EXPERIENCE 225 | Travis Luther - Entrepreneur, Sociologist, Writer, Speaker, Past President of Entrepreneur’s Organization Colorado Chapter, and Opiate Addiction Survivor

In this episode of the Loco Experience, I welcomed Travis Luther - sociologist, researcher, writer, speaker, entrepreneur, and Founder of Time to Live LLC. Travis shares his journey from a tumultuous childhood with young parents to pursuit of a music career and eventually finding his stride as an entrepreneur. He recounts his entrepreneurial ventures, including starting a successful valet advertising company and a legal tech company, as well as the Queen Anne Pillow Company, which he grew to a million-dollar business in just 18 months and exited in 2021. Travis credits peer advisory for much of his learning as an entrepreneur, and he’s a longtime member of and Past President for Entrepreneurs Organization - Colorado Chapter.  

The conversation delves deep into Travis’s personal battles, including a struggle with opioid addiction, and how he eventually overcame it through determination and support from his family and community. Travis also explores how his experiences led him back to academia, transformed his understanding of success to focus more on personal fulfillment and relationships, and the role psychedelics played in his healing journey.  You won’t want to miss his LoCo Experience at the end, involving a week-long relationship with a valet Ferrari, so please tune in and enjoy my conversation with Travis Luther.  

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Transcript

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In this episode of The Loco Experience, I welcome Travis Luther, a sociologist, researcher, writer, speaker, entrepreneur, and founder of Time to Live LLC. Travis shares his journey from a tumultuous childhood with young parents to pursuit of a music career and eventually finding his stride as an entrepreneur. He recounts his entrepreneurial ventures, including starting a successful valet advertising company and a legal tech company, as well as the Queen and pillow company, which he grew to a million dollar business in just 18 months and exited in 2021. Travis Credits Pure advisory for much of his learning as an entrepreneur, and he is a longtime member of and past president of for Entrepreneurs Organization, Colorado Chapter. This conversation delves deep into Travis's personal battles, including a struggle with opioid addiction and how he eventually overcame it through determination and support from his family and community. Travis also explores how his experiences led him back to academia, transformed his understanding of success to focus more on personal fulfillment and relationships. And the role psychedelics played in his healing journey, you won't want to miss his loco experience at the end involving a week long relationship with a valet Ferrari. So please tune in and enjoy my conversation with Travis Luther. Let's have some fun. Welcome to the Loco Experience Podcast. On this show, you'll get to know business and community leaders from all around Northern Colorado and beyond. Our guests share their stories, business stories, life stories, stories of triumph and of tragedy. And through it all, you'll be inspired and entertained. These conversations are real and raw, and no topics are off limits. So pop in a breath mint and get ready to meet our latest guest. Welcome back to the Loco Experience. My guest today is Travis Luther. And Travis is a sociologist, a researcher, a writer, a speaker, uh, a multi-time, uh, entrepreneur. And, um, the founder of Time to Live LLC. Yeah. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for being here. Thanks for coming up from Denver Town. Yeah, of course. Um, how was the drive? Easy peasy. Easy peasy. Yeah. It'll probably be a little harder going home. Yeah, hitting rush hour. I don't know which direction that goes, but I suspect it won't be a smooth sailing. Yeah, probably not. Although I think there's probably fewer people going back to Denver from Fort Collins at five than there is going. You know, back home to Fort Collins. True. I, I would suspect, I don't know. Very true. I haven't really tried it either way. Very true. Although two 70, uh, is unforgiving of anyone in any direction, same time, virtual, once I get back down there, I mean, I will be screwed at some there. Some point. There will be a rough patch. Exactly. There's always a rough patch. Well, um, yeah. Thanks for making, making your way up. And I, you mentioned the word when we were just, uh, chatting, just now retired. Yes. Uh, and, uh, I wondered, um, and you know, and this is like a, a next chapter of life Yeah. In this researching and, and sociologist titling. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me about that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, retired, I say kind of tongue in cheek, but I've had the good fortune of being able to have the last couple years off. Um, you know, mostly because I've been in non-compete since I sold my company. Yeah. So, you know, in addition to all those things you talked about, I, I am at my heart and core an entrepreneur. Yeah. Um, I owned a number of businesses and then over the last three or four years, um, I sold those businesses. And was able to kind of return to another path I had been on in my life, which is, uh, academia and, and research and sociology. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, yeah. So early in my entrepreneurial career, I, I, I, I, I had a previous career as a, as a musician, like touring all over the country, making records and stuff. Okay. And so I kind of came back to college later, you know, after, after that. Okay. Career wound down. I see. That's why we will explain some of that, the time gaps in your Yeah. In your LinkedIn profile. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So they don't have a. Uh, occupation for rockstar, but that, can we go there? What, what kind of rockstar were you and were you a proper rockstar or just a, I mean, I, I often describe it as like aaa, right? If you know baseball. Right. Okay, sure. You know, like we, we, we, we toured, we had vehicles. You made more, we had$50,000 a year, but not much. We, yeah, we than that. Yeah. Maybe more closer to the 30,000. This was a while back. I guess this was, yeah, early two. In today's dollars it would be 50 maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Theoretically. But yeah, early two thousands. Um, uh, went down to LA which is actually where I was born and where most of my family is. Okay. Tried, tried to make it down there. Had some fun times. And what was the band, one band or was it you a solo? Was it was, it was me at that point trying to put a band together. Okay. Did not have a lot of success. So I had some fun times. I, I gotta, I gotta hang out with Tom Morello, I gotta play with him and Adam Jones from Tool. I gotta actually jam with those guys. Yeah. Which was like a lot of fun and very encouraging. But yeah, I never really got anything done, so I went back to Seattle. Okay. Um, I grew up in Washington State. My parents were divorced, so my mom left California, went to Washington. Gotcha. But went back to Seattle and then started having all the success I thought I might have in Los Angeles. Oh, interesting. Now remind me, so this was like after the proper grunge band days? Yeah. Definitely stuff, right? Like this is another wave. Yeah, this was another wave. This was kind of now the, the post grunge, um, you know, we're kind of getting into that pop punk vans, warp tour emo kind of Okay. Kind of genre. And so I, we, we definitely fell right into that kind of warp tour, um, sound for sure. All right. So. Yeah. Um, so you spun that thing for five years or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I, I, okay. Maybe college. I found a way to hack out a living doing that I did, you know, one of my earlier businesses was a, actually a, a, a music promotion company. I had a record label that I put my, my band and my other. Friends bands on. Oh, okay. But then what we would do is we would make these compilation disks. So we'd go around to independent record companies or independent artists and say, Hey, we've made deals with all these record stores. They're going to allow us to put free CD samplers in every bag of every customer. They're gonna allow us to put you in their listening stations so that customers can hear your records. Mm-hmm. Where they might not otherwise be able to, and you're gonna pay us a fee for that spot on, on this CD compilation. Right. So we did that for a couple years. Okay. Um, uh, and that helped support the, the music as well. Little, you've got a little cash flow positive there for, and of course, a lot of hours of work. Right. O uh, but you're going to those record stores anyway. Right, right. Yeah. And I worked at one of'em. So that's kind of, that was, that was kind of how I, I, I, I got the idea and got the end. Yeah. And then of course I put my band and my friend's band as, and this is up in Seattle now? This is in Seattle, yeah. Yeah. As the, as the first three, you know, three or four tracks on each sampler. So we got a little special Yeah, yeah. Uh, uh, treatment and, um, exposure. But yeah, I, you know, I was coming off. You know, four or five years of, of that, um, you know, we opened for some great bands. We had some great tours. We just never quite got there ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was thinking about, all right, what am I gonna do next? Um, um, good friend of mine had moved to Denver, um, said. Why don't you just come out here, see what you want to do, you know, just take a break. Yeah. You know, and Yeah, change the scenery can sometimes blank page basically. Exactly. You don't have any strings to speak of. Exactly, exactly. And so, um, yeah, there was a music industry, what did they call it? The music industry and business studies major at University of Colorado, Denver. Okay. And so I said, okay, well that might be a good segue to, to law school. I thought maybe I'll become an entertainment lawyer and I'll, I'll work on the legal side of music. Yeah. Yeah. So I joined that program. Uh, actually you could job for Diddy or something. Yeah. Maybe not if I, if I just could have been lucky enough to work for Diddy. Right. Um, but actually the fray, uh, all the guys from the Fray were, um, were in my class and uh Oh, cool. It was right. I mean, it was Right. You know, they had recorded a couple songs. Oh, wow. They were, you know, so you kind of watched them blow up. Oh, totally. And, and I remember lecturing them, or I remember lecturing one of them, um, because I was saying, oh, I've tried this, you know, I've done this for five years. Yeah. No band just records a song, does a showcase and gets a record deal, but like Sure. As shit, that's exactly what happened to them. So I, I remember kind of wording them, well, this might be a longer process than you think.'cause they're like, oh, well we're going out to do this show, this showcase for a record label. And I, in the back of my mind was like, well, you know, I love your enthusiasm, but good luck. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, they did it. They did it. So one of the coolest concerts I've been to was a, uh, new Year's Eve show with the Lumineers. Mm. Yeah. And it was the, the. Guess whatever December, immediately after they won the Grammy mm-hmm. In November. Mm-hmm. Or whatever the Grammys are. Mm-hmm. And, and it was just so authentic. They were like, when our manager told us he booked us for the Fox Theater, we're like, oh shit, how the hell are we ever gonna fill the Fox Theater? Yeah. And, and we were part of a second night, even the day at it. Oh, wow. They're like, now we filled it twice. Wow. You know, it's been quite a role. Yeah. That's, uh, but same kind of thing, just meteoric. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Nowhere to ever, everywhere. Yeah. And, you know, and, and, and, you know, they're great stories, but they are super unusual. Totally. You know, I mean, I, I spent so many years, well, they might have had 10 years Yeah. Before True, true. That I'd ever heard of. True, true, true. I don't know. But I spent a lot of years on the road seeing just the most incredible bands and musicians that nobody would ever hear. They're all in double a aa. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, it's, it's. There's a lot of luck that comes with that. That's not to take credit from anyone, but you know, there's luck, there's timing, there's just, uh, there's just so much, much more and powerful people that become the pickers sometimes. Exactly. You know? Exactly. It depends on how your personality jives. Yeah. And your pliability sometimes perhaps. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So, so you go into this, uh, potential law track, uh, understanding the music industry. Yeah, that's what I thought I was going to, was gonna do. Um, um, and then, um, my kind of entrepreneurial. Inside started coming back outside, you know, and, and, um, it, it just did not feel like a good fit. Um, and I, you know, I was working at night as a valet down in Cherry Creek, um, while I was, while I was in that program, pretty gig. It was a pretty good, good drive. Really cool cars. Yeah. Oh yeah. Super cool cars. In fact, I'll tell a story at the end of the podcast for, for one of those questions that you asked about. Crazy, uh, for sure. The local experience. Crazy stories. Yeah. Um, uh, but anyway, um, I was, you know, passing out these valet tickets to all these rich people in Mercedes and Ferraris and Porsches and stuff, and I got this idea like, I wonder if I could sell advertising on the blank side of these valet tickets. And so I asked the guy who owned the valet company, if he would mind me going out and trying to do that. And he said, sure, you can go try and do it, but no one's gonna buy it. Um, and it's gonna be too expensive. And I said, okay, well, if you don't care and you think I'm not gonna be successful, right? Would you mind if I went to the other valet companies too to see if I could roll everybody up into this idea and give them all free valet tickets? Um, he said, go do whatever you want. So I went to the other valet companies, I got'em all on board, and within two weeks I had a deal with Mercedes-Benz to put a lease offer on the backside. Heck yeah. And, and so that moment, oh dang. Because you, you didn't just try to sell one to Mercedes. You, well, you put a coalition together. Oh, yeah. Where Mercedes is like, oh shoot, we're gonna get in front of a lot of eyeballs. Oh yeah. I was like, look, I can, I can put these in the hands of five to 10,000 rich people a month. You know, like literally put your ad right in the hands of people who valet park. Right, right. Um, it solved a good problem for trying to reach, you know, uh, educated, affluent demographic. Right. Well, especially the people that are trying not to be reached. Yeah, yeah, sure. Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. That's cool. And then you're leaving an ad on their keys. You're leaving an ad on their dashboard. Sure.'cause you valet so you're, you're leaving these deals all over, you're littering their car with, with these deals. Um, and so that really took off for me and that kind of gave me a little pause in that moment of, man law school is something I think I want to do because I don't really have another good idea about what I should do. And entrepreneurship and creativity and creating these cool ideas is something I really love. Yeah. And so that company, like I said, within a few months, like I had the nuggets, the avalanche, dang Maserati, you know, I had tons and tons of clients. Oh, interesting. Um, I had a backlog, you know, luxury apartment builders and condo builders. I mean, dang. And so. Start charging more and more I imagine as well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Did you like do like a variety of them then, or you promised so many handouts or, yeah, exactly. Were they tiny tickets or No? No, they were big. They're big. They were like seven or eight inches long. I mean, they were, they were really big. So like a fire virtually. Mm-hmm. Properly. Yeah, exactly. And because the valet ticket has to be split into a number of parts too, right? Oh, sure. So one goes on the keys, one goes on the dashboard, one goes to the customer, and then you tear the part of the. From the customer ticket when they return the car. So there's lots of places to, like I said, litter, the, yeah. How much were those, uh, were those actual valet tickets? Do you remember? What, what did they cost me? Per, per item? Yeah. A buck a piece. I charged$20,000 Okay. For a package. And I, I don't remember exactly how many tickets in there, but it cost me about$3,000 to print. Okay. So I, I was doing well, well, just on the tickets and that doesn't count all the sponsorships and stuff. And then, and then I got like, trade, so like the nuggets in the Avalanche gave me court side tickets. I, you know, tickets on the glass? Yeah. You're rolling. Oh, I was, and here I fringe benefit and I'm in undergrad, right. And I'm like, I don't really know anybody. So I'm asking these, these other, you know, 19, 20 year olds if they wanna go to a Nuggets game with me. And then I, you know, the four of us sit courtside and they're like, who the hell is this guy? Right. So you roll in all bacon and stuff, sides. And then I, and then I got a Mercedes, you know, so, um, so yeah, you know, it was, it was, uh, it was a, it was a wild time, a fun time, but it, it reignited in me this, this like, Hey man, you're an entrepreneur. Yeah. Like, and doing your own thing and coming up with your own businesses and your own companies is, is what your passion and you consider this researcher, writer, speaker, a, another entrepreneurial venture, is it? Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, it is certainly right. Yeah. Not just anybody can hire you and pay you a proper amount to come and talk to them and stuff. Yeah. So I mean, that's kind of the segue is like, so I left, I left that program, um, I entered another program. I, I transferred over to MSU Denver for basically for, for a reason of residency. I couldn't get my residency with cu so, um, MSU was gonna, was like, I don't care. Yeah. Right. And I just wanted to finish Right at that point, I just wanted to finish my degree, but what happened was I took a sociology class as one of the, one of my last, in the last year, A capstone course almost. Yeah. Yeah. And, and just fell in love with it. Huh. I mean, really did, you know, it explained a lot of things to me about how the structure of society really dictates the direction a lot of our lives go. Yeah. As someone who had struggled a lot, you know, my teen parents. Right. Well, that's so crazy that you struggled a lot and then you just kind of intuited this like, potential value proposition out of that, that valet ticket industry and turning a, you know, a cost into a, a value even. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well I had had other businesses before that. I had a couple coffee shops. Oh, fair. I had a skateboard and snowboard shop. I had the record label. That's a little different. Well, it was, it was different. And those, and those all failed spectacularly because they weren't entrepreneurial enough, you know? Well, they didn't solve a problem. Yeah. And so that, that's what I, the world doesn't need more coffee. Right, exactly. Exactly. So I thought, oh, well I like hanging out at coffee shops. I should open a coffee shop, thus it will be successful.'cause I like it. And that was a big lesson I learned in the transition from those companies from back home to what I did at Valet Ads was, it's not always about what you love. Right. I loved skateboarding and I owned a skateboard shop. Well that didn't work. I loved going to coffee shops. So I own a couple coffee shops. That didn't work. But you know, then I have this idea like, oh, I can solve this problem by putting ads in the hands of rich people by, from luxury companies. Right. Yeah. Well that solved a real problem and that's why it was so successful so fast. So you with coffee shops as much as you want. That's right. Without having down Mercedes. And Mercedes. That's right. Um, yeah, so that was like the, that was the big aha moment for me was that, you know, I was also successful'cause I had learned a lot about business that I probably couldn't articulate in those previous years, but I did come to understand why my businesses had failed. Yeah. And I applied those lessons to Valley ads and then everything that came after that. And so, back to, you know, back, go back to sociology. Yeah. Back to sociology. So, you know, in school, um, while I owned valet ads, I took these sociology courses. Totally fell in love with it. I was interested in marketing personally and I thought sociology is a much better fit for me and marketing than anything else I was doing.'cause it explains people, explains structure. And so even though I was successful in business, when I finished my undergrad, I didn't want to stop. I wanted to keep going. Yeah. And so I applied for grad school. Um, for sociology, um, I went to CU Denver and, um, you know, three quarters, um, through that program I got approached about, um, joining a PhD program upstairs in public affairs.'cause I had taken a couple of those courses too. Okay. Had a couple of professors, professors thought you were smarter than normal Yeah. And stuff. Yeah. Which was flattering as hell. Really. I mean, it really was. And so I applied to that part. It's probably, I hate to say it, but you're like a big muscular dude and kind of one just kind of assumes that dudes like you aren't as smart. No, that's right. I'm sorry to say it. Even me. I agree. As a, as a big slim, non muscular dude, I'm like, well, I think guy could beat me up, but at least I'm smarter than he is. But now I'm not so sure. Oh, that's funny. Anyway, keep going. I'm sorry. Um. But, uh, but yeah, that's cool to be and honoring right. After kind of very struggling a bit Oh, yeah. With your early Yeah. College, early career. Yeah. And, and this, and then the band stuff. And nobody likes your coffee that much. Yeah, that's right. That's right. You know, and, and you know, I, I, I, my mom got pregnant with me when she was 15. I grew up in poverty. I was very self-conscious my entire life about my status in the world, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Very self-conscious. Always felt people were like looking down on me. And so entering academia and, and having some people say like, Hey, you're really smart. Did you have the tattoos and stuff already too? Uh, I ha I did have a lot of'em, but you know, that, that same self-esteem issue that I tried to describe also, you know, in school I was a lot more guarded. Right. And especially if I was in a grad, my grad program or whatever, I thought a lot about how do I look and how do I appear? Yeah. Because I want people to take me seriously. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I want to get back to there too. That was the question I just wrote down was how much did your family background and having that. Early breakup of your parents mm-hmm. And your life and how did that all, you know, how much of that played into Yeah. You know, your eventual passion for sociology? Yeah. Oh, all of it. Um, and so we can come back to that Sure. Because I, we will jump in the time machine, but Yeah. That's, it's. Interesting that we were kind of getting to the same place. Yes. Oh, for sure. I mean that, and that's why I loved it, right? Yeah. Explained so much about me. Yeah. That I couldn't explain before. Yeah. Like, like why is my life always seemed to be a dead end. Right. And like in sociology, I could start to, well, in valet, the valet business kind of helped break out of that as well. Mm-hmm. Like right. As a double horse team, kind of the success, including financial success finally. Yeah. Alongside being recognized in an academic fashion. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. Yeah. So, um, you know, I got accepted to that PhD program. I, I, but my business, I had another business that I had started from that. Okay. Um, uh, a legal technology company again, I solved a problem for lawyers who needed technology. It wasn't anything I ever thought I was gonna do, but I started dating a lawyer. I eventually married her and she encouraged me to take my special skillset and apply it to lawyers because there wasn't anybody doing that. There were a bunch of old dudes that didn't have any tech involved in their practice, didn't know anything about tech, didn't know anything about business, didn't know anything about, yeah. Digital technology, you know, and so it was a perfect fit for my skill set at that time and, and grew much faster, much more profitably. Like you hired a bunch of people and stuff, or were you I took the guy two that was working for me at valet ads and I said to him, I said, look, we're gonna start this side company called Law Father. As a joke. I said, as a joke. Right. And why are we calling it Law Father?'cause my favorite movie's a Godfather. I just, of that, I can't think of anything else. Right. And I said, the reason we're gonna do this is because when lawyers call, we want to act like we have a company that just focuses on lawyers, even though we kind of do all sorts of marketing stuff. And I, within months, like. Again, it was a, a scenario which just this, I didn't enough people, I didn't have enough time. I did, I had so many, you know, it, it just grew very fast. And so my focus switched from valet ads to law father.'cause I saw even more potential there. Yeah, yeah. Um, and did you. And maintain valet ads or did you sell it eventually? I did. I, I, I maintained it for a while. You know, it, it kind of went the way, a blockbuster video in the sense that, um, uh, with the, um, with the launch of Uber and Lyft, a valet, there was a lot less demand for valet. Why were we gonna take the car downtown? Exactly. Exactly. And so the numbers that I could do before that could really show great exposure for your product and your service were much lower. Yeah. Now you're just kind of screwing around for a way less money. Exactly. You're like. That's, and a lot of the valley ended up just being at hotels and stuff, and that's transient people who aren't gonna stay and buy season tickets to the nuggets or a luxury condo downtown. So, yeah. Interesting. It, it, it just kind of died naturally, but I did keep it for a long time. Yeah. As, uh, this kind of background thing where I, I only took the calls of people who wanted to do a deal. I didn't do any selling and I still probably made 30,$40,000 a year in profit. Yeah, yeah. Just answering the phone on it. Yeah. So, but, uh, yeah, so I got, uh, invited to a PhD program, um, did a couple credits in there, but law father was just really taking, blowing up, blowing up. And so I was kind of dueling with this scenario where I'd have five employees who needed my attention for projects. I have five customers who needed my, my attention for, for services. And then I had, you know, two or three professors trying to remind me that I had a 50 page or a hundred page paper due like in two weeks. Right. And I, I, I remember I kind of, I got something gotta give. Yeah, exactly. I got to like a, the, the winter break and just said. I can't do all of this. I gotta decide, do I want to stay on this academic route or do I wanna stay in entrepreneurship? Could you have hired a professional manager for law father by that point? I don't think I was sophisticated enough. Yeah. To Didn't even actually find those people. Right. Yeah. Because you were making a ton of cash. Yes. Right. Like you could have paid somebody Yes. Eight grand a month or something like that. Oh, yes. Kept your PhD track on track. Yes. But, but, but I was the owner. Right. And so I didn't understand that other people could do that. Right. Stuff. Yeah. I had never grown an enterprise before. Right, right. I had had. Only these kind of owner operator businesses. Yeah. And so that with like one helper or whatever, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that alright. In itself was a change that came later. I definitely recognize that. Well, and the opportunity is staring in the face and you can always go back for your PhD probably. Right, right, right, right. If you decide to, right. Yeah. Even still. Even still. Yeah. So I kind of tucked my tail between my legs. I went back down to the sociology department and I said, Hey, can I finish this, uh, thesis and get outta here with my masters? And they said, sure. So I worked over the summer to do that. Um, and, and then yeah. Moved on to business. Yeah. So then I a, I enter academia a few years later. Okay. Again, when, um. Uh, MSU launches this, um, student, this is Metro State. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, uh, the Student Business Incubator program. Okay. And a minor in entrepreneurship. So this was their kind of first foray into Yeah. Academic entrepreneurship. Yeah. Someone who I had gone to school with knew that I had gone on to start a number of businesses, had been successful. She reached out to me and simply asked me if I would come down and be a mentor to the students who were in the incubator program. And within two weeks she had hired me to teach three classes. Chair Yeah, exactly. Of the program. I mean, the, the semester after that I, I was, I was the title dean, so I know. So it was really, it was really a fast evolution and I, I absolutely became like the top person in the program. I taught, taught three outta the four required courses. It was very successful. They eventually decided to turn it into a, um, a full on major. Oh, cool. And because of that, because of accreditation and stuff, they, they kind of shut it down for a year while they retool it. And at that point, that capable. Yeah. Like, dang, I love this. I thought I was gonna do it for a semester or two. Right. And I ended up doing it for almost four years, I think. And you're growing law father on the side, or? I grew law father, I launched Queen Anne Pillow Company and I just start trial line, my software company. Okay. So I'm doing a lot. So were you a software expert? Not at all. And so what did that. What problem did that company solve? So, you know, law father evolved from its initial launch of just being a web development and online marketing company to kind of a full service digital consultancy. Mostly focused on how helping lawyers give better presentations and trial. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So we would sit and trial and run others. Exhibits and demonstratives, but we would also create exhibits and demonstratives like you are making PowerPoints for'em and stuff, and 3D animations and Wow. Interesting. And, and then a lot of, um, graphic timelines. Okay. And so we would make these big poster boards of timelines of a case Sure. So that the jury could see different This is where you started going crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And this is what happened after that. And then this is where he went all the way at crazy. So that's why you need to lock him up. He ain't gotten crazy. But we did do a lot of criminal stuff, but we did civil stuff. Oh, okay. It was a lot of, uh, we, we could do construction defects, we did industrial equipment damage, stuff like that. Okay. But mostly what we did was personal injury. And so we'd say we make timelines of, you know, Steve, uh, was a, a hiker, a biker, a family man and whatever. And then he got in this car accident, he got this brain injury and this is everything that happened to him, him afterwards. Right. Or especially this accident at work. Yeah, exactly. And then he, you know, saw a chiropractor 15 times and he still can't hike or ride his bike properly. Yeah. Exactly. So we could, we could show, you know, what happened to somebody over the course of their injury. Yeah. Um, and that was a really cumbersome process, right? Like it was a very heavily graphic design intent. Well, huge stakes and huge stakes sometimes. And if we're in trial and a lawyer here's more evidence and decides they want to add more stuff to the timeline, all we could do is throw a sticky note on there. Right. It just looked bad. And we also made timelines for mediation as well, like stuff that would happen before trial, you know, for lawyers trying to get cases settled. And in all that process, that tedious work and that inability to adjust timelines on the fly, I thought, hey, let's make our own. I had some coders in there'cause we still had our website business. Sure. I said, let's make our, see if we can make our own timeline, web based timeline tool that we can just give to our lawyers. Our lawyers can enter, plug in the information, it's date driven. Yeah. And then if they need to change things on the flyer, whatever, it's not a big deal. It doesn't require a graphic designer start$149 a month, something like that. They could use it, whatever. Yeah. So I mock this thing up with, with my coder. I bring it home to my wife, who, who's a lawyer. I say, what do you think of this? And she basically says, I think this is the future of your company. Like, she's like, this is amazing. You know? Um, and so yeah, we kind of make a decision. I was looking to find a scalable, I. Product anyway. Yeah. I was getting really tired of crawling around courtrooms, moving televisions, monitors, projectors, screens. Like I was just tired. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And my, and and, and you're still boots on the ground doing that stuff. You haven't really quite moved into the proper owner seat? I'm the owner, but I have a lot of staff at this point. Right. I think at some point at law Father, I had 15 to 20, but you're still crawling around program rooms and stuff, but I'm still leading it, you know, I'm still the main tech guy and I was tired of it. Yeah. Um, and I wanted something bigger. I could, I, by now I'm starting to learn about how business, how to scale business. Yeah. That I don't have to be the guy doing everything. You met a few more people with examples of that. Exactly. I saw that you were involved with Entrepreneurs Organization and that for quite a while. Mm-hmm. Was that mm-hmm. That was it. That was along these days. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I started there in their accelerator program. Okay. Which is for companies between$250,000 and$999,000. Okay. And, um, I went through their three year accelerator program and did get my businesses up to a million dollars. Graduated. And I'm still proudly a member of eo. Cool. In fact, I just finished my presidency last year, so I ended up becoming president of this organization, which is really, is there. The whole thing? Or of the chapter? Chapter? The Colorado chapter. The Colorado chapter. Yeah. So that's probably quite a few individual chapters Or how does, how are they smaller groups that, how does that work? So chapters are usually city driven, but ours is state driven because we don't have such a, um, we don't have a, you don't have a huge membership in Colorado. We, we, Boulder, Boulder members are part of Colorado, Fort Collin members, or Potter, Colorado. Denver or Colorado Springs. So right now we still just have a Colorado chapter. However, we have members in different cities. Gotcha, gotcha. And other states like California, they have the LA chapter, the Silicon Valley chapter, San Francisco, we just happened to be statewide. So at the time that I, uh, left as president, I think we were around 180 members. Okay. So, so all business owners with a million dollars or more in annual revenue? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And, and then do you have smaller groups that get together and stuff, or you just have like a Yeah. So within quarterly thing with 180 people? No, no, no. So within that, we are broken into what are called forums. Okay. And so these are Now I get it. Yeah. We at local Think tank, we call it a chapter is like Oh, gotcha. Each little unit is a chapter and we don't have a forum obviously. So our your forums are our chapters. Yeah. Yeah. And how many people are in a forum? Like seven to nine. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yep. Um, and yeah, then when I finished my presidency, I actually entered leadership in the US West, which is our Okay. Our region. So now I serve as an expert to the region. Yeah. Um, and, and not, uh, so much at the local chapter, even though I'm still a member of the local chapter. And I guess, can you, uh, for a lot of people they don't know much about Entrepreneur's organization. If you're not an entrepreneur, you've probably never heard of it. Right. And even if you are, you, you may not have. Yeah. Um, can you kind of give a, it's, I. A peer advisory with some similarities to local think tank, but like a, like volunteer leaders of Yeah. Mm-hmm. Of forums from time rotating kind of basis. And, and then there's, I guess a, a whole statewide structure for all 180 people and stuff. Yeah, for sure. So Entrepreneurs Organization is, it's, uh, it's different from other business organizations, which are generally like leads groups or networking groups. Sure. And that, um, EO Entrepreneur's Organization, EO is, um, uh, a learning driven organization. Okay. Uh, meant to teach lawyers how to, I. Um, enhance the value they get from the, their businesses or the value they create in their businesses. Sure. But rather sometimes both related. Yeah. But rather than being strictly business focused, we look at the intersection of business, um, personal life and family. And so we give equal attention to those. So we might have learning events around how to be a better father, right. Sure. Or, um, how to plan for college. Then we'll also have, you know, how to, um, increase your cash flow or get a loan from the SBA Sure. As well as personal stuff like how to deal with your demons or trauma or some of the stuff that I do now. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, yeah, we try and give equal attention to all three of those areas. Okay. I didn't realize that. I thought it was really business focused more. No, no. It's, it's, it's family focused as much as it's personally focused. As much as it's business focused. Yeah. We say, uh, around loco we say two parts business, one part personal. Mm-hmm. Kind of just as a very. Simple, but you're like a third, a third, a third in some respects. Yeah. Yeah. And, and then each person kind of creates their own experience, right? Sure. You don't have to, but it's still a business person's group. Exactly. Ultimately, so hard to separate that. Right. It starts entrepreneur's organization. Yeah. So I always say the entrepreneur does come first. Um, and um, and you do have to have a business. You have to be the founder of a business or the co-founder of a business. Oh, really? Yeah. So like if you buy somebody's business, that doesn't count. Um, it, it, it can, but it requires a little more scrutiny. Okay. Fair. And there's also an examination of your journey from when you bought it. Right. Fair. So if you're, if you bought it and you're in the process of wrecking it, uh, sorry. Or if you bought it, you know, if you bought it, it was very small and you grew it over the last few years. Right, right. Then that indicated kind of a positive growth environment. Yeah. Fair. Because like you said, it is a peer group. Right, right. And so we're looking for people who have similar or shared experiences in which we can learn from all. Well, if you've got all the problems. And none of the solutions that it's mm-hmm. Hard to mm-hmm. Uh, find value in that membership. Yeah. For everybody else. For you, for sure. For sure. So, okay. So you, so, so at this transition point into this software company from mm-hmm. Uh, kind of a service company. Mm-hmm. You also joined eo? I joined EO before that. Before that too. Shortly. Yeah, before I spun that out. I can't remember exactly what year I joined. Yeah. But sometime before. But yeah, so I joined, really started getting some perspective on. Yeah. Oh, I can hire people to do actual hard things and stuff like that. Yeah. So, you know, that was, that was, you know, I, I had been trying a lot in business through trial and error, and what EO told me, uh, showed me and taught me were kind of how hard and fast rules about like, when do you hire, how, how do you, you know, what is, how I had never thought about cash flow and how cash flow allows you to do different things in your business. You know? I mean, I was just trying to, like, I thought if I made 30, 40,$50,000 a year, like, oh man, I'm making it because I'm, I'm working for myself. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But like, um, how do you scale? How do you hire management? You know, just a lot of stuff. Yeah. How do you grow from a half million to 2 million? Yeah. And increase your mm-hmm. Net profit margin all along the way. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Whatever. Yeah. So those were things, um, that I was not familiar with that really got taught to me in EO and then really allowed me to. To see my business in terms of numbers to plan my business, which is something I'd never done before. Yeah. Yeah. And to grow according to that plan. And um, uh, almost as soon as I graduated from eo, I started another business, or I'm sorry, from EO Accelerator and into eo, I started another business called Queen Anne Pillow Company. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and grew that from$0 to a million dollars in 18 months. So if you look at law father, it took me about 10 years. Wow. To get to a million dollars. Yeah. Yeah. And then once I learned all these things, I learned from eo the next business, it took me less than two years. So, wow. Um, and how did that concept come along? Why was there a pillow company in your future? Because at this point in time, I had a terrible back problem. Okay. That eventually, um, resulted in two surgeries and, um, the, the whole time before those surgeries, I was, I was seeing these ads, oh, this pillow will save your neck pain, blah, blah, blah. And, and I was like, is there a pillow out there that helps with back pain? Yeah. I couldn't find one. But what I learned is that man buying pillows is like a really interesting experience. Some are$4, some are$400. Right. You don't know what the difference between'em is. Yeah. Like I couldn't explain it. Um, and this was, you know, like 2000. 12. It was 11. Okay. 2011, 12. I mean, it was kind of the start of direct to consumer companies. Yeah. Fair. Um, and I had all this expertise in online marketing already because I had been doing pay-per-click advertising and SEO for lawyers. Gotcha. I saw that the online pillow purchasing experience wasn't awesome and wasn't Its infancy. Yep. And I thought, man, if I could combine my marketing expertise with solving this problem of helping people pick the pillow that's right for them mm-hmm. Maybe I could be successful. And so I launched Queen End Pillow really under the value proposition that I will teach you how to buy the best pillow for you. If you buy it from me and if you buy it from me and it doesn't work out, I will continue to replace that pillow until you get a model that works. Oh, fascinating. And so even though people were like, you're crazy, right? Yeah. Because shipping a pillow costs$20, I'm sure. Right? That seems like a crazy business. And so you go back and forth. The back and forth. But I have, because somebody takes you up on the, we'll replace it if it doesn't work, but Yeah. And we'll keep replacing it, but you had to kind of get good at getting them the right one first. Yeah. Yeah. So like how did you do that? We created bunch Matrix focus groups. Uh, we created a matrix. I looked at you and all your friends studies and, um, well, no, I had this academic background. Sure. So I'd look at sleep studies. Okay. I would go look at reviews of other pillows. I would try and understand what people were complaining about and what their expectations were. Yeah. I thought, thought if I could fill those expectations. I looked at side sleepers, back sleepers, snores, tall people, short people, fat people, skinny people, you know, and like just tried to come up with this matrix that. Let people, you know, allergies. Do you want a cool pillow? Do you want a warm pillow? And finally created this matrix of, I don't know, like 10 or 12 variables, and you could kind of go like this and say, okay, this should be the right pillow for me. Right. Boop, boop boop uhhuh. Yeah, exactly. And if I was wrong, or if the matrix matrix was wrong, we would replace it. And then people, I guess you had a, a, a margin on each pillow sold of course, as well then. So they could still buy the 400 pillow or the$40 pillow. Yeah. I mean, our pillows were expensive for sure. I think ours. And did you make'em? We did, we made'em in South Carolina. Okay. Yeah. So Oh, oh shit. Yeah. The US supplier. How did you find somebody to make the pillows and how did you, so you, you started researching all these pillows, matrix them, and then you kind of hit different target markets based on who was where, kind of, and did a, did a spread of products. Yeah. Kind. Yeah. Kind of like that. I mean, like not fast. I mean, you didn't fast steal their designs or whatever, but that I, yeah, I wouldn't say like that. I, I was not a pillow genius. I didn't know shit about that. Right. Like, how do you get a product to sell in the first place? It seems like that's a long journey. All I knew was like, I want a better pillow for myself and I wanted to understand this problem so I could sleep better. All right. You know? And so, um, I reached out to a number of pillow manufacturers asking them if they would be willing to help me make some pillows for myself and test out different materials. And everybody except one company ignored me. And the company that answered me was in South Carolina. And they were not a consumer company. They were an industrial pillow company, if you will. So they made pillow embedding products for hospitals and hotels. Sure. And so I was no threat to them. Right. They were happy to screw around with me. Right. You give'em a little fun little project. Yeah. I'd send them some ideas, they'd send me some samples, I'd dick with them, send them back, they'd sell it back, you know, and I suddenly, I got these pillows I really liked. I said, I, I think I might start a company. Did you have a few thousand dollars invested by now? Sure. In a bunch of hours. Yeah. Yeah. Dozens and dozens, if not hundreds. Yeah. But you know, it probably cost me a few thousand bucks. But your back felt better after you found the right below. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. And so I was just largely using their materials. Right. Because they, they had down, down in feather Sure. Polyester, they had all these bins of things and they had just foam, let me pick Yeah. Memory foam just coming out about that time. Yeah. And then just kinda let me pick what I wanted to do. And so then when I made the recipe, if you will, for what I thought were good pillows for me and good pillows that I wanted to sell, I just used their materials in my recipe. So where I might put 48 ounces of, uh, I might have a 48 ounce pillow with 25% down, 75%. Mm-hmm. Whatever. And according to this matrix, you've got these different kind of mixes. Yeah. And some are thicker. Mm-hmm. And some are thinner, that kind of thing. Yeah. Some are softer, some are more sturdy. Right, right. You know, um, I over time developed a line of. Uh, probably six models and three SKUs in each model. So 18 different variants. Right. Okay. So you've got king, queen, and standard. Yep. And then whatever the different fills were. Yeah. Yeah. And um, at first I used their material and then, um, over time I started to source my own stuff and all direct consumer, all direct. Your, your FedEx bill is big every month. Yeah. And then we went to Amazon. Okay. And that really, then the company really took off. Okay. It, we were early to Amazon. We were, you know, one of the early manufacturers, brand, brand registered manufacturers there. Gotcha. And, um, that was the real catalyst to our growth. Okay. And simplified our process. Um, and how, what was the growth of your team like during this time? Like. Um, you know, so I largely, you had these guys in South Carolina making your pillows, right? Yep. And you just go, yep. And they had a problem. Did they direct ship and stuff too? Mm-hmm. They did. Yeah. So I would go out there every, every couple months I would check in my product. You know, I, I did have to import some stuff there. Um, it would come up and a ship in Savannah and then it would be trucked 35 miles to Bufort, or, I mean, I was getting into things that like I never imagined I would sure. But I thought it was so cool. Right. I was learning so much. I know I had containers coming from China, you know, I was, I was badass man. And I love to go out there and check the product. Well, you're in this community with EO besides, and they're all like encouraging you and cheering you on. You're like, horse dude, you gotta get it straight from China. Course you can't be doing a, paying a distributor for that course. You got container words of, that's course, of course. Yeah. So I, I learned a lot, um, in, in that, you know, where to source materials, how to create a supply chain. You know,'cause we didn't have anything made in China, but there were some things we had to get from China. Right. Everybody has to get their fabric from China. Um, uh, uh, they just, we just don't have that here. Still makes sense, unfortunately. But we could still cut and sew here. We can still fill it. Yeah. Fill and sew it here and you know, we can do a packaging and inserts and all that. Yeah. So I would have, you know, boxes coming from one place, bags from the other, inserts from the other. This kind of fell from here. This coming from Canada, this coming from Europe. And it was all coming to the factory. Right, right. And I would go there and check it in and, um. Testing the different types and whatever. Yeah. Making sure it wasn't damaged. Make sure it still felt good and yeah, it was a, it was a lot of fun. And then you're doing the marketing, doing, you know, getting reviews after your customers are happy. Yeah. It's when you do replace a pillow, making sure they get the right automated email for that. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, going back to that idea of can you sell pillows to people who can't feel them, right? Like, this was the pushback that I got from everyone. Right? No one's gonna buy a pillow online because they're not gonna be able to touch it or hold it. And that's when I said, well, I'm gonna make this incredible offer to them. Right. That if it's not right, I'll continue to replace it. And I got that idea from Tony Hesh when he put out that book, uh, what was it called? Something Happiness About His Journey to Build Zappos. And he said, everyone had said the same thing to him and he said, that won't matter if we create the greatest customer experience in the world. Yeah. And that's what I applied to Queen Anne. And what I learned is I. Rather than looking at those people who continue to eat up costs and profit and shipping. Mm-hmm. As a bad thing. What I learned is when you made them happy, they became the biggest advocates of your company. Yep. They got online and they told everybody about how amazing you were, how accommodating. Yep. And it turned into an advertising strategy. Right. Well, and and picky people everywhere are like, holy shit. Yeah. This lady returned her pillow five times and they still made her happy. Yeah. And that could be me. Yeah. And imagine if I hadn't been nice to that lady. Yeah. She would've taken the same verocity of her anger and disappointment online as she did her happiness. Do you, do you know, or remember like what percentage of your customers actually did. Ask for a different pillow. Yeah. Like it was like five to 8%. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Which is about what I always promised. I said, and then like 90% of them probably were happy with the next one. Yep. Yeah. They would just say it was a little soft or something. Yeah. Yeah. And when it came to down in Feather,'cause our pillows ranged from$72 to up to$400. Okay. And when it came to down or down in Feather, I mean, down is incredibly expensive material. Yeah. If you buy it, it's heavy too. Shipping. Yeah. Right. But if you buy feather pillows that are like 20 bucks or whatever, you're just buying feather. And to be honest, you could be buying chicken feather. I'm not lying. Um, but to buy a a hundred percent down, goose down, which is what we did. Okay. Goose is, is really expensive. So in some of those cases, we would just take the pillow back, send it back to the factory, have it up, opened up again, and either add, take a little bit. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. I mean, that was a huge, you know, our cost was massive. Yeah. And so it made more sense for us just to take the pill and pay for the shipping. You got containers going back and forth all the time. Mm-hmm. Or was it all individual shipped all these pillows, those direct to consumer ones? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We just say put it back in the box. We'd email them, uh, UPS return label. We would come back to our factory, we'd adjust it, sew it back shut, and send it back to'em. Man, UPS loved you. They did, uh, consistent shipping. Of course they did. Yeah. Um, well I know you wanted to talk a fair bit about kind of the next adventure, um, but maybe. So does it make sense to go into kind of like the departure from, um, the pillow business? Yeah. And, and then meanwhile, is this software business like flourishing? Are you distracted along the way? Are you doing'em both at the same time? What's going on over there? Yeah. Um, so, sorry, that's two questions, which, sorry. No, queen Ann. I think we started in 2011. Okay. A few years after that, my father-in-law retired and he called me and he said, basically, I'm bored. He said, do you have anything that I can work on with you? Okay. Well, the pillow company wasn't my priority at the time. So I said, well, I have this pillow company I've launched. I haven't, I haven't given it as much attention as I'd like. So if you want to take it over, I'll tell you everything that you need to do. Okay. And then, um, you know, you and I can, and was this pre-Amazon and stuff? So this was pre-Amazon? Right. Okay. So. So he agrees. And I'll, I'll just make a long story short, you know, we start to have way more success than either of us really imagined. I think he was looking for something to do something. He was a little easy. Pay him a couple work. Yeah, a couple thousand bucks a month and whatever. But we, we just, we, we just, we had a good product that we had it, we had a good system. Um, and it really took off. And so we ran that for, uh, eight. Eight or nine years together. Okay. Um, and very successfully. We had a great partnership and um, but COVID hit, we had a few, we had a month of like, oh shit, we just built this amazing company and now no one's buying anything. Right. And then all of a sudden that changed, the free money flows into the economy like crazy. Well, everyone's at home now, and so they start replacing their betting and they wanna make everything more comfortable. Well, and plus they got$1,200 debit cards Yeah. True. And stuff like that. True, true. Yeah. So Queen Anne went from good growth to all of a sudden this kind of hockey stick growth. Yeah. And you know, he, I mean, by this time he's now eight years outta his retirement and he's starting to think about really retire. Right, right. And, um, and you know, our cash flow, we, we, we. Uh, we didn't have awesome cash flow because the more we sold, the more product we had to, to buy the longer it sat on ships, you know? And so it was just all of our money was constantly being reinvested. Yeah. But your balance was blown up. Yeah. Right. So it it, it was kind of like, hey, I, you know, we we're not in agreement about what we want to do next. Right. The challenges we're gonna have to bring in another partner, a capital partner mm-hmm. Or something like that, to continue to grow at this rate. Right. And probably a new manager'cause Yeah. Father-in-law doesn't wanna work that much harder either. Right, right, right. Exactly. Which he was always honest about. Sure. So, you know, um, and so we said maybe this is a good time to sell the company. And so we, we, we approached a broker, uh, decided what we want and got an offer for exactly what we asked for, like right off the bat. So, I mean, it, it was a, it was a really awesome deal. And then in that I thought, you know what? Okay, so this is gonna gimme some time to turn my attention back to trial line, which was the software company Yeah. That I had just gotten off the ground. It was a similar story. We launched that company January 1st, 2019. Got a ton of awards for, you know, legal tech and all this stuff. Everyone was like, this is a cutting edge kick ass best of whatever thing. Got some clients, but had, had, wasn't crushing it yet. I wasn't crushing it. Had dumped a ton of my money into development. All of my money. Well, back in those days. Yeah. Oh yeah. And it was so much more expensive to do development. It was so much A simple app was like a quarter million. Yes, yes. So I'm, I'm getting close to that figure myself, you know? Right. And uh, then COVID hits and it was the same thing, right? It was like all that momentum, all that investment felt like it had just been Right. Just sucked out of the room and it was gonna be lost forever. But similarly, as. Lawyers realize, okay, we're gonna have to do a lot more of this online. Mm. We're gonna need, and my, my, my product was SaaS based. Yeah. So it was browser based. It's, it's, and instead of you running around putting easels in, freaking stands up with pictures. Yeah. You can't do that on a zoom. Right. During a zoom hearing or a Zoom mediation or zoom trial. Right. And so trial line started to become kind of a popular option for this new, uh, virtual legal practice. And so it started to grow again. And so after selling Queen Anne for a year, going back to work on trial line for a year, I just knew, to be honest, that I was just tired. Yeah. I was just, I had been through a lot. I had been pedal to the metal with three companies for eight years. And when I sat back and looked at the fact that, I think it was my 15 year anniversary for law father or something like that. Okay. It showed up on LinkedIn. Yep. Knowing that I had always wanted to be a musician, you know, and a writer, and I still can, you know, still I, you know, but I, I just felt like I was, it wasn't what I would've picked for myself or predicted for myself 15 years before that. Sure. And, and while I loved it, I loved building companies. I, I definitely loved selling companies. Right. But I, I, I just felt like I had an opportunity to sell trial line as well. I had sold Queen and Pillow and I could really make, so that went for fresh. Yeah. I could really make a fresh start for myself. Yeah. And so I made the decision just to sell trial line. That did not happen as easily as Queen Anne Pillow did. Okay. Yep. But when it did happen, it happened with a great company, a great guy that's still operating. That's still operating. And so I sold that about, uh, it'll be two years. It's two years this month. Okay. Two years in June, and then you go into sabbatical mode. Yeah. And by the way, do you need to take a break or anything? You good? No, I'm good. All right. Let's keep cruising. Um, I had non-competes with both of them. Yep. It made it a little difficult to figure out what I was gonna do next. I had a little money in the bank and I decided that, um, you know what, I'm gonna go back to this, this work that I wanted to do that feels a little more important to me. And by that time, I had started talking about my drug addiction. Mm. I had developed a drug addiction, um, over that period of time. During the season. Yeah. Okay. During that season of balls to the wall, three companies or whatever, because of my back problem. Mm. I had become addicted to opioids. Mm. And. I didn't appreciate the level of my addiction. Yeah. Um, until I started running out of pills more frequently and then started buying pills from Yeah. People then started buying pills from the streets more than your doctor's willing to prescribe de and, and then at some point had this like, full blown addiction Oh, wow. That I was totally hiding from everybody, you know, my family, my friends, my EO members, my foreign mates, everybody. I was terribly embarrassed about it. I had come from a family of addicts. My dad had died from his addiction. My brothers had been in prison for their addictions. I always thought I was the good one that I had escaped it. Right. And I hadn't. And, um, and it was tough. And so I, I, I did get through that. What did that, what did that do to you? Like, like more from more from a mental, emotional state? Yeah. Like, did it make you. Short, um, or distracted, or what is the real life impacts?'cause we all hear about opioid addiction. Yeah. But we might not know how to recognize the people we love. You know, there's physical, there's the physical addiction and Sure. I'm sorry. There's the physical consequences and mental Yeah. And then there's the mental consequences. Right. And the mental consequences were this constant story in my head that I am a piece of shit that I have fucked up, that I'm a hypocrite. What? Yes. Because. Yeah. I thought I had got away from all of that, right? Mm-hmm. Like I said, I come from this family of addicts. Sure. To all my friends and family. I was the success story. Right? Yeah. To the people in eo. I was a great success story. Sure. And so I couldn't talk to anybody about it. Right. Yeah. Because that would've totally damaged who I thought I was to everybody, and put at risk this vision I had of myself as a hero who could be an example to people who could get out of their troubles. Yeah. And it was very isolated, escape, poverty, escape. Mm-hmm. The music industry if you had to. Mm-hmm. And was this your first brush with addiction? Yes. Like in your music career and No, no booze, no cocaine, no. Whatever. No, because, because before that time I was so scared of drugs and addiction because of my family. Sure. And so, even though I was absolutely exposed to everything, you can imagine, yeah. I'm sure outside of the music scene in Seattle and la you know, in the late nineties and early two thousands. Yes. Outside of drinking, um, which I also was moderate about and, and would take breaks from just to make sure I was okay. Yeah, yeah. Anything past that was like a no-go zone for me. Yeah. You know, I was very much like, no, my dad dies even in Colorado, weed's getting legalized and stuff, you know, dude, I I, I do, I do weed now. Okay. Okay. And it took me a long time to get comfortable with that. Yeah. And that only came because of, of my opioid addiction, kind of. I still have kinda alternative to that in some ways. I ha I still have back pain, I still struggle with back issues. Right, right. And it has done a And how is that comparatively, like in your mental and physical health comparing the two pre treatments, we'll call it? Yeah. Night and day. I mean, on the physical side of opioids. I mean, if your question is like, how can you maybe tell that somebody is maybe Yeah, yeah. You know, a little bit more, I was thinking more in the brain side, but also like. I, I mean, how people recognize when somebody's having a problem like that. Yeah. You know, they look outwardly successful. Yeah. Um, I had, I did have my, my brother worked for me and I, he, although he didn't know the extent of my addiction, he had been an addict. And I, and I think he knew I was on opioids, but he would cover for me a lot because, you know, you have two things. One, when you're high right. You, you, you can get sick, which is kind of fun. I mean, but you also, what do you mean? You can get sick? You can get you, like you puke, nauseous. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so, so here you get high, like, high, high. I, I think about opioids is kind of like. You get numb, but you actually get high like a, well, a cocaine or a heroin, guess you wouldn't know if, for me, getting numb was the part that I loved. Right. That's That's getting high. Yeah. Getting numb was the part like Gotcha. Because all of this trauma that I had had in my childhood, then it gets exacerbated by the fact that I feel like a total fucking loser. Right. And so I just wanna do more and more of these drugs because I want it to get quieter and quieter. I mean, that was the addiction part in it starts with the pain in the back. It starts with the pain and then the pain goes away. But at the same time, that was my brain thoughts too. All these voices go away. Right. And so when I took that first handful of pills, it was like, oh wow, man. So much quiet, so much quieter. I mean that's, and I, and I had never felt like that in my life. Yeah. I had just always had this constant, I've really never taken any of'em. Yeah. Like even, you know, I had hydrocodone or mm-hmm. You know, something like that for when I broke my leg a little bit. Yeah. But I've never really, I. Yeah. Experience, like the stronger stuff that we've had in the last 20 years around. Yeah. I mean, I probably pass actually. I mean, you could pass. You could pass. Yeah, for sure. I, I think, you know, it's different for different people, right? There's plenty of people who have taken opioids and been fine. Yeah. Um, you know, it's like me and my brothers all ended up with addictions and we all were addicted to different drugs Yeah. For different reasons. Right. And my father and my uncle also, my dad was an alcoholic. My uncle's thing was crack. My brother Jay's thing was heroin. My thing was opioids. Mm-hmm. And my other brother, Matt, his thing was meth. Right. Oh, and. And to big variety of there. I know quite a party, everybody together, but, but yeah, exactly. But to all of us, all those other things we didn't have any interest in. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like we all had like our one thing. And so for me, fascinat opioids was my one thing. I think we were all trying to solve the same problem. We'd all come from these terrible circumstances. We had these terrible thoughts going on, or chronic, chronic berating in our head, or chronic questions about our value and worth in the world. Yeah. Yeah. And we each had found something either on purpose or accidentally that quieted it, and mine was a total accident. Yeah. You know, at the point that I started taking opioids, I was not thinking about my mental health. Right. My back hurts. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, so on the mental side, I talked about being, oh, so did you come clean like publicly and stuff? Yeah. That time after the sales and stuff. What was that like? So this is the whole point of that story. I'm sorry. No, it's good. We'd like to schools around here. The, the point of that was saying when you said, what did you end up doing after you sold the companies? Well, a few years before that I had come clean in. Okay. Just in my entrepreneurship community about my addiction. Wow. And the reason I did that was because I realized that if I could have been as successful as I was, and I could have been perceived as as great as I was, but I was lying and struggling. Yeah. And holding yourself back, that there were probably other people in my community too who were in the same place. And so I wanted to be the person to raise his hand and say, look, I am an addict. I've been a drug addict. I did it for a number of different reasons, but I suspect that there's some people out here who are going through the same thing. And I want to be the person you can come to if you're struggling. And I want to be that first step in getting better because I've been sick and I've been better and better is better. Yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and so I gave a talk, a private talk. Uh, man, it was scary. Yeah. And I, I remember I went to my wife too beforehand and I said, look, this, she knows about this the whole time, or Well, she, yeah, later. She knew longer than she, she knew longer than I thought she did, for sure. And when I finally came clean, she definitely knew. It's about time you came clean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, um, I said, look, this is, this is what I feel called to do right now. Sorry. Um. I wanna help, you know? And, um, and I said, if I do this, I'm gonna go public. And that could be embarrassing. I, it was a conversation I had with my kids. She was like a lawyer in town still and stuff, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. How old are your kids? Uh, 16 and 18. Now or now. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, so they're old enough to know what's going on when dad, they, they are now maybe eight years ago, or It was, it was probably closer to nine or 10 years ago. Okay. It was a little harder to explain. Yeah. But it has been an open secret since then, so they definitely know now. Right, right. Um, but I said, you know, I, you know, I'm, I wanna go public with this. I want to help. And, uh, and you know, we talked about it and she said, yeah, you should do it. If that's what you wanna do, you should do it. And that and that, that first talk was about just this private event, right. With about a hundred, a hundred people. And then, and then I got asked to do this more public event with 500 people. So, and can you make it just as good as that last one? Here we, here we go again. Are you cool with this? This might end up on the internet, you know? Right. Um, and at that event. I had a line, a line of people next to the stage as I was coming off crying, hugging me, all saying, you talk right to where I am right now. Yeah. And so you help people. Yeah. Yeah. And at that moment, for reals, yeah. I, I, I was like, man, I can fix this and I can give it a reason. You know, I can, I can give everything, I went through a reason and I can help people who are going through the same thing. I can make a difference. Yeah. And very quickly, that almost became the most important thing in my life. Hmm. And so that led into the decisions also mix Mexican to sell the companies changes, mix some changes, and to live. Doing more of this personal work and this deep work in the service of not just entrepreneurs, but anyone who might hear that. Yeah. Yeah. Because I've lost a lot of people because of addiction, you know, and maybe I can be that one intervention that saves somebody, even just one. Yeah. Is enough. Yeah. But it sounds like you've already made a lot of impacts. I hope so. I hope so. So talk to me about where the, the, the writing and the researching comes into this. Yeah. You, you have a book now, or coming? I'm working on two books. Okay. Yeah. So the first, so the first thing that I did was I spent some time asking myself after I got through that recovery, you know, um. What did I do to recover? What did I need to do to recover and how could I kind of codify that into a system that I could share with other people? Right? Because a lot of it is like the pain, the negative self-talk. Yeah. All these horrible thoughts that we have about ourselves and, and, and I did get through that, but I don't, I wasn't sure I could really articulate it. I knew I did a lot of work. I had gone to therapy. I had done a lot of self-study. I had returned to sociology for some ideas, and I said, oh, I think I understand. I think I understand what I was able to do to get past the pain and the voices that led to that addiction. And so I codified that into a a five step system that I call the time traveler method. And it's basically to help people reexamine their past, look at their trauma, their chronic trauma, and reframe it in a way that allows them to live a future all their own right, to start to dictate to blank. Slate it a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. But just to, to, to change it and give themselves some agency as they move forward. Just saying, you don't have to live under these same patterns and beliefs that you did before. You, you, you can be free from these things. Yeah. Yeah. And this is how I did it. And so I started being asked to speak to other EO chapters about that journey, and I started to put that work together, uh, in a book. And so yeah, a five step, basically a five step program or process that I think kick that thing that's keeping you back. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. Whatever that thing is. Even it doesn't, does it have to be addiction or is it other things? No, no, no. It not just addiction. People self-sabotage themselves with other various tools, with other habits, with other excuses. Self-talk, all that, right? Yeah, exactly. The, the consequences of trauma, of childhood trauma. So do you have a title for that book yet? Is it coming? Yeah, it's called How to Be A Good Time Traveler. Okay. Um, oh, I like it. And, uh, um, it's, uh, break Free from Past Trauma to Create a Future that's all your own. I dig. Go. And so I go through a little bit of my own biography Sure. Or I guess autobiography if I'm writing it. Yeah, yeah. A little bit of my own memoir and my story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and then, and then, uh, kind of the crux is, a crux of it is this addiction that I had, um, one night where I decided I was gonna go out and buy heroin or Oh, really? Yeah. Or'cause you couldn't find pills because I couldn't find pills. You're like, well, I guess the only best thing next thing is heroin. Is heroin. Yeah. And my brother, my, I have a, my brother's deceased now, but um, he had heroin and so I was gonna reach out to him'cause he was a heroin addict. He, he had been, he, his thing was actually meth, but he would do heroin too in a pinch. And so I had this brilliant idea that I was gonna ask him to shoot me up because I was fucking dying from the withdraw. Yeah. You know, you talk about the physical stuff and what like. Puking and Oh, puking and shitting. Yeah. You can't sleep and you, I mean, literally, I don't know if you've seen train spotting, but you know, this idea that you think bugs are crawling all over you, you and you're just like, sweat, just a miserable time, sweat and then hot and then cold. And, I mean, it's terrible. Your skin's yellow. And I mean, it's just, you know, and, and your, your liver's failing. I mean, this is one thing I hadn't quite talked about, but, you know, I, I went, I remember going to these health fairs and stuff'cause my friend wanted to go, my friend Spencer, if you're listening, you know, and I would get the results back from my blood test and they'd say, do you take a lot of Tylenol? Your liver is like really screwed up. And I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. But of course all Percocet, Vicodin is all like cut with Tylenol, right? Oh. So I was killing myself literally with this crap. Oh,'cause you're getting whatever you get your hands on, street drugs, whatever. Yeah. And just poisoning myself. If you could just get straight Oxy and find a crooked doctor or two, you'd have been in better shape. Right. Right. But you're just, yeah. You're just buying whatever has it in there and ta you know, per, you're lucky it isn't today. You'd have killed yourself with fentanyl. Well, I, that's true. No, it's seriously, I mean, honestly, like, honestly, doing that much street drug, getting wherever you would, you'd, you'd have killed yourself accidentally by now. Oh yeah. For sure. Without a doubt. I believe it. And fentanyl's so much cheaper, right? I mean, it is. I wait totally. I'd be dead. I would absolutely be dead. Um, how terrifying and my opioid hunger still exists. Does it? Meaning, you know, I had, how did you recover? Like can we get into that a little bit or do I have to Yeah, no, buy the book for that or like, I did a very dangerous thing and just quit to cold Turkey. Okay. That night that I was gonna ask my brother for heroin, I don't, I don't know what happened. I can't really tell you, but I had a moment of clarity, which was basically what you just said. You do that you die. You may not die tonight, but you will die. And you have, I was in my son's room when I was doing the, the other thing I was doing that night was chugging a bottle of wine. My, my next, my next plan was, okay, just get drunk so you pass out. Right. Like, literally like, get so drunk. You get sick and pass out so that you can at least stop feeling like you're gonna fucking die. Right. My, my, I was in my youngest son's room. He was in his room with his older brother. They were younger kids. They slept together most of the night. And I, it's just like two in the morning and I'm just like, just, I, I don't know what else to do. And I just start looking around that room and I'm like, shit, dude, you do this, you die. They lose you, you know? And you become the one thing you despise the most, which is a father who put his addiction before his family. Yeah. Which is what my father did. And my father died at 38 from it. Wow. And I don't know, I just, I went back into my wife's room, uh, I woke her up and I just, I'm about to do heroin and, uh. Not, you gotta stop me, but somebody needs to know. Yeah. You know, and, and from there, um, the secret was out. It was like, lock me in a room. Yeah. I'm gonna cold Turkey this shit. And that's basically what I did. Oh damn. And it, and it was not like two nights. This was like, was like, yeah. Months. Months. Oh yes. Oh yes. Wow. It was terrible. The thing is, is that there's like, you didn't take any other opioids No. For, no, but you were in rough shape for weeks and weeks. Oh, months. Months. It was like six months before I think I felt normal. The thing with the opioid addiction that I don't think people understand is it, it starts off as a fun thing, then it feels good. Then it quiets the, the demons and then your body needs it. Right? And so pretty quickly, I was taking so much opioids and so much Tylenol, not because I now wanted to get high. Right. It was'cause I didn't wanna get sick. Right. Because getting sick. Was terrible. So most of the last half of my addiction was not lived being high. It was lived being sick. Right. But a different kind of sick than, than, um, wow. You know, it was, it was, you were sick because you're taking so much, but at least you're not in withdrawal because the withdrawal, you feel like you wanna die. Like you'll do anything. Like, you'll kill yourself, you'll do heroin, you'll fucking rob a bank like you will do anything. And do you have energy when you're in this kind of space, like to run these companies? I mean, most of these ideas popped off before you really got deep in your addiction, it sounds like. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Um. I mean, uh, uh, when I said I had a brother that would cover for me, you know, I would get sick. I would get sick, um, because I didn't have enough drugs. I would be under my desk in my office with the door shut, puking in a garbage can. My brother would come in, he'd tell everyone I'd have the flu. He'd take me home, put me in bed. You know, my, like I said, skin's nasty. My liver's not wearing Right. And all, I'm all, I'm thinking about scoring my next, you know, thing of pills is just, I don't wanna be sick. Not like I want to be high. Right. The fun part of it goes away this years since there was fun. Yeah. Yeah. So when I went ugh, to to quit, I knew what I was in store for. It's probably that way for those folks. Like, like the Matthew McConaughey and even the Prince. Yeah. Uh, and stuff like that. Like they haven't had any fun actually with their drug use in years. No. But Snoop still lights to light up a joint and seems like he has fun and so does Willie Nelson. Well, it's a different kind of drug, obviously. It's because like I, you know, like I said, I, I, I, I didn't say I switched to marijuana, but a little while later I started taking marijuana to help with my back pain. And I did that at night to go to bed. But yeah, if I went out of town and I didn't have marijuana, I didn't think about it once, right when I was hooked on opioids, I, I could not go. You couldn't get on the airplane to leave No. Uhuh without it figured out. Oh, dude. I had to count it all. Like, I remember going on family vacations, um, going on cruises with my family Sure. And knowing I was gonna run out halfway through and desperately searching all of the countries and islands we were gonna land on to see if I could find anything, coding pills or, or Tylenol three or anything. Wow. To get me through what I knew was about to be a fucking terrible week. Right. Of withdrawal. Right. And, and if you're with your family, with your kids, yeah. Or like, why is Daddy's, why is daddy in the room sweating? Yeah. Or just like, or just drinking. Right. Just drinking as much as I could to pass out to suppress the symptoms down. Mm-hmm. Damn, dude. Yeah. What an intense story. Yeah. Um, I wanna take a short break. Sure. Uh,'cause I need a potty break. Yeah. And I, I wanna get back to this kind of what you're gonna do from here a little bit. For sure. Uh, as well as time machine, local experience, advice. Of course. You know, course we had a bunch of stuff to cover and we're back switching to whiskey. Mm-hmm. Light small, just a little bit. Lots of ice cubes. A little nip. A little nip. Yeah. Um, well that was, uh, that was like, I was just reflecting, um. How interesting that's gonna be to listen back to mm-hmm. That portion of the journey in particular, and just how much, I wanna just compliment your courage. Yeah. Well, I guess you didn't really have a choice. You were gonna be dead. Yeah. Or you were gonna seek help and strength. And was there a faith component at all in your working, in your life? Do you have that later now? Not, not yet. Not then. I mean, there was, I, I mean, so. When I was a kid, my mom dropped us off at church. Okay. Like when I was like, what, five or something. Okay. I remember my mom saying this, or maybe she reiterated it later, but she, she basically was like, I don't wanna deny you guys, church or religion, the opportunity to be a part of it. Right. I'm not gonna, it's not for me. Right. But if you like it, stay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And my, my brothers went home and I stayed, and I, so I ended up being involved in church largely by myself, youth group and different things. Mm-hmm. Oh, all that stuff. Okay. Yeah. Summer church, camp, youth group, all of it. Um, but by myself, my, my, my family was never involved. I had the support of other families. Sure. Um, and in fact, when I moved to Denver, that story I was telling you about, I, I worked for a church in Seattle part-time as their office and business manager. Okay. And I applied to a church in Denver to do the same thing. Yeah. And I lived in a church in the basement of that church that I worked at while I was, while I had valet ads. Interesting. Um, so, um, and I was a member of that church. Huh. That church was a much more. Liberal church than some of the, um, more eval evangelical churches that I had been exposed to. And, um, and I was a full on member. You know, I had, I I I had what I thought fully involved. Yeah, yeah. You know, I, I definitely was a consider myself a Christian and followed the, the Calen, the Advent calendar and yeah. Um, you know, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and I was at church every Sunday and Yeah. And, uh, actually became a Christian education coordinator too, helping with the Sunday school stuff. And, and then I just kind of had a bad experience. Okay. Um, well, you almost said you considered yourself a Christian back then, but you don't think you actually knew the news yet or something, or, I, I, I was, I always said I was a reluctant son of God. Okay. Okay. So, all right. So I, while I. Believe in God now and believed in God, then I often like relied on God to fix things in my life. And when God did not fix things in my life, I became very right. Right. Very disappointed in God and would ask myself, well, what the fuck do I need you for? Right? And so you're not gonna help me then I guess I'll just do it. My dad says, that's right. That's right. And for a while there, I, I kind of tricked, tricked myself because I, I always felt like at the point that I left the church and decided to leave a organized religion is when my career really took off. I started having a lot of success in entrepreneurship. And I remember saying to some people, see, when I stopped relying on God was back God for my success, and I started relying on myself, look what happened. And to me that was evidence that, uh, you know, I did have a little period of atheism there where I said, this is evidence that there, there is no God. Or if there is one, he has nothing, no interest. He's us back. Whether I do it, whether I do good or not. So I got no interest in him. Um, but that, that definitely has changed over the last, um. You know, eight years for sure. Yeah. Um, uh, and then I've done some deep work, um, with psychedelics. Okay. Uh, as part of my therapy. Yeah. Interesting. And, um, I have, uh, the best relationship with God I've ever had. Awesome. And, uh, a really deep, meaningful relationship with God and not one that I'm scared to share or talk about. Um, that, and, and, and, and that does not mean that I think Jesus is coming back on a horse with a flaming sword and gonna cut off all the heads of people who thought like I did what I, some things aren't quite so literal. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Um, but, but you do believe in Jesus still. Do you consider yourself a Christian? Yeah. I say my tradition. So that is my practice to God is Christianity. Okay. But that doesn't mean that I believe that's the only way, you know, um, I like to say, uh. It feels to me like every lens upon who God is, is a blurry one. Mm-hmm. And Jesus and the Christians in general seem to have the most clearest one. Yeah. Um, and so to me that's kind of my practice as well. But I'm also, I'm not God, so I'm not the judge of whether somebody that's a, an amazing Hindu or a Buddhist. Yeah. Or Islam. Yeah. Uh, doesn't. Also, you know, it says it kind of clear, but that's what you would say if you were trying to get everybody to join. That's book. So. Exactly. So I dunno exactly. I think there are many routes to God, but I do think a practice is important and I think that a community. Yeah. And I think that religions are our practice and, um, you know, I'm also a libertarian, so as long as your religion doesn't infringe on my religion or your religion doesn't require you to cut my head off and doesn't require to cut your head off, then you know, I'm kind of Will Ferrell in a semi-pro. Hey everybody. Love everybody. Have you, uh, would you care to talk about, uh, the psychedelics and how that influenced Absolutely. Your journey? I've heard a lot of things about that and I know Denver's decriminalized now. Yeah. I don't know if you recognize it, but that's a giant mushroom right there. Oh, yes it is. Yes it is. The neighbor gave me that a few weeks ago. No, I didn't offer before now, but it's probably late. I, I You be driving home in a funny way. That's true. I'd love to because I talk about my businesses all the time. Yeah. And this, this part I don't get a, a lot of chance to speak about, so, okay. Of course. Yeah. Um, so you're. I guess set the stage a little bit for us. Like you're, you're, you've been clean mm-hmm. For, for months and months by this point, right? Yeah. But you, you mentioned already earlier that you still have this draw. Yeah. Like if I had a oxy right now, I would, I put it right there. You'd be like, I could probably just eat that, just that one. I wouldn't, but I know, but I know that I want it. Right, right. I, I, I, and you know, as an example, I got meningitis, uh, okay. Five or six years ago. Okay. I was hospitalized. I was in the hospital for like a week. This is like a bacterial infection Yeah. Of your, of your spine and your brain. Oh, right. Yeah. It's pretty, it's really bad. Right. So at any rate, it kills a lot of people. Yeah. It kills it. It can kill people. Yeah, for sure. Um, so I was in the hospital. I, I didn't have the mental wherewithal to say what I needed or I didn't. But, um, I was in a lot of pain. A nurse came in and gave me an iv, uh, of, of o obviously an opioid. Mm. She didn't know, right? Sure. I didn't make any warning or anything like that. Um, and as soon as that hit my body, I wanted more. Right. And I knew exactly. You were like, could I get a, a button? And I knew exactly what it was. Yep. And so I said to her, I said, I don't, I don't know if I told her that I had been an addict, but I said, uh, I won't have any more opioids, please. And I think she understood what I was talking about, but in that moment I knew like. When they say, you're an addict, you're an addict. Yeah. You know, it doesn't go away away. That's not a story though. Yeah. Your lifetime, um, you have this hunger, right? Yeah. And so I still today have this opioid hunger, right? This, this, this, uh, instant instinct inside me when things are stressful or uncomfortable to reach, uh, for an invisible bottle, um, that's not there, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And hallucinogen help with that? No, no, no. They, they, that this was more about understanding. How I got into a position Gotcha. As successful as I was. It's more about exploring that trauma. Right. Right. And what that was, how it was. Right. Why do I have this inside me that needs to be shut down? Opioids happen to be the thing that did it. Yeah. But, but, but why do I live with such, so exploring that question Yeah. Is where, where the second more Exactly. Okay. Exactly. And you do that guided or self-guided, or sometimes self-guided, sometimes guided. I mean, I've, I I've done the whole lay on your back and look at the stars for a few hours. Do wonders for a brain. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I, I've done the whole gamut. Um. You know, uh, concluding with, uh, ayahuasca, so Oh, you did? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And was that the, that was a capstone. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's graduation for sure. Was it as gross as people say? Like Absolutely. You puked and all that, whatever. There's people shitting, there's people puking, right? Uh, I did, I mostly dry heaved, but um, but I mean that first round, you know, you do it in rounds. I mean, the first round I was like, this is poison. You guys can call this plant medicine. You can be as fucking hippie dippy as you want. And were you with people that you knew? Oh, yeah. I was with a big group of people. Oh, we had a shaman, we had helper. I mean, I was in the most safest. You know, it, it was a wonderful experience and, and, and I did it the, the way that it needed that I think it needs to be done. Yeah. And that's with a community of people that you know and trust and also with a group of people who are in service to you. Right. Right. That aren't getting all fucked up. They're not getting fucked up. They're absolutely not getting fucked. They are listening for opportunities to help and heal. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so, um, it was amazing. Um, but, you know, you know, as a, as a, as a young rock star, I mean, I did dabble in a few things. I never did coke or anything like that, but, um, but I had done LSD. Yeah. You know, I, I had taken, I had had some mushrooms. I had never had a full on mushroom experience, but I had some mushroom tea back then. And so I, I knew I had done hallucinogens and I knew what it felt like to hallucinate and stuff. Yeah. And so, um, and contrast that with ayahuasca. Oh, I, I, I often say, you know, you do acid or mushrooms and it's fun. You can go skipping around a park with your friends and have a good time. You do ayahuasca, you just lay there in a sleeping bag, like, what the fuck? You know, like what the total Yeah. And, and you close your eyes and you just go into this internal world where, where the external disappears completely. Right. I mean, I blasted off into space and time and Right. It was fantastic. The separation is complete, but Yes, but it's, you're, you're not there. You're right. You're, you're just a shell. It's not a party drug. No, it is not a parking truck. If anyone's like, Hey, I got some ayahuasca, if anyone's interested, no, maybe, but we're gonna pla it, right? Because I'm not gonna shit my pants and puke in a bucket and be like, Hey, this is fucking great. Let's meet some girls. Let's go play pools. Yeah, exactly. No, no, no concert. Yeah. No, no. But yeah, I, I, I, you know, I did, uh, I did mushrooms in a therapeutic sense. Yeah. Um, uh, ketamine in a therapeutic sense, uh, ayahuasca, definitely in a therapeutic sense. What's that new one? I guess it's ketamine that, like Texas is getting it close to approving, like a therapeutic ketamine dose. Especially for military type. Yeah. Ptsd. TSD stuff. Yeah. Molly is another one that I've learned. Rick Perry, MDMA, former Texas, maybe it's that. It's MDMA. Yeah. Former gov. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry is a big. Advocate for that. So ketamine is legal already, and you can, you can go, I think it's MDMA. So MDMA is the one that still is like a research drug. Yeah. Yeah. And they're doing, they do a lot of that in Colorado too. There's a group in Boulder that does a lot of, so is that part of your future research stuff too? Not shift trends. I don't have, I don't have any, no aspirations going that, that's just personal curiosity therapy basically. There are plenty of people doing that. I'm happy to share my experiences, which have all been positive in the hopes that, um, it can be incorporated as a treatment. Because, you know, it's often what I say, and I say this to my kids too. Yeah. I mean, they, they know this too. You know, I've gotten the very same kind of insight and benefit from meditation, from being sober and sitting with myself and focusing on something. Yeah. But drugs do an amazing job of creating a shortcut for that. Right, right, right. And so it's, it's not that it's absolutely necessary. In fact, breath work is another thing. I've heard that, yeah. You can get it almost a psychedelic state. Mm-hmm. Just from breath work. Yeah. Yeah. But it definitely is a shortcut. It speeds up the process. Yeah. Yeah. And so at that time in my life, for those years in my life, I felt like I was in an emergency. Yeah. And that I was willing to do that, to kind of speed up that process. And so have you allowed yourself to feel like a successful person now after exiting Yes. These couple of businesses the last couple years, yes. And stuff, but I define success much differently than I did before. And, and I do not define it by my money, my sales, your balance sheet, my businesses or my stature balance. No, it's about, uh, time with my kids. The, the, the how I interrupted generations of, um, family trauma to create something good in them and to be able to see that it will continue to be good. Most importantly, that I can be a father who can be there for them. When I didn't have a father, my father didn't have a father, right? There were always these great generational interruptions to just love, peace and kindness. Yeah. And I was able to create that in my family, even through my struggles, thank God. Um, and so I, I define success like that. And, and, you know, somebody asked me, I was giving a talk to EO San Antonio. And I was talking about this, my ayahuasca experience and coming out of that, knowing what the meaning and purpose of my life was and finding out that it had nothing to do with business. Um, and just being so happy and content with that. And this woman asked me, she said, is it hard to get back into business after that? And I said, honestly, yeah, it is. You know, my whole world, my whole perspective changed after going through not just ayahuasca, but all of those processes. Yeah. I'm sure about what's important. A lot of stripping down and what matters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so this idea of just going to make money and using the resources of the earth just for the sake of making money is just, it's not something I can do or tolerate anymore. Again, it's like my vegetarianism. I don't give a shit what you do. I'm not going out there. Are you a vegetarian? Yeah. Damn. You're a strong looking dude for a vegetarian. A lot of shakes, man. A lot of shake shakes. Um, a lot of shakes. How long has that been? Uh, like 12, 13 years. Damn. Yeah. Interesting. Long time. Long time. But I would, I would self medicate with, uh, opioids too, if I didn't have any meat in my diet. I dunno, I just say it, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, the point of that is like, it, it, it does, it is harder for me to get motivated to do business things and I feel more called to this work of being, uh, a helper and in service to people. Yeah. And so, um, I have been distracted by some things. I've, I've, I've gotten antsy about money, you know, I haven't worked in a few years. Yeah. And I got a lot more going out than coming in. Um, and sometimes I feel like that is. Enough to change my direction, but at the end of the day, I go back into prayer, my relationship with God, and I just try and reconfirm that I am in the right place, doing the right thing for me now, and doing the, uh, doing the right thing for the people I care about. And that just kind of keeps me on the path. Are you thinking about going back for that PhD now? No, not at all. I did look at it, it feels like it might equip you in different ways than you realize, perhaps to me. Yeah. Like it might not be on the same track that you thought you were gonna study, but I don't know. I wonder about it. I'm not ruling it out. I, uh, I would like to jump us into the time machine. Let's do it. One of the things I like to say is at local think tank, we have a just in time machine. Okay. Like, forgetting a flyer out or doing this or that. It's always just in time. Not always, but too often. Uh, but anyway, we'll jump in the, in the, not just in time machine. Sure, sure, sure. So let's go back to like those, like earliest memory years, four or five. Years old. Mm-hmm. You were in California then? Yeah, uh, until I was five. I think my mom moved us to Washington when I was five. Okay. Can, can you remember California a little bit for me? And what was the circumstances of your family? Yeah. I remember a couple things. I burned my house down when I was two and a half years old. Oh, shit. I definitely remember that. Like with matches or something? Yeah, with a lighter. My mom was a smoker. I grabbed a lighter, she smoked in the house as everybody did. I'm not watching her mom. I, I grabbed her, grabbed her lighter, went into my bedroom, took all my blankets, rolled them up, put'em under my bed, and then lit them on fire. Oh, damn. I went back out to my mom. I said, mommy, come see my light. I was all proud of myself and my mommy came in my bedroom and saw that it was on fire. Right. And where's the fire extinguisher? Oh shit, I don't remember. Now my, now my mom at this point is. 18 years old. Oh, damn. She has my brother Matt, who is one years old, and she has my little brother, Jeremiah, who had just come outta ICU. He was born way earlier and he's, he's, he's, he's months old if that. Your mom is 18. Her third kid. They good. And you're you four. And I just lit, I'm two and a half. Oh, you're two and a half. And I've just lit the house on fire. Oh, damn. She's got like Irish triplets. Yeah. As an 18-year-old. Yeah. Yeah. She got pregnant with me when she was 15. 15. Does she not know how babies happen? No. No. I think she knows exactly how babies happen. Um, um, but anyway, uh, yeah, she got pregnant with me when she was 15. Dang. She had me when she was, uh, uh, 16. And what were, and then my brother at 17, like, she obviously didn't have a career, a job or anything. And who was your dad? My dad was, or who is your dad, I guess, or you said your dad was gone. He's dad, but yeah. My dad, you know, th this is a short version of the story. My, my dad was a very attractive, handsome, tattooed guitar player, okay? Mm-hmm. The, the beer goggle, the guitar goggles were effective on your mom, who was a haughty. 15-year-old. 15-year-old who was looking for a wig. How old was your dad? He was 17. Oh, that's all. Okay. Um, so, you know, the, the, the short version is my mom's mom. My grandma Eileen had schizophrenia. Mm. Okay. But it was undiagnosed. And so my mom was in a house full of chaos, mostly because my grandma was convinced that the school was calling, that the kids were doing all of these terrible things. And, and my mom and her brothers and sisters were constantly getting in trouble for shit that wasn't real. It was very confusing and stressful. My mom's mom actually was very light in that. Oh, really? Paranoia, schizophrenia kind of stuff. Yeah. And it was just grandma being weird. Yeah. You know, this was full blown. Like my mom would come home and my grandpa would sit her down and yell at all the kids.'cause my grandma would say the school would call and caught my mom for smoking and my mom, you know, I mean, just like crazy shit. Damn. And so my mom gets this bright idea, I'm gonna get outta this chaos. The way I'm gonna do that is by getting pregnant, because if I get pregnant, my parents will make me get married.'cause they were, my grandma was a hardcore Methodist and Gotcha. And that time, nobody. Got pregnant and didn't get married. So my mom found my dad. Interesting. Seemed good enough. Yeah. Got knocked up at 15 Right. And did get married at 16 before I was born and moved out just before. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And moved out. So, and, and, and from now my dad was already a drug addict. He had gotten polio as a baby. Oh, damn. He had a very small leg that he had many surgeries and treatments on. And so as a little kid, he was addicted to painkillers, but, but he was still charismatic and still charisma. Charming. Well, yeah. That was his defense mechanism to this kind of crippling. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this leg that he had was to ride motorcycles, play guitar, and singing in a band. And my mom made it up. You know, I think I, I got so funny and charming, uh, because I was like the smallest kid in every class. Yeah. Like I was four foot 11 at the end of my seventh grade year, or in my sixth grade year for that matter. And then five foot one at the end of my 10th grade year. Wow. And so I was just always. Kind of the class clown and charismatic and you know, kissing butt with the right people and whatever. And then I got tall and handsome and I didn't need all those skills. But then you had the great, the best combination. Right Now I'm charismatic, head handsome, funny, and beautiful. Yeah, exactly. Hey, you and I, the two pieces of the pod. So anyway, continue, please. But it's an interesting thing to reflect upon, right? Yeah. So they, they, so you're in this crazy situation, right? And now my, my mom and dad are in, in, and Does he have a job and stuff? I fuck if I know. I mean, they're, they're in love. Like Sid and Nancy were in love. Like, it is like fucking violence. And like my, you know, my memories are my dad punching holes and doors and my parents screaming and my mom was leaving and was her, how did she choose Seattle to move to? Well, she didn't choose Seattle. She moved to this little town in eastern Washington called Steptoe, which had a population of 14 people. Oh shit. I mean, so we went from Los Angeles Yeah. To a town that had 14 people and a truck stop called the wheel in. And how far from was it from the next town? Uh. Always 30 miles, right? I mean, from the next big town. Yeah. An hour and a half. I mean, it was, it's the middle of nowhere. The middle of nowhere. That's where's the North Dakota where I grew up? Yeah. And my, my mom moved there because my, her sister had moved to that area. I. A year or two previous to that to go to college. Okay. And so my, my, that was like her one piece of support kind of almost, or, well, her, her other brother Michael, my uncle Mike, had bought my aunt Patty this little itty-bitty house in that town because it was like, I think he bought it for like$7,000. Right, right. So that she could have a place to live while she went to college in the town. That was an hour away. Right. But she ended up marrying a guy, having kids. This house is just sitting there and it's just sitting there. My mom decides, she's like a thief in the night. She, she basic, she'd be arrested if she did this today. She kidnaps us from California. Doesn't tell anybody where she's going except for my, my, my uncle and my grandparents Doesn't tell anyone. In my dad's family. Certainly doesn't tell my dad because she's just. Tired of living in this chaos and this violence. Yeah. Yeah. And so she thinks at the time this is the best bet for, although if she's been a subject to a domestic violence and stuff Yeah. I'll defend her. Right. To grab you guys. Absolutely. And get you the hell out there. Absolutely. Absolutely. Any day. Absolutely. She, you know, this is kind of part of what I was talking about before, about being able to go back in time. When I look at it as a young man, you know, to me I'm like, why did you take us away from our family? I never got to see my, you know, it was a very negative, bad thing. Right. But when you go think about what a 18, well now my mom was 20 when she did this. Right? Because I remember when my mom turned 21 because that little truck stop in that town she worked at, and I remember her saying, oh man, when I turned 21, I'll finally be able to cocktail waitress. I can go to the bar and I can make more money in tips. Right. I remember that. Right. Who remembers their mom turning 21? Anyway, but, um, not very many people. But as an older person, I can say, what would I do? Yeah. You know, like, I want to protect my kids. I think she did the best could for She did the best she could. Yeah. And I, and I appreciate that. You know, I don't, so did you live there a long time? We, I ended up, we lived in Washington for the rest of my life until I moved to LA to pursue my music career at 21. Dang. And then did you like go to college or anything after high school or I assume you went I had, I had those coffee shops in Pullman. Oh, right. That was right, right. That was in Pullman. That was, that was the college town. Yeah. Yeah. That my, that my aunt was going to and my mom eventually moved us to. And were you like the, the newspaper guy when you were 14 and all these other entrepreneurial things? No, from fifth grade. Yeah. 11, sorry. Was learning papers from fifth or 10? No, third grade. Third grade. Uh, yeah. I had both a afternoon route and a morning route. There's, there's a video. You could find it on light of me talking about my paper routes and how I schemed everybody and built all, I built a paper route empire, um, for two newspapers on all these kids routes. But, um, uh, yeah, paper routes were definitely interesting. My first bit of income and as a poor kid who had nothing, right, absolutely nothing to be able to find a way to make money myself, I mean, that really gave me a taste of what it could be like to be in charge of your income, you know? And that's why I think entrepreneurship became so interesting to me because I was in control of it. Man, what a fascinating journey of like, coming from this kind of conservative background, kind of rejecting faith in church, coming back around, rejecting again in a different way. And, um, just finding grace for. You know, your, your, especially your mother, it seems like, and, and, and my father, your siblings and your father. Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah. And how did, how did that, but you eventually re reconnected with him, right?'cause you went back and forth a little bit from California to Washington, or just, I mean, we summers a little bit, or I did. Yeah. We, we, we were always connected in some way. Like, um, one thing my mom did, which may sound weird, is that even though she left him right, and she, she, she moved us as far away from him as she possibly could, right. She never talked bad about him. Right. But I could tell that she didn't like him him. But I think that her hope, and my hope as a kid was that some, at some point he would turn his shit around and he would be someone that we could count on, or at least a relationship, father relationship, have a relationship with. And I know that she did that with a great amount of hesitation and pain, but she would allow us to call him. She would try and arrange for us to see him quite often. That would end in violence, unfortunately. Um, but um, but in seventh grade I did decide to go live with him for a year. Oh dang. And it was terrible. It was, it was mostly you did it because you just wanted to have a relationship with Dad. I just wanted my dad. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Every kid, I can't even imagine because my dad was just always right there. Yeah. He's a pain in my ass. Yeah. You know, but to be absent that, I can't imagine that either. Yeah. I just, I just wanted my dad and it was not good. It was not good. It was not good. Uh, he, he drank the whole time. He never worked. He fought with my stepmom. He punched holes in walls. How did he stay alive? Like was, was he on Yeah, he didn't stay alive very long, but he got, he got on social security Okay. Disability, because his, his liver damage was so bad. Right. Sorry, I have this self-inflicted medical thing. Yeah, I know. I know. And then he lived off his wife, you know. Right. Um, she was a bank teller. I mean, she wasn't, she didn't, she wasn't rich or anything. Right, right. I mean, they were solidly lower middle class. Right. Um, and, and you know, that's, they, they survived. Yeah. Um, my dad was not very kind to her either. He stole her money and, and, you know, for his drugs. Goes, goes, where's your mom now? My mom's in Denver. Okay. She moved there after my first son was born. Right. Right. After. Um, and that's a great story too. Too long for this podcast, but I'll just say that my mother showed through her actions, never her words. My mom never came to me and apologized per se, but I know how that my mom is remorseful about our lives.'cause'cause later my mom would give us up. She, we ended up in foster care. Oh dang. And we would go back and live with our family in California. Oh wow. Um, she struggled a lot. My mom, my mom was, she spoke with addiction too, or a alcohol, not, not addiction. Mental health problems. Mental health too. Gotcha. Yeah, definitely. Mental health problems. Yep. And, and, um, uh, uh, and she, I. It was tough, you know, it wasn't like my mom left my dad and then things were rosy. Right. It was my mom left my dad, and then we lived in poverty. The chaos continued for a long time. Yes, exactly. And my mom suffered and my dad made things hard. My dad called the CPS and would tell them my mom was abusing us. Were you like a songwriter too, as this uh, 16-year-old kid that wants to go to la? When I left California, I started writing songs. Okay. When I was in California.'cause my dad was a guitar player and singer, and so he kind of taught, taught me a little bit and yeah. That songwriting kind of, you know, they say it's an outlet. I mean, it seems like the foundation for a songwriting, uh, career, right? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. But yeah, my mom struggled and, um, and so by the time my wife was pregnant with our first son, um, we still didn't have a good relationship. Hmm. But she told me, I'm gonna come to Denver, whatever. She came to Denver and. Committed herself to me, stuck it out, my son and my family. Well, you are the best thing she's got going or maybe, yeah. You got brothers still? Uh, one brother passed away. Yeah, about eight years ago. My other brother, Jay, he just moved back here actually from Seattle. Okay. So now we're all here. Um, does he have kids too or He does have a daughter. She's back in Seattle. Yeah. Um, but yeah, my mom showed her commitment to me and my family and has been with us for 18 years and I'm happy to say I can count on my mom for anything. That's cool. You know, she's one, she's, it's kind of crazy to say and she might not believe it, but, um, you know, she's one of my best friends. Yeah. Uh, and I. If you need somebody, she's your first phone number. Fuck man. Sometimes I don't even have to call her. She's just like, Hey, I know you have this. I'm showing it. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. And, and this is what I tell on my talk, the time traveler talk that I do about, um, as, as long as there's life, there's hope and there's debate on who originally said that, but it's often a's, uh, attributed to the Dalai Lama. But where there's life, there's hope. And so when people are talking to me about similar situations, what they've been in, and they say things to me like, oh, it's unforgivable. I would never forgive my mom, or I would never forgive my brother, you know, outside of like some kind of weird sexual crime or something. Right. I said, don't, don't be so quick to say that. Yeah. Because where there's life, there's hope. And so long as my mom was alive and my brother was alive, I, I believed that there was always a chance for some kind of reconciliation. That's really cool. And, um, I got, I got the best of it from both my brother and my mom. Yeah. Sounds like it. It's awesome. That's really cool. Uh, let me ask about your kids just a little bit. Mm-hmm. Uh, they're 16 and 18 now. Mm-hmm. Um, one of my, uh, things on the local experiences I would like to do, uh, one word descriptions of the children. Okay. Of each. Yeah. So would you, would you care to. Uh, endure that challenge of, uh, mentioning a Oh yeah. Maybe your older child by name and then giving a one word description and expand beyond that. Yes. Um, Henry, serious. Serious, yes. Henry the serious. Yes. Benjamin hilarious. Benjamin hilarious. That's funny that there's so, uh, diabolically opposed, yes. Diametrically opposed is actually, although diabolically might be, yeah. That was God doing that to you, putting them so diabolically opposed to each other. Yeah. I mean, as a sociologist right, we talk about nature and nurture and my kids had both, you know, me and their mom, uh, sure. Or my wife growing up and, and uh, you know, same circumstances and everything, but they are very different. Um, yeah. Boys, but, but deeply appreciative and best friends with each other, you know, like, um, but very different personalities. They're entering the world. I. The adult world at an interesting time with Yeah. AI making huge strides and maybe a little, like all the coders are already like that. Learn to code. Yeah. Uh, coal miner. Yeah. Doesn't really work anymore. Um, what, like, what do you, what's your encouragement, but both for them and for other young people in there, you know, 16 to 20. Figuring out what they're gonna set their pointer toward as it relates to ai or just life in general as it relates to just life in general. Well, like it's an interesting time though. Yeah. Because of so much ai, it's gonna be, yeah. I think probably disruptive to a lot of Yeah. Career paths. You know, I could give two shits about ai. I could give two shits about video games. All right. I give two shits about violence on tv. I'm just not a big subscriber to the idea that all of these things are going to shape entirely the direction of your children. Um, I,'cause we've seen this throughout history, right? Sure. Records and music and pot and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. I mean, every generation has parents who are worried that their kids are gonna be fucked up by one thing or the other. So I, I've tried not to put too much emphasis on that. Um, the thing I do put emphasis on with my kids, and I think maybe it's the difference between my kids and other kids, or the reason why I'm not worried about all this other shit is because I've always encouraged my kids to follow their dreams and to think about a life and a career that is your passion. And so. We, we say in our family is there's no plan B. So whatever it was that you said, you want, you, you know how this is. Yeah. When you, I don't know if you have kids. Do you have kids? No. Kids? No. Okay. Well, you've probably heard these stories. You know when a kid's little and in kindergarten and the teacher says, what do you want to be when you grow up? Sure. And all the parents are around in a circle eagerly waiting to see what they say. You know? Molly raises her hand astronaut and says, president Astronaut, everyone says, oh, yes, you can do that. You can do that. Right. By third grade, they're starting to question that, and by fifth or sixth grade, they're definitely telling, well, you might be an astronaut, but you should have a plan B. Right. I said, what are you gonna fall back on? Right? Yeah. And I hated that. Interesting. I hated that as a kid. I, not that my mother ever did that to me, but everybody else questioned me because I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Sure. I wanted to be a writer. You know? I had these things that I felt very passionately about, and by the time I did return to Denver to go to college, it wasn't. Because I thought that was the next best thing for me. The truth is, I believed everybody who had told me that because my coffee shops had failed, my skateboard shop had failed, and my music career had failed, that I wasn't cut out for entrepreneurship. And what I needed to do was go to college and get a real job like everybody else. Hmm. And the funny thing is, is within, you know, a month of going to real college like everybody else, I made more money than I ever made in my life. Right. Because I decided to be an entrepreneur again. Right. Fascinating. So in my family, we always talk about no plan B. Yeah. And so when my kids have had these dreams of what they want to do, we encourage them to do that. And what that does is it gives'em a focus that's different from everybody else's. Where AI and video games and violent movies might become a distraction. My kids know what they wanna do and they know what the risk and consequences are from diverging from that path, which is, you don't get to do what you wanna do. If you let all these other things get in the way, including drugs and alcohol, well, you change what you want to do probably, and you always can change it too. Yeah, they definitely had changes. But you know, my son Henry, the Sirius, which is a very, a very good name for him, uh, is going to be a professional baseball player. Oh. And he has known that for almost his entire life. Hmm. And does he meet. Does he what? Eat meat. He does eat. Okay, good. Keep eating meat. Henry, although, although for a while there, he was vegetarian when I first started.'cause Henry the serious is also Henry the daddy's boy, which I, I proudly say, but when I went vegetarian that's fair. He's like, I'll do it too. And so for five years he was, oh, wow. And then he started saying, look, dad, I'm not as big as the other kids. I think I need to start eating meat. I said, you do whatever you want. I, I don't care. I never made you be a vegetarian. Um, but anyway, um, and so, you know, he's, he, he played var varsity baseball his last two years of high school. He's a team captain on his club team. He's just starting shortstop and now he has a college scholarship. Nice. And he's going to Seattle, uh, this summer to go play college baseball. Um, so that, that's it. So I don't ever tell Henry, oh, well, you better have a backup player. Well, what if, what if he doesn't? Doesn't, then he just navigates. Right. Yeah. It doesn't mean he is a failure. Doesn't, like he said, I can get my PhD anytime. Right. He can go back to school anytime. But you can only be a baseball player for Right. So push hard at that. That's right. If your window is open. That's right. And then, and then Benjamin, the hilarious is extremely talented, downhill skier and downhill mountain. Dang breaker. Oh dang. And, uh, extremely talented. Something that doesn't require fear. Might be a good job. Well, he has fear, thank God. Well, just enough. Just enough though. Right. He's a smart, he's smart. Um, but he's dedicated and passionate and so that's his plan. Interesting. He wants to, he wants to, um, ride mountain bikes in college. He wants to get a scholarship just like his brother. Um, and, uh, and he wants to be outdoors and, and the only place, other place he wants to go is Canada. Right. But his plan for that is to find a Canadian woman to marry so Well, you know, but, but um, there might be quite a few of those in the market in the near future that are like, Hey, can you get me into America if anyone still wants to come here? Oh, before I change topics, sometimes we like to ooh, hit, uh, current events. Sure. Uh, and we've got like the, the LA riots. Mm-hmm. Uh, part four or whatever it is Yeah. By now going on like right now. Yeah. Um, as a libertarian. Yeah. Kind of leaning, uh, probably a, not leaning full on, I would suspect a Trump skeptic, but also a Gavin Newsom non-fan. Like what do you think about this whole, like, bitch fight over the like military and like federal versus state powers and, and what's going on with all that, all theater. Yeah. South Theater. It's a puppet show. It's a puppet show. Yeah. I mean, that's not to say that people aren't angry and suffering for good reason, andwhatever suffering. Absolutely. And they have a right to get out in the streets and protest. I think the protests turn now from not, uh, just so much a, uh, an examination of immigrant rights and also in an examination of hearings to the law. That's right. That's right. I think on both sides there are questions, answer, right. What is due process in this situation, right? And what does it mean to break into a country because that also happens. What due process is appropriate if you just come in and set up? That's right. That's right. But I think what people are pissed off about now, myself included, is the milit militarization of the whole thing and the test that Trump has created as to what people will tolerate. And I mean, I am 47 years old. I have never Are you really? Oh yeah. I thought you were younger than that. Yeah, yeah. Oil of Alay twice a day. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I have never seen the Marines come into a city and try and force. Uh, or actually try and push back protestors. Right. To me, that's crazy. And to me that's, that, that's crossed, that's theater. I mean, there's been a, like we got plenty of National Guard. We don't need to figure, bring a number. We don't even need the National Guard. I mean, I watched, I watched the mayor's press conference last night. It was pretty hairy. Like they didn't have a handle on it for sure. Well, but those, the National Guard are only protecting two federal buildings in la They're not actually out there on the, on the line with the police officers. Yeah. So, so it's theater, right? It is, it's total. If that's really the case, it's total theater. But I don't know if. Like, are you right about that? Are you right about that? There's no media. You can't know. But here's the fucking thing, right? Like my, as a libertarian, I don't believe in borders. You know, like, I mean Oh, that far Libertarian. Yeah. I mean, like, I, I believe people are people, right? And they de they deserve the individual respect. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, anyway, so then there should be nation states, so like Bitcoin for everybody, and just like Bitcoin for everybody. But I'm not a big Bitcoin guy either. I sold mine too, because I just couldn't find any fucking utility in it. Right? Right. And I made a lot of money in crypto, but I'm just like, when does this actually do something? Right? But with regard to people like, no, I believe in nations, right? I believe in cultures, I believe in, in, in laws, right? I believe that we can get in agreement about those things. I also believe that somebody can come here and raise their hand and say, I'm willing to be in agreement of those things. Yeah. What I don't believe in is that somebody can come here and then say, I'm in agreement of those things so long as you pay for me to come here. Right? Or pay for, for me, whatever. You know, I'm, I'm a, well, I think as a, as a. Libertarian leaning, but also free market economist. Like I love the idea of the gold card. Sure. Like the gold green card. Yeah. Like it should be like a, to me it should be like if it should be just as important. To become a part of America Yeah. As it is to become a part of my team here at local think tank. Yeah. Like you should almost have to do an application. Yeah. I should start charging people to apply. You have to adopt, adopt a culture, right? Like Yeah. Like a, like all a country is as a set of beliefs. Sure. Right. But ours is so fractured right now. It's really hard to say. There isn't really say what that is. Right. And even if we can't agree on what the set of beliefs says, we should be able to agree that nobody should be responsible for anybody else's this, that, or the other thing. The thing that has driven me crazy about locally, like, about, about this is Mike Johnston, the mayor of Denver, who happened to be my son's, uh, flag football coach, or a season or two also. But I don't think that one man should be able to decide to spend$325 million No. To give to illegal immigrants, to, to, to, to make their illegal transition to the United States and Denver, uh, easier without, without bankrupt the city of Denver virtually without a vote. Right. You know, without a vote. It's this executive power. That's fucking nuts to me at the local level and at the federal level. National level. Yeah. Executive power is outta control. It's outta control. It's outta control. And I say all that'cause I wanna remind people I don't wanna be canceled with, I don't give a fuck who comes here like, so long. Like, like fair. Like I don't like, I like I love it. Right. You know, there's a lot of value from, from, from the diversity that immigrants bring. Oh, tons. Yeah. Um, it's just like, who's footing the bill application with, with a fee Seems like way better than bringing a bunch of Venezuelan prisoners. Yeah. Up here. Yeah, for sure. If that's, and I think probably, which I think is Amar. I think too many of them are, but they're the exception to the rule Some. But if you're Venezuela and you're like, those guys are complete assholes and you know that they've been like letting a hundred thousand illegal immigrants across the border every month or every week. Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah. Why wouldn't you empty your mental asylums into the country? No, I, I agree. And when you have people like Mike, Justin, like there, they wish they had more mental asylum patients. No. They're like, here, take'em all. Take'em all. No. And when we're incentivizing, right. And you can, like, you can stay at a hotel in New York City. Yeah. You can call it support or whatever you want, but it is incentivizing people to come. It's saying, look, if you come, your journey may be arduous, but your arrival will be cake. Right. You know? Yeah. And like, and then once you, so we should not be doing any of that once No. To the extent that all the NGOs like, no, here's how you registered to vote. Yeah. No, no. You know, I, I, I liked the system of sponsorship that existed. Yeah. You know, which, like you could bring people over, but you know, your family at a restaurant, you kind got a vouch for'em virtually. Yeah. You vouch for'em. You say, Hey, I'm gonna give you employment and stuff like that. You know? I think that was a good system. It's intriguing for sure. Um, for sure. Yeah. Let's, uh, hit the final segment. Do it. The Loco experience. Yeah. The, the craziest story that you're willing to share Yeah. With our listeners. I mean, I don't know if it's the craziest, but, but it is a crazy story. Is it a valet experience? It's a valet experience. Okay. Let's hear it. All right. My, my, I think my first year working down there was, uh, maybe the year that the NBA All Star game was in Denver. Okay. Okay. I think Carmelo Anthony played for us. Uh, who was the guy that came from the Sixers? Um, uh, Barkley? No, no, no, no, no. Later. The shorter guy, uh, Allen Iverson. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it was during that time, right? Yeah. Yeah. Big suits, big shorts. Fuck it. You know, like, it, it was that, it was that time. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm working down in Cherry Creek. And everybody's coming down there. Who's anybody? Right? Right, right. They're parking all sorts of crazy cars. And so this guy comes up and he's got a Ferrari. He parks it. I, I always leave the Ferrari in front. He goes inside parties with his friends until the game's about to start. He comes back outside and he says, Hey, I'm actually gonna get a ride to the All-Star game with, uh, my friends. Um, can you just put my Ferrari in the garage and I'll come back and pick it up tomorrow? I said, I can put your Ferrari in the garage, but tomorrow was like Sunday or something like that. I said, you can't come back and pick it up tomorrow because the garage will lock and it won't open up again until Monday. Okay. And he says, okay, no problem. Take it home. I said What? Okay. He said, just take it home. I'll call. Gimme your cell phone number. I'll call you tomorrow. I'll pick it up from you tomorrow. I like it. Now, granted, I lived at the church at this time, right? You're right. Like barely across the street. Okay. And I've already got this Mercedes from my deal with Mercedes, right? And so I already look weird. Everyone already thinks I'm a drug dealer, already live in the basement of the church. I live in the basement of the church. Outside the basement door. I have my Mercedes parked. I also had a fore runner that I arrived in Denver with, and now this guy wants me to bring his fricking Ferrari. Yeah. I said, I said, ah man, I don't know if I feel comfortable with that. He said, look, I'll give you a big tip. Just take it home. I'll call you tomorrow. I'll come to wherever you are. I'll pick it up. I said, okay, sounds good. I take this Ferrari home to the church. He doesn't call. I drive it back the next day. He never comes. I don't have this guy's name, his number or anything. Damn. For a week. I drive this Ferrari back and forth from Because you want it to be there, the restaurant? Yes. If he gets here. Exactly. From the restaurant back to my house. Finally, my next day off, which was a week later, it was like a Sunday. I'm laying around in bed and my boss calls me and he's like. Pissed off and he's like, dude, Travis, where the hell's this guy's Ferrari? I'm like, it's at my house. He's like, why the fuck is it at your house? I'm like, he told me to take it. And he's like, well, he's pissed. You gotta get down here right now and bring that fucking Ferrari back. I was like, okay, I will. So I rushed that dude. Forgot completely. I don't know what he did. And this was previous to your business, right? Because Yeah. This is pretty, no, I had my valet ads company. Okay. You did? Yeah. Yeah. So I, I was doing fine, but like, I'm still working.'cause I, I met a lot of great people there. Right, right. Well, so I, and you at least had some credibility with the owner of the valet business. Yes. Right at Yeah. He knew I wasn't a criminal. Right, right. Although I did crash a Hummer that I had to pay for. Yeah. But that was an accident. Um, anyway, uh, so yeah, I drive back down there. The guy never comes out to see me. Okay. Okay. I wait in the restaurant thinking I'm finally gonna get this massive tip. Right. No, he walks out the other door, drives a car off. I never see him again. Oh shit. That was the craziest story. So I owned a Ferrari spider for one week. You should have, uh, uh, what's that? Tulo or what's the, uh. Rental thing. Turo Twoo. Yeah. Way before wrote that thing. Way before Turo. You could have given your friends like, Hey, a hundred bucks for two hours. Just kidding. Yeah. But yeah. If you knew he was gonna stiff you, I would've taken it all over town. Right. I put 4,000 miles. It would've been like Ferris beer. Exactly. But I was scared to death. I remember like watching it was parked under a tree and just like being like, oh my God, I hope nothing falls. Shit on the scene. Shits on there in the morning. Yeah, exactly. It just, it was so much responsibility for a kid my age, there's so much that could have happened. Oh, right. Like I'm 24. Right. And plus you've been like a two time loser on coffee shops. Yeah. And skateboard shops and music wasn't going your way. Yeah, that's right. That's right. But it gave me a taste of the fine life. That's right. That's right. What's cool though is that you've never been pursuing the fine life. Yeah, you've been pursuing value add, you know, you wanted to be comfortable, you wanted to be secure, I think after such a tumultuous childhood, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. That interesting way you got dumped into the fine life. Yeah. You barely had a spoonful of it your whole life. Oh, I know. And all of a sudden you're valeting for That's exactly it. Freaking Kobe Bryant and Yeah. And, uh, and making tens of thousands of dollars selling valet tickets. Right. I mean, it was a great time. What a fascinating spot. Yeah. Sit in Courtside and I mean, it was a great time. Well, this was a fun conversation. Yeah, no, it was. Um, if people wanna find you, do you wanna just look, look you up in LinkedIn or is there a way, you know, my website is travis luther.com. Okay. Um, I got a lot of stuff there, but I post a lot of my stuff on Instagram. So it's instagram@travisscottluther.com. Okay. I was the first Travis Scott, just so you know. Oh, nice. There's a big rapper and everyone's like, your name's Travis Scott, but yeah, at travis scott luther.com. I post my research findings there. Oh, really? On Instagram. Yeah. My self-help stuff. Seems like a weird place for that. I know. I just, I, that's where I have the most followers. I get the most engagement Instagram. I've stuck with it. Yeah. I dig it. Mm-hmm. My, my friend's, uh, mom was out for her grandson's graduation and her, uh, handle on Instagram is instagrammy. Oh, nice. That's awesome. Anyway, I digress. Love you, Barb. If you hear this, Travis, thanks for being here. Of course. Thanks for having me. And, uh, look forward to our next conversation. Yeah, this was awesome cheer. Thank you. Cheers. Bye now.