EXPERIENCE 225 | Travis Luther - Entrepreneur, Sociologist, Writer, Speaker, Past President of Entrepreneur’s Organization Colorado Chapter, and Opiate Addiction Survivor - The LoCo Experience

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
In this episode of The LocoExperience, I welcome Travis
Luther, a sociologist,researcher, writer, speaker,
entrepreneur, and founder ofTime to Live LLC.
Travis shares his journey from atumultuous childhood with young
parents to pursuit of a musiccareer and eventually finding
his stride as an entrepreneur.
He recounts his entrepreneurialventures, including starting a

(00:21):
successful valet advertisingcompany and a legal tech
company, as well as the Queenand pillow company, which he
grew to a million dollarbusiness in just 18 months and
exited in 2021.
Travis Credits Pure advisory formuch of his learning as an
entrepreneur, and he is alongtime member of and past
president of for EntrepreneursOrganization, Colorado Chapter.

(00:43):
This conversation delves deepinto Travis's personal battles,
including a struggle with opioidaddiction and how he eventually
overcame it throughdetermination and support from
his family and community.
Travis also explores how hisexperiences led him back to
academia, transformed hisunderstanding of success to
focus more on personalfulfillment and relationships.
And the role psychedelics playedin his healing journey, you

(01:06):
won't want to miss his locoexperience at the end involving
a week long relationship with avalet Ferrari.
So please tune in and enjoy myconversation with Travis Luther.
Let's have some fun.
Welcome to the Loco ExperiencePodcast.

(01:27):
On this show, you'll get to knowbusiness and community leaders
from all around NorthernColorado and beyond.
Our guests share their stories,business stories, life stories,
stories of triumph and oftragedy.
And through it all, you'll beinspired and entertained.
These conversations are real andraw, and no topics are off
limits.
So pop in a breath mint and getready to meet our latest guest.

(01:52):
Welcome back to the LocoExperience.
My guest today is Travis Luther.
And Travis is a sociologist, aresearcher, a writer, a speaker,
uh, a multi-time, uh,entrepreneur.
And, um, the founder of Time toLive LLC.
Yeah.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for being here.

(02:12):
Thanks for coming up from DenverTown.
Yeah, of course.
Um, how was the drive?
Easy peasy.
Easy peasy.
Yeah.
It'll probably be a littleharder going home.
Yeah, hitting rush hour.
I don't know which directionthat goes, but I suspect it
won't be a smooth sailing.
Yeah, probably not.
Although I think there'sprobably fewer people going back
to Denver from Fort Collins atfive than there is going.

(02:34):
You know, back home to FortCollins.
True.
I, I would suspect, I don'tknow.
Very true.
I haven't really tried it eitherway.
Very true.
Although two 70, uh, isunforgiving of anyone in any
direction, same time, virtual,once I get back down there, I
mean, I will be screwed at somethere.
Some point.
There will be a rough patch.
Exactly.
There's always a rough patch.
Well, um, yeah.
Thanks for making, making yourway up.
And I, you mentioned the wordwhen we were just, uh, chatting,

(02:57):
just now retired.
Yes.
Uh, and, uh, I wondered, um, andyou know, and this is like a, a
next chapter of life Yeah.
In this researching and, andsociologist titling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Talk to me about that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, retired, I saykind of tongue in cheek, but
I've had the good fortune ofbeing able to have the last
couple years off.

(03:18):
Um, you know, mostly becauseI've been in non-compete since I
sold my company.
Yeah.
So, you know, in addition to allthose things you talked about,
I, I am at my heart and core anentrepreneur.
Yeah.
Um, I owned a number ofbusinesses and then over the
last three or four years, um, Isold those businesses.
And was able to kind of returnto another path I had been on in

(03:39):
my life, which is, uh, academiaand, and research and sociology.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, um, yeah.
So early in my entrepreneurialcareer, I, I, I, I, I had a
previous career as a, as amusician, like touring all over
the country, making records andstuff.
Okay.
And so I kind of came back tocollege later, you know, after,
after that.
Okay.
Career wound down.
I see.

(03:59):
That's why we will explain someof that, the time gaps in your
Yeah.
In your LinkedIn profile.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So they don't have a.
Uh, occupation for rockstar, butthat, can we go there?
What, what kind of rockstar wereyou and were you a proper
rockstar or just a, I mean, I, Ioften describe it as like aaa,
right?
If you know baseball.
Right.
Okay, sure.
You know, like we, we, we, wetoured, we had vehicles.

(04:19):
You made more, we had$50,000 ayear, but not much.
We, yeah, we than that.
Yeah.
Maybe more closer to the 30,000.
This was a while back.
I guess this was, yeah, earlytwo.
In today's dollars it would be50 maybe.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Theoretically.
But yeah, early two thousands.
Um, uh, went down to LA which isactually where I was born and
where most of my family is.
Okay.
Tried, tried to make it downthere.
Had some fun times.

(04:40):
And what was the band, one bandor was it you a solo?
Was it was, it was me at thatpoint trying to put a band
together.
Okay.
Did not have a lot of success.
So I had some fun times.
I, I gotta, I gotta hang outwith Tom Morello, I gotta play
with him and Adam Jones fromTool.
I gotta actually jam with thoseguys.
Yeah.
Which was like a lot of fun andvery encouraging.
But yeah, I never really gotanything done, so I went back to

(05:01):
Seattle.
Okay.
Um, I grew up in WashingtonState.
My parents were divorced, so mymom left California, went to
Washington.
Gotcha.
But went back to Seattle andthen started having all the
success I thought I might havein Los Angeles.
Oh, interesting.
Now remind me, so this was likeafter the proper grunge band
days?
Yeah.
Definitely stuff, right?
Like this is another wave.
Yeah, this was another wave.
This was kind of now the, thepost grunge, um, you know, we're

(05:22):
kind of getting into that poppunk vans, warp tour emo kind of
Okay.
Kind of genre.
And so I, we, we definitely fellright into that kind of warp
tour, um, sound for sure.
All right.
So.
Yeah.
Um, so you spun that thing forfive years or something?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, I, I, okay.
Maybe college.
I found a way to hack out aliving doing that I did, you

(05:42):
know, one of my earlierbusinesses was a, actually a, a,
a music promotion company.
I had a record label that I putmy, my band and my other.
Friends bands on.
Oh, okay.
But then what we would do is wewould make these compilation
disks.
So we'd go around to independentrecord companies or independent
artists and say, Hey, we've madedeals with all these record
stores.
They're going to allow us to putfree CD samplers in every bag of

(06:04):
every customer.
They're gonna allow us to putyou in their listening stations
so that customers can hear yourrecords.
Mm-hmm.
Where they might not otherwisebe able to, and you're gonna pay
us a fee for that spot on, onthis CD compilation.
Right.
So we did that for a coupleyears.
Okay.
Um, uh, and that helped supportthe, the music as well.
Little, you've got a little cashflow positive there for, and of

(06:24):
course, a lot of hours of work.
Right.
O uh, but you're going to thoserecord stores anyway.
Right, right.
Yeah.
And I worked at one of'em.
So that's kind of, that was,that was kind of how I, I, I, I
got the idea and got the end.
Yeah.
And then of course I put my bandand my friend's band as, and
this is up in Seattle now?
This is in Seattle, yeah.
Yeah.
As the, as the first three, youknow, three or four tracks on
each sampler.
So we got a little special Yeah,yeah.
Uh, uh, treatment and, um,exposure.

(06:46):
But yeah, I, you know, I wascoming off.
You know, four or five years of,of that, um, you know, we opened
for some great bands.
We had some great tours.
We just never quite got thereourselves.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so I was thinking about, allright, what am I gonna do next?
Um, um, good friend of mine hadmoved to Denver, um, said.

(07:06):
Why don't you just come outhere, see what you want to do,
you know, just take a break.
Yeah.
You know, and Yeah, change thescenery can sometimes blank page
basically.
Exactly.
You don't have any strings tospeak of.
Exactly, exactly.
And so, um, yeah, there was amusic industry, what did they
call it?
The music industry and businessstudies major at University of
Colorado, Denver.

(07:27):
Okay.
And so I said, okay, well thatmight be a good segue to, to law
school.
I thought maybe I'll become anentertainment lawyer and I'll,
I'll work on the legal side ofmusic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I joined that program.
Uh, actually you could job forDiddy or something.
Yeah.
Maybe not if I, if I just couldhave been lucky enough to work
for Diddy.
Right.
Um, but actually the fray, uh,all the guys from the Fray were,

(07:49):
um, were in my class and uh Oh,cool.
It was right.
I mean, it was Right.
You know, they had recorded acouple songs.
Oh, wow.
They were, you know, so you kindof watched them blow up.
Oh, totally.
And, and I remember lecturingthem, or I remember lecturing
one of them, um, because I wassaying, oh, I've tried this, you
know, I've done this for fiveyears.
Yeah.
No band just records a song,does a showcase and gets a

(08:10):
record deal, but like Sure.
As shit, that's exactly whathappened to them.
So I, I remember kind of wordingthem, well, this might be a
longer process than you think.
'cause they're like, oh, wellwe're going out to do this show,
this showcase for a recordlabel.
And I, in the back of my mindwas like, well, you know, I love
your enthusiasm, but good luck.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I mean, they did it.
They did it.
So one of the coolest concertsI've been to was a, uh, new

(08:31):
Year's Eve show with theLumineers.
Mm.
Yeah.
And it was the, the.
Guess whatever December,immediately after they won the
Grammy mm-hmm.
In November.
Mm-hmm.
Or whatever the Grammys are.
Mm-hmm.
And, and it was just soauthentic.
They were like, when our managertold us he booked us for the Fox
Theater, we're like, oh shit,how the hell are we ever gonna
fill the Fox Theater?
Yeah.
And, and we were part of asecond night, even the day at

(08:54):
it.
Oh, wow.
They're like, now we filled ittwice.
Wow.
You know, it's been quite arole.
Yeah.
That's, uh, but same kind ofthing, just meteoric.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Nowhere to ever, everywhere.
Yeah.
And, you know, and, and, and,you know, they're great stories,
but they are super unusual.
Totally.
You know, I mean, I, I spent somany years, well, they might
have had 10 years Yeah.
Before True, true.
That I'd ever heard of.
True, true, true.

(09:14):
I don't know.
But I spent a lot of years onthe road seeing just the most
incredible bands and musiciansthat nobody would ever hear.
They're all in double a aa.
Yeah.
And, and, and, you know, it's,it's.
There's a lot of luck that comeswith that.
That's not to take credit fromanyone, but you know, there's
luck, there's timing, there'sjust, uh, there's just so much,
much more and powerful peoplethat become the pickers
sometimes.
Exactly.
You know?

(09:34):
Exactly.
It depends on how yourpersonality jives.
Yeah.
And your pliability sometimesperhaps.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yep.
So, so you go into this, uh,potential law track, uh,
understanding the musicindustry.
Yeah, that's what I thought Iwas going to, was gonna do.
Um, um, and then, um, my kind ofentrepreneurial.
Inside started coming backoutside, you know, and, and, um,

(09:57):
it, it just did not feel like agood fit.
Um, and I, you know, I wasworking at night as a valet down
in Cherry Creek, um, while Iwas, while I was in that
program, pretty gig.
It was a pretty good, gooddrive.
Really cool cars.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Super cool cars.
In fact, I'll tell a story atthe end of the podcast for, for
one of those questions that youasked about.
Crazy, uh, for sure.
The local experience.

(10:17):
Crazy stories.
Yeah.
Um, uh, but anyway, um, I was,you know, passing out these
valet tickets to all these richpeople in Mercedes and Ferraris
and Porsches and stuff, and Igot this idea like, I wonder if
I could sell advertising on theblank side of these valet
tickets.
And so I asked the guy who ownedthe valet company, if he would
mind me going out and trying todo that.

(10:38):
And he said, sure, you can gotry and do it, but no one's
gonna buy it.
Um, and it's gonna be tooexpensive.
And I said, okay, well, if youdon't care and you think I'm not
gonna be successful, right?
Would you mind if I went to theother valet companies too to see
if I could roll everybody upinto this idea and give them all
free valet tickets?
Um, he said, go do whatever youwant.
So I went to the other valetcompanies, I got'em all on
board, and within two weeks Ihad a deal with Mercedes-Benz to

(11:00):
put a lease offer on thebackside.
Heck yeah.
And, and so that moment, ohdang.
Because you, you didn't just tryto sell one to Mercedes.
You, well, you put a coalitiontogether.
Oh, yeah.
Where Mercedes is like, ohshoot, we're gonna get in front
of a lot of eyeballs.
Oh yeah.
I was like, look, I can, I canput these in the hands of five
to 10,000 rich people a month.
You know, like literally putyour ad right in the hands of

(11:21):
people who valet park.
Right, right.
Um, it solved a good problem fortrying to reach, you know, uh,
educated, affluent demographic.
Right.
Well, especially the people thatare trying not to be reached.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Right, right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That's cool.
And then you're leaving an ad ontheir keys.
You're leaving an ad on theirdashboard.
Sure.
'cause you valet so you're,you're leaving these deals all
over, you're littering their carwith, with these deals.

(11:44):
Um, and so that really took offfor me and that kind of gave me
a little pause in that momentof, man law school is something
I think I want to do because Idon't really have another good
idea about what I should do.
And entrepreneurship andcreativity and creating these
cool ideas is something I reallylove.
Yeah.
And so that company, like Isaid, within a few months, like

(12:06):
I had the nuggets, theavalanche, dang Maserati, you
know, I had tons and tons ofclients.
Oh, interesting.
Um, I had a backlog, you know,luxury apartment builders and
condo builders.
I mean, dang.
And so.
Start charging more and more Iimagine as well.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Did you like do like a varietyof them then, or you promised so
many handouts or, yeah, exactly.

(12:27):
Were they tiny tickets or No?
No, they were big.
They're big.
They were like seven or eightinches long.
I mean, they were, they werereally big.
So like a fire virtually.
Mm-hmm.
Properly.
Yeah, exactly.
And because the valet ticket hasto be split into a number of
parts too, right?
Oh, sure.
So one goes on the keys, onegoes on the dashboard, one goes
to the customer, and then youtear the part of the.
From the customer ticket whenthey return the car.
So there's lots of places to,like I said, litter, the, yeah.

(12:49):
How much were those, uh, werethose actual valet tickets?
Do you remember?
What, what did they cost me?
Per, per item?
Yeah.
A buck a piece.
I charged$20,000 Okay.
For a package.
And I, I don't remember exactlyhow many tickets in there, but
it cost me about$3,000 to print.
Okay.
So I, I was doing well, well,just on the tickets and that

(13:09):
doesn't count all thesponsorships and stuff.
And then, and then I got like,trade, so like the nuggets in
the Avalanche gave me court sidetickets.
I, you know, tickets on theglass?
Yeah.
You're rolling.
Oh, I was, and here I fringebenefit and I'm in undergrad,
right.
And I'm like, I don't reallyknow anybody.
So I'm asking these, theseother, you know, 19, 20 year
olds if they wanna go to aNuggets game with me.

(13:30):
And then I, you know, the fourof us sit courtside and they're
like, who the hell is this guy?
Right.
So you roll in all bacon andstuff, sides.
And then I, and then I got aMercedes, you know, so, um, so
yeah, you know, it was, it was,uh, it was a, it was a wild
time, a fun time, but it, itreignited in me this, this like,
Hey man, you're an entrepreneur.
Yeah.
Like, and doing your own thingand coming up with your own

(13:51):
businesses and your owncompanies is, is what your
passion and you consider thisresearcher, writer, speaker, a,
another entrepreneurial venture,is it?
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
I mean, it is certainly right.
Yeah.
Not just anybody can hire youand pay you a proper amount to
come and talk to them and stuff.
Yeah.
So I mean, that's kind of thesegue is like, so I left, I left

(14:11):
that program, um, I enteredanother program.
I, I transferred over to MSUDenver for basically for, for a
reason of residency.
I couldn't get my residency withcu so, um, MSU was gonna, was
like, I don't care.
Yeah.
Right.
And I just wanted to finishRight at that point, I just
wanted to finish my degree, butwhat happened was I took a
sociology class as one of the,one of my last, in the last

(14:33):
year, A capstone course almost.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and just fell in love withit.
Huh.
I mean, really did, you know, itexplained a lot of things to me
about how the structure ofsociety really dictates the
direction a lot of our lives go.
Yeah.
As someone who had struggled alot, you know, my teen parents.
Right.
Well, that's so crazy that youstruggled a lot and then you
just kind of intuited this like,potential value proposition out

(14:55):
of that, that valet ticketindustry and turning a, you
know, a cost into a, a valueeven.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well I had had other businessesbefore that.
I had a couple coffee shops.
Oh, fair.
I had a skateboard and snowboardshop.
I had the record label.
That's a little different.
Well, it was, it was different.
And those, and those all failedspectacularly because they
weren't entrepreneurial enough,you know?
Well, they didn't solve aproblem.

(15:16):
Yeah.
And so that, that's what I, theworld doesn't need more coffee.
Right, exactly.
Exactly.
So I thought, oh, well I likehanging out at coffee shops.
I should open a coffee shop,thus it will be successful.
'cause I like it.
And that was a big lesson Ilearned in the transition from
those companies from back hometo what I did at Valet Ads was,
it's not always about what youlove.
Right.
I loved skateboarding and Iowned a skateboard shop.

(15:38):
Well that didn't work.
I loved going to coffee shops.
So I own a couple coffee shops.
That didn't work.
But you know, then I have thisidea like, oh, I can solve this
problem by putting ads in thehands of rich people by, from
luxury companies.
Right.
Yeah.
Well that solved a real problemand that's why it was so
successful so fast.
So you with coffee shops as muchas you want.
That's right.
Without having down Mercedes.
And Mercedes.
That's right.

(15:59):
Um, yeah, so that was like the,that was the big aha moment for
me was that, you know, I wasalso successful'cause I had
learned a lot about businessthat I probably couldn't
articulate in those previousyears, but I did come to
understand why my businesses hadfailed.
Yeah.
And I applied those lessons toValley ads and then everything
that came after that.
And so, back to, you know, back,go back to sociology.

(16:21):
Yeah.
Back to sociology.
So, you know, in school, um,while I owned valet ads, I took
these sociology courses.
Totally fell in love with it.
I was interested in marketingpersonally and I thought
sociology is a much better fitfor me and marketing than
anything else I was doing.
'cause it explains people,explains structure.
And so even though I wassuccessful in business, when I
finished my undergrad, I didn'twant to stop.

(16:44):
I wanted to keep going.
Yeah.
And so I applied for gradschool.
Um, for sociology, um, I went toCU Denver and, um, you know,
three quarters, um, through thatprogram I got approached about,
um, joining a PhD programupstairs in public affairs.
'cause I had taken a couple ofthose courses too.
Okay.
Had a couple of professors,professors thought you were
smarter than normal Yeah.

(17:05):
And stuff.
Yeah.
Which was flattering as hell.
Really.
I mean, it really was.
And so I applied to that part.
It's probably, I hate to say it,but you're like a big muscular
dude and kind of one just kindof assumes that dudes like you
aren't as smart.
No, that's right.
I'm sorry to say it.
Even me.
I agree.
As a, as a big slim, nonmuscular dude, I'm like, well, I

(17:26):
think guy could beat me up, butat least I'm smarter than he is.
But now I'm not so sure.
Oh, that's funny.
Anyway, keep going.
I'm sorry.
Um.
But, uh, but yeah, that's coolto be and honoring right.
After kind of very struggling abit Oh, yeah.
With your early Yeah.
College, early career.
Yeah.
And, and this, and then the bandstuff.
And nobody likes your coffeethat much.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
You know, and, and you know, I,I, I, my mom got pregnant with

(17:48):
me when she was 15.
I grew up in poverty.
I was very self-conscious myentire life about my status in
the world, right?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Very self-conscious.
Always felt people were likelooking down on me.
And so entering academia and,and having some people say like,
Hey, you're really smart.
Did you have the tattoos andstuff already too?
Uh, I ha I did have a lot of'em,but you know, that, that same

(18:09):
self-esteem issue that I triedto describe also, you know, in
school I was a lot more guarded.
Right.
And especially if I was in agrad, my grad program or
whatever, I thought a lot abouthow do I look and how do I
appear?
Yeah.
Because I want people to take meseriously.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, and I want to get back tothere too.
That was the question I justwrote down was how much did your
family background and havingthat.

(18:29):
Early breakup of your parentsmm-hmm.
And your life and how did thatall, you know, how much of that
played into Yeah.
You know, your eventual passionfor sociology?
Yeah.
Oh, all of it.
Um, and so we can come back tothat Sure.
Because I, we will jump in thetime machine, but Yeah.
That's, it's.
Interesting that we were kind ofgetting to the same place.
Yes.
Oh, for sure.
I mean that, and that's why Iloved it, right?
Yeah.
Explained so much about me.

(18:51):
Yeah.
That I couldn't explain before.
Yeah.
Like, like why is my life alwaysseemed to be a dead end.
Right.
And like in sociology, I couldstart to, well, in valet, the
valet business kind of helpedbreak out of that as well.
Mm-hmm.
Like right.
As a double horse team, kind ofthe success, including financial
success finally.
Yeah.
Alongside being recognized in anacademic fashion.

(19:11):
Yeah, no doubt.
No doubt.
Yeah.
So, um, you know, I got acceptedto that PhD program.
I, I, but my business, I hadanother business that I had
started from that.
Okay.
Um, uh, a legal technologycompany again, I solved a
problem for lawyers who neededtechnology.
It wasn't anything I everthought I was gonna do, but I
started dating a lawyer.
I eventually married her and sheencouraged me to take my special

(19:32):
skillset and apply it to lawyersbecause there wasn't anybody
doing that.
There were a bunch of old dudesthat didn't have any tech
involved in their practice,didn't know anything about tech,
didn't know anything aboutbusiness, didn't know anything
about, yeah.
Digital technology, you know,and so it was a perfect fit for
my skill set at that time and,and grew much faster, much more
profitably.
Like you hired a bunch of peopleand stuff, or were you I took
the guy two that was working forme at valet ads and I said to

(19:56):
him, I said, look, we're gonnastart this side company called
Law Father.
As a joke.
I said, as a joke.
Right.
And why are we calling it LawFather?
'cause my favorite movie's aGodfather.
I just, of that, I can't thinkof anything else.
Right.
And I said, the reason we'regonna do this is because when
lawyers call, we want to actlike we have a company that just
focuses on lawyers, even thoughwe kind of do all sorts of
marketing stuff.

(20:16):
And I, within months, like.
Again, it was a, a scenariowhich just this, I didn't enough
people, I didn't have enoughtime.
I did, I had so many, you know,it, it just grew very fast.
And so my focus switched fromvalet ads to law father.
'cause I saw even more potentialthere.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, and did you.
And maintain valet ads or didyou sell it eventually?

(20:38):
I did.
I, I, I maintained it for awhile.
You know, it, it kind of wentthe way, a blockbuster video in
the sense that, um, uh, withthe, um, with the launch of Uber
and Lyft, a valet, there was alot less demand for valet.
Why were we gonna take the cardowntown?
Exactly.
Exactly.
And so the numbers that I coulddo before that could really show
great exposure for your productand your service were much

(21:00):
lower.
Yeah.
Now you're just kind of screwingaround for a way less money.
Exactly.
You're like.
That's, and a lot of the valleyended up just being at hotels
and stuff, and that's transientpeople who aren't gonna stay and
buy season tickets to thenuggets or a luxury condo
downtown.
So, yeah.
Interesting.
It, it, it just kind of diednaturally, but I did keep it for
a long time.
Yeah.
As, uh, this kind of backgroundthing where I, I only took the
calls of people who wanted to doa deal.

(21:22):
I didn't do any selling and Istill probably made 30,$40,000 a
year in profit.
Yeah, yeah.
Just answering the phone on it.
Yeah.
So, but, uh, yeah, so I got, uh,invited to a PhD program, um,
did a couple credits in there,but law father was just really
taking, blowing up, blowing up.
And so I was kind of duelingwith this scenario where I'd
have five employees who neededmy attention for projects.

(21:43):
I have five customers who neededmy, my attention for, for
services.
And then I had, you know, two orthree professors trying to
remind me that I had a 50 pageor a hundred page paper due like
in two weeks.
Right.
And I, I, I remember I kind of,I got something gotta give.
Yeah, exactly.
I got to like a, the, the winterbreak and just said.
I can't do all of this.
I gotta decide, do I want tostay on this academic route or

(22:05):
do I wanna stay inentrepreneurship?
Could you have hired aprofessional manager for law
father by that point?
I don't think I wassophisticated enough.
Yeah.
To Didn't even actually findthose people.
Right.
Yeah.
Because you were making a ton ofcash.
Yes.
Right.
Like you could have paidsomebody Yes.
Eight grand a month or somethinglike that.
Oh, yes.
Kept your PhD track on track.
Yes.
But, but, but I was the owner.
Right.
And so I didn't understand thatother people could do that.

(22:28):
Right.
Stuff.
Yeah.
I had never grown an enterprisebefore.
Right, right.
I had had.
Only these kind of owneroperator businesses.
Yeah.
And so that with like one helperor whatever, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that alright.
In itself was a change that camelater.
I definitely recognize that.
Well, and the opportunity isstaring in the face and you can
always go back for your PhDprobably.
Right, right, right, right.

(22:48):
If you decide to, right.
Yeah.
Even still.
Even still.
Yeah.
So I kind of tucked my tailbetween my legs.
I went back down to thesociology department and I said,
Hey, can I finish this, uh,thesis and get outta here with
my masters?
And they said, sure.
So I worked over the summer todo that.
Um, and, and then yeah.
Moved on to business.
Yeah.
So then I a, I enter academia afew years later.
Okay.
Again, when, um.

(23:09):
Uh, MSU launches this, um,student, this is Metro State.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, uh, the Student BusinessIncubator program.
Okay.
And a minor in entrepreneurship.
So this was their kind of firstforay into Yeah.
Academic entrepreneurship.
Yeah.
Someone who I had gone to schoolwith knew that I had gone on to
start a number of businesses,had been successful.

(23:31):
She reached out to me and simplyasked me if I would come down
and be a mentor to the studentswho were in the incubator
program.
And within two weeks she hadhired me to teach three classes.
Chair Yeah, exactly.
Of the program.
I mean, the, the semester afterthat I, I was, I was the title
dean, so I know.
So it was really, it was reallya fast evolution and I, I

(23:52):
absolutely became like the topperson in the program.
I taught, taught three outta thefour required courses.
It was very successful.
They eventually decided to turnit into a, um, a full on major.
Oh, cool.
And because of that, because ofaccreditation and stuff, they,
they kind of shut it down for ayear while they retool it.
And at that point, that capable.
Yeah.
Like, dang, I love this.

(24:13):
I thought I was gonna do it fora semester or two.
Right.
And I ended up doing it foralmost four years, I think.
And you're growing law father onthe side, or?
I grew law father, I launchedQueen Anne Pillow Company and I
just start trial line, mysoftware company.
Okay.
So I'm doing a lot.
So were you a software expert?
Not at all.
And so what did that.
What problem did that companysolve?

(24:33):
So, you know, law father evolvedfrom its initial launch of just
being a web development andonline marketing company to kind
of a full service digitalconsultancy.
Mostly focused on how helpinglawyers give better
presentations and trial.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
So we would sit and trial andrun others.
Exhibits and demonstratives, butwe would also create exhibits

(24:54):
and demonstratives like you aremaking PowerPoints for'em and
stuff, and 3D animations andWow.
Interesting.
And, and then a lot of, um,graphic timelines.
Okay.
And so we would make these bigposter boards of timelines of a
case Sure.
So that the jury could seedifferent This is where you
started going crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this is what happened afterthat.
And then this is where he wentall the way at crazy.

(25:14):
So that's why you need to lockhim up.
He ain't gotten crazy.
But we did do a lot of criminalstuff, but we did civil stuff.
Oh, okay.
It was a lot of, uh, we, wecould do construction defects,
we did industrial equipmentdamage, stuff like that.
Okay.
But mostly what we did waspersonal injury.
And so we'd say we maketimelines of, you know, Steve,
uh, was a, a hiker, a biker, afamily man and whatever.
And then he got in this caraccident, he got this brain

(25:36):
injury and this is everythingthat happened to him, him
afterwards.
Right.
Or especially this accident atwork.
Yeah, exactly.
And then he, you know, saw achiropractor 15 times and he
still can't hike or ride hisbike properly.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So we could, we could show, youknow, what happened to somebody
over the course of their injury.
Yeah.
Um, and that was a reallycumbersome process, right?
Like it was a very heavilygraphic design intent.

(25:58):
Well, huge stakes and hugestakes sometimes.
And if we're in trial and alawyer here's more evidence and
decides they want to add morestuff to the timeline, all we
could do is throw a sticky noteon there.
Right.
It just looked bad.
And we also made timelines formediation as well, like stuff
that would happen before trial,you know, for lawyers trying to
get cases settled.
And in all that process, thattedious work and that inability

(26:20):
to adjust timelines on the fly,I thought, hey, let's make our
own.
I had some coders in there'causewe still had our website
business.
Sure.
I said, let's make our, see ifwe can make our own timeline,
web based timeline tool that wecan just give to our lawyers.
Our lawyers can enter, plug inthe information, it's date
driven.
Yeah.
And then if they need to changethings on the flyer, whatever,
it's not a big deal.

(26:41):
It doesn't require a graphicdesigner start$149 a month,
something like that.
They could use it, whatever.
Yeah.
So I mock this thing up with,with my coder.
I bring it home to my wife, who,who's a lawyer.
I say, what do you think ofthis?
And she basically says, I thinkthis is the future of your
company.
Like, she's like, this isamazing.
You know?
Um, and so yeah, we kind of makea decision.

(27:01):
I was looking to find ascalable, I.
Product anyway.
Yeah.
I was getting really tired ofcrawling around courtrooms,
moving televisions, monitors,projectors, screens.
Like I was just tired.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And my, and and, and you'restill boots on the ground doing
that stuff.
You haven't really quite movedinto the proper owner seat?
I'm the owner, but I have a lotof staff at this point.

(27:22):
Right.
I think at some point at lawFather, I had 15 to 20, but
you're still crawling aroundprogram rooms and stuff, but I'm
still leading it, you know, I'mstill the main tech guy and I
was tired of it.
Yeah.
Um, and I wanted somethingbigger.
I could, I, by now I'm startingto learn about how business, how
to scale business.
Yeah.
That I don't have to be the guydoing everything.
You met a few more people withexamples of that.
Exactly.
I saw that you were involvedwith Entrepreneurs Organization

(27:44):
and that for quite a while.
Mm-hmm.
Was that mm-hmm.
That was it.
That was along these days.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
I started there in theiraccelerator program.
Okay.
Which is for companies between$250,000 and$999,000.
Okay.
And, um, I went through theirthree year accelerator program
and did get my businesses up toa million dollars.
Graduated.
And I'm still proudly a memberof eo.
Cool.
In fact, I just finished mypresidency last year, so I ended

(28:06):
up becoming president of thisorganization, which is really,
is there.
The whole thing?
Or of the chapter?
Chapter?
The Colorado chapter.
The Colorado chapter.
Yeah.
So that's probably quite a fewindividual chapters Or how does,
how are they smaller groupsthat, how does that work?
So chapters are usually citydriven, but ours is state driven
because we don't have such a,um, we don't have a, you don't

(28:28):
have a huge membership inColorado.
We, we, Boulder, Boulder membersare part of Colorado, Fort
Collin members, or Potter,Colorado.
Denver or Colorado Springs.
So right now we still just havea Colorado chapter.
However, we have members indifferent cities.
Gotcha, gotcha.
And other states likeCalifornia, they have the LA
chapter, the Silicon Valleychapter, San Francisco, we just
happened to be statewide.
So at the time that I, uh, leftas president, I think we were

(28:50):
around 180 members.
Okay.
So, so all business owners witha million dollars or more in
annual revenue?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep.
And, and then do you havesmaller groups that get together
and stuff, or you just have likea Yeah.
So within quarterly thing with180 people?
No, no, no.
So within that, we are brokeninto what are called forums.
Okay.
And so these are Now I get it.

(29:10):
Yeah.
We at local Think tank, we callit a chapter is like Oh, gotcha.
Each little unit is a chapterand we don't have a forum
obviously.
So our your forums are ourchapters.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And how many people are in aforum?
Like seven to nine.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yep.
Um, and yeah, then when Ifinished my presidency, I
actually entered leadership inthe US West, which is our Okay.
Our region.

(29:30):
So now I serve as an expert tothe region.
Yeah.
Um, and, and not, uh, so much atthe local chapter, even though
I'm still a member of the localchapter.
And I guess, can you, uh, for alot of people they don't know
much about Entrepreneur'sorganization.
If you're not an entrepreneur,you've probably never heard of
it.
Right.
And even if you are, you, youmay not have.
Yeah.
Um, can you kind of give a,it's, I.

(29:51):
A peer advisory with somesimilarities to local think
tank, but like a, like volunteerleaders of Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Of forums from time rotatingkind of basis.
And, and then there's, I guessa, a whole statewide structure
for all 180 people and stuff.
Yeah, for sure.
So Entrepreneurs Organizationis, it's, uh, it's different
from other businessorganizations, which are

(30:12):
generally like leads groups ornetworking groups.
Sure.
And that, um, EO Entrepreneur'sOrganization, EO is, um, uh, a
learning driven organization.
Okay.
Uh, meant to teach lawyers howto, I.
Um, enhance the value they getfrom the, their businesses or
the value they create in theirbusinesses.
Sure.
But rather sometimes bothrelated.

(30:32):
Yeah.
But rather than being strictlybusiness focused, we look at the
intersection of business, um,personal life and family.
And so we give equal attentionto those.
So we might have learning eventsaround how to be a better
father, right.
Sure.
Or, um, how to plan for college.
Then we'll also have, you know,how to, um, increase your cash
flow or get a loan from the SBASure.

(30:53):
As well as personal stuff likehow to deal with your demons or
trauma or some of the stuff thatI do now.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, um, yeah, we try andgive equal attention to all
three of those areas.
Okay.
I didn't realize that.
I thought it was really businessfocused more.
No, no.
It's, it's, it's family focusedas much as it's personally
focused.
As much as it's businessfocused.
Yeah.
We say, uh, around loco we saytwo parts business, one part
personal.

(31:13):
Mm-hmm.
Kind of just as a very.
Simple, but you're like a third,a third, a third in some
respects.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and then each person kindof creates their own experience,
right?
Sure.
You don't have to, but it'sstill a business person's group.
Exactly.
Ultimately, so hard to separatethat.
Right.
It starts entrepreneur'sorganization.
Yeah.
So I always say the entrepreneurdoes come first.
Um, and um, and you do have tohave a business.
You have to be the founder of abusiness or the co-founder of a

(31:35):
business.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
So like if you buy somebody'sbusiness, that doesn't count.
Um, it, it, it can, but itrequires a little more scrutiny.
Okay.
Fair.
And there's also an examinationof your journey from when you
bought it.
Right.
Fair.
So if you're, if you bought itand you're in the process of
wrecking it, uh, sorry.
Or if you bought it, you know,if you bought it, it was very
small and you grew it over thelast few years.

(31:56):
Right, right.
Then that indicated kind of apositive growth environment.
Yeah.
Fair.
Because like you said, it is apeer group.
Right, right.
And so we're looking for peoplewho have similar or shared
experiences in which we canlearn from all.
Well, if you've got all theproblems.
And none of the solutions thatit's mm-hmm.
Hard to mm-hmm.
Uh, find value in thatmembership.
Yeah.
For everybody else.
For you, for sure.
For sure.
So, okay.
So you, so, so at thistransition point into this

(32:20):
software company from mm-hmm.
Uh, kind of a service company.
Mm-hmm.
You also joined eo?
I joined EO before that.
Before that too.
Shortly.
Yeah, before I spun that out.
I can't remember exactly whatyear I joined.
Yeah.
But sometime before.
But yeah, so I joined, reallystarted getting some perspective
on.
Yeah.
Oh, I can hire people to doactual hard things and stuff
like that.
Yeah.
So, you know, that was, thatwas, you know, I, I had been

(32:43):
trying a lot in business throughtrial and error, and what EO
told me, uh, showed me andtaught me were kind of how hard
and fast rules about like, whendo you hire, how, how do you,
you know, what is, how I hadnever thought about cash flow
and how cash flow allows you todo different things in your
business.
You know?
I mean, I was just trying to,like, I thought if I made 30,
40,$50,000 a year, like, oh man,I'm making it because I'm, I'm

(33:06):
working for myself.
Exactly.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But like, um, how do you scale?
How do you hire management?
You know, just a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
How do you grow from a halfmillion to 2 million?
Yeah.
And increase your mm-hmm.
Net profit margin all along theway.
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
Whatever.
Yeah.
So those were things, um, that Iwas not familiar with that
really got taught to me in EOand then really allowed me to.
To see my business in terms ofnumbers to plan my business,

(33:29):
which is something I'd neverdone before.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And to grow according to thatplan.
And um, uh, almost as soon as Igraduated from eo, I started
another business, or I'm sorry,from EO Accelerator and into eo,
I started another businesscalled Queen Anne Pillow
Company.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, and grew that from$0 to amillion dollars in 18 months.
So if you look at law father, ittook me about 10 years.

(33:52):
Wow.
To get to a million dollars.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then once I learned allthese things, I learned from eo
the next business, it took meless than two years.
So, wow.
Um, and how did that conceptcome along?
Why was there a pillow companyin your future?
Because at this point in time, Ihad a terrible back problem.
Okay.
That eventually, um, resulted intwo surgeries and, um, the, the

(34:12):
whole time before thosesurgeries, I was, I was seeing
these ads, oh, this pillow willsave your neck pain, blah, blah,
blah.
And, and I was like, is there apillow out there that helps with
back pain?
Yeah.
I couldn't find one.
But what I learned is that manbuying pillows is like a really
interesting experience.
Some are$4, some are$400.
Right.
You don't know what thedifference between'em is.
Yeah.
Like I couldn't explain it.

(34:34):
Um, and this was, you know, like2000.
12.
It was 11.
Okay.
2011, 12.
I mean, it was kind of the startof direct to consumer companies.
Yeah.
Fair.
Um, and I had all this expertisein online marketing already
because I had been doingpay-per-click advertising and
SEO for lawyers.
Gotcha.
I saw that the online pillowpurchasing experience wasn't

(34:56):
awesome and wasn't Its infancy.
Yep.
And I thought, man, if I couldcombine my marketing expertise
with solving this problem ofhelping people pick the pillow
that's right for them mm-hmm.
Maybe I could be successful.
And so I launched Queen EndPillow really under the value
proposition that I will teachyou how to buy the best pillow
for you.

(35:16):
If you buy it from me and if youbuy it from me and it doesn't
work out, I will continue toreplace that pillow until you
get a model that works.
Oh, fascinating.
And so even though people werelike, you're crazy, right?
Yeah.
Because shipping a pillow costs$20, I'm sure.
Right?
That seems like a crazybusiness.
And so you go back and forth.
The back and forth.
But I have, because somebodytakes you up on the, we'll
replace it if it doesn't work,but Yeah.

(35:37):
And we'll keep replacing it, butyou had to kind of get good at
getting them the right onefirst.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like how did you do that?
We created bunch Matrix focusgroups.
Uh, we created a matrix.
I looked at you and all yourfriends studies and, um, well,
no, I had this academicbackground.
Sure.
So I'd look at sleep studies.
Okay.
I would go look at reviews ofother pillows.
I would try and understand whatpeople were complaining about
and what their expectationswere.
Yeah.
I thought, thought if I couldfill those expectations.

(36:00):
I looked at side sleepers, backsleepers, snores, tall people,
short people, fat people, skinnypeople, you know, and like just
tried to come up with thismatrix that.
Let people, you know, allergies.
Do you want a cool pillow?
Do you want a warm pillow?
And finally created this matrixof, I don't know, like 10 or 12
variables, and you could kind ofgo like this and say, okay, this
should be the right pillow forme.
Right.
Boop, boop boop uhhuh.

(36:20):
Yeah, exactly.
And if I was wrong, or if thematrix matrix was wrong, we
would replace it.
And then people, I guess you hada, a, a margin on each pillow
sold of course, as well then.
So they could still buy the 400pillow or the$40 pillow.
Yeah.
I mean, our pillows wereexpensive for sure.
I think ours.
And did you make'em?
We did, we made'em in SouthCarolina.
Okay.
Yeah.

(36:40):
So Oh, oh shit.
Yeah.
The US supplier.
How did you find somebody tomake the pillows and how did
you, so you, you startedresearching all these pillows,
matrix them, and then you kindof hit different target markets
based on who was where, kind of,and did a, did a spread of
products.
Yeah.
Kind.
Yeah.
Kind of like that.
I mean, like not fast.
I mean, you didn't fast stealtheir designs or whatever, but

(37:01):
that I, yeah, I wouldn't saylike that.
I, I was not a pillow genius.
I didn't know shit about that.
Right.
Like, how do you get a productto sell in the first place?
It seems like that's a longjourney.
All I knew was like, I want abetter pillow for myself and I
wanted to understand thisproblem so I could sleep better.
All right.
You know?
And so, um, I reached out to anumber of pillow manufacturers
asking them if they would bewilling to help me make some

(37:22):
pillows for myself and test outdifferent materials.
And everybody except one companyignored me.
And the company that answered mewas in South Carolina.
And they were not a consumercompany.
They were an industrial pillowcompany, if you will.
So they made pillow embeddingproducts for hospitals and
hotels.
Sure.
And so I was no threat to them.
Right.
They were happy to screw aroundwith me.

(37:43):
Right.
You give'em a little fun littleproject.
Yeah.
I'd send them some ideas, they'dsend me some samples, I'd dick
with them, send them back,they'd sell it back, you know,
and I suddenly, I got thesepillows I really liked.
I said, I, I think I might starta company.
Did you have a few thousanddollars invested by now?
Sure.
In a bunch of hours.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dozens and dozens, if nothundreds.
Yeah.
But you know, it probably costme a few thousand bucks.

(38:04):
But your back felt better afteryou found the right below.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Okay.
And so I was just largely usingtheir materials.
Right.
Because they, they had down,down in feather Sure.
Polyester, they had all thesebins of things and they had just
foam, let me pick Yeah.
Memory foam just coming outabout that time.
Yeah.
And then just kinda let me pickwhat I wanted to do.
And so then when I made therecipe, if you will, for what I
thought were good pillows for meand good pillows that I wanted

(38:26):
to sell, I just used theirmaterials in my recipe.
So where I might put 48 ouncesof, uh, I might have a 48 ounce
pillow with 25% down, 75%.
Mm-hmm.
Whatever.
And according to this matrix,you've got these different kind
of mixes.
Yeah.
And some are thicker.
Mm-hmm.
And some are thinner, that kindof thing.
Yeah.
Some are softer, some are moresturdy.
Right, right.
You know, um, I over timedeveloped a line of.

(38:51):
Uh, probably six models andthree SKUs in each model.
So 18 different variants.
Right.
Okay.
So you've got king, queen, andstandard.
Yep.
And then whatever the differentfills were.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And um, at first I used theirmaterial and then, um, over time
I started to source my own stuffand all direct consumer, all

(39:11):
direct.
Your, your FedEx bill is bigevery month.
Yeah.
And then we went to Amazon.
Okay.
And that really, then thecompany really took off.
Okay.
It, we were early to Amazon.
We were, you know, one of theearly manufacturers, brand,
brand registered manufacturersthere.
Gotcha.
And, um, that was the realcatalyst to our growth.
Okay.
And simplified our process.

(39:31):
Um, and how, what was the growthof your team like during this
time?
Like.
Um, you know, so I largely, youhad these guys in South Carolina
making your pillows, right?
Yep.
And you just go, yep.
And they had a problem.
Did they direct ship and stufftoo?
Mm-hmm.
They did.
Yeah.
So I would go out there every,every couple months I would
check in my product.
You know, I, I did have toimport some stuff there.
Um, it would come up and a shipin Savannah and then it would be

(39:54):
trucked 35 miles to Bufort, or,I mean, I was getting into
things that like I neverimagined I would sure.
But I thought it was so cool.
Right.
I was learning so much.
I know I had containers comingfrom China, you know, I was, I
was badass man.
And I love to go out there andcheck the product.
Well, you're in this communitywith EO besides, and they're all
like encouraging you andcheering you on.

(40:14):
You're like, horse dude, yougotta get it straight from
China.
Course you can't be doing a,paying a distributor for that
course.
You got container words of,that's course, of course.
Yeah.
So I, I learned a lot, um, in,in that, you know, where to
source materials, how to createa supply chain.
You know,'cause we didn't haveanything made in China, but
there were some things we had toget from China.
Right.
Everybody has to get theirfabric from China.
Um, uh, uh, they just, we justdon't have that here.

(40:36):
Still makes sense,unfortunately.
But we could still cut and sewhere.
We can still fill it.
Yeah.
Fill and sew it here and youknow, we can do a packaging and
inserts and all that.
Yeah.
So I would have, you know, boxescoming from one place, bags from
the other, inserts from theother.
This kind of fell from here.
This coming from Canada, thiscoming from Europe.
And it was all coming to thefactory.
Right, right.
And I would go there and checkit in and, um.
Testing the different types andwhatever.

(40:57):
Yeah.
Making sure it wasn't damaged.
Make sure it still felt good andyeah, it was a, it was a lot of
fun.
And then you're doing themarketing, doing, you know,
getting reviews after yourcustomers are happy.
Yeah.
It's when you do replace apillow, making sure they get the
right automated email for that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, going back to thatidea of can you sell pillows to
people who can't feel them,right?
Like, this was the pushback thatI got from everyone.
Right?
No one's gonna buy a pillowonline because they're not gonna

(41:20):
be able to touch it or hold it.
And that's when I said, well,I'm gonna make this incredible
offer to them.
Right.
That if it's not right, I'llcontinue to replace it.
And I got that idea from TonyHesh when he put out that book,
uh, what was it called?
Something Happiness About HisJourney to Build Zappos.
And he said, everyone had saidthe same thing to him and he
said, that won't matter if wecreate the greatest customer

(41:42):
experience in the world.
Yeah.
And that's what I applied toQueen Anne.
And what I learned is I.
Rather than looking at thosepeople who continue to eat up
costs and profit and shipping.
Mm-hmm.
As a bad thing.
What I learned is when you madethem happy, they became the
biggest advocates of yourcompany.
Yep.
They got online and they toldeverybody about how amazing you

(42:06):
were, how accommodating.
Yep.
And it turned into anadvertising strategy.
Right.
Well, and and picky peopleeverywhere are like, holy shit.
Yeah.
This lady returned her pillowfive times and they still made
her happy.
Yeah.
And that could be me.
Yeah.
And imagine if I hadn't beennice to that lady.
Yeah.
She would've taken the sameverocity of her anger and
disappointment online as she didher happiness.

(42:28):
Do you, do you know, or rememberlike what percentage of your
customers actually did.
Ask for a different pillow.
Yeah.
Like it was like five to 8%.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Which is about what I alwayspromised.
I said, and then like 90% ofthem probably were happy with
the next one.
Yep.
Yeah.
They would just say it was alittle soft or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And when it came to down inFeather,'cause our pillows
ranged from$72 to up to$400.

(42:50):
Okay.
And when it came to down or downin Feather, I mean, down is
incredibly expensive material.
Yeah.
If you buy it, it's heavy too.
Shipping.
Yeah.
Right.
But if you buy feather pillowsthat are like 20 bucks or
whatever, you're just buyingfeather.
And to be honest, you could bebuying chicken feather.
I'm not lying.
Um, but to buy a a hundredpercent down, goose down, which
is what we did.
Okay.
Goose is, is really expensive.

(43:10):
So in some of those cases, wewould just take the pillow back,
send it back to the factory,have it up, opened up again, and
either add, take a little bit.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Makes sense.
I mean, that was a huge, youknow, our cost was massive.
Yeah.
And so it made more sense for usjust to take the pill and pay
for the shipping.
You got containers going backand forth all the time.
Mm-hmm.
Or was it all individual shippedall these pillows, those direct

(43:31):
to consumer ones?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We just say put it back in thebox.
We'd email them, uh, UPS returnlabel.
We would come back to ourfactory, we'd adjust it, sew it
back shut, and send it back to'em.
Man, UPS loved you.
They did, uh, consistentshipping.
Of course they did.
Yeah.
Um, well I know you wanted totalk a fair bit about kind of
the next adventure, um, butmaybe.

(43:52):
So does it make sense to go intokind of like the departure from,
um, the pillow business?
Yeah.
And, and then meanwhile, is thissoftware business like
flourishing?
Are you distracted along theway?
Are you doing'em both at thesame time?
What's going on over there?
Yeah.
Um, so, sorry, that's twoquestions, which, sorry.
No, queen Ann.

(44:12):
I think we started in 2011.
Okay.
A few years after that, myfather-in-law retired and he
called me and he said,basically, I'm bored.
He said, do you have anythingthat I can work on with you?
Okay.
Well, the pillow company wasn'tmy priority at the time.
So I said, well, I have thispillow company I've launched.
I haven't, I haven't given it asmuch attention as I'd like.
So if you want to take it over,I'll tell you everything that
you need to do.

(44:32):
Okay.
And then, um, you know, you andI can, and was this pre-Amazon
and stuff?
So this was pre-Amazon?
Right.
Okay.
So.
So he agrees.
And I'll, I'll just make a longstory short, you know, we start
to have way more success thaneither of us really imagined.
I think he was looking forsomething to do something.
He was a little easy.
Pay him a couple work.
Yeah, a couple thousand bucks amonth and whatever.
But we, we just, we, we just, wehad a good product that we had

(44:55):
it, we had a good system.
Um, and it really took off.
And so we ran that for, uh,eight.
Eight or nine years together.
Okay.
Um, and very successfully.
We had a great partnership andum, but COVID hit, we had a few,
we had a month of like, oh shit,we just built this amazing
company and now no one's buyinganything.
Right.
And then all of a sudden thatchanged, the free money flows

(45:16):
into the economy like crazy.
Well, everyone's at home now,and so they start replacing
their betting and they wannamake everything more
comfortable.
Well, and plus they got$1,200debit cards Yeah.
True.
And stuff like that.
True, true.
Yeah.
So Queen Anne went from goodgrowth to all of a sudden this
kind of hockey stick growth.
Yeah.
And you know, he, I mean, bythis time he's now eight years
outta his retirement and he'sstarting to think about really
retire.

(45:36):
Right, right.
And, um, and you know, our cashflow, we, we, we.
Uh, we didn't have awesome cashflow because the more we sold,
the more product we had to, tobuy the longer it sat on ships,
you know?
And so it was just all of ourmoney was constantly being
reinvested.
Yeah.
But your balance was blown up.
Yeah.
Right.
So it it, it was kind of like,hey, I, you know, we we're not
in agreement about what we wantto do next.

(45:58):
Right.
The challenges we're gonna haveto bring in another partner, a
capital partner mm-hmm.
Or something like that, tocontinue to grow at this rate.
Right.
And probably a new manager'causeYeah.
Father-in-law doesn't wanna workthat much harder either.
Right, right, right.
Exactly.
Which he was always honestabout.
Sure.
So, you know, um, and so we saidmaybe this is a good time to
sell the company.
And so we, we, we approached abroker, uh, decided what we want

(46:20):
and got an offer for exactlywhat we asked for, like right
off the bat.
So, I mean, it, it was a, it wasa really awesome deal.
And then in that I thought, youknow what?
Okay, so this is gonna gimmesome time to turn my attention
back to trial line, which wasthe software company Yeah.
That I had just gotten off theground.
It was a similar story.
We launched that company January1st, 2019.

(46:41):
Got a ton of awards for, youknow, legal tech and all this
stuff.
Everyone was like, this is acutting edge kick ass best of
whatever thing.
Got some clients, but had, had,wasn't crushing it yet.
I wasn't crushing it.
Had dumped a ton of my moneyinto development.
All of my money.
Well, back in those days.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
And it was so much moreexpensive to do development.
It was so much A simple app waslike a quarter million.

(47:02):
Yes, yes.
So I'm, I'm getting close tothat figure myself, you know?
Right.
And uh, then COVID hits and itwas the same thing, right?
It was like all that momentum,all that investment felt like it
had just been Right.
Just sucked out of the room andit was gonna be lost forever.
But similarly, as.
Lawyers realize, okay, we'regonna have to do a lot more of

(47:22):
this online.
Mm.
We're gonna need, and my, my, myproduct was SaaS based.
Yeah.
So it was browser based.
It's, it's, and instead of yourunning around putting easels
in, freaking stands up withpictures.
Yeah.
You can't do that on a zoom.
Right.
During a zoom hearing or a Zoommediation or zoom trial.
Right.
And so trial line started tobecome kind of a popular option
for this new, uh, virtual legalpractice.

(47:44):
And so it started to grow again.
And so after selling Queen Annefor a year, going back to work
on trial line for a year, I justknew, to be honest, that I was
just tired.
Yeah.
I was just, I had been through alot.
I had been pedal to the metalwith three companies for eight
years.
And when I sat back and lookedat the fact that, I think it was

(48:05):
my 15 year anniversary for lawfather or something like that.
Okay.
It showed up on LinkedIn.
Yep.
Knowing that I had always wantedto be a musician, you know, and
a writer, and I still can, youknow, still I, you know, but I,
I just felt like I was, itwasn't what I would've picked
for myself or predicted formyself 15 years before that.

(48:26):
Sure.
And, and while I loved it, Iloved building companies.
I, I definitely loved sellingcompanies.
Right.
But I, I, I just felt like I hadan opportunity to sell trial
line as well.
I had sold Queen and Pillow andI could really make, so that
went for fresh.
Yeah.
I could really make a freshstart for myself.
Yeah.
And so I made the decision justto sell trial line.

(48:47):
That did not happen as easily asQueen Anne Pillow did.
Okay.
Yep.
But when it did happen, ithappened with a great company, a
great guy that's stilloperating.
That's still operating.
And so I sold that about, uh,it'll be two years.
It's two years this month.
Okay.
Two years in June, and then yougo into sabbatical mode.
Yeah.
And by the way, do you need totake a break or anything?
You good?
No, I'm good.

(49:07):
All right.
Let's keep cruising.
Um, I had non-competes with bothof them.
Yep.
It made it a little difficult tofigure out what I was gonna do
next.
I had a little money in the bankand I decided that, um, you know
what, I'm gonna go back to this,this work that I wanted to do
that feels a little moreimportant to me.
And by that time, I had startedtalking about my drug addiction.

(49:30):
Mm.
I had developed a drugaddiction, um, over that period
of time.
During the season.
Yeah.
Okay.
During that season of balls tothe wall, three companies or
whatever, because of my backproblem.
Mm.
I had become addicted toopioids.
Mm.
And.
I didn't appreciate the level ofmy addiction.
Yeah.
Um, until I started running outof pills more frequently and

(49:53):
then started buying pills fromYeah.
People then started buying pillsfrom the streets more than your
doctor's willing to prescribe deand, and then at some point had
this like, full blown addictionOh, wow.
That I was totally hiding fromeverybody, you know, my family,
my friends, my EO members, myforeign mates, everybody.
I was terribly embarrassed aboutit.

(50:14):
I had come from a family ofaddicts.
My dad had died from hisaddiction.
My brothers had been in prisonfor their addictions.
I always thought I was the goodone that I had escaped it.
Right.
And I hadn't.
And, um, and it was tough.
And so I, I, I did get throughthat.
What did that, what did that doto you?
Like, like more from more from amental, emotional state?

(50:36):
Yeah.
Like, did it make you.
Short, um, or distracted, orwhat is the real life impacts?
'cause we all hear about opioidaddiction.
Yeah.
But we might not know how torecognize the people we love.
You know, there's physical,there's the physical addiction
and Sure.
I'm sorry.
There's the physicalconsequences and mental Yeah.
And then there's the mentalconsequences.
Right.
And the mental consequences werethis constant story in my head

(50:58):
that I am a piece of shit that Ihave fucked up, that I'm a
hypocrite.
What?
Yes.
Because.
Yeah.
I thought I had got away fromall of that, right?
Mm-hmm.
Like I said, I come from thisfamily of addicts.
Sure.
To all my friends and family.
I was the success story.
Right?
Yeah.
To the people in eo.
I was a great success story.
Sure.
And so I couldn't talk toanybody about it.

(51:20):
Right.
Yeah.
Because that would've totallydamaged who I thought I was to
everybody, and put at risk thisvision I had of myself as a hero
who could be an example topeople who could get out of
their troubles.
Yeah.
And it was very isolated,escape, poverty, escape.
Mm-hmm.
The music industry if you hadto.
Mm-hmm.
And was this your first brushwith addiction?
Yes.
Like in your music career andNo, no booze, no cocaine, no.

(51:44):
Whatever.
No, because, because before thattime I was so scared of drugs
and addiction because of myfamily.
Sure.
And so, even though I wasabsolutely exposed to
everything, you can imagine,yeah.
I'm sure outside of the musicscene in Seattle and la you
know, in the late nineties andearly two thousands.
Yes.
Outside of drinking, um, which Ialso was moderate about and, and

(52:07):
would take breaks from just tomake sure I was okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Anything past that was like ano-go zone for me.
Yeah.
You know, I was very much like,no, my dad dies even in
Colorado, weed's gettinglegalized and stuff, you know,
dude, I I, I do, I do weed now.
Okay.
Okay.
And it took me a long time toget comfortable with that.
Yeah.
And that only came because of,of my opioid addiction, kind of.

(52:27):
I still have kinda alternativeto that in some ways.
I ha I still have back pain, Istill struggle with back issues.
Right, right.
And it has done a And how isthat comparatively, like in your
mental and physical healthcomparing the two pre
treatments, we'll call it?
Yeah.
Night and day.
I mean, on the physical side ofopioids.
I mean, if your question islike, how can you maybe tell
that somebody is maybe Yeah,yeah.

(52:47):
You know, a little bit more, Iwas thinking more in the brain
side, but also like.
I, I mean, how people recognizewhen somebody's having a problem
like that.
Yeah.
You know, they look outwardlysuccessful.
Yeah.
Um, I had, I did have my, mybrother worked for me and I, he,
although he didn't know theextent of my addiction, he had
been an addict.
And I, and I think he knew I wason opioids, but he would cover

(53:11):
for me a lot because, you know,you have two things.
One, when you're high right.
You, you, you can get sick,which is kind of fun.
I mean, but you also, what doyou mean?
You can get sick?
You can get you, like you puke,nauseous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, so, so here you gethigh, like, high, high.
I, I think about opioids is kindof like.
You get numb, but you actuallyget high like a, well, a cocaine

(53:31):
or a heroin, guess you wouldn'tknow if, for me, getting numb
was the part that I loved.
Right.
That's That's getting high.
Yeah.
Getting numb was the part likeGotcha.
Because all of this trauma thatI had had in my childhood, then
it gets exacerbated by the factthat I feel like a total fucking
loser.
Right.
And so I just wanna do more andmore of these drugs because I
want it to get quieter andquieter.
I mean, that was the addictionpart in it starts with the pain

(53:53):
in the back.
It starts with the pain and thenthe pain goes away.
But at the same time, that wasmy brain thoughts too.
All these voices go away.
Right.
And so when I took that firsthandful of pills, it was like,
oh wow, man.
So much quiet, so much quieter.
I mean that's, and I, and I hadnever felt like that in my life.
Yeah.
I had just always had thisconstant, I've really never
taken any of'em.

(54:14):
Yeah.
Like even, you know, I hadhydrocodone or mm-hmm.
You know, something like thatfor when I broke my leg a little
bit.
Yeah.
But I've never really, I.
Yeah.
Experience, like the strongerstuff that we've had in the last
20 years around.
Yeah.
I mean, I probably passactually.
I mean, you could pass.
You could pass.
Yeah, for sure.
I, I think, you know, it'sdifferent for different people,
right?
There's plenty of people whohave taken opioids and been
fine.

(54:34):
Yeah.
Um, you know, it's like me andmy brothers all ended up with
addictions and we all wereaddicted to different drugs
Yeah.
For different reasons.
Right.
And my father and my uncle also,my dad was an alcoholic.
My uncle's thing was crack.
My brother Jay's thing washeroin.
My thing was opioids.
Mm-hmm.
And my other brother, Matt, histhing was meth.
Right.
Oh, and.
And to big variety of there.
I know quite a party, everybodytogether, but, but yeah,

(54:55):
exactly.
But to all of us, all thoseother things we didn't have any
interest in.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like we all had like our onething.
And so for me, fascinat opioidswas my one thing.
I think we were all trying tosolve the same problem.
We'd all come from theseterrible circumstances.
We had these terrible thoughtsgoing on, or chronic, chronic
berating in our head, or chronicquestions about our value and
worth in the world.

(55:16):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we each had found somethingeither on purpose or
accidentally that quieted it,and mine was a total accident.
Yeah.
You know, at the point that Istarted taking opioids, I was
not thinking about my mentalhealth.
Right.
My back hurts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know, so on the mentalside, I talked about being, oh,
so did you come clean likepublicly and stuff?
Yeah.
That time after the sales andstuff.
What was that like?
So this is the whole point ofthat story.

(55:37):
I'm sorry.
No, it's good.
We'd like to schools aroundhere.
The, the point of that wassaying when you said, what did
you end up doing after you soldthe companies?
Well, a few years before that Ihad come clean in.
Okay.
Just in my entrepreneurshipcommunity about my addiction.
Wow.
And the reason I did that wasbecause I realized that if I
could have been as successful asI was, and I could have been

(55:59):
perceived as as great as I was,but I was lying and struggling.
Yeah.
And holding yourself back, thatthere were probably other people
in my community too who were inthe same place.
And so I wanted to be the personto raise his hand and say, look,
I am an addict.
I've been a drug addict.
I did it for a number ofdifferent reasons, but I suspect

(56:19):
that there's some people outhere who are going through the
same thing.
And I want to be the person youcan come to if you're
struggling.
And I want to be that first stepin getting better because I've
been sick and I've been betterand better is better.
Yeah, yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, um, and so I gave a talk, aprivate talk.
Uh, man, it was scary.
Yeah.
And I, I remember I went to mywife too beforehand and I said,

(56:41):
look, this, she knows about thisthe whole time, or Well, she,
yeah, later.
She knew longer than she, sheknew longer than I thought she
did, for sure.
And when I finally came clean,she definitely knew.
It's about time you came clean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, um, I said, look, this is,this is what I feel called to do
right now.
Sorry.
Um.

(57:02):
I wanna help, you know?
And, um, and I said, if I dothis, I'm gonna go public.
And that could be embarrassing.
I, it was a conversation I hadwith my kids.
She was like a lawyer in townstill and stuff, right?
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
How old are your kids?
Uh, 16 and 18.
Now or now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, um, so they're oldenough to know what's going on
when dad, they, they are nowmaybe eight years ago, or It
was, it was probably closer tonine or 10 years ago.

(57:24):
Okay.
It was a little harder toexplain.
Yeah.
But it has been an open secretsince then, so they definitely
know now.
Right, right.
Um, but I said, you know, I, youknow, I'm, I wanna go public
with this.
I want to help.
And, uh, and you know, we talkedabout it and she said, yeah, you
should do it.
If that's what you wanna do, youshould do it.
And that and that, that firsttalk was about just this private
event, right.
With about a hundred, a hundredpeople.

(57:45):
And then, and then I got askedto do this more public event
with 500 people.
So, and can you make it just asgood as that last one?
Here we, here we go again.
Are you cool with this?
This might end up on theinternet, you know?
Right.
Um, and at that event.
I had a line, a line of peoplenext to the stage as I was
coming off crying, hugging me,all saying, you talk right to

(58:06):
where I am right now.
Yeah.
And so you help people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And at that moment, for reals,yeah.
I, I, I was like, man, I can fixthis and I can give it a reason.
You know, I can, I can giveeverything, I went through a
reason and I can help people whoare going through the same

(58:29):
thing.
I can make a difference.
Yeah.
And very quickly, that almostbecame the most important thing
in my life.
Hmm.
And so that led into thedecisions also mix Mexican to
sell the companies changes, mixsome changes, and to live.
Doing more of this personal workand this deep work in the

(58:51):
service of not justentrepreneurs, but anyone who
might hear that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because I've lost a lot ofpeople because of addiction, you
know, and maybe I can be thatone intervention that saves
somebody, even just one.
Yeah.
Is enough.
Yeah.
But it sounds like you'vealready made a lot of impacts.

(59:12):
I hope so.
I hope so.
So talk to me about where the,the, the writing and the
researching comes into this.
Yeah.
You, you have a book now, orcoming?
I'm working on two books.
Okay.
Yeah.
So the first, so the first thingthat I did was I spent some time
asking myself after I gotthrough that recovery, you know,
um.
What did I do to recover?

(59:34):
What did I need to do to recoverand how could I kind of codify
that into a system that I couldshare with other people?
Right?
Because a lot of it is like thepain, the negative self-talk.
Yeah.
All these horrible thoughts thatwe have about ourselves and,
and, and I did get through that,but I don't, I wasn't sure I
could really articulate it.
I knew I did a lot of work.
I had gone to therapy.
I had done a lot of self-study.
I had returned to sociology forsome ideas, and I said, oh, I

(59:57):
think I understand.
I think I understand what I wasable to do to get past the pain
and the voices that led to thataddiction.
And so I codified that into a afive step system that I call the
time traveler method.
And it's basically to helppeople reexamine their past,
look at their trauma, theirchronic trauma, and reframe it
in a way that allows them tolive a future all their own

(01:00:19):
right, to start to dictate toblank.
Slate it a little bit.
Yeah, a little bit.
But just to, to, to change itand give themselves some agency
as they move forward.
Just saying, you don't have tolive under these same patterns
and beliefs that you did before.
You, you, you can be free fromthese things.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this is how I did it.
And so I started being asked tospeak to other EO chapters about

(01:00:40):
that journey, and I started toput that work together, uh, in a
book.
And so yeah, a five step,basically a five step program or
process that I think kick thatthing that's keeping you back.
Yeah.
Kind of.
Yeah.
Whatever that thing is.
Even it doesn't, does it have tobe addiction or is it other
things?
No, no, no.

(01:01:01):
It not just addiction.
People self-sabotage themselveswith other various tools, with
other habits, with otherexcuses.
Self-talk, all that, right?
Yeah, exactly.
The, the consequences of trauma,of childhood trauma.
So do you have a title for thatbook yet?
Is it coming?
Yeah, it's called How to Be AGood Time Traveler.
Okay.
Um, oh, I like it.
And, uh, um, it's, uh, breakFree from Past Trauma to Create

(01:01:22):
a Future that's all your own.
I dig.
Go.
And so I go through a little bitof my own biography Sure.
Or I guess autobiography if I'mwriting it.
Yeah, yeah.
A little bit of my own memoirand my story.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, and then, and then, uh, kindof the crux is, a crux of it is
this addiction that I had, um,one night where I decided I was
gonna go out and buy heroin orOh, really?
Yeah.
Or'cause you couldn't find pillsbecause I couldn't find pills.

(01:01:43):
You're like, well, I guess theonly best thing next thing is
heroin.
Is heroin.
Yeah.
And my brother, my, I have a, mybrother's deceased now, but um,
he had heroin and so I was gonnareach out to him'cause he was a
heroin addict.
He, he had been, he, his thingwas actually meth, but he would
do heroin too in a pinch.
And so I had this brilliant ideathat I was gonna ask him to
shoot me up because I wasfucking dying from the withdraw.

(01:02:04):
Yeah.
You know, you talk about thephysical stuff and what like.
Puking and Oh, puking andshitting.
Yeah.
You can't sleep and you, I mean,literally, I don't know if
you've seen train spotting, butyou know, this idea that you
think bugs are crawling all overyou, you and you're just like,
sweat, just a miserable time,sweat and then hot and then
cold.
And, I mean, it's terrible.
Your skin's yellow.
And I mean, it's just, you know,and, and your, your liver's

(01:02:25):
failing.
I mean, this is one thing Ihadn't quite talked about, but,
you know, I, I went, I remembergoing to these health fairs and
stuff'cause my friend wanted togo, my friend Spencer, if you're
listening, you know, and I wouldget the results back from my
blood test and they'd say, doyou take a lot of Tylenol?
Your liver is like reallyscrewed up.
And I was like, I don't knowwhat you're talking about.
But of course all Percocet,Vicodin is all like cut with
Tylenol, right?
Oh.

(01:02:45):
So I was killing myselfliterally with this crap.
Oh,'cause you're gettingwhatever you get your hands on,
street drugs, whatever.
Yeah.
And just poisoning myself.
If you could just get straightOxy and find a crooked doctor or
two, you'd have been in bettershape.
Right.
Right.
But you're just, yeah.
You're just buying whatever hasit in there and ta you know,
per, you're lucky it isn'ttoday.
You'd have killed yourself withfentanyl.
Well, I, that's true.
No, it's seriously, I mean,honestly, like, honestly, doing

(01:03:05):
that much street drug, gettingwherever you would, you'd, you'd
have killed yourselfaccidentally by now.
Oh yeah.
For sure.
Without a doubt.
I believe it.
And fentanyl's so much cheaper,right?
I mean, it is.
I wait totally.
I'd be dead.
I would absolutely be dead.
Um, how terrifying and my opioidhunger still exists.
Does it?
Meaning, you know, I had, howdid you recover?
Like can we get into that alittle bit or do I have to Yeah,

(01:03:26):
no, buy the book for that orlike, I did a very dangerous
thing and just quit to coldTurkey.
Okay.
That night that I was gonna askmy brother for heroin, I don't,
I don't know what happened.
I can't really tell you, but Ihad a moment of clarity, which
was basically what you justsaid.
You do that you die.
You may not die tonight, but youwill die.

(01:03:47):
And you have, I was in my son'sroom when I was doing the, the
other thing I was doing thatnight was chugging a bottle of
wine.
My, my next, my next plan was,okay, just get drunk so you pass
out.
Right.
Like, literally like, get sodrunk.
You get sick and pass out sothat you can at least stop
feeling like you're gonnafucking die.
Right.
My, my, I was in my youngestson's room.
He was in his room with hisolder brother.

(01:04:08):
They were younger kids.
They slept together most of thenight.
And I, it's just like two in themorning and I'm just like, just,
I, I don't know what else to do.
And I just start looking aroundthat room and I'm like, shit,
dude, you do this, you die.
They lose you, you know?
And you become the one thing youdespise the most, which is a
father who put his addictionbefore his family.

(01:04:30):
Yeah.
Which is what my father did.
And my father died at 38 fromit.
Wow.
And I don't know, I just, I wentback into my wife's room, uh, I
woke her up and I just, I'mabout to do heroin and, uh.
Not, you gotta stop me, butsomebody needs to know.
Yeah.
You know, and, and from there,um, the secret was out.

(01:04:54):
It was like, lock me in a room.
Yeah.
I'm gonna cold Turkey this shit.
And that's basically what I did.
Oh damn.
And it, and it was not like twonights.
This was like, was like, yeah.
Months.
Months.
Oh yes.
Oh yes.
Wow.
It was terrible.
The thing is, is that there'slike, you didn't take any other
opioids No.
For, no, but you were in roughshape for weeks and weeks.

(01:05:14):
Oh, months.
Months.
It was like six months before Ithink I felt normal.
The thing with the opioidaddiction that I don't think
people understand is it, itstarts off as a fun thing, then
it feels good.
Then it quiets the, the demonsand then your body needs it.
Right?
And so pretty quickly, I wastaking so much opioids and so
much Tylenol, not because I nowwanted to get high.

(01:05:37):
Right.
It was'cause I didn't wanna getsick.
Right.
Because getting sick.
Was terrible.
So most of the last half of myaddiction was not lived being
high.
It was lived being sick.
Right.
But a different kind of sickthan, than, um, wow.
You know, it was, it was, youwere sick because you're taking
so much, but at least you're notin withdrawal because the

(01:05:57):
withdrawal, you feel like youwanna die.
Like you'll do anything.
Like, you'll kill yourself,you'll do heroin, you'll fucking
rob a bank like you will doanything.
And do you have energy whenyou're in this kind of space,
like to run these companies?
I mean, most of these ideaspopped off before you really got
deep in your addiction, itsounds like.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
Yeah.
Um.
I mean, uh, uh, when I said Ihad a brother that would cover

(01:06:18):
for me, you know, I would getsick.
I would get sick, um, because Ididn't have enough drugs.
I would be under my desk in myoffice with the door shut,
puking in a garbage can.
My brother would come in, he'dtell everyone I'd have the flu.
He'd take me home, put me inbed.
You know, my, like I said,skin's nasty.
My liver's not wearing Right.

(01:06:38):
And all, I'm all, I'm thinkingabout scoring my next, you know,
thing of pills is just, I don'twanna be sick.
Not like I want to be high.
Right.
The fun part of it goes awaythis years since there was fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So when I went ugh, to to quit,I knew what I was in store for.
It's probably that way for thosefolks.
Like, like the MatthewMcConaughey and even the Prince.

(01:06:59):
Yeah.
Uh, and stuff like that.
Like they haven't had any funactually with their drug use in
years.
No.
But Snoop still lights to lightup a joint and seems like he has
fun and so does Willie Nelson.
Well, it's a different kind ofdrug, obviously.
It's because like I, you know,like I said, I, I, I, I didn't
say I switched to marijuana, buta little while later I started
taking marijuana to help with myback pain.
And I did that at night to go tobed.

(01:07:20):
But yeah, if I went out of townand I didn't have marijuana, I
didn't think about it once,right when I was hooked on
opioids, I, I could not go.
You couldn't get on the airplaneto leave No.
Uhuh without it figured out.
Oh, dude.
I had to count it all.
Like, I remember going on familyvacations, um, going on cruises
with my family Sure.
And knowing I was gonna run outhalfway through and desperately

(01:07:41):
searching all of the countriesand islands we were gonna land
on to see if I could findanything, coding pills or, or
Tylenol three or anything.
Wow.
To get me through what I knewwas about to be a fucking
terrible week.
Right.
Of withdrawal.
Right.
And, and if you're with yourfamily, with your kids, yeah.
Or like, why is Daddy's, why isdaddy in the room sweating?
Yeah.
Or just like, or just drinking.

(01:08:02):
Right.
Just drinking as much as I couldto pass out to suppress the
symptoms down.
Mm-hmm.
Damn, dude.
Yeah.
What an intense story.
Yeah.
Um, I wanna take a short break.
Sure.
Uh,'cause I need a potty break.
Yeah.
And I, I wanna get back to thiskind of what you're gonna do
from here a little bit.
For sure.
Uh, as well as time machine,local experience, advice.

(01:08:23):
Of course.
You know, course we had a bunchof stuff to cover and we're back

(01:09:16):
switching to whiskey.
Mm-hmm.
Light small, just a little bit.
Lots of ice cubes.
A little nip.
A little nip.
Yeah.
Um, well that was, uh, that waslike, I was just reflecting, um.
How interesting that's gonna beto listen back to mm-hmm.
That portion of the journey inparticular, and just how much, I
wanna just compliment yourcourage.
Yeah.

(01:09:36):
Well, I guess you didn't reallyhave a choice.
You were gonna be dead.
Yeah.
Or you were gonna seek help andstrength.
And was there a faith componentat all in your working, in your
life?
Do you have that later now?
Not, not yet.
Not then.
I mean, there was, I, I mean,so.
When I was a kid, my mom droppedus off at church.

(01:09:57):
Okay.
Like when I was like, what, fiveor something.
Okay.
I remember my mom saying this,or maybe she reiterated it
later, but she, she basicallywas like, I don't wanna deny you
guys, church or religion, theopportunity to be a part of it.
Right.
I'm not gonna, it's not for me.
Right.
But if you like it, stay.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And my, my brothers went homeand I stayed, and I, so I ended
up being involved in churchlargely by myself, youth group

(01:10:19):
and different things.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, all that stuff.
Okay.
Yeah.
Summer church, camp, youthgroup, all of it.
Um, but by myself, my, my, myfamily was never involved.
I had the support of otherfamilies.
Sure.
Um, and in fact, when I moved toDenver, that story I was telling
you about, I, I worked for achurch in Seattle part-time as
their office and businessmanager.
Okay.
And I applied to a church inDenver to do the same thing.

(01:10:40):
Yeah.
And I lived in a church in thebasement of that church that I
worked at while I was, while Ihad valet ads.
Interesting.
Um, so, um, and I was a memberof that church.
Huh.
That church was a much more.
Liberal church than some of the,um, more eval evangelical
churches that I had been exposedto.
And, um, and I was a full onmember.

(01:11:00):
You know, I had, I I I had whatI thought fully involved.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, I, I definitely was aconsider myself a Christian and
followed the, the Calen, theAdvent calendar and yeah.
Um, you know, Ash Wednesday andGood Friday, and I was at church
every Sunday and Yeah.
And, uh, actually became aChristian education coordinator
too, helping with the Sundayschool stuff.

(01:11:21):
And, and then I just kind of hada bad experience.
Okay.
Um, well, you almost said youconsidered yourself a Christian
back then, but you don't thinkyou actually knew the news yet
or something, or, I, I, I was, Ialways said I was a reluctant
son of God.
Okay.
Okay.
So, all right.
So I, while I.
Believe in God now and believedin God, then I often like relied

(01:11:44):
on God to fix things in my life.
And when God did not fix thingsin my life, I became very right.
Right.
Very disappointed in God andwould ask myself, well, what the
fuck do I need you for?
Right?
And so you're not gonna help methen I guess I'll just do it.
My dad says, that's right.
That's right.
And for a while there, I, I kindof tricked, tricked myself
because I, I always felt like atthe point that I left the church

(01:12:07):
and decided to leave a organizedreligion is when my career
really took off.
I started having a lot ofsuccess in entrepreneurship.
And I remember saying to somepeople, see, when I stopped
relying on God was back God formy success, and I started
relying on myself, look whathappened.
And to me that was evidencethat, uh, you know, I did have a
little period of atheism therewhere I said, this is evidence

(01:12:27):
that there, there is no God.
Or if there is one, he hasnothing, no interest.
He's us back.
Whether I do it, whether I dogood or not.
So I got no interest in him.
Um, but that, that definitelyhas changed over the last, um.
You know, eight years for sure.
Yeah.
Um, uh, and then I've done somedeep work, um, with
psychedelics.

(01:12:47):
Okay.
Uh, as part of my therapy.
Yeah.
Interesting.
And, um, I have, uh, the bestrelationship with God I've ever
had.
Awesome.
And, uh, a really deep,meaningful relationship with God
and not one that I'm scared toshare or talk about.
Um, that, and, and, and, andthat does not mean that I think
Jesus is coming back on a horsewith a flaming sword and gonna
cut off all the heads of peoplewho thought like I did what I,

(01:13:10):
some things aren't quite soliteral.
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Um, but, but you do believe inJesus still.
Do you consider yourself aChristian?
Yeah.
I say my tradition.
So that is my practice to God isChristianity.
Okay.
But that doesn't mean that Ibelieve that's the only way, you
know, um, I like to say, uh.
It feels to me like every lensupon who God is, is a blurry

(01:13:33):
one.
Mm-hmm.
And Jesus and the Christians ingeneral seem to have the most
clearest one.
Yeah.
Um, and so to me that's kind ofmy practice as well.
But I'm also, I'm not God, soI'm not the judge of whether
somebody that's a, an amazingHindu or a Buddhist.
Yeah.
Or Islam.
Yeah.
Uh, doesn't.
Also, you know, it says it kindof clear, but that's what you

(01:13:55):
would say if you were trying toget everybody to join.
That's book.
So.
Exactly.
So I dunno exactly.
I think there are many routes toGod, but I do think a practice
is important and I think that acommunity.
Yeah.
And I think that religions areour practice and, um, you know,
I'm also a libertarian, so aslong as your religion doesn't
infringe on my religion or yourreligion doesn't require you to
cut my head off and doesn'trequire to cut your head off,

(01:14:17):
then you know, I'm kind of WillFerrell in a semi-pro.
Hey everybody.
Love everybody.
Have you, uh, would you care totalk about, uh, the psychedelics
and how that influencedAbsolutely.
Your journey?
I've heard a lot of things aboutthat and I know Denver's
decriminalized now.
Yeah.
I don't know if you recognizeit, but that's a giant mushroom
right there.
Oh, yes it is.
Yes it is.
The neighbor gave me that a fewweeks ago.
No, I didn't offer before now,but it's probably late.

(01:14:39):
I, I You be driving home in afunny way.
That's true.
I'd love to because I talk aboutmy businesses all the time.
Yeah.
And this, this part I don't geta, a lot of chance to speak
about, so, okay.
Of course.
Yeah.
Um, so you're.
I guess set the stage a littlebit for us.
Like you're, you're, you've beenclean mm-hmm.
For, for months and months bythis point, right?
Yeah.
But you, you mentioned alreadyearlier that you still have this

(01:15:01):
draw.
Yeah.
Like if I had a oxy right now, Iwould, I put it right there.
You'd be like, I could probablyjust eat that, just that one.
I wouldn't, but I know, but Iknow that I want it.
Right, right.
I, I, I, and you know, as anexample, I got meningitis, uh,
okay.
Five or six years ago.
Okay.
I was hospitalized.

(01:15:21):
I was in the hospital for like aweek.
This is like a bacterialinfection Yeah.
Of your, of your spine and yourbrain.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
It's pretty, it's really bad.
Right.
So at any rate, it kills a lotof people.
Yeah.
It kills it.
It can kill people.
Yeah, for sure.
Um, so I was in the hospital.
I, I didn't have the mentalwherewithal to say what I needed
or I didn't.
But, um, I was in a lot of pain.

(01:15:42):
A nurse came in and gave me aniv, uh, of, of o obviously an
opioid.
Mm.
She didn't know, right?
Sure.
I didn't make any warning oranything like that.
Um, and as soon as that hit mybody, I wanted more.
Right.
And I knew exactly.
You were like, could I get a, abutton?
And I knew exactly what it was.
Yep.
And so I said to her, I said, Idon't, I don't know if I told

(01:16:05):
her that I had been an addict,but I said, uh, I won't have any
more opioids, please.
And I think she understood whatI was talking about, but in that
moment I knew like.
When they say, you're an addict,you're an addict.
Yeah.
You know, it doesn't go awayaway.
That's not a story though.
Yeah.
Your lifetime, um, you have thishunger, right?
Yeah.
And so I still today have thisopioid hunger, right?

(01:16:28):
This, this, this, uh, instantinstinct inside me when things
are stressful or uncomfortableto reach, uh, for an invisible
bottle, um, that's not there,you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And hallucinogen help with that?
No, no, no.
They, they, that this was moreabout understanding.

(01:16:49):
How I got into a positionGotcha.
As successful as I was.
It's more about exploring thattrauma.
Right.
Right.
And what that was, how it was.
Right.
Why do I have this inside methat needs to be shut down?
Opioids happen to be the thingthat did it.
Yeah.
But, but, but why do I live withsuch, so exploring that question
Yeah.
Is where, where the second moreExactly.

(01:17:10):
Okay.
Exactly.
And you do that guided orself-guided, or sometimes
self-guided, sometimes guided.
I mean, I've, I I've done thewhole lay on your back and look
at the stars for a few hours.
Do wonders for a brain.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I, I, I've done thewhole gamut.
Um.
You know, uh, concluding with,uh, ayahuasca, so Oh, you did?
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And was that the, that was acapstone.

(01:17:32):
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
That's graduation for sure.
Was it as gross as people say?
Like Absolutely.
You puked and all that,whatever.
There's people shitting, there'speople puking, right?
Uh, I did, I mostly dry heaved,but um, but I mean that first
round, you know, you do it inrounds.
I mean, the first round I waslike, this is poison.
You guys can call this plantmedicine.

(01:17:54):
You can be as fucking hippiedippy as you want.
And were you with people thatyou knew?
Oh, yeah.
I was with a big group ofpeople.
Oh, we had a shaman, we hadhelper.
I mean, I was in the mostsafest.
You know, it, it was a wonderfulexperience and, and, and I did
it the, the way that it neededthat I think it needs to be
done.
Yeah.
And that's with a community ofpeople that you know and trust
and also with a group of peoplewho are in service to you.

(01:18:15):
Right.
Right.
That aren't getting all fuckedup.
They're not getting fucked up.
They're absolutely not gettingfucked.
They are listening foropportunities to help and heal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
And so, um, it was amazing.
Um, but, you know, you know, asa, as a, as a young rock star, I
mean, I did dabble in a fewthings.
I never did coke or anythinglike that, but, um, but I had
done LSD.
Yeah.
You know, I, I had taken, I hadhad some mushrooms.

(01:18:37):
I had never had a full onmushroom experience, but I had
some mushroom tea back then.
And so I, I knew I had donehallucinogens and I knew what it
felt like to hallucinate andstuff.
Yeah.
And so, um, and contrast thatwith ayahuasca.
Oh, I, I, I often say, you know,you do acid or mushrooms and
it's fun.
You can go skipping around apark with your friends and have

(01:18:59):
a good time.
You do ayahuasca, you just laythere in a sleeping bag, like,
what the fuck?
You know, like what the totalYeah.
And, and you close your eyes andyou just go into this internal
world where, where the externaldisappears completely.
Right.
I mean, I blasted off into spaceand time and Right.
It was fantastic.
The separation is complete, butYes, but it's, you're, you're
not there.

(01:19:20):
You're right.
You're, you're just a shell.
It's not a party drug.
No, it is not a parking truck.
If anyone's like, Hey, I gotsome ayahuasca, if anyone's
interested, no, maybe, but we'regonna pla it, right?
Because I'm not gonna shit mypants and puke in a bucket and
be like, Hey, this is fuckinggreat.
Let's meet some girls.
Let's go play pools.
Yeah, exactly.

(01:19:41):
No, no, no concert.
Yeah.
No, no.
But yeah, I, I, I, you know, Idid, uh, I did mushrooms in a
therapeutic sense.
Yeah.
Um, uh, ketamine in atherapeutic sense, uh,
ayahuasca, definitely in atherapeutic sense.
What's that new one?
I guess it's ketamine that, likeTexas is getting it close to
approving, like a therapeuticketamine dose.

(01:20:02):
Especially for military type.
Yeah.
Ptsd.
TSD stuff.
Yeah.
Molly is another one that I'velearned.
Rick Perry, MDMA, former Texas,maybe it's that.
It's MDMA.
Yeah.
Former gov.
Former Texas Governor Rick Perryis a big.
Advocate for that.
So ketamine is legal already,and you can, you can go, I think
it's MDMA.
So MDMA is the one that still islike a research drug.

(01:20:22):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they're doing, they do a lotof that in Colorado too.
There's a group in Boulder thatdoes a lot of, so is that part
of your future research stufftoo?
Not shift trends.
I don't have, I don't have any,no aspirations going that,
that's just personal curiositytherapy basically.
There are plenty of people doingthat.
I'm happy to share myexperiences, which have all been
positive in the hopes that, um,it can be incorporated as a

(01:20:43):
treatment.
Because, you know, it's oftenwhat I say, and I say this to my
kids too.
Yeah.
I mean, they, they know thistoo.
You know, I've gotten the verysame kind of insight and benefit
from meditation, from beingsober and sitting with myself
and focusing on something.
Yeah.
But drugs do an amazing job ofcreating a shortcut for that.
Right, right, right.
And so it's, it's not that it'sabsolutely necessary.

(01:21:04):
In fact, breath work is anotherthing.
I've heard that, yeah.
You can get it almost apsychedelic state.
Mm-hmm.
Just from breath work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it definitely is a shortcut.
It speeds up the process.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so at that time in my life,for those years in my life, I
felt like I was in an emergency.
Yeah.
And that I was willing to dothat, to kind of speed up that
process.
And so have you allowed yourselfto feel like a successful person

(01:21:27):
now after exiting Yes.
These couple of businesses thelast couple years, yes.
And stuff, but I define successmuch differently than I did
before.
And, and I do not define it bymy money, my sales, your balance
sheet, my businesses or mystature balance.
No, it's about, uh, time with mykids.
The, the, the how I interruptedgenerations of, um, family

(01:21:48):
trauma to create something goodin them and to be able to see
that it will continue to begood.
Most importantly, that I can bea father who can be there for
them.
When I didn't have a father, myfather didn't have a father,
right?
There were always these greatgenerational interruptions to
just love, peace and kindness.
Yeah.
And I was able to create that inmy family, even through my
struggles, thank God.

(01:22:09):
Um, and so I, I define successlike that.
And, and, you know, somebodyasked me, I was giving a talk to
EO San Antonio.
And I was talking about this, myayahuasca experience and coming
out of that, knowing what themeaning and purpose of my life
was and finding out that it hadnothing to do with business.
Um, and just being so happy andcontent with that.
And this woman asked me, shesaid, is it hard to get back

(01:22:31):
into business after that?
And I said, honestly, yeah, itis.
You know, my whole world, mywhole perspective changed after
going through not justayahuasca, but all of those
processes.
Yeah.
I'm sure about what's important.
A lot of stripping down and whatmatters.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so this idea of just goingto make money and using the
resources of the earth just forthe sake of making money is

(01:22:53):
just, it's not something I cando or tolerate anymore.
Again, it's like myvegetarianism.
I don't give a shit what you do.
I'm not going out there.
Are you a vegetarian?
Yeah.
Damn.
You're a strong looking dude fora vegetarian.
A lot of shakes, man.
A lot of shake shakes.
Um, a lot of shakes.
How long has that been?
Uh, like 12, 13 years.
Damn.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Long time.
Long time.

(01:23:13):
But I would, I would selfmedicate with, uh, opioids too,
if I didn't have any meat in mydiet.
I dunno, I just say it, but, uh,but yeah, I mean, the point of
that is like, it, it, it does,it is harder for me to get
motivated to do business thingsand I feel more called to this
work of being, uh, a helper andin service to people.

(01:23:35):
Yeah.
And so, um, I have beendistracted by some things.
I've, I've, I've gotten antsyabout money, you know, I haven't
worked in a few years.
Yeah.
And I got a lot more going outthan coming in.
Um, and sometimes I feel likethat is.
Enough to change my direction,but at the end of the day, I go
back into prayer, myrelationship with God, and I
just try and reconfirm that I amin the right place, doing the

(01:23:58):
right thing for me now, anddoing the, uh, doing the right
thing for the people I careabout.
And that just kind of keeps meon the path.
Are you thinking about goingback for that PhD now?
No, not at all.
I did look at it, it feels likeit might equip you in different
ways than you realize, perhapsto me.
Yeah.
Like it might not be on the sametrack that you thought you were
gonna study, but I don't know.

(01:24:19):
I wonder about it.
I'm not ruling it out.
I, uh, I would like to jump usinto the time machine.
Let's do it.
One of the things I like to sayis at local think tank, we have
a just in time machine.
Okay.
Like, forgetting a flyer out ordoing this or that.
It's always just in time.
Not always, but too often.
Uh, but anyway, we'll jump inthe, in the, not just in time

(01:24:41):
machine.
Sure, sure, sure.
So let's go back to like those,like earliest memory years, four
or five.
Years old.
Mm-hmm.
You were in California then?
Yeah, uh, until I was five.
I think my mom moved us toWashington when I was five.
Okay.
Can, can you remember Californiaa little bit for me?
And what was the circumstancesof your family?
Yeah.
I remember a couple things.

(01:25:02):
I burned my house down when Iwas two and a half years old.
Oh, shit.
I definitely remember that.
Like with matches or something?
Yeah, with a lighter.
My mom was a smoker.
I grabbed a lighter, she smokedin the house as everybody did.
I'm not watching her mom.
I, I grabbed her, grabbed herlighter, went into my bedroom,
took all my blankets, rolledthem up, put'em under my bed,
and then lit them on fire.
Oh, damn.
I went back out to my mom.
I said, mommy, come see mylight.

(01:25:23):
I was all proud of myself and mymommy came in my bedroom and saw
that it was on fire.
Right.
And where's the fireextinguisher?
Oh shit, I don't remember.
Now my, now my mom at this pointis.
18 years old.
Oh, damn.
She has my brother Matt, who isone years old, and she has my
little brother, Jeremiah, whohad just come outta ICU.
He was born way earlier andhe's, he's, he's, he's months

(01:25:47):
old if that.
Your mom is 18.
Her third kid.
They good.
And you're you four.
And I just lit, I'm two and ahalf.
Oh, you're two and a half.
And I've just lit the house onfire.
Oh, damn.
She's got like Irish triplets.
Yeah.
As an 18-year-old.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She got pregnant with me whenshe was 15.
15.
Does she not know how babieshappen?
No.
No.
I think she knows exactly howbabies happen.
Um, um, but anyway, uh, yeah,she got pregnant with me when

(01:26:10):
she was 15.
Dang.
She had me when she was, uh, uh,16.
And what were, and then mybrother at 17, like, she
obviously didn't have a career,a job or anything.
And who was your dad?
My dad was, or who is your dad,I guess, or you said your dad
was gone.
He's dad, but yeah.
My dad, you know, th this is ashort version of the story.
My, my dad was a veryattractive, handsome, tattooed
guitar player, okay?
Mm-hmm.
The, the beer goggle, the guitargoggles were effective on your

(01:26:33):
mom, who was a haughty.
15-year-old.
15-year-old who was looking fora wig.
How old was your dad?
He was 17.
Oh, that's all.
Okay.
Um, so, you know, the, the, theshort version is my mom's mom.
My grandma Eileen hadschizophrenia.
Mm.
Okay.
But it was undiagnosed.
And so my mom was in a housefull of chaos, mostly because my
grandma was convinced that theschool was calling, that the

(01:26:54):
kids were doing all of theseterrible things.
And, and my mom and her brothersand sisters were constantly
getting in trouble for shit thatwasn't real.
It was very confusing andstressful.
My mom's mom actually was verylight in that.
Oh, really?
Paranoia, schizophrenia kind ofstuff.
Yeah.
And it was just grandma beingweird.
Yeah.
You know, this was full blown.
Like my mom would come home andmy grandpa would sit her down

(01:27:15):
and yell at all the kids.
'cause my grandma would say theschool would call and caught my
mom for smoking and my mom, youknow, I mean, just like crazy
shit.
Damn.
And so my mom gets this brightidea, I'm gonna get outta this
chaos.
The way I'm gonna do that is bygetting pregnant, because if I
get pregnant, my parents willmake me get married.
'cause they were, my grandma wasa hardcore Methodist and Gotcha.
And that time, nobody.
Got pregnant and didn't getmarried.

(01:27:36):
So my mom found my dad.
Interesting.
Seemed good enough.
Yeah.
Got knocked up at 15 Right.
And did get married at 16 beforeI was born and moved out just
before.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And moved out.
So, and, and, and from now mydad was already a drug addict.
He had gotten polio as a baby.
Oh, damn.
He had a very small leg that hehad many surgeries and

(01:27:57):
treatments on.
And so as a little kid, he wasaddicted to painkillers, but,
but he was still charismatic andstill charisma.
Charming.
Well, yeah.
That was his defense mechanismto this kind of crippling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, this leg that he hadwas to ride motorcycles, play
guitar, and singing in a band.
And my mom made it up.
You know, I think I, I got sofunny and charming, uh, because
I was like the smallest kid inevery class.

(01:28:19):
Yeah.
Like I was four foot 11 at theend of my seventh grade year, or
in my sixth grade year for thatmatter.
And then five foot one at theend of my 10th grade year.
Wow.
And so I was just always.
Kind of the class clown andcharismatic and you know,
kissing butt with the rightpeople and whatever.
And then I got tall and handsomeand I didn't need all those
skills.
But then you had the great, thebest combination.

(01:28:40):
Right Now I'm charismatic, headhandsome, funny, and beautiful.
Yeah, exactly.
Hey, you and I, the two piecesof the pod.
So anyway, continue, please.
But it's an interesting thing toreflect upon, right?
Yeah.
So they, they, so you're in thiscrazy situation, right?
And now my, my mom and dad arein, in, and Does he have a job
and stuff?
I fuck if I know.
I mean, they're, they're inlove.
Like Sid and Nancy were in love.
Like, it is like fuckingviolence.

(01:29:01):
And like my, you know, mymemories are my dad punching
holes and doors and my parentsscreaming and my mom was leaving
and was her, how did she chooseSeattle to move to?
Well, she didn't choose Seattle.
She moved to this little town ineastern Washington called
Steptoe, which had a populationof 14 people.
Oh shit.
I mean, so we went from LosAngeles Yeah.
To a town that had 14 people anda truck stop called the wheel

(01:29:25):
in.
And how far from was it from thenext town?
Uh.
Always 30 miles, right?
I mean, from the next big town.
Yeah.
An hour and a half.
I mean, it was, it's the middleof nowhere.
The middle of nowhere.
That's where's the North Dakotawhere I grew up?
Yeah.
And my, my mom moved therebecause my, her sister had moved
to that area.
I.
A year or two previous to thatto go to college.

(01:29:47):
Okay.
And so my, my, that was like herone piece of support kind of
almost, or, well, her, her otherbrother Michael, my uncle Mike,
had bought my aunt Patty thislittle itty-bitty house in that
town because it was like, Ithink he bought it for like
$7,000.
Right, right.
So that she could have a placeto live while she went to
college in the town.
That was an hour away.
Right.
But she ended up marrying a guy,having kids.

(01:30:10):
This house is just sitting thereand it's just sitting there.
My mom decides, she's like athief in the night.
She, she basic, she'd bearrested if she did this today.
She kidnaps us from California.
Doesn't tell anybody where she'sgoing except for my, my, my
uncle and my grandparentsDoesn't tell anyone.
In my dad's family.
Certainly doesn't tell my dadbecause she's just.
Tired of living in this chaosand this violence.

(01:30:31):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so she thinks at the timethis is the best bet for,
although if she's been a subjectto a domestic violence and stuff
Yeah.
I'll defend her.
Right.
To grab you guys.
Absolutely.
And get you the hell out there.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Any day.
Absolutely.
She, you know, this is kind ofpart of what I was talking about
before, about being able to goback in time.
When I look at it as a youngman, you know, to me I'm like,
why did you take us away fromour family?
I never got to see my, you know,it was a very negative, bad

(01:30:53):
thing.
Right.
But when you go think about whata 18, well now my mom was 20
when she did this.
Right?
Because I remember when my momturned 21 because that little
truck stop in that town sheworked at, and I remember her
saying, oh man, when I turned21, I'll finally be able to
cocktail waitress.
I can go to the bar and I canmake more money in tips.
Right.
I remember that.
Right.
Who remembers their mom turning21?

(01:31:13):
Anyway, but, um, not very manypeople.
But as an older person, I cansay, what would I do?
Yeah.
You know, like, I want toprotect my kids.
I think she did the best couldfor She did the best she could.
Yeah.
And I, and I appreciate that.
You know, I don't, so did youlive there a long time?
We, I ended up, we lived inWashington for the rest of my
life until I moved to LA topursue my music career at 21.
Dang.

(01:31:33):
And then did you like go tocollege or anything after high
school or I assume you went Ihad, I had those coffee shops in
Pullman.
Oh, right.
That was right, right.
That was in Pullman.
That was, that was the collegetown.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That my, that my aunt was goingto and my mom eventually moved
us to.
And were you like the, thenewspaper guy when you were 14
and all these otherentrepreneurial things?

(01:31:54):
No, from fifth grade.
Yeah.
11, sorry.
Was learning papers from fifthor 10?
No, third grade.
Third grade.
Uh, yeah.
I had both a afternoon route anda morning route.
There's, there's a video.
You could find it on light of metalking about my paper routes
and how I schemed everybody andbuilt all, I built a paper route
empire, um, for two newspaperson all these kids routes.
But, um, uh, yeah, paper routeswere definitely interesting.

(01:32:16):
My first bit of income and as apoor kid who had nothing, right,
absolutely nothing to be able tofind a way to make money myself,
I mean, that really gave me ataste of what it could be like
to be in charge of your income,you know?
And that's why I thinkentrepreneurship became so
interesting to me because I wasin control of it.
Man, what a fascinating journeyof like, coming from this kind

(01:32:39):
of conservative background, kindof rejecting faith in church,
coming back around, rejectingagain in a different way.
And, um, just finding grace for.
You know, your, your, especiallyyour mother, it seems like, and,
and, and my father, yoursiblings and your father.
Mm-hmm.
You know?
Yeah.
And how did, how did that, butyou eventually re reconnected

(01:33:01):
with him, right?
'cause you went back and forth alittle bit from California to
Washington, or just, I mean, wesummers a little bit, or I did.
Yeah.
We, we, we were always connectedin some way.
Like, um, one thing my mom did,which may sound weird, is that
even though she left him right,and she, she, she moved us as
far away from him as shepossibly could, right.

(01:33:24):
She never talked bad about him.
Right.
But I could tell that she didn'tlike him him.
But I think that her hope, andmy hope as a kid was that some,
at some point he would turn hisshit around and he would be
someone that we could count on,or at least a relationship,
father relationship, have arelationship with.
And I know that she did thatwith a great amount of
hesitation and pain, but shewould allow us to call him.

(01:33:46):
She would try and arrange for usto see him quite often.
That would end in violence,unfortunately.
Um, but um, but in seventh gradeI did decide to go live with him
for a year.
Oh dang.
And it was terrible.
It was, it was mostly you did itbecause you just wanted to have
a relationship with Dad.
I just wanted my dad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I get it.
Every kid, I can't even imaginebecause my dad was just always
right there.
Yeah.
He's a pain in my ass.

(01:34:07):
Yeah.
You know, but to be absent that,I can't imagine that either.
Yeah.
I just, I just wanted my dad andit was not good.
It was not good.
It was not good.
Uh, he, he drank the whole time.
He never worked.
He fought with my stepmom.
He punched holes in walls.
How did he stay alive?
Like was, was he on Yeah, hedidn't stay alive very long, but
he got, he got on socialsecurity Okay.

(01:34:27):
Disability, because his, hisliver damage was so bad.
Right.
Sorry, I have thisself-inflicted medical thing.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
And then he lived off his wife,you know.
Right.
Um, she was a bank teller.
I mean, she wasn't, she didn't,she wasn't rich or anything.
Right, right.
I mean, they were solidly lowermiddle class.
Right.
Um, and, and you know, that's,they, they survived.

(01:34:52):
Yeah.
Um, my dad was not very kind toher either.
He stole her money and, and, youknow, for his drugs.
Goes, goes, where's your momnow?
My mom's in Denver.
Okay.
She moved there after my firstson was born.
Right.
Right.
After.
Um, and that's a great storytoo.
Too long for this podcast, butI'll just say that my mother
showed through her actions,never her words.

(01:35:12):
My mom never came to me andapologized per se, but I know
how that my mom is remorsefulabout our lives.
'cause'cause later my mom wouldgive us up.
She, we ended up in foster care.
Oh dang.
And we would go back and livewith our family in California.
Oh wow.
Um, she struggled a lot.
My mom, my mom was, she spokewith addiction too, or a
alcohol, not, not addiction.

(01:35:33):
Mental health problems.
Mental health too.
Gotcha.
Yeah, definitely.
Mental health problems.
Yep.
And, and, um, uh, uh, and she,I.
It was tough, you know, itwasn't like my mom left my dad
and then things were rosy.
Right.
It was my mom left my dad, andthen we lived in poverty.
The chaos continued for a longtime.
Yes, exactly.
And my mom suffered and my dadmade things hard.

(01:35:55):
My dad called the CPS and wouldtell them my mom was abusing us.
Were you like a songwriter too,as this uh, 16-year-old kid that
wants to go to la?
When I left California, Istarted writing songs.
Okay.
When I was in California.
'cause my dad was a guitarplayer and singer, and so he
kind of taught, taught me alittle bit and yeah.
That songwriting kind of, youknow, they say it's an outlet.
I mean, it seems like thefoundation for a songwriting,

(01:36:16):
uh, career, right?
Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
But yeah, my mom struggled and,um, and so by the time my wife
was pregnant with our first son,um, we still didn't have a good
relationship.
Hmm.
But she told me, I'm gonna cometo Denver, whatever.
She came to Denver and.
Committed herself to me, stuckit out, my son and my family.

(01:36:36):
Well, you are the best thingshe's got going or maybe, yeah.
You got brothers still?
Uh, one brother passed away.
Yeah, about eight years ago.
My other brother, Jay, he justmoved back here actually from
Seattle.
Okay.
So now we're all here.
Um, does he have kids too or Hedoes have a daughter.
She's back in Seattle.
Yeah.
Um, but yeah, my mom showed hercommitment to me and my family

(01:36:56):
and has been with us for 18years and I'm happy to say I can
count on my mom for anything.
That's cool.
You know, she's one, she's, it'skind of crazy to say and she
might not believe it, but, um,you know, she's one of my best
friends.
Yeah.
Uh, and I.
If you need somebody, she's yourfirst phone number.
Fuck man.
Sometimes I don't even have tocall her.

(01:37:17):
She's just like, Hey, I know youhave this.
I'm showing it.
Yeah.
I mean, it's amazing.
And, and this is what I tell onmy talk, the time traveler talk
that I do about, um, as, as longas there's life, there's hope
and there's debate on whooriginally said that, but it's
often a's, uh, attributed to theDalai Lama.
But where there's life, there'shope.
And so when people are talkingto me about similar situations,

(01:37:38):
what they've been in, and theysay things to me like, oh, it's
unforgivable.
I would never forgive my mom, orI would never forgive my
brother, you know, outside oflike some kind of weird sexual
crime or something.
Right.
I said, don't, don't be so quickto say that.
Yeah.
Because where there's life,there's hope.
And so long as my mom was aliveand my brother was alive, I, I
believed that there was always achance for some kind of
reconciliation.

(01:37:59):
That's really cool.
And, um, I got, I got the bestof it from both my brother and
my mom.
Yeah.
Sounds like it.
It's awesome.
That's really cool.
Uh, let me ask about your kidsjust a little bit.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, they're 16 and 18 now.
Mm-hmm.
Um, one of my, uh, things on thelocal experiences I would like
to do, uh, one word descriptionsof the children.
Okay.
Of each.

(01:38:19):
Yeah.
So would you, would you care to.
Uh, endure that challenge of,uh, mentioning a Oh yeah.
Maybe your older child by nameand then giving a one word
description and expand beyondthat.
Yes.
Um, Henry, serious.
Serious, yes.
Henry the serious.
Yes.
Benjamin hilarious.
Benjamin hilarious.
That's funny that there's so,uh, diabolically opposed, yes.

(01:38:44):
Diametrically opposed isactually, although diabolically
might be, yeah.
That was God doing that to you,putting them so diabolically
opposed to each other.
Yeah.
I mean, as a sociologist right,we talk about nature and nurture
and my kids had both, you know,me and their mom, uh, sure.
Or my wife growing up and, anduh, you know, same circumstances
and everything, but they arevery different.

(01:39:05):
Um, yeah.
Boys, but, but deeplyappreciative and best friends
with each other, you know, like,um, but very different
personalities.
They're entering the world.
I.
The adult world at aninteresting time with Yeah.
AI making huge strides and maybea little, like all the coders
are already like that.
Learn to code.
Yeah.
Uh, coal miner.
Yeah.

(01:39:25):
Doesn't really work anymore.
Um, what, like, what do you,what's your encouragement, but
both for them and for otheryoung people in there, you know,
16 to 20.
Figuring out what they're gonnaset their pointer toward as it
relates to ai or just life ingeneral as it relates to just
life in general.
Well, like it's an interestingtime though.
Yeah.
Because of so much ai, it'sgonna be, yeah.
I think probably disruptive to alot of Yeah.

(01:39:48):
Career paths.
You know, I could give two shitsabout ai.
I could give two shits aboutvideo games.
All right.
I give two shits about violenceon tv.
I'm just not a big subscriber tothe idea that all of these
things are going to shapeentirely the direction of your
children.
Um, I,'cause we've seen thisthroughout history, right?
Sure.
Records and music and pot andall sorts of stuff.
Yeah.
I mean, every generation hasparents who are worried that

(01:40:10):
their kids are gonna be fuckedup by one thing or the other.
So I, I've tried not to put toomuch emphasis on that.
Um, the thing I do put emphasison with my kids, and I think
maybe it's the differencebetween my kids and other kids,
or the reason why I'm notworried about all this other
shit is because I've alwaysencouraged my kids to follow
their dreams and to think abouta life and a career that is your

(01:40:33):
passion.
And so.
We, we say in our family isthere's no plan B.
So whatever it was that yousaid, you want, you, you know
how this is.
Yeah.
When you, I don't know if youhave kids.
Do you have kids?
No.
Kids?
No.
Okay.
Well, you've probably heardthese stories.
You know when a kid's little andin kindergarten and the teacher
says, what do you want to bewhen you grow up?
Sure.
And all the parents are aroundin a circle eagerly waiting to
see what they say.
You know?

(01:40:53):
Molly raises her hand astronautand says, president Astronaut,
everyone says, oh, yes, you cando that.
You can do that.
Right.
By third grade, they're startingto question that, and by fifth
or sixth grade, they'redefinitely telling, well, you
might be an astronaut, but youshould have a plan B.
Right.
I said, what are you gonna fallback on?
Right?
Yeah.
And I hated that.
Interesting.
I hated that as a kid.
I, not that my mother ever didthat to me, but everybody else

(01:41:14):
questioned me because I wantedto be a rock star.
I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
Sure.
I wanted to be a writer.
You know?
I had these things that I feltvery passionately about, and by
the time I did return to Denverto go to college, it wasn't.
Because I thought that was thenext best thing for me.
The truth is, I believedeverybody who had told me that
because my coffee shops hadfailed, my skateboard shop had

(01:41:35):
failed, and my music career hadfailed, that I wasn't cut out
for entrepreneurship.
And what I needed to do was goto college and get a real job
like everybody else.
Hmm.
And the funny thing is, iswithin, you know, a month of
going to real college likeeverybody else, I made more
money than I ever made in mylife.
Right.
Because I decided to be anentrepreneur again.
Right.
Fascinating.
So in my family, we always talkabout no plan B.

(01:41:55):
Yeah.
And so when my kids have hadthese dreams of what they want
to do, we encourage them to dothat.
And what that does is it gives'em a focus that's different
from everybody else's.
Where AI and video games andviolent movies might become a
distraction.
My kids know what they wanna doand they know what the risk and
consequences are from divergingfrom that path, which is, you

(01:42:15):
don't get to do what you wannado.
If you let all these otherthings get in the way, including
drugs and alcohol, well, youchange what you want to do
probably, and you always canchange it too.
Yeah, they definitely hadchanges.
But you know, my son Henry, theSirius, which is a very, a very
good name for him, uh, is goingto be a professional baseball
player.
Oh.
And he has known that for almosthis entire life.

(01:42:37):
Hmm.
And does he meet.
Does he what?
Eat meat.
He does eat.
Okay, good.
Keep eating meat.
Henry, although, although for awhile there, he was vegetarian
when I first started.
'cause Henry the serious is alsoHenry the daddy's boy, which I,
I proudly say, but when I wentvegetarian that's fair.
He's like, I'll do it too.
And so for five years he was,oh, wow.
And then he started saying,look, dad, I'm not as big as the
other kids.

(01:42:57):
I think I need to start eatingmeat.
I said, you do whatever youwant.
I, I don't care.
I never made you be avegetarian.
Um, but anyway, um, and so, youknow, he's, he, he played var
varsity baseball his last twoyears of high school.
He's a team captain on his clubteam.
He's just starting shortstop andnow he has a college
scholarship.
Nice.
And he's going to Seattle, uh,this summer to go play college
baseball.

(01:43:18):
Um, so that, that's it.
So I don't ever tell Henry, oh,well, you better have a backup
player.
Well, what if, what if hedoesn't?
Doesn't, then he just navigates.
Right.
Yeah.
It doesn't mean he is a failure.
Doesn't, like he said, I can getmy PhD anytime.
Right.
He can go back to schoolanytime.
But you can only be a baseballplayer for Right.
So push hard at that.
That's right.
If your window is open.
That's right.
And then, and then Benjamin, thehilarious is extremely talented,

(01:43:41):
downhill skier and downhillmountain.
Dang breaker.
Oh dang.
And, uh, extremely talented.
Something that doesn't requirefear.
Might be a good job.
Well, he has fear, thank God.
Well, just enough.
Just enough though.
Right.
He's a smart, he's smart.
Um, but he's dedicated andpassionate and so that's his
plan.
Interesting.
He wants to, he wants to, um,ride mountain bikes in college.
He wants to get a scholarshipjust like his brother.

(01:44:03):
Um, and, uh, and he wants to beoutdoors and, and the only
place, other place he wants togo is Canada.
Right.
But his plan for that is to finda Canadian woman to marry so
Well, you know, but, but um,there might be quite a few of
those in the market in the nearfuture that are like, Hey, can
you get me into America ifanyone still wants to come here?
Oh, before I change topics,sometimes we like to ooh, hit,

(01:44:26):
uh, current events.
Sure.
Uh, and we've got like the, theLA riots.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, part four or whatever it isYeah.
By now going on like right now.
Yeah.
Um, as a libertarian.
Yeah.
Kind of leaning, uh, probably a,not leaning full on, I would
suspect a Trump skeptic, butalso a Gavin Newsom non-fan.

(01:44:46):
Like what do you think aboutthis whole, like, bitch fight
over the like military and likefederal versus state powers and,
and what's going on with allthat, all theater.
Yeah.
South Theater.
It's a puppet show.
It's a puppet show.
Yeah.
I mean, that's not to say thatpeople aren't angry and
suffering for good reason,andwhatever suffering.
Absolutely.
And they have a right to get outin the streets and protest.

(01:45:06):
I think the protests turn nowfrom not, uh, just so much a,
uh, an examination of immigrantrights and also in an
examination of hearings to thelaw.
That's right.
That's right.
I think on both sides there arequestions, answer, right.
What is due process in thissituation, right?
And what does it mean to breakinto a country because that also
happens.
What due process is appropriateif you just come in and set up?

(01:45:28):
That's right.
That's right.
But I think what people arepissed off about now, myself
included, is the militmilitarization of the whole
thing and the test that Trumphas created as to what people
will tolerate.
And I mean, I am 47 years old.
I have never Are you really?
Oh yeah.
I thought you were younger thanthat.
Yeah, yeah.
Oil of Alay twice a day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, but I have never seen theMarines come into a city and try

(01:45:52):
and force.
Uh, or actually try and pushback protestors.
Right.
To me, that's crazy.
And to me that's, that, that'scrossed, that's theater.
I mean, there's been a, like wegot plenty of National Guard.
We don't need to figure, bring anumber.
We don't even need the NationalGuard.
I mean, I watched, I watched themayor's press conference last
night.
It was pretty hairy.
Like they didn't have a handleon it for sure.
Well, but those, the NationalGuard are only protecting two

(01:46:12):
federal buildings in la They'renot actually out there on the,
on the line with the policeofficers.
Yeah.
So, so it's theater, right?
It is, it's total.
If that's really the case, it'stotal theater.
But I don't know if.
Like, are you right about that?
Are you right about that?
There's no media.
You can't know.
But here's the fucking thing,right?
Like my, as a libertarian, Idon't believe in borders.
You know, like, I mean Oh, thatfar Libertarian.
Yeah.
I mean, like, I, I believepeople are people, right?

(01:46:34):
And they de they deserve theindividual respect.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, anyway, so thenthere should be nation states,
so like Bitcoin for everybody,and just like Bitcoin for
everybody.
But I'm not a big Bitcoin guyeither.
I sold mine too, because I justcouldn't find any fucking
utility in it.
Right?
Right.
And I made a lot of money incrypto, but I'm just like, when
does this actually do something?
Right?
But with regard to people like,no, I believe in nations, right?

(01:46:55):
I believe in cultures, I believein, in, in laws, right?
I believe that we can get inagreement about those things.
I also believe that somebody cancome here and raise their hand
and say, I'm willing to be inagreement of those things.
Yeah.
What I don't believe in is thatsomebody can come here and then
say, I'm in agreement of thosethings so long as you pay for me
to come here.
Right?
Or pay for, for me, whatever.
You know, I'm, I'm a, well, Ithink as a, as a.

(01:47:16):
Libertarian leaning, but alsofree market economist.
Like I love the idea of the goldcard.
Sure.
Like the gold green card.
Yeah.
Like it should be like a, to meit should be like if it should
be just as important.
To become a part of AmericaYeah.
As it is to become a part of myteam here at local think tank.
Yeah.
Like you should almost have todo an application.
Yeah.

(01:47:36):
I should start charging peopleto apply.
You have to adopt, adopt aculture, right?
Like Yeah.
Like a, like all a country is asa set of beliefs.
Sure.
Right.
But ours is so fractured rightnow.
It's really hard to say.
There isn't really say what thatis.
Right.
And even if we can't agree onwhat the set of beliefs says, we
should be able to agree thatnobody should be responsible for
anybody else's this, that, orthe other thing.
The thing that has driven mecrazy about locally, like,

(01:47:57):
about, about this is MikeJohnston, the mayor of Denver,
who happened to be my son's, uh,flag football coach, or a season
or two also.
But I don't think that one manshould be able to decide to
spend$325 million No.
To give to illegal immigrants,to, to, to, to make their
illegal transition to the UnitedStates and Denver, uh, easier

(01:48:20):
without, without bankrupt thecity of Denver virtually without
a vote.
Right.
You know, without a vote.
It's this executive power.
That's fucking nuts to me at thelocal level and at the federal
level.
National level.
Yeah.
Executive power is outtacontrol.
It's outta control.
It's outta control.
And I say all that'cause I wannaremind people I don't wanna be
canceled with, I don't give afuck who comes here like, so

(01:48:41):
long.
Like, like fair.
Like I don't like, I like I loveit.
Right.
You know, there's a lot of valuefrom, from, from the diversity
that immigrants bring.
Oh, tons.
Yeah.
Um, it's just like, who'sfooting the bill application
with, with a fee Seems like waybetter than bringing a bunch of
Venezuelan prisoners.
Yeah.
Up here.
Yeah, for sure.

(01:49:01):
If that's, and I think probably,which I think is Amar.
I think too many of them are,but they're the exception to the
rule Some.
But if you're Venezuela andyou're like, those guys are
complete assholes and you knowthat they've been like letting a
hundred thousand illegalimmigrants across the border
every month or every week.
Yeah.
Or whatever.
Yeah.
Why wouldn't you empty yourmental asylums into the country?

(01:49:23):
No, I, I agree.
And when you have people likeMike, Justin, like there, they
wish they had more mental asylumpatients.
No.
They're like, here, take'em all.
Take'em all.
No.
And when we're incentivizing,right.
And you can, like, you can stayat a hotel in New York City.
Yeah.
You can call it support orwhatever you want, but it is
incentivizing people to come.
It's saying, look, if you come,your journey may be arduous, but
your arrival will be cake.

(01:49:44):
Right.
You know?
Yeah.
And like, and then once you, sowe should not be doing any of
that once No.
To the extent that all the NGOslike, no, here's how you
registered to vote.
Yeah.
No, no.
You know, I, I, I liked thesystem of sponsorship that
existed.
Yeah.
You know, which, like you couldbring people over, but you know,
your family at a restaurant, youkind got a vouch for'em
virtually.
Yeah.
You vouch for'em.
You say, Hey, I'm gonna give youemployment and stuff like that.

(01:50:05):
You know?
I think that was a good system.
It's intriguing for sure.
Um, for sure.
Yeah.
Let's, uh, hit the finalsegment.
Do it.
The Loco experience.
Yeah.
The, the craziest story thatyou're willing to share Yeah.
With our listeners.
I mean, I don't know if it's thecraziest, but, but it is a crazy
story.
Is it a valet experience?
It's a valet experience.
Okay.
Let's hear it.
All right.
My, my, I think my first yearworking down there was, uh,

(01:50:26):
maybe the year that the NBA AllStar game was in Denver.
Okay.
Okay.
I think Carmelo Anthony playedfor us.
Uh, who was the guy that camefrom the Sixers?
Um, uh, Barkley?
No, no, no, no, no.
Later.
The shorter guy, uh, AllenIverson.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So it was during that time,right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Big suits, big shorts.

(01:50:46):
Fuck it.
You know, like, it, it was that,it was that time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so I'm working down inCherry Creek.
And everybody's coming downthere.
Who's anybody?
Right?
Right, right.
They're parking all sorts ofcrazy cars.
And so this guy comes up andhe's got a Ferrari.
He parks it.
I, I always leave the Ferrari infront.
He goes inside parties with hisfriends until the game's about
to start.
He comes back outside and hesays, Hey, I'm actually gonna

(01:51:08):
get a ride to the All-Star gamewith, uh, my friends.
Um, can you just put my Ferrariin the garage and I'll come back
and pick it up tomorrow?
I said, I can put your Ferrariin the garage, but tomorrow was
like Sunday or something likethat.
I said, you can't come back andpick it up tomorrow because the
garage will lock and it won'topen up again until Monday.
Okay.
And he says, okay, no problem.
Take it home.

(01:51:28):
I said What?
Okay.
He said, just take it home.
I'll call.
Gimme your cell phone number.
I'll call you tomorrow.
I'll pick it up from youtomorrow.
I like it.
Now, granted, I lived at thechurch at this time, right?
You're right.
Like barely across the street.
Okay.
And I've already got thisMercedes from my deal with
Mercedes, right?
And so I already look weird.
Everyone already thinks I'm adrug dealer, already live in the
basement of the church.
I live in the basement of thechurch.

(01:51:48):
Outside the basement door.
I have my Mercedes parked.
I also had a fore runner that Iarrived in Denver with, and now
this guy wants me to bring hisfricking Ferrari.
Yeah.
I said, I said, ah man, I don'tknow if I feel comfortable with
that.
He said, look, I'll give you abig tip.
Just take it home.
I'll call you tomorrow.
I'll come to wherever you are.
I'll pick it up.
I said, okay, sounds good.
I take this Ferrari home to thechurch.
He doesn't call.

(01:52:09):
I drive it back the next day.
He never comes.
I don't have this guy's name,his number or anything.
Damn.
For a week.
I drive this Ferrari back andforth from Because you want it
to be there, the restaurant?
Yes.
If he gets here.
Exactly.
From the restaurant back to myhouse.
Finally, my next day off, whichwas a week later, it was like a
Sunday.

(01:52:29):
I'm laying around in bed and myboss calls me and he's like.
Pissed off and he's like, dude,Travis, where the hell's this
guy's Ferrari?
I'm like, it's at my house.
He's like, why the fuck is it atyour house?
I'm like, he told me to take it.
And he's like, well, he'spissed.
You gotta get down here rightnow and bring that fucking
Ferrari back.
I was like, okay, I will.
So I rushed that dude.
Forgot completely.
I don't know what he did.

(01:52:50):
And this was previous to yourbusiness, right?
Because Yeah.
This is pretty, no, I had myvalet ads company.
Okay.
You did?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I, I was doing fine, butlike, I'm still working.
'cause I, I met a lot of greatpeople there.
Right, right.
Well, so I, and you at least hadsome credibility with the owner
of the valet business.
Yes.
Right at Yeah.
He knew I wasn't a criminal.
Right, right.
Although I did crash a Hummerthat I had to pay for.

(01:53:10):
Yeah.
But that was an accident.
Um, anyway, uh, so yeah, I driveback down there.
The guy never comes out to seeme.
Okay.
Okay.
I wait in the restaurantthinking I'm finally gonna get
this massive tip.
Right.
No, he walks out the other door,drives a car off.
I never see him again.
Oh shit.
That was the craziest story.
So I owned a Ferrari spider forone week.
You should have, uh, uh, what'sthat?
Tulo or what's the, uh.

(01:53:32):
Rental thing.
Turo Twoo.
Yeah.
Way before wrote that thing.
Way before Turo.
You could have given yourfriends like, Hey, a hundred
bucks for two hours.
Just kidding.
Yeah.
But yeah.
If you knew he was gonna stiffyou, I would've taken it all
over town.
Right.
I put 4,000 miles.
It would've been like Ferrisbeer.
Exactly.
But I was scared to death.
I remember like watching it wasparked under a tree and just

(01:53:54):
like being like, oh my God, Ihope nothing falls.
Shit on the scene.
Shits on there in the morning.
Yeah, exactly.
It just, it was so muchresponsibility for a kid my age,
there's so much that could havehappened.
Oh, right.
Like I'm 24.
Right.
And plus you've been like a twotime loser on coffee shops.
Yeah.
And skateboard shops and musicwasn't going your way.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
But it gave me a taste of thefine life.

(01:54:15):
That's right.
That's right.
What's cool though is thatyou've never been pursuing the
fine life.
Yeah, you've been pursuing valueadd, you know, you wanted to be
comfortable, you wanted to besecure, I think after such a
tumultuous childhood, but, uh,yeah.
Yeah.
That interesting way you gotdumped into the fine life.
Yeah.
You barely had a spoonful of ityour whole life.
Oh, I know.
And all of a sudden you'revaleting for That's exactly it.

(01:54:37):
Freaking Kobe Bryant and Yeah.
And, uh, and making tens ofthousands of dollars selling
valet tickets.
Right.
I mean, it was a great time.
What a fascinating spot.
Yeah.
Sit in Courtside and I mean, itwas a great time.
Well, this was a funconversation.
Yeah, no, it was.
Um, if people wanna find you, doyou wanna just look, look you up
in LinkedIn or is there a way,you know, my website is travis
luther.com.
Okay.

(01:54:57):
Um, I got a lot of stuff there,but I post a lot of my stuff on
Instagram.
So it'sinstagram@travisscottluther.com.
Okay.
I was the first Travis Scott,just so you know.
Oh, nice.
There's a big rapper andeveryone's like, your name's
Travis Scott, but yeah, attravis scott luther.com.
I post my research findingsthere.
Oh, really?
On Instagram.
Yeah.
My self-help stuff.
Seems like a weird place forthat.

(01:55:18):
I know.
I just, I, that's where I havethe most followers.
I get the most engagementInstagram.
I've stuck with it.
Yeah.
I dig it.
Mm-hmm.
My, my friend's, uh, mom was outfor her grandson's graduation
and her, uh, handle on Instagramis instagrammy.
Oh, nice.
That's awesome.
Anyway, I digress.
Love you, Barb.
If you hear this, Travis, thanksfor being here.

(01:55:40):
Of course.
Thanks for having me.
And, uh, look forward to ournext conversation.
Yeah, this was awesome cheer.
Thank you.
Cheers.
Bye now.

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EXPERIENCE 225 | Travis Luther - Entrepreneur, Sociologist, Writer, Speaker, Past President of Entrepreneur’s Organization Colorado Chapter, and Opiate Addiction Survivor

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