I connect with Joseph Vander Linde most regularly in our shared roles at the Rotary Breakfast Club in Fort Collins, where he is the Membership Chair, and I’m the Sergeant-at-Arms. So, when new people visit I often introduce them, and if they become a member Joseph inducts them into the club some weeks later.
Joseph’s is a journey of triumph over trauma. His mother was a victim of domestic violence from his step-father, and they escaped to a series of secure shelters and safe houses in the witness protection program during his 6th grade to 11th grade years. His grandfather was one of his primary rocks during those years and beyond, and I happened to interview Joseph just days after he delivered the eulogy at his grandfather’s funeral.
Eventually, the threat subsided, his mom remarried a good man and Joseph began his educational and professional journey. He also became interested in finance, getting into podcasts and reading books like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”.
Joseph’s journey included many hundreds of hours of volunteer research for Mayo Clinic, located nearby his undergrad college, a transfer to a pre-med track from nutrition, and then a move to Colorado to further his medical education with Anschutz. From there, a hard right turn led him to a New York Life office - Legacy Financial Group in Fort Collins - and a couple years later - his own firm. Hard work, smart decisions, and dedication to being an honorable man are the hallmarks of this conversation, and I’m proud to share his journey of triumph through hard times. So please tune in and enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Joseph Vander Linde.
The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/
Follow us to see what we're up to:
Facebook
Music By: A Brother's Fountain
I connect with Joseph Vander Linde most regularly in our shared roles at the Rotary Breakfast Club in Fort Collins, where he is the Membership Chair, and I’m the Sergeant-at-Arms. So, when new people visit I often introduce them, and if they become a member Joseph inducts them into the club some weeks later.
Joseph’s is a journey of triumph over trauma. His mother was a victim of domestic violence from his step-father, and they escaped to a series of secure shelters and safe houses in the witness protection program during his 6th grade to 11th grade years. His grandfather was one of his primary rocks during those years and beyond, and I happened to interview Joseph just days after he delivered the eulogy at his grandfather’s funeral.
Eventually, the threat subsided, his mom remarried a good man and Joseph began his educational and professional journey. He also became interested in finance, getting into podcasts and reading books like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”.
Joseph’s journey included many hundreds of hours of volunteer research for Mayo Clinic, located nearby his undergrad college, a transfer to a pre-med track from nutrition, and then a move to Colorado to further his medical education with Anschutz. From there, a hard right turn led him to a New York Life office - Legacy Financial Group in Fort Collins - and a couple years later - his own firm. Hard work, smart decisions, and dedication to being an honorable man are the hallmarks of this conversation, and I’m proud to share his journey of triumph through hard times. So please tune in and enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Joseph Vander Linde.
The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/
Follow us to see what we're up to:
Facebook
Music By: A Brother's Fountain
I connect with Joseph Vanderlinde most regularly in our shared roles at the Rotary Breakfast Club in Fort Collins, where he is the membership chair and I'm the sergeant at arms. So when new people visit, I often introduce them, and if they become a member, Joseph inducts them into the club a few weeks later. Joseph's is a journey of triumph over trauma. His mother was a victim of domestic violence from his stepfather, and they escaped to a series of secure shelters and safe houses in the Witness Protection Program during his 6th grade to 11th grade years. His grandfather was one of his primary rocks during those years and beyond, and I happened to interview Joseph just days after he delivered the eulogy at his grandfather's funeral. Eventually the threat subsided, his mom remarried a good man, and Joseph began his educational and professional journey. He also became interested in finance, getting into podcasts, and reading books like Rich Dad Poor Dad. Joseph's journey included many hundreds of hours of volunteer research for Mayo Clinic, located nearby his undergraduate college, and then a transfer to pre med track from nutrition and then a move to Colorado to further his medical education with Anschutz. From there, a hard right turn led him to a New York life office, legacy financial group in Fort Collins, and a couple years later, his own firm. Hard work, smart decisions, and dedicated to being an honorable man are the hallmarks of this conversation, share his journey of triumph through hard times. So please tune in and enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Joseph Vanderlinde. one, two, three. Here we go. Welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast. My guest today is Joseph Vanderlinde. He is the founder and principal at Noble Capital Group, uh, as well as a, the membership, uh, coordinator or chair, uh, at my rotary club. I have to say. With all deference to all of our past membership chairs. Yeah. You've been doing it better than anybody since I've been in the club. Yeah. It's been a pleasure. It's been a learning experience. I'm sure. Well, you're a pretty new member when you became that chair. It's true. But yeah, two years, two years ago in July. That was when you became the chair or the member. When did you become a member? I think that was April, 2021. So you remember for barely over a year before ascending to leadership. Yeah, so this is the Fort Collins Breakfast Rotary Club. True. And I was invited by a good friend, Joe McCarthy. Oh, cool. Who I was a toastmaster with. He's a good recruiter. Oh, right on. Since 2017. So we moved to Fort Collins in 2017, July 31st, as most people do. July or August. Yeah, but mine was, uh, July 1st. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, Toastmasters had been on my radar during college. You know, I took speech, gave one speech, but I wanted to get better at public speaking and I, everything was new. So we got married in 2017. My wife, Gina, May 1st, and then we moved out here from Florida. I was like, Everything's new. Yeah. Might as well. Might as well do whatever I want to do. Yep. What should I do? So I googled Toastmasters. I was looking at club locations and we were living off of Galileo Drive down in the Southeast Fort Collins area and HP is like a mile away. Right. And there was a club there. So it was open to not just HP engineers, but it was open to the public. That's where I met Joe McCarthy, a couple of other great friends. I mean, Karen Reed, Joe, Julie. others that, you know, have been big influences in my life. But yeah, that's how I found Rotary. And are you still in the Toastmasters? You kind of ultimately exchanged, uh, Toastmasters for Rotary. You know, I, I was in multiple clubs. Um, that club in particular met Thursdays, uh, 7 a. m. It was called Rise and Shine. And so when Joe McCarthy invited me to talk to Rotary, it's like, well, you know, I can wake up early. I mean, I'm a morning person. And, um, so in April of 2021, maybe May, I joined the zoom meeting for, Oh, right. Cause we still met remotely until August. Yeah. And there were, you know, 60 lively, mostly senior, active rotarians and, you know, six 45 in the morning. We'd participated in webinars and things like that across the country for the last year, year and a half, and most of the time the cameras are off or, you know, you just see still pictures or people looking off to the other screen, writing their emails. And it's like, there's something to this. That's cool. Because my attendance was pretty weak back then. I might not have met you until we were a good person. They actually, Sarah, Murphy, who was the president at that time, um, you know, had recruited me to be the sergeant at arms, which didn't really require any duties until or unless we came back to in person meetings. And, uh, so, So yeah, well glad to have you aboard. That's really cool that even during a time of not meeting anybody actually in person that you were drawn to that club and that energy, so. It's been a journey. Awesome. I've got another year as membership chair. Okay. I'll have perfected the role as soon as I'm exited. President after that, right? Isn't that? It's a couple years down the road. Are you on that track? Eventually. You should be. Yeah. Yeah. I need more free time. I feel ya. Yeah. I got my first pressure to become the Rotary President like four years in or five or something. And I was like, yeah, no, this, I'll get this going on. It's rewarding. Then a few years later again. And I, I'm just, so far I just, I don't have. You got to feel it. I don't have enough space in my world to do it well. I'm doing too many, a little bit of too many things still, and I'd want to be able to focus on that if I was in that role. Yeah. Agreed. So, well, so let's, uh, let's talk about Noble Capital Group. Does that, uh, precede your move here or? It doesn't. No. Okay. Yeah. So that was, it all started around, uh, so in my teens, so I'm, I'm from a large family. Okay. I've got seven siblings. Well, very blended. Um, but I'm number four, basically in order. So I was the baby of the younger group. You know, chase my older brothers and sister trying to catch up to them and their gravel pits and things. And then I was the oldest sibling and, you know, got to, got to be the, the big man on campus in the household to my younger siblings. But in, uh, in my early teens, mid teens, uh, my, my mom's sister, Charlotte, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor called glioblastoma. And I've heard of that one. It's a terrible, terrible, yeah. Mortality rates, almost a hundred, even in like the first couple of years. Wow. So it was a big change for my whole family, you know, traveling to see her, watching her get sick and, and all of that, multiple family members. We all got interested in nutrition and health and, you know, I was becoming a senior shortly after she died and I was kind of undecided as far as university and college. So I took a general nutrition course while I was getting my associates degree and I really liked it. So. I declared a major nutrition and dietetics. And this was in Jacksonville, Florida at the University of Northern Florida. And, you know, lived a couple of miles from the beach. Is that close to where you grew up as well? It's not, I grew up all over. So I'm from originally in Redlands, California. Okay. And then we left when I was pretty young, one, one to two, and we moved to Utah. And then it was just east to west coast from there. Wow. Yeah. So California, Florida, we lived in Missouri for a short stint. Some of it was family moves. Some of it was, uh, a stepfather and domestic violence. So sixth grade. So like sometimes you moved across country to get as far away from your stepfather as possible kind of thing with your mom. Yeah. Like this protection education. Oh, wow. Kind of, uh, yeah. Sixth grade. My mom told me pack your backpack, like. We're not coming back and we left and we went to so this was in Victorville, California We went to Palm Springs a Shelter there called shelter from the storm. Oh, well, and we didn't leave the facility. I believe this is you and how many? Yeah, three three younger siblings at home and my older sister. Well, and my mom so We went to that facility for about six weeks. We didn't leave the building You It was tucked away in the edge of the desert, you know, 10 foot cement walls. Yeah. Tutors and proctors would come in mandatory counseling, individual group. And so, you know, that started a sixth grade to basically junior year being found running. No way. Yeah. So California to, so he wasn't in prison for any crimes, actually just harassment of your mom. Yeah. Basically we had, uh, and was he, Harmful to you kids too? Or more hurt. So he wasn't, so he's not my biological dad. And I later found out that my dad threatened him whenever they met, don't touch my son. And so any abuse that I ever received was verbal and emotional, basically. Yeah. But so moving around a lot, I went to about a dozen schools, K through 12. I got to meet a lot of people. It wasn't all bad. Yeah, I got to get a good sense of strong community feel, identifying people that could be allies, could be, you know, trusted. Yeah. Well, you've got like some of the strongest character I've come to know in someone since, you know, in a short period of time, honestly. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, it was, there were so many people that stepped up, that volunteered, that mentored, and counseled, counseled me, my family, and it's really, I feel a strong duty. I mean, service is fulfilling. Yeah, yeah. But I feel a duty to help others, because my general belief, a core value of mine, is that everyone is doing, the vast majority, are doing their absolute best, all the time. How old are you? 35. Okay, just curious. You carry yourself as someone much older. This, this was the fact of my older siblings. So, as, as the youngest for, uh, let's see. My younger sister, Angela, she was born in 94. I was born in 89. So for, for about, for about five years, you know, I was just looking up to my older siblings. Thanks. Thanks. four years older, 10 years older, I think 12 years older. Right. So I was, I was chasing them around. So before school, even during school, my best friends are my siblings always. And so I, I basically, you know, I was born in 89, but I played a target, tried to pay a big kid with those guys. And then when you were the big kid, you, well, and I was involved, I was involved in the eighties culture, even though I was born in 89. So I can thank my siblings for that, but I I've gotten that I was an old soul since I was about 12 years old. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so all this moving around, you know, at, with everything that started happening. So we were in Florida at the time. I went to Florida to Jacksonville for school and nutrition was declared. I started volunteering purely because of the location. One of my teachers said, well, you should consider Mayo Clinic. So I started working in the kitchen downstairs and Another teacher said, why don't you start volunteering doing research? Because, uh, sophomore or junior year in, in college, I, I decided that, well, nutrition, I mean, I shared everything that I learned with my family. That's still been important. It's a huge part of my life, but with my experience at Mayo clinic, I wanted to do more. It's like, well, I should be a physician. So I went back for a post bac in biomedical science and I volunteered several thousand hours with Mayo Clinic. Oh, wow. So they had what's called the CRISPR, the Clinical Research Internship Study Program, something like that. And I just got to interact with specialists in different fields. Dr. Richard White, It was an internist and researcher, Dr. Joseph Blackshear, who's one of the world renowned aortic stenosis, cardiologist researchers. What a fascinating internship kind of thing, right? I mean, I just fell into this. Yeah. Yeah. And I continued doing it because I was like, this is amazing. Right. You know, and you think you're smart as a junior, senior in college. And you know, I sit down at a cubicle in a nice, quiet research department at Mayo Clinic and it's like, review these hundred studies. And we'll talk when I'm back in town, basically. So it was, it was very formative for me because I got to see some of the top tier professionals in the whole world and how much humility they had interacting with one another. So they would come back from clinic, clinicals, seeing patients and, you know, even in a 92nd elevator ride. Hey, this came up on the, on the lab. What do you, what would you suspect here? You know, because the, the cardiologist wasn't the oncologist wasn't the, yeah, yeah, it was the notion of collaboration and perspective from different angles. Yeah. So during this time I would always be drawn totally voluntarily, no deadlines, no assignments due. to finance. And this started around the age of 18. I started reading research articles and just learning about investments and rich dad, poor dad, poor dad, Robert Kiyosaki, Dave Ramsey, yeah, Peace University. Um, and, but I didn't know, I didn't have anyone at the time. I didn't know much about mentorship outside of that, that research program. You know, I wasn't at the time competent enough to. Well, you don't know much about the world, right? Correct. You had a little slice and you recognize it as being pretty special, but, you know, what else? So I looked up these series exams and found out you had to have a sponsor or something like that. So I just kind of shelved the idea for a couple of years and, you know, I'm going through my mid twenties, I'm finishing up pre med, I'm working at Mayo Clinic. I started scribing in emergency settings, primary care, worked as a medical assistant. And, And the closer I got to actually going to medical school, I was like, this is not, you know, I took the MCAT, I think two times, my scores weren't crazy, you know, I had some gaps for sure, as far as genetics and things like that, mole cell, but we moved to Colorado so that I could pursue a graduate degree in biochemistry with a plan to go to Anschutz. Oh, really? And. All of these obstacles, just, I was accepted into the program. We moved here under that pretense and I started to look for these internships for some kind of bio med, some kind of, you know, something that would work for my graduate program. I was like, you know, if all this is unpaid anyways, let me see if there's something that I came across, uh, an internship for financial advisor, just a financial firm. I applied with just like, Hey, I'll send your faxes. I'll run your coffee I just I've got this burning desire to know and I have no idea what this world's even like interesting Yeah, you said we so you well with your now wife. Oh my now wife. Yeah, she was she right then or not yet Yeah, she was where'd you find her? Yeah Yeah, so there was kind of like a gap year post after my post back I think this was 2015 2016 My, my youngest sister, Michelle, she was finishing up her high school, uh, athletics. She was, uh, she was on the volleyball team. She year round athlete basketball. And, uh, South Florida is where my grandparents were and my mom and my youngest sister. And that's where I went to middle school. And, um, before we left, after being discovered, we went to Missouri, but without, without getting too chronologically out of order, I met. Yeah. So I was at a Starbucks, um, And Gina sat down across from me. I was, I just so happened to be sitting in her favorite spot. It was like one of those long conference tables, you know, kind of awkward. Uh, but I tucked myself back into the corner and she sat across from this kind of wide table and, uh, I started a conversation and this was May 1st, 2016. Okay. Because I went home that night and I told my family, I met my wife. Like she's the one. I like it. Yeah. Sometimes it's so funny how, like, it must be one in. Five yeah, long term relationships that I'm aware of it was almost that quick. Yeah, there's one of them new at least. Yep Yeah, I didn't tell her that night. She'd have been right, right Well, you didn't tell her you're gonna go try to be a financial advisor. She thought she was yeah I'm a pre med guy and her dad's a retired physician. Yeah, that was that was also she's never felt the bait and switch Yeah, Numa, I was the most afraid to tell him and he's been one of my biggest supporters in my life. Oh, yeah I like it. Yeah, so You So you get basically an internship at, at where? Yeah. So this was a legacy financial group in Fort Collins, uh, old bank building. Scott Talley, Brian Fabrizio. Brian Fabrizio. I've sort of been on board with Brian for a while. Yep. So they handed off my application, um, or my, for the internship. And I eventually got interviewed. This was at New York life. Okay. Um, kind of shared the career. This is what, this is what the, The world is they got pretty good structure training program with New York life I'm sure totally they're kind of a big one of the big cheeses at least. Yeah, almost 180 years old mutual company so, you know, I'm googling stuff I'm reading and Is this a scam is this not a scam like hilarious thoughts as I think I was 27 at the time, right? And so I called my uncle in California And I, I didn't know what he does and I still don't know specifically like past, they do like PNC and workman's comp and things like that, but he's, he's pretty high up. And so I called him and he says, you know, I'm like, uncle Ron, what's the deal with this? And he's like, best training in the profession. It's legit. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where I started my financial services journey. Phenomenal company, company, mutual company. Um, cause basically people come into advisory and in three broad capacities, banking, It's just rates, loans, private banking. You know, that was my route, you know, small business banking for me. Yep. There's insurance, you know, life insurance, long term care disability. I mean, there's all kinds of property casualty. Yep. And then, and then straight investment, you know, CFAs, run and hedge funds, big, big, big, small, straight investment. So selling mutual funds at the local bank. Yeah. All of that. Yep. LPL, all that. Um, and. looking back, so this was 2017, September, 2017, I had already started my grad program. Oh, really? I'd already started orientation. I had already started my courses. Some of the things weren't being delivered as promised when we moved here in this program. Okay. As far as, uh, advisory mentorship faculty space for research, you know, priority class registrations. Okay. And this popped up on my radar, which wasn't something that I knew, but was important to me for the last seven years. So for a time, at least you thought you were going to do this financial advising thing as a side hustle to a full time graduate. Two years. Oh yeah. Piece of cake. Yeah. Part time, you know, ace of the world. And. I can work 80 hours a week. It'll be fine. But really, you know, I, I started looking at, um, just my life, what we wanted. I had a big discussion with Gina, you know, because being a present father was always important to me. Yeah. This was before I had children as well, but I knew I wanted, I wanted flexibility. I wanted to be able to control and not be slave to whatever my profession ended up being. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And. So I withdrew from the program pretty quickly. I think by October. And doubled down and I was like, this is, this is what I'm doing. And um, Education's important to me. You know, having, having, providing good advice. Right. Grounded in. Oh yeah. Well, there's so many people that they get them into these programs and see if they can sell stuff and then they don't spend enough time learning how to do the craft, you know, and putting people in wrong investments and giving them, you know, it's like the Tasmanian devil, just breaking stuff all over the place, firms all over, right. Yeah. Uh, and, and, and what's left is. You know, it's the wake of families that have been hurt financially, you know, and I've come across many of them and sometimes they hear financial services or something like that and it's like, Oh, I got burned and, you know, so there's a lot of pain around that as well. But yeah, expertise was important to me and so, you know, very quickly I doubled down on education. I've been taking courses at the American college of financial services basically since 2018. Completed my, my CFP certified financial planner designation. Big exam. It helps you be more findable in the Google. Yep. Yep. And know better what you're doing. Totally. And I'm about to finish up, uh, what's called the accredited estate planner or AEP designation so that I can have a formal. and seat, you know, sitting across from the attorneys and the accountants that are working on those families, plans, business owners, and things like that. So you, um, you sell life insurance products as well as financial products or good question. Yeah. So coming in from that insurance background, you know, when we're looking at holistic planning, I mean, there's, there's various schools of thought, right. But if we're looking at a family's needs, Mostly in retirement. I mean, as far as planning for retirement is your Oh, yeah. Well, and I mean risk transfer, right? You know when we're looking at what are your businesses whether it's like buy sell agreements totally Yeah, those protection pieces, but also as far as risk is concerned I've got a I've got a significant background in research with the volunteer stuff that I did at Mayo Clinic. So looking at You know, is this evidence-based? Is, is this interdisciplinary? Right. You know, is do you need a long-term care policy because I wanna sell you a long-term care policy. Correct. But you don't really need it. Yeah. but what makes sense? Those commissions? Yeah. Yeah. So that the CFP was quickly the route that I, I determined that I was gonna follow because, because it is holistic and because very few actually do that. Mm-Hmm. you know, it's one thing and I remember taking, you know, I took most of my exams. At CSU okay. Through the American College. So, you know, proctored exams had to be at a, at a site, whether it Sure. Prometric down near Boulder. Um, but I took many of them at CSU and each time, you know, I sat for a new license, you know, series six, series seven, series 66. You know, the, the coursework's very clear in, in letting you know that just because you passed this doesn't mean that you know what you're doing. Totally. And I, I'm a pretty good test taker. Yeah. So I passed my se I got my series seven again. Okay. Cause I got it right at the beginning of my, uh, banking career. They were trying to create super bankers that could sell CDs and cross this credit cards and do mortgages and do small business loans and sell financial products. It was dumb, honestly, but it gave me a good holistic understanding of the industry. I had enough knowledge to do a bunch of things poorly. Yeah. Uh, before I focused myself on the small business lending side. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, that core, you know, wanting to help people. It started with my aunt, you know, and my family first, we need to know about health. We need to know more about nutrition. Since then, another aunt has gotten cancer in my family. So, you know, they're, but carrying that forward, I feel that duty to help other people and to serve other people. Yeah. And yeah, well, if your finances are not something that you're worried about, it makes it a lot easier to eat right. You could sleep. That, that was a kernel. That was a kernel that bothered me. Which was, if you ask a hundred people on the street how to maximize their life and longevity. Yeah. Everyone knows diet and exercise. Everyone knows that. Totally. They wrote, they know it. Yep. As far as succeeding financially, you know, everyone is entitled to a plan. That people, people can, can categorize individuals as the haves and the have nots and the rich and the poor. I really think it's those with a plan and those without a plan. Oh yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, the poor who underspend their revenues eventually become the middle class and the middle class who underspend their revenues eventually become the upper middle class. Yeah. ultimately, you know, and they buy real estate, they invest in stuff. And it's much more about lifestyle than it is about income. I've met a lot of six figure broke people. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, and my, my. Uncle back in North Dakota for a long time. He was a school teacher making 40 grand a year and he had his house paid off and he owned like five cars that were paid off and a bunch of stocks and crypto. It was like, because he, you know, they, they spent like 20 grand a year, even though they only made like 50 racing for kids. It was crazy. Yeah. Three kids, but, but yeah, it's all, it's a lot more about the expense side and really having a plan, delaying gratification. Uh, uh. Very popular these days, right? So what was your launch point for Noble Capital then? You were with New York Life and that group for a while, I presume? Yeah, so, you know, as I climbed up the licenses, the registrations, how to do business, you know, Eagle Strategies is our registered investment advisor now. Okay. So doing, you know, That was going to be one of my questions is you're not trying to figure out all the portfolios and stuff. You're using the benefit of other correct. Yeah. So going back to the interdisciplinary, right? I'm not, I'm not a subject matter expert in a dozen different lines of insurance and the thousand and one contracts that are out there, but making sure that clients have access to those resources as they come up. That's, that's ideally what we're doing when we're building those plans out. So yeah, the, as the SEC says in the business of offering investment advice. So that's what registered investment advisors are doing. It's, it's not selling mutual funds. It's not, you know, so I, I see myself in a consultative role. You're a fiduciary. Correct. For your client's best interest. Correct. Yep. So when we're, yeah, scaling up, we've got, um, We've got transactional clients. We've got transformational clients that, you know, we're working with weekly, monthly for ideally decades. Sure. 35. I commit now and I'll make it public again, another 35 years minimum to servicing clients, to working and building up legacies because, you know, and we're looking at. So you're not just looking for people retiring from HP that want to roll over a big 401k. We've got those clients. We're, we're, we're working on clients like that. You know, being an integral part, a trusted resource. You know, I just came back from a funeral in my own family. I gave a eulogy on Saturday and it's one thing. Whenever you're calling some number, it's another thing to say, you know, Hey Joseph, something happened and I know the family for a decade or longer. Eventually too. Yeah. So that it's not. An added stressor, you know, and so that things are taking care of their, they're in writing, they're signed. It's, it's a process that we go through, but it's not like a grief stricken. Now what? Right. I can't think straight. And I have to make what decision by when, right. You know? Yeah. I mean, um, I just got back from a motorcycle trip, uh, and you know, I was riding too fast sometimes and I, I, um, came very close to a young deer getting out in front of me. Yeah, she freaked out. I can still see her face when she realized I was coming faster than she probably bargained for. Yeah. And, um, I took evasive action, missed her by 20 inches or something. And, you know, Jill would inherit Loco Think Tank if I'm gone and we've got some life insurance. Sure. But Like, there isn't any formal, like, who would run Loco Think Tank, you know, Jolt can't probably do it, really, you know, almost going to be like, uh, what are we doing now? Kurt's dead, so, anyway, well, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm currently, I just finished the book this past week, um, we're working through it in my course, but it's, uh, it's by, It's a Harvard Business Review book and it's about succession planning, you know, and there's there's obviously there's a market There's as a business owner. We're looking for things that we can help solve in the marketplace But as far as like an actual gap, it's extremely significant, right? Whether we're talking about the front range here or we're talking about Colorado or just the United States across the country There's a lot of yeah Not plans. Yeah. And, and, and a lot of viable good businesses that are being run by 60 somethings. Yep. Um, that need to be transferred rather than killed. Yeah. Um, and it would be a shame if public, private equity bought them all up, which is kind of mostly what's happening right now. Yeah. And, and, you know, not to come from a pace of fear, but, informed. You know, taking, taking, I mean, you took evasive action. But, but to have those things thought out, you know, have time, you know, long weekend with Jill, like what? What would this be? You know, what could this look like? And then work from there. So yeah, that, that's Educating clients. I mean, I have my soap boxes that I'll be on from now until the day that I'm like formally retired and I can't call anyone fair, but then I'll be, I'll be the grandpa in the, in the lounge, you know, waiting and just sharing stories and things. But, um, uh, so one, you didn't quite answer my question. Yeah. So no, no, no capital groups. Yeah. 2021 I filed. Um, that's when we registered with the state of Colorado. That's when I really started to look at, had you always wanted to be your own boss more? No, no, not at all. Did you get let go? No. Okay. Just curious. No, no. Weird times back then. Yeah, no, it was, um, I know that that is a very painful experience for many people though, and it, it, you carry that pain for a long time, but yeah, that 2021, you know, we had our, our son Benjamin in, in, uh, July of 2020. Okay. Yeah. That's when I really started to study for my CFP. That's when I was really looking at, um, what, what tier of, of education expertise that I wanted to provide for clients where, what, what was the area that I wanted to play in? And then 2021 was really when I, I decided to go full, yeah. Set for the CFP. Um, I kind of came up with my education timeline, um, had conversation with the current clients. Cause I mean, at the time we probably had 250 households or something like that. Okay. Um, which was straight up bootstrap cold call. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was not fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was out of need and you know, a sheer determined, sure determination of success. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Was that a shock to New York Life and the group there when you planted your flag? I don't think so. It was, um, so it evolved. So New York Life, as well as many of the other carriers, they have, uh, contracts that they offer, and then they have certain, uh, retail products that are offered. Okay. depending on what kind of contract you have. There's a discussion of, Oh, so you can like have an access access to sell New York life policies without being like a New York life office. You don't get all the access, whatever. But yeah, so that is, that's what we elected for. You know, you're in business. It's proud to offer basically New York life. Um, they have retail annuities and things like that. They have distribution channels, but as far as in my lifetime, you know, going back to the 1%, the great financial crisis. Something that's important, I think, is that people know the history of the institutions that they're doing business with and if they're out to value their customers or to use them and, you know, TARP, the troubled asset relief program, which many of the largest banks and institutions in the United States took money. I mean, through loans. Yeah. Yeah. That was. I've got, I got New York Life was we don't need your money. Correct. They were, they were financially sound Yeah. As they are today. As as Ford was the only American auto company not to take the bailouts and screw their past pensioners too. Yeah. So, you know, and people have, new Ford people have their favorite companies, you know, and there's, there's Absolutely. So we, we, well that put Ford up like I was a Chevy guy all my life, but it put Ford. Yeah. Pretty close to par. I got a Ford now my old truck out there, Ford. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you think, you know, you think about. The modern, you know, 2024 consumer that we hear about that values the way that their companies do business with and who they're going to choose. Yeah. New York life is one of many that's built a longstanding reputable, you know, financially sound reputation. And, but there's many other companies. So, uh, noble capital group, it's also a registered brokerage. So we can, we can basically three of the top four You know, dozens of other companies, you can offer their fun groups or whatever. Well, I mean, as far as thousands upon thousands, but as far as like carriers, you know, being independent, being able to shop around, you can't formally know a hundred different companies, you know, and then you add writers and contractual variations, it's like, a good three to six, you're covered, right? Um, I assume you were a solopreneur when this all happened and then you, you since added a partner, financial representative kind of person and a person, an administrative, yeah. So, uh, we put out a call on, uh, I think it was indeed 2021. Um, I had had several. Kind of service assistance. Mm hmm. Even as early as 2018 2019. Yeah, your helpers through No, no, no. Oh, these were people that I hired. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, cool, you know, so you're always planning on building something It was your need are you just something's totally swamped? Right? Yeah first. Well, if you're bringing on that many households you were Basically working spending 40 hours a week in appointments. Yeah, so one reason that I wore this is because This soup top is because in, uh, 2018, so I was working so much, you know, I'm, I'm just consuming podcasts and books and, um, I think it was, uh, Zuckerberg that wears the same shirt or something like that at the time. So I was like, you know what? I bought five of the same suit. So people kind of thought I was a sociopath wearing the same thing, whether it was chamber, whether it's networking, whatever it was, and it was, it was this one. No wonder that looks so familiar. I've probably seen you more, more than a thousand times. Yeah. People in my Toastmasters thought that I owned one suit and they're like, man, this guy's struggling. Do you have other colors? Yeah, but I blue at the time that the blue jacket became your thing. Yeah, my eyes are gray kind of blue green. So depending on what I haven't, I haven't found a good green forest green for you. Yeah. But yeah, it was, um, I lost my train of thought, but it's okay. It's okay. So you hired somebody right away to help even way back. Yeah. Um, you know, not really clear on. Expectations, job role, this is kind of the stuff that you need to figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. Help me out. I need help and you're willing to help. But yeah, so in 2021, um, uh, this zoom was already pretty mainstream, right? You know, and we ended up getting applications from all over the world, but we had like a narrow three. I mean, me and my third party self. Right. Maybe your wife a little bit. Yeah, we came down to, you know, an individual in Florida. And then someone in Firestone here. So Desiree, who came on board and she's been on with us, um, two and a half years. Okay, cool. Yeah. And, uh, she's now getting her license as a credential so that she can do a lot of the background. Right. My role. Well, and you can pay her as part of the revenue stream instead of as an hourly person too. Yeah. Right. Like even if it's just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So she's been a huge help. You know, she sat and she passed her life and health exam. She's working on her, her SIE or securities. Industry something that he wasn't around when I took my, yeah, it's a new one, but she's getting more credentials so that she can off, you know, so I can offload more of that and spend more of my time because planning with, with families, sitting down with clients, absolutely love it. It's a fun thing, right? Like it's a puzzle. Yeah. Like whether you're small business banking or doing what you're doing, like understanding their whole kind of situation in all these different situations and then like thoughtfully, yeah. Putting something together. Well, and, and more and more now, I think the profession is, it's, it's taking into consideration that we're not econs. We're not 100 percent rational, 100 percent informed, doing the objective best thing at every time. It's all mostly narrative driven. Really not, and it's not, when I say narrative, I mean more about the story. Yeah. Like where do we put ourselves into this story? the story, what are the activities that we did in this big long book of Choose A or choose B. And you choose A or choose B a hundred times a day. Um, but we just kind of draw that story out in front of ourselves and, you know, choosing. I've gotten kind of chubby. I had a bum knee last fall and it got me, knocked me out of running. And, you know, I rehabbed it pretty good. Got a little skinnier and then I got kind of lazy again because it was better. And, you know. You know, I know my diet. Thankfully, I do pretty good job except for the amount of alcohol. I drink frankly. Yeah My neighbor and I had the podcast last night and we drank Way over half of a black box Cabernet box We knew we were going to we walked home together. Yeah. Yeah, and it was pretty fun, but Like it wasn't good for me. Sure And we've all got, so, so, you know, we've got objective needs. We've got from my role, you know, there's qualitative, there's quantitative, like what are the numbers say, but really, you know, and we're working with an individual or a couple or business partnership, you know, owners. What, what works the best in real life? Yeah, not on paper, not in some PDF financial plan. How can we get you saving? Is it automatically transferring money to your, um, your IRA each month? What can we automate? Because automation is our friend. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, subscribe to your own future commitments. Yeah. Yeah. And just don't even think about it. And we'll sign up for 6 a month fees from somebody for, you know, without even thinking about it. But investing 200 a month starting when you're young, it should be easy. And working up that pyramid of knowledge too, because, you know, I, I feel like as more information's available, the more individuals are confused because then you start getting into small nuanced topics that you would never even have stumbled upon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whether you're on Reddit or Tik TOK or whatever. I mean, we've got 65 year old clients who are, this is what I saw on Instagram or whatever social media channel. If it's starting conversations with licensed professionals, I'm good with that. I like it. But if it, if it's sitting at home on a Friday night and worrying or, you know, missing the family ski day, because you're watching some money show, that's not what grandpa's role is, you know? Yeah. Yeah. We make our choices, but trying to enable people to. As for my role, the hardest thing is to, you know, if, if, if I ask you a list of 10 priorities, yeah, the bottom four are probably going to get knocked out. Right. So what are the top six? And how do I get in that? That part of the process that scales up, that grows with your wealth. It, that doesn't matter because your priorities are yours. And like, I can be your sounding board. But at the end of the day, it's like, In your professional opinion, Kurt, what do you want to do in this situation? Because you're the expert of your past and your future, you know? I think that's one of the reasons that you make a really excellent person for this. Yeah. Um, because you, you got a great smile. You're, you got a good sense of humor. Yeah. And you're that old soul identified at 12 years old. Yeah. You know, and so you, you're, you're incredible. like your credibility versus age. Mm-Hmm. I have to think is way off the chart. So it's probably that and just your willingness to work your butt off. Yeah. It, it was a lot harder when I was 27 and I had a baby face. Right. at least got some facial hair and high that, that, that, that impressed on me though. The, the need, the absolute, it was essential that I knew what I was talking about. Mm-Hmm. because I wasn't gonna gamble. Right, right. And, and say, yeah, just do it. You know? I think this would be great Yeah. Good, good point. I want to, I'm gonna call a real quick break. Sure. Um, so let's see, where did we depart? Um, we were kind of just talking about people and the process of getting into their stuff. Yeah. Um, so I guess what you're To about three years coming up on three years independent now. Yeah. Any regrets on that? No. Do you miss working with a larger team and stuff? No, no. You've got a small team now, but you've also got tons of support. I mean, you know, we've got, we've got business alliances, you know, partnerships with, I was just looking at it the other day, half a dozen or more. Right. You know, just, just the day to day things that we need to get done, whether it's, you know, using Salesforce or Calendly or zoom or. you know, using AI, incorporating technology, you know, harnessing the future and not fearing what it's going to become. Right. Right. How can we manage this? Oh yeah. All that. Yeah. And even from a business perspective, you know, operating costs and things like sure what's going to benefit our clients the most, what, what's going to be the most useful for us to use on a day to day basis. So having those to be able to tap into, you know, it's a, it's a big, financial services planning. It's, it's a big space. There's a lot of small nuanced things. And instead of saying, Oh, we're certainly confident about this thing that we barely ever work on. Right. You know, isn't, that's not the right thing to do. Right. Right. Yeah. So basically once you get out of your depth, you've got a partner there to provide a little deeper, like somebody, go ahead. Yeah. Not just that, but also, you know, being able to speak to tax and legal, But not being in those lanes, right, right, right. You know, so that's what I was saying. I was thinking about life insurance specifically, like you identify a very complex life insurance need through your estate planning process, but okay. Which specific policy and how to structure three different policies to have different durations or whatever like that, like that might be somebody where you. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's consultants for, yeah, basically every, every carrier is going to have some kind of in house team or some external team. So. So, I mean, the good thing about the business world is there's, there are people that are looking to provide those services, you know, it's a value add and the better value that we have for clients is the one that we're going to look for, you know, not what's going to pay us the most. Who can we shop on our end to maximize revenue at their expense? That's seen, that's done plenty of times. And so I feel like, you know, as far as blue ocean, if we're providing those services and values for customers, for clients. We want to be the boat that the fish are jumping into, not that we see our clients as fish, but to be that firm, to be that team that's looking, it's not a short term thing that we're doing, right? We want to maximize your success for decades. Yeah. And when, when I'm working, you want to be part of their decision to get a better CPA. Cause yeah, look what they missed on your tech stuff. Totally. Or whatever. And again, going back to having that seat on the team, right. You know, as clients. Grow their wealth, their business, their needs change. They evolve. And I don't know everything we need. We need a collaborative discussion. Yeah. Let's ask your accountant, let's see what your estate planning attorney says. And maybe if you want me there, I'll be there. You know, if it's a conference caller, right. Right. We need to bring in the next generation because, you know, especially with older clients, my assumption is that I'm handing. Those beneficiary checks, those contracts over. To their children, sometimes older than I am, I'm, I'm, I'm keeping that in the forefront of my mind whenever we're doing planning so that that's, that's the assumption, I mean, and yeah, going back to the, just the relationships with clients, it's as much as I hope to change and affect families. I mean, my world has been changed going from, you know, not planning to own a business to this has to be done, right. This has to be done over a long period of time and, you know, always getting better, being open to new ideas and collaborating with other individuals. I was thinking what an interesting dichotomy that, that season of your life, you know, between 10 and 20 years old, almost when you were like, nothing was secure. You're regularly on the run and changing everything to transition to this, you know, 35 year outlook. Yeah. Yeah. Quite a, quite a dichotomy of perspectives there. Yeah. It's, it's definitely different, you know, planting roots like, you know, 2019 Gina and I were talking and it's like, all right, what do we want in our short list? Like, you know, goal setting is a very regular thing that we do and vision dreaming, you know, putting those goals up. I mean, vision. printing the pictures, putting it in your, on your mirror, your vision board, regular enough to see like, and I have stories that are wild that you'll, I mean, it's hard to believe some of them, you know, and now with years under my belt, you know, clients that have shared with me, you know, Nick shared, he was like, I didn't want to tell you this because I was embarrassed by the goal and we've already done it in a faster timeline than I even thought possible. And now we're on to bigger and better things, you know, and it wasn't my planning ability or, you know, in the discussions that we had, a bit of encouragement in the right places, uh, can really bend the focus, you know, and, and how much do you want it? Yeah, it's, it's, it's humbling. So, um, what are your like top five, like things people do wrong? or that they should start doing now because a lot of people aren't doing it yet. Yeah. Is there something like, Yeah. no matter what age they are, if they're 21 to 40. Here's something that is pretty much unanimous across the board. With multi millionaire clients to those that are just starting out and they don't know anything. Yep. Legitimately don't know anything. I wish I started sooner. Everyone knows more than I do. I'm embarrassed to ask this question. Mm. Two million dollar clients, 18 year olds working at Walmart, you know, so I would say the blanket statement that I'm very confident to make is you're taking action. If you're taking action, acknowledge that. Do something. You will. And if you are, don't be embarrassed. You know, if you're talking to someone and they make you feel embarrassed, that's not the right person. Right. You know, and, and that there's an element of vulnerability that's required. Yeah, for sure. I've had conversations with people that I liked, that I thought, you know, this is a great prospect. This is someone I can do business with. And then, trust is clearly not there. Yeah. And I've told them, you need to find someone else. You know, I like you. I appreciate you as a person. I want what's best for you. I can't be your advisor. Because you didn't trust them? Because they didn't trust me. Yeah, yeah. You can see that. Yeah. Is that part of your skill set? Well, people reveal themselves pretty quickly. And I don't know if it was me being an endangered child, you know, in new schools, hurt me, but that sense I have, I have, yeah, or they'd been burned before and you just didn't have enough facial hair right then. Well, I mean, even, even, even peers my age, you know, I joke with others, you know, it's, it's tempting to say I'm not going to work with people under 35 because, you know, everybody's got a smartphone, we can access any information on the internet. Uh, Chad, GBT, right? Give some hilarious responses, but certain people don't know and they're not sophisticated and they think that it's accurate when it's not. But going back to, you know, simple statements, everybody doesn't know more than you do. The system's extremely complex. It's difficult to navigate. There's very few masters out there. I mean, and there are definitely clients who have just chanced through decades with winning Positions with just this is what I did and I stuck with it and it was like wow, you know You you did phenomenally well, right? So so happy for you. What apple at 40 Well, even you know the consistency we were talking about before we started, you know consistency is difficult but You know coming up with something that's that's It doesn't take effort, you know, whether it's a monthly basis, like a contribution or, you know, the amount that you're saving, we all, we're all different. You know, some people, I always tell clients, some people think in percentages and some people think in fixed dollar amounts, you know, my wife will round to the nearest like five or 10 minutes. She doesn't want to, she doesn't want to say she's going to do something for 23 minutes. I've got clients who have said like, this needs to be a round number. Right. It's not a hundred and twenty two dollars and twenty three cents. It's a hundred and twenty dollars. Yeah, you know, maybe 125 we're different. Yeah, so You don't have to be embarrassed by that or reluctant to to communicate that. Yeah Yeah, you know where you're starting is where you're starting and the scariest thing The scariest thing is taking a really hard look at where we are. Mm hmm And most people don't want to do that. I heard that from my strategic planning guests last fall. Like taking an honest assessment of where I'm actually at right now or where we are at as an organization is one of the hardest parts of strategic planning. Yeah. Which is basically what financial planning is. Yeah. And, and you know, the, the real joy that I have in working with clients and being with, I mean, I'm inspired, I get to learn all the time. You know, client reviews aren't just, this is what's happened. It's tell me what's new, you know, what, what, what's your team working on? What's your company working on? How's the family growing? What are the dynamics that are changing? But just having experienced with hundreds of people, a fear or an uncertainty, just an ignorance in their life and saying, well, this is really what it is. Yeah. And them saying, Oh, well, that's not a problem whatsoever. And it's like, that was one of your biggest fears. So now that that's done, you know, so I think, I think, um, something that I'm excited about. Yeah. I mean, you know, exactly. Fear not and learn. Yeah. Love thy neighbor, fear not. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, you know, my first couple of years, a significant portion of the people that I worked with and the relationships I formed were, you know, recent grads from CSU that. You know, their loans were coming out of deferment and they were getting their first job offer. Like, Hey, what do I have to do to deal with this? Like come up with a payment plan, you know, get, if they're married or have children, like let's get some of these protection box, just checked off. You know, cause some of these things it's just, it's on the to do list until it's done. Right. Once you do it though now, okay. What's the next phase. Yeah. I mean, cashflow from my perspective is always the most important thing. Regardless of your age. I mean, retirement planning specifically. the big pitfalls are in cashflow, right. You know, and the same thing for accumulating, if you're running at a deficit for 10 years, right. That's not good. Yeah. Those credit card interest payments are going to, uh, strip your 401k investments. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, maximizing cashflow, just learning budgeting. I go through the same exercise for clients that are 67, looking to retire in June next month to 25 year olds. Like if you, if you mastered this skill. You'll be way more successful. Do you recommend any, uh, technology tools on that front? I know there's like Mint and different kind of softwares that do stuff. Banks sometimes have that. Oh yeah. So, I mean, Excel works, um, pretty well. Google Sheets works too, um. We use for clients, it's called eMoney, and it's a planning software where, you know, you can link. You can link your bank account right to it. I used to in college. Oh yeah. You can't fool me, Kurt. You've been spending all of your income. Well, it gives you a dashboard so that you can then become your own assessor, but it also links, I mean, you know, APIs and everything. 401ks through your employer, you know, IRAs that you hold. Can almost sound like a financial statement summary right there. It's living, you know, you can hit refresh and, um, yeah, so it's, I mean, that's a, it's a, it's a big software cost, but as far as the platform itself, we've gotten nothing but raving reviews and, uh, you know, they're committed to safety, cybersecurity and always improving it. So, you know, whether it's things on our end when we're doing planning or whether it's clients that are able to, you know, especially for those that are caring for parents. Sure. You know, it's like who's taking care of mom or dad. Like somebody has to have that. I mean, and there's professionals that could be that third party that are just helping pay bills. It's not a totally in and out. It's just, are the bills being paid and right. Is this done? Yeah. They're going to shut the gas off. Yeah. Cause yeah. Yeah. But I mean, you, you utilizing software, I think, you know, in the modern era talking about technology, it's, it's important automating what you can I mean, very difficult to get an 800 credit score unless you have things automated. Even if you're, you know, earning the income and you've got the discipline and just, Oh, whoops. Yeah. I didn't, didn't know that thing wasn't taking care of itself. And, uh, we all go on vacation. We all get busy and, you know, have deadlines and stuff. But, um, going back to Jillbear, that takes care of most of that, but think, well, and she's got it all automated now and going back to that casual aspect, you know, there's something that I love working with couples on is just making those community, that communicating what that compromise needs to be. Yep. You know, for you, it's shoes for her, it's the animals or it's, it's vacation or it's cars or it's hunting or it's guns or whatever it ends up being. Sure. Just making sure that your biggest fear. Is addressed. It's communicated and, and, and as is hers. I just don't want her shoe budget to exceed my motorcycle. Yeah, exactly. You get this. If I get that okay. Deal. Benjamin, our three year old, he's learning, let's make a deal or something like that. Like, here's the deal. And my wife, Gina's like, let's not teach him that. And it's not for reject. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Not a deal for us. Never split the difference kind of thing, you know, but it's, but I think that that is. You know, and I tell clients in one of the first two meetings that for couples, some of the most value in working with an advisor is the conversations that you're going to have when you leave this office, when you jump off this, between you, like really, what, what would you want to happen? Yeah. You know, and then just bringing me back. Right. The do we want to save 300 a month and reach our goals eventually or save 600 a month and go faster, but we're not going to be able to have, One less beach vacation every year. Yeah, exactly. You know, cause that's the real conversation. And also removing guilt. Removing guilt, you know, it's like, we need vacation. We need recharge time. Right. You know, maybe it's a 10, 000 Euro trip, but maybe it's a trip up the pooter and overnight camping that's 50 bucks more than the regular weekly grocery bill. Like it doesn't have to be that crazy thing. Right, right. But not having that guilt associated with it and not pretending like it's a surprise. Yeah, yeah. You know, the family trip in August, Is it coming up next year? Probably. Yeah. We'll see how we just allocate for that. Cause then, then that, that, that grows the, the, the broader conversation. I would say the other thing that I always spend time working on with clients and you know, the business owners are really love real estate or whatever it is. It's like, you know, there's a fork in the road and that fork is growth and income. Okay. Growth or income. You know, are we buying this asset for growth? Mm. Mm. Is this asset supposed to generate income? That's why you buy real estate, because it can grow and provide income. Yeah. Just kidding. Well, you know. As a financial planner, you're actually supposed to tell people never to buy real estate, just more stocks. No, no. No, No, no. It actually is a great asset class. Just, just having like for like. Yeah. You know, if, if, if we're, if we're comparing an investment grade bond. to your favorite speculative stock that you just read about on Twitter, x. Those aren't the same thing. Totally. Let's not even put them in the same ratosphere cause they're not, you know? And we're going to have less speculative stocks. The older you get. Yeah. I mean in general, you know, people, people table things down. You know, they, they shift down in their risk tolerance and there's going back to that, you know, qualitative quantitative. The profession is really, becoming more current with the behavior of human beings. It's not just, can I Google a ticker and see what the 52 week average was, where we are on that range. That's not, that's not success or failure. It's how can we implement things where, you know, we've got a goal based approach, values based approach, like this money is for this. And this money is for that. Yep. And now. We've got compartments, you know, the bucket strategy has been around for decades, storytelling thing. Right. Yeah. And if we do these decisions, then we can be financially independent by the time we're 57. Yeah. We might not want to retire yet. Yeah. But we could. Yeah. I mean, and when you look at, you know, things like opportunity costs, right. I think that that is something that is mostly just lost on the public until we take some time to really take a look, you know, well, grandpa and grandma, they just bought a CD, let it mature. Bought another CD. How much in CDs are we talking about? Hundreds of thousands of dollars. How long are we talking about? Decades, right? Oh, that could have been two point four million dollars. Yeah, instead. It was three hundred and forty. Yeah Even you know, we're in a high interest rate right now, right? Net interest income at the banks is just rolling in right and most people don't know that There's a cost to that by not taking a look at what your savings rate is. You know, not, not just in dollars per month, but like, what's your yield? I mean, totally. I actually, I kind of, I have, uh, our members pay annual dues. Some of them only have small portions, but I get a chunk of money at the end of the year. And, you know, I'm basically kind of bootstrapped local because I wanted to put 50 grand into a CD, a 5 percent or for six, six, six months. And so, and it's, for me, it's healthy to not have too big of a bank account. It makes me work harder. Yep. Yeah. You know, there's, there's multiple ways to go about it. And, you know, the outlining what that, that opportunity cost looks like, I mean, there's, there's rules that we have to play in, you know, whether we're talking about IRAs and required minimum distributions. Yeah. Yeah. Or if we're talking about inherited assets. I mean, we talk about the baby boomers and you know, this transfer of wealth, whether it's 30 or 80 trillion, real estate and all this stuff. It's like either way, uncle Sam's going to get quite a bit of it. Well, and just knowing, are we playing checkers or are we playing chess? Right. And what are the rules that we have to play by? Because we've had clients who saved more than enough for their entire lives, but they weren't, In accounts and in the position that would maximize what their actual goals were. And so I would say, you know, for, especially for older individuals, whether 60 to 70 really is, is an ideal time. Most really don't start thinking about it until they're mid to late fifties. Yeah. You know, especially for those raising kids and paying for college and things like that. Like, All of a sudden we have income and we're at our highest earning potential. Right. And our expenses just dropped off. And we're really looking at, you know, I don't want to do this for that much longer. Right. And maybe it's a, you know, a new career, kind of a, the, the retire at 65 and sit at home. That's, that's, that's long in the past. I mean, you know, that's an ageist thing to say you're retiring at 65. Medicare still exists. Social security is still a thing, but Although we need to really increase both of those, but we'll save that conversation for the politics segment. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, some of us know math. And some of us don't. There are fixes. Some things are obvious. Yeah. But, you know, when we're looking at, between the ages of 60 and 70, I mean, really dialing in on what those imminent goals are. Ideally, we have until, you know, we have 40 years to plan for that. We've got, we've got superstar clients that are in their early 20s just, you know, Yeah, already ahead of schedule way ahead. I mean and old souls, but also just like they're doing the thing that they need to do Yeah, like a robot and but but going through you know, what their biggest priorities are, you know when we look at Those that are caring for their parents. I mean, there's going to be empty houses. There's going to be real estate that becomes available. Who who's going to manage it? Are we going to rent it out? Is it going to be a property manager? Is that going to be my Thursday gig? Right. Right. You know, and just those questions. Yeah. Needed answer. Communicating, communicating with peers in the family, you know, siblings, who is taking care of mom or dad and it not being some. You know, spaghetti on the wall. Yeah. Whoever doesn't step back when asked, whoever's close, we'll sell it. And you know, where's the stuff going to go? Like, are you going to get the watch? Am I going to get the legacy? Whatever. Yeah. Like, you know, and, and not because the material things are material things, but sentiment, sentimental items, those are priceless and those are worth fighting over, going through, well, are talking about first, even in business, you know, there's been billions of dollars. Of market value wiped away from private family companies. Because of arguments about rosebushes being cut down, those were mom's roses, legitimately, I mean, the stories that are being told have been written, it's, it's wild, and you know, emotions can get in the way. Yeah, which, I mean, it goes back to your early comment from this conversation that we're not really rational. Creatures making rational decisions, which is why you got to get enough information in your head to make good decisions and fit them into your story. Yeah. And, and, you know, not to depart from the emotions, cause you know, caring for family, taking care of your parents, planning for, you know, your business partner to take over after your imminent death. Like these things are emotional and it's easy to just say, I'm not dealing with it, but having the conversations is always better because then you can fight about it. Um, and what's put on paper is, is, it's, it's been out in the open and it's not a surprise. Fair enough. Yeah. Um, we're going to jump into closing segments. Okay. Um, and I, I kind of, it's faith, family, and politics. Yep. Um, and I'm, I'm really kind of drawn to talking about family first and asking you about your grandpa. Yeah. Have you given a eulogy before? I haven't given one yet. I'm, I'm 50 this summer and I haven't given one, so. First one. So yeah, Wesley Millard, he just passed, uh, June 4th last week. He was 88. Um, my grandma, Dorothy, she's been his rock. I mean, they've 67 years through all the chaos in my life. So they were down in South Florida. They moved to Buford just after COVID Buford, South Carolina, which is where we were this past week. We just got back Monday. Um, they were, they were that, you know, that safe Haven, they were the one kind of consistent, stable place in your world. Yeah. And you know, there's a big, recognition and intervention for the cycle of domestic violence, especially in young men. It's, it's repeat offenders over generations is very common to people who've been watching when that's your image as a kid, you know, that's, that's, that's what you think is appropriate. It seemed like the opposite of that to me for what it's worth. So far, it's where I mean, my, my granddad, he was, he was a big part of that. And I mean, Um, dozens, if not hundreds of people who volunteered and counseled and coached, you know, to have that healthy, positive image of, I mean, I see myself as protector of all women and not in a sexist way that they can, but that that's my role, you know, if you saw a woman getting her purse grabbed by some thug running down the street, you would be giving them the clothesline. Yeah. I mean, I have a very, I have a very low threshold for things like that because, I mean, I called 9 1 1. And left the phone off the hook before. Really? When, yeah, my mom was being threatened. Oh, wow. And physically assaulted. Wow. But being powerless cause I was small. Right. I'm not so small anymore. Right. I'm looking pretty big. But, but, you know, granddad, he was, uh, so he was a professional engineer, civil engineer in Florida, worked on traffic. Um, he went to Clemson university. I think he walked on in junior year to the swim team and he was captain his senior year. Okay. Yeah. Just. Awesome athlete. Yeah, he was a pastor. Was raised Southern Baptist. Okay. You know, very rigid. Um, I like to clap. I like to dance. You can't clap if you're sitting down? There's, there's just very strict rules. You know, there's, you know, there's spirituality, there's religion, there's, there's a relationship with God. I mean, it's a, it's a wide spectrum. You know, I went to university. I was a barista at Starbucks in my early twenties and, you know, I got, I got a broader view of the world. But going back to my granddad, I mean, and my grandma, they were, I mean, If we were in a pinch, we lived with them for a while. They're like my mom and dad, even though I have very strong relationships with both my mom and dad still. Um, yeah, it was, uh, he had Parkinson's for a while. He had back to back strokes in the last month and a half, and it was just a quick decline, but it was my first eulogy. Um, I haven't really given the opportunity of some of my Toastmaster mentors to see or read the speech, but. So, you know, I, I'm, I'm always an advocate for Toastmasters and for people to find their voice because it's a, thank you. It's, we all have a message to share and if you don't know how to speak, you probably won't share it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's okay if there's fillers and all this other stuff that Toastmasters teaches you how to get through, but really distilling those messages down. Um, Writing the speech, writing the eulogy for my grandpa was the way I thought I had processed his death, you know, between Tuesday and Saturday last week. Not until, you know, 4 a. m. Saturday morning was it really hitting me. And, you know, to just be able to honor and share the legacy that people leave. You know, I work with money and people always say, like, we're not leaving anything for the kids or joke around. Right, right. Money aside, you know, our legacy is much more than the value of our IRA or, you know, the value of the house when we pass away, whatever it's, it's, uh, it's recipes, it's memories, it's experiences. And, um, he, he was a role model for my entire life. I was going to say, like, at least for a stretch of time, um, there, you didn't, you know, until almost until the Mayo days, you probably didn't have such a really strong. Mentor male mentor figure in your world, maybe a few here and there or whatever, but yeah, not a lot. Yeah. Right. You had counselors and therapists or whatever. And, and, you know, I, I didn't mention, so Milton, my, my biological dad, my real dad, we always had a strong relationship when we were, when we were leaving Utah in first grade kindergarten, um, we, I mean, I was crushed. I was devastated because my mom and dad had already split up, but, um, You know, that's when we started moving around with Pat and that's when, uh, I, I mean, I was, I was flying alone, I think when I was 11 from Florida to Utah. Wow. Yeah. You know, but still to go see your dad. Oh yeah. Real dad. Yeah. Okay. All the time. And, but you know, being, having the distance, it's just the, like, I don't know the dynamics of why his relationship with your mom broke up and stuff, but I imagine the, the, the The, the gut check, especially when, you know, you're in like virtually witness protection, moving around the country, trying to stay away from this evil person. Yeah, totally. Yeah. It was a wild ride. Oh yeah. And, um, And, and for your grandfather. Yeah, he, I mean, granddad stepped up to Pat, I think more than once, but I mean, I felt like Uh, we were nothing but safe in their presence, even though, you know, there was a lot smaller guy. Oh no. I mean, he, he, yeah, he's bigger than me. All right. Yeah. Okay. He, he, although he was older at the time. Sure. Yeah. You know, this is easily 20 years ago, but yeah, just did the, I mean, my, my nephews growing up around, uh, grandpa and grandma, uh, one of my nephews thought my grandma's name was darling. Because my grandpa dressed my grandma so much. Always darling. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, but I mean, the role model that he was, I mean, awesome swimmer, family man. Yeah, yeah. You know, just always there for a good time, watching movies. Cool. Cracking up. But yeah, the eulogy experience, um, It gives you a different perspective. I'm sure. Yeah. I'm sure. Um, I want to talk about, uh, your wife as well. But before we do that, can we talk about your mom? Yeah. Um, obviously very special to you as well. Yeah, definitely. As your dad. Sure. But, uh, what, what would she say about her kid? Yeah. If I asked her? Uh, so I learned my work ethic from my mom. Yeah. You know, with four kids at home. She easily put in 50 hours a week at work and then 35, 60 at home or whatever, never complained and would be there to listen or, you know, rub your back and talk to you when you're upset or whatever it was like, yeah, she's an amazing person. And I also got to see, you know, as I, as I got older and got a little bit more mature and just business knowledge, you know, how important it is for small businesses to value their employees. Um, whether it's being mistreated or underappreciated or underpaid, we felt she was kind of taking advantage of, uh, definitely her career, career journey or whatever at the biggest to the smallest, yeah. Multiple times, but learning the work ethic from her and just, um, mommy and dad. I mean, the thing that I was told was, Whatever you're gonna be be the best. It doesn't matter what it is. Cool. Any any career that you pursue just be the best Yeah, do it to the best effort that you can and that's that's worked very well And I think that it's something that is easily a very strong parental message for generations. Yeah, you know, fair enough Don't don't try and form your kids into some thing that you want them to become but Encourage them to do their thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause we ended up being the well, yeah, exactly. We end up your best you. Yeah. Right. Cause we all have different capabilities and opportunities. And it's my, my youngest brother is the, the heir apparent to the farm. And we're like, genetically, we look a lot alike, um, even in our character, our personality, it's a lot of like, but I really jived with school and people and I was just never going to be a farmer. Yeah. And he just loves it. He's made for it, you know, and so like A hundred years ago, as the eldest son, I was probably expected to take over the farm and stick around, you know, and, uh, thank God I had the kind of family that was like, you know, you do you. Go off to college, whatever that is. Yeah. Right. Because they didn't know, you know. No. So, um, yeah. Oh, that's fun. That's a neat. Uh, so on the, uh, the young lady from Starbucks, how long, uh, before she knew that you thought that she was Gina, she hung the moon. Gina? Yes. It was probably a couple of months before she, you let her know how much, uh, yeah. How smitten you were. Yeah, it was, uh, so it was funny at the time, my best friend Brandon, you know, since seventh grade, even through the moves and everything, like we, we talked this week, um. At the time we were going to the gym a lot and we were, we were monitoring like, health stuff. So we're checking our blood pressure, I'm sorry, our heart rate. And so I sent him a screenshot of my heart rate one night. It was like 110 or something when I'm laying in bed. And he's like, what the heck's wrong with you? And I was like, I'm thinking about this girl. Yeah, exactly. And so he quickly runs to, so the next time I'm at his house, which was like the next day, he pulls open this, uh, he, he said, what's her name? I said, it was like Gina, last name starts with a T, you know, her dad's an endocrinologist in town. And so my friend, Brandon's wife, Haley. She's, um, she's a type one diabetic. She's got, uh, I think it's a factor five latent blood disorder. And, uh, I don't know what that means, but it's something hard. They need, they need constant care. And she's like, Oh yeah, he's mean. I don't know. And so my friend, Brandon, he goes to get the yearbook and pulls it out. And sure enough, we went to middle school together. Oh, really? Didn't know each other. Interesting. We might've been in the same class, but we have no memory of it. And I moved away for more than a decade, but yeah, a couple of months in, uh, I told her, you know, I was considering moving, but I wanted to pursue other things and yeah, a year to the day. So we met May 1st, 2016. We got married May 1st, 2017. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. It was like, you know, we had dated a lot of people. We knew what we were looking for. We knew what we're not looking for. And, uh, Yeah, she so she was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico Okay, moved to South Florida when she was four. Okay, her mom's from Puerto Rico her dad's from Peru. Okay, where they currently live Most of the year. Yeah. Yeah, and Yeah, she's, she's bilingual, uh, Benjamin's think it's come out here? Oh yeah, they, they come out pretty regularly. Yeah, we either, basically, they spend a month with us, you know, and then we'll go down and see them in Florida. Very cool. Oftentimes we want to defrost and get a siesta key, so it's pretty regular. Very cool. Yeah. What, uh, what was it about her that had you so smitten so fast? Well, the first conversation that we had, I mean, An hour and a half in, you know, we're just talking about bucket list items and like really deep things. It wasn't a kind of first date superficial, small talk, you know, it was like, I've always wanted to do this. And we just went back and forth, like volleying, you know? And I mean, she had, we, we have it written still. I mean the same list and yeah, it was just like, she's absolutely the one. And you know, you, you learn things about your spouse over time or it's like, this wasn't great, but as she has with me, obviously, certainly, but you know, getting down to the core of that person and having someone that's experienced those things with you, you know, It just adds up over time, and that cumulative experience, I think there's nothing better. Um, you guys have one small? Benjamin. Um, and how old is he now? He's, uh, he turns four next month. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, he's getting actually kind of a chunker, uh, from the Christmas party. He's growing up, oh yeah. Um, uh, we always ask a one word description of the children. Hmm. Determined. Determined? Oh. Yeah. I wouldn't hurt him. Mm mm. Whether that means climbing the high chair by myself or Oh, yeah. I mean, in the first, in the first, the first nine of life, it'll be harder for us, but he's gonna do great. I like it. Yeah. It was inevitable. Gina and I are both stubborn. Yeah. You know, our powers combined couldn't have been anything other than this. I like it. His memory's better than mine. I mean It seems like you're 35, how old is Gina? Mm mm. Also because you were in middle school together. So if you're going to have, have more, uh, levels, it's time to go. You guys going to do more? We're actively working on it. Okay. Good. Pulled the goalie. That's great. We're checking, uh, ovulation. We're, we're using technology. Awesome. Yeah. For you. Well, good luck. Any day. Awesome. Yeah. I'm hoping for a girl next, but obviously I'll be glad with anything that we get. Just when I next would be perfect. Then you could kind of call it. It happens. It's not in my family. It's not in hers, but you never know. Yeah. Yeah, take it if it happens. Um, what else on the family front? Anything else that feels like it would be missing if we left it out? Um, When I moved to Cal When I moved away for university, I had no idea how much time I spent with my siblings and my family. Hmm. Like, the amount of friends that I had in school. One Brandon, right. You know, we had a little like trio or quad, you know, in high school for a minute, but it was just, yeah, I moved to university and it was like, okay, so full time student, full time job, right. Part time researcher, you know, and I still had time in the week. I didn't realize that, you know, just the relationships that you have in life and the importance of, uh, being able to. Just a dynamic experience. Yeah, you know, I've got one brother. That's great with technology one brother That has a tile and stone company, right? You know one one little sister. That's the athlete the other one. That's like a poet It's just variety, you know, and then going back and seeing, you know, 50 to 100 family members that I haven't seen since like before I had a driver's permit as, as a family person. Just reconnecting with, I mean, we've got 24 hours in a day, you know, especially with business and things like how can we become more efficient, more profitable or more clients. You also can't be everywhere eating lunch on a Thursday, right? You know, so just being intentional from financial planning to just living your day, whatever your time is being spent on, you know, making sure that it's something you actually want to do. We're going to end up somewhere. Let it, let it be a place where we want it to be. And we got people that we want. I've limited myself to four hours of Twitter a day, just cause I want to do more productive things in my life. No, just kidding. Like, I hope it's less than 20 minutes. Totally. Yeah. Um, Oh, it's, oh, I missed it. I, the four 20 is when I always offer the joint. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, good. Thank you though. You turned me down to the bubble water. I didn't expect you to take me up on the joint. Oh, you're good. You're good. Um, politics though. Uh, where would you like to start in that? I mean, I, I was, uh, I was in Florida for what was it? Jeb Bush and Gore. What was that recount? Yeah, the, the, the other chat. Yeah, I was three years old or something. Yeah, yeah. Things were just going crazy. Um, I, I had no interest really. Yeah. Until, uh, I mean the great financial crisis, you know, 2008. I graduated high school. Yep. Going through all this stuff. Um, and really it, it took another turn just working with individuals money. Okay. You know, and their concerns of, you know, this isn't some distant thing that doesn't affect me. Oh yeah. Uh, taxation in the future. I'm concerned about this act or this proposal, you know, and really just keeping an eye on what Congress is doing, learning that tax law is written in pencil. Right. And especially a state tax law. Oh, everything. You know? And I mean, even, even this past week, there was a Supreme court case that just came down that might affect by sell agreements across the board, changing, you know, 20 years or more of precedence. Oh, wow. Yeah. So just being aware of, you know, concerns that people have. And I mean, I was raised Southern Baptist, but there are being raised by a single Yeah. Wick. Food stamps, free lunch in the park, Pell Grant, I mean, you name something, I was on it, and we would have starved without it. So, you know, these social fabrics, these entitlement programs, they need to make sense. They need to be fiscally sound, and how can we do that? Yeah, do you think it can be done on a federal level, or does it, like, Resources need to be pushed out to, that's what I feel like. It always gets abused when it's on the federal level and usually corrupted, but maybe with oversight, stronger community engagement, it can be localized. But as things get bigger, they get more inefficient. It doesn't matter what it is. You know, you got a hundred thousand employees. You don't know them all. You know, you can't keep track of them and who would want to. So just being responsible. I think that, you know, life is a relay. Okay. My grandpa was 88. His legacy lives on. That responsibility passed to me and mine to Benjamin and so on and so forth. Like, what can we do today that makes tomorrow better? So what can we do today that makes tomorrow better? Uh, who's, who's got your, who's signed you got in your front yard for the 2024 election. I think that if, if everyone needs to do themselves a favor and their neighbors, they should read the constitution. Okay. It's not going to take long. Chances are, hasn't been in a long time. Uh, And when we're looking at the problems that are around us, um, it's wild. So you're not going to tell me who you're, whose yard sign you're going to put in? No, I'm giving out free RFK junior signs if you want one. I mean, I think that a dynamic duo is essential. You know, I think that coverage is essential. So if we've got a business magnate and, uh, Someone with, uh, an extensive past of law, that would be great. You know, people that have coverage. I don't want the same in two different positions. Yeah. You know, if, if you're the yin, I'm the yang. Like, just like a, just like a business team. You got to know yourself to be able to surround yourself with the people that are going to do the job right. The job's not being done right in many different aspects. I think three letter agencies are failing us. I think that, uh, the big institutions, I mean, when you build something, you have to stack on top of something before it. Totally. And most of those things were a hundred years old. The, uh, quote that was shared from Elon Musk today was, uh, uh, from a conversation he had with somebody, but they're, the world has trended toward too many referees and not enough players. Yeah. Yeah. Horses carrying the cart. I mean, you know, it's just, if you look at, I love first base, like first principles. I think Elon Musk is probably the business leader of the world that does that. Well, yeah, I loved physics and in college, just because there's rules, there's things that you have to operate in. And, you know, if we look at, if we look at debt, if we look at debt to GDP, if we look at demographics, we can look at other countries, other economies, we can see what works and what doesn't. I mean, if you're going to experiment, start small. whether it's universal basic income or, you know, whatever new crypto is going to be the thing, start small and our, our, our government can't do that. It doesn't know how. And if there's no checks and balances, I mean, would you prefer to take an Uber driver? That's a five star or a one star? No question. Right. Well, the one stars will starve to death after a while. Like the market has signals. And, and, and the thing that, I think isn't seen or recognized across our government is you don't even see the three stars, right? It's five, 4. 9, 4. 9, 4. 9, 4. 9. You know, I mean, and that's, that's biblical. Jobs report was great. That's, that's from Matthews. Right. And then it was Pareto, Vilfredo Pareto, the 80, 20 principle. Right. Right. I mean, so if you look at, I mean, the amount of corruption, uh, just irresponsibility, you know, if I'm beholden to you, if I'm your fiduciary. And I'm getting my report card from this person. What do you make of the, like, do you think there's corruption involved in like the Ukraine situation? A lot of exegesis has been thrown around there. Yeah. So everyone wants to talk about semiconductors. We're going to sign a 10 year, uh, mutual protection agreement or something with Ukraine like today or tomorrow or something. Well, what? Yeah. And looking, looking at something that. I mean, I'm talking about the conversation we always have around investments. Isn't just, you know, what's the return, what's the lazy easy button? Sometimes that's where we're starting and it's, you know, S and P 500 and we're going to go from there. But eventually it's, you know, do we want exposure in countries like this? Do we want to invest in? Right. For profit, military grade weapons. Animal testing. Right. Do you want that or do you not want that? Do you want Pfizer? We don't have to invest in that at all. Yeah. Honestly. For sure. And um, Well, how about the ESG thing? It's pretty big. There's some significant change in the weather there it seems like in that space, but I don't know. I think the thing that should carry across is that meritocracy. Yeah. What made America? Right. And merit merit isn't about checking boxes really. Cause not at all. Is it doesn't matter. Subjective and perspective kind of thing. Character of the person. Yeah. When we're looking at, I mean, Ukraine, everyone's talking about whether it's cryptocurrencies, uh, web 3. 0, right. Semiconductors, AI, VR, virtual reality, right. Silicon and neon have a direct relationship. You can't make any semiconductor without, without neon as an input. Interesting. 90, more than 90 percent of the world's neon comes from Ukraine. So if Russia gets it, Lindsey Graham just shared about, Oh, well, it's about the materials, right? Oh, which Russia now controls a lot of, which if we would have sued for peace a year ago or let Ukraine sue for peace a year ago, we'd have had that part. But so we were in. So shelter from the storm, they've got a mandatory lockdown and then you go into if you, if you graduate into it, it's, it's a, uh, protected housing. Okay. Iron gate monitor people that live on the premise. You're home by 5 p. m. You're not at home at five Oh one. There's an APB out. Every police officer is looking for you. Whoa. That's where I was watching nine 11 happen. Fair enough. I mean, looking at the corruption in our government, it doesn't work. Thank you. In the current state, what that looks like, we've got less than six years to decide. Well, there's, I mean, there's, it seems like there's a military industrial complex. There's, All kinds of, like the CIA thinks that they run the country and the president works for them, it seems like, as do the FBI, the DOJ has become, who knows what that, how deep that is. Um, and pharma, like pharma, what, I think they pay like 80 percent of the revenues that run the regulatory agencies. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the day you retire, you can get a job in the government. There's no corruption. Yeah, exactly. You want to run Halliburton? And then, uh, yeah, you could just, just hop on over and all of a sudden Yeah, you could be the State Department out of fat. Or vice versa. Yeah, the, these institutions, they were formed for different purposes than they currently exist in. And as far as term limits, the shorter, the better as far as who's running and who's able to hold that position. Uh, I'm skewed towards younger than older at this point. Not that wisdom doesn't exist. Right. But. You know, if you're in a emeritus position, you can be a part of the conversations, you're just not casting a vote. Do you think, uh, do you think you should have to pay taxes to cast a vote? To cast a vote. You know, right now it's just 18, right? And not a felon. Um, but there's increasingly numbers of people that are saying, you know, if you have zero skin in the game, if you've been collecting 30, 000 a year from the government for your 40 years of adult life, you don't get to vote. Yeah. I think that could have other, other effects that it would just get shot down. Right. Late in the facts. Well, in women, we have to let. Cause women vote so emotionally, we have to stop that from happening too. I'm just kidding ladies. Memes. Yeah. We're recalling memes. That's why I saw that one. Yeah. Totally. But, I mean, when we're looking at the entitlement programs, we can just watch Europe for the next decade and see how it works out for them. Because they're older than we are. Right. You know, we talk about replacements. Yeah, they got a bunch of young Muslims that are gonna be like Um, we have a challenge with the level of taxation, uh, and we could either give you less care or we could make there be less of you. Yeah. Which would you prefer? So I mean, fiscally, I'm, I'm extremely conservative in that it needs to be ran responsibly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, my, my grandpa Van, who passed. In 2019, uh, he, he was, uh, the funeral director of a cemetery in California. And, you know, from like the sixties to the nineties or whenever he retired, it was one of the few in the whole state that ran in the positive. I mean, they didn't take tax money because he just, he just ran it fiscally sound. And I think, you know, my grandpa, Wes. With, you know, his engineering mind and my grandpa van, who was pragmatic and dealt with people in a difficult time, burying their dead, you know, those things combine me to make, you know, we have a responsibility and money is just, it's a resource. It's a tool, how we deploy that tool is guided by our values and our ethics and our morals and our laws and things like that. Well, and the government, I mean, well, and the government has become, you know, uh, Biden's status statement that we are the government. That's not true. The government is an institution. It's job is to protect itself. The people that work within the government are in that institution. So they're part of that organism, you know? And if we look at just with technology, Jordan Peterson called X or Twitter. A modern day giant walking the earth. I mean, we don't really understand the things that we're using and how they can operate. Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, Yeah, the impacts of that thing is like a dragon that's burning villages. I'm in a rural country in Africa and I'm getting Wi Fi from the internet. And I can see what life is like living in, maybe not San Francisco, but, Whatever, yeah. Des Moines. Yeah. I want some more of that. You know, what does that look like? What are those ramifications? Do you think that's part of, like the, on this illegal immigration challenge, do you think that even just that window to see what it's like in the United States is part of the draw? Probably. Or is it, you know, signaling, don't worry about it. We're looking for more voters. Uh, I think there's both. I mean, there's definitely an element of, you know, if you see, I mean, my Third great grandparents on my dad's side came through Ellis Island from the Netherlands. Okay. Quarantined with cholera on the ship before they were let on. Oh wow. And I think it was my great great great grandpa and great great great grandma and like their five kids. They were seeking a better life. Right. Coming here. If it's a family versus man. Mattnedy You have more inclination to let a family that come across this thing. that we can absolutely wrap our entire collective arm around is that we need immigration reform. Mattnetdy One hundred per cent. first raggedy You know we've got, we got a great neighbor in Timothy. Married couple. Their, their, their daughter's three years old. They've been working here on visas for like a decade. They have to leave America. Oh, no way. They've been trying to renew, and trying to renew, and trying to renew. Sorry, we have too many undocumenteds now. We have to have you leave. Denied. Oh, shit. Yeah. Own a home, over employed, three jobs between the two of them, you know, if I'm at the gym, I see them at the gym. If we're at the park with Benjamin, I see them at the park with Benjamin. That's crazy. Windsor Rec Center swimming, they're there, you know. Talk about the American dream. When there's 10, 15 million recent immigrants with no papers, no connections to deport. So we need reform. Yeah. And I think it doesn't matter who wins this next election. We need to assess our regulations, you know, I like Elon Musk's idea, if you make a new one, Don't you get rid of one on the regular? Yeah, I mean, regulation, regulatory burden is insane. I mean, if you look at the county we're in, affordable housing, by the way, mandatory screens on radon. Premium grade roofing shingles. You can't have too many people living in one property. I mean, all these things have a cost, and you look at the line items. I had to pay an ornithologist 300 to come watch my tree, to make sure it didn't have any nests in it, so that I could cut it down to put my carriage house in the backyard. Makes sense. Yeah. It was like, it's my freaking tree. But you can't fight city hall. You just got to pay the stupid 300 and do the thing that they tell you you got to do. Like it shouldn't have mattered if there was a bird nest in that tree. I'm more important. I'm sorry, but I'm more important. Right. Well, and I mean, if you look at my tree, I think a barrel of crude oil, one barrel, I think it's like 55 gallons is approximately four years of manual labor, right? That's the amount of work in jewels it represents. Right. So do you, do, do we want our grandparents? Digging ditches for 40 years, or do we want to spend 900 right and get it done, you know? So I think when we're looking at AI when we're looking at automation and robotics and an inflation now How do we modernize our infrastructure? While not doing it in the way that China has done it Spending money on projects. It'll never be not just profitable not even break. You know, they won't add anything, right? Are we really gonna make a hundred thousand bicycles to sit here? And rot so that the people didn't rebel in the streets because they were at work and they were tired, right? That's that's in the next six years. We will have discussions like this and by 2032 Everyone will know because their social security check will go down by 20 Because when receipts don't match outflows, you know, we've been assessing this and it's been talked about for decades, you know. But you're just gonna have to do it. These are, these are our parents, right? These aren't, you know, these aren't third party others. These are, if we go to King Soopers right now, And they have gray hair. That's who we're talking about for sure. Our clients, our families, our parents, our aunts and uncles. And there's a great responsibility and the people that have been elected to watch over these things. Yeah. They could care less. Um, do you remember the first, uh, political conversation you and I had? Yes. When was it? When was it? I don't know. Probably the fall of 2021 or no, it must've been the spring. No fall. Yeah. Um, Yeah, it was, uh, you know, I, I try, I'm a middle child. I'm a peacekeeper. I'm a negotiator. And you know, we were, I've been, at first I was scared and how COVID presented itself, the fears that were communicated. Sure. But I was also hesitant because I have, I had Some of the most prestigious halls of hospitals, right? I've worked with people that I re to this day just for their expertise, but then I was also encouraged to have, you know, a critical eye and the ability to read. You don't have to be a medical expert. You don't have to look through the magnifying glass to lead a discussion right in, in a publicly. available research article. And so, you know, the last couple of years, it's just been scary, you know, when we think about, I know people refer to Germany and Nazis and Hitler and just ideological capture is really what shocked has shocked me. I'm a very conscientious person. I'm always thinking about the future. That's my role. Right. But, you know, I mean, I was, I was shell shocked basically between like 2020 and 2022 at the way that people were treating each other and what was being considered as viable as the things that were being thrown away, like the Great Barrington Declaration, which was not a conspiracy theory. It was not from, you know, from a bunch of geniuses that were probably right. Well, I mean, even to this day, you know, we couldn't even talk about it. People like Bjorn Longberg, for sure. He, he, he gathers Nobel laureates. If, if we value education and expertise, I mean, maybe not a peace laureate. Yeah. Yeah. Like Obama, but a medical expert, you know, it, it became a conversation of power more than anything in control. It wasn't about freedom. It wasn't about protection. It wasn't about families. And it certainly went against the Hippocratic oath. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was kind of stunned. I mean, it was, it was basically right in the heat of the mandated shots season. Oh, you didn't take it on your own in the spring of 2021 when you could finally get it and it's fall now and you're fucking us up here. We were get back to normal just as soon as you last 30 percent take this experimental drug. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you this, this past month, I had to look up if Canada requires a vaccine passport for a trip that we're planning next year. So you didn't, you didn't come back later and get it? No. Well, and now like that meme is pretty popular. Uh, nobody regrets not taking it. Well, just so you know, we were, so we were pregnant at the time. We had just bought a house. I was three years into business, you know, you know, with my first mortgage, real responsibilities, uh, knowledge of the financial world at least. And just being told, you know, if, if Gina gets COVID, you could lose a baby. Okay. We're going to be very protective. Six months down the road. It's not the walking dead. We're not stacking bodies at the end of our driveway. Um, can we live our life? Because you know, mostly seniors were afraid to meet. You know, I was a, Uh, what was the term that they had for the, no, no, no. The types of workers that could, Oh, essential. I was an essential worker by profession, but I didn't able to meet anybody because of fear or because of proximity or because of sitting in a closed office or, which was kind of nice for your profession. Um, cause it. Allowed you to start doing Zoom. It definitely opened up things, zoom meetings. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think, you know, I, I, I, I was on the plane five or six times, like Q4 of 2019, just doing business. Okay. And so I haven't done that since then. Right. As much even because of Zoom. So that's, that's, that's a positive. Yeah. If I don't feel like driving down the tech center of South Denver. I can save three hours. So it was, so continue with your thought there. You said like, you know, six months later, nobody's well, it just, I mean, nothing but fear, right. You know, and then looking around, I mean, thank God I'm, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a native on the internet. I was on the internet in 1995 before any child protection laws ever. We're past with the AOL CD that was mailed to everyone, you know, with no protections whatsoever. But, you know, just having an open mind, being curious, we were, so we were getting ready to get the Johnson and Johnson at Costco and one of our close friends, direct relationships had a full sided left stroke at like 40. And that scared us. Yeah. Yeah. And then multiple family members started reporting events immediately following vaccination. And at the time we were taking care of Benjamin, um, in May of 2021, we took a vacation to Siesta Key, which is pretty international. I mean, it's not Orlando or, you know, London, but plenty of people were there. And the day that we got back, our son. That month had 40 seizures. Oh. 4 0. Zero medical explanation. Nothing previous to that? Nothing. Okay. So MCR, Children's Hospital, uh, over 70, 000 a build. CTs, MRIs, genetic screens for him, genetic screens for us. We're going, you know, we're I knew you had some stuff going on, but I hadn't really gotten the deets. Yeah, so basically I would drive to work, I'd close my door and I'd cry, and then I'd go home eight hours later. Right. For months. Like, this was, it was devastating. But, you know, during the time we were told, you know, Um, we were asked, would you like this vaccine? And it's like, we don't know what's going on at the time we were writing down everything that Benjamin was consuming. He wasn't vaccinated. I presume. No, no. Um, but that first trip that we took the day that we got back. So we were on airplanes, we were on a lot of other people. We were staying with individuals, um, that were vaccinated and you know, for seniors that were scared, that had comorbidities. Again, the, the only thought ever from our perspective was it's our choice. Right. Well, if you're vaccinated, that should protect you from me. Well, and you know, we, we, I spent in undergrad, I spent a lot of time learning about HIPAA and we spend billions of dollars a year enforcing HIPAA and all of a sudden it doesn't matter whatsoever. And yeah, they're asking you like when you enter a building, it's the equivalent of your back card. It's the equivalent of me asking you if you're, if, if you're circumcised. It doesn't, it's not appropriate outside of close familial inner circle. That's not. Yes I am. It's not something you do at the grocery store, right? Yeah, yeah. Totally. Just being completely shocked. And that was just thrown out the window. Yeah. It was so weird. Yeah. But, you know, there, there were. That was my biggest disappointment. Really over that whole time was frankly the, the, what, the anti non vaccinated culture that developed within the Rotary Club. Yeah. And, and it's an older than average group and whatever, but you know, there was only a handful of us that, uh, at least at first, It came out to be more public, you know, I put it on my freaking blog, right? And gosh, I told you, you know, if it wasn't disrespectful to a certain group, we could wear a star of a David patch, honestly, it was, it was not just bizarre. I mean, respect isn't the right word either. I think it's trust. You know, if you're in a high trust society. My assumption is that you're going to be fair to me, just like I'm going to be fair to you, that's a high trust society. Yeah, and if I'm here in this room with you, it's because I don't feel like I'm sick with this novel disease. Well, and that's, and that's eBay, right? Right. I'm going to send you the thing that you wanted me to send you and you're going to send me the money. Right. You know, yeah, there could be a third party that sells insurance because there's still a lot of, uh, there's a lot of money. Right, right. But in general, we're not in a high trust society. Right. We've lost a lot of that which is a lot of the that that what makes the economics machine work better It's it's impossible to measure the loss of GDP based on the loss of trust Hmm, but it's not nothing and it's not insignificant at this point. Totally not Yeah, and the only other thing that I'll say about the economy, which is completely separate from this is not really inflation Yeah. And energy are the same thing. If you don't have the ability to produce the things, to move the things, Totally. to transport things, Totally. you're gonna pay more for the things. I, I, I actually say that energy is more like money than money is like money. Cause you can't just print energy. Well, and this just goes to show You gotta go get it. how, how we're privileged in that we don't even think about the things that we use and how they work. I can't, I can't tell you specifically how my cell phone is pinging a tower or how fiber optic cables work and how the internet was built to the technical detail. I have no idea. You know, I know how light refracts and things like that, but past that, no idea. But you know, to, to hear people that, you know, are dressed with things that were produced from other things and say that they're against those things is just. It's, it's inconceivable if you understand that, but when we look at energy policy, when we look at climate policy, when we look at the decisions that are being made, you know, if I come up with some numbers and I show them to you and I say, just trust that and otherwise you're bad, it's going to be great. You bad guy. You don't. It's okay. If you don't want to stop, it's caveman speak, right? You know? And. There's one person that does that the best, and it's Trump. Yeah, kinda. You know? It's not, Hey, inflation is 2. 2 percent year over year, or it's been this, or this is what CPI is. It's, have you seen They're crossing your border! Yeah, look at this menu. Have you seen that it's 42 for cheesecake, or whatever it's ended up being. You know, like His tweet the other day was classic, did you see it? Uh, or it was too social or whatever, but it was uh, I've never seen a thin person drinking a diet coke. Yeah, I saw that. You know, so when you look at, I mean, we were, we were ostracized by family members. We were ostracized by friends. There are certain people who still do not know. our status as far as our vaccine status. Some, you know, at the time we were also undergoing tests and we were told like, sure, you got this kid in the hospital and we have no idea what's going on. So we're not doing no changes, nothing's changing. And, you know, to come from that to where we are now, I mean, the economy, North America is blessed. We have been relatively geographically totally bipartisan efforts can't screw it up. We've got a moat to the east and west We've got great neighbors to the north and south NAFTA 2. 0 is one of the best pieces of legislation for the next 50 years Bretton Woods needed to be renegotiated Yes administration was leading that charge. Yep And now what do we have? We've got Europe who is short on energy while their entitlement programs are mounting up their Nord Stream. Yeah. I mean, could you imagine starting an artillery war around your pipeline that you depend on? We were selling natural gas at 10 X the price post post Nord stream 2. 0. I mean, so when we look at, I mean, my, my, my thoughts of the future are the people that are invested in it should take the responsibility and pick up their reins, you know, the people that have. An idea to share. If you don't care, don't participate. Don't, don't throw an opinion. Don't, you know, don't throw a stake in the ground because it doesn't matter to you, but you know, just do super votes. Like everybody gets a vote, so it doesn't feel disenfranchising, but if you're smart, like you or like me, you get three votes, right? Yeah. Spend your. Yourself and your two grandpas. Well, I mean, you know, we've, we've got so many technologies. I mean, for example, at the airport when we're going through TSA. Right. I opt out of the visual screen. Like, you don't need images of me. Right. It's just a personal preference. It's not a, it's a privacy thing. That's fourth amendment, you know, stay away. Totally. You do you, I'm gonna do me, and we're gonna trust each other to, you know, we can go to the grocery store peacefully. I'll wait in line behind the bank when you're getting your money out, and there's just a mutual respect. We've lost a significant portion of that. Who's gonna pay? Everyone. Some people will pay more. Yeah, especially those without assets now. Oh, yeah, and in this inflation, I mean, you know, we can look at fixed yields on assets that are just parked Versus said the other day that they're still looking at a rate cut before the end of the year It's like I call bullshit you better not because it's gonna backfire on you if you do I mean, if, if we care about our future, you know, we're going to protect children. We're going to protect women. We're going to keep our, our, our, our, our truest poor fed. We're going to take care of our veterans because otherwise we don't have a country. And we've got extended family members who don't think that borders should exist. I firmly believe that borders are where good ideas start and end. Look at North and South Korea, look at East and West Germany, you know, and geography plays a part, religion, culture, but you can't replace morality with loss. And I think that the best person who ever wrote about that in the last 500 years, maybe 100, other than Tolkien, was Frank Herbert. Okay. Who wrote Dune. Oh, yes. And I'm a non fiction guy, and that, we're on the, we're just starting the third one, so something that Gina and I do is we'll read books out loud to one another. It's very intimate. Yeah, yeah. It's very relaxing, it's very engaging, we can have discussions. You take turns. She usually reads more than I do. So shout out to Gina. But, yeah, you can't, you can't legislate morality. You know, the laws can't get to that finite level of, you know what? It's the difference between laws and ethics, you know? Well, I didn't break the law, and you're still a piece of crap. You know, what you did, you shouldn't have done. Right, and you know it. Hopefully it doesn't get to a jury. Right. But most don't. You know, most corporate lawsuits in America, they're either arbitrated or they settle. For sure. So, just these institutions are broken. Bye. We've got technology, we've got efficiencies that just need to be updated. It's going to be hard. The decisions are going to be wrought with danger. Do we need like a convention of states? Well, I think that state sovereignty is absolutely the other arc that's inevitable. So deregulation. fiscal responsibility and state sovereignty. Federalism has gotten out of control. That's how the, the, the, we just, we've got to let the states be more different. It's actually a strength to let the states be more, just like any board of directors at the local, um, bit business nonprofit doesn't matter if there's, if there's leadership, that's absolutely dropping the ball, get out of there. The sooner the better, because someone's going to come in there with a huge headache and that corner office isn't the place. Where you got your feet up on the desk and you're smoking a cigar. It's where you get the most distilled problems, right? Every minute that have to be solved immediately just gather the information and make a decision Yeah, so I think you know the we've got life's complicated now Yeah, but it doesn't have to be as complicated as we've made it and so deregulation is that solution and you know The youth that have been squashed out of the opportunity to buy their first home. It's it's it's a travesty Yeah, you know well and the only way you can do it It's to spend less than you make for a while. Yeah. And maybe that means you got to live with the mom and dad. Well, I don't know. You know, something that I share positively is, you know, in the last six months to year, as someone who's been on YouTube for well over a decade, a decade, let's just call it, um, the content and quality of things that you used to have to be in a graduate program, paying 60, 40, 30, 000 a year to participate in is now funner, more engaging, more up to date technologically. Yep. And if not free for 25 a month without ads, and that there's no limit to what a distributed knowledge network. I mean, going to AI, you know, just recently hearing, um, I can't remember the individuals who were speaking, but it was sent from a friend, um, Thomas shared with me, uh, you know, if you can think of computational power as IQ and dollars being how many GPUs you can buy. Mm hmm. How much IQ do you want? A billion, 10 billion. You know, so we've got like a direct input of our knowledge systems on a currency basis and energy feeds all of that. Yeah. I was going to say, so you could see AI being kind of like energy in that it's got its own kind of multiplier effect. Well, it's dependent. I mean, but it also, but it burns a lot of gas, people who are mining crypto, they've got to break even price point over below five. I think it's 5 cents a kilowatt hour or something. Right. It's very low. Yeah. Right. So you can try your thing with wind power in North Dakota. Right. And I'm going to have pure, Reliable decade long nuclear at low cost in some rural area. And let's compete. Unfortunately, 10 years is a long time to find out you're wrong. I'm right. We sunk 10 billion, a hundred billion, 5 trillion into it. But that's, those are the decisions that we're currently making, right? Like that's how there's creative destruction in that. Yeah. I mean, at this point, I think we need to get back to capitalism versus government spending. I mean, over 70 cents of every dollar. It's circulating in our GDP, this government, and, you know, the biggest, the biggest employment gains have been government, health care, recently, and The biggest part of funding the government, unfortunately, isn't even our taxes, it's printing of new money, creating Well, and, and, and the debt that we built in the past, we grew out of Right But we don't have more and more and more people Right We can bring people in, but that's not the same thing Right, right And, you know, to have people that are aligned. There's a lot of cost to educating them and things like that too, yeah. We need a uniting factor. Yeah. What that is. We'll see what it is. TBD. Um, that's a good transition into the faith segment. Um, like that was probably the uniting factor. In a lot of respects when, when the United States formed together, you know, some were certainly more religious than others. And then there was, you know, Quakers and Baptists and all kinds of variety already way back there. Uh, where, where has your faith journey taken you from those Southern Baptist days? Yeah. Honestly, the older I get, the more and more I believe that the Bible is true to word for word, uh, that's still developing. But as many conspiracies that have been developed in the past five years that I've seen, like. Sit down, listen, discuss, and then watch. Um, it's bizarre at, you know, the wisdom that our older generations have had and how old the Bible actually is, where it came from. I think that, you know, there's definitely, I mean, I can appreciate Bill Maher's religiosity and, you know, people poking fun at things and how ridiculous it might sound, but a virgin birth is no more preposterous than the big bang. Right. Well, and when I was a kid, um, It was kind of like either it was Big Bang or it was God. But now, like, the more they have this new telescope out and they're studying the Big Bang and stuff, they're like, seems like it must have been designed. Yeah. Who the hell designed the Big Bang? Uh, and then the alternative is, shut up. Yeah, right. That's all I ever wanted in my 20s, you know, working with very liberal, very progressive, very like, Alternative hippie individuals at Starbucks, whom I love, you know, these individuals that I absolutely love, but you know, had that respect to have that debate and to talk about like, okay, well we both have faith. We're just jumping in the different direction. Like if we can agree on that, I'm cool. If you want to say, no, I'm standing on fact and you're standing on fiction. No, we're not. No, because part of the scientific method is observation and picking up pieces of something, right? It's not the same thing. You know, if I burn toast in this office. And I eat the toast and I throw away the toaster. You know, this is, this is an analogy I heard from Ben, uh, space weather news, uh, recently, who's hilariously called a, uh, pseudoscientific death cult leader. Okay. So just to show you, like, I will listen to people and when I get sent things, I'm all ears, as long as it's not a waste, total waste of time and you know, it's condensable, but where's the smell of the burnt toast coming from some scientists will come in and tell you exactly where they're not going to say toaster. They don't even know the toaster exists. That's what we're doing with billions of years of information, you know, the age of the earth, you know Polarized caps like just things that we absolutely don't know I mean, there's things that we do know but then there's questions that we have about ancient civilization right across the world Well, like we're freaking out about the climate change situation across the world and stuff like that But only like twelve or fourteen thousand years ago The Nile Desert was a lush grassland and there's whale bones all over the damn place. Well as a kid, I mean first grade Mountain peaks of Utah where my love of the mountains started. Okay. I'm finding seashells. Oh, really? No one told me. Right. No one educated, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't planted. It was, I had that question for more than a decade in my life. Right. Where did the seashells come from? Not that I know the answer now. Right. It was Pangaea. It was a hundred billion years ago. Or something. We don't know. Right. You know, and I mean, even in, you know, high school, elementary school, undergrad and college, age of the earth. Oh, well. I mean, your margin of error is like multiple billion years. I don't think you know what you're talking about. Are you like, uh, like, as far as, are you like a young earth creationist from a biblical perspective? I mean, no. You believe that things have been here for millions of years. I have no idea. Right. I think, I think that, you know, when you look at the wisdom that's distilled down into the Bible is the first like hyperlinked text. Right. That's the impressive part. Really. I mean, you know, if, if you're going to live, uh, I mean, there's, there's various religions around the world, but sure. Taking a world religion course, you know, at 21, I was just like, these all sound like the same story. They're slight differences, different, but you know, yeah. I say it's a blurry lens on the same phenomenon. Yeah. I mean, we're not stoning people in the street in Larimer County, Colorado, 2024. Yeah. But if we're following, you know, don't cheat, don't lie, don't steal. Cool. Pretty good principles to live by. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think if, if you cast away everything else, Old Testament, New Testament, you know, all the sub denominations of Christianity and Catholicism and everything else, like, again, my belief is most people are doing the absolute best they can, and there's bad actors, and you don't get anything for free. Well, and the more you learn about what being right and doing right is, the easier it is to kind of walk that path, too. Yeah. Right? The Bible, uh, uh, uh, one of Peterson's One of Peterson's lines is, uh, You know, There's some fiction things that are truer than true things, you know, and I think, you know, you know, just assume that there was scribing it while God created the world in six days and then the seventh day he rested, well, is that, is there metaphor in there? You know, was it a real day? Was it a hundred thousand years? You know, I, I can appreciate the metaphor in there and it says, Hey, we work some days and then we make space for rest. It's good for you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the most spoken thing or written thing in the Bible is, love your neighbor, do not fear. Yeah. Top two. Right. Those are, those are, those are solid. If you hold fast to those two things, your whole life, uh, your life will be better, I would say. Totally. And, and everyone around it, you know, and, and just looking at the, the values of different people here. I mean, the United States is the melting pot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even in rural. I mean, going to Timnath, we've got at least half a dozen nationalities on our small street. That's, that's a drive by looked at as middle class Caucasian. I've, I've volunteered with junior achievers in Greeley, 11 languages in a seventh grade class. Swahili. I mean, all kinds of stuff, French, English, Spanish, Tagali, like what? And yeah, those things should be celebrated. And, you know, I think that. Just having principles to live by. Don't let them be assigned to you by the local legislature or Washington, D. C. That's a joke. Or your memorization of the law book, uh, that isn't gonna cut it from a day to day decision making standpoint. Yeah, and you know, it comes back to business as well. Like, the longest standing family businesses in the world, They've got a family constitution. They've got values to live by that all of the leadership knows because technology is going to change. Yeah. Your business cycle and product environment is going to change your supplier, who you're doing business with the generations. They're going to change. But what makes you, you, what is that culture? And I think that casting aside and casting away everything and starting from scratch is going to be really bloody. And we shouldn't do it. Right. We've done it before. Not everything. Right. But, you know, these things have real costs. And the people that are speaking the loudest are the ones who will die, and it's mostly the young men. Hmm. That's who goes to war. Yeah. You know, and we don't need a dead generation. And peace. Just ask Ukraine. Peace is preferred. Sometimes you can't get past it. That's Cain and Abel. Right. It doesn't end. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna 10x what you did to me and on and on. Yeah, we'll get you there. Yeah, Bugs Bunny and, uh, Elmer Fudd had one of those with the mallet and then the gun. Yeah. Um, one more question. Yeah. Uh, your loco experience. Yeah. Crazy experience from your lifetime that you're willing to share. You've shared a few already, a little bit. Okay, so it goes back to, um, so Gina and I are both, we love the mountains. Okay. You know, we got married, we moved to Colorado. People are like, why'd you move to Colorado? Was it business? Was it school? Yes. Yes. No, no. It was the mountains. It was the Rockies. Okay. And we feel really invigorated by just the earth and the mountains just being, if you go into, I mean, if you're looking at a 14 or, or higher anywhere in the world, you're not going to feel very big or strong. They're powerful. Yeah, they're, they're magnificent. They're a humility, humility generating machine. Yeah. Hiking a mountain. So, uh, we were looking at our Chinese zodiac and we're both earth dragons. Okay. Okay. So totally aside from Southern Baptist raising. Fair. Um, but we both get our energy in the mountains. And, uh, I would say the craziest story is, so, uh, she, we were visiting family in Arequipa. Yeah. Peru. Okay, and there's a 19, 000 foot volcano. Oh, it's one of the few in the ring of fire that spans across South America Yeah, she's been gazing at this mountain basically her whole life and she's like we should climb it. So 2017 we go to Peru and Her family's like you can't climb it. No, you guys are newlyweds. We don't want people pass away on that mountain every year Right. You're not going up it. Right. So then we went back in 2018 and we tried, maybe, maybe it was 2019. I might be getting the years confused, but so we tried, we hired someone to help us. Um, they gave us very old, very heavy equipment, you know, we're driving out kind of desert, you know, it's, it's high, but it's dry and then we're climbing up. Sheer rock and like volcanic. And you're starting at like 10, 000 feet or 12, we started. I think it was like 9, 10, 11 maybe. Okay, but still a hike. But this time it's 19. Right. So we, I'm putting this like 50 pound pack on. We definitely brought too much stuff. Right. Like laughing, like there's no way I can climb this. But we camped around 15, 000 feet that night. Okay. Just felt destroyed. I mean, it was, it was already a guide person with cold and windy, he didn't carry anything really. He was just showing us the path. Right. Right. And, you know, we're setting up and there's like, you know, a little mouse that comes and drinks the little bit of leftover water in our cup before it freezes. Cause it was already like, I don't know, windy and 40 degrees and we probably slept from like 10 to like 3am maybe. And I mean, we were both like checking on each other because. You're gasping for air, right? Like laying still. Right. And it was freezing outside. So we tried to finish the hike the next morning and then by around like maybe 5 AM, it was still dark. Maybe 4 30. I mean, we're just climbing up these huge rock faces, like almost vertical ladder, but good handholds and stuff. Oh yeah. They were big, but you know, you're looking back and you're like certain deaths behind very, yeah, you got no tie. I don't want to do it in the dark. Right. Don't want to do it. Tired. We definitely weren't trained for, uh, there's like extreme and ultra. I can't remember the order. Like K2 and Everest are the top one. And then like this mountain is like regular to that. Yeah. I mean, you feel like you're dying every hour, 15, 000 feet. So Gina started hallucinating. I started throwing up. She called it. Yeah, I would have died up there because I was stubborn. Right. So we're that was still on the dream list Or did you go back again? No, it's not even fun Screw that. No, we got up to 15. I mean if we did, you know, we coming down We saw like two 19 year old kids who were like, oh, yeah, you know, we've been we've been altitude all week They literally had like, you know The little Nike bags on their way, like a little satchel and some water, an extra pack and lunchables. I think we're very easy because we were playing soccer at the time. We were in the, in the running club. I think we very easily could have made it to the top and bottom in a day. Right. That would have been the approach, but going up at altitude and like horrible. We since climbed pikes peak together though, on bar trail, which was a success. Yeah, yeah. That was fun. Um, but mountains, that's a pretty crazy experience, but you're, you're going to climb more. Definitely. Yeah. We're, we love the mountains and that's our, that's also a local thing. Like, you know, horse tooth is usually the one that we go to. That's our go to that's an easy one. Family visiting. Dig it. It's not going to kill you. Right. Right. You'll make herding. We'll turn back. Right. Yeah. No big deal. But yeah, that's mountains. Do you have any, uh, last words with, Oh, people want to find you. They can just Google noble capital. Yeah. No, no, no, no cap group. PGRP. Joseph Vanderlinde. Um, The only thing that I would share is really, you know, going back to that, like, what are your guiding principles? Yeah, we did a program with the SBA over the last year called thrive. Oh, yeah So very highly recommend it for those that have been in business two years. I think 250, 000 in revenues like they're soft qualifications, okay, you know just going back through what our mission and values are and After thinking about it and revising what I wrote originally in 2017. I mean we came up with the acronym airs Okay. And those are, those are the, that's what we approach our business day with because we're, we're focused on not just the heirs of the families that we're working on, but those guiding principles. So it's humility, excellence, integrity, responsibility, and as Rotarians, service. So you know, I, So it's not bad when you put on airs around your office. It's uh, different than what the British notion would be. No, no, I'm continually growing and learning from the people that we get to work with and it's uh, It's a pleasure because like you said, it is, each family is a puzzle. And as a kid, I'd do all the puzzles that we had, and then I'd flip them over, image down, and do the puzzles. Oh, really? Not huge thousand count, but, you know, yeah. That's interesting. And I get to do that for a profession, day to day. So I'm very lucky, I'm very privileged, and both my parents sacrificed a lot for me to be able to do what I'm doing now, so. Yeah, awesome. Yeah. Well, thanks for sacrificing a couple hours of your day to be in the studio. No, it's great. Alright. Cheers, Jonathan. Cheers, brother. Bye bye.