The LoCo Experience

EXPERIENCE 231 | Exploring Love of Business, Chilean Patagonia, and Strong Relationships with Brian and Mary McKnight, Owners of Turf Tamers Landscaping in Fort Collins

• Ava Munos • Season 5 • Episode 231

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I had an enlightening conversation with Brian and Mary McKnight, the driving forces behind Turf Tamers Landscaping in Fort Collins. Brian shared how he acquired Turf Tamers, initially a tiny business, and grew it from the ground up starting with a few clients in 2001.  Brian shared his background, and the drama in moving from “trendy” California to “cowtown” Fort Collins in high school - but how he soon fit right in and found summer work in landscaping.  Mary, on the other hand, came to CSU from Indiana and studied global tourism. They met at the Rio, and their shared passion for adventure and travel led to a quick connection, and soon jobs and business opportunities in Chile.

They bought property in Chilean Patagonia in 2008, and over the years developed both the property and deep relationships with the neighboring families.  Despite travel challenges and lack of infrastructure - their valley finally got electric power in 2016! - they’ve developed an amazing fishing and recreation property in one of the most unique glacial valleys in Patagonia, and we spend a fair bit of time exploring their valley and the local culture.   

Brian and Mary also shared extensively about their business evolution, particularly how incorporating systems and focusing on quality customer service has been their key to success. Brian appreciated how Mary’s involvement sped their evolution, and how his membership in LoCo Think Tank has broadened his and their perspectives.  For young  people, they emphasized the importance of travel and entrepreneurship, and shared how their focus on values informs their business and family decisions. Our time together was an exploration of building a business and a life with intention and an adventurous spirit, so please tune in and enjoy my conversation with Brian and Mary McKnight.  

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Music By: A Brother's Fountain

Speaker 8:

I had an enlightening conversation with Brian and Mary McKnight, the driving forces behind Turf Tamers Landscaping in Fort Collins. Brian shared how he acquired Turf Tamers, initially a tiny business and grew it from the ground up, starting with a few clients. In 2001, Brian shared his background and the drama and moving from trendy California to Cowtown Fort Collins in high school, but how he soon fit right in and found summer work in landscaping. Mary, on the other hand, came to CSU from Indiana and studied global tourism. They met at the Rio and their shared passion for adventure and travel led to a quick connection and soon jobs in business opportunities in Chile. They bought property in Chilean. Patagonia in 2008. And over the years developed both the property and deep relationships with neighboring families, despite travel challenges and lack of infrastructure, their valley finally got electric power in 2016. They've developed an amazing fishing and recreation property in one of the most unique glacial valleys in Patagonia. And we spent a fair bit of time exploring their valley and the local culture. Brian and Mary also shared extensively about their business evolution, particularly how incorporating systems and focusing on quality customer service has been a key to their success. Brian appreciated how Mary's involvement sped their evolution and how his membership in local think tank has broadened his and their perspectives. For young people, they emphasized the importance of travel and entrepreneurship and shared how their focus on values informs their business and family decisions. Our time together was an exploration of building a business and a life with intention and an adventurous spirit. So please tune in and enjoy my conversation with Brian and Mary McKnight.

Speaker:

Welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast. My guests today are Brian and Mary McKnight, and Brian is the CEO and field ops guy. And Mary, the CFO and, uh, keeper of the house at Turf Tamers Landscaping here in Fort Collins. So welcome to the show. Thank you. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

thanks Kurt. Thanks for being here.

Speaker:

Appreciate it. Um, I guess let's set the stage, uh, turf Tamers. It sounds almost like a. Like a franchise name, but it's, it's homegrown. Is that right?

Speaker 3:

It is. I actually acquired Turf Tamers. It was a, a super tiny little business, uh, years and years ago. My dad, uh, when I came back to Fort Collins after high school. Okay. Um, I told my dad that I was really interested in buying a landscaping business, and we found a couple guys that had this tiny little business called Turf Tamers. Okay. And I built it from that.

Speaker:

Okay. And a couple of partners and mostly just those two guys kind of going Yeah. With

Speaker 3:

a few clients. It was basically a push mower and a truck, you know, but they had a couple clients Yeah. That, uh, that were, you know, worth us actually purchasing. And, and then we went from there. Cool.

Speaker:

Yeah. And when was this? How many years ago now?

Speaker 3:

2001.

Speaker:

Okay. Okay. So I remember. So it's been a little while.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Nine 11 was that year. It was a wild year for me. Yeah.

Speaker:

What was, yeah, what was going on in your, in your world at the time? Like you said you came back from somewhere.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. I had not left Mary. Or I had not met Mary, but I had, uh, left from high school. So I came out here from California originally in 13 years old. Went to Blevins and Rocky Mountain High School here in Fort Collins and, um, loved it. Looking back words. I loved it. But, uh, of course all my friends from California were like, what are you doing in that podunk little town? Oh, interesting. So as soon as I graduated, I graduated a little early. That's funny.'cause

Speaker:

you seem like. More country than the Fort Collins average. Anyway, there's a reason for that.

Speaker 3:

I, I was basically raised by, uh, my grandfather was like a Mexican charro, so I was raised around horses and raised around, uh, around, yeah. The Mexican rodeo stuff and whatnot. Mm-hmm. Cool. So anyway, when I got ba I finally, you know, I took off thinking Northern Colorado was for the birds and California was where it was at. And I lasted about a year and a half out there and came back to Northern Colorado. Was like, it's really nice out here actually, other than the ocean. Fort Collins has a lot. Ain't much. Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. So, uh, and I had done like a lot of landscaping with local landscaping companies during high school. Just as labor. Yeah. Summer jobs and stuff. Everything from balling trees to irrigation, cutting lawns, doing it all. So when I got back to Fort Collins, I kind of hit my dad up and said, if there's ever a landscaping company that, you know, I'd be interested in purchasing one, and, you know, yeah. Would you help me out kind of thing. Yeah. Type thing. Yeah. And we looked for a little while and we finally found some people. Obviously we didn't have big buckets all the money Yeah. To buy out somebody big. But, uh, so we just kind of bought something small and chipped away at it. And 25 years later, here we are. And, and it had that name Turf Tamers to get back to your original connection. Yeah. Fair enough.

Speaker:

Question, when did, when did you enter the scene, Mary?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So, uh, in 2001 I was in college. Okay. And graduated in oh five. We met in oh five.

Speaker 4:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And, um, three years later got married and then a few years after that I got involved in the business. So I've been in the business fully involved in since 2012.

Speaker 4:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Um, and at that point, hi, him and his dad were still partners and he was still doing the books. Okay. And so his dad taught me and I took over the books and the account management of Jeff Tamers. Cool.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. He was self-taught on the financial. Realm completely. Yeah. Um, it's, but did it better than Brian was doing it right from the start. Brian wasn't doing it. He was like, we need somebody to do the books. It's Brian's responsibility, so

Speaker 2:

it's fun. Um, you know, jokingly, I think that. My father-in-law really wanted to get outta the business so he didn't have to argue with him so much. Right. They just wanted to have like a good father-son relationship. And I said to him, yeah, I'll take over, but you're gonna have to sit down and sit tight at the end of every month to do billing.'cause he would be, you know, bouncing around, couldn't sit still to do billing. So that was the agreement and it's gone pretty well ever since. Really

Speaker:

cool. Really cool.

Speaker 2:

We've changed a lot of stuff that used to be pieces of paper crumbled on the bottom of the truck with coffee states on it. That's how we figured out our billing at the beginning.

Speaker:

Yeah. You got how many hash marks are there on the Yeah,

Speaker 2:

exactly. That's how it was.

Speaker 3:

There's, there's an evolution in the landscaping. In, in the landscaping field, you know, it's well, and as

Speaker:

you get more employees and stuff, you gotta give them a system to fall into. Otherwise they don't know if they're doing a good job or not.

Speaker 3:

Systems are. Very important. And she's the one that really incrementally systemized the office, systemized the pipeline, systemized the field, the bidding process. Yeah. I know how to get the implement and get stuff done and make it happen. Um, but there's a lot of waste if you just go out there. Right. You just push through, put your boots on. So like, getting the systems in and eliminating waste and being more streamlined and efficient is kind of the, what we've been doing the last four, five years.

Speaker:

Yeah. I mean, if you can cut back on your, on your waste 10, 20%, you cut back on your hours expended 10, 20%, now all of a sudden you've got a business that's got a 20% net profit margin. Right. And hire more

Speaker 3:

and invest more into your, you know. Waste is huge in our business. Yeah. I don't doubt it at all.

Speaker:

So set the stage. What's turf Tamers today? Um, and was there any other employees or was it just you and your dad when, when Mary came into the picture?

Speaker 3:

My dad was only bookkeeping. I was Oh, I see. I was, uh, pretty much an the head employee and then I had a part-timer with me. Um. And then when he and occasionally subcontract stuff. Well, you

Speaker 2:

gotta name him. You gotta give a shout out to James.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. James is a local kid, you know, he, uh, I'm not gonna talk names, but very good guy now. He owns a business. He actually does screenplay. He writes for Hollywood. Oh, what? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Uh, so shout out to James. He knows who he is and, um. And then, you know, I've had a, just a plethora of characters in my truck with me and all of'em are, I was very fortunate to have really good people all along who helped me out and, you know, scratch each other's back. And

Speaker:

so if you had a big job or something like that, you could bring in some part-time more. I would

Speaker 3:

just take on what I was able to, I never really stretched myself too far, but, um, you know, I did, I went from like one guy riding with me to two other guys, to another truck to, you know, it just kind of cascaded and um, or grew completely organically. Yeah. And, um, yeah. So, and how many

Speaker:

crews now, or people are you got in the field of high season? We have

Speaker 3:

a potential of like four crews. You know, we have like 11, 12 guys and then, you know, we go shrink down to, you know, in the winters we're down to like two.

Speaker:

Oh, wow. Okay. So we're very small. So it's intentionally a cyclical business. You don't do snow removal. We do do snow removal, but, but even with that, there's always so much snow. Keep it small. Yeah, we can keep it small. Well, plus you guys go like travel in the wintertime too, right? Yes, that's right. Um, Chile. Chile, yeah.

Speaker 3:

So very far, you know, it's kind of our, uh, our little vacation place, but it ended up being on the other side of the planet. So, uh, how long does it

Speaker:

take to get down there

Speaker 3:

and where's that 20? It used to take like four days, but now it's, we've, we've refined it down to 24 hours. Now. It's

Speaker 2:

two whole days.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

We go, uh, Denver down to. Dallas or Houston to Santiago. Okay. Which is the capital. Yep. Then you get in another plane to get to Puerto Mont. Okay. From Puerto Mont, you have a choice. You can either take a puddle jumper with like 12 people in it for like a 45 minute flight over the fjords, or you can get into a ferry boat similar to something you might see in Seattle. Mm. And that's like an overnight 12 hour drive. Oh wow. Then you've got a three hour drive to our place and then you're there.

Speaker:

So this is like far southern chili then? Mm-hmm. This is Pat Patagonia. Pat, yeah. Okay. Okay. So

Speaker 3:

we used to run a fly fishing lodge down there on the banks of this river. Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

And like did you take a break from landscaping for this or something? We would do there just in the winter. It's winter, so there's

Speaker 3:

summer. So I would leave, I would wrap up my landscaping right around Thanksgiving, fly straight down there. I'd be guiding clients from December, January, February. We'd leave, like late March, come back here, open up.

Speaker:

Interesting.

Speaker 2:

Start the landscaping all over.

Speaker:

And when did this start? When did the Chilly property? Right away.

Speaker 2:

So we met in January of oh five and I had. My sights fixed on doing an internship abroad in Chile.

Speaker 5:

Oh, okay. And this is

Speaker 2:

before I knew Brian, so I had been to Chile. You were already pointing that before I met Brian. Okay. All right. He had to be been to Chile before he met me.

Speaker 5:

Oh.

Speaker 2:

So we had, our first date was amazing'cause we had so much to talk about, I'm sure.

Speaker:

Mm-hmm. We both

Speaker 2:

been to Chile, like, who can say that? I don't

Speaker:

even know if I love one other person that had a chili farm in Chile.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So, um, oh five, uh, we meet in January. I already know that, that following winter I'm gonna go to an internship. I just haven't found it yet. Found an internship location, um, that summer and I just said to him. Brian, I think you should come. I think you should find a job down there and come too. And he was used to closing down over the winter and taking trips.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 2:

So it was like, or like, so easy. Yeah. It was something that he was used to doing.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and this is, but it's only eight months after you guys met, really. Right? It was pretty fast. Yeah. But you were in love already. We were in love. We knew we were.

Speaker 2:

And that trip just solidified it, you know? Yeah. Like that time together, you know, you spending every day together for four months and it's really remote. And we made a, like, lifelong friends that summer that we're still friends with.

Speaker 3:

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

Keep in mind, that was 20, I wanna down years ago down. I don't even care about

Speaker:

fishing. And I come down gotta You gotta come down and, and

Speaker 3:

it's a lot like Colorado, so, I mean, you don't have to fish if you're like mountain biking, if you like snowcap peaks. Yeah. Hot springs, paddleboarding. Yeah. Whatever. Whatever. Exactly. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker:

Wine steaks. Can we lurk here for a while? Like, describe this setting. Is, is this on the ocean or is it on a river or It's a fishing place, right. So it can't be on the ocean. Sure. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So if you know Chile geographically, there's no east and west. It's a north and south country. Right, right. It big pine in the middle with really

Speaker:

high mountains. Right.

Speaker 3:

Very

Speaker 2:

high mountains.

Speaker 3:

So we're still 1800 kilometers from Antarctica. Oh. North. But we're. 1800 kilometers south of Santiago, which is in, in the center.

Speaker:

So how far from the, the southern tip of Chile are you?

Speaker 3:

Uh, like two and a half day drive.

Speaker:

But nobody hardly lives south of you probably. No, we're we're,

Speaker 3:

yeah. There's a lot people live down there, but it

Speaker 2:

sparse. Have you heard of tourist de Piney? Yes. It's like a mountain that's very famous. Okay. Jill's

Speaker:

been fascinated with Patagonia lately and she wants us to go even though it looks, seems so we're like two days north of that. That's, so,

Speaker 2:

that's further north from us. Okay. So there's plenty of things to see. There's like, there's weeks worth of vacationing you could do just in the southern tip of Chile.'cause there's so much to see. Okay.

Speaker 3:

My big plan in the future is to, uh, do a giant road trip through there. We have not, we've kind of been confined to our valley working there and doing in our house being there. Right, right. Um. The southern part is different. The southern part is wind swept, kind of like the moon. Yeah, it's very, where we're barren plains, kind bar? Barren plains. Where we're at. It's called Northern Patagonia. More trees we're in a temper temperate rainforest. Oh, coastal. And uh, okay. So it's

Speaker:

more, literally more like the, the islands of, of, uh, Washington. Washington or something like Thatwhere.

Speaker 2:

Um, when I first went to the Seattle area, I said, this is just like Chile.'cause I had never been to Northwest, uh, United States. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but, uh, glacial rivers, is that what the rivers look like in Seattle? Outside of Northern Washington? Columbia especially

Speaker:

coming off of Rainier, the Columbia, like giant rivers too. Going out to the Pacific. Yeah. They're just looking outta the Columbia. It that

Speaker 2:

Right. Turquoise, like milky white, glacial rivers. Beautiful mountain peaks. The mountains are low there because you've gotten so far south. Yep. Um, but mountainous a lot of, and these are winding up kind of. Yes. They're, by that time they're, mm-hmm. Okay. And a lot of different microclimate. Microclimates. Mm. So temperate rainforests near the ocean. But since we're a three hours drive in, we're kind of drier.

Speaker 4:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

Where we're at. So it's a similar climate to where we live here, where it's that arid mm-hmm. Uh, you know, arid ground, um, except their land, their soil, if you dug the soil up, it would be black. Mm.

Speaker:

It's

Speaker 2:

volcanic, very rich soil. It's

Speaker:

like where I'm from in North Dakota, like we get about as much rain in central North Dakota as they do in Sterling. Mm-hmm. But we grow crops like more than twice as big because its', your soils got rich. It's a clay, it's a clay loam soil that's been growing tall grass for generations, you know, and that's it. Just all that organic matter. Yeah. Um, so yeah. Okay. I'm starting to get the, get the wind. One

Speaker 2:

more way to set the stage of Chile, just our valley is to explain that. Um, they got electricity in 2010.

Speaker:

Okay. I love it.

Speaker 2:

Um, when we bought the property, no, it wasn't 2020, it was 2018.

Speaker 3:

2016 is when they brought in

Speaker:

electricity. I apologize. Oh yeah, 2016. Even more recent. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So we bought, bought the land. Yeah, go ahead. 2008 2008.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And they were just building like the road out. It was just like a natural dirt road before. And

Speaker:

like you like went down there for this internship and while you're there you're like, yeah, oh, here's an investment opportunity. Well, as well we

Speaker 2:

went down for an internship and made those amazing friends.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And again, still friends after 20 years. These are really good people. The Chileans are amazing people.

Speaker:

I haven't met a bad one yet.

Speaker 2:

And um, yeah. Right. Yeah. So. The thing about, uh, 2005 to 2008, between between oh five and oh eight, we were gonna be married, we were engaged, and, and we got married later on in oh eight. We were really serious, but we were also like super serious about how amazing chili was. So over those next two few seasons, we were like, we should look at land. We just live there forever. Yeah. We should just like look at land. Yeah. Yeah. And that was the crash. So everything was cheap. Right,

Speaker 4:

right.

Speaker 2:

But we were broke. Right. So, you know, there's that, um, you know, college kids or college age kids without a whole lot going on. And what

Speaker:

did you get into, you didn't join the business until like 2012 or something you said? What did you get into after college?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I was like a raft guide in like a bartender. So I worked at Rocky Mountain Adventures. Yep. And I guided Whitewater, been down those a few times. And then I worked at Wanderlust. Interesting. A Wanderlust adventure, which is under Verns Yep. Out there in LaPorte. Yep. Yep. Um, various

Speaker 3:

bars around town and I

Speaker 2:

worked at restaurants and bars around town. Do you remember Stonehouse Grill? Sure. I definitely, um. Learned a lot there and had great managers noticed. Yeah. Steve actually,

Speaker:

uh, no. Was, it was before Steve. Steve made it the east. Thing Or the, the Caribbean bar. After the stone house? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, it

Speaker 3:

was, um, the Sutherlands. Sutherlands, yeah. Oh, okay. Interesting. Her, her father, back when I was in junior high, her father was captured, uh, an Iranian professor that was captured and held hostage. Oh. And it was this, then he got released in a hostage release and it was Oh. And was from Fort Collins. Interesting. And he came to Blevins and talked to us, and then she, he has since passed, but his daughter was part owner of Sutherlands. I think it was one of her. Okay.

Speaker:

Of Stonehouse of Stone or of Stonehouse. Yeah. That was probably the. Probably the most successful concept in that building, I would say would. So they did great. They did. I mean, honestly, since they, since then, it's been, yeah, tough times. And Topanga isn't busy enough to pay the rent there, unfortunately. It's a very big building. I upstairs can carry some weight, but mm-hmm. That's tough too. You, it's just a big building. Mm-hmm. Right. A lot of stairs, a lot of wait stuff to keep you strong. Throwing up

Speaker 3:

in for Collins, I have just noticed, and I'm sure your commercial real estate friends can say this too, but there's some places that just take, and there's some places that are like, it's like there's a curse on the door. Yeah. I mean the location, like

Speaker:

think about how much more money the restaurants. Or Austin's has made, compared to the place directly across the streets. Yeah. Which is now its fifth concept, fifth in 12 years or something. And probably none of them made a dollar. Yeah. It's, it went backwards. Yeah. Every one of'em went backwards while they were open and then they licked their wounds and, and somebody else can try it. Mm-hmm. I don't know. Yeah, you're right. It does seem, and

Speaker 3:

people, and it's weird. And what's the logic, man? People come in with Yeah. People come in with great ideas and, you know, it's like, yeah, that should fly. Yeah. And it's just like, I, you know, I don't know if it's'cause people don't like to make a left instead of a right or Right. Is there just that much more parking on mountain maybe, maybe

Speaker:

west of. College than there is Eastern. Better,

Speaker 3:

stronger drinks on the north side of mountain than there is on the south side. Have more sun. I dunno.

Speaker:

I dunno. Um, okay, so, so you guys buy, was it just a piece of property when you first Yeah. So

Speaker 3:

let me give you a little more context. Sure. So we, so we went down there with, she had the internship and then I went actually to work for one lodge and it pittered out. Didn't really come to fruition because you

Speaker:

were already like a passionate fly fishing guy or whatever. Yeah, I'd already, I was a

Speaker 3:

fly fishing guy up here in Walden, Colorado. Okay. And, you know, in various places. And then, uh, and then when I went down there, I got a job and it just didn't turn out to be anything. Okay.

Speaker 4:

But I got

Speaker 3:

noticed by, uh, this other person that this Argentine man who owned a lodge there, and he's like, well, what are you doing down here? I'm like, well, I kind of came down, but I don't even want to tell you what I'm doing. And he's like, well, yeah, but you're a gringo in this valley. What you doing? I'm like, well, I'm a fly fisherman. And he's like, oh really? And so they had, uh. They had closed the lodge down for about a year and a half'cause of a volcano. Oh. And he was like, I really want to open it up again. And he is like, you know, I was like, yeah, but I

Speaker:

don't really have a good Yeah. Guide right now. Yeah. And he's like,

Speaker 3:

I don't have a good guide. And I was like, yeah, I mean, if you ever need help, my girlfriend's

Speaker:

down here and she's got a job, but I don't, yeah. If you ever need help, let us know.

Speaker 3:

And he's like, well, what about, you know, I hire you, fly you and your wife down here and you run the whole thing. And we were like, so sign me up. Right. The trailhead can wait. So that took place and then that set the context. So through the course of that, we started meeting all the people in our valley. And this is, I mean, you're talking old world here, like old European world, this is right. Six families in the valley. Our neighbor has 17 children, huge tracks of land. Wow. And they're estate almost. They're all intermarried like estate. And they're all intermarried.

Speaker 2:

The different families are intermarried, not the same. And are these right?

Speaker:

Are these. Spanish families mostly. Yeah. Or the German families. Some of them Cortes. Well, we have,

Speaker 2:

I think it's, I thinks history. There's, you know, a lot of, lot of Spain and Germany. Yeah. Lot of former Nazis

Speaker:

went to Argentina and Chile Arg and stuff. Arg. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So as soon as you go over the border, so we're on a border town, and as soon as you go over the border into Argentina, it looks like Laramie. Mm.

Speaker:

Uh,

Speaker 3:

it's dry, it's arid. That's the Patagonian step.

Speaker:

It's kind of like the Colorado, Wyoming border. It's, it's, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3:

And uh, there you have the Welch, you have the British, you have the German, and that's when you start to see the blonde hair, the blue eyes. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. All the Nazis. And then everybody calls, you know, cake Khin and the post Khin

Speaker 2:

is like a German word. It's a German word. Oh, cool. Yeah, Coolen.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, they're

Speaker 2:

using German words and the architecture's hands, the, the architecture looks German, Hans Gretel.

Speaker 3:

And it's very interesting. It's very interesting. Yes. Very

Speaker 2:

much an influence, I would say for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But our valley, they, they're, they look like they're from. South America, they look like they're native. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, they're, you know, just quite short, dark hair and yeah. A fair amount

Speaker:

of indigenous mixed in with this original Spanish. Yes, I would agree. Yeah. Like most of Mexico kind. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Did you know that Colombians looked different than other South Americans?'cause they wiped out all the indigenous rather than in breeding. Yeah. Did not know that. I learned that on our podcast, uh, last fall, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

There was a lot of things that happened. Uh, like, you know, we had our atrocities here and we definitely had theirs down there too, too. There's been lots of'em everywhere. Like that's humans, like human

Speaker:

nature. Anyway, I digress. We try to be better than that. Yeah, certainly. So, so you got, so one more question about the, the geographic setting. You mentioned our valley. Is there like a dozen similar valleys staggering down here? Or is it really a special, unique place, or?

Speaker 3:

It's a very unique valley, uh, because it, this river is called the Fu River. It's a Mauche word for Bigfoot, which is kind of what Patagonia means as well. Um, but, or no, it's for Big River, right?

Speaker 2:

Poodle Fu means big river. Big

Speaker 3:

river. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Patagonia means big foot. Okay. Um, and meaning

Speaker:

a foot be more like a, a step or a, a flat? It's, I think it's,

Speaker 3:

cause there was Jurassic, there was dinosaurs down there. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of Dr. Dinosaurs in that area. Um, anyway, yeah. So we have a, a valley with this giant crystal river going right through it. And it, it's really famous for whitewater rafting. Mm. Uh, as far as we, I mean, it's famous in Chile for just being Patagonia green and beautiful. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. But the but among

Speaker:

raft nerds, I heard about it from the raft ting and kayaking community. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes,

Speaker 2:

I did. That's where I found my internship was at Recommended Ventures. Gotcha. Um, if you go into that store, there's like a bunch of signs that show, you know, um,

Speaker 4:

kind of different, a

Speaker 2:

little arrow and how far away how many hundreds of miles or thousands of miles. There was an arrow that said Food, la fu you know, five or six or 7,000 miles away. And I was like, what's that? And so that's how I found out, huh. About that place and got an internship that way.

Speaker:

Okay. Yeah. And so you're, you're managing this lodge mm-hmm. Couple years later. Yeah. Yeah. It like all year you're the managers. Are you coming back to run the business? No, you just gotta run it for the few months, a year that they're actually open. The rest of the year it's cold and nobody comes, couple whatever, seasonal. Okay. Interesting. Mm-hmm. Um, and then like through that experience, you learn about. Property for sale kind of thing. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3:

Is that how this shakes out? Yeah. We, you know, we used to party with our friends down there and at one point we, I was like, you know, I really, you know, we'd like to buy a piece of property and Yeah. Uh, but we don't wanna buy it on these tributary River. We wanted water property. Yeah. And we didn't wanna buy it on these tributary rivers. And, and so we just kind of floated it out there. If anyone knows anybody, you hear of something wants Yeah. And right across the river from the lodge we worked at, our friend was like, yeah, my brother's trying to sell one hectare in our family ranch, right. On the river. And he wants to move to town, which is like

Speaker:

10

Speaker 3:

acres or something. It's like 2.7 acres. Acres. 3.7, 3.7 acres,

Speaker 2:

3.75, three and a three and three quarters acres. Plenty of land dude riverfront. Right, right, right, right. Riverfront, riverfront property.

Speaker 3:

I mean, something unveil this would cost me 8 million. Nothing on, you know, so.

Speaker 2:

But you know, it didn't look like it had, it was still a chunk though, when you bought it. Right? It didn't look like it had a lot of value.'cause you know, there's no electricity or road remember, right? Mm-hmm. So we were just like, we were smitten. We loved it. Uh, they let us even stay in the cabin for a weekend, chest it out. Oh, it had cabin

Speaker:

already on it had a little cabin tin cabin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A

Speaker 2:

little tin roof cabin. And the bathroom was like an outhouse up the hill. You know, the long

Speaker 6:

drop dude, deep pit. Yep. One, two. And she did that pregnant. She did that. Oh

Speaker 2:

yeah. In the years to come, the stories only get better because I'm going down there at six months pregnant, having to go up the hill to use the bathroom in the rain. You are a good

Speaker 4:

sport.

Speaker 2:

It, it was crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I think what we fell in love with was the view, so. Imagine you're sitting on, uh, the side of a mountain on a deck looking to the east, and the sun is sitting behind you. So the, the mountain range in front is illuminated

Speaker 4:

Argentina,

Speaker 2:

so it's like pink.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Yeah. And

Speaker 2:

it's gorgeous. And that whole section of mountain is a protected preserve. Mm-hmm. And there's like this huge waterfall coming down in our view. I mean, we looked at it and we were like, whoa, should we buy this? And then we saw this and much, was it double rainbow? We were like

Speaker 3:

18 grand. And to us, back then, it was like the world. I mean, we had to borrow, like, I remember her dad's in real estate, my dad's an attorney. And you know, we were like, we're gonna give this guy, you know, we have five grand on us and we're gonna give'em, and then we'll come back next year. And yeah, we paid them over time. My parents were like, we weren't even married. You're crazy. You're never gonna get the title for this thing. You're nuts. You're just throwing money out the window. I remember, I remember we came up with this thing saying, you know, we. Uh, this little title or little agreement on

Speaker 2:

a Hello Kitty notepad.

Speaker 3:

Right, right. Okay. But we came up with ours and we were embarrassed to give it to'em'cause it was like a handshake. These are gauchos. All they have is their word and their pride. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so we went up, did your family background. Help qualify you with

Speaker:

them? Kind

Speaker 3:

of. Kind of, because I was, she didn't speak Spanish. I didn't really speak Spanish, but they liked me. You know, I knew, I knew the, I knew the farm life and uh, they, they definitely liked me, but at the same time, it's just business maybe. Yeah. Maybe they were impressed

Speaker 2:

with his riding'cause he is good at riding a horse. Oh, okay. So that might've impressed them. Yeah. Yeah. But we were friends with the youngest. Son, if you, uh, the story was that the youngest son brought us to his brother's place and showed it to us. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So can you, so I

Speaker 3:

didn't really know the brother. But anyway, so we make this agreement and then I tell my dad and she and I tell her dad who's a real estate guy out in Indiana, and you know, they're like, well, you're gonna have to sign this agreement and you're gonna have to make sure. So we sent, made up this little tiny, like four paragraph thing right. About, you know, we'll this, if I pay you this time, if I pay you this, this I'll get you water. When my landscaping, or we wanted to make sure we had water always. Oh, right. Because, you know, if we didn't have the water coming off the hill, the property's pretty much Right.

Speaker:

Right. You can't dip outta the, the water. And they owned all around us. Don't get access to the water out of the river.

Speaker 3:

We do get access to the water out, but it's easier if it's gravity. We had a, we had water above us. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Anyway, point is, is we brought this, and my one friend was like, I wouldn't even take that to Chocho because you're wor you know, if he's, that's

Speaker 2:

the owner at the time. Chocho.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And, and I was like, okay, but I gotta have some sort of agreement. He is like, well, Chilean's are very legal, so. Just take it to him. Yeah. And the worst he could say is No. Yeah. Just pay me when you get back. All of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's because I wanted to pay him some. Yeah. Then pay him a little bit more when the landscaping started and I got my fee going out here, and then pay him the rest when I got back and we went to the notia. So anyway, I bring him this thing and have him sign it and he's like. Hm, okay. I'll sign it. And then he breaks out like this Hello kitty notepad, like as if it's gonna hold up in, in court. And he is like, well, you sign this. And I was like, sure, sure. Yeah. This is in Spanish, right? Yeah. You can't even read it and you can read it. I, I

Speaker 2:

studied Spanish all through high school and college, so I was pretty much the one doing all the interpreting. Yeah, fair. It was really stressful, but we got it. We got it

Speaker 3:

and we sent all the money when we said we would, we got the title, we went to the notary, everything's signed. And,

Speaker:

and what's, if I may, what's the property now? Have you built it out some or is it still okay? Yeah,

Speaker 3:

we've done stuff, we've got three structures on it, and then we got like a little party room down by the river that's got like a chimney because it rains a lot money. So like amount of money. Families rent

Speaker:

the whole place a lot of times or people just come and stay. Oh, okay. No, we

Speaker 2:

keep it closed, so it's still kind of Oh, just your place? A seasonal cabin. Oh, okay. Okay. So you're

Speaker:

not monetizing it yet really?

Speaker 2:

Really we aren't yet. Um, but that's, we got plans too. That's because it's kind of complicated, like to get the water is this whole system. And then the heat is the califon system, which is that instant hot water system where you run it through the, so

Speaker:

you're still kind of building the infrastructure to be able to. Sort of right. Maybe. Yeah. If we wanted, it's pretty

Speaker 2:

great if we wanted

Speaker 3:

to do a commercial the way, like we have hot water, we have running water, we have, uh, electricity, refrigerators, microwave, you know, everything. But we

Speaker 2:

didn't before, but we do now.

Speaker 3:

If we, if we wanted to do something commercial, we'd have to, you know, probably put up a really fine structure. Yeah, I know, I know. It needs to be done in that realm. And if you know you're paying top dollar, you're not gonna wanna sleep in a cab. Even in today's world, uh, yeah, it's gonna be another half million dollar investment or something. Yeah, exactly. But to that level, yeah. But, uh, yeah, location, location, location. Even today's, but

Speaker:

down there, like mm-hmm. 50 grand don't go as far as it used to in Chi either, probably. No, it doesn't.

Speaker 2:

But it's, what it is, is it's big enough to fit our family. We can stay there. Um, we can open it up for a month and just stay, you know, and use it. And then we have, uh, you know, the relationship ended up being amazing with this family. So Chocho is like, you know, a brothers to us. Us grandpa. Yeah. Uncle, uncle Chocho. Um, their youngest one who's my age, PE Yuka, he's like a dear friend that we've been friends with for 20 years. His mother and I were really close and she taught me how to make cheese milk cows and make cheese. Yeah. Yeah. She passed away last year and she'll be missed. And so the whole family is super cool. They're amazing. They invite us to all their barbecues.

Speaker:

What a neat thing. Um, so for two or three months a year, you guys are down there? Or not that long usually.'cause it's hard. It

Speaker 2:

used to be longer. Yeah. But we have teenage kids now, so there's just a lot to that. There's

Speaker 3:

some resistance. Yeah. Well, they wanna go. It's just a matter of taking'em out during the middle of the school year. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It's more that, um,

Speaker:

it could be C-F-O-C-I-E and homeschool mom. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's

Speaker 2:

true. It could, I did the homeschool thing when we were, when they were little and we were down there. Oh, really? Second and third grade type of thing. It's, it's kind of hard. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So if you took away the fly fishing and the lodge and the work and all the romanticism of all that the people down there are Yeah. Are what is, so that's what keeps, keeps you coming back life. Yeah. So, yeah. That's cool. Even though I haven't been involved commercially down there for 10 years or more. I mean, going down there, seeing all now, all of our friends, we used to all be rafting bums. Right. And now my friend runs a rafting company. Somebody else's a restaurant. Yeah. It's a restaurant. All of our friends own businesses now. Cool. So it's kind of cool. And now our kids are getting, like, older, so, um, how old are your kids now? 12 and 14. Okay. 12

Speaker 2:

and 14. And so are their kids. So some of our dearest friends are raising kids the same age as us, so we go and have. They call it a pja. It's a pajama party. And so we'll go and stay at their house for like the New Year's Day, new Year's Eve. Mm-hmm. And let the girls and the kids and the boys play. And then what a special, we stay up late and have barbecue. You know, I dunno, we've

Speaker:

talked about it. But Jill and I host exchange students, Uhhuh, and we'll have our 13th coming soon. And so we get these little, you know, three to six to 10 month seasons of having this cultural experience. But that durable cultural experience and just long lasting friendships, it sounds like such a different kind of thing than most Americans or even most people, frankly. Experience. Yeah. It really is. So kudos to you for cultivating that continuously. It's touching for sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's really nice. It's nice to to know, uh, these relationships are so strong. It had been several years since I had been down there like five Oh wow. Or something.'cause of COVID, et cetera, et cetera. Sure. So I hadn't seen a bunch of people in a long time. And I get down there, I'm like, man, do are, are they still my friends or am I gonna. You know, be, be all alone down here. Am I gonna see people? What am I gonna do? The bored? Next thing I know, my entire calendar is full because they've invited me. Everybody can't wait to see that something every night. It's crazy. Um, they're just the most loving kind people. And they, they drink mate, and they sit around and talk and they have all the time in the world. For you

Speaker:

mate is a fermented drink? No, it's kind of like coffee, but it's they

Speaker 2:

yerba mate.

Speaker:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's that loose leaf tea's. Yeah. Yeah. And you put it in a little special cup and then you have a special straw with like a strainer at the bottom. Okay. You pour the water in and you strain, you sip it through the straw. So they share that. Oh wow. They pass it around. Interesting. There's a person who pours their drink and you fill the

Speaker 3:

water back up kind of almost. Yes, yes. Yeah. Fun. Yeah. And you don't get, you know, a lot of people in North America always think, you know, south America owe drugs and cartels. Well, once you get passed. Peru and you go south. Like there's, I mean, there's drugs obviously. Sure you can get whatever you want, but at the same time, you know, there's not the cartel around, there's no culture around it, there's no violence, no crime. It's very conservative old world.

Speaker:

I have a, uh, I have an interesting, uh, offering for you guys. Uh, tell me what you think that is. Take a sip. It's, it's safe, I promise. Tomato okay. Kombucha.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely kombucha.

Speaker:

It is kombucha. And, uh, can you have any hints on what I used? Uh, either for flavoring or sweetener in, because sometimes I do brew it with yerba mate, like

Speaker 2:

a Chile, like a little chili pepper or something.

Speaker:

No, but it's intriguing, uh, because it does have a, kind of a funny, it has a kick overlay that's, it's actually, uh, I replaced most of the sugar with black strap molasses.

Speaker 4:

Oh.

Speaker:

So it's like super dark. Mm-hmm. And, uh, earthy kind of, and I think I used. Blueberry herbal tea to give it a little bit more earthy. Still it's a little bit rough actually, if I'm being honest. I like rough stuff. It was in there for a while. Some So you're fu kombucha

Speaker 2:

maker.

Speaker:

I've been kombucha for over five years. If you want a mother, let me know. I've, and I've got all the, all the stuff. Yeah, yeah. No, I've, uh, in January of 2020. Okay. So I've been drinking basically a gallon of kombucha every week since then.'cause I have two one gallon things. So you must

Speaker 2:

be a sourdough guy then too?

Speaker:

No. Okay. Um, I'm not yet. But if you have sourdough, you'd like to trade for kombucha. Right. I'm your man. I was thinking are you in the he mother? I would say so. At least. Uh, I try to be. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

She very much is. Tag along. I mean, I, I'm into health, food, and whole food. I, yeah. I, you know, I can't say I'm the healthiest either, but I don't eat any junk food. Right. And out and no sugar pops.

Speaker:

That's kind of me too. Mostly like, I try, but I love to eat. I eat a lot. Right. I eat probably too much. I eat occasional pasta and stuff, but mostly we're like salads and vegetables and fruits and meat. Nice. And that's about it. Yep. Yeah, she's, and a lot of kombucha.

Speaker 3:

She's very

Speaker:

conscious about this. Yeah. I wrote a, you, if you've, uh, I have a blog from years ago now, I guess July of 19 probably. Uh, give me liberty or give me health.

Speaker 4:

Nice. Oh nice. Uh,

Speaker:

and it's basically, you know, if you want to have freedom, keep your ass out of the healthcare system. Yeah.'cause those fuckers will attach their prescriptions to you and their pinchers, and they'll suck you in until you're on eight of them.

Speaker 3:

That's, I think, the new healthcare system I'm on, is don't go into the hospital, stay healthy and stay upright as long as possible. Yeah. Kind of get

Speaker:

checkups, get checked out, you know, do scans or things. I'm. Colonoscopy in the fall.

Speaker 4:

Ooh,

Speaker:

yes. Love that word. 50 last year. And my doctor, I got a new doctor and she was like, what's your excuse for not getting a colonoscopy last year when you turn 50? And I was like, I hear they suck.

Speaker 3:

I don't want to really, we always joke because whenever we're, we tend to be around our second generation, older than us, the word colonoscopy always happens to come up around the dinner table or something. It's like, why do we have to be talking about this right now? It's like, can you watch the dog while we go do this? It's like, Hey, hey, well, during my colonoscopy,

Speaker:

nothing like colonoscopy stories. Would you like this, by the way? If you, if you jive with that or you can have that. I, yeah. I got a whole jug outside there.

Speaker 2:

I have a question. You were talking about having 13, uh, exchange students. Yeah. Exchange students. Have you had a Chilean.

Speaker:

Not yet. No. Okay. But if you've got a family that wants to send us one, we would do that. Um, incoming is an Italian.

Speaker 2:

Oh, nice

Speaker:

girl, Sarah. And she's the little sister of Enrico who stayed with us. Three years ago. Nice.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so

Speaker:

it's our first like inter family kind of thing. That's cool. And so I hope that in the future we'll be able to go to Italy a couple, few times. Mm-hmm. And, and maybe even host them back here again with their,'cause their parents are our age now. What? Right. Cool. Younger a lot of times. What's the context

Speaker 3:

of the

Speaker:

exchange?

Speaker 3:

Are you, are they going to school at cs u? Are they No. Hanging, usually hanging out. Usually

Speaker:

we, we've done either Rotary Club or Greenheart. Cool. And uh, Greenheart is what we've been doing lately, and it's either a semester or a full year. Last year we did a full year with a young man from Finland.

Speaker 2:

What age are these people? Um,

Speaker:

and they're six, sorry, 16, 15, high, 18. Okay. So they go to putter. Okay. Um, Jill and I live on, on LA Port, so it's a mile and a half west by bicycle. Where are your neighbors? Are you I did, I didn't know if I knew that.

Speaker 3:

Overland in Mulberry area. Okay. Yeah, right down the road. Putter's our backyard. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh,

Speaker:

so yeah, they go to putter high school if they're, if they should be a senior, they can't be a senior anymore, they have to be a junior'cause they don't let'em graduate. Mm of whether or not the classes count for some reason. Okay. So that's annoying. And for many kids the classes don't count'cause they're not hard enough to qualify for the Italian school system system or the finish school system System. Mm-hmm. System. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

We're both strong believers in, Mary has always said like, as soon as our kids are of age 18, we're setting'em on a backpacking trip through a different country. You know, where go.'cause we think submersing yourself in those cultures be, you know, experiencing d the way different people live and, and just understanding humanity more is like so important. Well, lemme

Speaker:

know if you wanna get connected with Greenheart. They're always looking for kids to send out. Absolutely. Well, um, and. We've decided not to take fifteens anymore. We've had a couple of, not quite mature, you know, but mm-hmm. They get there. But 16, 17 year olds are probably, especially with you guys, dragging'em down to chili all the time and stuff, they're probably ready to go. Yeah. Um, yeah,

Speaker 2:

our kids are pretty well traveled. Yeah.

Speaker:

Doesn't nothing surprise me. Should we talk about landscaping at all?

Speaker 2:

I guess I'm just kidding.

Speaker:

So tell me about like, who, uh, who your customers are. What do you guys do for them? Is it full service? Do you do installs? Yeah. Do you do maintenance? Mm-hmm. It's

Speaker 3:

full service. We do install, we do maintenance design too, porting in the winter. We do design, we do irrigation, we do snow removal. Um, we're kind of trans transforming our business away from, we do some high end residential, but we've really been taking on like commercial properties lately. Okay. As far as the maintenance goes. And that's kind of bled into the, uh, install and construction side of things. Um, but we still do a lot of residential stuff. Just regular. Yeah.

Speaker:

Regular residential. Turn on your sprinklers. Mow, mow your lawns. Yes. Do your fertilizer. Mm-hmm. Do you do just lawn mow mowing and stuff, or you kind of want more than just

Speaker 2:

No, we're full service. So when we take on a new client, we like, we'll make a grass look nice. Full service.

Speaker 3:

That kind of thing. It's usually it, we structure it like a year contract. Okay. So if you're just mowing, um, it'll be like a 30 week contract, you know? And then we, some people want full weed service and, you know, gardening. And we do five applications a year with a, you know, we do all gardening well. So like if I've got a my tomato garden, you guys will come pull. We, for me. Not that, no keeping, keeping like perennial beds in shape and curb appeal more garden makes garden sense. Okay.

Speaker:

Because I'd love if somebody pulled my weeds in my tomato garden.

Speaker 3:

Well, we do actually do some. Basic gardening, but you know, it's people, people, some people want basically they don't have the time. Yeah. They have very nice places. And you don't want'em to go Yeah. Completely south you and if you're not on top of'em every week, you can't just mow it otherwise it'll go No, you're right. So they pay, they pay to keep it mow. Especially if you're putting a lot of

Speaker:

water on it so that everything's voluptuous, then it gets going sideways pretty fast. Yeah. Okay. And is it all custom contracts then? Like it's, mm-hmm. Okay. We've got, your yard is x square feet, this is the suite of services that we're doing. Mm-hmm. And beep, beep, beep, boop. Yep. This is your price. Yes, it is all

Speaker 2:

custom. It's based on the house. It's based on their, uh, the size of their gate. Can we get the bigger mower through? Gotcha. If we can't, then we have to use the smaller mower, um, what services they do and do not want, but we have kind of a minimum amount of services to provide that turf tamer level of quality, so. Right, right. Um, yeah. And those systems

Speaker:

is what you've been building the last, uh, 10 years especially. Yeah, we

Speaker 3:

certainly, we, I would say we pride ourself in like. Our customer service right now. I mean, we, we provide a great product, but you know, the big thing with landscaping is you can't get ahold of anybody. Yeah. You know, that's a common, and we, we answer the phone, our guy is, uh. Our office manager is amazing and both of the people in our office are amazing. And then, you know, it's, it's small. So we're able to be, you know, have that point of contact. Yeah. Right there, you know, and then for our commercial properties, we really do, you know, if water's running, it's a turnaround immediately. And then, you know, usually generally within 48 hours we can do just about anything. Scramble somebody and Yeah. Yeah. Get, you know, get'em to a tenant if they have an issue. You know,

Speaker:

that commercial maintenance is kind of a nice baseline revenue every month. Exactly. You can count on it kind of thing. Uhhuh, otherwise it's a little seasonal or quite a bit seasonal, right? Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And we're evening that out with snow removal and um, just winter services for the commercial properties, meaning just going by and picking up any branches and cleaning out the trash. Trash in trash. The parking lot, whatever.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. That's like porting we call it. It's okay. Yeah. You go through, you know, say a storm came through and blew a bunch of trash or, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Some high school kids dumped all their right contents of their car out in the parking spot.

Speaker:

Right, right. Homeless. People homeless. Oh yeah. You get to, yeah. We actually sometimes had

Speaker 3:

some people from City of Fort Collins come and instruct our guys how to like deescalate and, um, and we're really proud of our, our crew, you know, so all of our guys, we do some schools around town, and so all our guys are kind of background checked and, uh, you know, they're good kids to talk to. And, and, uh, so we've had people come in and talk about like deescalating homeless situations. Unfortunately, it's part of our job, especially in the Metro district in Old Town, Fort Collins. Uh, you know, but generally, you know, yeah. People are, you know, north college, there's some spots that you can kind of count on Yeah. Encountering Yeah. So, yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, don't, don't, don't plow, don't plow'em away if they're sleeping on the side of the road.

Speaker:

Yes. That probably, uh, increase your insurance rates. Right. Um, and so, so that's kind of a traditional, um, landscaping firm in that regard with, with a kind of a higher touch customer service model sounds like. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm. I would say, yeah. I think what makes this really different, like he said, is we have a very great headquarters. We're really responsive. Mm-hmm. I mean, very fast. And even in the busiest time of the year, we're getting back to people day. That is

Speaker:

one difference I hear like already as you describe it.'cause a lot of landscape companies with 20 employees might only really have like one office person that's really just sending them out to this and that, whatever. And all that is, is traffic control. But there is really no, no service element to, and no way to weave it in easily.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. We really built out, um, the structure of the company these past few years. Uh, meaning we're, we're, the systems are in place and we have this amazing account manager who takes really good care of our customers. And then I have a bookkeeper, um, who is wonderful at organizing and taking a lot of the tedious stuff off of my plate. Sure, sure. I can really have that 30,000 foot view. I oftentimes am looking at it. Saying, Brian, do you think we should do this instead of this for next year? Yeah. And kind of trying to really look at the larger picture so that, uh, as the future comes, everything gets smoother and smoother and smoother.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because Kurt, what really matters to us is our quality of life. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

We

Speaker 2:

have a killer schedule. Brian and I get off at four. We hang out with each other, we chill with our kids. We don't work till 8:00 PM we go to the pool and we chill with our family. Yeah. And, um, we've wanted it that way ever since the beginning. Um, and so bringing these people into our office has really kept our quality of life. Yeah. We can take a vacation to see my family in the middle of the summer, and we're totally confident. Wow. Leaving everybody. Um, we went to, yeah. It wasn't always like that. I mean, we've

Speaker 3:

become that in the last three years, you know. Well, I mean,

Speaker:

I mean, honestly, when you and I met Mary, you were kind of. In the earlier year. Yeah. Yeah. Times of that. And, uh, it, I have to ask a question here and I hope it's not insulting any means, but you were talking about kind of the 30,000 foot view and stuff. Yeah. Are you the, the visionary and he's the integrator, more of this power couple in business. He

Speaker 2:

really has a lot of vision. He's a visionary too. So you're both visionaries maybe. Um, I just

Speaker:

hear him talking about the getting shit done, kind of part of it. Maybe. He definitely did get shit done, guy.

Speaker 3:

But, but as far, I mean, I have a vision of what, what we wanna do. She, uh, definitely is bringing in like the technology and, you know, we have this whole system for training now. Yeah. And, uh, to keep us all on the same pages. But I would say

Speaker:

she's still in the helper role ultimately to get to that vision.

Speaker 2:

Vision, yeah. The thing is, is that he's in the middle of. All of the operations. So he's busier than me by a lot right now. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas I can sit back at the office, finish my regular work, and then start thinking about, yeah. And right now I'm working on the 2026 budget, so I'm thinking about the future. Yeah. In my everyday right now. Yeah. Yeah. And we both kind of like to, well,

Speaker:

in building a system

Speaker 3:

is hard takes. It takes some time. She likes data and we, and over the last five years with all the input, you know, everything's on people's phone, we're time tracked. And so we picture submitted so we can actually look back at the data and use it as a rudder to kind. That's so cool. Steer the, so

Speaker:

you can be like, you know, our, our revenue per crew and Oh yeah. We have revenue per hour one. Mm-hmm. Oh cool.

Speaker 2:

We can, we can gauge revenue per hour. We've

Speaker 3:

been really working on metrics. We've been really working on,

Speaker 2:

uh, all the, all the things you would think of close ratios and profit margins and, um. Budgeted hours. Wow. Um, all of that is just wonderfully dashboarded and in front of my face, and I can use it at any point. What

Speaker:

do you use for software? Is it a industry specific thing?

Speaker 2:

Yes. Okay. It's a landscaping software called LMN, landscape Management Network. Okay. I've been using it for, since, well,

Speaker 3:

God, like 2014 I think. Yeah. Like a lot of years. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I, I met the owner, we went to these, you know, this, you know, the chief technology, um, officer. Okay. Also, we went to these conferences and met these people and learned about their systems and they trained all of us and it's a really deep, wide, and huge software. Yeah. And it almost took me a, a whole season to get through all of the different things that they offer, and they have like, I don't know everything you like,

Speaker:

which of these things do I want to incorporate into our business at what scale? Mm-hmm. Kind of thing. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

So you've got your CRM. You're estimating. Then you have, uh, all the scheduling on like a cool calendar thing. Then the time tracking and the time sheets. And those are a, an app Wow. That the guys use on their phone. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

They can upload pictures, they can leave notes. All those notes are accessible by the customer if they sign up for the portal. Yep. The customer can send in requests through the portal. Wow. So you can see like, it's amazing you're hitting their

Speaker 3:

backyard transform. You can kind of see like where we're at on, you know, like a gauge of Yeah. What percentage of completion virtually and stuff. Scoreboard. Oh wow. So we have a

Speaker:

change orders. Hey, I know we ordered the gray slate, but now that I'll look at it, I'm really thinking the red slate would be nicer there. Mm-hmm. Or whatever. Exactly.

Speaker 3:

And, and also it helps us also. L Litigiously, you know, it's like, right. You guys didn't do this. Well, actually we, here's a picture of it. You were at work. They were there

Speaker 2:

from 1141 to 1257 actually, because they're GPS tracked and they were there and they did this. So it helps. It's, it's important. It's great. Yeah. Interesting. Commercial, I would say for commercial properties is specifically, we don't have to be reactionary. We can be proactive. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4:

We

Speaker 2:

can go onto the property, take all these pictures, show them through the portal what's going on, and be like, Hey, can you give me permission to go ahead and just take care of this stuff?

Speaker 4:

Right. And in

Speaker 2:

the next visit we can do it. So what's it's, and then we can prove what we've done. We can show the before and after pictures. Mm. And a lot we can take pictures of a leak and say, Hey, see how it's leaking. Do you want me to, you know, a lot of

Speaker 3:

our property owners, commercial property owners are outta state actually. So they call us. And then we we're actually the eyes and ears. We even have people. You're also a property maintenance company? Yeah. Well, we have people, uh, same thing that we have their garage code personal residence, because they're out. They're out. You know, they spend the summers in a different state. Right, right. And, uh, so, you know, we are kind of the eyes and ears Yeah. For them on their property. Interesting. Uhhuh. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker:

That's an intriguing, like it's, it's much more than just mow your lawn and fertilizer. It is kind of thing. It is. Comes down to it.

Speaker 3:

We, we, you know, I wouldn't say it's

Speaker:

like white glove for whoever wants it a little bit. Whoever. Yes. Yeah. Whoever's willing to pay it's landscaping for, because we're a premium. Right. We're really,

Speaker 2:

we're a high-end landscaping company. Okay. But we're trustworthy and we do a really great job. Yeah. And we hire really good people. Yeah. You

Speaker:

have a lot of middle income families that choose you anyway. Yeah. Truly

Speaker 3:

our street presence is, you know, our kids are learned to. Clean up after every job, every day. And we just do a really good street presence. And you know, there, there's tiny things that just make a difference that I've learned throughout the years. And at that being at that point, there's a lot of other good landscaping companies around too. Sure. You know, that we, I don't think there's really any sort of competition for the market. We,

Speaker:

I had, uh, Zach George on a few months ago, I don't know if you listen to that episode. Yeah, we did listen to it. Yeah, we did

Speaker 3:

to it. He actually, uh, I've never met Zach, but seemed like a great guy in the interview. Yeah. I mean, his, his team just sent over a couple leads for us. Oh, that's cool. Randomly. Yeah. These random, small for us or whatever. Yeah. It doesn't, our model, it works out. We all kind of like scratch each other. Well, he was

Speaker:

saying that it's really hard in your size like that, at least for him, in that kind of 10 to 20 something employees, it was hard for him to have, you know, it seems probably he just didn't build his system soon enough. Would be a speculation. You know, there's every, there's a, there's just different model, a void

Speaker 3:

to be filled anywhere. You know, like there is a place for the one guy with the mow and blow Sure. And the truck and the trailer and uh, you know, then there's like the midsize guy like me and then there's Zach and Yeah. He could pull off much larger progress projects that you could probably, that I would never be able to bandwidth. Right. That he would, you know? Right, right. And, uh, so we, we, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And again, our focus is, yeah, we can still make a profit doing what we do, and our focus is keeping it so that we can have that quality of life that we're looking for. That's kind of our measure of success in the future.

Speaker:

Ha. Go back up to three and a half months in Chile in the winter time instead of just a month and a half. Definitely. We, I think that

Speaker 3:

with some of the, with the technology now, I mean, I could have a, a tourism. Thing going on in the winter down in Chile. I could have the landscaping up here. We also have a fly fish. I have a fly fishing outfit here in Colorado. Oh, you do too. And so we do. Do you guide or you have other guides? Yeah, I guide I, it's a kind of a personal thing. I don't really have employees. Yeah. If you needed a two boat trip, I could do Okay. But I do the North Plat up in Wyoming. Oh, cool. So I'm permitted to do basically the whole north platform, the Wyoming, Colorado border up by Walden. All over the ca. You're permitted

Speaker:

or so you gotta have like a special permit to Oh yeah. Do that kind of kind of work. I wasn't, I'm not familiar. It's a commercial operation I suppose. Yeah, just like a rafkin company. You pay X amount insurance. All of you've been permitted

Speaker 2:

since. Probably 2007 or eight. So

Speaker:

you take enough clients to pay for the permit and call it pretty square. At this point, it's

Speaker 3:

kind of more of a hobby, but I do plan on doing it more in, in the future if I, if my body holds up.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Well,

Speaker:

I mean, if

Speaker 3:

that's something

Speaker:

you find joy in.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. He has repeat customers, you know, he has these guys who call every year, so he doesn't really even have to look for clientele because there's a loyal clientele base that just comes every time, every season when it's good.

Speaker:

Some of whom will probably come down to Chile when you're ready to host. Yeah. Some of'em already have. That's true. A lot

Speaker 3:

of we have, you know, like I said, if. If you're, if you're paying big bucks, you want the chocolate on your pillow, but if you're just coming down to party, my house is perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I'm already thinking when Jill and I are ready for our PAG trip, I'll be, uh, checking

Speaker:

in with you. Yeah. I'm happy to do an outhouse. Well, we don't have an outhouse now. We're all, we've got electric. We got all stuff. Hot shower, all of it, dude.

Speaker 2:

Flushing toilets. It's divine.

Speaker:

We'll, uh, I'll give you, uh, a month with the ambulance, camper van. Oh, two weeks your cabin. Cutting. Um, well I wanna go back a little bit. Um, I feel like we've kind of touched on a lot of things, but go back to where both of you guys really came from and, and started becoming you. But I wanna do it after a short break. Sure. So we'll be right back. Let's do that. And we're back. Yeah. Uh, and we're gonna jump into the time machine. Um, back to, you said you were born here and then raised in California some, a little bit Brian

Speaker 3:

born. Yeah. I was born in Burbank, California. Okay. Came out here in 1990, um, and went to Blevins and Rocky Mountain High School. Okay.

Speaker:

Tell me about little Bryan in California. Like, uh, first grader, little Bryan in California. Yeah. Some of those early memories. Wow. What was your family setting? Well,

Speaker 3:

what was the town I was born in? Burbank, which is, you know, home of NBC. Right? Hollywood, Warner Brothers, h Hollywood. Yeah. My parents went to North Hollywood High. My family is, works at Warner Brothers. My family is not, not as movie stars, of course, but, uh, my family's involved in the movie industry Okay. Since the seventies. So

Speaker:

they went from like rancheros to movie? No, my, my

Speaker 3:

grandfather was, so my grand, my grandmother remarried. Uh, my, my, my grandfather McKnight had passed away before I was born.

Speaker:

Okay. My

Speaker 3:

grandmother remarried. And she met, uh, a Mexican Charro down in Tijuana with her girlfriend. Okay. Who turned out to be my grandfather, well, not by blood, but uh, who raised me as my grandfather. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And they got married, he moved back up to southern ca up to Southern California, to Burbank. And then he worked at Warner Brothers. He was the head of security for the Columbia Paramount lot. Wow. All the main lot

Speaker:

so in the industry. And then the family kind of followed along a lot of'em. Yeah. And

Speaker 3:

then he was friends with John Wayne and all the, the,'cause he used to raise, raise horses. Yeah. So he used to raise horses that were in the movies. Oh, wow. Yeah. So he was, uh,

Speaker:

he was

Speaker 3:

pretty linked up with some.

Speaker:

So what was your family doing? Your dad, your mom? My

Speaker 3:

dad's an attorney and my mom was in banking.

Speaker:

Okay. So they weren't in the movie industry. They necessarily, they, they weren't. Were just in the movie town kind of.

Speaker 3:

Right. And then my, like for instance, my uncle worked at Warner Brothers. My grandpa worked at Warner Brothers. My aunt worked at Warner Brothers.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

A lot of other families. But my parents personally, my dad had a, a small law firm in Pasadena. And my, uh. My mom was a banker down in Security Pacific, in downtown la. Okay.

Speaker:

So kind of a standard, uh, yeah. Standard upper middle class, family kind, middle class family. Uh, other siblings for you?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I have a younger sister who works at New Belgium as a brewer.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

Um, and, and how many

Speaker:

years younger?

Speaker 3:

Uh, five years younger.

Speaker:

Okay. So when you were a little five, Brian, uh, you were just getting a brand new baby sister? Yes.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm. Exactly. So we, we, and she was born in Burbank, uh, and we both moved out here. So Kelly actually went to an elementary school out here. I went to junior high and high school. Yeah.

Speaker:

And what did you think. When you got here, you kind of like Uhhuh. You said your friends were kind of like Yeah. Mocking of the you Colorado hick country or whatever. I

Speaker 3:

was, yeah. I was dressed in Quicksilver garb all into skating and surfing and I came down Mulberry at the time and I was like, well, I'm gonna be a shake kicker, you know? Oh really? Yeah.'cause Mulberry, I mean Fort Collins back at the time. Yeah, yeah. Didn't even start until you got to like Riverside. Well,

Speaker:

Sundance dominated the entry to the town and I was fine as being a

Speaker 3:

shit kicker.'cause I knew horses and my grandpa roped and I was like, yeah, whatever. You know? Yeah. So this was my new life'cause I had never been to Fort Collins. We drove out here with a cat and a dog and Oh dang. And what brought him out? Like what was the setting? My dad, so we, we, this is

Speaker 2:

a great story.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. We were, uh, I was basically, I mean it's not a great story, but you know, I was basically getting ready to start driving and, you know, there was all the gang violence in LA and uh, back Rodney King days and stuff, almost. So my dad, my dad loves to fly fish. My dad loves to fish. His best friend went to CSU for his best friend from Southern California. Yeah, yeah. Went to CSU and was a, was the head a superintendent over at the hatchery here in, in Bellevue. Okay. And so my dad was like at Watson Lake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My dad had always threatened to move out of la you know, it's kind of, I think everybody in la So he was like this LA lawyer and he is like, screw I'm gonna go is I'm giving it all up. I'm throwing towel fisherman before college for sure, dude. And

Speaker 2:

that's why, but he still calls it the pit. That's what he calls la

Speaker:

Nice. I tell people I spent a month in LA one week. Because that's about what it felt like to me. I was like, yeah, that's a good one. I'll, I'll take prison almost over. I don't

Speaker 3:

mind LA I have to drive. She won't drive in la I will not drive in la Yeah. Scary. I don't mind la But if you don't, if you just show up as a tourist with a camera around your neck, I mean, you're doomed LA's so big and you, you have to know what you're doing and where you're going and you know what to, what freeways to jump on. Well, I was a

Speaker:

pedestrian there and with my, I, I visited a friend, but she had to work during a lot of the days and stuff, so I'm just, this dude walking 20 miles a day around LA on Sunset Boulevard and you know, you r TD now, you don't wanna do that.

Speaker 3:

No. There's some good spots and it's fun. But like, I'd say six days in LA I'm ready to come back to Colorado. You know?

Speaker:

So, so your dad like gives it all up and like. W That's

Speaker 2:

a good part of the story. His dad, he kept, yeah, my dad did. Kept the firm

Speaker 3:

big sacrifice and he kept his firm and he moved the whole family out here. My mom quit Security Pacific after this giant earthquake. She was like in a 70 70 and he's got like another handful of

Speaker:

attorneys that he had a partner. A couple? Yeah, a couple.

Speaker 2:

So explain how he did the back and forth. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And then he, he moved us out here and then he continued his practice and moved back and forth. Oh. So

Speaker:

he'd spend a week out there, a back or something,

Speaker 3:

a week or two out there and then come back here. And he did that for probably five or 10, 10 years. Yeah. This is Predigital age. Making it easier so he could walk onto a plane with a cigarette, you know? Right.

Speaker:

Interesting. For how many years did he do that?

Speaker 3:

He did it like all through. All through my junior high and mostly through my high school.'cause I remember I got busted a couple times in high school and it was like when your dad gets back into town. Interesting. Yeah. So, um, yeah, that's kind of my story. Huh. And then, you know, worked balling trees for just trees and various landscaping outfits here. Yeah. Here when I was 16, 17, 18. And

Speaker:

then we kind of caught up to where

Speaker 3:

dad help me buy the, the landscaping. Yeah. And then I took off. I was like, I'm never coming back to Fort Collin. And what did

Speaker:

you do in Cali for that year and a half?

Speaker 3:

I was up in Northern California. I was, I started in. Santa Barbara ended in, ended up in Northern California, but I had stopped in Santa Cruz and lived, lived with a friend in Santa Cruz for a little bit. That's a nice town. The very end. I was up in like the, on the Humboldt coast and I was, uh, worked on a French boat, boat and marijuana, trim and marijuana. Worked on a French, on a, on a little shrimp boat. Oh, really? Okay. At Patrick's point, like we used to go fishing right off Patrick's Point. Okay. Yeah. And, uh, you

Speaker:

were just kind of living the labor or whatever? Yeah. I

Speaker 3:

don't know what I was actually doing back then. I was just, my wings, it was basically the equivalent of a, of a European backpacking trip. A different time. Yeah. Was just trying out my wings and figuring out what was going on. Yeah. Which I encourage everybody to do, but I, I really didn't have like. Big plans. Yeah. You know, just kind of wearing it out until I came back to Fort Collins. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker:

See if you can find a pretty girl, Mary. That didn't happen until later, thank God. Back to you, a 5-year-old young Mary.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I grew up in South Bend, Indiana. Oh, okay. And the youngest of four. So go Hoosiers? No, yeah. Hoosiers. But South Bend, Indiana specifically is Notre Dame University. It's go Irish.

Speaker:

Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. That dominates the, the local culture. Probably

Speaker 2:

very much so. It's very much an Irish Catholic town. Okay. How big a

Speaker:

town? Couple hundred thousand or something? Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Not too far off of Fort Collins. Okay. Um, not a, not even a couple hundred thousand I think. Less than, uh, 200,000.

Speaker:

And what was your, uh, family setting? Siblings, parents doing what?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, youngest of four. My dad, uh, started off as a car salesman and the family car business. Okay. Which my mom's dad. Oh, mom's, dad's dad started. Oh wow. Okay. So we're on the. Fourth generation of ownership of one of your

Speaker:

siblings is now

Speaker 2:

one of my cousins. Two of my cousins. Okay. Okay. Um, it's Chevrolet and Toyota over there. Oh

Speaker:

wow. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I remember like where I grew up, Toyotas weren't really around until like the nineties almost. Mm-hmm. Um, probably

Speaker 2:

that might have been when the AC acquisition happened. It Chevrolet first. Right, right. Yeah. So that's been around for a long time. He was a car salesman for a while, but he was a car salesman with like his two brothers-in-law, you know, and so I think he got into real estate pretty quick when he realized Okay. He just wanted to kind of differentiate himself and do his own thing. Yeah. So he was doing commercial real estate for a long time until he retired. Okay.

Speaker 4:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Really cool guy. My dad was a, um, a was a ski is a ski pet. He was a ski patroller. Oh, fair. Yeah. Um, on this little tiny ski mountain, there is actually a little tiny ski mountain in Indiana. Okay. A little ski hill. Um, until he was like 75. I mean, he skied as a ski patroller until,

Speaker:

well, so you're so your adventurous spirit to be a raft guide and stuff like that. It came from,

Speaker 2:

I would say both sides. Both sides. My mom too. My mom still kayaks and mountain and bikes on the road with her girlfriends. Um, yeah. You know, she's 75. Okay.

Speaker 4:

He's now

Speaker 2:

80. Um, and yeah, they, they actually live on a lake now in Michigan, just over the border about 25 minutes from my childhood home.

Speaker 4:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And it's just a beautiful place to visit. So we love going there in the summer and seeing relatives and there's like a ton of relatives, so we're talking like over a hundred people that we could see in one visit.

Speaker 5:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:

One specifically being my grandpa who is about to be 101 on the 17th. Okay. Of July.

Speaker:

Oh wow.

Speaker 2:

Um, so yeah, congratulations. Yeah. We went

Speaker:

back for my, my, my wife's grandma's hundred and fourth birthday. Nice. Some years ago. She passed since then, but pretty special thing. Yes. Anything over a hundred, you should do it every year, right? Yeah. Yeah. We've

Speaker 2:

been celebrating pretty hard since 98 years old, but at a hundred years old we had a blowout party and he danced with his walker until like 10:00 PM It's funny. That's awesome. But there was over a hundred of us there. Wow. Um, celebrating him and, uh, so he got a big party. He got a big celebration.

Speaker:

McKnight. Is that a, like a Irish kind of name? Irish Catholic background? Irish, both of you. Is that true or not necessarily? Well, I

Speaker 2:

didn't, I wasn't raised Irish Catholic. I was in that community for sure. Gotcha. And I went to a, um, I went to a Catholic high school even. Okay. And, which was across the street from Notre Dame University. But we were raised Presbyterian.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Um, and you were raised Catholic? Irish Catholic, yeah.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker:

And was that a, a thing for you guys when you started dating or?

Speaker 3:

When we started dating, we were kind of, we had kind of like taken a hi. I mean, we were very, it was pretty common, right? When you're 20. We met at the

Speaker 6:

Rio.

Speaker 3:

I mean, we weren't necessarily, so anyway, in Fort Collins, probably it wasn't a Bible study. Yeah. So, uh, doesn't everybody meet at the Rio at some point in Fort Collins? So anyway, so we, we, once we had kids, we were always really strong faithfully, personally. Right, right. You know, um, but once we had kids, we both agreed we wanted to raise. Once I got

Speaker 2:

pregnant, I was like, we gotta find a church. Yeah. That's how I felt. I was raised. At a church environment where it felt like a second home, and as a kid you could hide in all the little nooks and crannies of the building. Yeah. And like run around and chase each other. And it was a very welcome place for us. And Yeah. Yeah. You know, just a very inviting place. And I was raised and that's what I wanted, like

Speaker:

terrified being in the church, uh, because Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So very different how that conversation go with by switches.

Speaker 2:

How'd the conversation go? Yeah. Like how did, he was really receptive. I just said, you know, we need to, we need to get going to church. We need to, we need to get into the habit of having like that, uh, um, habit of that tradition, of that schedule. Um, he, he's really receptive. Yeah. He wanted to, I might've had to drag him at first, but he really enjoys it. He, we have a really, really strong friend community. Cool. At the church we go to now. Awesome. And it's the one that our kids have been raised in. I've been going there, well we've been going there, but I've been going to like the mom group when the kids are little and you're like talking. Since they were born. That's really cool. And so the friends, my 14-year-old daughter, your relationship there

Speaker:

are almost as strong and long as the ones in Chile.

Speaker 2:

Yes. Yes. Almost as strong and long as the ones in Chile. Mm-hmm. That's cool. So these kids have known each other since they were little.

Speaker:

And I jumped off of your childhood a little bit, Mary, but describe Young Mary A. Little bit. Like were you good student, were you an athlete? Were you were the youngest of four, and how much older was the oldest one?

Speaker 2:

My oldest brother's eight years older than me. Okay.

Speaker:

I was about the, I'm the oldest of four and 10 years younger is the youngest, so a similar family, uhhuh, but my little brother was spoiled as crap compared to the way I grew up.

Speaker 2:

My brother would probably say the same about me. She had

Speaker:

a pretty good, I, I got like a 25-year-old pickup. Joe got dad's most recent, almost new pickup when he bought a new one kind of thing. But our family was a lot more. Mm-hmm. Well to do by that time. Yeah. Right.

Speaker 2:

My brother had an El Camino.

Speaker:

Okay. Do

Speaker 2:

you know that car? I

Speaker:

go, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I had a Camry, you know what I mean? So it was a little nicer. Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah. Um,

Speaker 2:

but he was well known for that El Camino in high school. Right,

Speaker:

right.

Speaker 2:

He got like nicknamed after that El Camino in high school. You know what I mean? You

Speaker:

didn't get nicknamed after the Camry. No, that's good. That's good. So you're a little bit spoiled. But kind of a pleaser, probably getting good grades. Everybody likes you.

Speaker 2:

Sure. Yeah. I mean, because that,

Speaker:

I don't know, I'm guessing, uh, I don't really know you at well, well, not

Speaker 2:

necessarily a pleaser. Okay. I was always the one ready to fight. Oh, interesting. My oldest brother was always there to defend me. The two middle siblings were the ones who would beat me up and call me names, and then my oldest brother would come in with his TaeKwonDo black belt experience and just knock'em down.

Speaker:

Perfect. It's always nice when you're a sassy young girl. It's always nice to have a protector.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. You gotta have some, some of that. And

Speaker 3:

now she's teaching that to our

Speaker:

daughter.

Speaker 2:

What the sass. Um, but yeah, so we had a great, uh, kind of relationship, kind of traditional middle America, very traditional family,

Speaker:

but very engaged with your church community and stuff. Sounds like Totally.

Speaker 2:

Um, great church community. And, and

Speaker:

then how did you find CSU. Like,

Speaker 2:

yeah. Again, I think I was just a little bit, I mean, there's probably a lot of people like me who feel just the drive to see something different and be independent. Go

Speaker:

west. Young man or young lady.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. I most everybody was gonna go to school in Indiana from my high school. Yeah. And I said, there's got to be something more. I looked in Ohio, we looked in Michigan. They're like, outta state is really, you wanna do that? That's expensive. But I'm like, please, I can't. Well, we visited my second brother, so not the oldest, but the one below. Yep. He was out at CSU.

Speaker 5:

Oh.

Speaker 2:

We did a tour. I went on a, like a, like a little just run. I went on a run by myself on the sidewalk and I just knew I had to come out here. I think people don't realize that when you're south and east of Lake Michigan, that there's a thing called lake effect and you get a lot of clouds. Mm-hmm. Cloud cover all the time. Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Just the sunshine here was a completely different atmosphere from anything I'd ever seen. And then we have corn fields that go 15 feet tall. Right. And so the view here was nothing like anything I'd ever seen. Yeah. Yeah. The sense of space and place, they just

Speaker:

openness. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

So, uh, didn't care what I studied, I just had to be here.

Speaker:

I dig it. And

Speaker 2:

I've been here since 2001. And what did you

Speaker:

study?

Speaker 2:

I studied in the College of Natural Resources. Uh, it's, it was a new major at the time. In 2002, they came out with it. It's called Global Tourism.

Speaker:

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So it was a marriage between the business school and the natural resource department. Yeah. And they were trying to,

Speaker:

which considering the like future fishing resort I know. And that kind of stuff. That's crazy. I didn't know I was gonna be business realm with Turf Tamers here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So it was, it was like they wanted to, uh, turn out people who were gonna do international business, uh, like tourism. Yeah.

Speaker 5:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Tourism really cool. So I had to minor in a foreign language. Guess what? I picked Spanish and then you had to study abroad and internship abroad. And I'm like, sign me up. Any excuse to travel I will take. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because I had been a big traveler at 12 years old. I had gone on an outward bound trip at 13 years old. I had gone to, um, a camp that was like scuba diving in San Diego, outside of La Jolla. I don't know how I got my parents to say. Because you were spoiled. Yeah. She was the youngest. You were spoiled as crap. Her parents were just like, sure, we'll send you away

Speaker 4:

and we'll be all alone. You're our baby. You're never gonna have another child. IU Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

I went to Australia for three weeks. I went to Germany my sophomore year in high school. I mean, travel was,

Speaker:

yeah. But something I really liked. Very much a family value. And you obviously jumped on it too. Totally.

Speaker 2:

A family value. My parents were, were into adventure too. Yeah. And they still are. Yeah.

Speaker:

I dig it. Yeah. Um, do you guys wanna do the fun ping pong ball game now?

Speaker 2:

Okay. Yeah.

Speaker:

It's, uh, totally random questions. Okay. I think we'll do. Usually I do three questions to my one guest, but I think I'll do two questions or do you want separate questions? No, let's do separate questions. That's fine. So each pick, pick two balls. Sure. And then I'll tell you what the questions are. And if you could just maybe grab that whole thing. Mary, I'm reaching here, and so you grab any two balls, reach down to the bottom so we don't get any repeats from recently or anything like that. There we go. Who wants to go first? And Mary, if you'd like, you can hand that back to me. I'll go first. Okay. Brian? Four. Four. This is one of my favorites. What would you estimate your burp to fart ratio to be? Hmm. I would say,

Speaker 2:

I think we should ask his children that question because they could probably answer it very well.

Speaker 3:

I would say probably zero burps to four farts.

Speaker:

Really, you barely burp ever. Yeah. But you're a pretty party. Yeah. All right. All right.

Speaker 2:

11.

Speaker:

11. If you could time travel, would you visit the past or the future? Why and when?

Speaker 2:

Oh, my word. That's a cool, that's a great, great question. Probably go to the past.

Speaker:

Okay. Australian Outback 1573 Don D way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Chile would be great. Uh, but I kind of feel like I've seen the past in Chile because even in the two thousands, like Right,

Speaker:

they didn't have electricity in 2015.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I would go to, um, I would go to Tonga.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And it would be in 1890.

Speaker:

So I confessed to a lot of ignorance about Tonga. Like, tell me about Tonga in 1890. What was the, the setting there and what is it today? How do you help me?

Speaker 3:

Why

Speaker 2:

I'm, I just answered it. I didn't say I was gonna, she's never been to

Speaker 3:

Tonga. I've been to Tonga. It's a tiny little group of islands off the coast of New Zealand. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I knew it was somewhere. Don't think it's changed much since 1870 either. Yeah. Gotcha. But it's tropical and nice and I bet, uh, and who

Speaker:

settled it or colonized it or whatever? What's the, what's I know it's, what's the local language?

Speaker 3:

The local Langu is, is Tonganese. Oh, yeah. Okay. In English. Okay. Because they get all their supplies. So it was an English colony back in the day. Probably. Like New Zealand was? No, actually Tonga is still an ancient kingdom. Oh, is that right? And they ate everybody that tried to settle them. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So they, yeah, literally eight. So you would go there and not try

Speaker:

to be eaten?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, not try to be eaten. There you go. Could integrate.

Speaker:

Alright, Brian, what's your second? 24. 24. What's the most durable business relationship that you've had?

Speaker 4:

Hmm.

Speaker 3:

The most durable business relationship that I have had. Um, durable. Probably my wife. Yeah. You know, because I would

Speaker 2:

like to answer that too.

Speaker 3:

Sure, sure. Is that allowed? Please do. Yeah. There's no rules. I think

Speaker 2:

Brian and Karen Dunbar have been delightful.

Speaker:

Like clients of yours or something? Yeah, clients

Speaker 3:

of ours. We, we didn't wanna talk about any names on clients because we have a lot. Sorry. They're your favorites though. Yeah.

Speaker:

Like you could tell a lot of clients that they're your favorites, but really Brian and Karen Dunbar are your favorites. Yeah, they're

Speaker 3:

very, very nice people and they give us feedback and they, you know, they're not afraid to tell us when, you know, they're just great people and they're friends too.

Speaker:

So, but also very early clients as well. Very

Speaker 3:

early. Very early. We've,

Speaker 2:

we've been in a relationship with them for a long, long time. We got to watch

Speaker 3:

their landscaping mature. We've installed it and we got to watch him mature.

Speaker:

I wanted to ask you a question that I forgot about Mary. Um, but when you started dating Brian, like he's got this. A small landscaping business still. And he is like, was that normal to you? Did you have examples of entrepreneurs in your realm? I know there was car salesman, real estate, kind of, but that's a little bit different than,

Speaker 2:

well, first of all, I thought it was hot because sexy, all the guys had no clue what they were doing at my age.

Speaker 5:

Right.

Speaker 2:

He's five years older than me. Oh, okay. So to meet a guy like that who already had a house and a business and a plan and he was still playing hockey, you know, in in shape. Yeah. Yeah. And taking great care of himself and you know, renting out rooms in his house Yeah. And doing the bachelor thing. I thought that was really attractive. I mean, uh, what he was doing was basically the American dream, but at such a young age. Yeah. Cool. You know, he started at 23. Yeah. You don't hear stuff like that

Speaker:

every day. Right. I like it. Um, Mary, what's your second number?

Speaker 2:

Uh, 26.

Speaker:

What's your go-to way to unwind after a stressful day?

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's a great question. Well, first of all, I love starting my day working out because that sets the tone for my day. So exercise is a huge thing for me, um, at the end of my day to wind down. I think walking my dog. Hmm. Kind of another form of exercise. Yeah. But my, my morning exercise is like weight lifting, so I like to go to the gym and lift weights and set the tone for the day. But if I'm stressed out and trying to relax, I usually grab the dog. It's

Speaker:

hard to stay stressed when you're walking the dog. Yeah. Yeah. She also reads books like

Speaker 3:

that.

Speaker:

I do like it. I read a lot. Not audible. You just use the old fashioned way. Just I do the old fashion. You crush them too? Yeah. My wife can read like a hundred pages an hour. I'm like, I can't even comprehend. I'm

Speaker 3:

reading a really big book right now, but it'll take, it'll be eight months. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I can read his eight months probably for me it'd be like a month and a half. Yeah. Yeah. Two months.

Speaker:

Yeah. I feel you. Um, okay, so you guys said you were gonna do a small gift to somebody if they write in with the answer to the question. Yeah. And I think the question I'll choose is where would you move to? Just'cause it's easy Tonga 1890 and so the listener that spots this, you're going to get a free, it's called

Speaker 3:

a turf builder, which is a dach, an aeration, and then we do a little overs seeding and a granular organic fertilizer. One swoop,

Speaker:

one shot and up to say a 5,000 square foot lot or something like that. Yeah, yeah. We are not doing the acreage, but yeah. Fair enough. Awesome. So we will set that up and get a post out there after this episode goes. It's like our little bribery for listening all the way through and paying attention.

Speaker 4:

Nice. Cool. Love that. So,

Speaker:

and uh, we'll get that to you. One question I like to ask often is, um. Like you guys were, we were just talking about that era when you were 18, you know, in five years or three years or what, four and six years, I guess, your kids are gonna be kind of drying their wings. Is that the term you used? Mm-hmm. Brian, what? Given the world today, like what, what encouragement do you have for that demographic in general? Not necessarily your children, but,

Speaker 2:

so for youngsters, 18 year olds? Yeah.

Speaker:

16, 17, 20 year olds, whatever. Yeah. People finding, drying their wings. Okay.

Speaker 3:

I, I think, and I don't know if it's necessarily the, the right. The right thing to tell young kids, but I say have confidence, you know, like try to, uh, because I see a lot of kids, and I'm not saying that you should just be like obnoxious, right? I'm saying, uh, but try to have confidence, try to look people in the eye. Mm. Try to approach and be, you know, human. And, and that's hard. You, I mean, it sounds like nothing to us, right. But just looking somebody in the eye and shaking. Trust me, I deal with a lot of kids right now in the demographic of 18. You're hiring 18, 19, 20, 25 years old and, you know, it's, there's some social issues going on with, you know, with all the devices and everything like that. Yeah. Depressions and depression. Am I

Speaker:

a cat? Am I a girl? Yeah. So, you know, I, that would

Speaker 3:

say, I would say to try to like, block out the noise. Be confident. Be confident in who you are as a human being. Love yourself. You know, like a big part of it is also like you're not gonna be able to love and give yourself. Out to other people. Accept until, until you've accepted yourself and you're confident and you love yourself. I mean, work on yourself continually. Sure. But at the same time, like be very grateful for what God gives you, even if you have ailments. I mean, none of us are perfect, but I would say, I

Speaker:

think that's kind of one of the missed things from a more and more secular faith is, you know, the Christian faith, or even most any faith says, you know, God created you just the way he wanted you to be. Exactly.

Speaker 3:

Exactly.

Speaker:

And so you can have some pride in that and, and

Speaker 3:

for you to love somebody else, I, if you don't unconditionally love yourself, then I don't think it's very easy for you to go out and praise other people because it's, it's

Speaker:

phony. Yeah. I mean my, I'm my own biggest critic too. Me too. Right. I hate myself more than I hate anybody else For sure. Sometimes. And I think that's healthy. I do think that's healthy, but yes. But you do have to have an appreciation for, for that and give yourself grace. Yeah, exactly. And I dig it. Mm-hmm. Mary, anything from you for that young demographic? Uh, exploring the world, start

Speaker 2:

a business.

Speaker:

Right. I don't disagree. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Start a

Speaker 2:

business. So I'm really proud of what CSU did. They did a venture validator program. It's totally free. You can get online and you can sign up for it right now. I mean, there's a class in the fall. Yeah, I got an idea.

Speaker:

Try it out. If

Speaker 2:

you have an idea, try it out. Yeah. And it's, you know, this, it seems like this generation really wants to have a great quality of life and there is nothing better than running your own ship and owning your own business. Yeah. But it takes a lot of work and it's great to flesh out your idea before you get started blindly. So use the venture validator program. Right.

Speaker:

Well, and you might have to get some experience, you know, you might to work in landscaping for five years before you're prepared at all, or 10 years landscaper, right? Yeah. We teach people

Speaker 6:

all the time.

Speaker 3:

Failure is part of it. And, um, you know, but we we're firm believers in entrepreneurialship and we think that like the American dream and I'm not, you know, you're part of a local or you, you own local think tank, which is an entrepreneurial health. Yeah. That's why we came. But um, not. Put people that are just employees in any, but there's something unique about being a business owner. The schedule you're able to create, how you're able to process your life. Um, you really get these buss a lot of decisions. There's a lot of headwinds and there's a lot of decisions to make and you are responsible for a lot of other people. But at the same time, the blessing of, you know, having your own business and just being able to create your own. So being able to go to lacrosse games at four. Do whatever you want, whatever you can, fold your business, you can fail, you can do whatever you want, but you can also be successful.

Speaker 2:

I have one more.

Speaker 3:

Sure.

Speaker 2:

So, like our kids, I would love to see 18 year olds grab a ticket and see some of the world before they settle down. Yeah.

Speaker:

Go an exchange semester or something like that. Yeah. Grab, check it out a flight,

Speaker 2:

get a ticket. Go somewhere, see some things, go to a summer camp,

Speaker:

go to Outward Bound, whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Have experiences, see the way other people do life.

Speaker:

But you can see everything on TikTok Mary. I know.

Speaker 2:

No, I, I want them to get out of the country. I want them to go far. There's

Speaker:

videos from outta the country on TikTok. Me and Mart always met. I, I

Speaker 2:

think it was good for me and Brian. Yeah. We did a ton of traveling before, uh, we met and before we got married. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Me and Mary always said, and after we got married, that go, if you're planning on getting married, if you're using the word fiance right now, like get a ticket and go travel together in a different country.'cause then you really have to, you're really a team and it's like you're, everyone else speaks a different language. You're on your own. You gotta like fall into each other and, and then you'll really know like, this is working or Yeah, maybe this isn't working, you know. So

Speaker:

let's talk about your family just a little bit. Your, is it boy and a girl? Two girls? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

I forget. Mm-hmm. I have, uh, yeah, we have a girl and a boy.

Speaker:

And one of the things I'd like to challenge is a, a one word descriptor. Uh, one word description of the children. Are you willing to try that game? Yeah, sure. Um, so the, maybe start with the older or gimme a name and a one word description and a little, uh, little expansion on there.

Speaker 2:

Her name's Ava.

Speaker:

Hi Ava. Oh, just like Ava out here?

Speaker 2:

Yes. Just like Ava. We spell it EVA. Oh,

Speaker:

so it should be Eva. A little different.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. But um, you know, we go to Chile, so I like to use the Latina version of her. I see. I love it. Eva. I like it. Is EVA in

Speaker:

Spanish? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Um, independent.

Speaker:

Oh, and she's how old? 14. 14.

Speaker 2:

She's really got a mind of her own and I just love that about her. That's

Speaker:

awesome.

Speaker 2:

And then Van.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And he's 12. Yep. And he was named after that grandfather who's turning 101. Oh wow. His name's Van and, um, genuine.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. That's

Speaker:

a nice flavor. Do you agree with those words? Yeah. Agree. Would you like to add some? I think

Speaker 3:

Van is, is just, uh, he's got a heart. I, I think, yeah. You know, like he, he's learned, um. To just, he's kinda a

Speaker:

depth of understanding of people. Yeah. Understand. He works with

Speaker 3:

all age groups. He can talk to an, an, an adult, he can hang out with the little girls in our cul-de-sac. Yeah. Yeah. He's just, he's got a great heart. And then Ava, I would say is, um, like, mm, independent, independence's a good word. Yeah. Yeah. That'll do well. But she's got so many other words I could describe with her. They're both just such great kids. And, um, you know, we, we love parenting. We love, uh, that's cool. You know, of course, being a business owner, you know, sometimes we feel guilty about how much time we talk business and spend, spend time working on the business. But, uh, we love parenting and we cherish our kids and, and all their things. Do you

Speaker:

guys, uh. Like have boundary lines, like no business talk, uh, at the dinner table or in bed or things like that. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

we do. Um, we've slacked off on those over the years, but the rule is no business in the bedroom. Can't talk about it. Yeah. When, when I'm in the bathroom or in the bedroom. Doesn't matter. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

No tv, no business in the bedroom. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

We don't have a TV in our bedroom.

Speaker 3:

Oh, good.

Speaker 2:

Um, and then we try not to talk, to talk about business over dinner.'cause the kids are there, what do they care? You know? Yeah, yeah. Um, and but everywhere else that's hard. Yeah. Everywhere else.

Speaker:

What was that like for you, Brian, when, when Mary started becoming a part of the business? Were you like, sweet, this is awesome. Were you kind super

Speaker 3:

standoffish still kind of am. I don't like to be told by anybody what to do. I have it all under control. I got it figured out. Do the books. No, I, I can appreciate her every single day of the week. I mean, it's just night and day. What, you know, like I said, I had business, you know, shotgun. Was the office,

Speaker 2:

the shotgun of the truck? Yeah,

Speaker 4:

all the papers.

Speaker 3:

Not literally, but yeah, I mean, I, I, you know, I. Very stern, old school guy. So I don't like being told what to do, but I can also appreciate when I'm told something that makes a lot of sense. And it's like, yeah, you know, she's got that 30,000 foot view. And um, from the day we met at the Rio, we almost didn't meet. We, uh, but from the day I met, she's always been like, you know, my better, you know, my, my bellwether. What do you mean you

Speaker:

almost didn't meet? Like, well, we all, were you on a blind date or a set or something? Or you weren supposed to No, my guys

Speaker 3:

were, one of my guys was, uh, we were at the Rio and one of my guys was leaving for California, so we were all partying and I saw her out in front, um, on the street and I started talking to her. Yeah. And I was like, oh, we, we talked about chi and everything within that like five or 10 minutes. And then all of a sudden my guys were like, McKnight, let's go. And I just left.

Speaker 4:

Oh.

Speaker 3:

And I was like, I didn't even get her number. Nothing. I can't believe it. You know what, you know, and I was looking for her, you know, we went to Tony's or whatever and I was like, look, maybe she'll come down the street, you know, I never saw her. And then the very next day I was getting off a hockey practice. We all went to the pickle barrel. And I was sitting outside at the Pickle Barrel and uh, she came walking down the street and I jumped the fence and I was like, you remember me from last night, dude.

Speaker:

I like it. Yeah. And were you, uh, happy or were you terrified? Slightly terrified.

Speaker 2:

I, I wasn't terrified. Um, you know, that's kind of like the college thing, right. You know, just like, Hey, you wanna come, can I, can I get you a beer? Come sit. Yeah. It was a Friday afternoon after school. I just finished my day of college and, you know, all is all is good. So he was like, I was just

Speaker:

checking your shoes.'cause I was suspecting that you might be an inch taller than Brian or something. Yeah. It

Speaker 2:

might be.

Speaker:

How's something like that? Was that, was it a problem for you? I'm vertically challenged.

Speaker 2:

No, definitely not a problem. Better.

Speaker:

He was awesome.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I mean. What can I say? I, I'm attracted to it. I took her away in an

Speaker 3:

old i, the shorties Blue Ford playing, playing Flip Patsy Klein or something. Yeah. He was in

Speaker 2:

a blue Ford truck paying, playing Patsy Klein. I'm like, who the heck is this guy? Um, that's just, it was so out of the ordinary to, for me to sit in this big old diesel truck, you know?

Speaker 5:

I love

Speaker:

it.

Speaker 2:

Uh, but big strong hands, sexy shoulders. I'll take it.

Speaker:

I dig it. I dig it. By the way, Brian, I was, I was four foot 11 in sixth grade and then five foot one at the end of 10th grade. And so I was curt the squirt all through my, like, growing up years. Oh. Everybody was so much bigger than me and stuff. And then I like sprouted up and got, you know, I went to college at six two, a hundred and thirty pounds.

Speaker 4:

Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

I was always Napoleon complex. Yeah. I just went white. I doubt it. White or not taller. I've never seen you express

Speaker:

a bit of a Napoleon complex. Well,

Speaker 2:

McKnights aren't known for their height. Yeah. What can I say? His dad's about as tall as he is. Yeah.

Speaker:

I, uh. I'm, I'm gonna embarrass my wife with this quick story, but, uh, Jill and I were listening to, or actually it popped into my head, and so I started singing, uh, eyeball two pieces and I was singing that old Patsy Klein song and then, uh, got to the second or third verse and Jill was like, oh, sounds like she's like in terrible shape or whatever, like all outta pieces with this guy. Every time I hear your name. And then I reminded Jill. I was like, remember when, when Andrew was telling us about how you were like crying because I hadn't, uh, it, uh, proposed to marry you yet during that few months before I actually did. That's what she's talking about. That's what she's talking about right there. She was like, that's a genre asshole. I digress. Yeah. Um, what took you guys three years, by the way?

Speaker 2:

Oh, I think it was perfect. We were engaged within two and a half years, and then we got married. Um, the timing was great. Uh, we were both. Coming out of relatively serious relationships. I don't think it was super fresh for Brian, but it was kind of fresh for me, Uhhuh. And we were much wiser at that point, I think in like the dating sphere. So yeah. Yeah, yeah. We knew that we were serious right off the bat when

Speaker:

there's something to like being able to be a, a real proper adult before you decide to get married kind of thing. Yeah, I agree. Um, and so, yeah, it's a, it's a, and I

Speaker 2:

think, I think dating is important before you decide to get married. Like seeing the different types of people and experiencing relationship in different ways. Um, I had a whole list in my CSU agenda. Remember those little agendas from CSU? I didn't get one.

Speaker:

I'm a Northwest State guy.

Speaker 2:

CS U Agenda for everyone out there who goes to CSUI wrote it down all the attributes I was looking for in a man.'cause I was so frustrated with the type of guys I had been dating. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:

And

Speaker 2:

when I met Brian, I went back and looked at the, I still have it. That's cool. Um, I still have that piece of paper outta my CSU agenda because it meant so much to me that he kind of checked off all the boxes. That's really cool. Yeah. That's really

Speaker:

cool. Um, let's talk about the Loco experience, our namesake segment.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Yeah. It's been so amazing. Um, is this a

Speaker:

shared Oh yeah, actually. Well, yes. Thank you for that too. But yeah, you wanted to talk about your experience as a, as a local think tank member. Yeah. I, um, I've two years now.

Speaker 3:

Two years, I believe. Yes. A year and a half. A year. Not quite two, three quarters. Yeah. Not quite two. Love it. Yeah. You know, um, I like my cohort that I'm in with a good group of people and I know there's different cohorts for whatever size business. Sure. You, you have. But uh, you know, I just think it's really important, um, to get other perspectives from, you know, it doesn't really matter what widget you're selling, you know, business. Business is business. There's some set rules and, and kind of primary physics of it. You know, have some margin, have some people skills. Yeah, exactly. And, and, and be able to listen, you know, be able to hear what your customers want and gravitate towards that. Yeah. Um. Yeah. So I, you know, hearing from other people, you know, whether their business is doing goods taking off or slightly slipping, you know, we, you really get the pulse of what's going on. You need more encouragement this month or Yeah, exactly. Do you need some kudos? Yeah. And, uh, and then helping other people rudder or, you know, feeding off of their success and, um, just being able to Yeah. Be in the pulse, you know, I like being in the pulse of my community.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So, and I think Loco really helps me do that. Cool. And, and cool. Of course, I, I, I've gotten to a relationship. I also like the, this fact that it's kind of personal, you know, you get to be friends with'em and then you end up, you know, and, and I was told by Pat, you know, the very first time, like, this isn't a business selling thing, you know, but in the end we kind of all like, use each other. Yeah. And, and it's, it's just a really cool thing. I really

Speaker 2:

like it.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

Mary, you were, you were like kind of chiming in already that you've been Uh, yeah,

Speaker 2:

because I've been to a bunch of your events.

Speaker:

Oh, that too. Yeah. You've

Speaker 2:

had wonderful events that I've, uh, attended. So, thinker Fest, you're very, uh, involved in in the founded in Foco, and that's where I founded found Loco Think Tank. Because you were hosting classes here or? Yeah. Or there was a speaker that was supposed to be

Speaker:

here. There was speaker that didn't show up. Do you remember what the speaker was? I can't.

Speaker 2:

I don't. But I met a, a nice woman there who is a property manager, and we've gotten into a great relationship. Very awesome business, you know? Yeah, yeah. Um, and so that was a good touch point right there. And then you invited me to, well, you invited us to, um, yeah. Free Freethink or something, a round table Freethink. Mm-hmm. Which was delightful. You know, you provide these wonderful lunches and you give everyone space and structure to discuss a topic. Yeah. And to me, just like thinking about stuff, talking about stuff, jamming out and having that free flow thinking is really neat. Yeah. And then we did a weekend No, no. There you had a, you had your own event. A couple. Couple sessions. Thinker Fest. Thinker Fest. Yeah. That's what it was.

Speaker:

Yeah, we, that event in the fall. Yeah. Yeah. That's

Speaker 2:

in Loveland and that was really nice. And

Speaker:

you've got a, you'll have a ticket to share for our fall event this year too. You can give it to Mary. It's not called Thinker Fest this year. Correct. Aim to Thrive is what we're aim to thrive. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

yeah,

Speaker:

yeah. I

Speaker 2:

really enjoyed it. It was so nice. And we brought our account manager, which I think helps when you have this vision for your company for. People directly involved in what we do to see what we're involved in and how we're, yeah, just walk a

Speaker:

few steps in your shoes kind of a little bit. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3:

And also show that that, that we're like still thriving. You know? Like Yeah. If you're just seditary, it's kind of like your employees are like, well what's the end game here? Right. Right. But if you're evolving and you're like showing that like, yeah, we're trying to add to this. We're trying to build this ship as we go. Love. And people gravitate towards out. Yeah. You want come? Yeah, I want to come. Let's see what goes out. Right. And let's see what other businesses are holding around Northern Colorado. So I think that,

Speaker 2:

yeah. And you know when Brian presented for the group, so each member of the group presents. Sure. Uh, they meet once a month and when he went to present I was kind of helping him do the technology and getting the computer ready, get the

Speaker:

slides ready, what done? And

Speaker 2:

they all gave me permission to stay. They were so kind to let me stay. Oh, good. Yeah. And listen to the whole thing. And, um, they even bounced some questions towards me since I do more of the finance side. Well,

Speaker:

I'm, I'm thinking probably his cohort members or his chapter members already like, love you just based on the way Brian talks about you, Mary. Although sometimes you may say that's less good things too. No, she's

Speaker 3:

my better

Speaker:

house. Yeah, they

Speaker 2:

were all really nice and they had fantastic ideas for our problems, like next things. Yeah. That's awesome. Really great things I've already utilized in the finance side. Yeah, that's cool. And it was just like kind of a mind blow. I've used at least three different ideas that they gave me. That's cool. Um, since his, uh, turn to present

Speaker:

just a few months ago here or, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

That's cool. Yeah, it was in.

Speaker 6:

June, I

Speaker:

think. So the, uh, the, the Loco experience that, uh, and I appreciate all that good content there, but the Loco experience, that's the namesake of the podcast is, uh, loco crazy. Like, uh, what's the craziest experience mm-hmm. Uh, that you've had, that you're willing to share? And is that a joint experience for you guys? Uh, is it something that you've done together crazy, or do you have se separate crazy experiences that you would share with our listeners?

Speaker 3:

Most of my real crazy experiences were like, in a different lifetime. You're not gonna let your kids listen to that with the shrimp. However, we've had some pretty crazy experiences.

Speaker 2:

We went on a really cool, so as you know, we go to Chile. So we traveled to Peru first to get down to Chile, and we did three weeks up there and we went to Machu Picchu. We spent time in Cousco and we were like, let's save some money and ride buses all the way down to Chile. Well, guess what? That's really far.

Speaker:

How far Mary? It's like a continent.

Speaker 2:

It took like a week.

Speaker:

Right on stinky buses. Right on Stinky buses

Speaker 2:

and. It was one stinky bus after the other, and it was like the craziest thing that we've done. But that trip, it's so funny to say, when

Speaker:

was this? It was, we were married, so this right before

Speaker 2:

we got married, I called it, I kind of called it our honeymoon because it was like three weeks together doing like crazy stuff. Right, right. We're climbing Machu Picchu, we're hanging out in sco. Um, we're getting on these crazy buses and the Peru, some of the roads are very steep and sharp and you've got danger like pullout, so

Speaker:

that two buses could actually pass. Yeah, we rafted the, a Permac

Speaker 3:

River. We

Speaker 2:

rafted the, a Permac River that was, which is like the headwaters

Speaker 3:

of the Amazon coming out. Oh, the backside of the Andes down towards Brazil. Amazing. Um, but then the, the bus ride was in, I mean our one friend in who also has a place down in Chile, in the same town, he lives in Cusco part of the year. Okay. No past Nada. You just grab, nothing will happen. Yeah. You just grab a bus ticket, you lay mad, easy, easy. He's like, you get full comma, which is like, you know, like the lounge chairs. He's like, you get full comma, and then you just sleep for a couple days and next thing you know, you're until, well, it was nothing like that at all. It was like 17 bus transfers, 17 bus transfers, like shitters that weren't emptied, flushing around in the back. I mean, you name it, dude, I was, it was crazy. But those are, you know, like I always say with fly fishing, you know, when the, when the. Sky. Well, if everything goes right, you'd remember. If everything goes right and all you got a picture is this, you never remember it, but when the skies open up on you and hail and lightning are crashing on you Totally. You don't catch any fish. But everyone's smiling. Those are the trips you talk about for like, you know,'cause I take the same guys every year and they always talk about, do you remember that time when we were knee deep in mud? Yep. Yep. Shit. Hit the fan. It's like, yeah. That are the good,

Speaker:

those are the good ones. You know, I have, Jill and I were doing hiking, camping trips years ago, some more regularly, and we went to Missouri Lakes. Mm-hmm. I dunno know if you, it's up by Lead V. Kind of really cool. It's, it's like a temperate rainforest, almost like there's big ass mushrooms all over the place. Yeah. Huge. Even though it's like 11,000 feet, it's got this weird stuff going on. But it rained all weekend, like it rained on the way up there. It rained all weekend up there. Anywhere in these little tents. Right. And we're just wet the whole weekend and cold. But I

Speaker 3:

sure remember

Speaker:

that. Yeah. Those are the ones you remember, man.

Speaker 3:

And you never remember when everything goes right. Right. Like you said, the adventure starts when things start to go south.

Speaker:

Well, may your adventures continue with, uh, with smiles forever. Thank you. And uh, thanks for spending time in here with your day. Yeah, thanks for considering us. Thanks Kurt. Great conversation.

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Curt Bear

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