The LoCo Experience
The LoCo Experience is produced and sponsored by LoCo Think Tank - and sometimes others! Our mission is to uncover as much business education as possible while getting to know the founders and leaders of amazing organizations. You'll feel like you really know our guests after each episode, and if we're doing our job well, you'll learn business principles and tips from them along the journey and be both inspired and entertained. Episodes feature a range of local and regional business and community leaders as guests in a conversational interview format. The more interesting the journey, the better the experience!
The LoCo Experience
EXPERIENCE 171 | Aaron Everitt - Meeting Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump Trials & Tribulations, “Mr. Science” Anthony Fauci on the stand and…NoCo Real Estate Update
This week on The LoCo Experience, we welcomed back Aaron Everitt, our sponsor through his business, Logistics Co-op, and regular guest of the show for real estate updates and real talk on national and local politics. Aaron has been creating content on X the past year or so as @loanly_hipster, some of which has been supportive of RFK’s Presidential run, and he caught the attention of the campaign a few months ago. In May, Aaron was invited to have a one-on-one meeting with RFK prior to the Rally in Aurora, and he shares his reflections on that meeting - and on the potential routes to victory for the campaign - and the many efforts being made to oppose it.
Also fresh in the news is the Trump 34-count conviction for hush-money something something, and the first day on the stand for “Mr. Science” Anthony Fauci. Aaron and I discuss what is the swamp and how can we actually drain it? - and some of the big items in local politics. We close with a NoCo real estate update - hint - not a lot has changed - and we talk a bit about the future of water and population growth here in Northern Colorado. It’s always an easy conversation with Aaron, and he shares a touching LoCo Experience tying back to his grandad and the early years of the Fort Collins Country Club. So please tune in and enjoy my recent conversation with Aaron Everitt.
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain
This week on The Loco Experience, we welcome back Aaron Everett, our sponsor through his business, Logistics Co op, and regular guest of the show for real estate updates and real talk on national and local politics. Aaron has been creating content on X for the past year or so as Lonely Hipster, some of which has been supportive of RFK's presidential run, and he caught the attention of the campaign a few months ago. In May, Aaron was invited to have a one on one meeting with RFK prior to the rally in Aurora, and he shares his reflections on that meeting and on the potential routes to victory for the campaign. And the many efforts being made to oppose it. Also fresh in the news is the Trump 34 count conviction for hush money something something. And the first day on the stand for Mr. Science, Anthony Fauci. Aaron and I discussed what is the swamp and how can we actually drain it. And some of the big items in local politics. We close with a NoCo real estate update. Hint, not a lot has changed. And we talk a bit about the future of water and population growth here in Northern Colorado. It's always an easy conversation with Aaron, and he shares a touching loco experience tying back to his granddad and the early years of the Fort Collins Country Club. So please tune in and enjoy my recent conversation with Aaron Everett.
Speaker 2:Okay, here we go. All right. Welcome back to the Loco Experience. I'm joined again today by Aaron Everett and Aaron's been here. I don't know. That's probably seven or eight times, something like that. A few times. Number of times. Yeah. Like, uh, Rogan style. We have some of our favorites.
Speaker 3:Good to see you
Speaker 2:again. Nice to see you. Um, we're going to cover a number of topics today. Um, you've been a very busy guy the last, uh, well, your whole life really, but, uh, uh, like one of the really interesting things is you have become a fan. We talked in our last episode of, of RFK Jr. I did. In person.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did. It was really
Speaker 2:at the rally.
Speaker 3:It was a really cool thing. Um, I don't know, I've said this a number of times. I'm not really sure why that I got sort of singled out. I supposed to meet him, but it, but it's been cool. I've been doing a lot of stuff and on X and creating videos and things about, and really those videos are Just sort of, I like, I love to write. We've talked about this before. I really love to write. And this was just a really easy way to get into doing presentations of visual things in relationship to what I was writing. And, and so I started doing that and a number of those have been, um, friendly to say the least, uh, at RFK stuff. And they've been my explanations as to why I've been interested in his campaign and to what, what's happened over the last four years. I would not, um, this is not a normal time, I think, in politics. I just, it's a very unique time. And he has this very logical and, um, consistent approach to what he wants to see happen. He gets dismissed often as a crazy person and a crank and anti vaxxer and all the other pejoratives that are just really easy to dismiss somebody by. Um, which I find kind of, you know, normal. It's that this is Well,
Speaker 2:and the funny thing is, is I've I've listened to, he's been on several of my favorite podcasts and I've probably listened to him for no less than 10 hours total, uh, in different formats and things and like opposite a crazy person for the most part.
Speaker 3:Well, in particular, in comparison to the two others that are at the top of the deal. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I've, what, what have I heard from Trump in terms of actual time discussing issues and topics? Like, I don't think I have an hour of that.
Speaker 3:No, very little. And if you did his. You know, if you did give him more than an hour, which was B maybe a campaign speech or a rally, if you listen to the next one, it'll sound exactly the same, right? It's, I mean, there'd be little nuances or maybe new jokes or something, but it is, it's intended to just basically be kind of keep moving forward in the same direction. Um, yeah. So Biden's
Speaker 2:approaches more like don't hide in the basement, don't talk and throw legal grenades until something good happens.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And. And really, politics has just become not an interesting s subject. It, it's not a very interesting subject in America. Yeah. Because it, it is that. It's just two parties that kind of march forward and really neither one of them are all that great. They're not
Speaker 2:accountable to
Speaker 3:the population,
Speaker 2:to their party members. Not at
Speaker 3:all, not at all accountable to the party members. So, you know, part of my interest in him being in the campaign is to keep the conversation alive as long as possible. Um, Thank you. You know, I think if everything breaks right and things go in a good direction, I, I really do genuinely think he has a shot being very disruptive, if not winning, um, but more than that, having someone who's intelligent and articulate speak about things that matter. Um,
Speaker 2:hopefully we'll get people to pay attention, at
Speaker 3:least make, at least make the other two who haven't had to answer any questions all through their primary season, have to answer something when it comes to the election stuff. So it's been really interesting. I've done a lot of different video stuff. I think I'm up to 56 or 57 of my own plus five or six guest essays. So I'm, I'm well over 60 different video creations and writings. It's a lot. It's like seven hours worth of stuff now. Um, If you sliced it all together. So it's a huge amount. Each
Speaker 2:of those hours taking you
Speaker 3:one minute, a video takes about an hour.
Speaker 2:It's
Speaker 3:way too much time. I've spent way too much time on it, but I
Speaker 2:think that's why you got invited to meet RFK because nobody's making you do this. Nobody's paying you for it. You're not under rando. Yep.
Speaker 3:Just want to articulate things that I think are, yeah, I'm politically interested and I think there are things that are more interesting in politics than what we've been given the chance to discuss.
Speaker 2:Well in your background in writing, kind of generally libertarian, conservative viewpoints for magazines and different articles online and different things over the years, puts you in a special perspective probably.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And unique. I think, I think unique for his base. Um, although I don't know really who his base is, frankly, like it's, it's all over. Yeah, it really
Speaker 4:is. Um, free thinkers.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I hope so.
Speaker 2:It
Speaker 3:seems like it anyway. So tell me
Speaker 2:about RFK time together.
Speaker 3:So I got invited down to do the deal in Denver at the rally. And, um, it was just, uh, just something of a surprise. Frankly, I woke up to an email one morning that was just an invitation to come down. It was his director of scheduling and said, you know, would you be willing to come down to the rally at one o'clock where rally didn't start till six or five 30 or something. And, you know, had a meet and greet with donors beforehand and some other things. And he just wanted to, uh, an opportunity. You didn't write him a big
Speaker 2:check yet.
Speaker 3:No, I didn't. I've given some money to the campaign, but it's not like
Speaker 2:a bunch. Your time is worth a lot more than the money that you've done it. Yeah,
Speaker 3:probably so. So anyway, we just, uh, I ended up sitting in the room with him, his son was with him. Um, and his press secretary was kind of in and out and we talked for probably 35 or 40 minutes together. Um, what I was struck most with was. Just a genuine being a genuine person.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Um, which you don't find in politics. You know, he knew he was
Speaker 2:better than you though. Right.
Speaker 3:Made of better clay, made of better clay, men made of better clay. No, he, um, it was really cool because I went in and I, you know, I really wasn't, I didn't really know what to expect. I wasn't going in. For any with any objective, it just was kind of a very cool opportunity to meet somebody that I admire and I thought had great has had really great consistent things to say about whatever policy it is over the course of time. And I love his line, which is you can insult me all you want, but. I, I won't change my mind because you call me names. And I think that's really different than what we get in politics typically, which is if somebody comes and attacks, nuts, and then, you know, you get an apology and a backpedal and a this, that, and the other thing, he really doesn't do that. And. And probably to maybe to the detriment of his campaign, many of the people that are interested in him are very, you know, anti Israel and there's a lot of stuff related to Palestine and the conversations around that. And he doesn't back away from his particular position, which is that there's, if both people have a hundred percent of claim to the land, it's not as simple as everyone wants to make it. And it's not just good guys and bad guys. There's probably a lot there to talk about Netanyahu is not a great guy, but neither is Hamas.
Speaker 2:So there's probably two Yeah, that's the interesting thing is Netanyahu is clannical. Clinging to power. Yeah, before this all broke out. Yeah, so he's got an incentive to
Speaker 3:stick around same
Speaker 2:with Zelensky You know, he's the boss over in Ukraine as long as this thing drags out
Speaker 3:My favorite meme of just a sidebar just quickly about Zelensky, which was that I'm very the best meme I saw was Tom Cruise He's the highest paid actor in Hollywood made a hundred million dollars last year. And then Zelinsky down below said, hold my beer. I
Speaker 2:got 140 billion, bitch. I only get 10%, but whatever.
Speaker 3:So anyway, it was a great, so we got to meet him. Um, had a long conversation. He mostly asked me questions about what I thought about different things. Uh, artificial intelligence, the COVID response, uh, what the campaign was doing. Just who am I? Lots of questions about me. So I walked away Did you mention Loco Think
Speaker 2:Tank, by the way? Well,
Speaker 3:I, he signed a book that I had with a Loco Think Tank pen.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's pretty good. Did you give it to him? I
Speaker 3:gave him the pen. So he has the pen. He might get curious what it has to do with it. One of these days. Uh, so yeah, it was great. It was like, what I took away, and people have asked me a lot, you know, what would you say if you could boil it down in one word, what would you say about him? And I would just say it's genuine. Um, I actually think he's a really genuine person. He doesn't strike me. There's not a. An air of phoniness about him in any, in any manner. And I've met a lot of politicians in my life, right. Um, and spent time with them and sat down to lunches with them and, you know, went through their pitch and Corey Gardner
Speaker 4:was at the wedding. I went to last weekend. I met Mr. Gardner many times and, and he's a lot shorter than he looks on TV. Sorry, Corey, if you're listening.
Speaker 3:But, uh, you know, there's things about each politician that, you know, that the pitch is coming, that they want your money,
Speaker 2:or
Speaker 3:they want your, you know, they're not really even curious about your support. They don't really even care why you are there to meet with them for lunch or dinner or anything else. They're, they're mostly interested in trying to get their next campaign donation. And, um, And so, you know, you kind of walk in with a particular, yeah,
Speaker 2:guard, your checkbook, guard, your checkbook and your feelings, your children and
Speaker 3:everything else. And I didn't, did not come away from that at all feeling that way. I, you know, the press secretary was in a tank top and yoga pants and nothing, no air of pretentiousness about any of them. They're all very, um, the campaign itself feels very family, kind of like a family. Well, they're spending so much
Speaker 2:money on security. They can't really get nice outfits for everybody else.
Speaker 3:Million bucks a month currently right now. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Seems like probably a deal.
Speaker 3:Well, compared to being dead, which he's had, uh, four attempts at breaking in his house or five and two or three at, at rallies with people that came with guns and proposed as federal marshals or whatever. So there's been a number of, Um, reasons as to why the guy he's got doing security is worth his money. That's for sure. Well,
Speaker 2:the guy that's doing security has been on Rogan before. Yeah, Gavin DeBecker. Yeah, yeah. That guy's like one of my favorite past guests on Rogan. He's a really
Speaker 3:interesting guy. Yeah. Really, really interesting person. He's been around with a lot of presidents and advisors to presidents in the past, so really. I
Speaker 2:imagine he's probably not doing security. There most of the time I didn't, I didn't see him, but yeah,
Speaker 3:it was great. We know we went to the rally had 1700, 2000 people, something like that is kind of what the numbers said, which isn't a huge rally for politics, but it was also, it felt really good. Cause room was full actually was into the overflow room and he has a great stump speech. I mean, he really does. Um, and he talks about different things at every stump speech, which is kind of cool. I mean, you hear some of the same things. Sure. Kind of like the Jordan
Speaker 2:Peterson lecture series where he picks a new little tangent to spin off of. Picks a new
Speaker 3:little deal and does something else. But you know, it was, um, it's really great. So kind of been out trying to get ballots, I mean, get, or signatures to get him on the ballot, which is the big deal right now. You got to get, uh, 1200 signatures per district in Colorado to get him on the ballot. Um, and so, you know, Each one of those districts is going to have their own challenges about how to get that many signatures. But I think overall, seems like things are in good, pretty good shape in terms of him getting on the ballot in Colorado. And
Speaker 2:now, do you think he could realistically? Take the general election or he would be potentially a compromised candidate if neither of the major party candidates can get to the Number.
Speaker 3:Well, I think it's two ways to get there. One is that everything breaks, right? Which is For him anyway, which would be that for whatever reason any number of things that can happen in politics It happens. Could the Democrats nominate Kennedy?
Speaker 2:If they realize that Biden's bus is the short bus and it's not got far to go? Yeah,
Speaker 3:they could. They really could. That
Speaker 2:would, that's my thinking is that that would be like, they can't control him though. So that would be a big roadblock for the Democratic Party choosing him.
Speaker 3:And really, they don't, they don't. You know, both parties at this point have really truly have been, and I think this is the most compelling argument for why Kennedy matters in the particular election. Both parties have been captured very deeply by this, by both the corporate world, but also the, the bureaucratic institutions. More so even. So both of those two things playing together allow this sort of puppet show to happen above the stage. Right. But everything that's happening down below is. Is really under control. And, and you, you hear it often, you hear people talk about the CIA basically is like, I don't give a shit who the president is. Right? We run the show, they work for us Yeah. We run the show. Totally. So it doesn't really matter. And I think that's kind of what, um, it might be the most fearful thing about him in the institution is that he's talking about those things right out in the open. Right. Saying those are the, those are the issues. So we're not gonna argue about abortion or guns or anything else. We're gonna argue about the fact that the state runs everything and is the centerpiece. Of everything that happens for anybody in the United States, you have to go get permission to do anything you want to do. And I think that's where he's, and, and by permission, I mean, not just government permission, but you, you basically have to run the gamut. You have to move your way through this gauntlet of things, whether it's. Uh, you're, you know, the corporate, you got to avoid the corporate crushing of somebody or you have to find your way through government institutions.
Speaker 2:Did you, uh, happen to see the clip, um, from South Park recently, navigating the American medical system? It's amazing. We're navigating the American medical system. Just like roadblock after roadblock. You got to go back and get an MRI and do this thing and go to
Speaker 3:imaging and then back to health insurance. It's incredible. Those guys nail it. Always. Yeah. But I think it's similar. I mean, I think that's what people feel. I think that's what they recognize is like your small business in America, your odds are so stacked against you, um, for any number of reasons. And it isn't because of your product or your people or your wages or your, your balance sheet. Many times you're just up against the Just getting started is hard enough. Right,
Speaker 2:right.
Speaker 3:Because now
Speaker 2:we've got a lot of regulations that, you know, when you hit five employees, now you have to have a retirement savings account or you're automatically placed into the state retirement savings account plan.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Or
Speaker 2:whatever. And the families and medical leave acts and.
Speaker 3:401ks. Minimum alternative
Speaker 2:wages. And
Speaker 3:yeah. And all those things, you know, while that works really well for a. Amazon or it works really well for a target.
Speaker 2:well, I guess as long as they have a bunch of basically entry level wage people running their distribution companies and stuff that aren't actually Amazon employees.
Speaker 3:Well, that happens too.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, you know, I, but all of that said, you know, those guys can compete because they're the ones sitting at the table writing the laws.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:And they know that if they write the law, that little guy can't do it. He's not going to make it.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:And I think that's, that's the part that Kennedy's talking about that's so. Compelling to me. And it's because as somebody who's spent my life in small business, I know those things are real, right? It's not like I'm, you know, it's not like somebody made it up and it's a giant conspiracy. I understand it. I deal with bureaucrats in real estate all the time. I understand it. I deal with bureaucrats, whether it's in the transportation business or whether it's. You've
Speaker 2:been navigating like the alcohol delivery industry in the last couple of years. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And which is all just. You know, everything is another hurdle and another person that doesn't want to answer the phone and doesn't reply to your email and doesn't
Speaker 2:give you a straight answer and can't give you the answer to this or can I not do this? Well, I don't know. Let's have it be a mystery until you get arrested.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Or a fine or whatever. Right. Put your lights out. Right. And no, no small business just walks around and it's just like, I'm just flush with cash.
Speaker 2:Looking for a place for money on the government ideas. You know, that's not
Speaker 3:how that is. Everybody's They're trying to work really hard to do what they're doing. And so when somebody comes along and says, actually, this is an issue and this is the major issue in the United States, it's just resonates with me. So tremendously more than whether we're going to talk about abortion or whether we're going to talk about gun control or, or any of those things, which are all things they're, they're not, I don't mean to be dismissive of those issues for people because we've been trained for 60 years to think that those are the issues. So I get it that it becomes a thing. But when I look out on the horizon and I look at like. Even today, when we're there in Congress, you have Dr. Fauci up there at making basically admissions that the stuff that he did was all built in a lab and all the stuff that was, we were told were, you know, the science and the, and the facts and, and everything else. And when you hear the questions and you realize like, actually, we just lied to by government, we were just blatantly lied to or misled because they were of gross negligence, which either one. Right. Still you get a demerit. Is a demerit to me. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't work. And so that is the most compelling piece of it. It's, what's really intriguing me about being a part of it. It's what I feel very compelled to be a part of that campaign trying to get signatures, I'm suck at it terrible.
Speaker 2:So you started to say there's two ways that. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 3:I think if things break right and he goes in the right and things go the right direction and people get tired of the two kind of knuckleheads at the top and just can't handle it because Trump's in an orange, orange jumpsuit in jail or Biden can't string a sentence together at the convention or, or whatever, people actually realize what's the reason or rationale why they can't do it. He becomes a very sane choice for you
Speaker 2:think there could be a snowball effect on once it becomes socially acceptable to confess your willingness to vote
Speaker 3:for a third party, which is not a thing in the United States. We don't do it. So once he gets on, on the, all the ballots and people start to go like, really, we're, we're picking between. These two idiots, and there's a real rational person that maybe I don't agree with everything on, but at least he can string a sentence together. And at least he's got some capabilities, and at least he's actually had some production in his life in terms of actually doing things that actually have mattered, in terms of cleaning up the Hudson, or suing Monsanto, or all of these different things that have actually had real outcomes for people on the ground. If people are, allow themselves and give them the permission to say, well, you know what? I really don't care for either of these two things. And this thing he's talking about three out of four things that I actually really agree with. Yeah. What's the harm here compared to talking to either of these two, which I agree with nothing with them on other than they're in the party. That is my brand.
Speaker 2:Do you think that, um, the party apparatus, the, the, the, the Uniparty, if you will, is the bigger party problem in the US right now, or is it the, the bureaucracy, the, the swamp? And do you think RFK's got the stones to drain the swamp? Cause Trump obviously got the money. Distracted or something.
Speaker 3:Well, I, here's the thing. I don't think it actually takes stones to drain the swamp. I think it takes knowledge because when I work in bureaucratic world in real estate, if I don't know the rules better than they know their own rules, I can't accomplish anything. When I know the rules better than they do, I can win or as good or as well, then I can actually make my,
Speaker 2:so Kennedy's background in law fighting government, fighting Monsanto, fighting the insiders is really his qualifier.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what, what I think Trump is, is, is he's kind of like the bad guy in 1984, the antithesis to that, who's the guy that's, I can't remember his name, but he's the guy that they put up and he does terrible things. Two minutes hate because he talks about the things that nobody should be hearing and everybody screams and gnashes their teeth at him That's kind of trump because he really if you ask The democrats have raised a tremendous amount of money off of their hatred of trump, right? I mean Oh, yeah, orange man bad sells tickets orange man bad sells tickets. Exactly and orange mad orange man bad also Keeps them in power. Totally. I mean, because it's, people
Speaker 2:show up to the voting booth because Orange man, bad. Yeah. So I think Or mailing their ballot, whatever. So I
Speaker 3:think they, yeah, So I think that's actually a piece of the story that I don't think gets enough credit, which is that he, his sort of wrecking ball personality in this was just enough to make everybody go, well he's not gonna do anything, but we can really make everybody crazy over this guy right. Where I think Kennedy actually comes in rationally and calmly and basically says, well, I know my, I know the rules better than you do. And I think the debate thing is a great example of that. You know, Biden says, here's the rules I want for the debate. Trump immediately signs up and says, yes, they put it out there. Kennedy meets all of the criteria. In the, in the unique moment that CNN went out and copied and pasted the September rules.
Speaker 5:Mm-Hmm. and
Speaker 3:put it in and said that you had to have 200, these will be these, these will be the rules. Two. And they said you had to have 270, uh, electoral votes, at least in order on beyond the ballots of at least 270 just states to, to compile. Its 270 votes. So you could theoretically win.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:But the reality is, is. Trump is not the nominee because they haven't had their convention and neither is Biden. So neither one of them is on the, on the ballots.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:So he sues, Kennedy sues CNN in order to get on based on their rules that they wrote and he says it's an FCC contract or FEC contract. Federal Election Commission says you can't put rules out and then disqualify somebody for not being on the, if they meet those rules, you can't disqualify from them for that or it's a campaign finance violation because you're giving them advertising.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:So he sues them on that basis. That's brilliant right and that's smart and that's inside baseball and that takes that's a really
Speaker 2:and so do you think he's gonna be on? The stage with CNN Or they change the rules and they do what they
Speaker 3:want. Who knows, but the great part of that, he did sue him, and the great part is he said, you know, look, I know they're not going to be on the ballots, but I would gladly and graciously invite them in to and waive that qualification. Haha, hilarious. But that's what it's going to take. I mean, I think Trump is just truly enough of a person in the mix that people just go, I'm just bananas over this guy, I hate him, I can't stand him, he's so vitriolic and he says terrible things and he's mean and he's all this stuff. Haha. But really, when you look at what happened in Washington over the four years of his administration, did anything really change? I mean, more money was spent in Washington than all of the presidents combined up to that point, you know, that he spent more money during that time, he had no instincts at actually protecting even before COVID
Speaker 2:even before
Speaker 3:COVID yes. And, you know, short
Speaker 2:of did very little to protect. Americans from the response to COVID that was seemingly orchestrated on a global basis.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And he, but he didn't stand up for what is the constitution. What great line from Kennedy is there is no, there is no pandemic exception in the constitution. And frankly, when they were writing it, there were, there was a smallpox outbreak and there was a yellow fever outbreak in the United States. And the, the founders were dealing with it with their own families dying at home. They didn't write any exceptions in there to say that you can't, except for when, when there's this wild time that everybody has to stay at home and, you know, we'll shut the country down. Everybody talks on computers that didn't happen like that. Then. So they knew and understood it. And, and Trump didn't defend that. And I think, I don't know that Trump really understands fully how many people like myself can't go back. You know, as much as I even thought at moments, gush, you know, he's doing some things and maybe the judges and the, the, whatever. I don't think there's any. There's no attraction backwards now. I can't, I can't find myself in a position to say, Yeah, well, I have to go vote for an R.
Speaker 2:Does the, uh, does his, um, recent trial, Uh, the, the, does that draw you at all? No. To be like, they're clearly using lawfare against him or whatever. Nah. Well. Doesn't matter. He brought, whatever. It's
Speaker 3:wrong. The lawfare use and weaponization of it. So even if Trump, but he lost you already. So, yeah, so, but he's, and I would say this about his trial. I mean, in relationship to that, he very well is most likely guilty. He's not nearly as honest as everybody wants to make it to. He's not a Jesus figure in this story. No, no, no, no. Everybody wants to try to make, did he
Speaker 2:pay off that
Speaker 4:hooker?
Speaker 3:Yes, he did. And his wife was pregnant. I mean, it's dirty, gross. Sad, awful humanity moment where you're like, uh, yuck. So nothing of my character would ever indicate that that's how the life I would want to live, nor would it be the one that I would want represented to my children.
Speaker 2:Right,
Speaker 4:right.
Speaker 3:So yeah, is he probably guilty of what he did? Yes. The problem is the unequal application of the law. Totally. You don't have that for Bill Clinton, who paid off Paula Jones. You don't have it for I think Hillary
Speaker 2:Clinton paid for that like fake, uh, Russiagate thing out of her campaign contribution. Totally, the dossier 8, 000 or something silly. There's no
Speaker 3:way, there's no equal application of the law. And frankly, polarization happens when there isn't that. And that's what's really going on, is that there are people who just feel like Gosh, this, this isn't fair. Like I, I, I resonate with him and I kind of go with what's happening to him because it happens all too often. That's
Speaker 2:the challenge. Like, I think Kennedy can draw a lot of support from Biden and if he gets this message out, certainly there's some disaffected Trump people, you know, frankly, the fact that Trump can brag about operation warp speed at the same time that three quarters of his base was like, fuck your vaccine. Yeah. Um, like that's it. A very difficult resonance thing where certainly, um, Kennedy can pick up some of that support for sure, but there's 35 percent or 30 percent or something of Americans that are like, I don't care if Trump, Trump shoots somebody in the middle of Times Square. He's my man.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And um,
Speaker 3:and on some level I suppose he's in endeared himself to people enough that, that, that sort of like crazy man thing right into the movement kind of thing. The bully puncher totally kind of thing. He, he, he's endeared himself to enough people that that's always gonna be there. But I do think, frankly and kind of moving all the way through that second way in which Kennedy can win it only, he only needs to get a majority in every state. Which means if you have three people running, that's 35%, 34%. Right. That becomes the majority. And then that's winner take all for the electoral college. For most states, Nebraska and Maine are the only two that are not.
Speaker 2:Oh, they're proportional.
Speaker 3:They're proportional, but everything
Speaker 2:else. Yeah. I mean, if Trump gets 35 and Biden gets 20. Um, that's the least 45 for Kennedy, right? Or for Kennedy plus whatever the Jill Stein or whoever else is 1%. Yeah. What about that pick?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Is the Libertarian Party officially over?
Speaker 3:Please. I just, uh, it's so perfect on so many ways. I, I, I love, I love, I A lot of those ideas, I mean, Hayek and Friedman, Mises, whatever, and, and all of those guys, Rothbard, I mean, they're just fascinating reads. They're great philosophers. It's wonderful to read. And this caucus that sort of worked its way through the libertarian side of things in the Mises caucus, which really was the coalescence around the Ron Paul revolution within that deal, they really do have the better ideas. But the end of this is just, you know, Most, the most just desserts of all time for somebody in the sense that they, they do, there's an arrogance about what they think, because they really do think that they're the smartest people around totally in relationship because they've read all these guys and they know it and they know it like the back of their hand and they can quote it, but it, you know, the 800 people in that room for, it turns out only about 400 of them cared about it. Right. And so the rest is like. Well, none of the above almost won in that particular instance. And it, it really was a, the way they did their party thing in terms of how the votes actually ended up happening, it was a basic elimination of all candidates except the top two over and over again.
Speaker 2:should RFK have been courting the libertarians far sooner?
Speaker 3:No,
Speaker 2:no, I don't, I don't think it matches up. And I also don't
Speaker 3:think that they were going to go there anyway. They really, he does want to use the, the,
Speaker 2:the, the, the government to do stuff to a significant extent, not this free range kind of libertarian model.
Speaker 3:Well, and, and I keep coming back to the idea that But not
Speaker 2:make you do stuff. Like, that's the thing I, like, he wants to see Government can do something. Like, health outcomes improve, nutrition, like, what's the sources of all these diseases? Why do we need 74 vaccinations that, you know, from companies that are immune to prosecution or Testing apparently for these vaccinations, you know, all those questions, I think are valid.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I don't think he's standing there saying that government, um, shouldn't do any of it. Right. I think his premise is If you're going to have government, it should be good government, which is really sort of left over from British Empire, Magna Carta stuff, like government should be good. If you're going to have it. Right. And, and I think that's the, that's where I've landed on it as well for a minute is like, we're not, we're never going to live in a world in which no government exists.
Speaker 2:There's too much money to be made by manipulation of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And, and frankly, there's too many conflicts and too many complex and too many people. I mean, you lived in a thousand, a land of a thousand,
Speaker 2:like, yeah, maybe Alaska. Yeah. Maybe maybe you go. Yeah. If you
Speaker 3:live in Unalakleet, Alaska, it's probably not going to, you're probably not going to find a lot of federal invasion in your life anyway. Right. But in the normal world, if we're going to have it, it might as well be good. And I think that's the advocation that he's making. And it makes some sense to me. I mean, on some, some deep level, that's really good. And I think, you know, that's where the, the Trump stuff is his advocacy for go smash it all down and drain the swamp and do all of this stuff functionally never happened. You know, truthfully, like Obama built more wall than Trump did. I mean, technically there's, he didn't function. Uh, as anybody in that space, other than to help Democrats raise
Speaker 2:money, part of it was, he was just assaulted from a shit storm from all sides. Yeah, well,
Speaker 3:and he didn't, he never really, his base, his, his unique portion of his base, the 30 percent or let's call it 55 percent of Republicans that really love him and adore him. Yeah. Um, and which is really about.
Speaker 2:Twenty five percent of the population. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of independence out there these days.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, there's more now than ever before It's the largest political party in the United States. All right independent party,
Speaker 2:right?
Speaker 3:So, you know, you just I don't think he really is just do that. Yeah, you would think like You'd think it would make a difference. No, it's just for branding most most people If you did a survey of people, three out of four Americans would agree on the same things we, we should have the SIM, these things that are a part of less than
Speaker 2:280 military bases around the world or 700 or whatever it is, there is,
Speaker 3:we should not be in foreign wars, we should, we should probably watch our spending, we should probably have realistic balanced budget amendment, we should have realistic things about what you do with a middle class, we should be restoring the middle class, we should be doing things about trying to continue and continue Keep jobs in the United States. We should be doing what we can in order to be, you know, as clean as we can with the environment.
Speaker 2:Fixing blighted areas and stuff like investing in inner cities and things.
Speaker 3:Most people agree to that, even, even some of the most diehard. But like, I'm a big pro libertarian guy. I'm going to be like, Hey, look, we're, we have a government, so if we're going to do it, we probably ought to figure this out, you know? Um, and, and so I think that's, I think that's a part of what is intriguing about the moment. And I think it's partially how he can win too. If he gets enough people, gets those majorities in enough states, if he's able to win, Anybody fails to get 270 electoral votes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If nobody gets 270,
Speaker 3:nobody gets 270, then it does go to the house, which is the second way I think he can win, which is that he becomes the compromise. He becomes the position. The house
Speaker 2:is basically like 50, 50, right? And it is
Speaker 3:it's whoever the house is at the time.
Speaker 2:Oh, and the.
Speaker 3:The new election. So it will be after the election because they swear in first.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So who knows?
Speaker 2:Right. It could be. Yeah. Well Trump dragged people down. You know, they're anticipated. I think the Republicans have like the numbers like there's a lot more Democratic seats up for contest than otherwise,
Speaker 3:but. You know, you have that piece of it tied
Speaker 2:to this orange man bad efficiently and whatever. Yeah. So anyway, there's
Speaker 3:a couple of ways that I think it could happen. So it's legitimate. I think it could happen. I think I'm, I hold out hope that, um, he stays in as long as possible and has his,
Speaker 2:he wants to win. What's the downside of it? There's no downside. Yeah, no, it's clear in listening to him that he thinks that, The stars are aligned in such a way that it's probably going to work out. You know, maybe not probably, but it has a real calling toward this is my time and my place. Uh, so
Speaker 3:yeah, if, if people haven't watched the, who is Bobby Kennedy half hour deal that they did, um, it's fantastic. And it it's, well, it's a political ad and a political commercial to some degree it's paid for by the super PAC that supports him. It really does get into who he is and what he's done. And, you know, from, for most of my life, RFK Jr. has been a like head of that whole world in the democratic world. He's been lionized in many ways for all the work that he's done in, in with the environment and all the other stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, and then we can transition to our second topic. Now, um, his book, like that's where you got bigger stones is the real Anthony Fauci book, probably more stones than wisdom because, uh, like he got, he was swept into the poop storm from there and that swept him off of his high place. Yeah, of appreciation among those circles before
Speaker 3:certainly between that and his his commentary around vaccines over the years That is really what turned him into for some for so many. He became a pariah.
Speaker 2:Yeah villain eyes rather instead
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I and Anthony Fauci You know You know, he is the science, so there isn't really any way to have an argument about it. And, and sadly, you know, that's what we, that's what we've become as a country is that you can't, a person like that, who's been a bureaucrat in Washington for 50 plus years. He's highest paid. He's the highest paid bureaucrat in Washington. You can't question it. You're not allowed to question it. You're not allowed to ask deeper questions. And even, even if you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt for, let's call it 15 days or two months, was he sort of guided people through this? Because he's the chief virologist, right? Right. Even if you wanted to do that, at some point, empirical data has to be analyzed in order to decide whether it is science or not. This sort of You know, on high order that everyone, yeah, that everyone needs to comply with public health or else, you know,
Speaker 2:well, we measured it and six feet is the number. Right. You know, you
Speaker 3:ask him about it and he says, well, we kind of just. Pulled it out of the air. Now, it doesn't make some sense. I suppose that you could stand away from each other and not make each other as sick, sure, whatever, but that doesn't necessarily mean that, that we had to create an entire global policy around locking a country down and keeping people away and shutting down businesses and keeping kids out of school. And that's the stuff that on so many levels, that's the problem. And just the
Speaker 2:perverse incentive, right? Like what was the number that was just released? Is it 700 million? Of royalties paid to
Speaker 3:NIH. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of money. Yeah. It's a lot of money. And they don't, and by law, and Fauci said it in a testimony today, by law they don't have to disclose their royalties.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:If you work for the government. So just think that through. No one else gets this. Right. No one else gets to have this benefit. You work for the government. If you work in NIH and you work on a product, you do not have to disclose your royalties neither on your income statement. So you don't have to pay taxes on it and you don't have to disclose it for FOIA. It's fuck off. Totally. I mean,
Speaker 4:that's the law. What's to keep the
Speaker 2:bad
Speaker 4:guys from creating bugs that they get the profits from making
Speaker 2:vaccines? Oh wait.
Speaker 3:Oh wait. Sorry. It's, it's disappointing. And it's, and it's, from a rationalist perspective, you listen to it and go, this is, this doesn't make sense as to why some get to get away with making vaccines. But that's where the division comes in in America is that there's just not equal. The whole rules for the not for me kind of
Speaker 2:mentality is there aren't
Speaker 3:men made of better clay.
Speaker 2:There aren't. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so if there aren't men made of better clay, then there aren't men that get to decide who those who is better and who isn't. Yeah. And that's where we landed is that there were some that said, because of my wisdom and education and my position and everything else, I get to tell everybody else how to live their life. And I also get to say to the detriment of those people, you get out, you're out of business, you're
Speaker 4:done.
Speaker 3:Sorry. You know,
Speaker 4:here's some,
Speaker 3:here's some
Speaker 2:look how well I handled the HIV thing.
Speaker 4:Listen to me and
Speaker 2:bow down.
Speaker 3:It's. It's really weird. I mean, and there's been movies made about the, the darkness of that guy. The Lincoln lawyer is all about AIDS people trying to be able to buy generic drugs. I mean, he stopped that,
Speaker 2:right?
Speaker 3:He was the, he is the head of that department that stopped all of those things. And, and, you know, as this will make people mad, I'm certain. Cause he's a very venerated character in our world. And I, I'm sure, you know, so
Speaker 2:if you love Fauci, then you can just fuck off and not listen to this podcast anymore. How's that? Welcome to the loco experience. No, I
Speaker 3:just, it's sad. It's, it's sad to me that you can't question your own government at some point, that becomes the issue for me. Do you think
Speaker 2:he was doing his best or do you think he knew that he had been compromised, was probably guilty? The, in some fashion of funding this stuff that got away, you know,
Speaker 3:in part of the testimony they talked about, and it wasn't Fauci, but in this, in this world of testimony, they're talking about, they, there was somebody yesterday that was talking about FOIA requests and they had a lady from FOIA teaching them how to avoid. FOIA requests or make it harder. That's bull. Right. You know, this is nobody gets. Freedom of
Speaker 2:information act. Nobody gets to do this. Like nobody
Speaker 3:gets the access at the FOIA person to find out how to skirt around the rules. Right. That's not what the bank
Speaker 2:examiners teaching you how to cook the books without them noticing. Right. Or whatever.
Speaker 3:Moody's review lady and the big short, right? Like you can't do this. And you can't keep doing it to people and then expect them on the other side of it to just be like, okay, I guess that's good government, you know, like at some point people get pissed, people get frustrated. And what I, I probably, you know, all the way back to it, what I resonate most with it is that this is not an angry person. Uh, Kennedy is not an angry person. Yeah, he's a righteous person. Like, I think he looks at this and says, there's righteousness, injustice has been done and we need to do something about it. Yeah. But he's not coming from a, a burn it down vitriol type of, he's not that person. He hasn't been
Speaker 2:harmed in his opinion really. I mean, even despite being banned and blocked and dragged through the mud. He thinks this is the
Speaker 3:life that, this is the life that God set out for in front of him and so he's comfortable with it.
Speaker 4:Yep. Where's my bib? I'm ready. Yeah. Like get back at it. Give me
Speaker 3:those lobster crackers. Go back at it. So yeah, very, very fascinating times in politics. I think America will be better for it if this plays out, like I hope it does, which is that there's very large disruption in politics. Yeah. Enough
Speaker 2:chaos that nobody really is a clear majority is probably the ideal.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Outcome. That would be wonderful because then I think it does, it begs all these questions about our system, about what are we doing and how do we do this? And we're not a democracy, we're a representative republic and
Speaker 4:we're
Speaker 3:all these bigger questions about what's the electoral college and you know, it'll, it'll foment to be a place in which people will get agitated and angry. But at the end of the day, I think they would realize like there's some wisdom in how this all happened. Yeah, yeah. And really this, the way they wrote it and set it up. Did it before, you know, 1800 was a, a really, Jefferson called it the second revolution in the United States, which was, he saw the thing as the Federalist Party and there were no parties prior to that. So you really had George Washington and John Adams. Both were from the Federalist Party. They didn't call the party. They just were called Federalists because they were in support of federalism, which was the stuff that came out of the Federalist Papers. So that's where the name came from. But they weren't a party. They were just politicians. And Jefferson served in that administration and Hamilton served in that administration. All of them, you know, they were all these founding fathers. And so when 1800 rolls around, you actually have Jefferson who resigns from the cabinet and in the Washington cabinet, he serves as Adams vice president and realizes that this is just broken. The whole thing doesn't work. We can't get. We have different ideas and you need competing ideas to make something happen. So he starts the Democratic Republican Party, gets enough people around him, Madison's mothers to sort of coalesce around him as a leader of that
Speaker 2:deal. I haven't read much about this.
Speaker 3:And they go to bat with Adams in 1800 over the, and that's, and Jefferson calls it the second American revolution because the idea of small, dumbing, shrinking federalism's power, which is what he was up, was frustrated. He was trying to
Speaker 2:do.
Speaker 3:He did not like the bank. He did not like Hamilton and what he had built. He did not like the power that was being coalesced around Washington. And he wanted, and it wasn't Washington at the time, it was, it was New York or whatever, but the capital city, he didn't like that. He didn't like what was going on. Government needed to be smaller in his opinion and states needed to be more elevated in that particular deal. That's what he, that's the idea he put forth, put it to the public. And he, and his. Group ended up winning and that's really where we get the party system interesting and and he called it the second American Revolution, huh? I did not realize. Without violence. Right. Right.
Speaker 2:Well, and then probably the federal system grew and grew and grew again after that. And then Jackson was really the next one to be like, yeah, we're not yucky. We got this federal bank system thing. It was back away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, and if you're Jefferson and your insistence on smaller government, and then you go back Buy the Louisiana purchase, double the size, real estate deal, but, uh, you're not really living, you know, it's, I don't think it's as it's, it's not as simple as what everyone wants to make it into this small government, a large government. And I think that's what I've realized by doing it. Going through this exercise by being a part of the Kennedy world is like, yeah, I think government is way too intrusive. And I think in the power that it's assigned because of bureaucratic, the bureaucratic institutions, that's too much. There's too much of that. Government in itself is what we choose to order ourselves by. So there is some natural inclination, no matter what. Right. To have government and to have it do something. So, so I think this, this world that we're in is that you, you can't just, you know, you can't be the libertarian party and say that. We live anarcho capitalists or whatever. Right, it's probably not going to happen. And, and really at the end of that is probably not that valuable, nor will it be healthy for society.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the big swing that I, like to see is from both financial and therefore power concentrations shifted to a more localized effort. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because like as a good example, like the Innosphere here locally won this huge whatever billion dollar federal grant and da, da, da. But it's ultimately Like you got to be in good favor with Washington, D. C. Yes, you do. Right. And yeah,
Speaker 3:Nixon made that happen. I mean, basically every dollar goes back to Washington and then comes back to you and they have to touch it. So it's really, it's really depressing. It's really sad. I mean, I did hear about a school in Windsor, um, a charter school in Windsor that had the opportunity to take a federal grant and there was a bunch of strings attached to it with the DEI stuff. And they. Declined it. They declined the grant as the school and the private donor came in and wrote a check for the grant money.
Speaker 2:Wow,
Speaker 3:which is cool. That's what we need to be doing. More of those stories need to be happening in the United States. There needs to be more of that idea that like we can do this. Don't need somebody's blessing in Washington. Totally. I don't need somebody to say yes to what we're doing. We want to do what we want to do. And there's that balance against like, there are national interests that we should probably recognize and understand that whether that's waterways, airways, whatever it is, there are things that we all live under that we should probably be conscientious of and
Speaker 2:have,
Speaker 3:and have some national interest in. Totally. But I don't know if you could have everything have national interest. Well,
Speaker 2:and if you have like too much, you know, national minimum wage, That gets really high, well then Alabama can't attract companies to Alabama because the wages are so much lower. Then Alabama just sucks. Yep. Right? You just got no competing advantages. This one size fits
Speaker 3:all. If you could see anything through COVID, it's this, that one size does not fit all. Totally. It doesn't work. You can't just say that this place is how it has to always happen. And this is what needs to happen. And, and, you know, I think this Trump's probably biggest mistake in the whole deal was that he allowed those people to convince him that one size does fit all. And this is how it has to be. And this is the end of it. And if you don't listen to us, then you really are not, you're not, you're antithetical to science.
Speaker 2:Hit it hard on the politics so far. Any, uh, anything else, current events or politics related we should touch on before we get more localized?
Speaker 3:Oh, no, I'm, I'm just, I think it's, I love politics on many levels, I think it's a great American game, but I always have to remind myself sometimes, like, go outside. It's, it's that I love that about America in, in, in many ways, the word that I think is I've learned this year that I like a lot is eudaimonia. Eudaimonia, which is a, a Latin word. Um, that is, um, about the idea that it's the pursuit of happiness and happiness is not things or, um, even your own internal sort of smiley ness. It's really about the help of others, the concern for others, the general feeling of goodness and welfare. Like community joy almost. Yeah. Community joy. And, and that comes from that there's more benefit for your neighbor when you are happy. Yeah. And that is, um, something that I really do hope for that we might become as a nation again. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is the aspiration we should have. And it's really what Jefferson meant in the, in the declaration when he said the pursuit of happiness. He, that's an Aristotle term. It's, it comes from Aristotle and it really is, uh, New Daimonia is a, is. Well, and
Speaker 2:I want to tie that back. It's Latin, it's Greek. I'm sorry. I want to tie that back because when you were talking about like, You know, they, they want to talk about gun control or abortion or whatever. I was thinking like, to me, a federal government has. And I think that's a role in the abortion conversation because I, I frankly prefer it in the state's kind of realm. They can reflect different cultures and stuff. But if the federal government has a role, it's in creating a society that values unborn children and wants less so to have, I mean, like the actions that lead to abortions there, I'm sure they're pleasurable, but they're not eudaimonia. You know, they are instead like kind of the actions that, that the, the Bible speaks that are, warns about.
Speaker 3:Well, and culturally speaking, um, you can't have eudaimonia without knowing that the golden rule of loving your neighbor as yourself. Love is the key to the whole conversation and really any of the cultural issues that we face, guns, abortion, whatever, environment.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, but little boys in my house is what makes me happy, Aaron. Sorry, just kidding. How could you be the judge of how I get my eudaimonia? Just kidding. I
Speaker 3:love the idea that you have to love your neighbor as yourself. And I, and that if, if it's just self gratification then this, this might be the culture we're Yeah, or something that harms others, obviously. Anything like that. Yeah. This may be the culture we're, we're left with because we didn't do that. Hmm. We didn't strive for that. We strove for things that were about filling our own buckets first. Instead of our neighbors. Which leads you very well into local conversations because that's really where we can do this.
Speaker 2:Right. We can't do this on a national stage. It's hard to do. For sure.
Speaker 3:It's really hard to do.
Speaker 2:Um, should we take a short break and then come back on it?
Speaker 3:Sounds good.
Speaker 2:And we are back. Um, where did we leave off? Well, with all the politics and what not. I think
Speaker 3:we were moving towards conversations about localism.
Speaker 2:Localism. Yeah. You, uh, you're actually at least a contributing Part of the, uh, when we were redefining our values at Loco Think Tank last fall. Yeah. Uh, be smart, be kind, be true, be local, be the change, be you. Yeah. That be local at least had some, uh, support from your corner.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. Well, it's a, yeah. You know, after you talk about all these things that seem So that's it. We're done here. I will see you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Speaker 2:I think there's,
Speaker 3:I think there's one seat open as far as I know, um, but there's only three seats ever at that level. And so one person makes a pretty significant difference. Um, and you know, that County, Larimer County goes through a lot of different changes over, but it's a far more rural County than most people give it credit for. It's just very much dominated by
Speaker 2:Fort Collins. Yeah, Fort
Speaker 3:Collins. Hard to beat it. But, um, Yeah. So I think those elections will have a huge impact. I think, um, we'll be, I'd be really curious to see what happens even, uh, with the state and house stuff locally. I feel like in many ways, you know, the state's continued to turn more and more blue, but frankly, I think that's a little, Even polis was
Speaker 2:having a hard time with like a super blue.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Legislature is like, I have to be the sane one
Speaker 3:here. Yeah. Which is a saying a lot. Right. You know. Um, and so I think people will react to that differently over time. And I'm not
Speaker 2:saying that Republicans are all sane and Democrats are not. But, but when you get a, a house that has a lot of activists in it, one way or the other, and they have a huge majority, just weird stuff happens. Weird
Speaker 3:stuff happens. Yeah. no doubt. And I think people, I think people in this state are generally speaking, pretty. We are pretty rational people. And I think we do still want to see good things for the state. I don't, I don't think we want to look at it and say, let's turn it into California. Right. And I, you know, as much as that feels like some of that is happening, I think, um, people will react to that differently than I think. Um, then I think it happened in California. I think people are, there's just more, there's more realism, engagement here. And
Speaker 2:there's a community, not just kind of, yeah, I am.
Speaker 3:And And life is real, like, you know, weather and things here are real. Like, that's, that's.
Speaker 2:There is some unrealness about like LA especially. Yeah. My dad always used to say about
Speaker 3:LA. I was like, why, why is everything so weird here? And he's like, cause nobody lives in anything that's real. Right. Look around, you know, you're 10 minutes from the beach and you're two hours from amazing skiing.
Speaker 2:And the weather is kind of this band almost all the time. It's always
Speaker 3:70 degrees here. And then a whole
Speaker 2:bunch of people work in making picture shows. Yeah, just really
Speaker 3:weird stuff, right? So I don't think we'll ever get quite there. Um, and I don't think, you know, frankly, we don't have enough, right. And, you know, California is dominated by San Francisco and LA for sure. Denver's a huge dominant piece of our world. And so are Boulder and Fort Collins and Colorado Springs. But in general, I don't know that. I don't know that everybody in those places is nearly as Marble y lost as possible. Right, right. And for the most part Well, and really
Speaker 2:Denver doesn't have much influence on Fort Collins. No. Like most people from Denver have never even been to Fort Collins.
Speaker 3:It happens a lot, yeah, it really does. Maybe not
Speaker 2:most, but a lot of them. A lot,
Speaker 3:yeah. And I just think in just generally speaking, I think, you know, Colorado tends to work its way towards some things that make some sense, make some rational decisions. I have lots of hope for it anyway. I don't know. You know, I just don't think it will just continue to radicalize. So we'll see what happens. But I think, the more interested and more engaged people get in local politics, local things, Uh, still, you know, greatest question I've probably been asked in the last little bit as, Um, you know, somebody said, well, what can we do about all of this stuff? And I heard somebody say, well, when was the last time you went to the city council meeting? Right. And the answer is I haven't ever been, you know, for that person. And that's really where this is all being impacted. Right. You know, our, our, most of our lives is being impacted by city council. Um, and whatever town we live in far more or a county commissioner far more than it is by Donald Trump. Right. Right. And we don't see the
Speaker 2:headlines about it because there isn't a local newspaper where you can actually read about stuff that happens anymore and nobody tunes in enough to care.
Speaker 3:No. And it's easy not to. Right. Life is busy and things are this and it milks eight bucks and all these other things that did happen as a consequence of federal stuff. But local politics makes a big difference in what happens, especially in land use. I mean, I've always encouraged people like. Go to the planning and zoning commission meeting. You'll be one of seven people there, or one of seven people that isn't interested in an interested party. Right. Right. But you'll see what happens and how it works. And you'll see actually that staff runs the show and you'll understand, you know, what these politicians are sort of up against and how they do it. And then you actually might become educated about saying, well, like, I don't really want staff running our city.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:If we're going to elect
Speaker 2:people, then what's the point? I think we talked about the Fort Collins like it's basically a business development office now, right? Like it's a what do they call that?
Speaker 3:I don't remember the name of that particular
Speaker 2:but there's like a whole You know 12 people. Yeah at the city of Fort Collins on business engagement of some sort right now Community development type stuff, right and aside from sauna like none of them really have any business experience. They don't really I mean, they might have degrees in urban planning or economic something, something, but
Speaker 3:it's part of what we've done. They're siloized. It's really part of what we've done, which is that we've elevated academics to such a level that. That there's no life experience is never tempered against academics It's the academics is the more superior way at which you arrive at your conclusions in their studies or things or strategies And what you do that, but you know real life world happens and they're like, well that Shove your study, dude. I don't it doesn't have anything to do with right. We're actually battling down here. So I Totally encourage people to get engaged in that stuff. I mean, if, if you had 10% of the population in Fort Collins or Windsor or wherever, Greeley decide that they wanted to go to a city council meeting one night,
Speaker 2:right?
Speaker 3:There wouldn't be enough room at City Council, but fired
Speaker 2:1%, there wouldn't be enough, there wouldn't be enough room. Well, 10th of 1%.
Speaker 3:And so if you did that, if you got enough people activated, but people actually activated civically. Hey, I don't know if I really like what you guys are. I'm a big fan of the idea that the pulling off here. Or maybe I'd like to just learn about what you're pulling off and you got enough people doing that. You know, I've said it a number of times on the show, same 20 people my whole life have been the people that have driven policy in Fort Collins. Right. And it's just because they show up.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's, I mean, truly those same 20 people have shown up to every city council meeting and every planning meeting and they run the show. They decide what's happening because they're the voice that the politicians hear.
Speaker 2:So who's up on the Lamer County City, uh, County Commission?
Speaker 3:You know, I just saw, I think
Speaker 2:he was,
Speaker 3:I don't think it's John. It's, I can't remember who the guy is, but the guy running in opposition is, was the mayor of Windsor. Oh, uh, from when I, Paul, Paul, recently, Reedemeyer or yeah, I know
Speaker 2:that guy. Yeah. He had a pints with Paul thing. Yeah. Every. Yeah, he was
Speaker 3:actually a really excellent mayor of Windsor. He's a good guy. And I don't know if he must live in, on the Highland Meadows side of the border or whatever in the Windsor. He's in Larimer County. But he's in Larimer and he's running for county commissioner. I saw some signs up for him and I think he'd be a great candidate. He'd bring some of the eastern side of, or ranching side of, farmer side of Larimer County back to, um, Yeah. And I, you know, I think John, if you get John's a reasonable person, John Cofalas is a pretty reasonable person. If you talk to him, which I know you have, he's a very reasonable guy. So that would be, I find him more moderate than I do radical. For sure.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, 10 years ago he was radical. Yeah. Now he's moderate. Yeah. Not because he's changed.
Speaker 3:No, the, the, the, the, the, the, the line moved. What it takes to become a
Speaker 2:radical is, uh, quite a bit different than it used to be. Pretty, pretty different.
Speaker 3:But I think if you had John and, and, uh, Marin, Marinamire, or however he's, Paul, whoever his, uh, Yeah. How do you say his last name? I think if you had those two on there, that would make a very dynamic, uh, county commissioner board, and I think it'd be really good for Larimer County.
Speaker 2:Right. Okay. So. Yeah, that's my vote. That's what I know. Um, should we do a real estate update? Sure. Yeah. Uh, what's, what's new prices
Speaker 3:still stay the same. Materials
Speaker 2:costs and stuff are still high inventory is still low. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm on still high
Speaker 3:when I was talking, uh, thinking about talking about this today. I'm like, this is pretty much repeat, like, I just say the same thing over and over because nothing really has changed. It's still, you know, there's a
Speaker 2:little blip of like a point lower rates maybe a couple months ago, but everything,
Speaker 3:you know, people have stabilized the idea that interest rates are not going to be 2 percent or 3 percent anymore. So that mental hurdle is over. So the lull we felt in the fall, which was, it was substantial in many cases where people kind of put the brakes on some things. That seems to have passed particularly if you're in a price range. That's good. If you've got a great property and you have a good You know, you're in a good location And you've done anything that's at all attractive in the house. It's multiple offers still
Speaker 2:still
Speaker 3:so and that never really changed it might have fluctuated between You know, instead of 30 offers, like we were getting a couple of years ago, it's two, but you know, we were just in competition in one in Windsor and we lost out to it. And it was, uh, it was five offers on, on a property, great property. It was, it went over asking price and, you know, waving of inspections and a bunch of stuff. So all that stuff was there. So it's still part of it, but it's on the good properties because there's everybody's rushing to those great, uh, A plus properties. Okay.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 3:The B plus and C plus properties don't have multiple offers. They still are selling relatively quickly, pretty close to listing, pretty close to listing the properties that are struggling. Um, you know, the difference is once you get kind of down below C plus properties, what you end up with is people that then actually price it accurately. And those are still selling too, because they're, they're Low enough price that you're starting to get back into entry level stuff for people, but entry level pricing in Fort Collins is 500, 000. So your first time homebuyer is buying a 500, 000 house, single family detached home in Fort Collins, single family,
Speaker 2:1200 square feet, no basement, 1500 square feet, no basement, kind of a three beds, marginal two beds,
Speaker 3:maybe two or two or funky things with a floor plan. Probably lots of work to do in the house. 500 now is the number. Which um,
Speaker 2:you know, I remember what's the mortgage payment on that with 35
Speaker 3:To 4, 000 bucks.
Speaker 2:I could never buy a house in today's world.
Speaker 3:That's pretty tough. You know, it really is It's really tough to see it and I and I don't think you're gonna see that change anytime soon I mean the inventory here is not There's no relief coming for that. Um, what you see in sort of new construction, new construction has changed their pricing to accommodate a lot of first time homebuyers. So that's a good place for people to go because they actually are doing a lot of buy downs and getting people into housing that they can afford. But we just sold a condo in Timnath to somebody through Lenar, which is a great place. They have actually a great program. They hold the house, the mortgage in house.
Speaker 2:Um, Is that that kind of series of townhomes you can see across the, Yeah. Yeah. I, I noticed them the other day.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I sold one in there and, but these, these guys are paying with HOA fees. It's 3, 300 a month for a condo for condo. So that's Metro, you know, cause you have Metro taxes on top of it. You have HOAs on top of that, the insurance for everything, you know, insurance here is they don't pay out. So insurance never gets paid out. So premiums are crazy for hail and everything else. And then you have a hail storm and they just kind of fight you, fight you anyway. So yeah. Yeah. You know, it's the biggest racket in the whole world is insurance. So if anybody's listening, it's an insurance agent, you can take it up with me. Brandon, Brandon, talking to you.
Speaker 2:Um, so kind of stable and, uh, cost ineffective, um, is the story of the day. And you said there hasn't been much change with water. What was the status on water?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, Northweld is still a really big issue in our region. They've opened a few things in terms of they, they had a, uh, intergovernmental agreement with severance, a couple of other places in which they now allow, if you do development within those regions to be able to get taps, but it's an allocated number of taps per year. So one of the issues in severance is they're supposed to build a new elementary school, but the town wrestled with, um, a commercial project that was coming on tap. Or giving those same taps to the school. They gave it to the commercial because the sales tax revenue, the school sits, you know, delayed. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you know, that, that has its own, um, challenges, but they don't seem, I mean, they probably are closer. I know they have a deal with Elko now and some distribution stuff that are going on, but I don't know that they're terribly closer to figuring out how to do rural development, which is really What's happening east of here. Yeah, yeah. And is a genuine relief valve for a number of things that would allow things to happen that would bring pricing relatively back. At
Speaker 2:least you can buy a 400, 000 dollar house north of Eaton. In Eaton, right. Or
Speaker 3:Alt or whatever, but you can't get those taps right now because of North Weld. So there's pretty, still a struggle.
Speaker 2:Can they dry up farms around there? Make that work, or like what's the solution? No, Northweld,
Speaker 3:it really is, Northweld is in control of that district. So, unless you have over 35 acres, you're stuck. If you have over 35 acres, you could drill a well. Unless you could get a single family house on 35 acres with a well.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 3:Otherwise you have to wait until the district is willing to serve you. And they will, so far have not provided any will serve letters for people, not ready yet. And I don't know, you know,
Speaker 4:sources of water that they could, they're working on it.
Speaker 3:They're trying to put an arrangement together with Elko, but that is still, I mean, Elko's putting in a, gosh, it must be a 40 inch pipeline all along County road five. And it's going to take. However long until they get until wherever and so yeah, they'll struggle for a while and they're a huge district I mean they go clear out to 85 and past Wow and north past alt and south to Windsor
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, so all of that is impacted there all that Windsor which is really kind of the prime time I was actually driving around over there the other day and Like the views from from even from East Timnath and stuff now is really cool Like oh, yeah, we don't realize how much
Speaker 3:we get the back range, you know, right sitting over there So people really do like it over there and it's you know Windsor's growing up and there's lots of really great stuff happening there.
Speaker 2:Well a lot of couples You know, one couple, one parent will, or one of the two will work in Fort Collins. The other one works in Greeley or in Windsor or Loveland or something, you know, so all that.
Speaker 3:So yeah, there's lots of issues with that. Windsor has its own water treatment plant and they could still supply some water and some of that, you know, that South Fort Collins, Loveland water district. Weaves its way through raindance and some other, you know, not raindance, but some of that other stuff that's over there. Highland Meadows. Oh, really? I didn't realize that. It's all South Fort Collins, Loveland, Water District, and that, they go all the way through Timmoth. So South Fort Collins covers a lot of Timmoth. Okay, so that's more secure. They're kind of pocketed out. Yeah. Um, but Northweld, otherwise, you know, it starts to pick up pretty quickly just past Timnath, and then there's not a lot. Well, that would be
Speaker 2:a shame. It used to be, you know, that kind of drive until you qualify notion, but with, like, high gas prices and high water prices That just doesn't really work anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if, what I've heard 35 acres
Speaker 2:and car.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it may be. You know, but even those are selling for a couple hundred thousand bucks a piece. Right, without property. Without, you know, a mobile home on it. Yeah, you don't have a house on it. You can bring your tent out or whatever for 200, 000. But, uh, no, yeah, pretty interesting stuff. You look at Windsor, um, and what's happening there and just the different things that are happening within our market. And I think it's going to, it's going to take a minute to recover from some of the stuff that has happened with water. If, if we can do it, if we can recover from it, I think there's still a lot of reasons why maybe one of the reasons that they aren't really paying attention. And I love that this is like a bigger picture, but the, the result from pursuing it is that there may not just, there just may not be enough shares, right, Um, for them to really go out and get aggressive about it. So I did hear that if you do, if you are able to secure a tap on a development, Um, in north world that it's, it's between the water share and the tap fees is in excess of a hundred thousand dollars. So that's for a single property, for a little single house. For the right to
Speaker 2:buy water. For the
Speaker 3:right to buy water and hookup.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, about a hundred grand. That used to be 20.
Speaker 2:I remember when it was 35. I was like, that's insane. How could you ever do that? It's like, yeah, 25 percent of the cost of the house.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, it's that or more now. So anyway, yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 2:It costs a lot more.
Speaker 3:We'll see, uh, we'll see what actually ends up happening in real estate, but we do need some, we need, we do need some, if we're going to have this many people here, we do need some growth and it can't all be apartments. Uh, sadly, people just don't, you know, That's not sadly. People don't want to do that, you know, so
Speaker 2:have you ever heard of a Devil's Lake, North Dakota by chance? So Devil's Lake is a about 70 miles north of Jamestown where my family farm is are and stuff maybe maybe only 50 and When I was a kid, uh, there was a lot of talk about the Garrison Diversion. And the Garrison Diversion was to take Missouri River water, all the way across the state of North Dakota, put it into Devil's Lake, because Devil's Lake was drying up. This historic natural, uh, No outlet lake was drying up and all the fish and all the tourism. And it was kind of a resort town of sorts. There was a number of things. Um, and the reason it never really got done is because the overflow, if it ever overflowed, was over to the Cheyenne river, which eventually flowed into the red, which flowed up to Canada,
Speaker 3:Winnipeg.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And Canada was like, Fuck that salty water from Devil's Lake running into our river systems We don't want it because you've been you know, it's almost I mean it was not salty like the Great Salt Lake But it was salty and yucky and other stuff. And so they fought this whole Project and then along comes I graduated high school in 92 Probably by about 94 we had Um, like cycles of heavier moisture coming. And then by the 2004, 2006 times, there was, we had some 10 inch rains and things. And all of a sudden devil's lake is literally four times as big as it was when I was in high school and it's overflowing Canada, you're getting it one way or the other. They didn't have to build all this. Yeah. Channels and stuff. All of a sudden, Devil's Lake is back full and there's farms that used to have, you know, a thousand acres. They're down to 430. Oh, wow. And stuff like that. Like, it's It's all underwater. It's crowding everywhere. Yeah. And, uh, you know, that would be lovely if that could happen around here. If we could have some kind of a climate shift where all of a sudden, we're going to have All of our mountains are full of snow more and our reservoirs are full. And all of a sudden, you know, Glen Canyon and Lake Powell and filled back up again. Right. Then California and Arizona can go back to stealing all our water
Speaker 3:or
Speaker 2:oversubscribing or whatever, because we've got some real significant national level problems. Problems with water.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah. Between the Western slope stuff with Colorado river, there's bad, but now you have people in Nebraska making claims on the plat and making claims done downstream that are handshake deals from 120 years ago, making claims on which now makes it. challenging on, on the whole system too. So yeah, there's a lot of, well, that will be the biggest issue. I've said it for 15 years, but those are the
Speaker 2:main things that a federal government is necessary for, like those kinds of arguments a little bit, although
Speaker 3:I would think so, you know, I think as much as we would say, Hey, the state, that's the state situation to resolve reality is, is that. That waterway impacts way too many people.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, and we can't have California sending troops to Colorado to make sure the Colorado river flows. No, just not going to work.
Speaker 3:And those agreements, if they're, you know, if we can't fulfill those agreements based on whatever drought or whatever it is, right, it's not, there's probably other issues there that need to be done and addressed. And some of that does come down to reservoirs comes down to how do you store water? Because you do need to store it. There's no way to do this many people. You know, I have this many people up here this
Speaker 2:far away from where there's real water
Speaker 3:without more reservoirs, so. Yeah, I mean, very, very interesting stuff that'll happen in real estate. I still think inventory will remain its biggest issue a lot, and that will be driven both by water and, um, and politics, which just doesn't allow, growth is just not, it's a dirt, it's a four letter word.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So, um.
Speaker 2:Well, and just like the, the financial costs of, you know, the energy, like you couldn't build a four room shack. No. In Larimer County. Like, even if you just planted, uh, Like, resided at Three Seasons and not even have a heater. No. They would never let you. Like, you have to have perfect, wonderful windows, and like.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the code is, the code creep has been excessive too, which is a whole other topic in building, which is just much more collusional than anything else. Uh, that's a, another. Feels dangerous. Moment of, another moment of collusion where the, the, uh, international building code that the. Party that writes that every year is a 501 C3. So it's a nonprofit and people that are manufacturers donate to the code book. Oh, right. People that
Speaker 2:manufacture smart, uh, things and insulate are 38 insulation. And then if you want to have a quadruple pane windows,
Speaker 3:competitor, that's an equivalent. You have to prove it. Right. Is it an equivalent, which is a pain in the butt. So you just go with the one that's in the code book. That's right. This, and we got
Speaker 2:in the code book cause we made a big donation to the IBC.
Speaker 3:So anyway, those, those things are broken. Um, there's certainly broken elements of all of our society in many ways. And that's just one small example of it. And we feel it probably more than most in our region, because it's, we're on the front lines of a lot of those things that are really impacting us because some of those conversations around water, some of those conversations around politics and land and your land use and code all. Kind of coalesce around making it really unaffordable for people here, which is, which is detrimental to our community. I mean, I, we would, we're a better place if we have more people who are. different in thought and opinion and economic status, we will, we would be in a much better place. I
Speaker 2:wonder who, I was listening to, it might have been Jordan Peterson or something, but, um, the school of thought that, like, all these people are, are liabilities, you know, and mouths to feed in, on a, on a global scale especially, but, but in reality they're the, It's having a bunch of people that comes up with lots of good ideas. And life gets better when you can have a bunch of new thinking people that are educated.
Speaker 3:Well, it comes down to how you see humanity, right? If you see them as a scourge and a virus.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Which a lot of people do. Unfortunately, yeah. Unfortunately, then. Then you treat them as such that they're, they're somebody to be remediated. Um, if you see humanity as something that's divine and got a divine imprint upon it, then you look at things differently and you, and you see, um, humans as a much more. Impacting, meaningful thing that can create relationships and also innovations and beautiful things. So it comes down to how you see
Speaker 2:it. I've rarely heard it put just that simply that whether we're a virus or part of a divine creation.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Uh, but it's pretty much that simple. Kind of that simple. At
Speaker 3:least in my mind.
Speaker 2:Sounds a little rough, but yeah. Um, I want to shift to, uh, You've been slinging Loco Think Tank a little bit the last couple months. And, uh, just in kind of a semi formal role of being like, What's it really look like to sell this service?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Out in the community and who wants it? What do they want to, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been really cool, actually. I mean, we talked about it, um, You wrote an email several months ago. Yeah, I guess that was, yeah, we introduced
Speaker 2:you to it or whatever. And it was
Speaker 3:kind of a, Hey, I wonder what is the trouble spot here? Like, what, why aren't more people signing up? And more, Um, so I sort of volunteered myself, I suppose, into it and said, I'd like to try, see what we could come up with. And, and I think, I think in over the course of things, I think we're creating something closer to something that'll work. I think that will work. Right. I think that, um, and I, I don't think you could do that without getting into it and knowing like, okay, this is a pinch point. This is a problem. And this is something that we need to fix in terms of the business side of it. But you know, the conversation itself is still one that, um, More people need to hear and more, more people need to hear, especially in business. We've, and we said this when we were kind of, or I said this when we were kind of talking about me trying to do some of this stuff, you know, small businesses, just to really lonesome place. And it really is hard, you know, you, whether you're battling, you never know when you're going to turn your phone over and there's another, like, Right. Massive crisis around the corner or your truck breaks down or you're the, you know, your employees. And it's not even talking
Speaker 2:about ransomware and no, yeah. Or real bad things that people do to you.
Speaker 3:Your taxes or you're not talking about any of that. You just never know what is around the corner and what other shoe is going to drop. And so I think it's really easy to just get discouraged in business. And Loco has in many cases become a place for people to feel like they're connected on a level that they can trust. What they're saying to somebody else and the people that actually understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Cause non business owners just don't.
Speaker 3:No. And you know, for most business owners, they're not either taking it home to their husband or their wife. They're not, they're not doing that. They don't want to leave that at the door. They
Speaker 2:shouldn't too much anyway. Yeah.
Speaker 3:They may, they might, might lament about their day or whatever, but, and to have some sympathy, but that's, that's about the best you'll ever get out of your own home or your own relationships is some sympathy. And if you need to fix it, Which is its own thing, which is really what most small businesses actually need is the ability to fix what's wrong in their business. Then, you know, they, they have to engage that and try to come to that ability to do it. And they can't do it by talking to their buddy and they can't really talk to their competitors and they can't really talk to somebody, you know, you want to, you don't want the word getting out that your books are in trouble.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:So yeah, you know that, that's another kiss of death. So, so LOCO becomes this really great advisory board and really something beautiful for people to actually engage in. We, I feel like it's a lot like if people go to church, a small group. You know, there's something where you have people that you trust, you can tell not your dirtiest secrets potentially, but some of them.
Speaker 2:Well, I like to tease my, uh, the church groups organizer guy for our church, Daniel. I'm like, dude, if you're, if our home groups could be as transparent and vulnerable as my local chapter is full of heathens, like we'd really have something here. Um, because I do think generally our groups are probably more authentic than the average church. Church small group. Yeah. Yeah, because you're gonna see those people every week. Yeah
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's true It's it's been really cool to see that and see the impact that people actually take from it because there really is genuine Impact for so many people in local world. And so yeah, it's been fun to do it I think we're picking apart some things that are really good I think probably trying to help get closer to how does it become
Speaker 4:repeatable and
Speaker 3:more of a system than it is Kurt's deal.
Speaker 4:Right. Right.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. Which was kind of my goal coming in. Yeah. More of probably an ambassadorship kind of a thing than like a, Real sales person or multiple sales people.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's not
Speaker 2:repeatable Kind of a product
Speaker 3:and it's not that repeatable in the world that we're in I don't think we've talked a lot about this the lack of sales people Generally speaking right people don't know how to sell or pick up the phone or
Speaker 2:right
Speaker 3:do whatever or have a conversation with people And so I think there's a
Speaker 2:notion of a gatekeeper.
Speaker 3:Yeah,
Speaker 2:you know and Yeah, we could probably wax onto that. One thing I wanted to ask is you probably met with people Yeah, some, whatever, a dozen or more people that have known about LOCO for a while, like, you know, I said, Hey, this person would be good. What would you say was the, were, was or were the biggest impediments?
Speaker 3:People are afraid of giving up their time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's not even money. They're afraid of giving up their time. Some of it's money, of course. You know, if you're a fledgling business, it's tough to come up with a couple hundred bucks a month or whatever. It's not that it's time people feel that there are everybody's pressed for time. Yeah. The sense of urgency that has come from our technological always in your brain world makes people believe that they don't have four hours of a day, which is a month, a month, which is a sad, That's a sad indictment upon us as a people,
Speaker 2:um, but also well, and as to their relationships and things like that, too, right? If you don't have four hours a month to work in your business, how much time are you spending working on your marriage? Yeah, or your relationship with your daughter?
Speaker 3:It's it's really a sad indictment of our of our moment and I don't I'm sympathetic to it because I think a lot of felt it too of course like and You know, our money doesn't buy nearly what it did, and now everything is more expensive. And, you know, you look around and you're like, Oh my God, what, where did this, where's the hole in the bucket in my bank account, you know? And a lot of that just comes from the fact that everything's gotten more expensive. And so, you know, people are working, they're working really hard and they're trying to really make it and living here has, is a very expensive place to live. Right. There's always something to do. So there's another great event to go to another beer to drink, another whatever to do. And so people, you know, it's disposable income is tough, but also people just. The time is just, there's always somebody, there was a demand on everybody's time. And so I think that's, uh, that's been the biggest impediment in anybody's conversations. I don't think it's the right time for me right now. And I would, you know, I've kind of always pushed back on it and say, well, if you say that, then there really probably isn't ever a good time, right? You'll always find me now. You'll always find a good excuse as to why not. Yeah. Um, you have to kind of find a reason to, um,
Speaker 2:what would you say would be the, the degree Either non information or mal information or like how many people didn't really know what local think tank really did
Speaker 3:most of them
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah, even though they've been on my newsletter for years Probably some of my blogs and they've
Speaker 3:even been on the podcast or talk to you personally Right. I think people are also generally skeptical of networking So I think most people are like B
Speaker 2:and I has messed up the pool for us Like they saw B and I getting out of the pool and they're like, oh that guy peed in there. Yeah for sure. Totally We're not a networking organization for those of you listen No,
Speaker 3:but I think people really think that that's what it is And so they're they're skeptical of that and they also you know a number of conversations I had were like was this just this is No, this is not to disparage chiropractors and real estate agents Cause I am one, but a lot of people think that that's what these groups are, which is just the fledgling chiropractor and the guy that needs to figure out how to be in the.
Speaker 2:At least get three customers in his real estate real estate business. And so, which
Speaker 3:is not what this is, it's not one local is at all. And it's, it's factually, in fact, dramatically almost opposite of those things. It's really isn't a networking thing. It's really more of just the chance. You almost wouldn't want to sell to the people in your group, you know, because they almost become two front, too much of a friend. Like they really become these, these Not that you would turn their business down, but I think you, you, Yeah, you know, we have a policy
Speaker 2:that you're supposed to clear it with the group before you enter into it.
Speaker 3:Because it, it, it would do damage to the, the situation. Right. Potentially. If you're
Speaker 2:selling insurance in the group and you know that basically all the insurance is a bunch of baloney, why would you harm these people that you care about? Just kidding. That's for you, Brandon. If you're still listening, Brandon.
Speaker 3:I have it out for you.
Speaker 2:Just for our listeners, Brandon Avery is, uh, is alongside with Aaron, uh, a couple of ambassadors and advocates for Loco Think Tank and long time members and facilitators and oh, and if you're listening, Aaron is going to, um, we're going to launch a builders chapter with Aaron as the facilitator, probably in. September, October, you know, we'll maybe have an organizing thing in September and a real launch in October or something. So, uh, if that's something, and this is for builders, uh, which is what we call the under five employees, typically under half a million in revenues. You're off the ground, you've got customers, you're not starving to death, you have a root for real business. Yep. And you want to get from that 80, 000 a year business up to that 300, 000 and then, um, then 500, a million. Yeah. Um, so that's cool.
Speaker 3:That's yeah. And then I'm looking forward to that. I think that's been, it's been good. I mean, I've really appreciated getting to know the business more and understand what it is that is happening and how it works and kind of under the, under the hood of it. So yeah, you've been
Speaker 2:a member a couple of different times, but that's one angle. That's one perspective. Different,
Speaker 3:different deal to be on this side of it. And it's been really fun to feel like if people would take the time out to. To participate and do this, they would find benefit from it. I'm almost, I can't think of a single business that wouldn't benefit from it at this point. And even people that say, oh, I've done stuff like that. I'm I'm all right,
Speaker 2:right. Yeah. I talked to a consultant one time. It's not, it's not
Speaker 3:that it's the relationships that I think are so significant and that are so important in this and that are, is lost in business, which is just, you just don't have those relationships.
Speaker 2:Well, You have relationships, but like you have relationships with your suppliers, your employers and stuff, but it's not the kind of relationship that accommodates vulnerability and transparency and realness about stuff.
Speaker 3:No, you can't tell your supplier you're behind.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And you need that supply. I can't pay you in advance for this. Product, because I'm not sure if I can make payroll next month, unless you can front me that just be real about that. Can't go through that stuff. So,
Speaker 3:yeah. So anyway, I think, uh, it's been really cool. I think I'm very excited about the future of Loco. I think it's got tremendous legs and traction to be something great if we can really dial the recipe in and get it to figure it, you know, a way in which it's wash, rinse, repeatable type of thing. Um, you know, I think we can get there. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Um, Any recent loco experiences that you'd like to share? Any old stories, anything like that?
Speaker 3:Gosh, that's a good question. Uh, I always think about that when I'm driving over here and then I always space out and get distracted.
Speaker 2:I was offering you a, uh, a two up ride on my BMW motorcycle through, uh, through Bighorn Canyon when we first started working together.
Speaker 3:I said, yeah, that sounds fun. And you said, you're a liar.
Speaker 2:Basically that, yeah. I do believe that you would enjoy riding a motorcycle through that canyon once you had enough experience. Confidence and stuff, but I'm not really sure you would ever enjoy writing two up with somebody going way too fast. No, no,
Speaker 3:I wouldn't. So maybe I was just being nice. Oh, what's a good story about local stuff here that I'm trying to think of? Well, did I tell my secret service one last time? About the, uh, yeah, from the mom. I did that one. Yeah. Like when you were like in high school, just becoming a voter almost becoming a voter, we told that story. Gosh, I don't know. You know, I don't have a,
Speaker 2:do you have any, uh, best fishing stories?
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, you know, actually
Speaker 2:you've been, you've spent a lot of time in the stream over the years.
Speaker 3:I have. Yeah. Um, probably my favorite, this is a little sentimental actually, you know, kind of grown up around here. Um, we. Years ago, my granddad, um, had a guy from the Diamond Tail Ranch, which is clear over on the other side on the Laramie River. It's, you take the Laramie River Road in between there and Woods Landing. A huge ranch, cattle ranch there, and the guy wanted to join the country club. And we had just,
Speaker 2:no, just here. Oh, just right here. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And my granddad had just started the country club. So he, he built the country club too. Yeah, of course. Oh, I didn't realize he built that too. Everything big, big shoes, big, deep shadows. Um, so he and a couple of other guys, about five guys that, um, decided to do the country club. They kind of put it together. And my granddad loved to fish. And so this guy came over from, drove all the way over from there.
Speaker 2:Sure
Speaker 3:said, I wanna join your country club.
Speaker 2:Well, if you live in Woods Landing area, like the closest real town, I mean, you got, but
Speaker 3:back then Yeah, I know. So comes over and, um, he said, well, I tell you what, I, I won't, I don't want charge you. Uh, a fee for the country club, but I want to fish your land.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So he sets up this thing called the diamond tail fishing ranch. And so, so like almost a swap, like a swap members back. So, yeah, so you, he, people could go up there and pay a membership and fish on the river and then some people could come down here and he's going to come go. So we did, he did that and
Speaker 2:we were, that was probably a win, win for both. Oh yeah. Organizations.
Speaker 3:Fishing members there forever. And then it changed owners and did a bunch of things. And the club kind of continued to go on through the eighties and nineties. And then it kind of went into other ownership and they stopped the club and it was expensive and this, that, and the other thing. And so we didn't really do it, but a few years ago, it was for 2015. Um, I. Found out that the club was still operational. My granddad was still alive. Yeah. And so I, um, I bought a membership to go fish the diamond tail. Oh, okay. Cause I hadn't fished it since I was a little kid, sure. And those were in the eighties, nineties, whatever it was, but I had fished it last. Um, and so I said, well, let's go fishing. Um, and so we ended up You know, we tried all summer and my dad, so the three of us, we tried all summer and we just couldn't quite get it together. And by the end of August, um, he, we finally had a, it was August 31st actually, right before, uh, Labor Day. And we went up and he said, yeah, I can do it. So we went. And we went to, uh, through Laramie and we bought some flies and he said, you got to have this fly. And it was a funny fly. I'd never seen before. And, um, he said, this is the Wyoming renegade or something like that. And so we've got this fly that he wanted to buy for me at the woodsland or at, uh, at the West Laramie fly shore. We'd drive up and fish all day. And, um, I, my granddad was getting old at that point, he was 86 or so, and struggled to walk around in the river a little bit, just kind of fell, fell a couple of times. I just stopped fishing and kind of went with him. Um, and just let my dad fish and my, and I just kind of watched my granddad, um, fish and, and it turned out that was the last time he went fishing. So, uh, he and I got to watch my grandpa fish on his last trip and, uh, did
Speaker 2:the renegade bring anything home?
Speaker 3:Well, I didn't fish it, so I don't know, but I still have it in my box and I won't fish it because it's so, it's so sentimental to me now, um, that I, I don't, uh, I don't, I don't fish it, but, um, It was a great, it was a great kind of fine, fond memory of something that he had put together in his last fishing adventure of his life. Yeah, yeah. He died the next February, so.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Um, so yeah, that was the last time he went fishing.
Speaker 2:Wow, I didn't realize that was eight years ago now. Yeah, that's a long time ago.
Speaker 3:Wow. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:It's, it's weird because, We were just getting, we had been acquainted for a while, but it almost feels like that season was when our friendship really was finding its cement, if you will. yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3:it's, it's, it's, It's crazy to think, but, um, yeah, he's, uh, he's crazy. He's been gone since 2016. So, um, but yeah, anyway, that was, that's a fun memory. That's a fun loco experience that, uh, something connected to the country club. Yeah. Diamond tail ran
Speaker 2:around when, when, when was the country club planted?
Speaker 3:In the fifties. So it would have been, uh, 58, 59, somewhere in there, and so like
Speaker 2:60 plus years later,
Speaker 3:60 plus years later, we're, he's, we're trading, you know, I take him up to go fishing again.
Speaker 2:Bob was a young man when he put the country club thing together, apparently. My
Speaker 3:granddad moved here, I think moved here right after the Korean war. So he was probably 24, 25 years old when he started the lumberyard here.
Speaker 2:And then just like quickly just put it.
Speaker 3:Just, he said it many times. You can't. You know, I, he had the two best things in real estate, which was, he had location and he just happened to time it right. Right. You know, it was a place that everybody wanted to be and he happened to be in the right place.
Speaker 2:Well, and he was obviously used his skills and communications and mostly relationship building. That's exactly what it was. Um, to kind of coalesce a community around this little Bohunk place.
Speaker 3:Well, and, and that's what it took then, which is, I think, going all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, that's what I would really want for America again, this opportunity for someone like that. Yeah, let's have a
Speaker 2:community that says, this is our place. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And somebody who really didn't, I mean, he, he had an accounting degree. It wasn't like, he wasn't, he wasn't an expert in real estate development and he wasn't an expert in, but he's really loved people and he really loved this place. And so to the ability to get. all of those things at the table and create a community and create something great without a bunch of oppression or people on top of ya and all this Making it happen. Making it, ya know then You're
Speaker 2:inviting it to happen, not making it happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah. There's this really interesting beautiful spirit about America in the 50's and 60's here that I think allowed for That kind of recipe to happen. And I would love that for my children. I don't want them to fight the fight. I've had to fight, or my dad has had to fight to try to just succeed and be a,
Speaker 2:to do the right next thing. The next right thing. It shouldn't be so hard. No, it
Speaker 3:shouldn't. You should be able to just have a career and survive and do what you want to do using the talents that you've been given. And that doesn't, That doesn't happen in America very more, very much in you, not as easily anymore. And so it takes a lot of work. And so, yeah, that's a salute to
Speaker 2:salute to Bob, Godspeed, sir. I hope you're having good fun up there.
Speaker 3:I know he is. All
Speaker 2:right. Well, thanks for this conversation area. We'll see you next time.
