EXPERIENCE 185 | Big Boats, Small Business, and High Finance with Tom Trimmer, Co-Founder of Custom Marine Products and Principal of Trimmer Capital Management

Tom Trimmer, Jr. spent his growing up years in the Northern Suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, and was disappointed when his father got rid of the family powerboat (about the time he was old enough to start skiing…) and bought a sailboat instead.  The sailboat sparked a love of sailing however, that carries through to today, and spurred Tom’s first significant entrepreneurial venture - Bachelorette Party Boat Tours departing the Chicago Yacht Club.  And - love of sailing led into his current business, Custom Marine Products - when he built a website to offer his father’s solar panel on a pole invention to the market - allowing live-on boaters to maximize their solar collection by adjusting the angle of the panel to be always-perpendicular to the sun.  

Custom Marine Products has been growing at a 40%+ growth rate for most of its 10-year history, and is beginning to broaden their product offerings beyond highish-end marine solar systems, controllers, and lithium battery systems. They are increasingly developing their camper-van market offerings, and introducing refrigeration systems and more in the seasons to come.  It’s an interesting business, with 3 - 6 month lead times for most of their products, and slow inventory turns.  

In Tom’s previous chapters, and still today to a lesser extent, Tom has been a finance entrepreneur - sourcing capital for day traders, identifying arbitrage opportunities in foreign exchange markets, and other brainy stuff - and he is also active as an angel investor.  Tom’s a brilliant guy, a world explorer, and a very entertaining guest - so please enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Tom Trimmer.  

The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/

💡Learn about LoCo Think Tank

Follow us to see what we're up to:

Instagram

LinkedIn

Facebook

Music By: A Brother's Fountain

Transcript

0:41

Tom Tremmer, Jr. spent his growing up years in the northern suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, and was disappointed when his father got rid of the family power boat about the time he was old enough to start skiing and bought a sailboat instead. The sailboat sparked a love of sailing, however, that carries through to today and spurred Tom's first significant entrepreneurial venture, Bachelorette Party Boat Tours, departing the Chicago Yacht Club. And love of sailing led to his current business, Custom Marine Products, when he built a website to offer his father's solar panel on a pole invention to the marketplace. Allowing Livon boaters to maximize their solar collection by adjusting the angle of the panel to be always perpendicular to the sun. Custom Marine Products has been growing at a 40 percent plus growth rate for most of its 10 year history since then, and is beginning to broaden their product offerings beyond high ish end marine solar systems, controllers, and lithium battery systems. They are increasingly developing their camper van market offerings, and introducing refrigeration systems and more in the seasons ahead. It's an interesting business with three to six month lead times for most of their products and very slow inventory turns. In Tom's previous chapters, and still today to a lesser extent, Tom has been a finance entrepreneur, sourcing capital for day traders, identifying arbitrage opportunities in foreign exchange markets and other brainy stuff. And he's also active as an angel investor. Tom's a brilliant guy, a world explorer, and a very entertaining guest. So please enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Tom Tremmer. welcome back to the Lowco Experience Podcast. My guest today is Tom Trimmer and Tom is the co founder and president of Custom Marine Products. Also a, Long time local think tank member. Mm hmm. Yeah. Indeed. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Kurt. So, uh, what can I get for my custom marine products? Not custom marine products. Oh yeah, we sell solar panels. Okay. Um, all different types to our, we started out as a, as a, to yachts and large boats, liveaboards. Okay. Um, now we do vans, like the high end, uh, Sprinter vans, Ram vans, the camper. Is it just solar? Camper folks. Yeah. We do solar, and then we expand it into, uh, batteries. We do a bunch of lithium batteries, and then we do, yeah, and then your entire solar system too, right? So it would just be your, your solar panels, the mounting system, the wire, the connectors, then the wire down to the solar controller, then Yeah. Yeah. Then to the battery. Solar setups with battery packs and lithium sets and all these. I mean, I know because I've been like shopping and getting stuff for my Ambulance Camper RV mobile podcast studio. Right on with our, with our panel. We've got four of your 200 ish watt? Yeah. 170s. Okay. 170s. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um, one question I have is, Why just it's it says custom marine products like it seems like I could get Cupholders or like why aren't you custom solar marine products? Yeah Custom solar products. Yeah, that's a great call. We should be Just add more stuff. Yeah, I like that stuff. I like that too. Yeah, we're looking at yeah We're starting to add refrigeration as our next our next move. Okay, cool Yeah, and then we added the batteries. But the, the reason it's like that is we, we didn't know what we were doing when we started. So I had, my dad was retired and he loves his boat and he does all sorts of, uh, So I'm like, pop, we got to sell some of this or we might as well, so I built a website like an easy, uh, easily like a WYSIWYG or, um, website. So we put up dinghy seat bags. Uh, he built a, a swim platform off the back, LED light bars. And then he had a pole with a solar panel on it that you can adjust. So we put everything up. Um, And the solar sold, and the solar pole sold. Yeah. Um, and that's, we've since, I think we've sold. You were like, all this other crap doesn't really sell. Yeah, so. People are looking for solar systems. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, we, uh, yeah, so we just had the solar, the pole and the solar panel, and then we added more panels, bigger panels, and. People wanted Bimini mounted panels, then they wanted walkable panels on their deck, then they wanted panels on their arch, on their solar, or their dinghy davits, or their arch across the back. So we did more glass solar panels. And then they wanted everything. Then they want the wire and the mounting kits. Yeah, then we expanded, so we have a real high end lithium battery that we sell to, um, That's like, how do you sort of Marine specific and how do you get this stuff? Like how, what's your competitive edge? And maybe you can't, obviously Yeah, I wouldn't share your supplier necessarily, but like how, yeah. So what's, yeah, so what's special about us is we, yeah, we do. Um, so yeah, why wouldn't you just buy any solar panel? You can buy a solar panel for, I don't know, a fifth or a eighth of the cost of ours. Right? Oh, is that right? Yeah. For a, a similar, but it'll be bigger. So ours are. shade tolerant, right? So we have diodes and we've wired the panel. So our factory has wired the panel or we've designed them in the factory, builds them so that if half the panel shaded or a quarter of the panel shaded, the rest of the panel continues to put out power where a cheap, not a cheap, but just like a house solar panel, right? If it's a little bit shaded it, the whole thing goes down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's our, and then we have the highest end, um, highest efficiency solar cells. So, um, They're 20, 24, ours are 24 to 25 percent efficient where like most of your house solar panels be 18 percent efficient because space is constrained on a boat, right? And on a van, so you need the max power per square inch. I see. So that's, that's what's special about us. So some of the reasons or whatever. Um, yeah. And you've actually designed a lot of these systems yourselves? I don't know that we've designed. Or with help of others kind of? What are your, your customers are looking for this? Can you guys make that? Yeah. Right. And no, yep. Yep. And our, I guess, yeah, you know, that's very true. And then our own input as well, or what we think will sell and, and what people ask for. Yeah. So just over the years we've kind of dialed it in and dialed it in and dialed it in more. So. And when did you start? When did you? I think it's 10 years. We're going on 10 years. Yeah. 9, something like that. And it's become over the last three, five years, you're kind of Yeah. That's the main thing you're working on. Yeah. It wasn't for a while. It was a little side hustle. Right. My dad was mostly doing it. Yeah. Keeping him busy. Yeah. And then it got, you know, it's funny. It just gets more and more significant. Did he kind of pull you in more and more or did you want to go in because it was more interesting than the other stuff you were doing before? Yeah. I guess sort of a combination of that. Yeah. It's really, it's more fun than finance. Right. People are talking about their boat and their, I love boating, so everybody's, and nobody's in, it's never an emergency, I mean, I guess not never, but it's rarely an emergency. And they're excited to get it. Yeah, they love talking about their boat, their, I love boater, I'm a boater myself, so, um, yeah. It's super pleasant. But like any business, it has its issues and problems. But well, you know, every time you try to go from one stage to the next, uh, troubles will arise and then you get to solve new problems. Yup. Exactly. What, uh, what's the, uh, What's your favorite, like, region to boat in? Have you been all over? Oh, I mean, I love the, the BVI, or British Virgin Islands is, is fabulous, super gorgeous and super easy. I mean, they have the buoys, you just pull up, you don't have to mess around with an anchor. Like if you're an independent boater, you just pull up to a dock, virtually? Uh, it just, Oh, buoys. Oh, I see. It's just a buoy out in the middle of the harbor and there's a whole bunch of them and you pull up and they come around and collect money and it's just very, my, one of my, my favorite things to do. Yeah. Okay. My uncle in law calls it Disneyland for, for boating. So simple. Interesting. And then your line of sight, you just go from one island to the next, but you can see where the next island you're going to. Oh, wow. So you really can't get lost unless there's a hurricane or something. Yeah. It'd have to be a bad hurricane. Right. Yeah. Um, other, other top areas? Oh, Florida. Yeah. Florida. What do we do? The East Coast we've done. Uh, for my bachelor party I did, uh, Uh, 10 guys on a catamaran from Fort Lauderdale across to the Bahamas. Oh. Which was super fun. You leave, you have to leave at midnight, um, because there's no light. The Bahamas aren't lit, so you need to get there in the daytime, so we showed up at like 10 a. m. or whatever. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because there's no, no lit harbors, no buoys, no anything. Really? Yeah. Well, and even the town is not very lit, and there's a whole bunch of islands out there, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Um, So talk to me about your customers. Like, how do they, how do they engage? Like they contact you and say, Hey, I've got this boat. What? Fits on there? Or is it kind of an automated online process?'cause you're pretty much a web store, right? Like it, right? It's mostly Yeah. With, well, not just that because you have sales reps and people calling on harbors and marinas and stuff, right? That's right. That's right. And maybe a third, third ish of our business is, uh, boat manufacturers, people that are making the boats. Oh really? They put'em right on there. Yeah. They buy a new As an accessory. Yeah. You buy a new boat and you get our solar systems on there. Oh, cool. Um. Yeah. So those are, those are, but you know, those guys, those guys calling off the website too. So we're ranked really well on Google natural search. We're like, we're number one, typically for Marine solar panels, boat, solar panels, sailboat, solar panels. So, and then we do ads. And then we also do this. We're all over the first page of Google. If you search for Marine solar panels, they'll come up. So, so anyway, that's how the manufacturers come to us. The Marine has come to us. And then the individual boat owners. Uh, come to us that way. So a typical call would be like one that I had right before I came over here. The fellow was, uh, said, uh, I have a 50 foot yacht. I'm looking for as much solar as I can fit. I have, uh, 112 inches by, uh, 36 inches. What can I do? I said, okay, I can fit three, 185 Watts in there. I'd wire them in series. Here's your, I'll send you a quote or an invoice. And, uh, I just put the whole system together for him and boom. Just bada bing bada boom. And you gotta kind of do, is there a software system that you use or just kind of a generalized? We're doing QuickBooks and then we're starting to move to uh, doing our invoices in Shopify. Oh. We've got a new, we put up a new uh, We put up a Shopify site, our, our, Oh, almost so customers can self generate their invoice. That's the idea. Yeah. And it's, we're starting, yeah, it's great. I mean, it's starting right. So if someone calls in, obviously that takes a lot of time, right? It's expensive. Um, so we're trying to move more business online. So, so the Shopify site is much easier for the people to find what they need. Um, and what else was I going to say? The, um, Just about the invoice and estimating kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Yeah, so they can just really shop you so they shop and boom You don't have to like have a lot of your brainpower and stuff. Yeah, the order just oh, here's what I was gonna say So we are built we we have a tool on we have a couple tools. We have a Pretty detailed spreadsheet. That's not super easy to use like so someone would call in and say hey, I live on my I live on my boat I I Run refrigeration. I have a star link and LED lights and a laptop. Yeah. Yeah phone. How do what do I in an ice maker? What do I do? and So we run, we either, we can ballpark it, um, just from experience or we can send them to our spreadsheet. And then we also have a tool that they can enter everything in and it'll spits out, you need, you know, 700 watts of solar. Right. Um, And this many watts of battery storage or whatever. Right, right, right. How do you measure battery storage? What's the amp hours? Amp hours or watt hours? Either way. Okay. Yeah. What's a, what's a watt compared to an amp? An amp is amps times volts is watts. Okay. So if you know the amps and the watts, like volts is always one 10 or 12, 12 out of a battery. Oh, right, right. Or 13 out of a battery. Yeah. So, oh, right, so, so your battery, if you have a hundred amp power. lead acid battery times 12 volts. That gives you, what is that? 200 watt hours. Probably mostly 12 volt systems, right? The fridges and the, but not the Starlink. That's 110. Yeah. So you need an inverter to get it, bump it up to 110. Yeah. Yeah. Like in your podcast. Do you guys let go or do you guys sell inverters and stuff like that too? We have the whole. Okay. So you can kind of go front to back, top to bottom on that. Yep. Yep. Why not do a custom van products as a different like sister company? Yeah, we do. We do. It's really interesting. The van guys, I don't know why, but all the van guys want is the solar panels and the walkable. They just look, they only buy our walkable panels. Right, right. I guess not. Strictly, but very, 90 some percent are the walkable panels. And that's all they want is the panels. They don't want the connectors. Oh, we do give them a mounting system because we've had them come off. So we have a J bracket that holds them down. Um, so we sell them the J bracket and the, uh, the, uh, walkable panel. But they don't want the solar controller. They don't want the inverter. They don't want the batteries. They have, for whatever reason, they have all that. Where's the boaters? Want the whole thing. They want everything from us. I don't know. I don't know why, but my guess would be that the van people already have a solar system. No, they just want to build it themselves. Yeah. Or they have, or they shop or I don't know. I have no idea. I have no idea. You're not priced competitively on the controllers or something? No, we sell the, the Victrons we sell, they have to be, uh, You know, everybody that sells, that's a dealer for Victron has to stick with the same price. Same pricing online. Yeah, yeah. I guess you can, we were allowed to discount if you call in or something to us. But either way, it's not a different, much of a difference anyway. Yeah. Huh. So it's really fascinating. No, yeah, I don't know why. I don't know why the van guys don't like it. But you haven't actually started a separate company like custom van products. They're just finding, they're coming to your custom marine products? Or are you doing some SEO Too. Now we do, yeah. We rank, uh, we just got bumped to number two for Van Solar panels, so. Oh, wow. Yeah, so that's pretty, so, and, and we're number one for walkable solar panels. Right. And, and this all fluctuates, right? So it might be one to three, but generally it's one. Yeah. Yeah. And top and first page for sure of Google top five. Yeah. For, so yeah, so they search Van Solar panels, and we do have a dedicated Van Solar panel page on the website, but they're, it's not a separate business. I mean, it's not, they're not ready to check to custom van products or whatever. Right. It feels like there's opportunity to. At other products, like if you're selling premium items, what other premium items can you sell those people with margin? I think that is a beautiful idea. Yeah. And that's exactly what we're trying, what we're working on doing. Just got to spend more time in yachts and at marinas and on the water. So you can know what those people are really looking for. Yeah. Or willing to pay for. Yeah. And then I see this coolest trends, right? Yep. Then we're doing the, uh, we do the Annapolis boat show every year, which is really, really neat show right in, uh. downtown, uh, Annapolis. And yeah, and then we learn what people are selling and what people are right there. But yeah, I think refrigeration would be, we used to have refrigeration on, and I think we're going to, we're going to re add that one. We're going to, I think, start carrying some other, some higher end solar panel. Like people think ours are expensive, but you can pay 50 percent more for solaris and you can pay a hundred percent more for solvents. So I figured we might as well sell those. And we can, yeah, people buy them. Then great. If they don't make your other stuff, look, it makes ours, you know, if I was a large, if I, if I'm thinking about the world today and I owned a large yacht, I think what I would really want. Is a, an amazing machine gun and turret system, maybe as a rocket launcher. Like the Russian oligarch. You could maybe connect with some of the Afghans, uh, to get some of that old inventory or something like that to resell on the yacht market. High end. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just thinking if I had a high end yacht, that's really one thing that I would want, at least if I was going Mediterranean area at all. Red Sea, Israel. Yeah. Any of that. Anyway, we'll get into the politics section later. So, um, like what's your, what's your dreams? Like if, uh, if you can, I mean, we just talked about other products and things, but I'm sure, I don't know, like you're doing some, some tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue per month, but like, I can't think that you have more than like a couple percent market share so far. Even, but you're ranking really high. So maybe you do like, how do you know, how do you know what size your market is when you're in this world? So I think the, yeah, no, I have no, I have no idea what size the market is. Um, yeah, that's a great, I mean, how many people want, so, and they're mostly sailboats, but they're also the tug, the pleasure tugs and pleasure trawlers and then the regular boats. Well, and I'm thinking like every, but also like surf boats. I want solar on there just to keep my battery charged. Yeah, if you, oh, you know the stuff on horse tooth lake and stuff. Just little maybe. Yeah. I mean, that's so small. That's only a, a couple hundred bucks for a system. I know. But if they can just, everybody could have that. And if you make$75 and you sell it to 10,000 boats a year for those little things. And then how about all the pontoons, right On all the inland lakes, all that. Yeah, for sure. Right. Those guys are just out on dock and they wanna Well, and if you've got a pontoon, like you wanna be jamming the tunes, but you want it to be able to restart. So if you had an accessory battery pack, then your girls can be swinging on the stripper pole and you're rocking the tunes and you know, you'll still be able to start the engine afterwards. Yeah, right, right. We, we, you know, we did a guy, we did a, uh, a system for a fellow that had a huge stereo. System. And the lithium batteries stay at like 13 volts. So your, his sound was, he was so thrilled. His sound, the sound was excellent for hours and hours. And then the solar kept it, kept the battery topped off. Yeah. He was ecstatic. I, yeah, we haven't gone. I don't, we guess, I don't know. I'm just brainstorming with you. No, I love it. I mean, we've tried, you know, listen to this. So I am one of my. pledge brothers, not even my, like my fraternity brother, but then my like 12, one of my 12 guys that I pledged with is the CEO of Polaris. Okay. And so he turned me on to, uh, his pot. I mean, he's, we were at a retreat or whatever. And he's like, You know, we do, we do 600 million in revenue in pontoon boats once we talk to so and so and so and so. Right. It hasn't really, and they have an electric boat they're coming out with too. Oh yeah. Anyway, we're talking to those guys. But yeah, it's fun. Yeah. Well, and where do you, and can you maintain your margin selling, playing with those big boys, you know, on high volume stuff? Yeah, it's okay. I mean, I don't, we do. You would cut your margin quite a bit if you could. Sort of, sort of, but not really. I mean, we do, we do, uh, Ranger Tugs is a big, big customer. And, Yeah, we do fine with them or it's worth, I don't know, it's worth us doing the business. Yeah, yeah, cool. So, uh, so anyway, back to the question, like, I guess it's hard to know what size the market is, but it feels like there's continuing growth. You've been growing pretty fast, right? Yeah. 25 percent or more a year. Yes, anywhere between 40 and 70. Oh, wow. Percent a year, yeah. Um, I guess last, this, this, this year's gonna be slower than that. Um, What, uh, wait, what was my, what was the question? Oh, like how, how big can you grow it? Oh, how big, yeah, I think we need to, I think, I feel like we need to expand to different, like you were saying. You can keep dominating solar and add more, but you'll have to add more product lines to it. But is this a world where online retailers can really succeed? You're, what you're, what I'm asking you, I guess, is like, you're kind of a hybrid model because you've got, Like service way beyond what an Amazon could provide or something and products beyond what they would be willing to carry, cover, explain things like that. You know, but the, the online retail environment for many sellers is super tough because you know, Amazon competitive, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody came out on with our band with solar panels, similar to ours on the, on it's whatever band solar panels. Yeah. They, they bought and pay. I mean, They're just, they're very small and it's not a very good site, but, um, yeah, I think, I think, I don't know, or yeah, anyway, we, yeah, we do a lot of high touch, um, but it's a high end panel, our warranty is excellent. It's super easy. If something goes wrong, we just replace it without asking any questions. Um, if you have any problems before the sale, after the sale, years after the sale. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm hearing is it's so much, it's. It's, even though you can order stuff online, it's, it's still a hybrid experience where the opportunity to have a real high touch, long lasting relationship is there. Yup. Yeah, exactly. So what else can you sell these people? Right. Right. Anyway, we won't solve that today. That's more of a question for a local think tank chapter. Um, what are, what would you say some of your, like you worked in, in capital management, right? And arbitrage and finance kind of stuff for a long time. Right. And then into kind of this hybrid quasi retail wholesale environment, what would you say has surprised you about, like, having salespeople and employees and, like, setting up the systems, deciding to go forward with the Shopify, even though you were scared it was going to, you know, Reduce your SEO. Oh, yeah, whatever all these things like what's your observations about entrepreneurship compared to I Guess professional services is probably even though you're an entrepreneur before it. Yeah, there's a kind of game There was that you have finance was you can't really touch anything, right? You've just it's just money I had employees before but it's Had this is really it's really interesting to Yeah. The stuff I don't want to do. There's people that do want to do what I don't want to do. Right. And they're happy to do it and they're happy to have the job. And, uh, yeah, it's fantastic. And they do a better job at it than I did. Right. So we keep handing more and more stuff off and, uh, it's tough. The, you know, what's tough is the inventory is really hard. The cap, there's been a lot to learn, right? So we have a lot of capital tied up in inventory. Imagine I have to figure out. It probably goes down in value too, or not really. Is solar changing? Is it getting cheaper or is it actually, because of inflation, it's at least stable? You know, these high end, um, sun power panels that we have? No, we try to keep pretty skinny on the inventory, but if we over order, it's tough to unload. And yeah, you're right, it does keep moving forward, but not super fast. Yeah. Um, um, yeah. The batteries have gotten a lot cheaper, but we've unloaded most of the batteries. Maybe not all, but we don't want to get stuck with a bunch of batteries. Yeah, especially they're getting cheaper and cheaper all the time. Right. So, right. Um, but they might get more and more expensive in the futures depending on lithium and China and all those things. Right. There's a lot of interesting, uh, yeah, it's interesting supply chain potential challenges there. Yeah. And if there's, yeah, if there's a big, yeah. This is another big problem for the domestic, like auto market, like Ford and stuff is they're not too sure where they can get good batteries. Oh, true. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's what are they off near shoring or whatever? Yeah. Yeah. Pulling away from China. Yeah. And then they're super, the tariffs are tough to deal with. Bring importing solar. They're all over the solar from China. So we are yours from China. Uh, we see Asia. Yeah. And also, and we're looking to, we have some from Canada, some from the States and some from China. Yeah. Oh, interesting. So. Yeah, we're looking to diversify out of China, but they're excellent. I mean, the products are excellent. They're really inexperienced. They're low price, right? Or they, it's an excellent product at a, if you, if you find the right, the right manufacturer. Yeah. So it's tough to, I mean, we're always looking like these, these panels that I'm saying that are 50%, 100 percent more than ours are German. Um, And they're also excellent, but they're actually not as good. I think our panels are better. Right. And they're 23% efficient, where ours, 22, 23 and ours are 24, 20 5% efficient. Yeah. So it's tough to I dunno. It's tough to What an interesting environment. Um, yeah. You know, China's made a lot of money slinging solar panels to Europe and the world and the US and, and the world. Um. And fueling the construction of those solar panels with coal plants, pretty much. Oh, true. Anyway, I digress. But in some ways the, the solar manufacturing opportunity for them enabled them to like, be the energy drawers of, of using all that extra energy in China. You know, they needed to do that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. They are, they are installing a lot of solar and using, they are using solar too. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, good. But no, you're right. I mean, a ton of their power comes from coal. Well, it's high density power comparatively, you know, and you need that for some of the manufacturing processes like solar. I mean, electricity will get you there, but it's nothing like burning things sometimes to get things real hot. Yep. So, so it goes. So I guess, um, like to stick on with, uh, with, uh, custom marine for a bit. Um, like if somebody wanted to do a. Obviously not compete with you, but, but what, what can they count on for like margins in a reseller type environment like this? Is that, like, can you get 30 percent margin on something like that? Is that? Half? I would say so. Potentially? Sure, yeah. Okay. Maybe better. Better than that if you find the right suppliers and But then you have to, yeah, but I guess I mean there's a lot of costs associated with it. Yeah, you have to store it, yeah, you pay all the storage Warehousing and stuff, but as far as gross margin Warehousing, shipping, everything, yeah So yours is kind of like, once you get to the 50, but 20 Once you get to the corner, then you've got a pretty nice business, but you've got to do X amount every month, otherwise you're bleeding. Exactly, exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The nature of every kind of business like yours, but yeah, the number is very like, you've got decent margin to work with, but it takes a fair bit of infrastructure, infrastructure to be able to deliver the goods and sort of upfront investment. I mean, we don't have any debt. We've been able to grow sort of organically and the margins have been good enough that we've been able to buy or get out in front of our customers. Demand, but yeah, so you got a lot of capital sunk into your inventory, but we do, at least you don't have a debt load on it. It's our capital, right? If you had an 8 percent operating line financing that it would make the encouragement to sell things faster. Yeah. It's such an interesting thing about how. capital structure really manage matters for a business. Yeah. Yeah. If you had a high debt, highly leveraged business in your space, it would be hard to squeeze out many bucks. Yeah, absolutely. And then, and then the payroll is a, is something that I've never had to really deal with. Um, yeah. So every month you had to come up, you have to do a certain amount and move a certain amount, but then you also have to have leftover capital to buy more capital to to recycle it to buy more product, uh, sell. So it was kind of a, Totally all those things they teach us in business school, but what is your money rotating through the system and you know turning over and What do you think your inventory turns are? Yeah, I don't know not less than one Really? Yeah. Okay. So that's part of your opportunity to I mean it is but but our lead time, you know Oh, yeah, you're shooting stuff from a long ways away I said we'll place an order and then it has to be when then we get in line to be built Then it has to be shipped, then it has to get through customs, then it has to arrive to the warehouse, then it has to be processed in, so we're like, and then we'll order, like, we had an order, I want to say last year, in October, that we didn't get till March, right, so, so we could be skinny, but then, but then that order comes in in March, and it's all already sold already, right, so it comes in, and it's all been back ordered, and all those, right out the door, so if you could really forecast demand, then. Well, that would really be a clutch thing for your business. If you could actually do that, I'm not sure you ever will able to, but because then you could turn the inventory to so much faster, right? You could basically have just in time inventory arrival ish. Right. Except for we, we made that order in October. It was supposed to come in in December. But then it doesn't show up till March. So, so ordering COVID, you can't, you can't get anything, can't get anything. And so you put in this huge order. You're like, well, we might as well have eight months for this stuff. Yeah. Right. Right. But you don't have too many SKUs, right? You maybe have a hundred, a couple hundred. Yeah. Which I mean, it's not, it seems like a lot. It seems like it's plenty, but if you compare it to Amazon or Walmart, yeah. So at least there's, you know, you could, if you've got a warehouse with X amount of inventory. Those first sales, like the solar panel on a pole, like, so exciting. Like you guys were just doing that and from the garage or whatever you ordered a couple dozen of them or something like that. And then, I mean, we had to, we machined each, we went out to machine shops and had each. Hmm. And there's like a dozen parts that go into it. So we had each part has to be made. I mean, it's a tough, that's a tough business. It's interesting. I mean, I mean, we're not particularly interested. We don't sell a whole lot of those and they're not that high. I mean, we doubled the price on them since, but so we do make money on them, but, but they're, geez, I talk about inventory, but the other, yeah, a dozen different parts that you have to have made to sell, to sell one unit. Interesting. It's a lot easier to sell a solar panel. And what's the value proposition on that? That's like, Oh, is that just mounts kind of in the center somewhere as part of your pulling setup or it hangs off the back it attaches to your rails around your cockpit and okay in the rear and then it has what 13 positions and then you can swivel it so so you get 30 percent more power out of it could always have it be like right on it yeah so it's always perpendicular to the Sun yeah yeah so you get way more power out of it interesting yeah so my dad my dad ran this whole boat off of a 180 watt panel right where And he had extra power. He had excess power. A lot of people had 300 and it wasn't working. Right. Right. So, yeah, to have it flat, you need 300 ish watts to do the same as a single pole. This is a manual adjustment thing, I guess. You got to follow it around with a little crank. Yeah, I mean, you're not doing anything. You're just staying on your own. It's just kind of fun to adjust. I had one. Look, the thing is 12 percent off of being perfect. Right. Right. I had one on my boat in Chicago for a while. Um, okay. That's fun. It's fun to goof around with. Um, let's uh, should we jump back to, you just said Detroit and then you said Chicago. Oh yeah, did you say Michigan? I grew up in Michigan and lived in Chicago a long time. Do you want to talk more about business? Or should we jump back in the time machine and go from there? Sure, whatever. Yeah. Alright. I'm the host. I can do what I want. How's your whiskey? You doing okay? Okay. It's terrific. Thank you. Alright. Good. Um, okay. We're in Michigan. You are in fifth grade. What's going on? Fifth grade. I'm at Midvale Elementary School. Long walk to school every day. Okay. And is this Detroit? Is this, we're, we're in Michigan. Oh, Birmingham. Birmingham. Nice, nice suburb north of. Okay. Well to do whatever suburb north of Detroit. Okay. So what was the circumstance? Was your dad in the auto industry or something? Yeah, no, he was a consultant. He was like the first guy to ever, or the youngest guy to make partner at Pricewaterhouse on the consult, on the consulting side. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So he did really well. Sharp guy. Yeah. Oh, and he worked, yeah, he's, he works with me in the company or, yeah, sure. I told you that already. Yeah. Yeah. He found, or we did founded the company. Sure. Together. Um. And so he'd like he was like a high paid consultant as you were growing up through those first five years of school and stuff Yeah, and he was gone. I mean he would travel up until I was five years old He traveled like 90 percent of the time and then he became partner. So he ran the office So he sold a lot more work locally. So then he was home a lot more after that. Yeah And then, what? Yeah, I grew up, went to No, no siblings? No? Oh, I have a sister. I have a little sister, yeah. She's in Chicago now. Was your mom, uh, just watching the littles? Cause dad made plenty of dough and She was staying home until And then she went to work at one of the elementary schools in town. Okay. Uh, kind of for fun. Yeah. But it was helpful too. Kind of a teacher's aide kind of thing or whatever. She, yeah, she ran the after school programs. Yeah, yeah, things like that. and the before school programs. Yeah, yeah. She had a lot of fun. Um, what was, uh, what was five year old Tom like? Like, were you a straight A student? Were you getting into trouble because your dad was gone all the time? Were you, uh I was a good kid. We didn't, my sister and I didn't fight at all. She always jokes about it, or talks about that, and we didn't, you know, we were buddies. No family strife. Still are buddies, yeah. Yeah, dig it. Yeah. Played a lot of Legos, played outdoors a lot. Yeah. Loved being outdoors. We had a boat, we had a sailboat growing up. Okay. Or I guess, you know what? We had a, uh, we had a power boat, a water ski boat up until I was old enough to water ski in like around 10. Okay. And then we switched to a sailboat, which is kind of a big bummer. But whatever. Sailboats are still fun. But yeah, it's fun. And then we, oh, we belonged to a yacht club, uh, Orchard Lake Golf slash Yacht Club. And so I learned, I learned to sail there. So you kind of grew up around the blue bloods of the region there, kind of. I mean, in comparison. Yeah, I guess that's a, yeah, I guess you could say that. Yeah. I mean, I'm a kid from North Dakota. I grew up with five other poor kids in my class, you know, and we didn't have wealth really around where I grew up. Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. Even the rich people were probably like almost a millionaire. Okay. You know, or right around there. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting, uh. Yeah, there were lots of wealthy people around. Not all my friends were wealthy, but some were super wealthy. Yeah, yeah. Maybe not super wealthy, whatever. Sure, whatever super wealthy is. A lot of one percenters, two percenters, anyway. Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of money from the auto. I mean, cars cost a lot of money. Right. Well, and it was still, at that time, it hadn't been depressed for long yet. Right? Like, it probably got worse and worse. And that region, as the next thing you know, Twenty years passed on. It went through, it went in the 80s, early 80s it was terrible and my dad had to lay off like all of his staff except for four guys I guess. Wow. From like 20 or something? From 50 I think. Whoa. He had to lay them all off. Right. Super painful. Yeah, when the, when the economy gets a cold, Detroit gets the flu, is the, uh. Well, they say that about banks, too, in general. Oh, no kidding. I didn't know that. Okay. Um, but then when it's boom time, I mean, it's crazy. I, I went back to, my folks just sold their house last year, and I went back to the neighborhood, and it's, and they, you know, The, the block north of us was all ranches, but they've all, but every one of them has been torn down and there's a big, huge man, huge, I don't know, mansions, but big foothouses, we call them. They've all been super. It's way nice. I mean, it was nice when I grew up, but it's even nicer. That's interesting. So has Detroit, you know, I haven't really paid attention for a while, but like, GM's making money, hand over fist, Ford's making tons of money, Chrysler's making tons of money. Yeah, they're doing great. Okay. So the, the, uh, Domestic auto industry is a lot better. Cause it wasn't maybe five or seven years ago when Detroit was like, you buy a house for 17, 000. Right. And they had a lot of, okay. So inner city Detroit is still tough, but the greater industry is producing profits to be spent around and whatever. Yep. Yep. Okay. Well, and is Polaris based out of there too? They're out of Minnesota. Okay. That's right. Snow. Yeah. Well, cause they're also Indian now, right? Like they're making all right. Selling motorcycles. Right, right, right. They on Indian as well. Yeah. So like what's your journey like through the high school years and stuff still good grades still good kid Yeah, good decent grades. I don't know. I wasn't sailing Yeah, sailing what I had a good group of guys good group of buddies that I still we're going we're getting together next week I'm going north one one friend has a lives in North Carolina has a lake or what? He's a gastroenterologist and he's got a real nice beach house. Okay on an island in North Carolina So all the all my high school buddies are going down there. That's fun I really didn't stay in touch with my high school buddies in that same way. I mean, there was only five of us total. One was a girl, you know. So, for me, my college friends became the everlasting group of friends. Cool. Oh, Yeah, in comparison. That's important. So, you're getting ready to go off to school. Oh, so, yeah, then I go to college. What, uh, it was Michigan. I could have gone to the University of Michigan, but I thought that was too liberal. So, I wanted to go to, uh, I want to be an engineer because that's just what you do in Detroit, right? Everybody's an engineer. It wasn't really And then I was sort of Um, yeah, my dad was an engineer. My grandpa went to Annapolis as an engineer. Oh, interesting. Even though your dad was Price Waterhouse, he was an engineer by trade. Yeah, he got into sales. Yeah, his first job was IBM as sales, and then boom, into, yeah, which I guess consulting is. Yeah, consulting sales kind of thing, yeah. Right, totally. Or that's why he made Partners so early, right? Because he sold so much work. Right. Um. Yeah, I went, so I went, yeah. And anyway, engineer, everybody's an engineer in Detroit. So that's what I did. But no U of M, you said you went where instead? Oh, so I went to Purdue, which seemed to be a better fit for me. Indiana. Okay. But top, yeah, I was an industrial engineer. I wanted to, mechanical engineer was, I had a minor in mechanical engineering and industrial engineering, which is a manufacturing. Um, and it's still the number one. It was the number one school and whatever. It's top three, top five in the country. So. That was an amazing experience, joined a fraternity, all my boys are still, still buddies with all those guys, and uh, yeah. Did you ever become an engineer? Oh yeah, yeah, then I did, I did, uh, out of college I was, what did I do, um, oh I had an, uh, an internship at General Motors one summer, and then I got a job in South Bend doing parts, doing the parts for, plastic parts for, automotive for Ford and GM. We, we probably don't. appreciated enough, uh, here in Northern Colorado where we've got a, a super diverse economy, right, aside from maybe the education system and stuff. That's pretty dumb, and the hospital system is pretty big. But otherwise, there isn't that much concentration. Whereas, like, in the Detroit greater region, and even Indiana and all that stuff, you know, you can work for one of the bigs, GM or Ford or whatever, or you can work for one of the many hundreds and hundreds of Suppliers. Suppliers for those people. Tier 2. Tier, yeah, yeah, Delphi. Tier 3. 3 and 4, you know, and all these, and machine shops that just make a, You know, 10, 000 of these things for GM heavy trucks or whatever. Yeah. So everybody just about like, not everybody, but, but like, Those high schoolers going to college and those college students looking for jobs, it's like probably 40, 50 percent dependent on that greater industry. Yeah, that's safe. And you still have bankers and you still have marketing agencies and this and that, but nothing that really soaks up the bulk like that. Right. Yeah. Right. Interesting thing. Yeah. And then a bunch of it moved offshore for a long time. So a lot of those machine shops in Detroit went, went under. Yeah. All those, they were, the small ones went under. Right. Yeah. Probably. Big ones too. And then, but a lot has come, a lot has come back and I've talked to, who did I talk to? One of the, yeah, this, at the factory that I worked at, um, out of college, I talked to the manager and he said, well, okay, so here, so I talked to the manager, he says, we're, we're pretty competitive with China now, or we can make, we make our parts. It's not that much. And we're not even, we're on par, you know, everybody dialed it in, put a lot of work in, automated this, automated that. I mean, China raised their wages. Yeah, and then it's a hassle. Three times, five times. to get them. Three months to get your stuff. Right, exactly, exactly. And where, where you can just drive to Cool. Factory in South Bend, three hours from Detroit. So you were, I thought you were going to say maybe Trump brought those jobs back or something like that. Oh, no, I think it predated. Okay. It was already happening before that. I'm sure he was happy to take credit for it. Yeah. Of course. Um, so like you're, so you start your job at least in this engineering space, uh, how long did that continue and when did capital find you or finance? Started in, yeah, I've, I've always been interested in. Stock. So, okay. So I, I took the job in South Bend and I got transferred to a small town, Logan's port, Indiana, which was not a fit for a 23 year old, uh, single guy. Where's Logan's port? Yeah. Right. Where's Logan's port? I don't know. That's what all the girls said. In the middle, middle of nowhere, Indiana. And it was a great job and I had a lot of responsibility and I was responsible for these assembly lines and blah, blah, blah. But I wanted to live in Colorado. So I moved to quit my job. And I quit my buddy's job for him, which he wasn't very happy about. And then we moved to, uh, What do you mean you told his boss that he quits? I quit and then my, I thought they were in a tough spot. So I said, you know, this, my buddy's going to quit too. But he didn't, he wasn't going to quit for another month and a half. Anyway, he's, It feels like we need to expand on that story. It was pretty uncomfortable. But I left, I don't know. I quit and I left and he just, Oh, he didn't move? He did, six weeks later, eight weeks later, but they were very uncomfortable six or eight weeks before, so maybe I should have kept my mouth shut, but I felt like it was the right thing to do. You know, it's rare that, uh, you really hurt people financially with your mouth like, like you did there. Uh, no, he kept his, no, he would've gotten a raise. They tried to keep him, they would've, they tried. Oh, see, yeah, see, you would've, yeah, if he would've just played along. Or could've. Yeah, yeah. But he wanted to move to Colorado too, so. So, like, where did this, this idea, had it been simmering for a while? Or, like, had you been out visiting a bunch of times, skiing we, I grew up, yeah, we went skiing. So, where I grew up, we had a, we had two, we had a winter break and a spring break, which drives me crazy that we don't have that here. So, you got a beach break. Right. And then you got a ski break, so. Right, right. So we would come skiing to Colorado or Utah or California every, every spring break. Yeah, so anyway, I've been to Colorado a ton of times and then we came out here a lot of summers to on a two Week road trip or whatever. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, so you were dead set on not staying in the Midwest anymore kind of basically, right? Give it a shot Colorado's as good as any Pretty close. I got mountains. Yeah. It's not as boring as Montana. Colorado's the best. I didn't consider anywhere else. Fair enough. And then, and got a job in engineering again? Yeah, up in Boulder, or Gun Barrel, I got a job. Uh, no, it was a factory. I got a factory job. Um, night, yeah, night shift. Then I got an MBA. Went to the University of Denver, got an MBA. Skied a ton. Climbed a ton. Okay. Did a bunch of 14ers. Fun. Um. Yeah. And I got my degree. Did you find your wife during this time? No. Had you already found her? Not yet. Oh, I found it very difficult to date in Denver, Hertzburg. Okay. Menver. Have you heard that term? Yeah, I have. Yeah. I found that to be true. I mean. Okay. I did some dating. Um, or I was always trying to, to date. Um. I gave my number out a lot. Yeah. And asked for a lot of numbers. I did alright. I did fine. But then, so then I moved to, uh, yeah, I was here five years. Oh, then I got my MBA. Got a job as a consultant. So, and that was, uh, at five days a week on the road, which is miserable, but not that miserable. Cause I had a job in new one project was in Newport beach or I had a hotel on the beach in Newport beach. So I got a surfboard lived in the best Western, but then flew back here every weekend. Um, and then. And I had a job in sales. Anyway, anyways, you're of following in dad's shoes, like as a consultant wise. Yeah. Sort of. Sort of. That was kind of the idea, like why were you smart enough to be a consultant? It doesn't, I had the, in, you know, I was, I was the factory guy, so I had Gotcha. I, I had the factory background plus, plus the MBA pH of finance, so you could kind of put the numbers with the efficiency and process engineering was kind of what that was. Yeah. Like you were kind of early in that. Yep. And then I had a examination. My MBAI had a finance and a it. Oh, okay. Were my minor, so I knew how to code. Yep, yep. And I knew how to code from engineering school too. So that was the, that was my, sorry. Sometimes I, my contribution pick on consultants.'cause it's like why, why they're expensive for, well yeah, they're super expensive and some of'em are like, how much do you know about what? They're like, I don't know. I know how to send you a big bill. But the giant company, they don't really care. They just want the job done. Right. Um. Anyway, yeah, so I did that, but it's super miserable lifestyle and I, yeah, that was not my scene. So I moved. Oh, what did I do? Oh, I quit. So I quit my job and I moved and I wanted to take a trip around the world. Oh. So I had, uh, Yeah. So I did six months. So that was in 2000. Okay. Well, why don't you take a little interlude here? Cause my whiskey is going to notice yours is. So why don't you tell the listeners about your trip around the world? Why step out and grab that whiskey? You're just on autopilot here. Ready? All right. Put your, put your glass on the table. There you go. So tell me about the trip. Yeah. So I, um, yeah, I quit my job in 2000 and travel around the world for six months, six and a half months. Went to, uh, When I had it kind of lined up, but then I changed my itinerary, I went to, went to India, met some friends there, went to Nepal, a buddy joined me. Or no, my buddy joined me in India, then we went to Nepal, trekked for a bunch of weeks, or months I guess, turned into months. Uh, climbed a big mountain, climbed to like a 20, 000 foot mountain, island peak, that I was super proud of up in the Himalayas. Went to Everest Base Camp. On the Nepalese side. Went to Everest Base Camp on the Tibetan side. Wow. Um, yeah, traveled through Thailand and Vietnam and Laos. Overland. Um, went to the beach. Went into China. Flew to Lhasa. Or flew to Chengdu, went to Chengdu, flew to Lhasa, took an overland, we did, we went How much of this was planned when you left? I, you know, I sent stuff ahead to Israel, Egypt, to Cairo, and Like clothing and stuff? Yeah, you know, I took a huge backpack. Okay. And it was such a hassle. Um, and I, I sent it home, and I got a little tiny backpack in Vietnam. And I just carried it around a little bit. I needed way less than I thought I needed. Yeah, yeah. And what I didn't need, I just bought. Yeah, when you're in a cold climate, I need my jacket. Right. Or whatever. Right, yeah, I guess I had, I must have had everything with me for No, but we bought a bunch of, we bought sleeping bags and a whole bunch of cheap stuff. So are you, are you a saver? Like, were you like making good money at this consulting gig and stuff and you tucked it aside or are you just kind of freaked out and like decided I'm just going to like reinvent myself here or like tell me about the circumstance a little more. Yeah. So financially I quit, I had, what did I work for? I had saved 15 grand for six and a half months or Traveling the world. I thought so, yeah. I planned to, I planned to come home with nothing, right? Right. But then that was The internet thing in 99, 2000. So I had invested or I love stocks and I love trading. Um, and I came back six and a half months later with like 50 grand when I plan to come back with nothing. So I moved to Chicago and started trading. And I thought you were the smartest trader ever because duh, look at all my investments while I've been traveling the world. Yeah. So I, so I rolled that into day trading. Um, And I made that work, or I just banged stocks, um, or banged the keyboard and made money for, I don't know, three or four years. Then I, then I found a website, but that's a tough, that's also a tough way to make a living. It really is. You're stuck behind the screen. Totally. It's difficult and, but I did okay, right? I, I made it work. You got your capital built up to enough where you could actually make something off of the different calls and different things that you can do with a little bit of wealth. Right, right, right. Because you can make money just by having money to some extent if you're not just gambling all the time, all the time. True, true. And then, uh But mostly I was gambling all the time, all the time. I guess I can't, but I don't know. Yeah, I don't think it's gambling. If you're day trading and you know what you're doing, you can keep it low risk, right? Or you can just get out. You make a Keep a real tight stop and let your, let your cut your loser short, let your winners run and Okay. And, uh, don't, is there anything that people could learn? The average person or should, most people just should never think about day trading anyway. Um, I think it's way harder than it was. I mean, right. Um, they have computers that thousand 2001. 2002. Right, right. It was, yeah. It was smart to take out a credit card at 13% and then invest that at, in the market. Yeah, for that little period of time. Don't do that. No, no, exactly. Don't do that. But I mean, theoretically, that was a smart thing to do. Yeah, yeah. Like borrow 10 percent money and invest it at 19 percent because the stock market did go somewhere in that range. Yeah, and hopefully if you're trading, if you're trading, you're doing hundreds of percent on your capital, right? Right, right. Hopefully, or if you're any good. Um, even if you're mediocre, right? Um, so anyway, so there were a ton of day, ton, ton of day trading shops and uh, Yeah. So I was sitting next to a guy so that, you know, there's like, I don't know, 50 or a hundred guys in a room all trading. So I'm sitting next to a guy. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. In downtown Chicago. So you'd like to take the train. Are you paying a desk fee or something? Or like, like how do you get, they're paying you to be there, you pay? So I just, you put up your own capital and you trade and they make commissions and margin, margin and all sorts of little, all sorts of little fees. Almost like a co working space for day traders. Right. Right. Yeah. I didn't know those things existed. Yeah. And you're up. And it's because all these people lined up behind the screens. Yeah, you're up on the 50th floor of some office building downtown Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it was cool. It was fun. Yeah, sure. Oh, I really enjoyed, learned a lot. Yeah. Yeah. But I, so I was sitting next to a guy, um, and he had a, he had a website up that had a bunch of traders that would take your capital and they traded for you, which seemed like a lot better, um, use of my time. Right. Or if, if somebody else can trade it, trade for me. I put, given their, my capital, but I didn't have enough of my own to make it. To live off of. So I started raising capital for these other traders. Right. So you could raise capital. They trade, they pay you a piece of their Oh, right. Of their fees. You, for raising the capital. You get paid some of the fees, right? Yeah, yeah. Because they're just looking for more capital to trade.'cause that's what increases their turn, their revenues. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so you do that and you, I would get a piece of that. So that's what I did for a bunch of years. And then current and then, and that was in those, those were futures traders. Um, and then. Current. They, they made a big Forex. Uh, the farm bill or something changed the, the Forex. So for cash, Forex was legal. And that was kind of like the one foreign exchange Trading. Foreign exchange trading, sorry, yeah. Foreign exchange. Um, and that became legal and then there were all sorts of ways to make money in that. So I did that for a long time. Um, oh, so it was like commodities and. Yeah, exactly. So you weren't actually trading those things. You were sourcing capital for people that were good at trading those things. Exactly. So, and it's called a CTA, a Commodity Trading Advisor. So you, you give the login to your account to, to somebody else. They trade it for you. They make money or lose money. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, and then I get paid on commissions and percentage of profits and a management fee. Right, right. Depending on any combination thereof of those. And then your clients just get some kind of a net yield almost? Correct. Yeah, interesting. And your clients are basically the people with quite a bit of money that can come and bring it into the fray. Yeah, Interesting. Exactly. Really neat people. I dunno, I had some pretty neat clients. I'm sure. I'm sure. I had a cli, I had Sylvi Tab was a client that was a movie producer. He made a, he made Beast masters and he made, uh. Dancing. Uh, anyway, it was really, he had like a hundred foot yacht with a five man crew that he would complain about having to deal with his crew. What an interesting lifestyle. Well, that's what somebody told me the other day. They were like, you know, like the really wealthy people that, that have family offices and different things like that. They don't really invest in real estate that much because that's not sexy enough and doesn't offer enough return. Like they're buying. Uh, middle market businesses, they're buying, you know, different kinds of alternative assets doing these kind of things. Yeah. And you know, a whole different kind of investing world. I, I just locked in for a 91 day CD at first bank at 4. 75 and that seemed pretty good. Nice work. I made 1, 600 on my last one. Boom. For not working very hard and you've made that money. Well it's, I mean, honestly, this is going to sound a little bit terrible, but it's one of the first times in my life I've actually made a noticeable interest income. You know, I've never, and I've, I was a 50, 000 CD for six months, you know, for a local, but next time it'll be a 51, 000 CD. Well I hope it's 80, you know, I mean, that's the goal, but it's pretty nice to have dollars that don't need to be spun up out of. Commerce, sometimes. Right on. And it's an interesting thing. Absolutely. That's actually something, an interesting thing about even the environment now, and people should probably consider being more savers, those that can, right? Because that helps the banks have more juice to do more things, and it actually does give them a decent return. Yeah. In some ways, you know, everybody's been so focused on investing in real estate or the stock market or whatever, but just regular old savings at a decent rate of return. That's kind of one of the benefits of having a higher interest rate environment in the last six, 12 months. Like it definitely has a breaks on things, but it's for those that have capital patient capital, it's actually kind of nice to just have interest earnings like significant 5%. That's a lot, right? Right. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, I digress. So, so you're doing this kind of stuff and then kind of we just roll up to Dad's deck a solar panel on a pole and wants to build a website. Oh, yeah, right Is that kind of like how that played out like you know, I fit no way to wait I traveled around the world went to Chicago moved to Chicago traded raised capital for other traders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Okay, then I moved Back here and I moved back. Yeah. No, then I moved back here. No, then I got my wife in Chicago. Okay. Yeah What's her name? Um, we'll talk later. Okay, so yeah, hi Lisa Yeah, she's great. The how did you I had a fun you meet? Out the old fashioned way. I'm friends Okay. I don't a restaurant bar, kind of a or group of friends, my group of friends. Um, you started to sell another story, but I had an interesting business in, uh, so I had a sailboat in Chicago. I had a nice Okay. Or a decent sail that I, you know, I had a, you were day trading and somebody owed you and you got a sailboat out of the deal. Some, oh, I had a, I had a partner on a trade. You could do an automated trade. And we had an idea together. We had somebody do it for us and we made a good amount of money. So I bought a sailboat, um, that I kept downtown Chicago that he could walk to from the trading floor. So from, for lunch and after work or whatever, I'd go, go sailing. It was right downtown. I put up a website called. And I was single at the time, sailingbachelorettes. com, so I would do, so I would do bachelorette parties. Oh no. On, yeah, so the girls, the girls would come, the girls would come on, the girls would come on my boat, in their uh, Pay you a bunch of money. Bikinis, they'd bring the alcohol, bring the food, I'd bring a first mate, you know, they would see to their comfort and safety and serve them drinks. And be very attractive men too. You look at? Yeah. Didn't have any, I didn't have any shortage of guys that wanted to, to work for me. Sign up, do first to work for me, I'm sure. And how much did you make on these trips? I, you know what, so I started at 75 an hour and I didn't close that many deals, so I jumped it to 1 25 an hour and I closed all sorts of deals. Right. Um, yeah, 125 bucks an hour. So some girls, yeah, you were sleazy at 75 an hour, but at a buck 25 you were respectable. Kind of. Yeah. So interesting, an interesting observation that sometimes interesting market price is too low. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I would have done it for free, right? Right. You can't do that, obviously. Um, yeah, so You could, but it'd be pretty pervy. It would get zero, zero takers, right? Anyway, it was super fun. Um, but then I met Lisa and that sort of tailed off. You didn't, uh, let your other buddies take it out and stuff. Oh yeah. I had other friends who still try it, but they, I don't know. Yeah. Whatever. They just weren't as slick as you were. I thought about franchising it. I mean, it's Lisa wasn't one of the, uh, she wasn't a bachelorette. That is actually a very, I don't know if it's franchisable, but It seems like it would be, right? Like everybody with a boat in a Tampa, Miami, Massachusetts. Like, yeah, it should be everywhere. San Diego, like Anyway, I didn't Didn't really, uh, well, maybe there'll be the next chapter of custom Marine products, custom Marine services instead, baby. Anyway, so you're like, what, what brought you back? Like, Oh yeah. Oh, so we, uh, what do we had a few, we lived in Lincoln park right downtown or not down to, we had like five bars and restaurants from, uh, yeah, I do. Absolutely. I do. I miss the sharp people. The, the quick, uh, it happened in Denver too. When I was living in Denver, the, uh, Yeah, there's so much action you get just very socially sharp, right? Yeah. Yeah, and if so much goes a lot more laid back here Yeah, Colorado for sure. Yeah, do you think they're smarter? I think so, or you're just more on you just you're using your brain more if they try harder There's more social, way more socializing and more, uh, quick, big deals. I mean, there's, there's like the guy that lived across, like, I'm like, I'm in my, like we just said, we were one of a six flat, but the guy in my alley, I just walk out in the alley and go for a walk or I put out the trash and go for a walk with the guy across the ways smoking a cigar. So I chat with him. He owns a jet leasing company, right? Or he owns all the jets in a jet leasing company making like, I don't know, tens of millions of dollars a year. Right. Like that's just the guys that you're around. And that's just a. One, and then there's huge traders, and yeah, it's just a Yeah, it's such an interesting dichotomy. A mix of people that are all right there in the city, like, all moving around, doing stuff, so Yeah, yeah. More action, more I don't know that they're probably not smarter, but more You just gotta be Yeah, I don't know. I mean, my, my, my dad was Scratching 800 acres of farmland, you know, dry land, dirt farming at that time, about the same time as you're doing some of these adventures and he was on his way to becoming a big farmer for our region. Awesome. And he's as smart as anybody, just about. Yeah. Like, at his craft. Right on. And the, uh, The pace of change in Jamestown, North Dakota is, you know, one fifth the pace of change in Fort Collins, which is one fifth probably the pace of change in Chicago. Right on. Right, like it's just a different, I don't know, funny how Which is one fifth the pace of change probably in San Francisco, right? Right, or some of these other places, like some places change really fast, you know, what are they, what's that quote, uh, it's like bankruptcy, it happened Really slowly and then all at once. Oh, right, right, right, right, right. Like sometimes things change really fast. Yeah, yeah. Like Detroit had changed really fast. You know, it's very a leveraged city almost you would say with that auto industry. Like it's either good times or it's bad times and it's easy to tell the difference. Yeah, San Francisco is kind of in a weird place right now, maybe, but maybe not. But they have all the Google and the Apple and so much money flowing in, so much activity and venture. Yeah, if Apple and Google continue to become the owners of the world. People that is a good place to be. Yeah, anyway Okay, so back to the original question. You're like living life in Chicagoland. What? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so we have yeah So did my bachelor party met my met my girl I'm there for about 15 years and we had two baby Well, so we're living in the second floor of a six flat, you know in a high end part of town right in Lincoln Park but just a small place and and I Yeah, it's just a hassle with two kids, right? And we have a third coming, so we could either move to the North shore or whatever. We can move to any suburb. I guess we could have, that just sounded really miserable to me. So, and, and we'd come out here to go to do whatever ski trips or, um, uh, hot touch and camping and hiking trips with friends. Sure. Like, why don't we just live here? And I wanted to move back here. I, I've always loved Colorado. So. So we did. Was that And we moved to Boulder first. Oh yeah, go ahead. Did you stick around in the You stayed in the capital industry for quite a while then? Yeah, yeah. When was this? Circle me a little bit. Uh, 2015, I think we moved, we moved to Boulder, like four other families moved to Boulder at the same time. Oh, really? People you knew? Our buddies, yeah. We had, we had to go, we belonged to the Chicago Yacht Club, right? Which was, which was another story. We were able to join because the disparity in our, my wife's, they, they tiered it, they tiered the cost by age, right? So if you're a 25 year old, you pay a lot less than a 40 year old, right? So my wife was. Well, we got married, she was 28 maybe, and I was 40, so we paid, so she became the primary member. So we were, anyway, it was much cheaper if she was the front, which, which I couldn't be on any committees or do anything. Right, right. But whatever, it didn't matter. 12 years, huh? In the harbor. Yeah. I'm six years older than Jill. Oh, nice. Okay. There you go. I think it's kind of a mark of honor. Great. Yeah, it works. So it's, it's beautiful, like beautiful yacht club right downtown or right where my, so we'd pick up, I'd pick up the bachelor parties at the club and my friends and buddies and everybody else and then go out, but anyway, my, the whole point. Oh, so you were using your membership of the yacht club to really advance your business interests too. That's right. That's right. And for, I don't know, anyway, it was a really cool club and super, super awesome. Um, and was she excited about this move? Or she's just like, I don't know, dude, I got the whole point of the eclipse. How I tried to slip the club story in there was we had a going away party at the club and all these families that moved to Bowler attended our going away party and then six months later, everybody's in Bowler together. Right? Not here. I mean, we had a lot more than just these four family party, but, uh, um, well you started a trend and then they started a trend, something, someone already, how did you find a way up here then? Yes. What do we have? I have a good friend. That's the one I did around the world. If I met the couple in India and then I met him again and they were doing a two year on the world trip on bikes. And I met up with them a couple of times. Anyway, they just talked me into four counts. Um, and then we were doing the financial Independent the fine, the fire movement, the. Financial independence, retire early. Oh yeah. And it seemed like it'd be a lot easier to do that up here. Yeah. A little fresher marketplace for that conversation. Yeah. And then we could also afford a single family home within what we want to recreate our Chicago experience. Right. So we could afford a single family home, uh, within walking distance to old town. Where you can go see bands and stuff, whatever. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'll just walk into for a coffee or. But with the capital you'd already had just about, or mostly. You could, like, what you took from Chicago, you could live well, or even from Boulder, you could live well and be more financially free here in Fort Collins. Correct. At that time. Yep. That's right. That's right. Yeah, what was it? Oh, and we also like the river. And the lake here. That wasn't in Boulder. Yeah. I would love to move back to Boulder. Really? Yeah, no, I thought I would get into rafting and fishing up here and boating, but no, I love hiking and climbing and mountaineering, which is much more Boulder y and the Venture Capital is a lot bigger scene in Boulder. Right. When you've been part of the Boulder Angels and, or the Denver Angels and stuff like that. So you like that kind of game playing and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So why not? Why not what? Like, move back to Boulder. Oh, geez. Kid, I don't know. Can I pull my, can I really pull my kids out? What, second, third, fifth, and seventh grade? Can I? I don't know. I mean, you own them, they don't own you. I think that's part of the problem with the world these days, is like, people are owned by their children, not, like, you don't really own them, but, and you are there to serve them. You know, I'm all about serving leadership, but, I mean, and I'm not trying to lose you, because I'd rather keep you here. I personally think Fort Collins is way more fun, but, I get it. Um. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, we're looking, I don't know. We look at real estate down there. Really? I might go. Well, I hope we don't lose you. Uh, but thank you. You know, it's a, like everything is a choice, right? Like, what do you want to do? You can do anything. What do you want to do? Can you run? Yeah. One of my, who was I can play. So I teach, Oh, listen to this. I teach improv down in Boulder. I spent a ton of time down there. Yeah. And I took, I took improv in Chicago for a year at second city. Like where all the big guys come. We're Dan Aykroyd and Chris Farley and all, Tina Fey, all the, they all come out of Chicago, right? So, um, So anyway, I train, you know, whatever. Do you want to do some improv right now? I mean, that's what we're doing right now, aren't we doing improv? Well, kind of, this is improv, but isn't there some, like, rules around improv, really? Yes, yes, and, well, we would play games, we would play improv games. So, you know what happened when I was home for lunch? I took the biggest poop. Yes, and? Yes. So interesting. Tell me more about that. No, we keep it. I don't really know how to do it. You're the teacher. We keep it out of the bathroom and out of the bedrooms. Oh, okay. Alright. Um, so, you know, I started making a list of reasons to vote for Kamala Harris. That's what she said. That's the bedroom. Oh shit. Damn it. I'm sorry. I try to keep it out of politics. Anyway, the bourbon is kicking in a little bit and it's fun. So anyway, so I took Second City. I took ImprovOlympic. I took a year of Second City and we would just go in and laugh for like three hours straight for once a week, right? Yeah, super fun So I got trained nicely there and then I have a good buddy I have a bunch of good buddies in Boulder, but one buddy in particular takes improv. So I took improv classes with him Over the years. Why do I not know this? Yeah, I don't know. So, okay, so then We took a class with a different teacher. You're humble, that's why, mostly. We thought, okay, maybe. I don't think so. So then we, um, the class wasn't fun. We're like, and I'm like, when I took improv at Second City, we laughed, like the whole, not the whole point was to laugh, but we laughed the whole time, right? Because it was awesome. So I'm like, let's teach our own class. Yeah. And we talked to the teacher and she lined everything up for us. Um, and we're on our, did you talk to the teacher and you told her, your class sucks. We wanna, we wanna do our own We didn't say, we just said We wanna do our own. She's like, great. Um, so she gets paid right for, she puts everything, she puts everything together, markets it and stuff. Markets it. Oh, does everything. And we just show up and she rents the space. We just show up, the students show up, we teach'em. Then we have the show. Oh, we do? Or we do two shows after each class. So we've done two, our third class starts in October. Oh. So anyway, so I'd love to bring it to. Yeah, well, that's the whole point. I want to bring it to Fort Collins. I just want to get good at it. I want to get good at it practice. Um, and then, well, you can maybe this winter, you can bring it to a chapter meeting or something like that, like to a little warm up thing with a small group. Yeah, I could, I could. Yeah, we had a, uh, what a family reunion in upstate New York last whenever with like 45 people there. Okay. So you're like testing the content a little bit. Yeah. We did a bunch of our warmups and it was super fun and everybody laughed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, I'm good. Anyway, it's been very cool. Or the reason I took improv in the first place was because Toastmasters I found to be pretty, I was just sort of bored by Toastmasters, but I wanted the public speaking skills. Yeah. And improv absolutely develops that. For sure. Um, but it's way more fun, or a lot more laughter. Yeah, yeah. Which I like laughing. So, do you too? I like laughing. Okay. Some of my podcast guests laugh. Um, would you like to hear the most recent joke I've told? What do little old ladies taste like? Depends. Somebody told me a dad joke that was kind of in that category. Um, that one is not a dad joke, really. I mean, For some people, maybe, but Grandpa joke. More like a grandpa uncle joke. More like a uncle joke. Um, so Let's go into the closing segments. Alright. We're chasing squirrels here, potentially, if otherwise. But I do want to encourage people to go to your improv thing. Do you know when it starts? Uh, this thing, we're taking a six week break. It starts in mid October. How do they find it? Improv Collective improv collaborative on meetup. Okay, and you can join. Well, let me help you make something happen in Fort Collins for that I know actually one other person that's really excited about making something happen in improv up here. Oh, no kidding Yeah, and he's a little happy little run around fast monkey do stuff. Okay. So with your support and his energy Maybe we can make something happen. Oh fun. Okay. All right Good Faith, family, politics. Yeah, that's another reason we moved to Fort Collins was the, uh, seemed like much more Christian. Boulder was a little too. Yeah, I have another good buddy in Boulder that we did a big hike with and he's like, he's like, yeah, blah, blah, blah, and the football team, they actually go to church together, which is very rare in Boulder. So, anyway, that's another reason we moved here. Gotcha. Which, you know, Just more, whatever, Christians Yeah, we haven't talked about faith at all so far in this conversation. Um, but you, you, you mentioned kind of U of M was a little liberal. Yeah. So your family, I guess, is, you know, do you want to start with politics since we're coming up on election season? You want to start with faith? You want to start with family? Faith, yeah. Faith? I don't know. Faith, uh. Yeah, Christian, Christian generalist, any, we go to Mill City, Timberline. We have a Timberline family group that we're in tomorrow night. Yeah. So you go to Mill City because like the service is better with the life group kind of family group thing is a little better from the Timberline. Are they related? I guess, you know, we were going to associate. We went to Timberline for a long time. We just had a group and I go to breakfast with a group of guys from Timberline still from those, from the family groups a long time ago. Yeah. When we first moved, like the day after we moved here, we met another family that had four kids that invited, and we're still friends with them. Was that, uh, was a faith orientation part of your family as well, growing up? I grew up Catholic, yeah. Oh, Catholic, okay. Yeah, yeah. And where did that take you? Chapter change or like yeah, we would we went to a my dad and I went to a Bible study fellowship was which was a no BSF. Yeah, BSF. Yeah, that's where I learned the art of facilitation. That was one of four pillars for local think tank. Come on Yeah, yeah locally Um, well, I started here in Fort Collins, and then Colorado Springs, they asked me to be a discussion leader. And I was like, I don't know nothing about the Bible, Jack. I just became a Christian last year, or two years ago. And they were like, well, you don't have to. We'll teach you how to be a discussion leader. And that's a facilitator of a conversation. We see how you invite people into conversation. You don't have the potential to suppress extrapolous conversation and whatever, and we think you could be a good facilitator. Come on. Yeah, yeah. I was like 29 years old or something and an 18 month Christian, and that was literally the first piece of Loco Think Tank becoming a thing, was that conversation. Come on. Of them saying, hey, you don't need to have the answers. And so, you know, of Kimberly, of Moses, of Brandon, or all of our facilitators, you don't have to have the answers. You just have to be a really good facilitator. Facilitator of good conversation, you know, because business changes fast and you don't have to stay cutting edge. Just know people build relationships. Cool Yeah, so anyway Cool. Yeah, so I did that and it was cool when I was doing that consulting job I would go to BSF in LA and go to call 7 st. Louis on that. Yeah Yeah, that was where most of my Bible knowledge came from BSF because I took all nine sessions or whatever and then I was like Okay, I'm done. That's amazing. Yeah You Yeah, for three years. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, so that was non Catholic, um, and then, and then there were just a lot, you know, the non Catholic, uh, singles events were, And churches just had a lot cuter girls and were much more, were much more well attended. Easier. Much more well attended. No, Catholic girls are easy if you can get them out. Right. No, much more, much more, uh, well attended, right? Well, and Catholicism was kind of on the wane at that time, and the youngsters were fleeing faster than the older people and stuff, I imagine. Yeah. And there was more of a feminist movement. I hate to say it that way, and sorry Catholics that love this show, but that's been my experience. That was my experience too. So the, uh, yeah, I would go to all, I tried a bunch of different Catholic churches in Chicago, which is like the headquarters of Catholicism. Right. Are you of Irish background? A little bit. Yeah. Not a ton. Yeah. Okay. And, uh, Found, none that really appealed. I don't know, I just feel like, there are the, not dorky, but whatever, the people that went to the Catholic Bible studies, weren't the people that I wanted to hang out with, but the people that went to the non denominational churches were, who I wanted to hang out with, so I did. Interesting. Okay. That's where we are. And then you just kind of stuck there, you're raising your kids that way, sending them to Sunday school, all that. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes I wonder like you should have done Catholic for them or whatever, right? Do you like I do because of the tradition the kind of all that kind of structure behind it and the right whatever? Exactly, you know I think there's a way to honor and appreciate that and let them Discover their own truth. Like if I think if the Catholic Church has one major failing It's that they are the deciders of what truth is, and I'm more on the free thinking side, and I think the best non denominational churches are like, well, here's what we think, and here's the Bible. Like, read that shit. That's, you know, that's really interesting. That's exactly what I thought too, right? Like the, yeah, we never read the Bible growing up, right? Right. As a Catholic, the priest reads the Bible and tells you what to think. Which, you know, sort of looking back like maybe that's all right. Like they, they studied, they can see like they have, they have more time PhDs in it. Right. And they really Right. Know it where me trying to learn it on my own, which is really cool what you do in BSF. And anyway, that was more appealing to me. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it still is. Yeah. Um, kind of that liberty to think what you choose to think and discover research, whatever, and teach you, here's the Bible. Yeah. Here, read this, read this, read this. And you make your, your decisions Fair enough. Yeah. Um, let's move to family next. Uh, we do a one word description of the children that I may or may not have told you about. Do you, uh, are you feel prepared for that, for your kids? I have a bunch of kids, so, yeah. You got three? Four. Four now. Yeah. You had three when you came from Chicago. So, um, if you wouldn't mind. I had two. Oh, two and one on the way. Two in Boulder. Okay. I had one in Boulder and then I had another one in New York City. Good. So, uh, yeah, a name, an age, and a one word description that you can expand on each if you're comfortable. Of each kid? Yeah, each kid gets a one word description. My goodness. It's a hard game, but It is a hard game. Um, Evelyn, cool. Yeah, she's a cool kid. She's fun. I love her. She's your oldest? Yeah. She's twelve? Twelve, yeah. Okay. Seventh grade. So she's the babysitter emeritus, basically, or will be? Kind of, yeah. I mean, soon. She's tough on her siblings, though. Well, she has high expectations. Yeah. True. She won, she was the president. It drives her crazy when I brag about it. Uh, she was president of the Dunn of the, of her whole element. Elementary. Elementary school? Yeah. Okay. Yep. Of the whole school? Yeah. When she was in fifth grade, which was a super, I don't know. I thought it was a big deal I never would've run for. Right, right. Office and then whatever. She just got into advanced math and. 7th grade, so that's a big deal too. Okay. Yeah. She's so fun. I know we went to a party in, in Boulder. My, I just took her down there with my buddy and a bunch of other dudes and she was like right, it was like the five of us at this block party on Sunday. Okay. And she was so hilarious and, I don't know. Just easy to engage with adults and whatever else. Yeah. She started, she has a thing. I don't, yeah. If you lick somebody's elbow from behind, they can't feel it. So that was like, so, so we had a thing where, yeah, we had a thing where we got this, a guy we didn't know to do whatever you had to, and we had three guys and you had to answer the question and this guy we didn't know lost and he had to go to another group and lick somebody's elbow from behind. Which was started by my daughter. And the dude didn't even notice he licked the guy's elbow and the guy like just kept talking. Like nothing happened. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. I didn't take a pause. All right. Um, You have another, you have four kids. Evelyn was the first and Evelyn started a craze. I really kind of want to lick somebody's elbow now. I know. So weird. This grown dude in his fifties, like walks over to a group of guys standing in a circle talking, like hesitates. And then he licks the guy's elbow. Nothing happens. He walks back over to us. And he was so grossed out when we told him about it, like, whatever, 20, 20 minutes prior that you convinced him and then he was like, well, he took the bet where like, Oh, we had, we, the three of us were standing, we had some random person ask us a trivia question. Okay. I answered the first one. So I was out then my buddy answered the next one. So he was out. So this dude that we had just met had to go. And he stood, that was very impressive. You know, he stood up and stuck to his word. I like it. Anyway. So Evelyn, so my oldest, she's pretty cool. Um, and pretty thinking too, sounds like, yeah. Um, number two, number two, Ginny, Virginia, um, just sweet. She's so you like, if you have a friend, you want to be Ginny's friend or sibling, like she's always like, if we go, She's actually the best one. You go to a gift shop. She, everybody thinks she's the favorite, which is untrue. They're all equally, but everybody's so thinks that this kid's a favorite. But yeah, if she, you go to a gift shop, she's like, like, Oh, I'll get that. But let me, I need to get something for Evie, for Hope and for Tommy and for mommy. You know, like so sweet. Um, and she's funny. She's got an amazing sense of humor. She's like, has tons of play dates. She's like nine, 10, something. She's 10. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fifth grade next is and then hope is the next and she is like what? Boolean maybe would be like we had a new babysitter today that came and hope would just chatter by I don't know if I know That word very good ebullient ebullient It's like like expressive expressive and big. Yeah. Yeah confident and yeah. Yeah I've never really known how to say that word before, I think. Did I say it right? I don't know. I might have said it wrong. I don't know. So, yeah, she's such a huge personality. For a seven year old or something? She's Eight year old? She's eight, yeah. Okay. I think. That's exciting. It's tough to keep track of all the ages, but They always change. But, yeah, she's just a big personality and super confident and, uh Interesting. She's amazing. That's Probably I hate to say it this way, but it's not always a common trait in girls, and, and it seems like less so than when I was a kid for some reason. And so that's awesome to hear, actually. It feels like girls are being trained to be smaller, play small ball until they're like grown up girls and then they play big ball. Interesting. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about that. You know, we lived across the street. Way in Boulder, we lived across the street from somebody that had three girls. And her, and she said, girls can be anything, which I thought was a super interesting, where, where guys can't, I mean, they can be, but they can't really be nurses, they can't be, uh, whatever, teachers, I mean, they can be for sure, but a girl can be a CEO, she can be a nurse, she can be a, I don't know, a fireman or a soldier, but they can be a fireman or a soldier. Well, I mean, they were crafted by God to be an ideal helper. There you go. For the world. Nice. You know. Or a CEO sometimes Which is a helper too, right? Like servant leadership is And Tommy and then Tommy Fireball bulldog. He likes to play. He's he's just turned seven. Okay, and he He's thick and solid like okay, he's uh, yeah. Yeah, he likes to play Last year, I'm like, what do you play on the playground? And he's like, bulls. Like, how do you play bulls? He's like, just run into people with your head. You just run into most of them aren't actually playing bulls. You don't need to be playing bulls. He's playing bulls. You don't need to be playing. You just get drawn into his game after he crashes into you. Oh, God. It's like a high motor. Yeah. It's got a ton of energy. We have like always have projects going on. He's like, Daddy, let's build an electric bike. I'm like, okay, so we buy electric. Daddy, let's build a rat. Let's build a boat. Okay. So we build a boat. Daddy, let's build a cool. So let's build a wand. Let's build a staff with a, with a rot, with a, with a. Thing that shoots off, I wanna be able to push the button and shoot the thing off the end. I'm like, all right buddy, we'll build that for you. So we have all these projects. I like it. Yeah. So an engineer kind of, for sure. Um, you wanna talk more about Lisa? Like Yeah. Um, oh, sure. What, what was it, uh, aside from the fact that you had this thriving bachelorette boating business, uh, what caused her to say yes to the second time you asked her out? I, she had, um, I dunno, we had so much fun. I just had a blast that first night. I like spun, we danced, but it wasn't, it's not a dancing bar, and I spun her into the, I don't know, she sort of crashed into the bar, the patrons sitting at the bar. Oh, okay. Yeah, we got yelled at by the bartender. Because you were drinking too much? No, because we were dancing, we were dancing, and we're not allowed to dance in there. Or you know how to let it crash into people when you're Right, right. Not supposed to. Yeah. But she thought it was fun. She thought it was fun, yeah. She said yes. I asked her how She makes fun of me. I asked her how like every day for like three days in a row. Like before that first one? Just not cool. Or after the first one? After the fir yeah, I met her and then I asked her how the next day, and then the next day, and then the next day, and she said yes every time, so She makes fun of me for that, justifiably so. So you were like, will you go out with me Thursday? And then will you go out with me Saturday or Friday, like the next day? Like after each day, you were like, will you go out with me tomorrow too? Will you go out with me tomorrow too? Not cool. And, uh, how did she use that leverage? Just kidding. You know, I, one of the things that, uh, That Jill and I have learned about ourselves, I guess, is because we're 21 years married here last May. Nice. Wow. As, you know, being desired for a woman or man, but especially for a woman is a big vitamin booster for a relationship. Hmm. Right, and so that, you know, asking her again, asking her again, asking her again, like, that sets a tone. My cards were on the table. Like, this guy really likes me. And why did you like her so much? Yeah, she was super fun, super pretty. Yeah. She just had a great sense of humor, quick wit. She's from the East Coast. She seemed to like you. She was quick. Yeah, she liked me back, apparently. That's a big driver for me, like, actually liking me too. Yeah, that's important in a relationship. In any relationship, even a friendship. I apparently, I had, what did I tell, I had, I told her within the first week. Two minutes or whatever, or five minutes that I had a sailboat. That's it. Or that boat in the harbor. That's important. I was, I don't know what the third thing was, but I was friends with, uh, I taught rock climbing in Chicago. I moved back from Denver to Chicago, right. And I needed something to do. My climbing partner out here said, get a job at a climbing gym. So I'm like, Oh, good idea. So I had, it was a fancy gym downtown and, uh, like a six story. Yeah. It was like the, anyway, Jimmy Buffett came in on it and I'm a huge Buffett fan. Sure. And, uh, and then I taught him like whatever, four more times. He would always call him whenever he came into town. He called me. I was his guy with backstage passes. And, uh, with a pre, the pre dinner, a pre thing and give me ticket, like 10th row center tickets or whatever. Yeah, it was super cool. And then that's obviously something you need to mention to a girl that you just met, right? Yeah, you laid it on. Yeah. So she makes fun of me for that. But it worked. You named Robin Jimmy Buffet on your first date. Jimmy, yeah, you want to call Jimmy? Or I have his email right here. You want to email Jimmy? Jimmy, look at this girl I just met. She's so cute. Can she come backstage with me next time you're in town? Yeah, exactly. Oh, hilarious. I love it. Um, we got to touch on politics. Uh, we are less than a week away from the first presidential debate. Oh, great. They both said yes. Are they, everybody's agreed. Supposedly. Yeah. I don't know. I hear Trump backs out, I hear Kamala backs out. Yeah, well, Kamala said anywhere, anytime, and Trump's like, okay, let's have three debates. And then she's like, huh? Is it going to be three? No, I'm sure not. We'll see how the first one goes, but I doubt it. I doubt it too. She doesn't like to speak off camera, is what I keep reading, or is she Without her Of course the reporters and Yeah, I don't know. She doesn't have her teleprompter. She doesn't like to I heard Tim Walz was her emotional support animal. Really? Are they friends from before? I don't know. They just met, but she liked him. Tim Walz's whole family is Trump supporters. Did you see that? picture on, on, uh, X. Like, what's going on with that, though, really? Like, for real? Like, like, I hate to say, like, it's really weird that the Democratic Party put forward Joe Biden when they knew he was facing difficulties with associated with his age. Like, you can't convince me that they didn't know that. Like what kind of a retard wouldn't know that? Certainly his vice president knew that, but nobody says nothing. I go get the nomination and stuff. But she wasn't very involved or wasn't everything. I read this. He held her at arm's distance. She didn't, she didn't get to do much in the thing. Like Jill and Hunter were like, okay, that's good. Do you go, maybe? I mean, I've, I've heard that definitely from a lot of, Like cabinet officials, like, I didn't see him for like the last 11 months or 16 months or whatever, like we just didn't interact. He wasn't, yeah. So maybe he was hiding, but like, I don't know. Like what do you think about that whole scene? It's such a, it's interesting. Yeah, why, why, yeah, why didn't, Why didn't they put, why didn't they put a process in place to have an open primary? Why didn't they have an open primary? Like it seemed obvious to me that Joe, Was in rough. Like they hit him in 2020. Yeah, they didn't allow. He didn't, wasn't out then. Nobody picked, nobody picked Gamala, right? She's just like, or somebody picked him, the Democratic Party. Somebody did, but no people voted for her. It's so interesting. I'm like, how does she have, I don't know. But she's super unpopular. She was super unpopular and now, now the media spins it or they spin that she's is super popular and has all those accomplishments. I think she is super popular. Like, yeah. Like a lot of people like her all of a sudden. A lot. Yeah. Which is so weird, huh? Cause she was like down in the dumps before and now she's super popular. So, yeah, I don't know. Whatever. We'll see what happens. Yeah. What do you, what's your prediction? Um, yeah, I don't know. I, I guess from what I read that she's super Marxist and communist and, uh, Yeah, maybe it's the same thing as with Hillary, right? Like all the polls say that Hillary's gonna crush it and Kamala's gonna crush it, but then Trump comes out ahead? I don't know. Is that what you think is most likely? I do. What do you think? I I'm scared that there's funny business with potential as well. Like, I'm not sure what the margin is. I think RFK coming aboard with Trump was probably a big boost for Trump. That's really super interesting. I feel like he was always sort of right leaning ish. What do you think? Well I mean, I've listened to a bunch of his content and stuff like that because, I mean, he's attacking from the Liberty side, the biggest gap in Trump's game, which was that he was like, we got to lock down the country and give everybody these vaccines or not. He didn't, but he started Operation Warp Speed and stuff. And you know, Trump was not a defender of Liberty during that time. And RFK wrote. You know, the real Anthony Fauci book, and it kind of exposed that whole pharma corrupted scene. Oh, you haven't read the real Anthony Fauci? Mm hmm. Oh, dude. Oh, yeah. You gotta read that. I know he lives in a 7 million house or something on a government salary, or Fauci? Yeah. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. But, but he, like, the evidence suggests that he, like, prolonged the AIDS epidemic for years. Own in Richmond and other people associated and a whole bunch of other stuff like his whole record is kind of questionable and You know NIH gets most of the money's when are a lot of the money when new drugs are approved through the FDA No, who gets it NIH? Yeah, National Institute of Health because they like only like like literally 55 percent of the drugs approved by the FDA have royalties paying back to the National Institutes of Health right now. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. No, it's a, it's a dirty little game where if you're involved with our science approved crew, you can get, like, things approved easier than if you're some random Like, it's really impossible for, you know, as hard as it was for Tesla to break into the car business, it's probably harder for small time pharmaceutical companies to break into that business. And it's more than anything because of the gatekeepers. Space X was really difficult for Elon, too. Well, totally. And, and, like, the banking industry is probably what Elon should crack next, or somebody should. Because it's really hard to get into the big banking industry, right? And you get to borrow your money for a point and a half less than everybody else if you're too big to fail. Tough to face against that competition. Same, same thing for pharmaceuticals. Same thing for military contractors. Like, if you could build a better mousetrap and sell it to the fucking military? I'm sure you could kick I mean Boeing can't even go get, drop astronauts off up in space and bring them home. You know? And they're our most advanced. That's a detail. Yeah. Yeah. Oops. Thank goodness for Elon and for, yeah, people fighting to, or whatever, people, entrepreneurs that are doing new stuff. Like without, without free speech and innovation. Like, I think entrepreneurship dies pretty quickly, I guess is where I go with my politics a little bit. Yeah, but, but there's so much big, I think it's all gonna be okay with huge VC money and, uh, or venture capitalist money and tons of innovation. I don't know. I think America's gonna be okay. We would weather through a four year season of communism? I think so. Okay. You know what they say, uh, You can vote socialism in, but you have to shoot your way out. Well, listen to this. So, so for my business, um, um, Biden talks tough on imports, but actually it's not that hard to import things, but, but Trump actually enforces the right. So you would be like, shit, it's going to cost me a bunch of extra money. It's actually better for my business. Yeah. Yeah. At least in the short run. At least it's short I mean, if nobody has any money, it's gonna be harder for them to buy solar panels in the future. Yeah, I dunno. Yeah. I'm so curious if that, my whole Marxist communist thing is really real. If she really, or if she's, I mean she spoke pretty directly about price controls. Like when I was a kid in fifth grade, that was like one of the hallmarks. Yeah. But for grocery stores besides like, yep. Oh, price controls. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh, unrealized capital gains. Right. It seems pretty ridiculous, but, alright. Yeah. Seems like it. I don't know. I'm, I'm a cynic about all of it. So I'm probably gonna vote for Kanye again. He's not on the ballot, but I'll write him in, I don't know, maybe RFK, should they just, they should just add RFK to the Trump vote totals. They're not even letting him off the ballot in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Um, which is interesting. You've talked enough about politics? I have. You're walking a very good line of being conservative, but not stance taking. Do you want to share your loco experience? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when I started, I was, yeah, my marine solar business was pretty small, I think, right? It was just a Sure. Well, no, and this isn't your local think tank experience. This is really your, this is the craziest experience that you're willing to share with our listeners. That's the plan. Just my life experience. But it is true. Your local experience has been, I mean, you definitely have doubled your business like 10 times since then. Doubled, yeah. Doubled and then doubled and doubled again and doubled again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, thanks much and parts of Moses and mostly you're good decision But tell me about a crazy experience that you're willing to share with our listeners You had this this big peak that I climbed in Nepal was it was a big deal So 20, 000 plus? Yeah, so we hiked in, yeah it was, it's like a, so I'm taking my whole, so I went when I was 30 and I climbed this big peak, I went when I was 40 for our honeymoon. Oh. And then 50 I got COVIDed, but we're going again and, you know, I'm taking the whole family in, uh, November. We're all going to Nepal and trekking and everything. Okay, so the same place you went when you were 30? Yep. Okay. Yep. How old are you? I'm fifty four. Are you really? Yeah. Oh, I thought you were a little younger than me. That sucks. How old are you? I just turned fifty. Oh, okay. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. You know. Happy birthday. My hair is better, but, you know, you hike a lot more, so. I've got this instead of what you got. So we hiked, so we hiked for what, two weeks to get to the base camp, then we, and I was with my buddy. Wow. Who was in Africa, who had been in Africa. So we got it, so we, then we. Set up, went to the base camp, set up the tent, got up at 3 a. m., hiked up, my buddy got sick, went, went back to the tea house, which was like 10 hours away. Right, but it was a couple thousand feet lower elevation or something. Yeah, yeah, and lower elevation. Whoa. Better beds and And then we got to, we, there were two huge, and then we got to, and then we got out on, we put our crampons on, got out onto the snow, two huge Seracs, and uh, which are huge snow, like hundred foot snow towers, and then a crevasse, a big crevasse in front of us, so scary, like I almost peed my pants, and I, I had to like, mentally calm down and get myself under control. And we turned around, it was just the two of us. We were the first people to summit in, uh, except for we didn't summit that day, but we did the next day, um, in 2000, first people in the new millennia. Yeah. So I was the first guy to stand on the summit of Island Peak. In, uh, whatever, in the new millennia, in 2000. Yeah, yeah. So it was in May, or February of 2000. And you're, you're talking about, like, traversing crevasses and stuff like that? Yeah. You're gonna bring your children there? Uh, we won't do that part. Okay. Alright. We'll just do a trail. We'll just, a dirt trail and we'll pay, we'll pay a big deal. Gotcha, okay. Unless we get that far. Maybe we, no, no, unlikely. So then the next day we go back and then there were some Japanese guys. And we went, we went a different route. And the, uh, Did you have guides and stuff? I had a Sherpa. I had a Sherpa with me. And we were roped together. And he had a little carabiner that said not for climbing use on it. Like a little tiny carabiner. Like when you buy it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then we, and then picture like a seven, like, Yeah, exactly. A 700 foot, uh, ice, ice glacier flowing off of a cliff, and then there was a little piece broken off. He jumped out onto that piece, it was maybe A foot and a half wide. Climbed up it. I jumped off after him. Climbed up it. Went across a huge thing and then I had my water bottle froze solid for the, so I had no water all day. Hiked across, jumped across another crevasse. Some went up the, oh he was supposed to tie a rope and he, he, for this last ascent. Up the steep face. And he said, Oh, you're fine. You're good. You, you, you, you've been doing pretty good all day. And I don't really want you to fall on me. I don't really want to, and I don't feel like setting the road for you. So you're, you look like you're doing fine. So, uh, so we went up, summited, whatever, got a picture and I look so scared in the picture. Not that I get scared. I'm a really tough guy, but I was scared at that moment. And then, uh, no, I'm kidding. And then. Then, but then you're only halfway there when you're at the summit. Right? Then you gotta, we have to re we have to repeat that. So we jump back, go back down the steep section, jump across, go back across grass, all these things go thing down, down, down to anyone else. Did he let you hook up to him on the way down that? Yeah. So then we get back to cab mandu, so then we, whatever trick back we get back to Cab Mandu and I bought him a, I bought him a real harness, a real carabiner a real, all, all this stuff. His name was Ming Ma. Which means Thursday, because he was born on Thursday. Okay. I like it. That's a pretty cool experience. Yeah, it was really cool of him too, because I don't know, I was Yeah, he got me to the top, right? Right. Super impressive. Right. Was it his first time taking somebody? No, Tony, you've been up lots of times, right? I've never had to use his not for climbing use carabiner before. I know, I bet he's used it before. I thought that was really neat. He could have been like, oh, you look scared. Why don't we go back home? Yeah. No, but he's like, no, let's go to the summit. Like, you can do it. You got, you have the power. He called it the power. You have, you have power. You have plenty of power left. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, okay, we did and we did it. Cool. Yeah. What a fun story. So, um, custom marine products. com or something. That's it. Well, we have a whole bunch of new customers. We also own custom marine seller. com. So that'll swing you back around. Do you have custom van products? Custom what? Van products. com. Oh, we don't. That's a great call. I'm going to go buy it if it's available. So sell it to me. I'll sell it to you for a good price. Thanks, Tom. It's been fun.