Crafting Charisma: The Brady Bogen Experience

 In this episode, radio personality Brady Bogen takes us on a wild ride through his colorful career—from selling flooring to co-hosting Holmberg’s Morning Sickness on 98 KUPD for over 20 years. Brady shares hilarious behind-the-scenes stories, reflects on life in radio, and dives into his passion for barbecue, including his ventures with BTP sauce and the restaurant Porkopolis. From mascot to pitmaster, Brady’s journey is as unexpected as it is entertaining. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

They say you usually have three jobs before. I was selling flooring, marble, wood, tile. I used to say you name it, we lay it. If we can't lay it, we can suck it because we have a steam cleaning division. That seemed to open the door to a lot of general contractors for the code.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Hey there, welcome back to Above and Beyond Reccellence Meets Elevation. I'm your host, Jan Simon, and this season we're raising the bar, diving into the passion, purpose, and defining moments of leaders who don't just aim high, they live there. Big ideas, real stories. Let's get into it. Alright, today on Above and Beyond Reccellence Meets Elevation, we're joined by a Valley radio legend whose voice is as recognizable as his last. For over two decades, Brady Bogan has co-hosted Homburg's Morning Sickness on 98 KPD, delivering laps, perspective, and a whole lot of fun to the Phoenix airwaves. Whether he's sharing the latest headlines on the Brady report, solving life's problems in what would Brady do, or giving you the scoop on hot releases. Brady brings his own brand of charisma, curiosity and wit. But beyond the mic, Brady is a man of many layers, actor, former team mascot, Christian, family man, and even a tennis pro. He's also the barbecue master behind BTP, which is Brady, the Pitmaster, where he's loved for cooking meat, his gift for storytelling and connection with people. Let's dive into a world of someone who knows how to bend reality, not with smoke and mirrors, but with humor, heart, and a deep sense of purpose. This is Brady Bogan.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Jeez, I don't know how to follow. You know what? Let's just end it at that. That was unbelievable. Can't keep up with that.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Thank you. Yeah, well, welcome. Thank you. I appreciate you coming on the show. So tell me about young Brady. Where'd you grow up?

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Grew up in Columbus, Ohio. Ah. In a suburb called Upper Arlington, UA, as we say. And that is right in the heart of Columbus. Okay. So right off the bat, you drink the uh Buckeye Kool-Aid. Gotcha. So when you're there, and my my family's three generations at Ohio State. My grandfather, my dad, my brother got his master's degree there. He went to Notre Dame first. I went to Ohio University. Oh. I just had to Is that frowned upon by the family? No, it was not. Okay. And when I went to college, I by no means was uh an A student. Let's just say a C plus student.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

They say what do they say with a D?

SPEAKER_01 2:41

But in getting into college back there, Ohio University has a very good radio television communications school. And you had to have a certain grade point to get into that to begin with. But back when I went to OU, the admissions was basically check your pulse, you're in. Now it's different. It's a lot it's tougher to get into now. But so I that's what I got into.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

So did you go to school for radio broadcasting? I did. Okay. Did you always want to be in radio or did did you want to do some other type of acting stuff?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

I think originally I saw I wanted to be on the television side. Yeah. Not news or just I wanted to be involved somehow in comedy. Okay. Kind of that kind of entertaining some way. Yeah, yeah. And I used to jokingly say, well, whether it I'm calling bingo at a Catholic church on a Sunday, what I just I needed to feed that bug somehow. Yeah. And it took a while because I didn't have, I would say, necessarily like the courage right off the bat. Gotcha. I didn't want to, I mean, I I did try to get into radio outside of when I graduated. Okay. I there's a girl I went to high school with, and her father just owned a couple of stations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is about seven hours away from Columbus. So I graduate and she goes, You should go talk to my dad. He's crazy like you are, and maybe you'll hit it off. So I drove up to Milwaukee seven and a half hours. Okay. And I interviewed with him for three hours. And unbelievable guy, Michael Jorgensen was his name. Had a photographic memory, had a stand-up desk.

SPEAKER_04 4:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

And to get when you walk into the office, you see the stand-up desk, and he's got his computer monitor there. And in back of him is the butt of a deer. And it's a pencil sharpener. So you stick it into the rear of the deer.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

And so I'm like, okay, this is this guy likes to be funny.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

And he has all this stuff. And so he basically told me you have to, if you want to get into radio, what aspect do you want to get in? Do you want to be in promotions? Do you want to be in production? On air, sales, management. And coming out of college, I basically had no idea. I just wanted to, I didn't know. Just let me in. Yeah. But I didn't really convey that to him at the time. He basically said, once you decide what angle that you want to go in, you know, what department, what area, then I can help you.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

So when I said photographic memory earlier, three years later, I'm on the verge of I've done a couple of jobs, nothing in my major. They say you usually have three jobs before fine it. I was selling flooring, marble, wood, tile. I used to say, you name it, we lay it. If we can't lay it, we can suck it because we have a steam cleaning division. That seemed to open the doors at a lot of general contractors' places. But so three years later, I'm like, I gotta, I just I majored in this. I need to get in somewhere. And I got a call from the general manager of that station in Milwaukee and said, We just have an opening for a promotions director station. No experience. I went up there, interviewed again, came back, and a day later they offered me the job. I was twenty-five at the time. So I moved up to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, January.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

I spent three months in Milwaukee, January, February, and March.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

There you go. I the weather I would say is nine months of winter and three months of bad sledding. And but when the summer is on there, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

So I started as program promotions director. $18,000 a year. Moved, it was 40 below. My first day at work, I had to wake up at 2 in the morning and set up for the wacky morning show on FM 106, the Country Station, working hard to be your country favorite. And it was right, so they're doing a live remote that morning at this mall. And I just remember the mast basically. When you did the broadcast back then, you had to hire an antenna. Oh, okay. You had to put it up about 40 feet in the air, and it was a separate vehicle that would ride the giant antenna, and you put it up, then that shoots that signal back to the main tower where the station is. Yeah. It's 40 below. That thing is frozen. Stuck. Yeah, so we had to figure out a way to heat it up. And my promotions assistant at the time had been at the station for he'd been promotions assistant for three or four years. So here comes college boy, no experience, gets hired as a promotions director, and he was figuring I'm air parent, so and I don't blame him. Yeah, yeah. He worked there, and but this guy with no experience gets the job. So there was a little bit of a chip to begin with, and I just had to let him know, look, I'm learning from you. Yeah and I let's just have some fun doing it. Then I'm yeah, teach me the ropes. Yeah, yeah. And he ended up becoming a pretty good friend there in Milwaukee. And Milwaukee's such an interesting town.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Oh, yeah. There's a ton of stuff. And it's funny because you go down by the water, there's some really cool lakeshore stuff. And then you can jump in the car, drop down to Kenosha or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Yeah, you can drop down there. So that's funny you mentioned the lake shore. I rented a place over the phone, and it was right off of it was in Bayview area, which is South Shore. And when I moved there, I had a buddy in Chicago, and he drove up to Wisconsin with me to help me move in. I had a little U-Haul trailer, and I lived in this, it was a like a uh guest house. Back then, it was a lot of it was a German neighborhood, and the Germans would basically build a little mini house in back to build the big house in front. Oh. So they would live in that for a while while they're building the bigger one. So I'm in this late 1800s brick house. It has a caboose stove in it. Oh, okay. It's 40 below, and that lake effect. So when you're in bed that first night I'm there, it's just that howling wind against the window. Yeah, yeah. And it's just that ice, frost, and and I that when I showed up at work that morning, I'm like, what did I just do?

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Oh yeah. And it's a cold like I grew up in Washington State, northeastern Washington, and we get snow and it gets cold. But I'll tell you, and and my kids lived in in Apple Valley for a while, Minnesota, so I go visit them. But when I had to be in Milwaukee, I mean, it was brutal cold.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

And there is a difference, which is funny, between Minnesota, especially Minneapolis and Milwaukee. Like the days of sunlight in the winter. Minneapolis is some would come out a lot more. Milwaukee? Not at all. Katie Bar at the door. That is dark.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

Yeah. It's light for four hours. Yeah. And then, yeah. It's funny. I was in Michigan for work one time. Never been in that part of the country. Yeah. Had to go to a Kalamazoo. And I thought, oh, I'm close enough. I'll just I'm gonna go look at this lake. I can see Chicago across the way. Yeah. Like drive over there. I'm like, holy crap, this is a freaking huge lake. Massive. It blew my mind. Yeah. Like Milwaukee the same way, same thing. Huge lakes.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

And the suburbs around there, the people, it takes a while to become accepted in the community in a way. Yeah. Because some of these people have never been outside of city limits like two or three generations. Isn't that crazy? Cash in the mattress. It just was old school, hardworking. Yeah. And they don't travel all that much. Yeah, that's crazy. But then there's some areas where once you get to know the people in the community. My my first year in I I was there for a year and a half, but the first year being the promotions director, we had a country station, and then the other one was AM Station, which was like a big band, Frank Sinatra, Music of Your Life. Yeah. W O K Y. So both of them were M-I-L, O K Y, Milwaukee.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

And so they're kind of a heritage AM station, and the FM was a newer country.

SPEAKER_03 10:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

But being country and being the music of your life was a lot of events. The first year I did 252 events. Oh my goodness. Wow. We had a roll on radio, which was about a 40-foot trailer, and it was pulled by a dually crew cab truck, which technically it should have been a bigger truck pulling the trailer. This they made the trailer themselves. Okay. It was giant FM 106 on the side, and it was so heavy. There's times in the winter going to a remote where you're trying to stop and you're sliding 40 feet. It's like a train because it's so heavy. We did have the promotions director that I replaced was a girl, and she was there for three years, but she actually rolled the trailer on the 94. Oh my god. That was a big news story right then. So there's pressures on that. And then trying to back that thing up and learning it. I had to go to truck driving school. Did you really? Yeah. Up in Appleton, Wisconsin. Okay. And it's really neat that in and of itself. If you ever get a chance to do it, they it's this giant black top training ground. So you're in a full truck. First, you you train in a bobtail, which is a truck, no trailer. Yeah. And the instructor has a pad in his hands that controls the brakes. So you're doing 360s. Oh, no kidding. They hose off the pavement. Yeah. And they're teaching you how to counter steer. And you so they'll lock up the one side of the wheels and you start signing, so you've got to counter steer it the other way, straighten it out. Then they hook a whole trailer on the back and they put safety straps on it because the trailer in a truck, if it goes past 15 degrees, it ends up in your lap. Oh, yeah. So they have these straps that keep it going. So what's wild is you're training one at a time doing these things, and you're doing a 360 with the tractor or trailer.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

So they're basically teaching you to slide out in the thing.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

They're teaching you to slide out. They want you to know what it feels like. But I can only imagine, I always think it because where the school is, it's right along the 94. So people on the 94 are driving by and seeing these trucks doing three sliding around.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Oh my God, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

So you got whatever your the license permit on that in order to drive that the rolling radio around.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

That's crazy. That's insane. Did you always always know you wanted to be I think I may have asked you that? In radio? Yeah, in radio. No. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

No, and I got my foot in the door. I just knew I had another friend I went to high school with, his dad was at general manager of the station, and he just said, get your foot in the door, no matter what. Just try something. The only way you go in there and you find out, oh, radio's not for me. Yeah. You did I did a uh an internship at a TV station, which was kind of fun. And at OU, we had a campus television station. Okay. And my senior year, my my thesis more or less was I did a children's show called Imagine That.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Oh, really? Did you have to write it and produce it and everything? Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Put it together, and it was kind of edgy at the same time that, but I did, I ended up doing the pilot. Okay. And then the it's kind of like what is it? K-E-T with the public station here that we have. K-A-Z-T or something. Yeah. I'm so bad.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

That's K-T-A-R. K-K-A-T-T.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

But anyway, that's that station, it's kind of the equivalent of that. Or like the public station. Gotcha. And they said PBS. Would you do three more? Would you do five or three three to five more episodes after that? But I was graduating. Oh. But it was kind of cool that, like, okay, it had enough on there that maybe something could happen there. And then one of the cooler classes I took there was a comedy class at OU. And I it was taught by the professor was a guy named Mel Hellitzer. Okay. Mel Hellitzer was an ad advertising exec in the 70s, 60s. Okay. And he wrote some commercials. I think he was the guy behind the movie. Do you remember a commercial in the 70s? Mousetrap the Game? Mouse did that one. Okay. I think he was involved in Operation. Oh, kidding. You touched the side. Yeah. Yeah. But he was good friends with a old school comedian, Henny Youngman. Huh. And Henny Youngman actually came to our class on that semester. How do you do it? So the deal of the class was it was humor, writing, and performing. Okay. So your final exam is either performing a stand-up routine or you write it for somebody else to perform in the class to perform it. So then the final is open campus. You perform it in front of the everybody. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Whoever wants to do it.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

And he they jokingly set it up that saying your grade is based upon the amount of food and fruit has accumulated on your shirt, foreign objects thrown at you, all that. And basically I had two, I had a attorney brother that was in the class with me, very funny. And we did I end up I was on his routine and then I did mine solo, and then another person in the class asked us to both be in their deal. Oh, cool. And it yeah, it was pretty fun. It was a surreal moment. At that time there's probably, I don't know, 800 people there, and there's your final. Yeah. And then you you pass. But that helped because back then some of the stuff they were teaching was jokes and stuff that you would submit to the Carson Show or late night. Oh, no, okay. And they'll buy the jokes for two, three hundred dollars a pop. Oh wow. Also, at the time, Hallmark and other greeting cards.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Right in the cards.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Yes. You could submit so they teach you how to do that and where to submit it. I never I never submitted any of the stuff, but a couple of people in the class did. And some people did were making a living doing it. That's crazy. Then they end up getting hired inside there's so one of my best friends in college at the time was a fraternity brother. His name was Tom Brenneman. And Tom was the voice of the Arizona Diamondbacks for years. And then he did Fox football, and then of course, four or five it's coming up on five years, he had a live mic accidental that came back from break, and he was sank. It was a homophobic slur. He got canceled.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Did he did? That's too bad.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Four years. Wow. No one. I mean, here's a guy that was doing it for 25 years at the time, and he was he took it as good as he could. I mean, he understood. I mean, he came back, and there's shirts that are made after that. He came back on the air because he had no idea. I understand something went across the air, and this might be the last time I'm wearing these headsets. I'm not sure how if I'm gonna get a paycheck from the Cincinnati Reds or Fox, deep drive to Castellanos. He still doesn't miss the call. And that became legendary in itself that he's like, oh, you're apologizing, but then you're calling the game. Yeah. Wow. But he finally he just got hired back, CW, the channel, table, channel seven or whatever. Just started doing CW sports.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

So it's ACC games, basketball, football. Yep. And they hired him, and he's doing mornings at a heritage station in Cincinnati. Oh wow. I think it's WLW.

SPEAKER_04 18:41

Okay. Not W G R P.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

No, but those characters live there, believe me. So and his father is in the bro broadcast hall of fame. Wow. Marty Brennan. Oh, okay. He and a guy named Joe Knoxall used to call the Cincinnati Reds games since the 74 and on. And Joe Knoxall was uh at one time, he still might be, but he pitched, I believe, in Major League Baseball at the age of 15. No kidding. I think he was for the youngest player.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

The youngest player here. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. Did you play sports growing up?

SPEAKER_01 19:16

I wrestled and played tennis. Okay. And baseball up until ninth grade. Okay. But I decided I need finesse sports, wrestling and uh tennis. It's kind of the opposite, but that was what I did in high school, and then I continued on. I played, I continued to play tennis and got into the USTA deal and started moving up in the ranks. And I'm glad I did it that way because I my best friend in high school was a very good tennis player. He ended up getting a full ride to University of Michigan. Oh wow. Coming from Columbus, Ohio. And his parents are diehard buckeyes.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Yeah, that's not good.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Yeah, but it and he's back in Columbus and has season tickets. And but he kind of burnt out on the game outside of college. We would I played a couple of tournaments with him, but you could tell you you're grinding it all that time when you're younger. Yeah. You kind of phase out of it a little bit. So did you get into pickleball now? A little bit. Yeah. That's a big craze. It is fun. And a lot of tennis players have stepped it up to the next level. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

Really. Yeah. I just I was talking to KK yesterday, Kevin, yesterday, and he said that we used to play basketball. So how I met him and Rob and all those guys was we used to play basketball in Kevin's backyard.

SPEAKER_07 20:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Well, Kevin's built a pickleball court now out of the city. Turn it into a pickleball. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna have to come over and play pickleball now.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

I'll have to I'll have to come over and invade that group. Yeah, well, for sure. It is a it's a fun game, and of course the big thing they talk about is it's also the number one injury of sport that has the injuries. Oh, I'm getting it. But it makes sense because people that are picking up pickleball are 50 plus.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Yeah. It's crazy. I've been over to Palm Desert. I have a friend who's got a place over there, and we've been over there a couple times. And you go play, and there's like 80-year-old guys and we're ladies out there playing, and you're like, you feel bad, and then they're smashing on you.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

You can pick up pickleball a lot easier than tennis. Yeah. And that's why you'll see a lot of unorthodox shots and strokes. But if you come from a tennis background, you pick up the game really quick. Yeah. It has the toughest thing for me is one of the rules and commands is to stay out of the kitchen. Oh, yeah. And that's a battle for me in life, to stay out of the kitchen.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

But literally.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Yeah. So yeah, I enjoy that sport. We'll see what happens, how long it goes. Because I in the 70s, racquetball was huge, all the up until the eighties, and then that kind of kind of weighed away. Pickleball will last, I think.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

I think so. I was in so I went to school in central Washington. My degree uh is fitness in sport management, but one of the classes I had to take just to to satisfy the uh the degree was a r education rack and sport racket sports or teaching racket sports. Yeah. And we actually were playing pickleball. Now, it was nothing back then. I mean, it was back in the early nineties. But it's funny but now to see it full circle. And I think there was a kid that was on the football team that was in my class, and we would just go, we go mad. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were so competitive, so competitive. But I and I love playing. So yeah, I told KK, I'm like, okay, I'm coming over. I'll come invade your court.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

So when I was starting at picked up tennis at six or seven and played from then, and about nine or ten years old, we brought in at the club that I grew up at, brought in a sport called paddle tennis. So it was it's a elevated court. Okay. It's designed for winter sports. So it's a aluminum deck that's coated with almost like the tennis surface. And they had propane heaters underneath. So if it would snow, the deck is heated, so the snow wouldn't accumulate. Nice. For the most part. And it's screened in. Okay. It's like a heavier gauge chicken wire around it. And it's about the dimensions of a pickleball court. So over the net. The ball is a solid, not like a lacrosse ball, but a little bit more spongier.

SPEAKER_04 23:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

And it does it. They want it it's not super ball bouncy. Huh. You want it a little more dense so it doesn't bounce up high. Yeah. But you hit it in the court and you play it off the screens over the net.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Oh, really? And so So kind of almost a cross between racquetball and tennis.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

You get one serve. Okay. And that's a overhead serve, just like in tennis. And when you get to the upper level of that, it's big in the back east and midwest because it's cold. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 23:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

And you don't play in the summer at all. It's winter. It is amazing. It's more like the addiction on that one is just the same. Like you'd think in tennis, an overhead, you got a pretty good chance of ending the point. Oh, yeah. In paddle tennis, you can hit 15-20 overheads in a point. And you're back in the back corner and you're scraping off the screens. And a lob a lot of times is an offensive shot, but you're trying to hit the crease in the corners. Oh, gotcha. Because if you hit the crease, it goes straight out.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

It's so it's a great game.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

I feel like he was old as the hills. He was probably fifty, but he was like, I mean, old guy. Yeah. Oh my God. He'd kick your ass playing pick or racquetball.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Just knew all the angles. Oh, yeah. Would go up high above your head.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

He's standing in the middle of the court. Yeah. You're running in circles around him.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

He's just like, It's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

And then slap.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

John Homberg, who I do the radio show with, he and I used to play a lot of racquetball. Oh, okay. And it was at the village at in Camelback, which is in central Phoenix. And one day there's this girl that was working there, and her name was Rhonda. I forget her last name. She ended up being, she won the Nationals. Oh, wow. So but we'd never play her, but we'd always talk smack. You don't want to you don't want any of this, Rhonda. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so one day she came over, she's coming out of the pool, she had a towel towel on and uh bikini and flip-flops, and she goes, All right, let's play. And I'm halfway decent at racquetball. I'm a lefty. Okay. So it gives people a fit on the one side of the row of the wall. So she's like, let's play it a five. I'm gonna spot you four points. No. She beat me five four. No kidding. It's just to the next level. And that's what I think that's what happened with racquetball. Yeah. Is that upper level, anything above the knee or in the hip, it's coming back, it's just rolling out the wall. Yeah. It's a kill shot. Yeah. And that's what their level, their accuracy is so good. Yep. Squash seems to think it it still survived, but it's really big in Middle Eastern countries. They always have a they host the big tournament over there.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

It's all glass and the seats are all the way around it. Yeah, crazy. My dad used to play handball quite a bit. My dad did too. He played back in the 60s, 70s. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

But we used to go to tournaments. My dad would play in Columbus, but we'd go to Pittsburgh, Cincinnati. And so same thing with paddle tennis. The guy that played at University of Michigan, my buddy. He and I started playing competitive paddle.

SPEAKER_03 26:25

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

And we end up getting ranked 35th in the East. But we'd play tournaments in Milwaukee, Chicago, Pittsburgh. And it was fun because you'd go to the tournaments and people would house you for the tournaments. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

So you're meeting just amazing people that well in mid Midwest, I mean, there's something about it. I mean, the people are very hospitable for the most part. Sure. I mean, obviously there's outliers and it's changing now demographically, but it has, I think, generationally too.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Yeah. It's maybe uh because John, again, go back, well, they'll give me a hard time when I go back to visit, whether it's Christmas, I'll stay with my sister at her house. My family will. Or my parents will come. We we're just like, if they come out here, no, just stay with me.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

But a lot of people don't understand that. And then I y you get it to a certain extent. But we've never run into that with my all sudden they're there for two weeks and they're still, you know, you gotta entertain. It can be drained.

SPEAKER_02 27:25

It's exhausting. Yeah. Well, it's interesting, like when my kids come and visit, I mean, love having the kids over, but because they're not they don't live with us now, it's like now you gotta feel like, okay, now I'm entertaining. So when you have family in town for an extended period of time, you're entertaining. It's like, okay, we gotta take them to go see this or go do that, or let's go find someplace to eat, or what have you. So uh when did you move to Arizona? 1991.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Okay, was that for in like I moved in Milwaukee in January? Uh-huh. I moved in July. July, the end of July. No kidding. Yeah. Oh God. You picked up I drove from Milwaukee and the owner of the station, we ended up about a year into it. It's funny, the connection with the owner of the station is I was a tennis player and paddle tennis. Okay. And he belonged to this club in Milwaukee called the Town Club. Oh. And he goes, I understand you play some paddle tennis. I'm like, Yeah. And he's like, I'd like to have you as a guest when you just got here. Come to the club and play. And we play these two guys that he's never beat before. And we just beat him 6'2, 6'2, and destroyed him. He's like, Do you want to play next week? And so hit off. I'm in on that end, and it was great. And then we uh he invited me to the MemberGevs tennis tournament. Oh, wow. And we lost in the final, but we made it all to the finals there. And so he started becoming my guru in the business, at least showing me all aspects of the business. And he says, We're looking to buy some stations. If you want to go with me, wherever we do it, you're it that's up to you. I knew Milwaukee wasn't my landing spot. I'm like, all right, I'm in. Yeah. Lo and behold, it was Phoenix, Arizona. And he's like, I you grew up in the Midwest. This is and I said, I'm in. I'm let's go for it. So it was 1991. We opened, we started a station called KZON, 1015. Okay. It was, and then we had an AM station, 1230, Kiss 1230, the rhythm of the city. Which who I do the morning show with John ended up doing a lot of the voicing voices for the station. Okay. And it's there's some funny stories from that station. But so and then he ended up the owner of our station had stations in Milwaukee, Boise, Idaho, and in Phoenix. Okay. And then they decided in it was '95, I believe, they sold the stations for ninety-six million. They said that was enough to retire on.

SPEAKER_02 29:55

Oh, for sure, yeah. You know what?

SPEAKER_01 29:58

So he did, and he actually moved to Mexico, San Miguel Aliendo, which is a town. The movie Once Upon a Time in Mexico with Antonio Banderas was filmed in that town. Oh, wow. It's a beautiful town. And the lot short of it is he had his own demons. He's gonna be a downer. He ended up taking his own life.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

Oh, that's too bad.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Couldn't here you are, king of the world in a way. I think there's a combination of that and battling depression, probably. Yeah. Or bipolar, too.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Oh, yeah. Well, and and it's interesting. I was there's a mystery on it. No matter what, at some point, all of the stuff just becomes empty. Yep. And then you're there and you gotta it's a chase.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

It's a chase for a lot of times life ends up being a chase for happiness.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Yeah. And there it it's what you make it. Yeah. I mean, as I've gotten older, and I think you're maybe a couple years older than me, but I as I've gotten older, and I and it's like I've realized I life is this this is like whatever I do in my life is what's gonna make me happy. Right. So I may as well do things that are gonna make me happy because there's no And it takes a while to find that out.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Oh, absolutely what it is, and then you discover that happiness sometimes and you always hear it, like, oh you're birth. It's the little things. Yeah. But it's crazy how sometimes that absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

And don't you wish you could impart that on your children? Yeah. Right? To be able to build. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

But you gotta let them figure it out themselves. Their own journey to an extent. You try to guide the best you can.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Right. And then they push back and they tell you how stupid you are.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

And then when you get to my age, especially, and I mean you but that we had a comedian in, I forget, it was about a year ago, and I can't remember the who it was right off the bat, but we were talking about I had just turned 59 and he was right around my age, okay. And he's like, We've got 20 summers left.

SPEAKER_06 31:58

Oh, that was.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Watching my parents.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Yeah. I'm the same way, like my grandparents, all four of them, lived well into their 90s. Yeah. For the most part, had their facilities all the way through, but started getting dementia and Alzheimer's and things. My mom's dealing with dementia and Alzheimer's now in her 70s. But like I feel the same way. Like I want to be I'm happy to live as long as I can while I'm cognitive and can wipe my own ass.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

That's probably the that's probably the number one thing that goes through your mind is you don't want the dementia or go through that, especially if you see a parent or whatever. And on my side, both parents, well, my dad passed away about two years ago, and he was 89, lived nine lives, and his mind was sharp all the way up. Nice. But that's their fear, because a lot of their friends had been mentally missing for ten years. Well, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

For sure. And you think, I mean, I'm watching my mom right now, and she remembers things long term, short term. Well, we sit here and have a conversation in five minutes. What'd you do today? Yeah. It's wild. Talked about. But that's that freaks me out to think I'm going to be a vegetable in a wheelchair feeding some type of green slop.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

No, I think that's our parents feel they're saying the last thing I want to be is a burden.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

And I mean I tell my kids, if I'm ever at the point where I can't feed myself, just put me right at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Just leave me there with the locks off the wheels. I will take care of the rest of it somehow.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

So it it's yeah. When you come, I I always say it's like the intention is to be that way.

SPEAKER_03 33:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

But I don't think or you realize that's happening. Some people maybe early enough are going, okay, I'm starting to feel the slide.

SPEAKER_03 34:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

And they might own it. But so wild thing is my mom, we had a family friend, her name was Betty Hamilton. And anyway, she was had a horrible arthritis. Okay. And she started writing letters to Dr. Cavorkia. Oh, really? And they had a relationship because Kavorkian was very thorough. He's like, well, she's like, I want to be done. And so you write letters to him, and he sent me the your he wants to know the medical files and all that, and then look at it. And he's like, You qualify after six months. If you really want to do it, I'll help you. So my mom drove her to Detroit. No kidding. And they met at a hotel. It was Kavorkian and his assistant.

SPEAKER_04 34:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

And they basically put Betty in a chair and hooked her up, and you basically hit the yeah, you pushed the buttons and they left her there, and it's up to her.

SPEAKER_03 34:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

So, which is wild. And I didn't know this was going on at the time. Because you have to be very quiet because this was and so Betty followed through. Okay. And my mom had to go to the hotel room with the assistant, and he basically says, Yep. She's passed. Yeah, passed. Now you need she go he says, I think he he dropped her off like a block away from the hospital. This is the way you had to do it. And she wheels Betty through the emergency room and said, This person is deceased.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

No kidding.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

And they know kind of what happened. They know it's the Vorkian deal. And she leaves the body there and they take the body and do the assessment. That day she got a call, she was still in Detroit, and the lady that was the president of the Hemlock Society, which I had no idea that even is a society that believes in that too, where hemlock is, of course, a poison. Yeah. And that's why they kind of base it on that, that they're pushing for assisted. Yeah. And she wanted my mom to be involved with her. And my mom just had lunch with her and said, No, I don't. And what's interesting is my mom, I was mad at first.

SPEAKER_03 36:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

I was mad that she did that. And at the same time, this is a friend that really her life she couldn't, she had to have special keys made, Betty. To be fingers couldn't move. Oh wow. And it just felt like your body is being stuck with a thousand knives at all times. So it's debilitating. Yeah, yeah. And I think as you get older, I still don't know if I could. I think I get as I get older, it's closer, if I could wheel somebody up or do that.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

And I asked my mom that a couple years ago. Could would you do it again? And she says no.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

She's like, I want to, I don't not that I'm against it, but I don't want to I don't care to go through that again after the fact.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

Well I think there there must be some guilt that she carries with that at some level, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:03

I guess so because for sure, because you're she was raised Catholic.

SPEAKER_02 37:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

And that's your Totally against Catholic. That's a big sin to take your own life, or more or less so. I think there's the Catholic guilt was coming in on that. But at the same time, I don't think she So when my dad at the tail end he checked out gracefully, more or less. It's like we told him we were able to sit down with him at the end and say, Dad, you can go. Mom's gonna be okay. Yeah. And in five days.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

No kidding. Yeah. I think uh like I just hope. I hope at some point I just fall asleep.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Right? And I'm just uh whatever.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

But that's my mom's side of the family. Both grandma and grandpa the heart just stopped. Yeah, 85. And my mom is at 85, 86 right now. Okay. And she goes, I can only hope for that. And in fact, I know I will. It's Irish background.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Yeah. What at what point, too, do you're just sitting waiting? Is tonight tonight I go to sleep and I don't wake up.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

I yeah, I know. And I I've talked to my dad the last couple years, and he was funny. He's like, How are you doing today, Dad? Well, I'm awake.

SPEAKER_02 38:12

Yeah. Got me too.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

But I'm ready anytime. Yeah. Um and then it just got to the point where all of a sudden you gotta hand the keys in. Can't drive anymore. Yeah. It's just not someone's got to tell you a little bit, and there's certain things.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

Oh. That'd be tough.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

He fired his age in golf at 85.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

Really? No kidding. Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. So you moved to Arizona in radio, broadcasting. At what point did you hook up with Homburg? And what how did that all transpire?

SPEAKER_01 38:46

So John and we're at the zone, and John came right out of pretty fresh out of the uh he went to the Arizona Broadcasting School. I forget what they call the exact thing, but he came the one down here in Chandler? I think it was. Okay. It wasn't cheap. Yeah. But he's like, I'll do this. And he got in the door at the station, and he was dubbing tapes, doing whatever he can, whatever they needed, he's like, I'm in. And I was in sales at the time. Oh, okay. So I did advertising sales for almost ten years. Oh wow. And that's brutal. At ten years, it's fun, but similar to what you told me earlier as far as I liked getting results for helping people with their business. Yeah. But I was not huge on I did not want to be the herb tarlic.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Yeah, yeah. Closing the sale.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:37

Always be closing. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

That was a turnoff to me and said what? If and I I was happy that I was working at the time first with this uh selling a good product. People listened to it and it worked. Yeah. Doesn't have to be the number one stage, whatever. You have customers there, and if it fits right, it works. Yeah. And it's really cool to see how it works, not right. And not selling stuff just to sell it. Yeah. Because you do make you can make some good money doing it. And that's there's the in life the rub of sales, no matter what it is. People taste the money, it becomes about the sale more than actually helping that what's good for the client. Oh, for sure. So John uh worked his way up and he started doing overnights, and I kind of burnt out on the sales thing. The reason why the burnout was, you mentioned it on the introduction a little bit. I had a friend at the Diamondbacks, and they were auditioning there. The Diamondbacks were awarded a franchise. Okay. The Diamondbacks. The Arizona was awarded. Yeah. A franchise. The Diamondbacks in 96, I believe, is when they said it's happening. And they're they have commercials that they're going to run on TV to promote this new MLB franchise. Okay. And their idea was to have two avid fans to sit out front of the stadium as it's being built.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

So they're in lawn chairs, they've got a cooler, they got Diamondback jersey on, and and the whole slogan was it's gonna be big. Okay. That's the thing. Diamondbacks baseball. It's gonna be big. And so the first couple commercial. Anyway, they had done readings and auditions, 400 people. And my buddy was the marketing and advertising VP of marketing and advertising for the Diamondbacks, and he goes, I got a guy. And the agency at the time was like, what no? I'm telling you this, my buddy, he's perfect for this. So he calls me up and says, Hey, will you come in tomorrow and read for this 30-second commercial that we're doing? And he faxes it over at the time. And so the script comes over and it's like it's an avid baseball fan. I'm like, Yeah. So I go down there the next day and there's these actors in a bullpen sitting down there. I'm like, what's going on here? I don't know. And I could hear him saying, Oh, he must be independent. I didn't even know what that meant. Okay. Find out later that they have agents who are sent to these auditions. So I go in there and I read the part, and as I'm picturing it, is a I know baseball, a diehard fan. I do it kind of Chris Farley-esque. Nice. And so I do a reading, and there's probably six people in the room watching you the agency, the director of the commercial, and a couple other people from the Dimerbacks. And also I do it the first time, and they bring in a guy that I read with. I notice the guy's about six foot five. Oh, geez. So I'm the short, it's almost like Lauren Hardy, but reverse in the height. And I read with this guy, and they go, Thank you. They send that guy out, they bring another guy in, and I'm like, I read with him, send him out, they bring a third guy in, and I just holy crap. They want me for this part, and I'm doing radio sales. Oh, I don't know how if I could even do this, pull this off with my job. That's what I'm thinking. And so I read this third part, and the next day they go, We want you to do the commercials. We're gonna need two days to film. It'll be two different spots. And so I have to tell my sales manager and the general manager of the station, because I'm thinking they'll they probably will shut it down. Conflict of interest or something. GM was like, awesome. Yeah, no. Just do it. You're you're hitting your numbers. Uh-huh. It's like, well, this is great exposure for us, regardless, even if you do it. So I did the commercials, and the thing that really kind of iced it for me is they held a mock press conference. And the guy that I was paired with was an actor, and he didn't know much about the game of baseball. Oh, really? Yeah, he was a football player, but he didn't know much about baseball. Only I'm basing this on The opening night of Diamondbacks Baseball. There we are in the first inning. And they so it parlayed from the commercials for two years. Okay. So the first two players they signed were Matt Williams and Jay Bell.

SPEAKER_04 44:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

So I end up doing commercials with them. With them. The other guy, Brian, was his name, but they said, come up with your names. And I came up with the help of the owner of the station at the time, Drew Habatta. And so my partner, the actor, comes up with his name, Byron Jenkins. Which is like. Okay. So it's Drew and Byron, but Drew and Byron's was symbol symbolic of Diamondbacks. Okay. So we have that. I do the commercials with Jay and Matt Williams. And I'm still I still am friends with Jay Bell this day from that. Off and on through. We play a lot of golf. Okay. Amazing guy.

SPEAKER_03 44:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

But we they then asked us after this press conference, basically, you're the face of the Diamondbacks for the first year and a half. Because no players are there. Yeah. And so you're going to go out and speak to schools, promote the team.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

Oh, no kidding.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

So here we come to the inaugural season 1998, and they're like, Would you work the home the home games? Which is 82 home games. And I said, I'm still doing the radio sales basically eight to five, and then I'd go to the ballpark after that. I said, I'll let's start with half the home games, so basically 42, 41 games. Ended up having a couple more in in between there. It depends on the series and how things heated up. So 50 games season. And I did it for the first three seasons. Wow. And that was all improv, more or less. You have certain you see him do certain in-game stuff like the hot dog races. Yeah. And then I had the t-shirt gun originally. First year of the t-shirt gun, a little side on that. Is the this was uh the original steel barrel, and I could put it into the all the way into the upper deck.

SPEAKER_02 46:07

Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

And one of the ballparks, a person fell out of the upper deck, and I forget which one it was. And so MLB's like, no more shooting in the third tier deck. Yeah, yeah. Keep it in the mid sections over there. Yeah. But you could literally like pinpoint within one or two people. That's how powerful it was.

SPEAKER_02 46:28

No kidding. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 46:29

Which brings me to the next time the guy I'm doing the games with, Byron, always wants to do some stuff, and he his ideas weren't always the greatest, but the one we decided, he's like, I said, how about if I take the t-shirt gun and it's just in between the inning, and I'll shoot you. Oh my t-shirt gun. So he's across from me about 50 feet away, and it couldn't have been on a better leg. It was a curveball. It was a 12 to 6 right in the garage. And he couldn't get up down the field. Nothing would show the upper deck. Oh my god. The other time we're up in the third, we're up in the third deck, and it's a pro promo for America West, I think, at the time. Regardless, we're in there's little camera hutches at the time, and so they're like seven-foot ceilings to go in there, and then the camera pits right there.

SPEAKER_04 47:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

So we're underneath there. There's no camera there at the time. We go out there and they show you on the Jumbotron.

SPEAKER_04 47:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

And you're holding up whatever or you're doing some kind of skit. So he we have the fr it was the Fry's kids of the game. Okay. And he's like, hey, how about if I get up there and I'll just start river dancing? Which is like, okay. And so we have handlers that take us around to the parts and they're like shaking their head. I mean, his energy, he wants, he's trying.

SPEAKER_03 47:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

And I go, let me see what that looks like. And so he's 6'5. So he tries to do a Michael flatly. He jumps up, hits the concrete out. He's laid out. We do the promo. Wake him up afterwards. Oh my God. That's there was, yeah, there was some it was a blast. And it I just ended up working the three seasons and was burning at job. But that that diamondback uh mascottery opened up the door for doing a lot more commercials. Gotcha. I ended up doing some commercials four or five for the Valley Toyota dealers. SRP had these summer energy tips, their 15-second commercials. I did those. I did one, two kind of national deals. Wells Fargo Bank was doing a Rangers checking account. And so it was basically me in a Rangers uniform with as a vendor. So I but in the vending thing, it wasn't peanuts or it was checkbooks.

SPEAKER_04 49:02

Checkbooks.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

And so it's like, get your checkbooks here. And it's a cutout, life-size cutout. And they put it in all the Wells Fargo's in Dallas, in the Dallas area. In the stadium. And I remember getting a call from a girl I knew that was living there, and she's like, I'm at the grocery store right now at the Wells Fargo. Is that you at the Wells Fargo branch? And then one game, the it was the Wells Fargo night, and the commentators had my cutout in the booth with them, and they're interviewing the cutout. What do you think, sir?

SPEAKER_02 49:35

That's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

And the Darmabacks sent me that one. I had no idea that was going on. The second one was I did a lime away commercial.

SPEAKER_04 49:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:42

And Phoenix is a hard water market.

SPEAKER_04 49:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

And that ended up running in 36 to 50 markets. Oh, wow. And I had no idea. It took a total, they come to your house, and this was when they first had the portable HD cameras. And they just basically said, We're going to film for about an hour of you in your bathroom. I want you to touch it. Because you're saying, oh, and it that was referred. Another friend said, You should go to this guy's house to do it. So I do a little improv and I'm like, okay, we like it, we'll use him. And so they they had, I was there's probably four people in the commercial that they cut to back and forth about how hard the water is. And I put the lime away on my shoulder at the end. I dare you to knock it off. Like the Robert Conrad. Anyway, the commercial runs, and for the next five years, I'd get a check for $11,000 to $15,000 for basically an hour and a half of work, but I would have no idea that the commercials are running. Yeah, I'd get a call from a buddy in Chicago. Just saw the lime awake. Did you say Caddy Wampus? That's hilarious. But then you sing, you think, so if you land a national commercial, that's why you see like Flow and back in the day when they're exclusive, like Pat from Toyota.

SPEAKER_03 51:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:02

They don't want him to do any other commercials. He can do sometimes uh some movie stuff. I don't think he did too much. He came from Second City.

SPEAKER_03 51:10

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 51:11

He was with actually with some of the guys that were on SNL. He came from that pedigree kind of but he ends up doing the Toyota commercials with people. But he that's a very good living.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Yeah. McDonald's national ad. Some of those people are making 200 or 500 a year easily.

SPEAKER_02 51:29

That's incredible. Yeah. That's incredible. Let's talk a little bit about Porkopolis and Brady Sauce. If you're gonna agree with that. So I've I've partaken in both. Yeah. Tell me how that came to be. I mean, what got you into that side of the house?

SPEAKER_01 51:45

The radio biz, more or less. There was a guy, his family owned a butcher shop, bakery, and a restaurant called Midwestern Meats. Okay. It's in Mesa. And he was a sponsor on our AM station. A big they're supporting Nebraska football. But he also listened to us in the morning, and he goes, I know you like to, I know you like smoking and grilling. And so I went over to Midwestern Meats, and it is Man Mecca. Huge meat cabinet, cut, fresh cut meats, steaks, and everything. And I'm like, this is amazing. Then next door is a bakery.

SPEAKER_03 52:27

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 52:27

And then it's a Midwest kind of restaurant, and like you do the pork cutlet sandwich, or it's just old kind of comfort food. Yeah. And so his name was Rod McConnell. And his dad started the business. He was a meat cutter back in Iowa. So he came to me and said, You should do a barbecue sauce. I'll put it in my store. Let's put one together. So I thought about it, I'm like, oh, that would be kind of fun. But I don't want to put a piece of crap in a bottle and sell it for the novelty side of it. Yeah, yeah. I want to be involved on the recipe side. So I went in his kitchen with one of his cooks, and we were went back and forth and kind of put a first flavor together. Oh wow. Which was right off the bat, we went with a hot and sweet, okay, which was a traditional barbecue with the pineapple and cayenne. And then I came out with a sweet and smoky. So I had the two flavors, and I just started selling them at Midwestern meat.

SPEAKER_04 53:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 53:25

And that opened up the door to doing a couple other flavors, and some other stores wanted to I don't know. By the end of it, this I actually is this I the I have one case left. Oh really? I just decided to shut her down this year. Okay. But I was in sixty-three stores. It was in all AJ's sprouts and a lot of most butcher shops and some boutique.

SPEAKER_02 53:53

Have you been in the Gilbert Butcher over?

SPEAKER_01 53:55

Yes, I was there. I was in it for about a year. Okay. And the tough thing for me is doing my radio job, and really all of a sudden um coming when Christmas season would roll around, I would do a four-pack thing. I'm the clearinghouse. So I'm packaging up bottles. My garage turns into an Amazon warehouse.

SPEAKER_03 54:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:16

And it it's good, but you know, it's was the juice worth the squeeze of the time. It was a lot of work, a lot of time. So anyway, I did the sauce all the way up until this time. That started in it's 16 years. And probably four years into it, I had a friend that was a restaurant guy. Okay. And he came and he started a barbecue restaurant in Las Vegas at the Rio called The Rub, which stood for Righteous Urban Barbecue. And they were opened for about three years. It was a 12,000 square foot restaurant. Oh my God. So it was big. It's huge. And it was a guy, a young kid out of New York that owned the concept, the restaurant, and being young in New York and he's killing it in New York, he's like, let's open one up in Vegas. So my buddy said they had to go on for about three years and he had to renegotiate the contract to do. He's like, You're not gonna, you know, the rate we're doing, it's such a big place. You're break-even. If you're looking to make money on this, it just won't it won't pan out. Huge space. Huge space. And so he knew I had the sauce, so he came back and he was like, What if we would do a barbecue concept? So we had the meats, we had the sauce, and he goes, sauce is a big battle in barbecue. You need consistency.

SPEAKER_03 55:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:36

Restaurant consistency alone on everything is when you go to this restaurant, you want the same thing you get every time. Right, yeah. Which in barbecue, I would say, of all the meats, the brisket's the toughest to be consistent. And so we opened up pork opla. It was called pork oplas, and that's the nickname of Cincinnati, Ohio. Oh, is it? Okay. So my great-grandfather, 1835 German guy named Peter Bogan, George Bogan, their brothers. They came over from Germany, landed in Cincinnati, and they were purveyors of pork products and wine. Oh, wow. So they started that in 1835.

SPEAKER_03 56:17

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 56:18

Which is interesting is Cincinnati was the largest provider of pork and wine because the Civil War was happening. Chicago wasn't quite open, the train lines weren't there during right off battery. Yeah, until they got the tracks out there. But Cincinnati was a big supplier. Oh wow. And there are five German families, and that's where they named it pork opis.

SPEAKER_02 56:41

Oh, no.

SPEAKER_01 56:42

And there's and I have an article from a paper, and it it was 1921, and it talked about the pork fraternity and the Bogan families in there. So that's great. I don't realize how much bacon I had in my blood. And that's where we came up with the pork opis name. But I checked it out. Could we call it porkopolis without any copyright infringement and everything? And that's fine. If you go back to the Cincinnati stadium, they have hot dog stands in there. They call porkopolis. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. But so we opened it up. It was an eight-year run. Four years were it was really good. And the last four get tougher and tougher. Meat costs, brisket went up $1.50 a pound in one year, so there's fifty thousand dollars off the bottom line. And then minimum wage, just all the stuff that you're fighting. Like if we would have done these numbers in year one, we'd be broke. No, we would be profiting.

SPEAKER_02 57:38

Oh, would you okay?

SPEAKER_01 57:38

But the cost kept going up. It was kind of a wash. So the last three years, it was break-even. And the one thing we did was we opened a second location. And I left that up to my partner because he's a multi-location guy to begin with. Gotcha. If I were to look back on it, I probably wouldn't have opened the second one. Stay with the one. Just a little patient.

SPEAKER_03 57:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:58

Because the design was to open up multiple locations and then take it from there. Gotcha. If someone comes around and wants to franchise or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 58:05

Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 58:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:07

It was a fun run. It was taxing on the family. My daughter was pretty young at the time. Okay. And my it was just I if you're in the restaurant biz, whatever time you think you're going to spend there, double it. Whatever money you think you're going to spend there, double it.

SPEAKER_02 58:20

Triple it.

SPEAKER_01 58:21

And now it might be triple.

SPEAKER_02 58:22

Yeah. Yeah. I was actually meeting with one of my clients today who's a restaurant owner. Sure. Multiple locations. And we were talking about that. Abo not only the cost of labor, which is massive, the cost of food, obviously. Yep. But then also the employees that are kind of entitled and turnover is big.

SPEAKER_01 58:44

It's a never-ending battle. On that you'll always have, especially when you first open. There's one restaurant that just opened up, and it's a buddy of mine that has multiple locations too. And I asked him, I go, what did you uh spend on the build-out? Three million. Oh. Whoa. No kidding. Wow. Three million is like the one million. Like that was substitute to TI money when you released the improvement. Some of these restaurants will spend that, but you drop that kind of money. You're so far in the red there. You need to you're yeah, what you do is it's a three-year turnaround. Most of the formula on that that I've found is it's three years. Yeah, if you invested in a restaurant or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 59:27

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 59:28

Three years is when you want to do like the first payout. But if you go gangbusters right off the bat, you can do a distribution earlier.

SPEAKER_02 59:36

Gotcha. Yeah. Oh. It's such a it's I of my clients, I would say those are the hospitality restaurant clients are the ones that just I mean, man, every month.

SPEAKER_01 59:50

Got it's gotta be your passion.

SPEAKER_02 59:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:52

And your bet if you're just one location, you need to work it. There are cases where a person says, you know what, I'm I've retired from my one business and I'm gonna buy a restaurant and I'm gonna have someone run it for me.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:07

It can work, but I'm telling you, it's asked people in the restaurant business is like you have to work it because things walk. Yeah if you're not there. They can't still to that degree. Whether it's food, whether it's money, whether it's feeding friends on the side. And there and you factor that stuff in there. Yeah. You gotta look at the way that systems break down now, since majority of it is electronic purchasing, you can really track food costs and what's company, or if something's not matching up. Wait a minute. We went through eighty pounds of brisket today and only did 10 lunches. That just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:47

Where are these things going? We bought some big appetites. Yeah, yeah, for sure. What uh I'm assuming you still cook and smoke and stuff at the house. What's your favorite thing to make? Is it brisket or I'll tell you one thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:59

If you ever get to San Diego to Cardiff by the Sea, there's this market called Seaside Market. Yep. And they have a thing called the Cardiff Crack. It's a tri-tip. Okay. And it's a burgundy, a pepper burgundy marinade. It is crack. It's the best tri-tip I've ever had. But I would say that's number one. I and I go there, we go there in the summer. Okay. And when I drive back, this time I did it. I didn't do it last year. I'll m go out of my way on our way home, stop by the seaside market and about three. Oh, really? Yeah. And now it's gotten to the point where that they will you can do it through the mail. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, and you can get your own card of crack t-shirt too with it. It's really good. And their seafood, uh, it's an amazing market. But anyway, tri-tip, I love doing beef short ribs. Okay. The I don't do as much brisket anymore unless I'm having people over. Only because, like, there's three of us. My daughter, my wife, and I do a 20-pound biscuit. Yeah. I'm not a guy that I'll eat a brisket for two weeks. It's a problem, you want a variety.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

But on the smoker, it's so fun from chicken. But then I started doing stuff like smoked scalloped potatoes. Oh, interesting. You can do some smoked desserts too. Like a brownie fudge. We've done smoked mac and cheese. Mac and cheese is uh e in it done right. You gotta let it settle in. Yeah. Even smoking cheese is tougher. That's gotta be really low smoke. And there's different grades of smoker. I became really good friends with a guy named Mike West, and he owns a company called Barbecue Islands. Okay. And they that's if you're going for looking for rubs and sauces, they carry my sauce and rubs ears. Okay. But they've got hundreds. You can go there, and there's there are some really good rubs and sauces out there. I'll have to go check it out. Is that here in Gilbert? There is one on Power and Ray.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:01

Okay. I'll have to go check that out.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:02

Yeah. You go in there and everything from pizza ovens to smokers, the grills, they do the islands, they build the whole your outdoor setup.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:11

Oh wow. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. If you could rewind back in in your life with the things that you've gone through, this the stuff that you've learned now to where you are today. Yeah. Are there points at which you would like to go back and go stick with that or don't give up so quick? I mean, it sounds like you you were you had some pretty good ambition to keep moving forward in in what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:35

Yeah. It it's weird right now because everything seems like it's just gone so fast.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:43

But if I would go back sometimes I wish there's times I wish I would have pursued tennis earlier, but then I don't think I'd be playing it as long as I what if I did that.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:57

There's some other sports too, pursue even baseball at one time, a catcher, but I was a lefty. Oh. And at the time that was not real. And still you don't see too many lefty catchers, but now we have so much switch hitting. It was hard to find a glove. But we still did it. Golfing. But not on the business side, I don't know. I not really. There hasn't been something that it's like it's been just an amazing journey in the fact that I knew in sales that my heart was wanting to be in front of the mic rather than behind it. Yeah. But I just didn't one probably have the courage. And secondly, when I first got into it, I didn't want to start out in Yuma if I was going to be on the radio.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:41

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:42

Good afternoon, everybody. Let's take a look at weather and traffic and listen to it. I just didn't want to do that. And that's being so I kind of felt like if an opportunity comes by, then so be it. Yeah. If that's gonna happen, it will happen. I could have done more, I guess. I don't know if you know that I it wasn't like I was Jones and to be an actor by any means, but if something like that came around, would I do it or try it? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean the restaurant thing, uh that might be one. It was like it was so close. It was it really was a good product.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:17

We were in a C location, and we just you could go back, you think, if we would have done this, not open the second one, and just focused on that and done the walk down the hill rather than run down the hill and be a little more patient, it could have well I as much as I liked the background story of Porkopolis. I think that if we would have called it Brady's Burgers and Barbecue with the association of oh, that's the dude from the radio or whatever. It's it is what and you understand what it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:49

Oh yeah. It sells. I mean that's it's it is that years burgers and barbecue. Yeah, you've got the name out there.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:55

And we had that thrown around in there, but at the time I just Didn't want like I thought, well, I don't know. I I wasn't comfortable with it because I felt like, well, I'm not really cooking the food and I just didn't get the but that's not it. It still could be called your stuff. I mean because we had and then the sauce we're serving is Brady's sauce. Yeah. So we may as well. And you think like it would fit a lot better. I did sell a lot of sauce out of that restaurant.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:24

So I think we ended up with a gallon or something. I think we got a gallon. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:30

I have a case of the green sriracha left. Okay. And one case of the honey. Honey mustard.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:38

Oh, the honey mustard's good. I think we had sweet and spicy or something. Anyways. So let's talk about where you're at today. You're on the John Holmberg Show.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:48

On Homburg's Morning Cygnus. It's been twenty, it'll be twenty-five years in the end of August.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:55

Does that feel like a really long time or it's gone so fast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:59

But I just signed a five-year deal today. Well, nice. Congratulations. So I'll go through I'll be sixty-five on a hard rock station. So we can listen to you for another four years. Then we'll take it from there. Gotcha, yeah. I think one thing, again, it goes back to talking about our parents. If there's you wanted to do some traveling, if I can pace and could maybe throw the towel in at 65, which is the kind of the goal in a way. Yeah. I'd rather do that if I wanted to do the traveling.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:32

Have some time to do stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:34

70 to 80, you can still do some stuff, but talking to my mom and dad. Like my mom went to Europe to my nephew graduated. Okay. They my sister and brother-in-law lived had a place over in Switzerland for a while. And so she went over there this last in May. Okay. And that was her last time. Gotcha. She was just saying it. Yeah. Because it's just it's too much of it's too much of a hassle getting there. Yeah. The whole process.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:03

I think it's just an uncomfortable thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:05

And her hip's starting to bother her a little bit. And you're going to do some road work over there. And she's been over there plenty of times. She's like, it's good. And I've I'm not I don't regret it. I just know I don't care to go back right now anymore. I'm good with hanging out at home and playing golf twice a week and doing my thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:27

Yeah. No, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:28

My dad was the same way. For him, it was more uncomfortable sitting for a long period of time on the circulation of the legs and stuff. Gotcha. But he had like he he had nine lives and that's he was a healthy, not uh didn't drink, didn't smoke.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:44

No kidding.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:45

But it was just at 89, you're not necessarily cheating too much. No, yeah. But he was an athlete. He so I think that would be the thing to say, all right, let's see whether five years takes us, and I'm at that spot right now. Yeah. My wife's six years younger than me. Oh, okay. And my daughter's 17.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:05

So use young family. Yeah. For an old guy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:09

Yeah. And she kind of wants to pursue it. But the other interesting thing is what what does radio look like in five years?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:16

Right. Well, I was going to ask you that. Actually, that's that was a question I kind of had in my head was do you feel like with heart, with Amazon, with everything that's out there, that radio is becoming a thing of the past?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:31

They would say that for years when XM first came in. Yep. And the problem was a lot of the former people in radio went over to XM. So the initial sell on XM was we're playing, we're going deep in the music, and we're going to give a variety of stations. And when it comes down to it, people like six to ten favorite stations. There's 106 of them. Yeah. And all the people that didn't make it in radio are the ones that are doing it on XM. In a way, there's a factor of that.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:00

But they the big buzz was there's no commercials. Well, that's changed. Yeah. And the renewal, if it wasn't for new car sales, XM would be really hurting. Oh, for sure. So, and there's room for that. I'd say Spotify, Apple Music, those things on the music side of it, it's probably been a little bit of a factor. But the podcasting, I mean, look how many there are. Yeah. As far as generating revenue, you're talking one 1%, 2%. Right. But what's neat about it is everyone, their brother can do one. Yeah. Radio is free, it's still a free thing. But the king is content.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:39

And that's why podcasts, you've got some people that just the people are going there for the content. Yeah. And there's no one looking over your shoulder necessarily. You can do whatever you want. Do whatever you want. Go as long as you want. And I'd say people that are saying, starting off in podcasts, the last thing you do want to do. Not everyone can do the Joe Rogan thing. Like in fact, we've probably gone too long. Yeah. For whatever. Joe Rogan has earned that a little bit. He does have guests on there, and he'll go for three hours. But there's plenty of people that listen to that are like, I'm good for an hour and I'm out.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:11

Well, and that's i I mean, yeah, we're running over an hour here, but I've had these multiple conversations with people where it's like, okay, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, max. But then it's like, okay, well, but can we really get into the conversation? But do I need to make it two episodes? Do I need to do those types of things?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:26

And the glorious thing about podcasts with somebody, and in a way, are you trying to turn this into your source of income? No. But is there informative stuff on it? Or try to you always want to try to make it compelling something. Right. Give people a lot of people. I want people to listen.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:42

Right. You want people to listen and you want the guests to come on and feel like, hey, that was a good conversation. Yeah. And I didn't waste an hour, two hours of my time. Right. That that I got to know or talk about things that were relevant. But yeah, it's interesting because like this is not a oh, I want to make I want to monetize, I want to make a lot of money doing this. Sure. It's just more I I want to have conversations with people. Right. I want to learn about people, have a conversation, and put it out there so now other people can listen and if they want to hear and learn about people, they can learn about them.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:11

So that live here.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:13

Yeah, right. That l yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:16

If you can get a national guest, it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:18

I mean, I did have somebody in Poland listen to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:21

It is funny, yeah. Like our our So our morning show, the podcast numbers are through the group. As far as in our cluster of stations, where it's scary. And we just found out for about two or three weeks we're number one in Cameroon and Djibouti. No. Which you go figuring, you're like, you wonder how that even exactly. So shout out to Djibouti every morning.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:46

Say everybody's got a VPN ping in Djibouti. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:49

And it's I as I understand today, I think we're talking about it. It's like we're still in the top three in Cameroon. Djibouti is right in the top five. That's hilarious. But there are and it's neat to hear from people when you said Poland.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:03

They send you an email.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:05

The military when when things were going active and when crap was going down, we're hearing from them. We'd get pictures of HMS 98 on some missiles.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:19

That's crazy. That's awesome. Yeah. It's so cool. I mean, I and it's interesting because I've just kind of become a fan of the show in the last couple years, probably. I mean, Christine's been for she grew up at Shadow Mountain, so she's listened for I mean, uh well, I mean, I guess you have them 23, 25 years away. 25 years. So, but uh, I can't tell you how many times I'm just I'm laughing. I mean, I'm busting up, just laughing. But your humor is my kind of this is sophomoric, my kind of humor. Sure, yeah. And when you start talking about old bar, yeah. Which then I sit and I go, how the hell are these guys getting away with this? On the radio. Yeah. Right? When you think about like a Howard Stern who basically got canceled because he had to go to XM or C's or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:03

He went to XM for 125 million.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:06

Well, yeah. I mean, he didn't need to decide on that. But still, I mean, you think about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:11

Sure, he went through his shares of fine people fines on the FCC. Yeah. The big things, I think the reason why we talk about what we do and we can is because there's not really there's it's not malicious.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:26

You're not going out of your way to talk about this because you're but you know, you're also paid in a way to uh push the envelope a little bit, or at least be it's freeing in a way.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:39

Well, and I think you have to be comedy is supposed to be on the edge. Sure. It's supposed to, in my mind, highlight those things that we all know are true with regards to stereotypes and that sort of thing. Right. We know it's not true. When you say uh whatever. I'm not saying something offends somebody, right? But when you say whatever it is, it's meant to be edgy. It's meant to be well, it's basically it's real.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:12

Yeah. So it's like normally what the topics we talk about is something that you might talk about in the locker room or at the office amongst guys or amongst mixed crowd. Right. Right. And we're doing that.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:26

Yeah. And it's I love it. I mean, I honestly I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:30

Um the biggest thing is it's just amazing that it's been 25 years and uh this week we have Brett who is on our show. Well, it'll be five years for Brett on Monday basically.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:40

Oh wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:41

And Rich, it's just a it's wild that it just works. Yeah. It just kind of when John had asked me, hey, would you want to I was hired initially as a producer. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. Twenty five years ago. And we were a week away from not even being here. Because our second week on the air was when 9-11 happened. Oh wow. And that's a whole other story. Yeah. John's girlfriend at the time was in Tower Two. No kidding. And we were on the air. Oh my god. And she had a meeting with I think American Express on like the 86th floor at nine o'clock, and her boss was running late. So he told her, Go back down to the sixth floor, wait in your room until I get there. And then the one towers hit, and they said, Stay in your room. They said we would there's been a disturbance, we're just checking out. The first report was a Cessna ran into the one of the towers. And then, of course, the second one swings around and she they said, All right, get out. So she ran out of there and tells the story of someone was a combo that that you get what you think you see and what you're living and what you're actually seeing. But there was it was swinging around on the second one, and they're all running, and then you can't see anything. We were calling her on the air. We basically we didn't finish the show, we went right to a news feed. Gotcha. And I'll never forget our GM at the time, who has passed on since Chuck was like the main thing he said. Don't miss any commercials. Like, really? We gotta make the money. And we laugh at that, but and John jokingly says, because he's no longer with his wife. Oh, his first wife, he's like, Al Qa Al Qaeda just missed one.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:35

He's like, they didn't do the job. Well, John must be slow on the uptake because he didn't learn quick enough to but you know that was weird.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:43

We go off the air and he couldn't go over there for I think it it was four days, and he was able to take the first flight to New York to go pick her up.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:53

And who knew where this year, two weeks into the show?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:59

And really the after experiencing something like that, does he want to how does John feel coming back and you're going through all this stuff? And we uh we just started back up. And at the same time, we needed that humor. Yeah, yeah. We need that was and yeah, it's amazing because we were talking about that not too long ago. Like, man, this could have easily just never happened.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:20

Yeah. Well, this is crazy. That's it's incredible. And I think I mean, I I commend you guys for doing that. Like I said, I mean, there's mornings where I'm most time going how is this airing? But yeah, I love it because it is light and it keeps it moving.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:37

It's funny for the most part. Yeah. And there's some topics that even for me from coming from a little more conservative background, are that was one of my main worries when you talk about coming from a Christian faith and all that. Like funny is funny.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:53

At the same time, if I'm not comfortable with it or whatever. There's only been a handful of times, but you know, we've always said don't be afraid. Don't you're that's not your deal. You don't have to jump in. Just don't be a wet blanket.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:12

Or and for the most part, we've never really in the 25 years.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:16

How much show prep do you have to do? Like like the Brady Report and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:22

I get in a little before five o'clock. I'm usually the first one in, and I have a show prep service that suggests stories and and I'll say entertainment stuff. And then we'll check the other news feed. What's it it feeds itself? So Brady Report is pick stories five or six, maybe seven, whatever. And we've come up with little themes, whether it's wild America or Florida. Florida's always good for news. Ohio's pretty solid too sometimes. But kind of stuff that we basically because it's not like we're inventing these stories.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:59

No, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:59

But it's how it's told. Right, right. And the fact that the funny thing is I'm the furthest thing from a newsman. And it and I just don't like that necessarily. But to say that's why I do it. That's why, well, you're the guy. Because you're gonna hammer words, you're gonna and we'll have some fun with that. I'll tell you what. It's an eye-opener when you realize you're doing stories for years. I've been doing it for 25 years, and I'm still it's such a learning process to begin with.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:30

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:31

And so that's how that happens. And then really, it's spontaneous. It's probably 85%. We have our benchmarks. Yeah. Brady Report, Mondays, what would Brady do? Entertainment drill. You can get premature releases on Tuesdays. Guadalupe Squares, which is every Friday. Okay. Yeah. And so then you go from there, and then we'll have comedians on most Thursdays and Fridays.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:57

When they're in town or whatnot. Which is there are more and more now. I mean, I feel like there's more comedy clubs.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:03

There's a good batch of young comics coming around too, but yeah, and we have a great relationship with Matt Coleman, who has uh stand-up live and Tempe Improv. Yeah, yeah, uh Desert Ridge Improv. Yeah, which is And all those guys, you think about it, these comedians that come through town, we've been doing it for 25 years. So we've known Most of 'em. We see them once a year for 20 years. It's wild. A couple of them talk to in between throughout the year and run that's fun when you come up with something like, hey, can I use that? Every once in a while that will happen. No matter it'd surprise you who it would be.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:38

Yeah. I was talking to Rob, big Rob Butch Nolan. Sure. No longer so big. Yeah. But Big Little Rob. Yeah, big little Rob. We were talking, and it's that whole thing where do you listen to like do you listen to other podcasts, do you listen to other comics, do you listen to in fear of stealing somebody's Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:58

John's bigger on that, that he doesn't want to. I mean, he'll listen, but the reason why he won't, just because of that, doesn't want to be doesn't want that implanted in the but really when I took that humor writing class, Henny Youngman and Mel Hellitzer both said they would say there's no such thing as a new joke. But they said it's you just package it better, redo it. But there have been definitely some blatant rip-offs. And there's some comedians that you'd be blown away that actually bought their old character.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:43

I could tell a joke one way, and it would be flat. Somebody could tell the exact same joke, delivery, and it could kill. Delivery and timing. Right. Yeah. So, anyways. Last little piece here we'll talk about and we'll wrap this thing up, and I really appreciate your time. Do you have any like favorite moments on the show that that stick out in your mind where you're like, ah, that was just I mean, whether it was a funny thing or something you guys did? I mean, I know you guys do ton for the community and for the rescues and stuff like that, but well, there are, I mean there's a a lot, but that's funny.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:18

One one that came to mind was we would occasionally do pranks to some guys in the building. We had this one guy that was on in the morning with us for almost ten or twelve years, and he had gone to a concert the night before, but he's bragging that we weren't going, because usually we say, like, for me, like during the week, it's a school night. I don't like being up till midnight and then waking up at four, and but I can do it for ten years. But for the most part, it has to be really a band that I really want to see. And being in so long, you go to a lot of events. Oh, sure. So you kind of get like, it's gotta be a band there. But yeah, and you yeah, you become a snob in a way. You feel like, but anyway, he was talking about this band coming out, and he's like, Let's go, and I am not going. And he's like, Come on, John, don't be a pussy. You gotta go. Let's go to this band. I'm gonna get so high. And so I called John that afternoon, like, hey, he's going to this show. I got an idea, and I go, uh, what if we bring my buddy Doug in as a doctor and he's here for a random drug test tomorrow? No. And so he's like, That's brilliant. Let's do this. And we start working things out. I'm like, okay, let's do this. So the next morning we're on the air, and we tell our program director and that we're doing this thing, and he's like, I'm in. And uh basically over the intercom. Uh-huh. Oh, so our program director at the time announces, like, hey, it's a random drug test for the company. No. And you just see his face just go pale white.

unknown 1:25:06

What?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:07

Yeah, we uh the company just decided to do this. Like, oh, okay. And he's like, I am so busted. And so we're like, we can I think we can help you get out of this. I heard teriyaki sauce and old Roy dog biscuits will dilute your urine. So I go to Walmart and I buy these Old Roy dog biscuits and this generic teriyaki sauce, like, and you dip the biscuits in there, and he's eating them. And so they're gradually the announcement when we come up and say, Brady Bogan to the bathroom, you're next on the test. Oh, okay, I gotta go. And so he's waiting for his name. So he's pounding the biscuits in teriyaki sauce. And so then he gets his name called. It's like he goes in there, and so my buddy came in and he's in a lab jacket, and he's got the cups and everything, and so he's in the bathroom with him. And of course, he's got stage fright, and then he's also squirming. The funniest thing is he's not the best owner. That's why we knew he could do it, because then he'll just he'll he's buying into it, he becomes delusional. He tries to bribe Doug with three dollars. But I can get more, I can go to the ATM and get 40. Because our thing is we would do, we have these things called payday stumpmen. We knew he's always spending his check, he was check by check, and we'd push the limit. John would go, 500 bucks if you eat the hottest pepper in the world, or try something stupid stuff. Payday stumpman, we called him. Anyway, so he's like, I can get 40 more dollars. And he's like, So Doug comes out, guys, and we're all sitting in the program director's office. Guys, he just tried to bribe me with three dollars, and he thinks he's done life is over. And we bring him into the room to basically you're punked. Yeah, yeah. And we're and we say it to him. Doesn't register. No. Oh my god. He's in tears. Like, so and we're like, oh my god. Oh my god. We're like, dude, it's this is all put on. And so that's hilarious. That's one of the better ones that I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:31

Oh just horrible.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:34

Uh, that's too funny. Well, hey, everybody comes on the show. It's a gift. It's a gift. So make it be a gift. I've got a an adult toy. An adult toy. So the glass is. Yeah, the glass is actually it's uh went above me on, and it's got your uh your name engraved on it, my friend Rocky's all over the engraved that. So whatever your average of choice for this toys go.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:00

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:01

Yeah, and then and then a coin. So I really appreciate it. I've enjoyed our comments. Sorry if I bored your audience for a no, I doubt it. I highly doubt it. So anyways, well, thank you very much. You got it. All right. This is Brady Bogan, and I went above and beyond.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:17

Real deals, authentic connections, the kind that heels from Walm Springs and Pine Top's grace. APM's network spans every place. Above our network, we're going above and beyond, reaching new highs.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:36

In networking realms, scaling the high From mixers to golf. Our spirits unite. APN's the beacon, our guiding light. So here's to APN where dreams align. In every connection, a chance to shine.

unknown 1:29:02

Above and beyond will always thrive.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:05

In APN's network, we truly thrive.