Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
“Real Life Investing” with Jason and Rachel Wagner is a multifaceted podcast that blends insights from real estate, entrepreneurship, family life, and political discussions. Known for their candid and engaging style, the Wagner’s explore how their conservative values shape their approach to both business and life. They often discuss their personal journeys in real estate, offering practical tips on topics like how to buy a house or investment property while navigating a challenging housing market.
In addition to real estate, the show frequently delves into entrepreneurial lessons, highlighting the importance of mindset, perseverance, and staying focused on long-term goals. They are open about the challenges they’ve faced and provide valuable advice for anyone looking to head into entrepreneurship or seek the best version of themselves.
Dinner table conversations are central to the podcast. The Wagner’s discuss their experiences balancing various topics that families face, while often featuring guests who share similar journeys. Political conversations are explored from a conservative perspective, particularly when they touch on how these beliefs influence their business decisions and personal growth.
With a blend of relatable stories and expert advice, “Real Life Investing” is a show that appeals to a wide audience, from aspiring entrepreneurs and real estate investors, to those seeking inspiration in their personal lives.
Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
67. The Milford Method: How To Create Meaningful Connections Where You Live with Matt and Katie Milford
What if the secret to building deep community in our disconnected world was hidden in plain sight? Matt and Katie Milford—known as the "connectors" of their Arlington Heights neighborhood—reveal their formula for transforming neighbors into friends and acquaintances into family.
The Milfords share how their strategic decision to live near downtown, despite the higher cost, put them in proximity to like-minded, socially-oriented people. "When you rapidly surround yourselves with people who are in the same location, roughly the same age, popping out kids at the same time, and have similar interests, you naturally create friendships," Matt explains. This intentional choice creates the repeated interactions—approximately 10-30 needed to form a friendship—that happen organically when you regularly cross paths at parks, downtown areas, or while doing yard work.
Their annual gatherings have become neighborhood legends. Their Fourth of July party invites over 100 people to watch the parade from their yard—complete with a refrigerator rolled into the driveway and 200 hot dogs. The Christmas party they rescued from cancellation brings 150 neighbors together during winter months when community connections typically hibernate. Their block parties transform their street into day-long celebrations ending with neighbors sharing whiskey and cigars until 2am.
Beyond parties, the Milfords share their unique parenting philosophy, balancing personal growth with family time, and insights from Matt's former motorcycle garage business. They candidly discuss the challenges of building community while maintaining individual identity—something they've mastered through color-coded family schedules and designated alone time for each parent.
Whether you're new to a neighborhood or looking to deepen existing connections, the Milfords offer a refreshingly simple roadmap: be visible, be curious, and be willing to initiate. In a world increasingly dominated by digital connection, they remind us of the irreplaceable value of face-to-face community.
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Life Investing Podcast with Jason and Rachel Wagner. We have some awesome guests with us today. These are actually probably the first people we ever met in our own nights who've turned into some of our best friends out here, which is amazing. And a fun fact is that our kids are best friends too, and that's a really sweet bond. And so, anyways, we wanted to bring Matt and Katie Milford on the show here, because you, you know, when you go to like a new place, you kind of want to meet like the most popular people in town. This is Matt.
Speaker 2:This is Matt and Katie Milford.
Speaker 1:They are just I always refer to you guys as like the connectors of the community. You just kind of know, you have your ears low to the ground, you know what's going on, you know the neighbors and you guys are the organizers of all these like different events and I think this is like a really cool thing I wanted to bring you guys on and just kind of talk about. Like you didn't always live here, right? How is it for somebody that might be listening to this show, how is it that somebody can maybe go into a new community and find a way to say, hey, I really want to plant some roots here, like I really want to get to know everybody and get myself involved. And kind of like if you guys could walk us through your process of like when you first came to Arlington Heights and like what you did from there to kind of ingrain yourselves and kind of be in this little, you know mastermind community that you kind of have, it's super cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'd love to. Well, first of all, thanks for the invite to be on this podcast. It's awesome. I don't know if we're the most like you said, but we do try hard to be integrated into our little community. But before we start, are there any kind of things that are off the table? Should I monitor my language? No, Should I apply a filter?
Speaker 4:No, off the table. Should I monitor my language? Should I apply a filter?
Speaker 3:No, nothing's off the table. If we need to, we'll mark these slips in the box. There's no parental advisory.
Speaker 2:I have pretty loose lips, okay, yeah, so I can walk you some history. So about I don't know, 18 years-ish ago we moved to Chicago and we bounced around quite a bit. Before we landed in Arlington Heights, we made a list of what we wanted, what we think we didn't want, and every year we'd move to a new location. So Naperville, des Plaines, schaumburg, palatine, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know it's that pursuit of happiness that we were searching for, and we found it in Arlington Heights, and I'll tell you how. So when we came to Arlington Heights and I'll tell you how. So when we came to Arlington Heights, we saw obviously a lot of young people, you know, people pushing strollers, bicycles, things like that. But what we really found that worked is getting a location close enough that it costs additional, so it weeds out folks who aren't like-minded. So by living so close to a downtown center, you're paying a premium. That premium is often, you know, I would say, reasonable to pay for if that's the lifestyle you want. And so when we moved at our little location at the time, I think it was a thousand square feet. It was perfection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, katie was like oh, you know, I found this house number 50. And she's like yeah, I found this house. But before you say no, before you say no, I know it's one bedroom and I'm like what the fuck Like, how am I going to? What do you do with a one bedroom house?
Speaker 4:Well, first of all, he had like a checklist of criteria. It was insane.
Speaker 2:I had a checklist, but in one bedroom was being generous. It didn't have have a bedroom. It was a loft, no doors, so the second floor was essentially wide open with a bathroom, and the first floor was a kitchen and a living room and I was ready to have a baby. And she was ready to have a baby.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, wow, and she's like I want to have a baby.
Speaker 2:I'm like not, not before we have a house, absolutely not. I was like, no, cut her off, so so then. So then we buy the house and what we found out was a lot of the folks in the area are doing the same thing. They know they're going to pay 20, 25% more, whatever the percentage is, to live so close to a downtown because they value the need to walk around and be out. And I say that because I think there's a formula in terms of how many times you interact with somebody that you become friends. You need those interactions. Maybe it's 10, maybe it's 20, maybe it's 30.
Speaker 2:And what we found when we lived in Schaumburg, for example, we were friends with the friends in our unit but really not with the neighborhood, so we couldn't connect. We lived in an apartment building. Same concept the friends that we had we made by going to a meeting place like the hot tub or the pool. But when we moved to Arlington Heights, downtown, everyone's outside. You're crossing paths with these folks you know a hundred times in the summer, at the parks, at the downtown, walking along the sidewalk, out, doing yard work, and so those relationships start to build. And then, because those folks typically are like-minded in that they're socially extroverted, they have a deepening desire to connect.
Speaker 2:You know, getting philosophical here, I think civilization, at least in the US, has kind of lost its way. You know we built these neighborhoods where you're far out, you're not close to an urban center, you have to get into a car, and so we purposely segregated ourselves into filing cabinets and we were looking to do the exact opposite, and that's how we did in Arlington Heights. So we moved in, met all the neighbors. Of course, you know we we do host gatherings. You know we feel like it's important to and we had kids.
Speaker 2:Oh, and we had kids. Yeah, kids is a huge thing too, right, you know? I think think there was like four or five things in life that you need to be friends. There's like four attributes your age, your interests, your life phase, location. Yeah, there's four and you need two to become friends. And so when you rapidly surround yourselves with people who are in the same location, roughly the same age, popping out kids the same time you are, and, yeah, life phase and interest, then you just naturally create friendships. But we've been very socially extroverted. We love that, we love the community, we love the ability to know a lot of people. I think our focus this time this year, rather, has shifted to be a bit more prioritized on the folks that we do like, like those two cats sitting across the table from us.
Speaker 2:So, maybe kind of bring in that net a touch.
Speaker 4:But yeah, that's the long story but really hone in on those who specifically feel like we have those common interests as poor people, yeah, so deepening those relationships. And encouraging our girls to do the same.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. I mean, Matt, I didn't expect you to go into the philosophy here. That was honestly incredible, but when you think about it, Rachel, when you think about it, what he said was and which I've never thought about, this is that people that want to live close to a downtown area are likely more extroverted.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I picked up on that too, and I think that's pretty accurate.
Speaker 1:That's a great comment.
Speaker 2:You've got to justify the premium cost. That's what you're doing. And what you get of being near downtown is you are more active, you're more outside and typically you're more extroverted. So those folks are there. So, you may, may get, you may find yourself, you may have all the desire to make connections with folks, but they're walled up, they purposely self-isolate, and that's perfectly fine.
Speaker 2:You know, if you want the gigantic house out on two acres, you probably aren't prone to make friendships. You know, as easily as someone who says you know, I'll take my little eighth acre, my little guy, I can just mow my lawn with the push mower and and I will make for it because I I value those those things that it provides. It's the proximity to folks, it's the downtown accessibility and it's the parks and all that it's the opportunity.
Speaker 1:It's like a true opportunity of like, yeah, we're going to take this smaller property and there's an opportunity that comes with that maybe is more intangible, which is you get to know everybody and people, and so let's talk about the 4th of July parade and like what happens at your yard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny, we moved in and we were before, I'm sorry before we moved in we were looking at the house and we were walking the neighborhood. And that's really when it sunk in to me that this neighborhood is special, because the neighbors themselves that lived there came out of their houses in a few instances and came up to us and were like hey, are you guys looking at buying that house? And we're like yeah, they're like well, get fucking ready, because Frontier Days is insane. It's insane. Like well, what is Frontier Days? Well, it's, you know, it's seven well, five, technically five days right of a festival in the park that's a block away. And what happens during this festival? The whole neighborhood shuts down. People take off work, they set bars where their front porch is, they roll out their little refrigerator, they set up tiki bars. It becomes this five-day vacation for a lot of folks in the neighborhood. They purposely take off work and really enjoy it and embrace it.
Speaker 4:And the introverts disappear.
Speaker 2:And the introverts, you know, hightail it to you know, out of town Totally. So it becomes like a really hotbed of connection with neighbors. It becomes this, you know, annual event that kind of shuts down the neighborhood. Everyone takes off, work and drinks too much. Anyways, long story short, they came out and they're like get ready for this. And then they said also the parade. That's what we found about the parade it runs right by our house, it runs directly to the side of our house, it's two and a half hours long. And the first year or two we were just enthralled with it. We invite, like a couple family members, some neighbors, a couple neighbors. But then we, you know, as we create a lot of relationships with some of the neighbors, we realized, you know, not all of them obviously lived on that road. So we was like, oh well, let's just come to our house, come to our house. So it's become this annual event that I try to make bigger. Every year my wife tries to shoot down some of my ideas.
Speaker 4:She's a little wild yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't mass produce one one year. It's like 200 hot dogs is boiling them the morning of. It's incredible.
Speaker 4:He's having his sister-in-law boil them. Yeah, that's true. Well, you gotta delegate.
Speaker 1:I love that you have the driveway fridge.
Speaker 3:It's not a cooler.
Speaker 1:It's the driveway fridge.
Speaker 2:We push out. I think that was new last year. I think we just rolled out a full size refrigerator right out, right out in the driveway, along with tents and all that fun stuff.
Speaker 3:So just to give people a sense you're talking like. I remember seeing this invite list. It was like over a hundred people.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:We're on the invite list.
Speaker 2:It's almost as big as the Christmas party.
Speaker 3:That we host. Yeah, it is. It's almost as big as the Christmas party that we host.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we'll get to the Christmas party, yeah, it is almost as big as that. It's super fun though. It's easy, it's fun, it's entertainment, it's like the best definition of hosting a party.
Speaker 1:I love that you call it easy. Hey, we're going to invite 100 people over to our front yard. And you call it easy?
Speaker 4:Well, because it's this beautiful thing where the event is right there, so we literally just give our space and everyone has a blast. It is it's, the easiest definition of a party for me. Yeah, entertainment's included, you know, two hour parade comes down our street Totally.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's a wonderful thing and we just I mean, it's going to be our annual party as long as we're there, right, I don't see any stopping to it. Yeah, our annual party as long as we're there.
Speaker 3:Right. I don't see any stopping to it yeah totally yeah, and that's like a criteria for you too. Like if you guys make any change, you got to be on the parade route.
Speaker 4:So it's crazy that you say that yes, because that is literally what he will revert back to. As you know, we will like loftily look at different places, and that is part of what one specific house was so appealing to me, because it was still on the parade route. Because this is, this is, this is one of his I'm going to loosely say demands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh it is.
Speaker 4:It is Well, we even, it even impacted our landscaping plan, our fencing plan.
Speaker 2:Correct I got to have the yard. You know, got it what little sliver of yard we have. We got to have it available for this big annual bash. Yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 4:It's so fun, so fun.
Speaker 1:And so all right. So then you do the Christmas party and and walk us through the Christmas party, because we had the privilege of going this last year, which was incredible, and like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And like it inspired Jason. When we got back he was like we need to do this, we need to find a space that we could do this for our neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Haven't you done previous block parties too?
Speaker 2:We hosted our block party last year, so we did three parties last year Our block party, our Christmas party and Fourth of July party.
Speaker 1:Ain't no party like a Milford party, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:You'll leave in worse shape than you came guaranteed, Guaranteed.
Speaker 1:All right, so go through the Christmas party thing and how you came up with that or where that whole idea came from yeah, so I can't take credit for it.
Speaker 2:So when we moved in the first year, our neighbors bought us tickets to it, so it's been hosted, I would say, about 10 years prior to us getting there, probably Somewhere thereabouts. And what happened? I think the nexus of it was some of the moms, you know. This would be almost what 15 years ago now their children were aging up, yeah, and so they were ready to pass the.
Speaker 2:They wanted to host a party during the winter, when you traditionally don't gather outside of isolated play dates to keep the neighborhood tight. I think that was the real premise for it. And you know, luckily in our neighborhood there's a couple halls there's Legion, there's a that's a Columbus Hall, and so when we moved in we got invited to it and it was spectacular Brought Ellie, who was almost one at the time somewhere thereabouts and loved it. It's, you know, 150 people DJ, everyone brings food. It's like a big potluck. You hire entertainment. One year there was like a horse-drawn carriage. We've since added face painters. There's a bar at the back that's manned. So there's two or three folks manning the bar, which is great, but about two, three years in this is pre-COVID. The word on the street was they were going to cancel the party. Ladies who are organizing hosting it, as katie said, the kids were aging out and they were just going to cancel the and fold the party there is one consistent gal that is awesome and lovely.
Speaker 3:Yep, yeah, janet, yeah yeah, absolutely yep, there's one yep, and there's, there's.
Speaker 2:there's been a lot of helpers over the years, but essentially it came down to the fact that no one wanted to host it, so we stepped in and said we'll take it over.
Speaker 4:We being he. Oh yeah, I want to be clear. I think, I was pregnant at the time and I said I am not interested.
Speaker 2:She's like that's a bad idea, Because that's a lot.
Speaker 1:There's so much time?
Speaker 4:I don't know how you're going to do it.
Speaker 2:See, it's kind of. It is on record now her me voice. You may hear it I sound like an idiot, I don't know how to organize, I can't fold my laundry, that's. That's her, her impression of me. But we took it over. I said that. I said like hell, this is gonna stop on my watch. And so we took it over. We hosted a great party by two years. Covid hit. It was off for about two years and then we brought it back on. It's been going strong since he's recruiting. It's awesome, and it's actually morphed into more than just the Christmas party because these friends and these neighbors that have become friends loved it so much. The idea came out that, hey, you know, everyone should share the responsibility of hosting an event in the winter. And the idea is, you know, we see each other all the time at the park. We live a block away from a park.
Speaker 4:In the summer.
Speaker 2:In the summer you bump elbows with neighbors every single day, but in the winter everyone kind of hibernates, and so now there's more parties coming. There's one of the neighbors through his first quote unquote annual big deck energy party. I like that. He does have a very nice size deck, by the way, katie, better not comment. So it's a big deck energy party is awesome as late fall. And then another neighbor through last year their first annual chili cook-off, neighborhood chili cook-off. We did it successfully hide the fact that we cooked wendy's chili the first year. Yep, it came out after the, after we got awarded the worst chili of the neighborhood.
Speaker 2:Which actually wasn't mine anyway, we got that trophy and I will tell you we did win again this year with worst chili again this year, and it was my chili. And we actually tried this year. So screw that, we're never trying to win Well loosely tried.
Speaker 4:We took leftovers from it. We had dinner with our neighbor the night before and he had made these beautiful meats and briskets and corned beef I don't know a lot of meat and matt said just toss that into the chili. Yeah, because we didn't have beef, we didn't prep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, kick it up a notch it was not a success it kicked it down in a lot of notches.
Speaker 4:Ellie said I like the beans before we left. I like the bean part that was for commentary that we should have known that.
Speaker 2:We should have known that that was it, so we took home. Now we have two toilet trophies in our house.
Speaker 4:In our bathroom, naturally.
Speaker 2:Worst chili two years running. We'll take it. We'll take it, but it really is to the point of what you're trying to drive to. It's that connections Once you put that effort out there. Sometimes it gets reciprocated and that's kind of what's happening, and so the neighborhood is ever evolving, ever growing closer. You know, it's awesome, it's amazing to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so fun, yeah, and you guys, I mean you do a great job because I mean you mentioned like with the kids thing, and so you do a lot with the schools and like whenever you have playdates and stuff or birthday parties, it's a lot of kids from school, it's the neighbors. You include everybody right in a lot of those situations.
Speaker 4:I think for the most part we try to let our kids lead, meaning that our oldest, as you know, is a little social butterfly and so she will naturally include everyone under the sun. Our middle is our little loyalist and she would prefer to have this year specifically, she requested one child only I'm sure you can guess who and something more special. So we really do genuinely try to let them leave. But then there are scenarios where, if we're hosting a family party, like july 4th, everyone of course is invited, and then friends of friends are invited, right. So I mean it, we always get additional people every year. Last year we had some, some, actually we invited some cla friends that live in our neighborhood, and then they, they brought their neighbors, and so it's just fun to see the continual growth, and now, you know, it just emerges.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, I mean, but what I? Another interesting aspect is our kids go to private school cla wonderful and we have the neighbor kids who don't go to cla, and so I think a lot of parents can appreciate the fact that you've got these split in social circles. But because we're so close to all these neighborhood kids that aren't in cla, the invite list has grown and grown and grown, which is wonderful, yeah. So, yeah, we do try to, you know, do something special for them on their birthdays and we definitely yeah yeah we didn't chat about the block party.
Speaker 1:We didn't chat about the block party I haven't been to the block party yet us extroverts have uh, we've had other plans on your block party days, oh, I love that it's not happening this year. We're going to come.
Speaker 2:Maybe, if we can so, I'll tell you a funny story about the block party. I'm not trying to demean the moms here. You've got a bit to say.
Speaker 4:I don't know, I don't know where you're going with that. So the first year I was like, oh, we gotta throw a block party because there's a neighbor like three or four blocks north of us. I think you need to be very mindful of your terminology and your wording here, but continue.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, this is being recorded this is.
Speaker 4:This is the issue.
Speaker 1:This is the loose lips.
Speaker 2:I think it's kind of a funny story it's kind of inside of how guys operate, I think I think everyone could appreciate the guys so anyways. So was like, let's do a block party. So I called the city yeah, you just file a permit. This is during COVID, and so the festival was canceled.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's right, and so I was like we got to do something for the kids. That's what started it Like Frontier Days. Yeah, Frontier Days was canceled.
Speaker 2:Frontier Days was canceled. Then Frontier Days came back, which is a funny part of the story, because then they couldn't cancel our block party. So they would normally never approve a block party that close. But because of COVID and it was canceled, they approved it. And then they brought the festival back and so we had both a festival and a block party. So the story, the funny part of the story, is that, okay, I'll try to just keep it, men. Only it got to planning phase. Okay, how are we going to do this? So I messaged a couple of the dads let's go to Eddie's. Eddie's is a local bar. Let's do it at Eddie's. So we go to the bar. I think we're probably like two, three beers in. Okay, we, we booked the bounce house, that was it, we're done. And then what happened was the word got out the buck, party invite. You know. The date got set and everyone pitched in. One neighbor brought a keg, we brought our kegerator. Another neighbor, a lot of neighbors, brought those big tents. One neighbor had a rolling bar, everyone brought their inflatable.
Speaker 2:You, know, what do you call them? Like the inflatable sets out with water sets, and so we had this whole street blocked off. And then, oh, the other neighbor actually hired a band to play at his back porch, cooked out a lot of meats Joe, who was mentioned earlier, and so you know by rag-tagging this thing together in the last minute. It was an unbelievable party.
Speaker 2:Wow it went from noon till 1 am, Wow. So people were out drinking whiskey, out smoking cigars One I don't even see. I think it was almost 2 in the morning. It was an all-day event. It was an all-day event, it was spectacular, and so we brought it back last year and it was awesome.
Speaker 4:Every other year, right?
Speaker 2:Well, that was the neighbor who we emulated, who was like four or five blocks north.
Speaker 1:So we're going to do it every year. We're going to do it every year, every year. So are you going to have the same type of plan? I?
Speaker 4:have a budget allocated for party planning, because Milford loves a party.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's in the annual expenses. Yeah, we have a budget.
Speaker 2:You better believe it.
Speaker 4:You Talk about a vacation if you really want to know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I believe that yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's fantastic.
Speaker 3:Oh it is it's?
Speaker 2:perfection. Well, what's interesting is you have different types of parties, right, that's what we're kind of realizing. You have the Christmas party for the whole neighborhood. So you know, and as we keep hosting them, you know, first I knew 10%, then 30%, now I'm probably at like 60%, 70%, that I know these folks, there's a lot of people, it's a lot of. You know a lot of houses, this block party.
Speaker 4:And our entire like yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the and the Fourth of July party is our friends that are local, our friends that aren't local. It's a hodgepodge Right. The block party is a special party because it's the direct neighbors.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 2:It is you know. It's not, you know, generally open to you know. I know Joe from school. He lives his town over. No, it is your direct neighbor. So it's a time to shoot the shit with your direct neighbor.
Speaker 4:So it's a really special party, although with your direct neighbor, so it's a really special party.
Speaker 1:Although you do always end up inviting one or two extras. I can't. I think I still might come. I'm still going to come.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely you are an extra.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think you're going to have some peripherals.
Speaker 4:I know.
Speaker 2:Joe, the first year had peripherals, the same with the Christmas parties.
Speaker 4:Technically rock, but he always invites extras. So if you make that list, you it's a VIP list, but it's amazing.
Speaker 1:It's a Milford. It is amazing.
Speaker 2:So different parties, different functions, have different purposes and it is just a really special time. You take a break right in the middle of summer. People come back from vacation. They're talking about that. What are the kids doing, what camps are in? It's just a wonderful time to connect with your neighbors and drink too much. It's awesome.
Speaker 1:That's all awesome stuff.
Speaker 3:So you guys are also really like familiar with all the businesses I would say downtown Arlington Heights, but then also like some of the politics in Arlington Heights. Like I feel like we have learned so much from you guys and just casual conversation. Did that come from these social settings or was that something else that you had to seek out intentionally?
Speaker 4:We're downtown a lot. In the summer nearly every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we go downtown once a day during the summer I mean I would say on average once a day. I mean there are days we go down multiple times a day. We go to the farmer's market every week but to your point on the businesses, it's 95% small businesses yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, arlington Heights has done a really good job of keeping chains out, I think by design I don't know regulatory things they have in place, but they've done a really good job inadvertently, if that's the case, of keeping larger businesses out. So it's all small mom and pops. So when you go in these local mom and pops you see you know the turnover of the high school kids quite a bit, I mean all the time. But then you see the owners all the time. You know the owners, the owner's children just start striking up conversations.
Speaker 2:You know, I think our favorite place downtown relationship-wise has got to be Barrio. I mean Barrio special shout out, is kind of a warm place in our heart heart and what started as a relationship of us just visiting there. You know, I remember during covid we cared for barrio so much and the impact to small business that the excessive regulatory rules that got put in place that I would go there and I'd push the scale down when weighing my ice cream to try to give them some more money. And there's been this wonderful back and forth relationship with barrio and the owners and us.
Speaker 4:We go there. We try to host a lot of events. Yeah, they're very special to us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're very, very special to us and so we've gotten to know them, and the fact that some of these local business owners are conservative leaning even further solidifies our love for them. You know the various ones in downtown, so we get to know the politics, both micro and macro. By talking to these folks, we get more involved in the micro politics that are important to us.
Speaker 4:But also, I think too, I mean even just bringing things connecting dots right. For the Christmas party, we have raffles every year, and part of those raffles are we go out into the community and we ask if they want to donate anything to this event, and so our philosophy is this we go to the places that we, that we visit regularly and they they often, if not always, you know give some type of raffle item. So it's like this, like continual cycle, right Of us continuing to want to go and support them because they are supporting us in a different way as well.
Speaker 4:And so it's just, you just continue to build these reports across across our Lansing Heights period, and we don't like to get in the car. Have you met our children?
Speaker 2:So that probably that probably also helps. Yeah, we don't like getting in a car. It goes back to like losing our way.
Speaker 4:I mean, I think that connection to your local business, Although I would get into a golf cart. Matt.
Speaker 1:I know we Kate just pushed me to get into a golf cart.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we were in Key West last summer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we rented one.
Speaker 3:You guys would love 38. It's all golf carts.
Speaker 2:And around tonight. We should probably get it before.
Speaker 4:We talked to our buddy Dave, you could get a golf cart, it's allowed.
Speaker 3:Is it really it's allowed? Well, they'd have car seats right on these nice golf carts, and they'd just drop them off.
Speaker 4:Come on, no forget it, I know, I know, I know and it's allowed.
Speaker 2:And if they ever were to put a rule in place later, on, then we're going to miss that one. I suspect you could potentially be grandfathered in.
Speaker 4:So there's a lot of reason to get it yeah this summer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this summer let's go buy one. It's a Garage space. That's the tricky part.
Speaker 3:That is the hard part, that's the tricky part you just got to add on to your garage. That's okay, I know.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah the rules. It's like 750 square feet. It's 14 and a half feet tall. It's kind of tough. Yeah, they make it kind of tough. But yeah, a golf cart would be amazing.
Speaker 3:I'm all for it. Let's love it. I would love it.
Speaker 2:Big eye-boggling. But yeah, a golf cart is the way I think about it. It's you kind of have to wait until there's like a critical mass of people who are driving them to make them safer for the neighborhood. So I think we've seen like two or three so far. I think so, yeah, two or three. So you think maybe, like by five or 10, there'd be enough awareness where you're driving a vehicle with your infant children that doesn't have airbags. That would aways weariness to make it just a touch safer. That's my only fear.
Speaker 4:Yeah, my rebuttal is that you're not going above 20 miles an hour downtown Arlington Heights anyway.
Speaker 2:Well, for record, this is also the gal that doesn't want Allie driving the scooter.
Speaker 4:That's true. He lets her drive her own scooter on the road. Yeah, yeah, teach her how to drive her on the road.
Speaker 2:But you see those electric, like what?
Speaker 4:do you call? The stand-on ones well across busy roads. You, you already vetoed me and you drive with her on the road yeah, I lost that battle.
Speaker 2:Seven years old, riding a scooter that goes 15 miles an hour.
Speaker 4:Well, I was 12, but she doesn't cross busy roads.
Speaker 2:True, yeah, she doesn't. But yeah, just the neighborhood roads. Yeah, just the neighborhood roads. So yeah, you guys.
Speaker 1:I mean you guys are off of busy streets, like you're not far and you know, I think any a lot of parents. They have anxiety. I mean sometimes we have anxiety about this street, which is so funny, there's nobody that drives here right, yeah, like how do you, do you uh, how do you uh cope with that? I mean, um, or how could I maybe look at it a little bit differently when my kid goes and chases a ball that's in the street?
Speaker 2:yeah, like how do you?
Speaker 1:talk. How do you go through that?
Speaker 2:so well, I like to start off with, to give you an idea of how close we are. Where our property line ends is where downtown starts. Literally, there's not an alley, it's just literally our property line is R6 or R5, and then it goes to C1. So we are right there, but what we've done.
Speaker 4:You're talking coding terms, coding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just to give you an idea. And then the road, arlington Heights Road, is just west of us, so it's very, very busy. So to Katie's point from the earliest possible age we've taught our kids obviously look both ways.
Speaker 4:Don't go on the road, et cetera, et cetera. We don't even let them in the what is that? The part between the sidewalk and the road?
Speaker 1:Easement, easement we don't even let them in the easement.
Speaker 4:We train them that they can't go in the easement grass.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the easement grass yeah, but I would say we're more strict than some of the neighbors we have.
Speaker 4:About that yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we are more on the strict end where we see some of our neighbors.
Speaker 4:That's probably the only time they'll ever hear that we're strict.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and some of our neighbors have like free range children. You know they just kind of out and about in, I'm sure it's fine right, you have to be a little careful, you have to loosen a little bit, you know, and we're trying to, trying to cut that umbilical cord just a little bit, but it's tough, I mean I can't shake in her head it's. It's really tough. Yeah, you gotta trust your kids a little bit well, we are putting in a fence you are?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, we're putting in. We did these settle on a fence for the summer.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, so that we can give a little bit more freedom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, freedom in defense. You're free to do whatever you want in this penitentiary courtyard. Okay.
Speaker 1:Katie, I want to talk to you because you are, like, really good at playdates and I actually want to like I feel like you are, you are able to set up playdates with maybe different families on the same day. Like I feel like that's something you've done before, right, and you're actually really good at coordinating that but well, before you get into it, I would say why are you good at?
Speaker 3:it. Yeah, that's what I want.
Speaker 2:One of the big pros of katie. I'm just gonna say one thing is it talks a lot. Keep what? No, I don't keeping connections. All right, there you go. That's. That's where we fit in, like a jigsaw puzzle, yeah you talk a lot yeah, I do, I do, I do have me on here.
Speaker 4:Oh never, you have good info. Yeah, I think. Okay, so that I think that stems. Yes, I am a very big advocate of of play dates and, generally speaking, play dates at the same time. Reason being so we have two children that are less than two years apart and so I always want to make sure that they well, we have three children, but the two that are in play date mode, and so if we have a play date with one, we try to coordinate to have to ensure that they both have a play date so they both have a buddy, because otherwise it's like a third wheel and that's no fun for anyone. So so that I feel like is a bit intentional. And matt just saw the.
Speaker 4:Matt sent a sweet text a couple of weeks ago because I was very adamant. Ellie had been requested to go, one of her friends wanted to meet her at a play place and one of and so I was very adamant about making sure that Lila had a buddy too. You guys were on vacation, in case you're wondering, and so I coordinated and Matt went and picked up Lila's little buddy and then met Ellie and her little buddy and he had texted me. When he got there he was like this is amazing. These kids are all playing together beautifully or playing beautifully, but that's the goal, right? I want all of my kids to have fun all the time. So that's, I think, the consensus of the dual play dates, and it's just a lot of asking the girls, you know, what do you want to do this weekend? Is there anyone specific that you want to spend time with? We really do try to let them drive to the best of our ability, assuming it makes sense.
Speaker 2:And if they say no, we cancel it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sometimes they say they want family weekends right, and we then also support that. Yeah, so we let them lead in a lot of ways to make sure that their house, our house, is their safe space and making sure that they also feel comfortable with who's coming in and out of our house.
Speaker 1:Sorry, go ahead, Rachel.
Speaker 3:I was going to say. This kind of leads into a topic that I really admire about you guys and it's how aligned you are in your parenting and how clear you are in how you're raising your kids. I think it became a little aware to me that there were a lot of discussions we hadn't had yet when we started getting into the play date mode and hanging out with you guys a little bit more of like we parent kind of different, and so we've been more intentional at having those conversations. But I'm curious like how and when and why that all started for you guys, because I feel like there's so many aspects that you're very aligned and very clear in what your boundaries are and like what you're valuing and how you're instilling that in your kids. I really admire it. It's very like you always know what the answer is.
Speaker 4:That's very sweet. Well, I don't know if that's actually true, but that's very sweet, I think. Go ahead.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say earlier on. We kind of aligned on the fact that we want a very non-disciplinary, but promote the positive, Positive reinforcement, positive reinforcement, positive reinforcement.
Speaker 4:We do a lot of positive reinforcement, positive reinforcement.
Speaker 2:And that's been kind of our North Star, and so it's our North Star. So our children don't get timeouts, in part because their behavior is so good. It doesn't warrant it, but nor do we believe in it. We don't, you know any of that kind of stuff. It's been more of focus on the positive, don't focus on the negatives.
Speaker 4:And and we, we have the one and done rule. So, like, if we say something, we, we have a couple of different rules with our kids. You know, if, if we ask them a question, then they get, then they get. I would say we're very loose parents, like we.
Speaker 4:We have a lot of, we're very lofty in a lot of ways, but we do have some some solid baseline rules and one of them is if we ask you a question, if it's a question, then you get to respond and we'll respect that or, you know, take that into consideration. But if we tell you, then the expectation is that we tell you once you do and done, and so I think that that's, you know, that's one thing that we're pretty both pretty good about, and so you know. That goes back to the whole safety right we have. We live near a very busy road and seven years later we're just now putting up a fence right With with small children, and I think that's part of it, and I think mainly because we're outnumbered. If we were not outnumbered I don't think we would ever really necessarily need a fence.
Speaker 4:Well, security and safety too.
Speaker 2:I think that's kind of changing and we don't say no, we don't say we don't use the word no correct.
Speaker 4:It's only for safety, unless it's safety right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's always ah, ah, ah versus no. So it's never been a no environment, never been an environment where the kids get in trouble and where'd that come from?
Speaker 3:Was that like how you were raised? Or did you read a book, or how did you guys just like I don't know.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, I have a lot of quirks. That's a great question. I've got a weird answer to it. Oh, I want to hear it. I've got a really weird answer to it. It's how I raised my first cat and I have to explain to you. I did more research on how to raise a kitten than I did on how to raise a kid, because my philosophy with children is that they grow with you, grow with you so you learn as you go.
Speaker 2:Right On-the-job training. I know how to raise a seven-year-old. I have no idea how the hell to raise an eight-year-old, because I don't have an eight-year-old. I'll figure it out when she's eight. But when I had my first kitten I read a lot and some of the things it does blend into raising children. Right, if you play with a kitten with your hand, they will think your hand is a toy. If you punish a kitten, they don't understand it. They don't understand punishment, they don't understand pain, they just understand that you're giving it. And children are kind of the same way. Where you mold them in a in a. In a positive environment there'll be positive children and if you strip out the negative, they they just not in their head.
Speaker 4:Matt's family is actually very incredible about, like the positive reinforcement as a whole.
Speaker 4:I think that so, so maybe part of this does bring from his family is I remember when we first started dating, going out to dinner with his family and at the time they were, you know, we were in our very young twenties, maybe not even and so he had lots of little cousins and they were all just like we were out at this, I want to say country club, and all the little kids are just running around the table playing and I'm like, wow, like this is amazing, they're playing, it's beautiful. No one's you know commenting, no one's you know disciplining, like it's just working. And then you know you go into any other restaurant and it's constantly like parents harping on children or grandparents or you know, sit, still, do this, do this. You know a lot of demands, right, and and so like that was something that I think I really did absorb from his family as a whole, even to this day.
Speaker 4:I mean, they have reunions and Thanksgiving and they're just the energy that, like, his entire family has when they're together. I can't like I can't describe it Like you have to see it Like it's just very loving and kind and sweet and nurturing. It's a really cool for me going into his family. That was a really, a really neat experience that I had never had before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's probably a better answer than the cat one. You're totally right. Yeah, like I family has like, just let kids be kids. You know, let kids be kids you. You intervene if there's a safety issue. Otherwise, you know, the kids, like you said, sitting at a dinner table. We never force our kids to sit down at a dinner table. I mean, we just recently said okay, let's at least start dinner together, you know down. But if they get up and mosey around, that's okay and it's luckily we have an open floor plan yeah, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:The only time we were able to successfully do it keep them at that dinner table was when ellie was like under one year old and sitting in the high chair at a restaurant where we'd order from the the host immediately because we knew we had 45 minutes of her be able able to sit down. Outside of that it's been. You know, hey, I understand it's tough for me to sit down for two hours, let alone like a four-year-old. So we just, yeah, just positive, and let kids be kids.
Speaker 1:I mean it's really respectable and it's awesome insight. And I guess, like when you get to a discipline moment where like you know that maybe there should be like something here. Like you kind of know those moments, yeah. Or maybe you're just like you, as the parent, are actually having like a bad day, right, and maybe the kid does something that you're just like, oh man, like how do you, how do you approach those situations?
Speaker 2:She's laughing because I don't do that and she has to do it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he is. He is non-disciplinary at all. But also ironically I don't know For me personally, I can think maybe of not even a handful of times I've ever felt flustered towards my children. So if I'm having a bad day, it's not my children that get the brunt of it.
Speaker 2:It's this guy usually yeah, usually when a baby cries, something happens, she immediately starts yelling at me like I did it yelling.
Speaker 2:You're so dramatic you know, it's like a, it's like an intensity mirror. It bounces from the kid to her, to me. But I will give her credit. You know, love you dearly. But you do the discipline and what we, we, we convey a sense of disappointment. Yeah, you know, one of our children act maliciously, because it has happened, like you said, maybe a handful of times. Whenever they act out of non-kindness, we explain to them how disappointed we are in them. But I think maybe one has been sent to their room. That's it Over the last seven years. I mean, it's been very, very few and far between. But yeah, we do. They're not perfect.
Speaker 4:We tried. Yeah, no, nothing's perfect.
Speaker 2:So, that's how we do it. It's just conveying a sense of disappointment, shock and disappointment, and usually that's enough to course correct.
Speaker 4:Sometimes silence in and of itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Because, I'm course, correct, sometimes silence in and of itself, yeah, because I'm not very silent often. Sometimes silence, that that's, that's the trick. Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, yeah. But we don't require that our children apologize, or you know like we want these, like to be feelings that they naturally feel, not something that's expected and so it's. We say you must acknowledge, right, but everyone's acknowledgement looks a little bit different. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have lots of quirks.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it Well. I mean, nobody knows how to parent, right. There's no handbook, right. It's questioned every day. And this is the brilliance of what this conversation is is that you bring us insight into how you're parenting, right, and we can absorb some of that, and also we get to know you better, right, and it's. I think that's also another thing about some of these conversations. Getting to know your neighbors is also kind of learning how they parent, because you know how they parent does kind of rub off on how their kids are and things like that. And so it's just it's kind of good to kind of piece all this stuff together and have these connections and have these these conversations, yeah.
Speaker 4:And even to that point with play dates. I am very upfront to traditionally say I can think of maybe two families that we will, that our children will go to their houses without us, if even so, you guys can probably think of one yourselves, but it I am very specific. I do have like I am particular and I do want to make sure that my children are in the right environments, and so I think you're right. Part of that is getting to know your friends and knowing what you do and don't feel comfortable with. And and to that point a step further, I have some of my very best friends. I love them dearly. We have children the same ages. That doesn't mean my child is going to their house to play, right, and that's okay. And so we do a lot of open door policy at our house. Summer, during the summer weekends, our house is just an open door across the board. We have neighbors coming through.
Speaker 2:We have friends coming through.
Speaker 4:I feel like it is on rotation, so I think that's probably part of it, but still making sure that we're being respectful of our kids' boundaries, so like, yeah, I everything is very kid driven in our house in terms of like just making sure there's comfortability.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I think going back just a step to to the children and disciplining, I think the other core thing that we do, I think we could all recognize we're a different generation of parents. You know my dad, you know, and dad's his age, not very involved with children. Playtime that was not a thing you know 50 years ago and I think in part you know what we've done with our children. Obviously try to swing the pendulum the other way is getting in their world and playing with our children. Yeah, you're really good at that From an early age and so you're seen as a parent but also like a co-play friend and I think that's built trust in our children and they look up to us because of it.
Speaker 2:I mean we almost to a fault actually, it's actually to a fault have played with our children so much that we've created a dependence on it that we're trying to break a little bit this year. So this year we're trying to at least myself I'm trying to pull back just a touch. But I think that is another thing that has really instilled our children to be better children or just better behaved, more open to us, more honest. But going back to the play dates, you know that's another topic, because what's interesting about Katie versus, I think, a lot of people is that she's very asymmetric in relationships, so she'll go through periods where she's giving more than getting and she doesn't. It doesn't matter to her. I think a lot of folks, you, you of folks it's kind of a mirror, right.
Speaker 2:You get what you put in. If you give and it doesn't come back, it tapers off. I think that's a traditional relationship demise. But with Katie one of her strengths is that she'll power through, that. She'll continue to ask questions If a person drops off or they're not being responsive or they're just not giving in the relationship as much as Katie is. She doesn't care, she cares about the person and she'll push through it without even thinking about it. So you know the play dates. You scratch at that surface the relationships Katie's built has facilitated that, facilitated that and all. And the friends in our neighborhood and the friends like you guys, like it's 90 katie and how she, how she functions in, like a social, social aspect katie, are you in sales?
Speaker 1:because I feel like that's a great sales uh skill set just not afraid of rejection and just keeps pushing for.
Speaker 4:That's funny, though, because I I will, because I literally just said that to someone that I work with the other day. I said you know what? I would push back, because I'm in, obviously, procurement and I do a lot of negotiating, and I said I would push back and when they come back I'd push back again. You can take no twice, it's true. Like, keep asking, keep asking.
Speaker 2:That was very sweet yeah.
Speaker 4:Keep asking. Yeah, that was very sweet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got the personality and the rock and bod. You'd smoke sales.
Speaker 4:Get out of here. It's true, it's true, it's totally true man. You're so inappropriate. That's why I love you guys. You guys are awesome.
Speaker 1:I'm so inappropriate all the time yeah.
Speaker 2:So those kids keep coming out.
Speaker 3:That's good, so you have three kids.
Speaker 1:You have three kids now and you're hoping for for four. Is that kind of yeah?
Speaker 2:yeah, we're hoping for four.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, but you know that that being has to cut off from nursing, maybe when she's five.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a character in game of thrones, but that is.
Speaker 4:But that is what I'm noticing like as a perceived negative of not saying no, right, like we've, we me I've naturally let each of our children wean off of nursing and bailey's in it to win it. Man, yeah, she has zero interest and no is not my personality, and so that is. We're at this tricky point where it's like, okay, we're ready to have number four, but bailey is a hardcore no, and no one's telling bailey no. Actually I walked in the house last night from dinner and do you know what I hear matt saying to bailey all right, boss, baby, let's go.
Speaker 3:Boss, baby. Oh man, all the fun things, all the fun things, so report back in five years.
Speaker 2:What was it that the other day is funny. Yeah, a third kid right. Like you just do and I say this in the nicest way possible you do less and less and less prep, you know, pre-thought, for your children.
Speaker 4:How's your nursery?
Speaker 3:coming along. Oh, the furniture's all in there actually Maybe it was the same day? I don't remember. I think you guys were here on Sunday. I had Jason move it all.
Speaker 1:There's no design right. We just put the furniture in there. There's no, the furniture's in there.
Speaker 2:There's a couple of washed items. It's not the oh, it's cute, it's just the things you need.
Speaker 3:The diapers and wipes. It's fine.
Speaker 1:It's fine, the toys are out. But yeah, to your point, matt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've done less and less and less and, honestly, a more important project there's so much truth there we all have different priorities that's your answer to the summer. Though it was a safety issue, it had to be done the next thing will be the spindles, because that's also a safety issue they're too wide.
Speaker 2:Layla can fall right through and Scarlett can still get her little hips through how they built these.
Speaker 3:they built the houses in the 80s. Layla can fall right through and Scarlett can still get her little hips through. She showed me that the other day.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh, yeah, so how they built these? They built the houses in the 80s. I think this is early 80s on this one.
Speaker 3:But yeah, the spindles.
Speaker 1:they need to be a little bit closer together now, and so the code is different. But yeah, we've seen our kids stick their bodies through there, which is kind of funny.
Speaker 3:Funny is not the right word. Yeah, because they're up at the landing part you need your pillow mountain down here.
Speaker 4:It would be fine, right yeah?
Speaker 3:Uh-huh, yeah, go ahead. So I know you were wanting to wrap up, I wanted to ask what do you have in mind for the future with Arlington Heights and your involvement? Any plans or visions.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. Well, I get asked like Am I sitting across from the future mayor?
Speaker 2:I feel like I get asked almost daily right, you got to run for mayor, you got to run for office.
Speaker 4:I would like to get involved.
Speaker 2:I would like to get involved, you know, be at like a park seat, a zoning board seat, you know, something like that. So I think the future would be some level of involvement in one of those facets, because we care, you know, ultimately it's not a place of, you know, pursuit of power or, you know, whatever it is, it's just because we care what happens darling tonight, we care about its direction. I mean, we're very involved, we're trying to go to, you know, any of the we went to, like the mayoral, uh, was it?
Speaker 3:the debate you know, I went to the, we went with you guys, that's right.
Speaker 2:And then I, with another couple neighbors, I went to the mou with the bears in arlington. Oh, tonight's yeah, yeah. So just to get more involved, just to get more involved and and just see what you know you go to the safety things like through, like the, the public schools, to understand.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I just has a whatever expertise that's in our heads.
Speaker 2:We could lend Arlington Heights and help out.
Speaker 4:We want to do that when that path leads who knows?
Speaker 2:but just to get more involved and help the direction.
Speaker 1:I mean, I just feel like you guys do so much and it's, it's amazing to me. It's ginger. It's ginger's birthday, by the way.
Speaker 4:Oh, I saw the card. I didn't know it was today.
Speaker 3:Our kitty is nine years old.
Speaker 1:But yeah, you guys just do so much, which is just amazing to me. I mean, you never feel like you're overwhelmed with your activities or like you just need to hey, man, I'm just going to chill, or something. I just feel like you want need to hey, man, I'm just going to chill, or something. I just feel like you're you just you want to be so involved. And again, I think it just stems from you could tell, you guys just care and you care about making your kids happy or giving them the great opportunities, so that you know whatever they want to do that day, you're going to help support that and you've kind of like committed your weekends to yeah, you know we're going to revolve around our kids and then we're also going to kind of bring in our friends too at the same time and like they get happiness, we get happiness, and like there's a, there's a bigger picture and I I don't know, you guys just do it so well. So I think it's again.
Speaker 4:That's why that's why you're here. When the when the friends have awesome families right Like, that's always a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think it also goes to you know, katie, early on having kids we realized it's easy to get lost in your kids. You know some parents, they have kids and then that's their world and we want to not lose sight on what makes us individually happy for Katie.
Speaker 2:And as a couple that's being extremely social, having a lot of deep relationships. My side, I want friends, I want parties. I also have a lot of very quirky interests and passions that we continue to cultivate and I think that makes you more well-rounded. I mean, yeah, I think it makes you a better parent, it makes you a better employee at your workplace and it makes you a better parent. It makes you a better employee at your workplace and it makes you better involved in your community. So we try to balance it all because we're just constantly pursuing the things that we that make us happy. By happenstance. It does happen to be being involved. Just that's just what makes us happy and you know, I love our kids dearly, but we also want us to be happy individually.
Speaker 4:You know we're working on that this year too, making sure that we're setting aside time for us as a couple. Yeah, Because it does. It gets trickier the more children you have. It does.
Speaker 1:You guys are good about that. So you guys, yeah, so what are you doing there to kind of like give yourself a little bit more time, time together?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I'll tell you one of our secrets.
Speaker 4:It went from a weekend secret. Oh gosh, I don't know where he's going with this. It's a lot of you know what.
Speaker 2:Stop it. So that's important. The real secret is like we have the week split up and the way we've done it is I have a couple nights to myself, she has a couple nights to herself, After the kiddos are in bed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and then we have nights together and self. She has a couple nights for herself and then we have nights together and what that really does. But the biggest thing it does is, let's say, my night is a Thursday night and I get to play video games, I get to work in my garage selfishly, uninterrupted, I get my own world. And then Friday night we'll have a date night and I've satisfied that need of mine. I know that's put on the shelf. I can fully focus on my wife.
Speaker 2:And that enables us to just be non-distracted and together, and so it really heightens that quality time versus what was happening in the past was you know, I need to mow the lawn, I need to, the garage is a mess. Or you know, I want to do one of my hobbies while I'm hanging out with her. So I'm thinking about it. She's thinking, oh, I want to connect with this person and this, that the other and we're together, but we're not together mentally.
Speaker 2:Right and I think by doing that it's dedicated time that you've satisfied your other needs, so you can fully focus and be in the moment. Yeah, it's done wonders for us.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that's good. I think we have a sitter every third Sunday that comes over for a couple of hours that we can do. We take turns, picking and choosing what we want to do. So sometimes that's it varies, right, sometimes it's church, sometimes it's eating, sometimes it's going out whatever. But we do that. We try to prioritize, pick a day each weekend where one of us sets the priorities and then the other does the opposite day, so we can both accomplish anything that we're looking to individually do.
Speaker 1:And you guys are both really involved in the whole school drop-off too, it seems. How do you figure that out each day?
Speaker 4:We live close. That's literally the perk. But we have a schedule. Oh Jason, we have a schedule.
Speaker 2:She's got a down color-coded schedule. That's guy and color-coded. You have to show it to me next time. It's on the door right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, on the door Color-coded by the letters no confusion, oh, both doors, it is on both doors.
Speaker 4:Upstairs too and his office. It's a whiteboard? No, it's like a printed sketchbook.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a printed sketchbook, yeah, but it's like behind like a frame kind of.
Speaker 4:Okay, yeah, I'm going to show you next time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's been very helpful, especially now, since I recently started reading it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he hadn't read it for years. That little a-hole he's like whose turn is it to drop off to?
Speaker 2:Oh Well, I'd show up with Bailey at the other daycare. I'd be like shit, there's no one here.
Speaker 4:That happened several times. That happened enough. She's like it's color-coded.
Speaker 2:Matt, I'm like, oh, you're right, oh man, I'm an idiot. But you know, it's also COVID. Covid's been the best thing that's happened to us. We both work from home majority of the time.
Speaker 4:I mean that's been fantastic Working from home is nice right, because it does allow us, like lunch opportunities, to just connect if or to do things like this right. I mean, like we do, we try to go out with, with friends, we try to put something in the books once a month to go out during like the week and so, yeah, it's just a lot of different. We try to maximize every, every minute we have with the kids. Without the kids, all the things.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you guys have all the hacks. It's so cool. It's so cool you guys have a ton of wisdom and you're still very young.
Speaker 4:Well, you know, he did just turn 40. I did just turn.
Speaker 3:Katie was like oh, you have so many gray hairs. You guys have a lot of gray hairs. Guys, look closely, it comes.
Speaker 2:I never noticed it's on the sides.
Speaker 1:This already disappeared. I just noticed yesterday. Hey man, once you hit 40, what do they say? I'm a man, I'm 40.
Speaker 2:You should start saying that. I'm going to start saying that I'm a man.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm 39, so she's been prepping me for the last year now, and your 40th birthday was early too, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think she had my 40th birthday six months prior.
Speaker 4:Which there was good reason for it, but yeah, tell me more about your rough life, buddy.
Speaker 2:I know it'll be a 50th shirt.
Speaker 3:when I'm 47 or something, it'll be a 50th shirt when I'm 47 or something, or just to be efficient? I don't know what that's about. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:That thing for older men.
Speaker 1:I guess. So what's your one piece of advice? That if you knew a new family that was going into a new town and they don't know anybody, what do you think is the first thing that they could maybe do to kind of like find a way to start building their own little community? And what do you?
Speaker 2:what do you think you would suggest for somebody like that? Ooh, that's a good one.
Speaker 4:I think mine's pretty basic Just be friendly and kind yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean the. What made us successful is being outside.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, like being outside, not being afraid to say no.
Speaker 4:Cause.
Speaker 2:Again, it goes back to yeah, it goes back to the number of interactions. That's what you're not going to strike up a friendship with the first interaction with the person you meet. It's going to take five, six, seven. You got to break through some ice and then you'll develop a friendship. So continual interactions find the space where there's going to be the most interactions.
Speaker 4:You also feel comfortable? Yeah, you feel comfortable, there's a park If it's out.
Speaker 2:You know, now I'm to the point. Now when I go outside it's almost comical I'll fire up the power washer outside Jason's wrapping up and before it's warm, people will come over. You know, be outside interact, find interaction places.
Speaker 4:He says he's taking the trash out and it's like 45 minutes later because he stopped and talked to like three different like people walking past, yeah, yeah. It's constant combos, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And is it? And is it you like? Because if you're power washing, you've got your head down. But is it really like you're looking around and like checking your surroundings and like, hey, who's coming down and how? Hey, I want to talk to that person.
Speaker 2:No, they're scared the shit out of me. They will stand next to me. I'll be like ah, greg, what are you? What do?
Speaker 4:you power washing what's going on there? Did you break something? It's wild, it's amazing.
Speaker 2:It is, I think, it's friendliest actor, but also friendliness right like, even if I'm feeling not in a social mood, I'll push myself. I'll just push myself take advantage of every social interaction. Ask more questions yeah, make people feel Do do the opposite of what we're doing here. Ask questions.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's kind of wild right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. It's rare that we're. This is the point. Yeah, no, you're spewing the wisdom. It's good All we do is ask questions.
Speaker 2:All we do is ask questions Constantly. Be find ways to connect, the more the questions you're going to find some commonality you're going to connect you've got to ask questions non-stop.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. This was a fantastic conversation yeah, it was.
Speaker 3:We didn't even get to the business part. To get to the business part, what's?
Speaker 2:the business part their old business yeah, so we used to have a business. So I was working. I'll try to keep it non-elevator spiel, but non-encyclopedia. So I was working. I'll try to keep it non-elevator spiel, but non-encyclopedia. So I was working. Well, that's another funny story. I could go into thousands of funny stories. I was working at an agency of Illinois I'm not going to state its name and I was doing so well that my boss said hey, matt, we're going to hire two people underneath you. They're going to do your job and you're going to do this next big thing, which is what I was trying to get to there. You know it's going to take six months. We're going to elevate you. You have this awesome spot to this awesome work. I was like that's great. So two people came in and and then this environment once they come in, they're hard to get out. That's important to the story. So they came in six months trained them, because it's government.
Speaker 2:Right, it's quasi.
Speaker 4:It's government oversight.
Speaker 2:Anyways. So the two folks came in, they took over my job and then, pretty much when the keys were out of my hand, my boss was fired. She was gone, she got fired. So here I was. I now don't have a job, but I getting paid and I'm showing up to this office. We get, I finally get a new boss who didn't want that job of being that boss of that department. I go to her and I'm like hey, you know I, I don't have any work to do. All my work is given to these two folks. Oh, just hang tight, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 4:Well, you did have one One monthly commitment. I had one, one monthly commitment.
Speaker 2:I had one commitment I was very good at data analytics and I would present to the board of directors trends and ways I saw of fixing issues.
Speaker 4:But it was like a two-hour thing.
Speaker 2:It was like a two, three-hour thing Monthly, and so once a month I'd put together slides, deep analytics on how to save millions of dollars, how Billions of dollars, how to save time is construction, how to save time by accelerating this portion of a contract.
Speaker 3:All right all right.
Speaker 2:All that fun stuff, anyways. So, yeah, thanks. So, anyways, this goes on. So the first month goes by and month by month Got to the point I would show up and just watch Netflix. Get to the business.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:I love this story. Please keep going so this is my problem.
Speaker 2:I don't know when to stop. I don't know how much detail you want. I don't know.
Speaker 1:We can be here. We can go the distance if you want. We can be here for three hours.
Speaker 2:So, long story short, I was like, yeah, this corporate world sucks. You know, you could be really good and get fired. You can have a job that has no meaning. You can have a job without any work. I was like I want to start my, I want to do something I've always wanted to do which is something to do with motorcycles and mechanics and teach people. So I came up with an idea that's not new, not not, you know, not entirely new, but to run my own community motorcycle garage, kind of like a gym, right, like.
Speaker 2:So you pay, pay a fee, you bring in your motorcycle, you have a mechanic there to help you. It's kind of like a gym, right Like. So you pay, pay a fee, you bring in your motorcycle, you have a mechanic there to help you. It's kind of a club. So it's half social, half repair, half all that. You know it's all just a blend, very different than a traditional drop-off repair shop. And so over the span of one to two years we did all the work you know, got it imaged, all legwork, the financial, the legal foundation, the waivers, the attorneys, all that fun stuff, and opened a shop and, you know, wasn't profitable, you know, for the first year, year and a half and even after that wasn't very, very profitable, but it was incredible it was holding its own it was holding this pain for itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I think at the height of it we had 30 or 40 members. We had three bays, computers, tools, a library of stuff, and we ran the shop on the weekends, or I ran the shop, and it became this kind of club motorcycle hangout. It was incredible, it was a passion of mine, you know. You know I really wanted to do it. Very happy we experienced it and after three years we closed it down. You know, we had our first child and I missed a lot of really important stuff with my first child. You know I would disappear on the weekends. Katie'd be home with her first child and her other lover and I was very jealous, and so I was. Well, I want the second child to be mine as well, so I better close this thing down. I love Matt.
Speaker 1:So I was like I better hang up my keys here. I make the same comments about the milkman that stops you at the door.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right he does and she was very disappointed. I did. She had to break it off, but it was. It was. It was wonderful.
Speaker 4:I mean you know it was a really cool experience it is is bittersweet.
Speaker 2:It's very bittersweet. It's a very tough point in my life because I had to choose essentially between attention to my family or the self-pursuit of a passion and I think growing your family is probably the better word.
Speaker 4:right, right, yeah, exactly it's also my wife, right.
Speaker 2:Attention to my wife too.
Speaker 4:Growing your family, not just my new child, right yeah, exactly, or expanding a business because it was at a point where we either needed to dive full in. I think you guys could probably understand this right. There's these points right where you can either dive full in and fully invest.
Speaker 2:You know, there's these points right where you can either die full in and fully invest, but we were both working full-time jobs still at the time, and that was an evening, mainly weekend, scenario.
Speaker 4:And so pre-kids it wasn't a problem, right, because I could pop in and out whenever I wanted and it was just this really nice vibe. And then I got pregnant and that didn't even matter, because when you're pregnant you don't want to do anything, you just want to lay on the couch anyway and binge watch dumb TV. So, even that wasn't as obvious.
Speaker 4:And then baby number one she would still come, Ellie would still go to the shop and you know we would, we would go and spend time, but it became less and less right, because it is a little bit trickier when you have a child and you're trying to. You know, merge these, these these worlds of of motorcycles and cleanliness and babies, and and then when we start talking about growing the family even more, you know what does that look like and what and what do we? How do we want that to ultimately look?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it'd be hard to grow a family working 80 hours a week, right? Essentially what was happening for three years.
Speaker 4:Right, but I do think, I do think it's it's in his future again, I hope it is. I think it would be an awesome retirement option Because it was a lot of fun. He cultivated that vibe that we have right now in downtown Arlington Heights of going there and being kind of that.
Speaker 2:He calls it, like the cruise, right the cruise feel he did that with motorcycles and still has great friends to this day that really are still part of our network. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's the long and short of it. Oh, it's amazing man yeah.
Speaker 1:No well, it makes me really kind of like think about our whole situation. I spend a lot of my weekends like right now I'm in super busy season as a real estate agent. It's just like spring market, where I'm like constant every single day I'm out doing something and that's Saturday, sunday and a lot of times like it's, you know, in the fall time. I can really, you know, have those those times, but right now I can, I don't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, our lifestyle is very seasonal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and it's and so, yeah, I mean, as you think, as you kind of comment on, like man, I really missed a lot of those really important moments, which is true, I think. At the same time, I don't always feel that way, that I'm missing things because I am here Like I work from home.
Speaker 4:I think that is a big, I think that's a big thing, like I'm not in the office you know, so I see my.
Speaker 3:I see my kids when they come home from school and you know, that's been a big piece of why we haven't gotten an office is how different things would look if you actually left for the day and didn't come home right yeah. And if I didn't come home right exactly yeah and I think that that that's the flex.
Speaker 1:I I do have a flexible schedule, but the same time I don't it's just not a traditional yeah, right, yeah, and um, yeah, but, but I still I feel like I still get a lot of FaceTime with the kids, but obviously I'm always trying to scale that back. I would love to be a part of more play dates and I think that I'm. Hey, I might be able to do it one time, but I can't do it consistently.
Speaker 4:I think you're pretty good about it.
Speaker 1:I try I try.
Speaker 4:I feel like you're intentional, yeah, I try.
Speaker 3:I think the hardest thing is one, one thing that I love, like your guys' system with your schedule and everything, and I have wanted that for so long and I'm finally like accepting the fact of like we are day by day, because we really kind of have to be day by day, so it's like connect in the morning. What's your day look? Like what's our day look like Okay, how is this going to work?
Speaker 1:And it's working now. You wouldn't believe the life of a real estate agent is so sporadic.
Speaker 3:It's so sporadic.
Speaker 1:But I literally can't. It's very, very difficult for me to have something scheduled every single time or every single week at the exact same time. It is always different because there's always a different deal.
Speaker 3:Well, it's even a couple days ahead of time, because if somebody sees a property on a Tuesday, they decide they want to put an offer in it by Wednesday. Thursday you're doing an inspection and so, like that wasn't on the schedule on Monday or Tuesday right, cause you got to do it within a five minute window.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all of these very big time commitment pieces pop up at the last minute and you know, and now that we live out here, it takes me a little bit longer to get into the city or like wherever I'm showing the property, chances are the average drive time is like 30 minutes, right, so so it consumes a lot more time, but at the same time, again, like I still feel that I am a part of drop off when I, when I need to be, or when I when I want to be, and baby number three comes.
Speaker 3:He'll be doing a job. I'll probably be doing a little bit more of that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for sure We'll take Jason in the halls, but I can really relate to what you were saying.
Speaker 3:It's like everything's like a cost-benefit analysis, right?
Speaker 2:It's like.
Speaker 3:It's a trade-off of your time and we've had several of those conversations of like, even like me, like not working, like that wasn't ever like the intent, but I see how much of an impact that would have on our family if I did go back to work, right now Right, you know it's like it's. It doesn't really make sense, because we need that, that stable piece for for our kids and for our family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you gotta look at those things, yeah.
Speaker 4:You have to make the decisions Right, as every family looks different and every every dynamic looks different, and as long as it works for you and your family, that's.
Speaker 3:And it's a phase like you said right, like you think this will come back for him and I think work will come back for me sometime too. It's like just like this phase of life and making it, making it work Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I wanted you to finish that story because I was actually starting to crack up, because I've heard this story probably like two or three times, where you're like the whole the Netflix thing. And then Katie cut you off. It's actually really funny.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you one more.
Speaker 4:I cut him off because you've heard it two or three times.
Speaker 2:I want to hear it again.
Speaker 4:I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2:The most interesting piece of the story when I realized like, okay, this has gotten to point to be ridiculous. It was probably about four months in and I was exhausting my Netflix library.
Speaker 1:You're at this point. You don't have any work.
Speaker 2:I don't have any work. You just got a new boss, the new boss has no idea what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one piece of work I did was really interesting. I was able to determine. Anyway, I don't want to get into anything proprietary, but anyways, I did a big slide deck presentation that led to some serious changes and it was probably like a Thursday presentation that led to some serious changes and it was probably like a Thursday. It was past five o'clock. I was, you know, halfway through a movie. It was a really good one. I don't remember what it was. You know, when I go into the office I immediately take off my dress shoes. My slippers are there, slipping my slippers, and it's probably like 545, 550 pm. Everyone's gone for the day. You know, I'm sitting there by myself, we have my headphones on and then I watch this movie on my screen and I hear this ringing and it's my desk phone. This is 10, 15 years ago and the inner phones, right. So the phones between offices in the building, and usually my process is to let it ring and go to voicemail Because I didn't have a job.
Speaker 4:Sounds like a true government job. Huh, I kid, I kid, ring and go to voicemail because it cause I didn't have a job.
Speaker 2:They were calling. They were calling me for something that I necessarily wasn't responsible for, so I figured it out. If I just ignored it, they would find someone to get help, and so I'd usually ignore it. So it had a lot of dust on it, anyways. So it was like almost you know 545, 550 and the phone's ringing and it was my boss's boss on the caller id and I'm like shit, this is it, I'm out.
Speaker 2:You know the, the gig is up you know, I'm like ah, well, okay, you know, better, take off my slippers, put on my shoes. I answer the phone and he's like matt, what are you still doing here? Oh, you know, I'm just wrapping something up. Oh, he's like wow, that's great, did you? Did you get you know?
Speaker 2:so you're doing overtime yeah because I would get overtime for this, because I'm you know, I'm working after hours. I'm like, yeah, you know, I am Okay. Well, come on, come on up to my office, I need to talk to you immediately. And I'm like okay, this is it. I got my phone, I go upstairs and he's like sit down. And I don't know why he's closing the door. There's no one there. So I close the door and I sit down and he's like Matt, I just want to say what you've been doing is phenomenal. It's made such an impact. We've saved this money. We've saved this time. We're going to give you a big raise.
Speaker 2:And I remember at the time I was pissed off because either A fire me or B let me finish this movie, Because I had to pause it during a really good point in the movie. And he's telling me this and I'm like oh, I got a raise. He's like here's your new salary amount. This is a substantial increase. And I was like oh, thank you, I really appreciate it. I'm going to go wrap up. He's like I'm so impressed that you're even here after hours getting this done. Really appreciate it. Thanks for all you do. Bye, and I went, you know, finished my movie, clocked in the overtime and left for the day. It's a true story. It's a true story.
Speaker 4:It's the wildest thing in my life. It is the same I say this often, but I do genuinely. Matt is probably like. I know. He comes across as very funny, but he's actually the smartest person I know and the wild thing about him is he is so efficient and he tells me guys are weak and so guys want to find so the quickest route to figure, to figure out a solution.
Speaker 4:And so what he does at work, he literally does this right, and so it's just this continual process. Wherever he is he comes in, he recognizes a process that may take I'm just going to say, generically 10 hours, and then he somehow, he hacks it, does his thing and then it gets down to one hour, right, and so he repetitively does this everywhere he goes, and so to a traditional worker, it would take them that 10 hours.
Speaker 4:It only takes him just that one hour but, but in theory it would take anyone else that amount of time. And so, and so you know he doesn't always give himself enough enough work credit, so the value of the work you were doing. I mean he's, he's putting out really high valuable information in less than two hours in a month, Right, I mean that's. That doesn't just happen.
Speaker 1:Naturally there does have to be some yeah, yeah, you purposely did that to yourself where it's just like hey, I want more time in my day. Well, let's, let's shave off this 10 hour work and let's find some improvements and let's do it a lot sooner, so now I can hang out and watch Netflix.
Speaker 2:You gotta be smart to be lazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, that's great. You got to be smart to be lazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that's great, you have to be. Yeah, I tell Kay that that's right. You know men are the laziest people on the planet, but that's led to almost every invention that we have how to do it quicker, easier and better. That's it. That's the it's the key. Laziness is so important. I don't want to work, I want things to work for me. So that's exactly what I do.
Speaker 4:It makes you efficient.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes it very efficient. What's a better way to do it? What's a quicker way?
Speaker 3:Yep, because then you get to do more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you can do a lot more or less or less. It's really less or less.
Speaker 4:Or less, more parties.
Speaker 1:Love, love it, that's true. So fun, all right. Well, milford's, thank you for joining us. This was awesome. I guess how we wrap up this conversation is always like what's the biggest takeaway from the conversation?
Speaker 3:and, rach, we'll start with you go first I know I have a couple times I'm like I'm not there yet. Yeah, I think I think my biggest takeaway is your guys's intentionality with community. I mean you, at the very, very beginning of the show, had such a analysis of of what you were looking for and why you were looking for it and how to find it and then how to maintain it. I mean it's really like a formula for, you know, building root or planting roots and feeling connected and finding your own pursuit of happiness. I think is what what I heard you say, and I don't know that enough people take enough time to actually analyze what they want, to be able to identify how to find it and then find it and keep it. You know, like I think you really laid out a very clear formula for how to do that.
Speaker 3:And I think, I think people are going to find that useful. Yeah, how to find it and keep it, because there's a lot of like yeah, it was all the steps yeah yeah, this was a fascinating conversation honestly, like this is going to be really fun to re-listen to.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people can learn a ton from this Because I feel like in today's world we kind of lack that whole human interaction Because everything is so screen-driven right and we have a lot more of our social interactions now just happening on social media and believe it or not, you guys don't have social media.
Speaker 2:You guys are still so old school. I have Facebook with no friends, just for Marketplace. That is it.
Speaker 4:But Jason asked me a really good question the other day. He said how does Matt send? What did you tell me?
Speaker 1:Well, you're an ex. Thank you, thank you All right. So where this all ended here was we were going back to the fact that you guys don't have any social media right, and so, basically, what I recognize is that you keep it old school and you go back to the human-to-human interaction and you're not like the older generation doing that, you're this generation doing that, which I think is super special. And so I think for anybody, that's really kind of listening and it's like how do I build a community? Well, I think we have to go back to the roots, right, and it's not necessarily being on social media and organizing these things. It's literally going out and talking to your neighbors and asking if you guys want to do a block party.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:And and being the person that organizes, I've realized I've gone to a ton of networking events. The person that organizes the networking events is always the person that gets to know everybody, because they're coming, because they know you, because you're the organizer and you you typically have a tie to somebody in that room and so when you can be in the position of being the organizer, it just kind of grows your popularity or but like you just get your network expands and you get to meet a lot of great people and then, but you also just brought up like great stuff too, which is like you know, how, know, how do you maintain those relationships? So just because I know you doesn't mean that we have a great relationship and you guys are going a little bit deeper on, like how do we, you know, find the people who really like to be around and really deepen it? But you brought some great tips.
Speaker 1:Ask questions right to the other person, and so I think these are all like literally simple things that people can walk away from like after listening to this conversation, and I think that's one of, like you know, the takeaway for me. So I have to ask you guys you guys did a lot of talking, which is great, so now you have to reflect on what was the biggest takeaway from some of your comments.
Speaker 2:Well, I will let ladies go first. Oh, that's convenient.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, it's a taste that always feels sweet.
Speaker 4:Now, that's convenient. Now you're the gentleman.
Speaker 2:Called out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, good question. I think it's just a friendly reminder for me. I'm, I'm, I am like a firm believer of if I want to have a conversation or know something about you, I'm going to text her, I'm going to schedule a time, and so I think it's just affirmation that, like that works Right, and even just like this this is a podcast, but it's also a still hanging Right and and it's still hanging and learning, and so I think that's probably my biggest takeaway is is just like affirmation that I like the style in which we do connect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause it works.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, cause. How many times are you in conversation with people You're like, oh yeah, we should grab lunch sometime. Or oh yeah, we should grab coffee and talk about that, and then you just don't have the initiator right.
Speaker 1:You don't have a person that follows up.
Speaker 4:But to that point, the reversal is, I am actually intentionally trying not to be the initiator of of as many things this year, because that's one of my my 2025 goals, because it's okay that I don't always have to initiate. I can just sit back and enjoy as well. So it goes. It goes a little bit. I think that's part of the being intentional aspect, but it can go both ways. You're up.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, I you know, I think, a couple of takeaways, one being being I it's it's interesting being interviewed, you know, I I feel like we could have done a better job asking y'all questions no, that's not.
Speaker 4:That's not the point okay okay, but maybe we should make it the point, we can do a reversal next time you guys could totally host the podcast, you know the takeaway is, I think, the reason why we like you guys.
Speaker 2:I mean, you guys are very down to earth, you're very inquisitive, you're just a great set of folks that we equally as admire. I mean, your listeners probably can't see, but I don't have quite the chiseled physique. You know, you guys, we didn't even talk about Katie does. We didn't even talk about, you know, the 75 hard where you guys did a 75 hard.
Speaker 4:And we did the 30 mid we didn't talk about that.
Speaker 2:I call it the 50 chubby. Oh my gosh. But we admire a lot of stuff about you guys. I mean you guys you know, we you know, I appreciate that. You know telling us that we're really good at socializing and stuff like that and we try, but we've got a lot of areas for growth that we realize that you guys have, you guys excel in and we really appreciate.
Speaker 4:The individual growth. I think to your point. They both very much excel and we admire about you, and so that is something that you know we've had this conversation of what do we individually want to do, Like, because that is that is inspirational.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that about you guys.
Speaker 4:It's a pleasant conversation we want face-to-face interaction, face-to-face bonding.
Speaker 2:You know that's what we prioritize. You know, like you said, with the lack of social media, we don't get that dopamine hit when someone likes a post that we post or a picture from one of our vacations. We get that dopamine hit talking to people about it or having conversations. So it just affirms that. You know, I think our direction is a is a good direction. Yeah, so it's been a lot of fun, so really appreciate it guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, this is awesome. Well, we could totally do it again and we could go into. We'll find a lot more conversation.
Speaker 2:I mean we, we, we didn't, we didn't talk about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we didn't talk about. Yeah, we didn't talk about what we regularly talk about.
Speaker 4:What do you regularly talk about?
Speaker 3:Oh it's like more from.
Speaker 1:Well, you guys, you guys threw a great party and we were so lucky to be invited to that, which was the, you know, inauguration We've been really like into like real estate but also conspiracy we need to play like more like taboo topics speaking of, I saw a girlfriend yesterday and she totally made me think of you because she had her m-a-h-a sweatshirt.
Speaker 4:Oh my god, yeah, yep, yep, yep and my hat yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, oh, yeah, we could, we could, we could talk on that, yeah, oh yeah, I, I mean, and that's and that's the fun part, right?
Speaker 1:So the four of us always go out to dinner and we, you know, half the time we're talking about that and then half the time we're talking about the kids, and you know, and it's, it's just great, it's really enjoyable, and the best part is that our kids are friends, which is really great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Lila's first friend ever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah like Jason said, you guys are the first people we met at the school and that just so happened that our kids became best friends, lucky, lucky, yeah, so cute All right guys.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for listening to the show. If you found any value in it, which I'm sure you did tons and tons of wisdom out of this one please share it and we will catch you on the next episode.