Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 377 - Mark Bonnalie

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Mark is the creator of the Modern Rural Civilian channel, creating content about his ongoing adventure to design and create his dream "off grid" property and homestead. Many people talk about their desire to "detach" and build their own oasis, but few actually take the required actions. Mark's channel shares the successes and failures quite openly, providing insight in to what the lifestyle actually requires. Modern Rural Civilian: https://youtube.com/@modernruralcivilian?si=YHCCuQXPM0JxhudX Today's Sponsors: Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com Fabric: https://www.meetfabric.com/clearedhot  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome back. Today, days like today, I should say. Are the reasons why I like social media or are the reasons why I like doing this podcast? I get to sit down with somebody I never would have been connected with. I was connected to this person via a friend locally. Over Instagram, switched it to IRL in real life, emailing back and forth. Imagine wanting to get off the grid. Imagine not, you know, I say that not pejoratively. But you just, you just, you just. You just. You just. want to be able to have a piece of land, build your dream property, doing it all with your bare hands, which you can teach yourself and the tools and equipment that you have available, and maybe build into something where you can teach others. That, for me, is absolutely fascinating. And my guest today is Mark Bonali. He has been able to do that. He has an Instagram page that you have to check out. It is modern, rural civilian. You want to talk about somebody documenting the highs and the lows, the trials and tribulations of trying to do exactly what I just described. It's a great follow.

It's fascinating to see, I want to say low tech, but I don't want that to come off incorrectly. It's fascinating to see real world solutions or low tech solutions to modern problems. It doesn't always have to be electronics. It doesn't always have to be something that somebody else solved. One of the things I love about Mark is he just, he shows and documents. what it is he's building and how he solves these problems. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Before we do that, give me a few seconds, let me pay the bills.

Here we go. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Now today we're going to be talking specifically about their new energy product. It's no wonder while you're walking around feeling like a low-tee goblin, drinking those weak-ass, sugary energy drinks that taste like batteries. You need to try Black Rifle Energy. My friends over at Black Rifle Coffee put together the best energy drink in America, made with 200 milligrams of naturally sourced caffeine,

low calories and absolutely zero sugar. Seriously, go to their website right now and try them out. Right now, they've got four delicious flavors, Project Mango, Ranger Berry, Freedom Punch, and White Frost. Aside from the incredible coffee and energy drinks, Black Rifle Coffee's founding mission, is to build a support network for veterans, first responders, and law enforcement.

Every purchase you make with Black Rifle Coffee helps them get funding and equipment to those on our nation's front lines. Black Rifle sources exotic russ from award. winning farms all over the world and they have a wide variety of ground coffee, whole cups, K cups and ready to drink coffee if you like your coffee on the go. The roast usually have a military tie-in to celebrate veteran culture as well. So if you are a history nerd, you'll dig the bag art as well. They also have unique mugs, graphic teas, workout gear, outdoor apparel, and much more.

All made with designs you aren't going to find anywhere else. Their design team has been going crazy lately, so check out all the new shirts and stuff they just dropped. I love their gear. I wear it all the time. The shirts, the workout shorts, the hats, the hats. It's all next level. Try it now at black rifle coffee.com or you can visit any of the retail outposts and or visit your local grocery and convenience store nationwide.

Let's get into the show. To the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. I want to talk about, what do you call it? Your homestead? What do you call it our project? Yeah, I call it our homestead. Okay.

I want to talk about that because I am fascinated by the genre is the term I'm going to use. Like I was telling you on the walk up. over here. Yep. Michael, was it yesterday that you were showing me that other Instagram page? Yeah, Nate. So we were talking, I was telling him that you were going to come on. Yeah. In a brief overview what we were going to talk about. And he says, oh, is his name Nate? I'm like, I have, no, it's Mark. Yeah, right, right. And so he pulls up this other page. Like I was telling you, what does that guy have on his page, Michael? Yeah, 750,000. Yeah, something crazy. Yeah. Nate Petroski. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Of course you know him. Yeah. I'm familiar. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. He, he, he had a, he had a really early sort of just blossoming on TikTok.

And so I started seeing his content on TikTok early on. But he's, he's, of course, made, you know, he's made the leap to all platforms at this point. The following. Yeah. And maybe I shouldn't be shocked by it. But I was shocked by the size of it. And then I'm thinking about, I like the content that you put out.

It's fascinating to me. Sure. It's stuff that I think if I was laying in bed at night, not able to sleep, I would say I could totally do that. and I want to do that. And then I'd be mortified of actually starting. I just think it shows how much interest there is. Sure.

In the path that you chose to go down. But before we get into the homestead, you got to tell me about how you made that choice. Like, start wherever you want to, the origin story. And let's bring it up to the point where you said, you know what? No. Idaho and I'm doing this on my own. So early on, we, my fiance and I, Heather, we've been. together for the last decade, and we've always had a dream of just really living without neighbors,

you know, living out in the country. We've always had a place in town, small town of about 36,000, 36,000 people. Previously. Previously, yes. Where was it? East Coast, West Coast? No, no, only about a half an hour from the homestead property. Okay. That's not too bad of a commute. No, no, 45 minutes from the homestead property. And at that time, we really just didn't have an exit strategy, and we hadn't experienced these bumps in the road in life that wound up pushing us over the edge of wanting to venture out. And the biggest thing was, I mean, I got to say that one of the larger pushes was the whole COVID experience, you know. I mean, the, you know, we weren't in a position that we were fully locked down or restricted like a lot of the people that you would read about or see. Montana was very similar as far as places to ride out that particular pandemic.

I bet Idaho is probably the same. For the first couple of weeks, people were taking it seriously. One of my most distinct memories was there's a couple. One, the main street that we just walked across. In the middle of the day, standing in it, looking in both directions. And the only thing missing was a tumbleweed, which did not occur. I would add that to that story, but trying to maintain a relationship with the truth. Yeah.

And driving, we stayed out at our lake house, or a house near our lake, is not on the lake. Sure. And there were road signs. Right. That, you know, the electronic ones, stay safe, stay home. Stay put. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Those are probably the most two distinct memories. And those, I would say that was four to six weeks. Right. And then after that, people just like, got a little bit. Peaking their head up a little bit. Like, gophers. Like, what's going on here?

What's going on? And I'd say about, what do you think, Michael, four months into it, I'm not going to say we were back doing Jiu-Jitsu, but I'm not going to say we weren't. Right. Yeah. I felt really fortunate how we did maintain a sense of movement and freedom throughout that whole process. And Idaho was, you know, I think was just like you're describing. Yeah. Not overly. But once again, we saw like, we saw our recreation areas, you know, shut down with an orange sign that was like, look, don't go to this hot spring. Don't go to this. Don't go to this. Don't go. go do this thing that you're normally doing that doesn't involve any people at all. And is outdoors. Yeah, and it's outdoors. I mean, ridiculous. So on top of just supply chain.

And I'm in the world of preparedness and prioritizing self-sufficient living, I don't, I don't step into the doom and gloom side of anything. I'm super positive guy. But, you know, just the thought that you couldn't go to the grocery store and get your typical amenities was, becoming a reality that we had never witnessed in our lifetime. So Heather, she is big on, she's always been big on gardening and self-sufficient food production and food preservation and things like that. So her, you know, part of her dream, whether, whether any of that would have played a part in our life, but would have been with the rural acreage to step into this more self-sufficient life of creating our own nourishment through.

through our own food and our own, just stepping away from the supply chain a little bit. Gardening's a tough one up here. Yeah, it's short season. Northern latitudes. My wife, no pun intended, jumped both feet into the gardening bucket a few years ago, literally using buckets to try to grow some tomatoes. The deer got to them first. Right.

And I believe we, and I'm not joking when I say this, might have been able to fill up a small soup bowl with our bountiful harvest. And that was last time she tried that. She was very underwhelmed by the amount that was produced. Right. And upset by how difficult it was. And but she also wouldn't let me shoot the deer. So I had, I feel like I presented to her realistic, tangible solutions that she would not allow me to partake in.

Dang it, man. Well, it's, but it's tough. I mean, you're talking, the summer months are amazing because the sun doesn't go down. Right. But if you're in the same latitudes, we are here, I mean, we're past the solstice now, but six hours of sunlight a day if you're lucky. Yeah, right. No, I know.

This is the hard time of year for me. Yeah. And many people. It's difficult. I try not to ever make a sob story out of it, but my life changes from, you know, daylight till dark, hands dirty, making progress on projects, passionate projects that are, I get wrapped up in the creativity of just the projects alone. but what comes to light after, you know, the project almost being complete is this wasn't just a beautifying sort of land addition to our homestead property. This is going to change our life and our way of living once this is finished, you know, whether it be creating the water system, creating a garden or creating a root cellar, you know, to store the food. I sort of get tunnel vision on just the creative process of the project alone.

And it doesn't hit me until sort of the final chapters of creating it that, wow, this is going to make life easier. You know, this whole thing is going to make life easier. But yeah, back to the journey of getting to the point of taking the leap to start this was a big part of it was the real estate. boom that happened with everybody trying to bounce around the country during the initial COVID stage. Go back in time for me a little bit. What were you doing occupationally?

Were you born and raised in Idaho? Yep. Okay. Yep. So born and raised in small town, Idaho, a little logging community called Orifino that's down like Clearwater Country. Earlier on in life, I, you know, I just lived a pretty rural upbringing. It wasn't like a farm life or anything like that. the biggest industry in my little small town is logging.

So both sides, my mom and my dad's family, logging are in the woods, you know, to make a living. And with that mentality, probably lots of different industries like that, but you just get a lot of, you get a lot of strong mindsets of making do with what you've got and making the job happen with as little or as much resources as you've got available to you. So all my uncles, you know, fabricators and just, just accomplishing pretty crazy feats with with bare minimum, you know, type resources. I think the technical term is redneck ingenuity. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah.

I am not sure that would appear in the dictionary, but I think people know what I'm saying. That's 100% accurate, right? So small town upbringing, I'm real fortunate for the. You know, I didn't put a lot into mechanical. I feel guilty saying gifted with mechanical abilities, but I just, I did have, my dad was always fixing everything that broke around our place. So I was never around, I was never groomed in a scenario where you just call the contractor, you call the, call the dude to come and make it right.

you know, my dad was, is very talented and he, and he taught me, I paid attention just a fraction of what I should have been paying attention, but. Did he go to school for that or did he O.GT it as well? Yep, O.G. He was just, you know, back in, he, he graduated in the mid-70s from high school, and at that time, the timber industry was on fire and he. Metaphorically? No, yeah, metaphorically, yeah. Timber industry was on fire in comparison to the expenditure of going to school.

This wasn't as hot of a topic back then. Parents weren't really, at least in rural, small town America, weren't pressuring their children to think that this is the way, you know, go get a degree. And so for a long time, you know, for the first 10 or 15 years, probably into the late 80s, the logging industry was a way that a lot of tough guys could make a living, make a good, you know, make a good providing living for their family without,

honestly, without having much education beyond just the, the hard work ethic. How's the industry doing now? It's poor. I mean, I don't want to speak out a turn and think that I know the ins and outs of it, but every logging company that was family-owned logging company, you know, from my neck of the woods in Idaho, there's maybe, you know, three out of 20 left. Well, so what happened there? It's not like demand for wood products has decreased. I mean, even in Calispell, to go to your point about the real estate boom. Yes. Holy cow.

It's wild. It was wild. And the only thing that made it, that allowed me to understand it a little bit more is my time in California. Sure. Because it was very California-esque when you talk about a meteoric rise and real estate value. I think traditionally over, if you aggregate it out over enough time, I think 1.5 to 3% is your average increase in home value per year.

And I think that might be, that might be averaged out over the U.S. pretty clear. At the very least, it's single digits. Yeah, quite low. We, I mean, there were instances, this is how my financial luck is. This is the story of my life. First house that I ever bought was in Virginia Beach. Okay. Yeah. It might have been a little over $100,000. Yeah. I mean, and I'm, I find that looking back at that now, I wish I could find a house that was $100,000. I'd be sure I could, but it'd be $19,000. and 742 miles away from civilization. Absolutely.

So it comes with its own cost. Sure. But I remember looking at that, man, I'm never going to be able to afford that. I borrowed some money from my parents. Sold a house in Virginia Beach as that market was starting to ascend. And it was getting to a place where it was a little bit ridiculous. It was lagging the California market. And we're talking, you'd put your house in the market and you'd have six realtors and cars

lined up to bring in people to make you offers that were equal to, if not above asking price. Yes. So we made a killing on that house in Virginia Beach. Right. put it into a house in San Diego. And I think we closed the day before the trapdoor opened on that market. So I went from having some great equity to negative equity. And if people are curious about experiences and both, try to go for the positive equity. Because negative equity sucks. And I looked at

that. I think when we sold that house, I think I might have wrote a check for 10 grand or something like that. Just to move on. Yeah. We held it for years. Yeah. But at the same time, We were, I experienced buying a house on a short sale. Right. Which I had heard nightmares of. Had a phenomenal experience closed in 30 days. But after that, the real estate market started recovering. And then it became 3% growth in one year, 10% growth in the next year.

Right. 17% growth in the next year. And then prices, if we hadn't bought our house at the very bottom of the real estate market in San Diego on a short sale for less than they were offering. Yep. Which I didn't think when we made the offer. I remember having the conversation with my wife at the time saying, and screw it. They're not going to approve our offer anyway. So let's send this number across.

Yeah, right. They took it and the bank said, sure. Wow. So I saw this catastrophic rise that started. I still don't understand how people can afford to live in San Diego because I know what they make. And it's not incredibly higher than, it's higher than a lot of places, but not incredibly higher than others. No, no.

We sold that house. Yep. And we're able to lateral that up here because the housing boom hadn't hit. Sure. And then COVID showed up. And I remember thinking, I've seen this movie. Yes. And it was insane.

And very rapidly, you started hearing the same things that I had heard other places. Locals can't afford to live. The living wage is not allowing them to buy a home where they're living. So now it's, can I find two or three people to live together in a rental property? That's literally the best I can do in the town that I live in, which drives rightfully or wrongfully. There's a conversation about that, disdain from those people about those who are bringing money from elsewhere in. Oh, right. And it is, it's not an issue for all people, but it's a real thing for sure.

Sure. There's some frustration there. Absolutely. But yeah, it's, I've seen, I've seen it first hand. And that's the only thing that allowed me to understand what was going on is, was that forced scarcity. And people fleeing what I'm speaking for them, but it seems like what they saw was draconian control measures that they wanted no part of in the states they were living in. Yep. And for the people selling the houses, that was awesome.

Yeah. For the locals trying to buy the houses? Yeah. Not so awesome. No, not at all. That's, so we were on the giving end of that, our home in, in our, you know, neighboring largest town from where we bought the homestead acreage and property. You know, we sold in July of 2021, and I'll back up a little bit.

It wasn't my idea. Heather, my fiance, she, I was headstrong. In 2017, I'd quit the closest thing to a current. career life that I had built up to that age and part of my life. I worked for Nightforce Optics in the small little town that I was born and raised in, just because it was the, honestly, just because it was the best gig in town. I needed a good job.

And I'd moved back to Idaho from being young and dumb and started entry level with Nightforce Optics, got to be passionate about the shooting sports industry and got to be passionate about the product that we were building and with that passion came success within the company. So before long, I had worked my way into a rather career-oriented position that I never saw coming. I didn't plan on having and was now sort of making, once again, an uneducated. I didn't go to school. As naive as that sounds these days, I just didn't. It never made sense to me. I did go for a couple semesters thinking that school is going to be the right choice for me, but it, it, it didn't. Um, uh, so I honestly kind of felt like I painted myself into this, this, um, salary corner of how am I ever going to, I'm

either going to be here for a lifetime or, um, and I have a huge creative bug to scratch, you know, like, uh, um, early on in, in young, young life, I thought I was going to try to do something with, with artistic ability and, um, what medium? always fine arts, whether it's been drawing or painting, but the most unrealistic shit that you could imagine. I mean, you know, nothing that had any ties to reality. I just thought I've always been heartstrong in my motivations in life. And so I just always thought, you know, I can overcome people's reality gut checks, you know, that I'm getting all the time about this is never good. know, what are you going to do with that? That's great. You're good at this, but how are you going to

make a living with that? So, yeah, Nightforce Optics, I got to the point in 2017. Like, when I started with them, it was a really small, family-oriented company. It's still a very, I would say, still on the scale that they're at. It's still probably a family-oriented style company, but the relativeness of that term changed throughout the growth. And when I left there in, 2017, it was really kind of like a sort of a survival move for my creativity. I got, I had a lot of fantastic opportunities through the company and so much growth, but it was also becoming more of a cubicle and computer focused day compared to like such a well-rounded day that with people filling multiple roles within the company.

So anyway, as weak as this might sound, it was just, it was, I could feel it plaguing me. The direction the company was going and sort of where my ceiling had landed me, which was much higher than I thought was, you know, that I would ever rise to. But also, you know, I wasn't able to contribute to the creative direction of the company. The creative bug was something I was always, you know, wanting to and needing to fulfill within my own. just within my own happiness. So in 2017, this is going to sound crazy. But I had this, I had this passion for, I have always had a passion for old, old vehicles,

old, just classic Americana in all senses of that term. And in 2017, I was really looking for like, okay, what can I branch out? If I do quit this job, what can I do on my own, by myself or start in that manner and make, you know, begin to make a business out of this. And I've always been into sort of small space living, tiny homes and at that time a little bit of the, like we grew up camping my whole life as, as a recreation in my family. But vintage airstream travel trailers.

Those things are badass. I mean, it's, it might sound crazy to part of your, you know, to your audience. I don't, you know, a lot of people don't even know what the hell I'm talking about. This is worth a Google image search, Michael. This is actually something I can see you towing behind your Prius. Those silver things? Yeah. That's, yes, technically you are correct.

It is one of those silver things. Those silver twinky things. They look cool. Oh, they're incredible. Yes. What's not incredible is how much they cost. Oh, they're insane, especially the new ones. Well, they didn't used to be insane.

It's like anything. When it catches the eye of the consumer and they start going like, Wildfire, the price just gets on a hockey stick. It's wild. So we owned one. We owned like a 1966, 26 footer. And I was always attracted to the early, more simple versions of these. Look that one up, Michael, 1966 Airstream.

Yeah. Because look at that one in the middle and the bottom. That's definitely a new iteration. Absolutely. That deviates from the tree. I mean, I get the same colorways and stuff like that. Yeah. Yes.

The lineage stayed the same, but the classic vibe was, you know, was, you know, It was, it morphed over time, but the, these were space shuttles, man. Oh, my God, they're so cool. And they began making them in the, you know, the earliest airstreams, I probably the very late end of the 30s all the way up to. And so ours was a 66 that was Heather and I's personal trailer. Michael, add interior to that Google search.

We have got to. Oh, it's so classic. Do you make sure it's, what would be the good surf? Yes. I want to make sure it was an, oh, go original interior. That way, because of some. of these people really, they take them down to the bones. Oh, for sure. Just put original. Yeah, interior. No, not I original. Look what you've done, Michael. Isn't it funny actually how

much it does? Know what you mean? I stopped correcting my spell. Okay, let's see if we, that's probably one right there. Yeah, that absolutely is. That looks like original floor coverings and original, uh, original furnishings. Yes. So I mean, you know, as we all, we probably all grew up with that 70s show in mind, but we're even talking earlier than that, that 50s and 60s show. And so I, yeah, man, I mean, we were, we were on vacation, soul searching. You know, I was, I was really getting fed up and hard, hard to cope with just the doldrum of what I had found my life to be at that point. And, and, how old were you at that point?

I would have been, oh, man, well, that was in 20, I would have been late 30s. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I, you know. It's not too young for a midlife crisis.

No, no. I mean, I, I did what I could for a long time and had, I made the best of it and I had, you know, great,

I don't ever want to, it was me, not them, you know, is the point. I, I just had creative endeavors that I knew I was capable of, that I was not,

within the confines of, of the structure of the company, at least for me at that time, were not being, And I just didn't have an outlet for them. So it sounds like you recognize that you were a square peg and a round hole and not that they had tried to jam me into that. Yeah. It just didn't fit well for you.

I would rather have something I would rather. I feel like somebody recognizing that and making the choice for themselves to change trajectory is way healthier than recognizing that and staying in it because fill in the blank, whatever reason. Absolutely. Yeah. And finances. I mean, I'm, I'm the first to tell you that we do, you know, know, we, God, we're so self-sacrificing when it comes to our comfort zones and our, stepping out of that box is the hardest part.

There's been so much happiness on the backside of the scariest decisions I've ever made. Yeah, same. And it's, so I can't preach that enough to the general public when it comes to taking the leap to the thing that keeps, you know, scratching at your insides that you can't get rid of in the back of your mind, oftentimes we will write that off for 20 plus years or, you know, pretty soon life's passed us by. And we didn't pursue that just like, you know, you and I talked on the walk over here. Yeah. And regrets are more powerful than bad decisions through, through the growth that you can, you know, that you can experience through taking those leaps.

So I was just going to bring that up. I can't think of a worst situation. then arriving at the end of your journey, the metaphorical deathbed. Right. And the feeling that you are consumed, but you're going to probably be scared and fearful, right? Because it's your transiting back into the multiverse or whatever the hell we're living in. Yep. And, uh, but being full of regret of things you wish you had done experiences that you wish that you would have. And your body is just no longer capable of doing that.

I can't fathom how horrendous that would be in addition to the fact knowing that the end is upon you. Yeah, it's so scary. I mean, we're only here for literally like a flash in the pan. I've always had the ability, at least within my, within myself, to realize, even as things are new and shiny, like, I'm going to get tired of this or I'm going to get, like, this isn't going to be what it is to me today forever. Go for it. I mean, just pursue it. And I'm still a product of poor decision making and learning.

Aren't we all? learning through the hardships of it all. I mean, I can't stress that enough. I don't want to portray that I've got anything figured out here. But all I did know is that I did not have it in me to let my life slip away between the cracks and go on not chasing my dreams to the point where I knew I either failed or flew. The longer you waited in that decision, the worst it would have been too. Yeah, absolutely.

So decided there in the latter years of a decade long career with Night Force Optics that it just wasn't going to, you know, I was either going to be a lifer or else I was going to make some drastic life changes. Started the vintage airstream. What I thought was going to be a restoration company. I always liked, I've always liked building creative projects, whether it be old classic pickup trucks or we personally owned that 66 Airstream train. And I knew from a business and marketing standpoint, I knew that there was a cult following around these old, old time trailers. And I also, through my own personal passion for them, had realized I've seen, you know, maybe not hundreds of these things out in the sticks, like on these old country drives. Oh, they're out there, though. Yeah, they were my neck of the woods in the northwest of the country, in, you know, North Carolina.

central Idaho, I kind of attributed it to it's just a little bit behind time. So the people that there was not this knowledge that, oh, these things are valuable and these things could, you know, there's people looking for them. So I started a company called Hales Canyon Vintage Airstream, and I thought I was just going to be turning wrenches and creating airstreams. And I was cool with that, right? Like, it wasn't going to be an office. It was no longer going to be a cubicle or a computer. I don't want to take away the fact that I got to shoot a lot and get paid for it. I got to be, you know, I got to travel all over the globe representing the company and doing all sorts of cool things. But the core responsibilities at the job were getting funneled more and

more into a computer telephone and a, you know, cubicle space. So the the Airstream thing, though, it went, it went from me having an idea what this business was going to turn out to be to me. I wound up just having a knack for finding them out in, like I said, out in the country on these back roads drives. Is that how you would find them as well? Yeah, absolutely. You'd just go kicking curbs and find them.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I give people the visual of like American pickers. I mean, I... What was your pitch to the person when you found him? Well... Because obviously finding him is the first part.

Yeah. Leaving with it attached to your truck is the second part. Absolutely. So the pitch was always... And at the time, it really wasn't a pitch. I just was bonkers passionate about these things. And the history and the separation of what this is versus a 1967 versus, you know, a 1962. I was always, whether they, whether I, you know, I felt like they were going to want to part ways with it or not, I was telling them stories about how this was, you know, this was towed behind an old international pickup across, you know, Africa.

You know, not that's not that particular trailer, but this model. Trailer similar to it, yeah. So it was always kind of a correlation between the history and nostalgia of what it is that this thing is and that I'm just trying to make a small. American Dream come true in order to pursue creativity and pursue my my version of the American dream at that time. So I thought it was going to be a restoration company. What it turned out to be was a rescue and rehoming company where I literally just pulled it out of the field, you know, on flat tires.

Didn't restore the trailer, but I would get it up and running enough for safe. for safe travel. And just through, you know, connections and being passionate about these things, I found other restoration shops down in Southern California that had long lists of clients, projects on the books, and no trailers to build these projects out of. So I began to just supply basically the raw materials of a project trailer to already established restoration shops. And for me, that was already the funnest part because it was like, I mean, it was, it was just an adventure out through the, through the country all the time, whatever that looked like, you know, complete freedom and complete self-guided destiny in that sense.

And I had a knack for not, there was plenty of money to be made in the final sale of what it was to the established shops in California. So it wasn't, I didn't need to get them for pennies, you know, on the dollar from the, so a lot of these people were like, that thing is a piece of junk out in my field. What are you talking about? You know, I'm like three, four thousand bucks. I mean, you know, maybe the same price that somebody would pay for a good used, older travel trailer that they could jump right in and use.

And these things are hammered. Oh, they're hammered. Actually, they're probably not hammered. They're just abandoned. Just abandoned, neglected. A lot of them turned into storage units for people's junk that, you know. What was the coolest or most unique one that you found? Well, I wound up shopping, you know, the entire Western United States began to become my...

Playground. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing. So prior to the airstreams, I had really gotten into vintage Ford trucks. So I had built a 1964 Ford F-100 short-box little pickup that I had built it as like a shop truck, you know, like a little marketing vehicle. I don't know that people would know, but just like an original paint, beat up, scars, lots of, you know, patina is what it would be called.

What was the, Michael, let's... Today's a picture day, Michael. You're going to be so busy over there. What is it? An F-100, 64, F-100. short wheelbase would be a good... Whoa. What was that map you were on, Michael?

Were you locating them already? No, it's just the computer being weird again. Yeah. What was it, 64? Yeah, 64 Ford F-100, SWB. That'll just give you the short wheel base version of it. So, yeah, this green truck with, like, sort of the company logo on the side door, that is, you know, off the cuff is close to what Iowa was able.

able to just cruise the country in knocking on doors. It was quite obvious. I was passionate. I had my airstream business on the door. You know, it was no mistake that when I was able to talk to these strangers, that this, this was goofily enough my, you know, my thing at that time in life. So how's the airbag package in that thing? Pretty robust? Fully custom. Folly. Yeah. Yeah. Original. So, so that was. part of it though was that I gotten into building these old trucks with the old shell over the top of a modern underneath. Yeah, modern drive train underneath. So as much as you would never know it from the outside looking in, but it had like a 2007 Ford police interceptor chassis underneath the whole thing. The wheelbase is identical. The body literally just. So anyway, passionate about the trucks, passionate about the thought that I get to, like I'm living a very creative life at this point

versus the computer doldrum that I was up against. So got to travel the country, had a knack for finding the trailers out in the wild, and scooping them up for an affordable price that everybody was happy with the price. And then I would always include my travel and delivery fees into the final sale to these shops down south, wherever they happen to go. most often, Southern California. So I went from this team-oriented, boxed-in computer-type life to the Western United States is my playground,

and I get to orchestrate these road trips. I mean, complete freedom road trips, I would tell the most obligation I had was I'll be there sometime next week. You know, I mean, sometime Wednesday to drop the trailer off. was making a good enough living. You know, I kind of, I hate to say, I was using more of the profits from the sales of the trailers as a way to see all of these back road corners

of the United States that I always wanted to travel and see. And so I didn't, once again, poor financial planning, but I didn't sell these with the get rid of, get rich program. I mean, I was really trying to experience this creative version of my life. And I got to, I would take two or three week, you know, I never traveled, traveled back home the same direction. And I would always take at least a couple of weeks going and visiting a new area of the country as I made my way back to Idaho to sort of start rinse and repeat this whole cycle. What was the coolest one you found?

19, I want to say, 1952, silver streak. Maybe, maybe we can type this one in. Oh, yes. It was early 50s. Let's just call it a 50, 52. And this one was made by a sort of a sister, not an affiliated company,

but there was a handful of companies making Airstream-esque trailers back in that day. Silver streak, alien eyes. What? Yeah. I like this one already. Yeah. Whoa.

So, yeah, the front and rear windows. That looks like a mask. It's incredible. Go the far left edge of the screen in that same second row down. That was what it looked like when I was finished with it. I did take the time to have it professionally polished, but that was, that is the model. I mean, that one still stands. out. And when I found that, I found it down in

wine country of California. At this point, my shopping grounds had expanded, you know, to a lot larger area. And the novelty of some of these more unique trailers was definitely a calling for me. So if I could figure out the math, like, okay, I can travel down, I can pick this up, and I can still see money at the end of the end of the road once I make improvements to it. But I bought it down in Yeah, gosh, wine country of central California. How'd you find it?

Internet, you know, Craigslist at that time was a huge thing. I've met some weird people on Craigslist. Yeah. I just started listening to Theo Vaughan interviewing the creator of Craigslist, and I'm already scratching my head. There's been times in my life, you know, where you've got to sell some stuff to pay the bills. Yeah. And, you know, random people on the internet having your address.

can net you some odd experiences. Oh my God. I'm so, I discredit that nowadays. I have so many folks, you know, wanting to come and see bits and parts of the homestead firsthand.

And I'm like, boy, I don't know how to handle that. I, first of all, we're not set up at all for it. You know, our facilities are my ability to be a good host.

What I would consider to be a good host is lacking. But just back to this story real quick. You know, like used this business as a fantastic excuse to rediscover myself and my creative. So like when I bought this trailer originally, Central California Coast, you know, like I towed this, that trailer up Highway, Highway 1, Coastal Highway. I've driven it many times. I'm from Santa Cruz.

Okay. Yeah. So you're familiar. Yeah. So, you know, iconic American West Highway. Beautiful coastal road, too. Unbelievable. Not the most direct, but beautiful.

Yeah. And that was the beauty of all of this. I was never in a hurry. Eventually I wound up building a micro camper in the back of that 64 Ford, where I realized I was spending a lot of my profits just in the lodging that it took to travel all over the country. So that will just as iconic as I could create my life at that time, I was able to make money towing this, in this instance,

to in this very rare 50s trailer up. Highway 1 from California all the way up to Washington where I would just cut over, you know, back to the homestead. Not I say the homestead, but at that time just our normal residential home. You know, I just built a built a new shop that I thought was going to be put to good use doing the restorations of these things. And it really just, it worked me out of that mindset into you have a knack for finding these. You enjoy, you enjoy the communication. between these people. You've made the contacts that are hungry for the trailers. And yeah, so that was my rebellious period away from corporate America. You know, I mean, Night Force was amazing. I learned so many. That's what introduced me into the passionate world of training and anything to do with.

Like, I just grew up a hunter. you know um so we would hunt for deer and elk in idaho and not a good place to do it oh it's beautiful i mean unbelievable i've got fantastic memories of my dad and my uncle out at hunting camp on a yearly you know annual basis um but as far as firearms went you know we we were no different than the average montan and probably like a paper plate at 100 yards to make sure that your three to nine scope is on is on target. I like it. It's been known to work.

It was cool, but to find meaning within that night force role, I began to really, I mean, I got hyper addicted and obsessed with long-range precision shooting. Yeah, and PRS stuff. Yeah, and it wasn't ever structured. I didn't shoot competitively. It was just always, I had the public land, you know, here within my close, close radius to home. Idaho. So, but once again, so Nightforce was, was incredible. I got really hooked on the,

the bits and pieces of the tactical community and exposed to things that I just never dreamt of, you know, within that company. Also got burned out on it, went completely left field into the self-employed vintage trailer restoration and rehoming. you know, basically rescuing business. And I was kind of, I had the blinders on and was kind of tunnel vision on how do I take this to the next level. I just built a new shop in the back sort of area of our residential home. You know, we sold a 20, nothing fancy, but like a 2,700 square foot, you know, home that we'd put a lot of work into, making it pretty and making it comfortable for us in town.

And then COVID hit, and my then girlfriend, Heather, she said, we can sell all this and buy land. Like, you know, it was not my, like I said, I had the blinders on with finally being self-employed and making something of it. she's you know of course you would hear whispering to the real estate market at that time but she was the driving force to think no it's like you know it's a real thing we could make a lot of money off of what we've built here and reinvest in in being out in the country which we folks our age at that time i think we're kind of unless you really had something creative in the

works or business entrepreneurial in the works. A lot of people are just sort of accepting and getting locked into like, this is not a bad life. It's not maybe my dream life, but we may not ever own that acreage kind of a scenario. And so I think there was probably about a six to eight month gestation period between, you know, her mentioning it to like right now is the, like, right now is the It's a good time and it was never going to be an easy time. We set out to reduce our belongings, you know, down to basically nothing. We didn't, we started, we started traveling in a radius around our current living, you know, where Heather is a labor and delivery nurse and I've worked for the same regional hospital as a labor and delivery nurse for, at that time, going on 20 years. So she didn't want to, this life change wasn't really trying to move to a different region in the United States.

We really just wanted to find land within an out-of-town radius of where we were already at. Was the plan always with the idea of land to do it yourself? Because a lot of people would buy land and then their next step would be to find an architect. Right. And then a G.C. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a huge, there is a massive gap between those two categories. Yes.

Land, I'm going to do this on my own, my beer. Land, I'm going to go find an architect who does a roll of decks of GCs and they'll do it. Right. So I have a hard time recollecting enough to tell you that we didn't know what the acreage that we were going to find is. And we were, of course, you know, the massive sale of the home was also soaked up in paying the home off, paying all the debts off. So even though we sold for this crazy dollar amount, we, and I say crazy from us,

small town Idaho kids perspective. I mean, not like we could just go buy anything we wanted, but we... You didn't get here in your private yet. Oh, God, no. No, no. So, but yeah, we, Heather's idea of this and, and her was very, you know, she, she was always aiming towards a more self-sufficient existence and always aiming towards a more clean living life, trying to step out of the typical, just the typical supply chains and the typical surprises that we're always, like a friend of mine were talking this morning, it's like even a lot of the health food store nutrients and things we're learning later on were sort of just glorified versions of, the grocery store items, you know?

No doubt healthier probably, but, you know, just because it's farther out on the branch from the same tree. tougher to make an argument that it's something completely different. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of folks were pulling the wall. You know, it had the right label and it had the right vibe check, but it really was found out later. It was not so true blue. So I got to give credit to Heather for so much of the initial jump into becoming,

not becoming more self-sufficient because that's like such a broad category. I just look at self-sufficient. living is being in my own world unwilling to hire anybody for help. I'm, I'm, and I'd say unwilling, mostly just philosophically unwilling. I'm trying to figure out, I'm trying to problem solve, and I'm trying to make the money go as far as it can by, by not, you know, with the real estate boom came the contracting boom. Yeah. And the price of having the simplest of jobs done became more you know maybe five to ten times what you could actually do it for yourself with materials and if you've got the time and the know-how I know exactly what you're talking about

the coffee shop that we met at we built during COVID oh sure and I my father was a masonry contractor when I grew up so I'm not I'm familiar with being on job sites however I'm not an expert at it by any stretch right and he moved our family back to Santa Cruz after the earthquake in 89, the Loma Prieta earthquake, which this should not be a spoiler road for anybody. When the tectonic plates shift, masonry, brick and block, that doesn't always stack up well. So it comes crumbling down. He, I watched in real time, you know, supply versus demand in real time.

But he was able to charge for a fireplace and call it the early 90s in comparison to what you could get for a fireplace now. And what were you going to say? No, like, okay, you're not going to fix your fireplace. So fast forward to 2020, and we would get a lumber quote, and it would be good for 24 hours. Wow. And it might go up 30% the next day, where it might go down 40% the next day. Hey, we need a panel to tie in all of our electricity at this site, to go from city power to be able to flip switches on in the building.

Well, there's only one company that's still open, and you're in the queue, and it'll be here in eight months. Right. Okay. Okay. But brings me back, I had asked you, and I'm still curious, what do you think flipped the timber industry on its head? I asked you really, and I think I hijacked your answer. You know, I don't know if it was, I don't know,

because I think it's so disconnected, you know, and I've tried to, I've tried to, because I come from this background, I've always wanted to have a deeper understanding of that industry. I will say right off the cuff that my dad, and mainly my dad because he's worked in the woods his whole life and has been through the roller coaster of the high times and the low times of that industry, he was always like run as far as you can. Like don't, don't, you know, do something, do something different than this.

I've lost, personally lost two uncles that I can just immediately think of, you know, lost their lives in the woods, you know, falling trees and or hauling long. So, you know, from my dad's perspective, just trying to look out for his son, he was like, this is dangerous. It's, you know, the money's not there any longer. But honestly, Andy, I don't know the, there's huge timber conglomerates in, in north central Idaho, and maybe they're more widespread than I'm aware, but like potlatch timber company is one of them. And I, my interpretation of those organizations is a lot of, um, board members making decisions for for these land holdings that don't live in the area and don't

get to sort of see the end result of there there's there's there's playground areas of the woods just up the road from my place where I grew up you know in Idaho that are just I'm not a I'm not a tree hugger by any means but they're just raped to say you know like it's ugly I mean I'm not the first person that's highly educated on the regrowth and, you know, and I know that it's a renewable industry, and, you know, I'm not being judgmental of that, but I think, I don't know why the industry went under. I just know that the small guys and the people that made the industry go around

when it comes to actually harvesting the wood out of the woods and hauling it back into the mills, and possibly even the mills themselves as well, But they, their life doesn't change as we see these lumber prices go skyrocket. You know, when you had to go get framing quotes to frame up, you know, the black rifle location. It's wild because you talk to local industry loggers and their wage is not fluctuating with these. It's not going up 30% one day and 40% the next. No, no.

So, I mean, I don't want to overstep my bounds and claim that I know why. the industry overall has kind of just fizzled, but one thing I can tell you is that the nuts and bolts, the dudes, the hardworking people that are making the industry go around in the small town or the small boots on the ground sense are not, they're not being, I believe it just became outpriced to continue production of wood harvest and selling the wood. I mean, the equipment alone, you know, that they're investing in to have a now modern logging company. You do a million, you know, million dollars for... I'd say that's probably entry.

Yeah. Millions. Yeah. For these things that, you know, somebody used to be, you know, stand at the base of a tree with a saw doing the being a sawyer and saw on the tree down himself. But now it's like, you know, something that looks like came off transformer. and grabs the tree and saws it and... I do like watching those YouTube. Oh, I love it, man.

I'm not judging it at all. It's much safer. I think the deaths, you know, the injuries are a lot less, and I'm not being judgmental of that, but the barrier to entry... The family organizations aren't going to be able to match a conglomerate and their ability to source those type of equipment. Yep.

And then the next thing you know, their production goes through the roof. Yeah, how can you can be competitive in that market? So I think they just got... I think the ability to afford to play in the game just became, the math wound up not being there. You know, I grew up with one of my best friends in elementary all the way through high school. His dad, stepdad owned one of the more successful logging operations in our small town. And, you know, they were kind of the comfortable family when it come to, you know, just, spoiling their children a little bit more than what we were used to.

But I watched the whole cycle run its course, and before too long, they were, luckily they had invested in properties and other things like that, but by the end of it, they sold off almost everything in order to try to maintain the logging business. And so once again, I don't know the technical reasons, why it all failed, but really just, I think everybody got outpriced and the payoff for what the work they were doing and the lumber that they were bringing out of the woods wasn't paying the bills. Yeah. All right.

So you find your property. Yep. Did you have any idea of the size, scope, or scale of what you wanted to build? No. We really were trying to operate within the confines of, first and foremost, we wanted to find a property. that was within commuting range to, like I said, Heather's sort of bona fide career at that point. Outside of finding something that was close enough, and a lot of people ask me questions about how do you find land like this? How do you find land with water? You know, the biggest separating

factor in common denominator that is the reality of our scenario is that we weren't shopping to relocate across the country. We weren't looking at an internet ad of what this property may or may not be. We were able to go, you know, take an afternoon road tripping around our region and hiking these places that were for sale. So it's always hard.

It's more difficult for me to advise a lot of the people that I would love to help narrow their search and quicken their dream along for finding these. incredible properties, but our scenario was we were just looking for something within maybe a

on the outer edges, maybe a two-hour radius from where we were already existing, living. But we did not know the scale. We first of all wanted to find the property that made sense, and we live in a

sort of a mix of landscape and terrain, anywhere from agricultural farm, you know, field land to just upriver where I was born and raised, much more timber and steep, not mountainous in the high peaks, mountainous sense, but much more canyons and rivers and timber. So we didn't want barren, you know, open farm land necessarily. We were always attracted to the more the sparse timbered areas within those um within that landscape but we today's episode is brought to you by fabric by gerber life we're going to be talking about term life insurance

which is a topic that i did not think about very much when i was younger even when i first started having kids even when i was in the military there was insurance provided called the sgli and it was easy to opt in, but so many people got additional insurance on top of that. I was not one of them. I just didn't truly consider the risk, I guess, of that particular job. And actually, even after I got out, that I'm not going to sit here and say that skydiving and wind-suit base jumping is actually safe. It can be done as safely as possible. My point in all of that is that nobody knows how much time we have left. And regardless of what I want to do with my remaining lap around the track, I may not be given that opportunity.

That doesn't mean that I should only think about the things that I want to do. The way that I'm viewing this now is I think about not only the things that I want to do, but let's start thinking about some variables here. What if I'm not here to do those things and I have a wife and three children left behind? What can I do to help them? What can I do to set them up? I won't be able to really give them guidance anymore. But is there something that I can leave behind that would assist them in their life and the things that they would want to do?

And that's where Fabric by Gerber Life comes in. You may be asking yourself, what is Fabric by Gerber Life? It is term life insurance you can get done right from your couch all online and on your schedule. You could be covered in under 10 minutes with no health exam required. If you have kids, and especially if you're young and healthy, the time to lock in a low rate is actually right now. It's not when the health issues could potentially be occurring later on in your life. Fabric has flexible, high-quality policies that fit your family and your budget, like a million dollars in coverage for less than a dollar. a day. There's no risk. There's a 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can cancel at any time.

They have over 1,900 five-star reviews on Trust Pilot with a rating of excellent. And Fabric was designed for busy parents like you. And it's more than just life insurance. It's free digital wills, access to investment accounts to invest in your kids' future, and more. And you can manage it all right from your phone. So here is the offer to the listeners, if this sounds interesting to you. You can join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect the family. Apply today in just minutes at meatfabric.com slash cleared hot. That's meatfabric.com slash cleared hot. Mike Echo Echo Tango, Fabric.com slash cleared hot.

Policies are issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company. Not available in certain states. Prices subject to underwriting and health questions. Let's get back to the episode. Granted, we didn't have this nest egg of our home sale before so we're just fictitiously being dreamers thinking we're going to sell this house so let's go look for property. We didn't have any money to buy the properties we were looking for.

You were window shopping. We were absolutely window shopping and we were just trying to use it as a case study for, who knows, maybe something will be available. But properties and homes were being bought and sold within days of being listed at that time. We're talking midsummer of 2021. Oh, yeah. You know, we're 18 months into sort of the, the splash of COVID even being a thing. And so, yeah, the real estate market was absolutely bonkers.

We basically just went and walked this property that we found listed on Facebook marketplace. As I'm not sure if it was even real estate listed at that point or if it was property listed or, owner listed. Went and poked around enough to figure out where it was and find it and hiked the property. It had an archaically developed water source in the way of a natural spring on the land, and it had one power pole. So there was no outbuildings, there was no structures, there was no anything. We weren't able to shop in the realm of hundreds of acres.

We were looking for no neighbors and a remote feel. And so what we found in this property was like, it's cliche. Everybody says, oh, you walk in that house and you just know that's the one, or you walk on that land and you have this. There was a deep-seated feeling of, wow, this feels way different than all the 20 other properties that we've went and visited. We love this. How many acres?

14 acres. Okay. Yeah. Nothing, nothing to, you know, yeah, nothing to write a book about when it comes to land ownership in the grand scheme of. Also nothing to turn your nose up out either. No, we're not being, we're so grateful for everything that we've, the opportunities that have come about in this, in this journey. But we weren't really shopping. We were shopping for bare land.

And we were, we were planning on doing it ourselves. We didn't know what that, we didn't know the magnitude of what that, what that would look like or what that meant at the time. I knew I was capable. I was building small living structures in the way of these vintage trailers. Mechanical abilities enough. And I got to give it to the modern information age of the internet. How do you fill in the blank? Yeah.

YouTube and Google up to that, you know, even up to this morning. in my life, whether good, bad, or indifferent is if you've got passion to want to learn and the subject matter that you're not trying to convince yourself to learn about, you can, I just feel like humans can accomplish things easier right now today than ever before in history when it comes to something they really want to set as a goal and have a burning desire to conquer. I agree. What is your pie in the sky desire for development of this 14 acres?

What is it you're trying to build? Well, so when we first bought the property, we only set out to have no neighbors and to build out in the country. What we thought that looked like to begin with was probably 1,000% traditional building techniques. And I wasn't trying to reinvent the wheel in any. of the construction of our systems. But what I found is that with, honestly, with the twinge of COVID being sort of an influence in everybody's daily life there and supply chains and just the slight taste of instability that we had experienced at that point in our short-lived life, I thought, man, if, you know,

this is, so we need to build a septic system. We need to build a water system. Like, okay, this is, this is the traditional method of doing that. And these are the most widely known modern ways of doing that. But how can we? So I set out at every one of those crossroads, like, okay, we need to build a water system. We have grid power on the property. We don't have real, like, spread out access of that grid power.

But I have the option for, to build, you know, just. a traditional home in the country, I guess, is what I'm trying to paint a picture of. But every time I came to that crossroads, I thought, well, how can I investigate and build some sort of a backup plan into this modern standardized version of a well pump and a well, you know, pump pressurized water system? So I just found myself at all these crossroads of research, thinking, okay, I want I want these modern comforts and amenities, but I also

want to have some sort of a backup plan in an off-grid sense of property development. You want the comfort of modern living, but the sustainability of having it designed the way you want on the grid that you want to be. Yeah, and having the insurance policy of

if all else fails and shit falls apart, like can let's try to think towards the future of how can we maintain minimal comforts within this property by planning for those systems at the very initial stages of property development. Heather was all about that from the beginning? Oh, God, yeah. I can't, yeah, I can't. You know, everybody, a lot of my audience is like, oh, I'd love to meet Heather.

You know, I can't believe that you're dragging her through this in a, maybe not. I say in an innocent manner, maybe not, you know, everybody likes to troll and poke fun on the interwebs. But she's gung-ho. She is as much of a driving force behind this lifestyle as I could ever be. And so anyway, just research into, okay, this is the traditional modern 2000s way of doing this type of property development. What did it look like 100 years ago?

How could I, you know, how could we investigate a backup? plan for this traditional system. And so when you say pie in the sky, what started out is just like, we just want to live in a nice farmhouse in the country that we build ourselves, not necessarily thinking fully off-grid or maybe not even considering trying to do something off-grid at all, has turned into these small challenges that have fed my creativity and fed my, honestly. fed my insurance side of me for you know for preparedness and and then just challenges in the sense that what I set out to have okay let's just I use the water system as a as a

common example but a 220 volt water pump operated water you know rural water system but now I want this off-grid backup plan. The off-grid research and property development became so successful through my obsessions, and nothing more, honestly, just through my small brain, becoming intrigued by old-world ways, became so successful that the off-grid option

became the plan A. And so now we're looking at installing power to these areas of the property as a like fire suppression if I need to move a lot of a shitload of water all at one time in the case of emergency but the more simplistic off-grid versions of these systems have become so successful without my knowledge of that even being a possibility that I'm now really sort of hooked on the challenge and hooked on the drive to and and the accomplish it got a little bit of accomplished in my back pocket. at this point thinking you can do things that you never dreamt you know you can

maintain your quality of life you can maintain your quality of living through these simple systems that and in a way it's combining philosophy from a hundred years ago with the the tweaks of the little modern products that we have available through you know technology and and not that they're technological products but they're everything's been improved upon. So whether it be sprinkler heads that can run off of low PSI water pressure, those weren't available 100 years ago, but now by running a gravity-powered water system

and having these new modern little tools in the way of irrigation, sprinkler heads, you're able to accomplish these things that really haven't been possible up until present day. 100 years ago, their brains would have exploded if you would pitch them that concept. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, it's so true. You mentioned your audience.

Yeah. When did you start bringing people along on this journey? Because your audience is huge. Sure. Did it grow rapidly, slow over time? And I bet almost immediately. Correct me if I'm wrong. People started reaching out saying,

how are you doing this? Yeah. Because this is what I want to do to. Yes, absolutely. It's humbling because we've always been just far enough ahead of the the curve in, in general population, you know, wanting to make these life changes that I never saw it as anything special. You know, I didn't think that I was.

It was just your life. You live in life. Yeah. We, we, we, it was just the natural progression of our story. It wasn't. But I, so I started, I started taking a note to, um, social media and the possible importance of a social media presence and sharing your. journey and documenting your journey really.

Like I always get this little twinkle in my eye about if everything is as stable as it is now today, you know, 60 years down the road, I think it'll be really cool for my grandchildren to be able to flip on a channel and see how this property came about, you know, like, so documenting the journey has always been a core thought in me. wanting to share these projects and things. But I started sharing on social media back when I was doing the vintage trailers. Really just wanted to show this sort of, once again, niche interest that you can turn into an entrepreneurial lifestyle and buy back some of your freedom. You know, buy back some of your own choosing of the direction that your life goes on your own. and I didn't have any any preconceived thoughts that it could ever turn into what it is now. I mean, it's once again, just humbling.

Was there a time where it just levered and accelerated rapidly? Yes, 2020. When not basically. During COVID. Yeah, during COVID. People are like, son of a bitch. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sitting in New York City locked in my concrete jungle and you're out there digging a trench on your own on your own property.

Absolutely. No, that's exactly where it was. I get it. 2021 is when we bought the property. We immediately, we immediately sold everything that we own. We, we, I just got a touch on this before we move forward, but we, we listed our house. We sold it in four days. Cash offer.

That's what talking about. Four days. We kind of, and we knew that that was going to happen, or at least we knew that it was a high percentage chance. We had a 48-hour window where we had keys to our house that we just sold and talked. and title to our new acreage that had jack shit on it and nowhere to put anything. So that alone was just an absolute shit show of trying to figure out how do you do, you know,

we've got some chickens, we've got a couple of goats, even on our little urban farm. Maybe the new buyers wanted those. Yeah, right? Maybe they didn't know that they wanted those and it would be a journey of discovery when they found them. I think had we offered them up, That would have absolutely been accepted.

You actually might have been able to charge more. Like, listen, this is the rustic experience. It's a lifestyle. Yeah, this is what you're looking for. Yeah. We're going to throw in at an additional cost of two things. It's going to help you. Two goats, 17 chickens.

Yeah. Ease into what you guys have now signed up for. Yeah. No, it was a, it was a major, you know, like we've never been afraid of big, scary decisions. And taking that leap, just, we just, we just, boiled it down to the work involved in actually packing, moving, but we didn't have, you know, a great big grand scheme plan. But we did only have, we had 48 hours. We sold, you know, in the coming months up to the point of selling, we sold pretty much all the garbage.

I shouldn't, I shouldn't just go. I think you're hit it down the right path because how empowering does that feel when you start carving away? excess. I think I've told Michael this, but who I haven't told is my wife. Yeah. When she's not at home, I get rid of stuff.

Yeah. And she doesn't really listen to the podcast, so I think we're safe. Michael, I'll kill you if you tell her. Because this strategy has been working well for me. Absolutely. You know how many things she's noticed? Yeah.

Not a fucking one. Not a single one of them. It's true, man. Now, having said that, I'm being strategic. Yes. I'll look in the boxes that are in the back first. to clean that sucker out there.

And then eventually you can move the box away. I don't mess with like her stuff stuff. Right, right. Storage. But I mess with some of the other stuff. Oh, I don't blame you, man. I think everybody could take some serious advice to heart from that. The most powerful philosopher of our time, also known as Bradley Pitt,

said in the documentary movie Fight Club, a line that is incredibly true. The things that you own end up owning you. Absolutely. And man, it feels good. it mortifies Leah probably twice a year. I will get rid of almost every t-shirt that I own. I cannot stop people from sending me T-shirts. It is not a matter of me not having something to wear out of the house.

She is mort—and I love some of the shirts. Yeah, I wear my friends. Oh, absolutely. I wear my friend's stuff. And even I can't stop them from sending me their stuff. There's not enough days in the week or month or year for me to wear the shirts. For everybody who sends me yourself, thank you so much. I am incredibly grateful.

I'm not going to keep it forever. Absolutely. That nerds are out. Yeah. It does not nerd me out. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, you're so true.

I mean, being able to whittle down our lives into what really matters is a core element of maybe moving forward with a new state of mind, maybe moving forward with a new weight lifted off your shoulders. I was going to say it can make you feel a little bit. bit more weightless. Yes, absolutely. And all of these things are exercises of, of exercises that show you how much more you're capable of. I mean, initially it's just the, it's the necessity to not have this much shit to move. But the byproduct of that is, I feel, I feel so much better without all this shit. You're more nimble too. Yeah. And I, and I, I was able to part ways with it without it crushing me like I've always had the thought. So it's all one, it's cyclic.

You know, as you make these life changes, as you begin to simplify things, it feeds itself. At least it did for us. So we knew that we were just going to lease like a 20-foot shipping container, you know, that we could have delivered to the to the couple of flat spots on the land. And so we really had, that was all we had in the back of our mind. We, we bought an inexpensive old RV like a motorhome. We had till midnight the night of the 48 hours to get the fuck out. And we ordered pizza and we jumped in this old shitty motorhome.

and we headed towards the new property. And we had moved everything out there. We just had these piles of our belongings tarped. You know, luckily it was in midsummer of a pretty nice climate where we live in the summer. So we later then got the shipping container delivered and placed. But, I mean, I had a whole shot. You know, I kept all my tools. I kept everything that I knew that would, you know, obvious things that would,

be required to rebuild our life. But it was a fraction of what we had and a fraction of the comfort of what we had. For the longest time, we had, you know, shit, we had a propane-powered shower, you know, like hung up in a tree next to the spring water source where... Probably some of the best showers of your life. Absolutely.

Like, I mean, I... Just because it's new doesn't mean it's better. Oh, no. I mean, it's so. When you were describing how your plan B kind of became your plan A, I'm thinking. Evolution is almost always talked about in terms of a lever forward in either ability or quality or technology. Yep.

And sometimes that's just not the case. No. Yeah. I mean, sure. Can a propane shower be a little bit more complex to use? Yeah. Is it as convenient as being able to pull your shower curtain across and then untapped hot water? No.

But I'm thinking of showering in the woods. Oh, it's. I mean, come on. It's unmatched. I mean, and I'm, you know, I, I, I don't take anything from it. I'm just also trying to, um, I'm trying to make this lifestyle accessible to a wider range of people that may not be so easily extreme in, in what they're willing to give up and,

and, and, or sacrifice. And so I just always enter the conversation. with the knowledge that not everybody's me when it comes to like, but those were my best showers on the property. I mean, those were some of the simplest times. Like, I mean, for the longest time, I hadn't thought of this for years, but, you know, the spring overflow ran into this little horse trough thing.

Well, rather than going and buying ice at the, you know, at the closest place that we could haul ice and keep it as long as we could in a nice, cooler, that cold water that just comes out of the mountain became our little, you know, little juice cooler, whatever. We had our cans thrown inside of that in that little water trough. And it's just the simplest things. But I mean, I'll still remember those memories when I'm on that deathbed that we talked

about earlier as probably some of the most pure moments that we've that we've had. And if shit does hit the fan, that system's still going to work. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I think I take for granted how many of the fears have been erased from my mentality of what we can put up with and how do we approach this without this and the problem solving and challenges that come with this. For us, buying what I'll say is raw land with, you know, with nothing there other than just a couple amenities and working from from there outward. It takes a long time. It takes a lot of work. I'm a glutton for punishment because no matter how hard it is and no matter how the time span has grown past our initial hopes that we would be working and building on our, you know, our forever home at this point. What was your initial time I gave yourself? I mean, you know, I think that it's knocked down six months. No, no, no. The land. So we're all. on the, we're on a steep slope of a canyon wall, timbered, not a lot of flat land at all with it.

And initially at that time, back to, I guess kind of ties back into the logging stuff, but my dad, one of his earliest woods bosses, became his longtime good friend and, and was much older than him. But when he passed away, he left my dad a cat, deep. D7 dozer in his will. So my dad didn't really use this thing for a lot of things, and it wasn't a fancy, you know, it was in late 60s piece of logging equipment, but he was able to bring that thing up there to our property and sort of help us reimagine what we could do with the land. And we didn't, you know, we didn't change a lot.

We just, we just maximized the flat areas. Yeah, we needed as much flat as we could. We, even with that, we have, you know, we're more spread out like a, like a homestead of outbuildings than, then we can put everything, you know, within walking range of, of, you know, something like you'd see a modern house. But, but the property itself, raw. So we, I think that we had this, we hadn't put our finger on it because we didn't know how we were learning as we went with development of a rural acreage like this.

But I think in the back of our minds, we thought a couple of years at the most before we were maybe living in our, in our forever home, if not at least building our forever home. How many years ago was that? Three years ago. So, yeah, we're a humble, we're a humble, we're a humble, uh, dictation of what, what we thought we might be possible, you know, what we thought we were possible of. a little bit, you know, there's a little bit of, of, of sometimes, I heard you talking about not too long ago that you hate, it was like on full auto Friday, but you were talking about,

you just hate saying things. And then for some odd reason, they don't, they don't happen. You know, they don't wind up coming true and not. I like to under promise and overdelief. Yes. And I've always, I've always been that guy. in my personal relationships and my, um, especially, you know, I'm always learning different sides of business and, and, um, but one thing I can tell you with, with being that glutton

for punishment and trying to be committed to, to doing all of this homestead building on my own, oh man, I can't tell you how many times I kicked my own self in the nuts with, with, I said this and God, I just have to accept that I can't. Yeah. And so it sucks. It sucks. Painful tuition payments. It really is.

And, you know, not taking any, it's just a, it's a hard arena to play in. I mean, that's the strong point of that statement is that a guy can watch YouTube all you want on the consolidated process of building this thing and think and then sort of apply your own skill set to that activity. and Heather's real good about telling me at this point, like, I'm going to build that concrete pad and that little, you know, that little gazebo roof and this thing. And it'll, you know, it might take me a week, two weeks. And she's thinking, you fucking idiot.

She's like, that's two months. I mean, you have to start really. This is why we need high power women in our lives. Because men are idiots. And we will tell you that we can do anything. Yeah. And let me tell you, we cannot. But we will tell you we can't.

I'm so confident every time I'm not, I'm not trying to pull the wool on anybody or flat out lie to anybody about even myself. I'm just overzealous with my ambition for what I know I can achieve and what I want to do with the reality of the research that goes along with the process. Like a lot of what I'm doing is all of what I'm doing is brand new to me. I didn't, I didn't, you know, I've worked every sort of job that you could strum up in a small town, you know, some, some laboring, some, you know, the peon for contractors. Just, just all, like a taste of all sorts of different industries. And, but I've never been a pro at any of this shit. Like, I mean, not even the slightest bit. So you got to be seen at least a little bit now of some of the similar problems.

Because not that I'm about to say construction is construction. and I don't mean that in like the huge sense. Yes. But, you know, angles being level. Yes. You're going to start to encounter similar issues, which I bet you'll be able to knock. Absolutely.

Like I'm already so grateful for, and that's one of the things that just feeds the monster in this whole journey is, you know, if we stumbled across a pile of money tomorrow, I'm still not going to, I'm not going to skip from A to Z. I love this. Yeah.

I love this process. It'll definitely. make life easier to fund these projects a little bit more graciously, but I'm not the, I'm just not interested in the shortcut. And that's come with the accomplishment of just like you say, pieces beginning to fall into place like, oh, I can do that. There's nothing. I haven't been able to fix or make work even with bare minimal raw materials. And, and, and, and, And our life might be under a microscope, you know, less glamorous than a lot of folks out there that can't grasp this concept of building a homestead or the homesteading lifestyle in general. But the winds are so important.

I mean, they're so meaningful. So what do you have built out there so far? Yeah. Okay, so the biggest thing, water system, septic system, and when I say water system, I mean like distribution throughout, you know, probably a five acre parcel of our land, you know, all throughout future outbuildings, future greenhouse. So, so basically, I've never had to think so far into the future of, I don't want to redig this. What does this look like? I'll probably break some stuff if I have to do this again later down the road. You know, just the thought process that goes into what's going to be here, where's it going to sit.

But water system, meaning underground distribution of the spring water that we've developed ourselves throughout a multi-acre parcel of our ground, that took a year and a half to complete like just this last spring. So I guess it was last May or April was the first time that we have used water out of a out of a spicket. We had one, we had one water access point from the archaic spring that I had told you was already part of the property when we bought it. So we live off of a garden hose. We were filling our water through that garden hose constantly.

But after this water distribution system, last spring was the first time that we, like, sort of lifted the handle on a frost-free spigot and had water that we made happen come out of our ground. So as simple as that might sound, that was monumental for us. We've got a third of an acre area that will all become herb, herb and plant garden. My, Heather, she's like, her roots are in Western medicine and the nursing scene and labor and delivery, but she's a super passionate herbal medicine maker, practitioner. So a big part of, you know, a big part of our usable and accessible acreage is going to be isolated to food production and then medicine production when it comes to natural plant medicine. Water system, we've got our septic system in, but of course, I was of the belief that I wanted to build the infrastructure of the property before we finalized with the home. I'm I sometimes have second guesses on how I interpreted this this life and and maybe some of the

hangups that have come with that but that's that's the path that we're on we've we've developed all of the all of the systems that will hook into the house before we'll before we'll have broke ground on digging the foundation for the home is that next for you guys yes it is It is. But once again, and I got to be honest with your audience and honest with my self, because I don't want people to be misled by the realities of this lifestyle is we're now operating out of pocket. Like we had this nest egg from the sale of our home and the sale of our old life. But the future of what we're able to produce is going to be solely based on how we can, turn our homestead into an income and turn our, turn our life, you know, this content platform

that I've been building for a number of years now. We're now operating even, not not underwater, but we're now operate. So I want to say, you know, there was a time that we just kind of committed to the fact that we're going to be starting our, you know, breaking ground next, this, this later this year in the spring. Financially, there's been some things come up in the meantime that I think have humbled me once again and made me more so start to button my lip and not speak out of turn. But that's next. The house will be, I mean, we've got fencing and pasture and greenhouse and small barn that we need to construct, all like sort of little outbuilding projects, but the major tearing up of the earth in a beautiful way.

you know, reconfiguring the flats on the earth, making more flat ground. And then doing a lot of the work that you just wind up covering over with, in waterline ditches and electrical conduit ditches so that we'll be able to. Nobody knows it's there, but you do. Oh, my God. It's unbelievable. And maybe it's a good thing that we started with this stuff that you wind up backfilling back over.

And you're like, what the fuck did I do for the last couple? I think you have to. I think you have to build the infrastructure that you're going to connect to. Yes. Going the other direction. Let's just build the house first and we'll build everything else around it. Yep. What if you find out that all the areas you were going to build around it were untenable to what you want to put there?

Right. Now you've got a problem. Yes. It was always in my gut feeling to do it this way. But I, you know, at times that I've been questioning myself now as we still live in these old ass like little RVs, you know, trying to get to the point. that we're that will eventually be at, I've often wondered, God, why doesn't anybody do it this way? Or you know, why don't I see it being done this way? But I really have felt in my gut that this was the right, this was the right play of events to get to the point of, I mean, the home won't be the, the grand finale of this homestead.

there will always be improvements and ways of making things better. But we'll be much closer to that stage of, let's go sit in our rocking chairs on the porch for a minute. Like the rest of the shit has been accomplished through all of this blur of becoming new homesteading folks and building this ground from, or building this property from the ground up. So as your audience grew, I mean, I follow you on Instagram.

Do you use other platforms as well? I do. Don't say the T word. Yeah. Bastard. You understand that's not built for our generation, right? I do. I do.

I do. Yes, I do. It's unacceptable. Yeah. I'm present on any. Do you YouTube as well? YouTube as well. Facebook as well.

I know that Facebook, you know. I think Facebook most people would say is built for our audience. if not older, which I believe is called the Boomer audience. Yeah, yeah, which honestly, like, I've been very fortunate to realize that this way of life is not age group specific, you know. I have, I get messages constantly from people, you know, that are 20 years my senior that are still, oh, we can't, you know, we can't wait. We're just a, the biggest, one of the most inspiring things to me is that there's such,

a desire to step away from whatever it is the general population has gotten themselves wrapped up in in daily life and living maybe I guess residential I'm not you know I never have the full picture of what these people that are messaging me um what their reality looks like but everybody is in the what I call the dream state of starting this journey you know they I'm I'm going to fill in the blanks a little bit for them and tell you that what that means in my, in the back of my mind is that they're going to buy land in the country and make a simple goal of becoming more self-reliant and self-sufficient in their existence in the remainder of their life.

But it's really inspiring to, to, I just didn't know, I mean, I've always been sort of a niche interest sort of dude, never thinking that this was a widely appealing, you know, vintage trailers, precision shooting. It's always sort of this like sort of smaller crowd that I don't assume everybody's going to find comfort or understanding in why I'm so obsessed with these things. But homesteading and the self-sufficient movement in this world right now is so much more broad

than I ever would have given credit to it. How did you structure it? So you're on the platform on all of the, the, I'll call them content platforms for lack of a better term. How did you structure it and when did you start thinking about building that into a business that could sustain what it is that you're building? Because having an audience is one thing. Yes. Having an audience that is willing to support from a financial perspective or in, there's the other side of that too.

What do you offer them? You know, you have to figure out what it is of value that you're going to offer somebody if you're going to separate a dollar from their wallet. I'm curious how you manage that growth and turned it into a business. Well, or if you would even describe it as a business or a passion project hobby, whatever the word may be. No, I mean, that's sort of a key element to my current growth right now. I'm only just buckling down on, okay, let me back up just a little bit. When I first started to monetize off of these platforms and began to make, I've always just wanted to provide informational content for like authentic informational content. for an audience.

I never really foreseen trying to make the need to have to make a business out of it. I would describe your content as, hey, and Mark, this is what I'm doing. Sure. And this is how I'm doing it. I appreciate that. That's what it comes off to me as a consumer of the content you create. Absolutely. And to this point, I'm sort of a victim of my own lack of, of, of,

of business and knowledge understanding to grow it beyond that because initially I was I was naive enough to think that I'm I've always been like just this ridiculous dreamer when it comes to to all these different creative endeavors and so when I first began to monetize meaning reached these thresholds within the structure of the platforms the requirements for whatever it is yeah so um I began to began to get paid for basically just the number of people watching my videos from these platforms about a year and a half ago. So about halfway through, we were basically operating off of our nest egg up until that point from the sale of our home. The fact that we paid everything off, we have very little bills when it comes to normal people's lives maybe. But I was really like

striving to try to want to do more in the way of, well, for one, I could see the nest egg running out. So I'm like, fuck, what the hell, how the hell is it supposed to work? You know, we're on outgoing only here. Yeah, we're fully committed. Like, we're locked in. What the fuck? What are we going to, how are we going to make this make something? And that in a nutshell is, is a learning experience all of its own. But to, to simplify, here I'm like looking up at the sky often thinking, I don't know what, I don't know what, what's my next move?

What do I do here to try to, I'm beginning to capture all sorts of people's attention. And that was, that was always, that was always a orchestrated desire and hope in the back of my mind. But I never also foreseen that it would become so out of control. And what's the platform that you have, the largest followership on?

Facebook, honestly, is 1.2 million. No shit. Yeah. And I say that and I'm going to follow up with the fact that they are the least concern. Like, I don't know if they just signed on, you know. Facebook is a real rollercoaster of engagement. You don't, you know, you can, there were times in those early days of, of, so I was a, I was a, I was a,

product of understanding short form content fairly early on and understanding not that I'm a pro at anything but understanding how to build pieces of short form content and prior to

just about the I knew it back from the early days of that T word because that was the initial platform that anybody that was kind of like our first taste of of 90-second videos.

And, um, if not shorter, actually. Yeah. I mean, it could have been. Um, I'm always stuck in this 90-second time frame. But,

uh, that was, so I played around with that a little bit back in, um, gosh, probably like, uh, 2018, 2019 stuff.

And I, I amassed a little bit of a following there, like 100,000 people. A lot of, a lot through, um, some of the DIY projects of my classic trucks building and doing. So, but I had this understanding of like sort of the way that you edit a short form piece of content.

And then so when when I began to want to document the homestead and the projects and the work on the homestead, Instagram Reels was becoming the place to be. They wanted a piece of, of that short form audience. so they began prior to that I was posting carousel you know

just carousels like individual pictures I love to write so I was trying to which nobody reads on Instagram yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah I mean spend an hour you know in the morning writing this right in this caption

deeply well thought out caption people are just yeah all these feels and you're like so

so anyway I just kind of had a little bit of a leg up on understanding short. Plus, if you were prioritizing TikTok because of the 90 seconds, the reels come around, you can just use the same content in two places. Absolutely. So I began to post on, I went through a rebrand.

Like I wanted to continue to grow this content thing. So I thought to myself, like, you know, I had one sort of call sign, whatever you want to call it, like Instagram. Username. Username. There you go. Back in those days. and it was the highwayman, similar to like the old band, right?

Do you still have that? I do. Because that's a good one. I locked it in, yeah. And you could travel around and that would be a really good name for like a serial killer. Yeah. That travels inner state. Right, right.

That's where my head goes on that. I don't know what that says about me, but that was my first thing. Well, and it all came from the old, you know, the highwaymen is the band. But it was in alignment with my travels all over the country, rescuing these old air streams and just the self-guided sort of creative life that I was able to live, living out of the back of my truck. Man, I would take that in a different direction. Yeah, I can see.

I would take pictures of people from behind. Yeah. So you can't see their face. And I would describe as the serial killer when I was selecting them as my victim. I liked it. All just throughout. You're liking this, aren't you, Michael? You can do this if you want to.

I'm trying to give you content gold here. Thanks. I love it. all pictures through like grainy windows, like this person I picked because of. True crime is an area. This is what I would, you would find them buried amongst the ferns and moss. We should just do a true crime show. Yeah, I feel like you'd probably get a visit from the FBI or somebody associated.

But I mean, here's the thing. I didn't say I was going to kill them. Yeah. I said it would be in the vein of a serial killer and you just wouldn't be able to identify the people. You could take the pictures. This is what appeals to me. These are the thoughts that I'm having. Yeah, these are the attractions.

Yeah. No, that's awesome. But I was having a little bit of a identity crisis with trying to bring this homestead content into what I had been trying to frame my, you know, frame my life as prior. So sat down, you know, like probably winter of 2020, 2020 is maybe when I rebranded. modern rural civilian was all encompassing for my, I really wanted to create a category and a title of people that people could identify to that encompassed all of these passions that I had amassed over my crazy journey and without trying to manage three different YouTube channels

that were all very specific to, yeah, yeah. And I, I, I, um, that was the big goal. Like I was trying to, you know, how can I, how can I be broad enough that I can begin to show people different areas in my life that I don't have to be so, am I going to just do these Ford trucks and, you know, the, so, um, rebranded Facebook. I started posting through Instagram Reels on the DIY projects of tearing the land apart and rebuilding it with the infrastructure that, that was becoming my daily life. Instagram actually created this duplicate Facebook account that I didn't even realize I had. Probably started crushing.

Yeah. Yeah. The first time I fucking looked at it, I had 40,000 followers in just a couple months' time. And I'm like, this is not my Facebook account. Like I have my own name on the, but yet. So back to the Facebook thing, I just couldn't, I couldn't believe it. I mean, what I was a benefactor. of though is once again reels began to really get traction with with the world in general the the the actual

instagram reels portion of content and does money from that just come from watchtime essentially yeah views i guess um something to do with views or watch time yeah views i mean i sometimes i question if it how much it has to do with engagement but um the shitty part is is that there's no manual to any of it no there's nobody to call and ask and there's no real people. You're trying to, you know, you're trying to investigate it yourself and understand on a deeper level, how can I influence my own income here within the parameters of what. I don't think it's accidental that you can't find. Oh, no.

It's, it's a, well, here's the thing. There's incredible value. Yeah. So even as somebody who does a podcast, right? Yes. I uploads this to the internet that we uploaded it to YouTube. I get very limited parsed data back to me about consumption. Right.

But I know damn well that there is valuable upstream information. Not that I actually would know what to do with it. Oh, I'm the same. I'm learning. There would be the user device type. There I'm sure would be their IP address. All of that stuff that I assume they use in package to sell to advertising for them. Well, they will give me is here's your general locations, download statistics, things like that for when it comes to audio.

And the same, you're familiar with the viewerset stuff on YouTube. You can get relatively detailed information. Right. But there is, there has to be a treasure trove upstream of what we see that they are using to make their own money. And it's not an accident that there's a hard break in that information. No. And meta is even worse. You know, YouTube is one thing, but Instagram and Facebook, you know, I don't even know that I'm ever, I don't think I've ever even really reached anybody more than an automated response when it comes to questions through the meta platform.

So the understanding of this and, you know, I'm grateful for all the. I'm grateful for any level of freedom that's come from this. So it's hard to try to be judgmental. But you're not being judgmental. I think it's safe to say. And I know nothing about meta or the internal warnings. I bet you they understand it down to it. Nats ass.

I think they have me pigeonholed into. They not only have you. They have the monetization. They have so much aggregated data about their users. They have it down to a Nats ass. They do. But they leave it to everybody else who is, playing in their ecosystem, signed

to the terms of agreement. I'm saying this without judgment. As somebody who participates, to figure it out. Yeah. We got ours figured out. Yeah, you figure it out. See what works.

Well, and that's what, okay, so I, time flies and I don't pay special, detailed attention to this, but I think that Facebook wanted a part of the short form content action. So they began Facebook, Facebook reels. And because they wanted to grow their attraction to that portion of their platform,

then they started these creator, I don't know, I'm just going to say creator monetization programs that. And they prioritized it. Oh, they prioritize the shit out of it. So Instagram does it sometimes too, though. Do bonuses for reals or watch cyber engagement or all that stuff. Yeah. And it's a big unknown for a lot of people,

even anybody that's wanting to, you know, sort of dream about documenting their journey and how does it, you know, how does that all orchestrate in the background? A few pennies at a time is the answer. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's so true. So you couldn't have nailed it any more square on the head because, um, here I am, you know, watching the money, seeing an end to the, the, the savings that we had amassed

from, from our life change and wondering how do I, you know, how do I, how do I not get a real job and keep doing this? because I don't, for one, I don't want to, I want to build a property. And it's your full-time J-O-B right now. It would be so hard if it became your part-time or tertiary job. Oh, absolutely. Like, I can't give enough credit to that. But Facebook wanted a piece of the action.

They started prioritizing us creators. Looking back, they started, God, I don't, once again, I'm grateful for everything. But they started just using the popular creators to build their, their their validity within that short-form content, which, I mean, nothing new there. No, no. And probably, you know, from a business standpoint, nothing wrong with that. That's a smart move.

But I was sort of the, the, so here I go, just monetized off Facebook with this massive growth in a very short period of time in an account that I didn't even physically create myself. I mean, one year's time I had a million followers on Facebook from an account that I didn't even realize that be, you know, I mean, granted, I watched it grow from 40,000 up. Yeah. But the growth and the, the, um, views and the amount of, so here I am realizing that these landmarks are coming down the road for being able to finally, you know, make some money because I'm, I'm not naive to content creation and in the thought that there should be an ability to make, turn this into a living.

That was always the back of my mind. It wasn't, um, the priority, but it was definitely, this is going to hopefully be the... It's a real system. There's no reason to not figure out a way to utilize that to achieve your goals. Right. So I finally flip through these screens within my professional dashboard and I'm looking, I finally qualify for whatever that threshold is. You know, it's saying click to the next screen in order to see your approximate earnings.

And I click one button and I go to... the next screen on Facebook that says that I've a I still almost shit myself but I had I had an approximate earnings of $9,000 in change over the last 30 days

from this Facebook account This fantastic And I was I was First of all I didn't believe it I mean I thought this is some scammy You know like I Just give us the last four of your credit card number

And your social Yeah I mean Yeah I'm showing Showing Heather, showing, you know, talking to my close loved ones about it. I'm like, I don't know. Like, I mean, this seems legit after all of the framework that I've tapped through to get to this. But show me the money, right? Yeah.

Like, so I was naive enough to think that that was just like the life-changing moment. I've never been super money-focused and money-driven. but I have always in no lesser way of describing it thought of that day that the break, you know, that there's some sort of a break that happens. Yeah. So I thought, babe, we're good. Like, I mean, this is our new baseline. It doesn't go down.

It only goes up from here. Yeah, yeah. We need a convertible Porsche on our homestead. You're so awesome. And it's not, and it's not far off from where my brain. brain. You say like, okay, 9,000, immediately multiply that by 12. That's our salary now, but we can do better.

So let's say multiply by 15. Yeah, and that's one platform. You know, there's others to come. So, holy shit, did I. Dear Facebook, I'd like to be paid in gold bouillon. So I just thought, and obviously that's the least, I didn't have to ask my audience for anything to earn that, right? Like that, that was strictly off of their interest in my already natural, authentic

life. So I just didn't think, I didn't think past that. I didn't think past the thought that this would. So once again, there's no boardroom meeting with Facebook saying, hey, we're changing the, the payout rate to like, like, yeah, I mean, whatever it may, may have been behind the scenes, but I really did at numerous parts of my life think, this is it. Fuck, we did it. You know, like this is going to change our life. And within, you know, that probably lasted. The first six months were life changing with just Facebook money alone. And as they established their presence as a short form content,

they stopped. Yeah, they stopped. I still qualify and make money through all of those platforms. but the pay rate, you know, without any understanding of what the pay rate was to begin with versus what it is now, you know, like that same payday might be, shit, $1,200 bucks a month. It's easy to get, or to want to get frustrated at Facebook for that, too. The reality is though we, you and I, everybody else, we checked the box too. Absolutely. We use this for free.

Sure. Somewhere in the small print. Oh, for sure. I didn't read, and I'm not going to. Yep. Yeah. Fantastic tests on this. Yes.

Where they'll put into small print just to see people are like, hey, you sign over the rights to all of your children and all the property. No, it doesn't stop anybody. The click three rate is exactly the same. Oh my God. Yeah. But we're using their system for free. Yep. What they want from us is our attention.

Absolutely. And our time. And they sell that. And that's the game. And it becomes, it becomes tough, especially when, like you said, without consulting the person that is actually, because it is symbiotic. They're not going to grow their platform without the content that people want to watch.

They're rewarding you for that. They can change the mechanism behind the scenes but may change your ability to make the content. So there's an inequity there because they can control the platform, but that's kind of the game. It's just the game that they've created and we're just a player in the arena.

And I don't... Easy to be frustrated? Yeah. The better move is to just to continue to move forward I think the way that you are. You're going to figure it out. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

So that just leads me... I just wanted to show the vulnerability of my naiveness through the journey of content creation to tell you that I, I'm not, I don't have a, I don't have it all figured out. I'm, I'm absolutely learning as I go. Only this, only this year am I really trying to buckle down to, to, to, and I say this year, meaning like a couple days ago, you know, 2025, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, well, it's been awesome. You got a lot under your belt. Yeah. Like five days.

Just a new approach, you know, not trying to maximize, trying to scratch the surface of opportunities to a deeper level to make sure that I'm not just clicking through something that could have amounted to, you know, a relationship that I never seen coming. Michael and I, what was it, were we having this conversation yesterday, Michael? About looking at YouTube is probably the main visual platform. Spotify just recently added an audio or a video. component to the audience. I didn't even, I was not even aware of that. It was in a beta for, I don't know, six to eight months. Yep.

They allowed me into the beta program. It's, so it's offering the same thing that YouTube is. Yes. YouTube, though, I think is easier to share because you can attach it to social platforms a little from what I've seen so far. Right. And I try to listen to the feedback I get on the show and the, and if I get a single point of feedback, I will read and listen to it.

Yep. But when I start getting trends, I pay more attention. And it goes to what you're talking about. what are the platforms looking for? And one of the main ones I get is the short form content. Right. Because there are YouTube shorts, which need to be 59.9 seconds and below.

But the suggestion I keep getting is create a clips channel. So you could have something that is four minutes along or six minute, but not a two and a half hour podcast because when people share those with people that don't know the show, it's really unlikely they're going to barrel through two and a half hours of somebody they don't know. Right. Four minutes is pretty easy, though. Oh, sure. And it's easily shareable. Yep.

And so it's a way to, right, you need your top end of the funnel to be as large as possible. Because at the end of the day, it's the bottom end of the funnel, which is completely predicated on how much goes into the top. Absolutely. And so, yeah, I'm going to unleash Michael to create a specific clips channel for the show. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's be honest, he's not going to do a good job.

No, it was. It was really bad. That's something that's probably spelled the name of the channel wrong. I love it. I love it. It's a, there's no roadmap and, and there's no, you know, I'm really fortunate with the, the reach of my platform. It affords me opportunities to ask questions to people that I would have never really assumed would, would be willing to help or would want to, you know, want to offer insight. So, super grateful for, you know, for, but once again, there's just no roadmap.

There's no, there's no manual for doing this. And it's really a new, for me at least, and anybody in my circles, it's a new sort of career move that nobody really has much to contribute to in the way of, oh, well, this work, you know. Yeah. It's like a mutual fund, the small print at the bottom. Yeah. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Yeah. Just because it works yesterday, it doesn't mean it will work tomorrow.

No. And it's a highly self-motivated, you know, I often use the phrase feed the monster on these social platforms. Like YouTube long form is something that I've always had as a goal in the back of my mind. I'm so locked into feeding that monster with the short form content of posting and working my ass off all day, filming all day, waking up at the crack of dawn, editing for a couple of hours on that piece of short-form content, posting it by breakfast time for most Americans, and then getting back. Let's be honest. They're not consuming your breakfast.

Yeah, right. They're sitting on the toilet. Yeah. That's so true. Probably right after breakfast. No, no, that's accurate. I'm a victim of toilet consumption myself. We all are.

What the hell else are you going to do? What did we possibly do on the toilet before cell phones? Well, we got an outhouse now. So it's, it's, uh, boogie. It's not at all. However, fuck, it's cold. It's so cold. But, but Heather, she's like, she, she, she bust my chops constantly because she's like,

what the fuck are you doing? Like, it's an outhouse. I'm like, I'm answering some fucking messages. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm saying hi to some friends. So the, the, the discomforts of an outhouse will not take you out of, uh, perusing your social media even while you're on the, while you're on the, while you're on the john. May I recommend a space heater of some kind? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you may.

Let me ask you this, because we've known each other a couple hours. Yes. Other than our communications setting this up. Yeah. You're going to figure this out. I have no doubt that you will get to the end state. Sure. And the homestead will be what you want.

Right. So here's my question. What do you do then? Because I feel like your creative itch is definitely being satiated right now. Absolutely. But when you're done, I think it might come back. Yeah. Well, I've had visions of that because as we've progressed on the property and now I can visually imagine the home being started and completed and built.

I want, you know, I've always wanted to, right now I work in the in the mud, the gravel, the snow on anything outside in order to stay making progress on projects. but I sold a very nice new shop that I had just built, just had built. I was that guy back then and really didn't get the chance to, you know, to even experience the blessings of having this heated, you know, well-lit, nice space that can take you out of the season that you're in and still allow you to be. Your beat laboratory. Oh, yeah, yeah, right. Have you seen the movie old school?

Yeah, love it. It's your beat laboratory. It's beat laboratory. Don't touch the drum set. Yeah, yeah. I love that shop, but it was only just got a little taste of it before we decided, let's turn our life upside down and start this homestead. So I don't think I'll ever run out of, you know, eventually I would like to,

I'm getting, I'm getting asks constantly about teaching, sharing this knowledge, base with with other individuals who are you know less um earlier in the the journey of getting getting to this place um i'm a little bit i love people i i tell i joke sometimes that i love people from a distance more than i love the reality of of of um people like right right in my face you know um so i'm i'm i know that there's a good i know i can offer a good value to physically showing people how some of these systems work and showing them even through the remainder of the building of our dreams here on this property. But I'm definitely reserved to the thought of bringing people, you know, to the land to be able to. I don't think you need to. As you're

describing this. And again, take 100% of the things I say with a grain of salt. Because I'm fucking idiot. And I've also never done anything homesteading. Yeah. You already understand content. short form. And you've already, you said today you have an interest in long form. I do. You don't need to bring people to your property in the area that we live in where they can connect with your property on a screen size of their choice. When you finish, you could always choose to build, because I bet you the questions come to you in tranches as well. Like septic, water, fill in the blank. Yeah. Who's to say you couldn't get to a place where you can do a smaller sized project somewhere else on your property. But again, now you're turning that more into,

let's say, a polished collegiate level course, for lack of a better term, where you're structuring it, start to finish A to Z or whatever numerically or alphabetically, whatever you use as you want. That way you don't have to bring people onto your property. But that could actually be the product that you are now providing and selling and giving them access to. Sure. You're already doing a lot of the aspects of that. You already have the audience. You're obviously capturing the content. You're passionate about what it is. Again, just spitball on it. I mean, And it would prevent you from having to have physical people. Yeah, yeah.

I'm so reserved in that. You know, the further along we've got with the space and the more I've, excuse me, enjoyed the rural country life. I'm like, I don't even want to leave the property, let alone. Yeah, I just, I'm so comfortable in this, in this space. And I find it hard. There was a time that I was traveling all over the country doing these things. And I would have told anybody who would have told anybody who would,

listen, this is my happy place, being able to explore all over the country and see new places and be mobile and kind of nomadic. And now I don't even like to go to the corner store down the, you know. Mark, you can touch the world. Yeah. And I mean, I'm assuming you got a little Starlink out there. Yes, absolutely. Amazing.

I honestly think we're probably two or three years away from Starlink directed device. I agree. I can see that riding on the wall on that one. Yep. Which, what does cell phone companies do that? I know. I know. Guess what?

Not my problem to solve. Have fun with that. one. Yeah, I agree. You can touch the world from where you're at. You don't have to go to the corner store. Sure. And I mean, I don't know how DoorDash is out at the old room. Yeah. You can bring the corner store to you. It's probably a little bit better established here. But I think there's a path for you to scratch that creative itch, but also turn it into a very rewarding, whether that be personally or economically platform. You already have the platform. I do. I'm just at this point, I'm just realizing that I'm actually taking a little bit of a gut punch to realize that. I thought I'm not as well equipped to know what the right move in development of a business around this audience and around this sort of tribe of individuals that I've amassed and really kind of taking a step back to realize and I'm asking anybody who is willing to, you know,

to offer insight in this. How do you do that? Like, I've just been, I've been so successful with just my authentic way of conveying this lifestyle to people that I haven't tried to funnel anything. I haven't tried to. I think you just answered your own question. Yeah. I think if you can maintain being who you are, that is the best path forward. Sure.

There are, and I think anybody can see this, anecdotally, this is what I see at least. for whatever it is you're looking for, there's somebody on the internet selling it to you. Right. There's probably 10 people selling it to you. They might tell you a system. They might sell you a master class, a seminar, whatever it is. Right.

When you start deviating, in my opinion. Yes. No. And I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about in general. This is something I remind myself of. I think when you start deviating from who you are to follow somebody else's system, you're immediately shaving away at the effectiveness and efficacy of what it is that they're selling.

Right. Not everything scales infinitely for all people. Sure. I think if you maintain your authenticity. Yep. And you know what? I don't think there's anything wrong in talking to your audience and saying, I don't know what I'm doing. I do that all the time on the pocket.

I don't know how to do anything that I do. I love that. And I will tell people like, Michael, how many t-shirts do you think are in my garage? In hundreds. I mean, do you think there's a thousand T-shirts in a garage? Yeah. Okay. Easy.

Yeah. There's a thousand T-shirts. Yes. Let me tell you about the T-shirt. journey. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, pay for him up front. Yeah. So when I see the t-shirts in the garage, what I see is me trying to play businessman. And it's something that I enjoy doing. I like the soft goods. The soft goods sales, they're real, right? But they layer into a complexity. Like for you right now, it would not be the mood because where are you going to store it? How are you going to fulfill it?

Who's going to the post office? Right. It's a lot. Yes. I think right. I mean, you're providing information. So I don't know how many shirts to order. I also don't know what people like. And I don't know the cut or the blank or the feel or the color or the branding. Sure. So I have ordered some really fucking bad shirts. And guess what? They don't sell.

They're still sitting in there. They're sitting in there. And they are also part of the things that I get rid of when my wife Leah is not around. Yeah. So she doesn't see the, I caved in on that one. They remind me, though. that it's okay to not know what you're doing. I mean, I'm not going to go bankrupt

because I'm not selling these t-shirts. Right. But I almost like the reminder of, hey, man, anytime I need to go into the garage like what the freezer is to get some elk to eat. Sure. Every time I open the door, I'm reminded with, hey, you're a fucking idiot because here's a stack of t-shirts.

Well, it's just a gut, gut punch and a humble, you know, humble pie. You have to have that. You can have growth without being uncomfortable. Absolutely. And I'm, I'm grateful for that to come so natural. I mean, and just like you, I'm happy to, I think one of the things that sets, sets aside some of my content to my audience is just the, I definitely don't try to be afraid to show the failures. Like I have to. I love, and I put enough obsessive research into things that more often than not, I get more success out of what I'm trying to accomplish than failure.

But there's times that, anyway, the internet craves that. I mean, just... I think the internet actually craves authenticity. Yes. I don't know if your average consumer would articulate it in that way. Right. But I feel like as human beings, we are drawn towards things that are more authentic. Yes.

And again, whether or not that is something that is subconscious or above that subconscious level, I don't know. Right. But I have anecdotally found that to be true. Yes, absolutely. It's in my own behavior as well. Sure. If I look at my own consumption, what is it that I'm consuming? One, there's a little bit of an outlier.

that because I really enjoy people on bicycles getting hit by cars. It's one of my favorite things. I heard you talk about that. I actually did. What I like even more than that is going, like, putting stuff in my story for a good month without any and then just slide in a juicy one. Just stop people in their tracks. We're talking full ragged all car wheels.

And I don't have to look from them because people know this so they send them to me. It's so demented. I love it. Yeah. I mean, again, so that's a little bit of an outlier. Yeah, right. My own consumption, though, is that I want to see people fail. Yeah.

Not meaning like in their life goals. I need to rephrase that. Yeah. I don't want to see people fail. What I want to see is when that does happen, they're honest about it. Sure. Because it makes me feel more comfortable being honest with my own failures and sharing them as well. Yeah.

The vulnerability is so consumable by, I mean, and it's not even a content. it easier for everybody else to be more honest. Absolutely. Yeah, you're creating a landscape where it's not such a polished fake world that everything goes perfectly. You know, I try to learn off of YouTube how-to videos all the time. And it's so, of course, they're not trying to, we're not there to see how you screw up, you know, in some of these more nuts and bolts activities. but that's where you're you that's where the authenticity of what this homesteading journey for us

as really I get the most heartfelt comments and and messages because man thanks for showing how that hillside slid in on all your work and you're like you're down there every day digging your work from yesterday out of the mud yeah it was just about to start down that path and you save me an immense amount of time, effort, energy, and suffering. Absolutely. It's just realistic. It puts a more humble approach on these hard. They're not easy.

None of the shit's easy. I mean, it's really hard work and it's really, it takes some pretty strong mental commitment to even be trying to do the work to begin with, let alone thinking that it's all going to be easy. So sharing that part of it has been fairly instrumental. And I love to, just like you had said with you mentioning to the podcast viewers, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I mean, I'm fully willing to tell you I'm learning every step of the way. I feel fairly gifted on being a decently quick learner, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not an expert in any of this stuff. And if I can do it out of pure obsession and learning at a necessity to, you know,

to accomplish pushing this needle forward on the homestead and improving very basic human needs to more comfortable amenities within whatever those homestead parameters are, so many more people can do it than what give themselves credit. So I want to make sure and water those flowers, so to speak. I think that's awesome. Michael, did you do a scientific experiment with me real fast? Sure. Mark got me thinking about this with the how do you can you go to YouTube.com and I just want you to type in how do you and I want to see what YouTube auto populates it with.

Yeah. Now I don't know if this can be based off my search history so you guys might need to strap in. Put it up there on the screen, Michael, so we can share this. How do you? How do you want it, Tupac? How do you like me now? How do you heal a broken heart? How do you sleep with Sam Smith?

How do you get free Robux? That is very... How do you make slime? I like that one. How do you keep your pants up? It's a belt fuckers. Yeah. How do you get your voice?

Roblox. How do you do backflip? Ooh, there's going to be some broken necks on that. Michael, scroll down to how do you heal a broken heart and click on that day? I think there's going to be a music video. Yeah, right. Yeah. Okay.

Lyrics. I was going to say, if there was a play-by-play of like a... Yeah. 22 year old dude with lettuce hair. Yeah. My heart is so broken and I'm going to teach you how I got over it. This is the steps. Oh, that's awesome, man.

Shit, man. We've been at it for almost two and a half hours. I want to get you back to Heather. Yeah, yeah. I want to close out on in the three years you've been at this. Yes. For anybody out there who is inspired by the way that you've chosen to live your life and what it is you're trying to do homesteading. Absolutely.

Is there anything that sticks out as like a waving flag of, hey, be prepared for this or, you know, advice to things to maybe consider or avoid? Like big ones. Like, hey, before you do this, consider this. Well, I don't know, like I had this thought earlier today that just be careful what you ask for because it's, it's, it's. it can cause, it's a beautiful. The pluses are so much larger than the minuses and the wins for me personally and for Heather. You know, I can only speak from our own personal experience. They far out exceed the, you know, the discomforts and things that our life looks like right now.

But I don't know if people really know what selling everything and beginning on, raw acreage like a like I mean looks like and feels like and it's hard and it feels overwhelming at times it feels like we're fully committed we don't have a backup plan at this point and we don't have a home so we are figuring it out as we go we are we're going to have the most beautiful place that you can imagine in in you know seven to 10 years yeah that's what I was going say. God damn it. I'm trying not to... Our plan was three, so seven to ten. Seven to ten is going to be the commitment right now.

But just, I don't want to scare anybody away from it, but I do want to remind people that an outhouse in negative 14 degree temperature with no, you know, there will always be improvements, but currently for us, there's no lights, there's no nothing. It's a flashlight out to the thing. it's water that can freeze freeze up on you I'm dealing with stuff that I'm prepared for and goofy enough to put up with but I also don't, I just want to make sure that

when people have the idea that they're going to buy at least the raw land version of what I'm trying to teach people and show people that they understand that I used to be so focused on a single project and like, okay, let's start that and finish that in a matter of weeks, whatever it may be. But I never had, I'm now juggling no less than a dozen different major projects throughout this property. I mean, I never thought my mind could even really tolerate that, let alone. You feel, you know, there's days you feel like, am I ever going to, you know, am I just starting shit to start?

I'm ever going to finish and see the fruits of all this labor in any one of these particular projects? That's my average Tuesday. Yeah. It's humbling, man. It's so humbling. So I guess I would just warn people of the hardships that come along with it. But I would also follow that up with if you're really trying to do stuff from the ground up,

like we've chosen this path for us, there are appreciations that come from, like I've found myself calling them like a circle of life fulfillment that I never saw coming. Like creating a water system from a mountain spring that you find just leaking out of a rock that you then go and have that water tested and you can drink it right out of the ground.

Now you've taken that water, contained it and turned it into an entire system that now I really do predict that this land will granted I'm hoping that my my child and our children Heather has two two kids I have coming up on a 13 year old birthday here soon but if this is their interest in life I I predict that these systems that I'm building right now will be in place generations after I'm gone providing nourishment to my hopefully, you know, family down the road. And the, that old world connection to accomplishing these things that just in our modern daily life, we're not, we're just kind of, well, water comes out of

the faucet and, and if I, if it breaks, I call, call somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Like the connection to our history as humans and maybe not so, not that so long ago history, but, but, um, the settlers type history of of this country just brings me joy that I could never I could have never saw that coming and it could have never put a frame around it for for the public to understand and that's I'm all I'm always so grateful and fulfilled by this lifestyle that I think it comes out through my content and I think that's part of a bigger appeal to all of these folks that want to watch. But I'm, I'm sort of uniquely naive in that I'm just willing to keep trudging and keep and keep experiencing the small winds and calling them larger than, larger than life.

And, but, but it's, it's a hard life. And I, and I, the wintertime for us, everybody's climate's going to be different. Everybody's, um, version of buying property is going to be different. you know, I mean, I think that there's a lot of people that would have the opportunity to go by, you know, a sort of a retired farm that's got barns, that's got a farmhouse, that's got these other things. And I can't tell you exactly what that looks like. But when you're trying to do it all on your own and you're trying to really absorb the enjoyment later in life that came from that from that path, to get to having our forever home built and all of this property done really with only the help from like my dad sometimes comes up. But it's unmatched for me. I mean, the enjoyment is, it makes me understand why the West was settled. I mean, it was harder than hell and people died left

and right, but the enjoyment that comes from the point of going from a wagon to a cabin and going from hauling water from the stream to water that you finally somehow piped into your place, those accomplishments and those improvements, they just make me feel like tied to the land and tied to our existence as humans. I think it would for most people. Yeah. Promise me this. Yep.

come back in a year, year and a half or whatever, and we got to keep doing updates. Oh, I'd love to, man. Okay? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we'll just make it the first episode of many. We'll just keep going along. And then when you're done, we'll publish your address on the internet so people can go visit you your house. Spare me, spare me.

Awesome. That was great. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it very much.