From SEAL to Solar: Alan Blair’s Mission to Power Your Home

This is episode number 239 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're so glad you could join us for another episode live from the studio. What's going on, Kev?

Dude, tomorrow, it's gonna be good.

Tomorrow's good?

Tomorrow's gonna be good.

Why is tomorrow good?

Because tomorrow we're moving my mother-in-law into her house.

Oh, is it done?

It's done.

That's fantastic.

Yep. I mean, there's, I mean, there's always gonna be a little—

Just in time for you to take the camper on the trip. Exactly.

Yeah. We were like, we got somewhere to be, y'all. You gotta get that woman out of that camper. She ain't coming with us. But Uh, no, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's interesting. We'll have to do a whole episode just on kind of walking through some various things. But, um, there's, there's just like very small little things that have to be done and then it is finished.

Dude, I know that that's got to be feeling good.

Well, I mean, it's—

I think that's probably why I haven't seen you as much as of late.

I mean, it is shocking how much time I missed you. Thank you. I felt it. I, I don't know if you felt it, but I felt it. Um, it, it takes a lot more time. I— it's not my house, right? And it is taking a lot more of my time than I expected. And let me tell you the thing that was the most, uh, non-expected thing that happened on Monday. Okay, so she was like, yeah, I got a few last-minute things I need to do. I'm gonna go ahead and call the insurance company, get this thing insured, blah blah blah blah blah. Called her insurance company and they were like, yeah, we can't insure your house.

What?

She doesn't own her house.

Why doesn't she own her house?

Because it's on my property. So guess who owns her house?

I do. So the title's in your name?

Yeah.

That's crazy.

So it will be My responsibility to get insurance for her house, which I mean, it's not that big a deal when you think about it. It makes sense, and it's no, it's not a big deal. It's just not something that we really considered because we didn't deed her any land. We didn't. It's it's on my property.

Not something that came up. No.

Yeah. So it was just one of those things. I was like, well, I wasn't expecting that. It makes total sense. Just yeah, things you don't think about, you know. So anyway, we'll do it. We'll do like a whole episode. I'm not going to get into anything much, but I'm just really excited.

She's really excited.

I mean, she spent the last couple. days just kind of cleaning everything. But the U-Haul's— yeah, getting rented tomorrow. We're taking all our stuff out of storage, putting it in. Got a couple of strong men— I'm not one of them— who's gonna come over and move the stuff, move stuff around. We'll be good to go. So yeah, anyway, that's how I'm doing. How are you doing?

I'm doing good. I want to make sure that everybody knows that friend of the show Alan Blair is in the studio. We're going to be talking all kinds of different stuff, I imagine, tonight, but mostly solar power.

Okay, this time mostly.

This time he's like, I think we talked too, too much about other stuff rather than what I do.

Pandora's box tends to come open every now and then.

I love Pandora's box. So, so I had, I had 2 things I wanted to bring up.

Okay.

One is brief, but briefs. Not my briefs. Oh, that nobody has the subscription money for.

True.

But, uh, Weber Grill, did you see that they released their 70th anniversary model?

No.

Of the Weber Grill, which looks super cool.

I was gonna say, is it like saucer looking?

It's the same, exactly the same thing, right? It has some different colors.

Oh.

Like some— it's like pastel.

What?

Like yellow and kind of in time for Easter, sea green kind of stuff. But like, okay, like how much, how much do you think like a Weber grill, how much, how much would you pay for like a Weber grill? Like a, like a regular tripod?

I mean, I think typically if you go to Walmart and buy one, they're what, like $100, $120?

I think that's fair.

Something like that.

Going up.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, maybe, maybe a little north of there, but maybe— I mean, there's some pretty cool stuff you can do with them. I mean, they got some cool things that like accessories and stuff, but I think I'll get Between $100 and $150, right? I think.

Yeah. So, so the traditional 22-inch Weber kettle, black.

Sure.

Like $149.

Oh, okay.

That's what it's going for.

All right.

The 70th anniversary model.

Uh-huh.

Exact same thing. Right.

$800.

$300. Oh my God. What? Double the price? Because does it have like an emblem on it or anything?

No, it has, it has some cool stuff on it. But it's the same thing. And I think there's even other ones that are like $400. Yeah, so there's a bigger one, a 26-inch model that's $429. Um, but yeah, the, the, the new 70th anniversary model, like, they really are like proud.

They're proud.

Yeah, but they're ugly, y'all. I'm looking at them right now. There's not— black is the one I would want.

Black's the one you want? What are the other colors that—

it's like, okay, so there's like a yellow one, right? There's like a yellow one that's like like, uh, not school bus yellow. It's, it's, it's a little—

It's like a mustard yellow.

Mustard yellow. And then there's a, a, a faded lime green, so it's not super bright. And then there's kind of a grayish color and like a silver, right? And then like a, like a baby blue, which is hideous. And then, um, yeah, then there's like a dark, like a dark blue, very dark blue, and a kind of a more of a, I don't know, a muted blue, I guess. I don't know what to call that. There's way too many color options.

I know, right?

That's dumb. And for the price, who wants that?

Nobody.

Nobody.

Yeah.

Weber, listen, you messed this one up.

You've got a good thing going.

Yeah.

I mean, stick with the classic.

Yeah. I mean, this isn't the 75th anniversary. It's just the 70th anniversary.

They're warming up to it.

They're going, look, we We're not gonna put all the stops in. Uh-huh. You know, this is just gonna be our attempt, right? Yeah, they're gonna go, let's, let's screw this up now so that we get it right.

Get all our bad— that's a good idea. Let's get all the bad ideas out now. That's right. I don't know, maybe it'll work. All right, so, so speaking of bad ideas, I want— we've had an ongoing feud, uh-huh, you and I, okay, about the housing market.

Yes.

Are you still holding firm to your position?

Well, the longer we go, the longer we go.

I'm cool if you are.

I just—

I have new information that has come to light that I feel people need to know.

People, including me. Yeah, I, I, I, I think the longer we go here, the more we're seeing things plummet.

Okay.

Which frankly, is good.

Sure.

For like, for some materials, like, like raw materials. Like lumber is finally starting to kind of make a comeback. Like we can buy lumber again. Um, and it's not even where it should be, but it's, it's coming down. Um, yeah. So I don't know. Let's go ahead and tell me what I need to know, Greg.

Okay. So, well, there's, there's a couple things you need to know.

Okay.

One, and Alan and I actually spent a little bit of time talking about this last time we had a conversation just about monetary policies and different things happening in the government. So Jerome Powell recently got brought before the Senate Banking Committee.

Okay.

And they questioned him about inflation, interest rates, what are you planning to do? And the story— hang on, I got the link right here. This is a Reuters story. This is the headline from the Reuters story from March 7th. Okay? And this was like the day after they interviewed him. It says, Feds Powell sets the table for higher and possibly faster rate hikes.

Oh my goodness. Right?

And so I went back and I watched the video where John Kennedy, who's the Republican senator from Louisiana, is actually questioning this guy. And he says, he goes, if I'm understanding what you're trying to do by raising the interest rates is you're actually trying to increase unemployment. And he's like, no, no, no, no, I'm not trying to do that. And he's like, he goes, yeah, but historically, in order to slow inflation, we have to increase the unemployment rate, right?

Mm-hmm.

And he goes, yeah, historically, that's exactly how it works. And he goes, so by raising the interest rates, we're trying to raise the unemployment rate. And he goes, if we want inflation to slow down, that's what we have to do.

Oh my goodness.

And it's like, oh my gosh. And he goes, okay. So what are we trying to get it to? And he's like, he's like, he's like whittling this down, right? Because inflation's like at 6.5% or something like that right now. And he goes, well, we'd like to see it as like around 2.5%.

Okay.

Right? Sure.

So he—

I'm on, I'm on board with that.

Right?

Okay.

Until— okay, what John Kennedy brings up is that in order to bring inflation down 2 points, you have to raise unemployment by 3.5 points.

So that's— we're, we're talking we got to bring it down that twice to get to 2 points.

So we got to go from 6 to 4 in order to get inflation to 2. 2.5 where we want it, you've gotta get unemployment up around 10, maybe north of 10.

That's, I mean, y'all, that's 1 in 10 people.

Yeah.

Time for the grown kids to move back in.

Right? Oh no.

Mom, Dad, how you doing?

And I heard some guys talking about it today and say, you can't, you like take COVID off the table, right? Because you can't use those numbers because that doesn't, I mean, like that's not normal anything. But like, when's the last time unemployment was over 10%?

Oh, not in my lifetime.

Do you know? I didn't know either. It was in your lifetime.

It was?

Yeah.

Was it '80s?

1982.

Oh, wow. Okay.

You know what happened in '82?

I, I was one.

So major crash in the markets.

Who, who, who came outta office in 1981?

Oh, that would've been, uh, uh, The peanut farmer.

Yeah, Jimmy Carter.

Carter.

And Reagan came in.

And Reagan came in.

Yeah.

And you know where I was?

Where?

I was in the Middle East.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, yeah. And, um, they were the— that's when they had the American hostages in Iran.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, we, we were planning rescue missions and they were planning to fly kamikaze missions into the ships and into our, our task group. Real quick, who was planning, um, the, um the Iranians.

Okay, so not us.

Not us, no. They were, they were going to fly, you know, kamikaze missions into our carriers and our task group, which is carriers, destroyers, all that good stuff.

The group of ships.

Yeah, they were, they were planning that. And, um, the, the great thing was that Reagan was stern and he said, you know, you will release the hostages or else. And they released them.

It worked.

It worked.

Yeah, it worked.

We had a big ice cream social on the ship that night.

Nice.

But boy, we were gearing up.

I bet.

I mean, we were un-repping so many bombs. We were going to go in and level that place.

Wow. Yeah, I'm glad you didn't have to.

Yeah, I'm kind of glad too, because at the time, I know where I would have been.

Yeah. Well, and for people that don't know, I mean, you were in the Navy in Special Forces, right?

Yeah.

You got your— I mean, people aren't watching the video, they can't see your hat.

So yeah, yeah.

So you were SEAL Team?

Yep.

Yeah. So how long were you in the Middle East?

Well, I did a couple tours of duty over there. I was there from '79 to '81 and then again in '83 to '84.

Okay. Was it, was it a big difference between those 2 tours?

Uh, quite a bit, yeah. Yeah, yeah, because there was— when it was pretty tense when the American hostages were in Iran, it was pretty, it was pretty intense. Um, and you know, we lost, we lost some men during a rescue mission because they flew into a sandstorm. And I got extremely lucky because I was supposed to have been on that and I had the flu.

Oh wow.

My commanding officer called me in, he goes, you know, Petty Officer Blair— I was assuring him, you know, I could do this, I, I could go out on the mission, I'd be fine and everything. He said, nope, you're running a fever, you know, it could compromise the mission if you collapse in the middle of all this. And I was also an electronic specialist, another good reason they needed me on board. But they held back, and then unfortunately some of my brothers died in that. They flew into a sandstorm and all the helicopters went down.

Oh, just took the helicopter?

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah, it was pretty bad.

Geez, sounds like West Texas sandstorms. There's some bad ones. You guys call them huboobs?

Huboobs.

Yeah. Like, and have you never heard that before?

Not haboobs.

Haboobs.

Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're, they're called haboobs. And there was, there was, uh, I mean, I don't think that it was, it was labeled a haboob, but there was massive, horrible sandstorms about a week and a half ago up in West Texas. And yeah, it can, it can ground stuff because you have to. I mean, it's just horrible.

It like gets in the engine, I would imagine. Yeah. Yeah.

Those intakes suck in enough of that sand and it's all over.

Yeah, it's done.

It's all over. I'm almost surprised they didn't turn it around. But when you get the, the gung-ho officers in charge of that telling them, no, no, just fly through it, you'll be fine, you know, but sir— don't but sir me— that kind of thing.

Yeah.

When they typically don't know. I've learned that a lot about the officer ranks when I was in, was they didn't know a lot about what we did and what we were going to encounter in the mission. They just gave the orders, and that was deadly a lot of times. Geez.

Wow. And it's tough. I mean, I— look, a lot of these kids are doing their best. You know, they're 19, 20, 21 years old out there ordering people, ordering each other around. You got officers that are older than that, obviously, but, but still, I mean, it's, uh, man.

And then you've got stuff like Abu Ghraib. Do you remember with that big scandal that, no, they were, they were mistreating the prisoners and humiliating them because, you know, they, they weren't supposed to be naked in front of women and things like that.

Right. Yeah.

And then they had pictures and films from it. But it's interesting because this is how they work, unfortunately. You'd see the pictures and there'd be officers standing right there, but an E-5 or an E-6, a petty officer, took the blame and goes to prison for what happens when he's not giving the orders. That officer standing there is giving the orders. And that's the kind of stuff that happened a lot. An officer gave an order once that killed a friend of mine, and I can see his face to this day. But, um, they, they just— they're not—

Is— I mean, is that the way— I mean, I imagine you still talk to guys that are in. I mean, is, is it still that way now?

Um, I don't know. I haven't talked a lot about that with the guys that did. And I've got friends who are generals and admirals and that are retired and, and stuff, so—

Right.

And it's more— we talk more about the politics of what's going on right now because I like to stay informed. I'm conservative and I'm a realist. And one of the things I like to say is I'd rather live in pain knowing the truth than to live a lie. So, you know, if you know from that last show we did, I dig in.

Yeah.

I want to know what's going on. I fought for this country. I lost friends. I lost brothers, you know, over there. And it's not something I take for granted or that I'm easily going to forget.

Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, I want to finish this up real quick because there's a couple other things I wanted to make sure that people listening to the show know about what's going on in the housing market. The other thing, like, if people aren't paying attention, you, and you have like a retirement account, you probably realized as of late you've probably lost a lot of money.

Oh yeah.

A couple of weeks ago, the market, I think it went down somewhere between 400 and 600 points in, like, one day.

Right.

Do you know what that was from?

I, I don't, I don't know what caused it, but I know, I remember it happening.

That was, well, it happened, like, I think it happened again yesterday.

Okay.

But 2 weeks ago, what it was from is we got the quarterly earnings report from Home Depot.

Oh.

And what they, what they found out was Q4 sucked. And, and what, what you can usually tell from Home Depot, Lowe's, stores like that is when people are buying new homes, they then go to Home Depot, Lowe's, they're buying fixtures, they're buying furniture, they're buying all these kinds of things in order to fix up their new home.

Right.

And that typically happens in Q4 when people are a little bit more flush with cash and they weren't spending it.

Wow.

Not only that, since January— and see, this is the thing, man. This is the thing that irritates me is— and I'm, I'm not— I wanna— I don't wanna disparage anybody that's been on this show or talk bad about anybody that's been on this show because I, you know, I know that there's people in the real estate business that it's their job to make it sound like everything's going good. But like, we're at a 28-year low on, uh, mortgage applications.

Wow.

I mean, that, that alone should tell you something. Like, it's just like people are not feeling confident.

Yep.

In the housing market.

And, and here's what's crazy, man. Like, I still hold to the fact, I mean, a year ago we sold our house.

Yeah.

Almost to the day.

Mm-hmm.

And, um, in, In April, we closed on it, and then in May, we bought our new house. And I will still tell you, it's one of the best decisions we made.

Yeah.

And we paid 10% over asking, and all that— we got our interest rate at 4.5%, right?

You know, that— we were looking— you're looking like a genius right now compared to what other people are having to pay.

Exactly. And, and I know some of the— some people that refinanced their house, they're like, no, we, we Dug in. We refinanced our house at 2.75%, and they're looking at me going, man, what a moron. Why would you do that? Why didn't you do what we did?

And you're like, go buy one now.

Yeah. I mean, well, and for our family, it made sense. We were looking to make a move. Mm-hmm. Uh, to, to buy some more land. We wanted to build a house for my mother-in-law on that land. We wanted to do all of these things. And, like, to, to do that right now, people aren't selling their house either. because they know that they can't get anything for it. Yeah.

Or, or you're in a position where you have to sell, right? And you're just going to have to take it in the shorts.

Exactly. And so people that are— that were in the type of house that we were in, that we were looking for, um, they're, they're going to ride it out because they can.

Yeah.

They're— it's in a nicer area, it's a decent neighborhood, all these sorts of things.

And so, yeah, because I'm convinced, I'm convinced right now because people are like, well, the houses are still listing for what they were. And I was like, yeah, because people are still convinced they can get what they could have gotten a year ago.

And they're—

and it's just not gonna happen.

Market too. Yeah. I mean, they're sitting there for 30, 60, 90, 120 days. And you, you start looking at that and go, well, I mean, you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to figure something out. You're gonna either have to drop your price or you're gonna have to— something's gotta give.

Yeah. Then the numbers that we're not seeing is like, what did it actually sell for? Right? We're seeing, we're seeing the listing prices.

Yeah.

But we're not seeing what they sold for.

Nope.

Well, I have an ex that's here in town. Actually, she's out in The Woodlands, and I'm still very close to her and everything. And She writes mortgage loans. And, um, times are tough right now. Yeah, times have gotten tough. So that's kind of an indicator in itself.

It is.

They're just not writing mortgages.

Yep.

And then the few that are out there, everybody's scrapping over who's going to get to give the loan.

Yeah. So I mean, like, it's, it's beginning to look more and more like a buyer's market.

Yeah.

Um, right now, even though, even though prices I think are still inflated. But I mean, I think that's why you're hearing that from Powell when he goes before the Banking Committee and he says like, look, I'm doing the stuff that I can to try and drop interest rates, but right now I got to raise them.

Yep. And those guys know things. I know that we look at them and go, what a jerk. But there's part of me that goes, okay, They know things that I don't. And I'm not saying that they're doing everything perfectly. They're obviously not, right? But at the same time, that conversation right there, whenever you've got people going, no, can you just lower them? He's going, no, that's not— it's gonna make it worse. It's gonna make it worse. And he knows something that we don't know. Now, again, I'm not putting free passes out there for anybody, but I'm all— and I'm not trying to get anybody out of a job. Unemployment is not something I'm interested in seeing go up. But we all are feeling the crunch

whenever we're paying, you know, goodness gracious, I'm glad I don't own a diesel.

Right, right.

I'm glad I don't own a diesel because I would still be paying. My wife goes to the grocery store and she comes home with $300, $400, or $500 worth of groceries to feed our family of 4. And it's like, you know, at some point, at some point, something's got to change so that people— I mean, you're— what do you— these people are literally grabbing their paycheck and going and spending 100% of it or more, right? And that is— we've created that somehow. And it's just something's got to change in order for that to happen. And if it's got to get a little worse in order for it to get a little bit better, I, I don't like that. But if that's what's going to happen, we may have to just endure it.

One guy that I listened to said, and he prefaced it by saying, no one's going to like this, but where we were at right now is kind of the Goldilocks zone. We were kind of living high on the hog with 2%, and we just didn't realize how good we had it. 6%, that's not bad.

No, it should have been a lesson to all of us about government and honesty is— I can't hardly imagine. I mean, I've— I saw it, but what President Trump achieved in 4 years, we haven't seen any other presidents achieve in the last 40 years. That shows how much dishonesty there is out there. I knew that he was going to do a lot of good things, but did all what he did was phenomenal.

I mean, What, what, what in your mind did he, did he accomplish that was, that was so good?

The economy got better. The stock market, the markets went up.

Oh, you're talking about the economic performance?

Economic performance. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Of everything. And, and all of this while he was under attack every other day, a new impeachment.

Sure.

And by the way, let's take $4.5 billion out of Social Security to put this dog and pony show on, knowing they had no evidence on him. But I won't get into all that. But, but it just shows that If, if one president, one honest president can do that much good in one term, then if they were all honest like that, man, this country would be in good shape. Because I could go on all day about the taxes out there that are illegal, but they still, they still push them on us. And if we don't pay them, we still go to jail for it. I mean, it's, it's, it's— but mark my words.

Yeah.

2023, There's going to be some real coming-to-Jesus changes this year. I'm excited about that.

For the people in office, or—

For— yeah, for the people in office, for the American people. Some things are going to get exposed. A lot of things are going to get exposed, and it's going to change the whole landscape of how this country works.

I mean, I would definitely like to see something happen where more people have to come to terms with the amount of money that we're spending on ourselves that really, I mean, most of us never even see, but you know what I mean? How overinflated most of our government systems are, how much money they spend, and just on stuff that we really don't need and/or that no one voted on.

Sure. But taking care of people, I can't help but remember this statement that Biden made when he first came into office. He said, I'm going to take superfluous benefits from veterans and give them to immigrants. And after 35 years of VA care, and my— I'm premium care because of the decorations and where I served and all this. I have letters that say I will never have to pay for healthcare. Well, this last year they started billing me.

Really?

I get billed for medical. I get billed for prescriptions.

From the VA?

From the VA.

That's crazy.

And I have a friend who served for 30 years. He's 100% disabled. He was exposed to Agent Orange in 'Nam. And I called his wife, who was my girlfriend in high school. We're still good friends, and she's a Christian singer. But anyway, I called her and I told her what had happened, and she said, wow, well, I'm glad they can't do that to Bill, you know, because he's, you know, disabled 100%. And I'm a service-disabled veteran, but he's 100% disabled.

Uh-huh.

And 3 days after that conversation, she called me back and she goes, oh my God, Alan, what is going on? The VA is billing us now. Now, you know what kind of benefits we get? Zero. We get VA. That's it. And when you can't even count on that anymore, what kind of disrespect is that? And I shouldn't toot my own horn about what I should get. That's not my point.

But it was something you were promised.

Something I was promised. Yeah. And I've seen a lot and I've lost a lot of friends and I know a lot of veterans who served a lot longer than I did. And for them to be treating veterans the way they are, it's just unconscionable.

Well, and, like, and I've, I've heard that VA care isn't even that great comparatively to, like, you know, other, other services that you can get. And, and so, like, to me, it's, like, almost doubly insulting. Like, we're gonna give you a subpar service, and then, oh, by the way, we're gonna take that away.

That you'll have to wait for.

That you'll have to wait for and pay for.

But what's important about the VA care, because, yeah, often it is bad, because I could tell you stories about that, but I won't get into that.

Sure.

But what is good is that when you've got that coverage, if I take an ambulance ride or I end up in ER for something, they pay for it all.

Okay.

They did. They won't anymore, but they did. They would pay for it all. And that's a huge thing. And that's what gets a lot of Americans in debt that they can't ever get out of.

Yeah.

Is they go to the hospital for something they weren't expecting. And, you know, 12 years ago I had a virus that attacked my heart and I ended up in, in ICU, cardio ICU, and I was there for 10 days. And then after that, and they did 2 procedures that didn't work, and then I had a big procedure. And I know that this procedure would have been in excess of $1 million, and the VA covered it. But, um, yeah, so when they stopped covering that kind of stuff, I mean, we're right back in that position again. And, you know, like I said about Social Security pulling all that money out for that dog and pony show, And, you know,

when I look at how much money I get for Social Security, it's a pittance. And I mean, knowing what I've paid in over the years, and some of it they don't even qualify. There was one year where I paid $400,000 into the system and they said, oh no, because I called and said, why isn't that counted on my Social Security? They said, oh no, over this amount, we don't count it.

Right. Yeah.

Are you kidding me? I worked hard. I built a business. I paid a lot of money in the system, but it's too much. So, I don't get credit for that.

Right.

So I, I don't get what I should get. And, of course, even if I get what I've got and I live to be 110 years old, it would be nowhere near what I've paid into the system.

Right.

And they keep robbing it for whatever they want to. So, alright. I'll get off my, my, my horse there.

Well, and, but I, I think, I think it's an important thing for people to understand. I mean, obviously, like, this hasn't done anything to do with homeowners. But, like, like, we have one of the best standing militaries, the best standing military in the world.

Right.

Period.

And part of that is because we are able to recruit recruit a volunteer army. The reason we're able to do that pretty effectively is that we have good— we have always had good incentives for those people to serve. One of those being, hey, we're gonna take care of you when you get out. How we're gonna do that? Healthcare through the VA.

Yep. And education.

Yeah.

And education.

GI Bill's always been great. I mean, like, and other means as well. And so, like, if you start to peel those back, and take them away, well, it's gonna be less enticing for young men and women to want to join the military.

Yep.

Why would you do that? I mean, like, I mean, like, obviously, there's, there's, you know, the service to country, the honor, the dignity that, that comes with that job. I mean, like, there's so many people that don't get in for that reason. That's true.

They, they get in because I don't have any other options. I don't have, I don't have the money to go to college. I don't have the money to do this. I don't have the— but if I go into the military, then I will have some options in my life maybe that I've never had before. And look, that those people, those people have given their lives for us.

Yeah.

Those people that don't have anything, that the military has said we're going to give them something in return. And if they're not going to get that in return, guess what? Now we've got people that are choosing not to go in and still have no options. So now we got more issues, right?

And that's why I went in. I went in because at the time my family couldn't afford to send me to college. So I went in so I could get college. God help me, I became this young gung-ho man that really— I was very patriotic. I wanted to serve my country. So, you know, I didn't let anything stop me from serving at the highest level that I could. But Yeah, that was partially why I went in. I knew I wanted to make more out of my life, and I had a better chance of doing it there than I did anywhere else. Yeah.

Well, and just to circle this back around to homeownerships, one of the benefits that you get by serving in the military is getting VA loans.

Absolutely.

And like, if you want to hear me get angry, let me get on my soapbox about VA loans.

I agree.

Like, those— I think those things are the biggest rip-off to veterans.

I agree.

Because it puts— I mean, like, you You talk to any veteran that tried to use a VA loan during COVID when housing prices and housing market was so competitive, like, no one wanted to sell a house to a veteran because they knew the application for the VA loan was so much more stringent than any other loan on the market. They didn't wanna mess with having to go through that meat grinder.

But Craig, they're taking care of their people by making sure that the house that they buy is in perfect condition for them to move into. It's so infuriating. Now, I, I love the fact that they want to take care of their people by making sure they get a good deal, but whenever that deal costs them the deal—

Costs every time. Like, I can't tell you the number of times I've, like, I've watched a veteran lose a home.

Yeah.

Because they can't meet the criteria And the other people are using more traditional loans, and they can win because they're not making them, like, paint all the outlets the same color, whatever it is that they're making them do that particular day that tended to irritate them in the application process.

Yep. Well, and, and during COVID whenever you had 30 offers on a house.

Yeah.

You just— I mean— Why would I choose one that was going to make me do all of these things to my house before I can get it sold? and the application process is going to take longer, and, and, and, and, and. Yeah, well, you're not going to.

And then this one's the same price, but none of that, right?

And many veteran services are not what you would think they'd be. And a good example is I'm with USAA, been with them for many years.

In the past, that's been a great, a great company.

But when I go to them and ask about a loan, they literally told me your credit has to be Perfect, or we will not lend you money.

Really?

Perfect. Perfect. And that's the word they use, perfect.

Is this like for, for anything? Or like, like, because I know they do like car loans, they do home loans.

Anything.

Anything.

You got to be 800. You got to be—

Really?

Yeah. They won't lend you the money if you're not.

That's crazy.

And I thought, wow, you guys tout that you've got all these great services for veterans. Well, how does this benefit me?

Right.

You know, so yeah, yeah. So there are a lot of the services you hear about for veterans are not what you'd think they'd be.

Sure. Yeah.

And, and, and I guess the thing that's, that's so frustrating about that is what we have said here in this conversation is what they used to be, right? What they used to be.

That's the phrase.

That, that's the problem. And, and it's like, why, why has that changed?

Yeah, why and who changed it?

That's it.

That's— I think that's what most people want to know is like, I mean, particularly people like you, right? I mean, like, why did this change and who did it to me?

Well, I mean, look, we're still having— I mean, let's change this up. Not for a long time. Let's change the target. We can say the very same thing about Disney right now, right? We can say the very same thing about what Disney used to be versus what Disney has become. And we're going, when did that change and why?

Right?

Why?

I actually— I, I, I have changed my mind on the way I think about Disney now.

Oh, interesting.

That's, that's a rabbit hole there.

It— no, I know it is. And but my point is, like, so many people have said what it used to be, right? And, and we've said, you know, Walt Disney was— if he was here, he would have done things differently. Well, who knows? We don't. Walt Disney was an entrepreneur that did a lot of, a lot of things that people didn't expect him to do. So who knows? Who knows what he would do?

He was also a convicted convicted child molester. Well, and did you know? I'm dead serious. I'm dead serious.

Where is that from?

Oh oh, it goes way back. And and there's you've never seen any of these videos where in these animated films there's hidden images.

Oh yeah.

Okay. Anyway, yeah. So I don't I don't need. But do you know more kids disappear on family trips to Disney than any anywhere else? I mean, you can. I mean, it's— the numbers are staggering. And there's been reports come out about, you know, that they've got tunnels all underneath Disney that are supposedly for employees to be able to get to their positions and all of that kind of stuff. But people's kids disappear, and it's been said that that's, that's how they get them out of there with no one seeing them taking that child, is because they take them through those tunnels. Ah, oh, oh, there's, there's— yeah, there's a big—

there's a whole lot of stuff out there that I don't buy into, but that's fine either way.

so much on it, I can't help but think some of that's got to be correct.

Well, the only reason— my only reason to push back on that would be is my aunt was— who was she? I mean, she worked for Disney and she worked in the tunnels and she was— I think she was Tweedledee. She was like one of the characters that would pop out all over the place. And so they would take us on tours of that stuff all the time. And so I've seen those tunnels and things like— and I've heard that before. I've just never seen any data to substantiate it on that stuff. I mean, if you've read it somewhere, I'm happy to read it.

Oh, yeah. I'll share some stuff with you on that because I was floored. Yeah. Well, that was absolutely insane.

And I guess my point, to bring it back to what my point actually was, is that we're in this place right now in 2023 where we're saying what it used to be. And the thing is, that's not what it is. Unfortunately, can we get it back there? I don't know. Do we want to get it back there? I don't know.

So, so here, go, go ahead.

Sorry. But I think that at the end of the day, we got to figure out, like, change for the sake of change isn't good. Change for the right reasons is good. And so if we've just been changing just because, oh, let's try this or let's try that, like We got to figure out how to rein some of that in and so that we can actually, you know, move forward as a, as a, as an American, uh, country. I mean, every great nation has fallen, right?

Right.

Every great nation has fallen. We're the great nation. So I, I don't want to be that.

I—

hopefully we've put things in place to where that shouldn't be the case, but history doesn't bode well for those that were great. So something's gotta give somewhere.

Yeah.

It's kinda my point.

That's my point. Yeah. So, well, so, like, here, here's, here's my— the way I've changed, because, like, I know, I know, like, with companies like Disney, I know, like, Harry's Razors, there's a lot of people really irritated with Hershey's Chocolate right now.

Sure.

All, all these kinds of things. Right? And so, like, the— I think, I think the MO on this kinda stuff is, like, let's boycott them and then create these other things. So, and I do believe, and I think it was Andrew Breitbart who was like, you know, politics is downstream of culture. Like, the things that we're seeing in politics right now is directly related to what was happening 10 years ago in the culture. And so, like, I think if we don't, if we're not happy with the way things are going in culture and politics right now, we need to find a way to, like, recapture the entities that are informing our culture. Right? So where

I've changed my thought on this, because I've always been happy when it's like, okay, new people are coming. Like, like, like right now, uh, The Daily Wire, did you see their new chocolate company?

No. So whatever it is doesn't surprise me.

So have you guys, have you guys heard about the Hershey's chocolate?

I'm— I've heard something about Hershey's in the news recently, but I don't know much about it.

Okay, so Hershey's, Hershey's in in honor of International Women's— is it Month? Is that what it is?

I don't know. Yeah.

Okay.

You're gonna get me to lying, so I don't know.

It's something like that.

Okay.

They, they got a trans woman to be their spokesperson for this new ad campaign.

Right.

And they're calling it Hershey.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

In fact, we were— my wife, my wife and I were just in— we were in New York over Christmas. That was a big— that was— they already had stuff out for that.

The interns are chuckling at that.

Yeah, even they're shaking their heads about some of this stuff.

That was being promoted back in December even.

Right.

In the big Hershey store there on Times Square.

So in response to that, The Daily Wire has started their new chocolate company.

Oh man.

And they have 2 chocolate bars.

Okay, great. Here we go.

So sorry, my daughter's in the room. Cover your ears. The first one is called She/Her, which is just pure milk chocolate. Okay.

And she backwards, She/Her.

And then the other one's He/Him, and it has nuts. Right? Okay. And like, and they, but they did the exact same thing when Harry's came out with their ad campaign. They're like, okay, nuts to this. Pardon the pun. And they started Jeremy's Razors.

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

So here's, here's my thought on this. I think that that is clever and funny and great.

Yeah.

Right. Not because I, not because I agree with them politically, even though I do, but because it's just funny.

Right. And it's good comedy.

It's great comedy. Right. It's, and it's even, and like both times, like they got the website for the razors, it was ihateharrys.com. And then they got ihatehersheys.com.

Right. Okay.

Right. So like brilliant marketing, all this kind of— I love the creativity, all this kind of stuff. Here's my point. I don't think it's worthwhile to do that stuff in the long run. What I would rather see is a coalition of people who are like-minded go and buy Harry's. A coalition of like-minded people go and buy Hershey's. A coalition of like-minded people go and buy Disney. And, and just recapture these things.

And, and what's interesting, because like there, there are people out there going, like, let's take Disney for example, that they are such a, um, a powerhouse financially that, that they're, they're not able to be taken down. And I'm here to tell you—

Well, you say that and people go, go, go look this up because this is absolutely true. I read this in a, uh, a financial article the other day. One of the first things that Iger did when he came back in and took over that company is he split it up. He's already split it up. Yeah, he's getting ready to sell it off piece by piece.

Well, I, I hadn't heard that part, but here's the thing.

He's, he's breaking it up into like parks, movies.

Yes.

I mean, he's—

it's, it's in, it's in the works. It will be in a place where it can be sold. And not only that, There are people in the world, you put 100, 200, 300, 500 of them together, they can buy that thing.

Sure.

Absolutely.

That can happen. So, you know, to say that, that a conglomerate like, like Disney can't be taken down, that's not true. Now, would, would I want to see that happen? Not necessarily.

Yeah.

But I think there's something to be said about reclaiming some things.

I mean, look, it would be, it would be as simple as this. Get every American to invest a dollar. You'd have the money to buy it.

You would.

And like, if you, if you could make the case convincingly enough, you're like, look, American people, like, this is a great American institution and has been in the past. It's worth saving. It's going down the crapper right now. But we can, we can say we can save it. All it takes is $1.

Hollywood as a whole is going down, right? I mean, they're really— and, and I was working with a guy on, on a film he wanted to, to put out here not too long ago, and he was a Hollywood stuntman for many, many years. And, um, boy, when he told me some of the things he did about Hollywood, I was like, wow. Well, he got ousted from Hollywood because he wouldn't go along with some of their parties, right? Because of the things they were doing at these parties. And so, and, and you can see what they put in their films now. They project in these films, you know, this whole train derailment thing?

Yeah.

Have you seen White Noise?

No, what's that?

It's on Netflix. It's a film about a train derailment. I've not watched it, but it's about a train derailment that happens in Palestine, Ohio, or if that— yeah, that's the place where the derailment— I mean, and so everything's pretty similar. Some of those people that are affected by that were people that were extras in this film, and after the film comes out, you know, less than a year later there's a derailment there of toxic materials, just like the movie told us.

Hasn't there been 2 there now?

Uh, well, there's been— now there's been several around the country since that, actually. But—

Well, there's, there's always train derailments. We're just now hearing, like, they're being—

Oh, it's become more— It's become something that people are talking about.

That's the worst disaster in the history of this country as far as a train derailment because of how toxic the chemicals are.

Well, I was gonna say this one was—

That were Yeah, yeah. And you know, a week before that happened, the CDC changed the specs on what was a tolerable exposure for that vinyl chloride. It was 100 parts per million, and they raised it to 100,000 parts per million.

Oh my gosh.

One week before this train derailment. One week. Yeah, there's some things going on.

That's some crazy math right there.

It is.

All right, so we are 45 minutes into this thing.

No, well, we probably need to just cut it off. Let's make this an episode.

We're going down this rabbit hole.

And let's do another episode that actually is more—

We can split it up into 2 if we want. That's fine.

I think we should. Why not?

The first one where we get fired and the next one where we come back with actual— okay, that's fine.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, yeah, we're 45 minutes in at this point, so let's make this a thing.

So you— let's— if we haven't mentioned already, you do solar power?

Yes.

Right. So you— and you came out and we did a little evaluation on the property to look and see about how much energy we're using, how much we're paying, all this kind of stuff. And like, I know it's— you've, you've looked at it briefly, you haven't had a chance to study it. I mean, are we, are we kind of sitting in the middle? Are we kind of sitting on the high end?

Are we Well, what I need to go back and do, of course, is analyze— your lovely wife printed me up, you know, the information I needed on your power bills and all that. And then what I'll go do is I'll go back and average them and see what you're paying per kilowatt hour.

Okay.

And then we figure out how many solar panels it would take to make— now, one of the interesting things about how we do this, there's what's called offset. A lot of companies will do around 100% offset, meaning They sell you a solar panel system that provides 100% of the power that you'll need approximately. Okay, but we've gotten to where the smart bet is to go 110% offset.

I got you.

So that you're producing a little bit extra. So anomalies, weather changes, things that might get you a power bill won't get you a power bill this way. And One of the things that I'm sad to say I've run into a lot— I've been— I've had a lot of my deals undercut by companies because there are too many car salesmen out there that just want to make a buck. And what they will do is they'll underbid a system. I had a customer up in Wichita Falls, Texas, and, um, you know, I— and I knew what kind of deal I was giving him. There was no way another company could beat it. I knew it. And, and last minute he called me and he says, hey, I found a company to do it cheaper. And I

said, wow, you did?

Yeah.

And, and I said, do you mind if I take a look at that deal? And of course they were underselling him. They were going to sell him a system, and, and that's how it turned out. They sold him a system that was a lesser system.

Oh, he ended up getting it?

Yeah, and he ended up getting it to save some money because their, their deal was cheaper than mine. And then he's still getting $200 a month light bills. Yeah, and, and I've seen that a lot. My neighbor did the same thing, but he didn't know I was in the solar business. I saw them over there surveying the house, and I went over and said, oh, are you, you know, you're getting solar? And he said, yeah, we're getting solar and all. And then when I saw the number of panels they put on the house, I said, no way. But sure enough, I called him, he goes, yeah, we're still getting a power bill. And that kind of stuff is giving the solar business a bad name. And, and I, I won't I, I won't do that to

customers. Um, I take pride in being ethical and honest about what I do, and I lose a lot of deals because of that. But you know what, God will give me what I need.

Yeah.

You know, but I don't want to be unethical in how I do business. So I try to educate the customer as much as I can in what we're doing and why things come out the way they are and, and that kind of stuff. And, you know, but there's just— there's too many people out there that are sharking, you know, to get some money in their pocket. And it's— and just in the last week, actually, one of the gals in our networking group Um, she— I'm in the car with her because we're going on that cruise.

Yeah.

And we went down to catch the ship, and, um, I said something about solar, and boy, she just belted out. She goes, solar's a scam.

What?

And I said, oh, so my company is a scam? And she goes, well, that's not really what I was saying. I said, that's exactly what you said.

Yeah.

Well, you know, there's all these rip-offs. And I said, yeah, I know. And then, and, and then I talked to a friend the other day, a friend of 40 years. Yeah, same thing. She goes, nope, that's a scam. I said, what, would I sell you a scam? Well, my brother got solar and boy, they, they took him for a ride. Well, they did it to my aunt too. So there's just too many people getting in it for a fast buck and that's all they care about. So a lot of the ethics are out the window and I really hate seeing that. But—

Which I have to imagine is the case because, I mean, it is a high-ticket item.

It is.

Yeah, I mean, it's not a little bit of money.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's, it's, it's a huge investment.

Yeah.

But it is that. I mean, it is an investment, but it's a lot of money.

It's an asset.

Yeah.

You know, you go from having a liability to having an asset because like I said, we say, why rent your— you don't rent your home or your car. Why rent your power? Because that's all you're doing. At the end of the day, you have nothing to show for it except that your lights are still on. Where when you have solar, at some point when you've paid off the loan, you own it and you're not getting a power bill anymore and you own your solar panels. And that's kind of, you know, there's a whole lot of benefits to it. Of course, they say that the value of your home goes up because you've got panels on it. But I have heard of people that said they won't buy a

home that's got solar panels on it. And I don't understand that. I'm gonna— another guy in our group who's a mortgage guy, Mm-hmm. he's gonna have me do a lunch and learn at their offices so that I can teach real estate agents how to roll a solar system into a mortgage when the customer buys a house, whether it's new or or pre-owned. And then we can put a solar system on their home and they won't be getting light bills, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, right from the start, but it's rolled into their mortgage. So there's a lot of good benefits. There's a 30% dollar-per-dollar tax credit. One woman I spoke to recently, and I've known her for 40 years, and she goes, well, how can I believe that? Because I told you that. But she goes, it just doesn't, doesn't sound right that I'm going to get a dollar-per-dollar you know, on 30% of the cost of that system? And I said, well, I can, I can prove it to you, you know.

Yeah.

And that's, that's a huge benefit. So there's, there is a whole lot of benefits to doing it. But again, you get up, you get one payment and it never changes for the life of the loan that you're paying for that solar. When power bills keep going up, I know I mentioned earlier a friend of mine who had me look at his home and I was able to get him under $300 a month and he was paying an average of $400 a month. He said, I'll think about it. Then he called me a month later and he goes, oh my gosh, man, my contract ran out, my rate went way up, and I just got an $800 note, an $800 bill from the power company. He says, get back over here, let's talk about this.

You know, so there's, there, there is a lot of benefit to it. And like I said, it's an asset. You're, you're not, you know, you're not, it's not like you're renting your power anymore. We call it energy independence. Yeah.

Well, and is that, is that most people's objective with solar is to to sort of relieve themselves of being tied to the grid for power? Or are there some people that are looking to supplement?

Well, you have to be tied to the grid, unfortunately.

Right.

You know, but—

I mean, unless you're building out in the woods or something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you can literally buy a system with the batteries and stuff.

Yeah.

And at night your system's running off the batteries and during the day it's running off the panels and charging your batteries back up again too.

Right.

So it's definitely doable and I know of people that have done it.

But I mean, you are right. I mean, like, if you have traditional power, they are not going to let you get off the grid.

No, they won't. That's another thing.

Well, that was something that we— so we lived in April Sound for 5 years, and we had a solar guy come out and give us just some information. And, uh, based on the company we were using at the time for our energy, I don't think we were able to get off more than 50%. And they were going, we, no matter what, we were going to pay 50% to the energy bill, energy company, plus we were going to have to pay for solar. So it wasn't going to make any sense for us at the time because of the way the energy company was—

Resisting.

Resisting it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For, for re— I mean, obviously they're going, look, this is our, this is our moneymaker, you know, and we got, we got a sweet deal over here because everybody's got to pay for this from us because We had no options where we were. Entergy was the only option at the time.

Oh, they're notorious.

See, there you go. And, and so, you know, and, and I know that, um, I, I'm— and I don't know, but I, y'all are going to talk about this, but I, I've been told that MidSouth is very difficult to work with, um, as well, just because it's, it's co-op. But all of that being said, that was a big deal for us is It wasn't just about whether or not you could get off the grid. It was like, is your power company—

Yeah. Is your power company going to cooperate with your aspirations of having solar power your home? And we're finding that to be an issue more and more now. A lot of companies are, but we're also lobbying to have laws passed because they're literally stealing from you when you give back power, when you send power back to their grid, they're reselling it to someone else, the excess power that you're sending back to the grid, but they're only letting you and you break even on the power. A lot of companies are doing that to where, you know, your panels produce extra power that goes back to the grid during the day. And then at night when you're getting your power off the grid, they'll give you enough to take care of that

to zero you out when you normally, for the size system you had, you would have a lot of credit come the end of the month.

Right.

But they don't wanna do that. And so it's, to me, it's literally theft. theft because they're taking that power and selling it to someone else. I saw an article the other day, Entergy is going to start building solar farms to, to, you know, to provide power. And I'm like, now that's pretty hypocritical, isn't it? I mean, I made a post on Facebook and LinkedIn about it, but that's been a problem is some of the companies— and by the way, MidSouth was one of those companies. And recently when we were looking into MidSouth, they, they now are— have lightened up on their policies.

That's recent?

Yeah, very recent. Yeah, like a month ago.

Yeah, I was gonna say, because that last time I heard, it was still very, very difficult for, for Mid-South to, to allow. And again, because it was, it was a little, it's a little bit different because it's a co-op. Um, so it's a little bit different. But, um, but yeah, it's super. I mean, because I, I don't know if every— I didn't know. I don't know if everybody fully understands how energy is even produced. Like, how do I get the energy that comes into my house? I don't think most people realize that these, these companies are using natural gas and these types of things in order to produce the energy.

Burning coal.

Yeah, it's one of the reasons that it's— get me started on nuclear power, um, that, that's so frustrating about that. But then you've got other people who have solar that are literally producing energy for the energy company.

Yeah.

And they are getting zero credit for— credit for. And it is, it is. I mean, you're literally providing free energy for them that they're not having to produce with their system, and, and then they're selling it to other people.

And what got me into solar business, in, in the solar business I'll be honest when I say this whole climate change garbage they used to call global warming, it's— I don't believe in it. I really don't. But when I, when I got to doing it, I'm still researching this stuff, and that is how much of a carbon footprint is there for producing solar, for creating solar panels and a system for solar? And the batteries are a big concern because of what it takes to put these battery systems together. But wow, when you look at what the pollution they generate from mining coal, trucking coal to the place where they're going to burn it and pollute some more,

it's— burning coal is bad news.

Well, it's one of the reasons that it's frustrating that we can't do the nuclear stuff like we should be able to. It would be a whole lot cleaner. It'd be a whole lot more efficient, but it's just not something we can get done.

People are scared of it.

Yeah, they are.

And I might be shooting myself in the foot when I say this, but—

Here we go.

In the future, we're gonna— a lot of us are gonna go to hydrogen and they're gonna start producing power. Hydrogen power is clean, clean, clean and potent and non-polluting. I mean, it's even better than solar.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of reasons that's been held back. And like everything else, it's the almighty dollar. The future is going to be hydrogen-produced, hydrogen-based power. And people in the past, for instance, have invented cars. There was a young man at A&M that created a car that ran off of water. It basically was a hydrogen car. And boy, they jerked his patent and came and threatened him and said, don't you dare produce another one of these cars, because he put a couple of gallons of water in his car and drive it for a week. Yeah, yeah, but boy, they didn't want that out because—

Of course not.

And, and you have to wonder about the petroleum companies, you know, because they've always run the show when it's— because they were the wealthiest industry out there. Back in the '70s, Ford produced an electric car. This electric car on a single charge would go a couple thousand miles. Well, they didn't get too many of those sold before the Oil companies swept in, bought up all the patents from Ford, and then went out and found every customer and bought the cars away from the customers and destroyed them because it was threatening the petroleum industry. And it's, it's kind of funny, this new wave towards EVs, because in the past it— they, they, they have dumbed down the whole thing about, um,

electric cars because, you know, these Chevy Volts, oh yeah, it's It's $50,000 and it's a little, you know, it's not much to it and it goes 100 miles. And until Tesla, you know, which now can, you know, go 400 miles on a charge or whatever, you know, they just were not allowing them out there without them being exorbitantly priced. Of course, you know, a lot of— I don't want to call them tree huggers, but a lot of people complained about why we weren't going to electric when we're polluting with all of this, these petroleum products. Another thing that you have to think about is it would be so easy to generate power to keep the battery perpetually charged on a car off of its moving down the road.

Oh yeah.

Off of the wheels turning, you know, but they won't do it because there's still that charging market.

Yep.

You know, but, but why do you suppose suddenly they've gone to everybody's going to have to go electric and now there's all these electric cars being produced when before the petroleum industry was king? Well, because the powers that be decided, look, if we can make everybody drive an electric car, we can control everybody. We can shut their car down at home, and we can shut down their ability to charge it, and they can't go anywhere if we don't want them to. I hate to say that, but that's the truth.

Well, at the end of the day, that's going to be a bigger problem in the end because they can't produce batteries forever off of lithium because lithium is not a renewable resource. And we're going to have real problems whenever we run out of lithium and we can't make any more batteries.

And they're not safe.

No, they're—

and you can't dispose of them. Have you seen some of these cars on fire?

Sure.

And they can't put them out for hours.

Yeah. And you can't dispose of it. Yeah.

I mean, it actually happened in Carlton Woods. Remember that? We talked about that story where they looked like the— did you hear about this? It made national news. It was a Tesla that caught fire. And but they found the bodies in the back seat. So I mean, they didn't outright say it in the story, but it looked like they tricked the car into trying to drive itself home, and then it crashed at like 120 miles into a tree and then caught fire, and they were just—

Yeah, they were cooked. Yeah. And one of the problems with these battery fires are they happen so fast that you're lucky to escape the vehicle before it's completely engulfed in flames. I've seen videos of city buses electric city buses that caught on fire. And I mean, there's literally guys timing it on this video, and within 15 seconds the entire bus was engulfed in flames. But there wasn't anybody on it except the driver, and he managed to get out the door. Imagine if that was full of people, all of them would have died. So the battery technology is not safe yet.

No, it's not where it needs to be.

I had actually considered going, going for a research grant to research different forms of battery power for things like this. Because like you just said, and you're correct, we can't continue to endlessly create lithium batteries. You can't dispose of them safely. They're not safe. So there's some things that, you know, and me, I don't want to stop and charge my car for a half hour every 300 or 400 miles when I'm traveling. I want to whip in, I want to put that gas in my tank and be out there in 5 minutes.

So going back to something you said a minute ago about the guy at A&M with the hydrogen car, I can't find— I find a lot— there's a lot of stuff right now with A&M where they're working on hydrogen cells, but there is a guy named Dr. Roger Billings who in 1965 is accredited with being the first guy to make a hydrogen-powered car, and he converted an old Model A Ford. to run on hydrogen in 1965. It was a science fair project.

How about that?

Yeah, I love it. Pretty crazy.

Bring it back.

Yeah, come on, hydrogen. Yeah, in the meantime, I feel like I'm reducing the carbon footprint of these power plants that are trucking all this coal in these giant trucks that are burning and polluting the air. And then, you know, the mining stuff they use to mine it, and then of course burning the coal itself. I mean, it's It's, it's seriously dirty.

Well, let me ask you a question. Um, I, I think you, you've mentioned it yourself, there's a lot of people out there that are undercutting you, and there's a lot of people out there that are trying to sell stuff that is half of what they need, or, you know, 3/4 of what they need, and they're, they're selling it for a cheaper price trying to make a buck. For those that are listening to the show right now who are going, I'm still interested in solar. How do they spot those guys and what do they need to be looking for? What kind of language do they need to be listening for? What kind of deals do they need to be thinking through? How do they avoid being scammed

other than calling you?

That's a good start. Well, if they can do the research the way that we do the research on the home, they could know Like, I could take this bill that his wife gave me because I can see every month and I can see how many kilowatt hours they burn. And if he was educated in it in a way to be able to tell, okay, I would need this much to get a 110% offset from the panels, then he wouldn't be able to be duped because he'd know how— he'd know what the formula was. I mean, I had seriously considered writing a small book about that for the homeowners so that they could see, hey, you know, I can, I can calculate

my own and make sure that I'm getting enough system. Because the sad thing about these guys that are undercutting them, boy, they just mumbo-jumbo it and massage it to make them think that, no, you're not going to get a power bill, when they knew darn well they were selling them a system that wasn't quite big enough.

Hmm.

You know, so I had considered doing that because I'm, I'm a little distraught about this. I'm in an industry where it's starting to get a bad name because of these sharks. When— and maybe I do need to write that small book about it to explain how to calculate all this and how to understand yourself, what you need, and, you know, and how much of it you need. And so that people know if they're getting duped when these people—

Well, I mean, that's one of the things. I mean, when Craig and I began this podcast, that was one of the main reasons we started this podcast, was to help homeowners not get scammed not get taken advantage of by contractors. It happens all the time. In fact, I was talking to— I was talking to Mike Faust today. Um, actually, I wasn't talking to him, I was talking to his general manager. Faust has been on our, uh, podcast before. He owns a landscaping company. He told me that if they have a deal that is under $10,000, they don't take any money up front until They, they don't take any money until the job is done.

Hmm.

There's a lot of companies out there, uh, that are going to charge half upfront and half on the back end. And then, you know what they do? They take their half, they never show up. They're gone.

Right.

There goes half of your money. Right? And so now you can't even do the job cuz you lost all your money that you were gonna do this job with. And so, um, it happens all the time. And so we love hearing stories like that and passing them on to our listeners and our, our watchers because we don't want people to get scammed. I mean, we, we have— we just think that there's a better way. And if we can do anything that we can to educate people on what to look for, what to say, what to, you know, what to question, what to question and how to question it, you know, um, and how to spot something real versus something that's not real.

I think that that is hugely valuable information. And so I encourage you to write whatever little— even it's just like a little worksheet, something that we could, you know, put out that, um, and we would be happy to distribute that, um, to, you know, put it on, on— we link it up in the show notes. Even if you want to put it up, we can even retroactively do that if we need to.

Yeah.

Just so that people don't get screwed by someone coming in and going, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna charge you $70,000 for a system that is not gonna do what you want it to do. You're gonna still have to pay $200 a month and you still owe us $70,000. And it's like, wow. Thanks a lot, jerk.

Yeah. And I have experienced what you were talking about quite a bit over the years. I used to own a company called American Roof Company. It was a roofing and construction company. And back in 2003 and 2004, there were like 8 hurricanes— Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, all, all around in there. And I was over there just throwing down, you know, doing roofs. And I kept running across people getting screwed by their insurance companies pretty badly, and I would advise them on how to take care of it. Now, the thing about that situation is, boy, a roofer comes along and they go, well, I only got $800 for repair, and they really need a full roof. Well, that, that roofer leaves and goes to the next door where he's going to get a deal.

Sure.

He doesn't stop and try to help the customer. And that ended up being a huge bonus for me. My company grew out of control after, after I started doing those things. But, uh, for instance, I went to one woman's house and that's what she said. I got $800 to do repairs. And I saw her roof and I said, oh my gosh, you've got to have a new roof. I said, call your insurance adjuster.

State Farm.

Oh, I probably shouldn't say that. But anyway, yeah. Um, and, and I, I get the guy on the phone. I told him who I was and I said, I'd like to meet you on the, on the cust— on the client's property and take a look at this roof with you. And I pushed him and told him, you, you will pay for this woman's roof. And they did, okay? And I did this over and over again. I started doing town hall meetings, standing room only. And I didn't— first town hall meeting, I didn't even bring business cards in because I wasn't there to get their business. And of course, I told the lady that who was running the whole town hall thing. And I would, you know, like I said, standing room only. I tell them how to handle their

insurance company. what to look for, how to make sure you're getting what you need out of the insurance company after these hurricanes. And at the end of the night, after I'd done all this lecturing, they just lined up and said, we want your business card. And I said, well, I didn't come to get your business. I just came to advise you. No, but we want you doing our roofs.

Mm-hmm.

And then the lady that downhauled, she goes, you better go to your truck and get your business cards. And so I did. And one case hit me really hard, and it was an elderly lady who lost her husband 6 months before this hurricane. and it just tore her roof up. Well, a company from Houston, a roofing company from Houston, took half of her money to do the roof and they never came back.

Oh yeah.

And you know what, but she had a copy of, of the estimate or the quote, and, um, and she gave it to me. Well, I was from Houston, so the next time I went to town, I went to that— this company's office, and I walked into the owner's office and I threw that on the desk and I said, do you know what this is? And he said, well, not really. And I said, That is an elderly lady in Florida who you guys took half of her insurance money, left and never came back and did her roof. And he said, well, I don't know about that. I said, I do know about that, but let me tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to go ahead and get out of your hair and not waste a lot of your time. But if you don't send a

check back to that lady, I'm going to help her sue you.

Wow.

And I left. A couple of weeks later, she called me. She goes, Alan, they sent my check back. But what I went ahead and did was I went ahead and did her roof for the other half that she had. And, and she said, well, can you afford to do that? I was only going to be out of about $500 by doing that, but I said, yeah, you've got to have a roof. I kept thinking, what if somebody did this to my mother?

Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah.

The great thing was there was a former Marine that lived next door to her, and he came over. That man walked me around the subdivision, got me about a dozen more roofs. Nobody questioned anything about the quotes. They just knew I was a good guy because of what I did for her. And when she said, I got this check, well, if you'll just come by, I'll sign it over. And I said, no, ma'am, that won't be necessary. I got like a dozen extra roofs, right, in your subdivision because of, of what I did for you. And she says, well, Alan, I need a carport. Well, is this enough money to build me a carport? And I said, yeah, it is. So I sent a crew over the next day and built her a carport.

Oh, wow.

But, you know, God tells us we get repaid tenfold when we do right by others. And I've always just loved doing that kind of stuff because at the end of the day, it makes me feel good. And my whole thing is that I've got to lay my head down on my pillow at night and know that I'm good with my deeds. Yeah.

Well, on these solar systems then, like, I imagine if people are building the quotes out, they have to list the equipment that they're going to be putting on the roof. So are there things like microinverters and panels and batteries and brands and things that that people should be wary of? I mean, I don't want to like disparage companies, but like I imagine like there's older technology that people might be trying to like move out of the warehouse, you know what I mean?

Yeah, because on the quote they've got to list what kind of panels they're giving you, and you can get online and you can do the research and see what these panels are and how highly rated they are or how lowly rated they are, you know, to know whether or not you're getting a good product and It does help to know the inverters too, because some are microinverters, which is on every panel, which for a lot of reasons is the best way to go. But there's also one big one that they can use too, except if something goes wrong with that, the whole system goes down.

Right.

So there are things, and like I said, I could, and I may be inspired after this to go ahead and just write a small book about that so that people know how to do their own research.

Well, let me, let me rephrase it then so that you don't have to like speak ill of anybody. Which, what, what brands are you liking? Like when you, when you're quoting them, you're like, you're leaning into this brand. Because I, I, for, for like you guys, I imagine you, you can kind of like pick and choose.

Yes.

Different things.

There's all kinds of brands.

So like what, what are you really liking right now as far as like panels and inverters and all that kind of stuff?

Well, right now, the companies that do my installations, because I basically contract companies to do my installations, I sell them, I take care of the customer. and these companies come in and do the installations. Well, they've all gotten pretty smart about the panels, or at least the ones I work with. I make sure I check out the company, and if they're not selling the highest quality products, I don't want to do business with them.

Mm-hmm.

So I don't— that means I don't have to keep up with the products so much except go back before I start doing business with them and make sure I know what they do sell.

Mm-hmm.

And if it's questionable, I'll, I'll do the research on it and go, okay, why are you guys still selling these? But that— there's so many panels out there now, and there's so much new technology now. There are panels that stand straight up and down, and both sides of the panel create power. I mean, there's just so much stuff out there now. So, but there are things that people do get stuck on names too, like Tesla.

Right.

They'll say, oh man, we want the Tesla battery with our system. And I'll have to say, well, You know, the Tesla battery is good, but we have another brand that's better. It's got a built-in cooling system so that battery can never catch on fire, you know, and it's a higher rated battery than Tesla. And they're like, what, higher rated?

And it's cheaper.

Yeah, yeah, usually cheaper.

Yeah.

Um, I do this roundtable thing with experts all over the country every month. They do a roundtable thing so that we could discuss the panels and the equipment out there. And the good thing about Tesla is Boy, they are upping their game quickly. And it's, it's a lot of big, big guys in the industry are now saying, you know, eventually our company is only going to sell Tesla panels and stuff because they're getting better so much faster than everyone else and they're American-made.

Right.

You know, and but the batteries are still a little bit behind a couple of the other batteries. But, but they said, I think eventually we're all going to be forced into doing business with Tesla, which I'm not sure is a problem. You know, you know, I mean, if it's quality and it's American made, I'm up for it. Yeah, you know, totally. But, but yeah, a lot of people ask for the name just because they know the name. It's kind of like Bose. I used to be— I used to actually be in the home theater business, and we used to joke and call them blows.

Yeah, no highs, no lows, must be Bose.

Oh, but they're so— they're so expensive and so— yeah, they're so expensive and so proprietary, you can't add anything to a Bose system, but Bose parts.

Right.

And there's stuff out there way better that costs a third of what theirs, but it's that name. They generate that name. And after a while, that's what, you know, that's what people want.

So what about these solar shingles? Have you seen these?

Yeah, I have. And GAF makes them.

Right.

And they're, you know, they're a roofing shingle company and all that, but they're not very efficient and they won't last that long. So right now they're not cost effective because to put them on the house, you'd be paying as much as you would be for solar panels.

Really?

Yeah. And the good thing about solar panels is over the years they've gotten better and better and better, and there's like a race to make the better solar panels, and they're so rugged. You know, when I was training in solar, I saw these guys installing solar panels and they were walking on them, and I remember thinking, wow, walking on the solar panels? Because they're that tough, they're that resilient. So, and they've become a lot more efficient. And what you and I were talking about earlier about batteries was You know, the life of the batteries and how long they last and everything. And now they're warranting the batteries for 25, 30 years.

Which is crazy. I mean, like, when I first started looking at this stuff, I think the batteries only had like a 10-year warranty.

Oh yeah, but they're warranting them for degradation, meaning if they lose more than 5% of their capacity, they come out and replace them.

Oh wow.

Yeah, yeah.

So, and what I've seen on most of these systems is you have a pretty thorough monitoring system on them that's giving you that feedback data as to like how your battery's doing, how efficient your solar panels, which panel's producing this amount of energy.

Yes.

You can get those reports.

Yes. And there are now, they're putting their, these companies are getting their own apps so that they will be, that are attached to the system so that if a solar panel goes out or half a system goes out, the only way the customer knows is when they get that next power bill, they go, oh no, something's wrong.

Right.

You know, where the company gets feedback straight from the inverter that tells them, hey, these panels have gone down. And then they notify the customer and set up an appointment to come out and replace the parts and fix it.

Yeah.

And that's super good. And some—

What's the warranty on the panels now look like?

It depends. They're 25 to 30 years.

Okay.

So that's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. And they also are warranted for degradation. You know, if the panels start to degrade past a certain point, They come out and replace them. So the warranties are good. Yeah.

And I think that's something that people do need to be aware of. I mean, it's not going to be 100% efficient the lifetime of the product. I mean, like, it's impossible to expect that from them.

And recently I was in a restaurant. This is me doing good again. I heard a woman talking about, we have solar panels on our home, but now all of a sudden we've got a power bill when we didn't have one before. And I walked over to a table and I said, here's my card, I'm in the solar business, give me a call and I'll analyze what's going on and figure out for you why you're getting, you know, a power bill now when you weren't before. Ends up her husband and I went to high school together and it was just coincidental. And I was in a restaurant in Houston.

Yeah.

But they have panels on this house that they bought a couple of years ago. It already had the panels on them, but the company that did it went out of business. So they don't have a warranty. And see, that's happening too. So there— but there are companies out there now that just supply warranties, and I'm getting them a warranty for their panels.

Okay.

Through a company that I do business with who will send someone out there. They'll look at the panels, they'll clean them, they'll maintenance them, and they'll measure their efficiency and everything. And then they'll warrant them so that if they have a major problem, that warranty will cover it. And those warranties aren't that doggone expensive, actually.

Oh really?

Yeah.

Like ballpark?

Uh, $1,000.

Like a year?

Yeah.

That's not bad.

Yeah, $1,000 to $1,500 depending on how big your system is.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, it's like $120 a month.

No, it's not bad at all.

Yeah.

And then there's companies that, that are install companies, um, that will warrant the system no matter what. But these are big companies who are Fortune 500 Solar companies. I mean, they're at the top. One of them is a 43rd fastest growing company in America, and they have a 30-year warranty. And it doesn't matter what kind of panels you have on it, something goes wrong with them and that company's already out of business, doesn't matter. These guys warrant it. So it's getting, it's getting pretty, pretty good.

I like that there's competition out there.

I mean, it just makes it healthy.

It's going to be, it's going to be more, it's going to be better for the consumer. Yeah, right.

Yep. And for sure, now I'm working on government contracts because of my company being a service-disabled veteran-owned business, and I'm getting all these certifications, and I've already made some connections that could get me some pretty large, some pretty large government deals, which I'm, I'm pretty happy about. But it's a lot of work, and it takes a long time to get those deals settled, you know. But, but it, you know, it'll be good for me and my company for sure.

I mean, when it comes to government contracts, you got to have your numbers in order.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

So I mean, like, they don't have their numbers in order, but you better have your numbers in order.

Yeah, isn't that the truth?

Anyway, well, I don't— I mean, I, I think that, I think that solar makes a lot of sense for a lot of people. And at the end of the day, like, I— here, here's the problem I have with, with people that just come out and say Well, that's a scam. Here's my problem with that. Most of those people have not had someone over their house to talk about it.

And they're not educated in how it works. Exactly.

They probably talked to somebody that's had a bad experience.

That's right.

That's right.

That's right. And they might have even had an experience that was poor 10 years ago.

Yeah.

In 10 years, a lot's changed. A whole lot's changed in 10 years. And again, it's like anything. I, I think that there are definitely companies out there that are gonna scam you. I do believe that. Um, but at the end of the day, you don't— you need to do your due diligence. If this is something that you're interested in, call multiple people, have them come out, give you some options, look at it, you know, read the fine print, you know.

Yeah.

Do all the things that you need to do, do your due diligence and compare. And I think if you do your homework, you can make sure that you're not getting taken advantage of.

Yeah, and my policy on these comments when I hear, oh no, that's a scam, and my first thing is, what do you know about solar? Well, I don't really know any— I said, no, you really don't know anything about solar, so why is it you're saying that? Well, my brother— the one gal that told me, well, my brother, and boy, he got scammed. And I said, and you know what, I wish you'd have your brother call me. And she said, why? And I said, because he may have some recourse. It's not that doggone complicated once I go and look at his His contract and his system and find out who put it in. Yeah, that happened to my aunt. She got scammed big time by this company, and in the end, and it was

great. It's good to be a technology consultant because I was literally able to go back and online and find her contract in from their company website, just simply using her email address. Wow! Yeah, and then and then I put that company on notice. And they dropped all the billing and everything else from it. And now they're going to come out and pull those panels off of her house, and then I'm going to put a system on. There you go. Yeah, but I don't mind helping people with that kind of stuff. If somebody was done wrong, I tell them, just send them to me, tell them to call me, and I'll take some time helping them figure out what happened, why it

happened, and if it's something that they can fix. Because you usually do have recourse, whether you know it or not. Yeah.

Yeah. Great.

Well, and one of the other things I know we didn't talk about, well, I think you briefly mentioned it, was the tax incentives right now. Because if there's anything good from Biden being in office, it's that the incentives have gotten better for solar.

He raised the federal tax credit from 26% to 30%.

Right. In a time when it was going down.

Yeah, it had been going down.

They were taking it away rapidly. I mean, it was just 2 years ago, I think, that you and I were sitting here at the same table going, well, if you don't do it now, it's going to drop 5%, you know.

And it's going to continue to drop. Well, they had the schedule. It was going to drop like 2% every year.

Yeah. And now they supposedly have not just raised it, but they're saying that it's going to be around for the next 7 or 8 years.

Yeah.

So they won't be able to drop it. And it is a good thing because a customer recently told me, oh no, that's got to be crap. How can that be? Because I said, it's a dollar-per-dollar tax credit. And let's just say you're a 1099, at the end of the year you've got to pay them taxes. So you can take the value of 30% of that solar system and you can take it dollar per dollar off of what you're going to pay in taxes that year. And if it doesn't totally relinquish all of that, then you've got it for the year after that.

I was going to say, does it roll over?

It's amortized. Yes, it rolls over. Yeah. So, and I know it sounds almost too good to be true, but it's literally that. You know, and if you paid into the system, if you were W-2 and you paid into the system, they have to send you that money back.

Yeah.

So that, that really—

a lot of people don't know what to— don't know what to do with tax credits because they don't understand them.

Yeah.

They think they're tax deductions.

Yeah.

And those are 2 totally different things because a tax deduction is a percentage of a percentage type of thing, and I don't understand all of it, but what I do know is a tax credit is— it's like a dollar. It's like getting your money back.

Yeah.

I mean, it's like, you know, it's like you go buy something and then you get a credit back on it. You're gonna get money back.

And it is pretty—

It's as if you already pay that amount in there. That's right, is what it is.

Yes.

And it's pretty simple, but I, I still have to tell people I'm not a tax advisor. I'm not a tax person. So you really should call your tax person about this. And, you know, and of course they find out that what I was telling them was correct. But I'm not a tax advisor. I just know that it's really that simple. But I tell them, you know, consult your tax attorney. And it could be that their tax person will tell them, yeah, you know what, don't claim it this year because there's this advantage if you do it next year or something. I don't know. But from what I understand, there's some little ways you can even massage that. But you will get 100% credit dollar

per dollar for 30% of what the cost of your system is.

Well, and like, just, just to make the math simple, like, and I don't think most solar systems cost $100,000, but let's just say it did.

Some of them do.

Some of them do. Let's just, to make the math easy, let's say that it cost $100,000. Well, then the federal government's going to say, like, look, you paid $30,000 to the government already just by buying that system.

Yep.

So now you have $30,000 applied to what you would be paying in taxes. And so if your tax burden is less than $30,000, so let's say that your tax burden is $20,000 for the year of 2023.

Yeah, $10,000 more next year.

Yeah, you can either roll that $10,000 or you can get $10,000 back.

Yep.

And some of these companies, these finance companies are getting pretty smooth with these solar systems. And there's ways that they can literally take it out of the cost of the system when you buy the system.

Wow.

Yeah, that's pretty amazing. And some of them do things like incentives. Now most people will get a, you know, no money down deal. You know, it— if you have a 6— I think they said a 625 or higher rating. Yeah.

That's not even great.

I know, that's not even great. And you will get 100%, you know, financing. And, and some of them— because one, one of my friends decided to do this, and that was they will give him, you know, 6 months of not paying any any part of that loan for 6 months. And then there's another one that was 18 months. Oh my goodness. No payments.

Wow.

On the loan. Now that money's coming out of somewhere, but still, you know, when— if things are tight and you're trying to make home improvements or who knows what else, then hey man, to get deferred 18 months on paying any kind of bill for your power, that's pretty sweet.

Heck yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, man, anything else we, we hadn't talked about yet, um, that you want to make sure we cover?

Well, uh, there, there are different kinds of, of ways to buy. You know, there's cash. Some— there's people out there that'll go, okay, yeah, $75,000, I'll just pay cash, and they pay cash. Or there's a loan. There are leases too. I, I just won't do leases, and okay, I'll tell you why. Man, they, they massage numbers and move them around. The next thing you know, uh, you know, 8 months into it or something, they're getting a higher bill. Or better still, when you're leasing, you don't own the panels, right? But, but they will give you the option at some point to buy it out. But who's got the extra money to do that? I, I just always advise against doing a lease. I just don't—

Is the appeal of the lease that they'll switch the equipment out if it's Faulty or—

oh yeah, it's got a great warranty and everything too, but you don't own it. You might as well just keep paying your darn power company. Well, except it's going to go up. But, but yeah, I just, I tell them, don't, no, don't do a lease. Do a loan or pay cash if you can, but do a loan. Don't do a lease because there's too many little things that can go wrong with that lease that can cost you more money than you were expecting to pay. And I literally won't put my customers on a lease.

Okay, cool. Awesome. Well, listen, thanks for, thanks for coming. It's been good. Uh, it's, you know, the first half was super informative for everybody.

And, um, yeah, and we're a bunch of, we're a bunch of babblers. We could go, we could go on forever on some of these topics.

Start a whole different show.

Look, you get me and Craig in a room with anybody, it's gonna go wild. We're talkers too.

So it is—

You know what, you guys, you guys meld together well.

Well, thanks.

No, no, you really do. Well, the first time I watched one of your podcasts with you 2 guys, I was like, wow, these guys know how to bounce it off each other and work together on it. Not to mention, you know, how to be humorous with each other and, and jab a little back and forth to make it fun, fun banter, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You guys are, you guys are good like that. And that, you know, I saw that last podcast that you did with, um, with George, you know.

Yeah.

I got something out of that. And I was telling them the other night at the network meeting, if y'all haven't seen his podcast on this, and all of you are talking about how to get higher ratings, With Google, then you need to, you need to go back and watch this podcast. And your wife looked at me and she smiled. Yeah, but it was a great and informative show.

Yeah, good. Yeah, I mean, that's the point.

That's, that's the whole point— inform people.

I mean, we—

because we're stupid and we can't.

Well, that's right. We're gonna bring other people on to how to do it.

Guess I better get to work writing that book, huh? That's right. Okay, you already promised now if I write that book for people on how to—

yeah, they'll put it out.

You guys can put it out and then, you know, they—

Well, you brought the book tonight. We didn't even get to mention that. I mean, yeah, hold that up there.

Yeah, there you go. We got it in there. We can see it.

Race to Win.

Because you used to be—

Yeah, I used to be a national champion racing superbikes and—

Wow.

Yeah, and, and, you know, all you gotta do is win a couple championships. The young guys want to know how you did it.

Yeah, and so you were faster than the other people. That's how you did it.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I don't know why they want to know that information. It was super easy. Told them in like 3 seconds how to do it.

It takes some cojones, but if you just use some duct tape to tape them down to the tank good so they don't bounce around, you're fine.

Yeah, you're good.

You're fine.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, and boy, looking back at that, I think, boy, look at, look at the risks I took doing that. Oh man.

You were on SEAL Team, dude.

Oh man. But you know what, I had—

You're a risk You are not risk-averse.

I've had 19 lives. I had one accident at the races, and I was in about a 145-mile-an-hour sweeper turn with my knee on the ground. The front tire blew out on the bike, and, um, and I didn't panic because I know what to do. I'd been racing a long time by then. I knew to roll over on my back and try to kick the motorcycle away so that I didn't get tangled up in it. The problem was 2nd and 3rd place got fixed at what we call fixation, and that's where they look at you crashing and they automatically run you over. Oh yeah, so I got ran over by 2 guys, and then after that, my motorcycle that was flipping and bouncing ended up landing on

me. And yeah, I got to ride in a helicopter that day because I thought my neck was broken, and luckily it was not. But I was so beat up, I couldn't come back to racing for a year. I mean, it was, it was, it was not, it was not nice.

But, um, but what you told me earlier, how old were you when you won your last championship?

Uh, 48.

Which is unheard of, right?

Pretty much unheard of.

Wow.

Yeah, well, they say most guys are done by 35, some a lot earlier than that. I mean, that's considered kind of— yeah.

Well, they say if you get knocked off, it's like riding a bike, just get back on.

Yeah, yeah. And how many guys do you know that's crashed over 150 more than once?

Yeah, yeah.

God, God loves me for some doggone reason.

I don't know, man.