Naples Before the Billionaires: Clearing Land for the Ritz-Carlton in the 80s

We used to emulate our air guitars in the day. And Well, you went, you said you knew the name of the guy, the lead singer or whatever, and you said, hi, I'm Ian from Big Country. And I said, hi, I'm the black guy. You didn't know his name because I didn't know anybody's name in the band. Yeah, he was probably Ian something.

Yeah. Yeah. 'cause Jeff introduced, Naples to a whole new style of music bringing Motown and Detroit and the Bass, Motown, Motown alternative. Yeah. Yeah. It was Motown alternative. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of both, because, he brought that funk with the base. Yeah. Hmm. I almost forgot that we were like living celebs for about 20 minutes of our lifetime.

In 11th or 12th grade with, sly Stone. Oh, yeah. At chapter 11. Chapter 11. Yeah. So anybody who knows? Yeah. Naples. Yeah. That was, have you heard of Sly Stone? No. Sly and the Family Stone. Sly and the Family Stone. Yeah. So that's, where's your everyday people? That song? Yeah. Where, where's your My, this?

Can you hear me? My phone. Please Pull it up.

Is that here? it sh Did I bring it over here? No, I don't think I did. Oh, do you have it? Oh, it's behind me. There it is. Thank you. Thank you.

Oops.

Yeah, you got it. You heard the song? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that guy

So what wasn't he known for?

For different folks? One and so one. Yep. This guy, we were, there was this bar, bar right by the dock, by the dock near the dock where the dock in Naples is Dock, you know where that is? It's called Chapter 11. That was the name of the bar, and that was the hotspot at the time. And we were there and we He didn't perform there.

Yes, he did. So it was getting close to closing time, and he did the, he came and did a, a couple songs with the band and we're like, oh my gosh., and then we said, oh, they're gonna close. It's almost two o'clock. We gotta go get some beer before they, right. Because they stopped on beer to two on beer at two o'clock.

Yeah. So we were like, all right, let's cut outta here. And then we went to the seven 11. did we have him with us or did we meet him there? No, he, so, So we pull up and we look, we're outside the seven 11. Somebody ran in to get, get the beer before they, shut down alcohol sales. Yeah. And we look over on the payphone and it's sly.

Yeah. He was on the payphone trying to get a ride. Wow. Because, he, he ducked out there and, so he, we say sly and then he jumped in our car, backseat of our car. It's just like that. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause we had to go outside of the city a little bit. 'cause that's a seven 11 on 41. Yeah. Yep. Right there.

More towards the east. Yeah. Yeah. And he was on a payphone, no cell phones. That was pre-cell phone. Yeah. Pre-cell phones. Well along and got in our car. Did we take him? Did we just, no. So, so he's like, can you give us a ride? You like Yeah. So he jumps in the back. I forgot who was in the car. I know Bobby was in the car.

Yeah. Was his cell cell. And maybe Kos was with us. I don't know. Yeah. But, then he jumps in the middle and he goes, oh man, you guys gotta gimme a ride. Okay. Yeah. So he, you gotta take him someplace off of air. He goes, oh, go by Airport Road and stuff. And then he's sitting there and then he, he starts lighting up a bowl of smoking some hash.

We're like, what the heck's going on? Yeah. And then he took us to this h he went to go drop him off at this house, off of airport Road, some., old neighborhood and he got out and we're like, wow, I can't believe we just did that. And then the next day we read in the paper that he was busted for a drug deal.

Some drug drug house got busted. Really? Oh wow. I didn't remember that. Wow. Yeah. I, he was so open about, let me, I'm just gonna fire up this Yeah. Cash bowl in the back of your car. Well it was, I think, was it Bobby driving? I think maybe Bob may have been driving. Okay. I forgot who was driving. Yeah, I wasn't driving.

I don't think so. Yeah, I would've remembered that. Yeah. Yeah. So I forgot our claim to fame there for a little while. Yeah. And thank God we didn't get, I know in any of that, it's like, that was nuts. What were we thinking? What were we thinking? Moments? Those moments. Just, we'll give you a ride. Smoke all you want.

No problem. In the city of Naples, which was like the worst thing, I had probably already been just like looking at each other, like, yeah. Oh, okay. I wonder if that was, he was asking, but he wasn't asking. He was just doing it. Yeah. Yeah. He just was gonna do it. 'cause he sliced on. Yeah. And he was, is he alive?

I don't know. We'll have to go with that. He was, he had a reputation for slapping women around a little bit, I think at the time. Didn't he thought he did that with Well, I think he prob I think he was like, 'cause that would've been what, mid eighties? It was after high school. After high school. Yeah. So mid to late eighties maybe.

I don't know when it happened. Yeah. Whenever chapter 11 was. Around. Yeah. I don't remember that era. but I know he like wasn't in public much 'cause he was in trouble with the law. Yeah. Which is another reason we shouldn't have, but it's not like, I mean, he was a sixties, seventies kind of guy, so it's not like we would be following him.

Right. Yeah. We knew of him, but we weren't, wasn't like in our top. It's not like he was like the English beat or,. Yeah. Cure or something like that. Yeah. Or Bono Bon, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's another story. Went to the, were did you go with me to, to the U2 concert? Miami? No, Lee County Civic Center. Oh. I had to have, well they came to Lee County.

So this is, I always tell this story, it's like Yeah. I always ask people what's the, what's the one band that opened for another band before they were even, before they were really a big hit and it was U2 opening up for Qui Jay Gals band. Oh yeah. You were a big Jay Gilles guy back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Detroit guy too, then Detroit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was, and I had heard of U2, the first album, from a buddy, Jay Har. They opened for Jay, they opened for Jay Gals. I'll never forget now. We were right at the stage and Bono's right there in front of us and Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And this guy, some. South Florida guy from, the eighties is like wearing a flannel shirt going, what are you boo boo.

They're booming. Yeah. Yeah. That was before the, that was like, I will follow. It was their first album, right? Yeah. I will follow. Yeah. With that heavy base. Yeah. Yeah. Oh wow. I didn't remember that. Yeah. That take from me. So what you're, what you're, I was there. I went to that show. I don't remember that. But What's your, what, what band?

What, famous band opened for another band that you remember? Other than that one? So who did I see there? I saw, van Halen. You saw Van Halen there? Yeah. At Lee Lee County. Lee Civic Center, yeah. Is that what, what it was called then? I think Lisa Civic Center. Yeah. Lisa. I saw Van Halen and I'm, I know.

Did Brian Adams open for him? Maybe. open for them. I don't, I don't remember. I know there was a, they were good. We saw Foreigner there. I remember that. Yeah. Barely. You still have the tickets, ticket stubs like you used to save. I have, I have the ticket stubs for, from Detroit at Cobo Hall. Oh wow. When I saw Van Halen and Ted Nugent, $10 paying de see Van.

He stole the ticket. Really? Together? Yeah. That Well, no, they didn't, they weren't together. They were two separate concerts. Yeah. Okay. Well, that place, Cobo Hall. Yep. Everybody, when I go back to Michigan, to Michelle's area airport here, and they all have a story about Cobo Hall, like that was the, a place that was the main place.

Yeah. A lot of shows they, they didn't do sports there too, did they? I think the Red Wings used to play there, before they built their own stadium. Yes. So the Red Wings were in the Olympia first, which was an old rickety, building. And then I think they played at Cobo Hall for a while, and then they opened up Joe Lewis Arena, which is where the Red Wings played.

I don't know where they played now. Yeah. Probably not there anymore. I don't know. But Cobo, is Cobo Hall still there? No, it's long gone. It's okay. Well, there were, there are albums or well, whatever they're called now, that of bands that were recorded at cobol, Bob Seger. Oh, I think he did. He's another Michigan guy.

Oh yeah. And he lives here, or he lives in the city? He lives in Naples. Yeah. And Marco maybe, but he's in the area. Yeah. Yeah. Bob Seger. Yeah, Bob Seger was like, he's one of those guys that, people don't realize how big of a hit he, or, he, he didn't like get into the stardom, but he made great music.

So all we listened to at the Ramada in the kitchen Yeah. Working together or, I mean, I dunno if it was Doug or Kurt, that would just put Bob Seger the live, probably Doug, on the tape. It was playing a tape and with the, just put it on. Endless. Yeah. It was Bob Seger Alive or Live, whatever the live one was.

And rambling Man. All the, that was a soundtrack is in my head forever, but I saw, foreigner. Lee Civic Center and now who were they? The Liver River band. I don't know who opened with four. I wanna say the cars, but I don't think I saw the cars. 'cause they were popular right around the same time. Yeah.

But Pam said that she saw the cars there. I know, I saw more. She saw the cars with Fort Myers. Yeah, I think it was Fort Myers. I know I saw more than that, but the ones that stood out to me, 'cause yeah, that's like my pass password security thing now is like, what was the first concert you went to?

And I can only remember Van Halen. So it's, yeah, it's always, if you wanna hack my stuff, you think about that, that venue is like, the floor seats were just open general admission. I think everything. It was general admission. Yeah. You just had to get there early. It's just wherever you went, you went.

Right. Yeah. It wasn't like you got c Yeah, yeah. But it was out there. I mean it was 75 before 75 was built east. Yeah, right. It lived pretty much, it was like a nowhere land. That place is still there, that civic center, whatever. I think they do like, what do they call those things? flea market thing.

Oh yeah. Yeah. And they have race cars or something. Little, yeah. Little track. But yeah, that was our spot. But, but when you came here and we were doing the whole music was my life. I mean, it was everything DJing and the whole 40 fives and albums. And then you brought this whole new. Way of music to South Florida.

'cause we were just never heard some of that stuff. 'cause it wasn't, you didn't have access to everything, and the radio stations didn't play everything. So to find different music, you had to, somebody had to introduce it to you had to, to for MTV to start, which was Right, right. Just started about that.

Graduated from high school, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Was when MTV kind of kicked off, you killed the Radio star? Yeah. The first video on MTV. Yeah. But yeah, I had some, some guys in Michigan that were in bands, they liked alternative music and that's kind of how I got to know early on about some of those other bands that you didn't know about.

Like the, yeah. King Bees and the King Bees Prince at the time. Yeah. King Bees Prince. Who was it? The, at the time, the time Mor, he lived there Morris, the time Morris didn't one of the, what was the other one? The Sheila e no, the, drawing a blank now. The Romantics. Oh, that was our, that was our, everything.

That was, that was Wash the Floors at Robert Philadelphia mopping the floors for your dad and you'd bla the stereo and you'd I playing. Yeah. Yeah. We just, for that we air band song clock at night or eight 30 at night. Yeah. It's like. Yeah. We became the romantics. Yeah. Playing that song, like in the, like, how else can you enjoy mopping the floor?

Right. Yeah. We had full reign of the salon. We had like our own little club. It was the salon that we would get to have the keys to and get to go do whatever we want. Drink My dad's arrange boom beer that he ended back, he had great stereo system too. Yeah. Yeah. So, and it played through the whole whole place.

So yeah. Put the tape in. Cassette tape and That's right. Sucks and Rock out at night. We had a place to go after the bars closed. We worked. We're just cleaning a salon. It was our spot. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that. Did you ever, ever have an eight track? No, my parents did, but I never had one. Yeah, they had one up north.

Mark had my brother Mark had one. I remember. It was so weird. Do you, if you ever listened to music on an eight track, you'd like, they would in the middle of a song, change the track. So like the song would song Finish the song. Yeah. And then they'd finish the rest of the song. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Those, those things.

Steven, to see one of those now would be such a relic That was like pre Yeah. 'cause it went from albums to eight track to cassette to CD to digital. And eight tracks were, they were big almost the size of A-V-V-H-S-V-H-S tape. Yeah. Yeah. They were. Yeah. My mom had, she had, when we lived up north, she had, the Rolling Stones, an eight track of the Rolling Stones.

Well, that was one of the eight tracks that I remember. And an Elton John eight track. Yeah. But then when we came here, I was buying at 10 or whatever age up there, I was buying 40 fives. 'cause I had to sell them all when we moved because we were living in a motor home. So we had to sell everything that we had.

'cause we were, we could only live outta whatever we could keep in the motor home. Yeah. He didn't, we didn't store anything. We sold everything. Yeah. Like furniture, mementos, anything that we, well, I didn't have a lot as a 10-year-old or 12-year-old, but whatever they had, they sold and then we had to, so I got, had to sell my record collection at the time and then started over when we got here.

But eight tracks got sold with that era. But then, yeah, because when, when we DJ'ed, when we, like, were doing the Sadie Hawkins dance and Yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah. We played records. Right. Yeah. It was always, always records. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were, they were Because people would bump into the table and skip the Yeah.

Skip the album around. Yeah. And the trick always was, was to find the song that somebody requested or had, there was always somebody at, at, requesting Blue Oyster Cult, POC Don't fear the Reaper. Where are you gonna find that? And if you had it, you still had to find it. Or if you didn't have it, like now literally you do that now, you could just pull it up, like then yeah, we had, we had carry those big record case, the album that we had and the 40 fives and the crates full of yeah.

Albums. Yeah. And then you had kind of had to have some type of organization around it to be able to look it up when they, when they put in the request for whatever it was. If you haven't had, but you always look cool looking through the stack of Yeah. Right. That was, yeah. Like you were busy. Yeah. The headphones on.

Yeah. One ear piece. Yeah. Yeah. There's a picture in the U look of that. You looked totally looked like a D Hawkins. Yeah. Yeah. The giant cost headphones on with the, looking up the, looking up the album. But then you, so I remember you came here and you had these, these influence of these, this other genre of music that kind of blended in with ours.

But it, it opened up, it expanded your horizons. It completely did. In, in a lot of ways. You also expanded my boxing horizons too, which was Yeah. And I learned how to wrestle so well, that's all. The only defense I had is he would kick my ass, do a leg, sweet leg. What do you call it when you dive for the leg?

A single leg? Take down, double leg. Take down. Yeah. Yeah. Single leg. Single leg or double leg. It's the only thing I could do. As long as you didn't crossbar my face. I was okay, but yeah, you couldn't handle the jabs. 'cause my reach was longer. That was the problem. That was the problem. Yeah. I didn't know how to jab, so I got pounded a lot.

So you have two, Jeff has two brothers, older brothers that probably used to beat his ass and then he came here and beat my ass. So I was like the younger brother of your family, because your mother always treated me like a, the fourth son. Yeah. She was always Your mom was a mom to me. Like your mom was.

Yeah. Your mom treated me like a son too. Yeah. Yeah. I'll never forget the time that. I got invited over to your house for dinner. It was like a formal dinner. We all sat, your sisters and your dad and your mom were all sitting there, your mom or dad or both made dinner and you guys, your mom made artichokes whole artichokes.

Oh yeah. Boy, you remember that? Yeah. She would make those artichokes and stuff. I had art. Had no idea how to, yeah. How to, how to eat it. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta suck it off, dude. Like Yeah., I didn't even know which fork to use little, I've never been to like, yeah., that kind of a, a nice, nice meal.

Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, if you think about meals, I mean, I learned a lot from your family because I remember your dad who took us to the, at least one, one time. I think we went to the, Pelican Bay Club. Oh yeah. And that's where he had the Jordan, the, the wine. Yeah. He had the wine there. 78. 78 Jordan.

Yeah. The red cabs. Cabernets, I mean, that's right. You remember that? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. We, they would keep bottles there for, for him. He was into the wine. Yeah. Forgot we used to get to use his tab a little bit there too. Yeah. We go to the Pelican Bay Club. I don't know how long that lasted. Yeah. But Arti, those artichokes, those stuffed artichokes, that's like a, something I've never had in my life since, my, yeah.

Nobody has carried that on. I don't, my sisters might have the recipe for it, but I don't think anybody's ever done it since then. There you go. You got a challenge for this holiday season is you gotta make stuffed artichokes. Yeah. That one, I don't know. Surprise. Yeah. Michelle. I don't know. Not gonna do it.

No. It wasn't something I craved. I just remember the ritual of eating them. Yeah. And my mom liked to make them. And, but a lot of what we did was around food, of course, at our house. But, but also, I was always great for me to go to your house because whatever I was craving a little bit. 'cause your mom would make pierogis Guke, Kisa Kisa.

And I would just drop a hint like, oh, you got any, you got any more of that stuff? Whatever it was. And she'd whip it up for me. Yeah. She'd like, she like, make whatever I asked and yeah. Just love to see me eat. Whatever she made, I like, just loved that. I always felt, she always remembered what everybody's favorite was.

Yeah. Like, I like that casserole chicken. Bangkok. It was that. Oh yeah. City Chicken monte too. City chicken too. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And so like, I'd come to visit and it's like, oh, oh, we gotta have that. Yeah. Well, or the pistachio delight dessert. Oh yeah. With the, it's like a pudding whipped cream and all that stuff.

Yeah. It was a whole other form of food for me because, we had our Always the Italian sort of way. Yeah. And then they get introduced to this ethnic 'cause your mom had was, had tradit. Yeah. There wasn't a lot of Polish restaurants to go to. No kidding. It's not like you're going out for Mexican Italian.

Yeah. There's not a Polish restaurant. Chinese Yeah. There's not a Polish restaurant anywhere close. Yeah. But, but Dorothy's house, Dorothy's condo, that was, that was a respite for me. That place was great. In Vanderbilt Towers? Well, no, it's not Vanderbilt Surf. Surf Colony. Surf Colony. Yeah. Surf Colony. Yeah.

Yeah. Number two. It was 1, 2, 3. She was the second one. Was it the second one? No, we were the first one. Oh, the first, okay. Yeah, we were the first building. Okay. Yep. The first one. 'cause we were the closest to Vanderbilt Towers. We had the pool right where the lagoon Oh yeah, the pool overlooked the lagoon area.

Yeah. Around the backside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Second floor. What floor? Third. Second floor. Second floor was, yeah, we were trying to remember. It was like 2 0 4 or 2 0 6. I can't remember. It was on that side of the building. Yeah. That was, the boxing match was right outside the elevators. Yeah. We created a boxing on the second floor.

Surf colony number one, the middle ring. And if anybody came out of an elevator they had to watch, they were gonna left. Yes. They're like, you're the ding. And I was like, I stop. It's like somebody walks out and goes like, Hey, the ding probably saved me a lot of times. 'cause he was kicking my ass. So you came here middle of high school.

You were 81. 80. 81. You were, you were going into your junior year? I was in, it was in the middle of the junior year. Oh, you junior. So I did, I did fall of my junior year in Michigan. Finished football season and then we, oh. And then at Christmas time or whatever, we drove down here. Wow. In the middle of high school.

And then they started at Baron in January of, 81. Whoa. What, 81? Yeah. So that would've been 81 was the half second half of our junior year. Yeah. So 81, January of 81. So we moved down here in like December of 1980. 'cause my dad passed away in 79, so it was a year after he passed away. Oh, okay. Yeah. My mom had to make decisions to stay there or come down here.

You, your dad and mom were planning to move here? Yeah. Anyway, after I got outta high school, I think. Oh, they were, they were gonna wait. Oh, okay. I think, 'cause I mean they were probably gonna let me finish high school up there. Yeah. we never really talked about it, but probably, because the condo wasn't, was gonna be done right around I think 1980 because we, what happened was, I think it finished and so maybe they were gonna move down there.

Move, I don't know. Hmm. I don't remember. I never really talked to my mom about whether or not what the plan was because my dad died and, so young. But they, I do remember that before we moved down here, they got it furnished and they rented it out a couple times to kinda help make the payments. Oh really?

Yeah. And. Your dad was 51 when he died, right? Yeah. 51. Sudden you, how, how did you before they, before they had, we had two heart attacks. The second one is when he, when he died. But, they didn't have, stents or bypass surgery or anything like that to kind of, yeah. And I don't even know if they did the, catheter thing to even see if he had blockage.

I don't even know if they had all that stuff going back in, in the seventies. Yeah, late seventies. It may have been groundbreaking type stuff, but not commonplace. Yeah. How so? What happened? How did you find out? Well, it was, yeah, so, it was on, on my birthday, my 15th birthday, and I was out with some friends in, which is, you're about to have a birthday here, right?

Yeah. That's actually on Saturday. Saturday, yeah. So today's Wednesday. It'll be on Saturday, yeah. 61. but anyways, I was in the neighborhood with, some friend's house and somebody came over and said, there's an ambulance in front of your house. And so I came home and they were working on him and took him away and never saw him again.

Wow. Alive. Wow. Yeah. So your mom was there with him? Yep. Yep. He had just gotten out of the shower and I think she had walked, she, I think it was that she kinda walked in and he was kind of looking out this window in the bedroom and he kind of looked and then collapsed. So. And how was she at that time?

What was that like as a 15-year-old? What was that like? I don't even remember. Yeah. It was just hard, hard to grasp and really the reality of kind of what just happened. Yeah. So was it just you and mom at that point because your brothers were gone or were they still Michael was gone was Mark. So Mark had, I think he had just graduated from high school

And I don't know if he had moved out or not, but he wasn't around a lot. So, but, obviously Michael, Kathy and Gwen were off on, they're 12 to 14 years older than me, so, yeah, they were long gone and married and stuff. Yeah. 'cause you were the baby. Yep. Yeah. So, you were in Dearborn then, or, or Livonia.

You were Livonia then. You started Dearborn then? No. Or where were you? Yeah, we lived in Dearborn. It was born in Dearborn and then we moved to Lavonia. So you were there and that was when your, your, your dad, had you bought a house that he was fixing up? Or, or was a new development is what it was? Is that why you guys moved there?

Well, well, so my dad was a Dearborn police officer, so he did that most of his, most of his life. And then he retired from there. Then got into real estate. And then he started buying and fixing up homes in addition to selling homes. And then he started looking at new construction out in Lavonia.

And then, through the buying and flipping some homes back then, we bought the place in Lavonia and then, got there. So that was a movie to switch school? That was, yeah, that was in the middle of junior high. So that was, you switched schools then? Yeah. That was between seventh and eighth grade.

And then, so started over new there. And then, so, and then it was the middle, well he, I was in 10th grade when he passed away, so eighth grade to 10th grade we were in Livonia. And, yeah, so, so as a, so that's why he bought, so he was into real estate, so that's why he, when every time we came to Florida, he was looking for property down here.

Oh, okay. And that's why he bought at Surf Colony Pre-Construction. Oh, that was pre-construction. Really? Pre-construction. You bought that? wow. Or they were, before they were finished with the building. Yeah. So it probably was already up and they were selling units and, so w why, how did they end up Naples?

So literally we drove, I mean, we'd go on vacations and we would drive down the East coast stopping and looking at new model homes and stuff like that. And then we would, I remember Mark and I would run into every place that we went to. It's like, oh, this is my room. Yeah. And we'd never buy. But, and then we need ended up in Naples.

He was like, this is the place we're gonna wanted to buy. 'cause they liked Naples obviously. Yeah. Could had, foresight to see this is gonna be a nice place. Yeah. So, and surf colony at the time, 'cause we were in Vanderbilt not far from there was so far north. I mean, it was like, yeah, almost Fort Myers.

People thought of it because went soon you went north of Pine Ridge Road. It was another world. Yeah. So, but it was new construction. So it was like, I think he was seeing the benefit of buying, pre-construction and then being able to turn it. Who knows? But he never got to see it. Never got to experience it.

So I think that's why my mom said, let's, or, our relatives, his, her my aunts and uncles said, you should probably just go down there. You guys plan this. This was gonna be a retirement place. Go down there. Little did they know, they were telling her to go somewhere where she had no support system.

Right. No family, nothing, no friends. And they were like, like, oh yeah, go live down there. It was like, it was the two of you? Yeah, it was just me and her. Yeah. And then I walked over to the Ramada Inn to get a job and there you were. Yeah. Yeah. That good old, the one, everybody else was being like, ignoring me and stuff.

And you're like, Hey, how you doing? So, made my transition very easy. Yeah. To like have a connection, not only, getting a job there. 'cause I must've gotten a job before school started. 'cause I met you before school started Okay. In January. And then when school started, you saved me again at, the lunch table.

Just like nobody would sit with me. And then you came over, Hey. And they're like, oh well, Rob. Okay. And then, once spring football started, then they started making more friends. Yeah. You were a jock. Yeah. He, they they liked having you. The fast white guy coming down here. Yeah. With our oh and 10 football team.

That was at the time 'cause we were with no football stadium. That's right. We played in Naples High. It was our home games. Yeah. We had the football stadium that Barron Collier has right now was our practice field. It was like a Just a Sands Spurs. Yeah. Sands spurs. Yeah. You make my ass. Yeah. Coach Broxton.

Yeah. What was that saying? He said, no, you make my butt. Wanna suck San Sans Spurs suck sans spurs. Yeah. Rest in peace, coach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 'cause they didn't have enough money. Yeah. So our home, home games were again, like our home game against Lely was at Lely. Our home game against Naples was at Naples.

Yeah. We stayed, we were on the home team sidelines and they both, and they were over there and they were on the visitor side. Wow. That was crazy because it was our home game. Yeah. Well, it was cool for me 'cause I had like this inside one of the stud football players. Like a, he's my, he's my friend man.

That's my guy, John Kaminski. Yeah. And that day will live with me for the rest of my life Was the most heroic moment, I think the most exciting moment of Baren Collier's football, tenure forever because Naples was always so dominant. Naples just destroyed, walked all over. They just, everybody Yeah. Were the thing always.

And they always had D one players and they never played you at, at running back. You had played you at the speed for it, but they always played Reggie, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, but, and I was just glad to have a starting position, playing defense. Yeah. And, you were doing you on kick return or pun return?

It was, I forgot how I got on. It was kick. It was, I did both. but I dunno who it was. Somebody either got injured or was academically ineligible or did something stupid and they couldn't, couldn't play. And then the defensive coach, I forgot who that guy's name was. Short stock. He was a wrestling coach.

Ayers or, no, not hes, who was before did Giacomo Ays the short stocky guy. He was a wrestling coach. I don't remember. I remember Did Giacomo, HES McCormick Airs. May have been Hes Coach Ayers Kinda loud a little bit. He was our defense coordinator. Okay. Anyways. Yeah, I remember Coach Airs. Yeah. Yeah. That would be so.

You know, we do the defensive drills. Well, somebody's gotta carry the ball so the defense can practice tackling, right. So every time I got the ball, nobody could tackle me. Oh. So they saw, okay, well we can use this. So, so when it came down it's like, oh, who are we gonna put back there? coach goes, put Kaminsky back there, he's good at open field running or whatever, breaking.

And so that's how I got picked to go do that. So we're playing our rival and the reason I was good at it is because of my brother and his friends. Oh. 'cause you had to run. 'cause we played this game when we were little. We had in Dearborn, we had our house and then the garage was detached, so it was, and our backyard was behind the house, but alongside the garage.

So envision that type of a yard. So we would always, go play outside. So we'd always try to entertain ourselves. So we'd throw the football on top of the roof of the garage and you can't sit, you had to be up wherever it comes down. Wherever it comes down. Somebody had whoever you grab it and you had to run to the back of the, the back of the backyard to, to score and you kind of kept score.

Yeah. So anytime I would do it, I had to like figure out to not get hit by my older brother and his friends. Yeah. So that's how I learned how to Oh yeah. 'cause you were the younger brother evade tacklers. Yeah. Yeah, because I'd get tackled, there's the thing about that with the younger brother having to, with older brothers, like Yeah.

Even, Carmen Kelly, who, who was on, who was the baseball player, who was on the podcast. He had an older brother that he always had to deal with. Yeah. That had to compete with Yeah. And they always, had one up. They're older, they're bigger, they're stronger. So the younger one has to hustle more and work harder and Yeah.

Stay, stay alive. And you're, you're pretty much playing Kill the man with the ball. That's exactly what it was. Or forget the ball. We all go for the guy. I never tried to take a direct hit. Oh, yeah. So that got you. Good. Yeah. That got you. The training. So that got me the, the Barry Sanders moves, it's like Yeah.

For the, one of the most spectacular moments of all of our high school careers, because Naples High was our, everybody's nemesis, but especially for us. 'cause we just, were a new school, didn't have a big football program. Didn't have our home thing. And so for us to even come close to beating Naples or coming

Keeping the game close, they would put the games on the radio. They weren't televised, but Joe k Climas would, the games were on WNOG. Wonderful Naples on the golf. Oh, wow. The radio station. WNOG and Joe K Climas would do the games. And he had this great, exciting voice and he knew all the players' names.

He did. He knew by the, by the, did he the little score sheet? The, not the, well, whatever they gave him, which was usually wrong. what do you call it? The roster that they, they, yeah, it was the roster. But it was, what did they, the program. The program, yeah. Yeah. Which was printed wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Which said John Kaminski.

Yeah. Instead of Jeff Kaminski. Yeah. So I was getting to the game late and parking at Naples High was always difficult 'cause they didn't have, you had to park in neighborhoods, the residential neighborhood. And where Pam lived. Yeah, that's right. Right across the street. Yeah. Your bride. Yeah. Yeah.

Lived there. Didn't know it at the time. Yeah. I didn't know she was, I wonder if she was at the game. She probably was. She was. She was a sta she was a sta statistician with, with Mel and never knew that number 30 one's gonna be my husband. Yeah. He's gonna be the father of my children. That's crazy fate.

That's wild. Because I'm pulling in with my, I think at the time it was the Monte Carlo, the yellow banana, yellow Monte Carlo finding a parking spot. I got the game on the radio and I'm late and I hear Joe Kli is getting so excited because Kaminski, and he was calling him, John Kaminski broke a tackle on a kick, broke many tackles and is running down the field about to score a touchdown.

And this man who will forever live an infamy to this day, Curtis Walker, we hate you. Curtis Walker ran him down. Probably the fastest guy on their team caught jam and Jeff Kaminski, what they called him John Kaminski on the radio. It was like, that's my friend. That's my best friend. He just did that. He just did not get Staples High.

I think I made it to like the four yard line. Yeah. And like got. Shoot, shoestring tackled me and But what was that like? Exhausting. I don't know. It was, it was fun. But it was exciting 'cause that's what I did all through Michigan. I played, running back and so I was kind of disappointed that I didn't get to play running back down here.

Yeah. But, so when I got the opportunity to do that, I was like, this is, this is right in my wheelhouse. Yeah. So I think I told you, before, I dunno if you remember, but I came off that everybody's cheering 'cause, we ended up scoring and stuff and it was a close game too. I know.

Yeah. If Man Manhart hadn't dropped that one time, that was the game, Phil, sorry. Phil. Phil. Phil Manhart was right in his bread basket. Drop the ball forever. Phil will be remembered for that. It was a memorable game because we almost had the big upset. Yeah. That was like the upset of the decade 'cause Yeah.

Especially us. 'cause we just weren't known. Yeah. But I came, kept running off the field in, in Brus and looks. He goes, why didn't you tell me you could run like that? I'm like, coach, he turns back back and I flipped him off. What you, what does it take? Yeah, yeah. Like you're proving it on the field. Yeah. That was, that was.

Even that even we lost, even though we lost the game, it was still a statement. It was made our school proud. Maybe Baren, Collier's., actually I think that season, our first game I think was against like Port Charlotte or something. Yeah. And we won a game and I remember Port Charlotte being so ticked off because they were the team that lost to Barron card.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Because wasn't Barron like we were, if you had gone to Baron your whole high school career, that was the first four year graduating class. Our group was. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause it's 78 was the freshman class. We were the first four year group to go through. Yeah. Yeah. And there hadn't been much success.

Yeah, I remember that game too. 'cause I, we were, we were winning and it was getting down and the other team was Charlotte was, had the ball and they were trying to, score and beat us. And I got it. They threw a long pass and I got an interception and I got beat up. You pick the play.

Really? Yeah. Picked, yeah. I picked it off. I was running down the sideline. They tackled me and there was this line that was just beating the hell outta me because he was pissed that we saved the game. Got the ball back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember talk of that game. 'cause that was a big deal. Blake Moore and sights.

And who was on your defense? Jimmy. Jimmy Muir. David Anderson. David. He was defense. Yep. It was all our backfield. Our defensive backfield was me, Blake Moore, Jim Muir, David Anderson brand was the linebacker. Brandon Dave was Lineback. Yeah, Dave Brand was a linebacker. Who am I missing there? Somebody else.

Who's the red, tall redhead? He was a lineman, I think. oh. He was an offensive lineman. He was offensive line. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Richard something. Richard. Yeah. He played, I think he went to play at Central Michigan or Central Florida. Oh yeah. Think U-S-F-U-C-F. Yeah. but Breaks quarterback, Reggie Runningback.

Yep. Steve Miller was a wingback. Oh, Steve. Yeah. Wingback and, yeah, an old style. And then, wingback, Chris, Wright. Matt. Oh, Chris Wright. Yeah. Matt, Chris. Wide receiver. Chris was a running back too. Chris Wright. Yeah. Yeah. Chris. It may have been Chris that I subbed out for, when I got to do kick returns.

Yeah. I'm not sure. He may have gotten injured or something like that. Yeah. I'm trying to think if I knew any more people's names. Yeah, I know we're missing Phil. That was mostly the camper group and the Yeah. That's kind of stuck together. Well, Billy Tucker too. Oh, Tucker. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was defensive back too.

Yeah. Steve Frog play too. Steve Frog. He was offensive line. Rest in peace, Steve. Yeah. This guy named Goner. Joe. He'll, he'll watch this. He's the only, he's one of the few that is loyal to everyone. Yeah. He will watch, I'm sure you do some nasty little remarks. Oh, he's, yeah. He's the best, but he, he's good for the algorithm.

Yeah. Thanks Joe. But, love you Joe. You gotta have him on the podcast. Him and Yeah. Get him and Matt, Chris to, do a Oh, together. Together. Yeah. Oh, they love each other. Yeah. Nobody gets under matched skin like Joe. Yeah. It's those two forever. And Joe lives to get under people's skin. Oh, he doesn't matter who it is.

Master's a professional. Yeah. He just like, watch me get this guy. He knows exactly somebody's weak style. But there is this guy that, another guy, and I'm sure Joe will remember him 'cause 'cause I think Joe didn't, Joe used to go to, he came over from Naples High. Yeah, yeah. He was, and there was another guy that was really fast.

George Aeed. George ae, yeah. But he was, he was really fast. But I don't remember him being a really tough player. Like he could get, he was known for speed, but Yeah. Yeah. Known for his speed, but not necessarily, being able to take a hit and stuff. Yeah.,? So not like a tough player. Yeah. So, that's just because he was Lay, I think he came over from Lay.

Yeah, he was from Lely. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. But he, I didn't make a lot of waves anyway. I just knew his speed. I always heard about his, how fast he was. I think Matt was the first friend that I had that on the football team. Oh yeah. Yeah. And because I think it was, it was football was before football started or something.

It was gym class or something. He was trying to mess with me and I didn't back down. 'cause I was like, all right, yeah, let's go. Yeah. Yeah. And he was, he was going, you're pretty cool. And then he started being nice to me. Yeah. so that's, isn't that funny. Yeah. You remember your, like for me it was such a huge transition coming down here.

Yeah. especially you, everybody, the Ramada end gang, that was comforting and Yeah., being, have a, a home and then, playing football with those guys and the campers and stuff. Yeah. I didn't get, I didn't go camping with them all the time, like, 'cause they had, that had started before I even got there.

Yeah. The whole camper group. So. Well that was, so the, so the Ramada end was where the, there's a condo there now, but it's at the end of, right next to Wiggins pass. Hundred 11th Avenue, right next to Wiggins Best. There's big condo there. That was the Ramada Inn. So that was sort of our hangouts. So Vanderbilt area was sort of Baron Collier's beach area.

And then the campers would go to where, which is like off airport, which is the industrial park back there, which was nothing. A horseshoe. Horseshoe. Yeah. It's called Horseshoe. Ben Horseshoe. Yeah. That's the back, that's where they would go and get a keg of beer and, camp out there. Nobody would bother 'em.

Yeah. Yeah. That was pre, Before we had our artistic, we showed off artistic flair in, at high school before we demonstrated how good we were as artists. Yeah. We won't go into that topic. I think my kids are gonna watch this. Right. Thank God we can't, that was not public publicly. I have to tell my daughter Julia, where she got her creativity from.

Yes. Daddy Daddy's artistic. Artistic. Yeah. Yeah. People have to research that and see with a deal, a deep dive on it. It's, I don't see, you can't find anything online. So thankfully we were juveniles, so we were protected. Yes. Still to this day, sealed records. The records are sealed. Yes. And they cannot be unsealed, thankfully.

No. mugshots.com for us. Yeah. Yeah. Well the Ram Good times. The Ramada was, so work was you worked in front of the house? 'cause you were I started off as a busboy. Yeah. I think, Jack, is that his name? Jack ran that. Yeah. And I, Harold was talking about you. Yeah, the couple, yeah. Yeah. Jack and Harold.

Jack was there, like the, I interviewed with him and he was, hard kind, trying to be a hard guy and just really, yeah. And as soon as I told him my story about, yeah. My dad died on my birthday and I just moved down here with my mom and I have no friends and I don't know. And they was like, I better give this guy a job.

Yeah. So, so I started as a busboy, but then had the quickly influenced by the back of the house crew. Yeah. And, yeah. Doug and Kurt and Don and, I mean, that was our, that was our upbringing. I was like, who was the Vietnam guy? Cook the got guy Rich. Rich, yeah. Vietnam. Yeah. He had a couple DUIs. He ride his bike to work?

No, rich was the, was he a breakfast, daytime cook or nighttime cook? No, rich was nighttime. No, I think I'm thinking of somebody else had long blonde hair. Oh, Don, that was Don Donna, the ponytail. Yeah. Took, took fast Bobby to the, emergency room when he cut his finger. Yeah, that was probably, I forgot about that.

Yeah, he cut his finger. Good. Yeah. Don, yeah, he was the guy who used to tap the keg. He used to go into the walk-in cooler out to bring his own tap. Get the tap, yeah. Like and fill up pictures of beer, sounds like. Yeah. And bring 'em inside, because that's when the, they cut us off from getting pitchers at the end of the night from the, from the bar.

'cause remember they, we used to be able to just give 'em a pitcher, a water pitcher, and they'd fill the beer and they fill it up so that as we're cleaning up after dinner, we got the drink and Yeah. And we usually started before the dining room closed and then they changed it to say, alright, wait till the dining room closes.

And then they said, all right, you guys. And that's probably when he tapped a, yeah. The 'cause that was the walking killer. Was that the one right in back cooler or the one across the produce school? Outside The one outside, yeah. Oh, no, no. It was before they built the one across. Yeah, it was the one right out the door there.

Yeah. You go in there, close the door and Yeah, yeah, yeah. He don would hand us the picture and go, go get me my, yeah. Fill it up. Wow. That was crazy. We would do that. Stealing beer from the place. Yeah. Yeah. That was, David, sorry about your food cost that we killed. Yeah. In those times. But, but we, our lives were there.

We, we did everything there. Like a lot of stuff. I mean that was, yeah. And then I had a stent when I came. I went to Michigan and then I came back for a year, to save some money and stuff. 'cause I think living situation in Michigan is like, I had to come back to Florida for a little while and I came back to the Vermont Inn and it was like, what job can I get?

And David got me into housekeeping. Remember I did the housekeeping job? Oh yeah. Yeah. You were like leading or something. Yeah. I was like doing all the room inspections and stuff like that. Yeah. I forgot about that era. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are the formative years of our lives in early. Yeah. Thought I was gonna go into hotel management after doing that.

And Yeah. And then it said nah. Yeah. It gave you leadership experience. 'cause you were, yeah. You were running things there. I don't, yeah. I'll never forget, like when I first, very early on, like somebody goes, oh, somebody stole something. One of the housekeeping ladies goes, somebody stole something from me or whatever.

And it's like I had to get all everybody together and kind of. Do interviews and find out and who, who could have stolen the stuff. And it was, it was really crazy. Yeah. That was a whole other department that was like, the housekeeping was such a separate wing from what The world we knew in the kitchen.

That was like a whole other, I forgot who ran that, who the person was this lady, I forgot what her name was, but she was really cool. Yeah. and then we used to make the pina colada mix for the cheeky bar. Yeah. Run it out. Those pada, not in the housekeeping, but, when we, those were delicious in the kitchen.

Yeah. Yeah. But it was just the mix. We, I think we were just making the mix or did we make the actual I don't think we made the whole thing. We didn't put the alcohol in there. No. The those, they had the best pina coladas there. They were so good. Yeah. That the Cheeky parlor, which is notorious if you, if you, because everybody would come for Sunset there.

This, it was the most beautiful spot. You go there and get a drink on the beach and there's little cheeky hu at the Ramada and it was known when that closed. It was such a big deal. Somebody was always playing music out there. There Yeah. Talent out there. Yeah. It was a beautiful spot in Naples. So that, I think staying at the Ramada Inn is what got my dad to stay.

Oh right., he is like, oh, 'cause it's Yeah. Place. That's where people would stay Right. On the beach. Well, and no Ritz, the condo that he got, Ritz was right there. Yeah. They were building right next to the Ritz. Yeah. So we would always come down and, stay at the Ramada. Yeah. It was the Ramada and La Playa.

They were the two on the beach. Yep. And the beach clubhouse there too. At the Lighthouse Restaurant and Motel. Yeah. Yeah. But that was the spot. And, still North, north Naples. But that was before the Ritz. 'cause Ritz Ritz didn't come until 86. which changed Naples. No, we helped clear the land for that.

We did, we did. I forgot we, why did they leave the keys in a bulldozer on, I don't know. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. We actually, they were clearing Pelican Bay where Pelican Bay is now. They were clearing, they had these big excavator trucks and bulldozers and they would leave these vehicles overnight.

And it was an area that was not like a weekend. Yeah., not accessible, well seen. Right. And you couldn't access ITT walk for a while to get there. Couldn. Yeah. You had to walk along the beach and then go up in Yeah. And they would leave these big rigs that had the keys. Like they, you could just start these trucks up.

Right? Yeah. We would start 'em up and try to bulldoze at 16. I don't remember doing it, but I remember fast. Bobby did. I remember he was the one that was kind. He, he was the brave one. Right. He was the brave one. Yeah. We're like, ah, I gotta get outta here. We gotta get outta here. Yeah. We were nervous about that.

That was, yeah. We had a lot of bad influences. The only reason we got in trouble was 'cause we were hanging around with the wrong people. We were very innocent. We were, we got, just got caught at the wrong place. Everybody is to wrong place at the wrong time. Be careful who you hang out with. Yeah. When you're younger.

Could have been way worse. Could have been way, way worse. Yeah. But we, but I mean, you think about it, that's. Like you said, there was no Ritz Carlton. We'd go to Vanderbilt Beach and we just had to walk a couple hundred yards. And then there was nobody, nobody would walk down that far to nothing. No. Put their towels down or their, or hang out.

So we would, yeah, as you said, Barron Collier would go and that would be our beach hangout. They'd walk a couple hundred yards, dig a hole in the sand and Right. There was nothing there. Keg there. You had your whole beach there. There was nobody because that whole, no. Pelican Bay, no Ritz. And then the Ritz came and Ritz kind of put Naples on the map.

Really? That was brought everybody from everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. It was the big made, made Naples known. But we were there before we helped clear that land. I forgot about that part. Yeah. We were good citizens. We were, yes. So then you we both kind of went our way after high school. I went to Tampa. Yeah.

I went, I went back up to Michigan and finished college up there. And of course we never stayed in touch because there was no cell phones. Right. And if I wanted to call you, I had to know when you were gonna be home. Yeah. And it was long distance, so it cost money. It was so like, it was expensive too. Yeah.

Call long. I mean, I barely talked to my mom because long distance was expensive. Yeah. And then there was always the, who he was not home. You get an answering machine or Yeah., if they even had answering machines back then Yeah. They came a little later. Yeah. So we never really stayed in touch because, except for once in a great while, we, I guess that was our first.

Battleship, yeah. Trying to catch each other, trying to catch each other. It was like, oh, you got me. But, never Unless you planned a time. Yeah. Yeah. You didn't know. Yeah. So you went up there, you lived where you went back to school up there. You lived in Ann Arbor? No, when I first moved back up there, I lived, gosh, where did I think I lived, it was like Redford, it was another suburb of like right around Livonia.

Okay. Like another suburb there., there's Redford, Inkster Detroit. I lived in Detroit for a little bit. I had some different roommates and things. and then, when I lived in, after I got outta college, I, when I was working for UPS, worked, lived in Madison Heights in the walled lake, south Lyon, all over the place.

So you were, you had to put your, you had to pay for school 'cause you didn't have a Oh yeah, we didn't. So I dunno if you remember this, but in high school, in order for my mom was getting so, my dad's social security benefits. And in order for her to keep getting it for me, to kind of help us out and living down there, I had to be enrolled in college.

'cause they were gonna cut it off any of the benefits unless you were in college. If you're in college, you could keep getting benefits. Yeah. So I had to start taking college classes my senior year in high school. My last semester, the spring of 82. They had that then. Yeah. You that. So I went to Edison and took a couple classes there.

Okay. Had to be at least part-time. So those, they worked it out to where those Edison classes counted towards my high school, credits as well. So, yeah. So I, when I went to backup, and so this was, so nowadays, we planned things out for our kids, but my parents did go to college and my brothers and older brothers and sisters that had gone to college weren't keeping in touch with us and, what we were doing.

So I didn't even know how to, like, I remember taking the SATI didn't even know you had to, I think I was asking you or somebody else. It's like, yeah, what are you doing this weekend? Oh, I'm taking the SAT. Oh yeah. What's that? I didn't know you had to do take Yeah, it wasn't all these prep and Yeah, it was all these prep things and stuff like that.

Saturday study group and yeah. None of that stuff going on. So I, but anyways, I ended up having to get financial aid., I was able to get Pell Grants too, because we weren't making any money. Didn't have any income. So qualified for Pell Grants, but he didn't pay for everything. So he got student loans to go to school up there, to go to school up there for Michigan.

And, but to pay for rent,. And living expenses and stuff., my mom didn't support me after I moved out, so I had to get So you did that all on your own Three jobs worked, you were on your own? Yeah, I worked completely, yeah. I worked at a, a restaurant, a bar, and then I got worked, started working part-time at UPS.

To put yourself through school. To put myself through school. Yeah. While everybody, and then, my buddy Glenn was at Michigan State and another guy that I roomed with Craig was, they both stopped going to college. I don't know if it was like sophomore year or whatever, but I said, I've gotta keep going through this.

You know, so I kind of pushed through and graduated. Took me longer. But Was Michigan the school it is now in terms of Michigan versus Michigan State, like the smart kids go to Michigan, it doesn't know that. Yeah. It's always been that way as far as the two schools. Yeah. But I didn't go to the Ann Arbor campus.

I went to the party school was Michigan, the party school of state. The party school of state. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was harder to get into Michigan, so that's why. Yeah. So why did you pick it? Well, because I grew up a Michigan fan. We had, see, my dad had season tickets, so we always watched Michigan football Oh.

Growing up. So I was like, oh, gotta go back up. Yeah. Especially after, it was in your blood all the way. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't know about going to college. I didn't even think about going to college. Yeah. So that when it came time, and it was, we were graduated from high school, I'm like, well, if I'm gonna go, I wanna go up there, try and make it, but I shouldn't have.

'cause they paid three times the tuition. 'cause that time I was a Florida resident. Oh yeah. Yeah. 'cause I graduated from high school there, so I was paying outta state tuition, which is stupid. I should have gone to Florida or, some other place. So, but it was in your blood, so you just Yeah.

So I just went up there the, the hardest way possible that you could do. Yeah. 'cause you had, you had to pay living expenses and Yeah. Didn't outta state tuition and Yeah. Figure it out on your own. But you did that all on your own. I mean, you had to. Well, and I kept saying, oh, I'll petition it. And then they'll, they'll have to, 'cause I lived 90% of my life in the state of Michigan, why wouldn't they give me in-state tuition?

And they never did. Really? Wow. Even though I had lived there and never moved,. Yeah. He said, Nope. So why did you choose, why did you do the most difficult route to get yourself through school? Because I didn't know any better. I didn't have any information. No. Like, there was no guidance. I had no guidance from anybody that said, Hey, let's think through this.

You know? Yeah. It's just more of, you need to get a degree. And so that's what I did. And my friends, I had friends up there, so, it was tough when I left Michigan to come down here. And so I went back up there, but then those friendships weren't really there anymore anyway. So I kind of found myself

You know, just up there, but not really enjoying it. I really enjoyed Naples in Florida. Yeah. Climate was better. I didn't like cold weather Yeah. That much. But I found myself up there and, after we, started working at UPS and stuff, it, kind of clicked for me. But, and then college was tough and then I didn't get to experience the true college experience.

That's why. Oh yeah. Because you, that's all my kids. It's like focus on school, experience the stuff that, going to college and, go to football games, go to, join a fraternity or whatever you want to do, but focus on school and don't worry about working,? 'cause I, that's what I did.

I worked constantly. And there's times that I had to drop classes because I was work, I had to work more and I had to, I couldn't handle the, the class load and be working the two, three jobs that I had. But you had to work to pay for school and live in order to just live. Yeah. Yeah.

Make a car payment, pay car insurance. Yeah., so I never made long distance phone calls to you because I was like, no, that's too expensive. Right. Yeah. That's crazy. Wow. Had to call you unless I got, somebody's, MCI card or something and Yeah. The calling code or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Calling in the 800 number. We used to have a 800 number here. 1 803 salons. Yeah. Where they, we paid for the long distance. Yeah. Yeah. Forgot about those. Does it even exist anymore? No. Yeah. so you finish school, finish undergrad. Then what? Then I was working at, UPS offered me a full-time job and I was doing industrial engineering or designing delivery routes for them, and then went into full-time operations management and stuff like that.

So industrial engineering routing. This was pre, computerized, computerized networks, right? Yes. So, yeah. Kind of helped them. Our, one of our, the package center that I worked at was the, one of the pilot centers in the nation for rolling out the computerized clipboard. So when I started working there, they were still recording package delivery on carbon paper and pen.

Wow. And so every, every time they recorded something on the line, it, they had a piece of carbon paper and there would be two copies. So one would go into the, they had a, a backup. Yeah. And, then they rolled out the computerized clipboard, which was like 14 inches long and probably weighed 12 pounds.

Really top heavy revolutionary though. Had little screen that you could Yeah. You signed in that you had to No, you didn't even, didn't even sign, you didn't sign on that digital? Oh, no. Okay. No. Did you sign, I'm trying to think. Did you sign maybe later? I think they, yeah, would have that. did did they have that now?

No, I think, I think maybe you could sign, sign something, but it wasn't on the screen. No, it was like on a pad. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But, you couldn't scan anything. There was no barcodes. No. You had to punch the address in. Wow. And this was all UPS was newer? No. Or they were not public at the time? They weren't public.

It was private and they'd been around, but they were, they were expanding. They were expanding leaps and bounds and that's when they came out, like when I started working with them, they came out with next day air. So that's when all the air deliveries, they started buying fleets of planes and all of that.

And then it started getting more digital and so we rolled out the computerized clipboard to our center and our guys switched from the carbon paper and pen to computerized clipboard. So that was fun. That's what kind of got me into doing kind of that whole change management transformation stuff. 'cause it was fun to kind of help people get through something tough.

Right. Because I was like, it's okay. Just break it down. Adapt to change. It was a big change. Yeah. It was adapting to change. I mean, there was guys that had been UPS packaged car drivers longer than I had been alive. Wow. At that point. Wow. And I was their manager. Yeah. And I had to, they had to, I had to tell 'em, you have to use the clipboard.

Oh, I can't do it. I'm gonna get carpal tunnels. I'm,. Yeah. 'cause they had to use their thumbs to kinda Wow. Type in all the addresses instead of just writing it out. But it was fun because those same guys, after we got through it and got 'em trained and transitioned over, their, their, their clipboard would go down and I'd go, oh yeah.

Try to figure, no, you know what? Just go to carbon paper and pen for right now. I'll, I'll figure it out and, we'll see what's going on with your board. And, I can't do my route on carbon paper and pen. Can't go back. Yeah. Yeah. I can't go back. Yeah. And I'm like, success. Yeah. Yeah. I've obviously did something right.

Yeah. So, but I like doing that kind of stuff. Well that had you thinking in that world and that, and that's where you, what had you say, well, I'm gonna go back and get a master's. I wanna go back to school and really specialize in this. Yeah. What, what, what got you there? Well, I did that because at UPS it was like, you don't just get to choose that UPS, you had to work your way up.

That's the mentality that, at least in Metro Detroit, they had that. It's like, no, you don't get to just jump to doing that kind of work. You've gotta, you gotta work even though you're already doing it. Even though I was already doing it, I had the smarts to do it and, the skill to do it and the ambition to do it and all that stuff.

It's like, nope, you still have to. Work all these shift and all these long hours and do all this other stuff instead of taking advantage of what I wanted to do. So, and in metro Detroit, it was, a lot of fighting with the teamsters and there was some, it was union up there. Oh, it's always, yeah, it was always been Teamsters.

Oh, not, not just up there. Oh, all over. But in metro Detroit, there was a lot of leaders, like division leaders, but management was not, union management was not union. Yeah. So, but the senior leadership in metro Detroit was like, they had gotten their positions like battlefield promotions, like they were a package car driver, and all of a sudden we're expanding.

You're now a manager. They had no skills. They had never been to college. They had never managed people before. They just knew the business. They knew the routes. So you're now the division leader and, they're ex, oh, you're ex-military. Okay, we're gonna make you. So that was their experience.

So when it came to, things not going well, their, their thing was, well just ride 'em, make 'em, it's like everything, to a hammer, everything's a nail. Right. So it's like, Hmm. And they would tell me, I was like, okay, the time study's wrong. This guy's working, he's doing what he should do. He is following, following our procedures, but, he's never gonna beat the route, the way it's calculated to.

You should, it should take you eight hours to do it. Well, it's taking him nine hours., ride them, basically get 'em to quit. I'm like, so that's why I said, you know what? I don't have to getting behind the why of that's not yours. Yeah. Why am I doing that? But yeah. But, but that was the culture.

Yes. But your mind was going, well let's why, like, why is it that let's look behind what Yeah. Is there instead of hammering. Yeah. Yeah. So that was kind of my, I dunno, I guess I've kind of always had that, problem solving. 'cause I had to problem solve to make it through college. I had to figure out how to do it.

Yeah. It was like, okay, well I gotta make $450 rent, how am I gonna do that and Yeah. Pay for gas and, do all these things. I had to figure out how am I gonna make it work. And so I was constantly trying to figure out how to do it. Yeah. And then when I was, before I got into, when I was working part-time, I did like the preload stuff, which is loading the package cars.

So I managed those people doing that. And so it was like trying to problem solve like, oh, these packages don't fit on the truck. Or it's like, we gotta move these, gotta move Robert to Philadelphia, packages all these boxes, gotta move it over to this other truck so this guy can, we can fit all the other packages here and we'll have somebody else go over to Robert to Philadelphia and do that, or,.

So I had to do all that stuff on the fly. But that was like between 3:00 AM and 8:00 AM Yeah. And then I would go to class. but I kind of learned to. Figure stuff out. So that's how I got it and I kinda liked it. Yeah, you've always asked those probing questions no matter what I'm bitching about over the years to you.

'cause had me think of that this morning when you were sitting in, near the meeting that we had this morning, the conversation we had, and I'm thinking, knowing that you're in the room and the problem came up, well why can't we get them to just do this simple task of bring the ticket of, of close the last part of the six steps of service.

And for some reason just your presence there had me think, well, why don't I ask that question? Yeah. Like, why is that not happening? Like instead of just do it, everybody just do it. Yeah. Well why, why is it not happening? 'cause I had me think of that just having you there. 'cause I know that's how you think.

I don't, it was subconscious though. It wasn't a conscious thing. But then I asked that question and then they started talking about it and it became a conversation that is easier to solve. Like Yeah. And then it's like, oh, well we do it because it takes too long. Or does it Well, why does it take too long?

Yeah. Whoa. It takes too long because I'm always doing this. Well, why are you doing that? That's not your job. Mm. So who's telling you have to do that? Well, I just figured I had to. Well, that's, you don't need to do that. Yeah. So if you stop doing that, could you do the Yeah. Last two step. Oh yeah. I guess I could, yeah.

Yeah. But that's, that's the fun part. It's like, it's more of, see that's when you have success with transformation is when you get the other person to come up with the solution. Yeah. Even though you may know, like you just need to. Do this instead of you like me coming up with the solution. You coming up with the solution, then you feel good.

'cause you hey, you solved it. Yeah. Not me telling you need to do this. Yeah. Yeah. Because then you go, oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about. But if they come up with the solution, then they own it. They own the solution. So they're bought in because it's their idea. Yeah. You just help them get there.

So, so over the years you've worked with that with many organizations in bringing that into, 'cause organizations don't naturally have this toward of sort of tool or they don't think about things that way. Yeah. But then in the last couple decades or so, right? They've been bringing in this, this operational way that people are somewhat resistant to it seems like, or they're, they're just not, it's different.

Yeah. Well it's like, people have their already always way of listening in how they do things., and they don't think outside the box because what's comfortable is what you're familiar with. And so they're resistant naturally to any kind of change because, it's not the way I do it's not the way we do things around here.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh well yeah, nobody ever them. Well why, why don't you do it that way?,? Yeah. And that's, but that's just human nature. We're to have that resistance to doing. Things differently. Yeah. And it's a lot of times you just, if as you just ask, ask why like three or four times you get to the root cause of like, why have you done it this way?

Well, we had a client that was really upset one time, and so now we always make sure we do these extra three steps. It's like, oh, okay. And that worked for that client. Yeah. Okay. And so you do that for every client? It's like, yeah, we do that for every client. Now, does every client like get upset to where you have to do those?

No. No. It's like, oh, okay. Well, so is that client still here that you did that for? No, they're gone. It's like, but you still do the three steps. Yeah, the extra three steps. It's like, so do you really need to do that? No, I guess we don't. Yeah. But we just always done it that way, and we never really thought about changing it or how inefficient it was.

Yeah. And these inherited practices that just go on. Yeah. And people don't even know the why behind. Nope. Why are we doing that? Cynic that said, start with the why Peterson. Yeah. Cynic. Cynic. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So why, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. But yeah, but it's the same. Same thing. Yeah. It's like when you're problem solving, it's like, why are we doing this?

Yeah. Or what are we trying to solve? And everybody's all upset. Well, what are we upset about? What's, what are we actually trying to solve here? Yeah. Because a lot of times people start to solve things and they don't even know what they're trying to solve. They just know people are upset and things aren't working.

It's like, well, let's try this. Let's try that. Yeah. And it's like, well, what are we trying to solve? Is that really the problem or is it something else? And you find out it's something totally unrelated that you have to solve. So you got to see a lot of dysfunction in a lot of different organizations at different sizes and levels, and you got to experience the dysfunction, but also then work on implementing change and then deal with the resistance of even the CEO who says, yeah, we want this, but we don't want that.

Right. We'll take a little bit of it, but not all of it. Yeah, yeah. Or we'll, or some of the, yeah, so it'd be either a department or, as small as like an individual process, which is much easier because you just have one little process owner and they're like, oh, thank you for fixing my accounts receivable process, or whatever it is.

It's like, yeah, this is so much better. I didn't realize we were doing that. And, they get it and it's faster, but when you go to an organization, it's like, why is our, why are our implementations taking so long? And you gotta look at the whole implementation process that involves, five different departments and so forth.

Those are harder changes because you have to, each of those departments have their leaders in their way of doing things. But you're trying to implement change for the whole company to improve the cost effectiveness of the implementation organization as a whole., the, how much time are we, how much, how long does it take for us to implement a customer into our system?

Right. and. But in order to solve it, you have to look at the parts that build up to it. Like how do you, it's like your six step process or whatever you've got, if you were looking at it and you said, guys, I want you to do this much faster. It's taking too long., there's serving you as a client, like I want it to be faster.

But then, when you analyze it and you say, okay, well it's taking step one, you do this, step two, you do this, and each step there's an owner and you have to convince them of the change and their step. It's like, well, in step three we really, we need you to do it this way because it's taking too long to do step number three.

And so you gotta convince that person, you gotta convince all the people along the way that the changes they have to work together. Because the ultimate goal is to shrink the process from one to six to make it more efficient. Because that's what our customer feels. Our customer feels the one through six, they don't care about step three.

Yeah. They're, they, they don't care how long it takes you, or the fact that you wanna put extra love into step number three.,? And I get it that you love your step number three, but, the customer feels one through six. So how do we work together to make one through six as a team?

That way. Yeah. And that's hard sometimes. 'cause you've got these e all the different egos that are going on at different levels and the politics of it all, which is the part that kind of got it burned me out. The politics of it all. Yeah. Because I could see the possibility of what could be, and the politics got in the way of other people seeing the possibility and truly what it, what it is that we're working for.

They had a different why than what the company did or what I had to help the company. Yeah. And their why got in the way of solving the true problem. And they purposely or subconsciously would sabotage the transformation Yeah. Because of their fears. And sometimes when you're the outsider trying to explain that to people, it, they, shore up their defenses.

Yeah. So. Well, and this is at every size company too. Oh yeah. 'cause you work some big, big companies. Yeah. I mean, a DP Ceridian, first Data, first Data, big, big companies. Yeah. Like at a high level. But it exists at every, in every culture. There's some version of that. Yeah. And, but the fun part of doing that type of work is that you get to see.

The possibility and actually get them and the lights go off and people go, oh, this is so much better. Yeah, this is great.,? Yeah. but, I always kind of describe it if it's like, it's kind of like the business side of HGTV. Oh, this is a great fixer upper, this house has so much possibility.

Yeah., if you just changed the front yard and you, opened up, knocked out this wall and did this, and it's like, it would be so much better. Yeah. It's the same thing in business. It's like, well, if you just change this process, you do this, it would just be so much more efficient. Customers would be so much happier.

And then when you do it, you do the big reveal. It's like, wow. Look at how much better things are. Yeah. It's a, it's an area that I don't think is well known because they, well, we'll have somebody come in and do a rah rah, which is not the same thing. This is like doing a root canal on the culture of the business in a way that will transform the business with Right.

By how it operates. Like not, seeing things that they didn't know that they didn't know that exist. Yeah. So there's two different ways you, companies can do it. So you can go to, like, the big, it's a big six, big eight, how many different, the Deloittes, the McKenzie's McKenzie's.

Pricewaterhouse., all those, big, big firms, Bain Consulting Yeah. And all those, yeah. expensive firms. They'll come in and say, well, we're gonna tell you how to do this, and this is the change that you need to make and you need to implement and 'cause we know best and, all that stuff.

There's that type of expert consulting, or you can be a process consultant. So basically you take them through the change to where, like I described earlier, they're the change, change it. So they're bought in and so you're teaching them, it's like teaching them to fish instead of just saying, here's your new process, you're gonna do it.

And then they leave and they go, okay, we're just gonna go back to do it the old way. Yeah. 'cause that's what we're familiar with and We're just doing it because the boss, the leader du jour, the new CEO or the new SVP that's here, oh, he'll be gone in another year and a half.

He's gonna climb the ladder and he'll be gone. We'll go back to do the old way. That's not the kind of transformation that I like to, be a part of, because that's all about making money in, in greed and there's nothing wrong with making money. Yeah. But it's, so, it's more satisfying if you actually help somebody or help a company through that transformation to where they're, they're better because of it and they actually are better leaders and managers, because now they start asking why.

Yeah., like, are we measuring the right thing? Yeah., it's like the call centers that's like, well we gotta reduce our. The length of our phone calls., we gotta be under a minute. Our, our customer service calls are too long. They're going three minutes, five minutes long and stuff.

But the cust that's not what you should measure, is the length of call. It's the customer satisfaction. So if it takes three to five minutes to educate your customer, that's better than having the call done quicker. Yeah. So then you train your agents. If you measure it's like, get off the phone call.

They're like trying to hurry up and an just give them an answer and get off the phone because that's what they're being measured on. Yeah. So you end up incenting the wrong behavior or the wrong, the wrong thing. So, yeah, that's a, that was proven. That particular thing was proven by Tony Hesh and, and Zappos with their call center with, 'cause they were by phone.

And before it was as much mail order, but his incentive, his, what he said was not get 'em off the phone. Get to know them. Yeah. And he allowed them to have an experience with the person on the phone. Yeah. Talk to them about the weather. Right. Or get to know who they are as a human. Yeah. And it, it gave them a name on the planet that no other call, mail order company ever had.

Where you could talk, call somebody, talk about football on the other end. They let, they gave 'em the latitude to do whatever they needed to do to build a relationship with a customer. And they had the resounding, I mean, he sold the company for, billion dollars. Yeah. 'cause he built this culture around taking care of the guests, not the metric of get 'em, get the order, get 'em off the phone.

And that's the thing about the work. That I ended up doing with all these companies. It's, it's, what's the voice of the customer? Not the voice of the business. Yeah. You gotta, it's like you can focus on the voice of the business and what's efficient and cost effective for the company because that, you gotta make money, you gotta satisfy your shareholders, but they're not the true customer.

The customer is who's paying the bills. So you have to make sure the customer's satisfied and that those things change constantly. So you think about

Cars, buying cars, like when, when you and I started driving, it's like, man, if you could have air conditioning, I'd be really satisfied., now it's a given. You gotta have air conditioning, right? Yeah. Air conditioning or power windows. Like an option. Yeah. Power windows. An navigation.

It was an option or a navigation. Yeah. Now if you don't have a big screen that's 12 inch, the people are going, I don't want that car. Yeah., their customer expectations change. They're not the stat, a static thing. So you constantly have to be thinking about what the customer experience is all about and not think that, you know what it is, like Disney reason, Disney was so good 'cause they.

They understood that, okay, who's our customer? Well, our customer is a mom and a dad with a seven and an 8-year-old, maybe four of them. And they're, trying to figure out, oh, I gotta drive in there. I gotta park, I gotta remember where to park. I gotta get 'em to, how do I get, so you create that experience.

And I always tell this story when, in, in trainings is that they, the reason they named the parking lots, like, this is Donald Duck lot, number eight,? because it's easy to remember is not just we're in lot number eight, whatever, we're in Donald Duck, number eight, because you, it's part of the experience.

So when your parents come back after being all day at the Magic Kingdom, they're like, where do we park?, it's not, they may not remember it, but the kids will, of course the kids are gonna, we're in Donald Duck, number eight, of course, if they're into it. And so it's like, okay, that's the experience.

So you want to make, and they parking, they had a whole division on parking lots because, and the efficiencies of that. because that's. Your last experience with them. Your last customer contact was them leaving the park first and last. Yeah. You're coming in pretty much. And so they damaged, like what, why are people frustrated?

Well, I got out to my car and I left my lights on. Now I got a dead car battery and everything they had, alright, you got, we got somebody that comes out, they'll jump start your car. They had all that ready, fully staffed, ready to go. but the other thing they did with remembering where you parked was they set it like when you got picked up in the little tram.

Yeah. When they dropped you off at the tram. Yeah. They kept saying, remember when you come back, that's down buck number eight. Yeah. Part of the experience. It's part of the experience. So, but a lot of times we focus on the greed of it all and how are we gonna make more money? So let's cut that out, let's cut those parking lot people out.

Yeah. So, and I think, the whole Elon Musk thing now with the Doge, it's the same thing, but you need to make sure you're asking the why of, or what's the true, why are we doing this? And I think all that stuff that he did as far as cutting out expenses, there's a lot of fat in our, in, in those processes.

So yeah., all that's good, but you gotta make sure that you're not, cutting too deep or not focusing on like, who's this really gonna impact. Yeah. so. but that's now when people ask like, what, what kind of work did you retire from? It's like, oh, continuous business transformation.

And it's like, oh. And I'm like, the stuff, the Doge stuff, the, that kinda stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So it is that, but, you gotta think about it. It is much more to it than just like, cutting things, which is what most of the, media says that Doge was doing. They're, oh, we're just cutting stuff. It's like, no thinking about what's really important in making sure that we have that money available to spend doing something else.

That's such a great representation of it. I think that's a perfect example of what that is because he went in asking why. Why do you keep the rec, why can we not let somebody retire quickly? Well, because we have this antiquated system of we can't get the records they're stored in a mine in Pennsylvania.

Story of mine. Yeah. He asked why. Well, why? Well, that's 'cause of the way we always did it. But why? Well, that's pre-computer that, that came up. Like the why questions were what he was asking. Well, that was the safest place to store paper materials was in a mine that was CL Climate Controlled and Act. It's the company that did that for the government is Iron Mountain, and I worked for Iron Mountain.

Oh, wow. So that's how I knew exactly what they were talking about. When those that came on tv, I was like, oh, that's Iron Mountain. Oh, that's fascinating. Wow. Yeah. That was part of the, and that's why it's called Iron Mountain, because they, it all started in the. In the caves. Yeah. Well, isn't that ironic?

Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. I didn't realize that. Yeah. But that's, that's literally what he was doing., I mean, in, in some regard, like, why, why are we doing this? And it's, those questions never got asked of government. They just keep doing it that way. Like they've never gotta Yeah. And the defensiveness that you heard of from politicians or leaders or people in those organizations, the resistance that they met was because this is the way we do things.

You can't just come into our and, and it's like, now they may have done it quickly because they had a short timeframe and not have tried to change the culture so much. And, but sometimes you gotta rip the bandaid off. Yeah. When it's that bad. You have to rip the bandaid off. Yeah. And I'm for that, that, that approach also.

But it needs to be a situation like he came in, they came into where there's so much, waste going on that you just kind of say, okay, we're starting over. Yeah. 'cause this is so inefficient. We're not gonna use the caves anymore. We're gonna design something new. Yeah. We're not gonna try and fix the existing process.

We're going to design a whole new one. Yeah. That's modernized and, gonna meet the customer's needs, which is let somebody retire quickly. Yeah. That's what they want. Yeah. Yeah. There. And there's so much of that, that just over time is, there's never been a process to, to make it better or to look at the customers.

Well, the thing is, is that we need to be doing that as human beings in every part of our life. And we need to be okay with saying, is there a better way? Yeah. And you may come out and say, yeah, there is a better way, but I'm not ready to do it yet. Or, and this is why, 'cause that certainly happens a lot too in business too, is, you can say, all right, we should do it this way.

Yeah. You have to say, well, what's the cost and what's the benefit of making that change? Yeah., when you do a lot of the, a lot of the, transformation work is based on the ge, the Toyota or GE philosophy depends on how far back you go, is the Six Sigma. Well, six Sigma is a statistical calculation.

And, but not everybody should get to Six Sigma because it would be too cost prohibitive. It's like, what is that a Greek, what, what term is that? What is six? It's a statistical math medical thing. Math, yeah. Six Sigma Six. Six Sigma. Yeah. Number six. I've heard it, but I never knew what it was like. You can be at 3.5 Sigma.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's the, it's the amount of variation in your process. Okay. So you're measuring the standard deviation. From, just in your statistical process. So how much variation do you have in your process? How much is acceptable? So like there's certain processes you can, like, call handle time.

Yeah. We're never gonna get to six. 'cause six is other. Six Sigma is really 90 point, 99.99, nine 9% ac accurate all the time. That percentage of accurate, whereas like a three Sigma, I don't remember the chart, but maybe 75% or 80%. And in some processes, like in, hey, if we're answering the question, when people call in to our call center, 80% of the time that's good to try to get to 99.999% would be, you'd have to, do all kinds of crazy investments and have more people or, have, AI bots and

Different things. It's like, okay, for our business it's not necessary, but if you're a pilot and you're landing a plane, better be Six Sigma. You don't want to have that, not you want to have 99.99% time that they're gonna land the plane correctly. Yeah. You can't go with 75% of the time you're gonna, yeah.

80% of the time we're gonna land, we're gonna land this plane without crashing. That sucks. That's not good. No. Or surgeries.,? Yeah. How many times are you gonna fail at surgery? Well, it better be pretty darn close to six sigma. Hmm. So, but there's certain things, it's like, it's not feasible to expect that Yeah.

Level of efficiency. Hmm. So that was some organizations, you're getting technical. Some organizations were looking for that. But while that I, 'cause I remember this at the Ritz Carlton before they were bought by the Marriott, they won a Malcolm Baldridge award and Six Sigma was, that was won algae.

Yeah. There was, I remember them hearing that from that. 'cause we had our salon there and we were part of their culture and that was one of the terms I remember them talk, throwing around six, six sigma. Yeah. In, in their excellence or their, their quest for excellence. Right. I never knew what it really was.

I didn't understand that the term or what it meant. Heard it. And I knew you were working a lot with it, but I didn't know what it really meant. Yeah. Yeah. it's overused. Hmm. it's, and a lot of times you go to people who have been at big companies, they hear, oh, you're a six. Oh, so you're gonna be the head, you're the guy that's gonna cut the jobs.

Oh, because the Elon Musk, yeah. They thought it was like, oh, okay, well if you're doing Six Sigma, that means this project's we're gonna end up getting a lot of layoffs because that's how companies become efficient. It's like, no, not, there may be some of that, but sometimes you get to repurpose those people that were doing those extra three steps to do these other things that are new and innovative and, can do things that are more meaningful for our clients as opposed to those wasteful steps.

Yeah., it's like, why are you faxing something?, this is obviously a very old example, but, one of the things that I learned, or I did not learned, but I problem solving at UPS was we had back, back in the day, remember cods? Oh yeah. Cods. You gotta have a check. Milk coming, gotta have a check.

Gotta have a check for milk. Yeah. So the delivering our c so best driver comes to have these packages, they're cash on delivery, COD. So the driver would go, here's the package, but you gotta gimme a check before I can leave the package with you. Yep. Well, I had this, this, one driver who worked, they had their, their stop was a, automotive classic car automotive.

Restoration place. So they were ordering parts from all over the place. And so they would have 10 to 25 COD packages a day and the driver would have to go there. Wow. Get on those and say, and they would go to take it to the lady in the office instead of the, just the shipping counter and drop 'em off and leave.

All right. and she'd look at, no, I don't want that one take, send that one back., we found something better, don't want that one, don't want this one. Okay. Let me, and then she'd write the check. You have to wait and write the check out a full, checkbook. And so he'd sit there waiting, unproductive.

And so I go, okay, well what's slowing him down? Well, he is waiting. So I had the guy that was, loading the packages. I said, any COD packages you have for this car place, put 'em over here on, on the, outside the truck. Don't load 'em yet. Put 'em on the, on the grate over here. And that would come in every morning and pull the part that could come off.

'cause the two sides would stay on it. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. You pull the label off., take 'em, I put 'em, take 'em over to a copy machine and make a copy of like, I could get maybe six on a page and then make all the copies of the labels and then add, fax 'em to the company so they could be ready.

So they'd be ready. Yeah. So by the time the driver got there, they were like going, yep, don't want this one, don't want this one. And here's the checks. Nice. And they were done. Yeah. Yeah. So now, yeah. You, like your package is gonna be delivered between one and two and Yeah. They don't have know where don't, they don't have CODS anymore.

They don't handle money. Right. That stopped. Yeah. I remember. But that's how do, how do you, how do you make it a process more efficient? Yeah. A lot. So that's something I did and that's, it was like, and then every center that I, that was in that building with me was like, okay, we gotta do that for all of our COD customers.

Yeah. Get in and out. And the days that I like didn't work, the driver was like, oh, it wasn't pre, they weren't ready. Oh, wow. So it wasn't a standard process, it was just something that I had done. But, but the drivers had to love you for that mean, that'd be great for them. Yeah. Win 'em over quick. Yeah. Their life easier.

But that's what a, that's what a, manager or leader should do. How can I help you? Yeah. Serving your, yeah. Your team. Yeah. What, what's, what, what's going, what's, what is it so hard said When I would go out with ride with drivers instead of going, you gotta go faster. I'd go, what? So what's what, what's the hardest part of the day?

What's, you know what, well I gotta wait for all these damn cods and I'm gonna not gonna make it. We're supposed to go to a concert tonight with my wife and it's our anniversary. And it was like, yeah. Oh, let me see how I can, how I can help you. Yeah. So that's like full circle coming all the way back.

'cause that's, so in your DNAI re remember when you introduced me to the way the Peaceful Warrior, the book by Dan Millman. It wasn't just the book. 'cause it was also kind of the weird stuff that I thought you were doing. I didn't, I, it was different and I was intrigued by it. 'cause you were just doing things different.

You just doing life different. Remember when you went out west, you just left and went on this quest, like To the other side of the country. And it was just, what's he doing? Yeah. What are you doing?, like he, he just had a different way of looking at life. Well, that was, that was me asking the why for my own life.

Yeah. Like, why am I doing this? Yeah. You know what, it's gotta be more to life. And, reading that book, and I'm sure a lot of people have read that book and it kind of changed their life. Especially if you're, working constantly. Yeah., and you're like, okay, am I just gonna be breeding, bleeding, brown blood the rest of my life and having to work my way up this ladder and yeah, I'll make a lot of money, but I'm looking at all these leaders and I'm like, okay, he's divorced.

He's divorced, he's an alcoholic. He's,. Yeah. Like, I don't want that, that his kids don't love him. His kids, his kids don't love. Yeah. He is got, it's, they don't even know him. Yeah. It's, it's, so I was like, okay., and trying to find something else and do something different. And this was before I learned how to do all this stuff.

It was just, like you said, part of my nature to kind of ask those questions. And there was something inside of me that just said, I gotta do something different. So, but that book, made you think, no ordinary moments, no., stay present, enjoy the moment. Yeah.

You know, don't, don't worry, don't, don't let things bother you. That type of thing. Enjoy nature and stuff like that. So that's when I, when I left UPSI took that sabbatical in, drove to Alaska for a summer. Yeah. Drove up there. Drove to Alaska. Yeah. Well, I drove from Michigan to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and met some people there.

And just along the way, I had the, a Ford Explorer when Ford Explorers just came out. I was like, they were cool cars,? Yeah. And put my mountain bike, my tent and my camping gear in there. And drove, drove to Albuquerque and then drove up the Canadian rock, up the US Rockies, Yellowstone Glacier National Park, and then up through the Canadian Rockies and Banton.

This is in the day of paper maps. Yeah. Where you had to highlight where you were gonna go. Yeah, yeah. There was no, no, no Google maps. Oh, no. And you had to buy the section of the country that you were gonna drive in. Yeah. Yeah. You didn't even have a whole thing. Full GLO box. Yeah. The GLO Box. Full mess.

Or Atlas. Or an Atlas that had, like Yeah. Before even Triptych on aaa. Yeah. You had to actually. Like, look for signs. Yeah. And look for the roads and watch. But my brother, oldest brother lived in Alaska and been Yeah. Living there for 30 years or whatever. And I had been in touch with him and talking to him and kind of consulting with him about just kind of what was going on.

And he goes, yeah, you can come up here. So I drove up there. It took me about a month or something to drive up there and I drove the Alcon Highway through the Yukon territory and all the way up there. And then I spent the summer up there with him. So you had saved enough money to be able to do this?

'cause there wasn't gig work, you couldn't pick up an Uber. Each UPS paid pretty good. Oh, okay. So, and you'd save money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so you were, you had a little bit of a nest egg to live off of it. Yeah. And I, because I was working all the time, I never really spent it on anything.

Right. Yeah. You were real resource. Yeah. Other than my rent and stuff like that. Yeah. Plus I had been, I learned to be pretty frugal about buying stuff for myself because paying my way through college was like, okay, you can't afford, I can get by with, worn out soles on my 10, on my shoes or whatever.

I'd wait until the last possible minute. Yeah.,? And so I had a lot of money that I was saving, and so I said, oh, I'm gonna do this. And I knew I wanted to go to grad school because I liked that industrial engineering problem solving part. And I wanted a job like that at UPS, but they were like, Nope, you gotta.

Kind of go through this process. You gotta, this is not how we do things here. Right? Yeah. So, and it's like, all right, well I'm gonna go to grad school. And at first I thought I was gonna go into industrial engineering, and I kind of got into that a little bit, but I just found a program that kind of fit my needs at the time that was very similar to, helping, going through organizational change and transformation.

But yeah, I took that year off, traveled, camped, hiked, went salmon fishing all summer long. I don't think at the time I realized, 'cause you couldn't look at the globe in a way, you'd only just look at a map. I just didn't realize how big Alaska was. I think. And now you can, in Google Earth you can see like, it's a huge state.

It's three times the size of Texas. That's crazy. And you gotta drive up through Canada, Canada to get to a, it's a big deal. It's not like some little, driving to Georgia from here. Yeah. But it's kind of cool because you meet a kind of a lot of new people along the way too, which broke me outta my shell too, of Yeah.

You know, meeting new people and doing new things. And so that was all new for me. So it was all part of my own personal growth doing that. Yeah. 27, something like that. Yeah. it's like John Denver. I was born in the summer of my 27th year. He played guitar too. Yeah. Yeah. But, anyways, it you, I remember I was on the Alcan Highway and just, all right, well I gotta pull over and I don't want to set up the tent 'cause I don't know if there's,.

I just didn't wanna do it. So I kind of slept in the truck and I got up the next morning and this big motor home had pulled in., people drive motor homes across the co across the country and they pull a car and that kind of thing. So these people saw me getting out and I was setting up my Coleman stove to make some coffee and something to eat.

And they say, Hey, come on in. Got to meet them. They invited me in, talked to them about their travels and all stuff like that. And, it was fun. What's crazy to me is now people do that and make money up 'cause they make YouTube videos while they're doing that. Yeah, yeah. They make lots of money.

They actually, it's a business for them. Yeah. To literally, they could do their passion and make a living doing that. What you were doing then where Yeah, there was no, you couldn't carry a beta camera. You had nowhere to post it anyway. Yeah. I didn't have video cameras Yeah. Back then. No. Just even cell phones not old.

Yeah. Well, they we're all live in that era. That was the, you talk about transformation and life changing. Yeah. Yeah. But you've always kind of had that in you and it's followed you all along the way because even as a, a husband, as a father, you've sort of led the way, you've done broken the mold. You've done things that most people wish they would do, but don't ever do.

And they have a regret about it. Yeah. And that's like what, how you've raised your family and how you've put family first and how you've been in Well, the biggest thing. As we're talking about. I think that event in my life doing that made me realize, and I, compare myself to my wife Pam, or anybody, a lot of other people that I have that maybe they don't have is that experience.

And what that experience taught me is that even though I quit, I didn't know what job I was gonna have. I didn't know what was gonna happen after I did that. And I took that leap. But I have lived through it and now I realize it's all gonna be okay. It does, the worry of like, well I can't do that because what, what will I do for a job?

Or what, where will I live and what's my life gonna be?, it's like I can't leave this job., I can't make this change. Even though I kind of feel calling to do that, having been through it, which is easy to say. I know it's gonna be fine. Yeah. It'll all work out. God has a plan.

Right. So if I hadn't done that and I had stayed in Michigan and just worked at UPS, life would've been good. I'd have been really good., 'cause they went public. Yeah. Well there were a lot of incentives for you to do that. Yeah. 'cause they were paying well, and Yeah. But I wouldn't have met Pam.

Yeah. Wouldn't, wouldn't have, my two kids, wouldn't have the experience of, embracing the outdoors and, and doing those kind of things. And the biggest thing, like I said, is not being. Not having the

Not confidence or just the experience of saying it. It'll be fine, this too shall pass. Or, think of any number of other sayings. But yeah, just the experience and the confidence of knowing that you can, it's not the end of the world. Yeah. Right. If anything, it's opening up new things and possibilities.

Yeah. To where, yeah. I still worry about things, I'm, I've got kids, so I worry about things, it's, yeah., when you bring a life into the world and you have a family, you worry about things, but I also don't let things get to me, to the point, like other jobs that I've had. Yeah. I don't let it, get to me that much.

You know, I know that, fine, or I'm, I'm not gonna do this. I'm not gonna spend more time working on this PowerPoint presentation or whatever. However it ends up, it ends up, yeah. And more times than not in those situations when I've kind of made that decision to say, I'm not working on it anymore, or I'm not going to do it, I'm gonna spend time with my kids instead.

Yeah. and I'm gonna go to that soccer game to my son or that lacrosse game for my daughter. and I don't put the, and say, oh, I can't do it then, it turns out that like that meeting I was preparing for. It got rescheduled. Mm. Like it was meant to be. So I didn't, if I had stent and then worked on it and stayed up late hours and missed my kids' events and then they rescheduled it.

Yeah. I would've felt even worse. Yeah. 'cause they put all this time and effort towards it. Yeah. but, you just kind of have confidence in your own ability. It's like, I know what I'm talking about. I don't, I don't need to work on this anymore. Or it's not in the, in the big picture., as Dan Millman, we were kind of reminiscing about that earlier today.

The juggling the oranges, the eggs and the, and the blowtorch. Yeah., like when you throw the blowtorch in there, you go like, oh, I gotta, but the important things like the eggs, you drop those and you don't want to drop the important things in life. So I've learned not to drop, try not to drop the important things in life and just focus on things that are really important, like my family, and know that other things are gonna work out.

And people don't always understand that. They're thinking you nuts. Why are you, why did you do that? Why did you leave this? Or why did you make that decision? Yeah. But as long as I'm okay with it, and it's, it's for the important things in life that you can't, like you can't get back. Well, being there for your kids.

Yeah. I mean, nobody ever says on their death bed. I wish I would've worked more. I wish I would've made more meetings. Yeah. Yeah. So to, know that I know that you will never have that regret. 'cause I see what, who you are for your children. I see. You know how you raise them. I've, I've witnessed it.

I've also witnessed what you put first, because I'll never forget for my life, how you selflessly uprooted your life from your family. And came here when Michelle was sick and I didn't know what was gonna happen. I didn't know whether she was gonna live. I didn't know what was gonna happen. You came and stopped everything you were doing in life and came here and literally you weren't even allowed in the hospital.

I was in the hospital with her and you weren't allowed in, you sat in the car and waited to serve me, whatever we needed in a fricking car at the hospital for hours outside. Do you need anything? Do you need anything? How's it going selflessly? I like that to me is, that was something that my father-in-law talked about.

He said, that's some kind of friend you have. That's not, that's not ordinary. That's, that's your friend. He could not understand that a human would do that. And to me that was like. At a time where I was at my lowest, I was terrified. I was, I know what the, I didn't know what was gonna happen to Michelle. I didn't know at the time.

It was so scary. And I could sense that I couldn't, when you were like, this just happened and we don't know what's going on. And I don't know. I'm like, I couldn't imagine what you were going through. I could just, no way I could imagine, I'm like, people will send a text and say, what do you need?

Like, how can I help? I'm here for you. And they'll send a text and people don't know what to do in those situations. You just got on a plane and came, you just got here and, 'cause you don't know what to, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to ask for. I didn't even know what I needed. Yeah. And then when I, and I, and then you finally like, responded to one of my texts later in the day and I was like, you guys need anything?

You know, and you're like, well no, you don't need to come down here. And I'm like, I'm right out here in the parking lot. You're like, you're what? I'm like, I'm gonna go over to wind's and get, get, get some food and bring it up so you can have some normal food and it's not hospital food and stuff.

And then when they were going to transfer her up to Tampa. Tampa, yeah. Pam and I, Pam helped me 'cause she was, on the computer and we had Marriott points and stuff like that. And we found a place for everybody to stay. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Up in, in Tampa and drive up there transferring Michelle by ambulance.

To Tampa General, and I had to meet your sister. I had to meet Audrey to get some keys or, oh, Mike sunglasses I think, or sun, something like that. Sunglasses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you drove up separate, right? We drove up in, yeah, I drove up separate and then we, I, oh, we were following the ambulance. We took two cars up, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think you and I stayed in a room and then, at that hotel, Michelle's parents. Yeah. And Tim had a, had a room Yeah. And stuff and however, however many days that was. Yeah. Wow. That was just like, Mike never stopped talking about that. I mean, till the day he died, he just thought that was just something he had never witnessed, witnessed in his life.

And, well, you made a big imp, made a big impact on my life too. I mean, my acceptance here in Naples and, just best man at my wedding introducing me to my wife. Yeah. Yeah. There's some big things there. Yeah. And if you think about, I don't have a lot of friends, 'cause, we, Pam and I, we spent a lot of time with our, our family trying to build our family and so forth.

So we didn't have a lot of extracurricular kind of, friend groups and things like that, that we did a lot with. 'cause we kinda learned how to survive on our own, just making sure that our kids were gonna grow up and be good adults and have a safe life. so, but you were always there.

You always like when I would go through tough times and making those decisions and stuff. You would help remind me of the times. Like, well, you did this, you did that. And I'm like, yeah, I forgot about that guy. So, and I thought about that as you were talking. I was like, one thing I wanna make sure, as we're talking about this, it's not like I'm this, oh, you're such a perfect per, you so strong and everything.

Every day we all battle. What's that other voice in our head? And that other voice in our head always tries to tell, no, no, that trip that you did, that sabbatical, that thing you d, that's nothing that's, anybody could do that. That's, you're, you're nothing, you're not worthy. And, those, those things always go through our heads.

Everybody the best, CEO whatever. it's how you handle that. And having a good friend like you helps during times like that when you can kind of say, yeah, I'm going through this, and you kind of re help, re remind, remind me that, you've faced adversity before. This is nothing., or, but we all have that battle every single day in this new book that I'm, and I'm reading now, what's it called?

The

You gotta help me find that. I did it on the questionnaire. What was the, oh, I got it here because I'm still listening to it. I'm not reading it. I'm listening to it. It still counts, Michelle. It's the new era. It counts. It counts. I'm, yeah, it's like it still counts. Yes. Michelle giving you a hard time because just like, you're not reading it, you're listening to it.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, I got discounted my efforts. I will find it here in a second. real quick. Okay. winning Preston, the War in Your Mind, is the name of the book Winning the War in Your Mind? Okay, good. Winning the War In Your Mind. That was gonna be on my, that was one of my questions anyway. I was gonna ask you, change your thinking, change your life, winning the war in your mind.

Yeah. Okay. Alright. Gotta put that on the list. 'cause that's literally one of the questions that's coming. What's great about it too is it's, it's, biblical 'cause God says, do not fear, right? What does that mean? But he goes through different verses of how, there's the conversation in our head of, we should have faith, not worry.

And just what that all means as far as the, the stories of you're not good enough or whatever. How can, God made you in his image? How can you not be good enough? Mm. So it goes through a lot of, and I've really enjoyed it. Actually. Pam started listening to it too. We, and we actually listened it to it together when we were on our little trip out west.

And, It's a good book. You gotta put it on your list. Yeah. Yeah. You got credits, right? I got 12 left this year. I buy a bunch for the year. Yeah. Instead monthly. I just buy the whole year worth. Yeah. I got a lot. I have plenty to listen to, but I'll put that on for sure. Because just in hearing you say that, because one of the things that I feel so blessed being in Michelle's life, that she's given me a level of faith that I never had or never knew was possible.

But her mother would always say to me, whenever I was in the throes of something that I felt was treacherous or there was no way to come back from, whether it was a hurricane or the pandemic or whatever., how are we gonna survive this? she would smile and say, have faith, God's got you.

There will be a way. Like, she didn't have an answer for me, but she had that and that gave me comfort. Yeah. The way she would say, you'll always have what you need in a way like that God has you, like, you don't understand that God is not what you think you need, but what God says. God has what you need, knows what you need.

Yes. A lot of people hear that and say, God will give you what you need. And it's like, well, where's my million dollars? Where's my, I want that new car. And it's like, God, God's not giving me what I need. It's like, that's not what God thinks you need. Yeah. It says you need to serve his will., you need, you need to have a challenge.

Yeah. To, to grow. Yeah., you need to have., I saw, saw something, I think it was Morgan Freeman had this clip. I saw this clip of him saying, be careful what you pray for., God give me courage. God doesn't give you courage. He gives you the op opportunity to be courageous. Hmm. So, yeah.

You know, he's gonna keep putting that in front of you where you have to be courageous. 'cause you want to be courageous. You've asked, you've prayed for that. Yeah. So he's gonna give you an opportunity to be courageous. Mm. Right. So he doesn't give you the things you pray for. He gives you the opportunity to achieve that by giving you the experiences or putting you in a situation, you want.

Some people sometimes wonder why something keeps happening over and over and over again. To me, why does this keep happening? Mm. Because you're not learning the lesson that God wants you to learn. Mm., you're not seeing the lesson, you're seeing it as something's happening to me, as opposed to what am I supposed to learn from this?

And when you, when you say, this is when you start to ask that question again, back to asking questions, why, why did this happen to me? Why did somebody die? Or why did this tragedy happen? Right. Because, people will say, why does God make bad things happen? It's like, no, it's, there's things happen and they happen for a reason.

And it's usually, any of those challenges or adversities are things to help you grow as a person. And you see how many people like have become., lost the ability to walk and they are so successful. Hmm., or inspirational. Right. it's because they've taken on that challenge and say, what am I supposed to learn from this?

What, what am I supposed to do with this? As opposed to, God's not good. Yeah. Yeah. It's so easy to go there. Yeah. And we still do even, so that's the thing about human nature is like, we can sit here and talk about it and say, it sounds like I'm being so, so intelligent and philosophical and like really have a handle on things, but I can walk out that door and those same doubts and concerns and questions still pop into my head.

Yeah. Because I'm human. Right. And that's why you have, they say keep the faith. 'cause as you kinda keep coming back to it. Yeah. And if you, and that's why they say read the Bible or go to a small group, or go to church, whatever. It's 'cause it keeps God in your life. Yeah. And soon as you say, oh, things are going great, I don't need to, you stop doing that, that's when the evilness comes into, in, into your life and you don't know how to handle situations because God's not right there.

Yeah. For you to kinda lean on how quickly it goes away. He's right there. Yeah. But you don't, you forget that he's right there. Yeah. Ready to, and it's. It's not like a physical there, it's the his word of like how to be, how to live. Yeah., the whole Dan Millman stuff is more, it's not Christian, but he's is more of like a universal principle.

You know? be present, be in the moment. Those are very similar things to, that God wants us to do. Sure. Yeah. But it's just a different way of kind of thinking about it, but it's all the same principles. Yeah. so it's all about being peaceful. Right. Peaceful warriors., Jesus was very peaceful.

He was the peaceful, original, peaceful warrior. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I was, one of the books I read recently was talking about Jesus, and in that regard it was, it was, it was around being present and it was around how not present we are in society today. Because we're constantly bombarded with things that are taking us away from the moment.

Whether it's a phone, a, a message, a wa or something on your watch that pulls you away From the moment. And one of the analogies in there was, could you imagine when Jesus was being called to back, he was on, on a mission to go wherever he was going. And along the way, somebody stopped and said, Jesus, I need your help.

Can you help pray? Can you help heal? Can you help the, help me with this person? Jesus would never say, not right now. I got an appointment, I gotta get to it. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. He was present in the moment. He, he'd have time, he'd get to what he needed to, but at the same time, he was there to do whatever he was there to do in that moment.

There was never a minute where he was, I got, I got an appointment, I gotta get over there. And Yeah., being present, was that the book, the Ruthless Pursuit of Hurry? Yes, yes. That was, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that book. That was transformational. Yeah. You know who I, Ben, my son told me about that book and he's constantly reminding me like, I, I'll let you go.

'cause I can tell you're, you're trying to multi do something. He's, he always says there's no such thing as multitasking. Yeah. 'cause you're not giving, you're not present if you're trying to do more than one thing at a time. Yeah. And, women will say, oh, we're the master of multitasking, but wouldn't brag on that because that means you're not fully present.

Yeah. Or they Yeah. Will say, we can be fully present in multiple things and Yeah. You can't. Yeah. And if you're, if you've got more than one thing to think about, you're not fully present. Right. So if you're constantly looking at your watch or your phone or whatever, so it's, Ben would always say, quit taking pictures.

Enjoy the scenery. Enjoy the moment. Yeah., and he was like, we wanna remember it. And it's like, yeah. So we always, he's, he's a good teacher. He's wise. He's an old soul. Yeah. Yes. Well, that's kind of why I love this, because it is an opportunity to be present with another soul. That does not exist on the planet.

So I've, over the last year, we've done 30 something of these. Zach, how many? 30. Oh, wow. This is 30. This is 30. We've done 33 of these, some of them two to three hours with some of times somebody I'd never met. Right. It's the first time we meet. And to sit and be present with another soul for two to three hours doesn't exist in the world.

Like, it doesn't, like, it just doesn't happen because we just don't design life like that ever. Right. But to be this level of present, even our conversation, learning things about you, I've known my whole life and hearing things that you've said that I had no idea that I've, that opened a world for me. But that level of present, 'cause there's nowhere else where you're, this level of present phones are off.

Nobody's bothering us. There's, there's just this conversation. It's a forced conversation. It's forced presence. Yeah. In a way that doesn't exist. Well, I'm glad you did this too, because I was telling Zach as we were getting started here, it was like, usually when they come to visit, we're visiting Pam's family when I'm down here and you and I, well, we'll go to lunch, but we Yeah.

You know, or if when we call each other, you're on your way to the salon or somewhere. Yeah. And, or I'm on the way to, run an errand or doing something and we talk for a little bit, but we never get this much time to talk. Yeah. Like even last night sitting at your house. Yeah. Like me being able to stay at your house and not at my in-laws.

Yeah., just having that extra time to talk. We don't have that. We don't take the time. No. And I'm grateful. That you thought of this idea to, to have me to do this. Yeah. One, I wanted to kinda learn how you do all this stuff and Yeah. It's, it's really cool. But, now that we're in it, yeah.

I mean, think about it. How long, when's the last time you and I have really sat down and talked this long? Without a beer too? Without a beer? Yeah. Without involving something else. Like, where are we gonna go or what are we gonna eat?, it's like, gotta eat something. It doesn't exist though. It's like, it doesn't have to ex everything doesn't have to evolve around food and alcohol.

Yeah. No, but that's how it usually is. Yeah. Like that's when you, that's, but because we've always done it that way. Yeah. Going back to, yeah, no, no doubt. Well, why do you do it that way? Yeah, I know. We've always done it that way. Yeah. So we don't have to, it doesn't exist. So this is cool because it also captures this, this period of our lives, which is another period, we've been through many seasons together.

But it cap and you flew here for this, you came to Florida for this, this was your intention to be here for this, which is really cool. Right. That's special honor too. We have our first guest who've flown in to be on the spotlight. Oh yeah, sure. You put that on there. Right. And, and to celebrate the occasion, tomorrow night, we're going to see Strange Love Depeche Mode cover band.

I guess they are. I dunno. On tour, maybe we'll be able to know, but we're definitely going. But are they called? Yeah. We don't know. We don't know who the band is. It's if there's maybe one member of Depeche Mode there. Yeah. Or nobody here. Nobody here. They're all brand new. But to go back to our roots of.

Alternative eighties music. Yeah, yeah. to see them in Fort Myers. So that'll be how we, the finale of the time together. But it has been nice to, that just be able to be there. That's at a, at a theater or, or a, performing arts venue. Right? Yeah. Barbara Deman Uhhuh and I was, my son re recently went to a concert at, in Atlanta.

It was that kind of a venue. And I said, boy, I said, I've been to a concert like that. It was at the Fox Theater in Detroit. Guess who it was. And I told him, I was like, I was like, who's the violent femes? No way. Yeah. Violent femes. And, of course, I said there were a little bit of a crude band lyric flies and stuff, but Gone, daddy Gone.

That was the alternative music that we listened to. Yeah. The violent Femes. Wow. The Fem Souls. The Clem Souls, yeah. Million Miles Away. Yeah. Yeah. All that, valley Girl soundtrack. Yeah. Sorry, did I got you off track? No, no, that's actually leads right into, 'cause that's the whole next segment too. So it's like the kind of personal everyday stuff that's going on in life right now.

So what soundtrack playlist Your In the Zone playlist right now? What, what, what are you listening to? I'm not listening to enough music, is what I realize. Hmm. but I started playing guitar again. So getting the callouses built up a little bit. Cool. but, I don't know, as far as the old stuff, I always listen to the Cure.

That's kind of a go, go-to. Yeah. the PLI Souls, the

So I'm building a, yeah, a playlist of all the guests that we have on the podcast of their musical genre. Like last guest, Eileen, Patsy Klein was her, who she's listening to now. And it, we've had every, all genres, from pretty wide range of, one, one woman had seen, who was it from the Bakker Center Act?

Dr. Pfeiffer, who the, was that the 19th c when the Beatles came to the United States, she was in Atlantic City to see The Beatles, and she was one of the, she got to give the Beatles the key to the city. She had to promise not to scream. 'cause all the girls were screaming. If you see the videos of the

The girls, when they'd see the Beatles and she could not contain herself. She did it. She was just, to this day she, that memory for hers was so vivid to see The Beatles and, so that's one of the other, so, I mean, I have deleted a bunch 'cause, your phone always runs outta memory. But if I go to Spotify and see what's in my library

Oh, what's this Tesla Gator Drive? I think I made a playlist for you when you got your Tesla. You first got your Tesla. Oh. Oh, cool. All right. We'll have to share it. yeah, you probably sent it to me. I probably already have it. the Sugar Hill gang. Oh, the original rappers. The first rap, the rappers delight.

The first rap group. They invented rap pretty much. Yep. I reminisced about that. red Bone. Yeah, that's the artist. That's the artist, yeah. Yeah. But I'm trying to think of the song. But yeah, red Bone, I know that. come and get your love. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Did you know that's an all native American band?

Uhuh? Yes. Really? That's an all native American band. Really? Yep. I'll play you the video later. But they, the video clip actually starts with a guy in full headdress doing a. an Indian chant. and then they jump, the drum goes and it goes right into to that song there, Dean, Dean. And that, that song got revived by, guardians of the Galaxy.

Oh yeah. Because that's one of his, his songs that he plays. Well, they didn't get canceled or they they weren't allowed, they were still allowed to be original. 'cause they're native Yeah. Americans, they still, yeah. They didn't make 'em not wear the head dress and stuff, so, oh, there's one, Kolby, Kelly.

So Fleetwood Mac Landslide, all coming back of Fleetwood Mac stuff. Jack all coming back. A lot of Fleetwood stuff. Joe Jackson, is she really going out with him? Look sharp. Yeah. Stepping out. Yeah. Look sharp. Yeah, Joe, it's, I think it kind of had that, that base. Yeah. That hits a

Yeah. classic. Then there's Nico Moon Country, nothing but a good time. Oh, yeah. That now, right, right. Yeah. led Zeppelin fooling the rain. van Morrison. Yeah. Yeah. Linda, Linda had a, one of our guests who threw me completely off guard. I had no idea. She's, I don't know, probably there's sixties, late sixties, late sixties, CEO of, youth Haven in Naples, and she's just given her life to kids.

She just loves what she does and her. Go-to music is speeding on I 75 when she's going faster and Led Zeppelin. She just threw me completely like, she's like, you're a Zeppelin girl. Like the old stuff like, yeah, yeah, like black dog and Yeah. Yeah. So I got some hoodie in the Blowfish, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, some more country stuff.

Sugarland, Zach Brown. This is Red Hot Chili Peppers. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Under the bridge. There's some base under the bridge. Heavy base there. Yeah. Yeah. you were always the bass player. Yeah. some maroon five. got lots of country on here.

Yeah, I think that's it. I look at some of the other other ones. Let see what I put on your, on my Tesla list. Your Tesla list. Yeah. Yeah. Nelly. Oh, there you go. I got some big one. Ones. Michelle's group. I got some Cure. Fine. Young Cannibals. Joe Jackson English beat Eddie Moneys the PLI Souls. A BC Billy Idol, big abc Ted NuGen.

The Look of Love Van Halen, third day revelation. That's a Christian one. the Cramps. Oh yeah. That was, goo muck. Goo muck. Yeah. Yeah. the Proclaimers. I would walk by. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. that was their one hit Wonder Santana. Yeah. That's classic Riding the Tesla fits. Yeah.

That fits Nora Queen Rush. Violent Femes Bow. Wow. Wow. I want candy. Yep. Young mc. Oh yeah. bust a Move. One song. Yeah. Bust a Move. Yeah. Yeah. Depeche Mode. Never Let me down again Tomorrow night. Yep. Tears for Fears. The mm. One of the best. Yeah. One of the best. Yeah. What was, remember this one?

Oh, it's a slow. That's Kurt Kos. Yeah, that's Kurt Kos. He, he really found the alternative. Alternative. Yeah. From Vinyl Fever, Thompson Twins, Elvis Costello. Squeeze REM New order. This whole segment's gonna have to be music, like literally. Yeah. We have to put clips into this whole, like, this will be its own little session.

Yeah. This little chunk right here, where we just literally put in the music in the background on all those good ones. Yeah. We, I told you we should do another podcast. Just, rock and Robin, Jim and Jeff back in the, you gotta go back high school days of We'll, they're realistic. We'll, we'll do, we'll go do a Sadie Hawkins dance over at Barron Collier.

That's where it all started. Legend. We were the DJs. Yeah. There's a realistic mixer. That they can get sell on eBay because they don't exist anymore. It was an analog mixer, audio mixer. If you look up Radio Shack, realistic mixer, this was like the biggest breakthrough for us 'cause we could mix music pre-digital.

It was all an analog mixer that allowed us to put two turn tables in a tape deck together. And that was the whole DJ booth was run from that little mixer, which they still, you could still get on eBay, but now we have this, this mix, this mixer here. You can down one song and another one go up. Yeah.

Yeah. You didn't have that dead time. And to scratch you had to Well, I never did that. Yeah. But you had to start up the next record. You had to get it going because the, the song didn't start immediately. It had to have ramp up time. 'cause the belts on those turn didn't go. Yeah. You kind of had to give it a little leeway to go to get that next one started.

Yeah. To mix into the next one. So if you had a song that ended really cold, a cold ending that was really hard, like sudden it didn't fade out. You had to be really quick to get that next one going because you're, you're perfect at that. Yeah. That was, that's what made you master, you spent a lot of times doing that, but now, now it's all digital.

You can little Yeah. Tell it to didn't get anywhere. Use that AI to do it for you. Yeah. Right. It hasn't given me much in life, but yeah. Good musical fun. 'cause it funded, it's really didn't make any money at that. It was really pretty much just to keep my record collection. That's where all the money went.

To keep the albums. Yeah. Making money from DJing weddings and Sadie Hawkins stances. What's something you're surprisingly good at that most people wouldn't know?

Getting people to in a, in a crowd to get their attention. So they stop talking So somebody can speak. Oh yeah. Oh, at a wedding when it's time for the Oh, don't blow out his ears. Yeah. But when I do that, do that whistle. Oh yeah. It'd be really loud whistle like that. Okay. That's great. Yeah. I never had that one before.

Yeah, that's good. Okay. I mean, that's as well, I mean, see that or sneezed 10 times. Yeah, that's right. Well that would be awesome if that happened on cue. Yeah. He has this thing where like, he can't sneeze once. You'll sneeze like what? Like 10 times? Like how do you do that when you're driving? I, it's dangerous 'cause you close your eyes every time you sneeze.

Yeah. Like you can't stop it once it starts. Yeah. You just hold onto the wheel straight and take your foot off the gas and just hope that people don't like get ticked off again. Because once one comes they just keep coming. And you use as like this cycle of, 'cause you ex the I, it's a big exhale and then I have to take a breath in and it re-triggers the, I don't know anybody else that has that.

It's like a it thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's a talent. Maybe it's a hidden talent. Well now you can tell people, somebody who can do that. He's the only one I know.

Coffee order. it's usually just. Coffee, cream and sugar. I mean, if I was going to go like, maybe a cappuccino, maybe, Julia got me like in the afternoon. I usually can't drink hot coffee even though I've done it here 'cause I'm following your lead and having espresso. Espresso. You got your espressos?

Yeah. Yeah. But she got me drinking the iced vanilla lattes with oat milk. Ah, of course. Gotta be the oat milk. Okay, so you do have sort of a Starbucks sort of Yeah. Get in there with the Gen Z. Gen YI don't look too weird. Black coffee. Yeah. Oat milk. Yeah. Okay. That's Michelle's drink.

You looking at these, you looking at your, notes makes me think of when we were driving in your Monte Carlo on the way to school. 'cause we never studied for the, vocabulary test or spelling, spelling test or whatever it was. And we were like cramming on the way to school. Alright, gimme this word.

What does this word mean? Did we even do that? We did that. I'm glad you remember us doing some of that. Don't, yeah. We do it on our way to, on our way to school. We never studied beforehand. Yeah. We would just kind of like quiz each other on the way to school. And that was it. Sadly, I don't have a good memory of doing work, doing the homework at school.

I don't, I only get through it. I don't remember. Yeah. I don't remember doing a lot of schoolwork. Yeah. Yeah. Study another way to school. Yeah. Alright. Pick three.

Okay. You gonna read out? I get to ask you these questions. These are, these are for you. Your, they're your own. You get to pick your own. So read the question out loud so we can hear you. You gotta tell us what you're looking at. Oh, you gotta read it out loud. Oh. So we know those cameras. so this one's easy.

Have you, have you saved anyone's life? When and how? No, I haven't. Have you saved anyone's life? When and how have you saved anyone's life? Okay, well, you don't know that. You don't know. Yeah. Not that I can remember. No. But you don't know, like, you could've, maybe somebody was No icks. No drownings, no.

Yeah. But in the literal sense. But you could have, you could have said something to somebody that, or you could have delayed somebody from leaving that was gonna get in a car accident that you didn't know that. Yeah. That's, you delayed them or that's, yep. Not that I know of. Not that, of.

Okay. In what ways do you consider yourself blessed? just to still be alive, my dad died at 51, and my kids, my wife, just blessed that they've, they're healthy and, doing well. Hmm. And, There's so many more, more ways to be blessed than not. So just blessed to be here, blessed to have you as a friend.

Mm. so, the list is very long. Good. That was a good one. those two were deeper. Those are deeper cards. The blue ones are Oh yeah. That, that just a icebreaker level. So what was your favorite food growing up?

It's definitely, yeah. Tossup between city chicken and chicken Bangkok. Mm. My mom sued. Do you have those recipes? I do. Yeah. Yeah. Make you gotta share them. I, we should, we should definitely do that. Yeah. That would be cool. If I had it with me, I would, we would make chicken b chicken Bangkok tonight. That has to be on our bucket list.

Yeah. To do, the city chicken was good, which is just meat on a stick. Yeah. It's not even chicken though, is it? It's not even chicken. Yeah, right. It's, veal I think is, it's veal. And is it pork too? Is it veal and pork? Okay. Yeah. You alternate cubes and then you roll it in breadcrumbs and bake it.

Yeah. That was good, man. They call it city chicken 'cause you're, it's like you're eating chicken, but you're just on a wooden skewer, just eating meat off a stick. Is that a Polish thing or? Or I don't think so. Just the recipe that mom had. The dish. Yeah. Dish. Dish. Okay. All my mom. Well we gotta put those on our bucket list for sure.

Yeah. So gotta have 'em. I mean that was probably my fa my favorite things. Yeah. I did like liver and onions too. Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that too. I'm, it's good for you too. Yeah. Coming back. so how was it for you so far? What this conversation? Oh, it's awesome. Yeah. It's cool. Yeah, it, I like you said, I think that it's just how often do we get to have a conversation and be present with somebody.

Yeah. And you learn so much more about people and or about yourself even kinda when you start ask,? 'cause a couple times during us talking it was like, yeah. So that's kind of what happened in my, yeah. That's probably why I think that way. Or this is, like talking about how it just never stops.

It's not like, 'cause I started thinking it's like, yeah, it just all sounds like pretty cool stuff that I did, but it's still hard,? So just being able to, to realize that, and I kind of was hoping that this would kind of prompt me to kind of start thinking more about, now that I'm newly retired, not really doing the corporate gig stuff anymore.

Is just kind of think about how, how to give back. I still don't know exactly, but, having these types of conversations, more deeper conversations about stuff. It kind of, I think is gonna help point me in the right direction. Yeah. Well, and this also documented, like the clips that you'll have from this are snippets of what you do, did have as a, in your, in your, library of life that you can, reference, use or if you, or consulting or whatever you have.

'cause you defined it, talked about it. It's, it's, it's here. So you're saying, basically you're saying is that as your memory fades, you'll have this to go back and look at and say You actually, well, I wasn't, but I wasn't. But that's a good point. That's too true. True too. Yeah. But I was, if you're gonna, if you're taking that up again and you're gonna get back into the world of consulting or whatever, there's snippets here.

Sure. Not life. You've Yeah. That, that are what you said. But it's also good. That's why I like to have this too. It's also good to, to, it's a document, documentation of life at this stage. It's this season, whatever it is. So it's something I never did with my people in my family that I wish I had.

You know? Like Yeah. I mean, do you ever think about how, I mean, it's kind of creepy in one way, but if we all had like, like since we've been born, had like a recorder, like a Yeah. A body cam,? Yeah. And so like you could go back and say, oh, what did I do when I was three years old? Yeah, that would be so cool.

And just have like a. Historical log of your life that you could go back to and say, what did I get for my ninth birthday party?, what was that like?, or that era didn't have that. I think now there's more of that documentation. You could probably do that. I mean, there's, I mean, those pendants, those AI pendants I was talking about the other day, when we were talking about it, but, it's the sunglass place.

Yeah. 'cause they had those Google glasses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. AI glasses. But there's these pendants now that listen to everything that's going on and you can say, oh, well, what was that conversation at one o'clock today? Who was, yeah. What was the three things I was supposed to remember? And it, that'd be a lot.

It'll play back to you or whatever. That'd be wild. Yeah. But it's kind of close to that kind of thing. Yeah. But if you think if we had that, would we learn from history still, we still don't listen, learn from history. That's the best predictor of the future. But it's like, if you had that to kind of go back on and review, that's not somebody's interpretation of your life, but it's the video recording or the audio recording of, of what actually happened.

That moment in time. Yeah. That moment in time. Yeah. And then you think getting more deeper, you think about like, what if we did have that? What if we, what if they did have it and it was being done, but then, the big meteor hit and lost all power and it's gone. They don't have electric power anymore and, like you don't have access to all that digital format.

It's like Right., we go back and we say, oh, we found the Bible, or we found the Lost Sea Scrolls and that's our, now we've got all this digital stuff, but if we have this big electromagnetic impulse kind of bomb that goes off or something, all of our digital recordings of history and stuff like that is gonna be erased and society's gotta start all over again.

Iron Mountain has a place in the world.

Put it in the mountain, put it in the cave, but not even as catastrophic as that. Think about when wifi goes down at, at somebody's house. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Happened to us last week and it's like, shut us down for the night. Like, whoa. Everything we do, how I turn the lights off. Alexa, turn the light.

Alexa, turn the lights off. Alexa, gotta walk over to the switch and actually turn the lights off. Yeah. Where is the switch? I don't even know, like, which switch does that? Because it's all so it's all automated and then the show we're gonna watch is comes through streaming. We're not gonna watch that. Okay.

If we're not streaming, then we'll scroll on. Our phones can't do that because we don't have a cell signal. Signal at our house. Yeah. So suddenly we were like so dependent. Wow, this is crazy. Like seeing how dependent life is on everything that we went to do, like one night of that. It's sad in a way, like to think, oh my gosh, we're that digitally connected to everything.

Like everything you go to do. Especially my house. 'cause I have, I have everything hooked up to, to form of automated automation. And when that wifi was down, some of the stuff is local, but a lot of it isn't. It needs the net to, to make it function. And you see, wow, that was really well, that's why it's like today when we were over at the village and I walked outside and was looking in the, in the canal and seeing the fish going by.

And it's like, that's, that's better than scrolling on the phone at reels. Yeah. Inside, inside the salon waiting for you Yeah. To get done with your, your meeting to village. It's the most beautiful spot in one of the most beautiful spots on the water. Yeah. But it's like going up to our cabin and just going for a hike and seeing the color, the leaves change colors or seeing a, a deer walk through the woods and Yeah.

It's like, before we had electricity and people in the wilderness and they had cabins and stuff. They would just look up at the stars and Yeah. Have a campfire or whatever. Just enjoy the outdoors. Yeah. Which is God's creation. And we live in the most beautiful place in the world. And I think, Zach, we're almost finished here.

I know Zach's gonna go to the gym too. I probably got you late for the gym. He's a, he's a CrossFitter. I know. We gotta get gym today. Okay. All right. holy cow. I was, what time flies by? I was, where did that thought go? Gone. No, I was at a point there, I was headed towards, well it was about outdoors and Yeah.

Oh yeah. When, when I saw Suki from, Ridgeway, where we had lunch. Oh yeah. Her name is Suki and I saw her here outside and I said Thank you for, having your place. 'cause we had a great lunch there and I said I'm, it was a perfect chamber of commerce moment. 'cause I'm trying to woo Jeff and Pam back to Naples to move back here to get another place.

Yeah. So you really helped support that. I told her that. So we're trying to get another good soul back to home to come home. Yeah. I mean in, like, like we were talking on the way over is like, just get off the plane and you smell that Flo fresh Florida air. It's like, ah, you're home. Yeah. And yeah, you feel that humidity.

Yeah. You feel that. You feel it on your skin. I love that feeling. Yeah. Some people like, oh it's, oh man, that's when I know I'm home. Let's get off the plane from Detroit. Go golfing, go fishing, go to the beach. I don't mind the heat. Yeah, it's paradise. A thousand percent. Yeah. Reminds me of that. So thanks for presencing that for me too again.

And thanks for Pam for making this happen with Jeff and for being such a great wife and to my best friend. Yeah. Appreciate that. Very supportive. I just realized something, I don't think I looked at the camera. Is that okay? I don't think I ever, I was looking at you the whole time. Yeah, that's all right.

Sometimes I do, when I talk to Pam or when I talk to Michelle or whoever else is still here. If you're still listening right now. Yeah. God bless you. Wow. You made it. Oh my gosh. Well, Seth, the whole thing, well, Zach's gonna cut out about, two thirds of this and it's like, make it digestible. I dunno, how many, clicks have you done?

When did we start? Where are we at before? I have one more question, but we are two hours and 20 minutes. Oh, we're not even close to the record. Yeah, we've, we've been We can do it. Let's go have to do part two. Auto have to do a part two. You can go. We definitely, this, this leads to that. We definitely have to do another version 'cause at the next season, because, well, there's so many areas we didn't talk about that I would love to, but, but we got a lot, we got it started anyway.

We got you here for round one. So start the conversation. Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll take a look at the stuff and I'm sure we will say, let's do, let's just focus on that topic Yeah. And go, go deeper on there. Yeah. Or something else will come up and we'll say, Hey, let's talk about it. Maybe it'll be my new venture or something.

Yeah. Whatever that ends up being. Whatever possibility gets put in front of me and I decide to jump at it. Yeah. But revisiting all this stuff just makes re remember that person that did all that stuff that, that was me. Yeah. And it is you. Yeah. Yeah. It is part of who you are. Yeah. And why I love you and appreciate your friendship for many of these years life.

Likewise. Likewise. Yeah. Last question. Yep. For this segment, what do you love about your life? Hmm.

That was my pause. I'm looking at the camera.

I love everything. I, the highs, the lows, the

You know, as, as much as I feel like I've, you kind of have to wing it. 'cause we all wing it. We don't have, like, everything that we do, we're doing it for the first time. It's like, we've never really had the exact same scenario. Like, you've done 32 of these, but they're, you're doing this one for the very first time.

Right. So I kind of feel like we're winging it all the time. And I think it's kind of turned out pretty good. I've been blessed, like I said., my kids are healthy and, will find out in years to come, but I don't think we, they're gonna be all messed up because of stuff I did.

Maybe they'll, they'll probably say that, Hey, screwed something up. I don't know. But, it was my first time being a parent, but, no, I'm just, Phrase the question again. What do you love about your life? I love that I get to

You know, pretty much do anything I want. Hmm. I have the freedom to do that. Hmm. and there's a lot of people that don't have that freedom. And it's not just freedom, like being free, like, 'cause we live in America. Mm. But, that I've gotten to a place, mentally freeing to where, I mean, times that I get depressed and lonely or, or whatever, but I also know that I have the ability to kind of get outta that.

So I'm very, that's what I like about, I guess my life is being able to have that freedom in those different aspects. but I love my, love, my wife love my life, love my kids. So, and, God willing, I'm healthy. We never know exactly how healthy we are. Yeah. But, so I think that's probably it.

Perfect. Let's go look at those houses that you're looking at down here. Yeah. Reel 'em in. All right. Yeah. You saw that one listing. I know. Yeah. I don't think, it, don't think it's gonna be that one, but. I think I'm gonna go talk to your son about going fishing later. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. He, we got into a long conversation about going fishing down here.

Yeah. He's a good fisherman. Yeah, he's good. He's, he's got it in him,. I never did, but he's got it. Yeah, I know. I remember. Yeah. He used, didn't have the patience back then sitting on, on the sea wall. No, but we'd sit on sea wall. That was fun. But yeah. Pictures of you on the sea wall. Yeah. Yeah. Behind dad's house.

That's right. We're in that on bandana in your head. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the bandana too. The bandana. For some reason we took pictures of the bag on your head too. Had a bag in my head. Yeah. It was a silly, stupid we were doing. Yeah. Yeah. When, half the roll, you get it developed and you realize that half the roll, why did I take that picture?

It's no good. Yeah. What am I taking? What, what is this for? Yeah. You get a pay and wait. You had to wait and then develop it, and then you're like, what's that for? That's a whole other episode. Well, that's a whole nother, now people love to get the printed out pictures. Yeah., it's going back.

Yeah. It's like, well, why retro? Just take the digital ones and Yeah. Then print out the ones you like. Don't pay for a whole roll getting printed. Yeah. Just print what you want. Yeah. It's like, oh, I gotta take it with the old style camera. Yeah. Okay. It's like, what does a phone look like? Julia, Julia went through a phase of, buying disposable cameras.

Oh, cool. Just buy disposable camera and then old. Yeah. That's cool. Take it and print it out. I guess it's the anticipation of wondering what, how the, how they turned out or what they look like. Did I take a good one or not? I can't look at it. Right. That instant gratification. Yeah. But yeah, let's do this again.

Yeah, please. We can, thanks. Do this again later tonight. Off, off camera and off microphone. Yeah. But we should do the podcast thing. We'll have to take some clips. Maybe we'll put some clips of this concert tomorrow. Well, I mean, I gotta talk to Zach too about how all the Yeah, good. The, what the prep is like and what day after, how much effort goes into it, see if I can recruit Julie into doing the, all the editing and Yeah.

Stuff. 'cause she did, does all draft. Yeah, she's got all that. She's good that, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, Zach would be a great resource for her. Yeah. So, yeah, maybe we'll do some clips tomorrow night too of the show and put 'em in here. There you go. The journey to the Depeche mode that we'll play around with. We can do some stage ones too.

You can then be leaning over a garbage can and make Yeah, yeah. Partying too much at 61. And then, and then we'll have that clip. It's like, oh party, party, party. And then Zach will pan to the clock and it's like 7:30 PM not, not midnight, but it's like, oh, gotta go to bed. It's seven 30 with a diet Coke in our hands.

Yeah. Alright, well we should go work out. Thank you brother. Thanks for being here. Alright. Appreciate it. Love you. Appreciate it. Love you too man. Thanks.