EXPERIENCE 211 | Following the call into new chapters - Pete Gazlay - Founder and Former Owner of Total Facility Care - and our newest LoCo Facilitator! - The LoCo Experience

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I met Pete Gly late in mybanking career as one of my

(00:02):
colleagues was pursuing abanking relationship with the
owner of a young, but rapidlygrowing janitorial company.
Total facility care.
Pete founded the business in2010 after departure from a fast
growing middle market company inthe same industry.
At the start, Pete was a one manteam selling janitorial services
during the day and executing thecleanings at night.

(00:23):
They grew steadily throughoutthough, and sold in April of
2023 with a team size of around150 and a significant market
share in both the generaljanitorial space, as well as the
specialized tech and medicalclean room janitorial.
We spent a good amount of timetalking about business
principles in this episode,relationship selling, margins
and bidding, account management,hiring entry level workers

(00:45):
during a labor shortage, andfinding the right time and
manner of exit.
And we talked about life afterexit.
Community engagements, a recentmission trip to Tanzania, and
Pete's why in joining the teamas a local facilitator.
We're so glad to have him on theteam, and I know you'll enjoy,
as I did, my conversation withPete Gasley.

(01:41):
Welcome back to the LocoExperience podcast.
My guest today is Pete Gasleyand Pete is the founder and
former owner of Um, TotalFacility Care and that was a
mostly commercial janitorialservice here kind of across
Northern Colorado.
Is that right?
Yeah.
100 percent commercial.
Okay.
Um, and I guess, why don't youtalk to me first about like,

(02:03):
what was the, the, companyscale, size, your maybe a little
bit about your team andstructure at the time that you
departed.
Sure.
Um, so we, um, 100 percentcommercial.
We, um, we're running from FortCollins down to, um, Longmont.
Okay.

(02:24):
And I'm trying to think if wewere further south then, um,
actually when I fully departed,we were into the metro area.
Oh, so you stayed on for awhile.
Yep.
After the, after the transactionand then Loveland over to
Greeley.
Um, and we actually expanded alittle bit that last year, um,
up into Wyoming and Nebraska aswell.
Okay.
So.
So mostly Larimer Weld and, andkind of just started to cross

(02:46):
some of the lines.
We were in Boulder County for along time and Boulder got really
difficult, um, hiring wise, um,when houses are a million
dollars.
Yeah.
Hard to find people to work for.
Entry level workers aren'treally abundant.
So.
That makes sense.
It was a challenging environmentdown there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't doubt it.
It was a challengingenvironment.
Um, and, and.
Just janitorial.
Did you have a spectrum ofservices for janitorial?

(03:08):
We'd love doing the technicalstuff, clean rooms and medical
stuff, all those kinds ofthings.
So fancy janitorial was a fancypart of your differentiation, if
you will.
And then we had a full blown,uh, maintenance department.
So, um, that was unfortunatelyalways our.
Best kept secret.
And those are never good inbusiness.
Fair enough.
Like doing all their HVAC stuff,boilers, whatever like that?

(03:31):
Yeah, more kind of the minorhandyman stuff.
And then HVAC and some of themore technical stuff.
We could manage it for clientsand, uh, but we'd outsource it
to the pros in that area.
Makes sense.
Okay.
Um, and did you just break itdown by, Like divisions and
crews or like, talk to me aboutkind of that, the, the, the
dynamics of managing.

(03:51):
Cause it's mostly, I imagineyou've probably got 10 or 20
office people and everybody elseis cleaning.
Yeah.
Um, so we had about 150 peopleworking for us, um, you know, at
the peak of it.
And, um, so it was me, I had avice president, we had.
Um, three, um, operationsmanagers, one specialized in,

(04:14):
um, carpets, floors,maintenance, all those kind of
semi, um, skilled, and I wouldsay really skilled things to do
all that stuff right.
Yeah.
You have to know what you'redoing.
Okay.
And then the other two managed,um, geography.
So we had a four columnsoperations manager.
That was our biggestconcentration.
And then we had another one thatran Greeley, Loveland, Windsor.

(04:34):
And that was kind of, or see thegeneral cleaning and then
calling the flooring people asnecessary.
Yeah, exactly.
And then, um, so that was kindof daytime operations.
We had three people in theoffice, HR manager, um, front
desk person that we calledcreator of first impressions.
Okay.
Um, because they were answeringthe phone or somebody comes into
the office, they set the tone,you know, for who we are and,

(04:56):
um, and then we had an officeadministrator.
And, um, and I actually, I guessfour, cause my wife, um, was
always involved in the businessand, um, she would do the
accounting and bookkeeping andthose kinds of things back of
the house kind of stuff.
Yeah.
And then our big managementstructure was actually at night
cause that's when our folksworked.
Oh, right.
Um, so.
You know, you think about it'scommercial.

(05:17):
So we're coming in afterbusinesses closed.
Most of our people are reportingbetween five and, you know,
seven o'clock at night for workout to their buildings and those
kind of things.
So again, night managers inthose areas and then a bunch of
leads.
Um, and we try to keep.
lead bandwidth we tried to keepto five to ten people.
Okay.
Um, just so, you know, we wantthat intimate kind of personal

(05:38):
connection.
And are they going out in groupsof twos and fours in like vans
and cars and different things?
No, typically people are, soleads were, they had an area and
they were, you know, drivingaround in their area.
But typically Um, and then, youknow, a line level employee
would come into the office to behired, and then they'd never see
the office again.
Oh, really?
They would just show up onlocation?

(05:59):
They're gonna report to work attheir location, hopefully a
building near, you know, wherethey lived, and those kinds of
things.
Just one or maybe two or three.
Or it might be a route of, youknow, with smaller buildings in
an area.
Right.
Kind of try to geographically.
Office parks and things likethat, you clump them together.
Yeah, densify them.
Okay.
You know, some buildings, um,like we took care of, and they

(06:19):
still are, um, UC Harmonycampus.
And so.
You've got, you know, a dozenpeople in that building.
So they're all reporting in acertain time and you've got a
lead over that building and, youknow, a little different
operations.
Yeah, I guess everything's kindof a custom fit to the facility,
to the, the acreage, the floorspace, the needs of the client.
Um, yeah, it's a hundred percentcustom, actually, every job.

(06:40):
I mean, we have, you know, somestandard things we do, right,
but.
When you think about a building,they're all, they all have
similar things, right?
They've got office space, andrestrooms, and a common area,
and conference rooms, and all ofthose kinds of things.
But, um, Are they one story orare they 10 stories?
Are they, um, you know, reallyhigh end finishes?
Or is it like cement floors and,you know, um, a manufacturing

(07:04):
environment or something likethat, right?
So, or is it a, is it amanufacturing clean room and it
has, you know, very high specs?
Or it's a surgical operatingroom and it has to be sterilized
every night?
So, um, you know, justoftentimes people are like,
well, how much does it cost?
It says, well, it depends,right?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm developing the systemsso that you can.

(07:24):
Consistently win business andconsistently make profit from
those clients and know whichones you're making money on,
which ones you're not, stufflike that seems like part of the
puzzle.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think, and that'sevolution of a business and, and
a business owner too, you know,dialing those things in, right?
You think you're good.
And then all of a sudden it'slike, huh, this isn't quite

(07:44):
working.
We've got to resolve thisproblem.
Lost quite a bit of money onthis last quarter.
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, and, uh, like, do you wantto talk about the exit kind of
pathway before we zoom back ormaybe we should just even jump
back to the founding years?
Is that a better evolution?
Sure, yeah, wherever way youwant to go.
I think let's do that.
Okay, back to the beginning.

(08:04):
Yeah, we won't, yeah, not back,we'll jump all the way in the
time machine to first grade orsomething.
And I know you worked in kind ofcorporate janitorial services
before.
Yeah.
But I want to just jump back tolike when you leapt out of that
realm.
Yeah, maybe tell me theconditions on the ground, what,
what caused that leap and howwell capitalized were you?

(08:26):
How, how long had you beenworking on your plan?
All that kind of good stuff.
Sure.
Um, so I'll go back maybe once.
How did I get into the corporateworld?
Sure.
Um, I had been a police officerin Fort Collins and, uh, was the
youngest guy, uh, promoted inabout 20 years back in the day.
And this is, man, when was Ipromoted?

(08:47):
That was 1992.
So it was a long time ago.
Um, and, and really had a lot offun.
Fort Collins is an innovativedepartment and really good
people, I think even to thisday, but I.
Um, and they let, let me do alot of fun stuff.
Um, we, a partner and I, westarted the District 1 Policing
in downtown that's still therein Old Town.
Um, did a lot of problem solvingpolicing, community policing,

(09:09):
some really fun stuff.
But I knew that I was like asquare peg in a round hole and I
wasn't, I was on a good fasttrack, but I was gonna be Um,
just bashing head withbureaucrats and lawyers and
politicians and all of that.
It's like, this is not going tobe good.
Can you talk about why?
Was it kind of out of the boxthinking or what?
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not, I'm not thetypical kind of a guy I know.

(09:32):
I grew up in an entrepreneur'sfamily.
Okay.
So I'm not the typical, like Iwanted to be a cop from being
five years old.
Right.
It was, um, I fell into it.
It was, um, I was going to CSU.
I was working at toddy's grocerystore, which is.
Over at Drake and Lemay, is now.
It was still there when I movedto town.
Yeah, um, well you know a lot ofnew people don't know where that
is.
It's true, it's true.

(09:54):
And um, there's a job in theCollegian for student police
officers.
And I thought, Oh, that, that'lllook good on a business resume.
That's what I was going toschool for.
And it paid 25 cents an hourmore than the grocery store.
And that was going to take me alot more entertaining.
Right.
And it was going to take me acouple more years to probably
make that money.
I'm like, okay, I'll do that.
Um, and, um, newly married and,um, started that job.

(10:19):
We'd been married about a yearand we found out we were
pregnant and, uh, that messed upthe whole five year plan of
college of, you know, get, get adegree, start a business or get
a job or whatever it was.
And so I had to get a job and,uh, through good old networking,
I, I got onto Fort Collins and,uh, and had a great career
there, but it wasn't, it wasnever my dream.
Yeah.
So.

(10:39):
You were an entrepreneur atheart.
Right.
More.
And I was working on, I wasalways, other people were
working on like degrees inpublic administration.
I was working on my businessdegree.
Right.
When I finished up.
I was able to.
Cram that four year degree into14 years.
Did you work with Jason SantosStefano, by chance?
No.
He was my neighbor a few doorsdown, uh, for a while.
Yeah, man, I've been gone since,uh, since 1985.

(11:00):
I've been gone since 1998.
So I've been gone longer than Iwas there by, uh, by log time.
So, uh, so I leaped out of thatand I went into, um, uh,
leadership training, management,some motivational stuff.
One of my childhood heroes was aZig Ziglar.
Okay.
I was like, I'm going to be thenext one of those.
Yeah.
And, uh, that is a brutalindustry.

(11:21):
Totally.
If you're, if you're not famousor you haven't done some, you
know, Olympic feet or climbMount Everest or something like
that.
So I had a lot of fun doing thatfor three years and, uh, but it
was traveling.
And you were part of the team oryou were kind of going solo.
Yeah.
I had my own company.
That's an interesting choice fora young dad.
Yeah.
That's what my wife thought too,after a couple of years.

(11:42):
So, and again, you know, I, Ileft without having, um, I had a
lot of confidence in.
Leadership and managementtraining.
And I'd been doing a lot ofspeaking in my role with the
city.
Um, but I didn't have anyclients.
So that's tip number one, havesome clients before you leap.
That's always a good, good, um,so it was, it was tough, but it

(12:06):
was going pretty good.
I, um, I got a gig at careertrack, um, which was out of
Boulder.
They did the one day seminarthings and, um, and they were
really kind of cutting edge.
And then.
Um, I had, I had worked withthem and I was getting my own
clients a lot in the publicsector and policing and whatnot.
Um, And they got bought by FredPryor and it was, it was like a

(12:28):
hostile takeover.
They basically, their careertrack was out of Boulder.
They had these TV studios andall this creative, they fired
all of those people.
The only ones they kept weretheir speakers.
And then they cut our pay bylike 60%.
It's like, you know, it takes alittle more to get me on the
road than this.
You're, you're not a client ofmine anymore.

(12:48):
And, um, so then we were justwrestling with, like, our kids
were kind of junior high age.
I was like, I needed to be home.
I was traveling a lot.
I really didn't know that muchabout this chapter in your
history.
So timing was perfect.
Two thousand dot com bubbleburst.
Oh, I need to get a job.
So I put out probably 80 resumesand nothing.
And, um, I got a call oneafternoon and they said, uh,

(13:11):
It's this company.
I'm like, okay, what do you guysdo?
I didn't recognize the name.
Yeah, and uh, like, uh, we're,uh, we're a cleaning company.
I'm like, great, fat, sweatyguy, wife, Peter t shirt, cigar
stub, the corner.
This cannot be good.
Right.
But I didn't have any otherprospects.
So I went to the interview, um,after kind of looking them up a
little bit and to see if theywere legit.

(13:33):
And not only they were legit,but they were, uh, Um, at the
time they're doing HP andAgilent out on Harmony and, um,
they had about 1, 500 employeesdoing about 52 million a year.
Oh, dang.
And it was like, they've gotlike a really innovative way.
Like a shop out of Denver orsomething?
They were out of Sacramento,California.
So kind of focused in the techspace in general.
In the tech space, yep.

(13:54):
And that would go to a lot ofpharmaceutical stuff in the
years to come.
So, I think they were in likefive states when I got hired.
I'm like, I don't know anythingabout your industry.
Like, well, we need somebody toteach these 25 year olds how to
manage on these Fortune 500campuses.
I'm like, okay, I can do that.
Right.
And I need to learn theindustry.
And so, so I did that for nineyears.

(14:15):
Um, I didn't have to travel tillour kids were out of high school
and then, Kind of, I, I hadmoved up in the organization.
Yeah.
Well then travel would be kindof fun.
'cause you hadn't done that funin your life.
Probably.
Yeah.
So, um, I don't know about thefun part.
Business travel's fun at thebeginning, but Right.
The last three years I wasthere, I was traveling.
Um, I'd leave on Monday, gethome on Friday.
Ooh.
Um, half a day Saturday catch upand a couple hours on Sunday to

(14:38):
get ready to go.
Um, I did that 50 weeks a year.
Oof.
Um, and for some weird reason,my wife wanted to go on
vacation, um, when I had timeoff, so I was gone every week.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
House projects take a while.
they take a long time.
Um, that's where you learn todelegate to somebody that knows
what they're doing.
Yeah.
You get a favorite hand again.

(14:58):
For sure.
So, um, so it was an amazingexperience.
I mean, when, when I left wewere, um, we were in 44 states,
Canada.
Oh wow.
Costa Rica.
Um, I was in charge ofenvironmental health and safety
and customer service.
Okay.
So I dealt with all theproblems.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was that job title.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, um, but I mean, I have Thatallows you to also be a
understander of all theproblems.

(15:19):
Exactly.
And I was, I mean, I was in, um,you know, if, if at that time
you would name a fortune 100 ortwo 50 country.
Um, company, I was probably intheir global or world
headquarters and we were takingcare of them, you know, I mean,
that's, it was, it was prettyamazing.
You were dominating the industryalmost.
We were and, and the guy that I,What was the firm?
Um, yeah, it was SBM siteservices.

(15:41):
The guy that I worked for.
was a great Americanentrepreneur, still is, and um,
we didn't, we didn't do thatthrough acquisition, that was
all organic growth.
Wow.
Which is really pretty crazy.
Like they used to do it thatway, but.
Yeah, but it was, you know, itwas, um.
What a neat thing.
I mean, you, you already joineda pretty sophisticated company,
but how many, Yeah.
How many revenues and employeesby the time you.

(16:02):
Uh, we were doing about 240million and um, we had over 6,
000 employees.
So, yeah, it was, so, I mean, itwas, um, I got my PhD in
business working, you know, inthat company.
And what did the leadership teamof that?
F company look like, like werethere.
Oh, it was complex.
A C-suite and then a bunch ofdirectors or Yeah.
A C-suite.
Um, I was one of the directorsand, um, and then, you know,

(16:27):
kind of vast regional and thenarea down the site management.
Yeah.
And our, so like our typicalclient, we wouldn't go into a
new market unless, um, we couldgrab a million square foot
building or more.
Okay.
So large corporate campuses.
Yep.
And then once we were in themarket, we would do.
some smaller things, smallerthings being half a million
square feet or 600, 000.

(16:47):
Yeah.
Sometimes the 200, 000 was toosmall for us to manage just with
our system.
There was, you know, we had asweet spot and, um, so some of
the smaller stuff was tougher tomanage.
Yeah.
Um, so it was really fun.
And, but it was time for me togo.
Would they have not allowed youto travel less or have a
different role?
They would have, but, um, theowner and I just, we got to a

(17:09):
place where we just couldn'twork together anymore.
So when, when you start your dayevery day with, you know, these
series of F bombs and why isn'tthis person doing this and this,
it just.
It was wearing on my soul, Iguess is the best way to put it,
so.
Was that the entrepreneur thatbuilt it too?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yep.
Driven, you know, super drivenguy.
Yeah.

(17:29):
Um, and.
Learned a lot?
Yeah.
Oh, I learned everything fromhim about the industry and a ton
about business.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, on, on both good and bad,right?
Right.
Well, I mean, it's, it's nice tolearn from.
other people's mistakes andfailures instead of absolutely
repeating them yourself rightaway.
You know, I mean, they're stillin business.
He's massively successful.
Um, you know, we just had kindof different thoughts about how

(17:51):
to, to do some things.
So did you, did you have a plan?
Like you were crafting a plan towhat your escape thing was or
one day after too many F bombs,you were like, you know what?
Yeah, it was a, yeah, it was a,I would say a frustrating
parting for both of us.
And it's like, okay.
And so, so I left and I, Ilooked for some jobs, you know,

(18:13):
and, um, at that time we had ourfirst grandchild and, um, the
jobs that I, Um, what'squalified for and like one was
in Racine, Wisconsin, which is,and I wouldn't have to travel.
So that was one of my criterianot to travel, but it was in
Racine, Wisconsin.
So both days of the year, it'snice there.

(18:35):
It's nice.
But we're just talking aboutwinter here, right?
Right.
Just like your home.
Yeah.
It's a little better with.
You know, it's right off theGreat Lakes and all of that.
And then, um, another seriousone was down in Houston, Texas.
Um, I'd have to live in Houstonand travel.
So I was like, okay, no, that's,that's a double.
Almost as bad as hotline.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, exactly.

(18:55):
So it's like, you know what?
I really like this industry andthere's nothing like this
locally.
Nobody's doing it this way.
And, um, I'd been involved in alot of big deals.
And who was the big player?
In the industry before in herelocally.
Yeah Porter Industries.
Okay.
Yeah I was a long time they theyhad been around Um, gosh, I

(19:19):
guess the 30 years they, theywent under when they were almost
40 years old.
Oh, is that right?
Sad, sad story.
Yeah.
Um, you'll have to call somebodyelse for that one.
Well, it probably has a lot todo with your story.
They gave us a lot of customers.
I'll just say that.
I remember our bank actually hadused Porter Industries when I
first moved to town.
Oh yeah.

(19:39):
I mean, they were huge.
Well, and then they got.
Like annoyed with the serviceand they instead hired one of
our, one of my old friends, oneof our employees to clean the
bank on weekends, or whatever itwas, I think it was just once a
week kind of thing, and it waslike, for her it was great dough
and the bank was cleaner thanever.
Right.
Yeah, because she's got to bethere, right?
Right.
Kurt's talking to me in thebreak room again about his desk,

(20:02):
I don't know.
Yeah, there's definitely plentyof accountability in that
circumstance.
Right.
So, so anyway, so there was a,it was a soft market in that
regard.
I think so, but Porter was a,um, I mean they were the 800
pound gorilla in the localmarket here.
They had, I think.
I think they had 250 or 300employees, you know, when we
started facility care.
So, so again, you know, I didn'tlearn anything from speaking.

(20:24):
So 2010, we start total facilitycare, no clients, no employees.
Um, you know, and I, I'mthinking, Hey, I'm a pretty good
salesperson.
I'm just, I just, uh, I'mletting all these corporate,
right.
I mean, Intel was one of ourclients.
I, the year before I had takenthem from 25 to 35 million, you
know, um, and it turns outthat's a negotiation.

(20:45):
It wasn't really sales.
Um, and then, um, Genentech outin California, I just helped
close that deal.
It was a 20 million.
Well, turns out none of that issales.
Like that's coming in theboardroom later and like closing
the deal.
That's totally different.
And it's like, well, crud.
I got to pick up the phone andcall somebody.
And were you trying to sell tosome of these, things?

(21:06):
Um, yeah, I mean, I, anybodythat I was kind of like, I just
need a client, right?
So, um, but I imagine talking tosomebody that kind of corporate
office sphere is way differentthan talking to, you know, Joe,
the Napa store.
Yeah.
Clean to the banks or whatever.
Ten years that I was in thatcorporate environment, that,

(21:26):
that whole thing changed.
So.
In the day when, well, theyhired me, they had picked up HP
here.
HP was starting to consolidateregionally, but.
When SBM got the first accountin Roseville, California, they
just like knocked on the door atthe site and the site manager
could decide.
Well, by the time I left, um, wehad, with Hewlett Packard, we

(21:49):
had all of North America,including Canada.
I don't know if they, I thinkthey had some manufacturing in
Mexico we didn't do, but then wehad Central America, Costa Rica
and stuff.
Yeah, just super bondedrelationships.
And they were that.
Now about a year after I left,um, year two, they lost, they,
they had all the Americas andthey were going for all of that
and HP put it out to bid and,um, a company out of Europe that

(22:13):
had Europe and Asia bid on theglobe.
And I think SBM didn't bid onthat big of a piece.
Right.
Uh, we'll take you.
And if you, you know, if yousave a penny, a square foot over
how many bazillion square footthey have, it's actually real
money.
Um, and so, you know, so that's,so they lose that big chunk of
revenue as they lost it.

(22:33):
Um, you know, it was at thatpoint they were big enough that,
you know, you feel it, but itwasn't catastrophic.
It didn't break the whole, youknow, they were probably still a
top 10 client, but for years andyears they'd been the number one
client.
So the good news was they hadgrown and diversified and yeah.
All of that.
So, so yeah, so I entered themarket and I put some great
marketing collateral together, Ithought, um, and the market will

(22:58):
fly a folder and, you know, onesheets on office cleaning and,
you know, the technical stuffand medical clean and all these
different things.
Right.
Do you differentiate yourself?
Like as far as a brand andstuff, I mean, your brand was
Total Facility Care I assume.
It was Total Facility Care.
Yeah, I hired an idiot as thefirst, um Graphic designer.

(23:20):
Do you want to name this person?
Yeah, it was me.
Oh, okay.
Um, so, terrible colors, likethe total facility care was a T
with, you know, all the wayacross the thing and yeah, it
was, it was terrible.
So, but I didn't have any money,but I had time.
Right.
Um, so I designed that, designedmy first website, you know, all
of that stuff.
Not to ask a too personalquestion, but how come you

(23:41):
didn't have any money?
It seemed like you had this kindof high profile director level
job.
All the pursuits of raising kidsand having houses and a spouse
that didn't work.
I mean, I had a great six figuresalary and we were spending it,
you know, like most people.
Yeah, yeah, no, I get it.
I mean, we probably had, we hadsix months of savings and I
actually negotiated a severanceout of SDM.
Had a decent 401k probably.

(24:02):
Yeah.
But otherwise, like, spendablecash to start this business and
hire somebody to clean.
Yeah, I mean, we, we started iton 10, 000.
I mean, it is, you know.
Okay.
And 80 of that went to buy aJeep Grand Cherokee, because I'd
been driving a company car for10 years, you know.
So we, we owned one car, andit's like, well, we gotta have a

(24:22):
second one.
Yeah, yeah, interesting.
So Isn't it an interesting thinghow Yeah.
Like things can change soquickly in a financial picture
and you, and you can just pivotand adjust.
Right.
And, and manage through, you hada six month severance or a three
month severance or?
Yeah, we had a six monthseverance from SPM and then, you
know, we had some money in thebank, so it's not like we were

(24:43):
an immediate crisis.
Right.
Which was great.
'cause I also just took a fewweeks just to like decompress,
not make a decision.
Yeah.
Right.
And um, you know.
Walked the crap out of my dogback then and worked out and
just did some stuff, you know,for me.
Reflecting back, how, what doyou think, if you, if you had
planned for six months or a yearand saved 25, 000 to start with

(25:08):
instead, how do you think, andhad a business plan all ready to
go and maybe a professionalbranding.
Do you think your Accelerationwould have been faster if you
did that?
Or are you glad for the way ithappened?
Like, kind of learned everythingbecause you kind of bootstrapped
it from the real bottom?
Yeah, I mean, I think I'm gladfor everything that happened.
Yeah.

(25:28):
I think, um, there, there's afamous expression, I forget who
said it, but you know, a manwith money to burn will always
find someone to light the fire.
And, um, so I think that's true,you know, as rough as the first
year was, um, when we did havesome cash flow in the second
year, then I could hire a goodgraphic designer.
I could, you know, but I knewmore of what I wanted at that

(25:50):
time.
So I could have spent the moneyfor sure, but.
And, you know, having to scrapand do that a little bit was,
was important as well worth thatextra 20 grand maybe.
So I mean, I did, I did the oldthing, right?
I mean, nobody, do you rememberyour first client?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
So thankful for them.
It was, um, Colorado centralwater district over in Greeley.
Okay.
And, um, And then our, our firstclient in Fort Collins was

(26:14):
Harmony Laser Center.
And then our first client inLoveland was door security
serve, um, systems.
So, and they were all withinabout a week of each other.
Oh, nice.
It took me five months to getthat first client.
So you, so closing these multimillion dollar deals and you
landed one in each market, sonow you got to run this big
circuit.
Absolutely.

(26:34):
Yeah.
And then about a month later, Ilanded one in Boulder.
Oh, so yeah.
So I mean, it was just.
It was, um, it was wonderful,but Did you drop the Cherokee in
favor of something with bettergas mileage?
Oh, no.
I mean, I, I drove that Cherokeea long time.
Um, probably the first, gosh, Idon't know, five years of the
business.
And we put some miles on thatbaby for sure.

(26:54):
And did you hire help to cleanwith you, like, from the time
that you got your first client?
Yeah.
That wasn't, that wasn't thebusiness plan.
So I did do a business plan.
I worked with, uh, you know, thesmall business development
center and wrote out a plan.
And, um, honestly, the plan wasokay.
The best part that I got out ofthat was actually writing the
financial pro forma.
And I, you know, you wrote it.

(27:15):
It's like, Oh, look, I go brokeright there.
Um, I need to not do that rightthere.
So if people are thinking aboutstarting, right, write out that
pro forma.
Yeah.
Cashflow plan especially.
Absolutely.
Because you can, yeah.
you can grow too fast and growyourself out of business.
Um, if you're not careful inthere.
So yeah.
So the, the plan from thebeginning was, um, get a client,

(27:36):
clean them at night and do thebusiness stuff in the daytime.
So I was, I was the first and,um, last employee at the
beginning of the company.
And I would literally go do allthe business stuff, the after
hours, all of that.
And then I would go clean.
That's the nice thing about, uh,You know, having the, the, the
cleaning shift at night, youcan, you know, you're not, other
than the awkward encounters withyour client, Oh, I didn't know

(28:00):
you'd be here tonight.
Yeah.
My, you know, my person didn'tshow up, right.
Just me tonight.
Um, so, and then, I don't know,a few months in, I hired, I had
a couple, by the end of theyear, we had a couple of part
time.
employees.
And, um, that first year webilled, uh, 59, 000 and, um, we

(28:20):
took home about 2, 000 of that.
So it was not paying any bills.
Um, at that time.
Well, but you had revenue, soyou had to flow in a little bit.
Well, and I have an amazingwife.
And so she, um, probably shortlyafter, she, oh, for sure.
And so I'm the entrepreneur andshe's not, and you know, it was,
Not happiness, I would sayaround that.

(28:41):
But she's like, you know, and Ithink I'm going to go get a job.
My God, no, you don't need to dothat.
Cause you know, I'm anentrepreneur.
It's all going to work out.
Right.
Well, the kids are out of schooland stuff already too.
Yeah.
We were empty nesters.
Yeah.
Um, and she's like, no, I'mgoing to get a job and she did.
She got a job up at PVH and, uh,and she worked at UCH.
first five years that we had thebusiness and it was great.

(29:02):
You know, we got, it wasn't,it's not like she was highly
compensated, but yeah, we hadsome money coming in and we had
health insurance and you know,it just smoothed things.
Hopefully it's connected to thepeople who do the cleaning for
UCH and PBH.
Um, I don't think she ever did,but I had, I had other, we did a
lot of work for UCH and they'restill doing a lot of work for
UCH.
They were great clients for us.

(29:23):
So, um, like when does it reallystart to, to grow, um, rapidly
or did it right from the start?
Was it a, was it a steep growthfrom the start?
Yeah.
So that next year, like wedoubled in revenue and I think
we doubled in revenue every,every year.
Yeah.
240.
Um, you know, I think we jumpedfrom one 20 to three something.

(29:44):
Okay.
I mean, it was rolling prettygood, right?
And then, um, I'm trying tothink.
You know, I kind of, um, Uh,when did you start exactly?
Uh, 2010.
2010, okay, so coming by 2013,2014 is probably, probably about
12, 13 is when you and I firstgot acquainted.

(30:05):
Yeah.
Well, whenever you were with thebank there.
Well, I left banking in the fallof 2013.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so it had to have been 2012.
Right.
Because it wasn't like right asI think I met the bank
president, Doug.
Yep, yep.
Um, you know, some chamberstuff.
And we did Harmony Laser was ourfirst client.
Okay.
They were right behind you guysthere.
Oh yeah.
I'm like, I gotta get this bank.

(30:25):
It's like right here.
We're driving by and never pay,right?
Did you get it?
No, I don't think we ever gotthat bank.
It's just the way it works out.
Yeah, yeah.
Sure enough.
You know, the fun part, though,about those first clients was I
was massively loyal to thembecause I so appreciated their
taking a chance on me, right?
And so we serviced the heck outof them.
And, um, they were, um, theywere all clients up to, um, when

(30:47):
we transitioned.
So we kept them that whole time.
We took great care of them.
And, you know, so that's kind ofa cool thing.
My, uh, I've probably told thisstory on the podcast before, but
my dad went to seven banksbefore He found a banker that
would give him a farm loan, helphim out to put the first crop
in.
Um, and'cause he was amotorcycle mechanic, but
moonlighting as a farmer.
Oh yeah.

(31:08):
And a, and a and a and he hadbuilt a shop to do wrenching on
a side, you know, so he was a 24hour guy too.
Just about right.
Oh man.
Um, but, uh.
It was what was First Bank andthen became U.
S.
Bank.
Oh, okay, yeah.
And he, like, eventually hebecame, like, one of the more
well to do farmers in the wholeregion.
And First Bank was not reallygood at farm banking really

(31:30):
anymore.
And, uh, but he just was loyalto them, despite a lot of
bankers being like, We can saveyou, you know, this much on this
and that.
Right.
And he's like, you know, that'sThey took a chance on me when I
was nothing, right?
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Everybody wants my business nowthat I'm So I like to hear those
stories of loyalty like that.
So that's awesome.
Um, and so then from there, it'skind of just a slow build of

(31:53):
the, of the machine, right?
Like not absolutely not puttingtoo much overhead onto the.
The cleaning crews, um, andrecognizing kind of where the,
where the revenues come fromand, and what the expenditures
are around that.
What's the, like it's, it's aservice business, right?
So that the cleaning materialsand supplies and stuff is
probably 10 percent orsomething.

(32:16):
And then mostly it's wages.
Yeah, I mean, wages is your bigexpense.
That's like 75, 80 percent ayear.
Yeah, that, I mean, that's thebig expense for sure.
For six years at least, yeah.
And, uh, you know, you're buyingequipment, um, when you, when
you're going into a building,and, you know, it's typical life
there?
Yeah, I typically would leave itthere.
Okay, okay.
Um, you know, in the early days,um, again, I was just scrapping,

(32:37):
so.
You'd lug them back and fortharound.
Like, yeah, do you throw allyour equipment in the trunk of
your car?
And, and I expected everyemployee to do that.
What's the matter with that, youknow?
You don't want a floor waxingmachine.
Right.
And then, you know, and I hireda, I hired a manager, he's like,
you know, maybe we should stopthis.
So now I got to buy all thisequipment for these buildings.
And, you know, it's just like,it's like, okay, you're right.
Yeah.
We should do this.

(32:58):
Let's make it easier on our teamhere.
Lugging these things around, butwe, again, we did some things.
I learned, I had such greatopportunity.
I, I was at SBM.
I was able to talk to all thetop.
manufacturers in our industry,all the chemical makers, all
that stuff.
So, um, we, I mean, I bought amop bucket.
You've seen mop buckets, right?
They're yellow.
They got a string mop in them.

(33:18):
That's not what we used from theget go to chamber mop bucket
that had a microfiber mop that'sflat.
And guess what?
I'm not, I mean, go into any.
Um, well, bank restroom, exceptfor one total facility care
takes care of, um, or, you know,fast food restaurant or gas
station and look at thebaseboard in the restroom and

(33:39):
you're going to see black mopslop that high on there.
Well, microfiber mops, quarterof an inch tall.
You don't have that.
So, it's a labor saver, it'seasier on their back, you don't
have to go back and clean stuff.
Um, you can launder the mopheads easily.
And it's more clean in general.
It's more clean because we hadtwo chambers.
That two chamber is so muchdifferent.
Clean water on one side, dirtywater on another.

(34:00):
What a concept.
Right?
Versus putting, you know, thedirty mop, I haven't changed it
in a month.
By the end of the bucket, thewater looks rough.
On the first one, when you dipit in.
Totally.
You know, so.
And then, you know, greenchemistry and microfiber towels
and stuff that, you know, Yeah,microfiber towel with a spray of
water will get a lot of surfacesreally clean.
Yeah, in fact, in Europe, theyreally, that's kind of what they

(34:21):
do.
So, um, and we, we had greenchemicals, color coded towels.
So, you know, the one, so in anylarger building, what's in
between the two restrooms therewhen you come out?
The water fountain.
Water fountain, right.
So, the janitor's coming out ofthe restroom, cleaning the water
fountain, going to the next one.
Where was that towel before itwas on the drinking tray?

(34:43):
So we color coded them so youknew which ones were cleaning
toilets and which ones werecleaning other things and all of
that.
So, just, you know, simplestuff, but we had pretty Um, you
know, HEPA filter vacuums, um,so you're not kicking all the
dirt back up in the air that youjust dusted.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, just lots of things.
Ergonomically, they're betterfor, um, the team member.

(35:03):
All of those kinds of things.
So, you know, equipment set,that, that's a grand, um, for
one equipment set in a building.
So not insignificant.
Yeah, no.
No.
You know, to do that.
Um, but once you've got it, thenyou're pretty good.
Yeah, and it makes it a loteasier to work for you and
stuff.
Absolutely.
Was that one of your biggestchallenges?
Was staffing?
Or is that a speculation?

(35:23):
Or not?
Oh, not at all.
I mean, you're working in aentry labor field, right?
So there's lots of Lots ofcompetitors.
Staffing and training, Isuppose.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, um, you know, what I reallycame to believe, I, I stole it,
um, from Chick fil A 100%, but,um, that we were, um, a people

(35:43):
business that happened to cleanbuildings.
Yeah.
Chick fil A's is, you know,we're a people business that
happens to cook chicken.
Yeah, yeah.
And I really believe that.
And, and we just got into peopledevelopment because, um, there's
actually career opportunities inthat industry.
And if we could keep people,everything stabilized out and it
became.
Um, yeah, people say three yearsinstead of one year, you're

(36:06):
right, or six months orsomething like that.
Right.
Um, and in, I don't know if yourecall, back in 2018 in Larimer,
well, the unemployment rate waslike 1.
8, 1.
9%.
So people talk about duringCOVID and post COVID, but it
was, it was the hardest supertight before that in 2018, 2019.
Um, and so we just pivoted and,um, worked my, with my HR

(36:31):
manager and it's like, you knowwhat?
We are not hiring warm bodiesthat walk in that door.
We're going to hire people thatare, are kind of crazy.
And so we got really seriousabout our core values and really
serious about who we werehiring.
What's it like to be part of ourteam and multi step process.
And you got to fit our culture.
And, you know, we had, we hadweird crest questions on, um,

(36:53):
the job.
add that you needed to answer orwe just delete your, um,
application because even thenpeople were like spamming, you
know, what was going on, butwe're asking like, it didn't
matter to anything, but like,what's your favorite sci fi
movie?
It doesn't matter what theanswer is.
What's your favorite superhero?
They had to answer it though,for us to even open up their
resume.

(37:14):
So, cause otherwise they'rejust, and it doesn't mean you
were paying more or anything,just being more selective.
This is a person that's payingattention to some detail.
And then They'd go through aphone screen and then we'd have,
um, an interview with our HRmanager in the office.
And if they passed that, thenthey'd go for an interview in
the field.
Which was a A working interview,basically.
A working interview.

(37:35):
They didn't do any good work forus.
But they gotta, they gotta go tothe building that they were in
service at the time of day thatthey were gonna service it.
And they're going to do a littlebit of work.
They're going to put on thevacuum.
They're going to do somemopping.
See what the work is.
But the most interesting partwas, people are all prepared for
an interview in an office.
When you go into the field,they're all relaxed.

(37:56):
Like this isn't an inter, like Ikind of got the job probably.
Right.
And so you would hear all kindsof wild stuff and you know, the
leader, the night manager, likeyou had no way on this person.
All right.
So that step, you know, savedus.
And, you know, again, we wantedour kind of crazy.
Yeah.
Well, your leads were probablyyour quality control in many
respects.
Absolutely.
And they're the person that'sgot to be, um, supervising them.

(38:18):
Yeah.
And are they the contact for theowner or whatever of the
building too?
No, that was a, that was ourdaytime managers.
Yeah, because, you know, clientsaren't around typically at
night.
How did you facilitatecommunications between those
daytime personnel and thenighttime crews?
I think, I think it's one of thebest things that, um, we had
going as one of our secretsauces.

(38:38):
Um, so we had what's called apass down.
Um, every day.
And so the pass down was createdby that daytime manager and it
included a list of if we hadcustomer complaints, customer
compliments, and just maybeperiodic things that needed to
be done.
And then schedule issues.
Hey, you know, Joe called outover here.
We got to cover this building.

(38:59):
Here's how we're going to do it.
Sure.
Um, or we got a route open.
Here's how we're covering it.
Yeah.
Those kinds of things.
And the.
The daytime manager, the nightmanager had a pass down meeting
is about 30 minutes every day towalk through the issues.
Then the night manager, the endof their shift, here's the,
these are done, these are done.
Here's the issues out of here.
Hey, we, um, you know, we brokethe picture frame on this

(39:21):
person's wall.
Right.
Just happened to be our keycustomer and their diploma.
Um, real story.
Yeah.
And my diploma's right up there.
Yeah.
I'll stay away from it.
Yeah.
Um, and, and then the, thedaytime manager, our, our goal
was always to let the customerknow an issue before they knew
it.
Sure.
So by seven or seven 30 anyissues we wanted in the

(39:42):
customer's inbox.
Interesting.
And it was a massive creator oftrust.
Wow.
So, so you're daytime managerare coming on at seven o'clock
in the morning or six Yeah,pretty early.
And they're at least checkingemail from home and doing that,
looking at the pass down.
But like that customer, weemailed them, Hey, we'll be by
today.
We need to replace this framefor you.
Manager stops by later.
He's like, man, I can't believeyou guys told me about this.

(40:03):
And we take the frame, get it,you know, get it reframed.
And it's back the next day tohim.
And that paid off.
Where people are willing toshare that I did this.
Well, you're willing to tell onyourself, right?
Because I'm Scotch taping thatthing together and not telling
anybody.
Exactly.
Which is, which is the norm inour industry, right?
And then it creates this.
You're like, something's notright here.

(40:24):
Hey, Pete, what's going on withthis thing?
I don't know, Kurt.
Let me find out.
So then I got to wait tillnight.
And then it, so it's like, well,they said they didn't do
anything.
What do you think happened?
And we're going back and forth,right?
And you're just ticked, you'rejust ticked about it as a
client.
Versus in the other scenario,that client's a thousand percent
happy because We admitted towhat the issue was and we fixed

(40:47):
it right away.
Um, and so then you get, ifsomething bad does happen later
on, cause the janitors arealways first to be blamed, um,
you get the benefit of thedoubt.
Like, wait a minute, these guysare trustworthy.
Right.
You know, it's probably, Ididn't leave my wallet on the
desk there.
Yeah.
Like I thought I did becauselike they told me when they
broke the picture frame.
Right.
So it's not, and you know,countless stories of people.

(41:09):
Turning in wallets and diamondrings and you know all kinds of
stuff that we just we hadamazing people That's really
cool organ.
One of our values was beingtrustworthy and in our tagline
under that was Beingtrustworthy, when nobody is
looking because nobody's lookingmost of the time.
And especially in us, causewe're in your building and
you're not there.
Yeah, for sure.
You know, so it's a high trusttransaction.

(41:31):
Yeah.
Um, so I guess kind of alongyour business journey, you're
just kind of growing, buildingsystems, figuring out new ways
to hire, to.
Let people know that you're aspecial kind of crazy if you
want to work for you guys,right?
Yeah, I'll be one of our clientseven yeah, maybe and then Kovat
nation like is was thatsignificant?

(41:53):
Oh, you were essential workers Iassume we were keep the
buildings clean if even ifnobody's in them you have
contracts and stuff in thosesituations Or yeah people scale
back a lot.
Yeah Yeah, that crazy time.
So The good news was, with mycorporate experience, I had, I
had lived through SARS and H1N1and bird flu and lots of stuff
and You know, and corporate hasall kinds of contingency plans

(42:18):
for every emergency, right?
So that meant we had to createthem.
So I was very averse.
So every fall, I just startedkeeping an eye on CDC and who,
and because flu is always anissue and just anything else
that was popping up.
And um, so that year COVID wason the radar.
It was on our radar.
Oh yeah.
November of 19.
December for me.
Yeah.
And then come January, it'slike, okay, I think this is, and

(42:41):
I wasn't worried about itbecause like SARS in the past
and, um, bird fluid, it had hitthe coast, but not the interior
of the country.
So I'm like, it's not.
Probably not going to affect usin Colorado.
By January, I was like, hmm, wewere having cases in the U.
S.
You know, I think, I thinkWashington and California
started breaking out.
Yep, yep.
Well, and U.
K.
and a few places in Europe.

(43:01):
You know.
Yeah, Europe had gotten reallycrazy.
Yeah, Spain was rough real fast.
Yeah.
Italy.
Italy.
Italy, Spain.
I mean, a lot of them were, itwas really tough over there.
Um, so I'm like, you know what?
I need to get some N95 masks.
And, um, they had lots of themat Home Depot, but they were
chemical N95 and they werepainting N95.

(43:22):
Because back then, 3M was, um,slicing these out, saying they
were all for different things.
Oh, specialty.
Turns out they're all the samething.
Same shit.
Right.
So I didn't buy them.
20 percent more.
I finally found some, um, from afriend of mine that had a pest
control company that had onesthat were compliant.
I'm like, can I buy some ofthose from you?
Okay.
Okay.
And this is, this is in likeFebruary, so it's full on now.
This is probably our mutualfriend, Kevin.

(43:43):
Yeah, Kevin Lee Masters.
Yeah, yeah.
He's one of my best friends.
I don't doubt it.
Yeah, Kevin and I used to havea, about every six months,
rotation on lunches.
Yeah.
Oh, I thought you were going tosay smoking cigars, because he
loves to do that too.
Oh, I've never done that withhim.
We were pretty much just on alunch rotation.
Oh, there you go.
He's moved away now, right?
Yeah, he's in Pensacola,Florida.
Okay, yeah.
So, he to this one, I hope you,uh, come back and be on the Loco

(44:04):
Experience sometime.
Yeah, exactly.
You've got a fun journey too.
Yeah.
I was bribing him for that, thenhe moved away.
Oh, man.
Yeah, he, he shot me a pictureabout two weeks ago of nine and
a half inches of snow.
Oh, no! I'm like, man, that'smore snow than we've had in a
storm year this year.
So you, so you pick up a bunchof N95s?

(44:25):
Yeah, we got a few.
We We did training because weknew something, you know, we
were going to have todecontaminate this stuff.
And we were like, we were likedeeply understanding it.
Right.
And then, but like everyoneelse, we were like an essential
business.
You shut down people like, whatis this stuff?
That's, you know, I remember oneof my managers coming in and
Hey, the governor in California.

(44:46):
Shut down.
And I'm like, that's notAmerican.
What?
So I'm, I'm trying to study allthis stuff and, you know, thank
goodness we were in essentialbusiness.
Unfortunately, 40 percent of ourcustomers were not.
Um, and so that was an immediateissue.
Um.
I was like, Oh, we don't haveanybody going to the office.

(45:06):
So we're not going to need youfor a while.
Yeah.
And I was like, Oh boy, yourcontract actually says pro forma
again, here's where we gobankrupt, right?
I mean, it was, it was a veryscary time.
So, and then we had to, we hadto rebuild them cause I'm not
gonna charge you for stuff thatwe're not doing.
Right.
Um, cause I always had alongterm view for clients.

(45:26):
We're going to, we're going towork in your best interest.
And it always served us well.
So, um, but also you don't wantto like.
Lay off 80 cleaners orsomething.
I mean, I just, um, I don't knowhow many of your crew was at
that time.
Yeah.
We were a little over a hundredthen.
So, and fortunately we didn'thave to lay anybody off, which
is a miracle.
So a couple, I mean, there's abunch of miracles in there, but.

(45:49):
Um, the end of 2020, ourrevenues were flat from 2019 and
we lost 40 percent of ourcustomers for about five months,
right?
So that was a miraculous, like,cause a bunch of other people
signed up, uh, other peoplesigned up and we did hundreds of
COVID decontamination.
So yeah.
Um, trust me, I was, you know,not just a commercial and

(46:12):
residential, we didn't do anyresidential.
So just commercial.
So your existing client basemostly, but you would go in
there and do a full scrub kindof, right.
If they had a few people sick,it was like, okay, we're shut
down for a couple extra days orone person sick.
Cause you know, paranoia wasreally high.
Fear was super high.
Um, but I mean, it wasdefinitely, I'm a man of faith
and you know, I was, I was on myknees a lot during that time.

(46:33):
And.
really, really felt like, um,you know, um, God doesn't talk
to me audibly or anything, butjust like, Hey, you need to, you
need to get on offense in this.
And, you know, but we had doneall the things that you're
supposed to do of good duediligence, right?
Like we had, um, we'd calledthrough our finances, saved a
little bit of money.
I, I talked to all my bankerfriends and they all said, no,

(46:54):
thank you.
We don't want to extend yourline of credit credit.
I did this in January, you know,and like, I hate all of you
guys.
Um, so because they didn't wantto give me any money, a couple
of months later, they all wantedto give me money.
Mark Twain, uh, has a, you know,the, the line about bankers from
Mark Twain.
Yes.
A banker is a man that willgladly loan you his umbrella and

(47:14):
then take it back when it startsraining.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So, um, so we just, you know, wegot aggressive.
We asked Linda and I stoppedtaking a salary.
We want to make sure everybodygot paid.
You know, we prioritized how wewere going to pay vendors.
You know, the, the multibilliondollar company vendor that we
had, they could wait a while,you know, the, the local person

(47:36):
that like we're going to paythem as fast as we could.
Um, and of course our employeesgot paid first, but we asked all
of our managers.
We're like, look, we're notgoing to tell you what to do or
tell everybody.
We got to make a cut here, butwe got to make a cut.
So, I need each of you to goback and talk with your
families.
And tell me what you can do.
And it was, those were the mosthumbling, interesting

(47:57):
conversations over the nextcouple of days.
Yeah.
Of people coming back andsaying, Hey, I can, I can take
a, a 40% cut.
Wow.
And I'm like, no, you can'tRight.
You know?
Um, and fortunately so, but I'dbe honored to give you a 20% cut
if I needed to.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
So we, we talked about'em some,you know, 10%, one 40%.

(48:21):
I mean, it was, and it was kindof everything in between.
It was.
It was super humbling that Um,they believed in us enough and
in our line employees enoughthat they would sacrifice like
that.
Um, fortunately we didn't haveto cut any of their pay.
Um, we had enough cash reserves.
And then when PPP came out, allof my banker friends wanted to

(48:41):
help me.
So.
Sons of bitches.
So.
That was, um, actually, uh, Ithink, uh, right around March
24th.
5th or so, I had the first, uh,we had a long series of weekly
zoom ins on business climatestuff.
Oh yeah.
And I, I was the, the guest hostof the very first one before PPP
came out.
So yeah, whatever that was,probably end of March.

(49:03):
And uh, I was like, you know,your job as the business owner
is to be a steward.
I know that you.
Love your staff and love yourpeople, but if they don't have a
business to come back to afterwhatever the hell this shit is
Yeah, if there's no entity, thenRight, then you have to, your
job is to preserve a businessthat can give them back a job

(49:24):
whenever you can.
Like you have to do whatevertaxes, and maybe that means not
paying yourself, whatever, butknow that you're not going to do
anybody any favors by runningyourself bankrupt.
Yeah, destroying jobs for thefuture.
You know, I think the other,like the other great part was
we, we really educated ouremployees about, cause there's
so much fear around COVID.

(49:44):
We were experts already in themedical space.
So we knew what was going onand, um, and plus you got a
bunch of 25 year olds.
You're like, don't freak out.
Like, you know, actually theywere more freaked out than the
40 year olds.
It was just generational fear atthe time.
We had college kids up toretirees.
I mean, we have kind of everyspectrum working for us.
Um, but we, we equipped themearly with a lot of information.

(50:07):
I had one person freak, the oneperson that quit, um, and
ironically they did laundrydelivery for us.
So they would pick up the, um,used towels and mop heads and
bring them back.
We'd wash them in our commercialwashers in our shop and take
them back out and stuff.
And he was freaking out aboutthat.
And I'm like, so when you comeback today, can I, can I show
you some statistics from theCDC?

(50:28):
The flu kills more people everyyear.
What they're predicting this isgonna do so far.
And it's like, no way.
That's not true.
I'm like, the flu didn't killanybody that year when you
Right.
Well, or something.
It did in the fall of 2019, but,but not in 21.
Yeah.
It magically went away.
Um, so I showed him that and hequit.
His wife was actually at a, anat risk person.

(50:51):
So, you know, I, it'sunderstandable.
I got no criticism for fearreally.
But we, you know, not knowingmuch because of the bad
information that was coming out.
Yeah.
We just were proactive.
We early on in, um, it waseither late February, early
March, I put, um, we put maskson everybody and we put safety
glasses and not for the AnthonyFauci reason, which he was

(51:15):
telling us we didn't need any ofthat stuff, right?
And I'm like, I've worked in amedical environment for two
decades.
Now this, what you're telling medoesn't match here.
Like when human beings go intosterile environments, um, you
know, we're always, We're alwaysgowned up, right?
We've got, we've got gloves on,we've got a gown on, we've got a
hair net on, if you've got abeard like us, you've got a

(51:35):
beard net on, you've got a mask,and you've got safety glasses.
And, uh, the number one thingis, human beings are the biggest
contaminant in sterileenvironments, because we shed
thousands of cells every day,hair, right?
So, so whether it's, uh, Youknow, a cleaner environment for,
um, silicon chips or a sterileenvironment for medical were the

(51:56):
biggest contaminant.
So you're trying to prevent thatin the environment.
And then a lot of the mask andthe safety glasses in those
environments, you're, um, you'recleaning everything in a
surgical suite.
The ceiling, the lights, thewalls, the floor, the table.
I mean, the surgical table getsall taken apart, all this stuff.
And you have to, it has, it'swet.

(52:17):
It has to be wet for 10 minutesfor the disinfectants to work.
It's just insane.
So you're, you're saturatingeverything.
Well, if you got on the ceilingand you're looking up and it's
dripping in your eyes, it's notgood.
Or your mouth or your nose.
So it's like, okay, what we knowright now, number one, at that
time, gloves were optional forour people.
It's like, everybody's wearinggloves.
And everybody's going to wear amask and safety glasses.

(52:37):
And here's why.
Because you're going to becleaning something and your nose
is going to itch, or your eyesare going to itch, and you're
going to go like this, or you'regoing to wipe, and you're going
to, you're going to put thisinto yourself, and we don't want
that to happen.
So, it was, it was the practicalreason, not all of the nonsense
that happened later with themasks.
And everybody appreciated that.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, they feel cared for in acertain sense like that.

(52:58):
Right.
And so, and then we would, andthen we just started, um, we
communicated with them everysingle week.
Um, a company wide email, whichwe had really never done before.
And, you know, things werehappening rapidly.
So sometimes it was every day,every week, but it was at least
every week.
Here's what we're doing.
Here's how we're doing as acompany and all that.

(53:18):
And so we pivoted, we starteddoing these COVID cleans.
Well, you're in Weld and LarimerCounty, right?
Oh, vastly different.
So like, yeah, there was noCOVID in Greeley, hardly, but
I'm sure there is in thehospital settings and the banks
and different things.
I would say though, that, thatdifference of philosophy didn't
really emerge until probably Mayor June.
Yeah.

(53:39):
So there was a lot of fearfulmonths in there.
Everybody was just terrified.
I mean, I remember the first.
The first COVID clean we had wasin a doctor's office.
And, um, it's like, okay, I'm,I'm going to go do this because,
and I had the team with me, butit's like, I'm not going to ask
one of my hourly and people todo something that I haven't
done.
Like I I've researched this,I've developed all the
protocols.

(53:59):
I'm going to make sure it works.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we get there, the doctor isfreaked out, like locked in
their office, in their ownoffice.
And I'm like, Hey, doctor, can Italk to you?
Because their employee got sickand was in the other room.
A patient came in and was therefor a while.
They figured out they had COVIDand then they sent them away.
Right.
And the doctor is liketerrified.
Right.
It's like, so wait a minute,like, I'm the janitor and I know

(54:20):
what's going on here and you'rethe doctor.
Shouldn't this be different, butthey didn't, you know, that
special just, they didn't knowwhat's going on.
So we got them decontaminated,prove the process worked.
We had a team that we paid, um,we paid them a time and a half,
no matter what they were doing.
If they were going and doing aCOVID decontamination, we ended
up, we had a logo we made forthem and shirts.

(54:42):
We just had some fun with it,you know, which is morbid
probably.
Um, you know, we could havemade, honestly, we could have
made hundreds of thousands ofdollars more, but again, we're
good stewards.
By charging more.
Yeah, we're good stewards withour customers money.
Yeah.
Um, you know, we, we were usinga, um, disinfectant that it
turns out killed COVID.
COVID was an easy, um, virus tokill.

(55:04):
It's a, it's an envelope virus,just like the flu bug.
It doesn't, and they, we didn'treally know this until probably
July or August.
Mm.
But.
Um, it dies very easily.
It's a very fragile virus.
It will even just be on asurface for a while.
Yeah, it doesn't live very longon a surface.
Less than 24 hours.
And that's, it's always one ofthe myths during cold and flu

(55:26):
season anyway.
Well, can you guys disinfecteverything every night?
Yeah, we can do that.
And it's clean until the firsthuman touches it.
And then it's, and it's thatdoorknob you're talking about.
I always offered, I'm like, Ican have the guy in the tuxedo
with the warm towels, disinfectthe door handle every time.
Nobody ever took me up on thatfor some weird reason, but it's

(55:49):
still a service option ifsomebody wants it.
Um, I've any other bigdevelopments during the COVID
season or did you start thinkingabout selling then?
Or when did you?
No, I mean, it was COVID was allsurvival mode, I think.
And then a lot of people decidedthat.
Screw this.
Right.
They were out.

(56:09):
I'm ready to be done.
No, I think, you know, I thinkwhat happened for us is All of a
sudden, um, you know, thecleaning people became
important, right?
And we, we positioned ourselvesas experts on this in the
market.
So, um, we, you know, cashflow,we survived because of COVID
decontaminations.
Um, but we also.

(56:31):
We grew, even though our revenueended up flat at the year, we
grew because a new client'scoming in and they were like,
you know, maybe we're going totake this a little more
seriously.
My crazy drunk uncle Joe's beencleaning and we're thinking
that's maybe not a great idearight now.
Sometimes we find his chew spitin the toilet and he hasn't
flushed it yet.
Or he's asleep in the closet orsomething.

(56:52):
I don't know.
And it's like, yeah, we, I thinkwe can help you know?
There was more customers createdfrom that circumstance.
They were having an oppositeexperience.
Um, you know, and I was, um, atthe time I was on, I think I
was, I was the past president ofthe chamber board in Fort
Collins.
I had been previously on thechamber board in Loveland.

(57:12):
And so.
Just as a courtesy like I'm I'mshooting out information to not
only all our clients But to mybusiness network and of course
that information is so good.
They're like sharing it withpeople and So then we're getting
it wasn't the intent.
The intent was truly to justserve.
Yeah, but then phone would ringHey, I was talking to so and so
or they sent me this thing.

(57:32):
Yeah, could you come look at ourbuilding?
It's like, yeah, we can, we cancome look at your building, you
know, um, and so it was, youknow, it was good.
And like I said, we didn't haveto lay anybody off.
Um, I think the best successstory is none of our people got
sick from COVID, um, fromworking in one of our buildings.
We had people, at least as faras you can tell, right.
We had people with communitytransit mission, you know, their

(57:54):
kids got sick or they were, theywere at, you know, a gathering
with people or something likethat.
Of course that happened.
Um, but nobody got sick fromwork and that was pretty well.
And that's.
And we were in it all the time.
Right, well and, like it'spretty much known now, it's an
air transmitted.
Thing.
Right?
Yeah.
You got coffee easy.
Right?
And even if there is, yeah.
And so they're working there atnight when there's nobody

(58:16):
around.
Like Right.
If there is covid in the room,it's on a desk surface.
Yeah.
And you just wipe it up kind ofthing.
Yeah.
I mean, I think the number onebest piece of advice I gave
people during Covid was, youknow, stop licking the counters
and you're gonna be okay.
Right, right.
So, I mean, it was really like,let's bring some common sense
back to this stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
Wash your hands, you know, justif you're sick, stay home.

(58:37):
I mean, it just kind of simplestuff.
So in some ways, the growth thatCOVID turned or helped turn on
the backside of it, at leastmade it more attractive or
compelling to potentially sell,or you weren't even thinking
about it at all?
Not really.
I mean, we, or maybe you weren'tthinking about it even up until
you got an offer.
I don't know.
No, I, you know, beginning of21, I think the thing that

(58:58):
happened to us during COVID, ithappened to everybody.
Um, like a box of nitrilegloves, a hundred gloves.
in January of 2020 cost 4.
50.
Right.
Um, later in the year, we werepaying 23 to 25 for that same
box of gloves.
And it was, um, I don't think itwas price gouging.
I think it truly was supply anddemand because Everybody needed

(59:21):
gloves all of a sudden, andthere's only so many glove
manufacturers, you know, so, um,it was, you know, they were
sticking it to us, but they hadmore demand than they supply,
you know, they were.
Um, so, you know, um, thosehaven't come back down to 4.
50 though, oddly.
Um, I actually still have, uh,uh, gloves from my food trucking

(59:45):
days.
Oh, yeah.
There you go.
I've got two more boxes left andI use them for cleaning my grill
and nasty stuff and the plumbingCOVID.
You gotta have your stash,right?
I had it.
I was down to a four pack in thebasement during that season,
but, uh, we made it through.
There you go.
So we were seeing that priceinflation like on everything in,
in 2020.
So we got in 21 and we were, wewere good and we were growing.

(01:00:09):
And I mean, we had a nice,you're making price adjustments,
like everybody's back.
Well, we didn't, but we hadenough room, like we could pay
people more.
So we kind of raised wages.
Um, we were able, uh, one of thecoolest things was at the end of
2020.
Um, we were able to pay out somehuge bonuses to all of our team
who had worked so hard.
Um, so the year ended up great,felt totally blessed and we

(01:00:32):
wanted to share that, you know,with our team.
So it was really cool.
Yeah.
Um, and so we got, we kind ofdid our, uh, midyear planning
in, in early July and I left onvacation.
Things were great.
And when I came back, thingswere not great.
Um, I think we've had a bunch ofpeople who've been on the hiring
front and my VP and my HRmanager are like, we can't hire

(01:00:52):
anybody.
I'm like, what are you talkingabout?
I mean, like we hire five or sixpeople every week, you know, I
mean, it was just a constantthing.
Like we haven't hired anybodythis month.
I'm like, what is going on?
And like, well, everybody'staking their wages up to 15.
Right.
And we were, we were starting at1350 with a bump to 14 within a
few months.
Right.
I'm like, okay, well, that's,that's a problem.

(01:01:13):
Cause I don't have that money.
Math.
Right?
Math.
Yes.
And, um, so, went back and didsome research and it's like, oh
boy, we gotta do.
Have you been maybe increasingyour I hadn't been doing a
little bit sooner, uh, might'vebeen able to absorb some of
that.
So in our industry, there'salways a fight every year, a
three to 5 percent increase wasalways a fight with a customer.

(01:01:35):
So it became a little bit of aretention gamble, right?
So you just, so you kind ofdelay those, you put pricing
into new clients and, you know,so we, we were suffering from
that.
and it was, now it was acute.
So we built a plan.
I'm like, okay, everybody'sgoing up to 15 here on September
1st.
This is now beginning of August,right?
Oh, right.
Cause you can't hire new peopleat 15 bucks.

(01:01:56):
Nope.
If you're still paying somebody14, 20.
Can't do that.
That wasn't suggested.
I'm like, we're not doing that.
That's not gonna, that will notfly.
That's neither ethical nor safe.
Right.
Somebody's going to talk.
We'll go like wildfire, right?
Yep.
Um, and in the meantime, webuilt a case, um, And we had to,
most of our clients, we had toask for like a 25 percent

(01:02:17):
increase and some were evenbigger.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
So it's like, okay, well thismight be the end of the
enterprise here.
So next, if we lose too many,it'll be, you know, we're going
to go down.
Right.
And so, um, but we put the casetogether and really about, Look,
these are entry level peoplethat live in our Isn't that
crazy?
Right after giving out bigbonuses and stuff in 2020, and

(01:02:39):
Yeah! Like now we're Frustrated,now you're like, shit, batting
down the hatches, we gottafigure this out.
Right.
It's going the other way prettyquickly, you know, six, seven
months there.
Okay.
So, we put this case together.
It was about 30 pages of why weneeded this price increase, and
it included, of course,inflation, and it included
taking care of our employees,not just now, but we showed them
a path.
It was like My prediction isthis is going to go to 20 an

(01:03:02):
hour within three years, um, andwe're pretty close there, by the
way.
Um, so, um, so we, we went out,I had one of our top five
customers call me, I'm workingon this and he says, Hey man,
can we get together like nextweek?
I need to talk about ways thatwe can save money and cut our
pricing.
I'm like, okay.
Um, we'll meet with you.

(01:03:23):
Well, incidentally, I need totalk with you about some ways
that I could increase yourpricing at least 20%.
I didn't say that on the phone.
But, you know, it was a prettybig gut check.
Yeah.
Um, so we, we went and met withhim.
And, um, it was about a 28percent price increase.
And reduced service.
Price decrease and reducedservice.

(01:03:44):
No, price increase.
Oh, increase and reducedservice.
But what he really needed wasreduced service.
And so, we went in there and hesaid, Wow.
This is, I sent it to him 24hours before.
Cause I wanted him to read it.
It was, it was a complex casestudy and the pricing was
complex.
And, um, when we sat down, it'slike, this is exactly what I've
been looking for.
Oh, really?
Tell me about that.

(01:04:05):
It's like, well, I need to do acouple of things here, but we're
gonna, we're gonna maintain ourvacancy.
So if you can, if you can keepit at this rate, I can sell
this.
And then I was pitching, um, Ithink it was like 1 percent a
year, um, discounts if theywould sign on for three years.
So now I made three yearcontracts, um, with the clients.
And so we walked out of themeeting and I was like, wow,

(01:04:25):
that went a lot better than wethought.
And then the next day we had ourlargest client and, um.
This is a client that would, um,dicker with me over how you
calculated the percentageincrease.
Cause if you do it one way withthe numerator and denominator,
it's like a 10th of a percenthigher or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He wanted it the lowest way.
Um, I'm like, Oh, this is goingto be a rough meeting.

(01:04:47):
Always on that original amount.
And this is, I think at thattime, I don't know, it was, he
was a good, he was 15 or 20percent of our business.
So it was significant.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, and, um, Same thing.
Send him the case study the daybefore.
And we sat down and, um, he'slike, I said, so what do you,
what do you think?

(01:05:08):
And he says, well, you gotta bean effing idiot if you don't
understand what's going on.
He's like, every vendor of minehas already asked for price
increases.
Usually the ones that arewaiting.
We had annual contracts with himthat started in January.
This is now, you know, August.
And, um, he's like, you guys arewaiting until September.
This is a no brainer.
So we talked about that forprobably five minutes.

(01:05:29):
And I'm like, Hey, I just wantto clarify, you know, we had a
bunch of buildings that we didfor him.
I said, you're talking everysingle building here because all
of them are managed by like anHOA or that kind of thing,
commercial HOA.
It's like, yeah, every singlebuilding, he says, you guys
have.
You guys have made sacrificesfor us in the past.
We're going to, this is goingto, we need to keep you guys.
Okay.
This is what we're going to do.
Like, okay.

(01:05:50):
And so, um, Leland and I walkedout and said, man, maybe we're
not asking for enough money.
So we, that was too easy.
Right?
So we, um, we weren't quite asgenerous on the discounts, you
know, on the next clients.
And over the next couple ofmonths, we talked to every
single client.
And, um, we lost, we lost threein the process and one, I just

(01:06:15):
totally messed up the pricingon, um, and just, and then just
fumbled it.
Um, another was a new clientwe'd gotten that year.
They were small and they just,we already were an upgrade and
they couldn't handle more, youknow?
Um, so it was, it was prettyincredible.
So we get to the end of 2021.
And, um, I just, I felt like wejust kind of got released from

(01:06:37):
the business, which is kind offinally like at the end of the
fear, right?
In some ways, right?
But we had now this back intomasking that September or
something, right?
But we're starting to see theprice increases come in, right?
Because we were, We had most ofthe clients we had done, like,
Hey, we're going to implementthis at the beginning of the
next month.
Right.
And so we knew in January hitlike everything, like you get,

(01:06:57):
you can map it out.
I can map it out for threeyears, what this performance is
going to look like, what thingsare.
And I mean, it was, and again,we were able to give really good
bonuses at the end of, you know,we raised everybody's wages,
like a dollar an hour.
Right.
And, um, and we gave greatbonuses again at the end of the
year.
I mean, it was really.
You know, things were going welland, and now it was like really

(01:07:18):
set.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
Most of your big stuff underlong term contracts.
And, and we had, you know, Ithink the, our transition story
though, starts back in, um,probably 2015, 2016, we had an
offer in 2016, we had an LOIand, um, and we backed out when
you were like 20, 30 employeesor something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We had, yeah, probably 30, 40employees.

(01:07:40):
Yeah.
And, um.
Both Linda and I separately feltlike, um, you know, God was
telling us, no, it's not thetime.
Like, your, your ministry, yourfocus needs to be on your
employees right now.
As the entrepreneur, I was okaywith that.
Linda was not happy about that,but she was obedient.

(01:08:01):
She's like, Hey, I think thisis, I'm like, I'm feeling the
same thing.
It just, it turns out it was abrilliant move because, um, one
night I had to go get a jobright away and we found it out
in the aftermath about fouryears later that, um, That
company sold to another companyand then that new owner stiffed
all of the first acquisitioncompanies Oh, so it's supposed

(01:08:21):
to be a role.
We did it with Roger kind ofyeah So we'd have probably not
gotten our earn out on that.
I mean it would have been badbad news.
Yeah It's like okay, we gotsaved we dodged a bullet there
But I really felt like in thelatter part of that year like
okay, I think like I think it'stime to go Yeah, we got through
this and plus I was just I wasstinking tired from two years of

(01:08:44):
dealing with this stuff.
Well, I didn't realize you're,you're a little bit older than
me.
I thought maybe I was a littleolder.
I'm not sure.
I wasn't sure.
No, I'm older than you startedworking in 92 when I graduated
high school.
I got promoted in 92.
You got promoted in 92.
I've been working a few years.
So, uh.
So, yeah.
And I, but I know the feelinglike you get into the fifties
and stuff and you just don'treally wanna do the 60 hour
weeks anymore.

(01:09:04):
It's, it's just a grind, youknow?
Yeah.
And so, um, so we called up, um,you know, an investment banker
in our industry Okay.
Outta Chicago, um, that I hadworked with before and, and knew
great guy.
Um, he's also named Peter.
So that's, you know, he's gottabe a good, easy to trust.
Yeah.
Gotta be a good guy.
Um, and he's like, yeah, let'sdo this thing, you know.
Um, and a guy I know, he's like,Hey, um, he's doing this roll

(01:09:28):
up.
And if you're interested, Ithink he's in Colorado right
now, skiing.
I'm like, yeah, let's go havelunch.
You know, like I'm always up fora seven figure lunch.
And, uh, so I drove up to, um,Beaver Creek and we had lunch
and it's like, well, thanks fortaking a couple hours.
I'm like, yeah, it was more likethree and a half, but you're
welcome.
And, um, we had a great meeting.

(01:09:48):
It's like, Hey, just.
Whatever you do, I want to bethe first one to see this.
I'm like, okay, we'll, we'llgive you the first shot at it.
And so, um, it was interestingworking with the investment
company cause they were, um,what I felt was trying to low
ball the price.
And I'm like, look, because it'sbased off of EBITDA, which had
been pretty much not good in 21,um, but I'm like, let me go work

(01:10:12):
on the performance.
You guys can see this is like,okay, I see what you're saying.
Um, we'll, we'll do it this way.
And so we laid out our priceand, um, and we gave, we gave
Bryson the first shot at it andwe negotiated a little bit back
and forth.
And I said, the only thing Iwant is, um, they put a cap on

(01:10:33):
the earn out.
I'm like, I'd like you to takethe cap off.
Cause I believe we're going toover perform to kick ass right
now.
And well, actually the othercleaning industry people I know,
including one longtime member,she got slammed during COVID
recovered.
And then after that blew up.
Yeah.
You know, industry.
Yeah.
People realized maybe we needprofessionals doing this.

(01:10:55):
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that probably benefit.
So that was the only thing he,he kept the cap on there.
Okay.
And, um, and it was fine.
We, and we overperformed and Heshould have paid you a little
bit more.
He should.
No, it was all good.
Honestly.
It was all good.
I had a um, so you stayed on forlike a year or something?
Yeah, I was ready to be done.
So we exited in April of 22 andI had a, I had to, um.

(01:11:20):
I was kind of actively, um,helping out for a few months and
then like once a week in theoffice and then not in the
office and, you know, and theywere still paying me.
So, um, I couldn't complain toomuch as long as things were
heading in the right direction,there to answer phone calls and
all that kind of stuff.
And what's the business namenow?
Did they change the name?
Nope, still Total Facility Care.
So, um, when they bought us, um,they're out of Tampa, Florida.

(01:11:42):
When they bought us, they hadgone from, um, Um, and so, and
now today they're just, they'reright, hovering around a billion
dollars.
Oh, wow.
They've been rolling upcompanies all across the U.
S.
Yeah.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah, so now they're trying tochoose.
So is that the new vet industrything and they get like supply?
Cause that, I'm guessing itmight be similar in some ways.

(01:12:05):
Like the veterinary industry hasbeen taken over by big
corporates rolling up.
Oh, lots of industries.
And they have just advantages onthe supply chain.
Yeah.
And so they can get You know, solike when I was working in the
corporate side, like I knew allof the major equipment
manufacturers and all that,because we would buy from them

(01:12:25):
and we'd buy through adistributor, but we'd pay them
10 percent over themanufacturer's price, which the
distributor hated because theyhad a lot fatter margins than
that.
And then as a little guy, youdon't have those.
But if you're a small business,you're like, no, you don't have
any of those advantages, youknow, even.
You know, I think, you know,when I, when I left, we were
buying like 100, 000 ofchemicals every year.

(01:12:45):
Yeah.
So we got some better pricing,but nothing like I enjoyed at
that corporate level.
So, you know, at a billiondollars, I don't know what their
spend is, but it's, it's severalmillion dollars a year on
chemicals and equipment.
Sure.
They're, they're getting thebest prices.
Well, it's kind of the same astoo big to fail in banking, you
know, the Wells Fargo is in theJ.
P.
Morgans.
They literally borrow theirmoney for like a point less than

(01:13:07):
everybody else because they'retoo big to fail.
Yeah.
Well, it's a built in monopoly.
I don't know.
It is.
We could talk more about it, butprobably we don't have time, but
I feel like if anything.
There should be some kind of asize tax, right?
Because size, size createspower, power creates dirty deeds
and uncompetitive practices andthings like that.

(01:13:27):
And like, in your case, likeit's hard, would be harder still
for a little guy to try to getgoing again now.
Yeah.
Cause you got to pay full pricefor all those materials, all
that stuff.
Yeah.
And you know, in our industry,I'll say it's, um, it's ultra
competitive.
I think it's super, it's a superdifficult industry because
you're.
You're trying to manageprofessionally, but you've got a
lot of entry level employees,high turnover.

(01:13:49):
Um, Right.
And the competition is alwaysthere.
I mean, it takes somebody with avacuum and a mop bucket and
they're in business.
I mean, it's, you know.
No barriers to entry.
Right.
Now, now, they're not going tohire that person with the mop
bucket and the vacuum into theirclean room.
Totally.
So for us, those technicalspaces are the more complex, you
know, campus environments, thosekinds of things are always good

(01:14:10):
because, you know, it's, Thebarrier to that was higher and
the cost of change for theclient was always painful.
So if you, if you change, youknow, there's going to be
complaints from people.
Um, and so that was, you know,that was kind of our secret
sauce.
And the flip side, um, you know,we, you guys would know it, but
we, um, we've been working on itfor a couple of years and

(01:14:31):
shortly after the transaction,we landed the customers banging
customer here.
Um, they, you know, the firstletter is.
F and the last letters.
Oh, if you know who thatcustomer is, they have a green
logo, but they were looking forsome solutions.
And, um, I forget how manybranches, but Nebraska, Wyoming,

(01:14:51):
Colorado.
Right.
So we picked, we picked up allof that Western Nebraska, I
should say.
And, um, the local manager herewas great facilities guy, but
his boss in Omaha is like, areyou sure you want to do this?
Because you don't.
He had, I think in that area, hehad three or four vendors and he
wanted to get to one and we hadbeen talking to him for two

(01:15:14):
years easily.
He'd met our clients.
He'd been in our buildings.
He'd seen how we executed.
He's like, I need, that'sexactly what I need right there.
Cause we solve all his problems.
And, but it doesn't mean thefirst couple of months aren't
bumpy.
Cause you're transitioning allthese branches, new expectations
and all of that.
So, um, you know, I give him alot of credit and they're happy
as could be now.

(01:15:35):
They're one of the biggest fansof total facility care.
There it is.
So, yeah, so it's fun.
I feel like if we're gonna getyou out of here in a reasonable
time, we better, uh, take aquick break and then come into a
little bit more of the story.
Alright, sounds good.
And, uh, we'll also talk alittle bit more about, uh, Wait,
we don't have two cents.
Alright, sounds great.

(01:16:42):
Okay, and we're back.
So, I think the question I have,Pete, after listening to that,
kind of, really learning moreabout your industry than I've
ever known before, by far, uh,and just how, how it plays, how
it uh, interrelates, it's stillrelationship driven.
Oh yeah, 100%.
And a pencil, you know, a sharppencil for bidding it right,

(01:17:03):
executing it right, asking formore money if you need to, all
those kind of things.
Um, what were some of the bigthings that you learned?
Elements of change, if you will,along the way, you already kind
of talked about kind of gettingmaybe culture first in that 2018
19 time period, hiring anddevelop a people business, kind
of taking that focus, obviouslyeducation and communication and

(01:17:27):
even being a leader in thecounty, the community.
At that time during the COVIDnation was key.
Is there other big, big changeelements for total facility care
over the years?
Um, you know, I think, um, EOSwas really big pivotal in our,
in our journey.
Um, when did you start that?
Um, in 2018, but we had won, um,the chamber small business of

(01:17:49):
the year award in 2015.
And then a couple of weekslater, we won the, we made the
mercury 400 or 100 list for thefirst time, number four on the
list.
Okay.
And, um, there was an EOSimplementer, I think the only
one in Colorado at the time, shewas here in Fort Collins and,
uh, she handed me traction andsaid, Hey, I think this, you
guys are on a great path.

(01:18:10):
I think this will really helpyou.
And I'm like, okay.
I mean, I read business booksall the time, right?
So.
Um, I cracked it open and readthe first, first 30 pages and it
was about mission, vision,values.
And I was like, ah, like, Idon't need another book on this
and I put it back on the shelf.
Um, and then in, so we continuedto grow in 2018.

(01:18:30):
Um, you know, we were hitting mypersonal selling, I think, is
what was happening.
And, uh, You were managing allthe things kind of too much.
All the things, way too much.
And, um, at my peer advisorygroup, the one thing I was in
that was good, Um, they had aguest come in, he was a dentist,
and he had implemented EOS.
Okay.
And he was just raving about it.
I'm like, I think I got thatbook on my bookshelf.
I need to go look at that thing.

(01:18:51):
And then, interestingly,another, uh, peer advisory group
that was trying to recruit meOkay.
Sent me an email and said, Hey,this guy, Ken Trader is going to
be in town.
He's an EOS implementer.
Well.
Ken and I had been friends sincelike the late 80s.
Oh wow.
And I hadn't seen him in a fewyears.
And I'm like, I can't be therethat day.
But I reach out to Ken.
Right, right.
And so he gave me the spiel onEOS.

(01:19:13):
I'm like, we need to do that.
So he came in and um, we decidedto self implement.
And he said, I'll help you.
He says, you're the one guy Ithink that could self implement
this thing.
Yeah.
And so, so we did.
And that was So he coached you alittle bit, but didn't charge
you the full boat fee.
He coached me, yeah.
And, um, and we just, we justwent in and did it and it was

(01:19:35):
2018, 2019, 2018, yeah, into2019 and it was transformational
because, um, I hired the rightleadership team.
I had, you know, you have tomake some painful decisions when
you get real about your capacityand well, and sometimes the
people, right, people, right onyour team, all of that stuff,
right.
That's out of EOS.
And so.
I had to let some people go,hired some right people, and it

(01:19:56):
just set us up for success.
And, and those systems and thosepeople are still running the
company today.
So I think that's, you know,just a huge success that it's
still, it's thriving.
We've got great people that arestill running it and those
systems are running it.
They're still running on EOS.
whole big machine?
No, just your, your shop isrunning on EOS, just our shop

(01:20:17):
locally.
And sometimes there's conflictwith that.
But, um, and you see our visionboard, right?
And, you know, early on, I waslike, geez, Bryson, come on,
man.
You guys should really benefitfrom this.
I get, you know, some issues andit's not built for a company
that big, but the principlesstill transfer.
So, yeah, so that was huge forus.
And so I'm a massive fan of EOS.

(01:20:38):
If, if as an owner.
You like wanting more freedom inyour business and, um, you know,
and you want to make more money,um, all the things, right.
And you want to have the brokenparts.
And well, for me, I think giveyour team more clarity about
what we're really trying to do.
Each position kind of, you wantto help people connect to
greater purpose, right.
And, um, and just have a better,have a better story.

(01:21:01):
I mean, it's just not grindingall the time.
It's like you can have some funand joy in your business.
And I think EOS are one ofthose.
tools, you know, the great game,game of business.
Um, there's several others outthere.
You got to have some system,have a system and run as an
entrepreneur.
So, um, you know, I didn'tintroduce you as our new
incoming facilitator for localthink tank, although I did miss

(01:21:22):
that, but talk to me about peeradvisory and it in your business
journey.
Have you been in a peer advisorychapter?
A lot of that?
Um, yeah.
How long was in a peer advisorygroup?
Um, probably man, Probably sevenyears seven or eight years.
Okay, you know so mid kind ofmiddle at TFC through the end of

(01:21:44):
it.
Yeah, I just It's so valuable.
Um, you know, I think theentrepreneurs, was that Vistage
for you or was it somethingelse?
It was through, um, kingdom Wayin town.
Okay, sure.
Dan's groups.
Yep.
Yeah.
And um, Dan's been on the show.
I think he was episode 99, maybe90 99.
Real around there, man.
You got like a photographicmemory of those episodes.
Pornographic memory actually.
There you go.

(01:22:05):
Um, so it's huge.
I'm not talking about you Dan,I'm just teasing.
You've got other, um.
You know, entrepreneurs that arethe same boat, you know, um,
business owners are fighting anda lot of times it's very
isolating being in thosepositions.
So I think just somebody tobrainstorm with that understands
the journey, right?
And understands it's been therethat, you know, Hey, I didn't

(01:22:25):
take a paycheck.
I had to take out of my homeequity to pay, make payroll this
month or.
Whatever it is, right, that youcan just relate that and, and
you can get good counsel fromother people around you.
Yeah, yeah.
Dan and I were kind of, we wereintroduced like when he was kind
of first getting going and I wasfirst getting pro.
And I had like this one pageWord document application with a

(01:22:48):
logo that my friend's daughterhad made and whatever.
And he had like, The nice foldout thing with different flyers
and stuff, and, uh, I've justreally appreciated his heart for
service, uh, all over the world.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Dan's great guy.
Some of the friendliestcompetitors you're gonna meet.
Yeah, for sure.
And I think, you know, there's,um, I admire, I admire the heck
out of you for what you've builtfor Loco and, um, you know, you

(01:23:11):
already hired me so I don't haveto say it right.
But um, it's, I mean, it's not,it's not an easy task to build
something from nothing and Yeah.
And there's.
long time competitors too in themarket that have been doing it
for decades.
So, you know, you, you foundthe, the course.
Anyway, we'll see, you know, Ithink that there is opportunity.

(01:23:33):
For the, the, the small andmidsize businesses around the
country to get that kind ofexperience, you know, and with
or without a faith component,you know, for me, I've never
made that part of my brand, butit's part of my, my being,
right.
So, you know, go from there.
Yeah.
And I think, I think there is amarket for that.
And, you know, most of the bignational ones are going after

(01:23:54):
the higher revenue companies.
Right.
Um, so yeah, so you found a nicesweet spot there for Loco and.
Um, clearly it's working.
I hope so.
It's benefiting lots of folks.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, I appreciate that.
And I appreciate you being partof the team.
Um, let's jump in the timemachine to first grade.
Like I promised, where are weat?

(01:24:16):
First grade, uh, Greeley,Colorado.
Okay.
Um Were you born and raised?
Uh, I was not born This is ashame to me as a Broncos fan.
I was born in Oakland,California.
Okay.
But you don't have any choicewhere you're born.
Yeah.
My parents moved out here when Iwas three years old.
What were the circumstances ofthat?
Were they born and raisedCalifornians?
Or were they coming back toColorado?

(01:24:37):
Yeah, my folks met in Germany.
My dad was in the army overthere.
And my mom was over there withher family.
Um, my great uncle, who's nowpassed, but he was an aerospace
engineer for Boeing.
So he was over there doing somework with Boeing and my mom went
along.
Um, so mom and dad met inGermany and came back.
His parents lived in Alameda,California.

(01:24:59):
And so I was born in Oakland.
They lived there for a littlewhile.
And my dad went to mortuaryschool.
And, uh, got a job at a mortuaryin Greeley, Colorado.
So, yeah.
That's an unusual vocation.
It is.
And he didn't stay in it verylong because he was an
entrepreneur.
Yeah.
So, all the mortuaries It's areally good business, though, if
you buy one.
Yeah.
I mean, people are dying to getin.

(01:25:20):
Totally.
So Um, but back then, all themortuaries had ambulances.
And they had ambulances for themorbid reason that if you're the
first one on scene, you can havedibs on the bodies.
Really?
Absolutely.
This is early sixties, right?
And, uh, so my dad actually kindof started falling in love with
first aid and I don't, I'm noteven sure EMTs were a thing

(01:25:42):
then.
Yeah, yeah.
So he offered to buy theambulance from the mortuary.
And he started the GreeleyAmbulance Company.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Oh, did he?
And then that, uh, and there wascompetition, actually.
There was other guys that weredoing the same thing.
Yeah.
And, um, and then he, he kind ofwon the market and then he had
the Weld County AmbulanceCompany.
Isn't it so funny that, like,we're convinced in these days
that an ambulance has to be,like, owned by a hospital.

(01:26:05):
Right.
And it must be like a, like a,it's like the fire truck, right?
Like, it has to be a publicservice or whatever.
Right, But there's actually lotsof private ambulances.
Ambulances would probably be alot cheaper.
Oh, there are existing nowstill?
Yeah, so like if you see likeAMR, you'll see it more like
that in the Detroit area.
Those are all privateambulances.
So they're just like contractedto the hospitals to go pick up

(01:26:26):
people and different things.
But that's still, you gotta livewithin their existing.
Like structure, it doesn't allowthat kind of free range
entrepreneurism.
Like your dad was like, Hey, Igot, you got any dead bodies I
could hold.
Exactly.
So, so yeah, so first grade I'min, um, I'm in, um, public
school in, um, Greeley,Colorado, and I get a first

(01:26:48):
grade, I can't read.
And my parents are like, this isridiculous.
And so they put me in a privateschool, um, Trinity Lutheran,
and I was a hellion in secondgrade.
I did learn to read, which isgood.
That's good.
But the famous thing my momtalks about is the student
teacher in the spring, and meand my friend were just in
trouble all the time in secondgrade.
And, um, she had such a greatexperience student teaching, she

(01:27:10):
decided that after four years ofcollege and student teaching,
she no longer wanted to be ateacher.
And quit.
You chased a teacher out of hercareer.
Right.
So hopefully she's happy today,whatever it is.
Should be better on that othercareer path anyway.
Yeah, I'm sure.
So you were, uh, we'll call it ahyper active child with limited
restrictions on your selfbehavior.

(01:27:32):
Maybe we'll.
Oh yeah.
I mean, I, um, curious abouteverything.
Yeah.
And that was back in the daywhen student, um, teachers could
spank you.
So like I would.
I mean, the worst punishment wasyou had to stay in from recess
and you had to write pages outof the encyclopedia.
I would get swatted sometimes,but it was bad because then I'd
get spanked by my dad at home.
Because back then, it wasn't theteacher's fault, it was the

(01:27:55):
kid's fault.
Yeah, I was just rememberingactually.
Why are you doing that to yourpoor teacher?
I think 9th grade typing classis the last time I was assigned
to write pages out of thedictionary is what we used.
I had a typing class in 9thgrade too.
I don't think they teach typinganymore.
No, because their computers werethere.
So later it wasn't uselessthough.
Think how good we're at typingnow.
True.
Yes.
Compared to some people.

(01:28:15):
Yeah.
Right.
I, you know.
So, um, how did you progress?
Were you, were you, did youbecome academic?
Did you become sporty?
Did you have siblings by then?
Uh, yeah, I've got a youngersister, uh, Becky, she actually
just retired.
Um, as the Loveland, uh, 9 1 1center manager.
She did that for 37 years downthe line.

(01:28:36):
Kind of followed in Dad'sfootsteps.
Yeah, it was, it was weird.
We all like got into some lawenforcement there for a while.
So, um, yeah, so she's amazing.
She lives in Loveland.
Um, and.
Yeah, so, um, both, so I lovesports, played basketball and,
and football.
You could probably, yeah, hugeguess that from my amazing
stature, Um, fortunately I wasin a small school, so Well yeah.

(01:28:59):
But back in those days, beinglike, everybody was smaller, six
foot tall and, and yeah.
Skinny was big.
Yeah.
My eighth grade basketball team,we had a couple of guys that
were five 10 and they weremonsters.
Right.
You know, so in eighth grade,that's probably still true today
actually.
Yeah.
But, um, yeah, so played, uh,sports in, in high school.
Um, class president, um, youknow, pretty charismatic,

(01:29:22):
forward thinking, definitelythose leadership things were
early, I think, even in secondgrade, it was just going in the
wrong direction.
So, um, so yeah, those thingsand, um, yeah, good academically
and, um, definitely wanted togo, you know, be a billionaire.
I don't think that was a thing.
Be a millionaire when Igraduated high school and, you

(01:29:44):
know, probably start a business,do those kinds of things.
So, yeah.
Did you go?
College proper then too?
Did we talk about that?
Um, yeah, I came over to CSU.
So, long ways away from home.
Yep, and business.
My dad wanted me to studyfinance, so that's what I went
into.
And then I took cost accounting1 and 2.
And I got A's in it.

(01:30:05):
And I'm like, I never want to dothis again.
Right, don't make me.
So, then I moved to management.
Fair enough.
That seems more suited probably.
Absolutely, yeah.
Um, when did you Like you said,you wanted to be a millionaire
or a billionaire or something,and that usually comes with
entrepreneurship in somefashion.
Did you have other like teenageentrepreneurial ventures,

(01:30:27):
lemonade stands, stealing stuffand hawking them at the pawn
shop?
No, I did not do that.
Okay.
That's great.
No, I, yeah, lots of littleventures.
So back in the day, um, in theback of comic books, you could,
um, buy things that you couldsell door to door.
So like I would buy seeds andwe'd go sell them in the
springtime door to door to theneighbor, a big case of seeds,

(01:30:48):
right.
So for profit or whatever, yeah.
Delivered newspaper, babysat.
Um, mowed lawns, um, all that.
When I was 16, my best friendand I started a lawn mowing
business.
Okay.
And we had 20 lawns.
Okay.
Um, that we mowed every week.
And then we'd do landscapingprojects.
Yeah, it's great until it turnsout grass still grows after

(01:31:09):
school starts and footballpractice.
Oh, right.
So.
So fulfilling your contracts atthe end of the season was
harder.
Yeah, September, October wasrough.
We'd, um, so after practice,Hiring seventh graders to go
over there.
We'd go mow lawns, you know,we'd like pull the truck up so
we could see what the headlightsand then we'd come back in the
morning.
Before school started to makesure we didn't have mohawks on

(01:31:29):
the grass to trim anything wemissed.
Quality control always.
Absolutely.
So, yeah, so there's always alittle something like that going
on.
I dig it.
I dig it.
It's fun to know.
Do you, what, um, I guess we're,we always talk about faith,
family, politics.
And so the question I was goingto ask is.
I have all of those.
Talk to me about your children.
Are there entrepreneurs inwaiting or already in your

(01:31:52):
family tree?
Uh, no, they're probably smarterthan that.
So, yeah.
At least one of the governmentworkers.
That's easier.
Oh, no, no, no.
Used to be easier.
Just kidding.
No, my, uh, my son and, um, hiswife and girls live in Windsor,
and he's an iOS programmer.
Okay.
Self taught.
All right.
Um, and he can, he can programiOS and Android.
And what's that mean?

(01:32:12):
So, like, um, so like currentlyhe's working for Uber, not as a
driver, so he programs theairport app.
Okay.
Interesting.
Um, so if you've ever had anairport Uber ride, um, you know,
my son was probably a part ofthat somehow.
Gotcha.
Okay.
Um, yeah, there was some bigrelease project they were
working on, um, right beforeThanksgiving because that's a
heavy travel season in airports.

(01:32:32):
And it was, I, it was someimprovement for the drivers on
how they, they could see faresand pick them faster and all
that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
There's so much behind all that.
Like to me, I just push thebutton and it works, but yeah,
pretty amazing.
A lot of people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, and he's worked for a coupleof companies doing those kinds
of things.
And then.
Um, my daughter and her husbandand family are up in Cheyenne.
Okay.
And, uh, she works kind of nowas an office manager, ironically

(01:32:55):
at a funeral home.
Okay.
Um, but she's got, uh, and she'sgot six kids too.
So they're Oh, wow.
They're busy.
That's a full time job too.
Yeah.
And my son's got three kids.
So we've got nine grandkids alltogether.
So, uh, usually I ask, uh, likeone word description of the kids
or grandkids.
Oh.
Nine seems like a lot, two seemslike a few, but So can I use two
words?
Yeah.

(01:33:16):
Beautiful chaos.
That's all of them?
All of them.
All of them put together.
Yeah, when they're all together,it's beautiful chaos.
The question I was going to askis, do you see any budding
entrepreneurs in that grandkidsset?
Uh, yeah, definitely.
Yeah?
Definitely.
We'll see.
Yeah.
We'll see if that plays out.
Yep.
Um, what else in the family, uh,realm would you like to talk

(01:33:36):
about, if anything?
Uh You want to talk about yourwife?
Yeah, my amazing wife.
Where did you pick her up onthis journey?
Yeah, so my wife and I, um Uh, Ispotted her, I was in 9th grade,
and she was in 8th grade.
Okay.
And I spotted her, and I waslike, man, that's Are we back in
public schools, or were we inprivate schools too?
No, we were in a private, uh,Christian high school in, uh,

(01:33:56):
day spring.
Alright.
And, um, I was like, man, thatgirl is cute.
And, um, so like there was likea school hayride or something in
October, like, Hey, you want tolike sit together on the
hayride.
I think I was bold and I heldher hand or put my arm around
her or something.
You know?
Yeah.
It was pretty hot, pretty hotjunior high there.

(01:34:17):
So we dated off and on throughhigh school and then got serious
towards the end of that.
And then, um, and then as I wasleaving for college, she dropped
me.
She's like, okay, you're goingto go, you know, see the world,
all that, whatever, meet othergirls, but she was, you were
just at CSU and she was really,really, it wasn't, you're like,
no way, man.

(01:34:38):
And, uh, so, um, so we were alittle back and forth that fall.
And then when I came home forChristmas.
We reconnected, and then, um, wegot engaged.
So basically she held youloosely.
She held me loosely, yeah.
She gave you the freedom to gomake other decisions if you
wanted to be stupid.
And likewise, right?
Yeah, right.
Or maybe she had a boyfriend onthe side she wanted to go
explore with, I don't know.

(01:35:00):
She dated some other guys, buthey, let's face it.
It wasn't about that.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah, so we got, we got married,uh, December of 83 after she
graduated high school.
Okay.
And, uh, she's 19.
Oh, really?
So you were, like, you finishedyour first year of college.
Right.
And she finished her highschool.
Amazingly, after I got married,my college grades got a whole
lot better, too.

(01:35:21):
Right.
I can't imagine.
It turns out if you go to class,it helps a lot.
I don't know.
That was part of my journey,too.
I actually quit buyingtextbooks.
Uh, my, uh.
It's my second year of collegebecause I got a DUI, which was
my warning shot, but I, but Iwasn't attending classes.
So I was like, well, if youdon't have the book to try to

(01:35:42):
read and catch up, then youwon't skip class.
And so I, then I attended classa hundred percent of the time,
took copious notes and gotstraight A's.
No, I pretty much got straightA's from there.
I quit buying textbooks.
I don't know if I could do thatwithout reading the book.
Well, I just, I'm an, I'm anauditory learner and as long as
I'm going to class and listeningclosely.
All right.
I appreciate the result.
I know.
I need it.
For me, it was.

(01:36:03):
I don't know.
I don't recommend itnecessarily, but if you're out
there thinking, God, why do Ibuy these textbooks for 120 and
sell them for 30?
Yeah.
Well, do what I did.
So, I mean, Lynn is amazing.
We're, you know, we just had our41st anniversary in December.
Wow.
And, um, we love each other morenow than we ever have, honestly.

(01:36:23):
So, you know, people ask meabout that.
It's like, it, it hasn't allbeen, um, Easy.
There's been some really hardspots.
Well, you've talked already acouple times about how she's
really not an entrepreneur andyou really are.
Yeah.
And she was, she was sittinghere.
She would say that very samething.
Yeah.
And, but you know, there's, um,I think there's some beauty
towards the end of a journeywhen you've persevered through
all the hard stuff.
Yeah, yeah.

(01:36:43):
You know, and, um, a hundredpercent there's honestly,
there's no one I'd rather bewith.
Um, you know, and we just somuch in common, right?
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
Honestly, since we were kids.
I share that with you.
I mean, Jill and I, my wife andI met right when I first moved
to Fort Collins here.
Um, and she's very much moresimilar, kind of, uh, to what
you're talking about.

(01:37:03):
But having her, like, lock armswith me and march through, The
transition from upper middleclass banker to poverty level
income entrepreneur.
You gotta go get a job, Andy.
Yeah, well, and she got a hugepromotion and raise, which is
what allowed me to keep going.
I was gonna have to give up andgo back and get a bank job.

(01:37:25):
But she got a big raise and abig promotion in health
insurance.
I was like, oh, maybe I can makethis my real thing.
Good job, Jill.
Yeah, kudos, baby.
We wouldn't be here today,right?
Yeah, for sure.
Well, and to do that when You'rejust not sure right, uh, which
is the case with, with Linda andwith Jill, it sounds like, you
know, and I, you know, I thinkone of our success is we've

(01:37:45):
always pulled for each other andit sounds like you and Jill do
that too.
And, you know, we see so manycouples that are just like,
they're trying to do their ownthing and they're pulling
against each other.
It's like, you got to fight foreach other.
That's the, you know, well, it'snot a 50, 50, it's a hundred, a
hundred, a hundred percent, youknow, for sure.
I also say like.
We didn't always like eachother, but we've always loved

(01:38:05):
each other.
You know, and so, and thatperseveres through the hard
times.
Like, okay, at the end of this,like, I'm gonna still love you,
so let's figure this out.
If, uh, if she was sitting hereinstead of you, what would she
say about you was, uh, both whyshe was drawn to you first and
why she's, uh, locked arms withyou for 44 years?
Oh man, I don't know.

(01:38:26):
I think because she was cute.
I already know that.
And smart.
She was very cute.
She still is smarter than youtoo.
Um, and, um, yeah, I don't know.
I, you know, we were justkindred spirits for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would say early on sherecognized it as well as you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, um hmm.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, she's,isn't that.
It's amazing too.
I think, you know, she's aspouse that's believed in me,

(01:38:47):
even in those times when Ihaven't believed in me, you
know, which there's, I think weall, as confident as I am about
nobody's beat me up more thanI've beat me.
You have your own self doubts,right?
And so to have somebody in yourcourt, in your corner.
You know, like, hey, we canfigure this thing out.
Let's, you know, let's solve it,right?
We gotta figure out how to moveforward.
Even when we failed, you know.

(01:39:08):
And especially when it'ssomebody that you love telling
you those things.
Like, they're easier to believethan somebody else that might be
trying to give you a pep talk.
And taking some crazy risks.
Like, leaving a good job on agood career path at the police
department.
Sure.
Put in your 20 or 30 and you gota good retirement, you know, and

(01:39:28):
or the corporate thing afterthat, right.
You know, like, Hey, I believein you.
Let's, let's do this thing.
Yeah.
You could have spent the rest ofyour life in Racine.
Right.
Right.
Thank goodness.
Um, so I think that kind ofchecks the family box.
Uh, you want to talk faith orpolitics next?
Uh, your pick?
You're the questioner.

(01:40:30):
So, um, let's talk about faith.
We haven't, okay.
much.
Um, you mentioned that yourfolks took you out of public
school and then eventually atleast you were in a private
Christian school, Day Spring.
Um, what was their faithbackground?
Were they born and raised in thefaith and were you thusly raised
the same or?

(01:40:50):
Talk to me about that.
Um, yeah, so I would say, I'mtrying to think, my mom was, Um,
probably raised in thePresbyterian church.
I think my dad was in like theEpiscopal church, but his dad
was in, um, he was in the Navy.
He retired as a captain.
My dad moved, he was in 17elementary schools by the time
or in 17 schools by the time hegraduated high school.

(01:41:12):
So, um, you know, and that'sduring world war II and, and
Korea.
So, I mean, he.
I don't know, you know, I thinkthey went to church, almost
everybody did back then.
Yeah, yeah.
It was hard.
Never had a church community,hardly.
Like, and friends and all thatstuff, right?
Right, right.
So.
Um, so we went to a Presbyterianchurch growing up, very

(01:41:32):
traditional, you know, kind ofhigh church with, uh, church
organ and piano.
Okay.
You know, the pastor's in a robeand Okay.
You know, stand up, sit down,fight, fight, fight, all that
good stuff.
Okay.
Um, and for me, by the time Iwas probably seven or eight, I
was like, there's, there's just,I don't like this.
Like there's nothing here.

(01:41:53):
Boring kind of, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Totally boring.
And I don't get it.
And.
Um, all of that, so.
I mean, I was, I was definitely,um, not a person of faith and,
um, and then my mom, so then Ihad to go to this Lutheran
elementary school because thepublic school wasn't doing very
good.

(01:42:13):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or you weren't doing very goodthere anyway.
Right.
And then the, so now I'm in thisLutheran thing, right?
Which is even higher kind ofchurch, right?
Right.
We have more church.
Right.
Um, and so, I mean, I just, it'sall not working for me and I'm
just.
At the end of 8th grade, thatwas the end of elementary
school, then you go into juniorhigh, which was, um, I guess 8th

(01:42:36):
and 9th grade back then.
They didn't have middle schoolback then, but this school went
to 8th grade.
So I was going to finally be in9th grade in public school.
It was going to be good.
And my parents gave me thedevastating news of sending me
to this Christian high school.
Okay.
And I'm like, I don't want to dothis.
Right.
My mom's like, well just do itfor me.
You were still going to churchand stuff with them, but

(01:42:56):
Totally, no, I could put on,totally tuned out.
Mostly I could totally put onthe show.
I knew all the stuff.
I mean, I was, I got all daylong.
I, you know, like we had chapelall the time at school.
I went to church on Sunday.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I knew all the things.
Right, right.
But there was no, your booksmarts was there, right?
There was no, you didn't reallyknow what the good news was
still.
No.
There was no faith with God atall.
And, um, so I went to thisschool and she asked me at the

(01:43:17):
end of the first year, what doyou want to do?
And I was like, well, there'sthis really cute girl there that
I like.
And so purely on that, I stayed.
So, hey, it's worked out, youknow, all these years later.
Um, and then when I was, um, Ithink when I was 16 and started
driving, I probably, um, Iprobably started going to church

(01:43:40):
with Linda.
And, um, her family went to afour square church, so very
charismatic, very different, um,you know, like long worship and
they had like a band.
High production value.
They had like, I wouldn't sayhigh production value, but they
had a band, like there wasdrums, you know, guitar, the
whole thing.
It was like, Oh, this is cool.

(01:44:01):
You know, this is different.
And like the pastor was talking,he's, he's like preaching out of
the Bible.
And.
Going verse by verse andexplaining what it meant.
Yeah.
It was just a differentexperience.
I'm like, okay, I'm intrigued.
And then, um, you know, Linda'stalking to me.
Teacher at school is talking tome.
Um, and you know, and, and theHoly Spirit is talking to me and
my mom's talking to me.

(01:44:21):
Sure.
So springtime of my junior year,um, so I'm 17.
And one day after school, I'mlike, yeah, I, like, I'm, I am
ready.
And so, um, the teacher andLinda, another friend of mine,
you know, we went into, wentinto a classroom and, you know,
I gave my life to Jesus andsubmitted.
And, um, it was, it was just anamazing, powerful experience.

(01:44:45):
And, um, no, I've never been thesame since.
Yeah.
I like that.
That's a, that's a goodtestimony to how sometimes long
you have to.
Put things in the tumbler beforeyou get a battle and it you
know, I would say my faith wasstill pretty immature For a long
time, you know, I'm I'm 21 I'm aThey're idiots because I'm 21.

(01:45:09):
I look like I'm about 15.
They give me a gun and a badgeand handcuffs and they let me
arrest people.
Right.
And, um, I have a very black andwhite view of what God and
church is because I've just beenin this a lot.
And what the law is.
And now I'm like, In this crazyworld and, um, like I am

(01:45:29):
arresting people that saythey're Christians and all of
this crazy stuff.
Right.
And I was having a crisis offaith.
Hmm.
And, um, I, I rememberdistinctly, there was a guy
breaking into Jacks up on NorthCollege Avenue there.
Okay.
This is, you know, it's likemidnight or early morning hours
or something, or trying to getin and Yeah.
And I, he's trying to break inand I.

(01:45:51):
I pull up, I'm like the third orfourth cop on scene, and
there's, you know, there's afight with this guy in front of
the store going on, and so I'msprinting over there, and all of
a sudden he starts yelling outmy name.
Pete, Pete, see me.
I'm like, Oh my gosh.
And this is the guy from church.
Oh damn.
Yeah.
He's like drunk as could be.

(01:46:13):
I am mortified.
So embarrassed.
You know, we get them hooked upand well, you know, my buddy
takes him away and I just, isthe cuffs on, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cuffs on back in the police car.
You're going to the jail.
So Um, yeah, so I, I was like,that's it, man, this whole God
thing, like I'm done.
Oh, no shit.
And so really, but it was hardto go, it was hard to be in a

(01:46:36):
community then cause I'm workingthese weird shifts and, you
know, um, and so probably, Idon't know, the crisis of faith
for a year or two.
And then, um, you know, again,Linda, she's like, Hey, like we
need to get back involved inchurch and like, yeah, you're
right.
And, you know, unfortunately.
God will meet you where you are.
That's a cool thing.
Yeah, I love, I love the versein James.

(01:46:57):
It says, if you draw near toGod, he'll draw near to you.
And it's when I find myself awayfrom God, it's because I've
pulled away because of him.
And so if somebody's searching,just like ask God to show
himself to you because he willdraw near to you.
Yeah.
And it's a promise.
So true.
Um, a hundred percent agree withthat.
And one of the things I was justthinking about was like, one of

(01:47:18):
the things I felt.
Back in the day before Iaccepted faith, which was
somewhat through my wife aswell, but it was kind of a
Guiltiness, you know, like I hadto be a better person before I
could before you come to GodYeah, of course.
Well, and the same thing isrelevant with loco thick tank
Um, with a peer advisory groupand it's, and it's not a church,

(01:47:38):
but people like, people thinkthey have to get to their, their
business to a certain point,pretty good before they can be a
member of a group like this.
Cause they don't want to come inand show their dirty underwear
about how they've got these biggaps in their business.
No, that's true.
I mean, it's true.
It's true about church, right?
Um, people are right.
There's a bunch of hypocritesthere.
A hundred percent.
Come and join us.
That's what I say.

(01:47:58):
Like, come and join us.
Right.
And then like, guess what?
When you come into peeradvisory.
We all have some impostersyndrome.
We all got stuff going on in ourbusinesses that we're not quite
sure about.
But it's good to get a couple ofreal strengths, right?
And you've got some real gapareas that you might not even be
aware of.
And that person sitting acrossfrom you, maybe they've already
solved that problem and they canmake that path shorter for you.

(01:48:20):
Or maybe they're an expert inthe thing you're struggling
with, the finances or themarketing or sales or just
leadership, or how do you, howdo you hire this person?
Yeah.
Do I really need to fire thisperson?
I gotta let go of this keyperson, it's gonna hurt.
Yeah, we've been there.
Let's walk you through that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, because there is no newstory, almost.
You know, when you read theBible, you're like, damn, these

(01:48:41):
people might have lived back inIsrael a long, long time ago,
but they still had a lot of thesame little challenges.
You read Proverbs or Psalms andyou're like, Man, that guy's
thinking a lot of the thingsI've thought before.
I mean, read Genesis, you'regonna find all kinds of
debauchery and evil human stuff,right?
And it's like, this is not a Grated Bible.
No, it's not.
It's X rated, actually.

(01:49:01):
That's fair.
Um Oh, we haven't talked about arecent mission trip that you've
done.
Oh, yeah.
Um, which was very interesting,and I hope we, let me do a quick
time check, oh, we got time.
So, you went to Tanzania.
Yeah.
Um, just, what was it, thisfall?
Uh, no, March of last year.
Last March, okay.
Yeah, so just about a year ago.
So, talk to both the, the callof missions, as well as the

(01:49:25):
experience that, uh, that, causeyou had a, you were like at a
super remote part of thecountry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Really unique circumstance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we go to a foundation'schurch, uh, down in Loveland,
non denominational church.
And, um, the missions pastorapproached me and said, Hey, I'm
taking a small team of guys, um,to Tanzania and we're going to

(01:49:47):
be like in this really remotelocation.
And it is not going to beglamorous.
We're going to be camping intents and bucket showers.
And it's like, if you want togo, I'd like for you to go.
I'm like, all right, let me talkto Linda and we'll pray about
it.
And we did.
And You know, it was a pretty,it was a pretty quick.
Yes.
Um, you know, I got time.
I, this would be an adventure.
Um, I'm up for this thing.
So, yeah, so we went, um, so sixof us went over to, um,

(01:50:11):
Tanzania.
It's about 30 hours to getthere.
It's in Eastern Africa.
And, um, we went out, we workedBostic.
They're amazing, amazing people.
And, um, we drove, we went intoArusha, which is if you're going
to go, yeah, See, um, theSerengeti or Andra crater, or if

(01:50:33):
you're gonna go climb MountKilimanjaro, you're gonna fly
into a Rusa.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So that's where we flew into.
And, um, Kilimanjaro is inKenya, or is it Tennessee?
It's in Tanzania.
Oh it is?
Okay.
So, um, I think it's Kenya'sjust to the north.
So Kenya had the two tallestpeaks in Africa.
When the, and then when they,um, divided up Tanzania,

(01:50:56):
Tanzania didn't really haveanything.
Okay.
And Kenya was really nice, sothey gave them Mount
Kilimanjaro.
have this.
So it's probably a mistake inhindsight.
Right, probably.
But, given all the tourism thathappens there and what not.
Okay, so I'm in the rightballpark.
Yeah, absolutely.
Anyway, for some reason I justhad Kilimanjaro in Kenya.
I just, I guess K with K, Idon't know.
Yeah, um.
So yeah, so we drove out, um,eight hours into the bush.

(01:51:19):
After a 14 flight, whatever.
We spent a day in Arisha andthen we drove out and we spent a
week out there.
And we built a, um, basically apole barn, but a shade and rain
structure that the local peoplethere will eventually put walls
onto and, um, you know, turnthat into a church.

(01:51:39):
And, um, two evangelists thatlive way out there, um, to the
Hadza people, which are thelast, um, hunter gatherers.
Tanzania, they may be the lastones in Africa, actually.
Um, there's less than 2000 ofthem.
So they're kind of minimallycontacted.
Tribe, basically.
Yep, yep.
Is there Rainforest there thatthey Uh, no, it is, um,

(01:52:02):
Plainsman, yeah.
Plains, um, it's near Lake Yasi,um, there, which is a huge, huge
lake and they just, they cover ahuge area.
Um, and hunters, just huntersand gather.
I mean, they've been doing itsince the beginning of them
being in the area.
Yeah.
And they have a What?
And gather what?
Do you mind if I ask?
Um, yeah.
So one of the, there was thisreally old guy that would come

(01:52:24):
into camp and we asked him oneday, like, how old are you?
And he's like, I don't know,maybe 194, 000 years old or
something.
My guess is he was maybe 50 or60, but he looked like he was
probably over a hundred yearsold.
Whoa.
Um, and his, um, the biggestanimal he's ever killed was a
giraffe.
Okay.
Um, and then they, they killlots of, you know, if they can

(01:52:45):
get a piece of it With guns andstuff?
Oh no.
Or are they like, stone toolsand like ropes and Bows and
arrows.
Okay.
Bows and arrows.
Okay.
Criminal I should have, I shouldhave brought one.
That would have been cool.
That's very cool.
So they, um, they have thispoison made out of rosewood
Okay.
That they use for big animals.
Alright.
Um, and they'll put it on theend of it, so Um, after we had

(01:53:05):
built the, the church structure,we had a worship service on
Sunday, all of the tribes camein and this guy came in that had
all his bow and all his arrowsand, um, we were talking to him
through translator and, um, Hewas showing us this arrow and it
was it was quite larger than allthe others and it had all this
It had this compound just gunkon it.
Yeah, and guys like don't touchthat by the way That's

(01:53:29):
poisonous.
Oh, okay.
And then afterwards he's likeyou guys might and we were
holding the arrow not touchingthe point Oh, yeah, you know and
and a lot of the arrows some ofthem are just wood for like
small game Yeah, you know for arat or a small or something
small Um, critters or birds,right.
They'll hunt birds.
Right.
Um, and then some of'em aremedium sized and they'll hammer

(01:53:52):
out a spoon and then file itinto a very sharp point.
Hmm.
Um, and make a, I mean, it lookslike a.
An arrowhead that you could gobuy a X or something, you know?
Yeah.
Interesting.
They're not forging their ownmetals.
No.
But they can take it.
But it's made at the, you know,the shaft is a stick of wood,
and then the fletching are, are,um, feathers from a real bird
that they killed.
Sure.
And I've got one in my housethat, um, we bought Trader with

(01:54:15):
'em and Sure.
Um, interesting.
Yeah.
And so some of these folks havebecome Christians even though
they're living this country.
Yeah, they're lifestyle.
They're, they're considered, um,an unreached or unreached
people, so there's about 40 thatare believers there.
There's an evangelist therethat's from the Hadza, uh,
people.
And, um, so he's been workingwith them and they don't have

(01:54:35):
any written language.
So that's a barrier.
And so it's really, it's, it'sjust making disciples, which is,
you know, it turns out that'show Jesus did it.
He didn't write the Bible.
He just told 12 people and thenthey told a bunch of people here
we are today on the other sideof the world, you know, knowing
about this amazing God we have.
Right.
So they're doing that same thingin Tanzania.

(01:54:59):
And it was really, you know, wewent over there to help with
this project.
We funded it and did a lot ofthe building.
But, um, there's a church inArusha that is funding this
evangelist and, um, that's outin that area.
And so they're trying to reachtheir unreached people in their
country.
Which is really a cool thing.
And is Tanzania a Christiannation overall?

(01:55:20):
If you look on the, um, like oneof the global reports, it'll say
it's about 52 percent Christian.
But, um, Islam is on the rise.
Islam on the Sure.
Well, all across Africa, really.
Yeah, and on the, that easternhorn, so going down, I forget
the, what the country is above,Somalia, it starts with a P or
something, but then there'sSomalia, then there's Tanzania,

(01:55:41):
Um, I think actually Zambia,Tanzania, coming down the coast,
so, on the coast of all of thosecountries, Um, they're almost
all Muslim, but that goes backto the slave trading days in the
1500s, 1600s, because the Arabtraders would come down and, and
grab slaves.
Well, if you're Muslim You can'tbe enslaved.

(01:56:03):
And so the people on the coastconverted.
I'll be a Muslim.
And then they would go into theinterior and capture other
tribes and then sell them asslaves.
Oh, gotcha.
And then they'd run back up thecoast into the Middle East and
sell them.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
So there's quite the historythere.
And so Christianity has kind ofevolved off the coast in some
respects.
Right.
In other areas.
It's almost prey animals forthese Muslim slave traders.

(01:56:25):
Well, yeah.
I mean, there's a lot ofpersecution in different parts
of Africa because of that.
So.
So, like I say, in Tanzania,along the coast, you'll see a
lot of Islam influence, and thenyou'll see, um, you'll see more
Christian influence in themiddle of the country.
This is a heavy topic, but,like, with the rise of Islam,
like, across Africa, even, like,Oh, yeah.
Niger is at threat, probably, ofbeing overtaken soon, even

(01:56:47):
though it was historically veryChristian in different places,
but especially, like, Europe.
Like, UK.
Like, some of these countries in30 years are going to be
majority Muslim nations at thepace they're currently on.
Is there something that the Westshould do about this?
Well, I think Europe's got tofigure that out.

(01:57:09):
I think that's not our problem.
Well, not right now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, we have, we have a bigocean between us, right?
Um, I think the little reportedissue is like in Sudan and the
Congo, you're talking aboutNiger.
Um, like Suzanne.

(01:57:30):
The, the Christians are justbeing driven out, you know, in
the civil war that's going onand they're massively
persecuted.
Um, you know, you can, if you, Imean, the crazy thing is you
convert in one of thesecountries, you're going to
probably be murdered for yourfaith.
Um, you know, nothing that wefaith, we face here in America
or even in the Western world.

(01:57:51):
So it's, you know, it's a real,well, and some of the strongest.
faith proclaimers in the worldare in Africa right now, too.
Right.
You know, because, you know,nothing brings out strong faith
like strong persecution.
Yeah, persecution.
But, damn.
Exactly.
Um, I guess, is there, is therea role for, and we can shift to
politics from here in some ways,but is, like, recently Trump

(01:58:12):
just called out the SouthAfrican president for being
like, Right.
Right.
Hey, no preaching to stadiumsfull of people about how you're
going to kill the white farmers,please, like, that's kind of
like, right, pretty like we'redoing apartheid 2.
0.
Yeah, 2.
0 is worse than 1.
0.
Right?
Like, and that's the challengeof learning this as a nation,
right?
Kind of, yeah, like, like, howis there a place for politics in

(01:58:37):
this conversation?
Or is do we just let thosecountries kind of Do what
they're going to do, you know,you know, I'm, um, so I don't
think politics is going to bethe savior of the world, right?
I think we already have one ofthose.
Yeah.
Um, you know, I think aninteresting place to look at
politically is Rwanda.
Okay.

(01:58:57):
Um, that had the, you know, hadthe genocide there, right?
Yeah.
Um, and I forget the names ofthe two tribes, but basically,
Okay.
If, if we were looking at themas Westerners, we'd go, look,
these are the same people.
It turns out they are, but theywere just in two tribes and one
completely murdered the others.
But what's been going on overthere the last, gosh, I think

(01:59:18):
it's almost 30 years now isreconciliation.
And there's some amazingreconciliation going on.
I heard a story probably sixmonths ago about a woman who's
family had been murdered andthey murdered him mostly with
machetes.
So they're hacking people apart.
Yeah.
And her whole family was killedby her next door neighbor.
Wow.
So the next door neighbor, sothere was um, basically like

(01:59:41):
Nuremberg type trials in Rwandafor probably over a decade.
And so her neighbor wassentenced to prison and she
still lives in her house.
She's a widow.
So in, in the majority of theworld, if you're a widow, you're
in rough shape.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a man's world and you'rejust going to take advantage of
it in one way or another or lotsof ways, economically and

(02:00:04):
everything else.
Um, so this guy served his termand he was released back home.
So the murderer of her family isnow living next door to her.
Okay.
Like 20 years later.
Yeah.
Right.
And there was, um, there's areconciliation project going on
there.
And, um.

(02:00:24):
She was able to, to work throughthat with him and forgive him.
Okay.
Um, but she's got this massivetrauma, right?
Right.
And, um, and that Now, is itChristians and Islam there?
Uh, that In Rwanda?
No, it was, it was a racial, itwas a racial thing.
Okay.
But again, they're all, if youlooked at it, they all seem to
be the same race, right?
Right.

(02:00:44):
So that's, it's always a tribalthing.
And I learned a lot about tribeswhen I was in Africa.
Sure.
It's very much, it's very muchwho you are.
Yeah.
Um, there, we, I, I don't thinkwe have anything comparable to
that here.
No, I mean, like in the littlecommunity I grew up in, like
there were Perlerbergs and therewere Johnsons and there were
bears and there was almost afamily clan kind of thing like,
uh, Ireland would have orsomething, you know, but nothing

(02:01:07):
like tribe tribes.
Yeah.
So I don't, so that's on thepolitical solution in Rwanda,
even though there's been, um, Ajudicial process.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But really the healing has takensomething beyond the individual
level.
Yeah, which is, you know, it's aspiritual thing that is healing
that country.
Um, I would circle back to astatement you just made, which

(02:01:28):
was, I don't think politicsreally solves anything.
I like that kind of talk.
I didn't, I didn't think, Ijust, it's not the savior is
what I'm saying.
Okay.
So, um, what, uh, where, what isyour political, Yeah.
Perspective and how has itevolved maybe over this journey?
Um, uh, I've probably beenconservative, I think.

(02:01:51):
The whole way.
The whole way.
Yeah.
So when I, I mean, when I was18, I voted for Reagan.
Okay.
The, I guess his second time.
I don't think I was old enoughto vote.
Yeah, yeah.
And I wasn't old enough to votein 80.
Perot was my first vote.
So I've always been a wild cardin that department.
Oh, there you go.
Yeah.
That libertarian streak.
Right.
Well, he was independent, right?
He was, but kind of libertarian.
He just screwed it up, though.

(02:02:12):
He could have won that election.
If he, if he would have stayedsteady, maybe because he was in
and then he got out, rememberthat and then that killed it and
then he got back in.
Yeah, that may be so, but thedeep state was already in
existence.
It was.
So I don't really call thoseodds that strong.
That's true.
He probably got whacked.
That would have been Trump 1 0back in the 90s.
The guy would have used a scopeand took him out actually.

(02:02:34):
Right.
Instead of a freaking openscience gun.
Knowing what they're doing.
Yeah.
I digress.
So, so, so conservative ingeneral.
Yep.
Not libertarian per se, becauseyou're more socially
conservative than what mostlibertarians would say.
Yeah, probably.
Some of those family values arepretty important, but also
fiscal conservative, don't spendall my money.

(02:02:55):
Right.
So you've been kind of diggingthe doge Or don't spend any of
my money the way they're doingit right now.
You've been digging the doge,uh, investigations here.
You feel like that's okay?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, I think they'll, they'llget it sorted out here.
A lot of court stuff going onright now.
I mean, I, um.
I read something today about,you know, how, um, Obama had

(02:03:16):
pushed executive powers andBiden had pushed executive
powers and Trump is pushingexecutive powers.
And, you know, the court willweigh in on that and it'll get,
it'll get settled.
But I guess my real question is.
Like, look at all of thiscorruption that they're showing.
Who, who's actually for thatpart of it?
So, um, you know, it's not, it'snot like we should get there by

(02:03:39):
any means, but like, this is,this stuff's egregious.
We have to stop a lot of this.
Like, this is egregious stuff.
Yes, we can't be spendingmillions on Sesame Street in
Iraq, that's actually a good useof funds in comparison to most
of it.
I mean, I was reading today.
K cups for the FBI for 1, 200apiece.
Like, who's getting rich off ofthat about a coffee mug for a C

(02:04:01):
17 that costs 1, 300.
Right.
And instead of, when the handlebreaks, instead of repairing the
handle, they're buying a newcoffee cup.
Are you kidding me?
Like, what?
They think they're billionaires,but they're government
employees.
It's like, come on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um.
Uh, Gulf of America?
I think it's hilarious.

(02:04:22):
Doesn't offend you, neither isit necessary kind of thing.
Right, no.
I also love the Mexicanpresident's response.
Which was what?
This is Mexicana.
She's showing all of America,you know.
How about, uh, Canada is 51ststate?
Oh, I was going to ask this.
I chickened out for one of thefirst times in my life.
At the, uh Oh, be brave.

(02:04:43):
Come on.
Well, we had the, the goose cameand did a state of the state
kind of address at Farm RanchCommunity College.
Oh, okay.
And they had like an openquestions segment and it was, it
was really pretty disturbing.
Honestly, the whole tenor of itwas like, Trump's kicking ass
and there's basically nothing wecan do, but we can stay strong
and fight in the streets if weneed to.

(02:05:03):
Oh man.
But the question I was going toask that I chickened out about
was, uh, Do you think it wouldbe better for Canada to be,
like, ten smaller states or justone big state?
I, I don't know.
Um, I mean, I think Canadashould figure out their own
things.
We don't need them.
You know, I don't, no, I don'tthink we need them.
You know, the reality is that inthe, the first hundred miles of

(02:05:25):
the border, So if you go thenorth, our northern border,
their southern border, 100 milesup, that's like 85 percent of
their population.
Over 90 even maybe, yeah.
So, why do we want the rest ofthat?
Well, because they got a ton ofnatural resources, farm,
farmland, I mean that's, that's,that's.
But it's also all frozen, so.
Well, for now, but globalwarming, of the biggest thing I

(02:05:47):
don't understand is why isCanada all focused on global
warming stuff?
Like why wouldn't you wantglobal warming if you're Canada?
It's almost in it.
It's the dumbest thing I've everheard.
It's in us.
Right.
Warm it up, Chris.
no, I think, um, I think whatis, um, fascinating about what
Trump's doing in Canada is aprime example is he, he throws

(02:06:08):
these outrageous things outthere.
Right.
And then it turns out there'sactually some, um, he's smart as
a fox and the whole deal, Imean, look at the Panama canal,
right?
Like China has a death grip onboth sides of that by managing
these ports on either end and.
We were getting, you know, theshaftiness.
We built this thing, right?

(02:06:29):
And so, I mean, he threw the,he, um, he negotiates like a
business person.
And he does things that areunconventional.
He says the things that nobodyelse will say.
And so he, you know, I mean, itwas before he got inaugurated,
right?
Back in December.
Hey, the Panama Canal should beours again.
And everybody's like, where didthis come out of?
Well, it turns out it's been astrategic threat for a couple of

(02:06:50):
decades.
Oh, yeah.
That he's finally calling.
The cards on the table like thishas to stop well I have no doubt
that most people in Greenlandwould be happier in ten years if
they were part of the u.
s.
Yeah Canada not green.
I know Greenland.
Maybe is it my strategic?
Yeah up there and I think they'dbe happier and we'd be happier
Yeah, probably But, but isn't,so Greenland's another, so this

(02:07:13):
is an outrageous thing.
We're going to buy Greenland orwhatever, right?
Well, interestingly, Denmark nowall of a sudden is interested in
putting 2 billion into strategicdefense of that.
Oh, well, that's not a bad dealfor us.
Right.
That's not our 2 billion, it'stheirs.
And it turns out actually we'rekind of aligned.
I believe they're a NATO member,right?
So, hey, yeah, Trump's crazy.

(02:07:36):
I thought Trump was going to,uh, end the Ukraine war on day
one.
Yeah.
That is one of his campaignpromises he's not accomplished
yet.
Is that, uh, stubbornness byEurope?
By Zelensky?
By Putin?
What do you think's going on?
I don't know, you know, sotoday's February 11th.
I saw Zelensky.
Oh, we're coming up on theanniversary date soon.
Yeah, so I saw Zelensky, um,said, said something about, I

(02:07:59):
think we can get a deal donetoday.
And then also, um, an American,uh, Trump and Whitkoff got an
American released today.
Yeah, I saw that.
That's been in, uh, Russia.
So things are happening,probably.
Yeah, so I think things arehappening.
Be a little patient.
Well, Biden did about all hecould to fuck that shit up.
Well, to keep it going.
Right.
You know, I mean.
Shoot missiles into Russia, longrange missiles, right before he

(02:08:21):
leaves office.
Like, what are you talkingabout?
And does anybody believe the 900billion is all still in Ukraine?
Because I don't, by the way.
I don't.
No.
I mean, it's just, it's notthere.
It's, you know, and, um, I thinkthere's been reports of many of
the munitions we've spent sentover there during lots of,
right.
They're not lots of otherplaces.

(02:08:42):
So, you know, it's going to beterrible if our military has to
fight, um, against our weaponsthat we let get out of control.
I mean, I think that's going tobe horrible and it doesn't, that
does not in any way justifyRussia.
Going in there and trying totake over Ukraine.
That is unjust.
It's evil.
It's not right.
I think one of the things that'sreally at risk of this is, like,

(02:09:03):
all the acceleration and dronetechnology between Ukraine and
Russia during this fight.
I don't know if the U.
S.
is prepared for that kind oftechnology.
Clearly not.
We just announced three newWarships, the, the George Bush,
the Bill Clinton or somethinglike that.
And it's like, in retrospect,maybe those weren't the best
names to choose.

(02:09:25):
Well, and just like the Russia'sBlack Sea fleet got taken out in
a matter of a few hours by abunch of heavily armed drones.
I'm not sure.
Supposedly is.
Yeah.
Bohunk back country place.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just saw something on a feedon Telegram a few weeks ago
that, um, Israel has been doing.
Um, this like, um, uh, likeshark tank for drones, anti

(02:09:50):
drone technology.
And, um, they were, they were,had a big demonstration day.
So my guess is they're ahead ofus and we'll probably buy
technology from Israel for sure,because we're going to need it.
It seems likely, you know,hopefully not like, I'd love to
think things just settled down,but I think.
You know, it's pretty clear thatwe can't like track balloons,

(02:10:12):
right?
I'm guessing we can't trackdrones very well.
So something's got to changewith all of that.
Cause that probably is a threatthat we can't, you know, counter
right now.
Right.
Well, and how many of these.
Millions of illegal immigrantsare Arab people with a drone in
their backpack, you know Well,some of them that have been
arrested have been right, youknow, so yeah, but but even more

(02:10:34):
than that I think it's thetransnational crime happening on
the border.
Yeah, and I mean, the, thecartels got a lot of money.
They're, they're pretty savvythat borders have always been
valuable.
You know, there's alwayssomething that's worth more on
one side of the border than theother side of the border,
regardless of what kind ofborder you're talking about.
We've got a cartel and theystart shooting at our border
agents or police or whatever,you know, from a drone.

(02:10:55):
I mean, why wouldn't they do itif they could buy that
technology?
For sure.
Um, I think we covered a prettygood chunk.
Anything else in the faithfamily politics segments you'd
like to hit?
Um, you know, I think just,Those are big politics, but I
think politics is local, localto, you know, and so, um, you
know, one of the reasons that Iwas always part of the chambers

(02:11:15):
in Northern Colorado, I was partof all the advocacy kind of,
yeah, Greeley Loveland, fourcolumns is that advocacy and,
um, you know, we can, I, I'mfrustrated by how much politics
is in business.
I think it should, I probablylean more to you on a
libertarian bent on that.
Like, just leave us alone andlet us, let us do business, you
know, okay.

(02:11:35):
So I think you know, I think thethings that the chambers are
doing here, you know down inDenver matter Even though the
way things are lined up rightnow It's pretty anti business in
Denver, but you know, they canthey can get some wins on the
margins of that.
I think that's important Yeah,yeah, you know, it's important
locally too.
Yeah, so I would I would sharethat plug like for for business

(02:11:58):
community Members, businessowners that aren't a part of a
local chamber because you don'thave time, because you don't
want to spend the 1, 000 or 2,000 a year for membership, or
whatever that is for yourbusiness.
I think most of them you canjoin for like 400 or 450 bucks
or something a year.
You can be a member and justshow your support because, at
least here locally, I think theChambers are kind of one of the

(02:12:20):
strongest voices for business,and that's what you're buying.
You know, you're not buying amarketing group or networking
group.
You're not buying a new club tobe a part of.
You're buying a small part of avoice for business.
Right.
Well, and it's, and it's evencloser than that too, you know,
Fort Collins City Council rightnow is trying to figure out how
to get in a minimum, crazyminimum wage, which is

(02:12:43):
ridiculous.
Go look at a job listing and tryto tell me anybody that's hiring
at minimum wage.
The market won't support it.
You know, the market won'tsupport it.
It's, I mean, most people are, Ithink minimum 12.
50, something like that.
Uh, most jobs are starting at16, 17, 18 an hour in this
market in Northern Colorado.
We don't need a minimum wage.
The market is handling it.

(02:13:04):
And it, but they'll put theminimum wage up to 20 bucks or
something, and that's fine.
Then that moves it up.
That means I got to hire people.
Everybody that's getting paid 18has to go up to 20, and
everybody that's getting paid 20has to go up to 23 because,
well, I'm not a minimum wageperson.
Right, exactly.
And now all the consumer pricesand the business prices have to
go up to 20.
That was one of our kind ofsecret sauces early on is we

(02:13:27):
paid about a buck fifty abovewhat other people were doing.
And then Colorado put in amanum, the higher minimum wage
with the increases.
Yeah.
And it compressed wages and nowmy competitors were paying the
same.
They were still doing crappywork, but we're competing for
the same, like, well, you know,it's like, well, this is a
better place to work.
Well, you guys pay the same, butyou hold me accountable and make

(02:13:48):
me work.
Yeah, that's part of theagreement.
So, you know, so that kind ofstuff, I think too, we don't
have time as business owners,but then, you know, the
chambers, what they're doing,they can keep doing it.
An eye in that crazy stuff forus.
Well, you talked about thecomplete shortfall of workers
during that 2021 period.
Yeah.
Right?
Well, and that was, a lot ofthat was caused by just people

(02:14:09):
having some excess cash flowingthrough, you know.
Oh, yeah.
And they didn't have to takethose crappy jobs or whatever,
you know.
Well, remember they, they werepaying them 600 a week extra on
unemployment.
Yeah.
So that's over 15 an hour.
And I'm like, so what does ittake?
I mean, as part of the thing in21, like what's it take to get
somebody off the couch?

(02:14:29):
Right.
Like, well, it's more than 15,right?
Because I'm making 15 sitting onthe couch.
I get to play with my kids, goto the park, whatever.
Right.
If I take your 15, you canactually want me to show up to
work for 40 hours a week.
Yeah.
That was one of the most foolishthings I ever saw.
It was complete insanity, but itwas part of that.
That this long running thing ofwe got to get a fifteen dollar

(02:14:50):
minimum wage.
Yeah, which also when I rememberwhen you think that was
strategic in some ways.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
I remember in, um, whenever thatfirst came up in Denver, they
were showing McDonald's workersand this guy's like, I've been
in McDonald's for five years andI'm only making 30 cents an hour
more than, and I'm like, Well,then you're clearly not

(02:15:11):
contributing any value to thiscompany because McDonald's would
love to promote you.
They would love to do a managerif you don't.
And guess what?
McDonald's has the highestnumber of millionaires working
for them that have high schooleducation.
Because you can actually startas a fry cook on the line, and
you can own a McDonald's.

(02:15:32):
You can work your way up, and ifyou work hard, you're an
entrepreneur, you can own one ofthose things, and you can become
a millionaire.
Um, so don't tell me, if you'redoing the same thing, then
you're adding no value to thatcompany.
Acknowledged.
It's just crazy.
It's local.
It's, you know, statewide andit's, it's the nation.
So, no, I, a light hand, youknow, and I think the same

(02:15:56):
politics is to me, the moredecisions you can make local,
the better.
And the more there tries to belike a strong federal government
making us states all the same,the more bad ideas.
Yeah.
And I think we should rejoiceif, if some of this stuff can
actually happen at the federallevel and get rid of some of
these regulations, then.
It should come back, and we canregulate it the Colorado way,

(02:16:16):
the Northern Colorado way, like,the way, how do we want to get
the influence of the Sorosorganizations and the bill
writers out of the statelegislatures and all these
things.
Yeah, any of them, just get themout, you know, so, and, and let,
let business create and let themarket forces.
Um, actually do what they do.
They do it very efficiently.
Yeah.

(02:16:37):
I think we're ready for the locoexperience.
All right.
Your craziest experience of yourlifetime that you're willing to
share with our listeners.
Crazy experience.
Um, I don't know how crazy itwas, but I think it's very
unique.
Yeah.
When I was 10 years old, uh, mygrandfather, uh, my grandmother
put me on a plane in SanFrancisco.
Hmm.
And I flew by myself to HongKong.

(02:16:58):
Oh.
And I spent the summer overthere, um, with my best friend
in California.
Okay.
And we His family was from thereor something?
No, his family had a sailboatbuilt in, um, Taiwan.
Okay.
And they sailed it to Hong Kong.
Okay.
And they were outfitting it fora while there.
And so we spent the summer inHong Kong on their sailboat,
sailing around and Um, you know,being pirates on the sailboat

(02:17:19):
and all of that fun stuff.
And then his family sailed thataround the world over the next
couple of years.
And this was like in the 80sprobably?
Um, I was 10 so it was 1973.
Wow, early 70s.
Yeah.
Wow.
Um, which was like kind of justas China was opening up to the
world, I guess Hong Kong was alittle more open, but Hong Kong
was, I don't think, uh, yeah, Idon't think China was open yet.

(02:17:42):
Yeah.
Maybe, maybe Nixon and Kissingerstarted talking about a little
bit, but not much.
So, but Hong Kong, I mean, to meit was effectively Chinese
culture.
Oh yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Um, so you got to experiencethat firsthand when almost
nobody.
Do anything about any of it,right?
You know, we were still seeingcartoons with the little plant
eyes and the little funny hat,right?

(02:18:04):
I have one of those hats,actually.
Well, because they're real, youknow.
It's not just a cartoon, it's areal hat.
It's a straw hat that they worein the fields, you know.
And they shed rain really good.
They did.
So talk to me about thatexperience.
Like, anything extraordinaryabout it?
Like, were they, were theyfluent and stuff?
Or they had family?
No, I mean, we, um, they had thesailboat.
Um, docked, you know, that wasrun by England at the time.

(02:18:28):
So it was a British Harbor.
We were a bunch of Englishspeakers.
Yeah.
Yep.
And, um, you know, summer, so wedidn't have to do school or
anything like that.
And, um, I don't know if, youknow, I don't know if their, his
parents spoke any, um, Chinese.
I don't remember back then, butyou know, I mean, we'd go into
the markets and.
You saw all kinds of crazy stuffthat you'd never see in America,

(02:18:50):
you know, and like a, a bowl ora big plate of shark fins for
shark fin soup and, you know,baby chickens that apparently
you eat them whole when they'relittle chicks and I don't know,
uh, apparently, yeah, it's goodwhen the claws tickle your
throat or something, you wantthe bones to be a little crispy
so they break easier.
Um, but man, I learned to loveChinese food.

(02:19:10):
I think one of the amazing, youknow, we got to sail a lot.
So that was fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of the amazing experience.
We were out on a bay for acouple of days and it was fairly
early in the morning and, um,just crystal clear water.
Like you'd see all the way downto the bottom.
I was getting ready to dive offof the boat.
And, um, this giant manta raycomes swimming under the boat

(02:19:34):
and I grabbed the, like the twopoles there and it was, I mean,
it was huge, you know, I don'tknow, maybe it was two feet.
I was a 10 year old, so I don'tknow, but it, I mean, it looked
massive.
I know they're big.
Oh, wow.
And we, you know, we'd gosnorkeling.
Diving for stuff.
And it was, it was just fun.
I mean, we would, we'd climb upthe mast there, you know, that

(02:19:55):
the ladders going up the mast,we'd jump into the water and
really cool.
It was fun.
World expanding at the time.
Yeah, absolutely.
And.
I mean, they put me on a planeby myself, you know?
Right.
And sent me over there.
Right.
I'll say the, um, they werestewardess at the time, but the
flight attendants took good careof me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
well, your parents must havebeen at least a little bit free
range as well to allow that.

(02:20:16):
Uh, you know, my, be sick ofyou.
You know, it was my grandmother.
She was, she was fierce and shewas like, oh, he can do this.
He'd be fine.
You know, I don't know how shetalked my parents out of that.
I love it, but, uh, I love it.
Yeah, it was cool.
I'm glad they let me do it.
Well.
Thank you.
Thanks for sharing the time.
Oh, It's been fun.
Thanks for letting me learn alot more about the industry, and
thanks for becoming part of theteam at LocoThink Tank.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

(02:20:37):
It's a great community.
Alright.
It'll be fun to be a part of it.
Well, Godspeed, and we'll seeyou next time.
Alright, thanks.

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