EXPERIENCE 226 | Partners in Construction - Brothers in Life & Business & Faith - Chris & Patrick Elder and Austin Dodder of Elder Construction, Inc. - The LoCo Experience

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
In this episode of the LocoExperience Podcast, I sat down
with Chris Elder, Patrick Elderand Austin Dotter, respectively,
the CEO President and COO andPartners in Elder Construction
Inc.
We start by delving into theroles at Elder Construction,
along with the roots in NorthernColorado.
And previous to that, ColoradoSprings Friends, since birth in
first grade respectively, weexplored together the history of

(00:22):
their friendship and thefounding and evolution of the
company.
We touch upon their emphasis onbuilding strong community
relationships and focus oncommercial construction projects
and the poor results when theydabbled in residential
construction.
The Trio shares fascinatinganecdotes from their youth,
including adventures andmisadventures, and highlight the
challenging, yet rewarding pathto their current success.

(00:43):
We also discussed their personallives, relationship building and
deep rooted faith, which plays asignificant role in the
company's ethos and leadershipstyle.
So please join me in enjoying myconversation with Chris, Patrick
and Austin Partners in one ofNorthern Colorado's most highly
regarded commercial constructioncompanies, elder construction.

(01:40):
Welcome back to the LocoExperience Podcast.
I'm joined today by PatrickElder Austin Dotter and Chris
Elder in that order.
And they are the marketpresident for Fort Collins
Northern Colorado, as well asthe C-O-O-C-E-O and together the
partners of Elder Constructionhere up in, uh, I guess what

(02:03):
would you say, Windsor, whenpeople ask where your off
headquarters are at?
Well, I think we say NorthernColorado Crossroads.
We're, we're located in.
Do you just try to be ambiguous?
Yeah.
Community ambiguous.
The nature of our work takes useverywhere, so.
Fair.
Yeah.
We have, while we have aheadquarters, I, I'd say every
job site's its own office in asense.
True.
That's why you have all thoselittle trailers that say Elder
construction site.

(02:24):
That's right.
And then we also have a locationin Colorado Springs, which Okay.
Is where we're from and wherethe company was founded, which
is why the distinction of themarket president in Northern
Colorado.
Correct.
And who's the market presidentin Southern Colorado?
Uh, gentleman by the name ofSteve Dewe.
Okay.
Runs our office down in ColoradoSprings and has for the last
four years.
Okay.
And was he around for a longtime before that?

(02:46):
Just not running it?
Or has he, was he added to theteam?
No, he was added to the team.
Okay.
Um, he and I had known eachother through a Vistage
relationship.
Okay.
And, um, so stars aligned and,and we were looking for, uh,
some real veteran leadership inthat office.
Gotcha.
And well,'cause you started downthere, right?
Right.
And your dad, your dad.
The elder dad started thecompany.

(03:06):
Elder dad started, founded thecompany in 94 down in Colorado
Springs.
Okay.
And, um, you know, we, fromthere, we kinda grew up in the
business.
Austin, I think what makes thisstory fun is the relationship
that the three of us have hadfor, gosh, going on, what is it?
35 plus years.

(03:27):
Okay.
We, uh, we met in first gradeOh.
Is ever since Okay.
Have done life's journeytogether ever since then.
And this was in ColoradoSprings, I presume?
In Colorado Springs.
Okay.
Neighborhood.
And what, uh, like could youtell these guys apart right
away, Austin?
Was that one of the reasons theybecame friends with you?
I don't know if it was rightaway, but, um, pretty quickly
you learn to tell'em apart.

(03:49):
Right.
I mean, you know, I think one ofthe things that people always
ask me is they're like, can youtell'em apart by looks?
And I'm like, yeah.
And they're like, can you tell'em apart by their voice?
And I'm like, now I can.
Right, right.
I generally, in a publicoutings, it's kind of like on
track right now.
Like Chris, you're generally ina little nicer shirt, sometimes

(04:10):
even slacks, you know, Patrick'smore polo ish, not quite as
frequently shaven, you know, uh,perhaps.
Is that an accurate, uh,descriptor or is that just my
experience?
I think it depends on the days.
The, the really tricky ones arewhen they dress the same.
Do you do that sometimesintentionally?

(04:30):
No, not intentionally.
Just that joke is we have spareshirts at the office.
'cause every now and then we'llshow up with the same shirt on
or, or one that looks a lotalike.
And it's like, okay, who'schanging?
Somebody's s changing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I get it.
So, um, so talk to me aboutlike, why Northern Colorado do
you, I'm, I'm think I remembermaybe you came up for college.
Is that true in all of you?

(04:50):
Is that true also?
We did, we did.
So, um, you know, throughout thestory, I, I wish it was more
intentional than it was.
But yeah, we came up here, um,CSU to go to school.
Uh, how we picked CSU is, uh, Ithink a funny story.
It was brilliant earlyadmission.
I mean, we, we all, I think bothour families come from a value

(05:15):
of education.
And so there was thisexpectation, you're gonna go to
college.
Okay.
Um, and, uh, I remember CSU camedown to Eric Academy High
School.
That's where we went to school.
Okay.
Okay.
And a sophomore and junior year,I guess it was.
And, and basically they, I, I,people don't believe me when I
say this, but they, they had aassembly and pitched CSU and.

(05:36):
Said, Hey, if you raise yourhand now, well we got this early
admittance program.
You don't have to take the SATs.
You just, oh, you kind of, youget a free, free pass right in.
And kind of all three looked ateach other like, Hey, that
sounds pretty good.
Let's, interesting.
Let's go.
And we knew, uh, I don't thinkbefore we went to CSU, but we,
we had heard of the constructionmanagement program.

(05:58):
Well, I was gonna say, were youplanning on being like in the
construction trades anyway?
Was that what you went to schoolfor?
Well, pat, you wanna tell thatstory?
I would like to have Pat talk.
Well, I'd love to.
I think, um, you know, we'reboth from, from, uh, a family of
builders.
Austin is from a family ofbuilders.
I think that's just innately whowe are.
And I, I don't think I everenvisioned, that's why they

(06:19):
give, uh, like, like shoemakernames and stuff like that.
You know, you guys would've beenopolis if you're Greek or
something like that.
Right?
Well, probably not Opolis.
It's probably something morecomplicated, but, or deck your
engineer probably should havebeen in our last name, but yeah.
You know, I think that's just inour blood.
And, and CSU was a great fit forthat.
And we came up to CSU and, um,I, I very vividly remember early

(06:43):
on my, my parents saying, Hey,this is great.
You're going to CSU, they've gota great construction management
program.
Uh, we'll help you pay forcollege, but you can't go
through it.
And we kinda looked at eachother and, and, and, uh, well,
why not?
That's what we want to do.
And, you know, I think wisely atthe time, my, my dad
specifically said, Hey, you'vegained.
A lot of experience inconstruction, just growing up in

(07:05):
it.
Mm.
Uh, where, where you can reallyclose, try finance or something
like that.
Business or a business, trybusiness leadership.
And, uh, so went down that pathand ultimately ended up in
construction day one outcollege.
But am, uh, very thankful thathe pushed you specifically, or
everybody kinda was more of abusiness general, not
construction management.

(07:26):
Well, I was in the same positionwhere my, my dad was like, I'm
not paying for you to get aconstruction management degree.
Um, is that right?
Yeah.
That's so funny.
He was like, you want aconstruction management
education to come work for me?
What if you said psychology orsomething like that?
I don't know.
Because yeah, psychology was noton my radar.
Yeah.
Fair.
Um, but you know, for me, Iactually came to CSU on an Air

(07:50):
Force, ROTC scholarship.
Oh.
And construction managementwasn't even one of the programs
that they provided scholarships.
So you had a list that you kindof had to choose from and I was
like, well, civil engineering'skind of adjacent to construction
management.
So that's originally what I wentto, uh, CSU for, was for civil

(08:11):
engineering and.
You know, to make a long storyshort, after two years in ROTC
decided that wasn't what Iwanted to do with my life, you
can keep your scholarship.
I'll do what I want.
Yeah.
And so, um, he doesn't takedirection.
Well, no.
Um, and so I ended uptransferring to construction

(08:32):
management after a couple ofyears as civil engineering.
Gotcha.
So, and was dad in on that orhe, yeah, after two years they
were kind of like, well you paidfor the first two years in
college, so we'll pay for thesecond two.
Fair.
And how about you Chris?
Uh, you had leadership businesskind of same track.
I did, I was really interested.
Were you guys, like, were youguys like twinsies taking the
same courses and stuff most ofthe time too, know?

(08:55):
Uh, you know, strangely enough,Austin and I probably took more
business classes together thanPat and I did.
Um, I know Pat you were downkind of the management track.
Marketing management track.
And I went down more the realestate finance.
Oh, I see.
Yep.
Sure.
And then Austin, I only how you,we managed to take accounting
classes together and, uh, but.
We probably spent more timetogether in class than Gotcha.

(09:17):
During those days than, than thetwo of us.
But yeah, we did, um, ourfreshman year there was a class,
uh, called Rocks, Oxford Jocks,and it satisfied the science
credit.
Okay.
And uh, like a geology class orsomething.
Yeah.
And I remember the, uh, showingup for the final, and it was,
did they say you guys don't,look, here's the backstory.
So we, we did constructiongrowing up for my dad.

(09:39):
So that meant you're rolling outat 6 45.
You were pushing concrete aroundsometimes or whatever.
You're up early.
So that first semester you lookat the syllabus and you're like,
rocks we're jocks.
7:00 AM That's not bad.
We we're up at six.
And then you get to college andthen you're up until 1:00 AM and
then it's harder to get up atsix.
It was, uh, it was one of thoseTuesday, Thursday classes and,

(10:01):
and, uh, we showed up for thefinals.
There's two of you.
'cause we, one would go Tuesday,one would go Thursday.
Shared notes and Yeah.
Easy peasy.
Easy peasy.
I, uh, actually I stopped buyingtextbooks, um, after my second
year of college because I wasterrible at attending class and
stuff.
And I thought, oh, I'll justread the, the book and catch up,

(10:22):
kind of.
And then I never really did.
And that's not how they testanyway.
Yeah.
But then I, like, I couldn'tskip class anymore and I was
pretty much dean's list the restof my, my college and I saved a
bunch of money on textbooks.
Yeah.
I, I'm with you.
So I, I, I was like an audiblelearner.
I'm too, and like I had to payattention if I was there and
paying attention.
Shit was pretty easy.
You know, it turns out likerelying on brute strength to

(10:46):
read book by osmosis when it'ssitting on the shelf didn't work
very good for me.
That's that's this guy righthere though.
Yeah.
Chris, there were many a timeswhere we would trade off who had
to take notes in classes andwe'd get to the point where
we're gonna study for a testand, you know, we both boy cope
in our notes and inevitably Ididn't have any, you'd have

(11:08):
three lines including like alittle drawing of the pretty
girl up front.
Yeah, exactly.
And he's like, um, where areyour notes?
And I'm like, yeah, they're uphere.
Yeah.
And he was the guy that asked methe question You want Yeah.
The guy that didn't buy the bookand we just, you know, the night
before the test be like, well,can I borrow your book and stay
up all night reading the dangthing?
Yeah.
And, and set the curve.
It used to drive me crazy.

(11:29):
I worked so dang hard.
Well, it's nice to have thosegiftings.
Um, let's, uh, let's, before wego into the whole long journey,
let's set the stage on, on elderconstruction and what it is.
Who, who, who you work for.
I, I can see you more of acommercial focus, but also some
tenant finish, but mostlyvertical construction of medium,

(11:50):
small to medium size, sometimesbig buildings.
Yeah, we, I don't know.
Yeah, we, um, talk to me aboutit.
So it, it, uh, company startedobviously as mentioned in 94 and
we've just steadily grown overthe years.
Um, okay.
Our portfolio, we, we stay inthe commercial space.
Um, so what that looks like is,uh, we do a lot of K through 12

(12:11):
charter schools, a lot offinancial institutions, some
light medical dental, uh, hasbeen a big part of our portfolio
over the years.
So like nice buildingsespecially it sounds like.
Yeah.
Nice.
And, and I think it's not somuch industrial manufacturing.
We do that too.
Um, not, not heavymanufacturing.
Um, and I think it's, it's veryinteresting.
You look at the two markets thatwe serve and they dictate a lot

(12:33):
of the work that we do.
So, Northern Colorado, forexample, I think it's newer,
it's growing.
We do a lot more ground up.
Um, in Colorado Springs, that'sa very established market, a lot
of large real estate because ofthe, the size of companies that,
that occupy.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Uh, we, we do a lot of largetenant finishes.
Okay.

(12:53):
So I think it's a, it's, it'sreally market driven.
Okay.
But we like to pride ourselvesin, in being able to tackle any
kind of commercial, um,construction project, uh, and,
and get very personal.
And it's a general contractingfirm.
General contracting firm.
Um, do you do like public bidstuff as well?
I must do with, you're doingschools and stuff like that, or

(13:14):
is how, how you get a lot ofyour work?
Or is it more, uh, relationshipdriven kind of, and people say,
Hey, I need to build thisbuilding for my business?
Yeah, it's definitely morerelationship driven.
I think that's a, a key tenetof, of what we enjoy doing.
Um, we don't participate in the,the public hard bid market.
Uh, very often, sometimes marketconditions dictate that we do,

(13:34):
but we really enjoy working withclients early on in the process.
So before drawings are, arecompletely finished partnering
with the design team, theownership group, uh, helping
really provide a, a deeppre-construction process that
helps with budget construction.
So not truly a design buildfirm, but kind of right in
between with trying to get asclose as you can without
actually having a big designteam on the, in, on the payroll.

(13:57):
And, and we do a, a few designbuild projects, um, by bringing
architects into the, to theproject with us.
Mm-hmm.
But predominantly we, we work inwhat they call a, a, uh,
construction manager at risk,where we're brought on when
designs maybe 20, 30% complete.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, we've really enjoyedthat.
It allows us to, to reallyengage, uh, in a relationship.

(14:19):
It's less transactional for usand feel like we can really add
a lot of value to the, to theprocess that way.
So.
Okay.
Uh, it's been fun to see slowerin Colorado Springs, but
Northern Colorado reallyadopted, I think that early
procurement method with, withNan years ago.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and so it, it's, it's usgetting involved early and, and,
uh, really building therelationship and, and even the

(14:42):
procurements in public havereally shifted that well and
when everything keeps increasingin price, like the month before,
you know, every month it's a,it's, it's nice to get your
stuff right away.
Right.
Nobody likes prices.
Yeah.
You lock in your price now.
Yeah.
So that, that's a big part of itis just helping the, uh, the
owner and the design team designa budget.
Yeah.
Fair.
Um, and talk to me about theteam a little bit.

(15:04):
Like, uh, maybe both contrastNorthern Colorado and, and
southern Col.
Did you call it SouthernColorado or Colorado Springs
office or That's, we call itColorado Springs.
It's interesting.
Northern Colorado and thenColorado Springs.
Right.
It's, well'cause nobody wants tobe like, it's not just Fort
Collins Right.
You know, Fort Collins is 35%,but probably not even 20% of
your actual market.

(15:25):
'cause Fort Collins is built outso much.
Right, right.
And Colorado Springs is, it'sbig.
Yeah.
I don't think people realizethat.
Jill and I lived down there forthree years.
If you haven't, if you haven'tmade that, that trip, uh, south
of Denver.
Yeah.
And over Monument Hill, that's,it's uh, uh, it rivals Northern
Colorado the size of NorthernColorado.

(15:46):
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
And it's, yeah, just a sprawlingmonster.
And it grew for a long time inkind of concentric circles.
But is there more growthhappening on the fringes or is
it more growing north towardDenver now?
Or what's going on with that?
I think we're seeing growthnortheast.
Yep.
Okay.
Uh, and then we're also startingto see a lot of growth south.

(16:07):
Oh, fountain.
Okay.
Yeah.
Area just cost wise or I thinkthe real estate.
Yeah.
The lands there, there isn'tland that has, doesn't have big
rocks in and everything.
And I think that's, that's whatColorado Springs has for it.
It's got space to go.
Right.
I mean, obviously you.
It's got the s ex peak that kindof limit growth to the Yeah.
The circles are kind of like,like seas, like inverted seas of

(16:29):
growth down there.
Yeah.
I 25 used to split the city.
Right.
And now it's, say I 25 is reallyon the, the, the far, the far
edge of Yeah.
Yeah.
Of the springs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's an interesting, uh,perspective.
Uh, so yeah, so, so like how biga team?
So size wise, I, I,operationally, um, our staff's
about the same size.

(16:49):
We're running anywhere from, uh,28 to 35 people in each office
operationally.
Okay.
Okay.
Uh, that's our constructioncrew.
Okay.
And then in Northern Colorado iswhere we, uh, you could call it
our hq.
Okay.
And so we have, so there's anadministrative team kind of
there too, right?
Sure.
We've got, we've got about, uh,10, 12 people on our admin team.
Okay.
Uh, accounting, marketingpeople.

(17:11):
Is the C suite, is this thewhole C-Suite or is there a CFO
or anything like that in themix?
No, we've, um, we've got a, adirector of finance and
accounting.
Okay.
Um, with us, uh, Dana Baner.
Oh.
Oh yeah.
I've known Dana forever.
Oh yeah.
Wonderful.
She, she, I didn't know what shewas doing after, uh, leaving her
building company.
Dana, if you're listening, youshould come back to Rotary Club.

(17:31):
You love it.
You're such a good rotary girl.
Uh, and, and you'd be welcomeback with open arms and Elder
would probably pay your dues.
We would, uh, she's been, shecame on board, uh, she's coming
up on three years now and.
Has really taken that side ofthe business.
And you know, Dana, she's awonderful addition.
A, a grinder when things Yeah,I'm not, and she's kind a

(17:53):
brilliant thinker.
Well, yeah, for sure.
Uh, yeah.
And passionate about her work,whether whatever might happen to
be so, Hey Dana, if you'relistening, so, okay, so, so
about a dozen, what'd you say?
10 or a dozen or something onthe kind of headquarters team,
right?
And that's like taking in allthe invoices and making sure
every, all the spending'sallocated to the right projects
and like, tell me what that teamdoes for a contractor company.

(18:18):
The accounting and finance teamthat Dana leads really, I mean,
yes.
Is a part of it.
Is AP a part of it is AR that'sgoing on.
But you know, the biggestresponsibility is just preparing
financial statements, reviewingand analyzing that handling, you
know, taxes.
Making sure liquidity is goodand the payroll taxes are paid.

(18:38):
Yeah, exactly.
Well, probably most importantly,making sure we all get paid.
Um, that would be the number onepriority.
The, the non partnersespecially.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then, you know, uh, elementsof treasury management that, you
know, sure.
What do we do with, with cash?
Yeah.
Which matters, you know, when itwas a half percent it didn't
really matter, but like, ifyou're floating in some

(18:58):
liquidity and you're not getting4% on a CD or something, you're
being kind of dumb these days.
Yeah.
Yep.
Well, and there's a huge riskside to our business to manage
through insurance programs.
So, um, gosh, that, that is ananimal in of itself.
Just the, the amount ofpolicies, bonding and different
things, all bonding and Yeah.
GL and, and, uh, you know, thecyber policies now that have

(19:20):
become Right.
So important.
So talk to me about theoperations teams then maybe, uh,
aside from the, the HQ kind ofadministrative monster, what,
what talk is it project managersand then overseeing teams of,
'cause do you do some of the,some of the, some of the work
too?
Like portions of must have tohave that big accrue, right?

(19:43):
We do.
We, we self perform, um, a fewscopes of work.
Okay.
I mean, traditionally about 85%of the work that, that we put in
place is through trade partners.
Yeah.
Uh, in our subcontractinggroups.
Um, you know, we have projectmanagers that run the, the
financial side of a project.
Mm-hmm.
Um, handle a lot of thecommunication superintendents

(20:03):
are the boots on the ground.
Yep.
Coordination and safety, uh,project engineers, which is a
unique term to, to construction.
It's basically an assistantproject manager.
Okay.
We, we have fancy terms foreverything.
Right.
Maybe aren't so fancy.
Well, we did in banking too, butYeah.
So they're a part of the team.
Project coordinators do a lot ofthe project accounting.

(20:25):
Uh, estimators.
So that's a communicator almostwith the, with the headquarters
office a little bit, or is thatwhere that comes in somewhere?
So our project coordinators, um,they handle a lot of the
paperwork, the insurance, uh,project specific between
subcontractors.
Yeah.
Uh, the payout.
It's a lot to keep track of.
I reckon there's, there's a lotof paperwork, a lot more than

(20:45):
there used to be.
Yeah.
It's pretty heavily regulated.
And a lot of, you know, the riskmanagement steps that the
project coordinators areresponsible for, driven by, you
know, either corporate riskteams for some of the clients
or, or in a lot of cases,lenders, um Oh sure.

(21:05):
Require, you know, lien releasesand, you know, all the stuff to
make sure that Right, right.
Oh, there's not going to besome, nobody gets a hundred
grand without, without actuallyhaving the proper invoice for
it.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Or encumbrances at the end ofthe project.
Sure, sure.
Nobody likes encumbrances.
Um, so I guess, uh, from a, uh,uh, process standpoint, can you

(21:30):
take me through like a customerjourney?
Say I'm, I'm a business owner,I've got a 40 employee, uh,
professional services business,uh, that's been growing, and I
wanna build a nice officebuilding where I can also lease
out half of it, you know, somenice office park where, where,
where's that process start?
Who am I talking to?

(21:51):
Yeah, no, great question.
Is there like a sales rep, Sean,right?
Is one of your guys, least SeanAlban's with us.
He's been with us almost a yearnow.
He does a phenomenal job of, ofkind of, uh, getting out and
understanding a customer need.
And, and I think, you know,every journey's a little bit
differently.
A lot of the journey startswith, uh, an architect that's
already been brought on board.

(22:11):
Oh, okay.
Uh, a banking relationship, abroker relationship.
Sure.
Okay.
And sometimes, so I might havealready started by talking with
an architect or whatever, andI've got at least the foundation
of a plan.
You, you know, you've got a, I'mshopping it around a little bit.
I might be talking to Don, Imight be talking to Elder,
whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, you've got a need.
And, and generally the, thefirst questions are, uh, when I

(22:31):
have a need, I'm usually, I needit now.
And, and how much is it gonnacost?
Uh, and so that's where we, wecome in early to, to help
analyze, uh, alongside anarchitect partner.
Mm-hmm.
You know, what is the space planand what are the, the
constraints, uh, what are thetrue needs that you have for
this new facility?
And, and, and then throughoutthe process, we will help

(22:52):
navigate the, the municipalprocess.
That's a significant function,uh, that, that's a significant,
we've gotten a little bit morecomplicated permits and
regulations, or it's a littlebit more complicated.
Uh, and just navigating that,uh, it's not like building a
house where you can just rundown to the, the building
department and pull it right.
And start tomorrow.
So.
There's quite a bit to, it's along time between first

(23:13):
conversation and first revenuefor you guys, isn't it?
You know, on a typical groundthat it's, I would say you're
probably anywhere from 10 to 14months from, from the time the,
the architects really engaged instarting the, the planning
process with the city toshoveling the ground.
Right.
And then from there, it can beup to another eight to 10 months

(23:33):
of, of construction.
Right.
Right.
You know, it, it's a 24 to 36month process and we're, we're
plugging in, uh, just abouteverywhere in between Yeah.
Helping out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, the stuff that you guys selffulfill, what, what, what is
that stuff, if I may?
Sure.
There's, there's always scopesof work that, uh, kind of fall

(23:54):
between the cracks.
You gotcha.
Uh, a plumber doesn't handlethis, electrician doesn't, so we
do a lot of self perform around,um, rough carpentry.
Mm-hmm.
A lot of demolition, all thescopes that are really hard to,
to, to quite understand thescope.
Sometime on a bid portion,understand the scope or, or
there's not a dedicated, uh,company out there that can do
that.

(24:14):
So we fill in the gaps andGotcha.
Okay.
Yeah.
So there's just a, you know, yougot hammers or whatever, like,
okay, crew, we do have hammer.
Go take that stuff out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think as a company we have, ohgosh, ten eight.
Eight or 10 carpenters.
Oh, wow.
And they're good.
Okay.
You know, they're, they are truecarpenters that, that.

(24:35):
Uh, haven't been pigeonholedinto one thing.
Yeah.
They, they're kind of Jack Walltrades.
Gotcha.
And so whether it's filling inthe gaps or it is choosing on,
on smaller projects toselectively go in and say, you
know what?
It would be way too complicatedto bring in.
Yeah.
We could build up a lot of,lets, we're gonna put a
mezzanine in here, or we canjust do that.
We don't need to bid somebody inthere for that.

(24:57):
And then there's always the endof the project, right.
Where you're trying to wrap upand punch list and mm-hmm.
Um, it's hard to get, you know,you think about maybe on any
given project you're hiring 20to 30 subcontractors.
Yeah.
You gotta get'em all back withina short amount of time to fix
little things.
Right.
Well, and your budgets that thebanker has put in front of you
and is required withoutencumbrances and stuff, they

(25:19):
just really are based on thefunction.
Right.
So co if Elder wants to goexecute this portion of that
budget because they can't getthe damn framer over or the
plumber over in time orwhatever, then they can do that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
And I think that's been thechallenge for us is often that
has been cost.
We eat right.

(25:40):
We Right.
And so it's like, okay, how dowe, how do we make the self
perform profitable?
Right.
Not just a.
A way to a competitiveadvantage?
Well, or just a way to, tomaintain or, or hold the
schedule.
Mm-hmm.
Or delivery date.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
We got some bodies.
Let's throw it at it instead ofmm-hmm.
Should we really have been doingthat?
Or should we have held others alittle bit more strongly

(26:02):
accountable for finishing?
Right.
Strong.
Right.
But when you're at the end, youjust gotta, yeah.
You gotta finish strong and pushuntil you need to get there and
make the deadline.
So you gotta have those folksthat can help you do it.
Talk to me about, like starting,you said it started in 94, what
your, was your father's companyand then like starting up here,

(26:24):
talk to me about that experiencewas like, or did you go back
after college and be part of itthere?
Or like how do you, how do youset a tap route, you know, to
get, get a launch and, and ittakes a lot of capital, right.
Like to, or a decent amount evenjust to get a insurance policy.
You know, I think that, I guessthat's, it was already
established a little bit.
Yeah.
And that's, so our journey uphere, um, I think we touched on

(26:47):
a minute.
We went to school here,obviously then Pat and, and
Austin both went and worked forg Johnson Construction.
Oh, okay.
Um, pat on the estimating side,Austin, uh, traveling
superintendent took'em all overthe country.
Yep.
Yep.
And, um, there was a desire,there was always a desire to do
something together.
Yeah.
Uh, we just didn't know what itwas and how we were gonna do it.

(27:08):
So we, uh, famously joke aboutwe, we got pretty burnout in our
careers about five years in.
And, uh, and what were youdoing?
I was doing appraisal financework for Okay.
Uh, hotel HVS.
Oh, okay.
Oh yeah.
What's that guy's name?
Rod.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rod Clo or something.
Yeah, I got to, I got to kind oftravel the US with him.

(27:30):
Oh, cool.
And it was a fantastic, he had aquite a fascinating business
was, and, but maybe he stilldoes.
I don't know.
I haven't seen him in 10 years.
Five he does.
And, and tremendous, tremendousleader.
I mean, he's wonderful man.
And, and I learned so much from,from him and how, how to treat
people.
Yeah.
Cool.
I mean, and, uh, long the shortthough, we, we got bored, uh,
decided to take a trip toArizona together, hashed out a

(27:51):
terrible business plan.
Um, and our options were do we,do we start something on our own
Right.
Or do we, uh, see if, if pops isinterested in, in, uh, like,
Hey, you could be rn, we'll beyour out kind of thing.
Right, right.
And Austin, what was, what wasyour dad involved with?
You said you were also from abuilder family.
Yeah, so he was a, a high-endresidential contractor.

(28:15):
Okay.
Down in Colorado Springs doingwork down in the Broadmoor.
Gotcha, gotcha.
Um, big remodels.
Big.
Yep.
Yep.
Homes that we'll never be ableto afford, so.
Right, right, right.
Um, and I think that was part ofthe conversation is we both had
parents that were in, in theconstruction business, and I
think the first thing was, do wewant to do residential or

(28:35):
commercial?
Yeah.
Was that part of the businessplan part in Arizona or you
already knew?
Yeah, I mean, we, we prettyquickly came to the decision
that we wanted to do.
Commercial and why?
Uh, may I, well, yeah, I mean,maybe a quick story is once we,
we started the office up here asElder Construction.
We got the opportunity to do acouple of residential projects

(28:59):
and we spun off an LLC and we'relike, Hey, we'll go and do these
residential projects as long aswe got'em.
Yeah.
And, and they were miserablefailures.
Well, we joke that we, wewould've had more fun buying two
Ferrari and Smashing.
Well, I probably would've been,I just had, I just had Dwight
from High Craft on, uh, you guyswill be right close proximity

(29:20):
here.
So you guys would probably gladyou didn't run into each other's
Ferraris.
Well, and it, you know, it, it'sjust different.
Okay.
And what did you do wrong?
Was it your fault?
Whose fault?
Well, I think what you're notprepared for is the end client
user in residential as acommercial contractor and

(29:41):
everything while it's stillconstruction.
I mean, the subcontract groupsare very different.
How you deal with, you know,authorities having jurisdiction
are very different.
Mm-hmm.
Um, the sales process and, andthe starts of builds.
Um.
It unless you do it all of thetime.
I mean, there are greatresidential contractors around,

(30:02):
right.
And they understand how itworks.
And we come from a perspectiveof commercial and it just, you
know, our people weren't trainedin it.
Um, we didn't have the rightsubcontract base to do it.
We didn't understand, you know,how to properly time out.
Had you done some commercialprojects first?
Oh, yeah.
Already.
And then you got these couple ofland, these couple of

(30:23):
residential.
A good idea at the time were,they were running concurrently.
And I think that's exactly it.
You're looking at theresidential company and you're
like, man, we're strugglinghere, but the commercial's going
so well.
Right.
And I think we were pretty earlyin our leadership careers.
Sure.
And it was the classic case ofchasing a, a shiny object.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(30:43):
Normal.
A hundred percent normal.
And, you know, you sit back andlook at it three years later and
you're like, uh, never again.
Yeah.
So take me back.
So you, so you decide toapproach dad and be like, Hey,
you want to, you want a goodexit plan?
Yeah.
Pops.
Yeah.
And, and so Pat, so what we did,I think get right was our
timing.
Um, we, pat struck out andopened an office for, uh, my dad

(31:06):
up north in 2008.
So before GE Johnson or, uh Oh,you struck out independently?
Yeah, independently.
Oh, I see.
Really.
I mean, I, I'd probably have tojump in and say the catalyst was
really, uh, my wife and I gotmarried.
Uh, in 2008 and she decided todo a residency program at
Northern Colorado.
Okay.
Colorado Medical Center inGreeley.

(31:28):
And so that really pulled usback to, to Northern Colorado.
Okay.
Uh, I hadn't since left gJohnson and was working with,
uh, the director ofpre-construction who'd spun off
and started his own consultingbusiness.
Okay.
But that lasted until aboutOctober of 2008 when, when the
Great Recession.
Right, right.
Started to, to rumble up and hedecided it was time to, to

(31:50):
probably go back and work withthe, the corporate machine.
Gotcha.
And you're like, no way, man,I'm not doing that.
I'm, I am not doing that.
I, I've been commuting toColorado, or not Colorado
Springs, but Castle Rock at thetime.
And, and, uh, so it was, it wasthe conversation of, boy, this
seems like a pretty, uh, prettyfortuitous time to, to ask Dad
if he's, uh, he's interested inNorthern Office.

(32:11):
And he was gracious about itand, and awfully excited.
And, and so, you know, I eventhough probably you knew you
were coming into some kind of aweird recessionary time or
whatever, you know, I think we,I think we sensed something for
sure.
Um, I think there's a resiliencehaving been a builder for, for
so many years.
Yeah.
Especially for, for my dadowning his own business, um, you

(32:34):
know, 2001 wasn't a great timewith the.com bus.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Especially in Colorado Springswith as much, uh, yeah.
Kind of reliance in that space.
That was a, that was a big spacedown there.
He'd lived through the eighties,um, right.
As a contractor.
So I think we all looked at2008, not knowing what it was
really gonna become.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, just blessed that he'dalways run a very financial,

(32:56):
financially, uh, conservativeorganization.
Yeah.
Keep the overhead low.
And, and he, he said, sure,let's do it.
And, uh, he really helped kindof get, get things started.
I had some relationships.
I'd been in Estes Park for about18 months prior, prior, with g
Johnson doing, doing thehospital up there.
So I had some relationships and,and it gave us a great

(33:18):
opportunity to kind start slow.
Yeah.
Uh, the market was down.
It was pretty scrappy.
Yeah.
Um, and was it just you or didyou ring Austin up right away?
Or like what, tell me about thatevolution.
This would, this would've been,uh, January of oh nine.
And I think we did our, uh,Arizona Summit probably in
April.
Okay.
Guys, uh, the shingles, Hey, Igot this thing off the ground.

(33:40):
Did you have any clientsestablished yet?
I'm not doing this.
Uh, you had, you were six monthsopen or whatever, right?
No.
And in fact, uh, that was one ofthe conditions that I, I love my
dad'cause he's always made usearn, make us earn it.
But he said, you, you can comeon the payroll, but you gotta
have your contractor's licenseand your first project that, you
know, signed up before you, youdo that.
So, oh.

(34:01):
It, it was a, it was a grindfrom Oh, so he like rented the
office for you?
Kind of.
But you didn't get to be on thepayroll until you landed a deal?
Oh no.
We were in the basement.
Okay.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was no office for, for atleast 18 months.
Gotcha.
Uh, but, uh, by, by April, uh,landed our first client, uh, we
got our license in, in FortCollins.
And, uh, it was about a yearafter that that Chris joined,

(34:24):
and then a year after that, thatAustin joined.
And talk to me about that firstclient, if you're allowed to, or
Yeah, yeah.
Do they let you Great guy.
Uh, uh, Dr.
Meki in Mullin.
Okay.
And, uh, you know, he was, hewas super gracious.
It was a small boy, 800 squarefoot, 10 finish for Okay, okay.
For a 10 of 10 something thatmost people really didn't want.
No, nobody wanted.
I, I couldn't even tell you whatthe, the contract value was, but

(34:47):
hey, it was, if I told you you'dgo, well, you can't even put
carpet in a place right.
These days for that.
Couldn't have even buy thoseshoes that Austin's wearing for
that margin.
I loved it.
Margin.
Yeah.
It was, it was, it was great.
My wife was, you know, 36 hourshifts in residency and Right.
I had a pot of coffee in the, inthe basement on a card table and
Yeah.
Estimating and invoices atnight.

(35:07):
I, and, and, uh, superintendentby day.
And, and we did that for, youknow, a number of years, but
overhead was low and Right.
And, uh, we were having fundoing it.
Uh, and then what did you guyscome on doing and what was the,
was there other people alreadyon or with these of number two
and number three employees?
Number two and number three upnorth.

(35:27):
Yeah.
Okay.
I think that's one of the, thethings I think I'm.
I think we're so blessed with iswe, we all have very different
skill sets and giftings.
Yeah.
Uh, I really enjoy thepre-construction work
acquisition side.
Mm.
Austin's phenomenal on theoperations and, and construction
side.
Mm-hmm.
Chris has got the finance and,and business mind background and

(35:48):
Yeah.
So I think, you know, it wasn'treally early on, we kind of,
you, you kind of fell into yourlanes.
You didn't really even have totalk about it too much or like
you'd go to Arizona multipletimes.
That was, that was why we wentto Arizona and I gotta, gotta
hit him on this because we'resitting down in Arizona and
we're playing golf a couple ofdays and, you know, you'd sit

(36:10):
down afterwards and you'rehaving a beer and you're like,
okay, how are we gonna do this?
And we know what our naturalstrengths are.
And, um, you know, like, likePatrick said, you know, Chris
had finance, Patrick hadpre-construction estimating and
I was in, in operations, butthen there are the ancillary
parts of the business.
Sure.
Like HR and it.

(36:31):
Right.
And we all kind of look at eachother and Patrick's like, well,
I'll take that, but you, yougotta realize the, the iPhone
had just come out.
Yeah.
And so it, with the iPhone,like, how hard is this?
Yeah.
Just buy an iPhone, sign up forthe Apple Plus plan or
something.
He, he has yet to sign up forthat function of business
charge.

(36:52):
So HR and technology have neveractually landed on his plate.
It was a total beaten andstretch, right.
That was yours?
Or?
Well, it started with me until Ithrew my hands up, like, I don't
want this anymore.
And we have great people in thatarea of the business now.
Well, you've grown enough nowyou can actually have a proper
HR person.
How do you guys handle thatfunction?
Or do you have a full-time ormore than one even maybe hr?

(37:14):
Yeah, so we have hr, we have a,um, director of training and
development.
Okay.
Because that's one of thetenants of, there's a bunch of
OSHA and things like that.
And safety and Well, yeah.
And you know, one of the, thecore values that we have is we
want constant curiosity.
Mm-hmm.
And so for us, um.
You know, construction is whatwe do.

(37:37):
It's not why we do it.
Yeah.
And I think a big piece of the,the why for us is, you know, we
build purpose into people andthe idea is that we leave the
world better than than we foundit.
Hmm.
And so, for company our size tohave a director of training and
development, most othercompanies that I, that I'm in
peer groups with are like,you're crazy.

(37:58):
Yeah.
But it's foundational to who weare.
Yeah.
And we want our people to grow.
Right.
Um, so we've got Alicia Reddy,who's our, our training of, or
our director of training, um,and development.
And then we have an HR manager,um, that handle handles more of
the compliance related aspectsand the compliance.

(38:19):
And when you fire somebody, howto fire'em without getting sued
and stuff like that.
And trying to keep up with thestate of Colorado's legislative
changes is a full-time job.
Yeah.
Just about how much harder is itto do business in Colorado than
it was 10 years ago or when youstarted, like, not to like poop

(38:39):
on Colorado, but it seems likeevery year, and especially the
last few years, they, they makeit harder and harder.
And even for the really, it usedto be just picking on the 50 or
a hundred employee companies.
Now it's like if you got five or10, here's a bunch of new stuff
you gotta do.
Yeah.
I, I think it's, it's definitelyharder.
I think what we struggle with isas we grow in size, we start to

(38:59):
fall into those mandatoryrequirements, those bigger
buckets.
Bigger buckets, and, and it'sthis balance between what we
feel is right and how we want torun the business and, and, and
never wanting to feel like thestate is running the business.
Yeah.
Our business.
So we have those conversationsquite a bit because we do wanna
stay compliant.
Sure.
We want, we wanna honor the, thelaw, even though we disagree

(39:21):
with a lot of them.
Uh, and the logic behind them.
Um, I, I think it's twofold.
You've got the state, but Ithink what has also probably
made business more challenging,particularly in Northern
Colorado liability is probably,well in Colorado, is just the,
the changes in themunicipalities.
Mm.
So you think about if we werejust working under state
requirements or, uh Right.

(39:43):
Legislation or, um, whatever.
Yeah.
If there was just one set ofrules for building things, and
it was for Colorado, but inNorthern Colorado there's 10
different rules.
Yeah.
Rule books.
Yeah.
And everybody has their ownnuances on how, okay, they're on
this code, they're on this, andoh yeah, you only put R 36
insulation in it.

(40:03):
It needed R 38.
In this, we've now adapted andgot above and beyond.
We want to be this.
And, and so I think.
Uh, keeping up with that andespecially in the education with
our clients that they go, well,I, is that like a keeping up
with the Joneses kind of a thingalmost among city staffs and

(40:24):
regulatory bodies, like try toshow who's got the bigger rule
book.
I think there's an element ofthat.
My, my carbon sensitivity isbigger than yours.
Yeah, exactly.
Your SWAT is as big as mineanyway.
Well, and I think, you know, we,there are parts of our business,
because we work in so manydifferent municipalities, as

(40:45):
Chris alluded to, like everyproject, you know, we could work
in Who does that?
Like, who like checks it out.
Like when you get a new job inOmaha, you're like, shit, we
haven't built anything in Omahain like four years.
Like, we gotta go and likefigure out what we gotta do now.
Well, we really try to stay inthe state of Colorado.
Oh, do, okay.
But that's fair.
We occasionally sneak up intoSouthern Wyoming.
Okay.
So you don't go that far anyway.

(41:06):
Yeah.
But I think there are a coupleof places that, that have
highlighted this and withoutgetting thrown out of the room,
I mean, COVID was a greatexample of how difficult it was
to operate our business.
And I think everybody facedthat, that challenge, but, oh,
like what are you supposed toactually do?
Well, health wise and stuff, orwhat we ran into was, there was

(41:29):
a point where every singlemunicipality, whether it was,
you know, Broomfield or Brightonor Fort Collins or Greeley or
Loveland or Right.
Colorado Springs or Fountain orMonument, they all had different
rules.
Sure.
And so literally you have 30projects running across the
state.
Right.
And you're trying to navigatethe rules of 30 different

(41:51):
municipalities.
And you know, I think COVID wasa good example of that.
But you weren't that it was justvery invisible in that case.
Yeah.
Right.
'cause it was like, like, onething I remember was like,
Greeley, there was no such thingas COVID pretty much, right?
Yeah.
Fort Collins, if you walked in astore without a mask, you were
getting ostracized, chased out,or, or at least side, side

(42:12):
glance or you know, what arethey little cast a spell or
something?
A pex on you.
And then Windsor was a, was ashit show you didn't know.
Right.
Because some were like, super,don't wear that mask in here,
young man.
Others were like in between.
Yeah.
Weld County and Larm County.
Right.
So winter was kind of pickle,but it wasn't like they didn't
settle in the middle.

(42:32):
You'd think they'd just be likekind of, well, it's just gonna
be chill either way.
Since we're halfway between.
It was like, some stores werelike, super, get that mask off
your face, you fool.
And some were like, where's yourmask?
Asshole, asshole.
You know?
Yeah.
And ironically we were deemedessential workers.
Sure.
So we got to keep going.
Which of course.
Which was wonderful.
We, I mean,'cause we have, Ididn't even know if I was
essential or not.

(42:52):
I didn't really ask.
I just kept going.
They would've shut things down.
I don't know that the craft, we,we made a commitment from the
very beginning that we weren'tgonna let anybody go.
Yeah.
And we, we had the resources toprotect for a while.
Yeah.
Um, but a lot of the workers inour industry, I mean, they live
paycheck by paycheck.
Sure.
So not working would've beendevastating for them.

(43:14):
I.
Um, and it was just sointeresting, right?
A lot of'em were paid by thehour besides, right.
So if you're not actuallyworking well then Yeah.
Right.
And, and what we quickly came torecognize was our, what was
gonna shut us down fast, fasterthan anything was building
inspections.
Hmm.
So we are, we could only go asfast as, as building inspectors

(43:34):
would come out and inspect thework at critical points in time.
Sure.
And it, that's where we saw thebottleneck was he spent, I
guess, I don't know, it feltlike a whole year, every morning
you were looking at different,all the different municipalities
and saying, okay, here's their,their requirements.
So, uh, for, for theirinspectors to come the Yeah.

(43:55):
We, we gotta check, check all,all these boxes.
If the inspector shows up whenwe don't, and we does, we've got
four people in this buildingthat could only have three we're
gonna be screwed.
Well, or like, okay, he's gonnashow up, the inspector's gonna
show up, he's gonna honk hishorn twice.
That means everybody's gotta getoff the site.
And then he could go, gonna goinspect and, and then he's gonna
get back into his truck and honkagain.
Then everybody can go back towork.
And how do you, how do you I'mmaintain the five, not five feet

(44:17):
minimum.
It's funny, sad, not funny.
Ha ha.
From a safety aspect, right.
Lifting material.
Yeah.
Like it was just, it was.
Baffling.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It was, I can imagine that's aninteresting thing as you're
trying to ride on this guy toget him out to do his inspection
and he's terrified or whatever,right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're wiping down handrails orsending somebody ahead of him
just Right.
Hiring a commercial cleaningservice to go in there and clean

(44:40):
the place before the inspection.
Yep.
And, and it was interestingbecause the, the workforce that,
that we rely on, they reallydidn't buy into it.
They're from Greeley, and theydidn't really, well, they just,
I mean, a blue collar Yeah.
Didn't really buy into it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, and so that was challengingbecause you're, you're trying to
walk this fine line, but thebankers mostly did, you know,

(45:02):
they're maybe not, I don't know.
Yeah.
So, uh, anyway, challeng arealso, you know, uniquely suited
for that environment.
I remember the, the wholeconversation work from home and,
and not being able to go to aphysical office.
And, you know, one of the, thebeauties to that for us is we
have 30 different offices at anygiven point, right.

(45:24):
They're all remote in, in asense.
So from a technology standpoint,from a communication standpoint,
uh, I think we're really blessedin working in an environment
that was disruptive for sure.
Yeah.
But not completely out.
The network was still connected,kinda, yeah.
We typically do, do you guys uselike starlink stuff now on some
of those sites?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, seems like that'd bepretty handy.

(45:46):
Yeah.
Starling, I, I just saw Moses,my, uh, my landlord, Moses
Horner, he's got a starlinkright on the top of his Dodge
Ram pickup truck.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's great technology.
We've got, I think eight or 10of them now, uh, that go out to
job sites.
In 2001, there were 1 millionstar links a year, 13 months

(46:08):
ago, there were 3 million starlinks, and now there's 6
million.
Wow.
So they doubled in 13 monthsfrom 3 million to 6 million
subscribers.
Pretty amazing technology and soconvenient.
Yeah.
I mean, that used to be acritical pinch point for us as
we started a job was how quicklycan we get internet service to
the job?
Right.
How can we get that landlinefrom Quest?
Yeah.
Comcast is like, whatever.

(46:28):
These guys are just a smallpeanut customer.
Yeah.
We've got it on the ambulance,camper, and, uh, it's bomb.
Like when you're like in themiddle of nowhere and like
Jill's working, you know, fromthe truck while we're going down
the road.
It is really so cool.
Yeah.
Anyway, I digress.
So what are, what is, what isthe why around there?

(46:49):
Like, and how do you communicatethat?
That's one of the things Iwanted to, to zero in on is
like, what's your pattern incommunicating with the Northern
Colorado team?
Do the, do the Northern Coloradoand Southern Colorado or
Colorado Springs teams feellike.
They're connected to oneanother.
You know, culturally do you dothings to intentionally do
connect them?

(47:10):
Um, so yeah, talk to me aboutthat general topic.
Whoever wants to, to chime inthe why.
This is one that I think weinnately have always shared the
same why, probably from when wewere kids.
Okay.
I mean, I think over the years,having lots of conversations and
being forced to articulate it asyou're doing vision casting or

(47:30):
you're working on core valuesand, uh, it starts to be more
clear.
You start to put, you start toname it Okay.
That, that feeling you alwayshad.
And, and I think ours, ours fromthe very beginning was, um, just
this, this idea that we're,we're all, um, have a deep faith

(47:52):
and there there's the, uh, I'dalmost call it like a kingdom
building mission or why behinda, a lot of what we do, we don't
openly, um, you know, you don'tput it on your forehead or
anything, don't put a forehead,but it, but it is in our why and
it's that, you know, likeAllison had talked about, it's
this idea that, uh, I think allof us have been gifted with a

(48:13):
God-given talent and it's ourresponsibility to, to use that
talent for good in the world.
Yeah.
Uh, and then it's theresponsibilities of those around
you to help you if you don'tknow what it is or you can't see
what it is to expose it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And either get you in the rightseat.
Or get you off the bus and intoa different seat that's, that's

(48:33):
tailored for your why.
And so that was at the core ofwho we, who we are.
And, and you know, we weretalking about do you, your teams
know about your faith?
Mm-hmm.
And do you talk about that?
And how do you Yeah.
But it is not required to be aChristian, be on your team.
Like, no, I think it comes out,out articulate that.
I think it comes out just in,um, probably the way we speak.
The way we show up.

(48:54):
I would like to think so.
Anyway, you don't have Biblestudies on Thursday mornings
necessarily or anything likethat?
Uh, but we're not afraid to talkabout it either.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, and then, you know, we weretalking about Stan Everett.
Sure.
Yeah.
And, uh, part of the legacyproject Yep.
As we came on here.
And, um, you know, he, he kindof, we all went through that at,
at a, at a formative time.

(49:15):
Yeah.
And we were trying to wrestlewith these questions and you
know, this idea that you don'tget to live life in this
neutral, uh, position, you'reeither giving Yeah.
A blessing.
You're a blessing.
Yeah.
Or you're taking, or, or you'retaking, yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, you can leave good or bad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and so weaving that into,to the, the vision casting that

(49:36):
we had.
So, um, you know, the, the corevalues at, at first felt like,
uh, kinda that check the boxexercise that you gotta do for
the bank, for the business plan,but then you really start to see
the application of it.
And, um, you know, pat Austin,so many others that.
Uh, that when we started to tryto articulate it, uh, my, my

(49:59):
father always, my father's gotdevalues.
Sure.
But they were, they were, well,you keep them quiet, you hold it
in the vest in those days.
Right.
And so as we started to come onboard, there was this
opportunity to, to, and he, ashe handed the company over to
us, it was this opportunity tosay, okay, what, let's put,
let's name it.
Yeah.
What is important?
Um,'cause your values really setthe culture.

(50:20):
And I think culture gets areally bad rap now.
Mm-hmm.
'cause it's, it's a trite word.
It's a buzzword.
Yeah.
Right.
Uh, but really is simply, it'sjust the attitudes, beliefs,
it's how you show up, it's howyou communicate, it's how you,
what you value.
Yeah.
Hire what you tolerate.
Hire reward.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
What you tolerate.
And so getting really clear,really early, the three of us on

(50:44):
how my dad did it, and thenwhat's important to us.
Then you start to build storiesaround those values.
And then it's a lot easier in,um, orientations to say, this is
who we are and this is how we'regonna show up and this is how
we're gonna be.
These are our non, were theseare a good part of that kind of
gets baked in on the front end.
Yeah.
These are our non, these are ournon-negotiables.
Yep.
Yep.
Um, we interview towards those.

(51:06):
I mean, we have a, a list ofquestions.
I think people are surprisedafter they get hired because
they, they go, well, I didn'tknow you were interviewing for
that.
And you go, yeah, that's whatthis question was trying to
tease out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and culture's important.
Do we get it right all the time?
No.
We struggle with it.
And I think that's been one ofthe challenges that we've, we've
had over, I.
The, the last 15 years is, um,while what we believe is the

(51:30):
same, our core values are thesame.
They're a slightly differentculture in Colorado Springs
versus Northern Colorado.
Sure, yeah.
You can't be the same companythat the demographics probably
are different hundred percent inthe office.
Yeah.
The, um, just the communityitself is, is more conservative.
It's, uh, you know, so it's, andnot good.
It's not good.
Yeah.
But in Colorado Springs, it waskinda like, which church do you

(51:51):
go to?
Yeah.
Like if, like, in a businesssetting even really, it wasn't
quite that way, but it waspretty, yeah.
And it's less of that I thinknow, but cliquey and when I was
there, I was there oh four to ohseven.
Yeah.
Um, as a relatively youngChristian, I'd only been a
Christian for a year or two, andI was like, this is weird, you
know, in Park Collins, it'd belike, I've known somebody eight

(52:11):
years and I just found outthey're a Christian.
You know, they actually go tothe sister church of our church.
I don't, you know.
Yeah.
In compare, in contrast, in somephase.
Anyway, not to circle it aroundthere, but No, I mean it's,
it's, it's a true observation.
And, um, do you know what ourmotto is at Loco Think Tank?
Probably not.
I don't if the bus was here orthe ambulance.
We could, we could read it, butit was actually my personal

(52:33):
motto first.
But I think you'll resonate withit.
Each of you probably, which is,uh, ask of your needs and share
of your abundance.
Yeah.
That's great.
Yeah.
Uh, and the implication is isthat like, don't ask me of your
wants.
Yeah.
Like the answer is no, but Iwill help you if you have needs.
Really?
And what are they actually?
Yeah.
You know, and then the share ofyour abundance, both in a.

(52:54):
In a, in a philanthropic orgiving back kind of ad
standpoint, but also of yourtalents, you know?
Yeah.
As a member of local think tank,you, you're here at least in
part because you've got certaintalents or abilities or skills
or experiences that arebeneficial to this group.
Yeah.
And share it.
Share it into there.
Don't be, don't be shy.
Well, I love how you say it.
I, I think of it as time, talentand treasure shame.

(53:16):
Yeah.
Right.
Like, and, and there's differentmoments when Yeah.
Whatever that abundance is.
Whatever that abundance is.
Yeah.
And the need.
So that's good.
I like that.
Good.
I'm glad.
Yeah.
Oh, and the side of the tank, sohave you seen the tank Ambulance
Camper?
Well, I saw when it was anambulance, so it's got seen, so
it's got a tank silhouette onthe side.
Okay.
And it's an ambulance.
So both of those things are kindof morbid.
Right, right.

(53:36):
And so to alleviate it some,I've got like one of the old
Bugs Bunny like flags hangingdown outta the barrel of the
tank and it says Build, do notdestroy.
Yeah.
Uh, which I think resonates withwhat you were encouraging
Austin, you know, leave theworld better than you found it.
Yeah.
And I, and I think, you know,when we look at our, when we
look at our business, oftentimesyou, you get pigeonholed

(53:59):
sometimes in what do you wantyour business to be?
Sure.
Um, you know, and, and do youwant to be an uber efficient,
uh, business model, or are youmore of a lifestyle company?
You know, and I, and I don't.
Think we fit in either of thoseboxes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I think one of thetenants that, you know, we've

(54:20):
alluded to is we are a peoplefirst company.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And when it, like, Brinkman waskind of a grinder.
Like, yes, you could be our sub,but we're gonna grind the crap
outta you.
Get the best price, you know,work.
Maybe, maybe I'm fibbing aboutthat, but, well that was at
least the market impression Ihad maybe.
Yeah.
And I, uh, whereas you're like,we're not gonna like rip you

(54:40):
off, but we would never grindourselves like that.
Well, in the same, and I, and Ithink our perspective is as the
company, as the leaders, theshareholders in the organization
are.
Role is to take care of ourpeople.
Hmm.
And then our people take care ofthe company and they take care
of the company by taking care ofthe clients and, and the

(55:03):
relationships.
Treating yourselves with respectand all that.
Well, yeah.
Exactly.
And I think that's a huge partof businesses.
Without the design firms that wework with, without the trade
partners, the subcontractorsthat we have, our business
wouldn't exist.
Right.
Right.
Without the communities that webuild in.
Yeah.
We wouldn't exist.

(55:23):
I just posted on LinkedIn theother day, uh, this year we
should celebrate interdependenceday.
Yeah.
Um, because you, nobody can docrap by themselves.
Or even, you know, elderconstruction can't build
anything.
Barely.
Like you could build a nice shedin the back, or, you know, even
probably cooler than that, but,but you can't build a 200,000
square foot building.
He's gonna compensate us thenlet's Right.

(55:43):
And who's gonna inspect it?
Who's gonna, you know all that.
Well, anyway, continue asking.
Please.
And I think there's just a, youknow, foundation and business
there that we believe in that,you know, when you treat people
the right way, they're going tolike working with you.
And it's not the short game, youknow, we're not here for the

(56:04):
next year or two.
We want to build a company thatexists beyond, you know, the
current leadership.
Yeah.
And that's really our mandate.
Cool.
And, and so the way you treatclients, the way you treat your,
your subcontractors, the way youtreat your designers and
architects.
Yeah.
You know.
Has to be the long game, youknow?
And it doesn't mean that wedon't hold people accountable,

(56:28):
but we also show grace where wecan.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a, and oh, by the way, wework there, it's our life,
right?
We want it to be fun.
We like, I think Austin sum upthe mission really well.
Uh, it's look really, if, if wecan check three boxes in life
with around work is so awesome.

(56:49):
Do meaningful and challengingwork.
Do it with people you, yourespect and enjoy and make a
little money doing it.
Yeah.
Like, if we can do that, whichwe have to this point, like life
is so fulfilling.
Yeah.
A big part of our life Yeah.
Is so fulfilling.
Well, you, it's like you spendmore time with your coworkers
than you do with your spouseusually.
Right?
So yeah.
Why would we want to engineer aenvironment or a culture that we

(57:12):
have to live in Right.
That we don't like, so, yeah.
Well, and I think Tom, you know,Patrick and Chris's dad said it
really well.
One of the first projects thatwe did up here, um, was this
project called the Arts Hub.
And it was the first time wewere like, Hey, let's try out
this marketing thing and weshould actually like do a video

(57:32):
and we should interview somepeople.
And out of that, um, there's oneline that Tom used.
Oh.
You know, says in there where heis like, you know, I've chosen
to do business in a way thatallows me to sleep good at
night.
Hmm.
And I think that's what it's allabout, you know?
For sure.
Yeah.
Like, can I sleep with thedecisions that I made?

(57:54):
Right.
Well, and, and your industry isa challenge.
One, you, there's always, youknow, a corner that you can cut
and probably get away with it orthis or that.
And so that's, and and there'sso many, I mean, frankly,
business is that way.
Yeah.
I was gonna say in a lot ofaspects, I don't, again,
agnostic, most of business has,uh, that kind of conflict in
there somewhere where you haveto just do the right thing, you

(58:14):
know?
But when you start to, to adoptthis mindset of business really
should be a force for good.
And I think most people,yourself included, that's why
you have local think tank,right?
Sure.
Like that is what you'repromoting.
It is a ministry for me.
You know, like this is businessgets a bad rap and I understand
why.
Yeah.
Because of the bad apples.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That the platform that, thatbusiness leaders get to speak

(58:37):
out upon the influence that theyhave, what they can do for,
well, we're the only, is we, weshould be using that power and
that influence for good.
Yeah.
Um, and that's kind of the onlyindependent voices.
Yeah.
Right.
Like we were just talking aboutCOVID Nation and whatever, like
nobody that worked for HewlettPackard could speak up and say,
I'm not sure we should bemanding these shots.

(58:58):
You know, a few people did andthey got fired.
You know?
Right.
Well, or, or you just thinkabout how lonely the office is.
Right.
I, I, I can while.
I've never been in thatsituation.
I feel like I can relate to,well, I would never go to work
and give of my life if, if itwas, if I went to downtown
Denver, took an elevator up 11stories and was in a cubicle for

(59:22):
eight hours and didn't, wasn'tconnected to anything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I just typed away it's like,that's not for me.
I wanted to not forget abouttalking about peer advisory a
little bit.
Yeah.
Uh, you mentioned Vistage andOsage, you said something about
a peer group as well.
Is that like a builder 20 groupor something like that, or,
yeah, I'm in a, a national peergroup that's hosted by FMI, um,

(59:43):
FMI as a, they are a consultantin the a EC industry.
Um, okay.
So it's a group of, uh, sixcontractors throughout the
United States, and we cometogether twice a year.
Okay.
Like in person, kind of inperson, big gathering, kind of
industry focused speakers anddifferent things, whatever, or,
yes.
Cool.

(01:00:03):
Okay.
And how are you longtime memberof Vistage?
I don't know if you've everreally talked about it.
Yeah, I'm going on six yearsnow.
Okay.
So I, I'd consider that longtime.
Yeah, it seems like, yeah.
Is that with Nancy or withanother group?
Ron?
There's another group.
Ron.
Yeah.
I forgot I, yeah, I, Ron, ifyou're listening out there, we
should grab coffee or somethinglike that because I was

(01:00:24):
introduced to you long beforeCOVID, and then I just never
really followed up properly.
Yeah, he's been, he's been ahuge.
Mentor in my life.
Yeah.
And it sounds like the networkof Vistage in general has also
benefited you that it has fair.
It has.
You know, I think too, in mygroup particularly, they're,
they're, I'm one of the youngestin this group.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the wisdom that comes downSure.

(01:00:46):
Is pretty powerful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they're like, uh, you betterthink about this.
'cause I ran into this at your,was that your first experience?
It was with peer advisory.
It was, yeah.
And why didn't you ever returnmy calls before you signed up
for that?
Gosh, I don't know.
Yeah, because I'm a gun now,Patrick.
That's a long time.
Have you been in one yet?
Patrick?
What are you, are you going on10 years?
11 years this last year.
Yeah.
Congratulations.

(01:01:06):
Yeah.
So it's been a little while.
Yeah.
But I was in a Vistage groupbefore.
Okay.
Like, I, I basically stoleVistage's best stuff and left
their crappy stuff behind, youknow?
Um, but, but yeah, I was a, Iwas a member of a trusted
advisors group and had, wasrecruited into Bill Hunter's
Vistage Group when I was runningthe bank for a year.
See?
And Bill courted me for years.

(01:01:27):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, uh, I don't know what itwas about Ron.
He just showed up one day andwas there at the right time.
And, and we struck it off andCool.
And it was just, yeah.
It's been good.
Well, anyway, Ron, you can lookme up.
I, I'll be you a coffee.
Uh, I'm easy to find.
Patrick, have you experiencedany of that yet?
I have, I, I've been able to,uh, to be a part of a really
group, great group of guides.

(01:01:48):
It's a little bit less formalthan Vestige or Sure.
Austin's group.
It's, it's, uh, 10 of us locallyhere in northern Colorado.
And kind of an unorganizedgroup, if you will, or somebody
organizes it, but it's notaffiliated, if you will.
It's, it's unaffiliated.
It's, it's actually really wellorganized.
You've had a number of theguests on, uh, in the past.
Yeah.
So it's one of the super secretgroups.
Yeah.

(01:02:09):
It's not super secret, but youknow, you have to know the
handshake.
You got a handshake and, and yougotta, you gotta have bourbon
now.
Well, I do have bourbon.
We do have bourbon.
We could have some bourbon afterthe break.
It's a, it's a really good groupof guys and, and, uh, we, we
meet once a month, and I tellyou what, for anybody that, uh,
has an opportunity, whether it'sVistage or with you guys or

(01:02:30):
Sure.
Just a peer, I, there's so muchwisdom and power that is
gleaned, and I think as abusiness owner, everybody should
have it.
Everybody should, businessowners need it a hundred
percent.
Think like almost every, youknow, anybody that wants to be
in our H ho A could use it.
Yeah.
But, but like, we won't go toHOAs, but for that decider role
or, you know, you guys are,because you're equally yoked, is
that right?
Like we are 33 and a third eachYeah.

(01:02:53):
Despite the attorney's advice.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I think, you know, we'rein a really unique position
because I look at what Austin'sdad did, uh, what our dad did,
uh, what so many other businessowners do is they strike out on
their own.
And, uh, boy, I can't evenimagine or fathom what it would
be like to do this work bymyself being the one decider.

(01:03:14):
Kinda, you know, you think ofthe, the, the times and, and
we've had some pretty.
Up and down years in terms ofCOVID and just a lot of
disruption and a lot of stress.
You've got a lot of people thatyou're shoot, that you're, uh,
shepherding.
What's your payroll now?
Uh, between the two offices?
Yeah.
Like those are not all low paidpeople, almost none of them
anymore.

(01:03:36):
Uh, and, and, but to be able todo this together is something
that's pretty unique.
Uh, but I think that's where,you know, even a peer group is
so important is it putslike-minded individuals
together.
Yeah.
That you can just share, Hey,I'm really struggling with this
or that, and I can't share thatwith my number two guy and Yeah.
Yeah.
Anybody within the business,maybe a spouse doesn't

(01:03:56):
understand.
Yeah.
Uh, and so it, it's a reallypowerful, um, way to just create
community and live lifetogether.
Appreciate that.
Yeah.
Austin, you were gonna saysomething about something, I
don't know.
You're probably gonna give specsin the payroll and that was
gonna scare everybody and No, Iactually don't know what they
are these days.
Right.

(01:04:16):
Fair enough.
Well, if you got 60 of'em, Imean, those are probably mostly,
I'm imagining there's a lot ofsix figure earners within your
whole company.
Most of'em are six figureearners.
Well, no, I'd say half.
Half.
Yeah.
But you know what's interesting?
It's, uh, the craft is becomingmore and more valuable.

(01:04:37):
Hmm.
And they're getting, I mean, itis really, we're seeing
compression from the bottom.
Hmm.
Uh, not interesting, you know,the professional wages have
really.
Started to like those carpentersand stuff is Yes.
Carpenters more in demand.
Yeah.
Carpenter, even laborers you, I,I joked, uh, I know Fort Collins
was Oh, debating the, uh, theminimum, yeah.

(01:04:57):
The minimum wage rule.
And I'm like, when was the lasttime we paid?
Yeah.
For carpenter less than$20 anhour.
Like, why do we, why do we havethis conversation?
The market is setting itself ahundred percent.
I mean, I, like, I, I hireinterns at 18 bucks an hour a
lot of times.
'cause that way you can get agood one.
You know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, and I think, I think trulywhat's happening is their values

(01:05:20):
being recognized.
I mean Yeah, yeah.
You know, it's not that theyweren't valuable before, it's
just that, you know, one of ourbeliefs is you should be able to
live on a wage.
Right.
Right.
You, and I think that's one ofthe things when we look at
compensation and benefits andthings like that, is, you know,
they're given the same amount ofeffort and work in what they're

(01:05:42):
doing.
Their work and my work lookeddifferent, but yeah.
Like, you know, with the risingcosts of healthcare and
groceries and I mean, you namethe basket of goods.
Yeah.
I think it's incumbent on us tosay, look, we gotta pay people
fairly.
Right.
Um, well, and we all know,frankly, that like a high

(01:06:03):
performing person gets.
Two or three times as much workdone as a low performing person.
So if you can buy a highperforming person for a hundred
grand or a low performing onefor 70, you're probably better
off on the first categoryusually.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, and sometimes people don'teven know if they're high
performing or not, and sohonoring it when you find them
is useful.

(01:06:23):
Yeah.
Well, and even teams when you,when you look at assembling
teams mm-hmm.
Um, high performers wanna bewith high performers.
True.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They don't, no, nobody wantsthis dead weight around here,
that's for sure.
Yeah.
Do you guys get any help in thatspace or is that kind of your
training development personsetting the culture and do you

(01:06:43):
use like DISC or other systemsto kinda understand your team
dynamics?
Y yeah, we use a variety ofdifferent things.
Um, DISC is the one that'sprobably, you know, the simplest
to understand.
And I think it's more aboutcommunication style, and that's
one of the things that we oftendo with, um, new team members

(01:07:04):
that are joining.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, you know, one of theinitiatives that I'm excited
about that Alicia's been puttinga ton of hard work into is a
skills and behavior framework.
Okay.
And, you know, it really startswith.
You know, core values and youknow, what are the competencies
that we expect our people tohave?
And then what do thosecompetencies look like in your

(01:07:26):
individual role?
Yeah.
How can you tell when you haveacquired that?
Yeah, exactly.
Because I think particularly foryoung people or people that are,
that are new into a role, um,they just want to know how
they're performing.
A hundred percent to your point.
Like they don't know if they'rehigh performers or not, right?
'cause you know, we've askedthem to do a job and there's a

(01:07:48):
scoreboard, but there'ssomething covering the
scoreboard, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so trying to create, youknow, transparency onto, you
know, not only what are thetechnical skills that you need
to perform this job, but youknow, what soft skills do we
Yeah.
Do we expect?
And then, you know, how do we goabout training and developing

(01:08:09):
those skills?
And, you know, what does what,what could your career look
like?
And I hesitate to use the wordcareer ladder because I think
when you look at theorganization, it's more of a
lattice.
And it doesn't mean just becauseyou're doing this job today.
Yeah.
You don't want up to this onenecessarily.
We might figure out that you'reactually be better over here.

(01:08:29):
Well, and I think that alignswith kind of our.
Part of our culture of like,when you find what you're
passionate about, if that isn'twhat you're currently doing,
look over do.
Maybe we ought to look over hereand move you into a different
seat because, um, this more,more naturally aligns with the
talent that you have and thepassion that you want to pursue.
That's cool.

(01:08:50):
Yeah.
Other, like, while we're kind ofhere in the business, I think
we'll take a quick break andjump in the time machine and
find those little first graders,um, pretty quick here, but is
there other kinda main businessprinciples that you guys try to
try to live by?
Or, or how do you guys connectas a team?
Do you have like a once a monthmeeting and I guess the, the,

(01:09:10):
the Southern Colorado guy haszoomed into there too, or
whatever?
We, we definitely do that.
I think this is, this is fun forme'cause we don't often get to
spend time together.
Just the three of you?
Kinda Just the three of us.
Yeah.
It's, uh, as the business hasgrown and personal lives have
changed, but, uh, we definitelyare very intentional.
Uh, Chris and Austin do a greatjob of, of, of pulling us in

(01:09:30):
from a, from a cadence ofmonthly, even to a weekly check
down mm-hmm.
Huddle and, and you know, Ithink it's finding those
cadences that's important.
Mm-hmm.
Um, you know, the, the, theplanning season of business and,
and Austin can speak to this alot better than I can, but just
making sure that you're keyingthe rhythm of strategic planning

(01:09:52):
with.
You know, an assessment ofpeople health in general.
How's the organizational healthlook?
Yep.
Uh, the performance of projectsand, and performance of, you
know, forecasting of, of nextyear.
Um, believe it or not, we're ina very, uh, psych cyclical
business.
I know.
And, and you know, I, I alwayscelebrate when we finish a

(01:10:13):
project, but then we gotta goget another one.
Right.
Right.
And we gotta get another one.
Um, no different than loans and,and banking, right?
Sure.
Yeah.
No, hopefully they, they onetough to do and you're, they pay
off, you know, they, they,that's what I was supposed to
do.
Find somebody else to borrowsome money.
And so there's a, there's alwaysa cadence in their, a rhythm to,
uh, to our business and, andtrying to, you know, make sure

(01:10:33):
that we accurately time it and,and stay ahead of it.
'cause I think as leaders in thebusiness, that's the most
important thing that we can do.
If you're adding a bunch ofpeople to the team only to lay
'em off eight months later.
'cause you just really can'tafford'em.
Right?
That's not right.
Yeah.
And that's never been, you know,as a people for first
organization, never somethingthat, that Yeah.
That we have done.
And, and I think it is, youknow, important to, to spend the

(01:10:55):
time to think what is beyond thenext six months, the next year,
the next five years.
Um, that strategic, strategicthinking is, you know, we ask
our team to, to do that on aproject, but it's, you know,
it's a little bit closer.
We've gotta, we've gotta be theones that are out there a little
bit further.
And so it takes dedicated timeto, to spend as, as an
intentionality kind of to dothat.

(01:11:17):
Yeah.
We try to connect with the team.
Uh, we.
We try to, to communicate, uh,every Friday with them.
Companywide, like a, a email,email, video.
What's going on?
What's going on?
Yep.
Yep.
Uh, we have a standing, uh, aThursday company, monthly
company meeting.
Okay.
Where we company-wide.
Okay.
Um, and where we share the samecontent, we use that as an

(01:11:41):
opportunity to, to teach theteam about business.
Sure.
We share our financials.
Okay.
Um, like all the way Yeah.
Down to profit really.
Um, and well, I think it'simportant for people to see the
scorecard.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, it's hard to, to asksomebody to, to, you know, when,
you know, we see that a lot justbecause we are, uh, doing a lot

(01:12:03):
of projects or we're pushing atop line revenue number doesn't
mean we're profitable.
We could be, just remember the,the residential project back in
the day.
Yeah.
It's, we could go get out gobsof work with no fee and Sure.
We could be ha hair on firescreaming busy.
True.
And everybody's like, man,totally.
This is gonna be a big Yeah.
You can double the size of yourcompany just making no money.

(01:12:24):
And so a lot of education abouthow we make money where we spend
money.
Mm.
And we have a pretty rich profitshare pool.
Mm.
Um, that we use, uh, that we, weshare with'em every month.
Here's where we're at.
Cool.
Um, and I do think it'simportant for them to understand
what they can do Yeah.
To impact it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because they, it's a questionyou always get.

(01:12:44):
Sure.
What can I do to help?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, so show'em the, show'em thescorecard.
Have you ever regretted that andhave you done that for a long
time?
Uh, we've done it now for fiveyears.
Okay.
Um, have we ever regretted it?
Yeah.
Was it Harry at any time or didI think we've learned some
lessons on how to communicate itmore effectively?

(01:13:06):
Sure.
Um, I think, you know, wheneveryou roll out something new,
there are always some missteps.
Um, but I think at the end ofthe day, what, what we're trying
to show people is like, here's,here's where profit sharing
starts.
Like when we Yeah.
This point, right.
You know, it's like themargarita glass.
This month it was this and thismonth it was that.

(01:13:28):
And you know, part of that is wealso want people who we don't
want them.
Getting the accountabilitythat's built in is pretty cool
though.
Well, I think, I think there'ssome accountability that is
really cool around it.
And also you don't want peoplesaying, well.
Am I gonna go spend$8,000 onthis trip?
Right.
Counting on a profit sharing.

(01:13:49):
Right, right.
You know, check, I mean, itreminds me of change.
Right?
It's the vacation.
I was thinking the same thing.
Exactly.
$50 or whatever it was.
Maybe it was nothing.
A coupon.
Right.
Well, we actually had thathappen, right?
Yeah.
And I think that's where, whatdo you mean?
Well, we had a, we were rollingalong really good before this,
had a cracker, we don't call itbonus intentionally.
It's not a bonus.
Yeah.
It's, it's profit share.

(01:14:10):
It's dollars you've earned.
Yeah.
Guys.
And so, but before we hadprofit, we had a bonus and it
was, Hey, we weren't, we weren'tsharing the books.
It's, yeah, it's discretionary.
It's like, okay, it's December.
Hey, we're doing pretty good.
We, we, we feel obligated toshare that.
Right?
It's just part of who we are,uh, and being good stewards of,

(01:14:33):
of God's money.
And then you go, well, what'sthe formula?
And you kind of go through andyou're like, well, that guy's
been here a long time.
That guy's been here.
Right.
And then you, and then you justquietly hand out checks.
Right.
And you something good about it.
And then you get into rhythm.
And then you have a bad year,but you're busy.
Right, right.
And then you're like, look, we.
We can't profit share this year.

(01:14:53):
And, but people have come toexpect it.
Right.
And so, and they've been workinghard trying to get working
project done.
They've been, and the projectsone of the reasons you're not
making any money.
'cause the projects have been astruggle.
Right.
And the inspectors aren'tshowing up, or it's just a, or
it's just a different market.
Yeah.
You know, I think the marketsometimes you gotta just settle
for a little lower margin if youwanted to get any work.
That's absolutely it.
And it doesn't, it doesn't meanthe team's working any less

(01:15:15):
hard.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, you know, I, I think we'reone step away from farmers,
right?
In the sense that you can sew aperfect crop, but there are so
many things that can impact theoutcome.
Yeah, yeah.
And, and effort's.
Not one of'em.
Uh, yeah.
So it is, it's important tocommunicate and I think it goes
kind of even beyond, you know,just that aspect to can we help

(01:15:39):
grow the financial acumen andmaybe the business acumen of our
team.
Sure, sure.
We would love, uh, the team tostay with us forever, but we've
had so many instances where, uh,folks have broken off and done
their own thing.
And hopefully when they do that,they have been more prepared.
Yeah.
You leave'em smarter than youfound them and kind.
And that's, that's that wholepurpose piece.

(01:16:01):
Or they leave you smarter thanthey found you both has
happened.
Yeah, hopefully both.
Right?
Like, and, and it's something tobe celebrated, not something to,
you know, be upset about.
That's, you know, that'simportant.
So I think it's, it's thateducation around the financial
acumen and, and you know, justunderstanding.
Business.
Yeah.
Uh, and then how businesstransit transitions into life.

(01:16:23):
I think that's why we're so, uh,passionate around teams and
leadership.
And not only does it help us asa business, but how can, how can
that concept or the leadershipconcepts, man, what do you do?
Yeah.
My money tree is raining on Youtalk about money, that's a good
sign.
Right?
Right.
I hope so.

(01:16:43):
I don't know.
It looks like those are prettydead though.
That's normal.
What, I dunno know what thatomen is.
You think, you think aboutbusiness especially and, and the
leadership skills that we learnin business through peer groups
or through conversations.
Sure.
How often we don't apply that toour personal lives, you know,
with personal missions andvisions.

(01:17:04):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
And stewardship of a p and lversus a personal budget.
And, you know, I think that'swhere we have a lot of fun is
can we bring these conceptsdown?
Can we implement totally as abusiness, but is it gonna make
our project manager a bettercoach?
Yeah.
Or a, or a husband leader.
Or a husband dad.
Can he, can he, can he walk his,his his family through?

(01:17:24):
Or can she walk her familythrough, you know, a, a
visioning exercise that createssome core values and helps set a
culture of a Yeah.
Of a family unit.
So I, that's pretty cool.
I think it all comes togetherin, and the financial piece is
just one element of that.
I dig it.
Let's take a break.
Let's do it.
I'm gonna have a bourbon.

(01:18:30):
So, um, kind of, this is part ofthe show where we typically, uh,
jump in the time machine.
So we back to Colorado Springs.
All of you born there?
Yeah.
First grade or whatever.
Yeah, I was born there.
Born there?
Yeah.
So were we born there?
Born there, yeah.
Okay.
Probably all in the samehospital as a matter of fact.

(01:18:50):
Most likely Memorial, right.
19 time, 19, uh, 1981 MemorialHospital.
Pat and I were actually, we werenot.
Oh, where were you?
Penrose Penrose.
Oh, the second, second, uh,level hospital.
Right.
And the way that my parents tellthe story, at least my dad tells
the story.
We were the, they had justcreated a new needle natal unit

(01:19:11):
Oh, okay.
At Memorial.
So Pat and I were the firsttwins born.
Oh.
Uh,'cause who was first?
First I was 18 minutes.
Okay.
Yeah.
My wife is a twin.
We think we're not.
My wife was, uh, born one minutebefore her sister, um, identical
or fraternal?
Fraternal.
Okay.
And, uh, 45 years ago, yesterdayas a turns zone.
Wow.
Yeah.
Happy birthday babe.

(01:19:32):
See you a little bit.
And my wife's a twin as well.
Oh, is that right?
That, that's the story for thetime machine sped up a little
bit.
Right.
Yeah.
We just don't have time for thattime machine probably.
Yeah.
He involved with that.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, uh, first twin, so yeah, setthe stage first.
Twin, first twins in thehospital and born at, uh, the
new needle.
Needle.
So my dad didn't really get afront row seat'cause there were
so many people in that room.
Your dad's been running theconstruction company for a while

(01:19:53):
at this point?
Kind of.
Well, no situation or he was,well he was in construction at
that point.
Okay.
But not actually running his ownbusiness yet?
No, it was, uh, we were middleschool when he struck out on his
own.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
And so he was working inconstruction, but as a foreman
or as a whatever.
Project manager.
Yeah, project manager.
Estimator.
And then he was working for afamily company and really kind
of saw the, what writing on thewall.
Their kids were coming up and,and, uh, he wasn't, they were

(01:20:16):
the past of the future.
He was not kinda, I mean, and hewas.
Uh, he, he's told us often, he'slike, you know, nobody's gonna
turn the lights out on me butme.
Hmm.
Uh, and that was prettyimportant to him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he had a work ethic.
Yeah.
That was incredible.
And a desire and, uh, a will anda skill that Yeah.
I'm glad he did.
My dad founded a farm, uh, whenI was in first grade, um, that

(01:20:39):
now is 10,000 acres and, youknow, as a first generation
wealth creator up in NorthDakota.
Um, and like I, he could whoopme still, like he's 70 years old
and that he outworks me.
Yeah.
Well, he works out 45 minutesevery morning pretty much.
And stuff like that's, he'salways got dad strength.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(01:20:59):
For sure.
It would take two of me to whoopmy dad, maybe three.
Yeah.
To put me in my place.
My dad still makes me go cyclingoccasionally.
Oh really?
And I'm like, Ooh, slow out.
I can't keep this pace going.
Yep.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So Pinrose for you.
Yeah.
And what was your, are you firstborn, only child?
What you got?
I, I am first born of four.

(01:21:21):
Okay.
Um, so I have a brother that'stwo years younger than me that
lives in Denver.
And then I have a brother who's13 years younger Oh.
Than me who lives in ColoradoSprings, and a sister who's 15
years younger than me and livesin the spring.
Same mom and dad.
Just a same mom and dad.
10 year gap year.
Yep.
Interesting.
Yep.
Unusual, I guess, kind ofgetting the business going and
stuff.
Was that the circumstance or?

(01:21:42):
Yeah, it, you know, my dad hadan interesting journey.
Um, I.
In the, in the 1980s, he ownedan interior trim and door supply
company.
Okay.
Um, and down in ColoradoSprings, 1987 ish.
It got really rough.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, you know, and probably oneof the greatest lessons that I,

(01:22:04):
that I tell people that, youknow, one of the things I
learned from my dad was whenthat downturn happened, um, he
could have declared bankruptcyon that business.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and he chose to, he didn'tthink that bankruptcy was the
right answer, and so he assumedall of that debt.

(01:22:24):
Mm.
And, you know, following, uh.
That he went out and worked onthe road and he did interior
trim, um, for a couple of large,just like paying half of his
income toward that debt.
Yeah.
And half his income towardkeeping a family alive.
Exactly.
Dang.
And it took going out on theroad for many years to go out

(01:22:44):
and, and earn the income to beable to, um, yeah.
Pay off the debt well andprobably built the skills that
he needed to be a next stageguy.
Right.
Well, and then to some extent,yeah.
And he moved on from that andwent to do, um, spent a little
bit of time doing some realestate, um, appraisal type
stuff.

(01:23:04):
We moved to Oklahoma City sothat he could help one of his
college friends, um, get abusiness up and going, and then
eventually got drawn back toColorado, um, and really entered
kind of that high-end generalcontracting, uh, business.
Just kind of out ofhappenstances.
Yeah.
My, all of my uncles are inconstruction as well.

(01:23:27):
They're all in interior trim.
And what was the cons?
What was the company name?
Is it I recognize?
No.
Okay.
It's skeet daughterconstruction.
Okay.
I mean, so y But what happenedwas he had two brothers that
were doing interior trim on thisbig house, and the owner ended
up firing the general contractorand, and.
You know, came to them and waslike, do you know anybody?

(01:23:48):
And they're like, well,actually, my brother might be
interested in running this.
And so he actually startedflying back from, uh, Oklahoma.
Oh, fascinat.
Wow.
Back to Colorado and running hisjob, owners of the project, his
job.
And you know, we eventually thenmoved back to Colorado Springs
and Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, he's been doing kindathe residential construction

(01:24:10):
since then.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, he's trying to retire.
And what kind of a, a firstgrader were you when you were
getting ready to meet these,these brothers and what school?
Uh, Woodman Roberts ElementarySchool.
Woodman.
So that's up north side of townthere, or North?
Yeah, north, northeast,Northwest, kind of.
Yeah.
I worked at Garden of the GodsRoad.
Okay.
Uh, with Bank of Colorado therewhen I was down there.

(01:24:33):
That, that's Wait, with AdamsBank and Trust?
No, with Bank of Colorado.
What am I talking about?
Yeah.
Uh, that's where our office is.
Garden of the Gods.
Oh, okay.
So yeah, that was a great road.
I used to go across over Youwent to Yeah.
Yeah.
And then roll up whatever thatclever road was over there.
Oh man.
I mean, every time I drive toour office in Colorado Springs,
when you get off I 25 andyou're, you're heading west on

(01:24:54):
Garden of the Gods and you'vegot Pikes Peak just in, you
know, it's full beauty rightthere.
That's one of the few placesthat Colorado Springs beats.
Fort Collins is for many people,the drive to the office is
pretty sweet.
Oh, just dessert.
Just enormous.
Yeah.
It's incredible.
Yeah.
You know, um.
And yeah, so we all startedfirst grade at Woodman Roberts

(01:25:17):
Elementary, and, um, lived inthe same neighborhood.
We lived in the sameneighborhood.
Oh, okay.
That was probably the, the bigconnection is Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, we lived what, quartermile from each other.
Okay.
Um, and so we became the localbike gang.
Okay.
I dig it more of a kind of aGoonies, uh, style thing.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Patrick, why don't you, uh,gimme a little bit of a summary

(01:25:39):
of your family dynamic there atthe same time period?
Family dynamics.
Yeah.
Was it just you two, were thereother siblings?
No.
So, uh, you know, my parentswere, were originally from
Kansas and uh Okay.
Like rural Kansas or City ofKansas, or City of Kansas.
Okay.
In, in, uh, Topeka.
Okay.
Um, got married and, uh, theyhad a hard time having kids.

(01:26:02):
Ooh.
Um, and so, you know, marriedseven or eight years before
Chris and I came along.
Okay.
You know, towards the end ofthat they, they said, you know,
if we're not going to be able tohave kids, let's, let's go do
something that we've alwayswanted to do.
And, and Colorado was in that.
Okay.
That, that picture.
So, uh, I came out to Coloradoand then Chris and I showed up.
Okay.
You know, something about thatmountain error, huh?

(01:26:24):
I, I don't know what it is abouttwins.
I, I think you have a set oftwins and you really consider
whether you want to have kidsafter that.
'cause it's a, it's a reallyrough journey at first.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's definitely the two onone when dad's off doing stuff
is, uh, can be a challenge.
Uh, I I think it's a, it's ablessing, uh, when the kids get
a little bit older.
I agree.
I think as, as infants, that waschallenging.

(01:26:44):
But no, it just ended up the twoof us and, and, uh, you know,
pretty nice to always have a, abest friend to go do stuff when,
yeah.
Yeah.
I joke with my parents now thatI have two kids that are, um,
different ages, differentsports, different activities.
You know, Chris and I werealways on the same team.
They barely hang out.
Like literally you go one placeand it's a twofer.

(01:27:06):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, uh, but not, not the casefor most people.
So I grew up in Central NorthDakota.
Uh, graduated with a high schoolclass of five.
So a very rural, very ruralokay.
Environment.
Um, and my, so my dad's dad, um,divorced from his mom when my
dad was like 13 and thenremarried.
His older brother.

(01:27:26):
My dad's mom remarried.
My dad's dad's older brother.
Wow.
And had three, two more kids,the youngest of, which was my
uncle Jim, who was eight monthsolder than me, and in my same
class.
So my uncle was my best friendall through my growing up years.
There you go.
And he was like really big and Iwas like, really tidy.
And so he was like my protectorfor my sassy mouth sometimes.

(01:27:48):
He failed a few times.
Anyway, I digress.
Uh, but, uh, but he, but Jim wasalways there.
Yeah.
Like he and I were best friendsand I would go to his house for
birthday parties and stuff likethat and, and we were just, it
was just baked in.
Um, my next youngest brother wastwo and a half years younger.
So far enough to not have thesame Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know any of his friendshardly.

(01:28:09):
Right.
And vice versa.
It was just a different kind ofthing than that, that twins or
even one year apart, you cankind of have that same
experience.
You guys Same age too.
Same grade.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and talk to me about like,were you smart kids?
Were you sporty kids?
Were you troublemakers?
You said you were a bike gang,but not in maybe a bad way.

(01:28:29):
Not in a bad way.
I agree.
I think we, I think we run thespectrum of smart, uh, you know,
just tough enough to, to getalong.
And so like, Subaru's kind of,you're a seven and a half or
whatever and everything.
Like, not that smart, but prettysmart.
Not that tough, but prettytough.
No, I, I, I struggled withschool.
I really was not.
Oh yeah.
Uh, just not.

(01:28:50):
My thing.
Focus or, uh, no, I think I had,I definitely struggled with
reading and writing.
Okay.
It was not fun.
Like dyslexic or something?
Yeah, dyslexic.
Okay.
Yep.
Um, sorry to call.
It's fine.
I'm, uh, I'm, I'm happy to talkabout it, but,'cause it doesn't
define who you are, it's justTotally.
It's just, uh, I mean, for me, Iwas reading like, it was a
challenge.

(01:29:11):
I was reading huge books when Iwas like 5, 6, 7 years old.
You know, my dad was like, whatthe hell you gonna read Bones of
Plenty for 10?
You know?
I'm like, I dunno.
It seems interesting.
And plus I get book it pointsfor pizza, A Pizza Hut, you
know?
Gosh, no.
Like, I look at people thatenjoy reading and I, that's
something I've always longedfor.
I'm like, God, I wish I enjoyedit.
'cause it's exhausting for me.
But, um, enjoyed just beingoutside, I guess.

(01:29:32):
We played outside.
Yeah.
All the time.
We had a creek in front of ourhouse, both of our houses.
Monument Creek.
Okay, sure.
We had land around us.
We built terrifying forts.
Right.
Not according to Code.
Oh God.
No.
No.
Dug, dug way too many tunnelsand without reinforcing the
walls.
Yeah.
Uh, we built a tree house thatwas so bad and so dangerous that

(01:29:56):
it was the impetus of, of ourdads finally saying, okay, we're
gonna do this.
Right.
And we built, oh, the mostoutrageous wall we built.
I say we, they built the mostoutrageous, the dads mostly two
story, mostly tree house.
Okay.
That we then tinkered on for.
I, I think we, we would, wewould build.

(01:30:17):
From the time we were little,we, the three of us built.
Yeah.
And we'd have other kids comeover and play.
And we were more, whether it wasthe Ford or the tree house or
whatever, we, we cared moreabout building the thing than
actually playing in it.
Ramps for the bikes.
And everybody else was like,we're done building now let's
plan.
And we're like, yeah, no, wedon't plane things.
You build, build something else.

(01:30:37):
Yeah.
It was, it was great.
I mean, I could see, I'm likeimagining this first tree house.
Oh yeah.
That's like the slums of India.
And they're just like builtonto, you know, when they got
the lean to, attached to thelean to attach to the lean to
that, that was the point when,when, uh, you know, you couldn't
use dad's tools.
So like, you literally just haveto lean to it up and, and then
we got somet twine and sub ducttape.

(01:30:58):
Maybe when that thing fell down,they rebuilt it.
I, you know, I, I appreciate'em.
'cause they, they, they gave usa lot of leeway.
They, they said, here's theskill saw, we're gonna
accidentally leave it.
You know, they got tired of it.
Well, and the cool thing isthey've got access to job site,
excess materials all the time.
Right.
Bringing stuff home.
And, um, I think they got tiredof coming home every night and

(01:31:20):
we'd, we'd lay out boards for'emto cut and they were like, you
know, I'm just gonnaaccidentally leave the extension
cord and the saw out.
You're 11 when they get home.
You're nine now.
And they're nine.
They can, they've seen it doneenough.
Maybe they can just cut theirown board.
Yeah.
Well, but I was running acombine when I was like, 11.
There you go.
You know, you know, I couldn't,I had to pull on the steering

(01:31:41):
wheel of the combine to push theclutch in.
Like,'cause I couldn't just pushit and I wasn't, what's the
worst that's gonna happen?
Yeah.
I mean, like north the Dakota,yeah.
They were coming back in acouple hours, you know, the
truck would be back from theelevator and, you know,
whatever.
Just don't die or fall into thedumb thing.
Just stay in the cab, don't doanything, don't do anything
stupid.
You're 11 now, so we're gonnatrust you to not do anything

(01:32:03):
dumb.
Right.
Yeah.
And there were, I mean, therewere times we would probably to
the chagrin of our neighbors, wewould go down into the creek and
build dams, ice hockey, youknow, we'd turn it into the
hockey.
Oh, that's fun.
Skating rink when we were, youknow, I'm, that's winter time.
Like I think the EPA gets on youabout that these days.

(01:32:25):
Days if you build a nonpermitted dam existed in the
nineties.
Yeah.
And this is more like theeighties, right?
Yeah.
So, um, I wanna shift the focusa little bit to family.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, where did, where did youeach find your, your, because
you're all married, right?
Yeah.
And, and where, where along thejourney did you find your
people?
Austin?

(01:32:45):
I know you were the most recent'cause you were a bachelor going
into COVID.
Yes, I was.
Um, yeah, I met my wife inNovember of 2019.
Okay.
Um.
Kristen is her name Kristen, andshe'll probably listen, right?
Yeah.
And uh, so we met on match.com.
Oh, you did?
Um, you know, yeah.

(01:33:05):
And I was, gosh, late thirties.
Okay.
Um, had you just been reallycareer focused or had you had
other serious Yeah.
Kind of a relationships thatjust didn't quite get to the
finish line or some of both.
Okay.
Um, I think what, you know,early in my career with GE
Johnson, I traveled from right.
Lake Tahoe to the San LuisValley, the veil and Steamboat.

(01:33:28):
And so every 18 months to twoyears, you were packing up your
house and you were moving, um,oh, for like a whole long time.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
As long, as long as the projecttakes kind of thing.
Yep.
Interesting.
Exactly.
And so there was a portion, youknow, through my twenties where
it was a very transientlifestyle.
You could date a girl if youwanted to, unless she was ready

(01:33:48):
to take home from mom.
Like I'll see you later and goodluck finding one of those and va
So yeah.
Anyway, just really commonnormal girls that just wanna
find a cute guy from ColoradoSprings.
Yeah, exactly.
Settle down.
Um, you didn't find anybody inthe San Louis Valley?
No, no, no.
There's only three girls in thewhole valley.

(01:34:09):
Exactly.
They're all married.
Yeah.
And so after that, you know,after traveling, what were you
building in the San Luis Valley,by the way?
Ms.
G Johnson building down there.
I didn't know there was anythingthey would touch outta that
nation.
Yeah.
So what happened in 2007, 2008when you had the, the Great
Recession is a lot of theprivate work that we had been

(01:34:31):
doing in the mountains, um,stopped because it was all
developer driven.
Sure.
Right.
And so the state of Coloradocame out with the best grant,
um, and the best grant funded Kthrough 12, um, education school
projects.
So you could go and get the bestgrants and Gotcha.
So a lot of these ruralcommunities that have Right.

(01:34:52):
Schools that mean that werebuilt in the forties or whatever
Yeah.
And were falling apart.
Right, right.
Um, had the opportunity to buildnew facilities, so, okay.
I had spent, um, the previoussix years building high-end
condos and in all of these skiresorts.
And you're like, we're gonnasend you to San Where did you
live?

(01:35:12):
Where did you live?
In the San Luis Valley?
Like Alamosa or?
I lived in Alamosa.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well that's probably the bestavailable option.
It was tricky finding.
Um, housing.
We were, were just at, uh, uh,joyful journey, hot Springs, my
wife and I on the way back fromthe anniversary, uh, trip.
Yeah.
Uh, so we come through therepretty regularly.
It's, it's, so my dad had a goodfriend that lived, uh, next door

(01:35:36):
to him up in North Dakota for awhile, and he was like A-U-S-D-A
guy and then he got transferredto San Luis Valley.
And just the contrast from like,'cause we don't even have
irrigation up there in NorthDakota, but they got voluptuous,
clay loam soils that really onlyneed three reigns to get you
through the year.
And huge equipment, all ofleading edge technologies.

(01:35:56):
And then you, like I I, I prayfor the people down there, you
know,'cause it's hard'cause thataquifer's drying up and Yeah.
Yeah.
It's cold in California andArizona and it's cold at night.
Yeah, I've heard it's thehighest, uh, what is it, the
highest valley in the USaltitude wise.
Yeah.
I think that's accurate.
That makes sense mean.
Yeah.

(01:36:16):
It's a fascinating environment.
I remember driving to work onemorning and it was negative 39
degrees.
Oh.
I mean, and that didn't evenaccount for the wind, right?
Yeah.
I mean, it was, it was brutal.
Um.
Well, the beautiful place tolive.
But it, it also, you know, thecool thing about that project
after you've just built high-endcondos is you get to build a K

(01:36:41):
through 12 community or a Kthrough 12 school in a rural
community.
Yeah.
And the people, you're actuallygonna make a difference in those
people's lives.
Yeah, they did.
And the, the, the rich assowners of your Vail project
don't even care if you exist orfall off the roof and die.
Yeah, exactly.
And so not Dick Powell.
It was, it was fun to, tointeract with the board down

(01:37:05):
there in the I betsuperintendent of the school
district and I bet.
And it was a really rewardingprocess.
So anyway, let's find thiswoman.
So you, you, you get your mashdo com account up, you get a, a
pop right away and you know,yeah.
I mean, it took a little whilelonger than that, but um, yeah,
we went on our first date inNovember of 2019 and then as we

(01:37:26):
discussed out here, COVID hadhappened shortly after that.
Yep.
And, you know, we spent a lot oftime together and, um, she was
here local too.
Yep.
She was here local, um, and, uh,had two kids from a previous
marriage.
Okay.
So, um, we ended up gettingmarried and have been married
now for.

(01:37:47):
Uh, three years and justcelebrated our third.
Okay.
Uh, wedding anniversary.
And so we've got our two boys,Connor, who's 11, Blake, who's
eight.
And then, uh, we've got adaughter.
We, one, one together.
Oh, cool.
Congratulations, Madeline.
Who's 16 months old.
Dig it.
17 months old.

(01:38:08):
Dig it.
So what, uh, what was it about?
Was it Krista?
Kristen?
Kristen?
What was it about Kristen thatreally drew you to her after
that first, uh, master.comhangout?
I think part of what makes uswork is how different we are.
Yeah.
Um, my wife and I are a lot likethat.
Yeah.
And, and so the people that knowme like I am, you know, get

(01:38:30):
buried in thought.
I like talking about work orpolitics or whatever it happens
to be.
And generally my conversationsare not very light.
And so your philosopher type.
Yeah.
And so she's the fun one in therelationship and she's great.
Um, with people andrelationships and a fantastic
mother.
And I think one of the, one ofthe things about marrying

(01:38:53):
somebody that has, you know, hasbeen married before and has, has
children, is you get theopportunity to observe them as a
mother.
Yeah.
And what kind of mother are theyto their children?
Yeah.
And not everybody gets thatexperience, right.
Yeah.
You know, you're kind ofguessing like, right, right.
We have kids.
What are they gonna, and you seeher with her kids and you're
like, dang.
I like the way she mothers.

(01:39:13):
Uh.
I think one of the things thatdrew me to her is, you know,
just being a single mother, youwork hard.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it is the hardest job inthe world and you know, not only
are you trying to be a mother totwo boys, but you're also trying
to hold down a job and earn anincome, um, and support your
family.

(01:39:34):
So there's amount, there was a,a grit to her.
Yeah.
That was really attractive.
And then yeah.
You know, obviously, you know,her smile's great and she's got
beautiful eyes and, you know,there's all that physical Yeah,
exactly.
So I won't go into all thedetails with you.
Cool.
Um, so yeah, congratulations.
It's great to find love.

(01:39:54):
You know, I've, I, I was 26, 25when I met Jill in 27 when I
married her.
So what was then, yeah, thatwas, that, that long ago.
22 years ago, last month.
Wow.
Uh, was that picture, but, uh,where'd the be beard come into
play?
I couldn't even grow a, a, agoatee until I was 30.

(01:40:16):
Like I literally, I was, that's,I, I tell this occasionally, but
like what I told you, I wasKurt, the little guy.
I was four foot 11 in seventhgrade, and five foot one at the
end of 10th grade.
I didn't grow in middle school,basically.
Uh, and then I sprung up, but Istill didn't really have
puberty.
Like, I still didn't reallyshave until I was 25 years old

(01:40:37):
and couldn't definitely grow abeard.
And then I got like 30 and allof a sudden I got the, the
thickest beard ever.
I don't know.
And what are you, uh, six two?
Um, 60?
Yeah.
62.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I'm, yeah, I'm a six twonow.
Six, two and a half.
I used to be, but now I'm sixtwo, you know, buck 88 this
morning.
Yeah.
I've dropped about 10 poundssince the first of the year.

(01:40:57):
You know, clean living, not toomuch bourbon.
Um, anyway, I digress.
Yeah.
So, uh, who's, who's next?
You married a twin.
Do you wanna, do you wanna talkabout that relationship,
Patrick?
Yeah.
We met in, uh, last year atcollege, the U Okay.
Um, Chris, the, the great storyabout this is Chris actually
knew, uh, my wife's twin sisterthrough, uh, business classes at

(01:41:23):
CSU.
Okay.
Uh, I got an opportunity, or, ordrug, I'm not sure which, to a,
a church service on a Saturdaynight with a good friend of
mine.
And, and, uh, her twin sisterwas sitting literally right next
to me.
And, uh, okay.
Talk about her An amazing Godstory.
Uh, the, the, your wife or thetwin sister?
My wife.
No, my wife.
And Okay.

(01:41:43):
I had, I had met, uh, her twinsister Right.
A few times just throughinteractions.
You're like, Sarah?
No.
She's like, no, I'm not Sarah,I'm Susie.
You're, whatever.
What's your wife's name?
Uh, she's, her name's Emily andNurse.
Hi, Emily.
Sister's Hillary.
Yeah.
And, uh, so we, we, we kicked itoff there and, and, uh, she
finished, uh, CSU as anundergrad and then went to
Creighton for medical school.
Okay.

(01:42:04):
And so we dated long distancefor a while and then, uh, man,
she's an amazing woman that,that brought us back.
You didn't wanna let her go?
No way.
Now that dance and, uh, got backto Colorado and, and, uh, yeah,
we've been married now 17 years.
Okay.
Celebrated 17.
Two kids.
A daughter, Piper, who's 12.
Okay.
Will be 12 in September.

(01:42:24):
And his son Luke, who's ninegoing on 10.
Our, our sons are pretty closein age.
That's been a lot of fun.
That's pretty cool.
And a pretty neat dynamic.
So, um.
And she's doing some amazingthings with, she's a family
practice doctor by boardcertification.
But does, uh, oh, well that'swhy you could take a big risk to
like start a constructioncompany with a little seed money

(01:42:46):
from dad.
'cause you made her a doctor galeven though she wasn't making
any money out and she got a tonof student loans probably.
But, you know, there was a lotof, takes the risk out a little
bit.
Right.
Get those out of the way.
But yeah, no, it's, it's been,it's been a lot of fun.
And, and she's, uh, she's inprivate practice now.
Cool.
Uh, doing, uh, then there's sofew private practices out there.
Yeah.
What, what's she in?
She's, she's a board certifiedfamily physician.

(01:43:08):
Okay.
But she's pivoted into morefunctional medicine.
Okay.
That's the, the, uh, the, we're,we're signed up with a direct
family care office here, whichvery similar, which I think is a
very nice Yeah.
Uh, business model and like,insurance companies are the
worst creatures in the business.
Yeah.
Oh, you, it's not even really abusiness entire podcast company.
It's not even really a business.

(01:43:29):
Like you sell a governmentmandated product that be like,
whatever.
Anyway, I digress.
She's, she's amazing at what shedoes.
And, and, uh, direct primarycare was kind of the transition
from, from uc Health as a familyphysician to what she, I might
wanna learn more about that.
'cause I'd like the notion offunctional medicine too.
And, uh, it's a great blend of,of traditional western medicine,

(01:43:49):
but, uh, just a more holisticYeah.
Honor the acupuncturist and theChinese and the stuff like that.
'cause some, some of their stuffworks way better.
Well, and it's, and you don'thave to get a prescription to.
Fight the side effects of theother prescription of the thing
that you took to fight the sideeffects of the other
prescription, well,prescription, whatever the
attitude is.
It's, it's the concept of it'salways bad.

(01:44:10):
Let's understand root cause.
Totally.
Like I, I think she uses That'sawesome.
The quote of Desmond Tutu of atsome point you're gonna get
frustrated of pulling people outof the river.
Yeah.
You're gonna walk upstream andYeah.
Hey, stop jumping in here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Who's pushing'em in?
And so, yeah.
So she's been great.
We've been what does she have a,a practice name that people
should look up?
Does she take, take clients?

(01:44:30):
She does.
MIT md, so MINT md.
Okay.
Um, I like it.
Yeah.
So I'm gonna check it out.
Um, not that I'm not super happywith my existing direct family
care practice, I just want toWell, and she doesn't do direct
primary care.
Okay.
So it's supplemental almost inthat kind of space.
Yeah.
She really focuses on, um,chronic disease and root cross.
I, uh, I wrote a blog in I thinkJuly of 2019 that was, uh, in

(01:44:55):
Austin.
We probably could be friendsactually.
We can go get some bourbonsometime if you're buying on the
elder account.
But, uh, give me liberty or giveme health, uh, was the phrase.
And it was like, you know, don'tget caught up in our healthcare
system.
'cause they'll keep you full ofpills and visits and other
reasons to come back forever ifthey get a chance.
So just do what you need to doto stay healthy.

(01:45:16):
Here's some places to start, youknow, stay off the treadmill.
The health treadmill.
Yeah, the health treadmill.
Get on the treadmill.
Go on the treadmill better.
Yeah.
Go for a walk outside, you know,but yeah.
Yeah.
No, they'll, they'll, orconveyor belt with you.
They'll grind you up and justkeep you a long time customer.
We're bringing you back manytimes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, would you like to share thesame kind of Yeah.
I met my wife Courtney in 2010.

(01:45:37):
Hey Courtney.
And, uh, yeah.
Wonderful woman.
Got married in 13, so we'recoming up on our 12th.
Okay.
Uh, year anniversary.
We've got three kids.
Jackson's uh, our oldest nine,he'll be 10 here.
This, uh, next month.
Okay.
Same age here too, with theseguys.
Yeah.
So, uh, Jackson and Luke Patsare five months apart.
Uh, we're coaching baseballtogether this year and having a

(01:45:59):
ton of fun.
That's fun.
Yeah.
It's awesome.
Uh, they're two, was that yoursport?
Uh, it was golf and baseball.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
And, uh, Jack and, and Luke loveto joke that they're half
brothers.
'cause technically they are.
Oh, right.
Because we're identical.
Right.
And, and they really are.
That's pretty funny.
Best friends, which is fun tosee.
And that's cool.

(01:46:19):
Uh, then I've got a daughterthat's seven and a younger son
that is, uh, five.
Cool.
Almost five.
My, uh, my closest brush withfame, actually you guys are too
young probably to recognize it,but, uh, oh, and I forgot the
name now from North Dakota.
There is a, uh, a long timebaseball player that was, he was

(01:46:40):
the first player drafted inmaybe 97.
He kicked for.
Nebraska.
He was a gold glove winner forDarren Erstad.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I struck out Darren Erstad twotimes in one little league game.
There you go.
And nobody struck Darren outever.
The spitball?
I, no, I was just lucky I keptit up inside by the knees, you

(01:47:00):
know.
But anyway, I digress.
But that was my favorite sport.
Um, but I, I quit to go farming.
Yeah.
Baseball's summer storm in whenfarming happens.
And so when I got more than like13 and more enough to more than
drive the combine once in awhile, I had to just do that
instead.
Yeah.
So it goes, I wouldn't have beena pro anyway.
Look at this movie's wrist.
I mean, come on.

(01:47:21):
I digress.
The loco experience is ourclosing segment.
Okay.
And, and I'm gonna do one foreach of you.

(01:48:10):
So it's the craziest experience.
Oh, wait, before we do that,let's, let's dip a little bit
more into faith.
Have you guys all grown up in afaith background?
Environment?
Like started as Christians neverquestioned it, stayed that way.
Where do you go to church?
How do you keep your faithvibrant?
That's a lot of questions, butthere's a lot of questions.

(01:48:31):
I'll, I'll start to unpack that.
No, I, I think we have beenblessed.
We were all raised, uh, in thefaith community, um, different,
um, you're, you've got a lineageof.
Pastors, he looks like it couldbe a Catholic.
He's got kind of that Irish lookabout him.
Definitely not Catholic though.
Just checking.
We, we actually grew up Catholiclight as Episcopalians.

(01:48:51):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
My wife's Catholic.
And, um, you know, I, I know forme, definitely grew up in the
church.
It was an important part of the,the family, uh, routine and,
and, and what we did.
Uh, I I would say that, youknow, I don't wanna speak for
you guys, but for me personally,it was, it was probably high

(01:49:11):
school that really, uh,solidified it for me.
We had a phenomenal young lifeleader.
Okay.
In, in a gentleman named BrianCongleton.
Uh, it seems like thatorganization has impacted a lot
of unbelievable leaders over theyears.
Yeah.
Hugely impactful for, for me.
And I bet 20 of my 200 podcastshave had a, a person impacted by
young.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(01:49:31):
Anyway, just, I digress.
But phenomenal, phenomenalorganization and, and, uh, that
really solidified it for me.
And then, and then, you know,through college there was some
ups and downs, uh, but then gotconnected with another gentleman
that, that was with CampusCrusade at this at the time.
Mm-hmm.
Similar type organization.
Sure.
And haven't looked back since.
And yeah, it's, it's a, it's areally big part and I think it's

(01:49:54):
just a matter of, um, justperspective as we grow up and,
and you say with, you know,church, I'm over in Windsor
with, uh, Patrick Lightfoot andTraverse Church, which has Okay.
Been phenomenal.
Not familiar or, um.
Is it a, an an independentorganization?
It's an, an independent, it wasa plant church.
Uh, okay.
Not Episcopalian at all?

(01:50:15):
No, not Catholic.
Nondenominational.
Yeah.
Um, just a Christianorganization.
Okay.
And, and, uh, Patrick does agreat job over there and, uh,
kids plug in and I think that's,as a parent, what I'm, I'm
learning is, you know, that'sthe most important part is how
do you get your kids plugged in?
Yeah.
Uh, they really drive, but youcan't make people do stuff.

(01:50:36):
Right.
Like, you gotta gotta open thedoors.
You can, you make'em new a few,few times, but you can't make'em
plug in.
But you can't make'em plug in.
You certainly can't make'em.
Uh, you can give'em theopportunity to plug in, so, but
it's hard to make.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Um, so I grew up it, mygrandfather was a pastor.
Okay.
Um, and started a couple ofnon-denominational churches.

(01:50:58):
Oh.
Got in Colorado Springs.
Oh, interesting.
The most entrepreneurial of allventures.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, I think he got sick ofconstruction, decided to be the
pastor.
I'm like, okay, whatever.
If you think that's easier.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um.
And then on my mother's side,uh, she's from Nashville and my
grandmother was very influentialin the, uh, southern Baptist

(01:51:21):
community down there.
Gotcha, gotcha.
Um, and did a lot, did a lot ofwomen's prison ministry and Oh,
wow.
Interesting.
That sort of thing.
Okay.
It was always an interestingdynamic because, and that's like
the No, Dan and no drinking, no,none of that stuff.
No drinking.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
No holding hands with a prettygirl.
Right.
And it was interesting becausewe lived in Colorado, we went to
my grandfather's church that wasnon-denominational, but

(01:51:44):
oftentimes we would go back toNashville in the summer and
spend an extended amount of timethere.
And then we would get to go tochurch with my Mimi and Papa.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, the southern bab,first Southern Baptist in
Nashville or Donaldson.
And it was a different feeling.
So this is probably, this islike, it's funny when I think of

(01:52:05):
like a southern church, I thinkof like a black church and it
all gospel eyes and stuff, butthat's probably not at all like
what a real Southern Baptist is.
No.
That's like, they're like veryserious, right.
Or something.
Yeah.
It was very serious.
It was fire and brimstone andeven as like a fire, you better
turn, you got burn.
Well, you're wearing a, allthat, you're wearing a tie and
a, and a jacket to church.
Gotcha.
And it's like, oh, okay.

(01:52:26):
Starting when you're three.
Yeah, exactly.
So, okay.
Gotcha.
The only redeeming fact was thatwe got to go to Shoney's
afterwards, so, okay.
Uh, that's how they, it's apizza shop or a barbecue or
something.
No, if you're from the south,you know what Shoney's is.
It's like the worst chainrestaurant you've ever done.
Okay.
Alright.
But, um, anyway, you know, sonow, so you had this kind of

(01:52:46):
diverse uh, yeah, a veryexperience, diverse background
and, and so, um, you know, grewup in the faith and obviously we
went to high school together, weattended young life together.
We had that same experience.
Um, and now, you know, we hadgone to Traverse for quite a
while.
Um, but, and that was because mywife and her sons were at

(01:53:09):
Traverse since almost after itwas founded.
Oh, is that right?
Um, but just coincidentally,you're like, I started dating
this girl and you, you're like,oh yeah, I know her from church.
And so, you know, but whatPatrick mentioned about having
your kids engaged Yeah.
Um, has kind of led us on ajourney lately to find a church

(01:53:32):
that, um, is closer to us.
'cause we live in Fort Collins.
Yeah.
And going to Traverse was a 25minute drive.
Our kids weren't in school withthe kids that are there.
Yeah.
And, and so it's just adifferent community.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you sampling, you findanother one yet?
Yeah.
And lately we've been going toOverland, um, okay.
In the irony of, I'm notfamiliar with it, but Overland

(01:53:53):
Church is that they're SouthernBaptist.
So it's been, is it SouthernBaptist Light or like all it
Southern Baptist?
No dancing light for sure.
That's good.
It doesn't seem like SouthernBaptist full on would fly very
good in Northern Colorado.
No, no.
It would.
But, uh, our son, who's 11,graduated outta fifth grade and
is headed into the sixth gradeclass.
So last Sunday when we went wasthe first time he had to sit

(01:54:15):
through big church with us.
Hmm.
Um, and the pastor there gotinto some fire and brimstone in
Ephesians five, and my son looksat me and he goes, so I
shouldn't drink.
I'm like, uh, well, we'll talkthrough that.
But like what it actually says,if you're on a podcast, it's
okay.
You could have one.
And what it says is, do notbecome drunk.

(01:54:37):
Yeah.
You know, and so anyway, um, we,that's why you have to practice
a lot so you can drink morewithout becoming drunk.
And so we've been enjoying thatfor the last several months and,
and really that decision isdriven by, you know, how we
ended up at Overland was reallya lot of the kids that, that our
kids go to school with.
Yeah.

(01:54:57):
Yeah.
Um, and actually obviouslywhatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so that is a huge, that'scool.
Huge consideration and a hugedraw and Yeah.
Yeah.
Dig.
You know, my, I dig it.
My son is now at church camp forthe first time in Nebraska.
I dig it.
Um, at Camp Maranatha, uh, tillthis weekend, so I love it.
Yeah.
Connor.
Connor, yeah.
I remember my first church camp.

(01:55:18):
Yeah.
I dig it.
Chris, why don't you share thesame Yeah.
Similar journey.
Uh, really young life in, in,uh, high school was the tipping
point, you know, out outside ofthat it was very rich.
Rich, right.
It was kind of assumed, but notreally thought through.
And then maybe college, uh,started going to Timberline off

(01:55:38):
and on.
Okay.
And when we, um, when my wifeand I got married, we kind of
went on a, she's Catholic.
Yeah.
Grew up an Episcopalian.
Okay.
So we kinda had that and, um,went around trying to find our
place.
That's a weird thing up atTimberline.
Okay.
Yeah.
My parents, Jill and I, when wemoved to Colorado Springs, we

(01:55:58):
went to 17 different churchestrying to find our spot.
We went to the Catholic, we wentto the Episcopalian church and,
and really just, we went to thesnake handlers.
We went to the freaking,everybody, I don't know, it was
a wild season for us.
I think what drew us to Timber,the Timberline, uh, teaches on
the Bible.
Yeah.
And growing up, both in theCatholic and the Episcopal
Church, um, you were, you, youhad a New Testament reading.

(01:56:22):
You had an Old Testamentreading.
You had a sermon and it was ona, a calendar.
Yeah.
Very specific thing.
It seemed very disjointed and Inever learned the Bible.
Yeah.
Um, and so to, to start to finda, a truly bible believing
church that, that, uh, teachespreaches series.
You know, when you spend sixmonths on Acts Yeah.
Yeah.

(01:56:42):
And you're like, whoa, I had noidea.
I got, I'm so literate.
So I mentioned that Father Evanfrom Saint Beon.
Yeah.
Greek churches.
I gotta email you.
Sorry.
If you're listening to FatherEvan, I gotta get back to you.
But, um.
Anyway, that church, the GreekOrthodox, I've been listening to
their podcast.
It actually, his voice is reallynice.
It puts me to sleep at nightsometimes.

(01:57:03):
Sorry, father, I don't listen tothem all.
Um, but they started, they were,last year May, they were on Luke
11.
Now they're on Luke 15 or 17 orsomething.
Like, that's how crazy.
They are so rich.
It's so they're, they're like sorich three lines a week to, to

(01:57:24):
be able to just sit on it for awhile.
It really is.
And then, and then find contextin it all.
We, there's a balance there,right.
We loved it.
And my parents have since movedfrom Colorado Springs to
Northern Colorado.
Okay.
Um, they attend with us.
And so it's, it's been realnice.
It's, it's like cool daysdifferent.
Well, they got all the differentflavor.
I mean the, the differentflavor.
They, they got the best worship,right.
Like the best paid band in townand to these guys, the kids

(01:57:46):
programming's incredible.
Right, right.
All that.
And our kids want to go tochurch.
Yeah.
That's cool.
Um, okay, let's, uh, we're gonnaget you outta here in 10
minutes.
Uh, but first we gotta have alow-code experience from each of
you.
So that's the craziestexperience that you're willing
to share.
Maybe something your brotherdoesn't even know about that
story, but probably not.

(01:58:06):
Um, but uh, it could be a day, amoment, a near death experience,
a faith conversion experience.
A I saved my wife from fallingoff the edge of the cliff.
I don't know, like whatever thatexperience is for you.
Some kinda a crazy experiencethat pops to mind.
Chris, you wanna go first thistime?
Well, yeah, I can go first.
I see Austin smiling.
He knows his well.

(01:58:26):
I don't, we had some No, I'lljust share or together.
Is there a shared one?
Do we have a shared one that youwanna share that's, that you're
smiling about?
Yeah, we probably have a few.
Probably not.
Uh, probably some of'em weshouldn't talk about our
statutes.
That's perfect.
That's what this podcast isabout.
We don't have that many li Yeah.
You're way past the statute oflimitations.
Well, well there's probably onewe're all thinking about that

(01:58:50):
happened in college.
Um, we had been out, uh, weprobably enjoying Old Town a
little too much.
Yeah.
It wasn't the early days of thecraft beer revolution kind of.
And um, it's hard to kick agauge on how strongly they're,
sometimes you accidentally getdrunk, you know, and craft beer
For us that Natty Light wasgreat.

(01:59:10):
Yeah, exactly.
And, and we Right.
Had a especially 17 of them.
Right.
And so we had this situation in,in college where there were, uh,
four of us guys that lived inour house and the next door was
a house of four to five girls.
And we had become really closefriends with them.
And so we always went to thebars together and we always had

(01:59:34):
this huge group that came backto our houses, the Flotilla.
Yeah.
Because like we had two houses.
Yeah.
Or you know, eight or nine ofus.
Yeah.
You'd catch up five other peopleor something.
Now you gotta Yeah.
It was a party.
Well, uh, we had decided to comehome and me and a couple of my
friends had gotten diverted onthe way home and were walking

(01:59:54):
past the post office, uh, herein Old Town.
Okay.
And one of my buddies who I'llleave nameless, um, he's in a
different state now.
He's in a different state.
Yeah.
So he's good.
Um, started hopping through themail trucks and Oh.
Flipped down the visor of oneand the keys fell out.
Oh shit.

(02:00:14):
And so I know what I would do.
Yeah.
So we did what any 20-year-oldslightly inebriated male would
do slightly.
And we, we drove the mail truckhome.
Sweet.
Yeah.
And so lucky a rock.
Oh.
We drive the mail truck home andwe pull up in the front yard
and, and our fourth roommate incollege was kind of a stickler.

(02:00:36):
He was a, uh, he wanted to be adoctor and took it really
seriously.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So anyway, we, he went, went toclass more than you and stuff.
This is great.
And like there are 20 people outthere check it out and they're
like, yeah, it's hilarious.
Um, he's like, you need to takethat back.
Well, he came up and he was hotand he was like, get it outta
the front yard.
And we're like, okay, we gottaget it outta the front yard.

(02:00:57):
But now whether we gotta do withit, can't just take it back.
You can't just take it back.
And the only logical thing to dois to leave it in the middle of
the oval of CSU.
It seems like a legit plan tome.
So we took the mail truck and wedrove down the alley along
Laurel and cut across.
This was before all the camerasrecording everything that

(02:01:19):
happened on CSU campus.
Exactly.
So anyway, we roll it up intothe middle of the oval.
We hop out, we do our best todust the thing down from our
prince because you're superworried.
You're gonna figure it out.
Right.
And go home.
And that's the end.
And, and that's the end.
I like it.
That shut up in the campusblotter.
Perfect.
You hit the news.
Yeah.
So whoever's listening from CSUdon't look us up.

(02:01:42):
Um, but yeah, that was Iprobably the craziest college
story that we all experienced.
That's a pretty interesting one.
Yeah.
Um, and Dave and Steve, ifyou're out there.
So Dave and Steve were in mybanking training program and
they came to visit me like twomonths after.
And we, we were like weavingback and forth for some reason
to walk back to my house fromdowntown.

(02:02:05):
And you saw that post officeDave got lost.
And like wandered around OldTown for like a couple of hours
before sleeping in somebody'sVolkswagen bug in the back of
their yard.
Wow.
Anyway, so that's, yeah, I, thatwas what I was thinking.
I was thinking about you, Dave.
If you're out there listening,uh, that, that's a pretty good
story.
I like that.
I would, I would, I, I thinkthat that's a good way to share

(02:02:28):
the experience.
Is that the end?
Just a shared local experience?
Sure.
If I've got one, nothing's gonnacompare.
Really?
No.
Who, who made the decision todrive it?
Like, uh, his name is JohnMerritt.
Oh, it's spelled, I thoughtJohnny Walker.
You guys.
But, but I mean, because youpull this thing down and like,

(02:02:49):
somebody's gotta be like, dude,we're driving this thing.
Uh, he decided to drive it.
Okay.
Like, we're still out on theside.
We're on the sidewalk.
He's got it started up.
Yeah, he started out, is pulledout into the street and it was
like pop in.
Okay.
It was just you two.
Uh, there was, there wasanother, a few of you guys too.
So you had a posse just to getthe mail truck?

(02:03:10):
Yep.
And it was old too.
You know, there's a, I haven'tseen a new mail truck.
Oh, it hadn't been driven inyears, probably.
Wow.
It was like one of the 1970, Imean, it was a single front
wheel and stuff.
No, not single wheel.
They're closed.
Jeep.
I like it.
I like it.
Well, um, you should have seenif there was two of'em, you
could have smashed'em together.
Like a couple of Ferraris in theparking lot.

(02:03:31):
Yeah, we did that 15 yearslater.
That was or dabble intoresidential construction.
Yeah.
Um, anybody wants to look upelder construction?
Should they just go to yourwebsite?
You popular on LinkedIn?
You wanna get any commercials?
You got any specials runningright now?
Any special?
No, I reach out to us.

(02:03:52):
Uh, we've got a website overconstruction.com inc.com.
Uh, yeah, take it Chris.
Yeah, no, that's, any questionsfor me?
Thanks for being here.
No thanks and thanks for sharingthe time.
Hopefully you had fun.
Did you have fun?
We had fun.
We did have fun.
And it's been, it's been fun ourto see where you've gone over
the last we started essentiallytogether.

(02:04:12):
Yeah, pretty similar times.
Banking with you way back when.
It's fun to see your journey andappreciate your time.
Been fun.
Well thanks for having us on.
Send me your referrals for localthink tanks since you're strong
advocates for peer advisoralready.
Yeah, you bet.
Don't give'em all to thatnational firm Vistage and stuff.
Come on, get outta here withthat.
Anyway.
Appreciate you Ron.
Look me up.
Cheers guys.
Guys.
Cheers.

(02:04:32):
Thanks.
Cool.
Thank you.
Thanks.

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EXPERIENCE 226 | Partners in Construction - Brothers in Life & Business & Faith - Chris & Patrick Elder and Austin Dodder of Elder Construction, Inc.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}EXPERIENCE 226 | Partners in Construction - Brothers in Life & Business & Faith - Chris & Patrick Elder and Austin Dodder of Elder Construction, Inc.