The LoCo Experience
The LoCo Experience is produced and sponsored by LoCo Think Tank - and sometimes others! Our mission is to uncover as much business education as possible while getting to know the founders and leaders of amazing organizations. You'll feel like you really know our guests after each episode, and if we're doing our job well, you'll learn business principles and tips from them along the journey and be both inspired and entertained. Episodes feature a range of local and regional business and community leaders as guests in a conversational interview format. The more interesting the journey, the better the experience!
The LoCo Experience
EXPERIENCE 205 | Dain Johnson - Founder & Owner of Rev 0 - Engineer turned Organizational Psychologist turned Coach for Engineers turned Managers, Leaders, and CEO’s
Dain Johnson was a high-level mechanical and industrial engineer for a decade, during which time he worked under some great managers - and some terrible ones! He developed a keen interest in psychology, eventually leading him to further his education with a Masters in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from CSU, and to the founding of his business, Rev 0.
Dain is a coach for engineers turned managers. These range from first-time managers, to rising stars potentially headed toward the CEO role - and even new CEO’s. This podcast zooms in on the principals of coaching others to better lead people, and apply to anyone.
Dain is an awesome guy, and shares abundantly from his knowledge and craft. He also built and sold a coffee company in Texas in a previous chapter, and is co-founder and partner in Isolation Coffee here in Fort Collins, offering premium coffee, delivered to your door!
The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain
Welcome back to the Loco Experience podcast. My guest today is Dane Johnson and Dane is the founder and owner of RevZero, uh, which trains coaches, um, engineers turned managers. Yeah, that's right. And, uh, then also the founder and co owner of Isolation Coffee. And thanks for bringing a coffee gift for one of our listeners. Bring that mic just a little closer. Sure. How about that? There you go. Perfect. Um, so, you know, obviously, let's, uh, let's talk about RevZero, because, um, it's really been an evolving enterprise for you, as we've known each other the last Plus years, probably. Yeah, it's gone through a few iterations, a few revisions of its own. You know, revision zero, rev zero, stands for revision zero. Okay. I got the name, but I started it eight years ago. Uh, founded the LLC while I had my corporate job. Okay. And I had no idea what it was going to turn into. Okay. You were just sick of working for the man? Yeah, I was. Okay. And so I knew the writing was on the wall, and I formed the LLC in July, and by October I had resigned, and I was working with a small startup out of Texas as a consultant. So RevZero became my consulting partner. business, the arm through which I did consulting and that focused on engineering project management. Okay. And since then it has evolved as I have as well into psychology and behavior of people at work. And so now it's primarily coaching, which is all focused on individual performance at work. So you have a niche in engineers, but probably your toolkit isn't applicable to pretty much anybody. Is that so, or is it kind of designed for that engineering mindset, if you will? Uh, the coaching experience doesn't change based off of the, uh, individual's background, right? So if I'm coaching an engineer, or a CTO, or a CEO, whether they have a technical background or not, the methods are the same. The difference is my ability to relate to the engineer, um, because I am one. I was an engineer for 10 years, a mechanical engineer working in large corporations and small companies. So I'm familiar with their challenges. I'm familiar with their, their background. Uh, and so there's just. You know, for coaching to be effective, there has to be a relationship and trust immediately. And I find that my background just helps establish that trust faster. You know, I'm not, uh, um, I'm not coming in as a life coach, which a lot of them assume if you're going to get a coach that it's a life coach and of course we get into life. But with us sharing a lot of the similar background, um, it just builds that trust. Well, with our, you know, you've seen me present. One million cups and different things about loco think tank and, you know, our facilitators are, are You know, successful business veterans that have been there, done that. And so they already have that kind of instant credibility with those that are in it doing it right now. Yeah, exactly. And getting that credibility is so important. Uh, it takes a long time to build that, but if you have a shared experience, it's kind of built in. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So did you, like, did you learn the toolkit of relating with people and managing people and then later pivoted to that, or as you coached, you realized the. Opportunity in the marketplace? Uh, a very roundabout career path. Okay. Um, I joke with my wife that she, uh, knows people and just knows how to relate to people naturally. I had to go to grad school to figure that out. Okay. So, I have a master's degree in psychology. Okay. So I had to go back to school just to learn how to work with people. And it really all started when I was working at ExxonMobil. Largest corporation at the time. That was my first job out of college. And here was a corporation with engineers from interns to CEO. Every layer of management was engineering. And of course we were coming up with the right technical solution. Our projects were very well managed. We had them well planned, well controlled, but there was always this element at play that I didn't. I didn't quite understand and I didn't feel like most folks had an idea of how to work with it. And that was the people element. And so, an example, I'd go to these root cause analysis meetings where some major piece of equipment failed and we'd spend the whole day talking about why it failed. And so we'd break down all the components. Because that engineer doesn't love his job. And this is where it would get to. It would get to the people side and then the analysis would stop. So we'd get to the point where, okay, it was operator error or some managerial cultural thing. We don't know how to work with culture and people and operators. So we're just going to stop the analysis right there. And figure out how to change our design so that people aren't factored into it at all. Like try to engineer the people out of it. And you couldn't do that with everything. Um, and so that just started me on this path of discovery. Um, of one book after the next. And before you know it I'm studying psychology trying to figure out how people work. And I still haven't figured it out. This is in your side hustle. Like here's basically a bookworm on the side of your regular engineering job where you're, what were you, what were you doing in designing? Yeah. Uh, at Exxon, my job was machinery engineer, so I was doing turbo machinery, which is the pumps, compressors, uh, gas turbines, anything that rotated. Okay. Uh, I was in the group engineering that, and I was working large projects internationally. So I was in Korea, Angola, Norway, traveling the world to all these. facilities, um, you know, inspecting these multimillion dollar pieces of equipment. And, uh, so that was my engineering background. And they're failing for different reasons because they're all in different kinds of environments, but also the maintenance schedule is not the same with everybody's operation of it and different things like that too, right? We designed one spec and we maybe write it for West Texas, but then we want to install that piece of equipment in Siberia or Africa. Right. I was working on subsea technology, which is, we were designing. Um, five megawatt driven pumps that could sit on the ocean floor for years without being retrieved. And so these were things that were, that had to work perfectly. It's almost like putting things in space. The only difference is, uh, it can weigh as much as you want it to going into the ocean. What, uh, is that used to pump seawater out of the ocean for something? No. So this was a technology development program, a project we were looking at of, you're familiar with offshore oil production, where you see these big rigs floating out there in the Gulf of Mexico. Um, we were looking at how do you put some, a lot of that equipment on the sea floor? Could you just have it right at the wellhead? Um, have a separator underwater, have pumps, have compressors underwater, do that work on the seafloor, and then just have long, uh, pipelines, because so much of what comes out of a reservoir is water. And so, if you could re inject it. Without ever bringing it up to the surface. You could save a ton of money and also make it a lot safer, right? Right, right. Well, and if you do make mistakes and spill stuff, it's all the way down there. Nobody can catch you as easy Well spilling was not something that was tolerated and the place that this was being rolled out, especially was the north see, uh, like offshore Norway, where it's very hazardous, very hazardous conditions. Um, we could barely figure out how to bomb the Nord stream, you know, saying I'll pump oil that easily. Yeah. Uh, so it was a really cool technical problem. Uh, let me see the world and work with some really awesome people. But, uh, I started to realize that this was not my career path because my library was full of. Um, philosophy, psychology, uh, theology, like all these people things is what I ended up enjoying reading about and I didn't have any engineering books on my shelf. But yet your, your wife is the natural understander of people. So you invested in, would you, I would say that myself, I probably a better understander of people instinctively than many as well. Have you got as good at her at it now, or is your more from a, from a method at standpoint and peeling apart the onion instead of just understanding the onion when you look at it? Yeah, I'm constantly learning. Um, and I think why I've latched onto coaching is because it's moved away from the, um, theoretical. And it's now focused on the individual. Yeah. And I really like that. And I get to see the impact of my work far more than when I was doing, you know, change management plans or organizational development, treating people like statistics. Now I'm working one on one with the president of a company or the founder, CTO of a company. And. They're navigating the people problems, right? Because they figured out a technical issue, they figured out how to make money with it, and now they need people to scale it. Yeah, yeah. Um, but the, some of the advice I got Early on in my career, I was a very impatient person and I probably still am. Uh, but the advice I would get from mentors over and over again was just be patient. Be patient. And I hated hearing that. I wanted to know what I could do next. Right. So, I think grad school, I studied at CSU. Um, I think studying psychology for me, it didn't necessarily teach me how people work. It taught me how to be patient. So I've learned patience over the years. Fair, fair. Um, and so describe maybe an engagement. Like what would, Oh, I was going to just observe, I guess, that the, the value in, like your, your niche is pretty neat because, you know, engineers are worth whatever, you know, a hundred grand ish or whatever, but engineers that can manage engineers are worth twice that right? But a lot of engineers flame out, you know, like in my industry, I was, uh, I was a banker, I was a lender, you know, and I was pretty much just a hired gun, go get the bank, some more customers. And then, you know, some people became managers, you know, bank presidents and things like that, and other people didn't, and it mattered a lot as to what your value to the organization was. Yeah. And this is a value proposition. Um, you know, I believe that, you know, Engineers should be promoted into leadership positions in technical companies, uh, because other engineers want to work for engineers. Yeah. Yeah. Customers want to buy from technical experts. Yeah. Um, and, and when something goes wrong, you want someone who understands the technology. If you're a manufacturer, if you're in IT, whatever it is, when something goes wrong, uh, people want the leadership who are making decisions to be intimately familiar with the product. Yeah. And so. There's great value in not having professional CEOs come in from a retail store operation and being the boss of a engineering company. Yeah. So there's definitely benefit to hiring, definitely a benefit to hiring internally in technical organizations. The problem is then that so many of them, it's just a sink or swim. Um, uh, promotion, right? It's promotion as a reward. Hey, you were good at this job. Let's promote you. Because you'll, you'll surely be good at other managing people who have your old job and that doesn't just happen organically. And so I, I got into this line of work so that engineers like, like I was, stay in their job because they learn how to enjoy it. Right. Um, I kind of Well, you can still be an engineer and manage a team of engineers successfully, uh, if you do it right. And, and there can be a huge, um, you know, personal benefit. Yeah, yeah. Like so much more enjoyable. And so you started to ask what a typical engagement looks like. Very few typical engagements. That's what I was wondering, like, even, is the, is the person paying for it out of their pocket? Or is the company buying this coaching for this guy that's starting to look like he's failing as a manager now? Not quite. So, it is the business that hires me. Okay. Um, however They're not hiring me for the person who needs remedial coaching. They're hiring me for the person who is the future CEO of that company. So the people that they see as having high potential that they want to invest in, that they're willing to invest in, they're, they're saying, hey, we promoted you not only for recognition of what you've done, we promoted you for anticipation of what you can do. And so in coaching, that's my focus, is realizing that potential. Because the systems and the structures in most companies aren't set up to provide that development opportunity, right? And also engineers we get we get used to learning a certain way and that's by the book and There are laws of physics. There are no laws of human behavior. Yeah, and so we spend our entire education Uh, focused in the books, we spend our entire early career focused on the technical solutions, assuming that there is a solution, um, and so focused on the formulas and the, the plans that when you get into management, it requires a new, new way of working in problems rather than on them. All right. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I dabbled in education, you know, I tried to do some trainings. I'll do workshops every now and then, but the development of a manager is not a knowledge challenge. It's an ability. So when you mentioned that somebody, That could be the future CEO is oftentimes invested in through you by the company. But is that not person, not already managing people? They, they usually are. So I do get involved, uh, when they're already in a position of management, preparing someone for leadership role is almost like preparing someone to be a parent. They're not going to hold onto all that information until they have a kid that they're trying to figure out how to raise. So I tell, uh, companies when they're working with me, it's. After you've promoted someone, either I start coaching them that exact same week and we're just meeting one on one. There's no education involved. It's just having an external partner to help navigate this transition. So it's either right after the promotion or, or and. It's six months, nine months later where they've been in a position of management long enough that they've tried some things that they've made some mistakes. And they, they are willing to learn. It's not broken, but they've eaten humble pie, maybe for the first time. Yes. Yes. They've put in place all those, uh, brilliant ideas of, of time management and, uh, time reporting and how to run a meeting and haven't gotten the results they expected. Interesting. Um, and then. These companies, are they like 20 to 100 person companies, or are they bigger than that mostly? Would you work with director level people instead of CEO types, I imagine, too? Yes. Yes. On the low end, and this is from actual experience over the past couple years, on the low end it would be around 50. where they're starting to put in to place formal leadership structures. Yep. All right. There's a C suite basically. There's a C suite and it might be two people. Right. But then they're promoting someone else into director of operations or manager of operations. So it could be around that 30 to 50 people on the low end. On the high end, it's, it's a few thousand. Okay. It just depends on the evolution of the organization and do they have in house training and development. So most of the companies that hire me don't have training and development in house. Or if they do I'm getting to come in purely as a coach to, um, to add to the training to develop. Right. So I get to talk with Specifically for this role, probably. Yes. Um, I do have a program for first time managers and so a lot of small companies will send their people through this because for a first time manager, there are fundamental things to learn. Okay. What is the job? What does it mean to be a manager? What are my responsibilities? Right. Uh, they're not often being told that from their boss. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. In a small company, the boss doesn't. Always know even. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a interesting observation. Um, can we talk about like what is the job of being a manager? There's probably a lot of managers out there listening to this podcast and even small business owners that Started a thing and now they find themselves Managing three to five people and sometimes not really managing them much, right? Like what does it look like really? Uh, there's five core responsibilities that I, that I talk about, but in the program, I always start with the most difficult person to manage first, and that's yourself. So we spend the first four weeks just talking about self management, like what is, what does that even mean? And then we spend four weeks talking about managing other people. I think the expectations of managers has changed over the past few years, decades. Uh, how Probably a much more emotionally tipped thing. Relationally. 20, 30 years ago it was like, well, these are the five things I'm measuring you on and Yeah. You know, that's the end of the conversation. It'd be very transactional. Yeah. Uh, you know, you might be managing, uh, and it's, it's different if you're managing an engineering company versus a, uh, a restaurant or an assembly line. Right. Right. If you're, if your employees are paid more for what they can think up than what they can do with their hands, then the style of management is different. It's difficult. Very hard to measure. It's very difficult. So anyway, I sidetracked you. So what was that first? Yeah. So the, the, the responsibilities of a manager and these are, these apply to everyone. The first one is just to establish objectives. People are looking to you to understand what is it that we need to do? Why do we exist as a team? Um, and if you don't know where you're going as a manager, then you're probably just going to be stuck in the individual contributor role where you're just doing some engineering. These people are doing some engineering. And you're trying to bring it together. Oh, and that's, and that's different than the, like the, the mission and the vision and stuff of the company as a manager of a team of three or five or whatever, you've kind of also got to have your own real purpose, your objectives. Yeah. And I love OKRs, objectives and key results, because they're kind of stackable. And I see management as a collaborative sport that the manager is working with their. Uh, supervisor, the director, the director CEO. It's not a competition between the, the layers. Yeah, yeah. It's an integration. Yeah, yeah. And so when you're establishing the objectives as a manager, um, what I find is they're, the objectives aren't always established for them. Sure. They're just promoted. Right. And it's like, hey, this was actually some. Do good. Do good. Um, I will say that some of the, when I got hired for one of my engineering jobs and I asked, My hiring manager, like, what is my measure of success? And he just said, don't F up. And that was it. All right. So that is awesome. Sounds like a government job. No, it wasn't. No, I'm just kidding. A government job would have been better. There'd be more controls in place. So, um, so, but that's clutch, right? Like just knowing what we're trying to do here. Yep. Actually, that, uh, the blog I'm writing and is due Thursday morning and it's freaking already Tuesday afternoon is, uh, the power of the point. Uh, I like that. Uh, some analogy of like, you know, Arrows have points for a reason. And so should your, your day and each kind of hour, each half hour. Yeah. I like that. Um, and objectives are always in negotiation. They're always changing and what the point is, is always changing. And so this is just a starting point of a conversation for a new manager. Don't wait until you're giving an, given an objective, just write down what you think the objective is, take it to your boss and say, Hey, if this is where I focused my team. Is this the right thing? Well, and maybe sometimes, you know, take it to your team. And then you take it to your team. Right. And be like, is this, you know, this is the right objective? From my perspective, it kind of seems, especially if you're new in the position and they've been there. Yeah. You're like, is this what we're pointing toward here? Yeah. And it's a great point to take it to the team and have that conversation about, you know, sometimes the team knows better than you as the manager, what they can do and where they need to be and what they can accomplish. Um, especially if you're an outside hire. So if you were hired externally, um, It's folly to come in with your own objective, instead going to the team first and observing for a while and saying, all right, what do you guys do here? What do you want to accomplish? I kind of learned this as a consultant. When I was trying that out for a couple of years is the solutions are often already in the company. Someone's already saying it. They're just not in a position that anyone is listening to them. And so as a consultant, you go in and you're Yeah, the friction spots get noticed by somebody. Yeah. It's just And it's usually It doesn't make its way up the chain. And it's usually those people who don't have that job title of manager on them. Yeah, yeah. They're the engineer. So as a consultant, you talk to the frontline people as much as you can, the engineers, the operators, and you say What problem do you want me to to say needs to be solved? How would you like me to solve it? And I'll go tell the CEO and they'll listen to me because they're paying me for it. Interesting, interesting. Yeah, that was part of the the consulting that I, It's one of the reasons I moved away from it. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. I'd rather work with the CEO to help them listen better, Mmm. Uh, than to go Teach him to fish instead of like fixing every problem he's got. Yeah. Yeah. So objectives is number one. Establishing objectives. The second is to organize. Okay. Organize efforts. So thinking about, this is the, the coordination piece of being a manager, uh, understanding what each individual person is working on and bringing it together. Yeah. So whether you're going to use some sort of project management framework, um, agile methodology, product development, like there's so many different ways to organize and managers fall into the trap of trying to organize a certain way and, uh, it doesn't really matter the method. It's just that you do it. Yeah, I think, uh, not Confucius, but somebody else from way back then said something like, uh, a a a poor plan, uh, meticulously implemented beats a good, uh, brilliant plan left on the shelf. Yeah, yeah, and I I heard it. Yeah, and I can't remember if this was like, Steve Jobs gets so many things attributed to him, but it was like, um, it's not the, the plan that is valuable. It's the creation of the plan. Some paraphrasing. Um, and I find that it's, it's not so much whether you establish a good objective, write a great objective statement or not. It's the conversations that happen along the way. Yeah. So I don't want anyone I'm working with to jump into chat GPT and say, Hey, I'm a engineer of product development in an aerospace company. What's my objective? Yeah. And then it gives them nice words. It's one that organizes almost kind of an establishment of what the current situation is as well. Yeah. In some ways. Where are we? Uh, so it's setting the objective. Where do we want to be? And then you're looking at reality. Where are we? How do we need to organize? Yeah. What are our constraints? Right. And this is something engineers What resources do we have? Yeah. What constraints also? This is, and then constraints are what engineers are used to working with. Yeah. I mean, engineering is, um, at least mechanical engineering is physics constrained with time and money. Right. Right. I've, I've been a motorcycle guy for, you know, my dad was a motorcycle mechanic going back to when he was 14. And so I just, plus they're so visible, like a car is just hidden under a wrapper, right? Like the mechanical elements to it, but getting all those different engineers to work together. And this person's working on that. And, you know, in modern manufacturing, there's a lot of. Pop and switch and whatever you've been using the same engine platform for 25 years and you just strap some other wheels on it, whatever. But putting all those pieces together, especially for a all new vehicle. Man, it's so many different brains working on that. Yeah, it's so many different brains, so many different emotions at play. Right. And relationships involved. When I think about, like, taking that complexity of a problem from, you know, a 1972 Honda motorcycle, and then taking it up to, uh, uh, SpaceX. Mm hmm. And catching that thing. Yeah. You know. Yeah. And, and when you, that's going from engineering school to working as an engineer is the level of complexity just ratchets up rapidly. Mm hmm. Uh, you're used to working on a problem with a few variables. Now you're building a, a spaceship that not only needs to take off, it now needs to land and be caught. Right, right. Well, and there's, and there's. 400 other engineers working on other parts of it than the specific part that you're working on. Yeah But you can't worry about them. Really? You just gotta Well, and that's somebody has to organize that. Yeah, and that's the manager and this is something that comes up over and over and over again Is that the manager regardless of the level in the in the organization? If you're in a position of management or leadership You are a connector, right? You are connecting individuals to the organization. You're connecting the organization to the individuals. You're connecting departments to each other. There's been tons of studies on communication and the impact of communication in productivity. And if you open up paths of communication beyond the org chart. That's when productivity and collaboration and creativity just flourish. And so having those managers who are those professional networkers, right? When their team is faced with a problem, they don't keep it within their silo. They say, Oh, you should go talk to Jeff over in electrical. Right. And so making those connections is a really important part of being a manager. Although I'd say it's not a, it's not a core responsibility. No. But communication and the ability to connect, I'd say are the fireable offense. If you fail at communicating and fail at connecting, you won't be in a position of leadership for long. Yeah. No, I think that's actually, sometimes I, I, I consider myself kind of more of a leader than a manager sometimes, and sometimes my communication is short. You know, I assume people already get what I got going on, you know, I've been paying attention for a while. Come on, catch up, mustard. Um, so we got objectives and organize as your first two minutes, we'll finish out the five pillars. Yeah. Yeah. The other ones are to, to measure performance. So once you've established where you're going and you're putting the pieces together, how do you know if it's working or not? And this is a tough one because, uh, The tendency is to grab the easy metrics. It is a rocket blow up or not? Yeah. Those big ones, but also those KPIs though, that, that everyone latches onto that if it's measurable, they grab onto it. So utilization, right? I was thinking scorecard. Yeah. You know, instead of, but same thing, right? Yeah. And what I've learned through psychology and just the practice of working in businesses is getting comfortable with the, the qualitative. You know, it's not just whether they deliver the product, it's how they do the work. So behavioral feedback. Is almost more important than any sort of, um, measurable metric of utilization. Hey, did you have 40 billable hours this week or 38? Right, right. Well, and what does that have to do with it? Yeah, it got us, got us to be so interesting. I don't really, I've known some engineering firms, owners and things, but I haven't gotten into the work as much as like architects. I've got to know architects a little bit better. And so with architecture. Like you can see the lines and stuff like that a little bit more and to some extent it's at least a little easier to measure the outputs than engineers. Yeah, it's maybe it gets really hard to measure outputs. And so the things they focus on are billable, right? Yeah. And most engineers don't have any control over that. Right? The manager does. Right. And so as a customer that's paying has no idea what Value this person's billable rate is that they're paying for. Yeah. That's billable rate. Utilization rate is, is my least favorite metric, but it's prevalent. That's, that's the industry standard. Right. Right. Um, but I say that that's more of a reflection of the manager and that's data the manager needs, but the individual. engineer can't do anything about it. Well, and to a certain extent, the manager has to be at least a little bit sensing, like, I don't know, the metaphor that comes to mind for me is like a flat rate auto mechanic and there's some auto mechanics that have been doing it for 15 years and they can literally do. All their work in half or maybe even 40 percent of the time that the flat rate allows them to bill for it. So they make 180, 000 a year working their asses off, but good for them. Um, and I would imagine that to some extent engineering firms are a little bit like the same thing. Like if, if you know that this guy's productivity, like he might have worked 40 hours on it, but shit, that's like 90 hours worth of work. And so we're going to just charge a higher rate. for him on this, and he's going to work his way up at least as far as we bill him. And it rewards the wrong behaviors. Right. It rewards spending more time on client's work. Well, it's like becoming a government contractor. You get cost plus. If you're Halliburton, you just get 12 percent of whatever the fuck you spend. Well, let's spend more. Yeah, exactly. And, and that there's been tons of research on that. Um, rewards, the impact of rewards on human behavior. And so I, I love bringing that into the equation here for, for the engineering firms is, all right, these are, this is what you're measuring. And if you're measuring this, this is what people are going to pay attention to, but what are the behaviors that result from you measuring that? And a great example of this going wrong is safety metrics, uh, reportable incidents. All right, so a reportable, recordable, two different safety incidents in the oil industry and construction. And you say, all right, our target is zero recordable safety incidents. What they found is if you establish a metric like that, That we don't want there to be any recordable incidents. What you find is Well, then we're not going to record any of them. We're not hide them all. Yes. It doesn't actually change the safety performance, it changes the reporting of safety performance. Right. And they've seen this in hospitals. They've done a lot of studies of this too, about Uh, what they're measuring for nurses. Because they need to pay off all these widows and stuff with the non recordable instances. Yeah. Uh, sorry. That's probably rude, but it's, I've been watching Landman recently. So. I haven't seen that yet. Oh yeah, you should probably. It's uh, it's interesting. Yeah. Um, and so the, there's a famous article, it was, I think it's titled, Rewarding for A but Expecting B. And so we are rewarding for not reporting safety incidences. But we are expecting there to not be safety incidents. And so what, what I've seen a lot of companies do well, and a lot of the, the large, uh, oil and gas corporations I worked for, they did this really well is the safety culture and the, the encouragement through. Uh, find problems before they became issues, reporting near misses, incentivizing people to go out to the site, walk it, find things that need to be fixed, and fix it before it's an issue. Because not only is a safety incident bad for the individual and everyone involved, It's extremely costly. You shut down an entire facility for days to investigate or weeks or longer. And when you have thousands of people on a construction site, and one safety incident shuts it down, um, there's the incentive to go find things before they happen. And so I was working in South Korea in a shipyard, and We were building three offshore platforms that were going to be shipped over to Qatar and they were gas processing and every day, uh, engineers would go out and walk the construction yard looking for little things like, Oh, this, this electrical cord wasn't wrapped up. I mean, if someone trips on that, uh, there's an incident, we shut down production. We shut down operation. So every day we're going out there and we were required to fill out three things, three observations. And what they did well was there was no punishment tied to safety concerns. Right, the person that didn't roll up the cord properly. Exactly. Yeah, you just fix it. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Okay, so that was number three. Measuring, measuring performance. So we've got objectives, organize, and measure. And what's, uh, what's number four? Yeah. Motivate action. Motivate action. Motivate action. And it used to be, I used to be thinking about this of, oh, you need to motivate people. But I heard a really good analogy of how motivation works. And the story was that, uh, imagine motivation is a river flowing out of the mountains. All right, so you're up in the Poudre Valley and it's the Poudre River just flowing down. It has its source, all right? It has its source, motivation is coming in from all over, it's got all the power it needs, but things fall in over time. Things start to damn it up. The course gets redirected, trees are falling in, boulders are falling down, and so motivation gets constrained. Just over time. And I see this, I, this was my own experience working in corporations. Uh, this is, I know a lot of people's experience working in corporations. They're super excited. I haven't known anyone who got into engineering who is not excited to solve problems and work on big projects. They got into the work because they loved it and they were motivated to do it. They were motivated to study something very difficult, put in the years to do it. Get a hard job and put in the hours and the years to do that too. But over time, your motivation gets damned up. You have a bad boss. You have a bad client. Um, life changes. Yeah, projects you worked on for hundreds of hours got cancelled. Yeah, one of my early projects, I was working from 7 in the morning to 11 at night. Um, I should have watched the consultants who were working on the project and they clocked out at five o'clock because they knew something I didn't and that that was that the project was going to get shelved and it did. Um, but I was, you know, spending so much time away from home, so motivated to do good work. And then my motivation just fell apart. Shriveled up. Yeah, for sure. And so for a manager, this motivate action is to look for what is getting in the way. Of someone's motivation. I go in assuming that you as a manager and your team want to do good work. I haven't met anyone who deliberately got into management because they wanted to be a bad boss. Right. They kind of fall into it. They lose their motivation. And so if you're wanting to motivate action of your people, um, I take away all the carrots, I take away all those rewards, like gift cards and some bonus structure that they have no control over. Like that is not how you motivate action. If you want to motivate people, understand what, what excites them and remove barriers for them. And so as a manager, you're asking them, Hey, what are you working on? What are you excited about working on? And they say, here's what I'm working on. Here's what I want to accomplish. And then you start asking, okay, what's getting in your way. Yeah. And they're going to tell you, they're going to say, well, you're asking me to fill out time sheets that take three hours every Friday. That's getting in my way. All right. So now as a manager, you have a job to do, and that's to make that process simpler. Right. Remove the friction. And so this is where the manager gets to put back on their engineering hat and figure out, all right, where is the friction in this process that I can now enable people to do the work that they, that we hired them to do? You know, I've had a manager tell me in the past, my job is mostly to, to just stay in contact with my people and remove obstacles. Yeah. But that's a lot the same as motivate action, although it's, uh. more positive language. Yeah. Um, I'm, I'm a big fan of positive psychology, which is you identify a positive future state you want to get to. And you work towards that versus looking at the past and all the mistakes you've made. And so if we're giving feedback to people, I like to flip the script and say, give them performance feed forward. Like what would you want them to do next time versus the mistake they made in the past? Yeah. Um, and number five, develop people. Uh, you have, People who are still growing, still learning, who are, uh, motivated by a sense of mastery, uh, that are motivated to pro pro progress in their career. So, understand what, individually, the people that report to you want to grow in, and give them opportunities to do that. Uh, in a large corporation, you're gonna have the resources available to you. That's what I was gonna say, yeah. And you're gonna have some of this mapped out. Um, when I started my career at Exxon, uh, we had a three year early career milestone. Like this was an 11 by 17 sheet of here's all the trainings you need to go to. You're going to need to have these practical experiences. You need to be on these types of assignments. And so the manager, the supervisor's job was to make sure I was progressing on those milestones and the greatest motivator is showing progress. And so that's one thing that large companies do well is they say, here's what you need to work on in your early career development. And here's the resources, resources to do it. Exxon spent more on my development in the first three years of my career than they paid me directly. Wow. Right. Yeah. And, and the supervisor's performance was measured on how well they were progressing all of the new engineers that reported to them. What a fascinating, sorry, I've just, I spent so much time in small business where they're mostly making it up as they go, you know, and, and like part of my development plan for Alma is, you know, if you find something you want to learn about this year and it costs. It's a few hundred up to a couple thousand dollars. We could probably buy it for you. Well, you know, that's not very specific, but we don't, you know, we're just figuring out what we do in some ways, you know, method is far more effective than having a prescribed development plan. Right. It's saying, all right, if you see something that you want to learn that'll help you be better here, happy to spend the money on it. Right. And so that's what small companies do. But that works for a small, but if you're, if you're excellent, you got a thousand and Should have 1, 000 first year people, probably. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know. I left right before I moved to, right before they moved to the campus, and the new campus in Houston houses 30, 000 people. Right. Yeah, so there's always 1, people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. In a small company, what this looks like, uh, to develop your people, because you, you may not have the, the org, the roles on the org chart to progress people to. You don't have supervisor one, two, three. Um. You, you promote people to positions of leadership and then they kind of stay there for a few years because there's no other roles in the organization. So development can look very different. But in a small company, the nice thing is you get to adapt it to the individual. And that's what's missing in large corporations. Is you're just treating everyone like a statistic. Um, because you have to. Because there's a thousand of them. Versus one person. And you say, alright, um, you're spending a lot more time customer focused. You're spending a lot more time in front of our customers than you have in the past. In the past, you've been behind the computer working on CAD designs, but now you're going to job sites, you're going to clients offices. What would, what would help you with that? And that's when they can start to say, you know what, I really get stressed out. When I have to present in front of these, these clients. Mm. Okay. And, and so the manager can again, be a connector Yeah. Of resources maybe to, to toast masters or getting a coach. Yep. Yep. Sending them to a training. The, the research shows that with adult development, the most effective method is self-directed. Hmm. If you want to learn it, say, choose and want to. Yeah. Yep. If you choose and want to, it will stick Right. You'll get something out of it. Yeah. Yeah. The second most effective is coaching. Sure. And then far down the list is computer based training, lecture series, things like that. Sure. Mandated trainings, uh, doesn't stick. It doesn't change behavior. Yeah. Yeah. And so understanding, uh, in, in these conversations with your direct reports as a manager, what it is they want to get better at, whether it's pursuing mastery in their technical field, whether they want to try, have an opportunity to lead people, or whether they want to get better at public speaking. And then you just make the resources available. And this is another pet peeve of mine is how little is dedicated to development. Like you pointed out, engineers salaries are 100 grand plus. Right. You're already spending a ton on these people. And if they quit, you can expect to spend twice as much as their salary in lost opportunity, lost performance, all while you wait two times an individual's salary to rehire that position. So it's really expensive to lose an engineer. It also, uh, they have the longest cycle time for finding a hire. It can take 50 days before you replace an engineer. Right. And so think about all the performance. All the projects that are behind, everybody's waiting on your thing. Not to mention, uh, all the people who are now carrying an extra load. Getting stressed out. Getting annoyed, getting closer to quitting. Seeing that their buddy, uh, left and got a raise of 20 percent and now they're looking for an exit. Right. So I see this all the time. When, when one high performer leaves. Multiple follow, right? It's kind of, it provides a, um, Permission. It's like, Oh, it turns out there's something else out there. Yeah, for sure. And so you have to set aside budget for this. And if you're not spending five to 10 percent of a person's annual salary on development, they're going to be looking for other positions. Because they don't feel like they're being invested in. Yeah, yeah. I was just reflecting, thinking about, we've been using money. com here at Loco for Three years or something. I'm sure you're at least a little bit familiar and, uh, all just got selected as an ambassador, a Monday ambassador, which is, I think they got. One of 50 out of 500 plus applications and it's kind of like their user group, almost kind of a little bit of a form where they can give ideas and test new betas and stuff like that. And I don't think she, I don't think she gets paid, but I don't think she has to pay anything. She sure will get developed from it. Absolutely. And, and you get surprised with what people want to learn about if you just start talking to them about what they want to learn. It's not always tied to their job. And, and so as a manager you may say, well that's not relevant to the work that we need you to do. So, we're not going to, you can pursue that on your own. Others it might be. A very loose connection, but can be very valuable. I mean, honestly, if I had a, um, if I had a budget for a bigger company and, uh, if I had a, uh, employee that wanted to take violin lessons, it'd be like, yeah, you can spend your, I mean, to some extent, you know, not your whole thing probably, but like, cause I think just learning is. healthy. Yeah. For people, even if you're not learning something, you know, engineers may be a little different equation and probably because you can actually charge more revenue for them and stuff when they can measure that. But just being a learning personality type for a longer period of time is healthy for everybody. It is. And this has come up in working with a client, a small company. They didn't have the budget for it, but here's an engineer who'd worked there for seven years or so. Um, was really interested in getting deeper into cybersecurity, had nothing to do with his job. And so he just floated the idea to his manager. Hey, is this something the company would support? And the manager's initial reaction was, heck no, right? This, I'm not paying 200 for this. Do your job. Uh huh. Yeah. And, but then in reflection through coaching, we just started questioning that. You know, questioning the assumptions he had, the questioning the concern that if he's pursuing training in something different than his job, that means he wants a different job. He's gonna get the training from us and then quit. Right. Right. Take it somewhere else. Yeah. That's what a lot of leaders are hesitant to invest in. Sure. Leadership development. Cause they see it walk out the door. Yeah. And it always will. It, it will. Under whose terms? There must be a, uh, you must know that quote or at least have read that book along the way that the CFO says, uh, what if we invest all this money in training for our employees and they leave? And then the. CEO says, well, but what if we don't? And they stay. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. That's been an argument that I've, I've made many times. But I guess, honestly, like I was, uh, I was came through a banker, a banker training program, a credit and management training program that community first national bank hired six, uh, smart young people every year for, and then sent them out into the locations and stuff. And Three years in, I got poached by Bank of Colorado because they were just a lot better. They had a lot more market share. They were actually just a stronger organization to work for. They had more consistency, better customers. And so, in my particular case, Community First did invest, you know, probably, even back then, like 50 grand in me. Yeah. And then I parlayed that into a 8, 000 a year raise. And that was my experience in my first job too, right? They spent so much training me, and I left. Well, and so maybe they shouldn't train so early as part of what you're saying, or not train so much so early. But keep it going instead. Yeah, I don't know what the right answer is. You know, focusing on developing people because that's the manager's responsibility. You're not trying to get everyone who's working for you to stay there for 30 years. Right, right. And so sometimes just being honest with, you know, if, if we spend this much and they're here for five years. It'll still be good for the business. And that's, uh, you know, when I was just reflecting on Alma, like it wouldn't shock me to see her go to work for monday. com in the future. Yeah. Right. And if she can do that and get a good job out of it, you know. Right. I would celebrate, you know, it's like a loser, but it would also be pretty neat for her to have found this niche that she's really interested in that keenly. What's really cool is the, the knock on effects of taking good care of your people while they're there, of developing people, even if they don't stay. is if they leave on good terms, they're going to tell their friends and their family that, yeah, you want to get new employees that are awesome. This was a great place for me to, to kick off my career. It wasn't where I needed to be for 20 years, but man, the two years I was there were great. And having the manager have the perspective of, all right, if they're here for two years and we're paying them this, they're producing this. It's that's a, that's a fair business proposition. Like the objective is not retention. It's for a time. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Um, so what do you want to change from here? Are you like, do you like feel like you kind of navigated a bit and found a sweet spot? Or Yeah, it's taken me a while and this is part of the uh, evolution of RevZero is it's taken me a while to find my niche. Yeah. It's taken me a while to figure out exactly, um, where I'm best, where I add the most value. I've said yes to a lot of the wrong work as so many entrepreneurs do. Yeah. Uh, you need revenue early on so you say yes to every opportunity. I've learned to say no and that has really opened up, um, the right opportunities. And so coaching, you know, it's not a necessarily scalable business, but RevZero is my foundation. It's where I find that I do the best work and it's enabling good people to do good work in their business. And it's been really cool this January to see people I've coached over the past three years all get these promotions. And they're all celebrating these promotions on LinkedIn. And I'm just like, yeah, that's awesome. Cause we're getting good people. In, in, in the right positions at good companies. Yeah. Right. And so I just love getting to see that. And I, I never got that level of satisfaction outta my work as an engineer. Yeah. Um, even as a trainer, you're kind of disconnected from what you're educating people and what they do with it. As a coach, I get to, to see the solu, see them come up with solutions, see them, try it, see them fail, see them try again. One of my coaches adopted the mantra of, I'm gonna try again, slightly different. And I love that because he just kept trying something new, something different, same thing, a little bit differently. And now he's VP of delivery for this company. And so where I go from here with RevZero is just making it, um, making it easier for me to do more of that. I don't need to increase my, my reach to, to hundreds of people, um, having 10 executives I'm working with, but I always want to keep some open for new managers. Sure. I really enjoy working with first time managers as they're making that transition from engineer to manager. So I'm having a lot of fun with this work right now. It's very rewarding. Um, and what's cool is I'm getting to work across a lot of different industries. Yeah. Um, I think. you know, where I go from here, we're doing some product like, um, program development. Okay. That's because I was wondering, just make it easier for you to not have to go in a full custom with each client. Yup. Less customization. There's still custom solutions, but taking a lot of the education out of it and instead having a program or having this accessible somewhere else, because what did I say? The most effective way of development was it's self directed. Right. Right. Right. And so if. If my clients want to dive deeper into motivation, instead of them having to surf blogs full of ads, here's the RevZero platform. A client of mine, you're on RevZero online. You have access to my library of resources on motivation, not just the pop culture business. Right, right. Here's, here's, here's five links that I've found to be useful and on brand and on what I've seen, you know, whatever. Yeah. And, and as we, we grow, you know, one of the mantras for myself early on was knowledge is free. You can learn whatever you want on your own just by Googling it. Sure. Um, you have to wade through a lot of crap to get, to get to the good stuff. And so in RevZero, we're trying to do the same thing. Knowledge is free. Like, I'm trying to take what I'm learning in psychology, take what I'm learning in engineering, and project management, and take what I'm learning from other companies, and making it accessible to my other clients. Like, this, my client tried this over here. Um, it might work for you, get a shot. So making that knowledge free and then allowing me to really focus on coaching. Cool. Yeah. You love that relationship element of it. Yeah, I do. Which, if you had told me that is what I would do, I'd say no way. Right. But the one on one coaching. Love it. Huh. That's really neat. How do you measure your success, like outside of the big promotions and stuff like that? Like how do you, like on a month to month or week to week basis, like Did you check in on yourself like after coaching sessions and stuff or is your clients progress, your, your progress or? Yeah. So I start most of my, not all, but most of my coaching engagements with a development plan. Like what is it they're working towards that is important to them for three months? And that's what we're going to make progress on. So I use the OKR framework there. What's their objective? What are their key results? And so I can see and also reflect for them that they're making progress. Yep. I mean, these, these people are working so hard and, and it's a lot easier to keep working hard when you see you're making some progress. Absolutely. So we start with where they want to be, what is their ideal future self, and we work towards that. So we get to see that, but I do rate myself every coaching session. Um, after every coaching session, I give myself a number. Was that an eight? Was that a six? Was that a 10? And it's totally subjective. Yeah. Those numbers are purely mine, right? I'm not putting this into a database, but I'm just asking myself, all right, that session was a 10. Why? Okay. What would I do different? Yeah, it was an eight. All right, maybe we went a little bit over. Maybe I gave advice when I should have asked a question. So I am constantly checking myself with each of these sessions. Um, maybe we covered too much, right? And, and this is what I do in coaching over and over again is just narrow the focus. All right, let's bring you, narrow your focus to this one problem. And that's, um, then the larger measures of success would be those promotions. Are people actually getting into the positions of leadership that they aspire to? Um, but that's longterm. That's kind of harder to see. And now that I've been coaching for four years, I'm starting to see that happen. Um, the other one are, are the more subjective ones. This one, uh, Is he happier than he was when he came? Yeah. I mean, right? Like, cause everybody, Absolutely. Nobody likes to not succeed at their job. And if part of your job is suddenly managing people and you're not feeling confident about it. Confidence is one. And so, it's often what they'll share with me that is the measure of success. And it's not always what we set out to work on. And this one lady I was working with, after a few weeks working together, the focus was never confidence. But she said one day that, I'm so much more confident stepping into these conversations and we didn't, like I said, we didn't talk about confidence once it was just purely narrowing her focus of what did she need to talk about either on the stage or in that conversation. And so once she knew what she needed to say and how she wanted to say it, she just did it right. So seeing that confidence grow stress is a big one. Um, I like to confidence and stress are inverse. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, I studied psychology so that other engineers don't have to, I want these people to stay in their jobs because they got into it for a reason. They love the work. So I want to see them continuing to do that good work. Um, some of them will go through my program and learn what it means to be a manager for the first time. And this was early on when I first started doing this. Um, he decided he didn't want to be a manager. And to me that was a, that was a success because he learned that in three months. Rather than having been in a position of management for three years and piss everyone else off along the way, right? Yeah, and so for sure you feel like once you get promoted in management that you can't step away from yeah Yeah, and if you can have that conversation within three months with your supervisor of saying, you know, thanks for the opportunity I would really love to step back into engineering. Yeah. Yeah, you're doing everyone a favor. I Volunteered for the Small Business Development Center for a long time and at one point A few years in, um, there was this person that I, I basically, I don't know if I broke their heart or not, but they were, they were trying to buy a gas station and they were trying to buy a gas station, um, from a larger operator that was trying to sell one of their losers and I was like, you know, dude, the 50 grand that you saved from your job, if I read the numbers right and read your, yeah. Frankly, ability to manage a gas station, right? Yeah. You can't live on it and it's gonna, like, you're just gonna lose your 50 grand and the government SBA loan is gonna lose 200, 000 more and, like, I can't recommend. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I felt kind of bad about that. I was talking to the, the director of the SBA at the time, or SBDC at the time, and they were like, you know, if you save somebody. 50, 000 and three more years of thinking that they need to buy a gas station and maybe they should shift to somewhere else or whatever, you know, you're still helping them so much. Yeah, you're helping them get to that, that realization or that conclusion faster with less pain. Uh, so many of my other participants, they go through it and they say they're hesitant to get into management, but then they do and they learn the job and they say, Oh, now that I know what it is, I'm kind of excited for this. I'm excited for this opportunity. One of those people. She was in a corporate environment as a doer, uh, paralegal type contract review management kind of stuff. And now she manages people that do that function for this larger corporation. And like It's so much more fulfilling to her because she's a people wired person. She still knows her stuff. She can still review a good contract if she needs to. But, but managing has been for her a lot more fulfilling, you know, and And I imagine a lot of it has to do with her, her, uh, increased realm of influence. Right. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. The things that she thinks are important, the strategic ideas that she has totally. She can now put them into place. Same thing's relevant in engineering too, right? Absolutely. I mean, all of these guys and, and, and girls have, uh, ideas of technology that just aren't getting adopted simply because of the position they're in. Oh, yeah. Right. I dig it. Yeah. Well, let's, uh, is there. Other things that you'd really like to share about RevZero and that, or do you want to talk about Isolation Coffee? I could talk about RevZero all day. I'm sure you could. I'm sure you could. I'm not sure people could listen all day, though. Nope, probably not. As a coach, I don't do much talking, so this is a cool opportunity. Where did, uh, where did Isolation Coffee come into the picture? Was that Before, after, Oh, and I wanted to, I was wondering when RevZero sprouted after the psychology post grad. It all overlapped. Um, I started RevZero in 2016 and for four years is when I was really focused on helping build one engineering company. So a full time consultant and then pandemic hit 2020. And so I was already in grad school, but I was still working with this company, um, and travel. Do you talk about who this company was? Is that public? It's a small engineering firm down in West Texas, right? E and XL. Yeah. And, uh, so I, I was helping them get started and it was really a consulting period in some respects, right? Okay. Yeah. But, uh, not a very good consultant because I kept one client and never pursued the next. So it ended like it was planned to, but it ended suddenly with the pandemic. Uh, and so 2020 is, I was still in wrapping up grad school. Um, had my RevZero consulting base, trying to figure out, all right, where's the next opportunity? And then, uh, I was home roasting coffee on my own. And this is actually my second coffee company. My first one That's what I thought. There was something before then. Yeah, there was something called Agrarian Coffee, me and a buddy down in Texas. I wanted to learn how to start a business, and he wanted to learn how to roast coffee. So instead of going to get my MBA, I started a company. Perfect. Yeah, and so I did all the finances and the legal side of things. Um, but we sold that and as part of the sale, I kept. One of the, one of the small roasters. Oh. And so I would roast my own coffee in my garage for years. Um, and then in 2020, um, I just, I had more time to roast. Right, right. Everybody had more time. That's why I started this podcast. Everyone so many good things came out of 2020. True. Yeah. The QR code recovery. Resurgence. Uh, I asked some friends if I roasted extra if they'd want some coffee. They said yes, so I'd start delivering coffee just so I could hang out on the front porch. Talk with my friends. Um, and then one partnership led to the next. And I was introduced to my buddy, uh, Braden Lanz two years ago. And he had a coffee company. Oh, Braden from Matthew's house? Yeah, yeah, he did that for a bit, yeah. Yeah, he was Were you there at the same time? I know Brayden. Okay. Well, I was the president of the board of the Matthews House for a while, and I've been a volunteer and supporter for a long time. I think he had some involvement there. Yeah, yeah. Just before I knew him. I dig that guy. Uh, just tell him, you know, unless you hate him, then I hate him too. No, no, he's awesome. Uh, he is a perfect Is he your partner now? He's my partner now, co owner. Okay, what's up Brayden? Yeah. You'll probably listen to this. If he can get through, uh, me talking about RevZero, I'm coaching for an hour and a half. He's already heard you talk about that for hours and hours in the past. No, we just talk, talk. We just talk if I, cause we're gonna give away this, uh, a fancy isolation coffee mug and a bag or maybe two bags of coffee, but. Uh, I've got a RevZero mug. Oh, it's a RevZero mug, okay. Yep, RevZero mug. We've got two bags of isolation coffee. But what I was wondering about that is, could we just give a mug and one bag away to our listeners and I can just take one bag home? I will leave all of it here and where it goes from you, it's totally up to you. Alright, we won't talk about it anymore. We're gonna do our grab bag questions here in about, uh, 30 minutes if you're listening and so be listening for Dane's answers on that. Um. And, in the short run, I need to take another potty break. Uh, and we are back. And, and look, oh, there's only one bag of isolation coffee on the table. Oh, and you kept the best one, too. Did I? The Mexico. Oh yeah. Oh, the Mexico is so good right now. So we, we only roast in small batches and whatever is with the season, so we only buy uh, It's kind of a surprise to you how it turns out each time. Yeah. And, and Brayden is the head roaster and he's so good at, um, just getting the best out of everything. So we only have one blend and that's the table blend. We brought that as well. Okay. And so that's a mix of a African and a Central American. Okay. And so right now it's the Mexico with Ethiopian. And that's really good. Oh, but you change that up anyway. It's always a table blend, but it's a mix of Africa and South America? Yep. Or Central America? Central America, South America, it moves around. Okay. But there's a lot of overlap, similarity. Yeah, yeah. We try to get some level of consistency and flavor with that. Everything else is single origin, so we have four single origins at a time, and we have subscription service. Yeah, I was gonna say, talk to me about the business model of isolation. I don't see you in coffee shops around, or We're in one coffee shop, and that's Arboretum Coffee. Oh, yeah. You can buy us on the shelves there. But it's all subscription based. It's all online. And this is how I started it in, in pandemic times. Okay. Was people would place an order. It might have been text at first. It was like, Hey, do you want a bag? And then I'd show up on their doorstep, uh, Friday afternoon. We'd hang out and chat for a little bit and I'd leave the coffee. Uh. Leave the coffee on the front step and in a bag. Of course we had to be like. Yeah. Far away. Bring it in the next day. Yeah. We had to talk through screens. Um. Cause screens, of course. Screen doors, just as effective as masks, but it prevented COVID. Uh, but I had little kids and so my boys would come with me on the deliveries. And so I got to drive around Fort Collins, got time in the car with my, he was six years old at the time and a two year old. Well, you're doing new single origins on a regular basis, right? So it's almost like a wine club where the wine changes as it's. Fresh. It's all roaster's choice, so we'll get a few samples and Brayden will spend a few weeks testing and roasting before we buy a large order. Yeah. And then that's what we have on hand for a couple hundred pounds or a thousand pounds or Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. We only buy maybe 100, 200 pounds, uh, for one at a time and we're going through it a lot faster. So we finally moved out of the garage. We're in a roasting space. We have a larger roaster. Um, yeah, it's, it's fun. So it's not really just a hobby business. It actually pays you a little bit at this point. And what's the cost to be a customer? Let's see our subscriptions. Uh, we've got two, we've got the table subscription and right now it's 12 bucks and you're going to get a Monthly? Uh, no, per delivery. So it could be monthly, it could be weekly, it could be bi weekly, it depends on how addicted you are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Um, our coffee is for the, the home connoisseur. So you're, you're working from home. You've got your coffee bar set up, you grind it fresh, um, and, and then you get to discover something new. Hmm. Um. And then, so that's 12 bucks. And then we've got our, our isolation subscription. So that's like our top shelf stuff. That's going to be the anaerobic process, the Ethiopian beans, the ones that have a really unique flavor profile. The, the table subscription is going to be the safe one that your in laws are probably still going to like. Yeah, yeah. The, the The weird stuff. The isolation is going to be the, the weird stuff. Like the, you know, the It's almost like fine wines. Yeah, yeah, for sure. They've got really, uh, powerful Very pungent aromas. Yeah, but so good. So good. Yeah, yeah. And that's 18 or 20 bucks a bag or something like that. Can I get a mix? Can I get a subscription that automatically sends me a weird one once in a while, but mostly I get the table? Not yet, but we could, we could figure that out. Um, being a small business, we wait for feedback like that, and then we figure out how to do it. So someone asked, could we have a tin instead of a bag? Yeah, we can figure that out. Is it not really a subscription, it's more of an order when you're ready kind of a thing? But it's delivery? No, it's on a recurring subscription. And you can choose your frequency. Oh, you choose your frequency. Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. And then free delivery in Fort Collins. And do you do that? No, we have a delivery driver now. Okay. Awesome. Although every now and then I do, which is kind of nice. Right, right. I mean, we've had subscribers. It's been a business now for four years, and I think the average, People are with us for years. They've been subscribing to the coffee for two, three years and we stick with it. I imagine building the, the automations into the system, you know, once you're getting texts from all these people at first, but now you gotta not think so much about that. Uh huh. Right? And just have like And get all the orders at one time on Thursday morning. The route goes out this day and here's the logistically planned route where we're going to drop all these things off. Yeah. It's been a fun business and it just, we just keep reinvesting everything back into it and keep growing it. Um, the cool thing about roasting local and not having a shop space is we get to We don't have to charge as much for a bag of coffee. Right. We're not paying for prime Totally. retail space. I was noticing I actually bought a bag of whole bean, uh, Café Richesse Okay. at, uh, what was Beaver's, now is the Fresh Food Market. Yeah. But it's only 9. 99 for a pretty good coffee whole bean, and it's probably the same thing. Yeah. You know, they don't have to try to sell retail and pay the rent at a retail place. Yeah. Yeah, so we're trying to figure out. Well, I mean the whole reason I started the company was because the coffee I enjoyed drinking cost too much for me to maintain that budget, so I was like, Oh, it's probably cheaper to start a company than it is to keep buying specialty coffee. I've been enjoying, uh, uh, Matt with M& E painting. Yeah. Has, have you seen his little Spanish coffee makers that he gives away sometimes? No. Um, cause he, he and his wife do something with a foundation where they Sponsor exchanges to Spain's been going on hikes to Spain. Yeah, exactly. And brings men's group over there and stuff like that. He's kind of a coach of sorts as well. I don't know more, sorry, Matt, if I screwed this up. But anyway, I, I either bought or won, I think I won as a prize at some event. One of his little Spanish coffee. You've seen them before, where the bottom. is water, and then there's like a little, um, cup full of grounds, and then it boils it through the grounds into the top, so it's Like a mocha pot. Yeah, it's bigger than a cappuccino, you know, bigger than an espresso, but it's smaller than a coffee, so it's like maybe a seven ounce out of two big healthy scoops of coffee, so it's strong, but not espresso strong. It's like stovetop espresso. Stovetop espresso, basically, and it's frankly my favorite. I like it better than espresso, especially when there's really good Weird coffee in there. And there's something about, um, making it yourself, like making coffee is, is part of the experience. Totally. I remember my grandma had this, uh. I like it taking longer. Yeah, yeah. I love it more when it's done. I like doing the Chimex or the AeroPress. I mean, I get lazy most mornings. I just have the, the drip coffee pot. I grind it fresh every morning, of course. Okay. But, uh, my grandma had this, um, like wood carving on the wall and it said, a man who chops his own wood is twice warmed. I'm like a man who grinds his own coffee is twice energized. So any, um, like visions for isolation could Braden like take it bigger the future. It seems like you're kind of found your sweet spot in terms of how you want to spend a lot of your time. I love, I love both and this is what's hard and I know a lot of entrepreneurs are kind of in the same boat. They have two or three projects that they really have fun with and so it's always hard to let go of one. I've always used business to learn the first coffee business I founded. I wanted to learn how to do business finance. So instead of taking a class, I started a company. Um, this one, I wanted to get better at coffee roasting. Turns out Braden's way better at it than me. So once he came on board, I quit roasting altogether. And so I do all the back end. I do the website. I do the finance. He does a little bagging and everything else. Yep. Roasting and packaging. I've always had this fascination with, um, local, uh, employee owned self, uh, you know, you don't need to grow for the sake of growth to be a good business, um, to, to be small and to be, uh, serving a need in your local community. And so that's why I see isolation coffee becoming, we want to bring more people on board. Um, and give them a piece of it, you know, this isn't, this isn't my retirement plan. This is something that I would be really proud of to see grow into, uh, a group of 12 people that all have ownership in it that are, that all chip in the labor if they want to. Yeah. And they're serving a need in, in a local community. I mean, coffee isn't that great of a need. It's a luxury, but it's, it's a fun thing to do and it's great to connect with people over. And are you sourcing in a way that. So if we're, if we're good, and we're doing good, why aren't we doing good? nobody's gonna buy our stuff. And that's a problem. So we have a lot of, we have a lot of, we have a lot of people who are the ones that make the money. And, and, so we've gotta take, we've gotta get them off our list as well. Because we've gotta be we've gotta be able to supply them to other people. At least some of the visit the farms, right? Where we can do our own sourcing, but that's far down the road. We really liked the discovery of using an importer instead of locking in. Well, now that you've got profits, you could, uh, kind of basically hide those profits with a trip for you and Jaden and your spouses to go and investigate coffee farms in Costa Rica. I think the next use of the profits is to bring more people on. All right. Fair enough. Well, uh, you run it like you want to. Yep. Uh, but also, yeah, less time. and less direct work for you guys. And with Jayden does he? Braeden, I'm sorry. Ava's boyfriend is Jayden and I got him tongue tied. Braeden, sorry Braeden. Um, what's, does he have a, a Day job too, or is he a full time roaster with the coffee business? Like me, he probably has more things going on than he should. Okay. He's got two young boys at home as well, but he works for a cabinet maker. So he's almost full time at a cabinet shop, which is right next to where we have our roasting space. So that's really convenient. Very cool. But he's really talented at that as well. And then he also runs a nonprofit, Half Step Ministries, where he does music. Uh, education for high schoolers. And so, I know that, that brings a lot of joy to them as well. Yeah, that's really cool. It's, it's nice that, to have a partner where we're both kind of approaching it the same way. Yeah, yeah. It's like we really love, um, this business, isolation. We really love the product. We really like working with each other. Mm hmm. Um, and where it goes from here, we're, we're holding loosely, which is kind of counter to my approach to, uh, RevZero and management consulting, which is what's your objective and how are you going to get there? And within isolation, it's like, well, we'll see what it's going to be. Yeah, God's plan is probably going to sort it out if we don't push it too hard one way or the other. And it, I, I find that both. Doing both things, um, gives me perspective in both arenas that I wouldn't get otherwise. And it's really easy as a coach or a consultant to come in and, and, and think you see what needs to be done. But as an owner myself of a really small business that is cashflow positive and can't afford to pay me, can't afford to pay my partner, like we're just reinvesting in it, that we don't have the resources to, To go do what we know we should do and that's the state that so many of my clients are in too. They know what they should do. They don't have the resources to do it. And so, uh, it, it forces me to approach coaching with a lot more grace and patience of I know there's not A right next step necessarily, like the thing, you know, you should do, but there's the thing that, well, what could you do, what are you willing to do and what do you want to do? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it, again, I went to grad school and I got patience and in starting a, uh, coffee company, it's given me perspective. Fair enough. Yeah. Um, I feel like we can, uh, roll into the time machine real briefly. Okay. Um. How far back are we going? We go back to usually like first grade. Okay. Uh, do you want to share, like, what your family and life circumstances were as a six year old? Sure. Which is, um, yeah. Okay. So Oh, wait, wait. Sound effects? Yeah, we're back there in 1982. No, so I don't know. I was born in 86. Oh, you were born in 86? born in 86. I'm a 90s kid. You are a grown up looking guy. I mean, you don't look old. You just seem mature. Well, it's taken me a 30s still. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I, I, so, yeah. Was mature when I was 13. That's what I figured. Yeah. Yeah. I got my first job when I was, uh, I think I was probably 14 and I didn't tell my parents I just Went and applied for a job and then came home after I got the job And it was like, Hey, I'm going to need a ride to work every now and then. Most I can take my bike, but when the weather is bad. So, yeah. So talk to me about, uh, the, the, the setting. Yeah. So I grew up in West Texas primarily. I moved, I moved a ton as a kid. Like what, like Lubbock or? Further West. Further West. So a small town called Denver City is where I spent. the majority of my time, but I also lived in Midland and Hobbs, New Mexico. Okay. I moved around those three places a fair bit. Um, families from Oklahoma, but they followed the oil. And so, um, that's how I got in the industry. My dad's a petroleum engineer. Okay. So I grew up with this idea of, uh, engineer is someone who wears jeans and a button up shirt to work. Yep. Gets dirty doing their job. So I grew up with this idea of engineering being very hands on and, um, uh, hardworking position. Uh, but I was homeschooled all the way through high school. Never went to, to public school or, or private school. Homeschooled all the way. Other siblings? Uh, older brother, younger sister. Okay. Uh, about three years on either side of me. Okay, so a solid middle child position. Yep, yep. Uh, just always learning. checking it out, you know, the, the learning, learning from my brother's mistakes and, uh, yeah, well, just observing. That's what I've seen a lot of is that that middle child oftentimes observes like the, the first kid is like the trailblazer, the trailblazer. Exactly. They're exploring on their own kind of, in some ways there's an observer. And then the last one is virtually, right? Like as far as their perspective is concerned. Well, and, and in my family's case, our, our sister, younger sister, she is the star, right? She's, she's done some amazing. Well, sometimes it happens that way, right? Like there's some influence even in the ranking. She knew what she wanted to do early on. She became a vet. She's a all star horse vet down in New Mexico, travels around working with some of the best horses down there. Um, me and my brother, it took us a bit longer. to find where we needed to be where the traction is. I thought I knew where I needed to be and that was engineering. But 10 years later here on psychology, um, but yeah, uh, grew up homeschooled, grew up in scouts, you know, Nate Bargatze, he talks about, um, so Boy Scouts was kind of your interaction manner, right? Like a lot of people that think about homeschooling think, well, whatever my kid's going to learn how to socialize. Yeah. And it was, it was scouts for me and church really involved there. Like Nate Bargatze's experience growing up in the Christian nineties home. Like it was stereotypical, you know. And what kind of community are we talking? Is this a town of 20, 000, was like 5, 000. Okay. Yeah. And most of the whole economy revolved around oil, so it was good times or bad times, and hardly ever anything in between. Yeah, and I, I, I suppose I didn't notice it all that much as a kid, but that's probably why we moved as much as we did. You know, by the time I was, uh, in college. Well, in my life, I've moved 20, my son and I were counting this up, 26 times. Wow. And I've been in Fort Collins 10 years, and it's the longest I've been anywhere. Interesting. And, uh, so You go off to college then? Is that kind of the next, I mean other than getting a job and whatever else? Home, homeschooling for me in high school kind of turned into unschooling. Uh, there's a lot of freedom. You were already plenty smart, kind of at 13, 14? Um, no, I, I, I don't know if I was smart enough. Definitely not. Independent. Like, you were free range enough? I was free range. I mean, you grow up in a small town in West Texas. I was, especially being homeschooled, all my friends are in school. I'm out riding my bike on the, the, the lease roads and going to Caliche pits and all this stuff and, uh, and getting into mischief. Do you have other homeschool friends? There was one other family in town. Okay. Yeah. And so we hung out. We had a little band. We would play guitar together. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And then, um, I don't know. I, I had a lot of jobs, uh, always a lot of work. And then I actually graduated high school a semester early, uh, went to a junior college for a few classes. And then. Got a job offshore. So I worked on a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Wow. Uh, Was that like connections from your dad kind of thing or whatever? He basically said, Hey, here's the company that does the, the, the catering. And so I went on their website, I submitted an application and they accepted my application. Right. So I flew myself to New Orleans. Went to a training there, and it was me this this skinny 17 year old kid from West, Texas and a bunch of ex convicts We were the we were the new employees right and I remember I didn't have steel toed boots And so after that class I didn't have a vehicle I was in industrial section of New Orleans and I'm just walking around to try to get to a boot store so I can get my steel toed boots and Surprised I made it out of there alive. And then, uh, flew down. And did they have a boot storage? Yeah, found one. I found my boots. I was pretty resourceful. I took care of myself, found my boots, um, and then I would fly down to New Orleans, catch a hour, two hour long taxi ride down to a heliport, get on a helicopter, and fly another forty minutes out into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. For the day, or for a week at a time? Three weeks. Oh wow. Yeah. So I was a janitor on a drill ship. So I worked the night shift and what that meant was, um, I made everyone's beds. And I gathered everyone's dirty laundry, took it to the, I mean, this was a massive ship drill ship. Yeah. It's bigger than the Titanic. And, um, I was cleaning the, the heliport, uh, or the helipad. There's like rooms for 30 people or something, whatever. A hundred, hundreds of people. Oh, dang. Interesting. And then I'd also work in the kitchen where I was responsible for cooking like 400 strips of bacon for every meal. I got in trouble because, um, we had a, a dignitary visiting and so we were all cleaning. Right. Getting everything spick and span. And I polished the, the handrails of the stairwell. And so they were really slippery. So I got in trouble for that one. I had to go back and unpolish the handrail and the stairwell. So no one would have found out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then from there, um, a few different. Uh, colleges, um, I was paying for it as I went through, and so I looked for the cheap stuff. Just kind of dabbled in I knew I wanted to do, well, to do engineering. One, because it would pay my way through school. There are very few degrees that have paid internships. Yeah, yeah. Um, and so I did the basics at a small university in New Mexico. And then transferred to Texas Tech because there is a girl in Lubbock that I wanted to be around. Okay. Is she your wife? No. She is. Yeah. That's good. We actually got married, uh, end of sophomore year. How did you find her? We were next door neighbors in high school. Okay. Yeah. So I moved in next door when we were about 15. All right, and then uh, we were dating in high school and we didn't break up even though we moved to different Towns for school and then both found our way to Lubbock and got married when I was 20. She was 19 I've been through Lubbock actually before. There's really no other reason to be is you're going through there, right? Right? Yeah, pretty much Big biggest town. I don't know 50, 000 people or something. No, it's it's I don't know what it is now. It's a lot like Fort Collins. So it's a college town. Yeah. Yeah. Texas tech university. And, uh, I mean, it is like Christian university, a hundred miles in every direction is pretty much empty. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Uh, it's going to take you two hours to get anywhere else. Uh, yeah, it's probably 150, 200, 000 now. Okay. Well, which makes it kind of an oasis of culture in some ways, even. Yeah. I would imagine for West Texas, right? There's probably not Oh, yeah. Is there another cultural center in West Texas? Well, so this was my Like, San Antonio is way south, but Yeah, we never went down there. We would go to Midland sometimes. Yeah. And love it. And Midland's kind of a big town, but it's, it's like all refineries. It's like a hundred thousand and yeah. There's Midland, Odessa. So it's kind of a Metroplex. But it's all Roughnecks there, whereas Lubbock has a couple of colleges, a Christian school and a proper church. University. Yeah. Yeah. And, and there's a lot more agriculture in Lubbock. So a lot more farming, horse farms and stuff like that. Yeah. Okay. So, sorry, I'm just centering myself on where you come from a little bit. So you kind of secured this gal while you're in your like fourth college, uh, tour of some sort, you know, bouncing around. Yeah. But knowing you wanted to be an engineer and that sounds like the kind of school that would have a good engineering program. Yeah. Tech was really good. Um, I wasn't sure if I was going to go to A& M or, uh, UT or tech, but tech was really good. Uh, and I got to work in the machine shop there. I was in the mechanical engineering department. Uh, there the, the professors also teach classes, which is nice. It's not just grads, grad students teaching classes. So I had some really good professors who were there to teach. They wanted to be there. They loved it. Smaller classes. I got to, I was part of ASME student organization. I got to design my own, um, competitions. We did a trebuchet building competitions and so yeah, it was a good time. I enjoyed the time at tech and, um, they did a great job of job placement. And so I had four different internships or co ops just in totally different industries. I worked for BNSF railways. I worked for a chemical company in Iowa. I had an internship for Exxon and then an internship with FMC. They build the subsea technology for oil production. What a fascinating like set of opportunities for a young person. Absolutely. We, Katie and I, we got married and then we immediately moved to Houston, just the two of us. And I worked this internship where I was deconstructing subsea trees. I, I'd have to show up to work at four in the morning. We worked from four until one, I think, because That was the nice time of day to be working outside in Houston. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, it feels like we've kind of come full circle, almost back to where your career started and evolved. And so, um, if you're comfortable, don't need a potty break, we can jump right into the Faith Family Politics segment. Yeah, let's do it. Uh, let's talk about family first. Um, Talk to me about your dad in particular, it seems like, uh, driving force probably like in your family life tree, obviously the revenue generator and stuff like that. What was he like? Uh, well, I mean, he's, he's, he's an engineer, right? And he loves his job. Was he a manager? Yeah, he got into management, uh, and now he owns his own business. So he retired from BP. Uh, he had moved around to a couple of different oil companies through acquisitions and different jobs. Um, but yeah, he got into senior management and, um, then started his own company and he's doing Doing, like, consulting in this space or something? Engineering, well, it's an EPC, so Engineering, Procurement, and Construction. Hmm. So they design and build the production facilities down in West Texas. Interesting. Yeah. So they do a ton of work. It's crazy how it's still rocking down there. Oh, yeah. I guess Frack has basically recycled the It's turned it into What was getting to be a guest. field. It's turned it into a manufacturing process. Yeah. Yeah. It's less. Yeah. There's less wildcatting anymore. You just got to go down there and get it. Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting thing. It is. Um, how about your mama? Uh, so she was the, the educator, right? She, she didn't have a job. Uh, once they started having kids, I don't think she had another job until we were all gone. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so she was always home. Was she good at that? Like she was just natural curious and things about, yeah, you know, they raised us to be independent and it worked. And, uh, but also to be, uh, you know, free thinking, come to our own conclusions, read for ourselves. Yeah. Uh, so there's a lot of freedom and autonomy growing up, which was really cool. Um, and yeah, they work together now in, in this business. It seems to me that, uh, you're. Wife, then, uh, crush, uh, when you were 15, has been a significant, uh, branch in your road. Do you want to talk about why she was so impactful to you? Sure. Even, you know, cause you were, you spent a long time apart between 15 and 19 when you really got together. Yeah. But now we've been together in our lives longer than we've been apart. Sure. Right. Um, so yeah, she's, she's, um, Why did she want that? First question. Why did she want what? Why did she want that togetherness? Oh, I don't know. Like, cause she was this charismatic, uh, person that was very intuitive and drawing, and you were kind of this nerdy engineer that's trying to figure out how people work. I don't know how we ended up together, other than proximity, but I'm really glad that we did. Glad for the proximity. Absolutely. Like, it was, it was a gift, the fact that we ended up right next to each other. Um, and the fact that we've been together for, we've been married now 18 years and it, it just feels like we've grown together through all of that. Yeah. Um, cause we're very different people than we were when we were 15, right? Like everybody is. That's something that's really interesting. My wife and I celebrated 20 years last year, 21 coming soon and like recognizing that. I'm married to a completely different person now than I was 20 years ago. And you still want to be. Not completely different. No. There's still a lot of commonality, but there's chapters. Yeah. You know, and yeah, regardless. And we love each other for who we are now, not necessarily for who we were in the past. Yeah. And for who you were in the past. Like there's, there's grace around that as well. I think, um, there was probably a bit of. I don't know. We, we both found what we needed in each other. I think she wanted a bit of adventure and I would kind of do whatever I wanted. You were kind of too, I don't want to say too smart because that's like a judgment almost kind of thing, but you were eager to do something bigger and more and different than just, you know, working in some of the oil fields as a roughneck and then buying a house and having some kids and doing the thing. There's always been more that I've wanted. And she's complete opposite. She is present, she is grounded, she is content, and she always has been. Eager for security, and what I think I'm probably more eager for security than she is. Um, but, no, I think we balance each other out really well, and we're both growing in that. Even now, right? Where I'm trying to learn how to be more present, be more grounded. I mean, I've got an 11 year old and a nine year old. I want to be, be around as a dad. So how did you, um, how did the two of you find your way to Northern Colorado? Yeah, so we moved, you know, I took the first job with Exxon because I wanted, we both wanted to move internationally. Um, and so I took the global projects position so that maybe we could. Yeah, check that out. What I learned was they were taking, they were repatriating everyone back to their home countries and kind of taking advantage of new engineers to just send them on business trips. Yeah. Which I'm, I'm really grateful for the experience. I mean, I've traveled the world with Exxon and worked on four different continents and got, Yeah, no complaints. No complaints. And not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Exactly. Um, but we wanted to live international and I was just being sent on long assignments. I was in South Korea for four months. Right. Um, what was really cool was they, they flew her out and she got to be in South Korea with me. Right. Instead of them flying me home, they flew her back. Um, but then once, uh, she was pregnant with our first and we started growing the family, it was like, I wanted to be home at night. Uh, I would be gone for weeks at a time and I didn't want to do that. And so I looked for, that was it. I just looked for another job. Um, And the best oil field to work in that I wanted to live in was Colorado. Okay. Yeah. The other choices were, uh, South Dakota and West Texas and like, I've done that. Don't do that again. Um, and we've, it's always felt ever since we've moved here, it's felt like home and we really enjoyed being here. And I worked for an oil company up here for four years or so before striking out on my own. And even when I You're like, well, I'm not moving back to Texas to do the stuff I've been doing, and so I guess I gotta figure out Unfortunately, travel kicked back in. How to stay here. Yeah, but what, uh, so then I was traveling more than I wanted to. Again, I wasn't home as much as I wanted to be. And so, entrepreneurship was kind of First season, yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't be here otherwise. Right, right. Yeah, I've said that before. Uh, like, no remorse. Right. At the path I've traveled, but also, like, I don't want to go back there. Yeah, yeah. And in hindsight, and this absolutely influences my coaching, I recognize that I quit both of them. I really Comfortable and good corporate jobs when I had a nine month old baby at home. So I wasn't sleeping well, I was re evaluating life. May not have been in a proper mental state to make those decisions. No, definitely not. Definitely not. And so that certainly comes into play when I'm working with folks. It's like. Do you have kids at home? Yeah, what's going on right now? How's your, yeah, sorry. That's funny. Um, uh, I feel like, oh, we always do one word descriptions. They're not always, but often of your children. Oh, would you care to take that venture on and talk a little bit more about them? Yeah. Um, I know one word is pretty hard, but then you can, you can, you can hyphen if you need to, but also you can carry on. It's a good challenge. I mean, I certainly have, they're, they're two very different kids. Um, Hmm. I think for my, my oldest Bonham, uh, like the drummer, John Bonham. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I was thinking, I was thinking that, but I was also thinking, what's that guy? Oh, wait, it's Bonhoeffer. Oh, not him. Different. Different. Also very, uh, impressive person as well. Yeah. Yeah. Um, as he's getting older, uh, you start to see more of their personality. Uh, so for him, I'd say. Capable. And how old is he? Eleven. Okay. Yeah. Wow. That's a, that's a big word for an 11 year old to carry around. That's pretty cool. Yeah. It's one I need to remind myself of, that he's capable and I can let go of some things for him. Yeah. Yeah. You can just own this. Instead of me telling you to do stuff, you can just own this category kind of thing. Yeah. And then Soren. Soren is our youngest. He's nine. Um, what's one word for Soren? Um, and maybe it's, so the, his name means bright. Okay. And that's a good word for him. Yeah. Yeah. Like he's, he's a ball of energy. Both intelligence, but also energy and just draw, illumination kind of. Yeah, yeah. Some people are bright lights. He lights up a place. Yeah, yeah. And uh, yeah. For sure. Intelligent, um, and very active. Yeah. I dig it. Yeah. Um, well I think we covered family pretty well there. Unless there's anything else you feel like you want to make sure you pull in. No, not necessarily. Um. Faith or politics? Which, where do you want to start? I'm the host, I know, but Alright, let's talk faith. Uh, I'm guessing, I don't know, I'm guessing West Texas is still like Baptist land mostly, kind of the Bible Belt South, but maybe it's a little bit more diverse because it's starting to come over into like New Mexico, Arizona, where it's a little bit There's a lot of Catholicism and influenced by a lot of different factors. Right. Definitely Christian. Uh, you know, that's my, my faith center, um, has been, is always, has been, hasn't really been doubted. Um, I mean, doubt. Absolutely. That's part of the Christian journey. Healthy questioning. All right. And part of the, uh, the, the, my own experience, you know, moving around and living in small towns, I didn't grow up in one church. So, Hmm. Early childhood Lutheran Church, Lutheran Church in Hobbs, New Mexico. I didn't really realize there was Lutherans down there. There were 30 of us. It was a small church. I'm from North Dakota where the Lutherans are thick. But I didn't realize there was any in Texas to speak of. And my dad's side of the family, they're from like Minnesota area. And so that kind of carried down. Anyway, that, that sarcasm and the inability to carry a tone, uh, yeah, that was, that was church for me. Yes. Love you, all of Jill's family that I go to church with occasionally in Minnesota with you. Yeah. And then, um, moved to a small town, Denver city, and there's no Lutheran church there. And so it was where are my friends at? And so I went to a Baptist church to be part of the youth group. And then when I started dating Katie, her family grew up Church of Christ and I started attending with her. Okay. And, um, so I don't really know the significance like Church of Christ is, where do they slide in? What, what are they a spinoff of? The ones that I'm familiar with, you know, I don't know the church history. I'm not as, as a, uh, historical buff as most Church of Cri Christ. People seem to be They all know these questions better than me. Alright. I haven't been in it my whole life. You came in late? Yeah, I came in late. Um, and I don't know you, the funny thing about church is it's, it's you, you, you kind of pick up. Um, preferences, personal preferences. What do you like out of worship style? And for me, having moved around to so many churches, I feel like I I've gotten a better understanding of the core. Yeah. And well, even when you were in Korea and yeah, yeah. And, and attending a small church in Korea made up of a bunch of Aggies, right. Who invite everyone into this small church that they set up. Um, and then when we were in Houston, we went to a, uh, non denominational, a church called Ecclesia, that was really cool, that, that was really impactful, uh, for us, because we're now in this new town, new community, new church, um Sorry, you were making, coming around to a point, and I think I cut you off a little. Well, and, and, the, the non denominations, and getting to see all these different had a sampling of all these different things. I've had a sampling, and, and so that's given me, I'd say, a, a, a root more on, on the gospel, rather than personal preference. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. How a church organizes. So long as you're up front about the things that are valuable to you as a congregation or the things you believe even if They're not central to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can set it aside. So the objectives is kind of be more like Jesus and punch your ticket to heaven in some fashion. You can't really punch your own ticket. That's a race thing. Yeah. Organize. That's where we're talking about the differences and all these and measure. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. Like I mentioned earlier that I had these couple of Scots on last night and then Scotland, it's like the church of Scotland, which is like. Church of England, but not those fuckers. Yeah. Um, and then, or it's Catholic. Right. Because the Catholics pushed their way into most everything around that time, but there was always this like, the 40 percenters that were like, well, screw you guys. Yeah. Well, and you're picking up on some thing, themes. Um, I'm very independent. I don't like being told what to do. Yeah. Um, What to think. What to think. I'm going to come up with, um, I want to read the, read about something and come up with my own opinion of it. Yeah. And, uh, so anytime, A church is too restrictive around methodology or legalism. I'm like, okay, that's not my thing. Fair enough. Yeah. And so, like, coming around the full circle to today, where do you guys attend a Yeah, we're at a church called The Town. The Town. Yeah. The Town Church. The Town Church. By Safeway? No. Uh, it's on Timberline and Harmony in the old Harmony School. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, yep. Um, we've been there about two and a half years. And, uh, you know, when we first attended I met the pastor from that church. What's his name? Vince Black. Okay, yes. Yeah. He might not have been the head pastor. I think he was a junior. But has he been around? Or is it his church? Yeah, he planted it. Okay, okay. Then I met him, I guess. Uh, I didn't recognize his name, but I've Or maybe I've met one of his And then Eric, um, Reeves. Yes, I've met that young man. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So they're, they're the two preaching pastors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. But, um, independent. Um, you know, but what I like, and this is probably my organizational, uh, consultant coming out. What I like is they're, they're clear about what's important to them and how they're going to organize. and what it means to be a member. I'm like, cool, I don't necessarily agree with everything you say, but I can get on board and I won't be divisive. I can understand why you would make those choices. Yeah, exactly. And, um, we were at another church here in town and loved that church, Meadowlark Church of Christ. You know, that was a very similar to, uh, where Katie grew up and there's a connection between Denver City and, and here. And some of our, our friends from college are there as well. Um, they found their way up to Fort Collins and that was a great place for us for, for that eight and a half years that we were there. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Um, politics. Okay. Um, so we'll start with, um, should Canada just be one state or should it be like 10 or 11 states? Like, is it every province in a territory? I think Alaska should be part of Canada and we should just Let them have it themselves. Just leave them to their own problems. I'm pretty indifferent. Yeah, so, and that kind of sums up my political opinions for the most part. I'm almost indifferent. You just want to navigate the circumstances that are there without trying to necessarily influence it too much. Yeah, or, or understand it, necessarily. Fair, okay. Yeah, that's an interesting, I mean, is that, maybe even almost like a Church of Christ kind of perspective of letting things be like they will be? No. No. No. I wouldn't tie this to any of the It's not a faith perspective, because there's, like when you think about a faith perspective, there's like the Calvinists that think things are just going to happen the way they're going to happen, and you might as well just Yeah. Just allow for it to happen and then there's kind of a little bit, I don't know what you would call the anti Calvinists or whatever, they're like, well no, if shit's going downhill you should try to like change it. You should try to do something. I am a you should try to do something person. Yeah. Yeah. God doesn't have a firm set plan. He knows what's going to happen, perhaps, but you still got to take action. Yeah. Otherwise, what the hell are we coaching for and building local think tanks and whatever else? Things are set in motion, but you still have a role to play in it. You get to choose. Okay. Uh, you get to choose the role you're going to play and, and how you show up every day feeds into that. And that's more, but for you especially, that's more on the, the faith and personal interaction side than it is on reading the headlines on Twitter and everything else. Cause we're in the politics section now. Right. Politics. Yeah, um, I, uh, my perspective of, uh, I love studying politics. Um, I don't necessarily always enjoy current affairs. Yeah, fair. Right? Um, I really like reading things where I have no idea, after reading the thing, how that person voted. Hmm. Right. I just had a guest on my podcast recently, uh, Cole Stralow, who's created a newsletter called The Flyover. Oh yeah, I heard about that. Oh really? Yeah, I haven't seen it yet. Okay. Is it good? Yeah, it was a really good podcast and what he's doing is really interesting because it's like they're very intentional to not Emotionalize the facts. Yeah. Yeah, you know hard to do. Yeah Exactly and in this day and age, it's like you you get more traction for putting emotion into it, right? Right, right Yeah, and then that's partly why they've gotten and they're you know Cole and most of the team and most of the structure is What I would call moderate, conservative, libertarian, you know, not Republicans because they're all too free thinking for that. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about, can we talk about that? Yeah, sure. Like, I feel like the, the change. In the Republican party. Like I was a big time Trump skeptic. I voted for Trump finally on the third time around I voted for Gary Johnson the first time I voted for Kanye the second time Kanye West. Yes. And the third time around, I was like, you know, I'm starting to believe that this guy actually really cares a lot about this country. And he sees the part of me, part of America that the libertarian in me has noticed since. 2005. Two. One, like, like before, like right after the Trump Tower, the, the towers came down, I was like, shit, the freaking authoritarian state they're going to apply to this and the spying they're going to do on Americans and the wars they're going to create over this is going to be terrible. Which they did. Cause I'm a prophet. I don't know if you've noticed that before. Nostradamus. The local Nostradamus. Well, no, no more like the ones they talk about in the Bible. Like that definition of somebody that sees things more clearly than other people do and part of why. God sets them up with the ability to occasionally see the future is so that the people believe him about the truth now I don't know if you have the same impression of what a prophet does But I think there's modern day prophets and I think I am one Okay, not like one of ten like one of I don't know a half a billion Like people that can kind of see things happening and see things more clearly Anyway, I digress but I could already like I'd literally had a phone call the next day or later that day of 9 11 like That forecasted the Patriot Act, that forecasted Iraq invasion, like all these things. It is a gift I do not have. I would not say that I'm a prophet. And so that's why I pay more attention to politics than others. Yeah, yeah. And so, especially as Trump was tried to be killed probably by the existing government, especially as people like What's her name the the Hawaii girl and RFK jr came to the Republican platform and they were kind of Democratic outcast because they believe too much in free speech and Constitutions and stuff. I came more and more on the Trump side, although I didn't Well, going from Kanye West to Trump is not that huge of a leap. So you didn't have to make that big, you didn't have to make too big of a leap. But for me, that was part of the transition. It was, I was like, I'm actually starting to believe that this guy actually cares more about the country and the principles of our founding than himself and getting rich off of this position. And so anyway, I can, you can share with me how you resonate with that. But, uh, I'm curious as to, um, I guess non political perspectives in that because I've always been political just more cynical like if you're not cynical You're not paying enough attention. It's kind of my philosophy. Yeah, and you know kind of what we've talked about earlier I'm probably more pragmatic. It's like, all right, what's the current situation? What what can we do with this? Yeah, we're in now, of course, I of course I vote every opportunity I get Right. And I try to make an informed decision. Um, I look at, I, I'm as independent politically as I am in my faith and my, my career and everything else. Like there's a common thread for me. Um, I don't like associating with a group. I never really have political or otherwise. Um, I appreciate the, the Is that why I've never caught any traction with the Loco Think Tank conversation with you? What do you mean? Well, you're, you're an interesting freethinker. You've been navigating this business. We do have groups for Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. solo people and very small teams. I did attend, uh, uh, one of the freethinks. Oh, you did? I loved it. Yeah, it was great. But yeah, I, I don't in college, I never signed up for the fraternities or the honor societies like, Hey, join the society, pay us 50 bucks. I'm like, nah, I'll just, I'll just not do that study. Right. Um, join this entrepreneur group. I recognize the value of groups. Um, but yeah. I don't, I have a community that I get involved with, but yeah, same with politically, I'm not going to say that I remember growing the first time I voted and this was in West Texas and there was the option for straight ticket. It was like, you just circle one box and it does all the deciding for you. And I don't like that. No, no. And so I have a very different perspective politically at the federal level, the state level, the local level. Okay. The things that I think federal politicians should be focused on, I don't necessarily think local should be focused on. Do you think the federal government should be focused on less things? Less things than they currently are, or? Like, is Doge a good idea to recut some fat from the federal element? Oh, I mean, I'm a proponent of lean manufacturing. I'm always looking for waste, right? Yeah. Okay. Um, and when you put in place policies and procedures on top of policies and procedures in order to control people's behavior, Yeah. Things are going to get outdated really quickly. Right, right. I mean, management practices. Especially as culture changes and stuff like that. So, have things been put in place that should no longer be there? Absolutely. That's the story of any organization, any culture, any government. There are things that were put in place that don't need to be there anymore. Yeah. Right? So, I'm a, I don't know. I'm an, I'm argumentative. I can argue either side of any point. I love that. Yeah, I can do that too. And I actually want my politicians to be argumentative too. Yeah. If we have a Republican president, I would rather Congress be Democratic. If we have a Democrat president, I would rather that the Congress So stalemate is your preferred form of government? To some extent, because But if we can agree on something, then it must be important. Exactly. If we can agree on it, it must be important. It doesn't mean it's right. And, and this is the system's thinking, uh, for me is it's really hard to predict the impact of our actions, especially when we're talking at the federal level, the U S government is massive. And so if we put in place some, some program, um, it might be good for a time. Yeah. And once you put in place a program, it's really hard to remove down the road at unintended consequences or catastrophic. Yeah. And so then the, the pragmatist in me is like, all right, this is the current situation we're in. Um, what do we do with it? What do you think about, uh, this isn't quite politics, but it's kinda, uh, what do you think about DeepSeek? Have you seen, noticed that on the current events here? The stock market lost like, 8, 6 percent of its value? And Nvidia is no longer I'm waiting to see Skeptical? Yeah, I'm skeptical. It's not changing my investment strategy at all? Not yet? No, not at all. And maybe it's because I got burned because one time I When I first started doing stock trading, like when I was probably 22, um, I bought a company that all the numbers looked good. It was some Chinese import business and all of the finances looked good. I'd read, um, intelligent investing. I was like, all right, I'm checking all the boxes. That's your company. But like 600 bucks in it. And then a week later, news flash fraudulent company. So 600 gone to learn a very valuable lesson, which Wait and see. Let's see the sauce a little bit. Fair enough. Um, here's the prize opportunity. Oh, okay. So, three questions. Grab three ping pong balls out there and we're gonna choose together which one of them will be the prize. Okay. All right. So, yeah, we should have a better system with like a ball holder. Ava, put ball holder on the list of things to buy. We've got 13, 30, and 29. That's interesting. So, how does this work? Do I pick one of the three? No, we're going to ask you all three and we're going to decide together which is the winning answer. But I have to answer all three? Yes. Okay, uh, number six. If you could only eat one color of food for the rest of your life, what would it be? Red. Okay? Like meat and apples, basically, or what are we talking about here? Radishes. Some meat, uh, some kimchi. I love kimchi. That is one thing I've held on to. I've made my first batch of kimchi, actually. It's in my fridge right now. Did you actually bury it in the ground for six months? No, but I put it on top of my cupboard for two weeks and watched the bubbles go bloop I've found my one question. Kim Chi brand, and it's only at Lucky's, and I will go to Lucky's just for that. I, I can't do it. It's too expensive. Like, so I make my own kombucha and I make my own kimchi now. It's pricey, but it's worth it. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So red. Red. Red is the answer. That could well be, that could well be. Strawberries are nice. Yeah. Cherries, if they're not too ripe, I still qualify as red. Red wine. Yeah. Oh, nice. Yes. Okay. So, um, 13 is what's a book, movie or podcast that's had a significant impact on your life. Oh, man. Um, just one is just one for you. Probably it is. There's so many books and it's always the books for me. I like to read and think, um, I'll pick a kind of, uh, out there. Interesting one that, uh, let was left an impression and that was in cold blood by Truman Capote. And I don't know when I read it, uh, but it was the first time that it really got me thinking about ways, it got me thinking about psychology in ways I've never thought about psychology before. Right, because here were two guys who committed awful murders, totally unremorseful, and it's just like, yeah, we just did that. Yeah. Because. It's like, oh, whoa, the human brain can work in some really strange ways that I don't understand. And, and so that, the way he wrote that and, uh, the movie paired with it was really interesting. Well, and. Like, you know, to dip it back to the faith conversation, like, if there isn't God You know, then we're just walking meat bags, and if we're just walking meat bags, then why shouldn't I kill you for your bag of popcorn? How do you measure morality? What, what does that even matter? Why do I care? Right. Yeah, but we could probably spend another hour on that, but we're pushing our two hours already. But it's always been those books that, that make me see, uh, another side of, of human behavior and psychology that was not normal to me. Another one was Hyperspace. So now I threw you, threw out two. Two. Hyperspace by It's it's a Japanese author and I can't remember. I don't know how to pronounce it. Okay, I want to give the synopsis what is about quantum physics and It just explored a lot of different ideas about religion and quantum physics and Philosophy and theology it was really well and how quantum physics can actually tie toward like Can we actually influence the will of the universal creator being thing? And could he just do that? And, and the, the thing that stuck with me and this probably isn't, he probably doesn't write about it at all, but it was from a faith perspective. It's like, I can barely understand what he's talking about with it when this, within this realm of science. And I believe in a God that is so much more beyond that. Can I be okay believing in God that I can't fully understand. Yeah. And so it really put. The perspective, uh, of how much I could know. Yeah, yeah. Of, of any topic. Yeah. Not just religion, but how much can one person actually know about even how my brain works? Like, now we're getting really meta, but. No, but that's one thing I've, so over the last few years I've been listening occasionally to the, the Saint Spiridon, uh, podcast, which is now, uh, Ancient Faith Podcast, I think, or something like that, but it's an Eastern Orthodox, uh, church podcast out of Loveland. Okay. Um, and just coincidentally, coincidentally, like my good friend from years ago, his, her son is dating the daughter of this pastor of this Eastern Orthodox Church. Okay. And one of the things I've learned through literally dozens and dozens of episodes of this podcast is that the, from the Eastern Orthodox perspective, Like, we say, like the Protestant church at least would say, you know, God is infinite. And, but the Eastern Orthodoxes would say God is not finite. Like, they don't even put God into the box of He's infinite. They're like, He's not finite, you know, it plays by different rules that we can't even come up with. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And just a different perspective on different things like that. And I love learning from other world religions as well, not just Christian theology. Yeah, agreed. Same. Yeah, no, that was part of my own journey. It was like, what's this Buddhism thing about? What do they think? Um, third question, what's been the most surprising thing about running your own business? Hmm. Um, The psychology of buying, when people buy and why, uh, and that's probably been the most uncomfortable thing for me is getting comfortable with the lack of control in the sales process. Yeah. And it has to be the right time. Um, and, and that's, that's been the most surprising. You definitely can't make somebody say yes, you can get more opportunities, but you definitely can't, you can't predict it as much as you think, even sometimes. Also with running a, a Coaching business working with large corporations and a coffee business selling to my neighbors, right? It is just as difficult to sell a 30 bag of coffee as it is a 30, 000 consulting engagement It can be easier to sell the 30, 000 engagement. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah I mean for sure at local think tank we've struggled to sell the 250 a month membership for the little guys compared to the 1, 200 a month membership for the big guys. Yeah, it doesn't make, it doesn't make any sense. Someone, someone knows how to do this really well. Salespeople, I, I have a much higher appreciation for them than I ever have. Okay, we're going to make that question the question to win the coffee gift. So the answer is, uh, the psychology of buying behavior is the most surprising thing to you about running a business. Absolutely. And finally, the loco experience. This is the craziest experience of your lifetime that you're willing to share with our listeners. And, uh, if you can make your wife blush during this answer, that would be just kidding. It's not that crazy. Not that crazy. Not that kind of crazy anyway. No. Um, man, I don't know. You probably can tell from this, uh, this conversation that I'm not the most exciting person. I don't take the biggest risks. You're adventurous, but without With reason. Yeah, yeah. I'm prepared for the adventure. Have you had any near death experiences in your lifetime? Yes, but uh, plenty. Okay. But I wouldn't actually, like they were calculated near death experiences, right. So, so this, this is probably more, all right. High school, uh, college timeframe where I climbed things that I shouldn't climb. Structures. Okay. And, uh, buildings and out in West Texas, you find things to do. So you, oil derricks, whatever. You go out and climb things. Um, I played with a lot of explosives and, and fire as, as a high schooler. And, um Cause you had access to dynamite and stuff from the No, you don't need dynamite, just, just hairspray and some oxygen. Okay, alright. Potato cannons, potato cannons were, were a fun hobby. I like it. And lucky those didn't explode on me. Yeah. Doesn't sound that crazy though. No, no. Probably your craziest experience was Quitting your job like in the circumstance that the first one the first time it might have or the road or maybe going offshore I don't know. I did some really big road trips. So my wife and I after college I told Exxon I wasn't gonna start my job until September instead of starting in May Okay. And we drove to Alaska. We spent three, three months, uh, driving and living in a tent and out of our Honda element for Oh wow. We spent all the money we had anticipating that we had a job when we got back and, yeah. And just to Alaska, you took a road trip from Texas to Alaska? Yeah, I was started in West Texas and we drove as far as cold foot Alaska. Okay. Which is north of the Arctic Circle. Wow. Yeah, we wanted to go all the way to the Arctic Ocean, but once we got there, we realized the access is all controlled by oil companies. Right. And you have to have like a bus pass to get up there, like a tourist thing, and we didn't have any money. Right. So we drove as far as we wanted and then turned around again. Honda Element is like a, like a Forester or something, like a little small SUV kind of thing. That was quite an adventure. It was. It was really fun. Yeah. That was probably, there were plenty of crazy experiences. And how long have you guys been married at the time? Uh, two or three years. Okay, so you were pretty well acquainted. Yeah. But, like, I've run the Wild West Relay a couple times and been in a van with six or seven people for thirty hours. And that changes how you feel about each of those people. Yeah. So I imagine jumping in a car and being there for three months was probably expanding for your relationship. It was. I read an article about a couple who, uh, did a tandem bike ride across the country. Mm, yeah. Got divorced after that. No, the quote I remember from that was, Wherever your marriage is going, it'll get there quicker on a tandem bike. Maybe that's why my wife has been resistant about a tandem bike. Because she knows how this is going to end. I don't know. I don't think want to ride behind you that long. Mostly I think it's that she doesn't want to give up that much control. Um, Dane, if there's, uh, engineers that are also managers out there or other people that just think what you got going on is pretty interesting, you want to tell them how to find you easiest? Oh yeah. So isolation coffee, it's just isolation. coffee. Um, if you want specialty coffee delivered to you in Fort Collins, we'll take care of it. That's easy. And then RevZero, RevZero. org. Um, you can find us on LinkedIn. We're posting content all the time, trying to share as much as we can. And when the time is right, as the company grows, as you're moving from working on technical problems to people problems, that's when I can help you. I like it. And, and when you're, uh, a lot of people call me when they're anticipating a move out or trying to, um, thinking that they no longer belong there. Okay. And what often happens though, is that we figure out how to craft the type of company that they want to be a part of. And so then they, especially if they're on track to be that next leader, potentially. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Cause the promotion into leadership is not easy. It's not comfortable. Um, you get excited about it and then you quickly realize what it takes further up. You get in the org chart, the more help you need. I'm a huge proponent. I use coaches. I'm a huge proponent of coaching, therapy, mentors, like building yourself a board of support. Yeah. Whether that's therapists, mentors, and coaches, having all Think Tank chapters, all that. Loco Think Tank, absolutely. I, just having this mastermind that you, you get to see another perspective. Yeah, yeah. When I first left banking, the first blog I wrote was, There's no one to tell me what to do. Yeah. Exclamation point. Yeah. Uh, I was just telling my wife that this week. I was like, you know, I kind of, the thing I miss about having a job is you get there and you know, someone's going to tell you what to do. Yeah. But when you run your own business, you show up and you're like, there's about 30 things I could do. What do I do? We might not have shocked more about Loco Think Tank because we've got some pretty cool chapters for the smalls and like showing up next month. Okay. Not having done the thing that you said you were going to do last month. Accountability. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're the decider right now. Right. Your wife isn't going to call you out on it because you're making enough to make her not annoyed anymore. Well, actually she works with me in RevZero now. Oh, so she knows what you're up to. Absolutely. Oh, that's cool. We're collaborating on, on all levels. Oh, yeah. I forgot to ask much more about that. So, uh, what's her name again? Katie. Katie. Um, I think you're probably pretty awesome based on, uh, Dane's, uh, description. And the fact that she's put up with this for 20 years now. Yeah, you know. Hey, appreciate you being here, Dane. Thanks for having me. Have a great evening. And, uh, talk to you next time.
