The LoCo Experience

EXPERIENCE 247 | Diverse Experience and Strong Relationships Drive Business Success - A Conversation with Brett Kemp & Aaron Eide, President & Risk Advisor at Flood & Peterson

• Ava Munos • Season 5 • Episode 247

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Brett Kemp is the President of Flood & Peterson, an employee-owned insurance brokerage since 1939, and the strongest market share among property & casualty insurance brokerages in the region.  With career chapters in the Air Force, pharmaceutical sales, and manufacturing, Brett was a darkhorse candidate for ascendance to leadership. 

Aaron Eide visited Fort Collins almost exactly 25 years (to the day!) before we recorded this podcast.  He’s a UND graduate and came through the same Credit and Management Training program at Community First National Bank as yours truly - only a few semesters later.  Aaron had come out to scout out an apartment and see the town before moving to Fort Collins weeks later.  I gave him the nickel tour, took him out to see some live music at Lucky Joe’s and then to Elliot’s Martini Bar - and we don’t remember much after that!  

But/and - though we only worked together for about a year and in different offices - we’ve maintained a professional relationship through all these years, and that’s part of the theme of today’s podcast.  Brett’s prior experience in the military, and in manufacturing, and likewise Aaron’s career in credit and banking gave them added perspective on business and risk - and especially, people - that propelled their career growth.  

Lot’s of great business and relationship sales content in this one, and a bit of inside-baseball on the insurance industry, and three guys who all moved to the region in a short span of time - giving us a shared perspective - and so please enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Brett Kemp and Aaron Eide.  

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Music By: A Brother's Fountain

Speaker 7:

Brett Kemp is the President of Flood and Peterson, a family and employee owned insurance brokerage since 1939, and the strongest market share among PNC companies in the region with career chapters in the Air Force, pharmaceutical sales and manufacturing. Brett was a dark horse candidate for ascendance to leadership. Aaron Idy visited Fort Collins almost exactly 25 years to the day before we recorded this podcast. He's a UND graduate and came through the same credit and management training program at Community First National Bank as yours truly only a few semesters later. Aaron had come out to Scott out an apartment and see the town before moving to Fort Collins, and I gave him the nickel tour, took him out to see some live music at Lucky Joe's and then to Elliot's Martini Bar, and we don't remember much after that. And though we only worked together for about a year and in different offices, we've maintained a professional relationship through all the years, and that's part of the theme of today's podcast, Brett's Pryor experience in the military and in manufacturing. And likewise, Aaron's career in credit and banking gave them added perspective on business and risk, and especially people that propelled their career growth. Lots of great business and relationship sales content in this one and a bit of inside baseball and the insurance industry, and three guys who all moved to the region in a short span of time giving us a shared perspective. And so please enjoy as I did my conversation with Brett Kemp and Aaron Nike.

Speaker:

Welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast. My guests today are Brett Kemp and Aaron Idy. And they are President and Risk Advisor at Flood and Peterson Insurance. Flood and Peterson, period. Flood Peterson's, the

Speaker 2:

DBA name.

Speaker:

Yeah, that's what you're known as of Uh, so what's the, what's the real name? Flood and Peterson Insurance Inc. Oh. Is the corporate file name. Yeah. It would be a long email if, uh, very long email. If it was Brett K at Flood and Peterson Insurance, Inc.

Speaker 2:

It would be.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah. So we were talking, Aaron and I, uh, before we came in to the, to the studio before you got here, Brett, about, this is literally like, he came to Fort Collins 25 years ago, veteran's Day weekend. To find a place to live after having gone through the same banker training program that I did in Fargo, North Dakota. And so were you an NDSU graduate too?

Speaker 4:

Oh, don't swear it at me, Kirk. Oh, you were UND guy? IND guy. Yeah,

Speaker:

yeah, yeah. Go Sue. Yeah. They they played tough against the bison this past weekend, didn't they?

Speaker 4:

Yep. Lost in the fourth quarter. Oh. Well the

Speaker:

bison are pretty good at, uh, coming back if they need to. They really rarely have to. Yep. But, but good job on UND for putting up that much of a fight against the bison team that beats everybody by a bunch. Yep. Usually. So, um, maybe you'd like to describe the setting you were freshly graduated out of business school at UND. Oh

Speaker 4:

yeah. Um, yeah. Give,

Speaker:

gimme, lay the, lay the stage for me a little bit. Young man. The stage

Speaker 4:

25 years ago. Um, yeah. So we went through the same management training program in, in Fargo Community First Bank C, first National Bank. Yeah. Yep. Um. And, uh, after our six months there, they shipped us to one of their a hundred and whatever branches that they had. Yeah. 180 by that

Speaker:

time or something, I think. And,

Speaker 4:

uh, I got plopped here in Fort Collins and came out, um, Hadden, you know, dinner in Denver with leadership and whatnot. And the following. Yeah. Keith Dickman. Keith Dickerman, yeah. And then the following day I came up to Fort Collins and met you and Dave Marcy, and a couple others. And so, got to see you around town. Um, check out some apartments and then you took me, uh, to dinner in a CSU football game. Yeah.

Speaker:

The Fargo of Colorado. Really?

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker:

It, it

Speaker 4:

surprisingly, uh, Fort Collins, uh, reminds you a lot of Fargo or Fargo reminds you a lot of Yeah. Yeah. They have a

Speaker:

lot of similarities. Yeah. Especially did it that time. I don't know if it's stayed that way as much. Yeah. Not Fort Collins has lost kind of part of its agrarian background culturally since then,

Speaker 4:

but yeah. 25 years ago. Yeah. Moved out, got my apartment, you know, right behind the mall now, uh, or the, whatever they call Foothills Fashion Mall. Yeah. It still the mall.

Speaker:

Um, it's something.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. And, um, kind of left. And

Speaker:

how was your hangover after that night out? It was

Speaker 4:

long lived. Kurt. I had to drive back to Denver to get on an airplane.

Speaker:

And Brett, you were just saying, or we just uncovered that you got here basically. So I had, I had moved here in July of 99. Aaron, this was. January of oh one, January 1st,

Speaker 4:

2001. I had moved out here. Yep.

Speaker:

And then you were right in between us kind of somewhere.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. First week of January Of 2000. 2000. Yeah. So you beat by just a year. And where did you come from? Y you know, I, uh, after I got outta the military, I went back to school in Wisconsin and, uh, had then moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Okay. And, uh, sold for a multi-billion dollar packaging company up and down that east coast between Manhattan and DC. Okay. And, uh, as luck would have it, they were selling a division of the company I worked for, and I had an opportunity to stay with the new company. Uh, in the meantime, I had several friends that I grew up with that lived in the Denver area. And so took an opportunity. I was coming out here just to have fun ski things like that. You'd been out before? I'd been out before, yeah. And, uh, you know, just got a little bit tired of traffic and uh, and you know, just the lifestyle out. There's lot of people. Yeah. And took an opportunity to come out here and moved out here 25 stuck years ago without knowing a single soul.

Speaker:

Yeah, I think we all have just about the same story. Yeah. Did you know anybody

Speaker 2:

in Colorado, Aaron?

Speaker 4:

Uh, no. I mean, I knew other than that guy at the bank

Speaker:

that went through the same program as you.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. And I didn't find out that I had a bunch of, uh, college, uh, teammates that played baseball with at at UND that were in Denver, but I didn't know until, okay. I don't know, four or five months since we got out here. Yeah. You know, MySpace was the thing back then, right? I never

Speaker:

did get a MySpace page feel a little left out. Yeah. Yeah. I had friends in Denver, but Brent still using his MySpace page. No. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2:

I still have an a OL account too, just, you know, what the heck? Uh, but yeah, no, I moved on. I had several friends in Denver and it's, look, what have I ended up, uh, getting a job offer from Fort Collins and moved up here. Okay. Um, and left all them 60 miles behind and didn't know anybody. And here I am 25 years later. Cool. Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

What an interesting, uh, kind of, uh, but you went to the military first?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I spent 87 and 95 in the military. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Speaker:

So you're older than I think

Speaker 2:

I am. Well, I think that's a compliment. Yeah. Good for how old, old you're, yeah.

Speaker:

Fair enough. So, um, I think we should set the stage with, with a little bit of a insurance business. We're gonna jump in the time machine. I, what's, what's your town where you grew up? Aaron?

Speaker 4:

Uh, little town in Minnesota called Brainerd.

Speaker:

Brainerd. Oh yeah. I was actually just through Brainerd. Three of, so my dad remarried and he's got three step kids now, and each of them married into a family with a lake cabin in the Brainerd Otter Tail, Detroit Lakes area. Yeah.

Speaker 5:

Could, could be worth

Speaker:

places. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty awesome. I've all of a sudden got a, a eastern branch of the family with lake cabins. Uh, but Brainerd's a cool place. Mm-hmm. I mean, pretty nice town. 20, 30,000 it is now. Yeah. Oh, then it wasn't,

Speaker 4:

yeah. About half that size, whatever. And how

Speaker:

about you Brett? What, uh, what was your actually original hometown?

Speaker 2:

Well, most of my childhood years were spent in a town called Manasa, Wisconsin. Okay. Uh, where Nina Manasa, Kimberly Clark was headquartered in Nina and biggest town next to it is a town called Appleton on the Interesting, off the Fox River, just on the north side of Lake Winnebago. Yeah. I actually, uh, yeah.

Speaker:

Went partied in, uh, apple River a couple times. Okay. And saw concerts up there somewhere. I forget what the, the venue was. Well,

Speaker 2:

there's a lot. Yeah. You know, you're talking heavy German, Polish, uh, European descent. So there's a lot of music and slash drinking festivals.

Speaker:

That's

Speaker 2:

the cool

Speaker:

thing about Wisconsin is that like, you don't even really know people live there. They're all like living out in the trees and stuff. Right. But every 10 miles there's another roadhouse that's always busy. Yeah. Or at least it was. The few times I've traveled through there, I don't

Speaker 2:

think it's changed much. No,

Speaker:

they haven't, uh, lost their appetite for community and drinking together in Wisconsin as much as they have here.

Speaker 2:

Probably no different than Brainerd is though, to be honest with you.

Speaker:

Yeah. Never Midwest. There isn't that many other options. Right. You know, that whole healthy lifestyle and stuff is like, what in the freezing cold? What are you talking about? Right. Yeah. So Flood Peterson, long time, uh, insurance brokerage, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, not a, not an agency, but a brokerage and. For how long and how many, how many agents are you these days and is it just up here, Northern Colorado? Well, we, A lot of questions. Well, I was gonna

Speaker 2:

say that the, the company was founded actually in 1939. Okay. And lovely, uh, Greeley, Colorado. Okay. And, uh, uh, uh, Barney Flood and Pete Peterson were two childhood friends. Okay. That started the agency in 1939. And then, um, interesting enough, in 1941 when Pearl Harbor happened, both the founders decided, one listed in the Army, one in the Navy, and left their brand new company two years in and left it in the care of a woman named Anna Johnston, who was their office manager. Wow. Who ran the company while they were gone. Cool. Yeah. So then they, they came back and ran it,

Speaker:

which shows you that insurance agents aren't really necessary for the machine to function. Yeah. Well, they were probably could just call pretty small back then. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, they came back and ran it into the 1960s, late 1960s. Okay. And have, uh, I think what we're, what we talking about, Aaron, the fifth generation, I think we would call it as a, as private ownership. I think we're somewhat of an anomaly in the industry, uh, and the fact that we're not family owned. Oh, like Aaron and I are, are both shareholders and partners in the company and, and, uh, we're not related to each other. And there's nobody from the founding family in the company for the last 50 plus years.

Speaker:

Is it employee owned only or are there other private owners as well?

Speaker 2:

Employee

Speaker:

owned. Okay. Internally, yeah. Okay. So that some point, that transition happened. So if you're there long enough, you might get a chance to be a partner too, kinda. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker:

And is that like by formula or how do you, how, how would you decide?

Speaker 2:

Well, that's like how many octopus tentacles are there? Yeah. You know, uh, it. It's, it's, yeah, there's a way to, to, uh, to earn your way in based on, you know, your role and, uh, and your performance in that respective role. Sure. Yeah. And how long have you been there? I've been there, I just celebrated my 18th anniversary, so I guess I'm technically in my 19th year.

Speaker:

Okay. And Aaron, you joined?

Speaker 4:

Uh, it'll be 14 full years on December 5th.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 4:

Yep.

Speaker:

Nice job. Yeah. Yeah. Longer than you stuck around in banking longer. We both had a different, we had a similar, well, I, I got out of banking I guess later than you did. You jumped into insurance. But both of us had that experience of, you know, I left Community First National Bank in part because I could tell that they were trying to sell the thing and it was gonna be to somebody that I didn't wanna work for as much. So I worked for Bank of Colorado in Windsor, uh, which is at the time when they acquired. Lyndon Bartel's, no. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh, and spun up Pinnacle Insurance or what's now become Pinnacle Insurance. Yeah. And you probably know John Hessman well, I know John very well. And is how far away from your town in Wisconsin is, is his, is Menini right? Or is that Menominee? Menominee. Menominee,

Speaker 2:

yeah. Ah, it's a little bit of ways, but the key piece is Johnson Packer fan.

Speaker:

Oh. So that makes him okay. But that

Speaker 2:

makes him Okay. Fair.

Speaker:

I beg to differ as a Viking fan.

Speaker 4:

Packers haven't lost this week yet, Kurt. Oh yeah, Vikings. Have we, we got a few

Speaker 2:

hours to test. Which team's gonna show up tonight? I need, uh,

Speaker:

I need Devante Smith to go off big actually. Uh, and my opponent in fantasies only got the Green Bay defense left. Oh yeah. So, oh, it's a

Speaker 2:

good defense night for us. No offense, but

Speaker:

so, um, so yeah, so, so privately owned, which is important frankly, in the world of insurance or finance or any of that, because you don't have to be beholden to. The market whims in a short run and you can kind of make strategic decisions over time. Um, what, what number is your, like agent count up to and, and locations too? Are you just the main big shop still or is there other offices that I'm not familiar with?

Speaker 4:

Uh, there's three offices, Greeley. Okay. You know, home office, Fort Collins in Denver. Uh, what, 125 employees today? 125.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we've hired 2022 this year.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, so, and then my peers in the agency, there's 14, 15 I always get. Yeah. Yeah. We keep hiring, um, new sales folks, risk advisors. Okay. Um,

Speaker:

well, what do the rest of the people do?

Speaker 4:

Oh, it's all service and support staff.

Speaker:

Oh, really? So there's only 15 actual, well, there's

Speaker 2:

actually probably technically 19 producers. Yeah. There's several different layers of that, but there's 19, but probably 15 to Aaron's point that are out actually knocking on doors. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

The agency doesn't work or the brokerage doesn't work. We always interchangeable a bit in that sense. But without the, the account management and support staff, um, Brett and I can't be out and about and meeting clients all the time if, if that account management team claims Yeah. If somebody's calling you to ask about their policy thing and stuff like that. Right. So that Anna Johnston reference to flooding, Pete is the most critical mm-hmm. Component, you know, to 1941. I mean, if she wasn't around and Yeah. Didn't stay, um, around while Barney and Pete were off. Yeah, yeah. We wouldn't be flooding Pete. Right, right. And so yeah, they're the, they're the glue. Interesting. So,

Speaker:

so do they have, uh, like, talk to me a little bit about the structure if you would like. Do you have dedicated service people for all your accounts and the other risk advisors? Mm-hmm. Have dedicated service people for theirs. Um, maybe take care of that one, but, well, Aaron Aaron's

Speaker 2:

got Aaron Aaron's book, uh, and the clients he worked with has gotten to a space and and size of complexity of where he works with. He's probably got more of a tighter team around the accounts he works on relative to the space he works in because he works on complex, large, uh Right. I think that's how I describe your world. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of

Speaker 2:

construction industry stuff.

Speaker 4:

Is that Construction? Yeah. Manufacturing, distribution, larger accounts that generally, you know, spend if you will, or invest whatever term you wanna use into their insurance program. Um, quarter million dollars or higher is where I usually focus my attention spend premiums. Yep. Okay. Yeah. And so. Um, but the team, the team from an agency perspective is set up in verticals. Yep. So, uh, there's a construction vertical.

Speaker 6:

Okay.

Speaker 4:

So account managers and or, uh, risk advisors that focus in that work alone. Right. Niche business, uh, construction and oil and gas kind of go hand in hand. Mm-hmm. Very similar in how they build, right? Yeah. Contractors build up oil and gas guys drill and build down, um, different nuances in the insurance Yeah. Element to it. Yeah. And a lot of insurable risks on both directions. Uh, yeah. And then there's a, a diversified business which is manufacturing, distribution, tech companies, um, kind of the non-construction related, um. The bulk of insurance business is driven by construction. Unfortunately. That's just kind of the way it is because there's the, the pre the premium. So you're the

Speaker:

reason our houses cost so much and buildings cost, well, materials and labor and all those things. All those things. But part of it is,

Speaker 4:

part of, it's the, the insurance component. The risk of it too. Yeah. And so, and then, so there's, um, those are the big verticals. We have an agribusiness team that all they focus is on is the agribusiness component from food manufacturing to dairies. Yeah. Um, on that side. And we have a trucking division, which is over the road. Uh, long haul trucking and short haul. Right. Large and small fleet business. Mm-hmm. Personal lines team that takes care of our clients from A-A-V-I-I-P kind of personal lines component. Sure.

Speaker:

If you, if you're buying your commercial stuff, we must as well take care of your personal needs too. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

And then, um, employee benefits. So we have a whole team that just focuses on Oh, right. Um, you know, employer health sponsored program. So helping those folks through that process. And then tied to the construction component is the surety side for, uh, payment performance bonds. Oh, bondings and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's the core, core of it. And so yeah, it takes a lot of, a lot of help to put it all together. Yeah. Yeah. And are

Speaker:

you kind of the conductor almost of making, or you've got somebody that's your detailed person that's making sure all the, the loan files are put together, if you will pro

Speaker 4:

profiling me already. Thanks. Uh, but yeah. Yeah, so my job is to go attract and retain clients for the agency and then help or, um, with our ops team figure out who's the right account management, uh, team to support them, whether they're in construction or uh, manufacturing, distribution from that. And do they figure out

Speaker:

the carrier and stuff like that? You don't have to worry about that too much or? Well, we get involved in team project.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Kind of a team project, but we have a whole marketing division that works, uh, with us to negotiate those deals. Uh, well placements with the, with the carriers. Brett, a lot to do it. Yeah. Talk about

Speaker:

carriers and stuff a little bit.'cause that's part, part of the sauce, right? Yeah, I was

Speaker 2:

gonna add too. You know, the other thing is, and because we, we stood it up on its own vertical a couple years ago, three years ago, probably is, uh, human services. Oh yeah, the division. So, you know, from the beginning of our company, we've been very philanthropically based. And part of that is we work with several not-for-profits, and then we do a lot, uh, in the, uh, intellectual development and disabled space. Mm. So we actually have a, a vertical there that we specialize in the region on. Okay. And I'm gonna go back to an earlier, uh, question that you asked is, we've got three offices as Aaron referenced, where their locations are, but we do business in all 50 states. Oh, wow. Yeah. We, we've got a lot of business in this region, and then we've got business all over the country and actually have several placements of several types around the world. Mm-hmm. You know, a lot of it decision making driven out Colorado. But as time has gone on and people have moved on, we, we write business all over as Colorado

Speaker:

policies drive business away from the state and move, or people move, keep the insurance

Speaker 2:

guy. We, we work with several companies domiciled in other states. Mm-hmm. And I think based on the, you know, market and things of that nature, you're gonna see us continue to expand that presence. Regionally and nationally. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker:

So how is the, the industry these days, we hear a lot about, um, like in the p and c markets, especially homeowners insurance and stuff, hail and costs way up. Is, is the market more stable in the commercial lines stuff, or those hailstorms also wreck buildings in progress and stuff like that too? Or what?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I, I, yeah. It's funny. We just did a market update about a month ago at our sim, our annual symposium. Oh. I couldn't make it to that. I was outta town. Yeah. And, and so, you know, it's interesting about insurance at its most basic concept is a risk sharing pool. And so the same insurance carriers, for example, uh, write commercial and home and auto.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And so when there's property losses, so they're tempted to raise the rates

Speaker:

on your customers even when it's just their homeowners. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

When, when there's, when there's losses in Hale hail hits both businesses and Hits auto is one of the most unthought of losses in, in a hail firm. Oh, sure. Yeah. Uh, a as well as, uh, you've, you've got your residential damage on that as well. Sure. Uh, so the market's been pretty stressed as a property, um, market across the country. You know, if you just went back historically and looked 10 to 15 years ago, um, the industry averaged 50 to$55 billion a year in what they call catastrophic losses, which is weather related property losses. Okay. Uh, the last five years, the average has been 110 billion or more depending on the year. And so when you more than double what the market was built around from a loss standpoint. That's why we had such big rate increases. And every

Speaker:

one of those fires, like the one in Palisade in California is just like a

Speaker 2:

Palisade Marshall Fire, fire, no. Marshall Fire changed the dynamic, uh, I think across the country because it was not in a wooded area. It's just basically an extra field that caught on fire and an unfortunate circumstances of wind, heat, dry conditions. Yeah. You know, took a thousand houses out inside of an hour.

Speaker:

Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. Um, and how do you prevent against that, right? Like, is that part of the, like I think about your industry, especially in the brokerage space, a big part of it is trying to find the right carrier that will best understand your customer's risk profile and knows that industry and stuff like that. But then there's also how do you de-risk your clients. Mm-hmm. Do you guys provide support in that space? Like, it kind of seems counterintuitive because you're like, you're gonna pay me less, which means I'm gonna make less. But I, I have tools. I, I'm an, I'm a collector of knowledge, so I can help you de-risk some things.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. I think the, the piece about commission never crosses my mind. Mm-hmm. Ever in the whole process of it. So the whole part of it, people get upset about their insurance program when they have claims.

Speaker 5:

Sure.

Speaker 4:

Claims drive the, drives your market access down into a more limited pool, because if you have bad performance, if this is our insurance company Yeah. Why would we want to take a bet on a really bad risk? Right. Right. Right. So that's, yeah. You have some

Speaker:

claims and you go shop in your insurance, you're like, oh, I can pay actually more than what I've been paying or

Speaker 4:

not have options.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Right. And so that is the goal, which means you

Speaker:

might not have a business.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So the whole goal of our, I mean our whole value proposition is around what you just described in helping our clients manage their risk. Right. And it's, uh, not just the insurance pool of risk, it's the whole piece of it. Right. So I always split it up into three, just major components of risk. It's the operational risk or the business. Exposure of it. And how do we help our clients increase human capital, reduce their human error, right? So if you take construction and if you have people, you have workers' comp claims, if you have bad work comp claims, you don't get on job sites. And this thing just kind of spirals out control. Mm-hmm. So our job is to help, uh, our clients build and design a safety program and a, and a process and a culture for them to de-risk their business, to make'em more, uh, marketable if you will, to the insurance marketplace. Drive down premium and, and stabilize premium. So if you we're all bankers, so would you, uh, right, so you price a credit better than you price. C credit, right? Sure. So the insurance world is the same kind of concept in that perspective. So we don't, we want, we want to help our clients get a credit all the time and, and best insurance pricing, is that right? So the market swings up and down, but if you're the best of the best, you're always gonna get the best of the. Pricing at the time of the market that's, that's be available kinda, right. So, um, that's the whole thing. So the business risk is there, and then the strategic component of the exposure of the business is where are you going in three to five years? Helping them manage the balance sheet, protect the balance sheet, uh, from an insurance perspective. And I always, you know, use the comments like, who, who this afternoon can come in and really disrupt your business and potentially shut it down. And the acronyms start to come out, right? OSHA comes out, DOT comes out. Those elements of FBI. No. Well, we don't want those. Well, it could, that the EPA or the, you know, a lot of those, yeah. Those regulatory burden that comes into a business. We can help with resources, whether we have teammates that can help with it and or we can help find folks to help. Manage that component. And then the insurance piece is just the hazard element of the business, right? The three major components. Well, the insurance, that's just the insurance placement, right? It's how many vehicles do you have? How many people do you have, payroll, sales, property, right? Here's the specs. Yeah. And so that's, that's just the, the one third of the component of, of helping'em manage it. And so Interesting. Our, our whole goal is to get engaged and be a part of the team with them so we can manage three, you know, the whole pie versus just managing that one element of the risk. So, yeah. Well,

Speaker 2:

yeah, and you know, to Aaron's point, it's, um, I, I can tell you both, as, both of us would say the same thing as career transition people. We, we, we often hire people who are coming of other careers for several reasons. Yeah. Yeah. Um. But it may sometimes specializations somebody out of the ag world comes in and they're great with ag'cause it helps to understand how business works. Know like Aaron coming in and understanding how banking works was a critical piece of his success. I came outta the manufacturing world so I could understand and relate to manufacturers. I think the biggest surprising thing, and we've had everybody from somebody transitioning careers. Two attorneys coming on board mm-hmm. Would say the same things. Uh, a the insurance policy itself, the insurance carrier world and the market in general is much more complicated than people anticipate. Mm-hmm. You know, if you go back and watch your TV commercials these days or any commercial, it's about hitting an easy button. It's about saving 15%. It's all those things. Reality evidence is, don't worry about all the side

Speaker:

effects.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, a hundred percent. But reality is, if you look at the different verticals that Aaron mentioned earlier, each of those verticals may have very, um, narrow marketplace as far as carriers who have the appetite to write business in that space.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

But there's some very specific things that they do from an underwriting standpoint, risk management standpoint, and more importantly from a policy structure standpoint that's structured towards that business. So, for example, somebody writing an ag policy in an agricultural environment is gonna have different. Endorsements and possible exclusions on than somebody in the construction market. Mm-hmm. So I, one of the things I think we're really, really good at is identifying what the risks are and lining them up with the right partner. Mm-hmm. From an insurance carrier standpoint, knowing that all markets and all carriers are not the same.

Speaker:

That's one of the interesting things about just being in industry and, and in my place, even having conversations with so many interesting businesses, I can be kind of a collector of knowledge, right. For you guys, you can be like a one person insurance broker could not possibly collect the knowledge that they would need to serve Well, a complex client.

Speaker 4:

Well they can in the niche that they wanna be in, in that one niche. Right. But, but an

Speaker:

organization built up to serve multiple niches. I wanted to ask, um, from a little bit ago, you, you detailed kind of those, those verticals or whatever, but like, do you do like regular little businesses? Would you do a general thing for local think tank or a retailer or HVAC

Speaker 2:

company or, well, Flint Peterson is a reflection of. O of our communities. Mm-hmm. Right. Okay. Which is everything from your sole sur sole proprietor. We have a division of the company's actually called Main Street. Okay. And it's named that because the company was built on that main street business that you drive by or engage with every day. Yeah. So everything from sole proprietors do we have clients with more than 5,000 employees, uh, that have people, uh, work all over the, uh, all over the country and sometimes all over the world. So we can do anything. It's a matter of aligning someone up with the right specialized division and the right talent. Yeah.

Speaker:

Well, and those, like the, the insurable risk of a retailer, for example, is pretty easy to figure out. Right. You know, and so there isn't a lot of benefit to being a really smart guy in the risk advisor space because really I've got x amount of inventory, here's, you know, my margin costs, here's my fire risk, I should put a sprinkler in up on the ceiling to get a lower price. And it's about like that.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's interesting you say that because we all are consumers. I have my own personal home and auto policy. So does Aaron. I have teenage kids and believe me, uh, price has become more of a component on it that I'd ever thought. But the thing we both have realized through our careers is there's a price and there's a cost. Yeah. There's how much something costs you, but, or sorry, how much the price of something, but how much something cost you. And sometimes the cost is those things aren't, aren't included. Mm-hmm. There's policies that have exclusions on it. No policy is probably written the same.

Speaker 6:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know, a small business may have some similarities in how they structure their policy, but some of the clients Aaron talks about, they're very, very complex risk transfer. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Because at the end of the day, you know, one of our main roles is to create education about what the, you know, the risks are is Aaron articulated earlier in those three categories, and bring them a ability to transfer that risk to an insurance policy and let'em make a business decision on what they want to transfer and what they don't.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. I think that, um. We Insurance isn't designed to cover everything. Mm-hmm. No. Well, that's why our health system is so broken. Right? Uh, that's a whole nother job of insurance thing a pnc. Conversation, but it's not designed that way. Right. Right. Uh, if, if it was like, I'll just go back to COVID. If co if insurance was designed to cover everything, when we lived through that experience of COVID, the insurance business would be out of Yeah. Out of business. It would've been done. It would've been gotten Right. And so that's, that's the hard part. And I think the expectation for a lot of people when they spend that much money, it's all, it's a lot. Right? Yeah. It doesn't matter if you're starting up or Sure. Paying your homeowner's policy or you, you're doing$50 million a year in revenue. It's a lot of money. And so understanding what it covers and doesn't cover is a, is a big thing. And at this attorney tell me one time, he's just like, he tells his clients all the time, do you want to do it the right way first or, or hire me on the back hat on an hourly basis. Yeah. And I charge 1500 bucks an hour. Right, right. So, um, yeah. It's an art to the whole process. Yeah. Uh, when placed in a policy. Yeah.

Speaker:

Brett, you know the two things that insurance companies hate, right. What would that be, Kurt? Accepting risk and paying claims.

Speaker 2:

You know, so, hey, you know, that's a, that's an interesting, right, because that's one of those stereotypes that exists out there. And it, what's interesting about that is when you really dig into that insurance carrier and that insurance care relationship with its client mm-hmm. The right client, with the right insurance carrier, I actually, we see carriers go outta their way when the policy's built Right. To actually pay claims. When discovery's been done, the underwriting process has been thorough. They, they would step up, I think, you know, back to our staff, you know, above, beyond sometimes even obligation. Yeah. And I think that's one of our roles, right? What insurance is a fascinating pol uh, yeah. Piece of, uh, is a, is it a service? Is it what we call it a promise, right? It's apol, it's a promise in some ways that it'll be there when something happens. Uh, but what happens when a claim happens, right? Because think about it. You pay all this money in for insurance. For something you never want to use. Yeah. Right. You don't want anything bad to happen to you. You Right. You don't want a work comp injury, you don't want your, an auto accident, anything like that. But when it is there, what happens? I think one of the things that we do very, very well is upfront, we've got a couple safety professionals on staff Yep. That help form safety teams. They advise, uh, they, their advisor on how to handle OSHA visits, those things. Yeah. What, how to put, um, good auto policies in place. Put these things in your

Speaker:

training manual for your field crew. How do training, they do a

Speaker 2:

lot of field training. They're in the field all day long. And then when something does happen, we have, we have claims professionals on staff Yeah. That help advocate on the clients, on behalf of the insurance carrier to help facilitate that conversation.

Speaker:

Well, and that's, I was just thinking that part of the value of, as a guy, that kind of roots for the little guys usually, and f and p is one of the bigger guys, right. In the, not really your middle market size really compared to some of your peers, but like compared to that three person or 10 person office or whatever. If the carrier is being a butthead about paying out a legitimate claim and my three person office calls them and pesters them and whatever, that they can kind of be like, whatever. If Brett's on the phone saying, listen, this is one of our best clients, you need to pay this, or I'm just gonna have to not use you as a carrier anymore, dickhead, you know, you probably won't say it that way. I know, but I mean, you do have some leverage to get the outcomes you want, especially if you can justify it. Well, it's all contractual, it sounds. Oh, really? It's all contractual,

Speaker 4:

right? I mean, you pay premium for a policy that's an insurance contract and it says, we'll pay if these things. So no promises in that space? Uh, no. Not, not necessarily, but um,

Speaker 2:

I would say this though. I, I think our, our claims team does an unbelievably good job of engaging and facilitating the conversation between the client, the claims adjuster, and the carrier.'cause at the end of the day. It's about an interpretation of policy language. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so I think our team does as good a job as any team, um, of interpreting that policy and advocating on behalf of clients. Yeah. Fair. And I, and I think, you know, it's like anything else in life, right? I mean, it's a foreign language in some ways. Sure. Insurance, there's tons of acronyms. And I mean, how many people, I mean, I've

Speaker:

got the same commercial general liability policy as I've had since Brandon sold it to me way before he sold, uh oh, Brandon Aver. Yeah. Yeah. Way before he sold to IMA. Right, right. You know, so I don't even. I, I look at it, you know, but does it have the same things as other policies would? I don't know. You know?

Speaker 2:

So if you had a claim, would you look at it? Oh, sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker:

But I don't, I don't really even know what I'd have a claim for. Like a microphone shocked somebody to death in the podcast studio. I, he did, actually, he did help me early on. So when we first. Started doing applications for local think tank. One of the things it was like, well, you need this in there to basically say your decisions are your own. You know, the fact that you came up with this brilliant idea in a local think tank chapter and it cost you a fortune does not mean you're coming after lo think tank. Uh, you know, we're here for this purpose kind of. Yeah. Uh, so he advised me on how to kinda shift potential risk away from kind of a, a, what's that insurance when you, if you're a doctor, like malpractice kind, all professional errors and admissions errors and admissions kind of thing and whatever. Um, so we did talk a little bit about that, but you know, I just do stuff here in the office. There isn't really, you know, I'm not going up or down or driving cars and race cars or anything like that. So, or maybe you have big a differ. Aaron doesn't my, oh, maybe Aaron doesn't want my account. It's not big enough for him. You put one of your junior guys on it if we wanna talk next. Um, but that's a fair statement. One of the things I also wanted to ask about is pricing. Like. Do you. Like I assume kind of this carrier, okay, we got all the information, we got the profile, got the thing, here's our price. And then do you have discretion on how much margin you charge over and above what that carrier prices it? Or is that like a

Speaker 4:

carrier's defining price? Right.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So you take. Take a, you get a standard, well, any whatever share

Speaker:

of the house,

Speaker 4:

any company, doesn't matter what niche you're in, there's, there's a rating basis that's usually sales or payroll, um, from a general liability perspective. And what is the rate, right. So say, so the general liability, so they're the ones that decide the rating kind of. Exactly. And they have their own rates and tier, and so we will negotiate that price from one carrier against others. Right, right. You know, kind of from a marketing to multiple carriers per, but you can't give a higher

Speaker:

price to a customer that's more of a butthead and harder to work with, uh, if it's got the same rating otherwise. Right. Yep. Yeah, fair enough. That seems reasonable.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And you know, so much of it in today's market we talked about before, so you can't

Speaker:

gimme the hookup even if I deserved it. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

well, you know, in today's market we talk about is really tough. So much of it's about the underwriting process. I think as much as anything we, you know, there's, there's two parts to the application process, I would say. I think Aaron would agree. There's what's on paper. Okay. Which is what we're capturing your payroll and your exposures and you know, several questions around what your safety practices are and what risks that you take on every day. There's that part of it, but the other part of it's the story. Who's your company? How do you see risks? How's your culture? What, what makes you better than in your competitors? What makes you different?

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

What service you providing in the marketplace? I think our team does an exceptional job of explaining the company and our client base, the carrier market. And that does make a difference, right? Mm-hmm. Because there's a subjective component of underwriting. Yeah. That I often say that they, they, they underwrite based on what they see on the application, but they rate based on the things they don't understand. Right. Because I don't really, really understand this, so, and they have a rape ban and it's all filed. Right? Right. I mean, sure. The, the admitted market is, you know, governed by the, uh, insurance commissioner in the states, and the rates have to be filed. There is a. Excess in surplus market, which is higher risk. Sure. Which we, we see a lot now in our marketplace. Um, but it's about does your broker understand your business and can they represent you to the marketplace to get your best terms and pricing? And so much of that is understanding your business. Hmm. And which carrier market and do we need to approach on your behalf? Mm-hmm. Because they're not all the same.

Speaker:

One of the things that I reflected upon in my, in my banking career that I didn't really realize Right. Until I was almost out of it. Right. Was that, and, and you reflected on this, you were kind of over it with the banking thing of loan, good loans getting not approved by your peers kind of thing. But Reno Caesar told me this way back, he said. Your, your loan presentations are, you're such a good writer. Like you addressed all of my questions in an eloquent way to tell me the story of why this business was not only viable, but about ready to grow and mm-hmm. Need to borrow more money and keep a lot more money in the bank, in the not too distant future. And it was telling that story. What you're saying is instead of telling that story to the loan committee or whatever in the bank, you're telling it to the, to the carrier a little bit, which is like

Speaker 2:

25 different loan committees sometimes. Yeah. Right, right. That,

Speaker 4:

that's probably the one thing that, um, I've enjoyed in ba in insurance, um, is because if I get a No, I know I can find another, yeah. Oh, this

Speaker:

load committee said no, but I got 20 more. There's, there's a market,

Speaker 4:

there's a market to be, to be found for every risk. Yeah. Right. And it's, it's just a matter of, um, yeah. Finding it, what's the right costs. Um, so yeah.

Speaker 2:

Very interesting. Yeah, and we have a, we have an entire team. What, what we call centralized marketing. Marketing as in engaging with the insurance carriers as as the market. And, uh, that team keeps a pulse on what's going on. Everything from small business to large construction to ag to personal lines. Right. It's, it's very specific

Speaker:

mm-hmm. Uh,

Speaker 2:

to the industry and the size of the company, what your history looks like.

Speaker:

Well, and those carriers are all publicly traded. And so if, if they get a little hungry to have some volume so their stock price doesn't get limited, they might go into some verticals with better pricing for a while than otherwise they would. And you need to stay aware of that.

Speaker 5:

Well, they, they go in and out. Right?

Speaker 4:

Right. Yep. Um, like right. Two years, they might be

Speaker:

like, we're taking no new restaurants. Oh, we actually need more restaurants now, or whatever.

Speaker 4:

Not to pick on a particular vertical, but apartments are very difficult to insure these days.

Speaker:

Yeah. In Colorado especially.

Speaker 4:

Um, and it's, it's not just the hail exposure that exists. There's a lot of liability claims attached to apartments for, uh, the slip strips and falls, or the, the person who forgot to, you know, shut the oven off and let the pizza in overnight. Right. Well, poor people live there a lot of times. And so they're looking for ways to the standard market, stick it to

Speaker:

the man and get a payday.

Speaker 4:

You know, a lot, a lot of the standard market won't write apartments these days. Not because they're bad risks. It's'cause they've lost and they don't wanna lose again in the right sector. Right. So they just go in and out. Right? I bet you, uh, this is a beer bet with Brett in the next five years, you'll see all those standard markets come back because they'll be going a man, we're missing out on all this premium and people gotta live in a place, right? Because that's, yeah. It's an economics piece more so for them it's premium and Yeah. Loss ratio versus risk. Yeah. And, and profit from, from a, you know, publicly traded carrier. So

Speaker 2:

yeah. And, and then the tough part here, uh, locally, say you're talking to a company local and they're with the right carrier. They've had a great long-term relationship and yet something in that specific industry they're in, there's been challenges in other part of the country. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It, it could impact them where they get out of underwriting business in there. Nothing to do with that specific company. It's just an appetite. They, they no longer have the ability to take on that much risk in that industry. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah. We, we, a big storm in the Caribbean wrecked the whole, uh, shrimp fishing fleet. And so we're not insuring shrimp boats in Florida either. Yeah. Whatever. Well, and it's lot of it to make a forest come kind of ference. I, well, and a lot of, and

Speaker 2:

then the other thing is I, I, I, you know, I think we're gonna have some pending challenges in the liability marketplace as well. Mm-hmm. Um, I, there's been several things that have happened over the last few years, you know, coming out of COVID. Yeah. Talk to me about that. There were, there, there were claims that came in. Right. And so the court systems were shut down, so these cases built up. And so, um, as those claims are working their way through the system, still we're seeing some. Um, claims grow in what they were initially reserved for. Right. Because an insurance carrier gets to the end of the year and then they close their books out. Sure. Based on reserves. Well, they've seen dev development in the liability market on previously closed years on claims that are growing. Oh. Cost wise. Then what? They shut, they closed the year out for. Oh. So there has been some pending. Liability challenges, um, based on posterior. So like based on what, what, what are the Well, there's been several things. Yeah. There's been several things. I, you, you see more what I would call nuclear verdicts these days. Right. Which is any claim settle over$10 million. We're seeing larger claim payouts on stuff. Um, we're seeing some claims that came back in some big nationally known claims that have come back in, that have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in, in settlements. Wow. That the carrier may have closed their books out 20 years ago, and now here they have this claim payout. Oh, damn. And, and, and the other thing is, you know, the carriers by law have to keep so much in reserve. Like, what are we talking about, like

Speaker:

train crashes and stuff like that? Or when you say liability, or is it more like product

Speaker 4:

liability stuff? Well, it could be product or it could be an auto claim that takes five years to settle. And so they're closing out their books for this year.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 4:

This claim is open. They put

Speaker:

allowance in there, kind of an estimate kind of thing. They're reserved,

Speaker 4:

but then as time goes by people Right. There's a statute. Well, everything

Speaker:

costs so much more now too. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. And I won't get into the specific cases, but if you looked at national news, there's been some big national claims that have come out, um, against some well-known organizations. Why won't you get into a specific case for, well,'cause I don't wanna to dive into the rabbit hole of all those, but you may just take the, uh, claims against USA gymnastics. Oh, right. There were several, several, um, you know what, what an unbelievably sad case to uncover all those years later. Yeah. But those, those cases have worked their way through the court system. Mm-hmm. There were significant claim settlements on those. Right, right. Things that you just don't think of in your everyday life that impact the entire risk sharing pool. Right. Right.

Speaker:

I was thinking about, uh, Trump's uh, settlements he's been getting with CBS and whatnot to build his library. Right? Like, they didn't necessarily have that earmarked, but they're like, uh, might as well just do this. Yeah. Anyway, it's a different story, but kind of similar. Um, I think, uh, what else would you like to share with, with our, you know, we've got mostly a business owner, demographic listeners. Do you wanna give a few tips on, you know, other than call Flood and Peterson for the best risk advisors and the best company, but like what are the tips on becoming a tier as an insurance client and having kind of your pick of, of where you get it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. This is where I would start off. I mean, obviously I'm biased, right? Sure. Being one of the partners and, and with the talent we have on staff, I'm biased, but I, I, I say this all the time, I'll never say anything negative about another insurance agent and another broker. I think there's great people that work at. Our competitors, there's great people that work at the small, local, regional, national places. Sure. Um, we have chosen to continue to invest, uh, in, in, in our talent and what we provide to clients. I, I think with the private equity money coming into our marketed place and so many mergers and acquisitions and, and the sale, a lot of

Speaker:

temptation to trim a bunch of staff and shitty service. Well, and it happens,

Speaker 2:

right? I mean, if you, you pay a certain multiple for a company and you've gotta cut expenses. In our, in our business, number one expense is staff. Sure. And so we've seen the erosion of service in our marketplace and we look back and say, part of our promise is that we're gonna continue to be here. And like I mentioned earlier, we've hired 22 people this year. Uh, we continue to work on focus on creating jobs and opportunities. And we see opportunities in this marketplace to deliver something that has been an industry standard for years that we've seen eroded by, um. The private equity purchases of, of several of our competitors, and we're seeing it all over the country. Wouldn't you agree?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Why is

Speaker:

private equity coming into those industries? It doesn't seem like, it seems like insurance is too boring in state, or maybe they're just overstaffed. You're, after all this

Speaker 2:

conversation so far where you're calling us boring, it's gotta be the best podcast you've ever had. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

It it's annuity business. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very reoccurring type business. Right. Recurring revenue stuff. You take a look at it, at, at its core, the average client stays with a broker seven to eight years.

Speaker:

Wow. I would've guessed almost longer even.

Speaker 4:

Uh, that, that's industry standard. Um,

Speaker:

Aaron's like, I punched way above that, but whatever, you know. Well, I'm only 14 years. Only in the 14. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Um, but that's just the, that's the average, right? Yeah. And so, um, it's just a very desirable Yeah. Business to be in. I mean, if you take a look at any of the publicly traded companies that are out there, PR premiums haven't gone down. Yeah. Right. I mean, I started in the business 17 years ago and we were in a soft market, and I haven't seen one since. I'm, we're, we're, we're starting to see signs that the market is softening. Oh. But I joke with people, it's increasing at a decreasing rate. Right. And so, you know, two years ago we were talking 14, 15, 20% rate increases. Sometimes they're crazy. Uh, more, and I mean, I just had, you know, a handful of renewals today for 12 one, uh, one, one type business, and it's starting to be in that three to five. It's flattening out a bit. Okay. But you got, we can sit down and have a macroeconomics conversation about how the reinsurance works. Yeah. Uh, in the insurance world, which is the driving factor. Sure. To the whole thing, whether you buy your homeowner's policy or whatever, it's, yeah. It's the reinsurance market that drives the whole. Uh, our whole industry. So, so

Speaker:

Warren's getting after a little bit, getting a little more aggressive in that. Doesn't wanna put his money in anything else. Well, but yeah. Well

Speaker 2:

there's some truth to the capital investment in that. But, you know, reinsurance is really, again, its most basic concept is insurance carriers are buying insurance on their portfolios. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And as the price of that goes up, the price of the underlying insurance has to grow up. Because

Speaker:

I had, uh, Jack and Ginger Graham on Oh yeah. 106, six months ago and Jack was kind of a pioneer in that reinsurance space for a while. Yeah. Especially in the catastrophic loss space. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, I'm gonna call a short break. Okay. Because, uh, the insurance is just getting me too bored. No, just kidding. It's, it's very sexy. But then we're gonna come back and jump in the time machines to Wisconsin and Brainerd. Okay

Speaker 2:

man. Manasa

Speaker:

Manasa. Yeah. Manasa Wisconsin and Brainerd, Minnesota. And, uh, we'll, we'll compare Journeys. Alright. And we're back. That was a very refreshing bathroom break. You guys, you enjoy that Sure. As much as can for a bathroom break with a short bathroom break. Yeah. Um, so what we, what we like to do at this time, a lot of times is, uh, jump into the time machine. Um, Brett, one of the things I heard you say earlier was one of the things you look for in your company, especially for producers or risk advisors, is having done something else first, having some background of knowledge that reinforces your, your role. So, um, you're much older than Aaron, so I'll let you go first. Take me to take me to Wisconsin. Was that where you were born?

Speaker 2:

No, I was actually born, uh, just outside of Detroit, Michigan.

Speaker:

Okay. Yeah. All right. And then, uh, when did you move to. Wisconsin. Uh, so

Speaker 2:

we moved to Wisconsin. I was, uh, about six and a half years old. Okay. When I moved to Wisconsin. Yeah. So that was a

Speaker:

place you really grew up? Oh yeah. That was

Speaker 2:

my formidable years. Were there. Yeah.

Speaker:

Gimme your, gimme your family background. Was your dad in the auto industry or how did you choose to move to Wisconsin?

Speaker 2:

Uh, bringing the, uh, the dad thing in it is a complicated Okay. It's a complicated thing. I don't really know. My dad has seen Oh, sos your mom? Uh, yeah. My, my, my mom primarily raised us and took us to, to, uh, Wisconsin

Speaker:

and us. How many siblings? I've

Speaker 2:

got a, I've got a younger brother. Okay. Yeah. A few years younger than I'm, so, yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah. So, um, she worked and raised you boys and, uh,

Speaker 2:

she did, you know, I, I will tell you, um, it's interesting to go back and look at your parents and, uh, you know, at the time it's painful. It's in some levels. Right. Uh,'cause you don't, maybe don't see her as your parent as much as you want to. Yeah. Uh, you get a deeper appreciation when you get older and have your own kids. Um, of how hard she worked. You know, she, um, yeah.

Speaker:

Did she leave him to move to Wisconsin?

Speaker 2:

It's a, it's a super, it's a long story. It's a super complicated story that's concluded years of therapy Fair.

Speaker:

We, I'm not a therapist, so, and, and, uh,

Speaker 2:

Aaron's on the other side of the couch, otherwise I'd lay down for you to do the couch session. But, uh, yeah. You know, it's interesting. My mom went through a, uh, in today's world would be known as a project, self-sufficiency. Oh, wow. You know, um, she did take some state assistance and realized, Hey, I need to, I've got two boys. I gotta raise up skill if I'm gonna Yeah. I'm gonna raise it. And so she, she got trained and then, um, got placed in a job and she worked at that same company through its various, uh, ownership changes for 38 years. Wow. And so I think the one thing I really got from my mom is just that commitment to responsibility. Yeah. You know, she was really young. Yeah. And had two young kids and had to figure out how to make it. And a time, which. You know, a lot of, um, it was, it wasn't very common. It wasn't very common. In fact, my dad's

Speaker:

parents got divorced, uh, when he was 13. Yeah. Which made him like the one kid in school with divorced parents in the early

Speaker 2:

seventies. I was still the one kid whose parents were divorced. Yeah. And so I wa my mom and my mom worked, which was, you know, a lot of my classmates didn't have their mom work. Right. But, uh, and I didn't understand it.'cause the other thing we all know is regardless of your circumstances growing up, you don't know anything different.

Speaker 6:

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2:

You know, so I didn't know anything different. Yeah. Um, and so, but I just really, um, you know, admired just her hard work. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually cool. Even though when you're a kid, there's days you hated it'cause you know, what's the term? Latchkey kid. Right. And I've been letting myself into my house for all my life. I don't know anything different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but looking back on it as a parent, it took tremendous resilience and dedication for her to actually go to work and do those things. Yeah. Yeah. She could have had a lot tougher. She could have done. Yeah. She could have done a lot of other things or. Yeah. And, and she decided to work hard, right? Yeah. I mean, there's other things she could have done, and that's really cool. Uh, she, you know, she took assistance but then realized, I, I don't want to live my life like this when she went out and got a job.

Speaker:

So tell me about little Brett, like, uh, eight, 10, 12-year-old little Brett. Were you a baseball player like Aaron? Were you a, uh, rambunctious kid? I played a lot

Speaker 2:

of sports. Like any other kid, I wanted to play anything. And, you know, there's parts of my life that are pretty complicated and all serious sisters spent a lot of therapy time working through a lot of that. But you know, it as like anything else, I love sports. You know, I, uh, you know, I lived in, uh, Wisconsin and so there was just this love of the Green Bay Packers and sitting with a couple Vikings fans, I can actually, you know, emotionally tie to the fact of watching a team lose every year until Right. I became a, I became an adult in the worst word. Uh, yeah. But I like anything else. Right? I, I, I loved, uh, I loved sports probably more than I loved school. And, uh, and, and, and, uh, that

Speaker:

game against New Orleans where Brett Fav got. Beat to crap and they should have went to the bowl. Oh, with Minnesota? Yeah. Yeah. The bounty gate theme. Ugh. Rough. Right. Rough times.

Speaker 4:

Brett's. Brett's, uh, arguably, well in my life, top five most competitive people you'll meet.

Speaker 6:

Hmm. Interesting.

Speaker 4:

Well, you know, except pickleball these

Speaker 5:

days

Speaker 4:

then.

Speaker 5:

No

Speaker 4:

tennis.

Speaker 2:

Okay. Well, alright. No, I play tennis, man. I, well not, you know, it, it, it's hard. I, I try to play golf, but here's how I put it this way. It's, if you don't start a sport as a child, it's hard to suck at several things at one time. So I try to narrow it down, but, um, yeah. Competitive, you know, I think that's driven from when you're a kid and you see all these things that other people have that you don't have. Yeah. Yeah. I was just driven to, uh, create a life for myself. And then more importantly, if I was gonna be married and have kids create a life for my kids that they didn't have to understand, that's cool. But some of that meant right. And so it drove me my whole life and sometimes. C competitiveness can be a blessing and a curse all at the same time. For sure. As

Speaker:

I'm sure you've talked with your therapist about there too.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Oh yeah. We talk about it all the time. It's, it is not like, Aaron's not competitive. I, I, I think No, Aaron's very competitive. Well, yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, you, you know, to do anything alive, you know, that's why

Speaker:

you left begging. He knew he could never be as good a banker as I was. That was it.

Speaker 2:

You know, we talked about that before we took that. It's like, Hey, are you ready to come and be in that, that, that old PTSD ts moment? He was a better baker than me by the time I left

Speaker:

actually. Probably.

Speaker 2:

But, uh, yeah, I mean. Yeah. Childhood in several ways can drive, create driving. Well, high performers

Speaker:

rarely have an easy path Yeah. To that. So, but

Speaker 2:

it's, but I don't know any other path. So to me, yeah. I don't say my life's any better, worse, or harder than anyone else's. Right. It's all about what we do with the circumstances that we're dealt.

Speaker:

I'm gonna swing back to you and talk about the military decision after we get Aaron some Yeah. A hundred, some maritime in Brainerd. But tell me about your, your family setting. Were you born, raised there?

Speaker 4:

Yep. Mom still lives, uh, in the house that I was, I can't say I was born. Came back too. Came back to from the hospital. Yeah.

Speaker 5:

Came,

Speaker 4:

um, yeah.

Speaker 5:

So Cool. Your dad has passed on, I guess, or? Yep. Dad

Speaker 4:

passed, uh, will be five years here in March. Yeah, sorry. Um, but yeah, I grew up in Brainerd. Um, my grandma grandpa lived like right next door. It was one of those over the rivers built babysitter kind of things. Through the woods kind of things. No, it's a lot like. Um, we grew up in the eighties, right? Yeah. We're all, yeah, I was free range too, like you talked about Last Creek kids. Yeah. I

Speaker:

mean, my mom was there, but it didn't matter if she was there or not. I was just running, you know.

Speaker 4:

Um, my grandpa's, uh, was military. He was in World War ii. My dad followed in his path after Okay. He graduated high school and went into the National Guard. Um, and then he was a National Guard employee for 37 Wow. Years before he retired. He was a two job guy, so nights and weekends. He was a general contractor with, uh, one of his, uh, buddies in town. So I was on a home site. Since third grade.

Speaker:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 4:

Picking up trash and you know, it was,

Speaker:

wow. One of the, this is like summertimes mostly, or whatever, or summertimes, yeah. After school. Yep. If,

Speaker 4:

you know Minnesota right? In the summertime the sun goes down when? 10 o'clock. Yeah, about 10 o'clock. Yeah. 10 30. So it was funny, he was like, um, he gave me one of those little, um, pocket protector kind of portfolios. Right. And it was like spiral and it was, I had a red one, my, or a green one, I can't remember. My brother had the same, we had collars of ours. Yeah. And he is like, the only way you're gonna get paid is if you track your hours. So, uh, every night we would go out, we'd clock in, clock out, and he'd pay us$5 cash. Yeah. Right. So third grade all the way through college, that's how he put me through school actually is, um, the four. Well, I spent five years in college, thanks to the flood of 97. Um, but yeah, he, 10 99, me and my brother for my college career and Oh wow. Was my college banker, banker, for lack of a better word. Yeah. Yeah. My scholarship was working nights. Weekends building houses,

Speaker:

huh?

Speaker 4:

Um,

Speaker:

yeah, yeah,

Speaker 4:

yeah.

Speaker:

I worked for my dad. It as my first real job too. We, uh, we, he had a spray coop. You know what a spray coop is? No, tell me more. It's, it's those old, like before they had big field sprayers, they had this, this little like three wheel things and they'd drive around there. Yep. But they, you can't tell where you've been and where you haven't been. And so my brother and I would both be flaggers, so we knew exactly how wide the spray coup was, and we had to walk that many steps. And then he would, like, he would head at me and then once he got close enough, I would walk and then he'd drive straight at my brother Andy. And he paid us 5 cents an acre.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Wow. And

Speaker:

he got paid like a buck and a quarter an acre or something like that. Yeah. To apply chemical to these fields. And so that's part of how I explain my personality is walking through a lot of poisonous chemicals, uh, while out flagging fields in my Explains a lot. Kurt explains a lot. Fourth, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh grade years. Yeah. Um, yeah. But that, I think that kind of in sitting, that work ethic is a, an important thing and yeah. Um, cool. It was a big thing for me. You got just one brother?

Speaker 4:

I have an older brother. Okay. Uh, a younger sister. Okay. Um, they both live back in brainer. Yeah. Yep. Same here by

Speaker:

all my extended families back there too. Yeah. So I was gonna say

Speaker 2:

I had to honor meeting Aaron's dad. Oh. And it probably took about 10 minutes, uh, uh, uh, with him to understand Aaron's extreme discipline. He may be one of the most disciplined people I've ever met. Yeah. Especially in a sales role. He is one of the most disciplined salespeople I've ever met. Uh, if I gotta hire him to work from Tank Oh. Of time. I'm, I've a big business. I'm just talking about discipline in every aspect of life. But I've got honor of meeting his dad and, and, uh, you spend any time around him. It, it didn't take very long from first impression and conversation. He was just, your dad was just a very disciplined guy that did things for the right reason. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool.

Speaker:

How was your. School experience. You're probably good student and stuff as well. I know you played baseball even in college, right?

Speaker 4:

Yep. Did you

Speaker:

do that in high school too?

Speaker 4:

Yep. Um, so yeah, I,

Speaker:

or probably all the way through, starting in third grade, my mom started my peewee baseball team actually when I was in third grade.

Speaker 4:

Yep. Uh, played ball with my brother for a lot of years'cause we were Sure close enough age group together. And then, um, yeah, played ball through high school. Um, what was your spot? I caught.

Speaker 6:

Oh, you were a

Speaker:

catcher?

Speaker 4:

Yep. Interesting. And so funny. Uh, 30 year anniversary state championship was this summer. Got to go. Oh, go see state. Uh, a lot of my co my high school teammates that I hadn't.

Speaker:

So you were a state champion baseball team? Yep. That's cool. 95.

Speaker 4:

We uh, we pulled a rabbit out of a hat, so Nice. Nice. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. And then went to my first year out at. Uh, high school. I went to Minot State for quick. Okay. Because they would like to play baseball Forint. Uh, long story there, but the head, head coach, uh, was from Brainerd. Oh. And Minot was a reverse Title IX situation, so they actually brought the baseball program back. Oh, interesting. So it was the first year kind of situation and quickly learned that Minot was not the place for me. And then, you know,

Speaker:

why not? Why not?

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Because freeze's the reason,

Speaker 4:

freeze's the reason go. That makes sense. Uh, so I went to Grand Forks North Dakota instead. Oh, you can freeze there instead. Yeah. Uh, so spent, spent four years at UND and graduated there and, uh, played baseball. Uh, my

Speaker:

still catcher

Speaker 4:

still caught. Yep. Catcher's

Speaker:

a really interesting position. Um, I mean, you gotta be kind of the smartest guy on the team and the most like, willing for bad shit to happen. Like, I

Speaker 4:

don't know, you gotta be stubborn. I love that bats

Speaker:

and

Speaker 4:

I love the, the strategy of the position. Yeah. So it was. Growing up I called my own games with my pitchers. Right? Mm. And so you never, you don't get to do that today. Coaches are Mm. Calling the game from the bench and Yeah. Or wherever. So I really had a lot of fun. I, I mean, heck, my, when I was 15, I had to have mom and dad sign an amateur baseball contract to allow me to play, uh, amateur baseball. Mm. So, which happens a lot in Yeah. Central Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota. Iowa, a big amateur baseball system back. Yeah. What do they call that?

Speaker:

League

Speaker 4:

B? Well, it's, it's, I mean, there's a whole amateur Yeah. League around. We had a big

Speaker:

stadium actually. The, they're an Erstad stadium in Jamestown now, but they play a lot of those, those were

Speaker 4:

professionals, just to be clear. So the amateur baseball team is, is, uh, just non, non-paid. They're like non-profit baseball teams. Okay. So you raised advertising and just to get to, yeah. To play. But I caught my, um, two of my, uh, high school baseball coaches. Okay. It was a ton of fun. Very cool. Uh, at 15, you know, catching rides with your coaches. Little Falls and St. Cloud and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How fun. Yeah. Um, small little towns in, in Brainerd. Buxton was another one. I mean, they were all over the place. Yeah. Um, playing baseball, that's one of the cool things about

Speaker:

Minnesota as compared to North Dakota. Yeah. And Wisconsin too, probably. But yeah. There's just so much population density of all those small towns out there that there's, you know, I, I had to drive 80 miles to play basketball in high school. Yeah. Because to find another school that small,

Speaker 2:

well, well, Manas Max was the team in our town that Aaron's talking about. Yeah. And one a, a, a mutual friend of ours played for that team. Yeah. Small enough that lives here in downtown. Well, yeah.

Speaker 4:

Thomas Aarons, yeah. Played, he played for him. Manas

Speaker 2:

Max, my hometown. Oh. That's why.

Speaker 4:

Well in small, like my high school, um, uh, assistant baseball coach for high school was from Pecka. Oh yeah. And which is not far from where Breck up. Yeah. So you always, we took our amateur team to Akka to play. Wow. I don't know, three, four games. That's quite an endeavor

Speaker:

as a 15-year-old or whatever. Well, I mean, it's pretty, I mean, later after that, were a little

Speaker 4:

bit later, but Yeah. Um, the amateur baseball system in the Midwest is just there. It doesn't exist out here. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, so like high sch, the, the best thing that's probably going on here for amateur baseball is what? Um. Like the Fork, Collins Foxes. Yeah. And what they, they have been able to create bringing the foxes back and all the other teams that Preston. And have you stayed baseball at

Speaker:

all, you,

Speaker 4:

me or softball? Anything, any of that? No. I, I played softball until I was 40 and I took the guys to Old Seas my last game and I said, all right, I'm out. Have a great time. Really? They're like, you're quitting. I'm like, yeah, I don't need to give, uh, you know, I don't need knee surgery any faster than I'm gonna get it right now. That's fair. Yeah. Yep. Hung up the fair, hung up the cleats, grabbed the golf club, grabbed the shotgun in the fall.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yep. Dig it. I, uh, I watched a couple of the World Series games and it really reminded me how much I really, actually just really enjoy the game though. Yeah. I miss it. It's fun. Um, but so it goes, so Brett, you made a decision to enter the military. What was that like? Lead me into that space that you were at.

Speaker 2:

Well, decision's an interesting term,

Speaker:

or did

Speaker 2:

you get in big bad trouble? They said, no, that wasn't go to jail, go to the military. So I started, we were talking about childhood jobs earlier. I, I actually started working at 13 for my uncle. He, um, installed and refinish hardwood floors. Okay. In fact, at this time, that's also work. Yeah. It's a lot of work. Right. A lot dust, a lot of heavy lifting. Right. Yeah. Uh, so great thing is I didn't have to do offseason workouts for football or I was lifting all time. Just carry logs around here, boards around. It's crazy. I mean, now that it's company, my cousin run it now, but, uh, they do half the NBA floors in the. Oh wow. Right now. Yeah. Wow. That's impressive. Yeah. Yeah. They, the company's really grown, but I decided I, I really didn't want to do that and tried to, uh, went to college, played a, you know. Like a lot of our guys on our team, uh, got a chance to play athletics. I played in a okay, junior college basketball

Speaker 6:

Alright. For

Speaker 2:

a year. And fi uh, creatively found a way. What was your spot? You forward? I played a guard. I played guard forward. Yeah. Like what would be the three position guard? Yeah. Yeah. Three today. And, um, but yeah, unique and creative as I was at that time, I found a way to have the school tell me not to come back. Yeah.'cause your grades were amazing. Yeah. That, you know, they were awesome. I, I was lighting the world on fire and, you know, I, um,

Speaker:

paying all the attention to my classes, you

Speaker 2:

know, I was really, really fortunate to grow up to a a, a next door to a neighbor. He's like my older brother, um, who, uh, was in the Air Force.

Speaker 6:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And, uh, you know, unfortunately he was home on leave when I was a senior in high school and broke his neck. He's been paralyzed

Speaker 6:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:

From the neck down, uh, for what'll be 41 years here. Wow. Next month. And, um, what's amazing about that is that was another shaping moment in my life because reality is he, in all these years, I've never heard him once complain.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And so when things academically weren't going right, I mean, you know, it's pretty bad when you're playing sports and they won't let you say, uh, he, you know, convinced me like, Hey, go try the military out. And I joined the Air Force in the fall of, uh, in 1987. It's coming up. Yeah. Which seems like a lifetime ago. I mean, what was it? Almost 38 years ago. And made a, a, a decision to enlist. Which in many ways was some of the most formative years of my life. Yeah. Uh, you know, I, I went into accounting and finance. Well,

Speaker:

I'm only imagining you, I mean, you didn't have a lot of male influence in your No, not necessarily. Like, aside from the elective ones with your neighbor and friend and stuff like that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And my mom got remarried, but there, like I said, there's not enough room on complicated that counted at the moment. Complic. Yeah. It's complicated. So, uh, anyway, I ended up in the military, but way,

Speaker:

either way. Now all of a sudden you've got like buckets full of male discipline going on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I, uh, yeah. So I ended up in the military. I went up going, going into accounting and finance. I, I, I still have my recruiter's card. I should track him down and say, Hey, it's not what you thought it would be. Uh, so what's interesting about that is, you know, I spent eight years, I spent a couple years stationed. Uh, just north of, uh, London.

Speaker 6:

Oh wow. About

Speaker 2:

60 miles. A little base called, uh, RF Berry, which is next to a town called Huntington. Okay. And, uh, you know, it was, uh, it was fantastic, you know, played a, got to play full contact football a couple years. Cool. You know, back in the day, if you ever seen the old

Speaker:

MASH movies, well, plus, but ahead. Those guys didn't know how to play football nearly as good as the Americans. No, I mean, it was all Americans on base. Oh sure, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So it

Speaker 2:

was cool. So we got travel, so Oh wow. It was great. I mean it was, it was an interesting Oh, cool. Different, a long time. The military is not the same now. And what's your

Speaker:

football position?

Speaker 2:

I played safety when I was there. Okay. That sounds about right. And so, uh, so a lot of sports going back to, I mean, we've all in some ways, shape or form try to, you know, maintain that competitive thing of some kind. Now would you say it was a pickleball guy? I was just, pickleball is hard. Have you played by the way? I have. Yeah. It's very hard. It's harder than you think. It's very harder than you think. And

Speaker:

the cool thing is like the old guys can beat the young guys more often than not. Wow. Uh, because it isn't really about, there's some speed and stuff, but there's a lot of strategy in that game.

Speaker 2:

A lot of strategy in the game. And so anyway, so I left England and got stationed in the panhandle of Florida, Fort Long Beach, Justin area for five plus years. And, you know, back to a mentor, I had a, uh, you know, we've all been shaped by a mentor in our life. I had a mentor who was a Chief Master sergeant, uh, who came to me one day and said, Hey, look, I'm getting ready to retire after 33 years. This is a guy that enlisted in 1960.

Speaker 6:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And said, uh, I've gotta go find another career now. Uh, it'd be great for you to get out and go pursue something now. Yeah. And follow your dream and do something. Don't do what I did. Go back to school and, and everything. So, you know, I left. I mean, I, I got out in 1995, uh, following his advice and, um, interesting.

Speaker:

You know, did you go through a plan that allowed them to, like a GI bill or something? A GI bill to school bill and whatnot? Bill?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's, I, I have a GI bill and, uh, you know, it's crazy. Is. You know, I think the GI bill back then was 350 bucks a month. Oh, wow. Uh, and if you look now, people probably don't realize this, but CSU, it's vet program is either number one or number two every year in the country. I didn't know that. Have an unbelievable veterans program at Colorado State, uh, to give a plug for them. But they've done a great job of recruiting what would be considered non-traditional students coming outta the military. Yeah. And, and, and bringing them back to, uh, and bringing'em back to a campus environment. They've got a veteran center over there. I think they do a great job, work it, you know, and, and then Aaron knows, uh, you know, from, you know, life with his dad. Um, the military probably teaches you as much, if not more than school does every day. Oh, for sure. I had to work with people from every walk of life, you know, whether it be British civilians or people from, and I had roommates that were ranchers in Oklahoma from kids from the inner city of la, that thing a little bit. So when you get that kind of diversity in your day-to-day life, you literally. Are forced into a, a, a situation and an environment where you have to learn how to work with people of every, every walk of life. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's probably helped me as much every day in my life than, than school or anything else. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker:

Agreed. Um, and so you went, finished your college in Wisconsin? I went

Speaker 2:

back to University of Wisconsin Oshkosh'cause you know, like have it my brother, that's a poor name. And, uh, my brother, yeah, my brother and, uh, and his wife at the time, uh, had a young child and, and uh, was able to go back and spend a couple years with them. I knew, I was like, if you went back to Minnesota right, I mean, you know, you're not gonna stay, so you're

Speaker:

like almost 30 at this point, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was 30, man, I was 30 when I got out. Right. And so yeah, I was that, uh, that that guy that sat in the front row and Yeah. Yeah. Never missed a class. And, but lemme tell you, after spending eight years in the military, going back to college, it was pretty easy at the time. Your

Speaker:

discipline had to developed a little bit. A

Speaker 2:

little bit. And I'm still at that point was never as disciplined as Aaron is today. But, but, uh, yeah. No, I mean, you know, you were raised in the military family, it, it changes and shapes your life.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um. So in your world, I think you told us you went to the East j, New Jersey kind of thing and Yeah. When, when you came back here and, and came into employment at Flood and Peterson, were you what Aaron is now when you started? I did. I started, yeah, I started. What was your path to leadership?

Speaker 2:

Um,

Speaker:

talk me about the why of it a little bit too. See, I, I, you know, I've worked in not that good of a producer and so they're like, maybe this guy manage. That's pretty much what it is. They're like, your numbers are terrible. Let's find

Speaker 2:

you another spot. No, you know, I, um, it, did you ever read, uh, what is it, outliers, Daniel?

Speaker:

No, I have not.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the book Outliers, right. Malcolm Gal, well, I think it is the author of Outliers. Right? Not the author. I've read it a couple books. It's about time and place and I just, you know, I had a mentor, uh, that had hired me, um, and uh, a guy named Russ Michaels that was in town for a long time. Okay. And, and, and just the circumstances lined up. There was an opportunity with some. Other partners retiring at that time.

Speaker:

I see.

Speaker 2:

Um, and, you know, I had a diverse and different background than other people, so I had a chance to fill a void within the Fort Collins office to, to, uh, to be a leader in that space. And then, um, and unfortunately,

Speaker:

was that like a big move right away? Or were you like a, a junior leader for a while? Did you have a, a intermediate role?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was, we were structured a little bit differently back then. Okay. So I was somewhat, what you call the leader of the, for Collins office, whatever that means. Okay. Sure. I probably know official title, like the branch manager. Yeah. Something like that. Right. We were run a little bit different back then, but, um, you know, but here's the thing, right. Anybody who's in a leadership position of any way, shape, or form, right. First and foremost, you, you try to be a leader of your own life. Yeah. Second of all, I was unbelievably blessed and, and fortunate. It's not hard to leave a team of any kind or be in a leadership role'cause at the core of it, right, we're servants. Mm-hmm. And when you have people like Aaron and other members on our team, I mean, are you. You're there to assist and collaborate and be partners, right? I don't see leadership in a hierarchical space. I see it as a hundred percent. Are you a collaborator? Are, are you, are you somebody who's gonna be partners with anybody regardless of title or position? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker:

Mm-hmm. You know, I think that's, uh,

Speaker 4:

I'm just gonna echo, not even echo, just plug Brett as that person, right? Yeah. So, um, he probably doesn't say this much'cause a lot of people, he's a very humble person, but, um, you know, the servant leadership by definition, you're looking at, he's over it. You're looking at him. Yeah. Um, don't doubt it. And I mentioned my dad earlier, but five years ago, or, you know, coming up on that anniversary, um, big deal for me. But he was by my side down as a friend, uh, as a friend, but also, you know, as somebody at, at work, um, that just helps you through the whole thing. So he's, he probably gets, he, uh. I shouldn't say probably. I know he gets joy from watching and helping others succeed. Um, and that's my experience. I can't speak for anybody else at the office, but, um, yeah, he does. That's pretty cool. He gets it and he gets a, this, uh, just loves this, this strategy about helping people win and, um, that competitive nature. Yeah. Yeah. Comes out and, and that's how he and every chance, like if I call for help, I know there's 14 other people that are calling Brett for help on a particular, uh, account, whether it's, you know, getting them over to the office, to the agency or, or just closing it. So, yeah, he's, he's always there. Um, so I dig that

Speaker 2:

well, and I, I appreciate that. But you know, I, I, I am gonna go back to that chief master sergeant that grabbed me. Yeah. Said get out. I, I said, uh, know about a year after I got out and I was back in school, I said, I, I called him and I said, Hey, um. W why me? What, what, what made you help me? What could I do? What, how do I repay you? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And at the end of the day, he said, listen, I had somebody help me out years ago. Uh, and the only thing that person asked me, if you get an opportunity to help somebody, take the opportunity to help somebody. Huh. And so that's kind of always stuck with me, right. Because, you know, at, at, at the end of the day, work is something that we do. It's not necessarily who we are. Uh, how we engage and, uh, how we live our values is really shapes who we are. And I'm, I'm, I'm fortunate and blessed to work with people who live our values every single day. Mm-hmm. And an industry that's really, really challenging and stereotype not to have values.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, do you know Doug Woods, either of you? He was my most recent boss, uh, before I left banking. And, um, he had a little plaque behind his desk that said something along the lines of, it is only as we develop others that we truly succeed as leaders in life. Or something like that. And it, it, it reckons and, and what you're doing in, in your space of servant leadership, Brett may not sound like developing others, but it is, it's kind of creating that space for other people to learn, helping them overcome hurdles. And you don't like developing people doesn't, it isn't like putting ingredients in a food processor, you know, it's a whole different kind of thing. It's about building relationships and drawing to the right kinds of things. So,

Speaker 2:

well, yeah, I, you know, I'm, I'm gonna put Aaron on his spot here. He is gonna hate this, but I don't know if I've met anybody as good at any career as he is at what he does every day. Um, so at the end of the day, part of it is looking around and saying, Hey, wow, you have exceptionally talented people. So what, what's your role?

Speaker:

What do you need to do to unlock that?

Speaker 2:

What's your role? I mean, well, no, I mean, your role sometimes is to be supportive, be a listener. You know, we talk about being a therapist, right? Sometimes people just need to vent and get things off their chest. Ultimately, people will solve and identify solutions for their, what they're dealing with. Yeah. If you're there to listen sometimes, and at the end of the day, I think we underestimate the power of listening. Yeah. I don't really do anything. I sit there and listen and they get off the phone. Everybody solve their own problems and move on.

Speaker:

That's funny actually, that I, Ben and I had a, an extended meeting earlier and just conversational about topics that we could do different workshops and stuff next year with local think tank.

Speaker 2:

And you talked insurance? No, we didn't talk insurance. No, it's too boring. I know. Come on, man.

Speaker:

Um, but what we did do is like had back and forth listening conversations and one of my superpowers is, is having ideas. You know, that's always been one of my ideas. And so if he can set the stage properly for me, well maybe I'll come up with an idea, but I can, can't have an ideas if I don't listen.

Speaker 6:

Right. You know, if I

Speaker:

don't make time to, to listen and consider. So, Aaron, did you, were, were you pointing at like a banking job coming outta college or did you not really know and Community First had this training program done in Fargo? Um, tell me about that kind of segue.

Speaker 4:

Well, I kinda, I'll say, fell into it a little bit, but during my college career I did intern as a teller for the local bank. Okay. Alright. In Brainerd, uh, during the day and then in the, looks like these loan

Speaker:

officers have a pretty cush job. Maybe I should. Yeah. Or then in the evenings. Evenings

Speaker 4:

we, I hammered nails and, and then the, the nights off of work I played baseball. Yeah. Um, so coming outta graduation, I had, um, I had the, the, uh, living through the.com era mm-hmm. Of college. I had this dream to be a stock. Broker. Right, right. So because everybody investment made

Speaker:

so much money back in those days, investment

Speaker 4:

management in, uh, was a class we took, they, you know, give you that fake a hundred thousand dollars of money and, and go see how much you can grow it through Yeah. For this semester. Well the, the, the computer system was five minutes behind the ticker symbols on, uh, you know, during the.com era. So you just played the game and I was like, man, if we can make a million bucks and Right. Took, took your a hundred to make a million and you're like, oh, this is what I want to do when I grow up. And um, yes. When I came outta school, I had a job offer from Edward Jones and that was one of those tough careers of knocking on doors and friends and family or, um, there was a handful of guys from UND that got the, uh, were in the management training program before me. Oh really? Oh, oh, it had been, yeah. Gotcha. And, um. I don't think there was anybody in my group. Uh, a year and a half. So anyways, he's got my resume over to, uh, the manager. Was it Kim? It was Beth still hiring. Beth Feld was the Yep. That's who was, yep. And, uh, got the interview, got that job offer.'cause at the time, community First wanted to be, wanted you to be a banker and a financial planner and Yeah. And a mortgage lender and a open new accounts and cvs. And I got, you know, I, I studied passed by 7 66 Life Health and then got out into the real world and, um, that investment component Yeah. At the bank was, you know, calling on CD due customers. They were terrible at it. And so I was like, man, banking, uh, I sold a couple of floating rate trusts. Yeah. Uh, when Prime

Speaker:

was like 7% or something like that. And then, and annuities and, uh, yeah. Terrible. So, BA

Speaker 4:

banking, um. I don't wanna say call came easier, but felt better. Yeah. Um, and so that's wasn't as ethically

Speaker:

compromised in that time.

Speaker 4:

Um, so yeah. So Cayman, you know, got, that's how my banking career. Yeah. Yeah. Started, um, you know, Gerard Les was the bank president at the time, still, uh, somebody I get together with every other month at, at, uh, just for coffee, just to kind of catch up with Gerard. But, um, gave me my first job as, as a lender. And so

Speaker:

Oh, so he was the president by that time?

Speaker 4:

Yep. Um,

Speaker:

so,'cause you told me that story that, uh, yeah. Keith Dickerman shared that

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker:

The president that had been was no longer gonna be by the time you got there, correct?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So when I got here, Gerard was, uh, the bank president. We had such a,

Speaker:

so I, when I came to work at the bank, uh, Kelly Calper was the. Bank president.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Don't know that name.

Speaker:

Because he left two weeks after I got there to go work for Centennial Bank.'cause they were, oh yeah. They were paying big bonus fees and stuff for anybody that could produce loans. And so I spent five, six months unsupervised, basically complete, which is perfect for a guy like me. I like that kind of ish. Um, but then John became the president a little while later, but he was down at the South branch and so it wasn't until Dave Marcy came on board, maybe eight months later that I actually had a boss. Yeah. Like I spent the first, most of the first 10 months of my career without any supervision. Yeah. At all.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So that's how banking came about. Yeah. And then moved to First National after, uh, community First sold the Bank of the West. Yeah. Um, and then made the jump to insurance in, what was it, 2009 or whatever. And had you

Speaker:

been being courted by Flood and Pete, was it Brett courting you or what was that all about? No, um, you were?

Speaker 4:

No, I went, um. Not to take up the whole timeframe, but No, uh, NOCO 2030. Oh, sure. Yeah. You were early part of that. I was one of the, yeah, one of the,

Speaker:

I was almost too old already by the time it started, so I didn't get in.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So one of the, um, members in 2030, Steve Ewing was uh Oh, yeah. Had his agency. I was his banker at the time. And So you mean Levitt agency, right? Yep. And so Steve was the one that um, said, thanks for a referral one day and says, how many people like this? Do you know? I said A whole bunch. Why? And he kind of penciled out how insurance works and, and, um, you know, why being an

Speaker:

insurance guy is way better than being a banker.

Speaker 4:

Um, and then 2007, eight, you know, kind of happened. And, um, yeah, so it was one of those things that we were talking about earlier. It's just, you know, um, I was at that point in banking where it was gonna be my career forever or, yeah. Um, and I just. Took a leap of faith, I guess. Yeah. I was kind of the same college, try to, to try out the insurance gig and, um, it's been, um, at times you say, I wish I got into it earlier. Yeah. Um, mm-hmm. But on the same sense, I don't know, had I got into it earlier, I I'd be, but it's good. It's because of the, the 10 years of banking, so, well, even

Speaker:

in my whatever local think tank guy is like without. Nearly 15 years of banking, would I have been capable of spinning this up? I don't know. Yeah. You know, how do you recognize the right kind of business leaders and the right kind of facilitators and the Yeah. Ones that are gonna be distraction and annoying to the conversation.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Bank banking was fun. Banking helped, uh, it taught me a lot. Yeah. Um, yeah. Taught me a lot about how business works. Yeah. Um, for what I do today. So

Speaker:

we're going to, uh, usually I ask three random questions to my one guest, but we're gonna do, uh, two for each of you. Um, and, uh, depending on time allowance, we may expand, but, uh, that surprises

Speaker 2:

me. I didn't think there'd be anything random about you.

Speaker:

Oh, I'm totally random.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Say safe word Brett. Safe word. Grab the whole jug.

Speaker:

Oh, grab the old jug. All right. Yeah, because you gotta give Aaron two balls too. Make sure you hold onto those balls tight. Yeah. Who did I meet? Oh, somebody just today. Their name in Italian means golden ball. Um, and I was like, it's, it's a shame. It's not golden balls.'cause that would be kind of cool. Uh, but golden ball is just not as interesting. Yeah. Unless you're New Year's

Speaker 2:

Eve, the ball

Speaker:

drop. Oh yeah. I guess that's, that's the right time. So, so what's the, what's the deal with this? I wanna be playing bingo here. I've got, I've got numbered questions here leading to random things. So, so each of you,

Speaker 4:

we have a guy at the office that has these random questions, each of you. Yeah, we've

Speaker:

gotta refresh'em. We'll refresh'em for next season. But in the meantime, each of you must grab ahead two balls out of there and then give you the numbers from those balls and, uh. Brett, I'll start with you since you're the boss. Oh, I was gonna ask you Aaron, I'm not boss of any, do you have to do, do you have any desire to be like Brett when he gets old enough to retire or anything? Or is that you don't wanna manage people, he's good at that. You would rather just,

Speaker 4:

uh, I had that management experience in banking, Kurt. Yeah. And, um, uh, that's not my, where I get my joy. I enjoy the, the coaching, mentoring of Yeah. Of uh, um, working with my team teammates. But Did you ever

Speaker:

meet Kel o Kelly? No. He was the president at, uh, capital West Bank after I left or gotcha. Before I left. Good guy. He came in, he hired Doug Woods, actually. Gotcha. Who was my last real boss. But he was the CEO. And Kel, to his credit. So we, I spent 11 months as the acting president, um, for which the bank, uh, kept my salary the same, but did give me a$200 gift card to Jay's to say thanks. Nice. Yeah. Uh, it was super sweet since I knew that they paid my, I miss Jay Boss 180. Miss Jay too. Yeah. Um, but anyway, Kel comes to meet with me on his second day of work and I was like, do you wanna be the bank president down here in Fort Collins? He's like, no, not really. Okay, good. We'll hire somebody for you then.'cause I wanna keep you. I was a pretty good producer and all that, but, um, anyway, number Brett's first, number nine. What's the strangest way you've ever injured yourself?

Speaker 4:

Oh, boy. I'm glad I didn't get this one.

Speaker 2:

That's a good question.

Speaker 4:

Oh, I got a good one. You, you'll laugh. Kurt will laugh at this one. I hope so. Miami. Oh yeah. Might as well go down that

Speaker 2:

path, you know, that just came up to la So this is a problem. So, uh, it's Aaron and his wife Brandy and my, me and my wife Stephanie, walking down the street in Miami. And, uh, there's some big food network thing going on. Okay. And his food network car pulls up and one of the, and then windows, windows down or whatever. And one of the celebrities is sitting in there and I look and I'm trying to figure out who's in the actual car. They're all talking. And as I am looking, I turn and face planted right into one of those big metal poles, street signs, street time. Like wham,

Speaker:

like, and Oh, like right. Oh yeah. Square in the forehead, square in the forehead.

Speaker 2:

So, so you've been device after eyes are watering, everything's blurry and dizzy. I think Aaron might've said, Hey, are you okay? My, my wife's holding her knees laughing. We're all laughing and then yeah, they're all laughing. And, and once they figured out, out, it was okay. Uh, everyone laughed even further. I had a big, big red mark down the middle of my face and we, and we met several other people for breakfast. Yeah. And then I had to explain the story over and over, which actually adds to the injury.

Speaker 4:

Well, you know how face injuries are, right? Oh yeah. It could be the littlest little cut, but he is bleeding for Oh yeah. At least 30 minutes. Yeah, 30 minutes. All because of a stein. Just, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And, and literally I was trying to serve them by telling him who was in the car and it didn't work out for well. Yeah. Yeah. Well that's a good one.

Speaker:

I forgot all about that. No good deed goes unpunished. You know that one, right? Yeah. I'm sure Gerard has showed you that one.

Speaker 4:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh, who's next? You are Kurt.

Speaker:

Oh, I don't do all these, uh, well's for you. Your

Speaker 4:

choice.'cause I got both numbers here.

Speaker:

Okay. Gimme one.

Speaker 4:

Uh.

Speaker:

Two, we've done this one a lot of times. Would you rather fight one horse sized duck or 100 duck sized horses?

Speaker 4:

Geez. Yeah. I'm going with the big duck. Yeah, just one. Just one. Yeah. I And hope, hopeful that I can serpentine enough that he can't catch me.

Speaker:

Oh, you just outrun'em if you need to. Yeah, because I wonder how fast like a horse size little, little ducks can run pretty fast, like maybe half as fast as a, as a man can run. Do you think a horse size duck could run like way faster or would they actually be slower?'cause they're

Speaker 4:

Ask a swan.

Speaker:

Yeah. Swan's probably running pretty fast. Yeah. No,

Speaker 4:

do, do they get to use their wings or not as the question?

Speaker:

Well, sure. I mean if, yeah. Yeah. So then, yeah. I mean, let's assume this horse size duck on fly. I still take

Speaker 4:

one duck. Yeah,

Speaker:

man. I've always been imagining fighting that duck on the ground. If that fucker dive bobbed you, that would be a whole different seed. Yeah, it would. If you're a horse sized duck Yeah. Coming outta the air. But I, I'm on your side. I've, I've actually come back around to that'cause it's like, I don't, I'm not scared of an ant, but a hundred biting ants on me, I would be kind of scared of. Mm-hmm. Well, uh, duck sized horses would be worse than biting hands, I'm sure. Right? Mm-hmm. Yep. Brett, would you like to do your second? Yeah, sure. Number

Speaker 2:

24.

Speaker:

24. What's the most durable business relationship you've had?

Speaker 3:

Mm.

Speaker 4:

Wow. You got the deep thought. I know. I got the

Speaker 2:

deep, deep, durable, deep thoughts for curb bear. Um, most durable. Well, I, I tell you what, you know, we, I don't know how I, I don't know how I'd narrow it down. I, I would have to go back to the team internally.

Speaker 6:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

You know, uh, it's, it's interesting, right? It's low turnover team since you've Yeah. Been in the

Speaker:

leadership role, been

Speaker 2:

surround and, and, and honored. Oh. And how did

Speaker:

you get Aaron then, because he went to you and Levit and then he, I wasn't

Speaker 2:

even in role. We were like, I was just, I was doing production at the time and, and, uh, one of our colleagues, uh, knew him and, uh, and kind of recruited him over.

Speaker:

Gotcha.

Speaker 2:

But I, I, I'd say the team, because, you know, you know, it's interesting, you know, um, Aaron, me, uh, mentioned earlier, uh, you know, the passing of his father and it, it, you know, oftentimes we spend as much time at work as we do anywhere else. Sure. And right. So we live life. We live life. And for the last 18 years, I've been just incredibly blessed to live life with people who care beyond just the numbers. Care beyond just, uh, yeah. What we do every day. You know, we, we we're, one of the things we pride ourselves on is being involved in the community. And so I've been able to stand side by side with people who serve our communities, try to give back. Uh, and if we've all lived life through our own, you know, personal, um, and collective tragedies and, and yeah. And trauma we've adapt to done. And, uh, sometimes I think we underestimate those impacts on our life of, of, of being at an office every day when something personally is, uh, happened to you and having that support group around you and that, that creates durability. Yeah. Those friendships and that loyalty. Totally. Uh, and the last thing I'd say is, you know, at the end of the day. Everybody has a legacy in some way, shape, or form. Oftentimes we look at our children, but I think the, the, the ability to influence and then the people that have influenced off oftentimes shape our legacy more than we wanna Yeah. Yeah. What we recognize,

Speaker:

I, uh, my wife and I don't have any children of our own. Yeah. You, you know, some of my nephews over there and I do re

Speaker 3:

Yep.

Speaker:

Um, and, uh, but we've hosted now a dozen exchange students. Right. And the, the young lady we're hosting now, Sarah, we hosted her brother three years ago, en Rico from Italy. Right. And he came home with a passion for cooking.

Speaker 6:

Right.

Speaker:

Uh, especially Mexican food. And I just like that one, you know, that one little nugget of knowledge that, that he's like cooking tostadas for his family and probably his friends and his future wife over there in the, you know, middle of Italy. Uh, it just makes me smile a little bit. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And, and, and I, and I would add too, within that, I mean, we both have unbelievable, incredible spouses. Mm-hmm. Understand who have stood by us and, and, and been there. Right. Because there's a lot of, of time at community events and other things like we've Yeah. We've been honored have, sometimes they want to go, sometimes they don't. Yeah. And we, and we have spouses that have supported and then been there every step of the way. And in some ways both our spouses have had bigger impacts on the communities that we live in then we've had.

Speaker:

Yeah. That's fair. That's cool. Aaron, would you like the last swing? 16. 16? Oh, this is kind of a deeper thing. Who, what person has had the most significant influence on your life, other than Brett, that would be totally brown nosing at this point. No ker bear. Yeah. Other than me or Brett? Yeah. Neither of us.

Speaker 4:

Um, it's an easy one for me, but we've talked about him, but my dad.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Um,

Speaker:

it's pretty awesome to have a hero for a dad, right? Like, I mean, you can't necessarily speak to it Brett. Mm-hmm. But it is a really remarkable thing to have that person you really look up to in that spot.

Speaker 4:

Yep. It is.

Speaker:

I can see your, your emotional right now, just reflecting on him, and I think that's a huge testimony. So thanks for that. Yep. Realness. Um, the last segment, although actually let's have one more bonus segment. We used to intentionally talk about family a little bit more. Tell me where is it Stephanie? Yeah, Stephanie is your wife. Where, where, where, along that journey that we've been talking about, did you find her and why did she say yes to date number two? I'm still

Speaker 2:

figuring that out. Um, no. We met in, uh, so I, I joined a local company named Fire Block in 2002, and I met her in, uh, I think it was May of 2003.

Speaker 6:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And, um, I can still take you to the place in that building where I opened the door and she was there to interview her job. I could tell you what she was wearing and she looked like that day. I mean, that's, that's 20. You did a Charlie Kirk. You're

Speaker:

like, I'm not gonna interview you. I wanna ask you. No. And it

Speaker 2:

wasn't. She was interviewing and I was, yeah. I, um, yeah. So I, I just, um. I can remember it was like, like it was yesterday. That's cool. And she's, she's been there. You know, when you go into our business, you know, as much time as we've spent in the community, which is this understated thing of, I think what we do is just try to get back in the community is it takes a team. Yeah. You know, and she's been there every step of the way. I would not have any of the success I've had in the last 20 years if she wouldn't have been there. That's cool. Yeah. Where did you find Brandy at Aaron?

Speaker 5:

Uh, well,

Speaker:

here in Fort Collins. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I thought you were single when we went out that night. It was, I remember the girls you were flirting with. Uh, just kidding.

Speaker 4:

We just celebrated. Well, we're, we're soon to celebrate our 15th year of marriage in December. 12, 11, 10 December 11th. I always have to say it that way so I know which date it is.'cause I always get the

Speaker:

Oh, that's your anniversary, are you report? Yep. 12 11, 10. That's cool. Well, we

Speaker 4:

met on, uh, Halloween 16 years ago, just a couple weeks ago. Yeah. Um, mutual group of friends tailgating at CSU Air Force. Perfect. Old hug stadium. Like Brett, I can, um, probably find, you know, should it still exist out at Hughes Row and, and the ticket for that game. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So it was, yeah, pretty cool. 16 years ago. Yeah. Yep.

Speaker:

So here in front of us, I have, what do we call this? Oh, it's the Infinity Flask, um, which includes, glad you asked Outskirt, which includes a little bit of every distilled spirit that has come through the podcast studio over the last. Six months or so. And the cool guests, uh, have a sip with me and then do some tasting reflections before we get into the, the Loco experience stories. Would you like to start there? Sure, sure. I can pass it over to you, Brett.

Speaker 6:

There you go.

Speaker:

So I just, I would, I would consider it a sip or more their shooter.

Speaker 4:

Oh, I can smell the tequila.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's pretty, that's pretty distinct right away.

Speaker 4:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

So what do you think? Should I bottle that?

Speaker 4:

I would pass, uh, but it's not as bad as I thought it was. Right. It's, than I thought. Yeah.

Speaker:

Well everything's like in the mid shelf range. Right. You know, we are no slouches around here. We buy 30 and$40 bottles of stuff. My my guess. Bring cool stuff. Yeah. You can even taste the ji Can you taste the gin Little bit. There's a tiny bit of Mob Mountain Distillery gin in there. It's,

Speaker 2:

it's, uh, the sip that keeps giving. It does. Yeah. It's got steak power. Yeah. It's got steak power.

Speaker:

Oh, well, thanks for enjoying the local experience with me, but, uh, so

Speaker 4:

Kurt, remember that risk transfer thing?

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. And then you're giving the insurance guys alcohol on the way out the door. Yeah. Anyways, it was just, it was too easy not to

Speaker:

Well, it's on video too. I know. Yeah, absolutely. He's serving us like nobody's drank more than about a shot and a half. You're big guys. I'm just messing with that. It was too easy. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, if, uh, Fort Collins pd, if you wanna set up around the corner from, uh, the Loco Experience Studio on Monday evenings, you might get one once in a while. Yeah, they probably are already doing it. Brett, the Loco experience is the craziest experience that you're willing to share with our listeners. It might be ironic, it might be near death, it might be cultural, you know, signing up for the military after the background you came from. Uh, I don't know. Tell me what, what strikes you when I say, what's that craziest experience you would tell your grandkids? I,

Speaker 2:

I, yeah, I'd probably go with most unforgettable experience in a way. Okay. Alright. So in, uh, 1994, I was still at Eglin Air Force Base. Okay. I was, uh, about a year, year and a half from getting out of the military.

Speaker:

Okay. And had you decided already?

Speaker 2:

Uh, yeah, I was pretty certain I was gonna get out and, uh, anyway, I had won a, um, I won this award and, uh, and, and I had an opportunity. What award? Uh, I don't know if that matters. The Super Good Soldier Award. I was Airman of the Year for the Oh, at the base for real. That's impressive. Yeah. And then, yeah, out of how many, I think we had 5,000. That's pretty, you know, one out of 5,000. It's a pretty big ranking. Yeah. Well, it pales him. In comparison to be sitting here right now on the couch. Yeah. Kurt got blessed with Kurt. Right. The Infinity. I was like, I I'm going home experience podcast. I'm going home and throwing all the plaques and trophies anyway, so I'll stop interrupting, I promise. Yeah. So anyway, so this, anyway, so I got an opportunity and this is, uh, been, this was unbelievable, but I got an opportunity to go up in an, what they call an incentive ride. Uh, and I got to go out and pick between the F 16 and F fifteens.'cause we had several fighter squadrons on our base. Uh, I picked a 16'cause they had a low canopy so you could see really well. And, um, the day of the flight, uh, the general on base, who and I had an opportunity to meet a couple times was growing up.'cause they had to have to keep their, uh, pilots, uh, status. They had to fly so many hours. Sure. So we went up. So just two of us went up and, uh, cool. I knew it was gonna be interesting. Uh, hour and a half when I went up. We did a vertical takeoff to 10,000 feet. Pulled several Gs and, um, the thing they don't tell you before the incentive award, and I knew a lot of the pilots'cause I worked in a finance office, is that, uh, they bet with themselves that the incentive rider and I, they could make it pass out. Yeah. Well I was the first one and I think they hadn't given one in about five years. And so they were all itching for this. But, uh, basically, uh, they have to make, you know, puke. Oh. And so, uh, anyway, they accomplished that pretty quickly and they give you a chance to stabilize. But it was cool'cause I, I got to go out, uh, over the gulf. We were out far enough we could break the sound barrier. Wow. And, uh, I've got a plaque with pictures on it in my wall. So it's probably one of the most extraordinary experiences I've had in my life. Yeah. That a lot of people probably don't get to experience. Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

You didn't pass out from the GS though. You were uh, stayed conscious.

Speaker 2:

I stayed conscious the whole time. It's just unbelievable the pressure it puts on your body. Oh, no. And how sore I was the next day. I mean, I was sore for days after that.

Speaker:

I, uh, there's a video out there on the. Twitter where like somebody like comes into and out of consciousness pulling gs Oh, I could as a passenger on jet Like that. They're like,

Speaker 2:

yeah. I mean, when you take off, I mean, when you, when you, when you see those planes bank and they're pulling a couple G's at that point. Yeah. But when you do that vertical take off, if you're mouse open, you're not getting it closed. And then, you know, you have to go through all this training and you've got your flight suit on, and you can just hear this flight suit kick on and push all the blood, try to push all your blood back up. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Speaker:

It's so much more intense than most people realize. I think

Speaker 2:

it was more intense than I realized. I thought I was in pretty good shape at the time. I had parts of me sore that I never thought I could be sore. Well, I did

Speaker:

was have an airplane ride. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Thank you. That was it. That's, that's actually pretty cool. Yeah. Like, like one in a hundred thousand of my listeners, if I had a hundred thousand listeners, would've had a story. Well, you're gonna

Speaker 2:

hear a hundred thousand listeners after the insurance part, right? Well, Aaron's famous. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. The most exciting experience and insurance.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I should have went first. How? I don't know. I don't, can't follow that experience. No. Um,

Speaker:

do you have any brushes with famous baseball players in your career or anything like that?

Speaker 4:

No. I mean, I've met a handful of people, but you never really meet'em. You just, yeah. Acquaintances. So, and they played for the twins

Speaker:

for like a year. Whoa,

Speaker 4:

whoa, whoa. 97 or 87 91. Herbie. Oh, Herbeck, Kent, Herbeck, Kirby P These guys were studs. I'll, I'll go with the experience that probably changed my, uh, or influenced my life the most. I wouldn't say necessarily changed it, but you asked Brett the question, the one of the most crazy, uh, times you got hurt. Oh yeah. Um, so I don't tell this story to a whole lot of people, but I broke my wrist in junior year of, of high school baseball season and I just broken the starting lineup and I was all into it. And we had a racket sports class in high school. Okay. So what is a high school? Boy do in racket sports when you're warming up for tennis mm-hmm. You try to jump over the tennis match. Oh damn. So I did not make it. Uh, and, uh, ended up breaking a little bone. You broke your scaphoid. The scaphoid. I

Speaker:

broke my scaphoid crashing a bicycle trying to ride fast with no hands.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. And so that little bone, um, cost me my junior season. Ah, damn. Uh, but also taught me a lot about, um, patience, persistence, work ethic, um, being a good teammate, uh, when you're not playing.

Speaker 3:

Hmm.

Speaker 4:

Um, so yeah, so I had my, you know, cast on for yeah. Eight or 10 weeks and then convinced the doc to take it off and rebroke it and had to have surgery the following spring. So, um, but that experience is as embarrassing as it is. Yeah. Um, really. Helped me a lot. Yeah. Um, and I have, you know, I get to look at it every day. Right. Oh, did you get a scar? Oh yeah. I had from a backup

Speaker:

surgery, had

Speaker 4:

surgery and, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The whole thing. So, see, I lived with

Speaker:

mine for three weeks before I had it casted. Oh yeah. And, and then finally got it checked out and casted.'cause it wasn't healing, you know, I had a sprain wrist I thought from crashing my bike, but yeah. Yeah, no, that

Speaker 4:

little bone's a

Speaker:

it's a slow one to heal. Yeah. Yep. Interesting. That whole, like that was probably one of your first brushes with. Not being Superman. Right. Like with actually having to have a recovery time over things and stuff like that. Oh, I

Speaker 4:

don't never put myself in the category. Well, not a Superman,

Speaker:

but we're all, I mean, we're men. Mm-hmm. Until we're about 25. Yeah. We basically feel un un invincible until we have an injury or occurrence like that. Right.

Speaker 4:

You, you know, there's certain,

Speaker:

and then it's just like this little stupid bone. You can't heal that freaking dumb thing.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. I had pins put in it, the whole deal. Yeah. Dang. But I still remember, um, our, our head coach looked at me and he goes, what did you do? And he just looked, da, I was on the gym, in the gym on the floor, and he just shook his head and walked in the locker room. But yeah, I knew,

Speaker:

well, yeah, we have that in common to some extent in that. The, maybe you too, Brett, the, the worst things that have ever happened to me. I've done to myself. Uh, yeah. Yeah. But you know, I'm kind of thankful that like bad shit doesn't just rain down on me randomly. It's mostly because I cause it, but Yeah.

Speaker 4:

But you learn so much about it in the whole grand scheme of things, so Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker:

Which is why I ride a fast motorcycle and you guys are insurance agents that home

Speaker 5:

quiet. You got it

Speaker:

right. I haven't learned my lessons yet. Hey, uh, before I forget, thanks to Flood and Peterson, also for sponsoring local think tank events. Mm-hmm. Um, our pleasure past year. Absolutely. It's, uh, great to have you as part of that supportive community and you always know where to find us if you have good referrals. I know you have a lot of good customers. Aaron. Um, any questions for me?

Speaker 3:

No,

Speaker 4:

I'd just say thanks, man. You, um, 25 years funny, right? We started this that, uh, 25 years ago. Yeah. We met almost to the day. Um. It's been a pleasure to know you all those years and yeah, it's been fun to watch your journey. Yeah. Same, um, on how you've created much respect your, uh, the local think tank and, and pulling business owners together, which is a, a tough thing to do, to take their time, which is valuable. Um, having been a part of a peer group that helped me make the decision to get out of, to leave banking, if you will, I shouldn't say get out, right? Yeah. Um, to find a better place for your to, but to move industries, uh, was a big reason for me to make the change. So what you're doing is, um, very valuable to all those, all of your clients and the peer groups that you put together. Um, it's, well, I know you guys write the insurance for a bunch of'em, so it's cool. It. It's, uh, it's lonely at the top, right? Uh, it is. And, uh, no matter how big your business is, if you're a

Speaker:

one man show or Right. A 300 person company or more. So,

Speaker 4:

kudos to you, Kurt. Thanks. And, uh, thanks for inviting me and Brett and mm-hmm. Fred and Pete. Yeah. Uh, brand along

Speaker:

Brett. Fun to have you here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And I, I just, I think I told you that the R-C-R-C-S gala one year. Yeah. I, uh, you know, you make fun and poke fun on yourself like we all do. Right. Little self-effacing humor, but, you know, I, I You're a convener.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know, you're a convener. You talk about having ideas and everything, but ultimately, you know, you, I think you've created this, uh, network within the community, um, that's been incredibly valuable. I think it's up there best of local podcast, right?

Speaker:

Yeah. And we're gonna win it again this year. It's not public yet, so don't tell anybody not saying a word. It's gonna be out after that. Don't release that. It's, it is been released. It'll be released before this conversation comes live.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. But that, that, that, you know, that convener that brings people together, I, they think sometimes. As any business owner can be a lonely place, right? Yeah. Uh, but when you can surround yourself with other business owners and community, that place becomes less lonely. Agree. And I think you've done an unbelievable job that most people may not think about every day, but I I bet you there's several small, medium, large business owners in this community that have stuck it up because they were part of your groups and have grown before. Because I, I just thank you. Mm-hmm. It's also we're citizens of this community. Yeah. So the businesses you help, help create jobs and help drive the economy, that helps it make a great place to live. So don't underestimate what you do Well, same back at you. Yeah.

Speaker:

Sorry for teasing you

Speaker 2:

for being

Speaker:

Oh, no worries. Hey, we were as a badge of honor, but you are cool insurers, guys. Well, we try to be from the infinity flak with me, so that's cool. Thanks guys. Appreciate it. You bet. Alright, thanks Kurt. Speed. Be.

Head Shot

Curt Bear

Host