welcome to the top floor podcast. This is the Denver chapter. Paul, I think you're lucky number nine. Number nine. Yes. All right. My birth. My birthday is in September. So I was like number nine. Excellent. And it all lines up. It does. It does. Mr. Tam, Paul Tambarillo is the owner and founder of generator. Thanks for being here, Paul. Thank you for having me, Darren. I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Awesome. Awesome. And I appreciate that we're both standing. So for those lots. Yeah. Yes. I'll try not to do too much. And I'll actually try to look in the camera rather than just at you, not that you're not, you know, just handsome guy. But yeah. Yeah. That's an alternative. I appreciate it. Let me open the floor. Introduce yourself, please. Well, again, thank you for having me. And I'm excited to be here. I'm a Denver native and really proud and love our city of Denver. And have, you know, done many things over the years in my advanced age. And right now I'm the, you know, owner, founder of a company called generator, which really has a lot of different multi-faceted aspects to what we do. And we, you know, everybody's like, well, what do you do? And it's really hard to honestly explain. I can go into some more detail in terms of what our focus is right now. But really, I would say it's about, you know, generating energy around ideas. And it's about trying to create these moments of surprise and delight through that energy. And whether that energy is in, you know, realistic development, which is what some of what we do. We do a lot of adaptive reuse where we're trying to bring old buildings that have either been literally dead or underutilized back to life in a new way. Second thing is we do brokerage for people where we don't really look at ourselves as salespeople. We look at ourselves as advocates in terms of working with people who are really trying to find a home for their family, that nest, that place. And so we have a, we have a brokerage. The other thing we do is we have a distillery called the family Jones here in Lower Highland neighborhood. And, you know, that for me is all about, you know, you asked a question in advance of this, you know, what problem we're trying to solve. And really, that piece is all around, you know, bucking the trend of mass production. What we do in our distillery is all, you know, slow process, handcrafted, locally sourced grains as much as possible. So it's all about kind of, you know, if you're familiar with the slow food movement, or even the slow money movement, I would say some of those are some of the principles that we really try to work with there. And then the last thing, it's so funny, this is probably what most people know me for any more these days is little man ice cream, which, you know, if we had to, if I had to say what a problem we're trying to solve there would really be around creating an incredible and positive experience for young people in their first job. We like to say we're a youth leadership company that uses ice cream as its vehicle. And we're constantly, you know, developing those, you know, systems and processes and, you know, yeah, all those pieces at little man and the team there is just incredible. So yeah, that's, and then we do all kinds of other fun little things, but yeah. So you said something I find real interesting, a youth leadership movement, I think, is what you called it. Well, I don't know about movement. I think it's a company. Okay, you know, I, in a, in a previous life, I was, I worked with kids a lot for about 12 years, I was a youth minister, and always felt that it was such a privilege to work with young people. And I know any educator out there right now working with kids will say the same thing. And it's not just kids. It's like, really, if you're in an opportunity or in a place of leadership to work with people in an educational format or leadership format, it's such a privilege. And so we have really adopted this philosophy of little at little man of we want people to have the people that come to us to have an amazing first job experience. We're typically, you know, that first destination for a 15, 16 year old applying for their, you know, first thing and, you know, how do we do that? How do we, what's our hygiene like, what's our fingernails like, what's our their like, how to dress, how to speak, how to overcome crisis, how to, you know, the team there has just built this robust sort of program. And again, we're always trying to work on it and prove it. And so yeah, I really, I appreciate that very much. As you're telling that story, there's a number of things I went through my brain. Number one is I've got two step kids, 15 and 17. The 15 year old is not yet worked a real job. She's been a babysitter, but she hasn't had to like work for a boss yet. Right. So I think about that newness. I also thought about three stories of my own through corporate America, one of which was my, my first, maybe not my first real office job, but one of the first ones, like, honestly, the lesson was I didn't know you could attach things to a meeting invite. And so I'd send the meeting invite, but then I'd follow with an email with the attachment. Until someone taught me you could do it. So the whole point of sharing that story is when you talk about 15, 16 year olds about hygiene and fingernails and how you show up and customer service and all that stuff, like those are real life lessons that no one's going to teach them until they have an opportunity like you provide them. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, just the idea of the root of the word hospitality being hospital, right? It's supposed to be a healing experience when they go to the family Jones and sit down and relax and have a cocktail or something to drink or they go to a little man like, we, I always tell the young people, you never know. Ice cream is one of those self soothing things often. We'll get people in the middle of the day who will show up. And we've had people, you know, you could just tell there maybe just come from the hospital where they just lost a loved one. Maybe they're like, you just never know where people are at. And for a 15 year old or 16 year old to be to learn to be attuned to that is are some of the things that I think we're trying to teach and learn ourselves every day. So, you know, I say I love it. And it's one of those lines that I use often. And I don't use it without meaning. It's tremendous what your that story is tremendous. I mean, as you close your eyes and I am sure envisioning that, that image of being at family Jones or being at the ice cream shop and having that experience. I mean, that's powerful, visceral, beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, one of the people who, you know, I've been very fortunate to get to know over the years is Justin Koochie, the owner of Edible Beats, the restaurant group, which owns Rootdown and Langer and all these really amazing restaurants. And he always talks about it like that, you know, it's like people are creating a movie every day. And you are entering into their movie, right? And it's sort of like you, you he could say it's so much better than I am. But you know, but that's a really, it's a really important thing to remember that we're all in this process of going through this experience of the day. And that encounter with Darren or that encounter with Paul or Sally or John or whoever's working, you know, at any of these things, right? Yeah, that can be a healing experience or not so much a healing experience. And I believe the same is true with design. Design can be a healing experience. Space can be a healing experience. You know, all of those things are all part of that, that hospitable, that, you know, that hospitality piece. And I think, yeah, that's a lot of what we do or try to do or hope to do. Yeah. So as you're talking, please don't quiz me. I probably could take a stab as to what I think the thread is between ice cream, alcohol, real estate, development, rehab. Some others may say or could believe or think that these are rather disparate things. And yet you are a common thread. But I am curious, what is the common thread amongst these various business lines and why do you do it? You know, I started a non-profit several years ago called the Growhouse. And we originally started as an urban farm and marketplace and education center for kids around agriculture and, you know, really all about regenerative soil practices and how to care for soil and how important soil is, you know, in our world, in our life and to every aspect of our life. And one of the hardest lessons I learned, you know, we went into it thinking that, you know, come on, how hard is it? You put a couple seeds in some soil, grow lettuce, like this is really no big deal. You know, I, after 10 years, have such a profound respect for farmers. And where that sort of leads me back to your question is that necessity, like farmers, are the most ingenious, they see a need and they don't necessarily always, they just figure out how to make it happen. And that, if there was a through line for me, you know, you drive by an old building that's abandoned and nobody's wanting to touch it and it's, you know, falling apart, I see an opportunity, right? I see, you know, where we could create a space where somebody could, you know, start their first business. I love working with, you know, all of our property management stuff where we have probably 70 or 80 different business tenants. And these are people sometimes that put their entire life savings into creating a business. Again, I have such a profound respect for that, that process, that relationship, which at times is amazing and at times can be challenging. You know, but it's, it's, it's that dance that we're constantly going through. And so anyway, I, I guess I kind of have always been that, even from a child has been that kid that I saw a need, and I tried to create something to fix it or not, or, or be part of a solution around what that need is. So that's how I got into ice cream is that, you know, we had this chunk of land between our two buildings, and we were like, what do you want to do? And, you know, as I looked around our neighborhood here, I still right live right by little man, didn't really have like kind of a communal hub or gathering place. And so, you know, that, that idea of a third place. And so we really wanted to create that. And, and we did it through ice cream. Ice cream has always been sort of a fun thing of our family. You know, I buddies that as kids, we would have little ice cream competitions who could make the best flavor and, and that kind of thing. And so that's really, yeah, that's how it evolved. So cool. As a shameless plug for your favorite coffee shop, or one of you told me earlier, you were up early and had a chance to sit and enjoy coffee. Where did your coffee from this morning? Oh, there I am surrounded by amazing coffee. But for me, straight a block and a half up the street is middle state coffee. And Jay is the owner, Jay Deleros. And they roast all their own beans. He sources all of his own beans. He just does an amazing job. And the coffee is exceptional. So he has two locations in Denver, one on Santa Fe and one here on West 32nd in Clay Street. So, yeah, shameless plug for Jay. Yes, yes. Hopefully this is going to be okay, because I'm going to say it anyway. But if anyone listening goes, tell them Paul sent you and say hi to Jay. Yeah. Yeah. He's a really, yeah, they're good people here. Just to share a quick thought is one of the reasons I love doing the podcast is I get to meet people and scratch my extra version itch. And the way I describe it is I'm usually not the guy you're going to drop into a room full of strangers and I'm going to work the room and everyone's going to be about my best friend. That's not how my extra version works. It works more here having conversations with you, Paul and others like you. And what I'm always fascinated by is there are people that are making a huge difference in all corners of the world that no one has any idea about, right? I mean, you have an institution in the ice cream shop and there's so, and people would know that you're the guy behind it or one of the guys. And that's just a small piece of all the things you do. When you talk about, you know, the hospitality piece of it and the real estate development and these tenants that are poor, like you're a big part of a nice slice of the Denver pie. And I think that is, I wish my vocabulary is better. It's cool, but there's a bigger and better word. It's inspiring. I think it's, I think it's wonderful. Well, thank you. I mean, I hope, uh, yeah, that's in some way, I would say sort of my life work, right? Um, I remember one time I had a teacher and he said, you know, every person should have a mission statement for your life, like what you're doing. And, um, I sat with it and sat with it and it evolved. Um, and you know, what I came up with is that I want to live a life that inspires people to, you know, live a life themselves, uh, to, uh, with a purpose that is a greater cause, right? Than themselves, right? That there's something beyond that there's, you know, to live a life of purpose to a cause greater than themselves, right? That, that to me is, you know, what I'm striving for. Do I fail at it every day? Absolutely. Do I wake up there the next day every morning, going, okay, date, next day, let's go. Um, I, I love the movie, the Milagro Bean Field War. It's an old movie, Robert Redford. I think it was one of the first movies he ever produced. It came out, I don't know, 80s or something. And there's this little old man in the movie. His name is Amor Rante. And every morning Amor Rante gets out of bed. He sits at the edge of the bed and he says, thank you, God, for giving me another day. And, and I, you know, I don't know, I've always been inspired by that. And I, I, every morning I wake up and I'm like, wow, I get another shot at this, right? It's, uh, so it's exciting. Man, your mission statement is a lot more impactful than mine. Mine is something like, I want to do what I want when I want. So self centered. Well, that's, uh, you know, that, that's what they call retirement. Isn't that? Yeah. True. Yeah. Yeah. What were you just thinking there? I'm curious. Oh, there's a couple guys who just showed up in my backyard to do some work. So, um, yeah, I was just looking over at them. So sorry. I work as a coach. And one of the things we're taught is watch your client. Now you were not my client, but watch facial expressions, watch gestures, watch eyes. And what I have learned is a lot of times when people look up or down, sometimes there's a thought sometimes there's not two guys walking into the backyard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you do for fun? Um, you know, people ask me that all the time as well. I do a lot of different things, but I also find what I do every day fun. Yeah. For the most part, right? I, um, I'm kind of at a place in my life where, you know, I get to, for the most part, the work I get to do is, you know, what I want to do. And I'm inspired to do and enjoy doing and I'm excited about doing. Um, so that is fun. I also, you know, love doing, uh, dinner parties with friends. I love having people over a love, you know, that kind of thing. I like going out on, uh, on a boat and floating on the water and catching sunsets and that kind of thing. Um, in the winter, I used to be as much more of a skier. I don't do a lot of skiing now. Um, I'd say my winter activities are mostly, you know, walking the dog and just, you know, having, uh, yeah, just fun with friends and family in the evenings and things. Yeah. There's a book I read some years ago, some years ago, the author is Keith Farazzi. And the name of the book is Never Eat Alone. Yeah. And one, one of his things was to host dinner parties and bring otherwise despair of people together to have a night, not a night out, but a night together. And it was really, it was inspiring reading the book. And I wondered you talk about the business or the, sorry, the dinner parties. My mind went to that book, not knowing if that's what you meant, but that's where my mind went. I, um, I don't do it as much anymore, but I used to host a lot of themed dinner parties where I would say, okay, I'm gonna have 12 people come over. The theme is this, you know, this evening, the theme is beauty. What do you find beautiful? What's, what's something that really, you know, I'm working on a project right now where we're just starting it. I'm trying to figure out how it's going to work. So this is, you're the first person I've ever even shared this with. But it's this idea that, you know, um, we don't, the attendance in churches has really dropped off as I understand it. I don't have any data around that. But as I understand it has really dropped off. And, but I think being thought innocent of the sacred, what is sacred? And that's not a deity that's not, I'm not talking about anything like that, but just to be cognizant of what you find sacred. So I've been thinking about this project called sacred soapbox, where I don't care if you're eight years old or 80 years old, you can come. It's sort of like TED talks that are focused on the sacred, where people can gather on a Sunday morning and you can hear two different talks or three different talks. I don't know. And again, it can be anybody and they share what they feel to them is sacred, whether it's music, whether it's art, whether it's nature, whether it's relationships, whether it's the work they do, whatever it is, right? That that is, there's a reverence around this idea of sacred. There's a respect, there's a acknowledgement right to me. And I just feel like we're sort of losing some of that. I would say maybe respect for the sacred in our daily life. Life seems a lot different today than when I grew up here. I was born in 1975 just for a time stamp. And you know, my mom was one of those people that made us make church busy on Christmas and Easter. But the point that I'm trying to make is even when she grew up, going back to my mom's childhood, she talked about community was the thing. She grew up in New York City, but she said there was community everywhere, like neighbors and friends and other parents and everything. And then when I grew up, I grew up in a cul-de-sac and we had a smaller community, but it's still community-based. And it seems like that's kind of getting lost these days. Yeah. I've really been thinking a lot about this idea of convenience, right? We're trading convenience for so many things, right? You know, I went to the public market conference in Toronto last year and gosh, just, you know, learned about cities who prioritize markets throughout their city and they're like farmers markets, real farmers markets, not, you know, a farmers market where they have candles and booze and jewelry and like, but they're like where you go and buy food, right? And we don't have that system. We don't have a culture of farmers markets here in Denver. Sadly, I would really love to work on a project that has that focus. But, you know, we're trading convenience. We would rather have everybody bring it to us, deliver it at our door, all of that, but then that doesn't mean we really meet the farmer, get to know where our food is sourced from, get to know any of that. We're trading that. Earbuds. I have stopped wearing earbuds when I walk my dog because I'm noticing that it's convenient to be able to listen to Darren's podcast while I'm walking. But most of the podcasts are all about people and relationship and all that. And I'm walking by people and I'm not even looking at them. I'm listening to my earbuds. I'm ignoring my dog. I mean, you know, I'm not looking at the beauty around me. I'm just like, you know, I'm listening to some podcast that's going to fill me with some great idea when the great idea might be walking right by me. And so I think there's all this, you know, we're trading convenience for good, solid quality information. We're trading convenience for so many things. So I don't remember your question that got me there. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah. I'll ask you to indulge me for a second. It's going to take me a hot minute to share this spot. So the first is a lot of people know the like, it's not a phenomenon, which is when you buy a red car, you see red cars everywhere. Right. I actually call it something like Bader Hoffman or something. I forget. Anyway, I call them I call them micro themes. And a micro theme is I read something, a client says something, I see something, and then the micro theme is in a relatively short time. That theme is repeated. Here's the point I want to make. I'm listening to Andrew Huberman's podcast, right? He's a scientist. I think he's great. And he's got a doctor named Casey Means. And Casey is all about mitochondrial impact or dysfunction to our bodies and all his D's. The one thing she was talking about is in today's world is how convenience is impacting us in so many ways, such as we don't walk to get our food. We have temperature control. So we don't even get the highs of the heat and the lows of the winter, because inside, we can keep ourselves perfectly at 70 degrees or whatever we want. We don't walk. We drive everywhere. Right. It wasn't more than 100 or 150 years ago where most of us lived on a farm, or at least did some farming for our food. And today, I think she said it's like less than 3% of the country, or maybe the word I forgot the number, but the stat, I don't remember specifically. But the point being is that a very small population of us farm, make our own food, and especially back to the micro theme that you mentioned is the convenience is leading to us being sedentary. Fascinating. It's killing us in so many ways. Think about the choices. I mean, pretty soon, like I have no idea when I go on Amazon or any other stores. You know, I don't go to a store. I don't shop. I just get fed. You know, it looks like there's a lot of stuff out there, right? And if I go down 10 pages and whatever, but yeah, I don't know if those five-time reviews are real. I don't know if, you know, the best choice. I don't know. I mean, it's it's, we're trading convenience and for all of it. And I see it in business like, you know, I think specialty retail will still have a place. But, you know, if you're just general retail, pretty soon everybody's just going to buy their stuff online. I just think the convenience. And I think, you know, what happened with COVID was it taught all us boomers, right? I'm at the tail-tail end of the boomer generation. I was born in '62. And, you know, it taught us how to use the internet, right? Like I can order groceries on for Costco and I get delivered here. And, you know, I mean, I knew before, but I'm just saying that a lot of folks that are 10 years old than I am who were like, what? Amazon, how do you, what do you do? What, and they had to learn it, right? And now they're, they see the benefits of it. You know, they really, yeah. So, yeah, I don't even know what to say after that. But I'm thinking about it. Like, I'm listening to this podcast and thinking about my life and how do I operate and the exercise I do and don't do and my laziness and all this stuff. And it's fascinating. You bring it up about the markets. And when you talk about, you know, the candles and the alcohol, I think about my favorite farmer's market, which is by my house on Pearl Street. And yes, there's produce and food to be bought. And there's a lot of chocchis and crap. Sorry to the vendors. But like, it's not the farmer's market. It's a market. Maybe that's you. That's probably one of the better markets in the whole city. Great. I mean, that that is an incredible market. And it does have a lot of food. That's, you know, and it's, yeah, she does a fantastic job there. But, but it is a lot of, you know, there are, you know, I was talking to somebody just last night who said, have you ever been to a farmer's market in Palermo? Now I know that sounds very privileged. And I have been to a Palermo to a farmer's market. And it's farmers, cottage farmers, or like we like to call them truck farmers. So these are people who live on the edge of the city that might own 20 acres. But they have, you know, sweet corn and pumpkins and squash and, you know, broccoli and asparagus and, you know, tomatoes and they're growing all this stuff and they're a little, but they have a whole market system that they can trust will be there to support them. They got to show up on Sunday and be there and tell people why their tomato is special and what they do to, you know, make it special for them. And that what reciprocal relationship to me is the piece we're losing, right? I don't know who makes anything that I buy on Amazon, right? And I enjoy the convenience of Amazon. I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not, you know, bad mouth in Amazon, but it's, I'm, I worry what I'm trading, right? Yeah. I want to ask you a question about the local farmers or the local people that you work with. But if you'd give me a moment, I feel bad. I called people stuff crap at that farmer's market. And I, I want to apologize to our listeners. That was wrong of me and I feel bad. So hopefully those listening will accept the apology. Wrong choice of words. It's not crap. Yeah, it's definitely not. I mean, I'm just drawing a blank on the woman's name who runs that market. She does a, Nicole Jarman. And she curates some really good, I mean, artists who make handmade jewelry and to make, you know, they're doing honey and all kinds of amazing things. So yeah, yeah, it's, we're talking about markets where you go when it is crap. So that's not one of them for your grades. Trying to help you out here. No, thank you. Thank you. You know, foot and mouth. I do it often enough. Yeah, so we're getting towards the tail end here. We're not in a quick rush, but I am curious, because you mentioned about family Jones and I'm probably not going to remember the exact words you use. But what I thought I heard was local grains. Did I hear that correctly? You did. We have several different lines that we carried, right? And as we're growing, right, we're constantly, you know, getting our cost inputs in all those things under control. So I would say, you know, we're our, the percentage of what we produce that uses all local grains is constantly growing. We have some stuff that we source, meaning it's, you know, Michael Pollan said, you know, every act of eating as an agricultural act. And we like to say that every act of, you know, drinking spirits is an agricultural act, right? Everything in that bottle is a fermented grain of some type, right? And that grain is grown, cared for, nurtured, sourced by somebody, right? And we always like to say that, you know, it all starts with the soil. The quality of that soil is we believe translates to the quality of the spirits. And so we defined these eight regenerative principles around, you know, soil management and care. And we work with farmers that adhere to those eight principles and much more, right? And they're in a process of always dancing with those principles, right? Sometimes you, you know, you can do a no till, you know, field where you don't, you don't till it up, right? You replant things and you plant over it and it creates a biomass that holds moisture and creates more biodiversity within the soil, which creates, we believe, healthier grains, which translates to better flavor. Anyway, so there's all of those pieces, but we right now, you know, we work with primarily two farmers, one in the San Luis Valley and one kind of here up on the front range that is just like, you know, five miles from our distillery. So yeah, and they're all just incredible growers, really hard, hardworking people who every day have to, you know, I talk about making spirits as an improvisational art, right? You have to deal with the soil and the proteins and the sugars in those grains, how long it's in the barrel, what the char of the barrel, the oak of the barrel, the, you know, the atmosphere, perhaps atmospheric pressure plays a big part in aging whiskey and some of those things. So it is an improvisational art, but so is farming, right? You're constantly dealing with moisture and pest control and all these things, right? It's a beautiful thing to see somebody doing really well. So yeah, and if there, if I could give it a shameless plug, if you want to go check out one of our farmers, Jones Family Organics, they grow primarily potatoes and they have, their family has down in the San Luis Valley for years. If you go to, you know, any Costco in town, or not Costco, well, they might be in Costco too, but if you go to any whole foods in town, they carry their potatoes and they're beautiful, they're delicious, they're amazing, but what they do is they plant in between crops a rye for us and for other bakers that use rye. And so they're constantly trying to build this rye, you know, a market for rye. And they've started a project called, or them and some other people down in the valley have all started a project called the Rye Resurgence Project. And I would encourage people to go on Instagram and check out what they're trying to do because, you know, in talking to some of the farmers down in the San Luis Valley, they're like, we might be able to farm another 10, 10 years down here, and then that's it. Well, there's no water left. And part of it is, you know, obviously, water shares getting bought up by cities. And part of it is soil management. So planting rye helps the soil maintain moisture, which then feeds the aquifer long term. And if more and more people plant rye, but they don't want to plant rye because they don't think there's a market for it. So we need to do whatever we can to save the San Luis Valley, you know, to find ways to utilize rye in brownie mix and waffle mix and bread making. And it's a, it's an amazing, you know, delicious product. So we use it for distilling. We make our rye whiskey with it in a couple other products we do. Immediately, probably back to my childhood talking about rye. Oh, really? I mentioned my mom, right on the mom side of the family is Christian, your Catholic, and my dad's side of the family is Jewish. Grandma lived in Northern Manhattan and had not had, but knew the bakery that she loved that we in turn loved that had the best rye bread. It was amazing. So good. Yeah, good. Took you back. Well, that's good. Yeah. All right, I'm going to ask you two last questions, Paul. The first is any other shameless plugs or unchameless plugs of companies, yours, others, ways to find you links, any of that stuff that you'd like to share, and then we'll put it into the links below. Well, yeah, family Jones come check out our distillery, you know, ask for the family Jones at your favorite restaurants and bottle shops around the city and just know that you're supporting local economy, local agriculture, local farmers. I mean, we're all about, you know, really building Colorado and specialty spirit destination, right? Colorado spirits, they are kind of on the map. That's my dog's father. So yeah, check out the family Jones dot CO, it's not dot com dot CO. And then our spirit house, which is right next door to the restaurant route down in Lower Highland. In low high there, we're literally right next door to that's our tasting room. So yeah, that's a shameless plug. Little man ice cream. Yes. Come try all of our amazing flavors. And if you've never been to the little man ice cream factory, it's on West Colfax, 44 or nine West Colfax. It's a really fun place. And particularly during the holidays, like we, you know, we sort of pride ourselves on trying to be the Willy Wonka of, you know, ice cream and Denver. And our factory is very Willy Wonka esque. But what's even better is when the holidays happen, Lauren Martinez, who is our operations, really our CEO there, he just goes all out. And it's a lot of fun. So, okay. Very cool. All right, last question for you. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you'd like to? You know, one of the questions that you sent ahead of time was sort of about, you know, just that could be a question to discuss was about ambitions. And that's not a word I typically use, right? As a, you know, like, I I wouldn't say I'm necessarily like, that's not how I define my energy or enthusiasm around something, right? You know, I studied theology and enthusiasm, right? Or the word inspired. So enthusiasm is in Theo, which is in in that divine space, right? In that space of where it's a transcendent work, it's a labor of giving back to whatever you find the divine to be, right? That that passion comes from that connection, that enthusiasm. And you know it when you see somebody who's enthusiastic about what they do, I think they're working. I love going to see musicians who are incredibly proficient, like, like I saw Trombone shorty recently, and I literally, that guy is on another level, right? He is in the divine space when he's playing. So, you know, ambitions are, if I had an ambition, it was to it would be to live in that place of inspiration or in spirit. And, you know, it's all connected in that way to me. And man, I'm just trying to do it every day and live it and do the best I can. Well, in this short time together, you're a congruent guy. You know what you just said there very much ties into the personal mission statement. I think that's what you described it earlier as. And then even before we press record, you're talking about ethos. And all of these things are very congruent in the way you show up. So, I appreciate you being willing to be wide, wide-ranging with me today. I know we did send you ahead of time, all those questions. And I am positive I went off script. And you went, and I appreciate that. I thought this was a really inspiring conversation. You got a coolness to you, man. You know, you have all these things going on, which I think the naked eye would wonder how busy you are with all of these businesses and, you know, thriving businesses and growing and all this stuff. And you're chill. You're cool. So, I appreciate that. Well, yeah, what great things got Galloway, I recently heard him say this, that great businesses are built in the agency of others. And I had to sit with that for a minute and really understand that. And I sat with my leadership team the other day. And I was like, one, I'm fortunate that, you know, I have people that I trust around me to give agency to, to give them more autonomy to create. And I trust what they're doing. And it's, it's in line. And, you know, we're constantly talking about ethos. And so I think that, that connects. But I really love that idea that it's so I, you know, I get to do fun stuff. And I have some hard stuff I have to do like everybody else. But yeah, I'm, I'm fortunate to run it by really amazing people. It's awesome. Paul, thank you for your time. I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you, Darren. I really appreciate your time and your interest. Thank you, sir. Take care.
