CCU's Early Beginnings, Struggles, Porta-Johns, and More with Cren and AJ

Who do you want to thank first, Krenn, about allowing you to be on this podcast today?

Oh man, I gotta thank AJ Vargas with Custom K9 Unlimited, the best CEO and the best of the best company. Not only in the Southeast, but not only in the nation, but worldwide, because they're a global canine provider.

Global.

That's pretty good.

That was pretty good.

Yeah, not a sponsor.

Not a sponsor. Maya is somewhere towards the North Pole.

Yeah, I am.

Yeah, my crane— your makeup looks good, glad to see that.

Oh yeah, yeah, I like the gray.

It's peppered inside of there, or is that— did you do that?

No, that's, that's all natural. Yeah, okay, it's all natural. I do have my phone propped up against the laptop So I do have some light hitting me in the face, so which accentuates the grayness of my beard.

Yeah, it looks very good, especially this time of year. It just— it pops.

Yeah, it does. It makes me feel joyous and jolly.

Well, jolly is not because of the beard, I can assure you that.

No, it's, it's the belly, right?

Well, we're, uh, certainly glad to have you. You know, we tried a couple of times, but your secretary hasn't been able to get us on the right page. So I'm glad that, um, we finally made it to this point because we actually have you on, and, and you were early. So that's, that's an awesome—

yep, I was definitely early. Yeah, I was actually early the last time we tried too. Um, but so I'm, I'm turning over a new leaf, AJ.

I like it. Maya keeps us all on the same page. So, uh, she just happened to be late today, right, Maya?

Not, not late per se. We had to reschedule. My nephew had his little Christmas program at church, so he was a camel. He was a cute camel.

Oh yeah, did Pigpen go?

No, Pigpen acted like he wanted to go, but it wasn't— in reality, he was saying that, but in the same time wishing somebody would say, no, please don't go.

You stink. You can't go.

You can't go. There's no way. You got to get prepared a week ahead of time and start taking baths first.

Yeah, I mean, you've— yeah.

Are you talking about they're a different person?

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, Big Pen.

Yeah, you can't— we went nameless for a reason. Now we released his name to the masses.

No, we'll just cut his name out.

I want you to go beep.

Yeah, every time we say beep it, the thought that counts.

Hey, can we get to the show? The last time this happened, Crain got nervous, so nervous at the last meeting that he choked. And we had to pull out 2 pounds of cheese from his throat.

Yeah, I get nervous during these kind of things, you know.

What sign would one give if they were choking? How would they tell others that they were choking?

You know, I've never thought much about that. Maybe grab the throat? I don't know. Okay, that's the only thing I can think of.

Wrong. The correct answer is slap the table and look crazy, because that's what I did.

No, I thought he was giving a laugh as a mime would, and so I thought he enjoyed all the jokes. No, apparently not.

I was just dying.

And at what point did they realize what was happening?

When I reached down my own throat and grabbed about 4 pounds of cheese and started pulling it out.

The proverbial choke at the meeting. Yeah, we didn't get that contract.

No, I've messed up quite a few, I think.

Yeah, it didn't go well. Um, but anyway, uh, it did teach us a lot. Apparently there's two universal forms of jump choking.

Yep, yep.

But now that we know that, we'll run to your rescue. So, uh, Cran, welcome to The Source, Everything Working Dogs. And now that I've gotten you thoroughly loosened up and Maya understanding the reasons why there's so many stories, yeah, I think we're gonna enjoy ourselves for this next hour or two or three.

Okay. Well, or as long as my phone holds out.

That's right. Kind of going back to the beginning, right, Cran? Like there's, there's a lot of things that people don't know about us, you know, especially if they haven't been around us for extended period of time, right? And you've been kind of gone for 2 years, so like a couple of the other guys are lost at times when we joke and play around. So it's good, it's good in the sense that they get brought in at the most opportune times to hear stories and things of that nature. So you have about 22 seconds to tell your life story and to introduce yourself.

Okay, well, I guess first I'll introduce how I come to know you, AJ. I guess it was back in 2005. I, for whatever reason, got hired on at, at, at a police department that you were already working at and began a career there. And, you know, through that time, unfortunately got assigned to your shift where not only was I gonna meet one of my best friends, but one of the, the people that I, I love to plot on the most. So, you know, I, I remember that probably one of the very first times that I ever, I guess, got to know you was basically a hazing when you called me up.

I'm out. It's not a hazing, okay? That's the word that other people have given it, okay? Not a hazing.

All right, when I earned— when I earned the right to be a part of the shift, we'll say that. There you go.

You got to be worthy.

Yeah, yeah. We were on night shift. I had just finished, uh, shadow phase off FTO, so I was brand spanking new. And I remember you called me and we met somewhere in town. You said, hey, come meet with me over here. So I met you and there was like 2 or 3 other guys there. And I got out of my patrol car and you asked me if I wanted to take a bite from your dog. You don't remember this?

Of course I remember that. All right, yeah, but there's certain things you can't admit. Oh yeah, yeah, because remember, it was a hazing.

Oh, that's right, that's right. Yeah, well, statute of limitations is up, I'm sure. Okay, uh, but yeah, you, you asked if I want to take a bite from your dog, and, and I'm there to impress, so I said sure. And the instruction that you gave me was put this coat on and run that way. That was it.

Straight to the point.

Yep, it was.

Not to give you a lot to think about because your world was going to change. So yeah, I didn't want you to give you a lot to think about, and you would know.

Yeah, I was brand new. So I put the coat on, and I don't know why it never crossed my mind, you know, like so many new decoys and new handlers are getting in a suit. Well, what if he bites my legs? I, I guess I was so new or so dumb that I didn't even think about that. I didn't even know bike pants were a thing. So I put on the coat and I take off running into the dark. And then probably about 5 seconds later, my whole world turned upside down as I ate grass. I gotta say, when I stood up, I had nothing to compare it to. And the only thing I could hear through the night was your laughter and everybody else's laughter as I can't even stand up. So y'all came down, helped me stand up, and it was so dumb that I decided to do it again because you said, hey, you want to do it again? And I said, sure. And we just kept going. I guess I thought, man, that's pretty cool. The rest is— I mean, well, you see it. Rest of it is— it's been good history.

So yeah, we think back and all these stories, and that's what's crazy as you go through. And I said this even at the memorial for Obie, you began to recollect all these stories, right? And they're so clear. Like, I can't remember what I did last week, but I can tell you what we did in training 18 years ago. So the great thing about us being on now is that we're gonna tell a lot of stories and a lot of stories that probably the only ones that are gonna really remember what these stories are about are us. We fast forward. Couple years, and we're sitting in a restaurant on Sunday morning, which we always did when we had to work the weekend, and we just happened to be on day shift at the time. And I went to you and I said, hey man, I'm about to go pro, are you down? And what did you say?

I said, let's do it, right?

Which was the beginning of what we thought was, uh, CCU. Right.

That's—

little did we know. Well, you know, our thing was we were going to get prepared for this, like we were going to get our stuff together. All right, we got to work towards getting ready to leave the PD. And it took about 6 months from that point to the time that I actually left. And we went through a lot of planning, wouldn't you say?

Oh yeah, yeah. I, I remember we had a, probably a, a pretty nice size notebook full of, of plans. I remember I'd go meet with you when I was off and we would sit down and we would basically dissect the canine world. We would dissect the business and we would do a lot of planning, you know, really not even knowing what to plan for, but just had some big dreams. I think one of the funniest things. Coming from that was when we had our, basically a price list of, of everything we're gonna have at our facility. And we're looking at opening a multimillion dollar facility with basically your checkbook and mine. I don't know where all the rest of the money's gonna come from, but hey, we're about to blow this thing up and we're gonna have the nicest facility in the world.

And it ended up being an outdoor kennel in a, in an outbuilding.

Yeah. And we, we were really struggling to have that. Oh, don't forget the, the porta-john.

That's right. But that didn't come until later because we had to get money to get it moved onto the property as well.

When we first broke ground, which was probably one of the most exciting days of my life, was when we broke ground and actually saw things that we had been planning for and hoping for have a beginning. Like the, the first little bit of dirt that was moved was like groundbreaking, literally groundbreaking. You know, I remember when we put our little driveway in on that dirt road and we were like, man, we got a driveway, we got a mailbox. I think it's funny that it all began with pushing a little dirt and maybe pooping in a 5-gallon bucket when we had to. But just, I mean, to me that was one of the coolest things was when all of our planning, even though it, it didn't equal out to what all we had hoped for, but we're now, we're in a place where we're pushing some dirt.

Well, you know, that's crazy cuz we look back at it now and like you have so many people that we have an opportunity to talk with or try to help. That are trying to start out in this industry and everybody wants to make these big plans and how much do I need to have in my checking account or what kind of loan do I need to get? We literally started with nothing. Like we literally like were prayer and just trying to stay focused on just taking one step forward each day and just knowing what we wanted to do and at the end of the day, that's where this all started, with nothing. Yeah, you know, we can talk about a bunch of adversity, which I don't think we really need to get into now, at least not on this episode. But I think it's important that people know, is like, if you're going to follow your dream, do it no matter what. Like, don't allow finances, don't allow yourself to Talk yourself out of it. Just stay focused. And I've said this a couple times on another episode, but if it wasn't for my family and them believing in me, especially my wife, that would've been a big hindrance. And that's the same thing with you, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So I, I remember coming to my wife with the idea and I wasn't met with, but what if this, and we already had our first child and then we were about to have our second. I remember the day I resigned, turning in my resignation letter, we found out we were pregnant with kid number 2, but my wife never batted an eye. She was like, yeah, well, let's do it. As you were talking a minute ago, it kind of reminded me, I think people think that if they get started and are met with a little bit of resistance, that all of a sudden it's a bad idea. And I've used this analogy many times before. But, but, and I'll use it in this because I think it, it made the difference for us. It made us appreciate what we had started and what it is today, but at CCU, but, you know, I heard about a study that was done in the poultry industry where they took a dozen eggs here and a dozen eggs here. They had a control group and then the control group, they did not assist the hatching of the eggs in any way. They incubated the eggs and let the natural process take place. And the other group, they pretty much assisted the hatching of eggs. So when the chick went to break through, they went ahead and started peeling the egg back and all those things and helped the bird out. What was kind of interesting is the eggs that the chicks had to struggle to get out were healthier and lived longer than the ones that had all of the assistance, the ones that had it done for them. Because what the scientists had figured out was them struggling helped pump their blood, helped them clear their lungs, helped them do all these things naturally that they needed to do to survive. When the other group, because it was done for them, didn't have that opportunity and they were unhealthy or died. And I think for us, starting in a recession, I mean, we built a business in, in the middle of a recession. We did face some naysayers. I know that there were some people that would love to have seen us fail. It was that struggle that really made it what it is today. If we had just inherited already a great facility, already a great business plan, I don't know if we would still be here today. At least I don't know if we would have appreciated the process that, that is now what it is today. We both had support with our families and we got to struggle through some things and I think it not only made us better individually, but made the business better.

Yeah, that's 100%. I, I, I mean, wow. I, I couldn't even believe that came outta your mouth right now. That was really profound. Absolutely right. And a great analogy, especially for those that are listening that are about to go through that or teetering on that line on whether they're gonna take that step or not. I often say, if I know, if I knew then what I know now, I would've never done it. Like ever, because it, it's darn hard, man. And so when you think back to that time, and I know it's a while ago, but it's like, I can remember my first day not having a job and being at the kennel with nothing. Like, okay, what do I do? I own a business now and I'm supposed to be doing this and I don't have a job to go to, so I have no choice. I've got to do something. Looking back at that moment when you decided that you were going to leave law enforcement to start CCU, can you give us some insight on like, what were you thinking? Did you really truly understand what you were getting into?

No, not at all. Not at all. There was definitely ideas, and maybe I was a lot younger then, maybe I was naive. To think that failure could be an option for us, but it never crossed my mind. I had a lot of faith in, in you and in your leadership. So, I mean, I was like, well, if AJ thinks we can do it, we can do it. You know, it never crossed my mind that we would fail, but again, being young and dumb may have saved it. I was like, man, this is gonna be great. I'm just gonna train dogs all day. Well, when we started, we didn't even have any dogs to train. I know one of the things that we had talked about was looking at the industry and where the industry was failing law enforcement, where the industry was failing handlers. And we just thought we can do it better. And that was enough to motivate me to say, let's do it. Because I thought the same thing. I had no idea what I was getting into. My idea was we're gonna train dogs. We're gonna have a good time and we're gonna make it work.

Yeah, it's funny that you say that because I had that Field of Dreams attitude where if we build it, they will come, right? We quickly found out that wasn't the truth.

We ain't gonna talk about what Google did to us.

That's a whole nother episode, how to get off Google's blacklist. Um, because again, everybody, we were spamming everybody. We were scraping, paying for a program. Like, I scraped up $10 to pay for a program that would scrape email addresses for me. And then me and Crin, we had a thing that we had to contact 10 people a day each. Yeah. And on Friday, we would be sitting there and contacting people, and I'm like, we're not leaving until we freaking contact these people. Call your wife, tell her you're not coming home, we got to work late tonight. But we were doing that 7 days a week, man. Like kennels, training, spamming. Like, we were doing it 7 days a week just trying to kickstart this thing. We had no— we had no clue at all what we were doing.

When it became real for me was when our first shipment of dogs came. When we were able to get that first shipment of dogs, I think what'd we have, 6 dogs or 7 dogs?

Yeah.

Something like that to come in. We had like a PH1 on the, our very first, what was that dog's name? Renzo.

Renzo.

You know, so we had a great dog coming out the gate, a titled dog coming out the gate. We had some really good dogs coming in and I was like, man, This is awesome. Like now we can actually do something because I'm not good at sitting in front of the computer spamming folks.

I remember letting Renzo run around as we were building the kennel and run around with us and hang out with us all day. And he was like the coolest dog because he didn't go anywhere. He was social, but yet we could put the bite suit on and catch some hellacious bites from him and go right back to work if we had to. And he'd be fine just hanging out with us.

I've got a lot of fond memories of that dog. He was a heck of a dog.

Yeah, he was. Those listening, they're thinking about, well, and I get this question all the time. Chambers, one of the students that just graduated a couple weeks ago, he was talking about that, like, where do I start? The thing was, I was just a researcher. Like, I had no idea. We had no money. We had— I couldn't pay anybody to do it for us, so we just had to research. And back then, internet was scarce. It's not like it is now. We just figured it out and we just navigated the best way we could. It's crazy to know where we came from through that. Like, it's so crazy. And the crazy thing is that the one thing that I never told you was, was it was just as assuring to me that you were coming on and willing to take this leap with me. And that's what kind of motivated me to continue to push and strive to be better. That's what gave me the motivation to make sure that we didn't fail beyond anything else. Like, I can't, because Kran believed in me.

You know, we had each other. We kept things light. We always were playing pranks on each other and making that work environment fun.

And so now when you look, when you look back at all that, or is there anything that you wish that we would've done differently coming up?

Yeah. So just, just thinking about that. I don't know if there's anything we could have done differently, even if I wanted to. I, I feel like we utilized what we had, which was not a lot. We both worked in our strengths and had to grow in some weaknesses starting out. You know, how we struggled to build a business was probably one of the greatest struggles. And I'm sure you've heard people say there isn't a success story without a struggle that precedes it. And we made what we had work, work, I think is part of the story that I wouldn't want to change. I mean, I'm just thinking about things that we used to get excited about that people don't get excited about. I remember when we first got those lockers, you know, we found somebody giving away these lockers and we were just like, this is great, man. Now we can search dope on lockers and those lockers. But for us, It was an extension of more training that we can provide, another avenue of service that we could provide, just something as simple as lockers. And I, I think the excitement we got out of going and picking those up and setting those up and just as simple as they were, made it a better experience. I don't think there's anything that I would change.

You know, I often think the same thing. Yes, we could have wanted a whole lot more. But I think about the potential of so many failures. As an example, what if we had an abundance of money in a budget? We would've blown that arbitrarily and really not invested in our business, and it wouldn't have taught us to be a good steward to what we had and to invest that money. Then I think about, you remember when we met with MARSOC and we had the potential to get this huge contract. And we were in the, the final runnings to that. I look back now, we didn't even have proper project management set up. We would've failed the first month.

Yeah.

At that project because we had none of the resources that we really needed. I'm glad we grew the way that we grew and through the struggles and the successes that we had, because every opportunity was an opportunity for us to learn from, and we did it at a pace. That we could keep up without being a detriment to quality.

When we did start taking on some of those little by little, like when we did a deal for a series of concerts where a dog was donated to a veteran, I think that, that fell at just the right time. But I think those smaller things teaches you how to manage something else that could come up that, that may be a little heftier. And you're right. If we would've taken on something huge in the beginning, we probably would've fell flat on our face. Just to have a little bit of restraint early on when we were starting things, some restraint, you know, fire is great. It offers warmth, it offers light, but if fire is not controlled, then it's dangerous. It's the same thing with our passion. We were passionate about the industry, passionate about our dogs, passionate about putting out a good product, if we weren't protecting that, we could have burned ourselves down to the ground. We had a lot of good ideas and I think things came up at just the right time that let us kind of show some restraint, protect our passion a little bit. And as things little by little came in stretching us a little bit, those are well-timed and I think it gave us some positive exposure.

Everybody wants that huge contract and I hear it all the time. I had a student just a couple months ago that was telling me that, oh, I'm going to do this, my partner knows this person and that person. And I had to finally tell them, hey man, believe me, I'm not trying to kill your dreams. One thing I'm going to tell you is that's not reality, right?

I think too, a lot of these new trainers that are coming out and have dreams of building a successful business in the canine world, one of the things that we teach them is we won't put a baby at the top of the stairs and expect the baby to make it down safely because there's a process to everything. Baby's got to learn how to crawl. Then they got to learn how to stand. Then they got to learn how to walk. And even when they learn how to walk, they're not ready for stairs yet. There's a process in place, a natural process that has to take place before you're ready for certain things. And so Having a great idea, like I can look at a baby and say, one day this kid's gonna run around and play outside, but it would be insane for me to expect that baby to just go out there and do it at that time. Know when you should take that step and when you should just learn how to stand up. The Lord must have been watching after us when certain things came about that if we would have stepped into we'd have fallen on our face.

But we got to see the process, and some of that we didn't do on purpose. So, you know, we wouldn't sit here and be like, oh, look at us. Absolutely not. I'm, I'm telling you, some things were done by accident. However, looking back now and being able to give advice and allow people to learn from our experience, which is something we pride ourselves on, We're telling you, take those baby steps and learn and get comfortable and then grow a little bit more and more and more.

Yeah. Because, and too, AJ, not to cut you off, but just because one business does it doesn't mean it's right for your business. Early on, we had to do some things to survive. And one of those things, I, I don't know if you remember, was when we did like little group obedience sessions. On Saturday mornings and a lot of places were doing that already. And we thought, well, if it works for them, it works for us. And, and it was really more headache than, than what it was worth, we found out. And so when you have your idea and your model, it doesn't mean you have to make it what someone else's idea and model is. You can do your own thing. You just gotta be ready for it.

There's a lot of things that came about later. That we pushed off and said, no, we're not going to do them. And then later on, I think, dang, why didn't we come up with this idea so many years ago? Like, we had everything in place, but it just wasn't the right timing. Yeah, as we navigated through things, definitely the Lord looked after us in more ways than we could ever count or even appreciate. However, those things that you're mentioning and giving these new trainers this advice early on, because I wish somebody would have told us the reality of it. Of course, we didn't have anybody doing that. However, it really puts in perspective the fact that, like you said, it takes time to grow.

Yeah.

And then it just doesn't happen overnight. And taking it slow and not rushing it, not trying to be where we are today I hope one day you— somebody surpasses us, especially if it's one of our students. That's the biggest joy that anybody could ever— I want to go to their facility and learn from them. I want to see what they're doing and how many dogs and how many teams they're teaching and training and the magnificent things they're doing. And we have a lot of students that are doing that already, right? But I love to see that.

Yeah, no, I, I think of people like Riggs. Who's killing it in his area. I mean, he's putting out teams, people like that who've, who've found their own way in the industry and who are doing a, a great job with it in their area. Now, I'm like you, I would love to see more students once they leave school with these big ideas find a place, plant themselves in that place, and, and, and become successful, whether they Maybe they only put out 2 or 3 teams a year, but that's, that could be huge if they're putting out quality teams. And that was really the mindset we had when we started was we can do it better. We can put out quality teams. We can give quality training with a quality dog, give quality knowledge and put them out back out there in their department and let them just blow people's minds. And we've got people that we've trained that, that are out there doing a business right now that they're doing that in their area.

If we look at the core and why we started what we're doing, yeah, even though we said, okay, it's a K-9 team, it's a dog, it's a handler, we still take that same principle and we can put it with a trainer, we can put it with a kennel master. Now we can put it with this type of handler or that type of handler, not just with a law enforcement agency. Now it's with these other markets that we now have. Opportunity to touch. And, but, but the real focus and the core of that was to never, ever take any shortcuts on what we were doing and how we were doing it, no matter what, and live up to that in every sense of the word. Yes, we understand nobody's perfect, and I say that all the time, but we should try darn well to, to be as perfect as we can and put ourselves in the client's shoes to provide the services that they expect. And we still today strive to do that every single day. And now we just have a bigger reach. We have more opportunity to help those.

Yeah, you're right. Yep. It's quite lonely, but it was a lot of fun.

Now I'm gonna ask you this and I'm gonna tell everybody to plug their ears when you answer this because I'm gonna ask you for one thing that you're glad that we didn't know when we first started that we now know, because that would've hindered us from probably even starting.

Wow. That's a tough one for me. Like, I think one thing was that there's some crummy people out there. I think we had an, a little bit of an idea that we were just gonna be supported so much, but the people that, that we heard the most were those who wanted to see us fail. We had far more many people cheering us on, but the ones that wanted to see us fail spoke louder than the multitudes of people that wanted to see us succeed. You and I both went through some personal struggles during that time early on. A lot of that had to do with, we knew there were people that, that wanted to see us fail. I think to answer that, I would have to say, I wish that people who suck and wanna see you fail, I wish you didn't hear 'em.

Yeah. And that's, that's great for someone that's opening up a new business or just starting out. We've had some opportunity to work with some pretty famous people throughout our time, but it's all. The same sound even with them. Like there's so many people, they're doing well, but there is so many people that want to see them fail as well for no reason at all other than, you know, people hate to see other people succeed, I guess.

Right.

And you know, telling these new trainers, for me, the biggest thing was I gravitated more towards the Lord and I kept my focus forward. I didn't look around me. I didn't look behind me. Anybody can say anything they want to say about me, but I know my heart. I knew your heart, and I knew that we were always doing the best for that. And no matter what anybody else would say, I always knew that 100% of the time we were always going to do what was in our heart and do the right thing as best we could, right? But You're absolutely right. I told a trainer this just last week. Don't worry about what's going on around you. Stay focused on where you're heading and you'll be all right. I promise you.

Well, my grandfather, he was old school. He ran a farm and you remember him, old, hardheaded. And up until the day he had a stroke, he would plow with a mule, but he had a tractor he could plow a garden with, but he preferred to plow with a mule and What you said is, is exactly what he did. And it makes a lot of sense. If you wanna plow straight rows, you gotta keep focused ahead of yourself. His, his rows were straight and it was because he didn't get distracted with things. He had that bull pulling that plow. He had both his hands on that plow and, and he stayed focused and was able to have beautiful gardens growing all sorts of things. That's hard in, in business to stay focused, to keep looking at your goal and working toward that when you've got so many things that can distract you. I mean, it, it's funny that, that what we do in training, we don't do in our life because we will put distractors out there for a dog to get them over distracted. But Lord help us if a distraction comes our way. We don't want it. We wish there was never a distractor. But it just like with a dog, it makes that dog better out there on the street. It makes that dog better in, in their work because they've worked through it. They've had to train through it. Distractions are gonna come, but staying focused is a great key.

Yeah, absolutely, man. And I'm gonna say this now, if those that are listening right now are not and haven't been taking notes, I'm going to encourage you to go back and listen to these, these key things. Because now that I've vocalized those, as I hear the wisdom coming from you, Cran, like, I didn't even know you were this wise. Like, we've been together all this time and all this stuff was trapped inside that noggin all this time. And it's crazy to hear us vocalize this because we never have in the past. Yeah, we've ever had these types of conversations?

Well, you know, I've never been accused of being very smart, but, you know, I have shining moments every once in a while.

Well, you know, you did have a little bit of time to prep since you counseled 3 or 4 times. Well, I'm going to get into just 2 other things and, and kind of on a personal level, um, because you did mention that we dealt with some things personally, right? I've been a master through my time to separate my personal stuff, my personal life, and all that with what I do in the business front. And a lot of that is the, the help I get from my wife. Like, she's wonderful in that. She's actually paying me to say these kind of things, but at the same time, we're not beyond being touched personally with just things going on in our lives and still having to deal with the business side of it. So I'm going to ask you this, and you can answer however you want to, but can you just speak a couple moments? Because we all deal with personal stuff, but that may be going through some personal stuff or just may need some encouragement to, to really know that we all go through it. Like, it— that doesn't change. And it's how we deal with it in order to continue to push forward. We don't quit. Again, we never had these conversations, and some of it is because I've avoided them. Like, literally, I'm like, I'm not going to talk about this because it's probably going to hurt me more than anything. But if we don't talk about it, we can just slap each other with a leash, laugh, tell some jokes, and push on. But if we talk about it, then we got to address it, right? So if you don't mind, just give us a little bit of insight.

Well, I guess one thing that, that I would, that I would share, even though I had 100% full support from my wife, I struggled a lot early on when, you know, I'm, I'm draining my retirement to pay myself. Because everything we made went right back into the business. And so I'm draining my retirement because I wanted it to work. But when that retirement dwindled down and we still weren't really making anything, you know, it, it, it did bother me because as a husband, as a dad, I wanted to provide, you know, and feeling like I'm not doing— I mean, I felt whatever I felt at work. I knew I was doing a good job. You know, my, my dogs always look better than yours. Okay. Always. So I knew I was doing a great job at work, but I felt like I was failing at home. And, you know, that's one of the things that, that I tell people all the time. You can be successful everywhere else in life, but if you fail at home, You fail, period. If you, you fail because you know, that's where it matters. You know, you can, you can give your best at work, but if your house gets your leftovers, you're wrong. And I felt like early on because I was, I think maybe because I was young, because I was, you know, driven to, to do this thing, whether I was making any money at it or not. There was a time where I realized I'm failing at home. I remember kind of that day when Sandy came to me and says, we've got to have some income. And I was like, I don't know when that's coming. Like, you know, you and I both were still not to a place where we could pay ourselves. And I remember that day, and I remember I was like, man, I said, Sandy, all right, I'll talk to AJ when I get to work. And I was like dreading it. I was like, I mean, how's he going to pay me? I mean, you know, and I remember having a conversation like, hey, when we going to get paid? But eventually things worked to where there was some relief and we had some really good things. And like I said, I think those things were timed really well for us both. But I think what I took out of that is, you know, personally, I was striving so much to make what we were doing great that I forgot about my house.

Yeah.

Yeah. And my wife got my leftovers. My baby got my leftovers. I was just depleted when I got home and I had nothing left to give. And, you know, I would encourage anybody who is venturing out on a task like, like maybe what we did in starting your own business and, and doing those things. Just kind of keep in your back pocket, if you fail at home, you fail. You can run a multimillion-dollar facility. You can put out, you know, 1,200 dogs a year. You can have contracts with all these government entities and, and do all these service dogs or do all these things. But when you get home, if your family does not know who you are, then you've lost. You know, I think, I think that's probably the biggest struggle that I had during the whole thing was realizing that I was giving so much, but at home giving so little.

Yeah. You know, that's, it's crazy that you say that, Krim, because from my perspective, just to catapult off what you're saying and, and And it's going to sound like I disagree with you, but just hear me out first, right? Okay. And I said this earlier in, in this conversation, you know, I had a duty. I had a duty to do whatever it took to make sure that we were successful because I had an obligation. And I felt like I had an obligation, like I still do, to my family. To those families that work with us now, and for those that I have an opportunity to touch. And I remember these conversations vividly with my wife. I remember these conversations vividly with the Lord when I'm sitting on the couch and I'm depressed and I had nothing. And then it hits me like a ton of bricks And I realize it's because I haven't been doing enough. And what I mean by that is, you know, early on we didn't take on any civilian clients at all. Matter of fact, we said we wouldn't ever take on civilian clients. And I remember that first Christmas, I'm literally curled up in the bed, like in the couch, and you don't see none of this. But I'm, I'm like literally depressed. Like, I don't know what I'm gonna do, you know. And it was like a revelation, man. It was like the Lord spoke so clearly to me. Well, if you're so proud that you won't take the skills that I've given you to apply those and work with your hands and do the things that I've entrusted you to do, the skills that I've given you to use, don't sit here and cry to me. And it like, it hit me so— it was like he was speaking straight to— like I could hear him. And from then, that point forward, I said— and matter of fact, it was that same week we picked up our first client for a 1-month board and train. I'll never forget, it was a German Shepherd, and it came out of nowhere. And I'm like, we don't even do civilian dogs.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden she's like that she wanted us to train a dog. But I say that because Contrary to what you're saying, as an owner— and me and Nadine have had this conversation, and you remember at times when I'd be gone for 8, 10 months at a time while you were there by yourself, basically, while I traveled— and that was one of the things that we spoke about, was this is what we signed up for. We can't go back and, and cry about what's been given to us because you're giving us too much, or because we have to have a little bit of adversity, or because I got to be away from you for a little bit. Like, we need to find out how to make this work in a way that we do what we signed up to do, and that was to make sure that Quinn's taken care of. That's to make sure that we make this a success. That's to make sure that bills are paid. That's to make sure— and that's not to sit there and turn our back on things because we're a little bit uncomfortable. As a family, because as a family we made this decision, because I didn't do this on my own. But what I am saying, Corinne, that's not what you signed up for. That wasn't the deal that me and you had. And so I'm not disagreeing with what you say, because that's absolutely necessary. I had to find out ways to do it another way.

Yeah.

You know, but it was important that I put 125% into what we were doing because that's what we signed up for. And, and the biggest thing for me, man, was we asked the Lord to bless this and he did. And for me to then turn my back and go, well, you blessed this, but you blessed it in a way that I didn't really want you to bless it, right? So now I get to pick and choose what I want to do. And I just always felt like, um, and, and I remember, Cram, we had a conversation when I was overseas one time. We were texting back and forth, and, and we hadn't even talked for a while. And I remember I was sitting there having a drink, uh, of Coke and water and having a, uh, something to eat. And I remember exactly where I was when me and you were talking. And I said that I missed you and that I hadn't seen you. And, you know, it was just something that I've been gone, I've been traveling, and the list goes on. But at the end of the day, I had to realize, and that's what I signed up for, like, period. And Nadine and I have had these conversations in the past, like, we can't cry about this because this is what we signed up for and this is where our obligation is right now.

Yeah. Well, and, and too, some of the things I, I think Knowing, you know, sometimes things affect people in the same similar position differently. I mean, you being the owner and, and I know you always hated me calling you a boss. You used to say, man, don't ever call me boss. Yes, boss. You know, but, but, you know, taking on different responsibilities in something, there's, there's different weights that are, that are given to that person. The things that you're built to do, I'm not necessarily built to do, you know. And I think that's why we work so well together, is because your creativities and your strengths aren't mine, and my creativities and strengths aren't yours. And so we kind of make up a lot of it for each other. So, um, yeah, you're absolutely right. I, there, there is some differences, some lines that are drawn depending on where you stand within what you're creating. You know, I, as much as I hated the idea when it was, when you first came up and said that we're going to take some civilian dogs, I hated that idea. Oh my God, I hated it. But, but there's some great things that came out of it. You know, I think about Ms. Vento. Probably one of the best clients we ever had. People like that who helped our business grow because, I mean, she loved us. Ms. Vento loved us. We loved them. We loved their dogs. It just goes to show that, you know, sometimes things that you may have put out there that I was resistant to was better for us. But, but I couldn't have come up with that on my own. And really, I don't guess you came up with it on your own. You know, you had to have your eyes opened up to the possibilities. But I think for people to approach what they're about to embark on with some realities in check of, yes, it's going to take some time, it's going to take some extra heartache. I mean, literally blood, sweat, and tears went into this thing. Like literally all those things checked off our box, blood, sweat, and tears. And, you know, just to, just to touch back real quick on a point I made earlier, you know, we can— you can have all the success in the world, but if you don't have the things that matter the most taken care of and in order, it's all for nothing.

Um, you all right?

You know, I think, um, the support that, that you and I both had from our wives was probably unlike any other. I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of people that have attempted to do what we did and have fallen short because they didn't have that support. Their wife or their husband or whoever, their, their parents, whatever the case was, for them. They didn't have the support that they needed, and they just lost the drive. You know, it, it killed the drive. We, we had that. I mean, we had support.

So, man, good stuff. Strikes chords, right? It, it really does resonate, and I'm sure it's going to resonate with a lot of people. It's not, it's not easy. There's tough decisions that are made, and there's things that I think it's come from both perspectives. 100%, if somebody can manage, grow a business and start a business and all that and still make sure that they keep their home life, that, that is most important. Would I have ever sacrificed my house for this? I would not have, right? I was just blessed to be able to manage it and have a partner family, my girls that were there to say, Dad, we got you.

Yeah, I think that's probably the best way to look at it. You're gonna have to sacrifice time, you're gonna have to sacrifice some energy, you may have to sacrifice some finances, but it should never come to a point where you sacrifice your family. I think, yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. That's, that's the perfect way to look at it. If you sack— if, if if you have to sacrifice your family to achieve something great, it's not that great.

No, not at all. And, you know, every family dynamic is different too, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

There's been times in my career that my family's needed me more, you know, than what I could give to my business, and I've had to take a step back or adjust things or say I'm not doing that, you know. And that's one of the hardest things for me, and I mentioned this to Nadine, was sometimes I got to say no. And that's, that's hard for me, and that's something that I'm learning, but it's necessary. And, you know, it, it's something that's taken me a lot of years to come to, to say I can't take on everything anymore. I can't expect to be at everything anymore. And it's something that through growth that we've had to do. But at the same time, I would never sacrifice— my family comes first before anything, bar none.

Yep, absolutely.

All right, last one, Kren. You know, looking back, we've covered a lot, but looking back over the years with a bird's eye view of the years that we've spent together, what do you see?

Number one, you can't do anything worthwhile alone. You've got to have people around you that encourage you, but sometimes push you and correct you. And to get you to a place, I think looking back over all the years, it shows me that, that everything does happen for a reason. I get to thinking back to, you know, the department we both worked for was not the only department on the list for me. As a matter of fact, it was kind of an accident that I even applied there. So I thought, because, you know, it just so happened that a department that I was interviewing with said, we don't have a spot for you, but I know their chief, so I'll put in a good word. And that good word carried some weight. I think it was an accident that, that I was put on the shift I was on. I don't think it was an accident that, um, that at my own expense you called me to say, hey, you want to take a bite from my dog? I don't think it was accident that after you saw, after about the 5th or 6th time that your dog ate me, when you said, hey, how about I show you actually how to do this? And you spent some time with me and kind of shaped me to be a decent decoy. I don't think it's an accident. The connections that we made along the way, you know, we've got a great team that, that helps us find these awesome dogs and those connections that we had made. I don't think any of those things were, were by chance. I think that these things were planned out long before we had an idea or a concept what CCU might be like. You know, it's just, it's, it's interesting to see how everything played an intricate part into what CCU is today. From just the day I signed a contract to work at a PD that just so happened to have an AJ that worked there. You know, so it just, it blows my mind that, that all of those things work together for, for a purpose of, of creating this thing that I think has grown beyond what you or I would have even imagined that it, it would become. I mean, I think there's times where if I stop and think about it, I'm a little shocked that we're still not on a small 5-acre plot. That we're leasing and we've got a porta-john with a little makeshift outbuilding as a classroom, as a store, as a this, as a that, you know. But all of those things has happened for a reason. And now the impact that it has for agencies and even for people, you know, that come in and just want to Obedient Dog as a pet. You know, those contacts that we have are all because one day we got assigned to shift together. It's just, it's crazy. It's crazy to think that all of this has happened just because we just happened to like making fun of each other and You know, and we were on shift.

That's right, that's right. That is remarkable to think back of all the stories and all the things that we've done together and to, to see this thing unfold in front of us and how we, you know, looking back now, the craziest ideas that we had on our off-duty jobs that we were planning for And to see where we are today, it is absolutely remarkable. It takes my breath away a lot of times. I'll sit up on the gazebo now as the sun comes up and I see the steam coming off the ground, and I'm just like, man, never would have imagined this whatsoever. The people we have the opportunity to meet now, the connections we're able to have, it's remarkable, man. I would never change it for the world. But most importantly, man, I would never change your friendship. And your help. And there's things, um, that I know that you went through. I know there's things that you sacrificed, and that, although we don't often talk about it, never has been unnoticed.

Yeah, likewise. I, I think, like I said earlier, the things that you're strong in, I'm not. The things I'm strong in, you're not. We just made a great team. And I, I think for anybody starting anything needs to have that kind of support of a great team. And then, you know, we've made it because, man, we just, I, I think because our relationship, we've had a good time together and, uh, you know, and we, we needed each other. That's, I mean, I, I had to have you, you had to have me and it's what it took. So yeah, it's been, it's been a wild ride. It's been a blast.

It has. We need to do this more often. Yeah, it's great.

Good stuff.

We'll talk decoy and tracking next time.

All right, that'll work.

Well, Voice of Reason, Kryn, Skinny Kryn, not so skinny Kryn, wherever you're going by nowadays. Man, it was wonderful. Time, and, uh, we gonna do this again.

Perfect. Looking forward to it. I appreciate it.

Love you, man.

Love you, man. See y'all.