S1E02 - Living the nomadic dream

On this episode, we talk to Brian Sage, founder and CEO of Sage Digital, a software agency that specializes in ecommerce, marketing, and fintech. He’s also had a lot of trial and error experience while wearing different hats at various startups and agencies—some successful and some not so much. He’s a big advocate for affirmative action in tech and for working from abroad. We discuss his real estate dalliance, selling cowboy boots, and living the nomadic dream.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today on points of failure.

SPEAKER_02 0:02

This is the sort of thing that I always heard about in Silicon Valley, where the real technology people are. We were doing that. We were turning small guesses and successes into bigger things. That's when we were very reliant on Google and Facebook for showing our stuff. And that's how we got seven million fans within, it was like within a year. It picked up most of them. Facebook changed something.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

All right. For the sake of the people who may or may not actually click the button to listen to this thing, we know each other for 30 years, but they don't, maybe. So uh tell me something about you, Brian. Break it down. Who is Brian Sage?

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Uh Brian Sage met Steve Cotherin in eighth grade, which was my first ninth grade year. I had two of them. I liked it so much, I did it twice. Uh but yeah, Steve was this guy that that came out of the woodwork and was like, hey, you want to hang out with me and some friends? So uh that began a long life of ridiculous antics for the next 30 years. And then as a product of that, yeah, I'd I've uh we went to school together. Uh we both we were roommates in college our first year. And then, man, who am I now? Like, I guess I got a business. I got a I live in an RV. We travel around the country this year. A pandemic sucked, kids are remote anyway, so we hit the road. Uh married, got three kids. We yeah, like uh and I live in Colorado. Um that's that's kind of me right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Good times. And this is not your first business though. You had a couple that you've started and run. Right. So uh yeah, go back to the beginning of those. Give us your first one.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Um, man, okay. First, well, first one. First first one that was like an LLC. Uh actually I think might have even been a uh subchapter S. Uh, but it was right out of college. Me and two roommates put together a small business of doing web design in 1998. So like early, early web design. But the problem was we were in this tiny little town called Silent Springs, Arkansas, where uh nobody had ever anybody who'd ever heard of the web was all like, ah, it's a fad, it'll go away. Why use the web when you could just pick up the phone and call somebody? Am I right?

SPEAKER_03 2:10

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

You get them right at the desk. So um that was called Argon Design, and we tried designing websites for clients. Um, pretty much just wanted to pay like 200 bucks, you know, to get it done. We just realized, okay, we gotta go find real jobs. Uh so yeah, I worked for Tyson Foods for a little while and then um worked for a small startup EISP uh in Arkansas, not real startup bill, but then later uh around 2007, uh started freelancing. Actually, there's a really good friend of mine who just said, Would you like to do this? I've got another designer. One of the things I do is graphic design. So he says, I've got this other designer, he's charging me way too much. Would you like all his business? Yeah, sure, man. So I took that on uh around that time. This was 2000 and yeah, 2005, 2007. Uh, we were also investing in real estate because you know, taking the day job money and putting it into Robert Kiyosaki's best advice. Um, we uh kind of got upside down doing that. So I'm sorry, we were the reason for the financial crash in 2007, 2008. After that, what did we do? Oh yeah, then I was a part of a little business, little startup that gathered seven million Facebook fans called Country Outfitter. And that was that kind of launched what I do now is uh mostly technology. So building not just websites, you know, like design, but also custom programming. Yeah, there's country outfitter, there's been a couple of startups since then. I guess I there was finally startup money available in Northwest Arkansas, although I'd moved away from there, but with I guess a little more experience in that field. Uh now it's kind of what I do is I build web apps and uh e-commerce stuff for startups like that and and run my own business doing that.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Nice. So going back in the theme of the show here, Argon design, what would you account for its failure as it were? Was it just because Arkansas was behind the times or because the internet was just too new, or what do you think it was?

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Yeah, you know, you always want to externalize blame first because it makes you feel way better about yourself. Of course, of course. So it's real easy to look around and say, we were in a tiny town and weren't able to make it go. But looking around, you know, there's other businesses that made that work. If I were to kind of take what I've learned since then, looking back, and we started a business because we wanted to do the thing, we didn't want to do the thing for anybody else. We didn't have any clients. Uh there's nobody out there that we were connected to who wanted websites in in the area that we were in. That there were probably you know lots of businesses out there that that actually did, but we didn't know that. So just being someone who you know wants to do the thing, but you got no one to pay you for it, you know, there's a good word for that. It's it's hobby. It's not business. So you know, we were also three buddies. Yeah, we we liked each other as friends. We didn't, um, I don't think we respected each other. Yeah, me and the other two partners. So I don't think we respected each other as leaders in our own area, and that's that's just being young and dumb. You you don't, yeah, you don't know how to respect other people and just kind of realize, oh, I could use some help here, rather than oh, I could do this too. And you're just you know, you're also doing it. Yeah, it takes mutual respect to have a partnership. So, you know, there was external factors, and then there's internal factors of just not defining rules and respecting other people in those roles. So and then that you know went in all directions, all four whatever extra fingers are pointing back at me whenever I point at the other partners. So yeah, that was that one. Uh that lasted about three months, and which is to say we had three months of money in our pocket to be able to afford rents, and then we were like, okay, this is this is not working. We were penniless and you know, looking for jobs.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Nice. And from there, you said you moved into ifworld, is that right?

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Yeah, so the there's a friend that went to college with, and he I forgot how he got a hold of me. Well, so actually, first of all, it was um Argon Design. Then I went and got a uh real job, unquote, at Dyson Foods. I worked for their internal communications department, and then after you know a few months, I was actually designing and laying out their internal magazine. This is back when people distributed pieces of paper with impression on them. Uh yeah, right. And that was fun. You know, going going like in the same way that whenever you build a website, you have to know the you know the the way uh the computer will actually render what you've got. Back then you had to know how the press would actually put all the stuff on paper. So there, you know, there's like a there's nerdiness there too. So yeah, I went to work for Tyson for a while. Can I cuss on your show? Absolutely. Is this uh is your mom gonna listen to this? Oh yeah. So whenever I went to work for Tyson, yeah, who knows if her parents are ever gonna listen to this. I'm sorry, mom. Sorry, all the moms. Yeah, so I'm gonna talk about Tyson. So working for their communications department, they god bless them. I think this is just it's endemic of big companies where you just get people who know their political position more than they can do their job, but they're really good at looking like they can do their job. So yeah, it was it was always waiting on everybody else on the team, and then like the last day or two, you finally get all your shit like bam on the desk, and then well, gotta make a magazine on time. Those are not good times, but that's yeah, you kind of learn this is what it's like to work on a bigger team, uh, and to be the you know, the bottom of the totem pole, even though it's a white-colored job and you're sitting behind a desk. There were Friday nights and Saturdays where everyone else is like, Oh, I got my deadline because it's gotta go out on Monday. And there I was Friday and Saturday. Fuck you, asshole. Putting everything together, computers crashing.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Thanks for sandbagging me, guys.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Exactly. Yeah. Well, a friend of mine reaches out and says, uh, hey, I hear you're doing uh I understand you'd probably like to get back into web design. I hear you're not doing that anymore. I'm like, you're damn right, I'm not. Yes, I'd love to get back into it. Well, I work for this company that, yes, yes, hire me. So I went to work for if world after Tyson. Tyson was actually, I think it was a year and a half, maybe, that was there. And I even went to night school and got a MBA because I was like, design is like stuck. I want to be in business so I can be the person that hires all the rest of these people like me, that shitty jobs, I want to have a good job. So I did get an MBA during that time from uh Webster U to go into the Walmart campus and took that over to yeah, if world, small ISP that was doing web design. I developed a lot of skills there that I didn't have because it was kind of you know trial by fire. Client comes in and says, Hey, we you know, we'd like you to do this. Can you do this? And part of the job of learning how to do custom programming is if you understand the language, even if you haven't built something before, you develop a process of learning something that you don't know. So yeah, that's what we did. Building web apps, it all web apps, all custom stuff using PHP. But yeah, tried a bunch of products on the side. I actually worked there for seven years. The thing I remember most clearly is because we had rental properties, and this was going into 2006, 2007, going into 2007, uh, market started to turn. We we had a bunch of tenants and they all called and gave us a their 30-day notice, and they either had been laid off so they couldn't afford their rent, or they'd found a foreclosure property and bought it. So they're like, hey, bought a property, you know, 30 days notice and we're out because that that was the terms of our lease. Well, good for you. So shit, what am I gonna do? I had within within 60 days, I had five or six empty doors. That's our portfolio. That's all the properties we had, except for one. One of them was the guy that got laid off, and he was like, Oh, I'm just gonna be late paying this month. And that was kind of his story every fucking month. So where it wasn't, you know, the the empty house and we had to rent it out, it was this boat anchor of a tenant that we were like, you know, squeezing, trying to, you know, squeeze for uh at least part of the rent payment so we can make the mortgage. So financial crash happens, uh, or or we're getting real close to it. So we we actually fire sale all of the properties made out with a little bit of yeah, a little bit of pocket change enough to get us through the next year uh while I started the business, but it was really reliant on new money coming in uh to get the business off the ground. So we yeah, sold all the stuff and moved into a house that remember, and we invited you to the Thanksgiving. We moved into this house in Bella Vista, it was a spec house we were building. Talk about points of failure, man. Being part of the the real estate problem, we built this place, like you know, whenever you have a little extra money, what do you do in 2005? Let's go build houses because we're good at this. Never done this before. I can be a developer. Yeah, exactly. Can't be that hard, it's just sticks and brick. So we build this property out in Villa Vista, thinking, oh, the valuation is so high. The bank kept giving us these valuations. We're like, oh my gosh, what idiot in the right mind would pay this much for a house up in the middle of Villa Vista? I don't know, this is gonna be great. We sell it. Turns out it no one bought it. So the idiot that bought it ended up being us. We converted the loan into a uh long-term loan. And there was a Thanksgiving that we moved in. We were actually, I think we had tenants coming into the duplex that we were living in. We thought we were so smart, we lived in a duplex first, owned the thing, the other side pretty much paid for the mortgage. So when we were moving into this Villa Vista house, we went from that to this mortgage that we never should like. I don't know what clown approved us for the loan, but they did. So, you know, we we got into the house and then we quickly quit our jobs and went to freelance and and starting this other business called Semaphore. By the way, never start a company called Semaphore because nobody knows how to fucking spell it. Um, yeah. So we moved into the house. Yeah, I forgot where I was going with the train of thought. But anyway, that points failure, moved into the house, started the business. Uh, that's when we had our second kid, and I think mostly running that business was kind of just outrunning the mortgage payment in the house because it was way more than we could afford. I left Ifworld with I gave them, I think it was like it wasn't two weeks. I'm gonna say it was either like 30 or 60 days because I knew I was I was kind of a pivotal employee at the time, not too high in the totem pole, but you know, real important for their operations. I left. And what's funny is within three or four months, uh, I think they reached back out to me and just asked, you know, hey, what are you doing these days? I hear you're freelancing. And I was like, Yeah, actually I'm I am. So I ended up getting this full load of work that they, you know, previously would just land on my desk because I was an employee. Now they would start saying, Hey, can you bid on this? Can you bid on that? So that actually worked out pretty well. But you know, there's a business doing exactly the same thing that I tried to do whenever I graduated college in 98, yet I had clients. I already had this client base of folks who wanted work done. I don't think I was the best person, you know, that the most qualified. Like if they if they knew other people, they could have reached out to them. They they would have been more talented at delivering exactly what I was doing. But because they, I guess we had a good working relationship. And so that was the start of uh semaphore. From that, it was actually a lot of clients that I had met along the way working at if world or or just friends in the industry, they started reaching out and saying, Hey, could you also build this? And then uh when one of them got a I think it was an Obama-era policy. Yeah, Obama was 2008. So it was around 2009, 2010, there was this policy that kind of trickled down into the states that you know backed some sort of big loan. And they got this uh, or or actually it backed some sort of credit, um, I think like a tax credit that then paid for businesses to invest in other businesses. We got like $500,000 in uh venture cap. So, hey, can you build an e-commerce thing? And at that point, really didn't have a lot of e-commerce experience. I built uh, I think uh the Daisy uh website, which is uh shoot your eye out, yeah. Like so I actually built their website and then there's a couple other e-commerce ones, but nothing you know big and no. They reached out, they're like, Hey, can you build e-commerce? I'm like, well, yeah, I can try. And so we built a couple of e-commerce sites, and then they're like, okay, yeah, they they get another from that, from that experiment going right, they get another investment round of a few million. And so time to ramp things up. Can you do how many sites can you do? And you know, we kind of had this plan for 15 websites. I'm like, yeah, I think I think I can knock these out in a couple of months. So we did that, and then that turned into more investment and more and more and more, just you know, kind of taking this is the sort of thing that I always heard about in you know, Silicon Valley, where the the real technology people are. Uh, we were we were doing that, we were turning small guesses and successes into bigger things, uh, you know, into into proof. And so then that brought on more venture capital. And eventually, so this from 2011 to 2014, countryoutfitter.com became our biggest success of all the different websites we built. Because we think a bunch of guys from Arkansas that the most naturally natural thing to do would be to sell cowboy boots on, which is what we ended up doing. We were getting all this investment capital. So Silicon Valley, this is you know what what you hear about. It's you know what people are writing about in books and blogs and stuff. And you you too can be a bazillionaire, just build software. We were starting to see some of that success. So we we were able to do this until 2014 or 15. That's when we were very reliant on Google and Facebook for showing our stuff. And that's that's how we got seven million fans within it, was like within a year. It picked up most of them. Facebook changed something and they made it so you had to pay for more advertising reach, which is I mean, that's that's the nature of the business. They they own that that marketplace. So we we couldn't make it work within within like a year. I think the company basically couldn't pay paychecks. A lot of folks were a lot of folks left, uh, and then another whole second section of folks were laid off. And then it was kind of the skeleton crew just putting boots into boxes, but I don't think they were spending money on marketing. And um that's when I found another startup to work for, worked there for a few years. But you know, I at that point I learned how to manage teams of folks to do things, but it wasn't it and I never felt good at it. I never felt like look at this, we did something amazing. We we built a company that was big, it was making a hundred million dollars a year by the time it was eight. But you know, and not being a sustainable company, once Facebook changes a line of code, you know, sure it's on the line of code, but once they change something, yeah. It was I know a lot of people from that company said it was very depressing to watch, and and especially you know, the people at the top, they were they were just kind of blown away that what they had built just went away. So yeah, I kind of went to other a couple other companies. Um, one of them was uh software as a service business. That was actually a lot of fun. Uh, you know, again, doing a bunch of different things, getting my hands dirty as the uh was I better product. Anyway, I got to instead of just owning code, I got to own the way that the thing worked. And so um, yeah, that was brain stretching. And then from there, uh, Country Outfitter folks, this this is another story that you'd think with the right team, you know, you'd get together. It was a great team to be a part of. The some of the leadership from Country Outfitter said, hey, we're building an e-commerce engine to sell to other people. And this is another, you know, do you have customers? Uh we didn't have customers, but we were building this platform. We wanted to do the thing. This is like going like I should have learned my lesson back in 1998. And said this time around, yeah, it's it really is. It's the exact same pattern repeating. We didn't have customers, we didn't know how to get them, but damn it, we wanted to do the thing. So we put together a sellable version of an e-commerce engine, and it was actually really gorgeous. Uh, and there's some versions of it that exist today that are clients of mine now. But uh, we built this e-commerce engine and I think we got out a little ahead of our skis. We brought on a lot of engineers in a really short amount of time. Uh, the team was awesome. And at this point now, you know, I'm managing the team. I'm really not hands-on with code. And so there's uh yeah, there's a lot of folks that I knew were way smarter than me, and I was super grateful that they, you know, are gonna follow along and do things. So yeah, that there's a lot of I guess it, yeah. Anyway, it's way different from 1998 when I'm looking around and we're all we we don't respect each other. We're seeing each other as someone else that does exactly what I do, but maybe I can do it better. And I think all of us thought that. Now I've got this idea that Jesus, these people are really smart. I can't believe that they've joined me on this trip. And I'm starting to see some of the better leaders that I've worked for, and I can even name names. Terry Turpin, uh, who now works at JB Hunt, John James, who's an investor in Northwest Arkansas area. Some of those, and you know, more names will come to me here soon. But uh Jason Heron, who I haven't talked to in a while, but uh lives out uh he'd be worked for Simon Foods, learning to work with those guys and just kind of have the experience of seeing them trust me and trust other people that uh yeah within their sphere um of activity that taught me how to do the same thing, how to trust the folks that I was bringing onto the team. Uh so you know, I get a lot more mushy talking about the more recent stuff than the comical old stuff. But you know, here's where the pattern repeats is that 1998 pattern of not having customers, not having anyone to it wanted to do the thing. We all wanted to do the thing, but no one wanted to just do the thing. You know, no one's gonna pay for it. So within, and it was our CEO was incredibly optimistic. And he was telling us, like, it I kind of had a you know, we we were on a flight together, and I had a chance to just talk to him and and kind of get the the real inside scoot about our fash position, where we were going, what's coming up next. And he said, Well, I can tell you this, even if we're before we, you know, this thing has to end, if we have to, you know, land this plane that was the land that because it was engine, that was the name of the company, had a propeller logo, so plane analogies just flew all over the place. We have to land this plane, and that always meant you know the end of the company. He said, I would rather fly it into the side of Mount Improbable with everyone on it as a team than lay off people in order to in order to get over the hump. And I was like, Well shit, that's awesome. Like we brought up all these people who'd you know given us a trust. And he was, you know, in by saying that, he wasn't he wasn't saying like I'm gonna you know kill you all, but uh that conversation was around, yeah, exactly. I'm gonna burn the ship with everybody on. That conversation was around you know how much how much trust he had in us. He didn't want to lose any person that was on the team, and he fully expected we were gonna get another round of funding. So we actually, man, we had the best Christmas party. And this turns out to be just two months before we have to shut the the windows. None of us knew it. We had the best Christmas party where we had a we had a budget that because we thought so many people were gonna be there. We booked a room, and whenever we get to the room, we know as managers we have this limit. Uh you you have to spend more than X in order to basically we had we we knew we were gonna have like 16 people show up from you know flying in and then people on team in Denver. So we uh we booked the room knowing, okay, 16, maybe we can kind of push that and just be a little hedonistic tonight and do the, I think it was like 18 people's worth is is what the cost of the room was. Well, what's funny is that uh only I think there was only about seven or eight of us that actually showed up that night because there was a storm. So one couple couldn't make it. This other guy who was gonna make it, his spouse couldn't make it. And then uh the people from Arkansas couldn't fly. I think two of them could fly in, but two other had to do something else that time. And so them and their spouses couldn't make it. So the the numbers just start reducing, and now you got seven people who have to spend 18 people's worth of Christmas party night at this place. Oh man. So we told we actually like, how do you do this? So we just brought in the waitress, the woman who's taking care of us, and just said, here's where we're at. We're not gonna be able to make that. She's like, Yeah, the room's looking pretty thin. We're like, help us. And she's like, I gotcha. So she goes out, finds like the uh not just because they have a uh selection menu that they bring over. You only get like three choices. She brings in the stuff from you know the back uh and line lists from the back, and she's like, Okay, we also got this one here. So by the end of the night, we were we had had the most amazing time and we're still under budget. So, you know, that's just the way that that went. But it was a yeah, the team remained incredibly tight, you know, after that. Like I can't appreciate CEO enough for taking that, yeah, having that mentality and just saying we're we're gonna fly into the side of the plane or fly into the side of the mountain uh before we drop weight to get over. So yeah, the team is still incredibly tight. Like I still uh know those folks. And so the company was a failure, uh, it has a moral victory, you know, for for how we how we treated people. It felt good. We did have to shutter the company that turned out to be February 2020. So going right into a pandemic that was gonna start the next month while I'm looking for a job. One of the companies I was interviewing with, you know, I was supposed to talk to some of their their C-level folks. They said, you know what, we're we're just gonna put this fire on pause uh while we see how this COVID thing shakes out over the next 30 days. Oh so that was yeah, that was pretty much the the nail in that coffin. I wasn't getting a job. So I just reached back out to some of the former clients that uh that we had from Frenjine, just kind of networking through the team that we had and then some other people that I'd worked with, and just said, Hey, shingle is out, the doors are open, I'll you know, I'll sling code for money. So that's uh the beginning of this company. And now I actually have uh one full time employee, and we have a handful of contractors. working on projects. So it's you know becoming a real living that I don't have to be hands-on keyboard 24-7, you know, like it was before uh during the last financial crisis. Yeah. So it's it's it's still different. And of course I I look around and I see other businesses that I want to emulate. I want to be as big as you know these other people who are just doing it so well. I want to have the clockwork figured out where we can on a project and just never have a never have a road bump to uh you know getting things done. But you know it's it's that's that's not what business is. Business is any ecosystem. It's it's working very hard for your survival as a as an organism. So we're figuring it out. We're also doing this from the road right now like you're not recording the video or you're not going to use a video maybe but if people were looking around they'd see I'm in the back of a car because that's my office. Yeah I've got a three row SUV. So it's it's actually quite comfortable but I do actually take all my meetings here in the backseat of the car. Very nice. If I want to impress people sometimes or actually what was it? I got called out because I had Redwoods you know behind me and whenever I was um but like a week ago I got called out and they're like oh Brian in all these bougie locations oh sorry guys my wifi's no good you know they're making fun of me for this I was actually kicked out of the car because one of my kids had to have their meeting inside the car. And because you know they're just they're playing inside the RV. Yeah. So the reality of you know this bougie existence is staying at campgrounds and you know you have great weekends where you can see most amazing stuff in the country.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

But anyway it's it's uh it's not glamorous yeah from this side there you go we're all caught up yeah so going back to uh to 1998 uh you know the Argon design based on a couple things you said probably the point of failure as it were is that the three of you were not so much that you were friends but more that because you weren't established in a business setting with that sort of experience under your belt it was hard to like you said respect each other. You couldn't see that as oh this is businessman not just friend one and friend two but we're all businessmen we're all doing our part here it was it was that lack of of seeing that that was the the real failure there was that you didn't have that respect for each other.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Yeah that's that's a really good way to put it but didn't we didn't have the respect for each other we didn't we didn't know the role you know that that needed to be played and instead I guess at that age it's hard to separate this is the role I'm playing from this is me and this is my identity. I am this cool person who does all the things and has power and influence. Whenever you start realizing that uh power and influence is just something that sometimes you can have that and sometimes you don't it's not an attribute of you. It just happens to be where you are uh in relationship to other things. Sometimes you just don't have any influence at all and you're still you and sometimes you have all the influence but you're still you making those decisions. So yeah in that in that situation uh rather than playing an individual role and you know kind of understanding what I could do that would best help the group we were we were young 20 something with egos and ambitions and that got in the way of us getting on actually you know being a functional team. Sure. At least that's inside that we saw break down first, right, is is how we didn't respect each other. As a result, it it's real easy to continue a business if it's making money. And if you hate your and there wasn't any hate there it was just a because we we were still friends before and after but there was a the w when there's no money and then you take the fact that we're not making money on this we all have to survive we have these responsibilities we want to do you know ambitions lie elsewhere and something has holding back from those ambitions and it's you right you start pointing fingers at other people because you don't understand this is the role that I have to play and I have to trust them.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Instead, yeah it just all broke down uh between us the relationships you know we're sour for a while we didn't want anything to do with each other but yeah that that changes everything so you've been part of a number of entrepreneurial moves if you will whether it was your own startups or other people's startups do you think that any of that goes back to because obviously your dad is is an entrepreneur he's um you know he's just got that mindset do you think that his the way that he did things that being an entrepreneur and starting his businesses and whatnot do you think that impacted you seeing that you thought yeah that's what I want to do or do you think it just sort of embedded itself where you just naturally gravitated towards starting things on your own huh that's I was nodding along like yeah yeah yeah but then you said or and that's uh that's a good or I don't know is is it one of those things that's embedded I I I think everyone does this with their parents is you you see this is the model for how the world is is supposed to be.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

So yeah they their marriage and the way that it's modeled I try to emulate that their probably their their daily habits and hobbies those are things that I that I also probably think okay that's normal whatever I do that's not that is some variant and some some deviation. So I guess with starting a business uh yeah that that's a thing that uh there's kind of this family ethos for my family where my dad started his own business it was successful uh my grandfather his dad started his own business that was successful in Southern California my grand or great grandfather uh started his own business and that was uh wildly successful he he sold the Norris or he he was the inventor and owner of the company uh his name is Landy Norris and the Norris milk dispenser that you'll see in old timey cafes and greasy screens it was they were around whenever we were kids I don't know if they're around anymore. Yeah but these small milk refrigerators and they had these little weights on the front you'd lift up on them and they had them in the JBU cafeteria where we went to college lift up on a little weight and the milk would come out the little nozzle thing he invented those and then started selling them yeah everywhere because it would keep the milk fresh it was a way you know keep the milk fresh also you had to buy his bags of milk to go in the in the machine so yeah so that that was a uh business out of uh Fred Cities Minnesota so that yeah there's this kind of family pioneering business leadership mentality to that runs in the family but I think where it landed on me was the you start your own you claim your own territory it's not about operating according to well established principles it's this entrepreneurial thing because I I think looking back that's always the pattern that I sure something that pickles my ADHD enough but you know that that's the thing uh my sister actually runs our family's business my my parents' business they started for her I I think you know she has the same kind of uh value ethic for running a business starting a business how important that is uh but I think for her it's more about the principle of I'm totally guessing she and I haven't really connected on this but maybe seeing it be the best that it can be you know for perfection rather than experimentation maybe I think I think uh I'm much quicker to experiment with with something new and just be you know have that part of my brain just tickled by the the novelty of it so yeah the the pioneering mick business ethic thing I think that's where it that's where it is yeah for the family. And for me it's definitely the pioneering side.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Hey there podcast listener have you always wanted to start your own podcast have you been listening to this one and thinking to yourself man if he can do it I can do it. Well you're not wrong and thanks to Anchor you too can have your own podcast. It's super easy to do. So easy in fact I've been doing it but I probably couldn't do it without Anchor. All you have to do is record your episodes upload them to Anchor's website and they'll do all the heavy lifting for you including distribution groovy stats to see if you're awesome or if you suck and even finding sponsorships like this one that I'm doing. So if it's your lifelong goal to have your own podcast or even just a useless pipe dream anchor can help you with that. Just go to www.anchor.fm to get started that's www.anchor.fm anchor all your podcasting needs in one place yeah that was and that was kind of why I was curious about as to whether or not it that's why I said or because it is an interesting contrast where your dad you know this long line back to your great grandfather of starting businesses and beginning them from the ground and building them up and becoming successful. And then you and your sister sort of go, I don't know if they're opposite directions, but in the sense that you went the same route of making your own thing where you know it was never really a thought in your mind I'm gonna run my dad's business where you know your sister you know that's what she wanted to do was run that business and work her way up in it. Like you and I both did a summer job there. And I don't think either one of us was like I'm gonna run this company one day especially not with the shit job that we had to do when we were there.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

But I mean that that difference you're gonna run this company by pinning all the poles. Yeah and climbing around like a monkey on these these weird uh metal shells that I don't know how to build but uh yeah exactly well I was gonna say we built those shells we know uh no one should be cleaning on yeah yeah right there's no stability in that I'd stay away from those barely built it right good deal we lucked out but yeah so that was that was kind of my thing there I was curious about that because you know you guys did different things if you will well do you remember uh so whenever we had that summer job we were both like swabbing decks and you know bleaching like we we were the guy this this side book is remarkably clean yeah because we scrubbed it for a day because yeah that we were the guys that were were going around taking care of the stuff that was kind of beneath everybody else and I think that that was looking back I think there's an element of um my dad wanting me to to know what the business was from the the very ground yeah so yeah I think he was he was trying maybe to prove a point although he never said that but I I assume that's what it was. Sure. There was a time during during having those jobs where we worked with a couple of the guys that we were having sitting around having lunch with them and one of them mentioned he's like yeah well whenever you run this place yeah he was saying to me and I just I can't I remember feeling so uncomfortable it wasn't the it wasn't the responsibility it was the oh shit he's talking to me he's not talking to my friend Steve who's sitting here with me and I I remember that's kind of all in in places like that I've always felt uncomfortable if there's some sort of reputation that precedes me being there, right? Like you're sitting there talking to me. I'm at well how old were we like 17 I think yeah yeah so whenever we're there working the job and we're pushing brooms and painting holes and hammering we even got like bent up uh like the boxes would come in all bent up we take a mallet and we'd like straighten the shit out and we thought we were doing so good because you know this is the job we don't have anybody to talk to about this like we don't need a content manager until something's broke. He he needs these shelves built we built the shelves and then we put them together we caught we caught fire for it because he's like no if they're all bent up you ship them back. I'm like oh damn it I don't know this thing. So uh you know we're we're catching all this shit from the people that are that are managing us but yeah that's that's who we are. We're those guys in that situation. And someone's treating me like extra good somehow because he thinks this is going to work out for him that he's treating the boss's kid who's gonna run the whole show you know differently I felt awful. Yeah it still sickens me right that kind of thought so I I knew at that point I didn't want anything to do long term with the business or with any kind of environment like that. And I kept seeing that play out anytime I would visit. Yeah. So anyway it wasn't for me. It was also manufacturing I wanted to be in technology yeah and you know later it came back around and actually I built a website for that business since yeah which is cutting edge which was pretty great but that's within the last year. It took 25 years or 30 years for that to come about.

SPEAKER_00 32:50

So yeah I remember those back then I thought man this is gonna be awesome you know we're gonna I'm gonna go work for my friend's dad's company get this sweet job in the office or something at 16 you know at least in the mail room yeah nope you're gonna go out here and do crap oh thank you thank you you know what I think I quit yeah yeah so springing off of that you know you said you wanted to be in technology and you know you went you got a graphic design degree right from John Brown. Yeah that's that's sort of the motivator that that went that way you were kind of like this is what I want to do and you looked around and thought how do I get educated for that because I know we both came from the you know get your college degree and get a good job kind of background you know as opposed to starting businesses. So that's sort of the motivator there.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

Yeah what was that? Well so um I was always do you remember the science fair in ninth grade where this I promise this is on topic where um I set up my science fair project was a Nintendo so an NES which is an 8 bit machine next to an EC Turbo graphics 16 and by virtue of playing the faster games can you develop uh faster reflexes and that was my science project for whatever reason the the teacher approved it yeah maybe maybe she saw that I was really into I think it was I think it was Miss Brian that might have been teacher around that time. Yeah she was like kids want to do video games yeah sure she was awesome so but that was my science experiment and so of course I kind of get this taste of huh just add technology and people go wow I don't I don't know what that was but it video games always fascinated me I had a hand-me-down computer for my uncle my my parents weren't into computers but I had an uncle who had he always had something you know on his desk and so his hand me down one time he shipped it to us it didn't even have a disk drive it had it took cartridges it was a Texas instruments computer you booted up and it had a book you flipped to the back of the book the advanced programming section and you could type for a fucking day everything that was on this page and whenever you hit run this big blocky thing on a it was probably like an 80 by 40 or you know something 80 wide by whatever it was tall uh display 60 wide tall probably um this giant comes like these pixels these these very very low resolution things blocks from one edge of the screen to the other blew my fucking mind I was like I made this thing it was like discovering fire from the gods and then this computer was so so unprepared for this like well time to shut it down click and when I turn it back on whoosh nothing like I have to do it all over again I forgot what age I was I was like okay and I one more time I would sit down and I would read yeah and I would try to change things change his eyes and stuff that was kind of the beginning of thinking right to uh to learn how to do it and then maybe maybe you were a part of this this would have been um eighth and ninth grade uh there was a a computer class at Benton County Christian school where we went school with the Franklin computers and computer class yes yeah with those little uh Apple II compatible computers so we learned Apple Basic and programmed a teenage mutant ninja turtles game it was an RPG uh with like ASCII art for the characters. I think I only made it like you know two or three screens in you know what you're being attacked by a foot soldier what will you do? A B C or D but I remember doing this and then so that was that was kind of the start I just was fascinated with what you could build through well for some reason for days of effort you too could have a shitty ASCII art thing that maybe is not animated. Maybe is animated. Something about that's always fascinated me. So whenever I kind of had the proof positive that uh other people were wowed too through this science error that I could do something with video games and they're like oh clearly this kid is on his way to technology I I went into I actually went to college there wasn't a good uh like visual media degree available from either the U of A or JBU and I also kind of had this idea and I I see it in some of my kids too. They they've said to me that uh well I have to get a real job but I can't I can't do this. I have to get a real job and do something that'll be paid for and I feel bad that that's like the ethic that you know putting on them but um I think I had that too where I have to get a real job so I went to JBU as a business major instead of going to I was I was thinking of going to somewhere as an architecture major and I gave that up because I thought I don't have architecture jobs or not the same as running a bit so go get a business degree and sure enough a year and a half into it I was actually codering a couple of other students in the class in a statistics class and I just hated fucking hated it. Like it was it was the worst statistics class ever. The teacher would look up in the sky close his eyes rock back and forth on his feet and not listen to anything the kids would say just like yay this is these are the things you should know and it would completely boring. So I'm sitting in the class I'm doodling something I'm drawing something because I've always had a bit of a uh drawing ability and just kind of doodling on this one page and over time you know kind of spreads onto the back of the next page and it's like this little knight you know underneath this dragon raining down on them this uh it it started off as like stick figure night but then it turned into this realithic shaded dragon thing. And the guy behind me uh who I was one of the guys I was tutoring just goes did you draw that and I was like yeah just been fucking around in class whenever I hate this class he's like if I could do that I would not be in this class and I was like holy shit that's it so what class would you be in with uh what kind of art do you get yeah exactly I I mean I just realized okay maybe that's it maybe this is actually what I do with my with my time so switch to graphic design that's the closest thing to uh what I want to do at this particular college that I go to you know that's kind of always been my thing is not to look more broadly than that and I could kind of see my feelings there. You know why didn't I look at other colleges that actually specialized in it? Uh JBU's design program was pretty good but probably could have looked around and found like a real digital media course but you know it's my bad what I did instead is learn design. This was 1990 between 94 and 98 the World Web was just made public and HTML is a language you can pick up on your own it's it's uh there's documentation out there you can want to do it. And then the hot dog web editor uh was something that was free so I could download that. Yeah and uh started using that to build web pages and you know pages and I mean pages like one at a time HTML pages. And then I saw this flyer that was uh student website manager you know work with HTML and all this for the school. So I showed up with my resume on a floppy disk, a three and a half inch floppy disk as an index on HTML document. And she puts it in you know puts the disk in her computer this is when we all trusted whatever came on a disk opens up the the resume and she's like this is great. You're the only person that actually has shown up with anything that says you can do this job. So awesome what do I do? And they paid me I think it was like 50 bucks a month to handle this from other people there was one other dude who ever gave me their disk with uh their web page on it so they could they could be on the student web server. But that was the beginning of that and because of this there was a couple of uh companies that would come to the school and say hey do you have anybody that could build web pages or websites and being a designer and being able to to do the HTML hey you know they would send the work to me. So I kind of forgot about that. This was not an LLC but it was just me you know taking 100 bucks here 200 bucks there uh to to build a web page or two based on a design. So yeah that was that was that it it was I remember continuing to get some sort of notoriety in this in a small pond for building things that were digital or building web things. I didn't know any kind of programming any kind of JavaScript or I think PHP was the orl was the server side language of the day. Didn't know any of that but it uh still you know kind of was me being able to build something that's a digital thing. I got to play with digital Legos. So just kind of being you know having that reinforced as this is what people will pay money for sure that was uh that was enough. I was like hell yeah this could be my career. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

Business degree dropped out of that went into graphic design later hated my design job got MBA you know for real business degree and then uh ended up being a programmer not because I went to school for all nice but here we are it's funny that you mentioned those those steps in your education path because that was that's something that I I've noticed and for me in in my own personal life was a failure as it were because you know I went off to we were John Brown together and originally I was an engineering degree because I thought yeah that's what I'm gonna do I'm being engineered I'm gonna get my bachelor's in engineer in mechanical and then I'll get my master's in industrial and you know I didn't really know that I didn't want to be an engineer. I thought I did and you know I get to John Brown and you know I think I was two weeks in and the math just blew my mind. I was like calcul what I'm sorry I remember sitting in my that first calculus class and the professor walks up to the board and draws this you know quarter graph and puts this parabola on there and he's all show me the thickness of ice as a function of time and he just goes and sits down and you know everybody's flipping pages and calculating and I'm just looking around the room like it's time to leave I have no idea what's happening here.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

So I got up and and I went and I yeah I'm gonna guess Benton County Christian school did not prepare you for calculus. Oh not in the slightest you know kind of what it sounds like yeah maybe the tiny little Christians like private education school we went to wasn't all that good.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

Yeah maybe perhaps not yeah so definitely you know I got there and I I changed my major course in step with my upbringing I I switched to a youth ministry degree. But the I think that you know of course then I dropped out after my freshman year and saved money to get married and do all the things that I thought I was supposed to do in that respect. But I think that one of the things that I have looked at the education path because like all three of my kids and my youngest he wants to go in the military but my two oldest both were like you know Dad I don't know that I want to go to college right away out of high school I you know I'm not sure that I even know what I want to do. And I was like you know what don't if you don't know what you want to do don't waste the money on on the education it's just student loan debt. I mean I'm you know I I did a master's degree that somebody told me was a good idea. Once again, you know, what is that seven years ago now and it's a been a all it's done is give me plenty of student loan debt to pay off. So it's it's one of those things it's just like you know I think that is a failure as it were is to push on kids go to college, go to college and you know and then get a good degree and then get a good job because I mean damn I mean how many people change their major in their freshman year you know it's what like I don't know what the percentage is a high percentage of freshman students who change their major. I think it's shit advice and I think that is a failure as it were you know some people stroke a luck but I don't know for me I know it was a failure.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Yeah no I I I think same thing. I'm not doing what I went to I I do a little bit of graphicism but that's really not what pays the bills. It's kind of a foot in the door for a lot of businesses. But uh what really pays the bills is programming something that I picked up like a self-taught and then of the people that I've hired they don't have college degrees in programming either. You know we're building web apps we're not we're not solving challenges math challenges for DARPA. So it it's there's there are reasons to get a uh computer science and engineering degree you know but it's not the realm that that I've you know in and operate in. So yeah college degrees I'm on the fence too I I feel like definitely don't make it just you know grade 13. Once you finish grade 12 college is not grade 13. It's something else our culture though is that it's grade 13 plus you get to party in it in the West.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

And it's uh unfortunate. Yeah it is very one of the things I think is a huge failure at least for me for sure and I think probably it's relatively universal is not ever taking risks on things. I think that not taking a risk is actually much riskier than actually the risk itself as it were in the terms of like you know businesses and whatnot and down to the nitty to the to the smaller things of like you and your wife if you hadn't taken that risk to ask her out you guys probably would not be married. You know so there's those things that you know in and your businesses and whatnot. So what's your take on that? How do you feel about not taking a risk versus taking the risk?

SPEAKER_02 43:58

Yeah I think humanity Kind of wants to see other humans succeed. I think I've learned that by taking risks and just kind of putting your neck out there and saying, Hey, I do this thing. Like this is a thing that I want to do. I'm passionate about it. I'm pretty good at it. Can I help you by doing this thing? You know, we want to do this thing together. And that that's dating, that's business relationships, that's partnerships, that's uh getting a client. There is a certain amount of when someone can see you're inspired to do something, starting a podcast, for example. I'm doing a podcast, Brian. You want to join me? Oh, he's doing a podcast. Hell yeah. We kind of get behind other people on their ideas. So yeah, taking a taking a risk like this, putting your neck out there, I think you people do come along. Um it's just that you have to you have to start taking risks with the idea that not only am I going to be super excited to see this thing, I'm also not gonna let it get me down. And that's the hardest part. It's not letting something get you down when it doesn't work out. Because yeah, like we we go through this with our kids all the time. There we have some really, really sore losers in our household, like like really sore losers. No one likes to lose in a in our household if we play games. So it kind of gravitated to team games as opposed to, you know, even Uno. We you know, we'll get some pretty foul language from our children around a game of Uno that they lose. Well, the odds are if you play Uno regularly with four people, you're probably gonna lose three out of four times and play the game because it's someone's gonna win. So the reality is we are gonna lose when we compete. There's gonna be losses that come, and it's some high number of losses. It's just that you know, if there's losses, I think I think you just gotta also know what you're gambling. If you're uh yeah, gamble things that don't matter, like money. Money is you know, you you can always you can always stay on the couch, right? So right now my couch is mobile, it's in Oregon, but you're so welcome to it. And we we have friends, right, that that'll get our packs or family that that does that. So money is something that it sucks and your pride takes a big hit. But once you kind of get the pride out of the way, and that's that's the hardest thing, is getting the pride out of the way, taking that risk and realizing I might end up on someone's cash, especially when you have kids that are reliant on you to not end up on someone else's fucking cash. Right. It's hard to take that risk because you, you know, those are the things that you think are in the balance. But I I guess uh when you you know the risk is mitigated, you have people out there that want to see you succeed, those become your clients in my case, or they become your podcast guests in your case, yeah. Um uh and podcast audience, you you'll you'll you know, generate an audience. You uh I guess you become a lot less afraid of the next risk that you take uh because you've seen other things and it's it's really just a muscle that you've learned to build. And I wouldn't say that I'm good at it, or I wouldn't say that I'm good at it relative to what I really wish that I could achieve. Yeah, but uh I I think I'm a lot less risk averse. I guess probably because I've seen it pan out well in families narrative and uh you know my generational families narrative by taking risk and starting a business. And now it's going well. I've made a lot more money before in the past, but that's you know not what this is about. Instead, it's it is about building a thing that I I want to see built. So um, yeah, it feels good trying. I I think I would not feel good for trying this.

SPEAKER_00 46:59

For sure. And I, you know, that's uh like for me, you know, um I I talked a little bit on my first episode with Jeremiah. Uh, you know, I I'm very uh I've been very risk averse my whole life. Um just you know, one there's this opportunity, like, oh yeah, I could do that. And like, well, you know, and so it's always been that fear of the fear of the failure. Um, and that in and of itself has turned out to be a pretty solid failure. So it's it's driven me now, it's motivated me now to look at things and say, okay, you know, I read something a month or so ago that said, you know, your first song is gonna suck, sing it anyway. You know, your first interview is gonna suck, do it anyway, you know, those kinds of things. And I was like, you know what, that makes sense. So I need to just do it. That's kind of what motivated this thing here. So I think the big piece of that too is that for the longest time I didn't know who I was because I didn't know what I valued. And since I know what I value now, it's easier to, well, it's not easier per se, but it it's it puts me in a situation now where I feel more comfortable saying, okay, I'm gonna take this shot because if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. At least I tried, you know. So it's uh I value, I value the result, I value what's coming from it, and I value what I'm I think I have something to share. It's not unique, I don't think, in the sense that no one else has ever failed, but at least I feel like I've got a perspective on it. And so it's kind of where I'm at with that.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

Yeah, yeah. Well, having it like that's I can appreciate having that sort of guiding, there's an excitement there. There's something that you want to see happen. That's all the motivator I need is you know, something that that is it's like this there's the hill I want to go take. Like, you know, to use a military analogy. Like that that's the hill. I'm gonna plant my flag on the top of that damn hill, it's gonna be mine. Even when you don't yet have the army to storm it, or you don't actually know the plan that's gonna get you there. Something that just says, that's what I want, and then you go for it. Yeah, very exciting. I think it's cool to see you do it.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

Yeah, fun so far. So so one one uh one final sort of thought here. Um that's kind of been interesting to me. And I I think one of the failures in life, as it were, is when we get in a bubble and we stay in that bubble. And one of those things I think is never leaving home. Now I've traveled, I've gone places, but I haven't moved and lived somewhere else, you know, and that's something that you know you guys have experienced in the sense that you moved to to Colorado. And then now you are moving all the time, you know, as it were, you're constantly living in a different state. I think that's a I think that's one of those things that is I think getting away from your home, you know, your home life, your community, whatever is one of the best educators out there. And I think that's a big one that that that risk that you don't learn um and you get encapsulated. So, you know, what are you what are your thoughts on that? How do you think that has been beneficial for you guys and the in those moves?

SPEAKER_02 49:35

Yeah, um, so I'll start off by saying it was I will admit it was real uncomfortable for me to think because I was reading, I guess I was I was being reinforced mentally and socially by my circle that was my high school friends, some college friends that were in the northwest Arkansas area where you know we were all living, and we built that house in Bella Vista, uh, that spec house we eventually moved into. We lived there nine years, and we even poured more money into it. You know, we didn't look at it as this is a dumb purchase and just pay our losses as soon as we could. We kind of looked at it as uh, well, we have this house, this is our resource, we're gonna hold on to it. We fought for this thing. We we scraped the bottom of our finances and yeah, and kind of turned the corner uh in this thing. This is this is our family home. And I myself didn't listen to my wife's feedback. She kept saying over and over again, I hate this place, it's not something we picked. It doesn't feel like us. No matter how many slaps of you know, bunches of paint we put on it. We always had this idea, it's gotta be the right color for someone else to buy it eventually. And we we always had that mentality about the house. Wasn't a floor plan that we would have even liked to choose. We picked it because it'd be someone else would find it, like with most things, not annoying. Not amazing, but also not annoying. So they would buy it, and that's horrible. Uh, but we were living that life, we're making these choices to stay there. It actually required, and I speaking of failures, this this failure pushed us to finally move. It required our kids uh having so our oldest went to the hospital for an asthma, and the only asthma they ever had was from seasonal allergy. It's not a thing that they just learned, instead, it was an allergic reaction once a year or once or twice a year at the beginning and the end of the summer, they would have this reaction. And so once finally they had to go to the hospital for it, they had low oxygen saturation in their blood. Um, and the hospital wouldn't let them go for two days. So real serious, and uh give them some zero attack. Like that's what it turned into is uh just give them, give make sure they're on their pills. Well, they got they kind of aged out of it a little, but we couldn't do soccer, we couldn't do the spring and fall sports outdoors uh with them because uh they they just couldn't be around the grassy fields. Our middle child went to this elementary that was actually he's incredibly sensitive, not to social input, but just to individuals, like you know, their approval and disapproval and the way the school was teaching him to behave, unquote. Because he would, you know, sometimes the teacher would say, Okay, kids, put all your stuff up and then come back to your desk. And he would be so into what he was doing. And sometimes that would even be something like an act of kindness. There was this thing where he kept winning these awards because he would always find these kids who didn't speak English and they would they'd be added to his class, and he was always a little sweetheart who would just kind of go around and guide them, you know. Whenever there was a line they had to get into, he would guide them to the line uh non-verbally, and he is he was a little verbally delayed. Yeah, yeah, total sweetheart. The teachers were sometimes they would call him to the front of the class to discipline him in front of all the students because he wasn't listening to their instructions, because he's going and talking to someone. Well, in his mind, he's going and trying to get the the English as a second language kid into the line so they don't get in trouble too. He's got to go to the front of class, find his name on a list, and move it down to you know, higher you get, the better you are, the lower you get, the worse you are in front of the students. Yeah, they had him doing this shit daily as if this. I mean, if you're top of the chart, yeah, it feels great because you're the kid that lands on the top of the chart. But any misbehavior, anything that's seen as out of line by the teacher, you move down. And what once we heard this, we're like, what the fuck? We we call the principal and we're like, This is what you do to teach kids how to behave? Like it's no wonder that uh, you know, some kids are absolute reprobates. Like they're they're horrible because they're being reinforced, you're never gonna be seen in front of your peers as anything more than a kid at the bottom of the list. So, you know, we we had a meeting, and anyway, long story longer, we realized we gotta get our kids out of this school system, we have to get them you know out of the out of the weather. And our youngest by this time had aged into school or summer sports and uh was also having allergic reactions. So rather than do the steroid shot, we moved. It took that for me to decide I can actually see myself somewhere else. And I that's a failure on my part. My wife saw it, she was like, we gotta get the hell out of here. She moved around a lot more than I did as a kid, you know, but between states, we moved to California to Arkansas when I was four, and then we're always in Arkansas. Even if we'd move around, it would still be in northwest Arkansas. So, because of all those factors, we moved to Denver and then kind of we've been in Denver five years. It was a yeah, we we kind of just had this moment where we realized all the kids are in class anyway. Now that we've moved and we've tasted another area of the country. What if we reduce our expenses and you know had an RV payment instead of a cost payment? So we uh rented out the house, got in the RV, and now we're driving around the country. What's funny is it's not like we said, let's go on a grand adventure and be this stazing, uh, whatever YouTubing family that gets subscribers and say we were like, uh, being at home suck like all the time. So let's be in a smaller house. Yeah. Or we're even closer to each other and uh make the yeah, of course, unfamiliar once a week. But it's been awesome. And I agree with what you said. Like, travel is the best educator now that we've been out and we've actually you know, you meet people in southern Louisiana and you think they're gonna be one way because they've got you know this or that flag hanging from their car that says Trump is my president and Jesus is my Lord. Like, okay, thanks. I don't know why you gotta like what is this that that uh you feel this is the most important thing to broadcast via flag. Sweet people, like once once you actually talk to them, they're not as belligerent as their clothing always. So yeah, it's it's been a real eye-opener for us in in lots of different ways. And it's also kind of shown us that even though we put the spreadsheet together to pick Denver, once we actually got out, and you know, now that we're in Oregon, it's really gorgeous here. And I don't know, I don't know if we'll end up back in Denver or somewhere else. I think we'll be in Denver for the kids to finish school because we really like their school district. There's there was a lot of other positive changes, you know, by moving school districts also. Imagine that moving out 50th in education to somewhere else. Um anyway, it's something that was a little extreme for me to understand. We can travel, we can be somewhere else, but it's brought about so much good, just getting different influences.

SPEAKER_00 55:33

I think that that's really what it boils down to is broadening your exposure. Well, any parting thoughts, any final comments or anything? Yeah, I'll leave this as a parting thought. I love the fact to kind of formalize, I don't know, our bullshit sessions.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

This is good. Uh yeah, it's been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 55:48

Yeah, absolutely. That's kind of what I imagined, and that's where I wanted to start with, you know, people that I know that it but have actually also accomplished things. I don't want to just, you know, shoot the shit with, you know, just anybody. So I'm kind of finding my friends that have, you know, done things, accomplished things, maybe had setbacks and whatever, and been able to still come from those because points to failure is the point of the podcast. But at the end of the day, I don't just want to sit around and commiserate about all things we fucked up in our lives and have the ideas to to use those as the as guiding principles to lead to our success at some point.

SPEAKER_02 56:16

So yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I'd also love that you're putting something together.

SPEAKER_00 56:20

I appreciate you having me on as again. For sure, man. I appreciate your time.