The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley by Brent Underwood

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley by Brent Underwood https://amzn.to/48nWvd4 A long-abandoned silver mine for sale sounded like an adventure too great to pass up, but it turned into much more—a calling, a community of millions, and hard-earned lessons about chasing impractical dreams. “Inspiring and meditative—the story of man vs nature and man vs himself.”—Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Obstacle is the Way The siren song of Cerro Gordo, a desolate ghost town perched high above Death Valley, has seduced thousands since the 1800s, but few fell harder for it than Brent Underwood, who moved there in March of 2020, only to be immediately snowed in and trapped for weeks. It had once been the largest silver mine in California. Over $500 million worth of ore was pulled from the miles of tunnels below the town. Butch Cassidy, Mark Twain, and other infamous characters of the American West were rumored to have stayed there. Newspapers reported a murder a week. But that was over 150 years ago. Underwood bet his life savings—and his life—on this majestic, hardscrabble town that had broken its fair share of ambitious men and women. What followed were fires, floods, earthquakes, and perhaps strangest, fame. Ghost Town Living tells the story of a man against the elements, a forgotten historic place against the modern world, and a dream against all odds—one that has captured millions of followers around the world. He came looking for a challenge different from the traditional 9-5 job but discovered something much more fulfilling—an undertaking that would call on all of himself and push him beyond what he knew he was capable of. In fact, to bring this abandoned town back to life, Brent had to learn a wealth of new self-sufficiency and problem-solving skills from many generous mentors. Ghost Town Living is a thrilling read, but it’s also a call to action—to question our too-practical lives and instead seek adventure, build something original, redefine work, and embrace the unknown. It shows what it means to dedicate your life to something, to take a mighty swing at a crazy idea and, like the cardsharps who once haunted Cerro Gordo, go all in.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There she is, the Iron Lady when she sings at a mix of the fish. Welcome to the Big Show, my family and friends.

We certainly appreciate you guys being here. As always, the show has been around for 15 years, brings you all the amazing people, the people with the greatest stories, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the great authors who give you their life journey, share it with you, and so you can use it to expand your life or learn what not to do or give you ideas on how to reformat your life. The CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, all the great people expand your life or learn what not to do or give you ideas on how to reformat your life the ceos the billionaires the white house presidential advisors all the great people come on the show to share with us their amazing stories and boy do we have one for you today that's going to blow

your mind he's the author of the newest book that comes out march 19th 2024 called ghost town living mining for purpose and chasing dreams at the edge of Death Valley. Brent Underwood joins us in the show today, and he's going to be talking to us about his amazing story. You may have heard of him. Back around the time that COVID started, there were these stories that emerged that were going viral on social media. A young gentleman had bought an abandoned old mining town. And I don't know, i know we were doing social distancing but evidently he took the six feet a little too far and and just didn't want to hang

out with the rest of us during covid so i guess that was it i don't know well we'll get his story here in a second but brent underwood is the owner of cerro gordo an original boomtown silver mine established in 1865 he's the creator of Ghost Town Living where he chronicles his adventures on YouTube and he currently lives on the mountain above Death Valley with no running water, seven cats, six goats and at least one ghost. Welcome to the show, Brent. How are you?

I'm doing great, Chris. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. You've got 1.68 million subscribers that follow you on YouTube. You've had a huge success. Give us any dot coms. Where do68 million subscribers that follow you on YouTube. You've had a huge success. Give us any dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs?

Yeah, I think I'm just ghost town living on YouTube as well. That's probably the best place to keep up with it all. I'm also on Instagram at just Brent W. Underwood, but YouTube has most of the chronicles up here. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside your new book and in your tale there. Yeah. So, you know, I think four years ago, as you're mentioning before the pandemic, I had a pretty comfortable life in Austin, Texas. I was living in a nice apartment, had a lot of friends,

but there's still kind of that urge that something else was out there, you know, something that could kind of grab me and hold my attention. And I'd grown up, I kind of having a background in history and hospitality. And so this opportunity to buy an old mining town came up and we did that. And so the process, the book's mainly about moving out here in 2020 until now, which is 2024, and kind of the trials and tribulations there within, kind of how I navigated myself from what I would call a very comfortable life to a much more fulfilling life out here. There you go. There you go. So let's get into a little bit of you, and we'll delve back into the story.

What was your upbringing? Who hurt you? No, I'm just teasing. I'm just teasing. But how did you grow up? How did you get this finance? What captured your imagination when you came across this, and how did you come across it? Yeah. So growing up was pretty normal.

I grew up in Florida, the son of two public school teachers, both my parents were teachers. So education was very important. They were always like, hey, you need to kind of find those blue chip solid jobs or the banking, you know, doctor, and all those types of things. And for a little bit of time, my grandfather lived with us and his favorite show was Gunsmoke. And so if I try to attribute my love of the West

and, you know, kind of the seed that was planted early, it was probably with Gunsmoke. Landon and kind of trying to think of all the guys on gun smoke i grew up like you did watching that show yeah it was i think that's where the seed was planted and then you know if you fast forward i went to school for finance i thought you know banking was the best of the options that i had laid out in front of me i didn't like blood so you know being a doctor was out i didn't really think that being a lawyer would be terribly interesting. So that was out too. There's a lot of blood in that business too. There is. There's a lot of blood as well. A lot of virtual blood too. And then, yeah, I graduated

and I got the job in banking like I was supposed to. You know, I kind of went through that path and I just hated it. And it lasted maybe a month or so it was just miserable work no offense to any investment makers out there but it was I can't imagine a worse thing to choose to do with your life than be an investment maker and so I I quit and then you know I just I had gone into all the student debt to to pay for this education I wasn't using at all and so I kind of traveled around a little bit, tried to figure out what to do, ended up starting a backpacker hostel, you know, where there's bunk beds, people come and crash, kind of like a bed and breakfast thing. Started one of those just because I loved traveling and I miss traveling. I want to kind of be around travelers.

That kind of sparked the hospitality in me. I was like i really enjoy this i like hosting people and so that led to eventually a hostel in austin texas which was housed in a victorian mansion from the 1800s so that was the first kind of foray of combining the you know history and hospitality together i think it's a lot more interesting when you can go somewhere and stay in a piece of that town's past rather than stay in like a white box Marriott or something like that where you stay anywhere in the world. And so that was doing really good. I was kind of getting a little bit anxious because it was doing well, but there's only so much you could do with that. I was looking kind of for the next project. And a friend of mine texted me a link. And I remember the link was like, buy your own town for under a million dollars or something like that. And that was a pretty

captivating text to get up two o'clock in the morning. And he texted as a joke. He threw the, this might be your next project, ha ha, as a text message. And I became obsessed. I woke up, I started reading into it. And the town was just straight out of the American West. There was all the things that happened in Gunsmoke here in real life. There was adventures. There was a bunch of murders. There was $500 million worth of minerals pulled out of the mountain here. And so it was just this huge interest. And so I remember the next day, I didn't have nearly the money to buy the place.

And so I called up the real estate broker just for kicks. I was like, hey, I'd like to put an offer on the place. I remember he was kind of frustrated.'s like get in line you know and so i guess a lot of people had really liked this idea oh yeah apparently this idea of buying your own town and doing something with it was appealing to more people than just myself and so it was kind of got into this like bidding war type situation and i called a bunch of friends. I was like, hey, do you want to buy a ghost town? Most of them said no. Some of them said yes.

You know, some threw in some money. And then I was able to take a loan against my place in Austin. You know, so I kind of went all in. I took all my money. I took a loan against my place that I had in Austin and bought it. And we closed in July of 2018. And so bought it and we closed in july of 2020 of 2018 and so bought in 2018 um the first two years was trying to play the whole thing of managing it from afar um and i guess first the goal always has been to open this up for overnight accommodation so have people come up you know

stay in cabins stay in different things so let me stop you for a second so we can catch up on the story if you don't mind because i want to play this out when you bought the town had you gone and seen it or did you buy it you know maybe off a picture sight unseen i put a earnest money deposit down sight unseen but i did fly out before you went to the whole purchase i flew out i remember you know as the car was rattling into town it just felt like the old because so the road to get here the final eight miles to arrive in town is an eight mile dirt road where you increase a mile in elevation so it's very wow to get up here and so the anticipation just builds you know i'm driving where is it where is it where is it and then finally the town kind of reveals itself to you.

And it does look like out of an old Western or something. There's an old saloon. There's an old church, an old museum, a mine shaft that goes 900 feet underground. And so there was just all of these things in my mind just started racing. Like, what could we possibly do with this place? Could we turn it into this or that and again the idea was always to hopefully open it up so people could come and stay overnight because the town is set in a very beautiful setting where it's a it's a mining town and people think a lot they think of the desert but we're actually kind of in the high desert we're up at 8 500 feet in elevation and so it's kind of in the high desert. We're up at 8,500 feet in elevation.

And so it's kind of in the mountains. And from one side, you see Owens Valley and you see Mount Whitney, which is the tallest peak in the U.S., as well as Sierra Nevada. And if you turn the other way on our property, you see all of Death Valley National Park. It's a very stunning view. There you go. So, you know, when I grew up, I went to the Calico ghost town in California. We used to stop there going between Utah and California when we traveled to see our grandparents. And there's a kind of romanticism to these sort of towns and playing into vision or just you farm you took this vision right from you know hey i want to have that sort of what was the what was the reference of the western we both grew up watching gun smoke so was it was just the gun smoke thing you've been to calico canyons or any other silver mining things and and thought you

know this is did you have any ghost town sort of romanticism before it? I hadn't been to Calico, but I think, you know, a lot of American culture has a romanticism around the American West, you know, it's that Western expansion, it's kind of baked in. And so there is a lot of allure to the idea of this town where so much happened. And so that was kind of playing in my mind. And I think definitely influenced by the Gunsmoke, you know, aesthetic as well. Yeah. See, if I took over a ghost town, I'd walk around. I just lost the name.

What's going on with the Tuesday? The guy who used to say, Pilgrim, what's up? That's John Wayne. There you go. Oh, right. I'd walk around like John Wayne, dressed like John Wayne. I'd call everybody Pilgrim. Well, let me tell you, Pilgrim. Sorry, guys. I'd walk around like John Wayne, dressed like John Wayne. I'd call everybody Pilgrim. Well, let me tell you, Pilgrim.

Sorry, guys. I can't do impressions. So you buy the place. Can you tease out to us what the amount you put down, how much you bet on your dream? Because I think that's kind of interesting. Yeah. In the end, it was about $1.4 million. It started at $920,000.

Yeah. It was expensive. It was 380 acres of property, about 20 buildings. And again, I didn't have nearly that money. So more than half of that came as a hard money loan. And hard money is essentially as close to, I'd say, a loan chart. More than half of it was a high interest loan. Some of it was loans from friends and family. And then the rest, again, was banking against what I had in Austin and just kind of pushing in all the chips, which I think it's scary. You really believed in this dream, man. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I believed in it. And it's scary, but at the same time, there was some comfort that came in that type of commitment. Because at least for me, I was always working on the next project, the next project, the next project. And there's an anxiety of thinking, what's the next thing that I'm going to do? And so for this, that question is kind of out of the question now. This is the project for the foreseeable future, hopefully for the rest of my life. And I think I found a lot of comfort in that idea of it. Yeah.

Well, you're building a hotel, I think, right now, aren't you? And so people can come there and visit. I'd be interested in coming to visit it sounds like a lot of fun i'm not going down any mine though but there might be people like that yeah yeah we're going to the hotel it's it's interesting there's there's so much history here and i think the more i read into it the more i find it interesting like in the town's heyday they had 4 000 residents that lived here and to put in perspective at that period of time los angeles only had 6 500 residents so it was almost like an equal trading partner to los

angeles when it was in its boom time which is like in the 1860s and so to me it's an important town an important time but it has been seemingly lost to time and so the idea of trying to bring a dead town back to life is a pretty interesting project to work on i would say and i guess there's a lot of history behind this town i found a book from 2012 called sarah is it sarah gordo gordo am i pressing that right there you go that's right i think i got sarah gordo at one time from a bad burrito the but there's a book that has images of it and it's got quite the wikipedia page so there's a lot going has images of it, and it's got quite the Wikipedia page. So there's a lot going on here.

Yeah, it was a boom town. It was, at one point in time, the biggest silver mining in California. There were hundreds of buildings. They were pulling out, like I said, if you adjusted for inflation, they pulled out about $500 million worth of minerals from the mountain. Wow. And so it was just a huge operation and the demand of the place so that we're in the high deserts so nothing was being grown here and most of the products were being imported and so the demand called for a port city and so the

demand from cerro gordo forced los angeles to develop a little bit quicker and so it's kind of there's some of the history books call these mines like the mines that built los angeles because they were so important in the growth of los angeles back then oh wow there you go so it looks like you're you're a doer sort of guy work with your hand sort of guy do i have that correctly i was watching some of the stuff you're doing and you're you're you're good at that i think you're you're kind of that's that something you enjoy doing, have that tactile experience with what you're working on. Is that a good analysis? Yeah, I think it's definitely developed since being out here the last four years, a little bit out of necessity, just because we're two hours from the closest hardware store. Nobody lives for many miles around in any direction. So you're not

going to run to Home Depot five times in a day. You're going to have to figure it out yourself. And so it's kind of something that started in necessity, but I get a lot of enjoyment out of it. I think my day job before was working online primarily. And so the thought of getting out from behind the computer and building something real, something tangible that you can see and touch is something that's very rewarding at least to me and so i've really enjoyed that part of the

process too and and how do you deal with the being alone and alienation like i guess when you first drove up there your your car kind of broke down or at the end of the road or something or get stuck in the snow i think it was and then yeah and so you're you're kind of up there and then covid hits and you're you're kind of really there and then COVID hits and you're, you're kind of really stuck up there with COVID and stuff. So tease a little bit of that if you would. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely can be a lonely existence at times, but I think during the pandemic, it was a little bit easier even because I would tell myself, Hey, everybody's not hanging out with their friends. You know, everybody's a little bit lonely now.

So it was an easy time to be up here for that reason. I think since the pandemic has eased up and people are actually out hanging out, it's a little bit harder at times when, you know, all of my friends are going to see a movie or they're hanging out and all these things are happening. And I'm looking out at, you know, the tumbleweed going by the road. It's a little bit different. But I think the trade-off is i went from this life that i felt like i was just kind of floating through you know it was

comfortable but it just seemed like purposeless and meaningless in a way and so out here it's a much more difficult survival it's like very hard every day like this morning for instance i had to shovel like three feet of snow to even use the outhouse because we don't have running water you know and so it's it's hard and it's primitive but if the trade-off wasn't there i wouldn't be here and so like i find that the satisfaction that i get from being out here you know outweighs any of those loneliness feelings i would say there you go well i'm glad you're you're doing this when you're young because man when you're old this would be this would be much more challenging to do. Do you ever get worried?

I think at one point I saw a video where you're wandering around. You're like, I don't know where I'm at. And I think it's when you first went up there. And then, you know, you ever worry about having a sort of health issue or any sort of thing where maybe you fall and hurt your leg? Like, are there some movies about that? You know, wasn't there a mine thing where the guy gets injured and there will be blood, something like that, and he has to crawl out of a mine or something with a broken leg?

You ever worry about that sort of thing going on? Somewhat. The hikes are less so now. I'm pretty comfortable with the hikes. The mine stuff, I think it is the opening scene that there will be blood where he falls on the mine shaft and breaks his leg and has to climb out. That does haunt me sometimes you know because in the mines on hikes you can

have a satellite gps locator where you can press a button somebody can find you no matter where we are those don't work in the mines and so usually i tell people where i'm going and when to expect me out and if i'm not out then you know there's a sick there's a sequence of events that should happen if that were to happen there you go it's so you got a good setup there as a backup do a lot of your friends like to come out and visit you and hang out and and stuff or you know there you go it's it's one of those lives it's one of those settings that i think is very fun to dip your toe into for two to three days you know right now you know come out we have mines to explore you have dirt bikes and it's kind of this fun adventure land living here for more than a week becomes a little bit uh it takes that kind of commitment and purpose but yeah my

friends love coming out right now it's fun you know they come out not often enough but they come out enough we'll hang out well is it kind of nice to have your own i i mean i don't know how the tax thing works in california for this thing but you know i mean basically your own city so you're like hey well we're gonna do whatever we want over here and we grow on rules is that kind of how it works i wish that's how it worked but unfortunately the the the state and the county still supersede us i we're not like a sovereign nation or something. And so I still have to play by the county's rules and I still play by the state's rules. And so even

for instance, you're mentioning building the hotel. The hotel has to be permitted and approved to the state of California regulations. And so we've had eight inspections already on the build and we're not anywhere close to done. The inspectors have to drive all the way out there to drive yeah they do yeah

it sounds like fun though man i i'd love to come see it it's you know i i grew up as a kid going to calico like all the time we just stopped there all the time and and so it was always fun you know i i grew up watching westerns and you know there's there's always like a romanticism to it have you it sounds like you've been down in the mine is there's there's always like a romanticism to it have you it sounds like you've been down in the mine is there any chance there's like a place where people can go and mine diamonds in some park back east and there's always some person finding some crazy diamond is there any is there any silver resurgence mining or people can maybe come there and try and find some gold or silver sort of thing pan for or or something? Yeah, there's 30 miles

of mines underneath the town, so it's crazy. There's kind of snake everywhere. Yeah, the main mine shaft goes 900 feet down, and off of the 900 feet, there's levels every 100 feet or so. Wow. And the main mineral they're mining here is called galena, which is silver with

lead and sulfur and some other stuff in it. And so there's still little pockets of it. I've gone down and I've refined it all the way down to pure silver myself, which is a lot of fun. But whenever I bring up the idea of bringing visitors into the mines, I've talked to my insurance agent and they, they described that as gross negligence and they said that there's no way to ensure gross negligence.

And so I don't know that I'll be able to do tours below ground, but maybe above ground I could show people, you know, the process of refining the silver and stuff like that yeah that'd be good that or i don't know see some streams or something is there any streams up there maybe no it's it's it's very dry we actually don't have any water at all because we're right above what's owens lakes and owens lake is is the lake that Los Angeles redirects to get their drinking water from. So we're actually kind of in a dust bowl out here. Oh, wow. Can you drill down and get water?

Or do you got to import it all? Right now, we truck it all up in this old military truck that I have. But I've had hydrogeologists out. I've had even water dowsers out. You know, the guys with the sticks and all that. Yeah, yeah. But I haven't been confident enough to drill yet because I think we're probably having to drill about 1,000 feet down to hit water, and that's pretty expensive

because you might not hit it. Yeah, but, you know, what you should do is make one of those teenage corrections sort of things for teenagers who are bad. You know, they send them up there. Oh, right, so far away where they can't walk away i'd send my i'd send my kids there for the first 18 years there you go you know you always tell them those stories of grandpa had to walk you know two miles of snow 10 feet deep both ways to school they're like you're full of shit and you're just like i'm gonna send you up there and then is there a ghost run around that we can tease out i think did you

say there's a ghost out there it depends kind of how you ask it there's a lot of famous ghosts up here that people have seen over the years myself i only have one ghost tale and it happened even before i was living here full time and so i don't know whether it was you know either the ghosts have now accepted me as a resident and don't bother me anymore or the things i previously perceived as ghosts turned out to not be ghosts but uh the one that i knew there's a there's a building here called the bunkhouse and that's where a lot of the miners used to hang out and just past the bunkhouse is a overlook to overlook a great sunset spot and so i remember i was up here and we had a caretaker at the time. This was before I lived here full time. And we had some contractors that would come and go and

work on different projects. And they would stay in the bunkhouse when they were here. And so that day, the light was on in the kitchen and I was walking towards the sunset spot and somebody looked out the curtains and looked at me, kind of closed the curtains. And I was like, oh, well, the contractors must be here. Thinking, oh,'s no don't worry about it so i go up watch the sunset come back down next morning i talked to robert the caretaker like robert you know how long has the contractors been here and everybody kind of slowly turned to me and he's just like they left two weeks ago and again i'm i'm a pretty rational person so i was like i know i saw somebody in there but this isn't again we're at the end of an eight mile dirt road. So it's not like somebody's just going to wander into the building.

I walked over there. I looked through the building, nothing, turned off the light, put a padlock on the door. I was like, no, it's going in here. And then the next, that same night, the next night when I went to go watch the sunset again, the light was back on in the kitchen. And so I was like, oh man, I know I turned that off. And so, you know, I just, my way of handling it is I figured there's 380 acres here. They can have the bunkhouse, you know, hang that off and so you know i just my way of handling it is i figure there's 380 acres here they can have the bunkhouse you know hang out do whatever you need to do i'll stay in all the other buildings yeah i'm getting goosebumps with you telling this story man my hair stick it up on my arms dude the someone in the in the audience is asking how does he get electricity is he connected to the main network yeah so we actually they connect

electricity up here back in 1916 when it was a mining town so actually on the grid but no that's not to say it doesn't go out it went out it went out last week for a week and so i have generators up here too where i got a lot where i get a lot of the power but we are on the grid which is pretty nice we're not we have no water but we have power which is which is nice there you go well not, we have no running water, but we have power, which is, which is nice. There you go. Well, at least you got that, you know, as long as you can get wifi, but yeah. And people are enthralled with what you're doing, man. I can't wait to get this hotel open. I think people love to come there. I mean, you may need a, I saw the size of the hotel you're building. It looks like it's, it's kind of smaller. I guess you'll see what the

demand is when it comes, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's really interesting. I remember it went so viral and they're like, this guy bought a town and he's, and you know, everyone else is like,

does he not like us that much? But yeah, I think, I think maybe we've all kind of had that fantasy. I mean, over the years I've seen like small little towns get sold and like in Utah and Nevada and stuff, not really ghost towns but just like stupid little towns that got kind of bypassed by the by the main highway and i think

everyone's kind of maybe thought of a fantasy or had that fantasy of you know silver gold mining every now and then i'll see someone panning for gold they still do it on like tiktok and crap and you're just like that kind of sounds like fun. I don't know. I wouldn't last long. So you've just done it, man. You've journeyed this. And I mean, it's making a killing, I'm sure, on YouTube.

Why don't we talk about it? You want to tease out about the book so we can get people to pick this baby up and check it out and plan for a reservation. The book is cool. It's kind of the experience of being here over the last four years all the different stuff from you know surviving the natural disaster exploring the mines but i also tried to research and find the best stories from the past year that hadn't been told because there's a really rich history here and i kind of wove those in throughout the story as well and so i think overall it's kind of hopefully the idea to take that crazy jump into

something that you really care about you know to find what you really find meaning in and just to kind of yeah go for something there you go what about chicks man you you ever have any how's the dating life going up there it's a little it's a little hard to get married to somebody and be like hey honey this is this is it this yeah this is the castle right here this is it but especially right now let's maybe if we get some running water going some decent things maybe a little a little easier but yeah right now it's it's pretty it's pretty sparse out here women are into that running water this is yeah you know luxury living on living a high and only bathing is interesting but you know. Luxury. Living a high. And only bathing is interesting.

But, you know, when you're a young man, bathing is overrated. So, why bother? I think that's how we are on the show sometimes. But there you go. Well, Brent, it's been fun to have you on the show, man. I seriously would love to come out and try it once you get this thing rolling. I do need some of that running water a little bit just to, you know, I don't know, brush my teeth. But it sounds like so much fun.

If I do come, I'm going to dress up like John Wayne and then I'm going to perfect my accent and call everyone pilgrim. So, yeah. There you go. Oh, you can do horse riding, huh? You can have people ride horses and think of all the different things you can do.

Get some mules up here. Doesn't Calico, they have some players, like they have western dudes who have like gunfights or something? Yeah, like the reenactment stuff. Yeah, maybe you could get Clint Eastwood to come up and hang out, man. You have part of his last name.

You're kind of halfway there. There you go, yeah, Wood. You guys are probably somewhere, you know, on Anstrustry.com, there's a break off there. Maybe you could get him up probably somewhere, you know, on Ancestry.com. There's a break off there. Maybe you could get him up to come, you know. Maybe there's a Clint Eastwood. Maybe you could, you might be able to pull like a young Clint Eastwood.

You know, you just get that, those satchel blankets or whatever he used to have. You know? Yeah. And you just have to get a gritty sort of angry, you know. Anyway, I'm just having fun. So there you go. But yeah, that'd be kind of cool. Have a few seedy bandits running around town, you know, doing the whole scenery thing.

Just be right. Definitely. There you go. Well, Brandon, it's been fun to have you on. Give us your final thoughts. Tell people where to buy the book and any spin-offs or plugs you want to take and do. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's available everywhere books sold it's just called ghost town living i think a great place again is

to jump into the youtube there's four years of documenting what's been going on up here that's a great place to check it out there you go well thank you very much for coming to the show brent we really appreciate it and you know keep working hard and doing the the good work i think it's exciting what you're building up there and a lot of fun. And you know what? You're living your dream, man. I think that's the beauty of your whole story because we have a lot of entrepreneurs and stuff. They come on, they start companies,

they do businesses, but you found what really works for you, man. I've run companies all my life. People ask me, they're like, it's great that you do what you love. And I'm like, I don't really do what I love. The podcast I love because I love meeting and interviewing really cool people like you and your stories but all my other companies i'm like i just do this for the money i'm a whore

you know and i don't really love it and they're like what would you do if you could do whatever you want i'm like i'd probably run a wolf refuge somewhere up in wyoming of wolves and siberian huskies and i'm like i'll probably do They're like, there's so many in that idiot. And I'm like, I don't, I don't think I'd really care. You know, doing what you love.

There's just, it's priceless. You can't put a thing on it. So I'm, I'm glad you've done that. And you're sharing the vision with other people, man. There you go.

Yeah. Made it work. Folks, order up his book where refined books are sold. Ghost town living, mining for purpose and chasing dreams at the edge of death valley there you go thanks so much for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortuneschrisfosslinkedin.com fortuneschrisfosschrisfoss1thetiktokity and chrisfossfacebook.com

thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time