0:00

Sampson Gigs was a division one football

0:02

player at cu, and soon became an

0:04

early stage and key leader and eventually

0:06

minority partner in Mad Wire slash

0:08

Marketing 360. He used

0:10

his experience in that journey to power his own

0:12

ventures and understanding with many venture sense.

0:16

Darius Bell came to No Sampson while he was

0:18

a standout employee at Mawi and

0:20

is a lifelong student of brand and marketing.

0:23

Together. Sampson and Darius have created the Pain to

0:25

Profits podcast and are building

0:27

a business education and brokerage platform

0:29

for the next generation. Clearly acquired.

0:33

Their mission is to simplify business valuation

0:35

and acquisition and skills development to

0:37

allow a generation of independent business owners

0:39

to transition to the next phase of life. They've

0:42

got an event coming up in a few weeks after this podcast

0:44

publishes the Sales and Lead summit

0:47

on June 9th, which will be linked in the episode

0:49

description. Both of these

0:51

men have inspiring journeys of overcoming obstacles,

0:54

and we share a conversation that's both philosophical

0:56

and practical marketing trends,

0:58

business and demographic opportunities, fear,

1:01

love, pain, and addiction. It's all

1:03

in this one, so please tune in and

1:05

enjoy my conversation with Sampson Juris

1:07

and Darius Bell. Welcome

1:46

back to the Local Experience Podcast. I'm here today

1:49

with Sampson s Yes. Right.

1:51

Pretty close. Nailed it. And Darius Bell, uh,

1:54

they are the, um, founder

1:56

and CEO and chief marketing

1:58

officer, respectively of clearly acquired,

2:01

um, also the creative

2:03

talent, I guess, behind the

2:05

Paying to Profits podcast and all

2:08

of the newsletters and events.

2:10

I'm sure we'll talk about your upcoming event in

2:12

June. Yep. And so, um,

2:14

let's just start by saying, Samson,

2:17

what you been up to lately? Well,

2:19

man, a lot. I feel like, uh,

2:22

what I've been up to is we are

2:24

on a mission to just change the way that

2:27

businesses get bought and sold for the lower middle

2:29

market. And so, you know,

2:31

coming from the world of marketing and technology, that's

2:33

where Darius and I know each other. Mm-hmm. We, uh,

2:35

we're part of a local company here called Mawi.

2:37

Sure. If you guys are from Northern Colorado. So I

2:40

ran strategy there for nine years and,

2:42

um, learned a lot about small

2:44

businesses as well as marketing and technology.

2:47

And so I've been doing private equity for the past

2:49

couple years. Uh, I hit up Darius

2:51

because once upon a time when we were working

2:53

with 25,000 small business accounts, we

2:56

had this. Conversation in around

2:58

how anybody can start a business, but,

3:00

uh, very few people are successful

3:02

at it, right? Yeah. The majority of businesses fill in the first two years,

3:04

and so less than 4% of businesses ever make it

3:06

to a million dollars in top line revenue.

3:09

Is that right? And so I called Darius and said, Hey man,

3:11

I got this idea for a couple different

3:13

things. One this podcast where we

3:15

can bring on entrepreneurs and actually

3:17

share the wisdom in and around what

3:19

it takes to go from pain of starting

3:21

up to, to profits, right? Yeah. And

3:23

so there's, therein lies the name of the podcast,

3:26

uh, that's evolved into a newsletter, an events platform.

3:28

You know, as entrepreneurs, we do a really terrible job

3:30

of walking together and learning from

3:33

each other. And we're heads down, plus

3:35

speak for yourself. Yeah. Local think tank

3:37

guy, whatever. But

3:39

you know, we did a really hard time. We, but it is, it's a lonely

3:41

place. It's lonely and you're grinding constantly

3:44

and um, and you sometimes

3:46

aren't spending enough time leveling up and

3:48

the market changes quick. Right. Especially in the world

3:51

of marketing and technology and what's evolving around us as

3:53

we kind of. Exit out of the last a hundred year

3:55

cycle, baby boomers are stepping down

3:57

from the helm and millennials are stepping up as the

3:59

largest segment of the workforce. And yeah. And the

4:01

largest segment that's starting businesses and buying businesses.

4:04

So, long story short, that's,

4:06

you know, evolved into clearly acquired.com,

4:08

where we're building a, you know, finance, embedded

4:11

tech solution and marketplace to

4:13

help buyers and sellers come together by way

4:15

of talent and technology. So we got, currently,

4:18

we got nine going on, 10 m and a advisors

4:20

on our team. We're in

4:22

a sprint towards our mvp. We're

4:24

aggregating public business listings from

4:26

across the web. Wow. And we're pulling those

4:28

into our database to make a better sourcing

4:31

solution on the buy side. And obviously, you know, buying,

4:33

selling business is a, a collaborative experience.

4:36

Sure. But none of the platforms or the ecosystems actually

4:38

support that. And so that's what our

4:40

goal is, is to do that. Interesting. Mm-hmm. It

4:42

seems like you spend a lot more time on your strategy than

4:44

I have, not

4:47

just self disparage. Well, it's also,

4:49

I mean, I think, you know, what you see

4:52

it's like evolved very quickly in the last probably

4:54

30, 60 days. But, you know, we've been grounded

4:56

on this for yeah. Six, seven months, right? Yeah. Yeah. So what's

4:58

the, uh, the, the quote, if you got

5:00

10 hours to chop down a tree, spend nine sharpening

5:03

the ax. Mm-hmm. And so that's, uh,

5:05

something we definitely subscribe to and that's lessons learned,

5:07

right? From, you know, getting your, your

5:09

key, your teeth kicked in a couple times.

5:11

This is an entrepreneur, this isn't the first rodeo.

5:13

Right. So I want to jump over to the Darius.

5:15

Darius, what. Was this

5:18

a, uh, a concept that you

5:20

just immediately were ready to be like, yes,

5:22

I wanna be a part of it, or Yeah. Like tell me about

5:24

your reaction. Yeah, absolutely. Um,

5:27

I mean, again, he mentioned at first

5:29

we were talking about, he came,

5:32

Hey, I have this idea. I heard the idea,

5:34

I understood the idea. I see the idea. Let's

5:37

sit down and put our heads together. Yeah, I'm in. You

5:39

know, so it it was that simple. Yeah. Uh,

5:42

yeah. It, yeah, it wasn't complicated

5:44

for me on my end. Uh, he's a dear friend

5:47

and I trust him and I know

5:49

the way he thinks, uh, and vets things

5:51

and, you know, if there's something he's gonna pursue,

5:54

he thinks about it from multi directions,

5:56

you know, so it's not just some like, Hey,

5:58

I have this idea. Let, let's, I have this idea,

6:00

let's go. And, you know, no, it's like

6:03

he thinks about it. Yeah. And so, um, and,

6:05

and we, he creates a space for me to think

6:07

about it with him. And so that's what we do. And so, if I

6:09

understand it right, painted

6:11

profits, uh, is like,

6:14

to some extent a, a marketing

6:16

base camp for what ultimately

6:18

will be kind of a, a, an integrated

6:21

marketplace with access

6:23

to capital and consulting mm-hmm.

6:27

For a business exchange. Yeah. That's kind

6:29

of the getting there. Yeah. It's close

6:31

terminology might change, but yeah.

6:33

It's, it's, it's, it's associated and

6:36

the people who we serve through clearly

6:38

acquired, um, They

6:40

will find value in what we're doing with paying the profits.

6:43

Yeah. Yeah. And so are you also,

6:45

I I think, I sense that the

6:49

size of businesses that are ready

6:51

for acquisition is maybe

6:54

gonna be getting smaller than it has been

6:56

in the past or something. Or, or

6:59

I mean, or not necessarily. I mean, I

7:01

think there's a lot of the, the segment that we play

7:03

in is what we would call the sme, the small to medium

7:05

size enterprise to the lower middle market.

7:08

So one to 5 million would be

7:10

like the small to medium size. Yeah. Yeah.

7:12

Anything south of a million would be considered a main street

7:14

business. Yep. And so those come with our own

7:17

struggles to sell. Right? Like, so think about like

7:19

a dance studio doing $200,000 a year.

7:21

You got a very specific owner operator who

7:23

wants to buy the business, you're geographically constrained.

7:26

Right? Versus if we're taking

7:28

a $22 million year top line business

7:31

that's electrical contractor

7:33

guy's, you know, 65 years old, 70 years old,

7:36

and ready to retire, and,

7:38

uh, a guy from say Denver wants

7:40

to come up and get market share in northern Colorado,

7:43

he can buy that business for 12 and a half million.

7:45

Right. So how do we help that guy, uh,

7:48

finance that deal, put that deal together,

7:50

help that owner exit, understand it's there.

7:52

Exactly. Right. So, you know, coming from the

7:54

world of, of real estate private equity, which is what I've

7:57

had been doing for quite a while, you know, we

7:59

drive down the street and everybody sees the same building. They

8:01

see the same piece of dirt. Everybody's chasing

8:03

the same opportunity. Nice silent

8:05

sneeze. Impressive. Perfected

8:07

it over the years, he might have given

8:09

himself an aneurysm. Don't we? Don't do that around here. Oh.

8:14

But, um, but yeah, so the,

8:16

uh, you know, so helping

8:18

the, helping the lower middle market and, and

8:20

creating a more efficient part of that

8:22

market, anything from like

8:24

a million to 50 million is pretty inefficient

8:27

at the moment. Mm-hmm. And so that's the goal. Got

8:29

'em. Dude, it's allergy season.

8:32

It has been terrible. It might have some Benadryl

8:34

in there. Uh, no, I'm really gonna be out.

8:36

Right. Benadryl, I shot at tequila and a couple

8:38

betters. But, you know, one of the things about Darius,

8:40

um, and

8:43

one of, I guess one of my skillsets is write people right

8:45

seat. Right? And so Darius is just

8:48

very skilled, knowledgeable,

8:50

passionate about the world of marketing strategy

8:52

content. And he can see kind of around the corner

8:55

on how things are changing. Mm. And

8:57

so very proactively, you know,

9:00

we've been building a, a strategy,

9:03

uh, that's rooted in brand

9:05

and content. And so, you

9:07

know, that's why I reached out to him initially is because he

9:09

just understands that. Yeah. But we also align on our core

9:11

values, you know, of, of what we believe,

9:13

right? We believe that, um,

9:15

you know, everything that we do belongs to the Lord

9:18

and to God. And so we

9:20

align on that message. We believe that, you know,

9:22

God wants us to be entrepreneurs

9:25

and, and to make more impact and

9:27

add value to the marketplace. And,

9:29

uh, we can have a lot more impact from. The

9:32

market than we can ever from a stage on Sunday.

9:34

And so, um, you know, we we're gonna

9:37

influence 10,000 people in our life whether we like it or not.

9:39

Hmm. And, uh, and we just choose

9:41

the, share, the, what we feel is the good news

9:44

to the marketplace. Yeah. Because we feel like it's missing. And

9:47

so, so are you, are you, uh, overtly,

9:50

uh, Christian organization,

9:52

front facing or more behind the scenes?

9:55

I've never really seen those things. It's two different things. Right.

9:57

It's just the way that I operate, right. I don't know. Yeah.

9:59

Yeah. It's just, it's just the way that I am. Right.

10:01

Uh, I mean, uh, our, it's, it's in our core

10:03

values right? Of, you know, entrepreneurialism

10:06

is a gift from God. People are the creator of pro creators

10:08

of prosperity. Right. And so, um,

10:11

yeah, that's interesting too because it's like, well,

10:14

you're a Christian business.

10:16

Well, well, what's an atheist

10:18

business? Yeah. What's that mean? Right. Right.

10:20

What's a Buddhist business? Right. You know, um, what

10:22

does that mean? Yeah. I don't, I don't understand. It's just, it,

10:24

it helps dictate what our, how

10:26

our moral compass and our business ethics role.

10:29

Right. I had a, a customer tell me one time,

10:31

um, actually he saw my necklace and he is

10:33

like, oh, are you a Christian, Curtis? Which I suppose

10:36

shame on me for him knowing me for over

10:38

two years and not knowing that. Not knowing that. Um,

10:41

and, uh, and I

10:43

said, you know, yeah, I, I'm not a, a super

10:45

evangelist, but I have been for, you know, 10 years

10:47

plus now or whatever. And he is like, well, you

10:50

know, I, um, I

10:52

don't, I know a lot of Christians, but one thing I

10:54

do know about business is that if somebody

10:56

says, you can trust me, I'm a Christian. I cannot

10:58

trust that person. Well, yeah.

11:01

Just cuz you put it on your card doesn't mean Yeah.

11:03

And so I, I appreciate your notion of,

11:05

you know, walk it as

11:07

much as you talk it or more. I think if you, I think

11:09

if you have to say it, you're probably doing

11:11

it wrong. Um, that was an old Margaret

11:14

Thatcher quote when the, uh, when

11:16

I think, uh, the BBC

11:18

or NPR or whatever quit Twitter, uh,

11:21

Margaret Thatcher said back in the day, um,

11:26

being a lady is a lot like being powerful.

11:28

If you have to tell people that you are, then

11:31

you are not. Yep, that's right. Yeah.

11:33

Oh, man. That, that can go many directions.

11:36

Yeah, that's true. So yeah.

11:39

So, but yeah, so we, I think, you know, when you, when

11:41

you go to form a partnership, and I've experienced

11:43

the, the, the negative end of not having a core value

11:45

alignment with a partner and Yeah. What that

11:47

looks like. And it's, it's tough,

11:49

you know, but one of the things that is,

11:52

is rooted in what we believe

11:54

is just extreme personal accountability

11:56

in every way, shape, or form. Mm-hmm. And so you

11:59

need that, right? You need that trust to be able to say,

12:01

Hey, the lane, as it relates to marketing,

12:03

I'm very strategic and I have a lot of knowledge

12:05

and expertise. Mm-hmm. But I can't simultaneously

12:08

be the guy that's building the brand, leading the sales

12:10

team. Right. You know, organizing all

12:12

the people, handling legal contracts, raising

12:14

money, doing all that stuff, and simultaneously

12:16

be the guy that's waking up and going to sleep thinking about how we're gonna

12:19

generate lethal. Right. So tell me about this,

12:21

uh, group of m and a consultants

12:23

or whatever that are attached, or

12:25

at least loosely attached to, uh,

12:27

to the organization. What are their, what

12:30

skill sets are they bringing? Are they kind

12:32

of initial investors that are willing to

12:34

No, they, these are, these are people who come from the

12:37

profession of, you know, commercial real estate.

12:39

Maybe they were business brokers in the past,

12:41

or advisors in the past come from the world

12:43

of private equity, MBA grads.

12:46

Um, they have acumen in the space of,

12:48

in and around how deals come

12:50

together, how to actually value businesses.

12:53

And so, you know, there's, there's some technology

12:55

platforms out there that are great

12:57

micro acquire, flip a, they're

13:00

focused on SaaS and they're focused on

13:03

websites and, and blogs. Um,

13:06

but they're trying to cut the broker out.

13:09

And so if you have a, let's just use an example,

13:11

a trash roll off company, right? That's doing

13:14

2 million a year. Top line, they

13:17

have 2 million in assets, um, and

13:19

they have 500,000 in solar discretionary earnings.

13:22

That's a little more complicated than say, a SaaS

13:24

product, which is what's your monthly recurring revenue,

13:26

right? Right. How many users do you have and what's the multiplier?

13:28

What's the growth rate? That's a lot easier to value,

13:30

right? And so you need good advisors

13:33

to help these sellers. Facilitate

13:36

the transaction. They don't know what m and a attorneys

13:38

to talk to. They don't know how to size the deal to be sold.

13:41

They don't know how to value it. They don't know what due diligence documents

13:43

they need to get in order or how to even get their, their

13:45

house in order or, or

13:47

maybe that they're not even aware that they run the risk

13:49

of being faced with a very heavy earnout

13:52

because they haven't actually removed themselves from the

13:54

day to day as much as they think they should. Is

13:56

that your client ultimately is the sellers

13:59

of these businesses? Yeah. Correct. And,

14:01

and, and the buyers. Buyers, yes. But both.

14:03

Yeah. We're, you know, in the world that's who you serve

14:06

more than anything though, is getting sellers

14:08

businesses ready to sell and

14:11

then helping them accomplish that? Yeah, it's,

14:13

it's actually both. I mean, in the world of, in

14:15

the world of brokering, they would called it building

14:17

a market, right? So in the world of residential real estate,

14:20

that market already exists, right? So you

14:23

put a house on MLS and you just go to sleep,

14:25

and then you get, you get people showing up, right? Yeah,

14:27

yeah. But when you go to sell a business, yeah.

14:29

When you go to sell a business, right? It's like you have four

14:31

different types of buyers. You have financial buyers who are just interested

14:34

in buying it as an asset. You got industry

14:36

buyers who are looking for an acquisition. Yep. Strategic

14:39

buyers wanna expand their reach, and then owner operators, right?

14:41

Mm-hmm. So how do you identify those

14:43

people and build a campaign, sell a marketing

14:45

campaign to go. Call, reach

14:47

out and market the business. Right. And

14:49

so that's an, that's like the brokering

14:51

piece of it. Mm-hmm. But the rest of it is everything

14:54

that comes together to get it prepared to go to, it's

14:56

not as simple as just like, I'm ready to sell.

14:58

I took some staging photos and I plugged it on the mls.

15:01

Sure, yeah. It's a lot more complex. No. Especially

15:03

when people are so integrated into their

15:05

business, as oftentimes is the case.

15:07

Yeah, exactly. They spent, you spent 30, 40 years growing

15:09

a business. That's hard. Yeah. Selling

15:12

a business is even harder. You don't even know where to start. So

15:14

you guys worked together at Wire I Trust

15:16

then? Yeah. Yeah, we did. I hired Darius.

15:19

Oh, way back when. Yeah. We were sitting in

15:21

the, what, the, the, what's the outlets?

15:23

The outlets. We were talking and he was like, Hey dude,

15:25

you, you should come try sales.

15:28

Like, I've been talking about myself this whole time.

15:30

Yep. He's a very good question asker. Yeah.

15:32

Good. So I hired him and just, you

15:35

know, saw the potential in him and he

15:37

came in and did sales, did marketing, then moved to

15:39

brand and ran the podcast at

15:41

Mad Wire for a while, and then broke off on

15:43

his own and was doing his own thing. Yeah. Yeah. When we reconvened.

15:46

So it's, so are we talking about

15:48

Mawi? What happened there and why so much

15:50

talent fled and stuff? Or is that better left

15:52

for another conversation? I mean, it's not

15:55

necessary. I don't know if, yeah. I don't know if talent necessarily

15:57

fled, but I think it's just the ebbs and flows of growing

16:00

and scaling a business. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's, people

16:03

can say what they, it's like, I call it like, uh, It's

16:06

like the armchair quarterbacks right? Looks,

16:08

looks real good from over here. But you try it. Very

16:10

few people in this community can sit down and

16:12

say that they scaled the business from zero to a hundred

16:14

million in top plan revenue to acquisitions and

16:17

600 employees. So yeah, say what you will,

16:19

but none nobody's ever been to the big show before. Fair

16:21

enough. So the truth is nobody's perfect either, right? Like

16:23

yeah. Yes. There's consequences

16:26

in decision making and leadership that, you

16:28

know, it's obvious, right? Yeah. You

16:30

can just look at your own life and realize you're not that

16:32

different from the person. Yeah. No, that's

16:35

what I was, you know, uh, all

16:37

the worst things that have ever happened to me in my life,

16:40

I did it to my damn self. Yeah. You

16:42

know? Uh, and maybe that's,

16:45

you know, I'm probably living a blessed life if that's

16:47

what you can say. Right? Like, there's a lot of people that that

16:49

is not true. Yes. Some terrible things have

16:52

happened to them that weren't their fault. Yep. The one

16:54

thing I will say is I think very

16:56

few people in life set up with bad

16:58

intentions. And so yeah, here

17:00

in our community, people can say what they want or

17:02

think what they want, but there

17:04

isn't, there aren't people in that organization

17:06

still to this day, even though we're not there, that. The

17:09

very few people wake up saying, I'm

17:11

gonna go do ill today. Right. Egregious

17:15

act upon people. Some do some mise

17:17

in this. Yeah. Whether or not it happens or

17:19

the outcomes are whatever people think they

17:21

are. Yeah. Very few people, you

17:24

know, set out every day to go do the

17:26

worst. You know, I think, I think what's unique

17:28

too, though, and, and this is what nobody understands

17:30

about the agency model. Like we

17:32

started out as a marketing agency, and so when you're

17:34

sitting there and you're working with 30, 40, 50

17:37

accounts, they're all to figure out what

17:39

they need. And all business owners, you're learning

17:41

a lot. Total, yeah. Concentration. And you're also coming across

17:43

people constantly where you're like, if this freaking

17:45

guy can run a business like I can too. And

17:47

so, but you walk outta there with a ton of skills

17:50

because I, I would venture to say that of the

17:52

people listening to this, very

17:54

few of them can confidently

17:56

say that they can set up a Facebook campaign,

17:58

an Instagram campaign, a LinkedIn campaign, an email

18:00

marketing, run up marketing automation, social

18:02

media campaigns, understand how to

18:05

sell right? Understand how to do all the

18:07

things that build, generally build business.

18:09

Pro business owners have to hire somebody. And

18:11

this is why you're seeing so many. People

18:13

from the marketing industry go

18:15

off to be entrepreneurs. Yeah, yeah. Because they have

18:17

an innate understanding of how marketing influences

18:20

sales, product service

18:22

growth, operations, and ultimately finance

18:24

and the vision for the, for the business.

18:26

And so part of, part of it is just the

18:29

nature of the industry

18:32

in general. People leave

18:34

and Right. Don't pursue entrepreneurship. You can't

18:36

be around it that much. And Well, and like

18:38

using a local think tank as an example, we've got,

18:41

you know, two full-time near full-time

18:43

employees. One's the marketing manager,

18:45

one's kind of the digital manager website,

18:47

podcast producer, and

18:50

like to expect one

18:52

or one and a half marketing people to be able to

18:55

cover all the things and be experts

18:57

at all the different things. And so that's why it's tempting

18:59

to hire an agency, right? Yep. But

19:02

then, you know, that rep

19:04

has got 30 or 40 or 50 businesses

19:06

that they're trying to tap all the

19:08

balloons and keep 'em off the ground and whatever.

19:11

Yeah. And so that's hard too. Yeah. But they do at least get

19:13

concentrated knowledge. A hundred percent. You

19:15

drink from the fire hose, that's for sure. Yeah. And that's

19:17

part of why we went down the route while we were there

19:19

of solving by way of tech. Right? Right.

19:22

How do you do what everybody's

19:24

seeing happen right now? Leverage AI

19:26

in order to Right. Let one person be

19:28

able to have more bandwidth because yeah, we don't have

19:30

the infinite bandwidth. It's definitely

19:33

a challenge. It's a lot. Um,

19:35

to know, to do, to handle, to manage

19:37

this guy know very, very well. Uh,

19:39

he, no, he was, you ever met him many hats there? Sounds like.

19:41

Yeah. He, he managed 40 accounts before he knows what

19:43

stuff feels like. Yeah. I, I

19:45

had 118. I'm pretty sure not

19:48

all of 'em obviously were, you know, doing it, but Yeah.

19:50

You know, between like your hosting and website and Yeah. Yeah.

19:53

So, so 118 accounts. Yeah. So

19:55

yeah, I mean that's a lot opinions.

19:57

They're, yeah, just opinions and experience.

20:00

There's a difference between opinion and experience. Well, it's

20:02

hard. Um, you know, do

20:05

you know about Vistage? Have you been around advisory?

20:07

You've heard about it. I've never been a part of it, but yeah. So Vistage

20:10

has got a very similar model, but they really

20:12

prefer that their chairs, what they call 'em,

20:14

have at least two, maybe three groups of up

20:16

to 16 members. And

20:19

we generally have, our facilitators do one group

20:21

of 12. And one

20:24

of the reasons that I think I've been

20:26

able to attract such great facilitators is cuz maintaining

20:29

45 relationships in-depth.

20:32

That's hard. Like, that's too much for most people

20:35

unless you're doing it full-time. Right, right. And, and,

20:37

and that's the thing. You don't, but you don't really want

20:39

to work full-time. If you're really well qualified

20:41

and you don't really need a job, why would you wanna work full-time

20:44

and struggle at it? Yeah. And so I've

20:46

kind of been a, had a shift of my mentality. Like that's

20:48

really a, a strategic advantage for

20:51

me and loco think tank cuz I don't ask

20:54

our facilitators to try to have 45

20:56

relationships. Smart. You can have 10 smart.

20:59

Yeah. You know, and, and really enjoy

21:01

those 10 instead of really, I.

21:03

Barely scratching the

21:05

surface of 40. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Smart,

21:07

smart. Um, and I don't know if I'm thinking about the same thing

21:10

from a marketing standpoint or whatever, whatever

21:12

we focus on, right? Yeah. I mean, I think it's the hardest

21:14

part of, you know, scaling a

21:16

business is hard and, uh,

21:18

you know, you're, you're, there's

21:20

a difference between growing and scaling. And so sometimes

21:23

you, you need to add people in order to

21:25

grow, um, but you're

21:27

actually not getting more efficient. Your top line's

21:30

going up. Yeah, yeah. But you're not make getting more profitable.

21:32

In fact, you're just carrying more fica,

21:34

you're carrying more insurance, you're carrying more things, right.

21:36

That actually start to drag the bottom line. And

21:38

Yeah. Sometimes it takes a while before

21:41

you figure that out. And when you get to that size

21:43

and scale, you have that many people.

21:46

Sometimes you, yeah. It doesn't adjust easily. It doesn't

21:48

adjust. It's like the ship gets bigger, but

21:50

then when you realize you've made the mistake, it's like, oh

21:52

man, we gotta move quick. Cuz

21:54

if not, you start bleeding out the back end and so, right.

21:57

You know, so it's, yeah, it's just,

21:59

but candidly for me, it was the greatest experience

22:01

ever because I got to grow up as an entrepreneur

22:04

inside of a fast growing company. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. So,

22:06

you know, you build five departments, you hire north

22:08

of 400 people, you, you

22:10

get a lot of experience Real quick. So let's talk about

22:12

some of the, the trends. Maybe I'll get you back

22:14

on the stage a little more. Darius, what are those around the

22:17

corner trends in marketing? What are

22:19

the things that, that you guys are doing

22:22

to differentiate and get attention, but also

22:24

that every small

22:26

business, you know, almost, I would say over three

22:28

quarters of our listeners are, yeah. Active

22:31

small business owners, like what are they not

22:33

doing that they need to be thinking about? You

22:35

know, I, I don't, I don't generally speak on trends

22:37

a whole lot just cuz they change

22:40

fast and don't chase trends. But,

22:43

uh, I think the one

22:45

thing that people need to accept

22:47

if you're in business and as it relates to marketing communications,

22:52

anything that involves your message, uh,

22:54

is you gotta communicate

22:57

more. Hmm. Um, and

23:00

by communicate more, uh,

23:02

I don't necessarily mean the running of advertisement,

23:05

um, not ads, but I think you have

23:07

to get comfortable accepting

23:09

that there are people within my organization

23:12

that have thoughts and opinions and feel and

23:14

they're trying and they're learning and they're developing skills.

23:17

And that needs to be the form of

23:19

communication. You know, so for

23:21

example, one of the things we're doing with clearly,

23:24

um, people will see

23:26

this, that over the next year,

23:29

uh, we have a, a plan in place to

23:31

where I think people are gonna be

23:33

like, wow, these guys are

23:36

communicating a lot. A

23:38

lot. Yeah. Uh, and the

23:40

thing is, is because it's necessary, because

23:43

what's happening on the macro stage, in my opinion,

23:46

is our consumers are,

23:48

are, are being driven

23:50

to evaluate companies,

23:53

service and product providers based on

23:55

values. Hmm. More

23:57

than they were seven years ago, 10 years

23:59

ago, 15 years ago. Um, you

24:02

have a public, you know, in a macro sense, just

24:04

keep it within the states. You have people

24:06

longing for trust. We have trust. Trust

24:08

is at an all time low. Yeah. Across so

24:11

many different sections. Just came back from the BBB

24:13

torture awards, right? Mm-hmm. Uh,

24:15

better Business bureau. Yeah. Yeah. So like

24:17

there, you know, so these

24:19

indicators of trust, the empowerment

24:21

of the technology, um, you know, citizen

24:24

journalism, so many different things. And so like you,

24:27

you have this technology piece, you have

24:29

this social, you know, philosophical

24:31

sort of crisis of leadership and all these things,

24:33

and all that points to is that

24:36

businesses have to be willing to say,

24:39

here's who we are. Here's what we think, here's what

24:41

our people are up to. You know, here's what we're passionate

24:43

about. Here's some real stories where we made a difference. Here's

24:45

what we don't likewhatever, here's what we don't like. Here's

24:47

what we, you know, we, we're not fans of this.

24:50

We're fans of this. This is what John

24:52

is doing. This is what SU is doing. We're, you know,

24:54

do you risk, like sometimes when people

24:56

communicate with me too much, I

24:58

unsubscribe. See, but you're, you're thinking

25:01

about, you're thinking about permission

25:03

marketing, right? So if we connect, so

25:05

yes, if I start emailing you without permission

25:08

every single day, like, guess super annoying. But if

25:10

you knew what you were signing up for, right? If you decide to

25:12

connect with me and follow me on social and

25:14

I post content. Yeah. Right. So here's

25:17

the stat that'll blow your mind, that 90%

25:20

of the people who are on social media are just

25:22

consuming. Mm-hmm. 9%

25:25

are engaging in the comments. And only

25:27

1% are creating. So

25:30

if you want to be a top 1% producer,

25:32

then you better do what the top 1% are doing. Everybody's

25:35

worried about, oh, I'm gonna get judged

25:37

by the 9%. But what they don't realize

25:39

is people don't engage,

25:42

and so they won't actually experience the results.

25:44

My mom is just a lurker. She never comments. She never

25:46

likes, you know, they won't experience the result though, until they

25:48

show up to the meetup and all of a sudden they go, Kurt,

25:50

I love your content. And you're like, this guy never likes any

25:52

of the stuff that I put out. It's because

25:55

they are just consuming.

25:57

Yeah. Yeah. And so what marketing

26:00

has evolved to over the last 10 years

26:02

is everybody's looking for this shortcut hack on

26:05

how they can get the quickest

26:07

from point A to point B. Mm-hmm. But they're forgetting

26:10

the long game. They're not making the investment

26:13

in building up their brand by

26:15

way of content and telling a story

26:17

about what you believe and what you know.

26:20

Trust is built on the back of four things. Integrity,

26:23

intent, capability, and

26:25

results. 90%

26:28

of the research process is done before the customer

26:30

ever speaks with you. So you're,

26:32

there's a conversation happening about your business that you don't

26:34

get to participate in, unless, of course,

26:37

you're creating content. And if you're creating content, then

26:40

you get to be a part of the conversation. They're not gonna gauge,

26:42

they're not gonna, they're not gonna tell you it's happening, but

26:45

it will affect persuasion

26:47

when you get on that meeting or that call. They

26:50

trust you more. Mm-hmm. Are you even gonna

26:52

create content for like, the sellers of

26:54

these businesses and stuff to help them

26:56

potentially Businesses tough that Mark. It's discreet,

26:58

right? So you gotta be discreet, but we are leveraging

27:00

our employees. I'll let him talk on that a little bit. I was

27:02

gonna say, um, just to go

27:05

back to what Yeah, please. Sorry, I didn't mean to is I'm a scroll

27:07

chaser. You know what I'm saying? When I'm saying

27:09

like, communicate more, I'm not just saying

27:11

like, do more, what I'm saying is,

27:13

what I'm actually implying is that you're capable,

27:17

humans are complex creatures, yet we're

27:19

also kind of simple at the same time. Right?

27:22

But let's just say this

27:25

is random Podcast

27:27

Inc. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Uh,

27:31

typically you should probably be working in hiring

27:33

and bringing people into your organization who you do

27:36

align with based on your core values. Okay. And those types

27:38

of things. You shouldn't be bringing people into your organization

27:40

who, um, are radically

27:43

on the other side of the spectrum. That's a recipe for disaster.

27:46

Okay? But the people that you bring into your

27:48

organization, uh, and the people who represent

27:50

your organization, they have thoughts, they have opinions,

27:53

they have feelings. They're doing things, they have side

27:55

hustles and projects and things that are motivating

27:57

them and key relationships and all these

27:59

things. Fair and all you have to do,

28:02

um, to oversimplify to say, It's

28:05

okay for you to share what you're doing.

28:07

It's okay for you to share what you think. I'm

28:10

not worried about how it's going to impact the company.

28:13

I, I'm not, you know, you know, right now

28:15

it, it's, uh, part of why

28:17

people don't create content is

28:20

cuz they have to worry about the consequences. Mm-hmm.

28:23

They have to worry about, oh, that's my

28:25

boss. That's my boss gonna say, yeah. You

28:27

know, but if you look at, for

28:29

example, like if you look at Gmail, Gmail

28:32

is the byproduct of employees

28:34

being let loose to do what

28:36

they want to do. Gmail. Oh, really?

28:38

Yeah. Yep. Google had, what do they, what do they call

28:40

that? The, I, I don't remember the term, but basically they

28:42

just said, Hey, you get an, a

28:44

whole day to just create whatever you want. Huh.

28:47

And that's where Gmail was born is really a couple

28:49

engineers were like, before that Hotmail existed

28:51

in Yahoo, but what's different about

28:53

Gmail? But, but that's an awareness. But from the Google

28:55

standpoint, that's an awareness that our

28:57

people who work within our company, um,

29:00

based on the kind of people that they are, based on

29:02

their skillsets and their values, more

29:05

than likely they like to do other things.

29:07

So why won't we let them do, why, why wouldn't we support

29:09

them doing other things? Hmm. Right?

29:12

So why wouldn't we support something that they're passionate

29:14

about? Um, Yep. We always

29:16

say, you know, so that's when we say communicate

29:18

more, you know, it's like you are already

29:20

communicating, first of all, you're communicating

29:22

with your coworkers, ah, I hate this job. My da,

29:25

you know, well, you know, maybe don't

29:27

go post that, but don't say the point is, you know what I'm saying?

29:29

It's like you, you, technology

29:31

has enabled us to communicate in ways

29:33

we've never been able to, you know, you don't have to

29:35

get in front of the camera, you don't have to dance on TikTok.

29:37

You don't have to, you, you know, he writes

29:40

10 posts a day on LinkedIn, you know,

29:42

and it is like, that's his lane. He loves,

29:44

he, he just is just shining there, right?

29:46

Yeah. And so, but he's not on TikTok doing

29:49

this or making, you know, trying to bet nobody

29:51

wants to bu you, uh, bu and more of

29:53

it Yeah. Whether it's you or you

29:55

or the company or some of your consultants

29:58

or advisors, but the reason, your vibe attracts

30:00

your tribe, right? Yeah. And so you gotta be creating content

30:02

and, and small business owners are missing the mark because

30:04

they're missing out on the fact that it's

30:07

a recruiting tool. People wanna work for people that

30:09

they know, like, and trust. Mm-hmm. It's a customer

30:11

attraction tool, right? It's a brand tool.

30:14

Right? If, if there's conversations happening about

30:16

you, then you, that you can't be privy

30:18

to, then you need to be creating content

30:20

that shows up. And guess what? There's

30:23

two types of businesses, those that have

30:25

bad reviews, and those that will, and

30:28

if you don't have any bad reviews, then you just haven't

30:30

done much yet. Mm-hmm. So, The

30:33

only thing you can, I don't have any bad reviews yet. You can control

30:35

your reputation, right? You can get out there

30:37

and control your reputation by

30:39

telling the narrative and the story, because

30:41

you don't, 87% of your, even if you get a few

30:43

bad reviews, then it doesn't tell the story.

30:46

87% of your happy customers

30:48

are willing to share good reviews

30:50

about you, but nobody ever asks upset

30:53

customers. You don't gotta ask them.

30:55

They'll gladly go tell the world

30:57

plus 20 of their friends, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

30:59

You, you look at it just from a cultural

31:01

perspective, like people are longing for trust,

31:04

right? Then you have the other side where people are like, I'm

31:06

afraid of saying something or being a certain way because of the

31:08

consequences, but it's, it one

31:10

plus one equals two. So that means that in the middle of that,

31:12

it's the brave individuals who are willing to just say

31:15

like, Hey, here's what I think. Here's my

31:17

take on this. I had this idea, I did

31:19

this, that are gonna be positioned

31:21

to, um, to do

31:23

whatever they want to do, because the people who are saying,

31:26

I'm, I'm longing for something on the trust. Hey, I

31:28

see that guy over there who's doing something now. So like Tucker

31:30

Carlson is what I feel like you're talking about this guy. I

31:32

mean, exactly. He's perfect picture.

31:35

That's why he attracted such a big following is people are like,

31:37

I can trust what Tucker tells me. He's going, he's no

31:40

BS man. He's gonna be on, and, and so we,

31:42

we think, just to sum it all up, put a little ball on this.

31:44

We think that creators mm-hmm. People

31:47

who create content, We will be

31:49

the winners facts in the next

31:51

era of business. And those

31:54

that do not will be left behind. I

31:56

mean, if you guys aren't following what we, what is

31:58

called are known as SM b Twitter,

32:01

it's literally small business

32:03

owners on Twitter who are building massive

32:05

followings. Yeah. They're making more money

32:08

from Twitter and then building

32:10

their brand than they are from

32:13

running their business. Interesting. And it's leading

32:15

to acquisition opportunities. It's

32:17

leading to recruiting and people want to come work for

32:20

those people. It's leading to brand and trust.

32:22

Are these online businesses or No, we're

32:25

talking hvac. Many, uh,

32:27

it's a storage facilities. Yeah. I

32:29

mean, there's some, the big accounts, I've noticed

32:31

a few people that have like these weird followings

32:34

and even I, I've followed this YouTube

32:36

channel called Srk Cycles. Oh.

32:38

And he, he was a

32:41

motorcycle broker up in Michigan

32:43

somewhere or something like that, and

32:45

just would do like road

32:47

test reviews on the different bikes that he picked

32:50

up on the auction or whatever. And Oh,

32:52

this is my first time on the Honda Run.

32:54

Yep. Its balls out, you know, and,

32:56

but doing all these really good videos and now he does

32:58

bikes and beards and I think he's developed

33:01

basically kind of a, a YouTube influencer

33:04

personality point where he doesn't wanna screw around

33:06

with brokering motorcycles anymore.

33:08

He doesn't, does it have to, and I'm not saying you need to

33:10

go be an influencer too. I don't want to deter people from

33:12

that, but I just think that. But he built such a

33:14

brand, like he got his broker so big that he

33:16

kind of had a brand after that. Well, you remember back in the

33:18

early two thousands, right? And call it

33:20

2008, 2009, it was

33:22

all about seo, search engine optimization.

33:25

Right? Right. Content is the new seo.

33:27

Hmm. All the algorithm algorithms are favoring

33:30

the real-time content. They're favoring

33:33

authority, they're favoring people

33:35

who have their

33:37

own original thought about what

33:40

they're posting. Does podcasts help in that

33:42

space? Yeah, a hundred percent. That's why

33:44

you're doing it. A hundred percent. Yeah. Absolutely.

33:46

But not everyone needs to create a podcast. I mean,

33:49

right. Yeah. It should be authentic

33:51

to you or whatever. Pick a platform

33:53

and start there. You know, like, just get good.

33:56

But I, I think that there, there's no way to get

33:58

better at it than just to do it. Yeah, absolutely.

34:00

And the future is just, I mean, he said it,

34:02

if you're not creating, you're, you're left behind.

34:04

And it's not even that. It's just the truth.

34:07

It's just the truth. Because again, like

34:09

these, so the internet, social

34:11

media, all these things, technology, this

34:13

technology that we are so dependent upon is

34:16

built ultimately for decentralization.

34:19

Mm-hmm. Sure. So what that means

34:21

is you're funneling down into small groups and communities.

34:24

Mm-hmm. So it's not these centralized figures

34:26

anymore. Right. These big pillar institutions. Uh,

34:29

so what that means is that if you want to survive,

34:31

then you're gonna have to share. Yeah.

34:34

Who have distinct channels? Who is my tribe? Who's my

34:36

community? What are we for? Interesting. You know, like. It's

34:38

just gonna be that way. Well, we talked about that trust

34:40

meter kind of stuff, and the biggest institutions,

34:43

right, are the ones that are trusted. The least a hundred percent

34:45

business has the most trust compared to government

34:48

or academia or different things. Absolutely. You got

34:50

it. I mean, we can go down rabbit, you know,

34:52

we were, we watched the Super Bowl and um,

34:54

we were just talking about how the traditional media just

34:57

missed it. Yeah. Because if

34:59

they actually knew their audience, their Audi,

35:01

you know, what their audience was doing at the commercial break, they

35:04

were scrolling on their phone. And so if

35:06

they were actually doing a better job of, of leveraging

35:08

micro influencers who had their

35:10

audience's attention during that time period, their

35:12

money would've went probably a

35:14

million times further. But they're not thinking

35:17

that way because they don't understand the medium. The

35:19

game has changed. And so you can keep

35:21

shoving a square peg in round hole and

35:23

that that's fine. But the micro influencers,

35:25

like he was saying, it's about distributed. Oh, interesting.

35:28

Audience. So, so, and to

35:30

kind of bring it back full circle to like how we think

35:32

about content in the business, These

35:34

baby boomers, you know, they've been running their business

35:37

since they've been at the helm since like 1983.

35:39

Right? Right. And so if it isn't broke,

35:41

don't fix it. Well, guess what? 1983,

35:44

the internet came about 2000. The first online

35:46

job came online. And so the millennial

35:48

generation, who's now the largest segment of the market,

35:50

who's now buying these businesses is stepping

35:53

in and adding technology. Right? Brand,

35:55

yeah. Marketing content, systems, processes.

35:58

Hiring, recruiting, training. Yeah. Yeah. So,

36:00

you know, I can't tell you how many times I sit down with Boomer own businesses,

36:02

or at least like industries that tend to lean toward

36:04

more boomers, like the trades. And it's like, oh

36:06

man, I just can't find any good people. And I go,

36:09

tell me about your recruiting strategy. And they're

36:11

like, oh, well we, you know, we have a page on our site. I'm

36:13

like, no, no, no. Right. How are you attracting

36:15

them the same way you would attract a customer? Are

36:17

you telling a story? Are they excited to come

36:20

to work for you? Yeah. Well, and you've probably met some too,

36:22

that we, we had a, a. Someone

36:25

talked to us about Think Tank membership and they were trying to

36:27

bring their family's business

36:30

into the next level. They weren't yet managing it, but

36:32

they, you know, they needed a website, they needed

36:34

a Facebook page. It was, it was a trades

36:36

business. Yep. And, and yet

36:38

they were, they had enough long-term clients

36:40

and stuff that it was actually not a financially

36:43

unsuccessful business. Right. They

36:45

just hadn't invested in these things that would

36:47

We'll keep it that way. Yeah. What, what

36:49

got you there won't keep you there. Exactly. Yeah. No,

36:51

that's definitely a part of the, a part of the thing.

36:54

I want to talk about the, cuz we're gonna

36:56

talk about your guys' journeys and try to do

36:59

that simultaneous here a little bit. Um,

37:01

because I know they're separate journeys largely

37:04

until Mad Wire. But, um, this

37:06

summit you guys have coming up are the, what is Sales

37:08

and leads. Sales and leads. Yep. Sales and leads. Summit

37:11

Sales and leads. Something. Yeah. I mean, it's okay.

37:14

I thought so. I was just making sure. Yeah, it's

37:16

very, it's all about what we're talking

37:18

about right now, right? It's about the new

37:20

era of selling and,

37:22

and brand building and

37:24

how it's changing and how everybody's

37:27

not prepared for it. Yeah. And what it means

37:29

to actually build a brand, a brand's not a logo and a tagline

37:31

anymore, right? It's mm-hmm. It's beyond

37:34

brand. So Darius will be speaking about Beyond

37:36

brand, uh, we'll talk about raw

37:38

and real authenticity with Matt, she, who's

37:40

a local entrepreneur. Nice. By Colorado. Nice. Yep. M

37:42

and e Painting also has a leadership. Yeah. He was in

37:44

POD a few months ago. Training, coaching. Yep. And then,

37:46

uh, we got actually one of my other business partners

37:48

in our capital group. He's still a lieutenant

37:51

commander in the Navy at the highest level for explosive

37:53

ordinance and defense. And

37:56

he's trained in strategy in war. So he is gonna be actually

37:58

be talking about leading sales

38:00

teams through uncertainty and

38:02

what that actually looks like and what that means. Right. And

38:04

then we got Andy Neri, he is actually one of our portfolio

38:07

companies. Yeah. Baseball guy. Baseball guy. Runs

38:09

a game called Complete Game Cons, or runs a company called Complete

38:11

Game Consulting, working specifically with

38:13

benefits advisors and insurance producers

38:16

on how to actually leverage content

38:18

and, uh, modern day sales

38:21

techniques in those niches especially, or whatever.

38:23

Just in general. I mean, the stuff that he coaches

38:25

is not, it's, he has a niche, but, but

38:28

the business that he's building, he comes from that space,

38:30

but it's relevant to everybody. And so, yeah,

38:32

I mean, if you wanna level up on your sales and leads

38:34

and marketing strategy then, and

38:36

how do people find that? Uh,

38:39

yep. Right. Find it on your website. They

38:41

can, you can find it through, um, our

38:43

social profiles. Okay. Um, but it's on Eventbrite,

38:46

so if you happen to be on Eventbrite, our main page

38:48

is on Eventbrite. You can go there and search it. Okay,

38:51

cool. And it's just the pain department. So it's an in June,

38:54

no, June 9th. Yeah. Friday, June 9th, half day. Okay.

38:57

It's gonna be great. Entrepreneurs, salespeople,

38:59

their teams food. Networking

39:02

right here in Northern Colorado. All the good stuff. Yeah.

39:04

It's gonna be great. Cool. You know, it's, it's interesting.

39:07

As we're talking, I'll make sure this comes out. I, I'm gonna have to bump

39:09

you ahead of a few people, but I'll Yeah. I'll before this.

39:11

Thanks Gary. You can just drop the clip too,

39:13

you know, maybe. Yeah, right. Clip. Uh,

39:15

you know, it's interesting as we're we're talking about what we're just

39:18

talking about, I keep, I wanna make sure I, I

39:20

share this, I keep thinking about, are

39:22

you familiar with, if I was to say,

39:25

what's the hottest sports drink in the world right now?

39:28

Do you know? What would it be? Um,

39:31

not necessarily. I think there's, well

39:33

that, that kill water or

39:35

something like that, but it's just water. I think that is like,

39:37

like the liquid death. You mean liquid death?

39:40

Yeah. So it's water, but the, the hottest

39:42

sports drink in the world right now is

39:45

a, a drink called Prime.

39:47

Oh yeah, I saw it. It's Prime a little bit. I

39:50

haven't had one yet. It, it's, the creators

39:53

of Prime are two young men in their

39:55

late twenties, um, who

39:58

between the two of them have followings

40:00

of probably 40 million people.

40:03

Oh, okay. And they're

40:05

going to overtake Gatorade.

40:08

No shit. That has millions

40:10

and millions of dollars of spin in. Right.

40:13

And as part of Coca-Cola company strategy, they're

40:16

going to overtake. They're

40:18

going, they're going, they're the now the official

40:20

sports drink of the ufc. Yep. Gatorade's

40:22

about to become the next blockbuster. Right. Really?

40:25

Yeah. Well, it, but the point is, how

40:27

did they do that? Oh, they

40:29

made content. Well, they made content about

40:32

whatever they felt like. Hmm.

40:34

They built an audience that no liked

40:36

and trust them. Their vibe attracts your tribe. Yeah. And

40:39

when you have an audience, you can sell whatever

40:41

you wanted to. Like that they could Oh, I have, they can make

40:43

soap I have or whatever. I

40:45

really, I really want to create a sports

40:47

string and see if we can do this. Would you guys be before that?

40:50

Right? Yeah. You got 40 million people like, yeah,

40:52

we'll do it. Right. You know? Well, it's kinda like

40:54

Rogan being part of on it. Right? Right.

40:56

Like with Rogan's voice advertising

40:58

on it. All the shit outta

41:00

whatever he wants Mr. Mr. Be chocolate.

41:03

Well, and it's because his audience, his audience,

41:05

Rogan's audience knows how serious

41:08

he takes him. Yep, yep. His values.

41:10

Yep. So if he supports on it,

41:12

we're gonna be on it, you know? Right, right. If he

41:14

thinks Alpha Brainin is good, shit, we're gonna try it.

41:16

He probably gets a higher premium than

41:18

a lot of podcasts, even on a per download

41:20

because his authenticity factor

41:22

is higher, kind of. And that's, that's why he's winning

41:25

because your vi Right. Ron r

41:27

wins. Right. And so, yeah, and I don't mean

41:29

to belabor it, but I think it's just important for your,

41:32

your listeners being fellow entrepreneurs and

41:34

business minded people to understand that, you

41:36

know, we're talking about content, we're talking about all these things, but

41:38

it's just, and how do you do that? Not to shift

41:41

it kind of, but, but like it's online.

41:43

But a lot of these companies that you guys are talking

41:45

about are delivering goods and services

41:48

locally. You know, they're, they're

41:51

laundromats or they're, you know,

41:53

they're trucking companies or they're, I'll give, I'll give you

41:55

an example effect. I'll give you an example. I

41:57

have, one of the businesses that I

41:59

own is a private training facility.

42:02

Mm-hmm. We have 16 trainers. We got

42:04

8,000 square feet, and the

42:06

average boutique gym in our space probably

42:08

does 400,000. We'll clear. 1.2 million.

42:12

How do we do that? We barely

42:14

spend any money on paid media. How

42:17

do we do that? Every single

42:19

one of our employees

42:22

trainers has a scorecard metric to

42:24

create a certain amount of content, to

42:27

host a certain number of events. Yeah.

42:29

And to get out in the community and do

42:31

a certain amount of FaceTime in

42:34

order to build their personal platform.

42:37

And we communicate to them. And if they don't wanna do that,

42:39

then this isn't the gym for you. We, and we communicate

42:41

to them that the gym is simply a platform.

42:44

You are actually the product, you're the brand.

42:46

They are buying you. They're not buying us. Hmm.

42:49

But we've hired you because you align with our core

42:51

values. So we trust that you can

42:53

go out and represent the brand well. Right.

42:55

And so that's how you do it. Hmm.

42:57

People are overthinking it like our average

42:59

customer does at a gym. Like that person

43:02

won't drive further than seven to 10 miles. So

43:06

we're dominating seven to 10 miles, obviously.

43:09

Yeah. Right. So you can do that as an HVAC contractor.

43:11

You can do that as a plumber. You can do as a roofer.

43:13

You can do it as a boutique shop. You

43:15

know, it's the, the problem is, is people treat it like

43:18

a. An event like, oh, I created content

43:20

a couple times this week and it didn't work. Yeah.

43:22

Compared to what that's like going to the gym a couple times

43:24

and be like, I don't have a six pack yet. Yeah.

43:27

But I don't, one, one of the things

43:29

we talk about often is how there, there

43:31

are no rules when it comes to creating.

43:34

Like I was just thinking in my mind, this may

43:36

not even be a great idea, but I'm like, if,

43:38

if Loco think Tank wanted to grow, um,

43:42

having more chapters with some of the,

43:44

with some of the best, you know, business

43:46

facilitators, there are, I

43:49

take all my facilitators

43:51

and I'd go walking through the neighborhoods

43:54

where the business people are more

43:56

likely to live and I'm connecting

43:58

with families and people and telling them what we're

44:00

doing. I didn't even create a piece

44:02

of content. I'm just going out to show people, Hey,

44:05

I'm communicating. We're here. Yeah. And you're

44:07

probably gonna stumble upon five people that

44:09

have built. Some significant businesses

44:12

in somewhere in this state that

44:14

you didn't know that you weren't gonna reach with an

44:16

ad you weren't gonna reach by, you

44:19

know, some other route. Yeah. Right. But the point is, like

44:21

there is no rules is just go and

44:23

try to help somebody go

44:25

and try to encourage somebody. Go and try to educate

44:27

somebody. Go and try to make someone laugh. Go

44:30

and try to be curious with someone and get

44:32

their input on an idea you had go

44:34

and, I don't know, say,

44:36

Hey, I'm learning this to, it doesn't matter. So yesterday

44:39

morning I went to the, uh, good Samaritans,

44:41

uh, home, just around the corner from you guys' gym

44:43

there and whatnot. And, uh, I,

44:46

I spoke to the men's breakfast on invitation

44:49

from somebody that I met. Five years ago.

44:51

Yeah. And they like loco think tank and stuff. And

44:53

I'm telling this group

44:55

of 25, it's independent

44:58

living, so they're pretty high functioning, you know? Yeah. And,

45:00

uh, strong handshakes on all of 'em and stuff and

45:03

tell 'em about loco and this and that, and halfway

45:06

into it through it, the uh, uh,

45:09

guy sitting just to my right was like, oh, my son

45:11

has the, the Kirk Eye Center in Loveland.

45:14

And, and I was like, well, he might wanna

45:16

be a member, especially if he's thinking about expansion

45:18

and things like that. And he is like, he is. Yeah.

45:20

I was like, oh, well, well good. You know, and I didn't,

45:23

obviously, I didn't think I was gonna pull any tail

45:25

from that group, you

45:27

know, but I was doing it, you know, because

45:29

I was invited to and I was serving and

45:31

I thought it would be fun and useful. Yeah.

45:33

And boom, maybe I've got a good prospect. Two guys took my

45:35

cards afterward, not including him, so who

45:37

knows? There you go. Yeah. And, and last

45:40

thing, and then we can kind of move on. Cause we've beaten this dead horse,

45:42

but I It's cool. We're so passionate. We're just so passionate

45:44

about it. And Yeah. And this is, this whole pot

45:46

is about helping small businesses, right?

45:49

And so there's nothing, I've been in that space

45:51

for over 10 years working specifically

45:53

with small businesses and I'm,

45:55

nobody's more passionate about that than I am, I think.

45:57

And so I tell you, um, yeah,

46:00

but you are the Yoda

46:02

to somebody else's Luke Skywalker story.

46:05

And so a lot of the content

46:07

that people do try to create is very self-serving,

46:09

right? And so, yeah. Hey, if

46:11

you're looking to sell your home,

46:13

give me a call. Right? Right, right. It's like, well, who's that

46:16

for? Right? So you gotta add

46:18

value to the marketplace. And that's the

46:20

easiest way to avoid, you

46:22

know, feeling kind of grimy when you're creating

46:24

content, right? Yeah. Yeah. So don't takes the pressure

46:26

off. Yeah. Don't be selfish. Add

46:28

value. Here's what worked for me. Yeah. That's what we always say, right?

46:30

I dig it. Yeah. Um, we're gonna take a short

46:33

break and then come back and hit the,

46:35

the journey a little more. Let's do it right. Sure.

47:15

So this is about the time we jump in the time

47:17

machine and

47:19

we go back to kindergarten

47:22

today. Sampson,

47:24

where were you in kindergarten? Kindergarten.

47:26

I went to a, a little tiny Catholic

47:28

school called Holy Family. Okay. And,

47:31

um, and this is where, this

47:33

is in, uh, Los Angeles, California. Okay. It's

47:35

actually in South Pasadena, if you know where the

47:37

Rose Bowl is Ish. Yeah. Yeah. Close

47:39

to the Rose Bowl. So, cool. And, um,

47:43

fast forward to about fourth grade.

47:45

I ended up ge going outta school and homeschooling Oh.

47:48

And homeschooled for my fourth grade year through

47:50

my ninth grade year. Wow. And, uh,

47:52

all in California still. All in California. Yep.

47:54

Um, my, my parents thought that I could just get a,

47:57

a better education, which they were Right. Taught

47:59

me to be a self-starter. Yeah. Taught me to be

48:01

a independent thinker. Um,

48:04

you know, I, I always say for the love

48:06

of skateboarding, I was always trying to get my school

48:08

done as quickly as I possibly could so I could skate

48:10

as much as I wanted to. Interesting. Okay. You know, while

48:12

most kids were in school, I was getting done with school at like

48:14

12 o'clock so I could skate for four hours

48:16

before. And people asking you at the park, why are you here this afternoon?

48:19

Just working on my kick flip class. Okay.

48:23

And how was your family dynamic, if you don't mind? Yeah.

48:25

Uh, my parents were married. My parents have been married for

48:27

you going 40 years now. Siblings, were they working

48:30

Entrepreneurs? Entrepreneurs, yeah. Not entrepreneurs.

48:32

I mean, my, my dad tried many times to start

48:34

his own thing. He was a carpenter. Okay. Um, and

48:37

never really broke past sole proprietorship.

48:39

Yep. Um, because he's truly a

48:41

craftsman. He needed somebody like me who was more business

48:44

minded and sales minded to go Yeah. Get

48:46

the work and facilitate the work. But he had great, great relationships.

48:48

Grew up in Los Angeles. Um, my

48:50

dad is a big part of my story, you know, he, when

48:53

he was 13 years old, his mom died and his dad walked out.

48:55

Oh, wow. And so he's been riding solo since

48:58

he was 13 years old. And so, you

49:00

know, he, um, did

49:02

the best that he possibly could and, and is

49:05

as loyal as they possibly come. And,

49:07

um, Taught me about that. Right. Of just

49:09

what work ethic looks like. Didn't have much

49:11

to teach me on the business acumen side. I had to

49:14

kind of go learn that. But between homeschooling,

49:16

seeing his work ethic, you know, I learned

49:19

a lot about just the grit that it takes

49:21

to, to get stuff done. Yeah.

49:24

When I turned, um, about 14,

49:26

I found football, fell in love with football,

49:29

changed my life. Uh, it was all I wanted.

49:31

A good running back style, or I was a linebacker, full

49:33

backer, linebacker. Okay. Fullback. Yep. Linebacker, fullback. And

49:35

so I went to, uh, all, you

49:37

know, great high school football player.

49:39

Ended up going to the, uh, Western New Mexico University,

49:42

which is a D two. Headed into my sophomore

49:44

season, I decided that I wasn't happy.

49:46

Took the walk on at cu and

49:49

thankfully a year later got put back on scholarship. Oh,

49:51

wow. And so I ended up switching to fullback

49:53

when I got to CU you and got to play under, uh,

49:55

Gary Barnett and then Dan Hawkins. Oh.

49:58

And then, uh, I probably didn't see play football

50:00

there, probably. Yeah. Yeah. I've watched a few games here

50:02

and there. Yeah. Usually I'm cheering against CU at whatever.

50:06

Um, before we get too far into

50:08

your journey, can we shift it over to

50:10

Darius? Uh, when

50:12

you were a kindergartner, where were you

50:14

at? Um, I

50:17

don't, what, what age is kindergarten? Five or six. Like five

50:19

or six? Yeah, five mostly. Uh,

50:21

so yeah, tell me what, what was your family

50:23

dynamic? Uh, kindergarten. I don't

50:25

know. The school I was at, I feel like I, I

50:28

can't remember because you moved around a lot. Your family

50:30

did, or? I, I did move

50:32

around a, a, a decent amount, um,

50:34

family dynamic. Uh,

50:37

Unstable, dysfunctional,

50:41

sorry. And where were you?

50:43

It was fine. Part of the, I was in Buffalo,

50:45

New York. Okay. So I'm originally from Buffalo, New York.

50:47

All right. Um, and I, I lived

50:49

in Buffalo, New York until I was a sophomore in high school.

50:52

Okay. And I moved out of Buffalo because,

50:55

uh, my mother passed away

50:57

my freshman year of high school and, and

51:00

didn't know my pops and Wow.

51:02

And my mom through, I think

51:05

God's grace, uh, made a

51:07

deal with my brother that basically

51:09

said, you, I'm dying.

51:12

Uh, I didn't know this, but she said, yeah, you know, I'm dying. His

51:14

brother's older, I guess. Yeah. So, so

51:17

it's a, it is part of a, a, a, I

51:19

wanna hear the rest of that. I'm dying. Well, it's interesting,

51:21

and I think about it when we're talking about like life stories.

51:24

I'm like, eh, I

51:26

don't know if I've thought about like, how much I want to

51:28

divulge about like, yeah.

51:30

Some of those, let's share what you wanna share. Um,

51:32

honestly, um, just, but I think that's

51:34

part of what, I mean, Sampson just shared

51:36

about his dad and his story, and that's part

51:39

of what makes you really dynamic, is that self-sufficiency

51:41

to you. Yeah. So, uh, yeah.

51:44

Well being, yes. So my parents,

51:46

uh, both of my parents were, uh,

51:48

they, they battled substance abuse, uh,

51:51

like many parents in the inner

51:53

city and the eighties and nineties.

51:55

Uh, two thousands. Two thousands

51:58

today, thousand tens. Now it's the kids. Right.

52:00

Um, but so

52:02

parents were, oh, no. You know, I mean, it's just

52:05

real, it's just life. You know what I mean? Like, What

52:07

are you, you just you and your brother? No. So,

52:09

so, so my sibling

52:11

breakdown works out like this. Uh, I

52:13

have, so I have siblings

52:15

from both of my parents, but I'm the only one

52:18

from the both of them. Okay. Uh,

52:20

and I have a si two siblings

52:22

from my mother who are both 25 years older than

52:24

me. Oh. And so

52:26

my mom had me when she was like 40

52:29

years old. 41. Wow. Yeah. Uh,

52:31

with my father. And then he

52:33

had two other daughters,

52:36

my sisters with another woman. Yeah.

52:38

Um, and so, uh, yeah.

52:40

So anyways, a little bit dysfunctional

52:42

just based on when you're an addict, you're

52:44

unstable. Yeah. What can you like? Nothing

52:46

stable. Therefore, uh,

52:49

if you have dependent, which me

52:51

and my siblings and other people were, you

52:53

don't, you know, you don't have stability. So, uh,

52:56

for me, like I said, I was in Buffalo until my sophomore

52:58

year and then I moved to

53:00

Minneapolis to live with my older brother. Hmm. And,

53:03

uh, was there for a little bit of time. And

53:05

then I took a trip back to Buffalo. He had

53:07

gotten there somehow. So he was in the military.

53:10

Okay. And, and throughout

53:12

the years, he just had a, a desire

53:14

to get out of Buffalo. Um, Buffalo

53:16

can be, it's, it's like you're a typical

53:18

inner city, impoverished

53:20

area where those type of areas tend

53:23

to be, uh, they tend to suck

53:25

you in. Yeah. Yeah. Keep you there. You

53:27

don't have options. Like, you know, even

53:29

North Dakota, even though it was, yeah, it doesn't matter.

53:31

It's rural, but it sucks you in, you know, nobody

53:34

really thinks that they can leave there and be successful

53:36

somewhere else. Really. Yeah. Where

53:38

there is lack, you typically

53:40

lack the, you think you

53:42

lack option options, right? Yeah. So it doesn't

53:44

matter if it's North Dakota or you

53:47

know, north Bronx or North Michigan, whatever.

53:49

Right. Eastern, east Bronx, it doesn't matter. Right?

53:51

Yeah. West Denver. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Black,

53:53

white, whatever. Right. It's just part of,

53:55

it's econo. It's what comes by way of economics. Yeah. And,

53:58

and culture and stuff. And so anyways,

54:00

uh, moved to Minnesota and

54:03

then my brother moved

54:06

us to a place called Farmington, Minnesota,

54:09

which down southwest,

54:11

right down south of Minneapolis.

54:13

Yeah. Uh, but it's

54:15

Farmington Farmington's, national farm,

54:18

farm town, farming town. There's a pork processing plant

54:20

and a bunch of soybean farmers and whatever. Yeah.

54:22

Yeah. And it was cool. It was, it was, uh,

54:25

it was a bit of a culture shock. Oh sure. But

54:27

my best friend, two of my best friends to this day,

54:29

two of my oldest dearest friends, uh, They

54:32

came by way of my time in that place.

54:34

Yeah. Yeah. And I lived in

54:36

Worthington for a little while, which was

54:38

probably about 150 miles.

54:40

Mm-hmm. West of Farmington. Yep. So,

54:42

so didn't know it so long. Right. Totally. Yeah.

54:45

And so, you know, that was, that was life.

54:47

And then I fancy myself

54:50

going to a little community college

54:52

to, you know, follow

54:54

a girl and try to play some sports and, um,

54:57

what was your sport? Uh, basketball.

55:00

Yeah. Um, and then,

55:02

uh, he's also a golden gloves boxer. Don't, oh, is that

55:04

right? So you don't want to tussle

55:06

after this? I have no interest in tussling at

55:08

all. I will run away

55:10

before I try to fight somebody. Yeah. Uh,

55:13

yeah. I will have nothing to do with that. Hmm. But,

55:15

uh, fighting is unforgiving, but at that time,

55:17

yeah. Anyway. You did. Yeah. And so, yeah.

55:20

And so I went, went to college, but

55:23

my, my story gets a little messy in college,

55:25

so my parents were addict, so I stayed away from drugs. Yeah.

55:28

And alcohol. Yeah. In

55:30

college, I tried drugs and alcohol

55:33

and it sent me into an absolute spiral. Mm. Um,

55:36

and, uh, I didn't

55:38

pick my, I didn't come out of that spiral until

55:41

2012 when I

55:43

got saved. Mm. And started walking with

55:45

Jesus. When, when did you start the spiral?

55:48

Uh, that would be 2000 and. Uh,

55:51

eight. Oh, wow. Uh,

55:53

2008. And so 2007,

55:56

technically because by that fall, 2007.

55:59

Wow. So, uh, so

56:01

2000, so five years of just being

56:04

unstable party lifestyle and whatever, unstable, were

56:07

you still a college student this time? No. No. I,

56:09

I ruined that opportunity very quickly. Mm-hmm.

56:11

Um, I wasn't prepared for, I

56:13

wasn't prepared to be in that environment. I wasn't prepared

56:15

for the autonomy. Yeah. You know, everyone

56:18

wants, a lot of people want autonomy, but autonomy.

56:20

Autonomy means the word actually means self

56:22

law. And you can desire

56:24

autonomy, but if you don't Yeah. That's not freedom. That's

56:27

not just like spread it everywhere. Yeah. It's not freedom. And what

56:29

it actually requires is judgment. You

56:31

need judgment. Yeah. In order to have a law,

56:33

you need be able to have some judicial

56:36

people that can handle that. Right. So mm-hmm. You're gonna be

56:38

a law unto yourself. You need to be virtuous. You need

56:40

to accurately be, have discernment

56:42

and do all these things. I wasn't prepared for that. Hmm.

56:45

Um, I wasn't prepared for that. So

56:47

messed up my, my life got derailed and Jesus

56:49

came and put it back on track. I

56:51

want to come back to the faith

56:54

journey a little bit, um, but

56:57

I think it might be served to

56:59

like, actually let's just stay here

57:01

for a minute. That's good. Like, tell me about what,

57:04

what your circumstances were,

57:07

who found you, uh,

57:09

other than Jesus was some, was there an encourager

57:11

or somebody that believed in you when you didn't believe in yourself?

57:13

Yeah. I called him my brother. His name's Adam. Okay. Um,

57:17

So I met him my first day in Farmington. Oh.

57:20

So check this out. So I get to Farmington High School,

57:22

I get to Farmington, uh, middle school at the time. It's,

57:24

it's technically, so what happened is

57:27

I got put back a grade, even though I was in high

57:29

school, I was a sophomore in New York. When I got

57:31

to Minnesota, I got put back in the middle

57:33

school and their middle school went through ninth grade. Yeah. Even

57:35

though in high, in New York, high school starts in ninth grade.

57:37

Right. Same as where I'm from. Right. And so, but

57:40

I go into the civics classroom. I'm

57:42

in Mr. Hoy's Civics classroom. I

57:44

got this big old fro. Right.

57:47

And it's the only fro in town, I'm pretty sure.

57:49

No, no, no. Not at all. No. Okay, gotcha. Um,

57:52

it's funny, people don't realize there's, there's more black

57:54

people here than people think. And Fort Collins

57:56

people are always like, there's only like four black people. I'm

57:58

like, well, maybe 40. Uh uh,

58:01

there's probably even 400 or something. Something really.

58:03

But Exactly. I just, but the town I lived in

58:05

Worthington, it was all, uh,

58:09

Hispanics obviously. Yeah. But also

58:11

then there was a lot of migrants from, uh,

58:13

Laos and different mm-hmm. Things. The, the, the,

58:16

what's that people group that not,

58:18

not the lay oceans as much, the monks.

58:20

Yeah. A lot OFMs. But then there, there wasn't,

58:22

in Worthington there wasn't hardly any black s in Minneapolis

58:25

there's a lot of Mung Mung people. Yeah, yeah.

58:27

Yeah. So, so anyway, wasn't that much

58:29

that rare in Farmington. Cause it was close to close to

58:32

Minneapolis. I imagine. So it's Well Farmington

58:34

definitely know black people. Right. That's what I was talking

58:36

about. Yeah. So sitting there actually, well you're saying you

58:38

had this big Afro. I'm sitting here in class, I'm in the front

58:40

row and I'm sitting in the civics class

58:42

and I'm like, Man, this is kind of

58:44

weird, you know, like awkward

58:47

nervous. And this dude taps

58:49

me on my shoulder behind me and he says,

58:51

uh, Hey man, you don't

58:53

need to be so nervous. I'm black too.

58:56

And I turn around and this dude's like blonde

58:58

hair, blue eyes. And

59:01

I look at him and I'm like, what do you mean?

59:04

And he's like, yeah, man. My family's all

59:06

from Mississippi, man. We got black people in our family.

59:08

I'm I'm black man, don't worry. And,

59:10

uh, he's trying to make you, that's been my guy

59:13

since this day. And then, then I got another

59:15

guy named Derek. Uh, they, they've

59:17

been my, like, my oldest dearest friends, but they didn't

59:19

drift into the same, um, Kenneth Spiral

59:21

or you moved away or whatever. Yeah. So

59:23

not him. Uh, so Adam,

59:26

not so much. Uh, actually they both,

59:28

they both had a little bit of a while outside, but, um,

59:30

nonetheless things got messy when I got to

59:32

college. Uh, just know, like there's nothing

59:35

in terms of a story. There was, uh, it,

59:37

I don't think, no specific, no crash car

59:40

finally came to Jesus. Whatever happened. No, no, no. So

59:42

until I got to college, uh, I was,

59:44

I stayed pretty low key. Uh, and then

59:46

I went wild in college, uh, took

59:49

my first puff of a joint and

59:51

the rest was history. And then

59:54

from there was other things and Captain

59:56

Morgan and everything else you can think of.

59:58

Oh, yeah. And funny, I'm a, became a fan of Coors Light,

1:00:00

and I can't stand Coors Light today. Um,

1:00:03

but, um, yeah, so I,

1:00:05

I, I came to know, I, I guess, I don't know where you want

1:00:07

me to go with it, but, uh, yeah, I was just wondering about the circumstances,

1:00:10

like. Um, a lot of people times

1:00:12

people say they had to hit rock bottom first

1:00:15

or Yeah. Whatever. Did somebody just

1:00:17

invite you to church? No. And it changed your life,

1:00:19

or like, no. So, um, I

1:00:22

was trying to keep this brief cuz there's a lot of details in,

1:00:25

in, in. So I came to Fort

1:00:27

Collins in May of 2012.

1:00:29

Oh. I came to Fort Collins because I

1:00:31

had a dream about Adam and I, and,

1:00:35

and I woke up from that dream to

1:00:37

a message from Adam. Hmm. That

1:00:39

was a deeply personal message and

1:00:41

I didn't know God and didn't have faith and I took

1:00:43

that as a sign. Hmm. And I was like,

1:00:45

I'm going wherever he is. So

1:00:47

I got here in May of 2012.

1:00:50

Yeah. Between May and 2012

1:00:52

and November of 2012 is

1:00:55

when really, um, things

1:00:58

kind of came to faith set. Yeah. The foundation

1:01:00

was set. Well, I, I began to look

1:01:03

for truth. Truth,

1:01:05

yeah. Truth became essential because I was

1:01:08

desperate for life and peace and hope

1:01:10

and it all culminated with Jesus

1:01:13

being the only one who can offer me those things.

1:01:15

Because if you look at every other worldview

1:01:18

of religion out there, they all put the

1:01:20

pressure on you. Yeah. To be

1:01:22

the good person to denounce this,

1:01:24

to stop doing this. Mm-hmm. And Jesus

1:01:26

is the only one that says, yeah, I agree. You can't

1:01:28

do, what do you think? That was the same dent that

1:01:30

first got in my armor when I was

1:01:32

in Fort Collins as a young man. About the same age

1:01:35

probably. Um, so, so

1:01:37

that landed you here. We're gonna shift back to Samson

1:01:40

so we don't have too much, uh Yeah, please. Air time. But I

1:01:42

do want to come back to that story. He's got a way

1:01:44

crazier story than I hate that. I hate

1:01:46

to, I I love hearing it. Cause there's, there's

1:01:49

always little things I learned about with you, so.

1:01:51

Yeah. Well, you can come,

1:01:53

you can share it more next time you're on if you want to.

1:01:55

I'm working a book. No, I'm just kidding, Sam.

1:01:58

Um, yeah, tell me, so

1:02:00

you went to New Mexico, Western New Mexico

1:02:03

or something. Oh, then you transferred to cu Yeah, Western

1:02:05

New Mexico. That's where we jumped off. Little tiny town

1:02:07

full back at CU then? Yes. Got a re

1:02:09

scholarshiped again. Yeah. Silver City,

1:02:11

New Mexico, tiny town. Not a lot going on

1:02:13

there. Yeah. Uh, then, uh,

1:02:16

for example, my biggest class was like 50

1:02:19

people. My, my first class

1:02:21

at, um, CU was 350

1:02:23

people. Sure. You know, and they're talking about you

1:02:25

talk to the, to the ga. I'm like,

1:02:27

what the heck is the, what's a graduate

1:02:29

assistant? I don't know what that is. You know? Right. Where

1:02:32

do they hang out? I have no idea. So, um, but

1:02:34

yeah, I, uh, Part, part of why

1:02:36

Colorado had family in Colorado. Okay. And,

1:02:39

uh, I kind of knew Colorado football

1:02:42

and then I had a girlfriend that I was dating from high school, long distance

1:02:44

since she was here. So it was like Gotcha. University of Utah

1:02:47

or Colorado. So chose Colorado

1:02:49

to see if that would work out. Yeah. Got here,

1:02:51

fell in love with it. Lived in a little tiny apartment comp, uh,

1:02:53

uh, off campus. No car. No phone.

1:02:56

Took the bus every day, would wake up

1:02:58

at four in the morning to go run

1:03:00

in the field so nobody could see me. Train

1:03:02

eight top top Ramen and

1:03:04

still had to make the team. Right. So I transferred with no

1:03:07

guarantee, basically. Sure, sure. Show

1:03:09

up. Seven people at my tryout. Three of

1:03:11

us made the team, uh, the other two guys quit by

1:03:13

the end of spring ball. Yeah. I was the last man standing.

1:03:16

So, um, needless

1:03:18

to say, it didn't work out with my girlfriend, uh, cuz

1:03:20

she was a sorority girl of going, she was

1:03:22

a pifi and, uh, mom and dad were paying

1:03:24

for her to go to school. And so we had probably

1:03:26

some different priorities, you know. Yeah. All

1:03:28

values, man. Yeah. It was, all the kids

1:03:30

that flunked out in my

1:03:33

college experience had parents paying

1:03:35

for it. Yeah. You know, the kids that maybe

1:03:37

screwed up a little bit and then buckled down and decided

1:03:40

to change, uh, they were paying it for themselves.

1:03:43

Exactly. Right. Getting engaged. She, she was

1:03:45

in, she was incredible. Don't get me wrong, I

1:03:47

just didn't see there being like a future and I'm like,

1:03:49

Hey, either gotta get back on scholarship

1:03:51

or I'm going back to junior college. Right, right. Mm-hmm. And

1:03:53

so hunker down. Well, you know,

1:03:55

on the other side of everything that scares you.

1:03:58

Um, are probably is everything that

1:04:00

you've ever wanted. So yeah, six months later

1:04:02

the obstacle is the way you got it. Six months later,

1:04:05

I, uh, go to a wedding from one of

1:04:07

my teammates, uh, back in New

1:04:09

Mexico. He lived in Loveland, Colorado. Hmm. And,

1:04:11

uh, he was a super senior. He had a couple

1:04:13

red shirts and injuries. So he was graduating

1:04:16

when I left and he was getting

1:04:18

married to the woman that he met in New Mexico.

1:04:20

Mm. And at his wedding I

1:04:23

met his sister for the first time. Oh. And

1:04:25

so there's a running, that's your wife now, I guess.

1:04:27

Yep. That's a running joke cuz I always knew you had sisters.

1:04:29

I just didn't know you had sisters, you know,

1:04:31

like really good looking

1:04:33

sisters. And so we hit it

1:04:35

off and, um, the rest is history.

1:04:37

We were 20 years old. I mean, uh, we've

1:04:39

been together for 18, married for 14 this June.

1:04:41

Awesome. Let's go dude. It was

1:04:44

like one of those moments out of, um, movie.

1:04:46

What's movie's? The wife's name? Her name's Casey. And,

1:04:48

uh, what was it about you that let

1:04:51

Casey give you uh, the time

1:04:53

of day? I was persistent.

1:04:55

She, she knew ex, she knew exactly

1:04:58

where I stood the moment I saw her. I

1:05:00

was not shy about it at all.

1:05:02

It was right. Yeah. I was like

1:05:04

white on rice, man. I was like, I wanted

1:05:06

to just. Know her, you

1:05:08

know, and when we hit it off, we connect her brother,

1:05:10

she always saw her brother's friends as like stupid jocks.

1:05:13

Yeah. And so I was a jock, but I also was

1:05:15

raised on a heavy dose of punk rock music and skateboarding

1:05:18

and yeah, we, we connected on a lot of music

1:05:20

and stuff, homeschooled and probably had smarter parents

1:05:22

than most of the teachers that teach a lot of people's kids

1:05:24

and all that. Yeah. So, um, yeah,

1:05:26

so we just, we hit it off on a lot of things

1:05:28

in art, music, and Cool. And that was it, man.

1:05:30

The rest is history. And so that Awesome. Totally changed

1:05:33

my trajectory in life and thought I was gonna

1:05:35

go be an orthopedic surgeon. Oh wow. Didn't

1:05:37

have the grades for that. Fair playing, you

1:05:39

know, playing, people don't realize you played D one football.

1:05:42

It's like working in 80 hours a week. I thought they had people

1:05:44

taking your test for you and shit like that. Well, no.

1:05:46

Yeah. No, no. I just, not at your

1:05:48

level. I decided not to take Native American

1:05:50

studies and Right. I decided to go get

1:05:52

a degree in physiology, um, communications.

1:05:55

Yeah. So, but

1:05:57

um, but yeah,

1:05:59

I, by the time I got to my senior year, I

1:06:01

didn't really have any interest of trying to continue to play. So

1:06:03

I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do next. Yeah. Yeah. And

1:06:05

that's when I got the opportunity to go

1:06:08

trade features in commodities. So, oh. Way graduated

1:06:10

on a Friday with the Green Human Physiology and

1:06:12

walked into a features and commodities brokerage on a Monday,

1:06:15

three months later as a newly crown broker. And

1:06:18

the Dow Jones fell 777 points to set

1:06:20

off the economic housing crisis. Perfect. So

1:06:22

I get baptized in the deep end. Um,

1:06:25

and then, um, that's

1:06:27

how Mawi was born. Mawi was kind of formed around

1:06:29

that. That company. So

1:06:32

JB and Joe Kellogg were,

1:06:34

they were involved with that before we were all trading

1:06:36

together. Oh, is that right? 2008 hit.

1:06:39

It's the perfect opportunity to start a business in the middle of

1:06:41

the session. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So they broke off and were

1:06:43

a little tiny room where they would reverse

1:06:45

solicit other marketing and web website

1:06:47

design companies until they figured it out and we

1:06:50

were still running the brokerage firm. Interesting. Yeah.

1:06:52

And then the brokerage firm was feeding the Yeah.

1:06:54

Feeding that business. And then the rest is history.

1:06:56

So I've had some really enjoyable conversations with both

1:06:58

JB and Joe and, uh,

1:07:01

was trying to schedule one the podcast a while back,

1:07:03

uh, probably like a year and a half ago now, and then

1:07:05

lost the handle, so, oh, yeah. J JB

1:07:07

would be a great one. I don Dunno, don't about Joe, Joe probably

1:07:09

wouldn't go, you know, I

1:07:11

spit twice shy. He's like a very

1:07:13

jovial guy. Oh, he's, he's super

1:07:16

jovial guy. Yeah. But he, he like,

1:07:18

you know, it's, uh, get up, go to work,

1:07:20

go home, hang out with his family. Yeah. Why

1:07:22

the hell would I wanna spend two hours? He's like, that's for the young

1:07:24

guys. Yeah. You know? Fair enough. Well,

1:07:27

JB if you're listening, yeah. Uh, let's get you

1:07:29

booked up in June. Um, I'll

1:07:31

make it happen. I'll make the intro. Fair enough. So you were

1:07:33

there right from the very foundation of Yeah.

1:07:35

Of MADD wear. Were you an owner of that or,

1:07:38

yeah, I'm a, I'm a minority. You were right

1:07:40

from the start almost. Yeah. Yeah. I had to come in. But you still

1:07:42

are even, yeah, I had to come in and earn it, obviously. Right.

1:07:44

So, because you know how many money? Well, a little bit yet, a little bit different

1:07:46

path. But, um, but

1:07:48

yeah, it was an incredible journey and, um,

1:07:51

cool. Yeah. So yeah, we talked a lot about what

1:07:53

you've learned in that space and stuff, and so

1:07:56

we're getting close to this same time. You joined

1:07:58

med wear, you're not. Or how, how long behind

1:08:00

that were you or, I didn't. What year was that? I

1:08:02

didn't join until 2017.

1:08:04

Oh, 17. So what were you doing from like 2017,

1:08:07

fall of 12 to 17? What were you

1:08:09

up to? Technically, my, my first day was January 1st,

1:08:11

2018. Ah, let's go. Um, but

1:08:13

I got the job before that and, um,

1:08:16

so your question was, what was I doing before? Yeah. What was he up to? You

1:08:19

moved to Fort Collins got saved in the fall

1:08:21

of 12. Yeah. I, I got saved

1:08:23

and I was trying to figure out what just

1:08:25

happened and who am I? Yeah.

1:08:27

You know, so, okay. So it's

1:08:30

interesting cuz my, I think personally,

1:08:32

I think my life is a testimony to

1:08:35

God's grace. Mm-hmm. Like, to me,

1:08:37

I feel like I have no qualifications

1:08:41

to be in this room, to be

1:08:43

frank. Like, I, I really do. Like,

1:08:45

that's the way I, I think about it. Like, I have no qualification.

1:08:48

We, we'd be at Mad Wire and people would be like,

1:08:51

so where school would you go to? And I'd be like, dude,

1:08:53

I high school flipped out of jc

1:08:56

I'm from community college. I, I barely got

1:08:58

outta high school. You went to the manna school.

1:09:01

Hard knocks. Yeah. I, I barely got outta high school.

1:09:03

I really did, brother. Yeah, that's fair. I mean,

1:09:05

a lot of the most, you know, successful people I know

1:09:07

have a high school diploma. So, well, so

1:09:10

and so for me, and so for me, like I spent,

1:09:12

um, So I worked at, uh,

1:09:15

I've, I've been, I was in, in hospitality.

1:09:17

I worked as a, a bartender or a restaurant

1:09:19

manager. Okay. That's all I was doing. And

1:09:21

then, um, I Your favorite

1:09:23

among the bars and restaurants that you worked at town

1:09:25

Yeah. And in town. The ones where you worked at Oh, easily.

1:09:28

Cafe Vinno. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um,

1:09:30

it was, it was unique and it, and it, it,

1:09:33

it was my first introduction to, oh,

1:09:35

these are professional people. Right. You know, there's, there's

1:09:38

an attitude that tends to be in the restaurant space

1:09:40

I'm transitioning. It's like, well, well,

1:09:42

uh, maybe you should actually think about this like a professional.

1:09:45

Yeah. And you would see some other things. And so,

1:09:47

so anyways, uh, what happens is, I,

1:09:50

so I did use to box and I,

1:09:53

one of my good friends, his name is Seth,

1:09:55

he says to me, dude, you gotta come to this place,

1:09:58

uh, and work out with me. And

1:10:01

I'm like, sure. He's like, it's boxing. I'm super

1:10:03

critical of anything that's like boxing related workout,

1:10:05

just cuz Oh, is this

1:10:07

Joe's place? Yeah. Yeah. And so I

1:10:09

go and I hit the bag and I, well

1:10:11

I meet Joe and we work out for the first time. And, and

1:10:14

then, uh, Joe's like, yay man. Uh,

1:10:16

he wants to talk to me cuz he can see that like,

1:10:18

I know you could box, you

1:10:20

actually know how to punch the bag. Yeah. And so, and

1:10:23

so then what happened is I, I ended up becoming,

1:10:25

uh, just joining his team and, and, and

1:10:27

helping him support the best way I could in building

1:10:30

by classes and everything. And then that

1:10:32

led me to one Saturday. Um,

1:10:35

I'm helping him run a bootcamp in,

1:10:37

uh, Loveland for this gym

1:10:39

called Pursuit. Okay. And, and

1:10:41

they're people that they put a boot serving.

1:10:43

And so we ended up doing this bootcamp, we're

1:10:46

doing boxing and fitness and, but

1:10:49

afterwards I'm sitting there talking to this guy.

1:10:51

Mm. And um, and at

1:10:53

the time I'm working, I'm doing,

1:10:56

I'm working with Joe, but I'm also at

1:10:58

a company called, um, Lamar Advertising.

1:11:00

Mm-hmm. Lamar advertising, and I'm working in the

1:11:02

operations and slowly trying to get

1:11:04

into the sales and stuff. Right, right. Um,

1:11:07

you're paying your dues ultimately, you

1:11:09

know, and you had a talent spotter in the house. You're

1:11:12

just do it. You're just trying to, you know, that's my superpower.

1:11:14

Yeah. You just, you, you're, you're aspiring

1:11:17

to other things, but you don't necessarily know how to get

1:11:19

there. Yeah. Um, but I do,

1:11:21

I did know, I, I'm, I'm pretty

1:11:23

convinced of one thing, like if you,

1:11:26

um, aspire to lead a certain

1:11:28

quality of life, you should

1:11:30

treat people in a way that mimics that. Hmm. Yeah.

1:11:33

Like, you should do that. That

1:11:35

would be if you don't got anything else going for you Yeah.

1:11:37

You should treat people in that way. Yeah. And so,

1:11:40

um, longer story short, boom,

1:11:42

I get connected into Mad Wire, and that starts

1:11:44

really the journey of transitioning

1:11:46

into corporate world. Yeah. Um, well,

1:11:49

and just even learning about marketing and

1:11:51

Yeah. Actually getting hands up, sales, all that

1:11:53

kinda stuff. The funny thing is though, like, to

1:11:55

go back to my, my story. I

1:11:58

personally think, uh, I have a knack

1:12:00

for advertising. Hmm. And, and,

1:12:02

and messaging. But here's why

1:12:04

I think I have it, because when

1:12:07

you, I think the black community in America

1:12:09

mm-hmm. Is arguably the most

1:12:11

marketed too community in America. Hmm.

1:12:14

And I say that because if you look

1:12:16

at the way the dollar circulates

1:12:19

in the black community amongst other communities, it circulates

1:12:22

the least. So that means the

1:12:24

dollar made of like multiplier is going slower. So

1:12:26

that means the dollars that are made by the people

1:12:28

in that community leave the community fastest.

1:12:30

Mm-hmm. But what do they go to consumer goods.

1:12:33

Mm-hmm. Right? How do they know about them? Marketing. Right.

1:12:36

And so I inevitably had

1:12:38

a knack for I think what

1:12:40

was like, good messaging, good ideas,

1:12:43

good lines of communication. Yeah. I

1:12:45

mean, we, we tend to be, if you look at the Black

1:12:47

American tends to be pretty creative and,

1:12:49

and very expressive. Are you stereotyping

1:12:51

right now? Oh, totally. It's kidding. Get

1:12:54

away with though. Totally. Um,

1:12:56

I'll, I'll, I'll add to the stereotype, but you are

1:12:58

legit poetic. You are good

1:13:00

with words. Um, you

1:13:02

are a musician too, so

1:13:05

Yeah. How did you get so smart and well spoken? Like

1:13:07

did you do some learning outside of your

1:13:09

college or high school experiences and things

1:13:12

or? No, I, uh, taught myself, but

1:13:14

here's how I taught myself. Uh, I

1:13:16

would watch soap operas. I

1:13:18

would watch Seinfeld and Frazier. Yeah.

1:13:21

And I would read books. Yeah. And

1:13:23

so I learned. I

1:13:25

guess what you could maybe call something

1:13:27

that mimics, uh, proper form

1:13:29

of communication or a baseline form. Yeah.

1:13:32

Yeah. Um, by way of

1:13:35

watching Yeah. Those who communicated

1:13:37

differently than me. Yeah. Yeah. My,

1:13:39

my exchange student that we have right now, Hey Manuel,

1:13:41

if you listen, um, but she's from Brazil

1:13:44

and she's the only one of her friends that speaks

1:13:46

fluent English. And she got it from Gossip

1:13:48

Girl. Yeah. Oh wow. And different things

1:13:50

like she, and then to learn written

1:13:52

English, she would watch German

1:13:55

Netflix with subtitles. Genius.

1:13:58

Yeah. And so, and nobody told her to do this. She

1:14:01

just like, she smart, decided that she wanted to learn English

1:14:03

and that seemed like a good hack. Yeah. Gossip

1:14:05

girl. Absolutely. They're so dramatic

1:14:07

in how they communicate Right. And reflections

1:14:09

and stuff. Well, I think sometimes she brings a little

1:14:11

extra drama to the conversation, but she, she

1:14:13

is a 17 year old girl, so, you know, that

1:14:16

might just be natural. Um,

1:14:18

that's really interesting. Yeah. That, so that, so

1:14:20

if, if I

1:14:22

was just about gonna say that, but if we dropped

1:14:24

you in Buffalo in

1:14:27

the neighborhood where you grew up Yeah. And let you sit

1:14:29

there for three weeks, would you come back talking differently?

1:14:31

I don't think so. You do? So No, I don't think so. Um,

1:14:34

I would, in talking to the people

1:14:36

there, there would be certain things that would

1:14:38

probably naturally happen by way

1:14:40

of in talking to them or whatever. For

1:14:42

sure. Uh, but no, you're

1:14:45

really well spoken. Like honestly, don't, something I've learned

1:14:47

about you from the start. Don't. And when did we meet?

1:14:49

Cause we minute, because we met at. I

1:14:52

think either at my church or at when they, our

1:14:54

church tried to spin a church off with Jeremy. I'm

1:14:56

not, I'm not sure or something. I feel like that's, I'm not

1:14:58

sure either. Must not have been that special. N

1:15:01

no, maybe not. Probably not. Um,

1:15:04

uh, Kurt was like, Kurt was like, Hey, you're one

1:15:06

of the like 40 black guys on Fourt Collins.

1:15:08

Yeah. I was like, I was like, actually 400 just

1:15:11

to get Well, I'd only have really two

1:15:13

other, what I could call friends.

1:15:15

And so, you know, if I can get three out of 40, oh

1:15:17

yeah. Shoot, that's, I got like a 7%

1:15:20

ratio. That's bad average. Yeah. Dude, I will say one

1:15:23

thing and, and I did have a

1:15:25

couple people that actually cared

1:15:27

enough to try to challenge me intellectually.

1:15:30

My aunt, my Aunt Shirley. Okay. Um,

1:15:32

she was a principal for school. Uh,

1:15:35

at one point she challenged me. Uh,

1:15:37

I had my other aunt, her

1:15:40

name is Vanessa. Um,

1:15:42

she would, she didn't really

1:15:44

challenge me, but she would just be like, how's school going?

1:15:46

And you know, I didn't have any answer for

1:15:48

it. At least she cared. Yeah, yeah. That those

1:15:50

are, but, but those are two people I can think of that

1:15:53

I guess in some aspects were a very positive

1:15:55

force in terms of intelligence. Yeah. To think

1:15:57

about it. And then, and then my mom, um,

1:16:01

one memory that I actually have about my mother,

1:16:03

uh, did my mom. So

1:16:05

I don't know. I, I can't say I know

1:16:08

my mom. Yeah. But I can say,

1:16:10

dude, my mom did not take mess from

1:16:12

people, dude. Like, she didn't

1:16:15

take mess. And so, and so, um,

1:16:17

she placed a very, an emphasis.

1:16:20

Even though the interactions were few with her

1:16:22

and I. Mm-hmm. Yeah. When we had interactions,

1:16:25

she placed an emphasis on how I communicated

1:16:27

with her in those interactions. Hmm. True. So

1:16:29

I got in, I got in big trouble one time

1:16:31

because I called her man, you know how you'd be like, man,

1:16:33

get outta, you should

1:16:35

have seen what happened because

1:16:38

she said, I'm not a man. Yeah. And words

1:16:40

matter. And truth is real. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

1:16:43

Were you, did you raise yourself a lot? Kinda,

1:16:45

I mean, you went, you, you skirt past. I think I survived

1:16:48

dysfunctional. I think I survived myself. I don't

1:16:50

think I raised myself. Hmm. Uh,

1:16:52

I, I honestly, I think the raising part

1:16:54

of Darius began when I

1:16:57

became a Christian. And I'm, and I don't mean

1:16:59

to just be this super yeah. Religious guy, but I'm,

1:17:01

no, I'm serious. Like I

1:17:03

didn't, how. I felt you spent

1:17:05

most of your prior time. Not I spent enough

1:17:07

all the way my, I spent most of my life feeling invisible.

1:17:09

Right. And not really knowing, you know,

1:17:12

and so there was no output, you know. But

1:17:14

can, can I, can I edify you real quick, bro? But that's

1:17:16

one of the things that makes you a great husband

1:17:19

and dad. Yeah. The way that you love

1:17:21

your kids and your family is the byproduct of what you

1:17:23

went through. You know what I mean? So, yeah,

1:17:25

for sure. I would agree with that. It's tremendous to watch you as

1:17:27

a, as a husband and a father. And tell me

1:17:29

about that, cuz we're chron lodging here

1:17:31

and you've had a wife for some years

1:17:33

and you've got a eight years. Eight years and you've got a

1:17:35

couple small We have four children. Four.

1:17:38

Four children. Three. Three and one on the way. But I

1:17:40

kind of just four should we shift out of uh, cuz I

1:17:42

think we, we get into madd wear, we learned some things.

1:17:44

Yeah. Then we jumped into where here. Yeah. Let's

1:17:46

talk about, uh, that love story just a little

1:17:49

bit. Where did you meet your,

1:17:51

you gotta tell him the story. Which one?

1:17:53

Just about her dad. Oh yeah. Just like, get away

1:17:55

from my daughter. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:17:58

So I, so what happens is, uh, I

1:18:00

become a Christian. Okay. And I end up attending

1:18:03

this men's breakfast one time. Okay. And

1:18:05

there I meet a guy who will become my brother-in-law.

1:18:08

Uh, but what happens is he

1:18:11

invites me and Adam over Adam

1:18:13

can't make it. I go, I meet my wife,

1:18:15

her name is Celia. And, um, long

1:18:18

story short, I, I become

1:18:20

friends of Celia and her family and

1:18:24

I get the bright idea one day and I'm like, Hey, We've

1:18:27

had enough interactions where I,

1:18:29

I know there's something here and I say,

1:18:31

uh, hey, can I talk to your dad? Cuz her dad

1:18:33

was traveling quite a bit. He's teaching,

1:18:36

going around teaching the Bible. Mm-hmm. And I said,

1:18:38

Hey, can I, can I talk

1:18:40

to your dad about pursuing you? And

1:18:42

by the way, I knew I was different in Christ because of

1:18:45

Christ. I, who I never said spoke like

1:18:47

that. Can I pursue you? But,

1:18:50

uh, but uh okay. Older, she's like,

1:18:52

yo girl, you want pursued?

1:18:55

Yeah. Um, but anyways, so I,

1:18:58

she's like, yeah. So I go and

1:19:00

I'm like, Hey, I would love to know

1:19:02

if I could talk to your daughter and

1:19:04

this is at their house. And

1:19:06

it just went bad. And he was just like,

1:19:08

get out. Basically. Not rude.

1:19:11

Yeah. But he was just like, it's time for you to go. Interesting.

1:19:13

But here's the beauty of it, what

1:19:16

he wanted to do in that moment, immediately,

1:19:18

the second I expressed interest in his daughter

1:19:20

was he wanted to ensure that I had not

1:19:22

been manipulative towards his daughter. Hmm.

1:19:25

And I love it. And, and he's like one of my, he, yeah,

1:19:28

I call him dad. Yeah. He is my dad.

1:19:30

And, um, it's, it's strange man.

1:19:32

It's, it's an interesting story because like he

1:19:34

kicked me out and I couldn't talk to my wife.

1:19:37

And I remember it was such an emotional time

1:19:39

be, I'm like, Sitting in my

1:19:41

room with candles lit, crying and

1:19:43

stuff. Like, I can't see her and I miss

1:19:45

her. And, um, but well, all

1:19:47

he wanted to do was make sure that he just

1:19:49

wanted chicken in with her first. He wanted to make sure I was,

1:19:51

I had not hurt his daughter in any capacity.

1:19:54

And he took the, the out. I mean, it's better

1:19:56

than beating around the bush. Like No. Yeah. Get

1:19:58

out. Yeah. All right. We gotta go. I

1:20:01

heard you gotta go. You're right. And

1:20:03

so what happens is we ended up meeting, but

1:20:05

here's the thing that I asked him, which I, I just, I I

1:20:07

love this man so much. We ended

1:20:09

up meeting, so we kind of dated, basically.

1:20:12

We basically dated, we went on a few dates, him and I.

1:20:14

Oh yeah. And,

1:20:16

and I, dead serious. We was, we

1:20:19

was sit in the alley cat. Yeah, that's cool. We

1:20:21

would sit in the alley cat and hang out on a little coffee

1:20:23

dinner. Well, and pricey probably maybe even

1:20:25

had gotten to know a little bit about your history and background

1:20:27

and stuff like that. Yeah, well, you know, whatever. Well, I

1:20:29

came to him and I said, Hey,

1:20:32

um, I know you're her father.

1:20:34

I know you're her father, but could you be

1:20:37

the role of a brother to me? Cause

1:20:39

I don't want to mess this up. Hmm. I

1:20:41

don't want to do that. My life was riddled with that

1:20:43

behind me. Yeah. And so

1:20:46

it got a little awkward. We had to work through our dating

1:20:48

and then we ended up, then we ended up,

1:20:50

uh, con, you know, then he ended up giving

1:20:52

me permission and. Uh, I walked

1:20:55

with my wife for about a year and a half before we got married.

1:20:57

Yeah. Um, and we would've got married sooner,

1:20:59

but her sister had some health issues and

1:21:01

the family had to go through that and I had to go through that

1:21:03

with her. Yeah. Yeah. And so wasn't time. Yeah. So

1:21:06

that's how I met her. Awesome. And we got married in 2015.

1:21:08

And, uh, you said you've been

1:21:10

with your wife, uh, for 18 years. Married. 14.

1:21:13

And how many smalls you got around there? We two.

1:21:15

Simpson, you got two, nine and 11. Nine 11.

1:21:17

Two little girls Del Lot of love and Kennedy Summer. So

1:21:19

we, uh, I don't know if I didn't prepare you guys

1:21:21

probably, but we always do a one word description

1:21:24

of your children on this show.

1:21:27

Who would like to go first and, uh,

1:21:29

give 'em a name and a description. You can talk a little bit more and

1:21:31

elaborate. One, one word description. One word.

1:21:34

Hyphens are okay. If you need it. Hyphens

1:21:36

are okay. Yeah. Um,

1:21:39

man. Okay. That's interesting. I'll go with,

1:21:41

uh, Delilah Love. Okay. She's actually

1:21:43

named after her, her dad

1:21:45

and her mom. Right. Sampson and

1:21:48

Delilah. And, uh, her mother is

1:21:50

a Valentine baby. Born in Loveland,

1:21:52

Colorado. So that's where Delilah loves

1:21:54

come from. It's fun. Delilah Love is

1:21:57

a, uh,

1:22:00

she is a,

1:22:04

an artistic empath.

1:22:08

Interesting. A little more emotional. Yeah. She,

1:22:11

she wears it on her sleeve. Yeah. Yeah. And,

1:22:13

uh, She,

1:22:16

um, yeah, she just loves

1:22:18

art and she's an incredible swimmer. My, my

1:22:20

my staff person, Alicia, who you paid a nice compliment

1:22:23

to on the newsletter just today. Yeah. Uh,

1:22:25

we were sitting in the Better Business Bureau luncheon and there

1:22:27

was some of the new business awards

1:22:29

and a couple of them were visibly nervous

1:22:32

and stuff like that. And Alicia's like, I'm so,

1:22:34

like, like seeing

1:22:36

them so uncomfortable kind of makes me uncomfortable.

1:22:39

And I think I, I think I benefited

1:22:42

Alicia in saying, you know, yes. And

1:22:45

like, this is a moment that's a step along the ways to

1:22:47

them being less uncomfortable. Yep. Next

1:22:49

time. Yep. You know, and so just

1:22:51

value that. That's perfect. I mean, so my daughter

1:22:53

is the one that, um, you know,

1:22:55

she'll get nervous enough that she'll just not want

1:22:57

to do something cuz she needs to know what it's like. Right.

1:22:59

Yeah. So example was, she was, um, she's

1:23:02

getting ready for her first swim meet and she's natural swimmer.

1:23:04

She's built like a swimmer, long legs,

1:23:06

long arms, long to, so put her in the water. She looks like

1:23:08

she's been professionally trained. She's

1:23:10

just got it right. And so it's

1:23:12

her very first swim meet. It's the day before. And

1:23:14

she's been like, daddy, I don't want to go. I

1:23:17

just want to stop swimming. And I

1:23:19

go, okay, so if you stop swimming, then you're gonna,

1:23:21

if you ever want to do it again, you're gonna pay for it. Daddy's

1:23:24

not gonna pay for it anymore. You're gonna have to figure it out. And

1:23:26

she goes, and she finally does it. And

1:23:28

she, she wins like a bunch of first places and

1:23:30

she was like sold on her. So we're always talking

1:23:32

to her that, hey, nervousness and excitement

1:23:34

mm-hmm. Feel exactly the same way. They only differ

1:23:36

by one thing, the thoughts that you're telling yourself.

1:23:39

Mm-hmm. If you're nervous, you're thinking about everything that

1:23:41

could go wrong. And if you're excited. You're

1:23:43

thinking about everything you go, right. Yeah. And so

1:23:45

that's how I work with my little emotional

1:23:47

creature. Ooh, cool. My younger one, Kennedy

1:23:49

Summer. Yep. Who? Um, she,

1:23:52

I just love the name. I want the way we spell the name.

1:23:55

Delilah is with a y We don't spell like

1:23:57

the traditional biblical church. Sure. Well that's good, Casey.

1:23:59

And then we got my Just Delilah's, not necessarily like a

1:24:01

superhero with a Bible. Yeah, that's true. The

1:24:03

other, other spelling, this one will be, we love

1:24:05

the name Lila. Right. We went the Lila. That's

1:24:07

actually my, my wife's, uh, grandmother's

1:24:10

name was Lila. Yeah. So we love that name.

1:24:12

So Kennedy, I wanted all my girls have wives in their

1:24:14

name. Yeah. And then summer, she's a summer baby.

1:24:16

My wife and I met in the summer, so

1:24:18

Summer of Love. Right. So that's where the middle names come from. So

1:24:20

Kennedy's, uh, one word, she's

1:24:22

charismatic. Ooh. She's will do

1:24:24

her. Well, she's a lot like her dad. She

1:24:26

can make friends with anybody. Yeah. Never been a stranger.

1:24:29

Nope. Fair enough. Wow. Yeah. That's

1:24:31

awesome. Dude. His daughters are up. Wonderful

1:24:34

to be around. That's cool. Yeah. Um,

1:24:36

so we have Lily. Okay.

1:24:39

Lily Marie. Okay. Uh, I think

1:24:41

the word that I would use to describe her, I

1:24:45

would say brilliant.

1:24:48

Ooh. Um, uh,

1:24:51

Sawyer, my second daughter. Uh,

1:24:55

Her middle name is Rose. And,

1:24:59

and would say, what's that a treasurer would say, and I

1:25:01

would say to describe her,

1:25:03

I would say, I want to use either rambunctious

1:25:06

mm-hmm. Or sensitive. Hmm. Because

1:25:08

she's like this combination of brave,

1:25:10

but she's extremely sensitive. Hmm. So she will

1:25:12

get wild, but she is sensitive.

1:25:14

Yeah. And I don't know if, if rambunctious is the word that

1:25:17

meshes those two. I think we can use that hyphen here. Rambunctious

1:25:19

sensitive. Okay. Uh, and then,

1:25:21

and then Theodore Innocent. Um,

1:25:24

oh, that's pretty. He, he shares my middle

1:25:26

name and um, you

1:25:29

know, I think my son is an imitator right

1:25:31

now. Hmm. The word I would say is imitator

1:25:33

because he, well then do good stuff.

1:25:36

Well, that's actually been the, the most revelatory

1:25:39

thing about being a father to a son. Yeah. Yeah.

1:25:42

Um, is more than my

1:25:44

other two children who actually had more access.

1:25:47

Uh, he mimics

1:25:50

everything than I do. Yeah. Yeah.

1:25:52

And he picks up on things that I didn't even realize that

1:25:54

he, that he picked up on One time

1:25:56

he came in my office and he, um,

1:25:59

he did something with the microphone that I had

1:26:03

in a way that mimicked what I was doing. And I

1:26:05

never thought he saw me doing that with

1:26:07

the microphone. Right. And I was like,

1:26:09

whoa. No, he's watching everything. He's watching

1:26:11

everything. And he wants to be in there

1:26:13

with me. How old is he? He's, uh, just turned two.

1:26:15

Okay. And he wants to be in the room with me

1:26:17

when I'm working. Yeah. He wants, he wants to do everything

1:26:19

that I'm doing. Like, if any, that's pretty honoring

1:26:22

and, uh, awkward

1:26:24

and threatening in a little little ways too. Right. It's

1:26:26

deep man. It's deep pressure. But it's a, it's a privilege

1:26:29

though, like to have children like, and

1:26:31

you know, so those are aren't my children. I

1:26:33

thought you said you had four. Yeah, we got one coming.

1:26:36

Oh, one on the way. So the word would

1:26:38

be unknown. Yeah. Yeah. And

1:26:40

expected when excited. Uh, in the fall.

1:26:42

Early fall. Awesome. Congratulations. Appreciate

1:26:45

it. Yeah. Um, when I

1:26:47

say family,

1:26:49

uh, like outside of, um,

1:26:52

you know, your immediate homes and things, like,

1:26:54

I just, I heard you talking, telling your, you

1:26:57

know, calling your father-in-law, dad. Yeah.

1:26:59

Um, and stuff. So let's, let's stay with

1:27:01

you for a moment, Darius. What's kind of the

1:27:04

bigger word family mean to you in,

1:27:06

in today's space?

1:27:08

Are you still close with your brother? Is he still around?

1:27:11

Uh, your sisters? My sisters,

1:27:13

uh, two, two of the, three of my sisters

1:27:15

I have a solid relationship with. Uh,

1:27:19

but I would say I don't, it's

1:27:21

hard to say what family means. I think

1:27:23

family is, uh,

1:27:26

I, I just see it defined in actions,

1:27:29

to be honest. Like I have Hmm.

1:27:31

There, there are, there's a, there are two men that

1:27:33

I call my brothers that I don't share DNA with

1:27:35

them. Right, right. But they

1:27:37

would lay down their lives for me. Yeah. And I would

1:27:39

lay down my lives for them. Yeah. My life. I don't

1:27:41

have more than one life, my life Yeah. For

1:27:43

them. Um, so I don't

1:27:46

know, I don't know the right wording, but it's,

1:27:48

it's equated to those who Yeah. How

1:27:50

they treat you well, and what I think

1:27:52

I'm hearing, you know, Jesus

1:27:54

talked about that too, right. Like, these are my

1:27:57

brothers, you know? Yeah. And, and whatever.

1:27:59

And so I think that choice

1:28:02

of who you want to really be around is a great

1:28:05

blessing too. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Love is

1:28:07

a verb. It's a verb. That's it's

1:28:09

action verb even. Yeah. It's not this weird noun

1:28:11

and that's like floating around ready to sweep you up.

1:28:14

Yep. I like that. Samson,

1:28:16

anything to add on that topic? General. I

1:28:20

mean, he,

1:28:23

yeah. I mean, to me family is just

1:28:26

priority, you know, it's mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I

1:28:29

love my family so much. Yeah. Dude. Dude.

1:28:31

This man, this man prioritizes his family.

1:28:33

So, you know, as busy as I am, um,

1:28:36

I love my family. My wife

1:28:38

especially is just, We

1:28:40

could lose everything tomorrow. And she would, you know, sleep

1:28:43

in a, under a bridge in a car with me.

1:28:45

Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's, it's

1:28:47

cool. And she's, um, we've just grown up so

1:28:49

much together. Yeah. So, yeah, dude,

1:28:51

it's great. You know, let me tell you something about, about

1:28:53

Sampson. Um, uh, you

1:28:55

know, I have a privilege of being around entrepreneurs, uh,

1:28:58

and he's, he's

1:29:01

one of the rare ones who I

1:29:03

Yeah, I see you do excellent

1:29:06

in, in business and, and things

1:29:08

like that, but it's only matched

1:29:10

by your desire to be excellent

1:29:13

with your family. And there

1:29:15

aren't a lot of to be, I'm telling you, there's more, there's,

1:29:18

there's less men than you think that really Yeah. The

1:29:20

people that might say that, that really prioritize it, that say that,

1:29:23

but it's different. I agree. And it's different

1:29:25

when I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Oh, I'm just here with, you know, I'm

1:29:27

doing this with my, my family. Yeah. Oh,

1:29:30

yeah, dude, I don't do this after a certain time. You know,

1:29:32

like, like, so, like fair. He, he

1:29:34

lives it, you know? Uh, my hobby is

1:29:36

work and my business,

1:29:39

and then my family. That's about it. Yeah.

1:29:41

Where do you think, where do you, does that, did

1:29:44

that come from seeing it modeled maybe in, in your

1:29:46

dad and then seeing it in, even in modeled in Joe?

1:29:49

Um, or where did you

1:29:51

get that? Um, I'm not letting

1:29:53

this go. I don't know, man. That's

1:29:55

a good question. I, I, um, I

1:29:57

just knew my whole life I wanted to be married and have a family.

1:29:59

That was never a question. I can't say that.

1:30:01

Um, The, my,

1:30:04

my family dynamic was like super

1:30:06

amazing. Right. You know, um, yeah.

1:30:08

There's some rough spots. Nobody's perfect, but yeah.

1:30:10

But, so I, one of the things we didn't talk about is

1:30:12

I was an only child for 12 years. Mm-hmm. And

1:30:15

then my little brother was born same parents. Long stop between

1:30:17

trains. Yeah. Yeah. And then I have a little sister who's 14

1:30:19

years younger than me. And so, um, you're

1:30:21

the way older brother. Yeah. I was like

1:30:23

the cool uncle. Right. You know? Right, totally.

1:30:26

And, uh, so when I left to go, I was

1:30:28

18, I left the house and my brother and sister were six and eight

1:30:30

respectively. Yeah. And so, um,

1:30:32

yeah, it was interesting. So we,

1:30:34

we just started becoming friends when they were in their, you

1:30:36

know, twenties basically. By the time they finally, yeah. I'm

1:30:39

10 years older than my youngest brother and you

1:30:42

know, that same thing, like, I left for

1:30:44

college when he was still just a little punk

1:30:46

ass. So we've only really gotten to know each other,

1:30:49

you know, the last 10, 15 years or whatever. Yeah,

1:30:51

exactly. So, yeah. But yeah. Yeah,

1:30:54

man, I just always wanted to have a family. He's still a little punk ass

1:30:56

in case he's listening. Joe. I, yeah, I

1:30:58

got one of those two Jake kitchens. Um,

1:31:03

so, um, you know, we

1:31:05

touched on faith a fair bit, especially in

1:31:07

your story, Darius. Uh, you mentioned

1:31:10

your background a little bit, Sampson, but do you

1:31:12

wanna expound on, on what faith is

1:31:14

in your space? You know, I was raised, um,

1:31:16

Catholic. Mm-hmm. And, uh,

1:31:18

I guess I always knew, I

1:31:21

knew of the story

1:31:23

of who Jesus was. I

1:31:25

knew God and definitely believe in,

1:31:27

um, a creator and a higher power.

1:31:30

And, um, And

1:31:32

then when I hit my twenties, you

1:31:35

know, I was no saint in college either.

1:31:37

Yeah. And definitely struggled to, I really

1:31:40

wrestled actually with religion. Hmm. Um,

1:31:42

and I thought I was wrestling religion instead of faith. I

1:31:44

thought I was wrestling with faith cuz I didn't understand the difference

1:31:46

between the two. Yeah. And so I spent

1:31:48

a lot of my twenties really just questioning

1:31:51

a lot of things. And so, you know, I

1:31:54

ended up kind of coming

1:31:56

full circle with, Hey, you know what? I believe that there's

1:31:58

a crater I, I can't, there's no way I can look up at the universe

1:32:00

and look in the entire world. Right. And

1:32:03

logically say that like a bunch of

1:32:05

people who all kind of looked similar,

1:32:07

just randomly all evolved outta nowhere and

1:32:09

just popped up on different continents. I can't,

1:32:12

I can't come to grips with that. Yeah. And

1:32:14

I'm somebody who's, you know, deeply

1:32:16

trained in, in science. Right.

1:32:18

Like, I have a degree in physiology, I have a master's in

1:32:20

sports nutrition. Sure. I spend a lot

1:32:22

of time thinking through those things. And I think the two things

1:32:25

can exist, uh, simultaneously. I think that

1:32:27

more that science goes along, it actually proves

1:32:30

the case. Oh yeah. For fine tuning. And

1:32:32

some of the best Christian thinkers I know

1:32:34

are like scientists and Yeah. One book

1:32:37

that I'm reading right now by Eric Matis is called His Atheism

1:32:39

Dead. It's an incredible book. You haven't read it. Interesting.

1:32:41

No, I need to read it. I'll write it down. Uh, it's, but

1:32:43

it's all about just talking through the science that actually

1:32:45

makes a stronger case for a creator than it does deny

1:32:48

it. So agreed. Mm-hmm. Um, so

1:32:50

I was able to come to terms with that and then

1:32:52

kind of like floated in and outta church and never

1:32:55

really, and then when I turned 30 years old,

1:32:58

I had a quarter life crisis. Okay.

1:33:00

Woke up and legitimately had a panic attack.

1:33:02

The first time I experienced that heart attack that

1:33:04

I was gonna die, um, had

1:33:06

anxiety for the first time, depression for the first time in my

1:33:08

life. Hmm. And so you get to that place

1:33:11

pretty quick. You start to just, you

1:33:13

start looking at the rest of your life and thinking, man, there's

1:33:15

a lot of things that I wanted to do that I haven't done.

1:33:17

Mm-hmm. And a lot of things that I probably need to get right in my

1:33:19

life and including, you know, fix

1:33:21

the relationship with my parents and, you

1:33:24

know, make sure that I'm walking the path

1:33:26

a little bit, uh, tighter than I probably

1:33:28

was. And so, yeah. Um,

1:33:31

yeah. So that moment was

1:33:33

a big shift for me. And then I found

1:33:35

myself in church

1:33:37

cuz I didn't know where else to turn in

1:33:41

back at Catholic Church or, no, I actually in Foundations,

1:33:43

uh, which is a non-dominant Yeah. That's your home church. Yes. So

1:33:45

I've been to lots of events there and stuff. Yeah. So I,

1:33:48

and then from there, I just started my journey and honestly

1:33:50

the biggest shift was actually reading the

1:33:52

Bible. Mm. Um, yeah. And walking

1:33:55

through it and even what took me to the next

1:33:57

level was actually I, I'm in a men's

1:33:59

group and we meet every single Tuesday, same

1:34:01

time, same place. All men with

1:34:04

families, all men who've struggle

1:34:06

with the same things that every everybody else does.

1:34:08

Yeah. All men struggle with all entrepreneurs. Right.

1:34:10

Especially Yeah. And you know, that's what we do. We just

1:34:12

walk through the work together and actually study

1:34:14

it and question it and, and challenge

1:34:17

it and, and think about it and dwell

1:34:19

on it. And um, yeah. That has been the number

1:34:21

one thing that has helped me. That was

1:34:23

a huge, sorry to No, you're good. In

1:34:25

my, in my own personal, cause I was 25

1:34:27

ish before, you

1:34:30

know, I went to church to humor my wife, kind

1:34:32

of, yeah. My now wife. Um,

1:34:34

but I was being worked on for quite a while and

1:34:36

part of it was that difference in grace that you mentioned

1:34:38

earlier, Darius, and, and that

1:34:40

notion, I like to, I like to

1:34:42

tease that I'm a Christian because I

1:34:44

need more grace than most people. You know,

1:34:46

some people can really live that righteous life, but

1:34:48

that ain't me, I guess. Well, I think it's a fine balance,

1:34:50

right? It's so, I, you know, there's, there's

1:34:52

something to be said for truth. Right. You know? Totally.

1:34:55

Yeah. But it's something to be said for grace and you need both,

1:34:57

you know? Totally. I think, I think one of the things I wrestled with,

1:34:59

with just being raised Catholic is I,

1:35:02

I just never felt like I was qualified. Yeah.

1:35:04

Um, and I, I couldn't get in, so

1:35:07

I didn't understand this concept of our relationship

1:35:09

with your creator and as Darius said, you

1:35:11

know, not having to, uh, bury

1:35:14

bear all the weight. Right. That was, uh, the,

1:35:16

the focus of our Easter message, uh, at the

1:35:18

crossing this spring was kind of, uh,

1:35:21

the recognizing Jesus

1:35:23

as both savior and sovereign. Mm-hmm.

1:35:25

You know, and cuz sometimes I think. Some

1:35:29

churches or people or me, uh

1:35:32

oh yeah. Love the savior. Love the savior. Yeah.

1:35:34

Don't give the sovereign his due take.

1:35:36

What said, spend a little time, uh, in Revelations,

1:35:39

you'd be like, oh wait. Yeah, there's some stuff

1:35:41

here. Well back, you know, back to the family thing. You know, I think that,

1:35:44

you know, why do I priorit my family? Cuz I realized that

1:35:46

my family and my wife do not belong to me. Mm-hmm.

1:35:48

Mm-hmm. They belong to the Lord. And I'm

1:35:50

responsible for all the gifts that I've been given

1:35:53

that goes down to my, the ideas that I'm given, the

1:35:55

entrepreneurial endeavors, the employees that I have,

1:35:58

the money that I have, the family, that I have,

1:36:00

the relationship, this relationship that I have with you.

1:36:02

Yeah. The relationship I have with him. You

1:36:05

know? And so when you, when you change that perspective

1:36:07

and, and especially walking in a world

1:36:10

that says your truth, Kurt. Right?

1:36:13

Right. It's all about your truth, which is very

1:36:15

selfish. Uh, it changes

1:36:17

the dynamic. So how I steward my money

1:36:19

and where I put my money, where my mouth

1:36:21

is understanding that that a hundred k check

1:36:23

that I just got, it's not mine. So

1:36:26

I need to give back to the Lord. What's the Lord's right? And

1:36:28

I need to orient my heart properly.

1:36:31

And the world does not tell you to think that way. I

1:36:33

want to ask you something cause I wonder if it's

1:36:35

similar. Um, so

1:36:37

in, in my own world, I was, I, I went

1:36:40

to a church. I memorized the books of the Bible, but I never

1:36:42

heard the good news Really. Which sounds not

1:36:44

too dissimilar from you. And one

1:36:46

of the things I carried around through my early late

1:36:48

teens and early twenties was, was guilt.

1:36:51

Yeah. Uh, because I was, you

1:36:53

know, a strikingly handsome and

1:36:56

smart and charismatic. Person

1:36:58

that was given more blessings than

1:37:00

I deserve, but yet I recognize

1:37:03

that I had the same ugly stains

1:37:05

on my soul that most everybody else

1:37:07

did. Mm-hmm. In, in similar measure. Yeah.

1:37:10

And so, you know, there's a, you

1:37:12

know, to who much is given, much is expected

1:37:14

kind of thing. Do you vibe with that notion

1:37:16

a little bit, or not necessarily? I didn't really feel

1:37:19

that, but I, I was more trapped in the

1:37:21

rules and the regulation. Yeah. Very

1:37:23

legalistic. Very legalistic. Yeah. And I didn't

1:37:25

know how to, how to wrestle with that. So to

1:37:27

me, a lot of times

1:37:29

throughout my life, the Bible was used

1:37:31

as the tool to weaponize. Mm-hmm. It was a

1:37:33

weapon towards me, me. Yeah. The religion is the

1:37:35

Yeah. And it gets used that way a lot and,

1:37:38

and it turns a lot of people off. And I think that's part of the,

1:37:41

part of the battle that Christianity's up against

1:37:43

is it's, you know, you have a sect

1:37:45

that is not representative of the entire community.

1:37:48

And, um, and yeah. So

1:37:50

I, lots of them, so I battle, I battle with that.

1:37:52

But I also came to terms with the fact that, you

1:37:55

know what, the people in my life that, uh,

1:37:57

maybe represented it that way, they're, they're

1:37:59

wrestling with their own stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And

1:38:01

so I had to actually turn around and give a lot of grace

1:38:03

back to the people that mm-hmm. I held

1:38:06

so much bitterness to. Yeah. Yeah. And forgive forgiveness,

1:38:08

which is at the core of everything that. Christianity

1:38:11

talks about. Right. And forgiving yourself for

1:38:13

forgiving everyone else and Yep. And

1:38:15

we can disagree on something and we

1:38:17

can simultaneously, but still be friends. Yeah. Yeah.

1:38:20

Well, that leads us straight

1:38:22

into the politics segment with, uh,

1:38:25

with the plum. Like, uh, let's go there.

1:38:27

There is, I think there,

1:38:29

there's kind of two camps in that space

1:38:32

right now that like,

1:38:35

we can disagree and both

1:38:37

be kind of Right. You know,

1:38:39

from our perspective. You know, I, like,

1:38:41

I was, I was teasing my friend in San Francisco,

1:38:43

like, it's okay for San Francisco

1:38:45

to have paper. Weak ass, terrible

1:38:47

paper straws. Um, because

1:38:49

they don't want them plastic straws floating

1:38:52

around in the bays and messing up their turtles and

1:38:54

all these sea lion and stuff. But in

1:38:56

North Dakota, they just want cheaper

1:38:58

straws that actually work for an hour

1:39:00

with by soda. Yeah. You know, and the chances

1:39:02

of those straws coming into San Francisco Bay is not

1:39:04

very high. So we can actually both be right

1:39:07

with different sensibilities on that

1:39:09

specific one little issue. Yeah. Anyway,

1:39:12

uh, yeah, I mean, I planted that seed, but yeah.

1:39:14

Talk to me about politics in general or

1:39:16

big picture, small picture. Yeah.

1:39:19

Well, we're, what are you curious? Anything particularly

1:39:22

you're curious to know? Yeah. What rubs you the wrong way? What,

1:39:24

uh, I mean we've got, uh, some lot

1:39:27

of interesting stuff here. There's apparently not gonna be

1:39:29

any democratic debates displayed,

1:39:31

A couple of candidates announced,

1:39:34

but that's, it'll happen kind of normal. You think they will? Yeah.

1:39:36

No way. I bet you no way Biden will debate

1:39:38

with bet Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I don't, there

1:39:40

will be debates. So, uh, without

1:39:43

getting too, so this is, I think part 50 bucks. I