Riding Tandem

Hi there. This is your host, Vivian, and you're listening to Riding Tandem, a podcast that is all things business, entrepreneurship and the secret to operating a successful business while still having a life you love. Whether you're a business owner on the verge of taking that side hustle to the next level or just curious about the world of entrepreneurship, join me as I go behind the scenes of my own business and the businesses of others, unpacking some of the most valuable lessons you can apply today. Let's dive in. Welcome to this week's episode of Tandem Works. Excited today. I have with me on the podcast today a dad husband entrepreneur. He is a dad of six kids, owned four businesses and has one wife. I love how he wrote his bio out that way. He's also a very creative mind that I just have to say, doesn't stop the ideas just keep flowing all the time. He's also a bit of a history buff, so it won't surprise anyone that his LLC is called the Dead Presidents Group. And he's also been known to say that Facebook is the end of humanity, which I'm not sure that I disagree. And so I'm here to welcome today Jon Nelson. Thanks for coming on.

You bet. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.

Yeah. Okay, so first I'm just going to say I don't know if you still have it, but I used to live right across the street from one of your businesses, right over Alice's place. And you drive the coolest truck.

Yeah.

Do you still have that truck?

Yes, I got a couple of them.

Yeah.

Old trucks? Yeah, that's probably my favorite thing to do is attempt to work on old trucks and drive them just down country roads. So it's my relaxation.

I remember coming out one day and I'm like watering my plants out front because I'm the plant lady and I look, trust me and I'm like, what a sweet truck. And I don't remember which one it was, but you see of a couple.

Yeah, I have a couple. That one was probably the 1962 Chevy C ten. I've just bought it off ebay. Actually. I bought it when I sold seller 19 and it came from California. I just kind of bought it sight unseen and I lucked out because it was a beautiful truck, super clean, and everybody, I mean, can't go to a gas station without somebody trying to buy it from you. We're coming over and talk to you about it and telling the story that they had it. They grew up in one, so it's cool, people. It's a great conversation piece.

Did it run when it came to you?

Yes, it ran good, but then I blew up the motor one night driving home. Just a big poof and cloud of smoke. I threw a rod right out of the oil pan. So I put a new motor in it and it runs pretty good. There's still little things that I'm always tweaking with, but luckily those cars or trucks are so old that they're easy to work on. No computers or anything, so you can diagnose it pretty quick.

Are you pretty handy when it comes to that type of thing?

No, I'm not. I am never construction or mechanic, nothing. My friends always make fun of me when I try and build something or work on something, but I'm slowly getting there. I can do, like, the basics, slowly getting better.

What do you just, like, YouTube it or how do you figure it out?

YouTube, man. That's why I learned how to be a butcher and work on trucks and cook different recipes, everything.

It's good for recipes.

It is beautiful.

So I know you're not a Facebook fan. Do you like the TikTok or anything like that?

No, I got a couple of TikTok buddies. My kids are TikTok, but I'm an Instagram guy. I'm the photographs. I love pictures. Pictures tell a thousand words they say, right?

Yeah.

And my dad was always into photography, and I think that's why I picked up on it too. But yeah, just instagram. I like posting pictures and not really following up on comments or anything. I just want to post a picture and look a picture.

That's where it starts getting dangerous. All the different the comments and the trolling.

I know it's just hard and it can just rabbit hoole you.

So you have a very creative mind is what I've observed. And then Mikayla knows you really well, has for years, and every time you come up a conversation, it's always, oh, there was this idea, or there was this time, and we talked about this and this would have been cool. And you've obviously launched a number of ideas, but I'm curious, when you look back, what have been some of your craziest or wildest ideas that maybe you haven't pursued, but they still pop up for you?

Gosh, I don't know. I wish I could sell ideas. But I do have a ton of ideas. Just the execution on all of them somewhere. That's where I'm still learning as a business owner and idea guy. What are some of them? Oh, yeah. Well, this isn't really a good one, probably, but it's like Uber for kids. It's probably somebody already came up with it, and I probably just read it somewhere. That's the only one that can come to mind. But somebody that can take my kids to basketball practice and they're like a certified, whatever child person.

The child driver.

Driver, yes. They're all approved and accredited and they can take my kids to school and practice and all that stuff. That'd be great. Uber for kids. I'm sure it's already exists somewhere. Trying to think what else I think.

That is interesting because I believe it does exist in really large cities.

Does it?

Like New York, things like that. But I don't think anyone's figured it out for more spread out areas like ours where you have like an urban pocket, like Council Bluffs, but then you have all these rural areas, and I think that's where it gets really tough. Right. You're trying to get multiple kids to different activities, and you might be driving a long ways.

Yeah, I mean, it's just practices and games all weekend, but yeah, it's not a very good one. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head, but I.

Know Michael Mikael's wanted to do something with you, and it required also, like, Lu owes and closing down blocks and roasting pigs. And she's really wanted to do some sort of party.

Yeah, street dance. That could have been one.

I think it would be cool to have a street dance party type of business where you roll in and you just open it up for people.

Yeah. No, that is one of the ideas. It was the McClellan Street dance. We're trying to come up with the first annual. I'm pretty sure it's already happened once or twice. But just going to those small towns, I think that's where people are starting to regress back to all the old butcher shops and all the stores. They're all depleted and everybody left. But I think there's a resurgence. I think people are coming back and going away from the big box stuff. And that was the idea with the butcher shop and Jon's Naturals was to try and recreate some of those old memories and kind of bring back some of that old school stuff.

Yeah. Tell me a bit about Jon's Naturals. That's one of your businesses, one of your four.

Yeah, Jon's Naturals was an idea, another idea. I had Seller 19 in Council Bluffs, just a little deli and wine shop. And my dad would always take me over to Spirit World, a restaurant in Omar as a kid. And we'd eat these sandwiches on these, like, crusty baguettes and this cheese I've never heard of. And he would look at all the wine and shop, and we would drink root beer and eat these sandwiches. And it's just like the best memories I've had. And that's where Seller 19 came from. So it kind of started there. I was working in a cubicle, and I realized that it wasn't what I wanted to do. And so I saw this strip mall being built in Council Bluffs and I just went for it and signed it and told my bosses in Omaha that I was quitting and I was opening a wine shop and a deli in Council Bluffs and they said, you're doing what? You're opening a wine shop and Council Bluffs, that's never going to work. And I'm like, Well, I already signed the lease, so I'm doing it in my two weeks. Here's my two weeks. So I did it and it took off actually really well and it was efficient and had good staff, good tenure and it was fun, but it was a ton of work and there was a bit of naivety. Is that a word? Naivety?

Yeah, close enough.

And that's good. I think that was something I learned pretty early on. Is it's great to be a little naive with your ideas or starting a business? Because if you do know all the roadblocks and the hurdles, you'll never, ever do it, so it's good to just jump in and go and tackle them as they come. But yeah. So, anyways, I sold that in 13 and just kind of happened on a whim and it happened pretty quick and I didn't realize what I was going to do next. So I always was frustrated with my suppliers and being able to get locally sourced proteins and stuff deli meat in the restaurant, and it frustrated me and I couldn't figure it out, so that's why I wanted to start it. And so I sold it and just had an idea on opening a butcher shop. And like I said, it sold pretty quick. And so we went out to I would always go out to McLellan and there'd be a couple of buddies that live out there and there's a little bar called the Dew Drop there that I would go to and have a beer. And there was this little building that was shut down and just abandoned and looked like an old butcher shop. So I tried to rent it from the farmer or buy it from the farmer and he said, no, sometimes my employees go up there and use the bathroom, so it's probably not going to work. And so I went back to them and finally got him to lease it to me and just opened a little butcher shop, went to YouTube, started making sausage, learning how to make it, and it kind of took off from there. I was thought I could draw people from Council Bluffs in Omaha into the butcher shop. And it was pretty slow going early on, but I realized one day when this 120 year old lady came in and ordered one sausage for like a dollar 50, that I probably needed to switch gears and do something else. So one of my suppliers that's how it started, I kind of just started googling local farms and local suppliers, producers in state of Iowa found one, and they turned me on to another one and kind of went from there. But they had one commercial customer where they would after production, they would take it up to their office, and a couple of days later put it in their take it down from their employee refrigerator and take it delivered to this restaurant. And they approached me and said, hey, do you want to maybe take over this account? And I'm like, yeah, sure. I need to do something. So I did and kind of spiraled from there. I just started knocking on restaurants doors and back doors and going in to talk to chefs. And we kind of built our program based off of these chefs needs. And I realized quickly that a lot of the products that were out there weren't really what chefs were looking for. They were looking for different cuts and more fat on the pork and different beef cuts that weren't really readily available. So we kind of started tweaking stuff, and we built this custom program based on butcher's chef's needs, and we call it Butcher driven. Just kind of built the program off that.

That's really neat. That's interesting how you have changed things over time. You start with one idea and go, no, not quite. I'm going to do this one. I'm curious, with seller 19, you sold it. Why did you decide to sell? Was it because you now have this new idea and you wanted to pursue that, and you didn't want to have both things going, or what? What was the decision you had to make there?

No, it was just that daily grind. It was the seven days a week. And I was pretty detail oriented, so I wanted to, like, make every sandwich and make sure there was the right cheese, the right amount of cheese, the right amount of lettuce, the right amount of tomatoes. So I wanted it perfect. And so I don't know what the word is, but I really wanted to have control over the process. So I worked seven days a week for however many years, and it was just like, one day out of frustration. And he was always drilling me, when are you going to sell it to me? When are you going going to sell it to me? He was a regular customer, and I finally said, okay, here's what I want for it, and you can have it. And he said, okay. And that was it, really. Yeah.

Did you have to pull in lawyers and drop paperwork, or was it more of like a handshake type of deal?

It was the whole shebang. Yeah. Had to go through all the records and the tax returns and all that good stuff. So it was a little bit of a process, but it did happen fairly quick.

Yeah. Was that familiar territory for you, or were you learning as you go with that process?

No, that was the first never thought anybody would want to buy one of my ideas. So when it came across and I thought about it for a second, I was ready to jump on it. I go back and forth now whether I would regret the decision or whether I would do it over again, but, gosh, I feel like I got more ideas, and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I'm still trying to figure it out. So just move on to the next one and don't let any of those ideas go untapped.

When you sold seller 19, I think this is a thing a lot of people ask us, too, like business owners, what are you selling? Is it the with a restaurant, as of for example, are you selling the building, the recipes, the name? Or is it just recipes? No building? Like, what does that look like?

Yeah, it's all different, I guess, depending on how the business is set up. But this instance was not the building. We didn't own the building. We just rented. So it was the concept and the recipes and the employees and kind of the whole brand, I guess, more than anything, kind of building that brand and something that customers can recognize and quality and just whatever is behind that brand, I think, is what was worth what I sold it for.

Yeah. Knowing exactly how much cheese that's right. Having a problem.

Three tomatoes, two slices of cheese. How do you it's just the mayo. I mean, you just can't squirt so much mayo on. There, like, half the bottle or not enough. It's got to be, like, the perfect that's why McDonald's has the damn gun that squirts, like, three, four spots of mustard, and it's the same every time. It's about that consistency. That's what keeps me up at night, is trying to be consistent and deliver the same product. Some of that stuff isn't necessarily great, but it's consistent. That's how they win. You know what you're getting. It's the same thing every time, so it's hard.

Yeah, that is true, though. Even when you travel across the nation, if you walk into some of these types of businesses, I know the experience I'm going to have. I know when I look to the right, I'm going to see this. When I look to the left, I'm going to see that. You know what I mean?

Yeah. It still amazes me how you're able to scale like that and keep everything consistent with employees and the products and the packaging and everything. It's impressive, and I'm still trying to figure some of that stuff out.

Yeah. I wonder about what goes through your head when you're thinking about all these ideas. Is there a process that you're going through or what's rolling around in there when you go, this is an idea worth launching, and this one I'm going to shelve for. Now, what criteria are you going through? How did you decide to go from the cubicle to I'm going to launch Seller 19, what happens in your head?

Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I don't even make those decisions. Like, it just happens. Like, I know that if I'm supposed to do something, I just do it. And I guess I don't have any rational decision or there's not that one thing. It just feels like it's like, out of my control. Like I just do it and don't really think about it. And if I believe in the idea and believe in the concept, then I just go for it. And that goes back to that not thinking about it, because you probably won't do it. But being able to do that, I guess, is great if you can pull it off and you can get in sticky situations with different ideas. And I've dealt with that too, and it's hard, but you just try and believe in that idea, and then I think that all of it just happens. I mean, certain things have to fall into place and go in your favor, but if you want it to happen, I think you just make it.

Have you had ideas that you felt really strongly about, that you thought were going to be super great and they just haven't panned out the way you hoped?

Yeah. Currently I'm in one, and it's restaurants. I swore I'd never do restaurants again just because there's so many moving parts and so many they're just a conundrum to me, especially in today's environment. They're just impossible. But, yeah, you have this idea and how things should work, and it seems like it should be efficient and easy, but when you get into the framework of it, there's just so many moving parts. That's what I like now, and that's what I love about Jon's Naturals. It's efficient. There's not a ton of moving parts. And with the restaurants, there's just so many variables that it's hard to be consistent and make a buck these days.

What do you think has made Jon's Naturals so efficient? Because I'm sure it didn't start day one at fully efficient.

Yeah.

What has it taken to get there?

Just that individual drive, I think that being able to do it yourself and being able to make it consistent and developing those relationships, I think is the biggest thing, and that's the same thing in the restaurant world. And I haven't had a ton of time to be in the restaurant as much as I should have, and that's probably to my own fault. And maybe one of the problems I think people want to see that your face and owner and that's kind of I think how Jon's Naturals was built is just based on myself and being able to develop those relationships with people. Yeah.

And that's something I know. Pre interview, you've given me a couple of notes here, and you talked about balance in there a couple of times. And I do wonder about that. As you're transitioning from Seller 19, you're doing Jon's Naturals and you have your other restaurant ventures that you're doing. Do you find yourself stuck at times between balancing all of that or juggling it? And how do you deal with that?

Yeah, totally. I mean, it gets overwhelming at times and that's part of the nature of the beast, I guess. But yeah, that family balance, that health balance, the work balance, it's all this juggling act and you're always trying to do it all and it can get overwhelming and you get anxiety, especially opening new concepts. And there's a lot on the line, a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of people. So it's scary. And yeah, being able to have that balance, I think, is what reduces some of the stress and the anxiousness. Being able to go to the gym and work out and walk and run and hike and do whatever, I think that burns a lot of it off. And then the family, I mean, coming home to kids and is pretty special, just seeing their innocence and they don't have a care in the world and it makes it easier, too.

Has it been fairly easy for you to build that in? Because I know many, whether you own a business or not, if you're in a career even, it can be hard to build that time in to take the hike or to be there for the kids before they go to bed. Has that been easy for you?

No, it's been a challenge, too, but I've had the time with Jon's Naturals now that I've built it, and you get to that three, four, five year mark, and then you can finally build a staff and pull back a little bit. And I've done that with Jon's naturals. I have a great employee out there now that does most of the work and the ordering and the deliveries and the sales and she's great. And that has allowed me time to pull back. But then you also get Lulled to sleep with that, too. And that's one of the challenges now, is you pull back and just be content and then you can get stuck in that rut where you're not as focused on the next thing, you're not as focused on what you should be focusing on. And so you can get a little to sleep a little bit there. But no, I've been pretty good trying to find the balance, being able to find the balance.

Yeah, it's interesting. One, McKay and I talk about it a lot, too, just being business partners together with family and other interests and things we want to pursue. And we finally have decided, we personally believe that work life balance is a lie, that you can't have balance because you're always going to tip one way or another. And that it's. Given us a little permission now to go, I'm putting more into the business right now, and then next week I might put more into the family. And so we're not balancing because we felt like we kept feeling torn. It's a little semantics, right, how you want to think about it in your head. Yeah, we've definitely found that kind of this sway and being good with that, but then making sure that our family is also good with that.

Yeah, definitely there's more people involved in your decisions. And everybody calls me selfish, and my wife sometimes calls me selfish, and I try and give attention where attention is needed, but it's always a lot of work. And, yeah, finding the right groove and, yeah, you're right, things do require more attention at times, and that leaves less time for other stuff. But trying to find out where to spend it, it's a little bit of a trick. But overall, I think it works.

So mental health is an important thing to you, and we were talking before we jumped on here that you've even been involved in some community projects with that. Can you tell me a little bit about why you decided to get involved and what that project looks like?

Yeah, so mental health is huge with the restaurants. It's something that we feel strongly about. And I lost my dad to suicide when I was 15, and it just kind of threw our whole family for a loop, and it was hard on our family and hard for everybody and growing up and having to kind of figure out stuff on your own. It's and not really understanding a lot about mental illness when you're at that age and what it all entails. And as you get older you ask questions and learn about it. But yes, it was something that I always felt strongly about. My dad was a physician at Jenny Edmondson, and he just had a great I have great memories of Jenny Edmondson. Went to school at Hoover, and we'd always walk over after school and stop at Jonson's Pharmacy. I know you might be too young for Jonson's Pharmacy, but there's this little pharmacy, obviously, and we'd go get candy and then walk up to my dad's office and the nurses would all give us more candy and we'd go home. So we have great memories of Jenny Edmondson's. So I always wanted to do something in my dad's honor for that our family did, and we finally came up with the right idea and the right people involved to be able to create something. Campaign to raise money for mental health and the behavioral health unit at Jenny. It started kind of with an idea. I was just out running one day and I got to like, mile two and mile three, and I just started crying just out of nowhere, and it was listening. When I talk about this story, and sometimes when I talk about my dad, it gets me, so I apologize. So I just started crying. And it was actually a Whitney Houston song, which, yes, I run to Whitney Houston. That's okay. But it was like the percussion saxophone in the song, and it just reminded me it pulled me back to those memories of my dad. And I just remember being in the basement of our house and he would pull me into his office or into his den, and he had these real fancy headphones and all these fancy speaker equipment, and he'd put his headphones on me like these, and we would listen to all this music. And it was one that I remembered, and it just hit me. And it was crazy. So I came home, and I called my friend at the hospital, Tara, and said, tara, I got this great idea. I figured it out, but figured out how to solve mental illness and help. And she's like, okay, well, tell me about it. I said, we need music. We need a music room and the hospital and the behavioral health center. So people, when they come, they're so at such a life moment, and so they're so stressed out, and we need to have some place for them to decompress. And I think music is the answer. And she loved the idea, and she said there was already a campaign kind of working, and so I just jumped in, and we worked on getting all of it put together, and we developed a nice little campaign with all of their help and all of their work and a bunch of great donors and developed this campaign. And we raised, I think, over a million bucks for the behavioral health center. And we got to redo the courtyard and redo the floors and the walls and the rooms and the paintings and just make it a more pleasing facility. I think that mental health gets, you know, swept under the rug a little bit, and it was kind of the last of the remodels. You know, it doesn't get the same attention as some of the other places and some of the other areas in the hospital. So it was just a great thing to be a part of.

That is cool. And you hosted that event at your restaurant, didn't you?

Yeah, we hosted it, and we had a bunch of people show up, and we gave speeches and not a good speech guy. I try and get nervous, but, yeah, it was great. Just kind of telling stories, I think, is the big thing. People are drawn to stories, and if you can tell a good story, I think people will listen.

I'm totally with you. Hence the podcast.

That's right.

Yeah. Good stories. There's so much of that, whether you're talking about mental illness or you're talking about people who are just, well, I guess struggling through anything in life. Right. And within business, I think mental illness gets overlooked a lot, that it's hard, and people can get swept away with running their businesses. Let alone in other areas of life. We're talking about that work life balance and certainly known a lot of people who kind of cracked under the pressure of trying to hold all of that together and it's not talked about much at all. And so that's one of the goals here too, is certainly we want to celebrate the successes because they're really fun and they are what make you leave your cubicle and do the thing right. But I think it is important to shine a light also on like not everybody is an overnight success. Actually, I know very few people who have ever been an overnight success and there's a lot of work in between.

No, there is a lot of work and a lot of decisions and failures. You learn more from the failures, I think, sometime, but those failures can have massive consequences and they can affect you in your life and your family in so many different ways.

Yeah. Are there any that stick out to you over the years for as far.

As me personally, as far as instances.

Where you just learned something, not necessarily that you lost the whole thing, but has there been anything you're like, wow, I really learned from that.

Yeah, a ton. Partnerships and people and relying on people and just yeah, I learned a ton. People have different ideas in business and partnerships. I've never really been involved in many of them before. Over the past few years I've been involved in a few and they've been a challenge and really being able to work together and have the same goal and the same effort and it's definitely been one of the hardest things I've dealt with in business.

Yeah, Mikaela and I talked about that a lot, being business partners and I had a business partner prior who was actually also my husband and that imploded. I mean, many things going on there, not just because of the business, actually, probably not a ton because of the business, but it added another stone to the pack. Right. And Mikayla was there through part of that. So then when we decided to come together, I brought a lot of hurt and I was scared because of that, but I also have a lot of hope and a lot of ideas and like no, no, like, we can't make this work. I didn't want to be stuck in the fear, but the fear was there and so it helped us shape our partnership, actually in many ways, I think for the better. But it's not to say that it's made it perfect and we still have things that come up and we've had to figure out how to navigate through those, but it's also been one of the richest pieces of my life too. It's great we get to grow through that together and I don't know if we'll be business partners forever or if there's a time on it, but it is interesting figuring out working together.

Yeah. I see the chemistry between you guys and bringing those outside experiences from previous either businesses or relationships is what makes you who you are, and you learn from all of that stuff. And I think it's made for that next step or that next program or next idea or whatever, that it helps, and it helps lessen the anxiety, maybe the burden, the nerves, the fear, and it just builds you for that next thing.

Yeah. So you've started four businesses, correct?

Yeah, I think so.

What were the other two? Because we've talked about Cellar 19. Jon's naturals.

We have cellar 19. We got Jon's Naturals, we have my wife opened up with myself and another couple tap hydration, and it's an IV and health spa down on Valley View Drive. And it started in 2018 or 19. And it's been great. My wife does all the work and she's the service provider. And I say I'm the idea guy. I help try and help with some stuff. I'm obviously limited on what I can do, but it's a beautiful little business. It reminds me of Jon's naturals. It's efficient and it's been great. The timing, I think, is huge on some of those things. It reminds me of the timing with Jon's Naturals. And Jon's Naturals was kind of when that farmed a table and that kind of resurgence was started happening, and it felt like it was right before that. So I was able to get in early and get the jump on it. And I feel like tap hydration is the same thing. It was early on and there wasn't a whole lot of competition. There's still not a ton in our market. And it was really able to get a foothold. And it all comes with service and the service provided by my wife, and it's been a great little business.

That's cool.

Yeah.

What about pizza?

Yeah.

Yeah, because I remember one of the first times I think I met you was you were at an event with your pizza, which was amazing.

Yeah. We have a pizza truck. It's called lodestar pizza. That's actually the name of the truck. It's an international harvester and the load stars. Lodestar is the model. It's 70, 319, 73 flatbed pickup. And we mounted a pizza oven from Italy on it, and it's all wood fired. And you get this oven up to like 500 degrees, and it's this beautiful piece of art.

It is cool.

It's so functional that just cooks the most beautiful pizza. So we have two of them. We have one at the restaurant at Lincoln's Pub and then one on the pizza truck. And we do mobile events for weddings and street dances and all that good stuff.

Yeah, it's good stuff, too.

Thanks. Yeah, we try it. There's different variables, especially trying to cook outside and in the dead of winter. We had one a month ago and it was cold out, and you have that outside influence and makes it harder to cook a pizza. So still learning.

Did you learn how to do that on YouTube as well?

Yes, I had some help and a couple of other guys that had worked at a couple of the restaurants came and kind of showed us some dough and the stretch. It's all about the stretch and the dough. That's the biggest thing. Yeah, the dough and the ferment and the rest and the portion size. But it's really all about the stretch. It starts with this nine ounce or 14 ounce ball, and you got to stretch it into this beautiful dough and you got to leave the crust and you can't make it stretch, it too thin and otherwise you're going to get holes. And you put it in the oven and it rips and you just ruined it.

I've definitely done that.

Yeah, it's perfect. But it's got to have the right dough, the right temperature and the right stretch. I'm a flip guy in the air. I feel like when you flip it in the air, kind of like the what you might call it, it stretches on its own and gives you that frisbee type look and it makes it perfect.

Have you ever had one stick to the ceiling, though?

Not to the ceiling, no. I've dropped two on my flip.

Not bad.

And I think it was right after I said I've never dropped one. And I was outside and I was in way too many people and we were behind. And that's when I think I just got flustered.

Yeah, it'll happen to the best of us, right? I'm curious to know, what have you learned about yourself through owning all these different businesses?

I've learned that I'm kind of well, I go to football practice. My kids started to play tackle football last year, and it was their first year. And they were like, okay, we're going to the NFL. We're starting to play tackle football. We got our pads on, we got everything. I'm going to start just crushing people. I'm going to be scoring touchdowns. And my kids are kind of like me. Not the biggest, but they're quick, they're agile, and speed wins, I think. But we played some bigger teams and they loved it, but they realized early on that, boy, this is a physical sport and it's the real deal. But anyways, they practiced a couple of nights a week and there was like the older kids practicing on the other end of the field and they were like the 7th, 8th grade team or something. And I was just watching their team practice and like 50, 60 kids. And they were do you have every different type of kid out there? And there wasn't really too much organization. And there was one kid out there, though, that was just a bad ass. There was one kid who was just killing people and nobody wanted to tackle them. They're doing tackling drills and everybody else was kind of just going through the motions. And this one kid, skinny, tall, lanky kid, socks rolled down, and he was just killing people, like, every single time, just showing that passion. And he was like, the one dog out there. And that's what I want to be. I want to be that one dog. And I feel like I'm getting there. I feel like I can do a lot and I can back up against the wall. And that's when I do my best work. And I don't think I'm that number one guy yet, but I'm like, top ten, and I'm working my way down to get to that one spot. But I feel like I can do anything. I feel like I can tackle any challenge and not scared. I'm nervous. But you try and channel those nerves and that fear into energy and find somewhere to find that motivation and that drive and get it done. But where do you think that comes from?

Were you like that as a kid?

You know what? I was? I was super athletic, and I was determined and thought I was pretty good at sports, and I was stud. I was, like, on the working my way up. Junior high is kind of when I peaked, but I was still great. We played every sport. We played football, baseball, basketball, track, golf, everything. Tennis. And then when my dad passed away when I was 15, I was a freshman, and I you know, I just went through that spell where I just quit, and I just quit everything. And I was always I feel like, you know, I don't know if there's pressure, but my dad wanted me to play all those sports, and I enjoyed it, but it was a lot. It was something every night, and it was just go, go, go, and always playing, playing, playing. So when my dad wasn't there, I was like, Screw it, I'm done. I'm quitting. I'm going to do whatever I want. I'm going to try and be cool and party and hang out with older kids and think I'm whatever. So I think that's maybe where I get some of it. I feel like I left something on the table as far as sports and maybe athletics and stuff. So I want to prove myself in business, and I think that's where I find my motivation.

I'm backing way up in your story here.

Sorry.

No, this is good. I love it. How did you end up in a cubicle? What were you doing in a cubicle?

Oh, man, it was brutal. I graduated from Iowa in 2000 and got a marketing degree. Slid through the cracks somehow. I'm not sure. I still have dreams where I wake up and I didn't graduate. I was at one credit short, but I literally graduated, I think, with one extra credit or a half something. I don't know how it happened, but they told me I couldn't get into business school and I needed all A's the next semester to get in. And I'm like, okay. And I got all A's. I was kind of like the C guy went up too much or not too little, but got in, graduated in 2000 and I was just going to move and go to somewhere and I went to Minneapolis. I interviewed with a finance company and it was like, I don't know, the market crashed or there was a recession or something right around there and nobody was hiring. So I moved to Kansas City and I was going to try and get a finance job. Ended up working at a restaurant and then helping build a bar down there. And I just kind of went down there on my own, and I didn't know a lot of people. And I was down there a year, I think. And I had a friend back at Warner Enterprises Trucking Company in Omaha. Good company, but I was there four or five years and kind of worked my way up a little bit and met my first wife there, Libby. She's great. And I had a lot of friends that worked there too, but just realized it wasn't for me. I couldn't sit in the cubicle. I felt like it was like 06:00 A.m. To four or something. So I leaving the house at five when it was dark, and you get off the interstate there at the SAP Brothers and there's a line of 50 cars, they all got their turn signals on. I felt like I was in the hamster wheel or the cage just driving in and it was brutal. And you drive home at night and it's dark again and I just couldn't do it. I knew that I was meant to do something else.

Yeah, pretty incredible. And then you started Seller 19.

Yeah, yeah. I don't even know where that I think that was always in the idea there, but I don't know how. I just think it was the construction. Driving to work every morning, I saw a little building by my house and I'm like, yeah, let's do that.

That's really interesting you say that, because I've had a number of other guests on who have said quite literally, and you mentioned this, actually, with Jon Naturals, they saw a building and the building, like, spoke to them and they weren't sure what they were going to do with it. They just knew they had to have it. Yeah, they were going to put something in there.

Yeah. Those buildings, they look like something and they have a story to tell and they've all been there. My building at Jon's Naturals was a hatchery originally.

Really?

So, yeah, they raised chickens there, I guess.

Chicken hat. Yeah, chicken hatchery, yeah.

And then it was the feed store, Macquarien Feed and Grain, and then me. But I still have people come in that farmers, and they're like, I came in here as a boy. There's this lady behind the counter in her chair. So yeah, it's cool to tell those stories and to bring an old building back to life. Yeah, or a new building.

What has that been like as far as outfitting a building and designing a building? Because you do have a lot of attention detail. I've been inside a couple of your businesses and they're beautiful.

Thanks.

What is that?

It's got to come from my mom. My mom I haven't even talked about my mom. My mom's a badass. She's an interior designer by trade, but she's where I get all my inspiration and motivation. She's like entrepreneur, one on one, start her own business, worked for a company, then branched out on her own. And she's got that eye, and I think that's where I get all of that from. It's easy to build out an old meat shop, chicken hatchery, just put some old rusty meat grinders and stuff out there and hang a couple of pictures of steak or cows on the wall. Restaurants are a different story, especially new construction and everything's so expensive and it can get out of control quick, but yeah, we've designed a few of those.

Yeah, it's neat to how you've worked the history in have you always been interested in history? Was that as a kid?

No, my college roommate was a history major and I don't know why he never used it.

Do they ever I don't know, history majors?

Yeah, probably just like trivia or to make you look stupid.

Yeah. I want that person on my trivia team for sure.

He graduated a semester behind me and I got done in December of 2000. He didn't graduate until May, so he hated my guts because I was done and I didn't have anything to do. And I stayed there an extra semester and I was always trying to get him to come out and party with me or hang out, and he'd be locked in his room, like writing history, 70 page history papers on the third Reich or something. So no history. I don't know. I just appreciate it. And councilbuse has a ton of it. That's where Lincoln's pub came from is the Lincoln monument. I had two young boys back when we started it and I would keep them like one or two days a week. I had a little flexibility, so I would keep them home from daycare and we'd just always go do something, go to the children's museum, go to Lucy Clark or the Lincoln Monument. And that's where we went that one day. Lincoln Monument straight up the hill from the pub, linkett's Pub. And it's where we used to run around when we were like 8th and 9th graders. There's the black angel in the cemetery. We'd run up there and cause trouble after school and get into quite a bit of trouble up there. But yeah, there's a statue or whatever up there and it's got a sweet little story up there about, I think, general Dodge and Lincoln. They were standing over there looking over the river, out over the river, seeing where they were going to put the railroad. And Lincoln had four plots of land, or a bunch of plots of land right around here, and he wanted to put the railroad up here so he could monitor those plots of land that he bought or got. And that's how it was started. And I went to Abraham Lincoln High School. 96, right? Yeah. So that's where Lincoln's pub got its name.

That's cool. I love it. And there's a picture of you as Lincoln, abraham Lincoln on the wall.

That's right. You took that picture.

Yeah. You came down to the studio, and that was a really fun project.

We used some old film and an old camera, right?

We did.

We have one shot.

Four by five. Four by five film.

What is that stuff? It still exists?

It sure does. It's just film just like you think.

Got one shot. You got one shot.

Can't blink, man. I know. We shot it digitally and on film just to have the backup, but the backup, the film backup is digital. The film turned out pretty sick.

Yes, it did. We bought a $3 suit from the Goodwill next door. Looked pretty sweet.

It did. It looks pretty legit. I think people could mistake it for the real deal. So I have some rapid fire questions for you.

Oh, man, I'm horrible at that.

You can take your time.

Okay. Doesn't have to cut the paws out.

Yeah, we could do that, for sure. What do you think is the biggest misconception about owning a business?

The work involved and the nonstop about it. It looks fun and it looks cool, and you can be on Instagram and take pictures and look cool and stuff, but it takes work, and it takes years and years of work, like at least five years of day and night work to get it off the ground. Some are different, some are easier, but from my experience, it's that four or five year mark of your head down, grinding, everything going wrong, everything breaking. The payroll, the rent, the loan, the water bill, all come just, like, so quick. And after four or five years, it feels like they start to slow down and you slowly get ahead. And that grind is what is the biggest misconception. It takes a lot of time to get them to work.

I'm with you. Has there been an important piece of advice that you've been given that you've.

Actually applied on business? Gosh, I watch Instagram, and I get pieces of advice all day. I can't remember any of them, but.

My husband does the same. He sends me Instagram reels all the time.

Yeah, my wife did you know that? Yes. My wife does, too. But biggest piece of advice would probably be that nothing's going to be given to you, and you can't really count on too many people if you want something done, and you're going to have to do it yourself and just put in the time and effort to make it work. And when you own your own business, nobody is really there. It's you. And you don't have a boss or a company or it all comes down to your execution. And you're the everything. You're the accountant, you're the janitor, you're the producer, the service provider, and you can't rely on anybody else. Kind of rely on yourself.

Yeah. Which can be fun and a little crazy.

Yep. For sure.

Yeah. Is there a piece of advice you would tell your 18 year old self now, knowing what you know?

Yeah, I would tell them to just believe in their ideas and go for it. Don't delay and don't be scared to make decisions. And don't leave it on the table. If you are passionate about it and you want to do something, you believe in it, do it. I don't want to be there when I'm 60, 70 years old, talking about how I almost did this or almost did that. Life short. And if you're not happy with what you're doing, you got to do the things you love and the stuff you want to do, so just go for it.

Yeah. Is that something you're hoping your kids pick up from you, too?

I hope so. I think one of them is a little more pragmatic, and he'll probably be like, what's he going to be besides the NFL football player and a Navy Seal? And then he wants to be a cook, too. Nice. Yeah, one of them will probably be like, a biology teacher, and the other one will probably be like, selling bracelets on the boardwalk out of a van.

Nice.

But yeah, hopefully they do that's.

Awesome. Do you have a favorite kickback and relaxed beverage?

Kickback and relaxed beverage? Yeah, I do. Miller Light and Grand Marnier. A little sidecar of Grand Marnier. A little sipper.

Yeah.

And it seems to work good.

Nice. All right, good to know. Is there a song or a book or a podcast that inspires you right now?

Song, a book or a podcast? I'm not a huge podcast guy. I should be.

You will be now, of course.

Yeah, definitely song. I'm kind of doing the whole country thing at the moment, but my current song is well, my kids are into walk up songs for baseball. I got walk up music now. We didn't have that back in the day, so the Moby Flower is one that really gets me going.

Okay. Yeah, let's check it out.

Yeah. Flowers. That's a great one.

Okay, cool.

Then what was the other one? Podcast, song or a book?

Any of them yet?

Book is from good to great, and I haven't even read all of it. I think I've had it for, like, 20 years, and it's from how to go from good to great, and that's my problem. That's my biggest hang up as an entrepreneur. I feel like I'm good at a lot of stuff, and I've got a lot of stuff and ideas, and I do them all good. I don't think I do anything great. I'm trying to make that next step to great. It's hard, and it's everything in relationships and being a dad and owning your business. I feel like I'm good at all of it, but, gosh, I want to be great. Maybe you never get to great, but I want to be there. So I need to finish the book. Hopefully they tell me how you get.

There and how you define it. Maybe.

Yeah.

That's interesting. What's something people often get wrong about you?

My wife will tell you different. I call my self counsel of Second Son just because behind Tom Hannah Fan and Jenny Edmondson or something, but she says that now that's not real and that Little Jon Nelson. I call myself Little Jon Nelson or she does or something, but I feel like I'm still a kid and I'm still growing up and still figuring out what I want to do, but just that. What was the question? People get wrong about me?

What's something people often get wrong about you?

What do people get wrong about me?

Or might not know.

Or might not know? I like collect butter dishes. Yeah.

Really?

Anything old and rusty. Really? But I've been on a butter dish, like old vintage butter dishes.

Really?

There's nothing better than, like, real butter in a dish on your counter just out at room temperature.

That's how we do it.

Yeah. With, like, English muffin in the morning. Yeah, it's like last meal death roast type stuff. One English muffin with butter. Real butter?

Real butter.

Warm butter.

Like the carry Gold butter, or are you talking farm butter?

I'm talking farm butter. I get this rolled Amish butter. That's, like, ridiculous.

Could you eat it like cheese?

Good? Yeah.

I just did this yesterday. It was so fun. You bring this up. I also have two or three butter dishes because I think they're cool, but I wouldn't call myself a collector. Room temperature, though, for sure. And I like to have it on saltines. And I did this yesterday because basically I just want to eat the butter. It's more butter than saltine.

Yeah, no, that's great. I got high cholesterol, so I have to watch my butter intake, which I shouldn't collect butter dishes, but I'm working through it.

Fascinating.

Yeah, I think it's heredity mostly.

All right, we'll have to look into this.

Yeah.

Maybe it's one of your ideas that will turn into a business someday.

Could be.

All right, last question for you.

Okay.

What do you think business owners can do to make the world a better place?

What can business do owners do to make the world a better place? Just help people be kind to people, collaborate with each other in your community and work together to make your community better. There's so many different ways to do that and being in business, whether it's working with your neighbor next door on how to provide clothing or shoes or something, and just be generous to people. We're on the 100 block and counts of bluffs, and occasionally we'll get a homeless person that come in and you see staff, like, jump and try to get them to leave and something and maybe talk to them, have a conversation with them, make them a cup of coffee or something on the house or some eggs or something, and that's okay. And I think all those people, homeless people in our community that got stories to tell, just like us, and they were little kids one day, too. So just being good business owner and a good person and being kind to people is a great way for businesses to help.

Yeah, that's excellent. Well, I appreciate you coming in today and sharing your story.

Well, that's it. 03:00 on the nose. Nailed it.

Nailed it.

Good. Twelve.

Yeah.

All right. Yeah, sounds good. Well, I appreciate it.

Absolutely.