I was introduced to Micah Johnson by Jeffrey Beyle, one of my guests during Season 1 of The LoCo Experience (Episode 29 if you wanna check it out), and one of my spies in the Boulder area. By spies I mean those who think of me when they meet someone with an interesting business journey to share, and a lot of value to share with the business community through a podcast conversation like this one!
Micah is what most would call a serial entrepreneur, with multiple starts and exits, and some failures. Micah’s largest business venture to date was GoFanbase, Inc., a social media marketing and community-building strategy firm based in Nashville, which focused on multi-location businesses such as auto dealerships and restaurants. After growing his team to over 100 employees, he and his wife Alane made the decision to exit and search for a next chapter. After years of focus on efficiency and teams and automations at GoFanbase (and a choppy merger integration) the pair was left with skill sets essential to their current venture - Workday Ninjas!
Workday Ninjas helps their agency and B2B service business clients remove roadblocks to scaling through tools like Monday.com, Asana, and ClickUp. Having utilized Monday.com for the past 3 years, and currently undergoing a database conversion to the CRM tool offered by Monday, this was an intriguing opportunity for me to learn more about the kinks and capabilities of the platform from an expert - and ultimately uncover principles of efficiency, communication, and building high-functioning teams. I learned a lot, and had a lot of fun, and I’m confident that you will enjoy my conversation with Micah Jonnson.
The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/
Follow us to see what we're up to:
Facebook
Music By: A Brother's Fountain
I was introduced to Micah Johnson by Jeffrey Beyle, one of my guests during Season 1 of The LoCo Experience (Episode 29 if you wanna check it out), and one of my spies in the Boulder area. By spies I mean those who think of me when they meet someone with an interesting business journey to share, and a lot of value to share with the business community through a podcast conversation like this one!
Micah is what most would call a serial entrepreneur, with multiple starts and exits, and some failures. Micah’s largest business venture to date was GoFanbase, Inc., a social media marketing and community-building strategy firm based in Nashville, which focused on multi-location businesses such as auto dealerships and restaurants. After growing his team to over 100 employees, he and his wife Alane made the decision to exit and search for a next chapter. After years of focus on efficiency and teams and automations at GoFanbase (and a choppy merger integration) the pair was left with skill sets essential to their current venture - Workday Ninjas!
Workday Ninjas helps their agency and B2B service business clients remove roadblocks to scaling through tools like Monday.com, Asana, and ClickUp. Having utilized Monday.com for the past 3 years, and currently undergoing a database conversion to the CRM tool offered by Monday, this was an intriguing opportunity for me to learn more about the kinks and capabilities of the platform from an expert - and ultimately uncover principles of efficiency, communication, and building high-functioning teams. I learned a lot, and had a lot of fun, and I’m confident that you will enjoy my conversation with Micah Jonnson.
The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/
Follow us to see what we're up to:
Facebook
Music By: A Brother's Fountain
I was introduced to Micah Johnson by Jeffrey Bale, one of my guests during season one of The Loco Experience, episode 29 if you want to check it out, and one of my spies in the Boulder area. By spies, I mean those who would think of me when they meet somebody with an interesting business journey to share and a lot of value to share with the business community through a podcast conversation like this one. Mike is what most would call a serial entrepreneur, with multiple starts and exits and some failures. Mike's largest business venture to date was GoFanbase, Inc., a social media marketing and community building strategy firm based in Nashville, which focused on multi location businesses such as auto dealerships and restaurants. After growing his team to over 100 employees, he and his wife, Elaine, made the decision to exit and search for a next chapter. After years of focus on efficiency and teams and automations at GoFanbase, And a choppy merger integration, the bear was left with skill sets essential to their current venture. Workday Ninjas. Workday Ninjas helps their agency and B2B service clients remove roadblocks to scaling through tools like Monday. com, Asana, and ClickUp. Having utilized Monday. com for the past three years, and currently undergoing a database conversion to the CRM tool offered by Monday, this was an intriguing opportunity for me to learn more about the kinks and capabilities of the platform from an expert. And ultimately uncover principles of efficiency, communication, and building high functioning teams. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun, and I'm confident that you will enjoy my conversation with Micah Johnson. Welcome back to the Loco Experience. I'm honored today to be joined by Micah Johnson and Micah is the CEO and founder of Workday Ninja. What is, uh, what is a Workday Ninja? So at Workday Ninja, we go into generally B2B companies, a lot of agencies. But, uh, we help them figure out how do you leverage AI, how do you leverage automation, and how do you streamline your workflows, uh, with project management tools such as Asana, ClickUp, or Monday, and string those all together so that you have, yeah, major benefits across the board. So what, what was the impetus, um, to do this as an enterprise? That's a great question. I've fell into it like the rest of my career. Yeah. So, um, I, I exited my previous company at the end of 2018 and right before that exit, we went through a merger with one of our competitors. Okay. Up until that point, I naively thought every business was completely organized and had workflows and completely dialed in, had their knowledge bases, had their processes all squared away, onboarding perfectly. Turns out, that's not the case. It's not? That's how I ran it. That's how my brain works. I like thinking about systems and making things work so that I don't have to work so hard. Yeah. But when we merged with a competitor, they didn't have a lot of that stuff in place. Okay. Nothing against them. They were making a lot more revenue than we were. Sure. Because they focused on sales and marketing instead of systems. You're like, look at these workflows and onboarding processes. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But put together, that should be a strong thing. If you can get acceptance. And did you bring your tools and workflows into that organization then? Yeah, exactly. So that was my first attempt, or I would say my first opportunity outside of my own businesses, because that one was my second venture, um, to really come in and say, okay, we've got a big problem to solve. We've got a lot of employees. We've got a lot of revenue. We've got a lot of clients. How are we going to take all of this? And then we have to invisibly make this all really efficient. It'd make it work for and to pass due diligence, right? Because our goal was an exit with the merger. So, okay, we got a big problem to solve, but going through that. So, um, I won't get into all of those details yet unless we get in there, but, um, ultimately that experience and, and after that exit, I just really enjoyed. And so I decided to start consulting with companies who are really good at sales and marketing. but maybe lacking or missing elements of the systems, the processes, the workflows, the automation and all of that kind of stuff. So I would go into businesses, figure out what their giant pain points were on their workflow side and then piece together like, Oh, you could do this CRM to here and leverage this API and centralize all your data here. So you don't have a hundred different versions of all this stuff. Well, and it's no wonder I've been kind of fascinated by. You and the way you think because like loco think tank started, you know, originally just as One chapter of 12 members with a Word document application, you know, we've grown and then we've also strapped on, you know, a business valuation tool that our members can use and how those relational intelligence training that our members are trying to build a common language around and how do we keep track of all those things and actually charge for things when we deliver services and stuff like that. Sometimes it's important. It's not our core thing of our memberships, but okay, now we can't just forget that. So anyway, I was just remembering even more so our, uh, my fondness for learning more about what you know. Yeah. So you did it just as kind of a, a generalist consultant for a while focusing on these things or were you the workday ninja already? No, it was definitely, it was definitely general. And. I, I remember having a conversation with my wife and she's, she was very integral with scaling the last business and, and helping us get to a much larger piece. She's, she's my sales and marketing arm, you know, so that's why we make a really great team. Um, so we were even having the conversation of, are there businesses out there that will pay us for, like, we didn't even know, would this market really exist? Do they want somebody from the outside to come in? Right. And try to help them solve this problem. Our experience with the company that we merged with, they were not super open for a lot of, a lot of things. Right, right. Which is Change is hard, you know. It is, it is. And what they were doing was working to a degree. It was bringing in the revenue, it was bringing in the sales. Right. So I put myself out there and, um, one of my first contracts, uh, was a company that was based in Norway in Oslo. They had offices in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia. And, uh, they were basically a nutraceutical. So like supplement company for the Scandinavian market, they were doing fantastic, super, super cool stuff. Yeah. Great product. Yeah. People were buying it. High demand. Really, really high end. Yep. Cornered the Scandinavian market. They were doing great. But the, they just didn't have the, they were missing the piece of how do we string all these systems together? Our departments had silos. We had communication issues. All of these things. And is that like supply chain too? Oh yeah. So that when we get a bunch of orders, it's already going through and automatically ordering from these suppliers and things like that? Yeah. Inventory was a Just visualizing it too. Was a big issue. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So I spent about 12 months, uh, working with them and, and how do we train on Asana and how do we bring all this stuff in so that we can manage from a higher level, how do we structure the team? So at that stage I was bringing on any, any project that was sounded interesting. Right. I just got through an exit. I'm like, I'm going to have fun and do like, just whatever I want to do. Yeah. Yeah. And so, man, I worked. I don't know. I don't know the exact number, but it was probably 50 to 70 separate gigs, just consulting where I would go in, figure out what the real sources of the issues were, and then help them build the solutions through. And ultimately I got really lonely. Right. Because, you know, you built Consulting is hard. It is. Right? Way harder than I expected. It's nice to not have any responsibilities. Yeah. Nobody to, you know, make sure you do payroll for and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, I'm roam y. Yeah, but then you're like, at the end of the day, you're like, okay, wow, that was really cool. I don't have anybody to celebrate with. Right, right. Exactly. And when you finish a project, it's like, okay, bye, I hope I hear, never hear from you, I guess. Because that means I didn't do something right. Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly right. So after a number of years, I decided I want to build a team. You felt like you proved the, the model, the value proposition through your consultancies. I thought I did, but I was wrong. Okay. Let's hear it. I was wrong. I had a major false start. So this is now my, this is my third business. Okay. And I went into, I came out of an exit. I'm successfully consulting, making good money. And I'm like, I got this in the bag. I'll seed it with 50 grand, hire four people. Yup. Easy peasy. Kurt, I was so wrong. It was terrible. I scaled up to like, I think we scaled up to 12 or 16 people and we're like bringing in the clients. All right. This is working, finding team members and first few months feeling really good. But then. then things weren't changing. All these team members were just going, Hey, Micah, what about this? What should I do here? What about this? So instead of, I'll tell you what though, I wasn't lonely anymore, but I was, it was just, I was so fatigued because not only did I have to keep things going with the clients. Now I had all these team members that I had to support and train and keep going. All those people, and I'm sure some of them after a little while, you're like, okay, you're just not going to work because I can't actually detect you making a difference in this client's life. Yep, that's exactly right. So what I, what I realized in that part of the journey and that adventure was that what I took a lot of stuff for granted, my history, my knowledge, the way I think about things, and I thought I was just going to be able to somehow. Yeah. get other people that I hired to think about those same things the same, same way I do. Right, right. Rookie mistake for my third business, but, um, you know, so. And so what was this? Uh, what was the name of that? Well, it's, that's still BGBO. So the original name of this business is, B G B O. Okay. And the idea behind it, because now I have to explain it, is biggest goal, biggest obstacle. And the idea was, let's focus on the biggest goal, let's solve the biggest obstacle. But in all of those words, I have to say that every time I say B G B O. Yeah. So. And then people are like drifting off thinking, what is my biggest obstacle? What is my biggest goal? Yeah. Well, I have a monologue about the name. So that, yeah, that name. was not great. Um, so we still use it, but we're shifting to Workday Ninja. I gotcha. So it's the same business. We're just rebranding it so that we could Fight through that, like hiring 12 people and stuff? Or did you shrink it back down almost to a consultancy again and then rebuilt the foundation? I shrunk it back down. I kept a few key people that are still with us. And, um, yeah, so I basically let the team go and it was really like, you know, I don't, I don't know, just like, uh, almost come to Jesus moment of, Hey, we got to figure this out. Like we, we were a little overconfident on this one or I was, and, and so that, that forced me to say, okay, what can I do? That I can hire a team for that. I can stay focused on. And I started to ask myself questions like what's the maximum value that I can provide where in, in all the stuff that we can do, where do I provide the most value? Where do you provide it? Or where does your team, where does your, is your niche as an operation? Kind of, kind of both, both. So I had to look at it. individually and say, all right, as, as a leader, where do I provide the most value? And how can I design this so that it can scale? And we're still, you know, we're not out of the woods yet, but we have scaled back up. We were able to really focus. And that's where we got into like focusing on the automation on the workflows on specific things like B2B and just really dialing back in because there, I think originally we could almost hear any operational issue. We could solve that. Yeah. We could solve that. Yep. Yeah. Maybe not efficiently. Maybe not for a paying customer that wants to keep you engaged for a while and actually do the work. Yep. Qualifying that is hard. I'm sure. So have you changed your curriculum? The, the offering model, like how you work, was it like time and materials? Is it like, uh, we, we fluctuated through, I mean, we've tried everything at this point, I think, um, we definitely started with hourly because that's the easiest. You can just get up and go hourly time and materials. And we go after that. And that actually worked really, really well. Um, we kept that for a long time. There was a period of time where we scaled up. We went fixed pricing and tried to do project pricing. And boy, did we lose money. The problem is, is some projects are this big and some projects are ten times that big and you can't know which. Yes. Until you get in there. Yes. And when we're talking about workflows, it's layers of an onion. And sometimes Pandora's box. Right. So, you know, you solve one thing and then all of a sudden you're like, Oh. Yeah. That's, uh, that's not what we were originally told. Hmm. Well, it has to be kind of done in the background without disrupting customers or employees too much and all that. Well, if you could just burn it down and start over, it would be easier. Yes. But you can't do that. Yes. And so we, you know, fixed price, uh, pricing did not give us the flexibility we needed. And it was frustrating because for the clients, because every time we. tried to do something new. It was like, well, that's actually going to be more. It either seemed like you were charging them way too much for this little project, or you knew that you were charging way, not enough for this giant project. Yep. And hourly, um, hourly has probably been our longest run that works well, but it's so variable. So if a client has 10 requests come in, we're going to knock those 10 requests out. If they're urgent matters, if there are things that need to get done, if they're, for example, automations that might. affect sales and marketing. So we can't just. So do they almost just like send a request into your team and your job is to kind of finger that out? Yeah, it's really, it's actually really like, that's my favorite part. Yeah. Um, but it's like an IT services company in a way. It is, it is to a degree. And it's this weird, slow ramp. So guaranteed at an initial intro call with a client, we're going to hear something like this, man. I don't even know what I can automate. I don't even know all my workflows right now. And within the course of a 30 minute conversation, we'll start hearing things like, well, it sure would be nice if we could automate proposal generation as soon as this, right. And they'll start, Like you can hear the gears turning. And so there's this slow roll. So that's the intro call. And then once we solve a couple of problems and implement a couple automations, three grand to fix these problems. Yes, because then they're fixed in perpetuity, right? Absolutely. And that's when the other team members, the other leadership goes, Hey, remember how we solve this? Like, what if we did that over here? Or what if we, so as we start working with clients, then it just keeps Starts flowing in and more and more and more. So in the beginning we kind of seed it and we prompt it and we say, Hey, here's a bunch of ideas. You can automate your client onboarding. That's super ripe for automation. Right. And you know, instead of spending, just talking about that with loco here, like, wouldn't it be nice if 60 days after somebody joined, they got a nice little, Hey, hope you're enjoying it so far, you know, whatever. Yep. So we, we start out. You know, getting the ball rolling. But then as soon as the clients catch on, Hey, what about this? Can we do this? And so, yeah, so we've set it up. So it's just send us the request. And then we set up a backlog that says, here's all of your requests that you've made now let's prioritize them. And that led us to our current model, which is a productized agency model, which means you pay a fixed fee every month. Okay. You can have unlimited requests. And then we. work with you to prioritize and break these requests down into bite sized pieces. And then we focus on the top priorities only. But if, if there's a whole bunch of small top priorities in a single month, we're gonna get a whole bunch done in a single month. If there's only a few that are bigger ones and we need to work on these bigger projects, then we're gonna, those might take a couple months. And that probably includes kind of a strategic initiatives element as well? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. Um, tell me about these platforms, you mentioned, I think, ClickUp, Monday, and Asana? Yep. And, why those? Why not others? Like, uh, Yeah. And maybe describe those platforms for, for listeners. I've used, we used Asana a little bit for project management years ago. I didn't really like it as much. When I found Monday, I liked it a lot more. Yeah. Um, but, but yeah, give me the why about those and what they, what they're up to. Yeah. So I would say, you know, all three of them tend to call themselves work management tools. Okay. But nobody else does, so they're project management tools to the listeners, to everybody else in the world, they're really project management. I like the term work management because it makes you think of if it's something I'm doing in relation to work, it should probably be in this tool and projects suggest that. You're ever going to get it done. That's right. You know, work is just work. You know, we have new members come into local think tank every month and they need to get an onboarding email and they need to do that. Yep. So where all of this came about was with a previous business, we put Asana as our backbone for operations. So all the projects, all the account management, everything that we needed to work on, um, scaling, key, key growth initiatives, as your CRM and everything. Uh, we had our, we had CRM separately and we had ticketing separately, but as far as running the operations of the company and streamlining the growth, that was all Asana. And so that, and then we in court started incorporating automation even way back then. And that was the reason that we could scale with a much smaller team and a lot more efficiently. And. Um, so I started doing the consulting, that became kind of a mainstay. So, you know, when you look at a company having a CRM is really important. Having a project management or work management tool is really important. As important as an accounting software. So, you know, you wouldn't these days, some people still do, but you shouldn't use Excel for accounting. Right. You'd probably want to use QuickBooks or Xero or something like that. Same thing with project management. You wouldn't necessarily want to manage your projects in Excel these days. Some people still do, but you're going to be a lot better off. In a project management or a work management system, the secret behind those is that they can be the centerpiece for integrations and automation. And so when we look at how do we streamline workflows and how do we free up time and how do we optimize processes? If you have one of those in place, you're a huge leg up over somebody who doesn't or somebody that's using it incorrectly. So it's just a massive collaboration tool that instantly breaks down silos across all the systems. Well, I'm just imagining probably a very specific use case, but okay, I've got a website and I've got a Shopify on the website or whatever, and when somebody orders Print this, print the mailing label at this workstation. Yep. Right? And then that person just has to go find a box that fits the thing, and they got the mailing label right there, and the inventory is automatically accounted for, and a lot of things, right? They just gotta put the thing in the box and stick it in the post office. Yeah. Or whatever. Exactly. And whatever that workflow is for that company. That's right. That's right. So it gives you that, that basis. Yep. Yep. That allows you to start somewhere instead of trying, because if you were to try to build all that from scratch, right, you could, but it'd be very expensive. Yeah. And so, you know, pay a little bit per user per month and you have your starting point. Well, and to some extent, the way I imagine, you know, I, Monday is now our platform more for that, but it's almost like that telephone operator person, um, from the old days where the, Oh, yep, we can plug in over here and they got all these different wires and stuff and Monday can just kind of do that with Zaps and, you know, Eventbrites and websites and Shopify, as I'm sure, and all these kind of things. Yeah, absolutely. So what kinds of companies have you seen really benefit the most? Is it, is it service company? You mentioned B2B is kind of your niche at least. Yeah. B2B B2B is pretty big time with that because, because a lot of them do have their heart with project management. And so. If you're B2B, you're dealing with clients. And when you have clients, you generally have some sort of client project. Some sort of project for them that you're doing, whether it's an architect or a marketing agency or whatever. Yep, so that gives you the ability to set a very clear structure within those tools to say, how do I structure my clients? How do I structure my client projects? How do I get dashboards of where everything's at? And things like that. So, um, um, Almost any business can benefit from those tools because every business should have some sort of key growth initiative projects or internal projects that would help them grow, and you don't want to be managing those and notebooks and spreadsheets and things like that. So even if you're not using it for You know, the actual client experience. Exactly. Yeah, there's still major benefits for collaborating across teams collaborating with leadership Collaborating, you know with contract. Well, just a accountability within teams and stuff. Hey, this was your deliverable It says right March 25th. It's March 26 today. Yep, and I mean manufacturing is probably a second Manufacturing is probably a second, um, top one. Major niche. That's right. Because you have the new product development process, which can be mapped out, templated, and then leveraging dependencies. This is probably getting too technical, but leveraging dependencies, you could move one date out. Like, for example, let's say you're waiting on a prototype and the shipping gets delayed by a week. You could move the date for that prototype in the project out by a week. Oh, right. And everybody else's. Deadline goes out a week so they can focus on something else. Yep. And if you're building out multiple SKUs at the same time, that makes a difference. That makes a huge difference. Yeah. Interesting. Um, so what's your team these days? Uh, are you back up into that 10, 12 territory? No, we haven't. Well, we're right around 10 right now. Yeah. So kind of blasted off, hired a bunch of people, managed the heck out of them. Um, I, I mentioned, uh, or I didn't mention to you, but I've shared the story how, you know, I kind of got out of college with an economics degree, got right into banking, kind of got pretty good raises and promotions for a long time, and then got this wild hair to try to start this restaurant venture, which turned into a food truck and, You know, I hadn't really eaten humble pie, um, for 37 years of my life. And then it was kind of all that was on the menu for a while. Yeah. Uh, was it as good for you as it was for me? It doesn't taste that good at the time, but. No, no, but you know, the merger. Was a bit of humble pie too. Oh, really? Okay. And it was tough. It was a very tough experience personally. Hmm. Um, even between, you know, my wife and I as partners in the business, that was very difficult. There were definitely elements that were, were very humbling across the board. And I did not like it at all. Yeah. But. And maybe I'd love to hear if you share the same experience, looking back on eating that meal multiple times was one of the best things that I could, that I could say I've done because that's what led me down this path for good or bad. Uh, but you look back on it, you're like, I learned so much. So much. Yeah. No, I've had the same experience and definitely wouldn't, wouldn't take it back either. Yeah. Miserable going through it. Don't take it back. I don't enjoy looking at the menu and it has a bunch of humble pie on it either, but, uh, but it's good. It's healthy. Yeah. Yeah. I think we all need a little bit every once in a while. So what's your vision for Workday Ninja? Like are you kind of intending on doing it? Remaining a boutique ish kind of a firm. Do you want to scale up a larger shop again? Is it kind of depend on what the market tells you? Maybe both. I mean, I would say when we had a hundred employees or a little over a hundred employees, that, that, that was probably not my cup of tea. That's a lot of people to manage. Um, a lot of people have a relationship with kind of too. Yeah. When we hit 35, that was a, that was kind of a. An end cap experience of, I think we're done with this one chapter and we're onto a new chapter in this business. There was a period of time, a little bit of humble pie in here too. I've got a side story on the first time I tried developing software and then hiring a developer. Okay. The short version is I hired a developer. He goes, very first day, who wrote this? I hope you didn't pay for it. Yeah, That might have been a second comment. That might have been a second comment. And I said, well, like I wrote it. He goes, huh, it's really bad. This is pure spaghetti code This is, we're gonna have to rewrite the whole thing. And, and, um, anyway, that, that's, that's a, that's a, you know, a good number, another humble pie story, but Well, you could trust that guy though. Like when somebody on his first day or second day is willing to tell the boss, uh, here's what I'm seeing and shoot you straight. I think that's a good indicator. Yes. Now, I don't know that I want to get back to managing a hundred people, but there was, there was that period as we're building up from 35 and going through the merger where. I spent a good, I want to like, not exaggerating, three years of working on myself as what does it mean to be a CEO, what does it mean to be a leader, what, how, how do I improve my people skills, um, and it's, it's a constant learning and it's a constant effort that I put into it, but making that concerted change in myself because, I mean, I also remember as we were growing, we hit around 25, maybe 30 people, and our employees started asking us for team building events, and I'm like, pfft, team building events? What? Go, go, go for it. I don't want to be part of this. Yeah, whatever you guys want to do. Now, looking back on that, I see, all right, there, there is definitely a better way. So you're working on yourself, but you weren't really necessarily paying attention to the rest of those other kind of needing to be developed too. Yeah. And so while I'm very happy that I had the ability to be part of a team that large and part of a leadership team of that size, it's not gigantic, but it was big, big enough. Um, I don't know that I want to get that big again. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I didn't have a kid when we started that. My wife and I have an eight year old son now. Okay. So he's been through a decent part of this journey. And, you know, what's important to me right now is family. Yeah. And having the time. to do for that. So if I'm working all the time, it's a lot harder. Well, you're still young enough, you could have another kid or two. Oh boy. You guys can talk about that later. So, um, what would you have people know as kind of the, I guess, some of the principles of Workday Ninja Inc.? Because I assume that's kind of, that name, that brand, is kind of like what you're hoping to create amongst young people. Your, your client's employees and things like that. Like just somebody goes through their workday silently and stealthily, just taking care of business. So they don't have to ask you a million questions about what's next. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And that, you know, that kind of, that's a perfect segue from the last question. What we're working on now is taking all the knowledge and all the stuff that we learned that works, and we're building live programs and online programs that we can say, all right, if you're a do it yourself founder, if you're kind of early stage and you don't want to, You know, pay somebody to come in and do it for you. The live programs are where it's at. You're going to be able to know, like, answer the questions. What, what can I automate? How do I set all this stuff up? You're going to know how to do it, and then you're going to know how to maintain it. Wow. And so we're putting all of that stuff out there. Oh, cool. So that whether it's you have, you know, if you're, if you're a do it yourself founder kind of thing or a small team, um, or you want to hire just a freelancer or somebody in house that has interest, like a project manager is often a very good example. A lot of people think project. So now I'm, I'm branching into that, this now question, which is a lot of people hire project managers thinking, Oh yeah. Like you're a project manager, set up our systems and our templates and everything on Asana, but you know what project managers are good at? Managing projects and not building systems. Well and building systems. People and integrations and techno, you know. Totally. All the data points. I'm uh, I've attracted a couple of people over the years, um, including like before I even got I, there was a gal that met me and, uh, introduced herself. She, uh, branded herself as an entrepreneur wrangler and she would help you project manage. And I had like 11 teen projects and they were sprinting all over different directions. But even since then, there's been people that come around and we're like. Loco thinks Tank's cool, you're pretty cool, you're kinda all over the place, let me project manage you. Yeah. Kinda, as if I was a project. Yep. And I'm not really, I'm not, it's not easy to manage me, but, you know, what's that, that Kurt Richardson says this, you would like that line, uh. Um, people run the systems and the, no, it says in the systems run the business. Yeah. People run the systems and the systems run the business is really where you're trying to get to ultimately. Yeah, exactly. And so, I mean, a few kind of key takeaways that I always give is a lot of companies and a lot of founders try to jump right to something like automation or AI, right? We use that in our marketing right now because it generates a ton of interest because everybody's going. Hey, how do I leverage AI? How can I automate this? The reality though, is you've got to take a couple of steps back. If you don't have the foundation in place, if the workflows aren't working manually. Automating them will not help. Please do not try to automate them. You will be spending so much time and so much money just making all the changes in the workflows and then making all the changes in the automation and then all these customers and like, Asking for their forgiveness for this dumb thing that you automatically sent them 17 times. Yep. Or something. Exactly. Exactly. So it really comes down to basics. Right? You gotta have, what are your workflows? You got to have those working first. So that's step one, having the right platforms. Like we talked about earlier, CRM, a project management, accounting, stuff like that, having that baseline and just getting things working with those tools in place is a perfect place to start. Then once you have your workflows humming along and you can. even if it is completely manual, there's in all those platforms, they have automation within those platforms. Um, the real magic happens, just reminders and different things like that. That's right. So that's kind of phase one. How do you get those little things going? And once all that's working, now you're in a perfect position and you're going to know. And so kind of going back to our conversation earlier, when Clients, how do they, like, just give us a bunch of requests? Right, right. Once that foundation's built, and once that foundation's in place, it just comes up. Because, hey, this part of this workflow sucks. And you've got like a customer service rep almost on your team that's like, understands enough about, they've maybe got a half dozen clients or something, but they know enough about each client to really understand the problem they're trying to solve. Yep. More than, you know, more than not. Yep, that's exactly right. How do you choose between, you were kind of agnostic on the Asana Monday ClickUp thing. Oh man. What's, what platform for different people or is it, yeah. This is, so. First off, there's no perfect solution, unfortunately. It's so hard. Some of it is purely personal preference. Okay. So, like, you mentioned earlier, you didn't, like, Asana, you didn't gel with Asana as much as Yeah. As Monday. You get in on Monday, like, by all means, do not force Asana. Right. Fair. Like, So that's a big piece of it. Um, but they all have their pros and cons. So for example, Asana is really good for agencies who are just focused on projects. And it's, you know, it's been around for a very long time. It's a very mature product. Yeah. Um, when you say agencies, are you talking about like. Marketing agencies? Yeah, marketing agencies, ad agencies, things like that. Um, anything that's really focused on client projects. Project work. Yep. Because essentially Asana is, in Asana's worldview, it is, everything's a project. Right. So, but there are some weaknesses with that too. Asana. And Asana's design brings in a lot of administrative burden. So unless you have really fine tuned project managers, unless you have a real clear structure on this is how we're going to use Asana here and establish that with every team that's using it and every person that's using it. That sounds hard. It is. And when that doesn't happen, it can create as many problems as it solves. So, um, Monday is, is, it's a beautiful piece of software and it is really easy to get started. It's really clear on a lot of times what you need to do, but it has weaknesses in some of its dashboard capabilities. It has weaknesses with recurring tasks. Um, it's got a great ecosystem of, integrations and stuff like that. People building stuff to strap onto Monday and stuff like that. That seems to be more and more popular since we've gotten on it. Yeah, absolutely. Their marketplace is great. And what's the, the ClickUp thing? So ClickUp, ClickUp is my favorite right now because ClickUp has a true hierarchy. So that means if I have a space, which would kind of be like a team or a works, a team and a sauna or a workspace and Monday, if you're familiar with those, uh, space allows you to put in folders. And folders, you can have lists and you can have lists without folders too. But you have that inside of Monday, but it's not a true hierarchy in ClickUp. If I look at a list, I'm seeing just the tasks in that list. If I look at a folder, I can create views showing me anything in that folder across all the hierarchy or division or whatever, whereas Monday you'd have to build a bunch of. That's right. Routes back. Exactly. And then in the space, I can see all the lists and all the folders and get views on that. And then there's an everything level, which allows me to build views across the entire organization. So if I wanted to manage, say, team capacity or resources across my entire account, I throw one workload view at the everything level. And I'm done. Hmm. It's that easy. And then if I wanted to say, Hey, I only want to manage the resources of my production team or my creative team with my client projects, I can put a workload view at the client project space and it just gets everything under that. Yeah. Yeah. So, the amount of transparency that you can get and the amount of questions that you can answer in just a couple clicks is amazing. Dashboards are really great too, and integrations are really good. So, many times, if you're looking to build complex workflows, complex systems, ClickUp's a great choice. ClickUp's a more robust platform to build off of, maybe? Yeah. Asana tries to be everything for its people more so, maybe. Yeah, I mean they, again, they all have like weird pros and cons. So like, Monday is very robust and it has a great API. ClickUp is, um, I wouldn't, much better, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're Robustness is much better now. Um, within the last year. A couple years ago, pretty rough. Okay. Um, the interface is still a little bit more complicated than the other two. A lot of people don't like it at first glance. Um, understandably so. Yeah. Um, But when you get into it, like we, for us to manage our projects, we built some simple automation. So one of the things that we have with ClickUp is that every task can have a status associated with it. And it's built into it. Monday has some similar things. Asana is complete or incomplete. Well, and I'm thinking about with your, the, the workflow thing where people are putting in all these requests. Like sometimes it's complete or incomplete, but sometimes it's waiting on this from client. Yeah, we have about 12 statuses for every single request. And what we set up was, and this is just our internal system, but when it goes into, um, scheduling, that's automatically creating a subtask for our project manager. And so now a subtask can be handled. And you know, this gets into task management, but we've, we've built a system so that she's trained on how do I manage all my tasks independently. So that gives her, her own way to say, Hey, I've got to schedule these three tasks today, but it doesn't affect the parent task of the whole request that came in. When it goes into, uh, validation, it looks up the custom field of who's the account manager for this task. request for this client, who made the request. Okay. And pulls that data and assigns that person, the subtask for validation, because the account manager is going to know what the client wants. All right. So when it goes, But the account manager probably doesn't have the technical skills to actually deliver it. That's right. So when it goes to launch, That goes to whoever the lead architect is on that request. And so all this system is, you know, the same type of automation over and over and over, but because we can manage all of those contained within that single request, now we always have the information of who owns this request, who's the account manager, who's the lead architect, when's the client delivery date, it auto calculates. A countdown to the client delivery date. So we always know how close we are and it gives our project manager all the information she needs at a glance to say, Hey, when, who has the resources to do this, who has the skill to do this and how soon do we need to get the urgency of it? That's right. Can you also sort those activities? Like what I'm thinking about is you've got kind of this flat fee situation that's kind of unlimited. Can you sort it like by who's using us? Way too much for us to make any profit on. Well, it's a, it's a valid, Hey, we're going to put you in the plus size plan. Dial it down a little bit. Um, we introduced a client facing Trello board for this. And so that acts as our client collaboration. Oh, so they can know exactly what you did for them almost. Exactly, exactly. So the entire, all their requests go into that automatically. We have the automation that links the two together. ClickUps our internal tool, but Trello becomes a single board. That's all the client requests per client. And then we single out the priorities and we have a little power up that says, Hey, color this column when we have too many. Request in the active column. You're getting a little too needy over here. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. Um, what else would you have folks know about, uh, your, your world before we jump in the time machine? Geez. I don't know. That's, um You know, getting the right foundation is such a big thing. Uh, oh, I got a good one. Most of the time when people ask about, Hey, could we have AI do this? Yeah. What they really only need is automation. Right. So, there's, there's just so much that can be done with automation really easily. But A. I. can be really powerful, although it's not as powerful as well done automations and workflows. Yeah, at least right now. Right now, we've got another year. So right. Yeah, that'll take over the world year after that. Um, before we jump in the time machine, actually, you moved out to the west from Tennessee land. Yeah. Over the last Um, and that was, you were introduced to me by some friendly that you met, Jeff Bale said you should meet. So that's an interesting story because we actually. Um, my wife did an accelerator in Chicago, met Jeff, when we rented a short term rental in Boulder to check it out. We met with Jeff. Oh, cool. And, or I met with Jeff, and um, Just asking what's up. Yeah, yeah, just to meet somebody new there. But we actually met him in Chicago, and then while I was in Boulder for that short term rental, Uh, connected up with Jeff and then he's like, Hey, you got to meet Kurt. Interesting. So yeah, it's very honoring actually. Yeah. I thought he probably had met you for a while. I didn't know he'd been around. No. First time. Dang. You were, you were at the top of the list. Apparently. Um, well, and we had a lot of residents when we, uh, connected for our first zoom conversation here and you just saw how smart my Alma is on the Monday. She's great. She's great. Um, so what was that decision tree? Like Colorado, like. Oh, man. All right. So I mean, you could have done it when you were a consultant, right? You did that for like five years. Yeah. Yeah. Instead, I did a bunch of road trips and kept driving through Colorado. Honestly, that was that was a big piece. So before Tennessee, we lived in San Diego. Okay. And we had one of our friends from San Diego move up to Fort Collins. Oh, okay. And so a couple years ago, and you know, prior to that, we had taken a number of road, we would do like a 30 day road trip and take a like, he was three at the time. We take our son and four. We do like half a month road trip. Cool. But we, you know, we've got family in Minnesota, Louisiana. We got friends in San Diego. Um, we'd want to see other sites. What's your preferred road trip vehicle? Oh, that's a great question. I previously had a Dodge Ram that we would take on the road trip because it was the ex, like the huge cab. Yeah, super sized cab. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And we'd fit, sometimes we'd fit our dogs in there and our son, and then we'd load the back with our camping stuff. Yep. Oh, it was pretty solid. It was good. Uh, since then I traded that in and got a Jeep Gladiator. So like, you know, that truck version. Not quite as smooth a ride. No, but way more fun to drive. Right, on the trails and stuff especially, or even through a bunch of snow or anything like that. Yeah, so that's, that's my current favorite one. Fair enough. Um, Anyway, I distracted you. You were traveling road trips around and thinking about We kept crossing through What was next? Colorado. And every time we'd stay, or cross through Colorado, our best experiences of the road trip were random encounters in random towns, or like Sub cap towns. Yeah, totally. In, like, whatever, Colorado. Yeah, there's one where we stayed. It wasn't even open. Um, we didn't know that, but you know, the, uh, yeah, the campground people came down and they were, you know, it was, uh, it was like, um, I don't know preseason or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So they're like, you guys can stay, but it's not technically open. It got down to like 30 degrees that night. We're all cuddled in the tent. It was the best experience ever. We're looking over a lake, looking over these snowy mountain peaks. We're like, this is amazing. We have no idea where we were. At all, at all. We've looked at the map multiple times going, Let's see, we came from Durango, I think we were heading North, you know. I like it. Not that we had too much fun in Durango. Right, right. It was that, we were literally driving, we see a sign for a campground, we're like, hell yeah! Let's go check it out. I like it. We, You know, it's one of those like little brown signs like campground, whatever. So we went down there. We're like, this is gorgeous. Nobody's here. Let's check it out. My wife and I went to Durango maybe for like our third anniversary weekend or something. Yeah. And it's end of May, which sounds nice and warm, but in Durango, it's really not. And it might not have been for our anniversary, but it was, they have a, uh, iron horse race where the, where bicyclists race against the train, the old steam train from Durango to Silverton. Every place was booked, like we couldn't find any place to stay anywhere around, except for where we stayed the other night. In the campground at Durango Mountain, they just like opened a week before and we were like the only ones there. We were like way up on the mountain and I brought my rifle into the tent with me that I had in the car because I was like a bear's gonna freakin come and bite my head off. Uh, That's amazing. Thankfully they did not, but uh, but I had a similar experience probably close by where you were. Yeah, yeah. Um, so, so we kept having these great experiences and living in San Diego for a while and then living in Tennessee for a while, very different cultures, very different. And, Fort Collins kind of splits the difference or Colorado, Boulder? Well, Boulder might not. Sorry, anybody who's listening in Boulder. I love Boulder. But I would say Colorado does seem to split the difference. And that's one of the things that we'd pass through and we'd have this great experience and we'd meet random people and we could have real conversations. And these are real people. And this was cool. It's a little bit of West coast. It's a little bit of East coast. It's a little bit of Midwest. A lot of Midwest. And I like to say it's a, it's a white cheese fondue. It's a bunch of different white cheeses, but it's a melting pot nonetheless, a cultural melting pot. And so we kept having that in the back of our mind. And we knew, you know, honestly, I do not fit in in Tennessee. No, I mean, I was, I was born in Florida. I grew up in Minnesota, lived in San Diego. Like Tennessee, I do, I just do not fit in. And so, you know, we kind of had this in the back of our mind. Where are we going to go? Yeah. And we wanted to get a, get a different experience for our son. Yeah. And, um, and so one of our friends from San Diego moved to Fort Collins and she's like, you got, You guys should come up and check it out. So two years ago, we spent the summer up here in Fort Collins. My son's name is Fletcher. Okay. We put them in, um, like a week summer camp at CSU. The very first day he meets his best friend. This kid's name is Archer. So it's Fletcher and Archer and we got to know Archer's parents who are amazing people, right? So we're like, yes, this area is awesome. So that was two years ago last summer We rented a house in Loveland and like let's just get Let's get a, you know, uh, uh, uh, explore a little bit and see what the different, different pieces of this front range are like. So, um, we rented a, uh, co working space at Deskchair in Loveland, which, shout out to Jim. Pretty solid there, huh? Awesome. One of the best co working experiences I've ever had. Agreed. And met amazing people there. And so, developed friendships, and I've got some great friends in, in Loveland and now Fort Collins, so we're like, alright, we've gotta, we've gotta do this. And, uh, so then we continued to work our way down, and we wanted to be a little bit closer to the airport, wanted to be closer to something a little bit more tech y. Tech focused. Yeah. Yeah. And so we rented the short term renter and rental in Boulder and And honestly just fell in love with the neighborhood It was reminded us of like the 80s and 90s kids are riding their bikes Playing in the cul de sac knocking on each other's doors And that's really what we wanted to bring for our son because we're on nine acres in the middle of Tennessee right now Oh, well, and he's an only child And he's like begging us, please, can we go to this street, you know, maybe there's a kid my age and it's hard, it's heartbreaking because you don't want that to happen. You know, be his childhood, even though like I look at him like nine acres and you can explore, but I get it. Like I was an only child too. So, but I got to ride my bike to friend's houses. I got to like hang out in the neighborhood. So now we're introducing that neighborhood experience to our son. So are you. Settled in Boulder then? Or are you still deciding? You said short term rental in Boulder? So our short term rental was up while we had that. We actually found a place two blocks from this rental. And we got it. So, I won't, I'll pretend not to be offended that you examined Fort Collins, Loveland, and Boulder and chose Boulder. And then chose Boulder. Yeah, that's cool. Whatever, no judgment here. And, and, like it's just one more demonstration of it's a, Like, the blessing of being in Northern Colorado for us is that people choose to live here. They don't, you know, move here because they have to. Absolutely. Ever. Yeah. You know, they get to. They have the opportunity to. Yeah. I mean, Loveland and Fort Collins was definitely, I was like, sold. Let's do it. Yeah. Um, but, you know, there, there were some benefits that we could see. Well, even just frankly, from a reputation standpoint, having your headquarters, you Yeah, it can help. Yeah. Yeah. So there you are. It's not too far. He can come up with it. I mean, it's so easy. It's such an, I mean, what did we get like eight or nine inches last night? Right. Dust off the car, put on some boots and drive up. Here we are. No issue. Here we are. Yep. So, um, um, I feel like it's time to jump in the time machine. Um, but maybe take a real quick break first so we can stick a commercial in here. Sure. You ready for the time machine? Let's do it. Back in kindergarten, where are you at? Man, kindergarten. Gosh, I guess I'm, uh, Minnesota. Yeah? Yeah. Where at in Minnesota? Uh, just north of the Twin Cities, so just north of So like Red Bear Lake or, White Bear Lake or something? No, that's over north of St. Paul. Yeah, that's St. Paul. No, uh, uh, Bloomington was, uh Okay. Kind of my early stomping grounds. Alright, so the city kid anyway. Yeah, and then ended up closer to suburbs with Maple Grove and stuff like that. Okay, yeah, well that's still, still city. I'm from North Dakota. Oh, yeah, okay. So, and I graduated with a class of five. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which, Minnesota, there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of Trump country in Minnesota and there's a lot of city in Minnesota. Yes. And it's, uh, more diverse they probably couldn't be, hardly. I agree. Yeah. I agree. Yeah, it's been, you know, it's been a while, um, we looked at Minnesota again. Yeah. After, after, after Tennessee. It's a pretty cool state. Like, could we go, could. Could we live with the Minnesota winters? Could we live there? Yeah. Yeah. My wife, I mean, she's amazing. She actually flew to Minnesota, rented a car, and drove around in some of the most hideous weather Okay. that Minnesota could throw at you, to the point where she had an Airbnb, and, uh, she was driving through the alleys, bottoming out, because the ruts were so bad, Right, right. from, you know, the ice and the, the snow. Not only that, she went to a soccer game. Oh. In the winter. And? What was her verdict? She could do it. I believe she could do it. Yeah. But she, then she came home and said, Do you really want to? shovel that much snow all the time. And I said, I really want to shovel zero snow. Good point. Most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so that was kindergarten. Um, what was the, what was the, the situation you lived with your parents? I presume. Yup. Yup. Live, live with my parents. Did you have siblings? No, only child. Okay. Yeah. So, um, I think my parents got divorced when I was like 11 or 13, somewhere around there. We moved a lot. What was the, the setting was like chasing your dad's job or trying to find new jobs after he got let go from places or what was the moving a lot? I don't really know. Um, I think the moving a lot happened a little bit more after, after the divorce, of course. So each kind of finding their own way. And yeah, that was, it was an interesting. It's kind of interesting thinking about this. I recently drove to some of the houses that we lived in. Oh, wow. And, um, yeah, it was, it was, you know, it's not something you think about often, but you have like these glimpses of your history. That somebody else now is partying in, but you don't think of it so much that all of a sudden you see this house that you were in for, say, a year or two years, and it's like, man, I remember playing in that field, or I remember building a fort in those woods. Yeah, yeah. Super interesting. If you were up on the balcony watching that five, six, seven, eight year old you, um, what would you have observed about it? That person. Were you like, really good at school right away? Were you bright and inquisitive and curious about how systems works early? Yeah, actually, actually, now that you asked that question, a couple of things come to mind. So, I liked, beating systems as a kid, as a kid. So a couple, the first, the first thing that I can think of, my parents would pay me, I don't know, 10 or 12 to mow the lawn. Okay. That was my job, you know, a little older than I heard out for only 6. Well, that's exactly, yeah, you're beating my story here. That's exactly what I did. I walked down to the neighbor's house and I said, Hey, Jake, You want to mow my lawn for 6? Did you get more clients like that then, too? No, but I should have. Right? You could have had the whole neighborhood paying you 12 and hiring him for 6. I was inside playing video games while the neighborhood kid was mowing our lawn for 6 and I was getting paid 12. Did you have them do it while your parents were at work? So the hell yeah, dad, like, Hey, why is Timmy mowing our lawn, Michael? So, you know, that's exactly what happened. My mom came home early from work and she said those exact words. Why the hell is Jake mowing the lawn? That's your job. You know, funny you should ask mom. Yep. Yep. So she tells me now, she's like, I didn't know if I should be mad or impressed with this, then it, then it gets, it gets a little bit less, um, innocent from there. I, so the high school that I went to, um, it was one of the, I think it was one of the first ones in Minnesota that had a four period day. Okay. And I looked at that. And then I looked at the classes. This is my, you know, freshman year of high school. And I realized at my freshman year, if I don't take electives, like all my friends were filling their days with electives, right? Like let's, let's make school easy. And I went. Um, what if I only take the required courses, because then by my senior year, the only course that I have left is a senior English course. And I couldn't screw around three hours or three. Well, I thought worse than that, but it didn't work out. And so I did that for three years. I only took required courses. Interesting. And I think I had to take a couple of electives a year. Then my senior year came around and I met with the principal and said, basically, Hey, I don't have any more required classes outside of English, so I'm not planning on coming in. Is that cool? And of course he's like, No, that's not how this works, right? And this was my very rebellious stage. So I'm like, Hmm, okay. And I'm, and I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but, um, I went back home. I found a couple, uh, like field trip things that my mom had signed and some other things that she had signed. You got good at forging her signature. Absolutely, I did. Sorry, I keep choking you. I practiced. I practiced for days, forging her signature, using the same type of words that she would use. Using the same notepad. Using the same pen. And then I would write the notes, to excuse myself. First, but, before I did that, I befriended the secretary, which would take all the notes. Right, right. And I befriended Sergeant Slaughter, who was the um, police officer at the, at the high school. How long did you go away with it? Almost the entire senior year. And so, yeah, I would excuse myself almost every single day. Every relative died. Every relative had all kinds of sickness. Oh yeah. It was in my notes. In my notes. Yeah. Yeah. In the yearbook, you probably were like, uh, got through the toughest year ever. Totally. Totally. Nobody yearbook at that point. What did you do with all your free time? Uh, I would skate. I would go home and skate. Okay. And, um. At the time, I was really, I guess, still really into computers, so, um, I taught myself how to program. When I was 13, I taught myself, I wanted to make video games, so I taught myself how to program C Okay. And so I was very, for me, I was very much, uh, I could very, I could learn very easily, like, I liked the feeling of learning something new. Right, right. So, that was always my And school was almost a Torturously ponderous pace of learning. Yeah, I hated it. I hated it. It didn't, it just didn't work because I like wanted to move on. Yeah, yeah. And so I would, I would go home and I would do dumb stuff too. But like, you know, I would try to look like if it's learning skating or learning programming or Right, right. Even when I was 14, I was working for an agency taking Regular graphic logos and then turning them into vectors and uh, illustrator. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, at that stage I'm like, why am I here? What, uh, like, what did that translate to at the end of high school? Like, I'm guessing you probably didn't get the bestest of grades because of that. Well, I mean, they're all electives, so. Oh, right. Yeah. At that point it was, I mean, I had an outdoor adventures, it was called outdoor adventures in the suburbs of Minneapolis, which is like not that adventurous. But I mean, as far as like getting into colleges or was that like not your plan or? Honestly, I don't, I don't really know. I didn't think too much about, I was in such a rebellious state, I think, with my parents being divorced, moving all the time. And what did you do with your mom? I was living with my mom. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it was, it wasn't a great. relationship. Yeah. Um, you know, my stepdad, it wasn't a great relationship back then. Um, he came along pretty shortly after or was your mom single mom for a while? Single mom for a little bit. Um, you know, not too long, but single mom for a little bit. Yeah. And, um, you know, that's stepdad thinks he's the new boss of you. And you're like, nobody's the boss of me. You know, it It was just, my, my dad is a very specific type of person. He's a very caregiving personality type. And so it was, it was a very like lead with kindness approach. And my stepdad is a completely different type of person. And it's not at that time, not necessarily lead with kindness. Yeah. And so, I had never been exposed to anything like that in my younger life. And you revolted kind of by just departing largely. Oh, yeah. I mean Check out. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I totally checked out. Yeah. At that point. What was next for you then? Well, I was good at art. I was good at You know computers all of that kind of stuff. So I really wanted to be at the time. I wanted to be a Like 3d artist or something in you know, video games Assuming you're quite a bit younger than me, but I graduated 99. Okay. Yep. Yeah, 92 for me. Okay. Yeah So computers are like the, so I was like computers were very rudimentary when I was in like junior high school and that kind of thing. They were coming along quite a bit by the time you were there. By the time I was in high school, yeah. Yeah, I think we were like in Pentium. Right, right. Era around high school if I remember correctly. So the programming languages and stuff had pretty well been developed and whatever else and, but graphics was a big area of, Huge. Improvement. Oh, it was skyrocketing at that point. Yeah, yeah. So, my big plan was to go to the Art Institutes of Minneapolis. Okay. And, I enrolled, got in, and it was for two reasons. One, I really dug art girls at the time, and two, like, that could Help me get into that career. Right, right. So it was like a win win. Who doesn't like art girls? I mean, come on. So, yeah, so I, I went there for about a semester and had just these things, all these things kind of happened at once. One, I took out a little bit of student loans, hated it, went to college, and with my previous experience working at that, or working for that agency at such a young age, You do it right. I already was. I learned 10 times as fast working at 14 that I have at this college. Right. So now I have to borrow money, pay for this education that I already know. education. Yeah. And, and then while that was happening, I got a job to pay for college as a telemarketer. And I got a job as a telemarketer at a web design and hosting company. Oh, sweet. And you're killing it. Yes. So my very first call, I get, and, and up to this point, again, being naive, I'm naive. Up to this point, I thought, Hey, CEOs, founders, executives, they're a different breed. I'm not that breed, different type of person. They're the elite. Cool. So I was super nervous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who should be upper echelon. Yeah. Yeah. And very first call, I closed the deal. And it was like the biggest rush I ever had and absolutely loved it. And so then I honed again, going back to, I really like learning, I did everything I could to learn how to close a deal. On a call. Cool. On a cold call and how to cold call. So, um, I practice and practice and got really good at that. And at the same time, I went to the owner of that company and said, Hey, I can design websites and so. You know, it was 99 or so. So he like gives me a magazine article and he's like, here, design a website about this. I went home, downloaded my free trial of dream weaver and designed a website and put it on a three and a half inch floppy, brought it back in. And he's like, wow, this is. Better than what we're currently doing. Right, right. And so I was getting, I was going to college, cold calling for my job, closing deals, and then working on these projects at night. A little bit of moonlighting. Yeah. And then I was like, why am I doing this for somebody else? Yeah. And so I quit, I called my mom and dad up. Independently and I'm like, so I'm going to quit school and I'm going to move to a different town and I'm going to start my own business and I'm going to cold call people until they buy from me and then I'm going to work on these projects at night. I love it. And they're like, No, you're not. That's a terrible idea. I was, uh, so Alma, who you just met and interacted with, she was in her like first semester at front range community college when she came to work for me. And then she was hired as a marketing intern. And then her. The, my marketing manager left a week later. Oh, wow. So all of a sudden it's me and Alma. Yeah. And like, instead of being freaked out, she was 18 at the time, first real job. And now she's only 21, but she subsequently has, has quit taking classes at Front Range. She took a UX design course online. She has access to learning whenever she wants, but same thing. She's like, I learned like five times as fast. at my job where I get paid at Loco Think Tank than I do when I go to this dumb school that's also like online classes and stuff because it's COVID nation and that's just dumb. Yep. So can I go full time? I was like, yes, you can. Yeah. Absolutely. Very shortly. Absolutely. And hopefully she doesn't go starting a competing peer advisory organization or anything like that. I think she likes it so far. But it was really such a similar, and because of the free thinkingness, like she's like. I've got these data points, and you were the same way. I've got these data points. They all suggest that I should save my money and do something different. Yeah. So, what happened after that? Did your folks, uh, relent? They didn't have a choice. Yeah. I mean, whatever. What are they really? I was already, I already moved out. I moved out as soon as I could and got my own place. And, um, I met a really good friend at that art, at that art college. And so we ended up moving to a town. I don't know. About an hour and a half south. Where? Rochester, Minnesota. Oh, sure. It's where the Mayo Clinic is. Yeah, and the next, uh, I mean, the next smaller downsized town, really, and there aren't that many other medium sized towns in Minnesota. No. No. So we, we started up something there. We sent out press releases via faxes to, like, get some press about what we were doing, and cold called all day long. Like building websites and stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we did that. We sold hosting, resold hosting and sold websites. Yeah, yeah. And, um, yeah, and it got to the point where I had to stop cold calling because the phone was ringing. Ringing so much that we were getting referrals and it really worked out, so. Did you go to Rochester just to kind of go to some place that wasn't quite as saturated with people trying to build websites? I mean, honestly, I was trying to have some integrity with the previous company. I didn't want to just quit and step on their toes. That's kind of cool. Yeah. I, you know, it was, um, really just wanted to get a different market. So it wasn't like, Hey, cool. Sorry. I'm stealing all those customers I got for you. Right, right. Like I just didn't have the heart for that. Yeah. Yeah. So I like that. Yeah. That's mainly, mainly why. I mean, I think that's, uh, Most people wouldn't uproot their whole life for that. They might've refrained from actually calling on that person's customers, but I think that's pretty neat. I mean, when you say it like that, that makes a little bit more sense, but at the time, you know, everything's up for an adventure. Right. Well, and I think that probably. And enables you to give a little more space between you and your mom and your stepdad and stuff. And just kind of like, okay, here's the line. It felt, it felt like a chapter end. Which, I think over the years is important piece of it. Totally. You gotta close a chapter before you open a new one, kind of. Yeah, so that was that, but I remember. So pretty soon you're Hands over fist all these customers referrals. Yes. Yes. And no, I'm not charging enough. So you're not really Definitely the case. That's exactly right. I remember God I mean, well, there's this there's this piece to it where The previous owner tried to sue me anyway, because we got in the paper And then he's like, well, I taught you everything you knew. And so the first thing I did was I interviewed a bunch of attorneys. Yeah, exactly. I interviewed a bunch of attorneys and, um, anyway, I found one that was like really aggressive. He scared me. Right. And I'm like, okay, this is, this is my guy. If I'm paying him and he's intimidating me, like, well, yeah. So yeah, nothing really came that way, but yeah, it was interesting. Well, you're just like this. 19 year old, 20 year old guy going to art school and hustling on the side that he would take the time to, like, sue you is wild to me. You must have, I mean, you must have made a mistake. been a difference maker, obviously for him and that he would cared enough to pay attention, really. I mean, it's, it's hard to say because that was such, such an early experience in business. Right. I had no idea what I was doing. Yeah. I mean, completely winging it and just trying to get by during that time, I developed a fear of checking the mail. Okay. Because, you know, I didn't want any more bad news. And at that same time, I remember thinking in my head, if I just had 10, 000 in the bank, that's all I would need. And then. You know, it's, it's so funny to reflect on that and then to think about how fast you can spend 10, 000, especially in business. Yeah. Yeah. And especially if the revenues aren't flowing in. Yup. Yup. So, yeah, so that was, that was my first foray. So we, we scaled that up, um, ended up merging with an email marketing company based out of Minneapolis. Um, And then they had an office, I think it was through, I think it was through economic stimulus money with the state of Nebraska, but I ended up running their office down in Nebraska, which was awful. In Omaha or something? No, Beatrice, which is like a 45 minutes or something out of Lincoln. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, literally surrounded by cow pastures. It was a lot more country. Uh, one of the young bankers I was trained with in. Community First National Bank was from Beatrice, and he described, uh, Have you, did you do any noodling while you were down there? No. You know what noodling is, right? No, uh uh. Uh, noodling is where you, I think you start by drinking a lot of beer, um, I did that. And then you go to a creek side, um, and the catfish hang out in the little cave things, and you put your arm down there and reach your arm right into their, I did hear about people doing that. catfish like bites your arm while you're dragging this 40 pound catfish out from underneath the shore. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Never did that. I, I, I used to want to try it. Yeah. I no longer do. Like that, that phase has passed. Like during my twenties and maybe even my early thirties, I was like, it might be fun to go noodling sometime. No. I did drink a lot of beer there. Well yeah. I also. The midwestern thing in general. Yeah. Yeah. And when you're trying to dull the pain of having to move to Nebraska. That was, I mean Sorry, Nebraska. But it was, you know, I was, what, 23? Right. In the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. It was to the point where I'm like, I'm not I'm not touching a girl. I'm not dating a girl. I'm not, there's no chance I'm going to get a girl pregnant out here. Exactly. Like, I do not want any ties to this. And I ended up speaking at an event in Fort Lauderdale and, um, took an extra day, hung out at the beach. Okay. And I was like, Oh, this, this is where I need to be. Florida is what I like. Yeah. Beaches, ocean, palm trees, Alligators. Alligators. Alligators. And the very, like, so I had this, like, moment, and I'm relishing this moment, and I'm, the very next day I'm at the airport, I'm sitting at my gate, and I'm just thinking about, like, why am I in Nebraska? And my phone rings, and it's one of my original clients. From my first business. And he goes, Hey man, I got this idea and I want you to be part of it. I'll fly out here to San Diego. No obligations. Oh, check it out. I already got an office. I'm like, yeah, sounds a lot like Florida. Yeah. Sounds also a lot, not like Nebraska. Yeah. So I flew out there, checked it out. I'm like, this is cool. And so, and you were like a partner of this merged enterprise still, or you kind of Sold merged into this other thing? Well, so I got pretty scared like I was dumb and didn't hire an attorney when I merged my first business with this email marketing company, and so I got royally screwed and You know learn you learn so it goes I mean, I'm sure like if If I were to be on the other side, I probably wouldn't think I was royally screwed, but, you know, at the time, I was like, Oh, that wasn't what I was expecting. Gotcha. And so, yeah. So there wasn't this big dramatic exit? It wasn't. It wasn't. More like they underpaid you for what was a pretty nice going concern kind of thing and gave you a job? Pretty much. I had a job, so. You know, I signed a contract, then I hired an attorney, got out of the contract, and then moved to San Diego. Got it. So I was in San Diego. I moved to San Diego around like, um, 2005, 2006. Okay. And, um, of course I was right before 2008. So everybody that I was meeting was my age. in the mortgage industry, right? Making like 20, 30, 50, 000 a month. Right. I went to one mortgage company and my friend brought me and he goes, dude, just, you got to come here and see this. And it was like commission check day or whatever. Right. Right. And it's just like in the movies, like people were like, Throwing out this wheel of like commissions and like 20, 000 check and 50, 000 check. And this guy's like, yeah, I went to Vegas last weekend and blew 50 or 60 K I don't even remember. And I'm coming here from Beatrice, Nebraska going, what the hell is happening? What is this? Everybody is just a gorgeous person, you know? And so, yeah, it was, I, I very much enjoyed my time in San Diego. Do you like the girls there? Yeah, they were okay. That's where I met my wife. Yeah, well. Yeah. I liked one of them a lot. So what were you doing in, in San Diego then? So I helped out, I didn't want to be a partner of this company that, um, brought me out there. And so I helped them get going. In this kind of marketing website tech space or what were you doing? It was still tech. So it was, uh, kind of an analytics play. Okay. And we raised a little over a million dollars. Okay. And we scaled up to about 19 people. That was right at the beginning of social media. And so I started seeing the writing on the wall and I'm like, Oh man, there's, there's something here. And so I got the itch to do my own business again. So long story short, turn that company into my first business. Client for the, my second business and then continued to find new clients that my pitch at that point, the social media wasn't even a term yet. So I called it, like started Oh seven or something, right. Or something started getting really popular. Yeah. Five, maybe. Yeah. So I called it social arena marketing. So I'd go to again, call up companies and say, Hey, here's a way that you, instead of spending advertising dollars that you don't know what's happening right now, track it. Well, spend it with me and I'll help you reach your audience without any ad spend. Oh, right. So that was my original value prop. Because that was when you had forums and blogs. It was so easy. So everything was organic. Right. Right. My food truck business from 2014 got like 700 followers in a season. Totally. Right. Totally. And I post something and people like it. Forty six people would like it. Now I post something and I'm way more famous than I was then. And four to six people will like it unless I spend money. Yes. So that was right at the peak. And, um, and so I scaled that up a little bit, hired a few people and just continued writing that peak. And one of the way that we And they would just pay you as a consultant, basically, because the rest of it's free. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I would help them set up all their systems and reach their, their specific audience before it was, you know, Yeah. And before all the tools were there to do so, so easily and stuff. Yeah. And is that the one that continued to scale then? Yeah. So that one continued to scale and, um, one of my first hires was a salesperson and we ended up getting connected up with, um, uh, automotive dealership in San Diego. Okay. And that automotive dealership, uh, was part of the second largest automotive group in the country at the time. And, um, and it was, it was just. You know, luck and perfect timing. And so good job for them. And then pretty soon you're doing stuff for them all over the country. That's exactly right. So, you know, that was Southern California. We got a bunch of stores. Then Northern California is like, Hey, what's Southern California doing? Then East coast is like, what's West coast doing? Right, right. And so we continued to scale that up and, um, yeah, and we really focused at that stage, we kind of shifted gears and we said, let's focus on multi location businesses, which automotive groups are perfect. Right, right. And so now we started solving problems that only companies with multiple brands and or multiple locations. Right, right. RAN into a social media which differentiated us. Well, and that really changes the dynamic for, like you talk a lot about agency and multilocation. Those are kind of your niches that develop through that in some ways. And your buildout, if you will, of, You In your case, Asana, to get this project management stuff was really essential to navigating the really rapid change in social media. That's right. That's right. That's what allowed us to be so agile. Yeah. Yeah. And then we added a software component to it. And so then we started building out, um, some softwares, uh, like essentially a software suite. So to help with, uh. Like the posting tools almost, the HootSuites and stuff like that? No, we, we took it a different direction. So I came across, um, man, it was like an, Yeah. Yeah. It was one of the earlier online contests. I think maybe Marriott was running it or something like that. And I'm like, Oh man, this is a brilliant campaign. Then the second thought I had was I could build a tool that allowed anybody to make this. So I did. So I built that tool to rapidly create contests and giveaways and social media. Yeah. Oh, and that was your big driver to your growth plan, sounds like. I wish. No. So. I mean, it seems like a special tool. Very useful. It was, it was very good. So there was a, there was a similar tool at the time called Wildfire and you know, social media was so new. Again, very good life lesson here. I focused on sales leads. Because I'm thinking I'll build a tool that's leveraging social media with contests and giveaways and can build sales and can get sales leads. So we're getting like tons of qualified sales leads coming in because they're entering in these contests that are coming in. So we had like a travel company that got like 30, 000 sales leads in a month. Too much for them to handle. Right. Cool. I'm thinking this is going to be it. We're going to skyrocket. Meanwhile, While we're doing that, Wildfire is saying we'll build followers and fans. And I'm internally Like, what the hell's the use of that? Right. I'm going, that is That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Exactly. Exactly, Kurt. I'm like, that is so dumb. What are they gonna do with this? But you know what was happening at that time? All the old chief marketing officers were going out and all the new ones were coming in and the new ones were being tasked with figure out social media and build us fans and followers, and I'm selling sales leads. And so I'm not even in the marketing discussion for this software that is working amazing. Because they're like, we don't want sales leads. We want fans and followers. You're like, why don't you want sales leads? Yes. Isn't that what you're trying to do? Do you know how much Wildfire sold to Google for? 2 billion. 450 million. I was guessing high just because I assumed it was going to be some dumb number. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you probably wouldn't be right here right now if you had gotten 450 million for your thing. Yeah, you never know. Yeah, you might be. Um, so, so this kind of continued, you just kind of slow grew from this kind of 5, then 10, to 20. Like, you mentioned kind of a sweet spot 30, 35 space. Yeah, and um, You know, at that point, how did you get to Nashville? Were you already, that was, you moved? No, we were saying, no, we were still in San Diego this whole time. So it was Nashville, right? Uh, yeah, outside of Nashville. So we, we continued to grow and it kind of got to a point where it's like, I'd like to do something else with my life. Okay. Like this is, This is years now I'm spending in the automotive industry and the radio industry and things like that. There's a few small niches, but mostly you're just dominant in a few channels. Yeah, so I'm like, all right, I could do something else. So I, like, talk to my attorney and, you know, uh, like, hey, I think I'd like to sell this company. Okay. And he goes, dude, you're, you can't sell this. So what do you, what do you mean I can't sell this? He goes, you have a massive client concentration problem. Right. I'm like, what the hell is client concentration? What does that even mean? You're like, he's like, you got like six clients. Yeah. He, and I'm like, no, I have hundreds of clients. He goes, yeah, but they're all from like a few groups. And I'm like, he's like, nobody's going to buy that. That's too risky. If one of those groups pull out. Their entire investment in your company is at risk. Huh? That's not good. So, so that's, uh, that's when we started, like I started, you know, I was just exploring options, so I started talking to a private equity firm, um, that private equity firm was like, Hey, you're not big enough, but like, here's another company. That's not big enough. Maybe you guys should meet. And he just introduced us via email. Okay. And so we started talking and that's ultimately. What led to that merger. And so, yeah, it was just this random, uh, kind of email introduction. We went out and met with them. We compared our books. And they're in Nashville? They're in Salt Lake City. Oh. Or were. Well, bring me around. Like where does Nashville come in? So we hit like this gold, before the merger, we hit like this golden era where I could like go into work, answer some emails, go mountain biking all day. Yeah. Yeah. Come back, answer some emails and questions and help, help the staff. And I was like the perfect golden era of this. Virtually semi retired. If my salary's I live in San Diego. Yeah, it was, it was wonderful. And, um, you know, it's, as we started traveling, my family's in Minnesota. My wife's now we're married. My wife's family's in Louisiana. Okay. And San Diego to. Any place is kind of a, kind of a hike. It's, except for California. Yeah. So LA is really easy to get to. Right, right. Yeah. And Palm Desert, Palm Desert's pretty easy, you know? So, um, Tijuana. Tijuana is very easy, getting back is harder than getting there. Depending on how much you had to drink anyway. So, so yeah. So we're like, you know what, what are we going to do? Let's, let's get some property somewhere. Yeah. Let's have an Airbnb. Okay. And let's rent this out, and then we can reserve it when we want to. Yeah, yeah. And we'll, we'll find a place that's a little bit easier for your family. A little bit easier to get to my family. And so, um, we had a bunch of, it's not Missouri. It's not Missouri, so we, sorry, Missouri. We ended up, uh, having a bunch of clients, uh, a bunch of stores and. Tennessee. And so we toured the whole state of Tennessee, my wife and I. And, um, we really liked it. It was gorgeous. I think you'd make worse choices. It seems like Tennessee's got it shit together pretty good. Pretty well. Overall. Pretty well, yeah. I mean, you got, like, geography and weather is just kind of, you're stuck with that. And so what are you going to do with it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is a gorgeous state. Yeah. It is absolutely gorgeous. So we, uh, We ended up finding outside of Nashville, we found this property on nine acres, this gorgeous home, like an elderly couple had built it up and it was like a Dutch colonial. So it was like, it was red with like white trim. Right. Like it looks like a, like a, the painter of light picture. Yeah. And we have like, It's surrounded by woods and we could build mountain biking trails in the woods and all this stuff and we could start farming and like, you know, the idyllic, let's, let's go out to the country kind of thing. So our goal, we packed like a frying pan, our dog, two weeks worth of clothes in our car, drove from San Diego. Yeah, fresh start. To Tennessee. Well, no, we were just, we weren't planning to move there. We were just going to drive out there for two weeks to take ownership. Oh. And then come back to San Diego. And so like, because we bought the interior of the house too. We bought all the furniture. Oh, all ready to go. Yeah. Yep. All the linens, everything. We bought all the tools. Everything. Yeah. Um, so our plan was literally drive out there for two weeks, get to know the place, take ownership of it. Yep. Put it back into the VRBO. Put it on Airbnb. Right. And within those two weeks, like in San Diego, you don't really talk to your neighbors. Right. So And you got people bringing you pies and cookies and stuff. We have one neighbor and he's like, Hey man, like come up and have a beer. And uh, we got like an outdoor fireplace on our porch. And so I'm like, okay, cool. So like I go up and like have a couple of beers with our one neighbor and his porch has this awesome fireplace outside and it's looking over the property that we just bought in the sun setting. And I'm like, holy crap, this is calming. This is peaceful. Cool. This is nice, this is really cheap, and yeah, and so, you know, we look at that and we're like, wow, that's, that's awesome. And my wife was having similar experiences, and within those two weeks, we ended up going, what if we just lived here? And then traveled to San Diego. Yeah. So we did. Did you have the little guy yet? Not yet, not yet. Being in a peaceful, quiet place makes it easier to think about. That yeah, so that happened So that's pretty cool. I like that change of pace. You're just like, yeah pivot Yeah, we even went to farm school and before any of this we went to farm school in San Diego I love it just to learn how to grow organically sustainable stuff. So you're like that Kind of these city ish people. Is your wife from like the city of New Orleans? Baton Rouge. Baton Rouge. Yeah. So the city there too. And so you're like kind of these ultimate kind of, at the time, especially perhaps, liberal kind of granola eating. Oh yeah. Like, give us all the, like, we want to adopt a llama tomorrow. Totally. We got chickens. We got bees. Right, right, right. We got outdoor cats to chase away the mice and the moles. Totally. Yeah. And, which is cool. And it just, like, it ain't that easy. It's hard. Right. It's not easy at all. No, it's way easier to live in the city. Yes. In so many ways. Yes. I've got just a half dozen chickens and, you know, a little small property and stuff, and it's just a lot. It's a lot. It adds complication. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but we, you know, we really enjoyed it the first couple of years. We had a giant like quarter acre garden. We planned all this stuff out. We bought a tractor. I put up fencing around that. So we had a nice yard. Got another dog. In 300 years or so, you'll have all that infrastructure paid for with the output of that garden. Yes, at least. But it was, it was super rewarding and it was, I love it. I mean, now, you know, all that stuff and it's, you'll probably do some of it for the rest of your life. It was definitely, definitely. I mean, the house that we have now, they have like, uh, six raised beds that were already put in and we're like, that's perfect. We don't have to plow it, but we can still have tomatoes. Yep. So, I mean, it's, it's definitely one of those where I'm so glad I did it and I do not regret any of that. It got to the point where you, and I think we traveled so much during that phase. It's kind of hard to like explain the, the thinking that we had because we loved it, but we would travel all the time. And when we come home, it was like, Oh, yes, this is wonderful. Cause we could go travel to a city, we go travel to Europe and come back, but then we're like in our little sanctuary that we, we have deer that come up to the fence and like owls fly over and hawks. And that's fair. So. You know, there were many years, but then, you know, we did have our son and again, it, it wasn't, it wasn't that bad. It was when school started and when he really needed to develop friendships, that's when it really hit home for us personally. And, and also as we've been trying to scale this business, because nobody, In, outside of, you know, rural Nashville outside area is like, Hey, let's start a tech company. Right. Right. And even in Nashville, it's a great city. But it's grown extremely fast stuff, mostly they, yeah, and there is some tech, but it's, it is just not like we come from San Diego and like visiting the Bay area a bunch and having friends in LA. And so like, we're definitely like West coast tech scene is what we're used to. And that is not Southeast Texas, right. By any means, Northeast Nebraska or yes. And so, you know, it just, we, we. We tried, but it was just, uh, we needed a change after a number of years. Well, and you can, you can probably rent that place. Is your, uh, So ten years later, our Airbnb vacation home will be on Airbnb this year. Oh, nice. Perfect. Oh, you kept your Nashville place then. Yeah, we're keeping that. Um, we had bought a lake house. Um, we had scored an awesome deal. So just North East of Nashville, there's a lake called Dale Hollow, which goes in into Kentucky. Um, but we ended up scoring a lake house on that lake on the bluff. So three bedroom, two bath, we paid 80 K cash. Wow. Yeah, it was amazing. Amazing. Right. The 800k here. Yeah. And, um, we absolutely loved that place and then we started renting it out and then we ended up selling it to Simplify Our Lives. We sold it about a year ago. Okay. And, um, and did well on that. I'm sure. And then after the exit, we put some money towards a commercial building. So we've got a commercial building in Tennessee. Yeah, yeah. That we rent out. And so, you know, it's all these little things that add up. Bye. Now we'll have a Airbnb and reserve for ourselves when we want to go back. Yeah. I like that. That's a good notion. It only took us 10 years to execute that plan. What, uh, talk to me about your wife's role in, What was the name of the social media company, by the way? It was GoFanbase. GoFanbase, okay. Yeah, the original name was Chief Ingredient, but everybody thought we cooked stuff. Right. So, don't ask me for naming things. Fair. Because Second chances. Don't have a hot streak so far. What was your You kind of talked about your role in your imagination. Your wife Was it part of it right from the start? Uh, or did you come into it after? Man, I don't know if I want to answer this one, but I hired her. Oh, so that was how you met her. That's how I met her. yes. This, it's, it's okay. It's, it's a great, it's honestly a great story and I wish she was here to tell her side of. Because here's what happened. I had, um, a guy that was working for me and he goes, Hey, I've got a friend who I think would be really good for this position. Uh huh. And at the time I think I was a, it was like a part time social media manager position. Right, right. Something, something kind of low Entry level. Low key. And so I'm like, cool, like, introduce me. Yeah. That'd be great. And so he did and we, I don't know why, Man, but for some reason, we decided to meet at a restaurant over mostly a bar. And, um, I was sitting down, I had my laptop, I had my interview questions planned, and then she walked up and swear to God, I don't remember anything. That happened, but six hours later, I was getting her number after making up in the parking lot. And she, she had long, straight blonde hair and she was wearing a An incredibly sexy black dress. And that was it for me. You're like, that dress is not appropriate for this interview. Blacked out. Completely blacked out. I was in love at first sight. Hands down. Uh, you hired her? That I guess? So I went back to this guy that referred her to me. And all I said was, dude, what's her story? Right? And he looked at me and he could see it in my eyes, obviously. Right. He was spitting, right? Yeah. And he's like, he's like, oh, no, no, no, no. Don't, she's off, don't she? She's way too outta outta your league buddy. Yeah. She ba he, he basically said, don't get your, she's outta your league. Yeah. He, she only dates rich guys. Like, don't worry. And I'm like, Oh, okay. I'm going to be a rich guy someday. Cool. Yeah. I'm like, all right, cool. And like, move on. And I don't say, or I hired her and I don't say or do anything for a year and a half. But would you believe it that, um, almost every day. We would strategize after work. We'd go and have some beer and some pizza and strategize on work. There was a point where she sent me a message. She's like, we need to talk like, Oh crap. She's going to quit. And she's, you know, she came in and she like. Knocked it out of the park. Yeah. She just completely yeah. Crushing people two years, three, five years senior. Yes. Crushed it. And so I'm like, crap, she is going to smart and talented and I can't fire her so that I can ask her out. Yeah, exactly. And now she's going to quit. And so now this is like my worst nightmare, the worst situation. So we get together, we sit down and she goes, I don't know. I think we should fire everybody and build back up, except for a couple of people. And I'm like, Oh, thank God. I thought you were going to quit. And she's like, no, I don't want to quit. I just don't want to do the work of everybody anymore. And I'm like, Oh, okay. And she's like, you're terrible at hiring. Let me do the hiring. And I'm like, okay, and you're like, do you want to just get married and run this thing together? Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, well, you just marry me now, but so sure enough, we, we let a bunch of people go. In the, like, in the peak of us doing This is when you're like 35 and you shrink back down to 20 or something? Yeah, what were we? We were probably 15 or 20 and we shrunk back down to like 6. Wow. And then rapidly hired. But I let her do the hiring. Yeah, yeah. And, uh, again, life lessons, man. I learned so much. Like, when I would hire people, I would look at their good traits and their bad traits and I would re be really tough. Try to balance like, hey, they're going to be really good at this, but maybe they suck at these things. But I can overlook that because they'll be really good at these things. And she's like, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to hire people that are going to be good for this position and only good for this position. No bad traits. And so, yeah. We went with it, and I even, I even tried to like, test the water. I'm like, I think this hire will be good, and I'd hire someone, and they fucking fail. So she was the secret sauce, really, to your growth. She, she was a huge, huge piece of it. Yeah, a huge piece of it, because she's the, she's almost the direct opposite of me. Yeah. And, um, whereas, like, I want to plan, and I want to build systems, and I want to, like, systems and kind of cold, relatively unfeeling in comparison, but she's like Imagining exactly where people are coming from, why they might want to be here. Yep, yep. She's like, dude, we're just gonna start selling this shit, okay? We're gonna stop building, and we're gonna sell this. I'm like, okay. So like, that's, that was the dynamic that we had. So she was, throughout, throughout the growth, right, she's very, Client facing, um, we actually made a really great team. There was a number of times where we would go in together because she would be the beautiful woman that would show up for a general manager of an auto dealership, right? And then sweet talk, um, not just sweet talk, but like she has obvious sales skills and like would really sell it, but they're not just going to trust the salesperson. So then I get to be the person that comes in and be the technical person. And, and so they're like. Oh yeah, I get to work with you, and I have you supporting on the technical side? We're, we're good, we're good, yeah. So that, that was kind of our, our MO. It's almost politically incorrect to acknowledge that the auto industry is impacted by things like I don't know that I said that. Well, you did not say it. No, you didn't. Well, it's, it's funny. It's like acknowledging truth is almost politically incorrect these days. Yes. Yes. One of my previous employees was a very attractive young lady and I was like, you know, like it or not, your looks would open up a lot of doors for us if you decided to exercise them. And, and she really didn't want to and I never made her. Yeah. Uh, And I think you can say things like that without getting thrown in political correctness jail. Should be able to. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so where did the, uh, the romance start then? Like, was she already your business partner before you asked her out then? So, I mean, this is, yeah, this is, this is where it gets, um. Nobody HR is judging this conversation. We, we were HR. Right, right, exactly. We were HR at that time. So, I mean, it got to the point where we would go out almost every single night, strategize on the business, each from our own perspectives. We really enjoyed each other's company. Of course, I'm still head over heels in love with this girl. Right, well, where's the first kiss? So, we were doing that for a while. Like a year and a half. Yeah, and it was on my 30th birthday, and I invited her out to my birthday party. Okay. And, um, at the time she was practicing Lent, so she wasn't drinking. Okay. So she's like, sure, I'll come out and I can be your designated driver. And, um, so, I had a bunch of my friends. We were all out. She ended up showing up and she tells this story much better than I do because I was already half in the bag by the time, yeah, I wasn't practicing Lent. So the way that she tells it is that my eyes just lit up when I showed her, when I, when I saw her come in, come into the restaurant or the bar at the time. And long story short, You know, we, we hung out, um, somehow all of my other friends just disappeared throughout the night and it was just left between her, her and myself. We're at this bar called Nunu's in San Diego, which is a very classic bar. Kind of like cool dive bar. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, so we were, we were sitting in this like vinyl booth and we were shoulder to shoulder and she gets up to go to like, some guys were, um, chat, chatting her up a little bit. And then she gets up to go to the bathroom. The guys were like, dude, sorry. Like, you know, no offense, girl. Yeah. Kind of thing. And I'm like, no, it's cool. Like not a big deal. We just work together. And as soon as those words came out of my drunk mouth, I'm like, What the hell is wrong with me? Like, what am I doing here? So she comes back to the bat from the bathroom, sits down again. We're like sitting shoulder to shoulder and not my smoothest move ever. I turned to her and I go. You ever think about dating me? And that, that was the beginning. That was the zinger that sold it all. You're a little bit tipsy. I'm not asking, I'm just curious. Yeah, and uh, she looks at me and she goes, I kind of feel like we already are and I'm like, okay. And so, yeah. So from that point and, and I think, yeah. So February 14th, like we had both broken up with our girlfriend. Your birthday is Valentine's day. No, but, um, my birthday is March 15th, so, before Valentine's Day, we had already broken up, so we did a platonic Valentine's Day that Claire and I went out. Just pretending we're platonic at this point. Yeah, and so, we, you know, that, that continued on through to my birthday party, and, um, yeah, so, you know, we, we kind of didn't know what to do from there. You kind of courted him. Yeah, it was a different way than normal, but very different. But, uh, yeah, so we were kind of like, we showed up at work the next Monday and we're like, Hey, Hey, this is super awkward. So we decided to go out and chat about it. And we had a very long conversation about everything because we both very much enjoyed working with each other. We did not want to sacrifice the work relationship. So, We closed every bar down every nightclub down that we could go to we sat outside my house at the time that I was renting in her car and continued to like talk about every topic related to like if we Try this right, you know, let's cover all our bases up front all the importantly good things Yeah, if that doesn't work out, yeah somehow and so that that was that was it analyzed So first kiss was that night After you've worked it all out. After we worked it all out, we decided, yeah, 14 hours of conversation later. I love it. So yeah, so that was, that was that. And then we didn't tell anybody at work. Oh shoot. So we would, we would like. We were officially dating and it was kind of one of those things where we're such a good pair, we're so opposite that it like, it just fit in lockstep and it just started working and, but we didn't want to make anybody uncomfortable at work. So we would hold hands until we were like two blocks from the office, come in at slightly different times. You just sit on this park bench for a minute. Yeah, the just. So silly. And, um, within three, let's see, yeah, within three months, you know, the way, the way that I think back on it, it's like I never really understood marriage growing up. Yeah. It just didn't, just didn't get right. You hadn't really seen a great example of it. What's obviously, yeah. What's the point, right? And when I met her I was like, okay, I have this urge. To like, I think I understand marriage now. I have this urge to be able to say, I'm dedicated to you and, you know, let's do this life together. And all of a sudden it made sense. So I think it was within three months of us, of my 30th birthday, we were engaged. I proposed at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Oh, wow. Yeah. And, uh, have a supai. Yeah. You know, I think. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a really libertarian leaning person generally, and like, we don't have any contracts with our members, we don't have any contracts even with our facilitators who are effectively my service delivery model. Right. Because I just don't think it's right. I think if you want to be gone, you should just go. Um, and, like I see the tremendous value of a covenant. Contract, right? Like a marriage covenant where you're like, you know, you break both your legs and get a head injury. I'm still with you. Yeah. That's my covenant. That's my promise. Because there's so much value to both people to live knowing that you've got that other person there. Yeah, it just, you know, as, And those three months seemed so long, seemed like such a long time, but you told everybody after you got engaged, I presume, uh, yeah, yeah, at the office. We finally did. Hey, yeah. So, you know, we got engaged last weekend and I think, I think, uh, yeah. So is my birthday is in March. And then by the end of August, we're married. Wow. Same year. Very cool. Yeah. And nobody was surprised. I, I think her parents were. Except maybe her mom. Yeah. I think her mom was like, You're gonna what? Your boss? No. How old, was she younger? She's three years younger than I am. Okay, but not a lot younger. So it was the same. So she was already, you know, not an old maid yet, but getting up there. Ah, she's still, still wonderful. Yeah. Um, I'm going to call one quick break, then we're going to go into our closing segments and wrap this up. Sounds perfect. And we're back. So we, uh, we've been talking about Elaine a little bit already. I think, uh, in our, might as well do our closing segments here of Faith, Family, Politics and Start With Family. Sounds good. Um, do you want to, I mean, you've kind of Talked a lot about why you liked her so much. Do you want to talk about why she might have liked you? I'm still figuring that out. Okay. If I asked her, what would she say about? If you asked her, I mean, I think, you know, I don't know. I'm not that handsome of a guy. You're pretty cute. Thanks. I was fishing. Yeah. But, um, you know, I think we just connected. So, there's, there's You didn't push it. No. No. I mean, that's one thing is, like, she is stunning. And so, you know, I, I was completely, like I said, head over heels. Intimidated, kinda, but also I think that's the difference. I wasn't intimidated. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of guys around her were. were and she's used to guys being intimidated, so I didn't have the intimidation. I had the confidence. Yeah. Yeah. And we work together so she could see me execute and she could see me that you had skills, lead, focused and all those things. So all those important factors. I, uh, I have, I haven't a few superpowers, but one of them is that Beautiful women love me. It's a good one to have. It seems like the more beautiful and the smarter and more capable, the more they seem to like me. And partly it's because I'm not like, dumb, drippin over my tongue around them and stuff. I'm married for twenty some years. I don't care how pretty you are, or how big your boobs are, or whatever. I don't care. Right, right. And I can tell that you're an amazingly powerful person. Creature. Right. Good job. You know, and they get, yeah, anyway, I don't mean to talk about myself in that, but I think it is, especially for very attractive women, not having, having dudes around that fumble over themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it was, I mean, I hope, I hope I, the interview, who knows what I said. Right. But other than that. Yeah. Uh, you know, I think just having that confidence to be around her and treat her like a normal person. Yeah. Yeah. Not something I was trying to win. Yeah. Put on your menu. Yeah. If you will. Yeah. So, and you know, and we just, we, we both really enjoy entrepreneurship. We both enjoy business. Yeah. We're both super ambitious. So while we align on all kinds of things. We also are, take it from such different angles, which later in our relationship was more difficult than in the beginning. Right, right. And so now we're kind of circumventing around back to, uh, making it a positive. I did a little workshop for the Founded Foco stuff, uh, building a team with shared values and diverse talents. Ooh. Yeah. I like that. Uh, and really that kind of notion. And like Alma, who you met here a couple hours ago now, like if We look at that. I mentioned that hallows relational intelligence. She's the opposite of me. I've got no organizer, no integrator. Almost. She doesn't have very many ideas and she's not very people person. Yeah. Um, she's probably a lot more like you and me and Elaine would probably connect better, easier. Probably beautiful. So obviously she'll love me. We always do a, uh, a one word description of the children in this podcast. Would you like to attempt that with, uh, Uh, Fletcher. Energy. Energy. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. He is. I mean, he's just on top of it. Right. Turned on in the morning, and when he finally turns off, then he's been going full power all day. Yep. Yeah, it's, um, I didn't really, being an only child and I was always the youngest in family settings, I didn't really understand what to expect when I had a son. And, uh, and honestly it was extremely difficult the first six years of his life. Oh, really? Very much. Very much. To the point where I feel like For you? Yes. For him? Both? Just that Well, you know, uh He definitely, he loves me. He loves his mommy, of course. Um, I, I think it was very, it was very difficult for me. I just couldn't quite grasp how to be a dad. Yeah. Yeah. It was tough. Well, and probably he's got a lot of his dad in him, so he doesn't really like being told what to do. Yeah. And you've been like leading people and telling people what to do for a long time. He's the perfect mix between me and Elaine. Yeah. Yeah. And so he's very outgoing, very like front of the room, but he's also very analytical and he's got this wit to him. But as a baby, of course, none of that comes out. It wasn't until he could start talking. He hasn't stopped talking yet. But once he started, then I was able to relate. But before, He was really talking. It was just so hard. Yeah, like I just could not get a get a grasp on it. Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah What would you say about your extended family is your mom still around Uh, today I have no idea. Really? She, uh, have you seen Nomadland? No. It's the story of, uh, I think it, I haven't watched it because it hit too close to home. Yeah, fair. But, it, they basically sold their house. Bought an RV, have been traveling around, um, they work at the Amazon, um, whatever you call it, where you're doing the, the packaging and stuff. The Amazon Center's on, uh, like, for seasonal work. Yeah, and then just travel, nobody? Yeah, so With your stepdad still? Yep. Wow, interesting. So, I think they were in Utah for a while, I can't remember where they're at right now. Interesting. But we'll talk every once in a while. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, any other extended family out there? Um, my dad Monselk and cousins? Whatever? I've got, you know, I've got some cousins, um, kind of still in the Midwest. Yeah. Um, most of my grandparents have passed. I have my grandma on my mom's side. Uh huh. She's in a memory unit. And Yeah, yeah. My grandma on my dad's side Not really with you much anymore. Also in a memory unit. Yeah. So they're kind of both at the end of their You started mentioning your dad. Have you had a relationship there? Yeah, we have a good relationship. Um, he still lives in Minnesota. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, we talk, we talk often. And, um, you know, it's him and my stepmom. And, uh, we, yeah, we've got a really good relationship with them. Yeah, yeah. Definitely a smaller family tree in, at least in action than a lot of folks I've talked to. Super, super small. I thought it was normal. Right. Like, there'd be times we'd get around, like, I've got a, I've got two uncles. And, um, growing up, uh, most of our family gatherings, we could fit everybody around a large table. Right. And then I, when I met Elaine and I go hang out with her family, there's, I still, after 12 years, almost 13 years, cannot keep track of all the extended family and like relationships, let alone remember all of their names, her family's huge. Well, my, my dad was one of nine siblings and then his. Dad was one of nine or something and my dad had 53 cousins when he was growing up. Wow. Yeah, that sounds more like I think Elaine's mom I'd like nine. Yeah, and I don't have anywhere near that I think I've got like eight cousins or something like that, but it's still a little quite a bit different. I've got Yeah. I have three siblings, and then three step siblings in my case, and a bunch of new babies and stuff, so. Wow. Yeah. It's really interesting thinking about such a compact family. Yeah. Travel light. Because one of my uncles never had kids. Yeah. Uh, my other uncle just had two. Um, my stepbrother has never had kids, so my, my stepsister, she was, uh, mentally handicapped. She was, uh, a year, can't remember now, a couple years older than me, but, uh, she unfortunately was, uh, she passed pretty early. Um, She choked on a piece of banana and was nonverbal and couldn't Oh no shit. Yeah, couldn't What a tragedy. Get to anybody, right? So, you know, she's in a wheelchair and she's nonverbal. Oh wow. And Huh. Yeah, it was just one of those I actually had a banana save me, uh, not too long ago. I can eat all my vitamins in one shot, like a little handful, and just a little splash of water, and just drink them all down well, but I forgot that I had these new chewable vitamin C's that were like a disc the size of like a Rolaids, or bigger, like a Tums, and I got it stuck, like, in my throat, and I can, like, talk, and breathe, it's just very uncomfortable, and I'm, like, talking to Jill, and researching online, and apparently eating a banana will help with something like that, because you've got enough mass that you can Push it, but it's soft enough and squishy enough that you can, like, pick it back up really easily if you don't get it down and stuff. Jeez. So I, like, was drinking water and trying to dissolve this freaking vitamin C thing that's stuck in my throat and then eventually ate some bananas and pushed it down. Yeah. There you go. So, anyway. There you go. I had a better experience than you. Yes, much better, I'd say. Um, family, faith, politics. Do you prefer faith or politics discussion next? Let's do faith. All right. Um, I know your wife went, uh, took Lent seriously at a time and place. Yeah. Which was probably not that common in San Diego at that time. No, not at all. So that's Catholic, maybe? It's Catholic, yep. Okay. Yeah, so she, she was raised Catholic. Her mom's Catholic. Okay. She went to a private Catholic school. All right. Um, had a great experience. Yep. You know, there's a lot of people from LSU and, and Louisiana that. Does go to, oh yeah.'cause that's kind of, uh, San Diego, French Catholic kinda scene there. Right. So it was, it was cool. Um, so she, I mean she definitely had friends that were doing that. I think moving to Tennessee when we first was Baptist land there, right? Woo. Yeah. When we first moved to Tennessee, she was like, well, maybe we should find a Catholic church. And, uh, yeah. That didn't last long, so we, we never ended up going to one, but, um. Yeah, uh, you know, my religion experience was, I remember going to Sunday school in Minnesota, and I remember asking too many questions, and then the, uh, children's pastor asking that I don't come back. I like it. So that was, yeah, kinda. Good Sunday school teachers like it when you ask hard questions. Yeah. But not all of them. So that was, yeah, so that was, I mean, and I think that really identifies my experience with religion throughout my life. They checked you out. So you kind of checked out. In some ways? A bit, but it offered more questions than answers for me. I never felt like I could get the answers from religion that it felt like a lot of people did. Now, when my parents got divorced, my mom, they, I mean, Micah is a book in the Bible. Neither of my parents were religious, raising me when I was born. And when they got a divorce, my mom, became pretty religious. Oh, OK. And so, and she joined a church with my stepdad. Um, it is interesting that they named me Micah out of the Bible Right, right. not being religious. Right. And then later Well, your stepdad was kind of a hard guy in comparison to your father that was kind of bound in kindness. Exactly. Um, so you had this kind of contradictory Very, yes. Which further reinforced Not getting involved in any type of religion. That's fair, yeah, no, I mean, that's uh, probably more people are kept away from the hypocrisy of the people that they see that call themselves Christians than the mixed messages they actually get from the, from the pulpit. But you've got an eight year old now, and Yes. Yeah, and we sent him, I mean, it was, again, Tennessee is a great place, but maybe not the best fit for us. So we, you know, we would send him to like, Mother's Day Out was put on by the churches. And so the local church, we'd get him there once or twice a day and let him try to make, um, Get exposure and see how he felt. He just got very confused. Right. So he was combining the story of Jesus with storks, delivering him. And for a very long period of time, when he could first speak, he thought it was Jesus that taught him how to speak. Right, right. After the storks delivered him, just mixing up all the messages that the churches were given. So, um, but, but yeah, it's, I think, you The culture in Tennessee, and I would say the hypocrisy, like we ran into things where our son would have very good friends in school, we would try to get together with those kids and have playdates and stuff with our son, but the parents wouldn't return our calls or our texts. The assumption that I'm making with this is because I didn't go to their church. We didn't go to their church. And so it was this very exclusionary thing. Right. Instead of like, it's not like we're worshiping Satan over here. Right. We're just not going to the Baptist church. And yeah, yeah. No, it's a, it's an interesting, a podcast I listened to recently was talking about status. Mm-Hmm. Um, and like how like a hundred years ago, like status was a lot easier to measure. It was mostly measured by your local church, whoever, whichever chapter you were a part of, kind of Oh, interesting. Like however good of a Christian you were. Yeah. Kind of a, a, a affirmed, affixed. A lot of the status to you. Hmm. And the last. 50 years, especially it's maybe been a little bit more about like entrepreneurism and you know, living the American dreams and the tech founders and different things like that. And maybe the last five years or something, it's more about being your true self, whether you're furry or they, them or whatever. Yeah, totally. You know, and so there isn't really a scale by which to affix status. That's really interesting. And so I don't know where that goes, but I have, there's a, uh, check out Elon Musk's feed if you, uh, there's a video that just got released. It's like, you know, we're all racist now, we're all racist now. You might've seen it already. It's been pretty viral. But it's like, basically. We got all the things, we're, we're racist, and then the last one was, you know, I've got dyslexia, my mother's got bulimia, my wife has this, and it gives me anxiety, we're all mental now, we're all mental now, just waiting to see what's next, and Right. There's some that I listen to that I affirm that think that, you know, if God is really dead, it kind of fucks us all up. As humans, like, because then the state is the most important thing, and if the state is the most important thing, then they act like it, and now we're back into freakin feudalism. Right. Or something worse. Yes, yes. Can you talk to me about that, and I guess what the follow up question is, is, like, are you interested in trying to investigate that faith topic from a more blank slate foundation? You know, it's, it's a tough question for me to answer. I think in my past, like there's been times where I'm like, I'm going to go to college and study theology. Right. Because I want to know how all this works. The concept of it is super interesting to me. How did we get organized religion? How do they overlap so much across the globe? Things like that, right? There's these unanswered mysteries and questions that really intrigue me, but almost from a scientific perspective instead of a faith perspective. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. So But I think that's just part of the way my brain works, systems and no, yeah, that's, you can't help it like kind of that piece. And so, but I will say I have kind of explored, like, you know, what, what is my version of it? So what, what do I think is except not acceptable? I don't think that's the right word, but like, how do I make peace? With, I guess, my own spirituality, not having a predefined one that I prescribe to. Like, how then should one live? Right. Right. Yeah. And so that's kind of what I've been going in on. And so I do like reading, like, I went to a meditation retreat with my dad, actually, where we did a silent meditation retreat for, I think it was four days. Wow. Yeah. And I was pretty apprehensive, like I was excited to do it, but I was apprehensive about it. And it felt like a little bit of like, okay, this is a little too far on the side of like the spectrum of, of this. On the woo woo side? Yeah, where I'm like, I don't, I don't know. But I went with it because I'd much rather have that experience than not have the experience. It was honestly one of the best experiences I've had in my life. That's cool. And, um, it just really helped my brain go, hold on, it's not like things slow down. Yeah. But it just got a lot more simple. Yeah, yeah. And I could parse things a lot more because I didn't, it wasn't always conversation, it wasn't always engagement, it wasn't always solving problems, it wasn't always this. I could just Like, the monks there would teach us, Hey, here's how you do walking meditation. Here's how you do yoga meditation. And then, my meditation experience before that was about 10 minutes. Right. Right. And the very first meditation was 60 minutes long. Wow. And I'm like, holy crap, my legs are falling asleep. But you do that multiple times. And it's just a fantastic experience. So I know that's not the same as religion. Well, that's why I use the term faith. Yeah. Because religion is kind of yucky. It gets, yeah. Religion is what you avoided. It is. But faith is useful. Yeah. You know, to me, faith is like, whatever it is that you kind of believe in, that you hang your hat on, that you find value redeeming stuff. Yeah. And I think I'm still trying to figure a good part of that out. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Um, do you like, do you use like terms like atheist or agnostic or whatever? You don't have, don't have to even think about that question because it's not relevant really. Not really. Yeah. No, I think that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, you know, I. I don't know. It, it, um, because my wife and I, we talk about this every once in a while, like, she definitely believes there's a God. Okay. I don't believe that there's a white man in the sky. A big white beard, for sure. With a big white beard, right? Santa's brother or something, like, you know. I don't believe that. But is there a creator? There's got to be something right? There's got to be something even Aristotle thought of the unmoved mover, right? Right. So, you know, in that context, like I don't, I don't know that it's like, I'm going to believe what other people say that it should be like this way, but yeah, you're not like a, his name is God. And here's his old Testament. Here's his new Testament kind of guy. Right. I do like the concept that we're all matter. We're all energy. Energy and we're all going to be recycled. And there's, there's something that made this and we're part of a much bigger thing than any of us can imagine. And it does help think about. Well, how much do the little things in life really effing matter? Yeah, and so getting that perspective over the years has really helped me. Cool. Um, politics. Everybody's favorite. Everybody's favorite. My, my March blog is almost like a book. It's done. It's, uh, being titled, uh, March into Madness. Because between the Russia Ukraine stuff and, and frankly, like this New York fraud case against Trump where nobody lost any money, but they're trying to bankrupt him. Anyway, as a warning to future would be fraud, something, something like, it's just really bad, like, and for the Russia, Ukraine thing, the worst part to my mind is that we seized all these Russian foreign reserves assets and dollars and all these oligarchs and stuff. And we're like, okay, dollar don't mean nothing now. We'll just take it whenever we think, which just. It's gonna destroy the value of the dollar over time and really allow a lot worse things to happen. Anyway, that's what I've been doodling on just lately. And the same thing with New York. Like, if you start, like, suing people like Donald Trump and taking their money just for being somebody that doesn't like the state of New York's rules, or, not the rules, but the, doesn't want to bend the knee, Yeah. To the state of New York. Then a lot of people are gonna be like, I'm gonna go build stuff in Florida or North Carolina or not New York. Bye. I mean, but that's New York's problem. Right. Well, with the unintended consequences. Yes. Are significant. And it's not New York's problem. It's all the people that live in New York that are dutied with this tax that they got to pay someday. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Anyway. That's true. What would you like to say about politics? Ah, man. Yeah. Man. I don't know. I, I would say it's been so uncomfortable for so many years now. For so many years, um, I'm not, I'm not a Trump fan, uh, you know, and it's, but it's, it's for personal reasons. Right. Like, I just can't handle him talking. Yeah, yeah. Like, uh, you know, I look at that as, as a leadership perspective. I'm like, that's just not a good leader. Yeah. Not a good leader. Not a good leader. But, you know, it doesn't, that doesn't mean I'm, Biden doesn't inspire confidence. Yes. That's exactly, that's it's we're in this like strange, super uncomfortable medium point where it's like, we're literally, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to share a story, super quick. And one of the first houses that I lived in in Minneapolis, there was a white fence and it was one of those where a square posts and then it had like, like one by fours. Slats. Oh, sure. With the width of it was like the one inch facing up. And I got the brilliant idea. It's amazing I have kids. I think you'll probably know where this is going. I had the amazing idea that I would climb up, stand on one of the square posts, and then balance beam across this one inch. One inch fence to the next post. I made it about halfway, lost my footing, and straddled that fence post. Yeah, my feet did not hit the ground. That's where your politics are right now, too. That's what it feels like politics are right now. There's, there's no, there's no, like, Yeah, where can we be here? Where, where do we go from here? How can we be here? Yeah. Yeah. Biden is like, I don't want to, I don't want to support anybody. I feel so sorry for him, kind of like if he was your grandpa, you would put him in a home and be done with it. Like you wouldn't make him try to sign up for another four years as the president of your company. I mean, I had to stop following stuff. Like I deleted news apps off my phone because I would get into this and then be so depressed and then get so frustrated and it's, and it's both sides. It feels like both sides are the same thing just from two different perspectives. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I told you what Dictatorship with two parties. Yes. When I, it was, it's, it was a little bit eyeopening. That first client when I was consulting that was based out in Oslo. Yeah, yeah. I flew to Moscow. This was, um, and met with the team and there was Ukrainians and Russians. I was part of the team. It's about a team of 40 and amazing, just an amazing experience. There's no way in hell I'd go there right now. Right. But. I'm so glad I did. It was, it was a great experience. But what, what I really felt like was the people of the U. S., not the government, and the people of Russia, not the government, are very similar in culture. And it was almost like the two countries now, speaking about, were like brothers. Kindred spirits of sorts. Kindred spirits, like brothers that hate each other. Yeah, yeah. Like we grew up. Well, and Iran's kind of the same way. I've met so many Persians over my lifetime that were just Regular people from Iran? They're amazing. Right. Right. They have a lot of the same kinds of characteristics except for, you know, now the Iranians are trapped by these ayatollahs and this and that, and the Russians are trapped by Putin and his kind of autocracy, and Americans are now trapped by whatever the fuck this yucky thing is that's smeared all over our Washington, D. C. area. Yes. That's where I was going with it. Right. Because now it feels like internally. Yeah. We're, we're trapped. We're facing the same kind of shit. We're facing the same kind of divide. You know, it's, it's hard. Like, this is, it's a, it's, it's, you know, Tennessee was a, and I would say the Southeast and the rural Midwest. Like, there's places that you can go that you should not be open about your thoughts. For sure. Right now. Right, right. And that's sad. Yeah, a hundred percent. So. No, that's fair. Um. How about RFK Jr.? Are you gonna vote for him instead? Man, I, you know, I don't know. Too scared to throw your vote away? Just, that, but that's, that's the, the crux. The media is telling you he's a kook job though. Well, I mean, the media's gonna tell us. Whatever they do. Yeah, I mean, But it's like, do, like, how would we vote? How do you vote right now? It's, it's impossible. Like you can't vote for the people that you really want to vote for all the time, because you do feel like you're throwing your vote away. And then it's going towards whatever mainstream is going to, I don't know. I don't know. And so I, so I asked, you know, the, the Russians that I, that were showing me around Moscow, you know, I asked, they're like, yeah, let's go to the red square and we'll walk by the Kremlin. And I'm like, Is that safe? Isn't the criminal like the source of all evil? Yeah. Like, can we talk about things outside the building and stuff like that? And it was, it was interesting, but I did ask, like, I didn't know what was okay. And not okay to ask them about stuff because all I knew up until that point was what I was told as a kid, what movies tell me, what mainstream media tells me. And so I asked them, I said, what is it? What is it like living here? Like, are you guys able to internally talk about Putin? Are you able to talk about politics, like, and not fear for things? And their response was, essentially, there's the Russian government, and there's the Russian people, and they're two very different things. And that's it. And we don't talk much more about it than that. And that was even back in 19, so 2019. Right. And even at that point, I was like, huh, that's an interesting concept. Yeah. But since then It now starts to feel like, huh, that is getting closer and closer here. Like there's kind of the government that gets to do their own thing. And then there's the American people. Man, it's a, this new Supreme court case with Missouri was Missouri versus Biden. I don't know what it is now, but I was kind of frankly shocked about. How much the, the conservative justices agreed that the government should kind of be able to tell social media companies what they can do and who they should pull and stuff. Yeah. Like that felt like Really? Like, after all the Twitter files were dumped and it showed how much corruption there was and all that, uh, Alex Berenson exploration with some of the stuff, I, that just feels like so completely wrong and it looks like they're going to get away with it. Of course. Yeah. I mean, what, what else is going to happen? I don't know. I just want it to get better. Yes. I think, I think everybody does. I think everybody does. I think everybody wants, and we all have, just like Elaine and I have totally different perspectives on how we execute on business. Yeah. That doesn't make one right or wrong. Yeah. It's just different, and I kind of feel like the American people are in that phase right now. I guess if we could decide what we're trying to work toward, it would be better, though. That is, that is the key. That is absolutely the key, because we're going in two different directions. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Um. You know, I was pretty sure back in the nineties, for example, that, or especially even like the early Obama years that like race relations had finally been kind of put to bed and the meritocracy was cemented and affirmed. And like, Yeah. Character is more important than color of skin, and then, you know, now we've put this new effort to fix racism with more racism, and it's hard, and it doesn't seem like it's gonna work. Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think so. Well, it's working, just not toward the supposed, you know, every, you gotta name everything like the Inflation Reduction Act these days and stuff, like do the opposite land of what it's actually gonna do. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, I think my politics are much like my religion. It's just really confusing. Yeah. Well, because you can't understand it. It's bigger. It's bigger than all of us. And people, like, people make rational decisions and people in large groups somehow, sometimes. Yes. At least with power corrupted anyway. And I think a big, big piece of it for me is, you know, we've firsthand interacted with a lot of people, like being an analytical thinker. Or self proclaimed analytical thinker, I should say, um, it's hard for me to associate when I, when I have conversations that are just soundbite clips with people, it's like, I just tune out, like I'm done. Yeah, I'll never remember that again. Yeah, like it's okay, cool. But, you know, we just have a lot of that. Yeah, yeah. Fair. Um, let's move on to the closing segment. The loco experience. Yeah. The craziest experience that you're willing to share, either solo or with Elaine or, uh, whatever crazy experience being in business. It could be a moment, a near death experience could be a year in Moscow, in Norway. It could be, oh, geez. Uh, I, I have no idea what your crazy experience is, whether it's a moment or a. Man, crazy experience. I like it. I like it. I don't know, my closest near death experience. Was I, you know, honestly, my crazy, my crazy, this sounds super lame, but my crate, my personal craziest experience was the transformation of finally understanding what it was to be a dad. All right. That, that, I mean, it's like my own personal thing, but it definitely affected my son. It definitely affected my wife. And was there like a moment or what was that trigger or yeah. Heroic dose mushroom trip. Okay. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. I, my wife and I like accidentally overdosed ourselves on mushrooms down at Palm Desert when we were down there. And it was hard. Like I accidentally ordered two pizzas online and they went to the wrong place, the wrong timeshare thing. And I like gave up and stripped down and was like laying on the bed while like she was like, are you just going to give up? And I'm like, yeah, I think I am. Yeah. Anyway. Um, so tell me about, uh, being a dad. Yeah, so, I mean, I, I signed up for therapy, I tried to find, like, I, I had a therapist that really You were just kind of a shitty dad for a while, kind of just had a hard time connecting? I couldn't connect. Yeah. I couldn't connect. That was, that was exactly it. I couldn't connect. So, um, yeah, it was just Um, it's hard to explain it other than that. I just could not connect with my son and I didn't know how. And I think it was because I, I have struggled with a connection with my mother and I, I think, uh, my wife said to me, we were laying in bed one night and, um, I can't remember exactly what she said, but it, it made me realize that if I continue on this path, I'm going to, I'm going to be, He's gonna be me and I'm, I'm gonna, we're gonna have this very large disconnect for the rest of our lives. Yeah. And that was very soul crushing. Yeah. And, um, and so I needed to change and I needed to figure out how to solve that. So this, this, it's a longer transition period, but I, I got, uh, a therap. I sought out a guy that, like a male therapist Yeah. That could help me from a. masculine perspective as a father. And that was the start of it. That was really good. And then, um, you know, I had dabbled with mushrooms a little bit just in your twenties. A lot of people do. And I had a couple experiences with them. I only did it twice. And both of them led to like these visions of, you know, Like one of them, I was, it was right at my very early stage entrepreneur career. And, um, it was when I was cold calling a lot and I had this vision of me sitting at the square or the circle table in the middle of this giant room with a spotlight only on the table, but it was an out of body experience where I was looking down on myself, like working away on my computer and the feeling that I got was the feeling of what I felt. People were getting when I'm closing everybody else out and just focusing on this and that vision Caused me to change how I started reacting to people and interacting with people and prioritizing my life So it wasn't just business as an escape. Yeah. Yeah, so I started thinking about that and I just had this pull to do Another trip. Yeah. Yeah, and so I I don't know how much of this I should share, but we literally drove from Tennessee to Washington, D. C., where you can go to a dispensary, buy something, get gifted magic mushrooms, drove back to Tennessee, tripped on my nine acres, and, um. Just solo? Yeah. Yeah, I mean Nobody around you, nothing, just Well, so I was outside, and, um, I like, made the tea, and went out and drank it, drank it way too fast, and I'm like, Jeez, maybe these are, maybe this didn't work. Didn't work. And then like 10 minutes later, you're like, It's working! I laid, I laid down, and I was looking up at the sky, And all of a sudden this blue wave in the sky just comes through and I'm like, Oh shit. And I set up and the trees are like, Oh, wavering a little bit. And I'm like, Huh? And I'm like, okay, this is coming on really fast. I'm going to be stuck out here in the woods. So I made my way in and my wife and son were downstairs and I, and I went upstairs and we have like a, it's like a complete upstairs. So I went upstairs and. And it was a very difficult trip. I essentially, um, met the real, like, I was having conversations with myself. So to give context to this experience, I would watch other fathers, and they were so patient, and they would say the right things. And then, like, my son would say something to me, and I would Not have the same patience. Yeah. It wasn't like I would lash out, but I didn't act the way that I wanted to act. And then inside of me, I'd have this little voice that would be like, that's not you. You really mean. Yeah. That's not who you are. Yeah. And so when I was tripping, the walls broke down and I got to have a conversation with myself and the roles switched post trip. So, and you know, and there were like. I won't bore you with a trip report here, but like, basically those, the roles switch and I got to be me and when I woke up, I could hear my son playing downstairs, coming, you know, coming down from the trip and. It, it was like joyous. I felt joyous hearing it and I'm like, okay, that's interesting. And I was stable enough so I could walk down the stairs and I opened up the door to the kitchen and there was like this beautiful light. And, and like my wife and son were at the oven or at the stove. They were making homemade eggnog. This was like Thanksgiving weekend. They're making homemade eggnog and they're laughing and they spill a little bit and nobody's mad at anything being spilled. And I look at Fletcher and I'm like, is mommy always this happy? And he looks at me, he is like, yeah, daddy. And um, and it was just, I had never seen my wife and son like, like I had never seen them. Yeah. I had never seen them like this. And then my son sticks something in my face, which is usually like, I'm like, oh my God, get it right. Right. Get it outta my face. Didn't phase me at all. And my wife looks at me, and she could just see it in my body language and my face, that something had changed. And, and, like, we just Hold each other and started crying. That's really interesting. And, and it was since then and integrating from that trip that I was able to rebuild my relationship and like actually be a dad. So that is my. Which probably also really rehabilitated your relationship with your wife too, or strengthened it. Yep. I'm, I'm, I'm imagining you as, and partly because I know Alma. Uh, she's like such a systems thinker and not really emotionally invested in truth kinda. For sure. And with a little kid especially, but also with a woman, but in the case of, of, of Elaine, you were like, wow, she's an amazing thinker. Look how useful she is. Look how, like, in addition to her extreme beauty, you also were smitten with the way that she processed informations and integrated things and stuff. And this little baby is like, fade babe, here, stick my hand in your face. And you're like, what is the usefulness of. This thing everything I didn't understand. Yeah, but then when you like my first instinct isn't really the systems thing. It's the emotion. It's the love. It's the whatever. And so by having that conversation with the real you in there, you were kind of given freedom to just love because yes, yeah, and it was It was so wild because my wife is so supportive on all of this. In fact, of course my son had no idea any of this, but her and my son made a notebook. And it was this leather bound notebook, and they stamped it with like a little, uh, tiger. Uh, like a kind of wood burning but leather burning with this tiger on it. And in the, like, I was in the bathroom. I had to go to the bathroom. So I was in the bathroom completely tripping and I opened the door and she's standing there and I'm like, totally out of it. Right. And she hands me this notebook. And so that like brought like all this emotion that I had been holding up for all these years, just completely. I surrendered to it all during this. So there'd be one time, there'd be one minute I'd be laughing my ass off, the next minute I'm bawling like a psycho. And if somebody could have watched me, right, I'm like, just this, like, parsing through all these years. And in fact, it was like going back through all these years and all, all these different experiences that I had. And that was the trigger of whether it was a laugh or a cry, or a, you know, Exactly. Or whatever, almost. Exactly. I, I have a lot of respect for Elaine to just witness you in that situation and appreciate the, I guess, both the gravity of and the levity of the situation, kind of. Like, she could see that it was a new page. Oh, and, and that notebook was so that I could write down. What I learned on the trip, which was like unbearable support, right? Like I couldn't even handle the thought that she had thought of that and, and supported that. And so. There was, as I was coming down, I didn't even realize, like, it was dark outside at this point, and there were no lights on in the room, and I wasn't for sure certain if that was part of the trip where she handed me this notebook, or if it happened in real life. Right, right. Because I got to the point where, like, Like the ego dissolution. Like, I didn't remember my name. I didn't remember what I did for work. Oh, wow. I don't know what day it is. That was some strong tea. It was very strong tea, and I reached out to my nightstand, and I felt this leather book. Right. This leather notebook that they made me, and it was like this, Like the most cherished thing. And reality, like, just like, Okay. Sucked right back in, and here I am. Boom. And that, and that was like, I don't know if it was my brain re rewiring or what it was, but it was like that moment, like solidified everything. And then it gave me that experience to feel. That emotional side. Yeah. Again. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so that's Is that easier for you now since then? Much easier. Yeah. Much easier. And I've, and I've developed, you know, been working to develop that over, you know, that was a couple years ago now. Yeah, yeah. So Very cool. Yeah. Well For a year and a half or so, yeah. I think, I think that's a tremendous loco experience. Alright, cool. Um What, uh, how do people find you if they're looking for a Workday Ninja? Workdayninja. com. That's easy enough. Yep. Um, is that the right place? Contact form? Contact form's Yep. LinkedIn, Micah Johnson. Yeah. Easy peasy. Yep. Well, thanks for making the big drive up from, uh, Boulderville here up to lonely Fort Collins, Micah. Welcome to Northern Colorado. Thank you. And, uh, you know, look forward to seeing where we can intersect our paths in the months and years ahead. Love it. Alright. Godspeed.