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 177 | Building a Multi-Location Bourbon & Bacon Colorado Pub with Ryan Wallace, Co-Founder and CEO of William Oliver’s Publick House
I popped into William Oliver’s Publick House a few weeks ago at the end of the day, to grab a quick beer and a snack - and ran into the owner whom I remembered from their early days - Ryan Wallace. William Oliver’s had been a regular lunch-spot for me when I worked at Capital West Bank - a top choice because the staff was always great and they served locally sourced fare in a non-pretentious fashion. After leaving the bank and becoming Old Town centric in my consumer behaviors though, William Oliver’s fell from my rotation for many a season.
But now - it’s back on! - even if I have to go out of my way. When I asked Ryan about being on the podcast, he said “only if we can drink too much bourbon” - and I knew we were going to have a fun time. What I didn’t know is that William Oliver’s now has additional locations in Windsor and Lafayette, and that Ryan is not only an incredible spirits expert and armchair historian - he’s also a very-business-savvy CEO!
Ryan’s journey into founding William Oliver’s is all about “why wait?”. He’d been working in various contracting and consulting roles, fell in love with Publick Houses during a stretch in the UK, and had a dream of “someday” opening a pub in Fort Collins. His wife Tiffany asked the question “why wait”, and a year later they took over a tiny space that had been vacant for years, in the King Soopers center off Drake and Timberline. They worked evenings and weekends building out and then staffing the kitchen and the bar (and raising a family) for many a season before they could depart their day jobs. But the concept caught strong from the start, and the location was soon expanded, and later, more locations added!
William Oliver’s is a story of passion, smart business, employee engagement, and why wait - and Northern Colorado is richer in deed and in spirit for it. So, please join me in enjoying my conversation with Ryan Wallace.
The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain
I popped into William Oliver's public house a few weeks ago at the end of the day, to grab a quick beer and a snack, and ran into the owner whom I remembered from the early days, Ryan Wallace. William Oliver's had been a regular lunch spot for me when I worked at Capital West Bank. A top choice because the staff was always great and they served locally sourced fare in a non pretentious fashion. After leaving the bank though and becoming old town centric in my consumer behaviors, William Oliver's fell from my rotation for many a season. But now, it's back on. Even if I have to go out of my way. When I asked Ryan about being on the podcast, he said only if we can drink too much bourbon, and I knew we were going to have a fun time. What I didn't know is that William Oliver's now has additional locations in Windsor and Lafayette, and that Ryan is not only an incredible spirits expert and armchair historian, he's also a very business savvy CEO. Ryan's journey into founding William Oliver's is all about, why wait? He'd been working in various contracting and consulting roles. Fell in love with public houses during a stretch in the UK and had a dream of someday opening a pub in Fort Collins. His wife Tiffany asked the question, why wait? And a year later they took over a tiny space that had been vacant for years in the King Supercenter off Drake and Timberline. Evenings and weekends building out and then staffing the kitchen and the bar, and raising a family, for many a season before they could depart their day jobs. But the concept got it strong from the start, and the location was soon expanded, and later, more locations added. William Oliver's is a story of passion, smart business, employee engagement, and why wait? And Northern Columbia is richer indeed and in spirit for it. So please join me in enjoying my conversation with Ryan Wallace. Welcome back to the Loco Experience podcast. I'm here today with Ryan Wallace, and Ryan is the owner, president, CEO, uh, William Oliver's public house here in Fort Collins. So welcome to the show, Ryan. Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here. Yeah. Nice, uh, nice hot bike ride for you down here to the show today. It wasn't too bad. Not too bad? Luckily, we had good cloud cover. Yeah, the cloudy, uh, and the electric assist helps a lot. Yes, it does. So, um, I guess for the uninitiated. Uh, tell folks about William Oliver's. Yeah. William, as it is today, William Oliver's just a, a whiskey and bacon bar is the way we like to call it or whiskey and bacon pub. Um, we are a public house and, uh, my wife and I started it in 2013 with, uh, 38 seats and 150 whiskeys on the shelf. And now we're three locations. Um, and we've got, we've got about. Between 400 and 500 whiskies on the shelf at any given moment. Wow, and how many seats? Uh, I think our smallest location is Fort Collins at around 83, and then I want to say Lafayette is 120, with the rooftop, 125. Yeah, yeah. And what's the third? Windsor is the third location, and it's right in the middle on size. And where are you at in Windsor? I wasn't I didn't do my research, obviously. I thought you still had the one location there. No, uh, yeah, we're right downtown at 514 Main. Oh, yeah. Immediately downtown. Bank of Colorado was right across there. I worked real close to that somewhere, 500 block ish. Yep. Very cool. Yeah. Well, congratulations on all that growth. That's, uh, when did the second and third locations come online? Um, uh, Lafayette is about seven years old now. Okay. Um, and then Windsor is about a year and a half old. Oh wow. So 2023. Yeah. We were hoping actually to open Windsor earlier. Um, we were planning on putting a letter of intent on a building, uh, on March 18th of 2020 and March 16th of 2020 is when the governor shut all the restaurants down. So, uh, yeah, it was interesting. It was, it actually worked out to be great for us because, um, We are a business that does not have any debt whatsoever. And so we had the cash reserves to build out a third location. And then when we pulled back from doing that, we had the cash reserves to maintain our business through COVID. And, um, we didn't have to lay anybody off and, you know, we just rediverted those funds. So it was great. It worked out. Now you say you're bourbon and bacon, but you guys have a pretty Broad menu of tasty treats, right, still? I mean, I used to come there for lunch a lot when, I used to work at the bank just down the street. That's actually, probably, I met you briefly, but I was just some dude coming in there for lunch, right? I could tell you were the owner of the place. Um, but you would have really great locally sourced, kind of snackables. Yeah, um, when we first started, it was very, very limited, um, right behind the bar. So, like I said, it was 38 seats. The kitchen was a spot behind the bar. Food prep certified. I would come in the morning and I'd make one hot item from scratch. When it was gone, it was gone. And so, usually by about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, we were out of hot food for the rest of the day. Okay. So, it was deli cut sandwiches. And then, um, at our one year mark, we expanded the Fort Collins location. And that's when we were able to put in a kitchen and yeah, so now, I mean, we've got smoked salmon sandwiches, and we've got salads, and hot dogs. It's actually a pretty full menu. Yeah. Our kitchen is tiny, though, and we don't have traditional stuff. So we don't have a griddle. We don't have deep fryers. So, you know, I, I like to say that we're a place that you can go and, um, get traditional pub fare that isn't traditional barfare. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I think that the distinction is pretty easy. Um, would you say that you're like a English style pub or a Scottish style pub, or like, how do you, how do you categorize yourself? We claim ourselves to be a Colorado pub. Um, obviously anytime you're going to have a pub, it's going to have to have some influence from, from overseas a bit. And, um, I got the privilege of living in England for a while, working for the ministry of defense and got really familiar with English pub culture. Okay. And so we. Definitely borrow pretty heavily from that. Um, and, but we don't get offended if somebody is like, Oh, you know, this is an Irish bar. This is a, uh, uh, English bar, Scottish bar. We're like, no, we're Colorado pub. And we're not a bar. We're a pub. We're a pub. Which is, for those who don't know, a pub is somewhere in between a bar and a restaurant. It's not quite either. I dig it. Um, who, let's, should we talk about your team a little bit? Like, uh, do you have GMs at each location? Yeah, we have a phenomenal management team. Um, I don't know how we lucked into it over the years. We've, uh, we've just. By being a good boss is a big part of that. I don't know. I don't know. I think it's just luck more than anything. Um, but yeah, each of the locations has a GM. Um, one of the GMs wears two hats. He's, uh, Josh, he's the. the GM of our Fort Collins location, but he's also the beverage director for all three locations. So he's, he's the guy who now figures out which whiskeys go on the shelf and what cocktails are going on the menu and all that stuff. And then we used to have a kitchen manager who was the KM for all three and, uh, he's He'd been with us for, I think, eight years. Just over eight years. And then, uh, he got another opportunity, which was very good for him. And, uh, I'm back filling as the KM now. So, which has been fun. Back to your roots, kind of. Back to my roots. Getting into working on the menu a little bit more, which is awesome. I love it. When you did one hot thing for all day, like, what were some of your things? It would change every day. Like bangers and mash and stuff? Uh, my My favorite was I'd do jambalaya, I think on Thursdays. And then, um, so I'd literally go to the market in the morning and pick whatever crockpot or whatever. I virtually like, yeah, exactly. Big one. Um, and then on Fridays by Friday, I was too tired to get up early. Cause I still had a day job at that point when we first launched. So, so I'd come into the pub, make the hot item. High five the bartender, go to my day job, you know, do that whole routine, go home for dinner, and then I'd come back and I'd work to close down the bar, you know, and, um, And yeah, so by Friday, I was like, you know, I just want to sleep in a little bit and that's where hot dogs came from is I was just like, let's throw hot dogs in some boiling water and put them in a bun. We can have relish and sauerkraut and all kinds of goodies. Yeah. So on, on a Christmas Eve, we haven't done it the last two Christmas Eves. I'm not sure if it'll come back. No, we have three locations, just a little bit harder to make it work. But when we were just one location, I would be the sole bartender for Christmas Eve. Oh, and then the food was. Going back to our roots, just having hot dogs and they're just free hot dogs. You didn't have to buy anything. Just come in and get a hot dog. So, uh, on the hunt for maybe a kitchen manager at some point after you, uh, get a, get a taste for it back. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure we'll get back to having that, but right now I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Um, and then what's your, you're, you're a pretty long hour. Establishment, right? So you got probably quite a few employees at each, a lot of part timers or how's that work? We're primarily full time is who we always look for, but we, we always say we have room for whoever the right people are. So if you're the right person, you only have part time staff availability, then we're going to take you. Um, But yeah, we're 11 a. m. to 2 a. m. One of my favorite stories about that is, uh, one time I was bartending and this guy comes running up to the front door and he opens it up and he goes, Is it too late for last call? And I was like, It's one o'clock in the afternoon. And he goes, It says you close at two. And I said, That's the other two. That's 12 hours from now. I like it. I, uh, I have one distinctive story. I remember, uh, you guys had a black bottle tap takeover day one time. Um, and I was the banker that financed black bottle way back in the day. And, uh, I was in there having one of my lunches and there was a guy come in and said he was really hung over and what should I do? And, and just a minor threat was one of the pints that were only 4, I think. And I was like, you know, if you, if you have that, this is like an 11%, uh, a pint of an 11 percent beer will change your day at 1130 AM. I guess it will. Maybe for the best. I don't know. I don't know. He did it. He took my advice and went forward. Yeah. I decided I should have one too, actually. I went back to the office a little bit tippy, but whatever. Yeah, that was a wild tap takeover that we did with Edmund's Fund. Is that right? I feel like tap takeovers aren't a common thing anymore. I don't see them advertised as often. Yeah, you know, I think the, the craft beer industry is in such a generalized decline that it's hard for them to get, you know, Innovative anymore, I guess or you know, they're I don't know. We've done some pretty fun events to break the mold We did one called what's in my mouth with new Belgium and you had to You were just given, you knew they were all new Belgian beers, that was your only hint, and we allowed cheating. So we said, talk to other people, go online, do whatever you want, uh, and you just had to figure out what the beers actually were. Ah, interesting. What was funny is people who would guess, uh, you know, the beer's bright pink and they're, they're guessing 15 54. Right. I'm like, come on, the internet's going Totally. I think I could do pretty good at that. Odell's even better probably. It was a really fun event and we got people, it got people really engaged once they knew they were allowed to cheat. It was such a vibrant time in Fort Collins region and that kind of coming out of the 2009 2011 kind of doldrums. And just a lot of, you know, local think tank started in 2014. Um, you know, he sounds like you started in 2013 and there was just a lot of new stuff happening. Yeah. I still feel like there's a lot of new stuff happening, but I guess so, uh, local media used to be, I think a little bit on it, right? We had, we had a really good food and drink section in the local paper and so we were just kind of missing that piece, which I think every small city in America is missing that local piece. Right. Yeah. No. And media has become a lot less trustworthy since the old school stuff died too, right? And so nobody knows where to look for what. Well, on that note, uh, we got ranked, you know, those like 50 best bars in America. Okay. We got picked as the best Irish bar in all of Colorado. And as we already talked about, we don't even consider ourselves a Colorado, we're a Colorado pub. We're not an Irish pub. That's awesome. And the funny thing about that though, is you could tell it was clearly written by somebody who was just. sitting in an office somewhere Googling. They haven't been to any of those places. And, um, Lucky Joe's, downtown Fort Collins, they got best bar, best Irish bar in Wyoming. And so I tagged them on our social media and just said, you know, we're, thanks for the shout out calling us a great Irish bar, but our neighbor over here is so great, they beat out a whole other state. I love it. But that's the problem with a lot of, you know, the food and drink media these days is it's, there's no real journalism behind it. It's just somebody sitting there and hitting Google and churning out an article. And quite honestly, their deadlines are ridiculous. They've got a, an article every 30 seconds is essentially how they're cranking out media. Yeah, no, it's a, it's an interesting dynamic and we'll get probably more into the state of the world in the future of this conversation. Um, what's changed in your business? It's like, as far as. Customer tastes or habits. I mean, I know that for me, like the trail, it's been kind of my, I live six blocks from the trailhead. So if I want to go out and Jill's out of town and I want to shoot some pool, that's kind of my place. But like they do last call it like. 1245 these days almost and there's barely except for the The the the meat marketing clubs like nobody's even out after midnight a lot Yeah, that has changed Although we that was one of the things that we always stayed open as late even through the coveted restrictions as late as the restrictions Allowed us and as soon as we were able to get back to 2 a. m. We stayed that's just kind of your thing They allow us to be open till 2 so that's what we do We've always wanted to be the industry bar, you know, and so like on Mondays, for instance, we do. If you're in the industry, we have a happy hour special that's 50 percent off anybody who's in the food and beverage, you know, so we've, we've always liked being the industry place and you can't be the industry place if everybody's closing at 10, 11 or midnight and we're closing at midnight. Well, they can't come to us. Yeah. You know, so that's, and, and that is, that's Primarily who still is our midnight to 2 a. m. Is that right? Is industry. Oh, that makes sense. I've never really thought about that. And that's, I worked in the industry and when I was in college, you know, and, and a little bit after that, and, uh, Just a bunch of neat people. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And they've And they tip well. They tip, they do tip well. You have sort of instant camaraderie. There's, you know, anytime you're talking to anybody, whatever industry you're in, it really doesn't matter. When you talk to somebody who does what you do or knows what you do, there's a lot of background information you don't have to provide. So when you just want to vent and be like, oh, my day was this, you have an instant audience who's like, yep, I get it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that's a great correlation to, you know, my real business, the Loco Think Tank is like, you know, we're all owners and deciders of businesses in this room. Yeah. And one might be a, a pub, another might be a sign manufacturing company and a made service agency, but, We see things as much the same. Yeah, and we can have similar frustrations without having to dive into what does that actually mean? I don't understand those words. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so you mentioned your wife Tiffany? Tiffany. Yeah. Um, she was has been a part of it since the start or since day one. Okay, we would have no success without her She CEO this year. Oh, is that right? and Our kids are in high school and she just, she wanted to make sure she finished the, the, the, the, the, before they go off to college, she wanted to finish those years strong with them and be around to do whatever it is, you know, teenagers want to do with mom and dad and she wanted to be the driver for that. So she said this year, she just wanted to step back to focus a little more on family, but kept CFO because she's the book gal. I do not get it. Accountants speak a different language. I don't understand what they're talking about. Half the time I just nod my head, you know? So what shifted in your world, like, cause you, I assume you had to take on a bunch of responsibilities that she had been doing. Yeah. I mean, I was doing most of the daily operations before anyways. I just took on a larger set of them. Obviously just all the CEO looking forward. What's the next six months, 12 months, five year plan, those sorts of things. Um, but not a lot. Not a whole lot changed in my day to day. I just now have one less person to bounce ideas off of and and she's obviously Happy to always give me advice or input stuff But I'm trying real hard to to create that boundary for her right? Well, he loves to work when you're home You want to be like with your kids and with your wife and stuff, not necessarily burden them. And she just, she loves working. And so I know if I, if I open the door for her to come, she'll come back full steam without remembering what her goals were. Interesting. Interesting. That's a fascinating dynamic. Um, One thing I remember about William Oliver is when you first opened is that, like, I don't remember if you didn't have tips or if you, like, paid a living wage in some capacity but had, like, an upcharge that was automatic. I forget. It was something novel. When we first started, we did it, um, very traditional tips. We did pay higher than the normal, um, the normal wages, um, plus tips. And then I just, I always like tweaking things and seeing just because something's working doesn't mean it's working. the best it can. So, um, talk to the staff and said, I'm thinking about trying to a no tipping model. And we had a lot of feedback from the staff. We actually had one, uh, a guy named Jack who he was honest. He said, I, I don't, I don't believe I'm the type of person who can work with no tips. And he gave, I have to kind of seek that incentive. Yeah. And he gave a month for a month notice. And, uh, and he's still in the industry. And he's, he's still phenomenal. He's over at, um, Oh my gosh, what's the place that was, they've got the, the, uh, pile of meat and the rodizio. No, no, no, no. Um, still the whiskey still. Oh yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. I love that. They've got a good team over there too. They've got a great team and that food is phenomenal. Um, and uh, so, you know, I, I didn't look at anybody the wrong way when they said, well, we're not sure if this will work or whatever. And I said, I'm not sure it'll work. It's an experiment, you know? It was phenomenal. And, um, and it. It was working pretty well. I'd say 90 percent of the front of house staff enjoyed the no tipping model. Okay. Um, and then amendment 70 passed and that was in 2016, I believe is when amendment 70 passed and amendment 70 basically guaranteed a minimum raise, a minimum wage increase every year. And I believe if, if you're paying more than minimum wage, the law says you don't have to raise your, your wages, right? Right. But your employees are effectively making less. Right. If all their peers are like, if everybody's going up and they're not, they're effectively making less. Yeah. And so we did another survey with all the staff and said, what are your thoughts? We can keep this, but it might become at the cost of other benefits. Yeah. And all of them, I was a hundred percent said, let's go back to tipping. We know that works. Yeah. So, and so, yeah, it was a one year experiment and it was good. My problem with it was amendment 70, it wasn't the wage increase that was really the problem. It was the backend stuff that a lot of people don't think about, like the, um, Workers comp insurance is based off of wages, right? And so I tried to get a meeting with the governor and said, you know, like I don't think you guys have considered There needs to be a secondary piece of this that talks about Workers comp and what that's gonna do to our industry because we're considered a higher high risk industry. So a dollar an hour More actually adds up a lot on the back end. And, uh, and I got the forum response from, you know, I'm sure they were inundated, but I got the forum response of your, your thoughts have been heard and we'll include them in our discussions. It was like, well, I didn't share any thoughts yet. I just shared a thing saying I'm requesting a meeting to share thoughts. So, but, but no, it was, it was a good experiment. Um, and I, I still. part of me still wants to move that way in the industry. I really, I think tipping, well, I'm not the only person that tipping has gone overboard. Oh yeah. And I think it's actually hurting our industry. want, 18, Yeah. It's like, It's hurting our industry because we're, as consumers, we're being hit up for tips everywhere. Places we've never been asked for tips, now we're being hit up for tips. And then I think that carryover culture is hitting the restaurant industry in a negative way, where people are just getting over tip. Well, and there's so much counter service now and stuff, and it's like, Okay, now I'm tipping 20 percent for counter service, you know, that didn't really feel served. Not any more than when I go to 7 Eleven much. And it won't be long until 7 Eleven's asking for a tip as well. Probably not, probably not. Um, any, um, particular shout outs on your team, you want to call out any? Early employees or key managers now or anything like that or don't want to leave anybody out too much Yeah, do you got time for me to go through 50 employee roster at the entire team is phenomenal Yeah, we really do have such a cool team You want more bourbon to Bike I'm walking home. So, you know, it'll be fine Talk to me about like what you've learned about business like did you you said you were in the Ministry of Finance or something? Mr. Defense ministry, so like you didn't have a background necessarily an entrepreneurship before this No, I've wanted to own some sort of business since I was nine years old. Okay, I've there's never been a better where I haven't thought about owning business. And to be honest, when I was a kid, it was a very self serving desire. It was, we, we were extremely poor. And I just looked at everyone who, and every job my mom had had, she worked at a video, uh, Rentals. Yeah. Not, not, it was like a little locally owned one. Sure, sure. And I just remember thinking that the lady who owned that place must have the best life because she could have any movie she wanted and they had arcade inside the store and she could play the games anytime she wanted. She could play Pac Man whenever she wanted. And I was just like, that's so cool. So as a kid, it was very self serving. It was like whatever. Yeah. Things we couldn't afford as a kid, as a, as a family, when I was a kid, I just was like, well, whoever owns it can afford it. I know now as a business owner, we can afford less of our own product than other people can, but, uh, But yeah, so it was very self serving in that respect as a kid, but, um, I don't know, as far as what I've learned? Yeah, like, compare yourself 14, whatever, 15, 12 years ago, 13, 11 years ago, something like that. Yeah, 11 years, 12 years. So like, uh, like, did you come in? Fresh faced and bushy tailed or like you kind of had a pretty good plan and with your wife and her financial background just kind of executed? I had been fortunate one to have my wife there who she she does have a background Educational background in business. Okay, and she had been working for One of the larger cable companies when we were in California. I think it was Time Warner Cable at the time Okay and so she and her whole everything she'd ever done even when she was just in When she was an administrative assistant at businesses, she was always working for whoever was on top of the team. She was for the director or for the president or so she, she, she had much more background in that. Um, I was lucky that I had my father in law who had a business background as well. So he had ideas I could bounce off of. Um, and then for me, I had managed a lot of good size teams. So I was coming in understanding at least how management people part more. And I'm not going to lie. I read. Every dumb book I could find, um, I read how to start a bar for dummies. And that's one I highly recommend. If anybody is ever thinking like, I think I want to own a bar, read how to start a bar for dummies. The whole for dummy series. I think they do phenomenal, but that one was so good. And it was stupid. Little things like, um, if you don't ride a motorcycle, don't start a motorcycle bar. Yeah. Because you're going to have clientele who expect you to have a certain knowledge that you're not going to have. And it's going to come through as fake at that point. And basically that point of the story was, start something authentic, start something you that is true to you. Yeah. And I have a deep passion for whiskey that I've had for now. 20, almost 25 years, you know, of collecting, educating, drinking, sharing whiskey and whiskey stories. Um, and so for me, that was the authentic piece was I want to have something that is whiskey focused. And then i'm a colorado native. So that was the other like, yeah, let's let's also try to tie in colorado stuff So our our shtick has been since day one whiskey from anywhere in the world And if it's not whiskey, it has to be Colorado. So all our gin, rum, vodka, brandy, absinthe, beers, wines, they're all Colorado products. Oh, really? The only one that kind of has to change the rule a little is our tequila. Legally, tequila has to be made in Mexico. Right. So all our tequilas are from Colorado owned companies. Oh, right. I have Suerte on my shelf fairly regularly. Their Reposado is kind of a nice sipper. I really like that one. Yeah. I think it's good. And it's, you know, a nice mid shelf price. It's not too banging hard, too hard. Yeah. So I want to go back to those start days. Um, you said 38 seats was the King's super center. They're kind of new at that time. Um, I want to say, I want to say it had been seven years. Okay. That have been there. And the only reason I have that number in my head is the spot where. So the bar side of Fort Collins, that was the original bar, where our bar currently sits today. Nothing had ever been there. Oh, is that right? I vaguely remember the owner of the building saying that, um, it had been empty for seven years. And so, us, I do have a side, uh, You like noted in my negotiations. I did use it, yes. Um, negotiations took a while. I want to say six months, by the way, and that's a little tip that I always have for people too, is don't, uh, if you're starting a business, don't get so invested into the idea of starting that you forego smart business transactions, right? If a lease isn't right, it's going to be wrong for the whole time. You have this lease. I like it. So Work on it today. I would rather lose a month today than sit on a crappy lease for 10 years. You know, I think ours are three extensions at five years of pops. So we're, you know, we've got 15, 20 years before they can kick us out. Yeah. But that's a long time to have a crappy lease. Right. Yeah. If you don't like it. Yeah. You can't really change it usually. So it took us six months to negotiate. And, um. And what was your, your, your, your job? What was your day job? You mentioned you were working at the time. I was a director of operations at a technology company here in town that was called Guys Global. They've got, they've been bought out since. And so I did that. I don't know the company name that owns it now. I should know it though. So you're like a super smart computer y guy too? I don't know. Or you were? I think I'm a pretty lucky computer y guy. I think I've, my entire career has just been me falling in to the right thing and then I may put my head down and do hard work until I get it kind of person. Alright. So, um, You mentioned that you don't carry any debt now. Did you get financing to get started or anything? Or are you just scrapped and saved and had a little family help or something? We took everything we owned and put it into it. Um, and I was lucky I had heard about, um, what is it called? Self directed 401ks. Oh, yeah. And there's a company down in Lone Tree, Colorado, that specializes in helping small businesses set up a self directed 401k. And I had had a successful career, and I had a 401k that was pretty well stocked, and I was very The market had rallied quite a bit by then. It had really rallied, and then I, I was, um I was exceptionally fortunate that I worked for an ESOP company and they, they had the option to pay me out over three years and they chose to pay me out the year I quit. And so they paid me out at the highest their stock value had ever been. And that all went into my 401k. So I was able to use a self directed 401k to invest that. Without the tax hit it is still carried into yourself and so it's still so which means my 401k actually owns something like 53 percent of the company. Yeah, which is really neat I don't ever want to sell but if I ever do that money goes into a 401k, right, you know tax deferred It's a really neat way now One of the risks there that people should be aware of is that if you don't? Do a self directed 401k for your company. It means you have to have a 401k available to your employees. Oh, something we wanted to do anyway. So it was no skin off her back. But if you don't want to offer a 401k and you do invest it this way in your own business, interesting, you know, it could cost you. Oh, is that like, Um, is it fives of thousands of dollars to get that kind of stuff set up in that space? Because that seems like a really useful tool for a lot of people. You know, I think if you believe in yourself more than you believe in the American stock market. Yeah. Now this was, yeah. And that, that is a good point right there, right? Is you, you're, you are investing in a stock and at the end of the day it's a very concentrated stock. You're very non diversified anymore. Um, uh, yeah, I want to say it was less than 5, 000. Now that was 11 years ago, I'm sure it costs more. And then there are. It's, uh, hefty federal requirements because it is a 401k and so we pay that company annually to keep us above board and make sure that any changes Almost have to have reviewed financials or something. Every year has to be reviewed and then we have to have a valuation done on our company every year by law. Okay. Because the 401k has to know what it's worth. Right, right. You know, and so it has to be a third party that comes in and does all that. Yeah, yeah. And so, so there are ongoing costs that are associated, but for us, it, it's been a godsend. And you said your 401k owns 53 percent of the rest kind of employees and key stuff, or is that just like you and your wife? So it's me and my wife who own the vast majority when we first started, um, I had said my father in law, he had been giving me so much advice, you know, I'd probably been talking his ear off 10 years about this idea. Right. And so we offered them an opportunity to invest. Um, but we kept him at 5 percent because I said, I don't, I don't need your money, don't get me wrong, I want your money, because if I'm using somebody else's it makes it that much more breathing room for me, but, um, kept them at 5%. And then I did the same with my mother and her husband, I just said, so they're, they're in for 5%. Um, I want to say my mom reinvested a little bit at some point, so she might be up to 7 percent now. Um, yeah. And then we had a regular at the bar who's become a really great friend of mine. But just like everybody, they see this bar ownership and it's like, Oh, I want to do that. I want to do that. And I kept, you know, just having polite conversations, but brushing them off. And then after a few years, um, his name's Mike and he just goes, Dude, I want to invest. And I said, okay, well, let's, let's go have a meeting and we'll really talk about what that looks like. Yeah. So we sat down and had a meeting and I said, what's the minimum you want to invest? And he said, well, no less than a hundred thousand, no more than 300, 000. I was like, oh, you have real money. Cause you, most people go, well, I have 500, I'd like, I'd like to own a share, you know? Oh, or yeah, even 10 grand. It's starting to get to like, okay, that's real money. But it's not enough. I don't want to send you a K 1 every year for that. I don't want to have all the extra paper that comes with 10 grand, you know? And, um, and so I was like, okay, I tried my best to talk him out of it. And I just said, your money is better spent investing in Amazon or at the time Tesla or anything like that. And he said, well, I really believe in you and Tiffany. I believe in where you're going with this and I want to invest with you. And he's like, and he goes, if I can get 50 percent off, if I can get a 50 percent discount by being an investor, I'll make my money back over time anyway. So, so that was the agreement and he doesn't have any, uh, Operational say he gets a vote once a year at the shareholders meeting. And that's what I always tease him. I said, you can take your, it's something like 23 percent of shares. Oh, and I said, you can, uh, vote to fire me from my job, but my shares will outweigh your shares every time. So I'm going to keep my job even when you don't like what I'm doing. And, and so we talked through all that and that's cool. And, uh, yeah, we, well, I bet it's been okay for him though. It hasn't been bad. Yeah. COVID was a tougher season, but Um, in COVID, our, that was the first year our stock price ever went down. And, um, we actually offered to buy, buy it out from any, any shareholders that wanted to get rid of their shares. And I was like, it's a bargain right now. I'll buy it. It looks like a discount to me. My father in law was one who, he replied to the email and just said, anybody who wants to sell, I am buying at that price. I'll take it. That's fun. Um, Let's go back to, um, business skills. And it sounds like you've kind of, by doing that 401k kind of structured thing, it really, Your level of accountability and financial accuracy and different things like that I suspect is far above your typical, uh, bar operation. I think so. I think it's far above the typical small business. I think so. Yeah, probably. We, yeah, we, and this is all my wife's doing. Now I'm just kind of the steward of the things she set up. Right, make sure we do the stuff that Tiffany said. But, um, yeah, she has always been to the penny accurate. Um, to flashback to when her and I first met. Uh, knew for sure we were gonna get married and everything. I was the one in charge of the household budget. Okay. And, uh, I'll try to keep the curse words out of the retelling of this story, but she, uh, she was looking over my shoulder, and I don't like when people look over my shoulder while I'm working, and I, I said, can I help you with something? And she goes, well, I'm just trying to see what you're doing with the budget. I said, well, can you just wait till it's done? And she goes, well, I just have some ideas. And I got mad and I was like, well, then you do the budget, you think you're so good, you do the budget. And, uh, about 30 minutes later, she handed me a budget and I was like, Oh, that's what a budget looks like. I was like, Oh my God, this, yeah, you're in charge of this from here on out. Take the wheel, baby. Yeah. So, uh, she, she's always been a to the penny person. And everything has to be above board and, uh, they're, you know, part of it is just, she's a genuinely honest person. And the other part is if an audit comes and it will come, she doesn't want it to be a pain in the butt. She wants to be able to just go, here you go. Here's all the stuff. Here's all the stuff, whatever you need. It's all documented. It's all arranged. It's all well, especially with like the family investors, things and stuff like that. You want to be really. Yeah. Accountable to them. I think that's the most important thing. Um, and I, I wish more people who own the business themselves, a hundred percent with no investors. Yeah. Treated it the same way. Agreed. You know. Agreed. Just because you own it doesn't mean you should skimp on yourself. Yeah. It was, uh, I was a banker for 15 years and, uh, small business banking and that was definitely probably the single biggest problem. Weak spot in a lot of people's businesses. They knew the business. They, they even knew the finances and they could kind of tell how the business is doing by the balance in the checking account, but not really. Yeah. A lot of people are cashflow. That's they do, they do cashflow gaming and that's good enough for them. And, um, yeah, I mean, it helped in COVID. There were so many grants that came out and a lot of them were, you had to have good books and show, and, and we would Hit print. And here's a PDF of everything. Here's how this quarter looked compared to last quarter. You know. See, we're losing our tail over here. Give us some money. Um, what, uh, gosh, I had a good question. Oh, there it was. Um, theft. Like, you got, like, what's your most expensive, uh, bottle of bourbon or whiskey or whatever on the shelf ish? I think, I think Balvenie 40 is probably our most expensive at the moment. I want to say it's a few hundred dollars a pour. Okay. Um. So, for a bottle, it's like. Yeah, I think that bottle's up to almost 10 grand. Yeah. So, like, I mean, is there like video cameras on everything? Pour measures? Like, I mean, it's Yeah, we, we do have that, um Not that you don't have the best staff around, but it's just when you're I mean, that's like gold value, just about, right? Yeah, the truth is, when those bottles come out, everyone treats them, uh, you know, as sacrosanct and is careful with them and they use the jiggers and pour properly and, you know, make a thing of it. It's really the lower end cost of things, that it's easy for anybody to just kind of ignore. It's like, Oh, it's, it's our well whiskey. Right, right. You know, so those are the where we're actually off the most and we do keep very tight controls of our inventory. So we know when we're losing stuff. And then I just give it to the GMs. It's up to the GM to decide whether it's hit a threshold where they need to have conversations with the staff. Um, you know, you can never going to get a hundred percent accurate. Right. Well in a little bit, I mean, if you got regulars that are there all the time and if you want to give them a little half shot extra on their. Um, on their maker's pour, you know, maybe that's okay sometimes. And yeah, and the way we A little bit. I think, I think what seems to work for us is the way we get around to that is we just tell our staff, um, you can give stuff away, just ring it in. Right. Because then it's accounted for. Right. We know where it went. Perfect. And so when we do our actual versus theoretical, it might say, hey, you theoretically could have made this much more money. Right. But as far as product missing, you were a hundred percent. Nothing was missing. Oh, I love it. Yeah. You know? Perfect. And then everybody's got a, to an extent, like a comp budget almost, like if somebody's giving away 500 a month, it's like, wow. We don't set a specific one. So I give the, the manager's guidelines of what I think is the minimum and maximum. And I do think there's a minimum. You should give away some product. If you don't have a relationship with people, then you're not. That's something I learned from Otterbox years ago, uh, when, uh, I was doing some consulting work for them and they just said, you know, If you have the budget to give away your product for free, it's the best marketing you'll ever have. Ah, yeah. And he's like, unfortunately most people can't just give their product away, but you can give away some. My favorite. One of my favorite swag items that I ever got was this small yellow OtterBox, before they made very many phone cases, and they were giving away, Amy was, Amy somebody was working for them then, and it was just like this great little, like for rafting, or for canoeing, and stuff like that, it would, I, well, it served me well for years. Remember when they first launched Big here in Fort Collins, they, they, They were at every event. Throwing it around. Throwing it around. That was their marketing strategy. Get the locals excited about it and then it'll sell itself. But, but they were selling to a national audience. You know, that was why I was so, but we were blessed by having lots of cool Otterbox swag around for quite a while. So I dig that. That's a, that's a great, like don't try to control people. Give them. Yeah. Almost. We give them, you know, take the training wheels off. You hire adults. Right. Stop treating them like children. Yeah. And if you have employees who consistently demonstrate that they are just children who need constant supervision, well, the truth is we're not the right employer for them. We're just not that kind of company. We like having people who know what they're doing and are free to do it. Yeah. Do you have qualifiers as far as like, you got to know quite a bit about, you know, what Whiskey. No, that's actually, or things like that. One of the few things where we really don't care. Okay. Um, I can teach you all day about whiskey. Josh I mentioned earlier, um, he knows so much about whiskey. Yeah. We can educate anybody on whiskey. Okay. So I would rather have somebody who understands people and customer service and, um, all those basic fundamentals. Yeah. Has the integrity, the the integrity things that class, you just can't. Teach. I mean, there's an argument to be said that you can teach customer service, but I think there is an innate piece that some people have it and some people don't. And for the people who don't have it, no matter how much I hit them home with it, they're not going to understand what I'm going for. Yeah. Yeah. I would agree with that. Um, what would your staff say about you? Like some of your, maybe a one or two years, you know, not there forever, but just kind of know you a little bit. Yeah. I think my more tenure staff would probably, uh, say that. I, I am not as serious as I come across, um, whereas the new staff I've heard through grape grapevine tend to think I am a little scary, a little scary, a little terrifying. Uh, but I think honestly, most of that comes with just, we've been in business for 11 years. When I started, I was probably eight to 10 years older than my average employee. Right. Well, I'm 10 years older than that, and the employee base doesn't really change age. You look pretty good, by the way. You haven't aged too badly in that 10 years. Must be having fun. I'm 40 something. Must be an easier job than being the president. I almost said, uh, what age I actually am, and then my wife's going to listen to this, and I'll be wrong. I never say my right age, and it's only because I don't know. It's 40 something. We'll just go with that. Okay. Well, um, uh, I can't be wrong if I don't say an exact age. I am about six weeks away from 50. Nice. So, just a little bit, you're senior. Well, happy early birthday. Thank you. Um, Let's talk more about, um, Fort Collins and, and the community, uh, in general, like how has that evolved? When did you get here? Um, so I first moved to Northern Colorado in college. I was living, so I'm a Denver native, but I was living in Colorado Springs. I, as a kid, we kind of lived everywhere. Okay. So we came, my mom tried to get us back to Colorado, Colorado Springs was the closest we could get to family. And then I went to school in Greeley. Oh, UNC. My wife went to school here at CSU and, uh, I followed her. to Fort Collins. And this is circa? This would have been 90, no, uh, 2000. So in 2000. Okay. Um, so we lived here and then after we graduated college, which I, it took me five years, so 2005, um, we moved back to Colorado Springs, then out to California, uh, and then. I moved to England for a very, very short stint and then, uh, just me, it was supposed to be the whole family. I can tell the whole story. I just don't know how much time we have. We'll jump in the time machine in a minute, um, and, and capture more of the story. So we got back here to Fort Collins, I think in 2008, maybe 2010. I think it was probably 2009 cause my youngest, I think had just been born. That was some of the real blossoming years there while you were kind of away a little bit. Yeah. And then the recession, real estate got affordable for a short while. Yeah. And then it went back up really fast. Got all the cool kids in town when they could afford it. Right, exactly. It's my fear of, uh, everything getting so expensive is the cool people tend to leave when things get expensive. Yeah, sad. It's a true thing. Um, do you do things, like as far as team and, and such to get them out in the community or to, to build a team? Do you have, you know, the mission, vision, values things and the things? Stuff on the walls to tell'em how to act. Or, um, we, we do have core values, Uhhuh. Um, I don't put'em on the wall. I feel like that's a very 1990s thing to do. Um, that I firmly believe that corporations in the nineties, they created their list of core values or mission statements as a way to win. Somebody messed up and they had to go in front of the news right? It was, they could point to the wall and go, it's against our core values. Right. So instead, we have core values that we do dictate how we hire, how we fire, um, what relationships we'll build with other vendors. Um, and we have, you know, quote, fired, uh, booze vendors who didn't match our values. And so, um, But as far as anything going out into the community and pushing them, not, not really, not really. Yeah. I wondered maybe with kind of your innovative tip model and things, how edgy you are there. But honestly, in your line of work, it's like give good service, pour good booze, serve good food. And we want to create good community within our four walls. Yeah. And the truth of the matter is all my staff work so hard all the time that, you know, A lot of them, they don't want to commit to more outside of those four walls. It's when, when you do a good job inside the four walls of a pub, it can take a lot from you. I could imagine. I'm thinking of almost like a, Like a bat cave or something, right? Like where you're in this space is our operation. And, and to a certain extent of significant spent, like to the extent that you can drop people into your space and want them to come back and want to come back, that's kind of the secret sauce. That is where we're building community is within those four walls. Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. And, and probably, gosh, probably hundreds and hundreds of. Good friendships have been spawned at your place. It's the cool, I think it's the coolest job. Bartending and serving is one of the coolest jobs that exists in the world. And if you do it right, you really do get friendships constantly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of a constant cycle and you might come in and out of season, but. Always know where, where you remember that guy from. There's still people that I talk to on a regular basis that, that were regulars 11 years ago. They still don't come to the, they, they haven't come to the pub because they moved away 5 years ago. Right, right. And I still talk to them regularly. So interesting, yeah. Um, well one of the things, uh, we always do after we've kind of gotten to know a little bit is jump in the time machine. Okay. And we were kind of trending toward that anyway, so let's just, uh, let's just, uh, Do it all the way back to kindergarten. Okay, going way back. Yeah, well, you were, wait, you said you were nine when you had your first business, uh, kind of ideas, but let's go even sooner. Let's go way back. Okay. Uh, small family, big family? Real small family, um, well, small immediate family. The, the, you know, it was my mom and three sisters. Um, I have a stepdad who is who I consider my actual father. Okay. Um, and. Um, we, yeah, we were, we were small, but I come from a Mexican family. So the extended family, yeah, I know. Last name Wallace. I look this way. Yeah. British pub kind of guy. And actually a third generation is also, it's, uh, it's, uh, John Leguizamo has a good joke, uh, in one of his standups where he talks about that and he's like, well, the Europeans did. And so it's not that surprising that a lot of us look like them. Uh, and he obviously tells the joke a lot better with a lot more dirty words. All good. All good. Um. So, come back me up. So, so are you half Hispanic? Are you, are you actually? Uh, 25 percent. Okay. 25 percent. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Um, but your mom was? So my mom and my grandma's who came to this country. Oh, I see. Okay. Grandma came and then my mom's 50%. So yeah, got it. Okay. But you were culturally raised at least somewhat in that realm. Yeah, quite a bit. It was, uh, it was a weird blend. Um, because my, when my grandmother came to this country, she was teased for not knowing English. And so she didn't want her family to suffer the same way. So. Um, she didn't allow us to speak Spanish in the home. She would only speak Spanish to her own sisters. And literally if you open the glass door to the back patio, she would switch to English just in case somebody heard her. So she was very much a part of that, you know, which is a very different time. That was very, very, that was a very normal story to a lot of immigrants, especially in that time. Um, that was a very normal story. And so we were raised with Mexican food culture. But not the language culture. Right. Interesting. And so I do feel like our family missed out on a lot because of that. Yeah, no, I can only imagine. I wonder, I'm torn philosophically here almost between, like now you almost get punished as a business if you don't have like a Mexican menu on your menu. I hope that's not true, but I know what you're saying. But there's a lot of accommodation or even accommodation of, like there isn't very much social pressure for a newly immigrated Spanish speaking person to ever learn English. And what you're talking about here is like, there was a lot of social pressure, even among the Hispanic communities to get English figured out and be part of America, if you will. So I would, I would secretly watch Telemundo in the evenings and, um, I, uh, Takes have been taking Spanish lessons since I was in I don't know seventh grade. I still do them my regularly Yeah, you know and so I I think I'm on day 1700 or something like that interesting on Duolingo and I have Spanish teachers and and I like it are you 2024 am I fluent? I'm Pretty good. I'm fairly okay. So, uh, I always have my grandma's yelling in my head to not do it. So I, I, sometimes I have to get real comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. So whiskey will help. Okay. The more I drink, the more I can speak. Almost bilingual. If you want to have some Spanish conversation with her just to polish up. Nice. Uh, one of my favorite, uh, stories about that is my wife and I went to Mexico one time and, uh, we're doing the border control stuff and she's asking me questions and I looked at my wife and I said, I don't know, what's the answer to that? And she goes, I don't know. You two are speaking Spanish. And I was like, Oh, I didn't realize that, but I felt comfortable because I was there, you know, um, I'm trying, actually. I'm hoping I can go to Spain next year for like six weeks. Oh, wow. That would help. There's a really in depth study where you do 23 and a half hours of classroom time. And you live with a family and they have excursions that are all in Spanish and it forces you for the six week period to really immerse and I think that'll kick me over that edge where I'll finally be where I need to be. Yeah. Yeah. I suspect so. I was just reflecting on my, my wife and I have hosted a number of exchanges and, uh, Manuela was the most recent, um, and Manuela was Brazilian, so it's Portuguese, not Spanish, but it's, you know, same, same ish. Not even close. I know, I know. Portuguese is an insanely hard language. It sounds way different. Uh, I can pick up Portuguese accents a lot easier than I can just in general because they stand out, right? But anyway, um, Manuela went to a school that didn't really have much English support or whatever. It was kind of later in coming to her region. But she watched Netflix in English and learned how to talk. She talked with almost no accent. That's crazy. Watch. The English subtitles, but speaking in German so she could learn how to read English. That's crazy. So she was self taught Netflix. That's awesome. Right? I love stories like that. I don't know how much Netflix she had to watch to get there, but she was kind of a genius. So if you're listening to this, man, well, uh, uh, I think you're smarter than I probably let on. She needs to go get a job with LingoPie, which I always thought was PA, but it's lingopie. com and they are a company that was founded a few years ago with the sole intent of teaching language through binge watching. Hmm. Interesting. I love it. She needs to just put that on her resume. Like, I was doing this before you existed. I'll send her a note through Instagram. Instagram and she'll probably eat that right up. But anyway, I, uh, I, for some reason I flashed on Minn Welow when I was thinking, so you're in Colorado Springs. Is this right? When you're in that kindergarten grade? No, I'm, I'm just in Germany in kindergarten. Oh, in Germany. Okay. So your father was a service member or something. My, my mom, uh, Um, and my, my dad, my stepdad, we're both in the service and, uh, okay, cool. And so actually that's actually the, the founding story of the pub, so to speak, that is part of our training or onboarding with our staff that talks about being nine years old. Um, and we were poor and, um, For whatever reason, we'd go every now and again, maybe once or twice a month. We'd go to the beer gardens and my, my parents just seemed so happy and everybody in Germany and all the parents seemed happiness. Kids were happy cause we're just getting to play around outside and life was good. And I thought whoever owns us again, back to the, I just, whoever everybody's just here happy all the time. So whoever owns this must have the best life. And I was like, I want a beer garden when I get, when I'm an adult, I'm going to own a beer garden. And then that became over time. I want. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. I think about overseas service a lot of times, uh, as being potentially more lucrative. But when you said you were poor, even though your folks were both kind of working in service over there. I mean, they, they were enlisted in the army. Just kind of early stage. You, you get paid what you get paid. Three sisters, two plus you? It's two plus me, yeah. Two plus you, so there's three eaters, right? Yeah, so, I mean, military you get, yeah, you get, you may get a little differential, um, but that's getting consumed because it's more expensive to live there. Fair enough, fair enough, so it wasn't a lucrative kind of a, they weren't officers or whatever, no colonels, nothing like that. Nothing like that. Fair enough. So when did you come back to the States, or tell me more about Germany, I guess, what you remember in those days? Um, my gosh, I, I don't know, I got, uh, the privilege of, uh, when I was working for the government as an adult to go back to Germany a lot, so, um, I got to kind of relive and feel like I, as a kid again. Yeah, yeah. But I, I don't know my full timelines on anything. I suck at those. That's cool. I want to say we came back to the States. I was in middle school, maybe it might have been elementary. Yeah, no, I would have been back by the end of elementary, like sixth, seventh grade. Yeah, somewhere in there. And then we were, uh, my mom, um, did her best to keep us in Colorado Springs because that's where, well, we lived in Colorado Springs. on the east coast for some. And then once we got back to Colorado, she was like, I'm gonna wherever you start high school is where you'll finish it. And so that was her, her gift to us is stop moving around constantly. And so I graduated from high school in Colorado Springs. And were they army? Were they like a Fort Carson then or something? Um, my mom is army, but she didn't like living near the base. So we were up on the north end of town just to be further away. I mean, No offense to the Fort Carson area, but it's definitely a little rougher down in that part of town. Isn't that a weird side of Colorado Springs where you have Cheyenne Mountain with these people who have insanely high incomes. Or Broadmoor and all that. And right across the street is the, like, some of the worst incomes in all of Colorado. And the super poor people, like, they only, like, steal from the other poor people. They never cross the street over to the Broadmoor area. Uh, yeah, no, it was, uh, what was that bar? It was kind of down on the side. The Black Sheep. My wife and I lived in Colorado Springs for a few years. The Black Sheep, and there were a few places down kind of that southern realm where it was a little bit Yeah, there were, there were definitely, there is no, still to this day, there's no shortage of uh, dive bars where you might get stabbed in Colorado Springs. Totally. Totally. And I love them, I do love them. I love being a good dive bar too, so. But you do have to, you know, keep your way with all of them. So, are these sisters, um, older, younger split? One older, one younger. Okay. My older one's only two years older, my younger one's eight years younger. Oh wow, okay. So, big, big gap there. Yeah, yeah. Um, so it goes through your high school years in Colorado Springs mostly? Yeah, I was, like I said, that was my mom's gift to UNC from there? Um, went to UNC and then moved, uh, I was living in Fort Collins, driving to Greeley just because, uh, Because your girlfriend was over here? My girlfriend was over here, and, and, uh, Greeley was not a great place to, there was no, back then, there was no, Yeah, it's become a lot cooler in the last ten years. It's a lot cooler now, but there was no nightlife. Yeah. And everybody who went to school in Greeley, it was a suitcase community. They would pack up on Friday and they'd be gone back home, down to Broomfield, down to Denver, down to wherever. And so. Yeah. So it was such a boring, sleepy town. So instead, by living in Fort Collins, I got to have. I got to go out and do things, you know, and there was just nothing that you could do back then. Now there's a lot, like, Greeley's a pretty cool little town now. Yeah, there's a few folks especially that have kind of invested in the downtown and made it, you know, really a special place. Um, it's still not quite as cool as Fort Collins, but it's come a long ways. I don't know, I think Fort Collins might be overhyped. Might be, yeah, it got so cool it overcooled itself. I don't disagree. Um, so, yeah. What did you get your degree in? Um, I have two undergraduate degrees. One is in mathematics and the other is in black studies. Oh, interesting. Um, and then I have a master's in systems engineering. Okay. Tell me about the, the black studies. Yeah, that was a phenomenal program. Um, when I was at UNC, you know, I was just taking general electives or general credits, whatever they're called. And I could find something in nearly every category that you needed. If you needed, you know, something cultural, if you needed something religious, if you needed something, um, literature, if you knew there, there was a black studies course within so many categories. And I took one not knowing what it was going to be. And it was taught by this guy named, um, uh, Dr. George, who ended up becoming my mentor. Um, and he, he had this, aura about him. It didn't feel like I was in a cow town in Greeley, Colorado. I was in a movie in one of those auditoriums with a professor. Right. That's the best professor ever. And I remember asking him like, why? I, after my first lecture, I said, what are you doing here? You know, he said, my resume is in the library. I said, no, I said, what, um, what did you do? What is your education? I, that's what it was. It was like, what is your education? I was just so enthralled with how much he knew. And he said, my resume is in the library. If you want to see it, you can look at it there. So I pulled it up and I looked at it and I came back and I said, okay, you are far too educated to be in Colorado at this tiny university. What are you doing here? And he goes, wait, you actually looked up my resume. I said, you told me to. And he goes, I thought you were just some white kid wondering what the black, why the black guy was allowed to talk. And I said, Oh no, I am enthralled at your knowledge and I want to know how I can get to your level. How does somebody get there? And he, and so he ended up taking me in as a, as mentor mentee relationship and I started taking more classes. What was his class? This, what was his expertise? Uh, his, his, he actually was the founder of the, uh, what is now called the Africana Studies Department, but at the time it was called the Black Studies Department. Um, he was the founder. And so, uh, He, his primary focus was civil rights. That's what his primary focus was. But he did anything related to Africans or Africans in the diaspora. And so I took several courses from him. Then I realized I was a couple more courses. If I took some, I would have a minor and then I got to meet the other professors in the department. I was like, Oh my God, they're all. just these insanely talented people. So I just started taking more and more. And then I was like, I'm two credits away from another major. So I just finished off my major. I'm assuming that your father isn't like secretly a black fellow, right? So that's, uh, I love that interest. I, I've got a minor in, uh, business and a minor in philosophy, uh, both because I was, you know, pretty close anyway. I just, because I thought it was really interesting, you know, metaphysics and Greek. I wish more higher education was based on that. It's like, show up, take some classes, and whatever you find interesting, we will make a degree out of. You know? What would you say is a misconception in the American, either vernacular or understanding that because of your major in black studies, that, you that you would correct them on? It's kind of an out of nowhere question there, but I have to think there's a few things. There's more than a few. There's a really great book called, Lies My Teacher Told Me. That's one I wish you would read. Every, uh, American student would be forced to read, uh, and it goes through in detail all the things that are, that are just flat out lies in our American history books that we are taught from middle school through high school. Right. And, and so I like that there's, there's not one particular thing, but yeah, I would highly encourage everyone Everybody to pick up lies. My teacher told me the guy who wrote the book, if I remember the story correctly, attempted to make a high school textbook and nobody would publish it. Oh, really? How fascinating. Um, so you got this, uh, big swing and, um, college degree and you said you got a master's in system engineering to go right into, um, school again after? No, I, I fell into that one. Um, I was, uh, I was working for a company in Colorado Springs and, um, they had an education program where if I, you know, did something that related. Executive MBA stuff. Yeah. Whatever, almost. And so I, I literally started an MBA because they would pay for it and I hated it. I thought that was the worst. I was just like, again, it goes back to that. My brain doesn't work on finance in that finance world. Right. And so that. Well, but you have a math degree, right? I have a math degree. I can, I know numbers. So much different than finance. But yeah, uh, you know, again, accountants in the language that accountants and bankers talk is so different than mathematicians. I have a, I'm an economist by training and, but I'm very much a, Um, and I'm not really a macro preference economist, like I like the big trends and the unintended consequences and things like that. Yeah. The micro finance and different things like that is less interesting. But Malcolm Gladwell stuff Right. I like, I can, I can dig on that. Speaks in a language that I at least get because he speaks down to me. Right. I appreciate that too. Um, but, uh, yeah, so, uh, basically once I started my master's, I realized I wanted a master's, but I, and I convinced the company that an MBA wasn't. Uh, what they should be paying for, that they should pay for this. We were a technology company, we're not paying for this engineering degree, so I got them to pay for it. And you're already, like, did you and your wife graduate about the same time and stuff? You said you were together early in college. Yeah, she's, we've actually, we were high school sweethearts. High school sweethearts, even. Yeah, so, um, yeah, we, we did it all, all together this whole time. Interesting. Yeah. Talk to me about, uh, Like, how did that happen? Uh, how did we become high school sweethearts? Yeah. Like, what were, what was it? You, uh, you were pals for a couple of years first, and then you finally worked up your courage and asked her out. So, slightly embarrassing story for me, I think, on this is that, uh, she dated my friends and, uh, and, uh, After she went through your friends, she, she settled for me, um, yeah, she, I would say more like she found out that you were the best one for her, at least. The funny part of that story is I, uh. All us guys, we'd hang around her house all the time. It was, not only was she, you know, the cute teenager, and we were the teenage boys fawning after her, but her dad had a pinball arcade in his basement. Oh, gosh. And a fridge full of sodas. Right. And so we were there all the time, and her mother would just open the basement door sometimes and just yell, If you're not a tax deduction, it's time to get out of my house. You know. I like it. So we'd all come trotting upstairs and, uh, when, when Tiffany and I actually started dating, she told her mom, she's like, guess who I'm dating? She's like, who? She's like, I'm dating Rico. And she goes, Oh, that's like dating your brother. Because I'd been such an integrated part at that point. Uh, but you know, here we are 24 years later, still going. Congratulations. Tell me about Rico. Yeah, so again, that's a slight, slight homage to the fact that I'm Hispanic and it's probably less of homage, maybe just a little bit more of a slur that my friends might be racist and it's just dawning, dawning on me. Um, sorry, I hope they're not, no, I don't think they are. No, um, there was a Ryan, two Ryans and a Brian. Um, in our, in our core friend group and, um, we had a friend's mom who was new to this country, um, from Asia and it just, for whatever reason, two Ryans and a Brian, she would always get confused. And so they were like, we'll just call this Ryan Rico from here on out. And so it became Ryan, Rico and Brian. And she could then understand who we were talking about. I dig it. So, um, yeah. So, where did we jump off? Oh, yeah, we we had the job in Colorado Springs a little bit. We cruising over to Europe soon Uh, for the British thing? No, not yet. Um, I kind of threw that in there that it was just a, yeah, I did it for a little bit. So, the, the long story short on that one is that I was supposed to, I was living in England. I was working for the Ministry of Defense. Okay. As like a consultant or something? Yeah, it was, it was a contract that, uh, they essentially had, um, a legal requirement to create what's called a, a war journal. Okay. And because we were allied forces and we were using American systems, they didn't have, they weren't meeting their own legal requirement to keep a war journal. And so, and some of this tech stuff that you had been doing translated to that, you had to work for them. They contracted the United States to implement U. S. technology on foreign soil, on foreign equipment. And so it was like a licensing agreement with us basically so that they could then legally own all the data and it would sink back to Afghanistan on a on a minute by minute basis. So they had up to date real stuff stored in their country so they can meet the legal requirement. Got it. And so, yeah, I got doing that and I came back and I was supposed to be back for Thanksgiving and Christmas and then January 17th of that year. Move my family and my father in law pulled me aside one night and he just goes, you know, I just want to tell you that I support you and everything you're doing. And I know that you're doing what's right for your career and your family. But my my wife cries herself to sleep at night thinking about her grant her grandchildren living in a foreign country and she's not going to get to see him. Every night like she wants and I was like, okay, what am I supposed to do with that information? I went to my wife and I said, hey, you know, this is what your dad said. Do you want to live in England? And she said, yeah, of course, I want to support your career. And I said, that's not what I asked. Do you want to live? No, not one piece of me wants to live in that country. I was like, okay, well, I have a job in England. I own a home in Colorado Springs and, uh, we're going to start over. So, uh, we had our, our family had, uh, uh, my in laws. You got a couple littles by this time. A couple littles and, and the in laws had a cabin up in the mountains. And so here in Estes Park and, and we, uh, And that was the thing is I wanted to live in Denver, she wanted to live in Fort Collins. And now it's like, okay, well, we currently live in the springs. I want to live in Denver. She wants to live in Fort Collins. My job's in England. We'll figure out this puzzle. And found a house in Fort Collins that was a bank owned home and we put in an offer and the bank accepted our offer. And This is an, a stupid number. I mean, this was only, you know, 2007, 2008, something like that. No, it would have been a little probably 2009, 2010. Um, and we picked up the house for 189, 000, you know, it's like, you can't how many square feet? It was 20, 2, 600. You just can't do that anymore. I mean, if it doesn't have walls or insulation, right. And so, So then I was like, Okay, well, that that became the next joke is like, well, now we have a house in color Springs that we hadn't sold yet. We have a house in Fort Collins and my job is still in England. Um, but I ended up trading places high fiving with a guy I knew who I was qualified for the job. He had in Colorado Springs. He was qualified for the job I had in England and we Swap places and as they say the rest was history and then after a while in Colorado Springs, it was yeah All right, after a while of commuting to Colorado Springs, so I was daily commuting from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs Oh, yeah, cuz that's where the job was. Oh my there's a lot better than a commute to England I knew were you driving and then taking 470 around or I was I'd get all for get up at 4 o'clock at 4 a. m 25 ain't too bad. Ain't too bad. And then, yeah, and then on Thursday nights, I'd stay at my old man's house in Colorado Springs so that I could wake up early, get to the office early, and then be out. Yeah. Get out of there at two o'clock or whatever. Yeah. But, uh. Wild. And then when we moved up here, I had also, so by the time we moved up here, or rather by the time I got a job up here, so that director job, I had also finished my master's program. So I was working full time, commuting four hours a day, four to five hours a day. And, uh, going to school full time. Wow. And so, all of that ended. Overnight, I get a job working here in town. I'm like, I can ride my bike to work. I don't go to school anymore. And I just looked at my wife and I was like I could start a pub in my spare time. That's what I said. I said, I don't know what people do with all their free time. I think I would just draw that out, though, cause I mean You see a lot of TikTok videos and stuff these days, and people are like, I'm working full time at an entry level job and I've been there for two years, and I just don't know how I'm ever supposed to buy a house. Well, maybe you're 21 and you should get a second job, or do some other, you know, not that I'm saying the economy isn't hard. I know exactly what you're saying, and I'm torn by it. But a lot of people work their ass off to get to success. Because Because that was your lever. I, you know, that, that was how I knew I'd get out of poverty was by work and, and that's, that was something my mom taught us. And like I said, we were raised, you were a math major, we were raised very, very poor. Yeah. And, uh, and so yes, I, I fundamentally agree with the idea that you need to work harder to change your station. Yeah. Yeah. But if you look at where the economy is now and how much things cost now versus then let's just look at education alone Right for sure like the cost of education So that was the way I had 22, 000 in student loans when I finished college. Yeah, five and a half years Yeah I feel like my generation might have been the last to be able to truly pull themselves up by their bootstraps by getting an education I graduated with 70, 000 in debt right that I've since paid off but Um, it was through a lot of luck and a wife who like hammered down on spending and wouldn't let me go do a lot of things. She's like, well, we got this debt. And again, we got lucky. We bought a house for 189, 000 that we turned around and sold for a lot more. Well, that paid off all that debt, you know? And so there's a lot of there, yes, there's a lot of things I've done that are working hard, but I think there are a lot more things now that are working hard against the next generation. I think. Something that the next generation might need to do is change their tick tock message as opposed to I work full time at job X and I can never afford a house to talking more about what's really the limiting factors. It's not that the business isn't paying you more. The business can't afford to pay you. Yeah, it's the fact that Um, we, we, and I can get super political on this. I'm not going to. We'll get a whole political segment later. But we've got, you know, we do have, um, rules that are set up to benefit a very small section of society. And, um, one of the things in Colorado that can be done. That could, within 12 months, fix some of our, our housing costs. Yeah. Well, two things. One, allow mixed use housing in more places so that you can have high density housing next to low density housing. And then the other is stop allowing, uh, Airbnb and VRBO to be the primary, uh, investors in neighborhoods. Right. You know? I'm not against that as a business model. I like the idea. I used VRBO or Airbnb. Sure. Sure. But there has to be a point where it goes, okay, we're going into Fort Collins. Housing prices are insane in Fort Collins. We need to put a cap on how many people can invest that way in this community. You know? Yeah, I suppose. But then it has to be arbitrary. Yeah. Right. And this is where, this is where it gets hard. You better get in first. Otherwise you're screwed. Whatever. If I was part of this next generation that is truly, I do believe they are truly getting screwed over by the system right now. Um, it is insane. Well, the system is really the printing of money. Yes. Right? That causes inflation. Yes. Uh, which hits real assets the hardest. But we, we, it's so hard to live here and this is, I mean, this is primarily my employees. Um, I'm, I'm terrified because I have employees who are struggling to survive. Yeah, yeah. That's not a great place to have a business and, you know, I can't just pack up and leave. I don't want to do that. That's not the solution. The solution is to figure out alternative means. Yeah, if you start paying all your people. 80, 000 a year to work at your pub, uh, you'll be, your cash reserves will dwindle quickly. There would be no cash reserves. You're right. You know, and so, so there, there are other solutions and that's where I wish the message from the next generation would push less against their immediate employer and more against the system. That that's actually causing headaches because the employers hurting to that's the truth most people unless you work for those mega corporations You know, there are corporations that have the GDP of a small nation sure they can afford to pay more. Yeah I'm sorry, my three pups can't well and like one of the reasons Tesla stock is strong is Because they pay their people 45, 000 a year on the front lines and Ford pays him 80. Yeah. Right. And you know, yes. Should Tesla pay more than 45? I suppose, but it's a significant competitive advantage right now. It is a significant competitive advantage. And a lot of their employees are in Texas, where houses are only a couple hundred grand, right? You know? Yeah, they just voted to approve moving corporate operations officially to Texas. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, hard to, yeah, interesting dynamic, you know, do you want to be that, can you be those legacy businesses anymore and have that 40 year union job? Hmm. Hmm. and still have a competitive company? Or will China's electric vehicle industry eat Tesla's lunch if they start paying people 80 grand a year? Well, and that's the other thing is a lot of, a lot of companies, the, the legacy companies, they'll complain that employees are no longer loyal. Well, the employer stopped being loyal a long time ago too. So yeah, they did it first. So, you know, um, we, we hope that, that we're, we think a little differently at William Oliver's about some of that stuff, but at the end of the day, the system. As a whole need to revamp. Yeah. That's where, you know. Everybody's, everybody's hurting and unfortunately all businesses get lumped in as one unit. We talk about employer versus business. We talk about all employees are the same group and all employers are the same group. I'm like, well, there, there is something vastly different about the way I operate and the way Kaiser Permanente operates or Amazon or, you know, a hundred percent. Um, we're going to come back after a short break. Um, I want to talk about like. Those stories of I want to start a pub. Okay, and where'd that went from there coolio we are back. Uh, octopus, by the way. So you can find this, break in the action Alma in our random conversation. I did see that in the email. Yeah, octopus is our safe word, but she'll look up every octopus. So if I say octopus a bunch, she'll pull up the. Is that how, is that, I want the transcript to be like, why is there all these octopuses? Is that like speech to text technology that helps define the Descript. Um, and it actually transcribes the whole conversation and then you can do just a word search. Cool. Uh, and find things that you might want to edit out or whatever. Cool. So if I want to, you know, if we have a break in the action, a little funny and we can octopus it and Alma can decide from here. Now she's just gotten over. She's so annoyed. Um, so yeah, let's talk about the, like you said, for 10 years, your father in law was like, here, you can talk about this pub that should exist. Not even in Fort Collins at the time, right? No, I wanted it to be wherever I was. Right. And that, that was actually part of my wife's argument against England as well, is that she would support my career, but she knew that having a pub was something important to me. There's a lot of established pubs there already. And yeah, she was like, you know, we're not going to own a pub in England. Right. We're not going to live there for the rest of our life, so that seems silly. And, um, yeah, I had a, um, uh, site, um, Deviation in this story is that, uh, I had a mentor in the industry named Denise Stinson. She went by Mama. She owned a bar in Colorado Springs called Tam O'Shanter. Okay. And it was a super divey, Irish, quasi Irish themed bar. Yeah, yeah. And, um, What was there, was there an Irish themed bar that had like a runner's club or something? Oh! McQuinn? That's, uh, Connor, Connor O'Neill, no, that was, Fort Collins was Connor O'Neill's. Jack Quinn's. Jack Quinn's. Quinn's, yeah. Yeah, so neat side story there some. The upstairs bar in, uh, Jack Quinn's is actually from Ireland. Oh. Yeah. And the owner, uh, used to be on city council. So there's all the trivia I know about that. Okay. Very good. But yeah, they used to have a 5K, uh, running club. Yeah. If you did the 5K, then you got a free beer afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. And I always said we're going to do that at William Oliver's because I used to be a runner, but then I started drinking more beer and started running a lot less. You're like, why am I going to pay these dumb runners for free beer? Maybe, uh, you just had, uh, um, run Windsor on, uh, Uh, recently. Oh, Mandy, yeah. Yeah, Mandy was on. So maybe I need to talk to Mandy and be like, all right, let's get the running club out of the Windsor Club. She can probably do it. Yeah. Uh, calling all Mandys. Uh, well, we're actually, uh, my, my ambulance, excuse me, my ambulance on the social media is around. I've got a 1989 Ford E350 ambulance that Already a pretty awesome RV, but soon it will be a mobile podcast studio. Oh my gosh. And in a month from now, I'm taking it on the Wild West Relay and I'll be interviewing some of her runners on the relay and get some footage from Mandy. And I'm going to be hauling her drone videographer guy around. So that'll be fun. Yeah, it's fun. That'll be fun. I like the running community. Yeah. So yeah, we can, we can work that out. I can make that introduction. So anyway, I do know Mandy. I just need to hit her up. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, so, um, Mama, basically, she, I had told her that my dream was to have, to do my career and then retire and start a pub. Okay. And she said that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. We're gonna be traveling after your career is done, dude. Yeah, she, she's like, Um, owning a bar is one of the hardest things you'll ever do. And she goes, and starting one from scratch is even more difficult. And if you wait till you're retired, you won't have the energy to do this. Yeah. And She sounds like a pretty smart lady. She's very smart. And, um, so, I Talk to Tiff about that. And I was like, so maybe let's move the timeline up a little. And that's where the whole England and we're not going to start a bar there. And she said, you know, Fort Collins, you wouldn't mind starting one there. Right. And I was like, yeah. So then when it came time to actually happen, this, you know, we've been talking about this now for over a decade and we're here and I've. with my masters. I'm not commuting to Colorado Springs. I have all this time on my hands and I'm like, let's start the pub. And she's just like, um, and started coming up with like, How old are your kids at this point? Like two and one. Like, yeah. Um, we I could understand her. hesitation. Yeah, but by the time we actually broke ground on the Fort Collins pub, they were old enough each to at least hold a hammer. So but we have pictures of them in their diapers and their big old bellies like just hammering holes in the walls. Um, and yeah, So we found this place in Fort Collins, your home that you bought, ultimately kind of drew you here, no? Yep. Um, this is like what I said, Tiffany wanted to be in Fort Collins and this is a great place to build community and I believe pubs are part of building community. And so let's build the pub here. And then Tiff started doing her pushback. She's, she's a very fiscal conservative person in terms of like, um, anything. She's risk averse. That's the better way to say it. She's risk averse. And, um, and so. I was all gung ho. I was like, this is gonna happen. We found a spot, uh, it's been vacant for seven years, seven years. The lease is right. We've got this. And then pretty much once we signed the lease, she slept like a baby because now it's done. It's just, it's just, it's done. We have to do it. Right. And I didn't sleep at all because I'm just sitting there going, what have I done? Making lists of things that need to happen. I can't believe I'm going to try to start a whiskey bar in a King Soopers parking lot, basically like, what have I done? And, and then, um, a friend of mine, Uh, Kyle, who works for New Belgium, um, at the time he wasn't a friend. He's just a guy who came in selling beer and he's like, Hey, here, you're starting a pub here, early phases. And I showed him the blueprint on the wall and all this. And that whole space is 14 feet, 11 inches by 63 feet. So it's very narrow and very long. Wow. And all it was, was a box when he saw it. Right. And he saw the blueprint and he's like, Hey man, this looks great. Best of luck. Well, over the years we became friends and I recalled that story one time in front of him and he goes, Oh, I remember that. And I remember telling you, Good job. This will be great. And leaving going, There is no way. This is not going to work. There is no way a bar is going to work there. It is so small. You just can't even spin the thing fast enough to pay the rent. And he goes, He's like, I'm so happy I was wrong. Um, but my first drawing of the pub, I just saw the space and I pulled out a piece of paper or a napkin, I think it was a napkin at a bar and I etched out. I was like, yeah, bathroom would go here. Bar goes here. Yeah, it'll work. My wife goes, that is not how you do a floor plan. And so she made a proper floor plan and she's like, yeah, I think we can make everything fit. I was like, yeah, that's what I said. Look, my napkin and yours are the same thing. Actually, that takes me back to, um. So I was working in Southern California and, um, our oldest had been born, but our youngest hadn't. And, um, we went down to San Diego. I was on a work This was like more contract work after you came back. Yeah, more contract work. And, and, um, we were at this, this bar and I do know the name, but I'd have to pull it up. Um, but we're at this bar in the, uh, Gaslight district or whatever it's called in San Diego. And I'm like, Tiffany, this is like the feel I want my pup to have. So we started, it was about four hours from where we lived and so on. I started a business plan. Uh, and then the whole way home, she was just writing every, all our little thoughts down. And I wish we still had that napkin, but that was the original business plan for William Oliver's was spurred out of this bar there. Uh, two years ago, I'm back in San Diego and I go to that same bar and while I'm sitting there, I open up Google maps and it says, uh, Something like bars nearby that are like William Oliver's. You know how Google collects all the data about you. So it's like, Hey, you're at William Oliver's all the time. You're in a different city. Here's one like William Oliver's. And I'm like, Oh, I showed the, I showed the bartender. I was like, our business plan started in this bar and look, Google thinks they're the same. I love it. So, um, Yeah. What's that like? Like, did you like hire contractors? You build out your own bar? Like what, what was your level of involvement in all of that? Well, to get off the ground, as I said earlier, we were self funded. So, right. And you, you got a day job and I got a day job. So there wasn't a whole lot of money there. So we hired a general contractor cause the city required one, um, because it's over. I'm like, well, every commercial project is over 5, 000. Um, and so we had a general contractor and then a licensed plumber and a licensed electrician, cause those are what the city required. Other than that, Tiffany and I were doing it with the help of a few friends or contacts I had made throughout the way. Um, I suppose that's a big shout out is to Kyle Eddie at green check solutions. He's built. Probably half the bars in this town. Okay. Um, he's a, he is a creative person. I think I know his work. He's creative who happens to know how to build stuff. Right, right. You know? And so like he's done the bar top at Horse and Dragon. Yep. Um, at uh, what's Colin's place? Why am I blanking on it? Downtown, the brewery. It's been here forever. Uh. I'm so sorry Colin. Oh, the, uh, well, not, no, the one off Remington there. Yeah, right across the street from the parking garage. Yeah, the, uh, Oh my gosh. Space Ghost. No, not Space Ghost. It's gonna hit me later. Anyway, sorry, Colin, that I'm blanking. That's so embarrassing. Uh But yeah, um, yeah, so he's, he's done a lot of work and so had a little context like that throughout who helped us with things. But um, if you go into William Oliver's and you've been there, so you know that the left wall is all stone, right? Well that is four tons of stone that we didn't hire out. Tiffany and I did that and that's, I always said is my secret. We lost, I lost 27 pounds opening that because we had to move that stone multiple times because no matter where I put it. That's where who is always in the way, the contractor coming in. So the electrician be like, Hey, I need it off this wall cause I'm running a running electric. Okay. So we move it to the middle and the plumber will be like, Hey, I'm about to bust up all the concrete right where that is. And I need to run plumbing. Yeah. Yeah. So we move four tons of stone. I don't know how many times. Oh, that's really interesting. So you said, when did you open? What month did you open? That was March of 2013. Okay. So I worked at the Capitol West bank about a mile south, two miles south of William Oliver's, but I quit October of. 24, 20 13. Okay, so we'd only been open a few months, six months. I, I bet I ate at your place at least twice a month in that time. And then like since then, my whole world is north of Prospect and so I go down there sometimes, like Jill and I enjoy Willam Oliver's. If we're in that quadrant, we stop in. Yeah. Basically. I was only overlapping with you. That's why we're kind of, it's one of my favorite things about Col uh, uh, I almost said Colorado Springs about Fort Collins. Um, is that. everybody is so community. They're their neighborhood. That's what they're focused on. And I really like that because it does help the small businesses succeed against some of the bigger chains when people care about what's happening in their neighborhood. I live in between my own pub and Jessup Farm Barrel House. Perfect. And so those are my two stops. I actually my front door looks at the barrel house. So I've got a brewery right out my front door. Well, and that Uh, the Jessup Farm restaurant there was one of my two main locations where I wanted to have a restaurant. So that was my, my own journey was I was, I left banking to try to start a restaurant, ended up with a food trailer, and then Loco Think Tank kind of grew out of the ashes of that disaster. Gotcha. Yeah, I, I reached out to Gino who, uh, was the developer on that project. Um, and when they put up their sign on Timberline saying that the farmhouse was available, yeah, I was like, this is exactly what I want. Right. And I reached out and he said, well, what's your timeline? I said, uh, no quicker than a month. No later than three months. I want to get this thing open. He goes, Oh, we're still two years out. Right. And I was like, Oh, I was kind of more in that zone, but it was also like, and here's a rough estimate of how much we're thinking in rent. And I was like, Ooh. And, and, and refurbishment costs. Yeah. Um. That is the terrifying thing. So God bless them. I'm so glad I didn't get a big loan and open a restaurant back in those days. If, if you're going to get into the restaurant space, a loan is the opposite and I'm sure when you were in your banker days, you would tell them the opposite of that. You would say, no, no, a loan is a good option, but the truth is the margins are so thin in a restaurant that you have to pay the bank their, their, their cut first. Right. And there's nothing left over. No, I think, uh, in the future. Food business, especially the margins are so thin that you usually, but I mean, I don't know that many restauranteurs in part because as a banker, they were like, don't talk to restauranteurs. You know, we don't need their loans. Even now with three locations, I think I would still struggle to convince a bank to, and even with your quality of books and things like that, you know, they, Oh, I'd finance your real estate at least. Do you own any real estate? No, we don't. All tenancies. That's, that's part of my wife being risk adverse is that, um, It gives us an out, we can, I guess, but the only really good reason to run a restaurant is to buy real estate over time, any restaurant that's been in operation for 40 plus years, they own the real estate or totally. I mean, it's like the, it's like the useful thing about a restaurant. Otherwise you'll just be pulling your hair out eventually. Although yours is not a restaurant, right? It's a whole different thing, making a mild menu and important bourbon and having good conversations. So, so far it's working out for us. Yeah. Um, But, you know, um, we have three good landlords in three different locations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, my one in, the one in Windsor is actually a really good friend of mine. Any thoughts or plans for expansion beyond? Three was the original goal. Okay. Um, that was the original goals. Three William Olivers. What I'd like to do now is diversify. Within the same corporate umbrella more, uh, concepts. Okay. You know, I, I kinda like, um, hot corner concepts Yeah. Here, here in town and how Yeah. They got the Come Chicken is way different than the Moot House, than the MO is way different. Yeah. They've Austin four different options that they, so they can kind of play around and have fun. Yeah. And still keep the risks minimized. If something doesn't work, you can just shut it down. Yeah. Yeah. Like the Austin's at Pelican Lakes or whatever. Was that Austin's homestead? Oh, I don't know if I, yeah. Um, you should listen to my conversation with, uh, Al, uh, Jansen. Yeah. Uh, he's silver grill and you know, I'll probably silver grill Verne's now, but he was the number two at, at hot corner for a long time. And part of his journey was humping it out to Windsor and trying to serve. golfers and stuff at Austin's Homestead for a couple few years. That would be tough. It was just a whole different business model. And they, you know, ultimately Steve and the group just, it just didn't really work for their thing, you know? So, yeah, I think that's wise. So, yeah, that's kind of where we've looked at is, is how could we diversify? I think Do you have any thoughts about what that might be? I think there's a lot of space in this town still for, uh, supporting food trucks with a A commissary type? A commissary type thing. Um, I have some ideas about how to change up the current commissary. Dude, if there could be like in some towns there's like a, a commissary kitchen with a yard with six or eight semi permanent food trucks. Yeah. Yeah. It would be, it would be, it would kill it. We've, it'd be great for everybody. There's a couple concepts like that in Denver, and I know a few of the owners of those, and they, you know, I've been to some of those out west too, in Portland, and you've got a person with a liquor license, so you can get your boots over there there. Right. You have your liquor license, you've got, and you've got the commissary for people who just want to go in and come out and Yeah. But you got permanent trucks there as well. Yeah, dude, it, it, it's a really good. Way to give everybody a little bit what they want and I think that the game changer piece has to be there has to be Something to draw people totally that's you know where I like You know the what do they call it the exchange? Mm hmm downtown. Yeah, I I like where their heads at with that Yeah, and I think a food truck or two Yeah, which is the opposite of what they were going for. They don't want a food truck, but I think a food truck or two would bring in people who are like visiting. I want to follow this food truck around, right? Double dubs out. Well, I met, uh, I met with Josh Guernsey way back when they were first noodling on that project because I was experienced in the food truck realm and he wanted to know what. These little concepts, you know, like the churn or yeah, uh, what's the, the flatbread gay? Uh, I know it, but I can't remember. Um, you know, like he was a really successful, uh, Mobile food guy for a long time. And they're like, what would cater to somebody like that? And it's like, well, you got to build community, you know, give that opportunity. Yeah. Although maybe you should have that, uh, that brewery space right in the corner there, you can just, uh, operate something right there. It's some food trucks in maybe some Josh to take your call. So, um, what do we, what kind of brought us back around for a sucker, right? Like, I don't feel like we're missing too much in terms of the journey back. Like you kind of talked about leasing the space, building it out. In laws, outlaws, 401ks. I don't really have too much. Uh, look into the future. Uh, taking, uh, two of my staff to Scotland here in September. So that's something that we do. That's really fun. If you work for us for five years, you qualify for a trip to Scotland. And so it's the general manager from Lafayette and then, uh, Colleen, who, uh, has been with us in Fort Collins for almost seven years. And is that your, uh, Other part of your heritage in addition to the, the Mexican? It is Scottish. That is the Scottish Irish side. I got married in a kilt, which my sister always laughed at. She said, you know, we're Mexican and you're getting married, but no, that is the other side. I've been to one wedding where there was a kilt, uh, on the groom. So I dig it. Yeah. Um, so the, the, the turn here is the. It's the, we always talk about faith, family, politics, um, any order, anything you like, anything you don't like. I like all those things. Um, let's start with politics. It seems like it might be the longest, uh, okay, so I put a, I put a post on Facebook today basically observing that my sense was that the, the, the reaction to the fireworks last weekend was Less vibrant than in years past because people watched the debate and they realized our president is, should be a nursing home occupant. And it just kind of sucks out the pride a little bit on what our country really is like. And I'm not defending Donald Trump with that quote. Statement I'm just saying it's a weird place in America right now where that's our president Do you think if there is a 40 year old president currently that we would have had more excitement about America? I don't think so. I think yes, I think people are feel deceived I don't I think people are waking up to the fact that American citizens have been pawns in a political game for a long time. Fair. And are now realizing that the politicians themselves are also pawns in the game. Totally. That, and I, I, I think that's fair. I think until, really until 2020. COVID hit. Most people didn't understand that even the politicians are just pawns. Totally. They're just pawns with a few more moves. We can go forward. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and they, you know, but they're, they're certainly not the queens or the kings on the chessboard. They, they're pawns that just, they can go two moves instead of one. Right. That's it. Right. You know, and. I heard an interview, uh, with, uh, With Justin Trudeau's brother on Tucker Carlson, uh, which I highly recommend if anybody's curious. I don't know if I can export anything Tucker Carlson's doing. Well, I don't know. Uh, like Trudeau's brother is literally like an old school hippie, like a seventies style, kind of a hippie guy. And one of the statements in that was, you know, Justin's not the boss. He's, he's not like the owner of the team. He's not like the manager. He's like the coach. Yeah. Well, it's different though, in the Canadian system, because The monarchy still has control to shut down the government. I believe the last time the monarchy Oh, is that right? Yeah, the monarchy shut down the Australian government in the 70s, I believe. So, you'll hear it a lot of times. France is going through it right now. They just elected a bunch of people. And they have to, have to quote, form a government. Right. And so, The American system's a little bit different, that we elect people and that is the government. The government is formed by election, whereas they still have to form a government. They have to agree on what the rules are going to be, who's going to have power, who's going to All the centrists and the leftists together bonded to say, let's keep those right wingers out. But now they have to come up with new rules on how they're going to govern so that they can form a government. Oh, wow. And so, if you So it's literally like, what? Yeah. And so, so the, the prime minister, um, has to go basically to the queen and say, I, or the king now, uh, I have formed a government in your name. Oh, that's fair. Do you approve? Right, right. Okay. So that's, uh, I guess that's a pretty good, uh, metaphor or explainer for me on the difference between a Trudeau and a, and a Biden. And a Biden is that our president is the president. They are the NWL. Right, well theoretically, but obviously not. And the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court just basically ruled that we have a king, so long as the king has advisors and the advisors are the Supreme Court. So the latest ruling basically from the Supreme Court gives presidential immunity. Uh, for nearly all actions that the president does. And those who determine in an official capacity who, yeah, but who gets to determine that right? The courts, right? So now that is a king with advisors. The advisors are the Supreme Court. They are strong and they get to decide whether or not the king has acted appropriately. So we are, we are, we are. We are now just a few hundred years away from being, uh, a kingdom that has a government formed in the king's name. You know, we're, we're on our path. I don't think it'll actually go that way. No, I don't think the American people will ever willingly let that happen. Um, I think we're terrified now because it has, It is now law. It has been interpreted by the Supreme Court as that is essentially now I've given it fancier words than it or less fancy. I suppose we have more layman's more layman's terms than what they gave. Um, but essentially we we have that our president does have true authority to do whatever they want. If the courts will back them up, if they can make a good enough argument to the court system saying that these were official facts, function of their role. Yeah. Then fair enough. It's then it's legal. Although I, you know, I think it, it bites a hard edge. Like I've, I've read thoughts on both sides of that Chevron. Right. Is that the, the Chevron decision? Just, yeah. Yeah. Um, and if you, if they decided the other way, then a president could be like. Limited by decision based on what their liability might be. But shouldn't they be? I suppose so, to an extent. So the sheriff of Larimer County is an elected officer. Sure. Yep. The sheriff is limited by what he can prove he did legally. Right. He, if he But he's ultimately pretty much the big shit in this county. He's the big swinger for the county, and if Hmm, but what he did legally. If he does something that the voting public doesn't like, we have two options. We can vote him out, or we can press to take him to court. Yeah. Right? And so he's not above the law, is the law in Larimer County, but he's not above the law. Right. We have several layers of courts that can go above that. And basically the way the Supreme Court decision reads is that the Supreme Court, the last court in the land gets to decide whether or not the president was acting officially. Well, this limits it to very few people. So that's arguably a power grab by the Supreme Court. Yeah, I think so. Which is what the Supreme Court has been doing for the last 40 years. Which means we should definitely add six members to the Supreme Court. Minimum. Why should we not expand the Supreme Court? Think about the population, the U. S. population, uh, in the 1950s versus today. Massively larger population, same number of justices. So we have the same number of justices. I would say the House of Representatives, yes. But that's the whole point. The House of Representatives is, is adjusted. The committees get unwieldy. You know, a nine person court is bad enough, but a frickin thirty one person court? I would, you know, but why not 23, that's a good number, you know, and so, so I'm just saying that we don't have enough justices now. Um, now what's there, there, uh, I forget the woman's name, but she, she actually came up with a systemized way of adding justices where it's not the current president, it is adding them through a certain system. And the other thing that I think most people. Uh, I think most Americans can get behind is, is term limits to the justices. Uh. A hundred percent. You know. Yeah. I think so. An appointment for life, I understand the idea, right? Which is, you don't have to worry about your job for the rest of your life. So you can make decisions that you believe are the right decision under the letter of the law. Right. And your job is safe. However, you're now in your 80s. Right. Your job was safe. You should have retired by now. You know? If you were a general in the army, we would have forced your retirement. Yeah. I haven't really heard that scaling based on population as much for the Supreme Court as I have for the representatives. Yeah. Because, like, right now it's, what, one representative for every 750,000 people or something I think. Yeah. I'll have to believe you on the, on the ratio. I mean, that's a ton, right? Like, I don't know, but you know, states have two senators per and Yeah. Yeah. And that, but the representatives was supposed to be kind of like, this is my representative supposed, that's supposed be ours. Yeah. Hey, I'm one of your 70,000. But when we started, it was one of like 1200 or something. Mm-Hmm. right. And so like we could with electronic means, like instead of 435 representatives, there could be. 14, 000. Yeah. And everybody just Zoom meetings and they vote according to the little hand raiser things and you've got a much smaller district now where Your people could actually say, Hey, I want some representation on this thing. Yeah. I mean, we could move more towards a true democracy if we were going that way. Yeah. Um, and that's, you know, one of the, the battle cries that you hear on, on social media all the time is we are not a democracy. We are Republic. Yeah, yeah. You know, and so How about the notion of, uh, you should have skin in the game. Like, you should pay 50, 000 in income taxes before you're allowed to vote, or you should own property before you're allowed to vote, or something like that. If you're living here, if you're living in this country. Whether you're a citizen or not, you have skin in the game. Okay. If you're living here, you have skin. So do you think the recent 10 million immigrants or so should be allowed to vote in the federal elections? I'm not sure that simply living here will, should give you a right to vote. I'm just saying that living, living here gives you skin in the fair. Fair. You are beholden to stuff by being here and stuff. So, and the idea, the government is spending, but the right, so if you're only receiving and never. Giving, should you vote? Right. I don't know. But if you say the only people who can vote on where that spending goes are people who own things, well, the people who own stuff, we're never going to give it up. Own things or pay things. But yeah, no, it's a good question. I don't know. Who, who, who's gonna, you know, cause, cause you might at an individual level go, yes, I could take a small sacrifice if it helps the people around me. But when you can't see who those people are, cause, cause they're, they're obfuscated through the social metrics that we have available to us, you know, like, this is called the vanilla valley. You know, we live in Fort Collins. Vanilla Valley. I call us, uh, uh, I say we're a melting pot here in, in northern Colorado, especially Fort Collins, but it's a white cheese fondue. It's a white cheese fondue, but there are actual huge pockets. Oh, yeah. Uh, of, um, The Latin American folks that live in this town, and they are underrepresented, uh, in politics, and they are underrepresented in business, and they are, they are the background characters. And to say they, they don't have skin in the game because they don't yet own property is not a fair argument, you know? Well, and it's, I mean, there's a lot more than just, you know, Hispanic people that don't own property. Um, there's a lot of just young people, young white people and whatever. Um, I was thinking to myself about, it's an interesting dynamic and you're right. I mean, I, I experienced it regularly because Alma is like outside of her work with local think tank. She's mostly engaged with the Hispanic community through her church and through her kind of husband's work and community and whatever. And so I'm her, we're each other's little window into those. Yeah. In some ways. Um, but Mayor Martinez was a long time ago. What? Like, early 90s? Yeah. Ray? Ray? And he was more Hispanic cultured than not, probably, in his upbringing? Yeah. For sure. But it didn't I don't know. It hasn't really translated to, and of course there's Gallegos and different families that have had really successful business, but it hasn't really translated to that population engaging with the business community at large. Yeah. Well, I, I, I, so I'd like to try to foster that as well. Yeah. I think your, uh, your think tank and your podcast have a great opportunity to help engage in that. Fair. Yeah. Well, except I don't speak Spanish, so I'm going to need you to come in and translate for us. Thanks. You'd be surprised how many of them speak great English. No, it's true. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so like, if you were going to sum up your, I'm, I'm sensing a pretty strong Trump's evil and potentially like destructive to the future of our nation kind of thing. So regardless of how, old and decrepit Biden as we should vote for him. Um, RFK, any thoughts on him? To, to be fair, the two of, uh, the two big ticket, uh, guys are four years apart. They're both old and decrepit. For sure. To make this about age is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. No, I think it's about capacity. I mean, it's obvious that Biden is, you know, slowed down more than Trump has mentally. Yes. I, I, they're, but Trump says bananas things all the time. He just says them faster, you know, like just because you can rattle off dumb shit faster, does it make you smarter? You know, and that's how he quote won the debate is he just lied and didn't answer the questions at a much faster pace. Um, Do I think Biden is right for America? No. Do I, uh, Do you think he's gonna drop? I don't think he will. You don't think so? He'll go to the polls? I think he'll go to the polls. Um, Do you think he should? I'd like to see the age for, uh, presidents be lowered. Mm. You know, um, is Ocasio Cortez, Uh, of legal age to even run for president. Barely, if she is. If she is, it'd be barely. She was 29 when she first got office, so. She's, she's incredibly intelligent. And that's the kind of person that I disagree with most of her politics. But I would, I would jump behind her. Interesting. Or somebody like her. Okay. Who's just insanely intelligent. And I wish that's what we had up. That's my problem. Well, actually, uh, W, um, he, he was a guy that I want to have a beer with him. He seems like a genuinely fun guy to have a beer with. In terms of intelligence, I don't, I shouldn't be smarter than the president. When he was running for president the first time and I was like, 14 or something like that. I was like, I'm pretty sure I'm smarter than this guy. And it changed my whole view on politics, frankly. And that's how I feel is like you shouldn't, the average human, the average American should not be smarter than their president and the two big tickets. And even if you want to include, uh, RFK in there, all three of them, most Americans. Seem to have a better grasp of common sense intelligence than those guys do at the moment And I push back on RFK though, cuz I've listened to a lot of long podcasts with him and he's pretty freakin smart Okay, well like he might have some views that you disagree with but that doesn't mean he isn't hyper intelligent I will tell you that I have largely ignored. I I've watched maybe two to three minute clips of what he has to say Uh, that have probably been curated by Reddit of all places, you know, and so maybe I haven't given him his due, but I haven't given him his due because we're not a three, a three party system. Right. Well, but he got blackballed out of the democratic primary. Like he would have won that if it had been allowed to continue, if they hadn't changed the rules. of engagement, I think, which, you know, I think we need to, that right there is part of the problem. Right. Being a party system. Let's get rid of the two parties. Let's, you know, let's equalize a lot of that and financially equalize it too. Yeah. No, I'm down for that. So, um, it'd be, it'd be amazing what the campaigns would look like if all parties had to had a maximum they could spend. Right. If you get this much public interest from your website or whatever, then you get a million dollars. And you're done. And that's it. That's all you're allowed to spend. Right. It'd be wildly different. Oh, totally different. Yeah. I have no idea how to predict that even. So what's your prediction for the fall? You think Biden's going to win? You think Trump's going to win? Is Trump going to jail? I have no idea. Um, you know, I have no. It doesn't really matter. I have no predictions. William Oliver's will continue as it has been. There, there is not an outcome that I see that I like. Fair. I agree with that. Um, faith or family next? Let's go faith. Okay. Um, I don't know. Irish Catholic background? Uh, you got, I don't know, uh, any Yeah, I suppose theoretically I should be super Catholic with, uh, Irish and Scottish side and the Mexican side, but, uh, I did grow up around the Catholic church. My grandmother's Catholic, um, but I, I was never baptized into, into that church. Um, and, uh, or any church or did you go to church at all? Went to church a lot. So, um, when we were, uh, In a small town in, in Pennsylvania, we just basically went to the church that was, it was the farm church. It was the one you could get to, you know. Right, right. And I believe it was Methodist. Okay. I'm not a hundred percent sure. Yeah, yeah. Um, no, I've, I've, I've, I am a follower of Jesus. I, my whole life I've, uh, Counted myself as a Christian, um, but I don't really subscribe to any specific church. I think dogma is what gets people into the weeds, into the wrong, the wrong way. That was what kept me from approaching the truth. Christianity for a long time because it was like when the Irish Catholics were bombing the British Protestants and stuff like that It's like if if Christians treat each other this way, that's dumb Yeah, I saw something something online that was you know, it was being anti muslim and it just said like, you know When is the last time somebody has used the Christian God in to justify death and I just like Are you unaware of the entire history of Christianity? Like, um, all faith does that at some level and, you know, so no, I, I do consider myself Christian, but, um, but haven't really been actively involved for decades, even really, maybe. Yeah. Um, there was, uh, do you read the Bible ever or anything like that? Yeah. Um, Um, I study religion a lot. Um, I'm a Freemason as well on top of it. Oh, interesting. And to be a Freemason, you, you don't have to believe in a particular faith. You have to believe in a higher power. Yeah, yeah. You have to believe in deity. Um, and so Is that a family heritage thing or something you signed up for? Something I signed up for. Okay. I got a big scholarship. Not big, but I got a 500 scholarship from a Freemason organization. Nice. Like, out of the random for college. Colorado Masons, we literally just did our, uh, our annual Um, uh, scholarships. Um, and so it was something like two and a half million dollars in scholarships. Um, and Mason's worldwide are the largest private, uh, education scholarship. And I suspect it's like smart poor kids, mostly. Mostly. Because I was a smart poor kid, you know, and I got 500 in a random. You know, we, we actually don't really publish what the criteria are because we want everyone to apply. Yeah, yeah. And so, um, but generally speaking, if you are of means, you'll get excluded pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah. Um, if, if we have a lot of people that we're going to, um, the people who won the scholarship this year, uh, are some of the most gifted kids I've ever, ever, uh, like seen resume wise. I mean, they're not even 18 or just turning 18 and their resumes, it's like the stuff they've been involved in. And we've been doing rotary club scholarships for the Fort Collins breakfast. Rotary is a group that I'm involved in. Okay. You might like that. Actually. I know of them, but I have not. It's a ginger and Baker on seven o'clock on Thursday mornings. So let me know if you want to visit sometimes. But, um, but those kids that. Win or or even are considered for our scholarships come in and talk about it afterwards and stuff And it's like dang. I was not that grown up or responsible or thoughtful when I was 17 Yeah, yeah close. I you know, I thought I was pretty hot shit These kids just put you to shame, the stuff they're doing and, and the circumstances, the odds that they're overcoming to do it is even more, a lot of them, so many applicants come through that not only are they 4. 0 GPAs and involved in extra, uh, extracurricular activities and in sports and they're charitable in the community. They're holding down 20 hour a week jobs, you know, on top of it. And it's just like, so they're talking about masons. Is that something you've been involved with a long time? It's like a secret society, right? You can only tell me so much. Can I sign up? Yeah. If I wanted to? Theoretically. They probably wouldn't let me in. Do you know what Kiwanis means, by the way? Tell me. Couldn't get into the Rotary Club. Um, yeah, no, it's, uh, it's an organization I've been involved with for a long time. since 2013, I think, or 14, 2014. So since really, 2012, cause you're a made man through the, through the masons. 2014 I became a master Mason as they call it. And uh, so next year will be 10 years that I've been a master Mason. Um, and yeah, it's a, it's an organization that I really do enjoy. Um, I'm part of a very small group that we actually broke off and created our own lodge. Cause I live close to the Masonic Lodge in Old Town. Yeah, so the temple downtown was two different lodges and I was originally a member of one of the two lodges that was there. Yeah. And, um, meetings can be kind of boring, you know, they can be business meetings and we wanted more esoteric and like, let's talk about things that nobody was willing to talk about. Interesting. And so like right now I'm, I'm pretty heavily into studying the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism and stuff like that. And as a Christian to jump into that world, it's really fun. This is a group of guys that I can go into and, and just talk about conversation about it. And they're all about it. Let's have, let's talk more, you know, as opposed to, you know, you, if I bring up a Jewish mysticism around my wife or most of my other friends, I'm like, okay, and I've, I actually was just shooting darts and I got locked on this idea that was just this, this idea of the four worlds and in Kabbalah and, and I'm just shooting darts and I'm talking about it. And my buddy just comes over and he goes, will you shut up? Right. Save this for your Mason meeting. He's like, we're shooting darts. I don't want to talk God right now. It's like, okay, fair enough. Interesting. So it almost sounds like, um, an intellectualism first kind of an organization in some respects and philanthropy, I think, right. And brotherhood. I think, uh, yeah, uh, brotherhood's probably the highest. And then, um, philanthropy is probably the lowest of those three, you know, but yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a fantastic organization. You can tell me more after we finish this, cause the rest of it's probably secret. I don't want everybody to come. There are no secrets. Do you know Chris Palomino? I do. Rhonda Palomino was my, frankly, probably the, one of the few employees I've had in my lifetime that were comparable to Alma on my team right now. And Chris was a, was a Mason. Okay. Yeah. I thought so. I thought that name. He's Hispanic. That's the, that's the Palomino name as well. Um, and, uh, Rhonda was, uh, you know, white cheese fondue, but, but they had a great relationship and I hope they're still married anyway, if you're listening, Rhonda, it's been 10 years. Um, anyway, like Chris was one of my few kind of windows into the Mason realm, if you will, just because we went to an event over there one time at the Mason Lodge and he was like, yeah, we're Mason. He's like, oh. That's weird, tell me about it. It's a cool building. That building's haunted, by the way. Is it? Majorly haunted. Interesting. Yeah. Um, is it the ghosts of salsa dancers? Because I know they had salsa dancing there. They do. So the, the basement. Tuesdays for a while. The basement has a world class floating wood floor. There's very few of them left. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, it's, yeah. So it is, that is down there. Um, so, Faith, do you feel like you've covered that to your extent, do you wish? Yeah, probably. Go, family. Um, do you One thing we always do is a one word description of your children. Amazing. As a group. That is them. And then how about if you take them individually? Do you have one word descriptions that you can, uh Process them down too. We do allow hyphens. Um, my youngest is naturally funny. Uh, and my oldest is naturally smart. Oh. Um, but they are, uh, they, you, I have two teenage girls, you know. I have two high schoolers and everybody that knows. A dad, dad, uh, what is that, girl dad. Yeah, girl dad. Damn. You know, everybody's just like, Oh, good luck with that. It's like, I don't need it with these two. They are truly phenomenal human beings that, um, my wife and I just feel blessed that they are part of our life. Yeah. Yeah. Like they, they include us. They keep us engaged. They, you know, they, they still every now and again, come tuck us in. You know, we'll be sitting there watching TV and they'll want to go to sleep so they'll come and they'll, they'll tuck us in and I don't know, they've, they've just been phenomenal and it's my wife and I believe our, our sole job as parents is to create. independent, contributing members of society. I dig it. That's it. And so everything we do as parents is just trying to push them down that path. That's so, uh, countercultural almost. Like a lot of people's parenting is like, I will protect my child from any harm until I can no longer do it. Yeah. And then I will die. We saw it when they were little with, You know, parents who were, who's friends and whatever, parents of friends, and they would not be allowed to have candy in their house. Right. And we always have a candy bowl. Why, I mean, I brought in a flask of nerds. Yeah, I would have some nerds. Yeah, have some nerds. Oh, we should talk about that whiskey too, by the way. Oh, yeah. Um, but we always have a candy bowl. And it's easily accessible, and there are no rules on it. You can hear it in the microphone. A nerds flowing out of a flask. Um. And kids would come over from the neighborhood and they'd be like, so what's the rules on the, on the candy? And, and they'd be like, well, you can have as much as you want. And they would just go to town. It's like, well, if you, if you put on strong breaks and bumpers and stuff against your kids, then. That's, they're just going to push against it. So we, we're not quite hippie dippy enough to just let them have free reign of the world. We're somewhere in between. Yeah. Which is probably my whole life. I'm just somewhere in between. I was raised a pretty free reign ish. Like I could let 15, if I came home at one o'clock in the morning, well, I wasn't dumb, but. Okay. I have that. Um, my mom, she said, um, that curfews didn't matter. So long as you did what you have to do. Yeah. And my sisters couldn't handle it. So they had curfews because they would complain about going to school and I'd come home at two or three in the morning and I'd wake up at six and go off. And so she's like, well, he doesn't have a curfew because he can handle it. So my, my wife blames my mother for, for the fact that still to this day, I, okay. Don't go to sleep till 4 or 5 in the morning, and I get up at 8 and, you know, start my next day. Wow. Interesting. Even if you're not bartending, you're just like, do stuff till late. If I'm lucky, I might fall asleep at midnight, uh, but I will wake up at 2. There's something in my head that's like, it's 2am, it's closing time. Um, I have broken myself of the habit. I used to always check the cameras, and I tried to convince myself that it was checking to make sure my staff was okay. Right. But the truth was I, I just didn't know how to let go. Right. Um, but I still wake up at two. Cool. Um, so talk to me about Tiffany. It's clear that you think she's. She's pretty much out of your league. She's the bee's knees. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Um, well, you, I mean, you're pretty cool too, but. I think in every relationship, there's somebody who realizes they settled and it wasn't this guy. Um, she is, uh, yeah, she is phenomenally smart. Um, I, I don't know if you've ever even got to meet her. I don't think so. Um, if she's ever at the pub, she's very, very much background. She doesn't like to be. Um, she loves being in the foreground, but like the invisible for right, right. So she'll be like pouring your beer, pouring beer or doing dishes and where she can hear everything, but she's not forced to engage. She loves that. Um, she'll, well, you were definitely the personality as you guys were opening and stuff. You were in the paper a lot and different things, jokingly always say I was the pretty face, right? Anybody who knows, yeah, way much of a lie. Um, yeah, no, she is, uh, yeah, she is. She's been a person that. Um, literally since I was a teenager has been influential in my life and is just a person that. It accepts people for who they are, and lets people have faults, and, you know, it's amazing. What do you think, I think I remember you telling a story where her mom was like, you're gonna date your brother? Yeah, ooh, that's like dating your brother. Talk to me about your in laws and like, what that was like in those earliest months. Um. Yeah, I've always had a really good relationship with the woman who became my mother in law. Yeah, her name's Marsha and Side side story to that is I didn't actually know her name for the longest time. I've been hanging out at her house. Mrs. B Yeah, I called her lady and and she always thought it was me being like, oh, she's the lady of the house Right very feminine And more you were like Beastie Boys. Uh, yeah, it was, I don't know. I'd probably been married to Tiffany for 10 years. And I was just like, uh, yeah, it came out. I was like, yeah, Marsha, I called you that. Cause I didn't know your name. That's awesome. Um, yeah, no, uh, my father in law is, is a, a no shit rocket scientist, um, like an actual. Like Lockheed Martin or something, something. He spent his, the vast majority of his career in the Air Force, um, doing things that he probably still can't talk about. Right, right. All I know is I was at his retirement ceremony and they said that when the work they did became declassified, his name would be in the history books. I said, not our name, not our group, him. That's interesting. Um, uh, do you think aliens exist? I do. I definitely believe. Do you think he's seen any? Uh, I convinced myself as a kid, I've seen some, and Dwight, uh, has always said that he, at the, uh, Pentagon, there's small doors for the aliens. Um, but, I don't know, I don't know if he genuinely believes. It's a big universe, it would be kind of shocking if there wasn't some. something out there. It's gotta be something. We just watched Independence Day on 4th of July, my wife and I did. Oh, that's a super good one. Super good. I love it. As an alien movie, I love it. Cause it, it makes them weak like us. You know, they're, they're just, they're just, uh, a humanoid sort of creature that's just as vulnerable, just as, and they're just better technology. One of the interesting things I, and I've brought it up on this podcast before, but you probably remember when you were a little kid. Like it was, either there was God, or there was the Big Bang. Like you could choose this, or choose that. And now that the big telescope is out, they're kind of like, Oh, this Big Bang thing looks pretty planned. Yeah. And, like, intelligent design is kind of, but then how do you get the no God thing? What did, uh, um, Pete Holmes new stand up? He had a really good bit about that. Oh, I haven't seen it. I'm not going to be able to paraphrase him to do him any justice. But basically he's, he's like, if, if you believe that nothing created the big bang, that's a pretty amazing thing to believe in. If you believe that when you die you go back to nothing, you're going back to your creator. We believe in the same thing, we just have different words for it. I like that. Um, I've, my whole life I've, uh, I've always thought that religion and science were not mutually exclusive, you know? Yeah, fair. So, I, I think it's, it's one of those things that Yeah, I think, well, a lot of the best scientists kind of tend to be more religious. Yeah. Like, the, the mid level scientists are kind of like agnostic or whatever, but Well, the more you dive into anything, I think the more you realize you don't understand. Totally. And so, the more you dive into science, the more you're like, there's a lot that can't be explained. Totally. And if you're willing to just look for a second into This other phenomenon that's called religion and go, well, what if some of that was true? Right? What if I just start with, some of it might be true and it could explain some things that are unex, currently unexplainable and there are diehard scientists who will just go, well, it's currently unexplainable, but X-rays were unexplainable at some point and now we know that, so we just, we just gotta learn enough. God is unexplainable because we don't know enough. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, well, what if they're one in the same? What if science will get us to a point of proving God exists? Why can't I still believe in God the whole time? You know? What's the harm in that? Yeah, I dig it. So, um, Do you feel well covered on the faith, family, politics? Anything you want to say more about your parents, your mom? My mom is, uh, She's one of those phenomenal people that, She, she held down three, four jobs at a time to raise us. And was your stepdad not there the whole time? No. So the guy I considered my father's, his name's Tony. And, um, he was only married to my mother for gosh, maybe six years or so. Okay. And so my little sister, that was what, like middle school up to, through most of high school, a little bit, you know, but he never, he never left our life. Right. Um, But it's, it's, they weren't married anymore, but they weren't married and, you know, and I mean, I'm sure he threw child support towards my little, actually, that's not true. Um, my mom and him had an agreement. They were both broke as shit. So they just had an agreement. Do you keep a roof over your head and I'll do the same. It's pretty much. And so, um, my little sister lived with him some of the time, lived with us some of the time. And, uh, but he never stopped being my dad, which I thought was a very, very cool thing that even though financially it wasn't, it wasn't Sure. Something he could take on two households. Yeah, yeah. He never stopped. In my whole life I've gotten Christmas presents from him. Yeah. You know, so. But my mom was, you know, like I said, my mom was uh. She's a real gem in your family tree. Three to four jobs at a time to make sure we always had something. Well, that example really probably was the tipping that said, Hey, I got two little kids. I got a full time job, but let's start a pub. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Like seeing her work like she did. Yeah. Had to have been a big impact for you. My grand, grand, my grandmother, her mom was the same way and worked and worked until, pretty much until she died. Yeah. Um, my, my grandmother-in-Law on my biological father's side. Same way. Yeah. Just, I come from, I come from a big group of hardworking women. Yeah. um, the, the, the men. It's like a lion pride almost. Um, we have one final segment. The Loco Experience. The craziest experience of your lifetime that you're willing to share with our listeners. Oh, okay. Um. Could be a big one. Moment a day a week a month a year. So a few years back. This would have been 2018 maybe okay. I got to partake in what Grant's whiskey called the greatest job interview in the world Okay I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but it was like they got 20, 000 applicants for the Grant's Whiskey Global Ambassador job. Okay. And the first round was you had to submit a video via YouTube. You can make it unlisted, but you had to submit them on YouTube a video. Uh, answering a few questions and it was like, if you got invited to the second round, what would you bring? That sort of stuff. And so I made the video of me sitting at my own bar. Interviewing me as my own bartender. So, uh, I made this fun little video back and forth. As if you had a twin almost. Yeah, pretty much. And, um, I said I would bring, um, a, a mixtape of 80s rock songs. Because there is not a person on the planet who doesn't know every lyric. to every 80s rock song, whether or not you like it or not, you know, all the words, you know, somehow I've learned, uh, living on a prayer like four times in the last two weeks. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So, um, so yeah, I got to go, I made it to the top 20. Okay. Uh, and so they flew me to Scotland. Oh wow. And then I got to be part of a week long, kind of, uh, adventure in Scotland of all these people, these phenomenal human beings that, um, we had to read Robbie Burns poems with Scottish brogue. And we had to go into a room. There was one room there, like, what languages do you speak? And you'd write down any that you even knew a little bit of. So I'm like, well, I, I speak English and I speak Spanish. And I know a little bit of German and they're like, okay, go into this room. And in that room were people who didn't speak any of those languages. And so it was like, They're just like they were properly interviewing you or like telling you to like, tell us a joke and it's like, I don't speak your language and you couldn't use your languages to tell it. That was the only rule is that the languages you spoke could not be spoken in that room. And it was just like, Wow, it was so much fun. Uh, and then, uh, they narrowed it down to three people. I placed fifth, so I missed the top three. The top three people got to go. Each of them had to go to like four or five countries. It's like The Bachelor almost or something. Yeah, for, for a global ambassador job. The guy who got the job is a guy named Danny Dyer, who I'm still in contact with. Phenomenal human being, and I knew he was going to get the job day one. Yeah. Because we all had to meet in Edinburgh. The top 20 had to meet in Edinburgh. Uh, not in Edinburgh, in Aberdeen. And This, we're at a train station. We formed a little group and this guy comes over and he just looks worse for wear. And, and he's like, is this the grants thing? I was like, yeah, it's a grants thing. He's like, okay. I was like, yeah, you're doing okay, bud. And he goes, just got finished with a stag doing out in Edinburgh. It's not even over. He goes, I, I stayed until I could, and that's the bachelor party. So he basically kept partying with him till he had to get on a train to get to Aberdeen, hopped off the train. He was somewhere between drunk and hungover, not quite sure which one. And he slept the whole way. They took us on a bus to the distillery and he slept the whole way there. Everybody else is getting to know each other. Where are you from? All the normal stuff. And he's just out. And as soon as we get there, he sees a bar and he goes. Are we allowed to drink any of this? And the guy goes, yeah, if you want, it's nine o'clock in the morning. Right. You know, and the guy's like, yeah, if you want it, like one drink and he's like, he cracks it back to his normal self, back to his normal self. He knows that, you know, and he grew up around the distillery, like within 10 miles of the distillery. So I was just like, that guy's got the job. And then sure enough, that's the guy who got the job. He's a phenomenal human with some of the funniest stories ever. Let's, uh, let's talk about. Like we're pretty much a third and I think I probably drank quite a bit more than you did because I can tell I'm I'd say We're 25 percent a third 25, although, you know the American people Do you know that story that the quarter pounder versus the third pounder? No that the Quarter pounder didn't do as well or the third pounder didn't do as well because people thought a quarter pounder is bigger God, that's yeah So, uh, yeah, so what are we dented it pretty good. We put a little dent in this. Um, so this one's, um, makers mark does this phenomenal, uh, private selection program is what they call it. You get to go out to the distillery and makers mark only makes one juice all day long. They're still is just churning out one with same juice, same juice all day. And so they've got regular makers and then you've probably heard of makers 46, which is just makers with 10 French oak staves put in the barrel to finish it off for nine weeks. Okay. And that's all private select is, is you get to pick what 10 staves go inside the barrel for the last nine weeks of finishing. And you get to sit in, they've got two different facilities, um, that you get to choose between. One is up on the upper top of the pro, uh, upper part of the property. Overlooking this meadow and, uh, they're on the backside. You've got cows in the pasture that they're raising and, uh, a beaver pond. Right. Yeah. And it's a phenomenal room. Or you can go down in the cave where they actually finish the whiskey. Right, right. And for nine weeks. This is the authentic 62 degree environment. Livestove cave, yeah. And, uh, you can do it there. And the tours will actually pass by you, um, in going through the cave as you're, you're like, Hey, getting some of my whiskey staved right now. Um, so this is the third time we went out there for this one. Um, and it was, you know, it was last year. And it's just, you know, post COVID it's been tough. And so there wasn't a lot of room in the budget. And so I said, I don't know who we can take and, you know, whether the company can really afford to take four people as we've done in the past and pay for hotel rooms and eating out and airfare and all this stuff to go out. And it's a wonderful experience, but I don't know if we can really afford that. And my wife said, well, I'd really like to take my dad. She took her dad out for Father's Day. That was his gift for Father's Day. And he likes rye. He doesn't like bourbon. Um, so his goal with this was to create something that it's the same juice. It's just Maker's Mark juice. There's nothing different in the bottle. So to use staves in a way that would change the taste. The profile. So instead of being this nice, subtly sweet whiskey and the first sips you get from it are much more reminiscent of a rye. Totally. And if you look at the, the rye. So interesting. Um, it, it shows you the 10 staves that we put in. So they chose four of the seared French cuvee, three of the Maker's Mark 46, which are just a French oak that has been baked. Um, and then two roasted French Mondi staves are really cool. I'll tell you those in a second. And then two or one of the toasted French spice. And that French spice is what gives it a little bit more of that cinnamon and clove. Um, those Mondi on staves though are wild because inside the barrel, oops, I'm hitting the microphone inside the barrel. They don't do a whole lot that you'll notice, but outside the barrel, if you pour a little bit of this whiskey, taste it, let it sit for 10 more minutes when whiskey that has been finished on a Mondiant stave, and Mondiant, by the way, although those are either French or American oak, there's not, it's not different wood, it's a different baking technique, but when, when whiskey that has been aged on the Mondiant stave touches oxygen, It changes the flavor of it over time. And so this whiskey starts very spicy and then finishes quintessentially bourbon. It's, it's wild. I dig that. Uh, tell us where to find, uh, William Oliver's? Yeah, so we got three locations. Uh, one in Fort Collins along Timberline. Uh, one in Lafayette along Public Road. And then one in Windsor on Main Street. I dig it. Um, love you, appreciate you being here. Thank you for having me. This has been a blast. Talk to you next time, yeah.
