Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business. Do Life. Have Dane Espegard here with us today. Welcome to the show, Dane.
Dane Espegard: Happy to be here.
Brad Johnson: Well, I’ve known you for a long time. And so, we’ve traded some text messages, we’ve hung out at some dad’s retreats over the years, made fun of mutual friends like Justin, but this is our first podcast, so I’m really looking forward to this one. So, I know today you’re also a published author so we’re getting into The Dream Machine today. And so, any thoughts before we kick this off, or do you just want to dive right into, basically, The Dream Machine and what’s it all about?
Dane Espegard: I’m just excited to be here, excited to have the conversation with you, and I always enjoy our time together so I don’t think this will be any different. So, I think we just let it rip.
Brad Johnson: All right. Well, so as I said, we met at a dad’s retreat, Jon Vroman, mutual friend. And you’re a dad, you’re a husband. Likewise. Same on my side. So, I always connected on that front with you is just I saw the intention. You tried to live that with and continue to get better like all of us. And what’s really cool is getting to understand more the business side of Dane because I got to know a lot more of the life side right out of the gates. You’ve been incredibly successful at Cutco, and then on the Vector side, kind of run the business side, the organization side. You’ve scaled big, big teams of I think what most would say is like younger, not as seasoned businesspeople, typically kids in college or fresh out of college. And to be able to lead a big group of people that maybe from a business perspective aren’t as mature as some others. It takes a lot of talent, takes a lot of intention, takes a lot of organization. And a little bit of the secret of how you’ve been able to do that and build one of the biggest sales teams in all of Cutco is actually in this book. And so, let’s start there because in business you hear about goals all the time. And in the book, you talk a lot about dreams and the importance of writing them down, manifesting them, putting a plan in place to achieve them. So, Dane, is a goal and a dream the same thing, just called two different things, or do you define those differently?
Dane Espegard: I think they can be. I define them differently. And the reason I’m intentional with the language around whether it’s a goal or a dream is, for me, I grew up in direct sales, so 18 years old on, and goal setting was just a regular occurrence, weekly, monthly, quarterly. And so, there’s a little bit I think that can get stale around just goals in general. And I also think it’s very natural for people to set goals that we know are absolutely within reach, because deep down we want to hit our goal. If I’m sharing it with a supervisor or someone else, I want to look good and hit my goal. And so, I think that, I don’t know where I heard it but the quote of goal setting isn’t about hitting the goal, but it’s about who we become in the process. And I feel like if we’re not setting goals that actually stretch us, we don’t get the full benefit of that. And so, I think in walks the word dream then. And when I use the word dream with my team, I think what it’s meant to do is be a lot more freeing and ungrounded to say, “Hey, let’s just have some fun. What are some things that you think would be amazing to do at some point in your life?” And that allows people to detach a little bit from reality, which I think is helpful in the big… If we really want people to think big and outside the box, I think dreaming could be helpful in that. So, I think they both have their place. But I think the feeling that I want people on my team or others to feel when they hear the word dream is something that’s uplifting, abundant, anything is possible, but at the same time, nothing that’s obligatory. And I feel like sometimes with goal setting, that happens. We attach ourselves to it. And then there can be a negative feel occasionally with that. I don’t want that around the word dream. I want it to be real, very positive and abundant.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. As I think about it, a lot of what you said resonates because a goal feels like something you’re supposed to do or have to do, like cleaning your room when you’re growing up. Or a dream feels like something you want to do or you aspire to do. Do you find just simply by switching the language around that, you’re kind of unlocking the side of excitement that people typically don’t get when it comes to goal setting?
Dane Espegard: Yeah, absolutely. And I also think that it’s a lot easier to bridge the gap between personal and professional. And I think when we’re talking about goals, especially in the book, I talk about bringing this specifically to work teams. I also do this with families and everything else. I think it’s a little different, but if we’re talking specifically in the business world, I think that when you’re talking to your team or anybody about goals, we’re thinking specifically about the workplace or professionally. And I think people associate dream a lot more with personal. I do anyway, so I might just be projecting that onto my team. But I feel like when I’m thinking about dream, it’s dream trip, dream experience, dream, “Oh, someday I’ve thought about all these things,” and I think that’s where dream kind of unlocks the door into this whole world of possibility that work hopefully then whatever our vocation or our current occupation is can kind of become the vehicle then for us to be able to achieve these dreams that some are in the business world, but many of them are in the personal world.
Brad Johnson: Very do business do life of you if I say so myself.
Dane Espegard: Yeah, I think so.
Brad Johnson: Well, it’s wild. We were talking before we hit record here and I actually brought this up, but it’s a little blurry here on camera, but this is actually something we’ve done at Triad for basically since we’ve existed and we call them champagne moments. So, what’s something we’d look out and pop a bottle and celebrate something a year from now? We do it every January. We do it with our members externally. We do it with our team internally, and we define it, what’s our do business champagne moment, what’s our dew life champagne moment. And actually, Kinsey, our Director of Culture this year, just added, “Life’s too short,” at the bottom, almost like pseudo bucket list, right? And so, the open of your book, I want to get into that a little bit because you shared a couple powerful stories. And as you know, our audience is independent financial advisors all over the country, in the world really, for that matter. And they deal with this every day with retirees, like people have been working and slaving away so someday they can retire. And you shared a story. I think it was a family friend, and I’ll let you share it. I mean, you know the story much better than me, but you share it in the book of why sometimes the someday doesn’t always work out like you planned. So, maybe we use that to kind of set the why behind why this stuff matters.
Dane Espegard: Yeah. It’s one of the stories that I kind of opened with two separate stories that have the same feel to them and the same underlying principle, which is this specific individual who is a family friend, and they did well for themselves, and they worked really hard and amassed a real sizable nest egg for them to retire on. And right as they were on the doorstep of that, husband is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and I mean it takes off. It was really aggressive. And so, it wasn’t a, “Hey, we’ve got X amount of time.” It was, “No, this is going super-fast.” And so, now all of a sudden all these things that they had that they were planning on doing in this era of life just didn’t get to happen. And he’s since passed. The story I think at the time that I wrote it, I think he was still with us, but now she’s trying to do many of the experiences that they had set together that they were going to do, and unfortunately it’s not the way that they drew it up. And I think what comes to mind for me, Brad, is the last time we just saw each other was at a close friend of ours’ celebration of life. The guy’s in his mid-40s, arguably in the best shape of his life, and unfortunately, things ended at that point for him. And he lived an amazing life, but I guarantee there was… And I would say with that situation, he was somebody who was living his life, right?
Brad Johnson: For sure.
Dane Espegard: And I think it was evident at the celebration of life that, man, this guy who’s been living a full life in a short amount of time, but that’s not the norm. And I’m sure your listeners, as we were talking, you’re like, “Man, my listeners, the people we work with, they deal with this all the time.” And I think everybody, it doesn’t matter who they are, what industry they’re in, they have somebody in their family or social circle that this has been the story for them, right, where unexpected deaths or disability or something that didn’t allow them to continue living the way that they wanted to. And, man, that’s so sad to see that when we have everything designed the way we think it’s going to be. And so, what I hope inspires people from this is just the idea of, look, the more we dream, the more… When people hear ‘dream’ at first, I think they think of just a dream vacation or a dream house – and they think of these really big things. And in the book we talk about it. It’s not that. It’s all these many times just small things that are new experiences, things I want to do, things I’ve said, “Oh, that’d be really cool.” And one of the keys to this, I think, is helping people dream more, not necessarily bigger, but more. And I think that dream big is a topic we hear a lot, but not necessarily dream more, which means, “Hey, let me get 100 to 200 or 300 things down on paper to say, ‘At some point in my life, if I experienced this, would it bring me joy and energy? And if so, I’m going to put it on the list.’” And last year, I think on my list, I crossed off 25 dreams. So, they can’t be that large if there’s 25 in a year, right? But they were things like go see a show at, what’s the new? The Sphere. That was on my list. Unbelievable. So, that’s just one of the things. We just got back from a trip, an RV trip to the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, Florida. And seeing the World Equestrian Center was on my wife’s dreams list. So, it was just we were there for a weekend, but it was something that she could cross off her list and say, “That was great.” And what I have noticed is as we experience more dreams, it just adds more to our list, right? We experience one thing, and we meet cool people and have cool experiences, and add more things to our list. And so, life just gets more exciting and we just have so much more purpose behind the things that we do.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, let’s apply this to the world of finance because I know there’s financial advisors out there listening right now, and they’ve seen the exact same story you just shared played out, unfortunately, dozens, if not hundreds of times depending, because they live in it all day. They’re dealing with pre-retirees, retirees. And regardless of how well you take care of yourself as you age, the body breaks down and some of these health things pop up and throw you the curveball you weren’t expecting. And I heard it said once, I had an advisor that I worked with years ago, and he said, “Most people like work, work, work, work, work, work,” so someday, and you got a story around that too, they’ll have enough. And of course, oftentimes that carrot is moving because, oh, someday I’ll have a million then it becomes two, then it becomes five, then it becomes ten, and it’s like just this pursuit that never ends. But someday, if I have enough, eventually I’ll retire. And his philosophy was different, which I think aligns a ton with you on the dream side. He said, “The way I look at it, I don’t work my whole life, my best years and defer retirement. My goal is to retire a little bit more each year, build my business in a way that gives me freedom, or the ability to kind of play out those dreams along the way.” And that always resonated with me because I was like, why would you slave away the healthiest years of your life, the years of your life where your kids are actually living with you, and you have the opportunity to make these memories and moments just to defer them all to when you’re an empty nester and not as good health and save up all the good stuff for the end? Yeah, it makes no sense at all. So, what’s your take on that, because I think that aligns pretty close to your philosophy and the fact that you let put these on paper and let’s go get them.
Dane Espegard: I absolutely love that viewpoint. And I think the challenge with it is, in theory, it’s so great and it makes so much sense, especially with the kids element, in practice, it’s so difficult. And the reason is I believe, and I’ve lived this myself, is that we pour so much into our professional careers and we see ourselves creating momentum in that. And to think, “Okay, I’m going to take a step back,” it doesn’t have to be a step back, but I think that when you look at it just surface level, you’re like, “Okay. Well, that means I’m going to be retiring a little bit each year, which means I’m working a little bit less.” And so, if I’m doing that, am I harming my future trajectory with my profession? But I believe if we were to talk to most people and say, “Hey, list out the things that are most important to you,” most people are going to put family first. But it’s the whole, “Tell me what your focus is versus show me your calendar, and then I’ll tell you.” And so…
Brad Johnson: What gets calendared gets done, as they say.
Dane Espegard: Yes. And for me it’s been, you know, I’m so thankful that I went down the path of just writing a book because, if anything, I know it’s made a difference for a lot of people but it’s made the most difference for me. Because being the guy who wrote the book, I feel that there is somewhat of a duty to live that life which supports what I really want, but it’s difficult to do. And so, the last couple of years we have absolutely done that, which is retire a little bit more each year. And I think about this often of just, okay, I’m currently, as we’re recording this, I’m 40 years old. For whatever reason, that’s an iconic or an age that people think about a lot before. And so, as I hit that, I went through a lot last year thinking about what I want my 40s to be about. And what I settled on was fun. I want my 40s to be fun. And that’s always been, that’s one of my core values, but it hasn’t always been reflected in my calendar. I bring fun to work. I could work 90 hours and have a lot of fun. And so, it’s kind of a cop out for me to say, “Oh, well, look,” as opposed to, “Well, what do I want fun to be? I want fun to be with my friends and family. That’s what I want it to be.” And so, just recently we bought a class A motorhome. We’re doing a road trip every, we’ll call it month to two months with the kids. I’ve got an eight, six, and an almost two-year-old. And so, I do think about that where it’s, man, I have a lot of momentum on my businesses, but I can do that later. I’m going to have all the time in my hands when the kids are out of the house. And I love my wife. We co-parent great. We’re best friends. And so, I’m excited about that chapter of our lives. But how great to be able to go on these awesome trips with our kids and just do – we’re planning a trip for next week just to go out on the limb and pull the kids from school and say, “We’re going to Big Bend National Park.” So, on the flip side of this, what’s been really interesting is this has been a total exercise in business strategy. Because when I moved to Austin, we moved from Minnesota to Austin three years ago, I said, “Okay, I want to be very conscious of trying to work less and less,” because one of the reasons that we were moving was for community, so I wanted to really plug in and be involved. And what’s been interesting to see is, as I have strategically been working less over the last couple of years, my business has been growing at a more rapid rate than it ever has before. And so, there’s been a lot of lessons in there that it’s, “Oh, it doesn’t have to be that I’m choosing this over this.” It’s, “I’m actually choosing both, but I’m doing it in a way that really honors the, at the core of what I would say on my deathbed matters most, which is my family.” But it’s difficult to do that when there’s all these shiny objects in front of you and work opportunities and this and that.
Brad Johnson: Well, I had a friend that same philosophy. And it’s cool you shared that as you started to create more space for family, the business had to evolve to allow for that. If everything’s on Dane’s shoulders, you can’t take a vacation, or you can take a vacation and just be on your phone taking phone calls and answering e-mails, right? And so, what he did is his first sabbatical, he said, “I’m going to take a one-month sabbatical,” but he put it a year out. And basically, he said, “It forced me to build the business in a way that it could exist without me for a month.” And then the next year, he doubled it to a two-month sabbatical. So, now it had to evolve even more to allow for that and not break when he was gone. And he said it was one of the best things he ever did because it was almost like creating that goal, force the action or that dream, in your vocabulary. And I always thought that that was pretty interesting because like procrastination, it’s like you don’t do things until you’re forced to, but he forced himself to build this in a way that would allow for it. So, I love that thought.
Dane Espegard: And again, this is my personal. Are you talking about Grant, by the way? Is this the same mutual friend?
Brad Johnson: I’m actually talking about Michael Hyatt was the one who first told me.
Dane Espegard: Okay. So, Grant from The Speaker Lab. You know Grant?
Brad Johnson: I don’t.
Dane Espegard: Oh, okay. But he talked to me about that. He took a sabbatical. He came back and everybody was doing his role so he changed his role. Went on another sabbatical the next year, changed his role, and all of a sudden, it wasn’t a lot for him to do. And I think about as I’ve been stepping out of my business more, I’ve also been able to say, “What are the things I enjoy doing and what are the things that I’m uniquely gifted at? And let me just stay in that sweet spot.” And as I’ve done that, one of the lessons for me has been… And everybody’s different. For me, I have a big personality, and there’s only so much oxygen in the room. And what I’ve been able to figure out now is that when it was the Me show, I would actually lose my best talent because, again, age group that I’m working with, these are young go-getters, achievers, and they would develop within my program. And then there’d be a point at which I think they would say, “Well, this is the Dane show. I got to go create mine somewhere else.” And as I’ve been stepping away the last couple of years, I’ve not lost any of those A-plus talent. And so, I’m the most deep in terms of my development that I have ever had. And they don’t want me to do a lot because they want the opportunity to be at that place.
Brad Johnson: That is a very self-aware comment that I think a lot of leaders don’t realize that ever, where if you make it the founder show or the boss show, to your point, there’s not room for others to grow and evolve and have career tracks. And now we’re going to get back to dreams, dude, but now we’re just all of this business conversation. But I heard this was Bryan Miles, so the guy that started BELAY, he shared a story where he said he owned his business and he was talking with the CEO, and he’s like, “You don’t own it. You run your business. You don’t own it. You don’t actually own it until you’re no longer required to be there.” And I think a lot of business owners, it’s almost this pound yourself on the chest. I know in our space there’s a ton of this because, financial services, the only way you survive is you do everything when you first start because you’re almost a one-man or one-woman team. But once you evolve to actually needing to be a business owner and CEO, the rules change and you can’t make it all about you. Or you basically stunt your growth at these glass ceilings and some never figure that out. And then they get super frustrated when, to your point, all their top talent continues to leave. But nobody wants to work for something that’s all about somebody else.
Dane Espegard: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: I think that’s a pretty universal truth. So, I think that’s a super smart observation. That’s not that hard to figure out once you think about it.
Dane Espegard: Yeah. I just had to do it to figure it out.
Brad Johnson: You decided to run some talent off? You’re like, “Wait, what’s the common denominator with this problem?”
Dane Espegard: Oh, man. It was forever. And so, it’s one of those things where it’s like sometimes you have to actually like get burnt by touching the stove before you notice the stove is on. And that’s what it was for me. Maybe I’m not the smartest one. It took me a while but I figured it out.
Brad Johnson: Hey, I’ll tell you what. Being an entrepreneur, being a business owner is about learning from your mistakes because you’re sure going to make them if you’re doing anything that matters, right? Okay. Well, let’s go back to the dreams because you have a really cool framework. And I think surface level, a lot of people are like, “Okay. Yeah, I should set dreams. Oh, I should set goals,” like that is not a new concept, but what is really cool is the framework. You go about doing it and we dove in just to prep for this conversation. I was like, “Dane, dude, you just blew my mind because what you’re doing,” I’m like, “You’ve got a website, you’re tracking this, you’re reporting it. You basically have a model where leaders could know their team’s dreams, and now they’re actually assisting them and helping them achieve them.” So, I want to get into this, and I want to talk about kind of the before and after as these things evolved in your business. But, yeah, let’s go there. Give us like here’s the first time I kind of shared this concept of creating dreams to the team, and then how that’s evolved over the years to where now it’s actually powering a lot of the growth and momentum inside of the business.
Dane Espegard: Yeah. So, when this started, this was all inspired by Matthew Kelly. He’s an author. He wrote the book, The Dream Manager. I read it in 2007, but I had the opportunity to hear him speak at a conference, and he walked us through a dreams workshop. And so, that was my first time putting pen to paper, coming up with a hundred dreams and a 20-minute sprint type of deal. And it was super uplifting, but then I didn’t do anything with it. Just like a lot of personal growth things, it’s like a shot in the arm where you get excited and then you just go back to doing what you’re doing before. But I would look at it every so often, but I didn’t necessarily change my behavior as a result of it. And then five or six years later, I had the opportunity to move a couple of times within Cutco-Vector and start some teams from scratch. And so, as I was going through and starting another team from scratch, I went through and I was thinking about culture and I was thinking, “Hey, I’ve done this a few times now,” and I had my lessons from each team that I built, the positives from each culture, the negatives, and each year I was reading more books. And so, I went to it and said, “What would be the culture that if this is the last team that I ever started, that I would still be excited and engaged 10, 20 years from now? What would that culture need to be for me?” So, it wasn’t actually about the people. I knew that if I was an engaged leader, my people would probably be having a good time, right? And so, I settled back on dreams. And part of this was also a, look, there is no point in my life from like you know what I’m born to do. I was born to be with a nice company. So, part of this was finding purpose within what I was good at, and where I had found myself. So, when I moved, it started in 2013. And basically, iteration 1 of this was two things. I’m going to help people create their dreams lists, which gets people started. And then the second thing is, I’m just going to be very committed to living my dreams out loud in front of my team. And my thought was get them started on a list. Some people will run with it, some won’t. And if every time I accomplish a dream and I’m using that terminology, it will trigger people to go back to their dreams list and say, “Oh, yeah, what was something I wanted to do?” Then we started. In between there, somebody said, “Can we put up a corkboard and put dreams out?” Sure, right? So, there were little things like that that happened. And then…
Brad Johnson: How big was the team at this point? How many people were you involved in this?
Dane Espegard: So, at that time, we had one we’ll call it location like one franchise that we’re doing at one office. And we had a team of probably about 20 to 30. And sometimes it’s tough for me to say the number of direct sales or turnover is heavy. But we had, I’d say, 20 very consistent individuals. Then we had 5 or 6 offices that we were doing this with. So, at every time that all the locations would come together for like a quarterly meeting, we would talk about dreams. And then a couple of years later, we started running our first ever dreams retreat, we would call it. And so, it was an offsite. Everybody came together and it was two full days of only dreams. So, we had a ton of space to create bigger lists, do stealing and sharing, which I talk about in the book, which created some deeper bonds within the team. And then we added after a couple of years of that, we have in the last part, which was taking action. And we all know that the best time to take action is in a motivated state. And so, at the very end of this, we would go through and say, “All right. From that dreams list, what are 5 to 10 that maybe are within the cards this year?” And then everybody would start doing research. So, we’d have just kind of call it a jam session for two hours. We’d put music on. People are just Google searching flights and locations and different things. And then at the end of this, people would make a commitment. A lot of times they’d come up with two, three, four that they were going to do. But we asked everybody to end with a commitment on one dream that they’re going to pursue over the course of the next three to six months. And then all of this was in Google Sheets. So, I would have people’s Google Sheets full of dreams and you can imagine there was like 50 of them. It was super chaotic. I don’t think any business can do that. I was super committed to that, so I would use it. So, that’s where it all kind of started. And then fast forward, we now have software for it. And so, as I launched the book, I knew some sort of integration piece was needed if this was going to be scalable to other businesses. I just figured another founder, CEO, whoever wasn’t going to be necessarily as committed as me writing a book on it, that type of thing. I’m not super techie, so it took me a while to figure out a partnership with somebody that I trusted to be able to build this. And so, now we have the Dreams Vault and this has been fantastic. So, think Google Sheets, people, they’re going to upload their dreams. So, on the spot in a dreams workshop, they’ll journal them and then they throw them into this Dreams Vault, this website. So, on a user account, the team member, they can view all their dreams. If they want to pursue one, we call it activating the dream, they click on it, and they add a bunch of sub-steps. So, an example would be, “Hey, Brad, you said you wanted to run a marathon. What would have to happen?” Just normal goal setting, right? “What would have to happen for you to run a marathon?” Well, you probably have to figure out which marathon. You probably have to sign up. You probably have to figure out a 16-week training program. You’d probably have to start training.
Brad Johnson: Dane, a lot would have to happen for me to want to run a marathon, just saying. Football players don’t run a lot of marathons.
Dane Espegard: Maybe I should use a different one. And so, then they put those steps in there and then they put desired dates. So, if I want to run this one on June, like last year, for instance, on my team, I had five or six people sign up for the Fargo, North Dakota marathon. So, that was like June 1st or something. So, then they were putting these dates in there and they put it into the Dreams Vault. So, then on the team leader side or the manager or whoever, they have visibility to every single person’s dreams. So, my Cutco team, for instance, I have 73 people that are into the Dreams Vault and click on any of them at any given time and see all their dreams. Now, they have the ability to set some private if they want, but most of them are available for me to see. I can use that for Christmas shopping. And this is where I buy everybody’s gifts right off their dreams list and some really weird.
Brad Johnson: Interesting.
Dane Espegard: I mean, there are some cool ones.
Brad Johnson: So, give me some real examples of that. That’s a cool idea.
Dane Espegard: So, I mean, some of them were as simple as… I’m going to use some very different ones. I’ve bought people voice lessons. I’ve bought people, one guy… I’m trying to pick out the weird ones. One guy had in his dreams said he wanted a cat tower for his cat. I bought the most epic cat tower you could find online. Pretty hilarious.
Brad Johnson: Right. So, a dream… One of the dreams on here. This is great. And so, this speaks to the diversity of, “Hey, that’s like I can go to Amazon and do that,” but he just like, “Hey, I want to someday get my cat a cat tower.” So, that’s like could be pretty quick one.
Dane Espegard: Brad, you’d be so surprised. When people hear ‘dream,’ they think that these are all these massive things. But when you start putting pen to paper, you’ll actually notice a lot of these things I could do right now if I wanted to do them. I just haven’t made the space for them, haven’t made the whatever. So, I’ve got a budget. I want to spend $200, $300 on a gift just to… But it’s a gift that they remember and they talk about. They say, “You’re never going to believe what Dane got me.” “What did he get you?” This year I bought two people colonics, colon hydrotherapy. Very weird, right? It was on their list. So, I found a place in the Twin Cities. I got a couple of people acupuncture. A couple of people wanted a really nice standing desk. Let’s see. So, that gives you an idea on some of the different types of ones that are on there. Sometimes I know you’re a wine guy. I have some people on my team that have certain, like, “I’d really love to have this wine experience or here are some bottles of wine I’d love to enjoy at some point in my life.” And if I have the opportunity to make those things come true, I love that. I like picking health ones if I can. So, if somebody on my team has triathlon or marathon, I love encouraging that because I feel like I get four to five months of superhuman that person. So, if, Brad, somehow you decide you in another life wanted to run a marathon, whoever’s on your team gets a different Brad Johnson for those four months of training.
Brad Johnson: I mean, I’ve done a couple of Tough Mudders. I mean I’ve put in 10 to 12…
Dane Espegard: There you go.
Brad Johnson: And I’ve got to have a little break to do some push-ups along the way or something.
Dane Espegard: But with those, what I think…
Brad Johnson: That’s still cool though because as a leader, I think it’s so important, your team has to know you care.
Dane Espegard: Yes.
Brad Johnson: And what better way than to figure out what matters to them and support it? It just makes sense. So, now you’ve got a system and a way. Is this an annual thing you do with your teams, and then you just start tracking them throughout the year? How frequently are you doing this?
Dane Espegard: Well, so we do one offsite. For us is in August, that’s just the timing that works for us. So, we do, that’s our annual Dreams Retreat. And there’s also a ton, like, we’re there two days, but we’re really only like in sessions for six hours. So, there’s a lot of just organized engagement time, right, or connection time.
And then we’ll have touch points throughout the year. So, those are opportunities. When I say touch points, it’s 30 minutes here or there for people to add some extra things to their dreams list, but as long as they get those loaded in and then they have some dates to them, what I have access to then is in the Dreams Vault, I get reminders of when they have a date approaching within the next week. And a date could be something simple like, hey, Brad, you said that you were going to research different marathon training programs.
And so, I get an email once a week from the Dreams Vault and all it will say, I have a list of any upcoming step for the next seven days. And so, I’ll spend five minutes on a Monday just saying, “Hey, Brad, this is the week for you to figure out what the training program is. Excited to hear what you go with.” And I might even do a search. I’ve run a couple marathons, so I would look and say, this is a real-life example, I’d say, “Hal Higdon is an OG, really simple program. You should look his up,” right?
And so, what that does is I heard this term recently from Brian McRae of joyful accountability. And I love that word, joyful accountability, the joyful part, because the purpose of this is not to make it obligatory, but to be really awesome nudges forward to say, “Hey, remember, you’re going to do that, right? Let me know how it goes.” And that way, I’m like a fly on the wall, but I’m their number one fan and supporter as they’re going through it.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, it’s accountability, but not like crack the whip behind you and shame you because you haven’t got it done. It’s like, “Dude, I’m here to support. Let’s go. Here’s a couple ideas.” It’s that cheerleader. I think one of the things that a lot of leaders underestimate about leadership or coaching is sometimes people just need to be inspired that they can do it and just bring in that positive energy. And I know you’ve got that because I’ve hung out with you enough. Got a great sense of humor. So, I’m sure you’re throwing that in there too. And so, what is the biggest dream? How long have you been doing this? How many years with your team?
Dane Espegard: So, 2013, so 12, 11 years, 12 years.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, okay. Yeah, over a decade now. What is the biggest or the most fun story for you where somebody threw kind of a wild dream that they didn’t think they could accomplish on there, and then you kind of broke it down, eat the elephant one bite at a time, and kind of were cheering them on. Do you have some big ones that people just, like, knocked it out of the park on?
Dane Espegard: So, there’s one that comes to mind. I don’t know how big it is, as much as like, it wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for this with the team. But also, what comes to mind when we think grandness, again, the age group for this team, I have a few different teams, but for this specific team, it is like 18 to 25, right? And so, I mean, within the last couple of years, we have a handful now, I think it’s six that have purchased their first properties and not properties for them to live in, like investment property, duplex, triplex. And so, that has been really neat to see people put that on their list and then say, “What do I have to do for this?” And then be able to help and say, “Hey, here’s some resources” or “here’s some things” or “here’s some professionals that can kind of close that gap for you.” So, those have been some really big ones.
Destination weddings have been neat to see people kind of getting married the way they want to get married, and not the way their parents want them to get married, which I know is a touchy subject for some. The one that really comes to mind was during COVID. We had this guy Alex, who, as I’m saying this, I actually just went to the Republic of Georgia last weekend to wed. I got to do the ceremony, two people that are on my team, this guy Alex Funk, I got to marry him and his wife in the Republic of Georgia ceremony last weekend.
He ran a treadmill marathon during COVID, so all by himself, 26.2 miles. So, he had said he wanted to run a marathon that year. And that was at the beginning of 2020 before we knew COVID was going to happen. And he said he was going to do it by the end of the year. He did this on December 31st. And so, COVID happens. He’s like, “Ahh, man, I don’t think I’m going to be able to run a marathon.” And then, as we’re going through it. And I wasn’t trying to hold his feet to the fire, I was like, it would be understandable if you couldn’t run a marathon this year, if marathons aren’t happening, right? And he’s like, “I want to do this.”
This guy, by the way, is the poster child for Dreams now. His dreams list is like 1,500. He does like 80 to 100 dreams a year. And so, he said, “I’m going to do this on a treadmill.” And I said, “By the way, I have trained for a marathon that sounds like death.” And then, we were talking more about it. And I said, “If you’re really going to do this, here’s what you have to do. You have to have a laptop. You have to open it up and you have to have a Zoom window. You have to have a Zoom open for your entire marathon. And we need to let everybody know that you’re doing this.” So, people, I said, “What makes a marathon great are the people cheering,” right? You feel like death, and there’s people cheering you on.
So, he opened the Zoom, and his local newspaper in Minnesota wrote a story about him doing this and people, I popped in, I want to say eight or nine times throughout his marathon. And every time I was on, there were other people popping in. I got the CEO of Cutco to pop in. He had no idea, he’d never met him before. So, while he’s running, he’s shocked by this. In our business, the celebrity pops on. That one was one of the coolest experiences to see him do. And when he finished the 26.2, there was like 35, 40 people on Zoom cheering him on. It was so cool to see.
Brad Johnson: That is cool. That’s quite the commitment too. I didn’t even know a treadmill. Is a treadmill marathon, was that a thing before he did it? Because I’ve never heard of that.
Dane Espegard: Well, I don’t think so. I mean, he basically just said, “At this time, I’m going to run 26.2 miles on a treadmill until that, or I fall off one of the two.”
Brad Johnson: And he got it done.
Dane Espegard: He got it done.
Brad Johnson: One of my good friends has a phrase, he says, “Language creates.” And what you’re doing is you’re extracting the idea, you’re putting it down on a piece of paper or electronically, right, and now, sharing it with others and you’re manifesting it, right? And I’ve just seen it and I remember, I know Cutco very similar to the world I grew up in finance, a lot of thought leadership, a lot of personal development and people pouring into it. I remember the first time I heard it all starts with mindset and I was like, “Oh, that sounds kind of woo-woo,” right?
And then the older you get, the more you realize it’s true and how much it matters, and because you’ve seen it play out, right? In business, you see it play out both ways, both on the positive and the negative side. And so, that’s an awesome story. Do you share that much, as far as when you speak about this?
Dane Espegard: When you asked me that question, I smiled right away because I have not shared that story in a while and that was one of my favorites. I had a timer going off every 30 minutes to hop back on, and that was a really cool experience. I mean, man, stuff like that bonds the whole team, too, right? Everybody that’s on the team is telling their friends and family, you’re not going to believe this guy at work. And so, that’s…
Brad Johnson: Yeah, it’s like creating this culture. You’re creating a culture in your team that other people are talking about and hearing about outside, right? So, do you find that kind of the flywheel effect of one team member does it, then that inspires a couple other team members to do theirs, and it just kind of keeps, kind of spreading in a good way, like a virus organizationally?
Dane Espegard: Yeah, 100%. Like, for the gifts that I was telling you I was buying, there are so many repeats on people’s lists because also when they’re making their dreams lists, they’re around other people. So, they’re hearing from somebody, oh, you’re putting that down. I’m going to put that down. And so, that happens. And then also, a lot of the health ones, we try and encourage people to do them together. So, it’ll happen where somebody makes a statement and says, “I’m running the marathon” or “I’m doing this Tough Mudder.”
And then, inevitably, other people will say, “I have it on my list, I’m going to do it too.” And the health ones I love so much and a lot of those, I’ll split half the bill. I like it when they have skin in the game. But I might say, “Hey, Alex, I know you’re looking at–” Grayson, was one of the guys that did the marathon last year. I said, “Grayson, if you’re going to do that marathon, I’d be happy to split the entrance with you. Like, I’m so excited that you’re going to do that. I know the impact that had on me when I was training, and how cool it was for me to experience that. I’d love to be a part of that, even if it’s just paying $100 towards your entrance.” And so, again, it’s a small thing. They don’t need me to do it, but I also feel like now we’re invested together in this cool experience for them to be able to do it.
Brad Johnson: Well, I love it and the stuff matters. And what a cool– like, back to creating a lot of fun in your 40s, I have to just assume as a leader, this is fun, like hearing your team do stuff they didn’t think they would ever do and challenging them and kind of raising the bar, like, how fun is that from a leadership perspective?
Dane Espegard: It brings, I mean, truthfully, 10 years ago, if you were going to ask me if I was still going to be at Cutco now, I would have said no. And I just told my wife the other day, I was like, man, I’m having so much fun. And things didn’t change, work-life balance, income, all of that, things just stayed the same. I could see myself doing the exact same thing I’m doing right now for the next five, six years and being totally be with it, because the freedom I have to be with family, but also just the experiences that I’m able to share with my people right now has been great.
We now have a thing in our team where anytime that we go somewhere for a work conference or anything else, I’m looking for things that are on my dreams list that are in that area, and then we’re all doing them together. And so, then also is I’m checking off more things on my list. And in the other, one of the residual things of this or fringe benefits of this is that it allows the leader, and I don’t know that I talk about this in the book and I don’t know that I was aware of this early on, but when you grow up in a business, if we’re staying in that business, it’s often because we saw somebody else’s life and said, I want that, right?
Our good friend Justin was that for me in Cutco. He’s only four years older. I remember being in college and being like, “I want that guy’s life. It looks like he’s having a hell of a time. He seems like he’s a good character.” I got to know him more later, and I’m just like, “He’s a great guy.”
Brad Johnson: Yeah. And you’re like, well, most of it checks out.
Dane Espegard: And I didn’t know how much money he’s making. But I’m like, it looks like he’s doing really well and I want that. So, I stayed in the business, but what happens then is once we reach a certain level, and again, this is my story, and I think this checks out for many people. What was interesting is I wanted that lifestyle. And as I started to experience it, I got quiet about it because I knew the people that were on my team maybe couldn’t afford to live the same way that I was or have the experiences.
And so, it was interesting as I started actually dimming that light for these other people that were up and comers in the business, because there was this weird feeling about it, as I started talking about dreams, it gave me permission to start sharing these epic experiences that I was having because I’m also supporting their dreams. And so, what it allowed me to be was show up far more authentic with my team, where there’s nothing that I’m hiding. They know, hey, Dane’s experiencing a dream right now. Dane is doing this. And that made our relationship far more transparent and far more authentic. And I think that’s really made a difference for me and also other leaders that have started doing this.
Brad Johnson: I love that. We haven’t, at Triad, systematized it to the level that you have, but I can tell you from simply writing down champagne moments, one of the things we do at the end of every year, we’ll do a team retreat, and then we’ll do a Christmas party where everybody connects, and we have some remote team members, so everybody’s flying in and just celebrating a great year together. But I will tell you, some of the most powerful moments I’ve had at Triad are when our team stand up and share some of these.
And one I can think of last year that literally half the room was crying, we’ve got Megan on our Experiences team. And young mom, younger kids kind of just get into sports. And her prior career was she actually worked at a funeral home. And the downside of work-life balance when you’re running a funeral home is people don’t stop dying. So, she was literally seven days a week tied to that business. She told me she hadn’t been to one of her kids sporting events in a year.
And so, one of the things that really attracted her to Triad is DBDL, Do Business, but build the business in a way that it actually allows you to live life too. And she shared, she’s like, I think she said, “I only missed one of my kid’s games over the last year” or something like that. So, literally, flipped a 180 and, like, there was more to the story. She was getting a little emotional, like everybody in the room was getting emotional, but I was like, this is the power of writing stuff down that matters and actually bringing it into reality. And who doesn’t want to be surrounded by people checking off stuff that matters on an annual basis in business and the business that actually allows that to happen?
And so, when I dove a little deeper, like, what’s interesting is you were just Dane, The Dad, trying to level up, for as long as I’ve known you. But as I got to understand a lot more on the business side, I’m like, “Dang, dude, this is powerful. We’re going to have to use some of the stuff that Dane’s doing with his team and infuse some of that into our team.” And I know we’ll have some conversations around that probably when we’re done recording. But dude, it’s just fun. Like, who doesn’t want to do that? Want to, like, let people level up.
Dane Espegard: I mean, it is that. And hearing people share their experiences is the fuel of this, right? And so, where I think the biggest synergy is between this and what you’re doing in DBDL, it’s recognizing that we’re not here just to work. We’re here to live an amazing life filled with rich relationships, and work should be the vehicle for that. It should enable people to do that. I believe that an employer, a place of work’s greatest work is to raise the level of life that its employees can live. And I think that that’s the responsibility, number one. And then it’s clients, number two. I think it’s the employees, number one, because they’re the individuals that are tapping in for such a large portion of their day in a week.
And so, when I hear people saying, “I had the opportunity to do this and I did this,” it’s like, I love not having a conversation about their output or their production because if we’re talking about these dreams that they’re experiencing, honestly, I can see reports and whatever else, but I just know they have to be thriving in the workplace if they’re doing those things, right? And so, what was different with this is in the past, when I was a younger manager, I was trying to get people motivated and go do this.
And then you can do these awesome things and flipping the table on that to say, what are the things that give you that inspiration and motivation, and then saying, let’s do those? How can you do those? Oh, well, you probably need to perform here. But that was something that they would figure out on their own, right? And so, now, all I’m doing is assisting in helping them live the life of their dreams. Not you got to do this for me, right? So, it’s the whole what’s in it for them, which I think is the most important piece of this.
Brad Johnson: Well, and Dane, on another aspect I’m just thinking through from your team members’ lens, the litmus test we think about inside of Triad is true culture, not just the team member that’s in the office. What’s their spouse or significant other, what are the conversations happening at home when they’re not at the office? And my thought process around culture, and no culture is perfect and rents do every day, but if they’re going home and saying, “Yeah, you know Dane, remember you met him like a month or two back? He just sent me a message and was asking how the marathon training was going. What a good dude.” Like, you’re just– and now, they’re supported. Their spouse or significant other knows you care and you’re creating this whole vibe and culture where those conversations at home, it’s like, what’s the spouse think? What’s the significant other think? I promise, that’s the sort of glue that holds them as a team member, where they’re not out looking or job searching or looking for something else to do. So, back to retention, which is bring great talent in, but more importantly, keep great talent, that’s to be a huge retention tool for you guys.
Dane Espegard: Brad, I would never have thought that this would be something that I would keep track of, but this year, and that point of like the spouse involvement or their outlook because that does matter. So, often, somebody is working their butt off doing something and they get home and then their significant other’s not supporting, right, because they don’t understand or they’re not seen, either seeing them burn themselves out.
This year, I have three weddings that I’m officiating, and they’re all people on my work team. And so, I don’t think I’d ever use that as a scoreboard as how the culture is, but this year, I was honored. Technically speaking, I don’t necessarily want to go to all– I want to support them on that day, but you understand with young kids, it’s like, ooh, I feel like I need to say yes.
Brad Johnson: Well, the cool thing is if you’re officiating it, you probably don’t have to participate in all the stuff you’re too old to participate in at the party, right?
Dane Espegard: You got it. You got it. It gives me a little bit of an out on that. But for me, it’s like, man, I feel honored when I get that opportunity. And I think that that’s a testament again to both people’s view, right, the person that’s on my team and also the individual it’s not.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, time is flying, so I want to transition kind of more to the do life side here. But as I was thinking about just kind of the framing here and you have a personal story with your grandmother and I’ll kind of tee you up here and then I want to get to the do life side for Dane. We had Tim Grover come out. And those that aren’t familiar with Tim Grover, he was the performance coach for Michael Jordan, and then Kobe Bryant, trained a lot of other pro athletes. And so, he came out to our launch experience that we did in January.
And he had one of the most powerful closes to any keynote I’ve ever heard. He had everybody stand up. He had them put their hand over their heart, and he basically said, “Feel that?” And he literally like, I will tell you, the room was dead silent. You could have heard a pin drop. And he’s like, “You feel that, that you’re not getting that heartbeat back?” And literally, it’s like, and that next one, and that next one. And guess what? The next one isn’t promised.
So, if you’ve got something big to do in life, back to dreams, he’s like, “Don’t wait for it. Go get it because tomorrow is not promised.” And I know you talked about our mutual friend, John, that we had his celebration of life, but this stuff matters, man. And if you don’t prioritize it, and if you do the someday, the someday is not guaranteed.
And so, I’d love, like, kind of share the personal story that you open the book with, too, that directly impacted your family because I think it’s fun to talk about business ideas, but back to your point, like you wrote them all down and then didn’t do anything with them when you did it first time, but let’s get to, like, the taking action part and why this stuff matters.
Dane Espegard: Yeah, I think the story that I had in the book to begin with is my grandmother, my mom’s mom. And I didn’t know. So, I didn’t have a relationship with her because of how early she passed, but this was all, like, this has had… And I really believe I got a lot of my dreaming stuff from my mom, and this is what’s happening with her life. And she said that her mom would constantly say, “I want to go to all these places and visit all these things and do–” and my mom grew up on a farm in rural North Dakota. So, my grandparents, her parents were farmers. And anybody who knows farmers or anybody in that industry, it doesn’t stop. It’s like the funeral thing that you were talking about, there’s no weekends. They are seven days a week and it is sunup to sundown and it’s a grind.
And so, my mom said that she would hear her father often say, mom and dad having a conversation someday, yep, we’re going to do it someday, someday. My grandma was very rigid. My grandpa was this just people pleaser, but he was a hard worker and just, yep, someday, we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it. And then she passed in her 50s, and again, far too early where they felt like they had a whole nother chapter of their life that was going to be there for her to experience the world.
And her entire world was North Dakota, rural North Dakota. They never went anywhere. And you can imagine if that’s you, and you’re my grandfather Henry, who has also since passed. But he lived to be in his 90s, almost 100 years old. And I got to believe that that was with him his entire life of just not having the opportunity to experience those things. And again, like you said, your listeners are going to have so many of those examples that they can think of, of individuals in their life that have had that.
But I just think of, especially with my kids, where I’m like, man, if something, God forbid, were to happen where– we just played pickleball this morning. My wife said, she goes, I don’t know what prompted it, but she was like, I had to ask, we played a game a couple of days ago. She goes, “If you fall over and pass out in the middle of this game, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” And we were joking around about it, but the idea of, hey, what if, right? The whole heartbeat thing of we don’t know, I want my kids to be able to say, like, we learn how to live from our dad.
And that’s the thing where every month, I’ve got something in the calendar, big, small, whatever in between, of just something as a family that we’re looking forward to. So, there’s always this excitement. Anticipation is such an awesome emotion, right? I’m just like, “Ooh.” And sometimes, it’s even better than the real thing, right? You got a trip coming up and you’re talking about it and you’re playing in it, and then you experience and it’s great, but it’s that anticipation. So, we always have stuff in our calendar that we’re working towards and we’re planning, and I think that that, we love, it might not be for everybody, but we love being in that place of what’s next, what’s exciting.
And I think that it also teaches, it’s I didn’t want to be a parent that was the person that told their kids, you can do whatever you want in life, right, but then didn’t model it. And I learned from Front Row Dads of lessons aren’t taught, they’re caught. And so, it’s not what we say, but it’s what we do. And so, I really wanted to model for my girls. And it’s still a constant battle for me, right? The realist in me pops out all the time to say, I don’t know if we can do this or if we should do this or if this is being good stewards of our money.
And then the other side will come in to say, “Well, let’s be calculated about this, and what are we modeling for our kids?” And that to me is right now, at this stage in my life, the thing that matters most. And I love telling my girls, I get the opportunity to teach people about dreams, like that to me is so fun.
Brad Johnson: Well, all of that resonates with me, man. And we do a ton of that too, like Sarah and I looked at this year and we’ve had it on the list to do a safari in Africa. And that’s happening this year. And I’m so excited for my kids to experience that. And we’re going to go serve over there and see like what it looks like to not have everything that you need.
But I think, sometimes in life, you worry too much about ROI or what’s my return on this investment or, oh, I’ve got to stash this away. I love, like, what comes to mind when you talk through that, it’s return on memories or return on experiences. And these are memories where you’re shaping your children or sharing memories with your spouse. They’re priceless, man. That’s the sort of stuff they’ll be talking about that when they’re saying the eulogy of like, dad did this, I remember that and this, and he taught me this, and he made this a priority, I promise you, they’re not going to be like, yeah, dad did that. Actually, he closed that extra sale and I got parent issues. That isn’t going to be the conversation that’s going on.
And so, I just love the intention there and kind of creating the system that delivers that. That’s really what I look at of what you’ve done is you’ve created a system that prioritizes what matters most. And that’s a beautiful thing, man.
Dane Espegard: Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think leadership, one of the greatest gifts of leadership is the accountability. For me, I’m a better me when I know people are watching. And so, the whole thing of me writing this book and everything else has been the greatest source of accountability for me to continue to live life because I’m supposed to be the dreams guy.
And that’s what I want. I need that reminder to say, “Hey, what are you doing now? What’s the next thing?” And in my eulogy, I just hope the girls say, “He lived,” right? Not he went through the motions, but man he lived. That’s the thing that I think resonates the most for me.
Brad Johnson: Well, on that note, and we might have already shared your definition, but the question I love to close the podcast is what is Dane’s definition of Do Business, Do Life? So, if you want to expand on that or rehash any of that, I’d love to hear your version.
Dane Espegard: Yeah, I think it’s a lot of what we’ve been talking about, but when I think of Do Business, Do Life, I think I would sum it up as, am I waking up excited and going to bed fulfilled? And if I’m doing those two things, I think I’m doing business and doing life in a great way, waking up excited in anticipation for the day of what I get to do, who I get to do it with, right? I’m doing things in my zone of genius that I enjoy, that I get excited by and filled up by. And then I go to bed fulfilled because of the relationships, the time I spent, the conversations I had, and the production that I had because I do get lit up by that.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, I love that, man. That’s simple, yet eloquent. Waking up excited, going to bed fulfilled.
Dane Espegard: I’m going to tell my wife you said that. I don’t think I’ve ever been called eloquent. But simple, people call me simple.
Brad Johnson: No, dude. You know what’s funny about you is you show up very humble, but you have a ton of intelligence. And I’ll tell you, you can’t have a sense of humor. Like, this was a pretty dialed back day. And I want you all to know, like, if you’re watching this on video or listening on audio, Dane could have done a 60-minute stand-up routine, and you would have been rolling, because you are one of the most naturally hilarious people I’ve ever met. Actually, I was talking with our mutual friend, Brian, who happens to be Triad’s General Counsel, and I told him this was coming up. So, I think you guys crossed paths in college, right? Was that where you guys met?
Dane Espegard: Yeah, yeah.
Brad Johnson: What a small, weird world, but yeah, Brian also concurs you’re one of the most naturally hilarious people he’s ever met.
Dane Espegard: I appreciate that.
Brad Johnson: So, round two, we’ll have you do stand-up for us, man.
Dane Espegard: Okay. Well, and that’s– I was going say, sometimes, if I’m off the cuff or letting it loose, we’d have to censor some of this.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, that’s okay. I mean, you’re not like Dave Chappelle level of inappropriate.
Dane Espegard: No, no.
Brad Johnson: But hey, that’s okay, sometimes you got to work some of that in.
Dane Espegard: That’s right, that’s right.
Brad Johnson: Well, hey, dude, I know you’re holding back from some pool time with your wife and daughters that are waiting for you, so I don’t want to get in the way of that. But as always, just love our conversations. Always learn something new. Always have a good time. So, thanks for hopping on here, sharing your wisdom. And I know this is going to help a lot of advisors out there.
And I know also, you were kind enough. We’ll throw it in the intro to share. I believe you call it the thought joggers that has a thousand-plus dreams that I’m guessing a lot of these have been shared over the years of you doing, so those that want to run with this, we’ll have a great start to kind of get the wheels turning for them.
Dane Espegard: Yeah. And this next week, I’m starting to do monthly free dreams workshops online. So, if somebody follows me online on Instagram or whatever, they’ll see me post about it. But I’m going to start doing that, just my mission is getting more people dreaming. So, those are going to be free 90-minute, once a month. We’ll go through a few categories. And they’ll be rated PG, so people can invite kids and get some more dreams out there.
Brad Johnson: Love it, man. Well, I’m going to be talking to our culture team about this, so don’t be surprised if few Triad members pop on there. And we look at how we can expand on the champagne moments and systematize it a bit more because I love a ton of the ideas you shared today. So, well, dude, grateful as always. Thanks for hopping on here. And on that next RV trip, Kansas, I mean, it is a destination, so make sure. Pretty much everywhere you go you can get there through Kansas for the most part.
Dane Espegard: That’s right. We’re hitting Omaha. So, we’ll be coming through the area.
Brad Johnson: Let me know for real. You’ve got a place to stay if you’d like. Well, we don’t have an RV hookup, but I’m sure there’s one cool stay. Maybe we’ll put one in just for you.
Dane Espegard: You’ll be our stop every time on the way up. It’d be good.
Brad Johnson: All right, dude, till next time.
Dane Espegard: Bye. Thanks for the time, Brad.
Brad Johnson: Great talking to you, Dane.
