William Huffman  0:00  
Hey everybody, William here and Sarah. And we just need to let you know that we are licensed real estate agents in the state of Minnesota with the REMAX results of Good Life Group. And that's our legal disclaimer. Everybody, William here and today we're talking with Chad, there's knives, places burned down, maybe some stocking stuff. And like tea, I know it'll all fit together.

Accouncer  0:20  
Welcome to Life behind the highlight reel. The podcast that takes things beyond the curated life we all see online, join hosts Sarah and William Hoffman as they dive in with their friends to talk about the good and the hard things that come with a real, not perfect life behind the highlight reel.

William Huffman  0:37  
Today, we have this guy right there, his name is Chad, Chad. Hi, Chad.

Chad Jeske  0:41  
All right,

William Huffman  0:42  
well done way to follow directions, like Simon says, I can see this is gonna go very, very well. I'm gonna warn everybody. Chad is a talker. And there's a lot of stuff that he could talk about for hours and hours and hours is one of the reasons he's so fantastic at his job. So let's go ahead and get that out of the way real quick. What do you do? And what relevance is that, like, just tell me what you do.

Chad Jeske  1:04  
I run a platform called Twin Cities, real producers, which we came up with, to help top performing agents elevate their business. And the way we accomplish that is we utilize a lot of power of proximity. We become the average of the people we surround ourselves with. So we kind of build a culture of like minded like performing people that they can surround themselves with, share off each other's energy share off each other's wisdom. There's a lot more market awareness. There's less sales posturing, it's just it's a different way of working in the world of real estate. And it it's effective. It helps people elevate their business.

William Huffman  1:37  
See, I told you he's a talker. He's an you've done the DISC profile, right? Yeah, yeah, you're an eye. I mean, through and through. I mean,

Unknown Speaker  1:45  
what are you though?

Chad Jeske  1:46  
Honestly, I don't even remember.

William Huffman  1:47  
Yeah, what 100%? I mean, really, Chad, tell me about that plastic bottle there. And then three hours later, I'm invited to your wedding. I mean, that's kind of what you do. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. Now. Why? It's true. He's a talker. That's why he's really good.

Sarah Huffman  2:04  
I thought he might have been an S. Ah, here. I'm curious. You'll have to get back to us on what you are. Yeah.

Chad Jeske  2:11  
I mean, I've been called an s before. As in

William Huffman  2:14  
like a shithead. Kind of Yeah. We keep it PG. 13 Nishan. This bad boy, unless you really need to go explicit. You can drop an F bomb. Yeah, I mean, I'd prefer not for not cool. All right. Go ahead.

Sarah Huffman  2:29  
Well, I'm super excited to have Chad on the show. Chet, we met Chad a little over three years ago, just added a shocking add an event. Event. I don't even know which one but we went to one. And I do believe it was rooftop.

William Huffman  2:46  
Seven, seven years at our first seven. Yeah. You have our first event. Yeah, Fisher was up there. And he wanted us to come hang out with them. Because he's my homie. That was

Chad Jeske  2:55  
a fun event. It was a fun. Note to self don't do rooftop events in July. Oh, Lord. That was when it's extremely windy out. Yeah. Your signage isn't gonna.

William Huffman  3:05  
Yeah, just in general. It was gone.

Sarah Huffman  3:10  
It was a great event, though. It was really fun. But that's how we

Chad Jeske  3:13  
met. I didn't realize that's the first time I met you. i Yeah,

William Huffman  3:17  
I think so. One person that was the first time we met. Got it.

Unknown Speaker  3:21  
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was

William Huffman  3:24  
riveting. Okay. On this podcast, I have had gluten, I have had an energy drink. So I'm gonna be burpee and Barbara, but whatever it is what it is. So here's the deal. We want to learn about you. Sure. You don't want to hear about anything real estate. Really. We don't want to hear about that. We don't want to talk about work here. We want to find out where you were born. Where you grew up about your parents about your siblings. You know what schools you went to, like, you saw a mascot of the mascot. I got a thing I do with the mascot. And that's what we want to know about you. So take us back to the year. What year 98 ish.

Chad Jeske  4:00  
1980 Yes, yeah.

William Huffman  4:01  
When were you born?

Chad Jeske  4:02  
1976 Okay,

William Huffman  4:04  
so you made Canadia Shaco.

Chad Jeske  4:05  
So, I was born in Edina, but that's about as much time as I spent growing up in Edina. Okay, just at the hospital there.

Sarah Huffman  4:12  
Fairview Southdale. Floor two. Yeah.

Chad Jeske  4:15  
I don't know what what floor it was, but it was for two or

Sarah Huffman  4:19  
two owners. And I was born there too. Yeah. And they volunteered at that hospital. Okay, it's not about you as a candy striper. We know.

Chad Jeske  4:29  
So I grew up in Savage, backwoods savage just corn and soybeans, mostly okay. And it was kind of a farm kid. upbringing, so I did things like pick rock and corny tassel.

William Huffman  4:40  
Oh, yeah. Picking boulders out of fields. Yeah, that's horrible.

Chad Jeske  4:43  
Good stuff. Good stuff, but

Sarah Huffman  4:44  
I riveting

William Huffman  4:46  
riveting riveting

Unknown Speaker  4:49  
stuff talk about rocks. Yeah, no, it

William Huffman  4:51  
was there's a market for that somebody will tune in just to talk about rocks. You

Chad Jeske  4:55  
know, interestingly enough, when when I'm interviewing you got to stay closer to the microphone when I'm interviewing. Hi. between people and I find out the the farm kid aspect is part of their background. Yeah always grabs my attention. Yeah, yeah. Tough individuals typically will generalize that way. Yeah. Well,

William Huffman  5:11  
some strong work ethic. Yeah. And when I was doing landscaping, a lot of the crew was Marshall farm boys. Yeah. And hey, I want to bring my friend like where do you know him from martial? Yes. Yes.

Sarah Huffman  5:23  
I want to bring bring my friend. Where do you know him? For from? Medina?

William Huffman  5:27  
Edina.  No, no. No martial. Yes. Edina. I'm moving on. Okay. So so we grew up in savage.

Chad Jeske  5:38  
And he siblings. I have four older half sisters used to have a young one

William Huffman  5:43  
and four sisters only boy.

Chad Jeske  5:45  
Yeah. So to her from my dad's previous marriage to her from my mom's previous marriage. After the divorces took place, they got married and they had me. So technically, I'm an only child, but I'm not.

William Huffman  5:56  
Yeah. Okay.

Sarah Huffman  5:58  
So how did that work? Like, yeah, I was like, rotation wise with the siblings. Were they all on the same rotation? Or did they like filter in and out? Was

William Huffman  6:05  
there one of you than five of you, one of you than five of you? Or

Chad Jeske  6:07  
it was a little bit of that? Yeah. Two of my sisters grew up in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Okay. And they had accents. And they often they would come live with us every other summer. Yeah. And yeah, that was our relationship. And then the other two sisters were there all the time. And then when we became teenagers, I remember one of my sisters from Connecticut, moved in with us and went to high school out here and it was just kind of a turnstile a little bit. Okay.

William Huffman  6:35  
Well, we just we just skipped ahead a little bit. We skipped ahead. Okay, but that's super interesting. So tell us about your folks. How did they meet like, what did they do?

Chad Jeske  6:43  
You know, my parents met at a place called controlled data, which was in Bloomington. It the old Lincoln High School. My father's from Webster, South Dakota, which is on the east side. There are basically two families from Lesnar. It's our family and listeners as in Brock Lesnar. Okay, yep. Brock's in my age group. And then my mom, I believe, grew up in the Bloomington Richfield area. Okay, so they've got a lot of routes out there.

Sarah Huffman  7:12  
So they met at work.

Chad Jeske  7:13  
They met at work,

William Huffman  7:15  
the good old tale, his time timeless tale of meeting around the watercooler,

Chad Jeske  7:20  
I believe, statistically that's how a lot of people Yeah, meet their significant others back

William Huffman  7:24  
then. I bet it was now it's internet and Tinder swiping? Yeah, yeah, no, you're right. Grindr. Whatever those things are. That's that's a one.

Unknown Speaker  7:34  
It's real. It's real.

William Huffman  7:35  
Don't make it weird. It's my job.

Sarah Huffman  7:37  
You made it weird.

William Huffman  7:37  
Thank you. All right. So

Sarah Huffman  7:38  
your parents met? They got married? Yeah. And then little Chad came

William Huffman  7:44  
1976 1976. All right. And

Sarah Huffman  7:47  
did you guys live it? Did they live in Edina? Or were you just born anytime I was just born. Okay. But you lived in Saba in

William Huffman  7:53  
the very beginning when he said he was I know. Well, he said in that was what the extent of the time he spent remember, we put back the tape.

Sarah Huffman  8:02  
Dave, these are really good. Bloopers down the road for when Will's an asshole.

William Huffman  8:07  
Oh, man. That's gonna be a great blooper reel. I'm hilarious. I'm on fire. I'm feeling good. Now that I've eaten you know, I mean, Jordan kicked my butt this morning. But that's a different story. Cool. So they met at work. And so you come along in 1976? Like, what's one of your first memories? Oh, gosh.

Chad Jeske  8:24  
All right. I'm gonna throw this out there. I haven't I haven't shared this in a while.

Unknown Speaker  8:31  
I love it. Sarah one. Oh, we're getting elusive.

Chad Jeske  8:35  
Sometimes when people ask the question, what's something about you? That's different that not a lot of people know. I've been shot, burned and run over by a car. What? All by the time I was. What was it? 12?

Sarah Huffman  8:51  
Tell me more. tell

Chad Jeske  8:52  
you more. Which piece so?

Sarah Huffman  8:55  
Well, what happened first?

Chad Jeske  8:59  
getting run over by a car.

William Huffman  9:01  
Get out here. Are we talking like your toe? Like? No, like, you're lucky to be here.

Chad Jeske  9:06  
I if I if I pause and think about it? Yeah, I remember seeing the underbelly of the car.

Unknown Speaker  9:12  
Yeah, we just went

Sarah Huffman  9:14  
explicit. That was pretty quiet. But

Chad Jeske  9:16  
so are you serious? Yeah. My mom, my mom hates this story. And I don't blame her

Sarah Huffman  9:20  
rightfully so because she drives we're living.

Chad Jeske  9:23  
We're living on a block out in the middle of nowhere. So there's no traffic and things like that. So when kids played back then it was go outside and play. You know, that's it. There's no rules. You don't need a whistle to come home for dinner. Well, my parents would just yell, right yell or name and we would kind of hear it most of the time. So apparently, the story is I was playing in the middle of the road. I was sitting down I don't know what I was doing playing with trucks or something like that. How old were you? I was young. I was probably five. Okay, five or six. Maybe a little younger. Again. I would ask my Mom for this one. And there was a neighbor girl down the street that was just driving down the street and didn't see me. And I don't know how I didn't like hit my head. Go to the hospital. I don't remember going to the hospital go to the hospital. Nope. I just remember being on my back, seen this car go over. And then the car slams on the brakes. And then my mother comes running out of the house. And that's about it. That's all I remember. Like that. Sorry. You weren't ready for them. I

Sarah Huffman  10:36  
mean, child of the 70s. Like, I love it. How it's like, yeah, we didn't go to the hospital. Yeah, I don't.

William Huffman  10:42  
Well, you must have I mean, first of all, think whoever that you were small enough that maybe you just lay down instinctively or something? No,

Chad Jeske  10:49  
I I remember it. I definitely remember it. And

Sarah Huffman  10:53  
no broken bones.

Chad Jeske  10:55  
I've never broken a bone. mean either. Yeah. Challenging sigh Yeah, yeah. I was just gonna say this. Not a challenge.

Unknown Speaker  11:04  
Okay, so

Chad Jeske  11:05  
I got burned. It actually wasn't fire. I someone was boiling soup on the stove. And rude. This one. I think I was I was this might have been first I think it was three or four. I've seen pictures where I'm covered in scabs and stuff from basically my, my, my lips, you know, all across my chest. And I just reached up, grabbed that thing and pulled it right. Oh on me. Okay, that one? I did go. Go to the house. I would assume for a while. Yeah, actually. Yeah, there is there's some, some scabbing and some bandages and things like that. Fortunately, I I don't have any scarring. And then shot shot. It wasn't by shotgun. It wasn't 36 or anything like that. But you know, I got a I got a gun for Christmas when I was eight.

Sarah Huffman  12:00  
You know? It's just that Red Rock. What are those things? Like the

Chad Jeske  12:04  
BB gun? Red Ryder BB red writer. Oh, it was a daisy. It was a daisy, daisy, red Ryder. But that's not the one that shocked me.

William Huffman  12:12  
Those are those. Those are two different brands. Daisy is one and red riders one. Oh, they're

Sarah Huffman  12:16  
not the same.

Chad Jeske  12:17  
Moving on. It's all good. It's all good. So I hunting was was just a regular part of my microphone. In other words, you know, parents would come home and say, Oh, look, you kids. You all have guns. You're up to no good. It was what you get. Yeah, that's what it was.

William Huffman  12:33  
I had one of my my first gun. I think it was seven or eight. When I got it. It was a bolt action. 22 was a single shot one at a time. It was that in 100 shells and go.

Chad Jeske  12:45  
I love that. Yeah. Yeah. So I I just grew up where guns and hunting. It wasn't an awkward topic at all. So one day, I was hunting with some friends. And I decided I wanted to go home. And I started packing up my stuff. And I said, Alright, I'm leaving. And instead of just saying goodbye, one of my friends said, No, you're not stay here. We're not done. Stay here. Alright, no, I'm going and I started walking over to my bike because I biked over with my God as we all do. Yeah. And then I I started riding my bike, and I heard it fire. And I felt a tap on on my arm right here. And I looked down and there's just blood draining out of my wrist. And I I went home and I went to the bathroom and I was looking at it and I found the hole. And I was feeling my my arm. And I could feel the shot. It was down here. Oh, my word. And I again, I was probably 11 or 12 something like that. I remember my buddy was standing next to me freaking out. You know, my parents weren't home. Nobody. Nobody's around, right? Nobody's calling doctors where you're just like, what calendar was this? What's that? What caliber gun? It wasn't caliber it was is basically like a pellet gun.

William Huffman  14:12  
Oh, okay. So it was I've been shot I forgot to but continuous.

Chad Jeske  14:14  
So it was a lead shot. And it was in there and I basically just pushed it all the way up to where it went. And I just squeezed my wrist as hard as I could. And it came out. And then about two hours later, my dad came home from work wasn't in a great mood, you know, he's been Brick Lane. Oh, yeah. Since Yeah. 430 or five. And I said, you know, my friend shot me. That's, that's why there's blood all over the place and and he just looked at me, he goes, Well, we should probably go to the doctor and he took me to the ER. And I remember sitting in that waiting room for like an hour and a half. We never actually saw a doctor because people kept having heart attacks and other things that we consider to be more serious. Just what I was dealing with. So it's like, yeah, they can go in line, they can go in line. So we just eventually left. And that was it.

William Huffman  15:08  
That's interesting that you've been shot by 20.

Sarah Huffman  15:12  
Wait, let's just review run over by a car ran over by a car burn and shot, dude. Oh, yeah. Those are really great things to share for like two truths and a lie. Like I've got I've been burned. And I've been to Jamaica and I've been

William Huffman  15:33  
not that you can see it. Maybe you can, right? There's a scab. There's a rare Yeah. 2222 caliber pellet gun. I was also on my bike. I was also leaving a friend's house. And I was down to Tennessee. And he just it was my own gun. I was letting him borrow it. And then as I was leaving, he shot me in the back of the leg. We didn't ever tell anybody like like never because I didn't want them to take our guns with my girls. And I had to fish it out with the pliers or tweezers. And I could stick a pencil in my wag. About that far that it is like a party trick. Like at school and stuff. Sir. What are you doing?

Sarah Huffman  16:20  
I've heard your story.

Unknown Speaker  16:22  
I just You were on

William Huffman  16:24  
camera and you're texting is taking notes.

Sarah Huffman  16:26  
I'm taking notes. If you want to not be

William Huffman  16:29  
a present, let me put it on a hill. But literally like, oh, just this is a borings. I've heard.

Sarah Huffman  16:35  
I've heard this story. Well, what were you saying?

William Huffman  16:39  
I shot this is good. We have not been drinking. Like I wish water water. Lots of water.

Sarah Huffman  16:53  
This is not vodka. This is some type of an electrolyte water.

Chad Jeske  16:59  
Outstanding. Outstanding.

Sarah Huffman  17:01  
Okay, so Chad.

William Huffman  17:03  
We've gotten nowhere and it's been 17 minutes. And we've gotten but I mean, we don't even shot

Sarah Huffman  17:07  
burned. Over we've gotten places. You know, when

Chad Jeske  17:12  
kids when kids would play back then I don't see kids do a lot of this stuff these days. We used to have lady finger fights. Do you know what those are? Like the desert? No. fireworks? Fireworks really? So yeah, like lady fingers are just like small firecrackers? Yeah, Blackjack, but they're but they're real. And I would sit there with with a lighter and lady fingers. Vitamin throw at each other

William Huffman  17:38  
bottle rockets. We used to take the sticks off bottle rockets and light them and throw them at each other.

Sarah Huffman  17:42  
But okay, can we just talk about this back in the 70s and 80s when we all grew up, because we're 80s babies. What are we called? We were called turnkey kids or I don't know you're you're taking my story for a second. Well, no, there's

William Huffman  17:55  
a name for us. Like, they didn't call us lamplight. Kids. It was something No, when I can finish I'm working on it. There was a name for us. We're free roaming. We were just we're just free. roamers, it's all we were.

Chad Jeske  18:06  
I liked that one. Yeah, we weren't better than literally.

William Huffman  18:09  
I mean, as long as you're eating dinner at somebody's house. Well, I said lamplight because when the lamp light came on, you had street light came on. You had to go home. Please proceed. I've got the camera right on, you

Sarah Huffman  18:20  
know, are you sure? But like, I wonder I wonder though, like if those firecrackers back then were the same intensity that they are now they were bigger.

William Huffman  18:32  
Yeah, they were there more greens. Forget

Chad Jeske  18:34  
Sure. There was less regulation. That's my assumption. Well,

Sarah Huffman  18:37  
they weren't my theory. Disregard.

William Huffman  18:39  
Did you guys ever hurt? Did you guys ever play war with your BB guns? Like she actually they have like a three pump minute maximum.

Chad Jeske  18:46  
So again, you guys want real story? No, we wouldn't know that. Because we were worried about shooting people's eyes out. However we want. Our alternative was, go to McDonald's, grab McDonald's straws. Go to your parents sewing kit, and grab a sewing needle take thread and go through it a bunch of times and create a Dart. And those McDonald's straws are wider than most straws they are. So we would sit in each other's basements with a bunch of darts with needles and straws and fire them at each other. And if we hit somebody and they went down, we would laugh. That's all it would be. I can't believe no one lost an eye. Are you still

Sarah Huffman  19:35  
friends with these people today?

William Huffman  19:37  
No. Oh, I wouldn't be either. I'd be like I'm never talking to them fools again.

Chad Jeske  19:45  
You're waiting for me to say like, oh, yeah, you know? Yeah, that girl that ran over? Yeah, we hang out. Oh, yeah. No, it's my pastor. Yeah.

Sarah Huffman  19:53  
I mean, you do have a lot of pastors in your life. I do. So there we go. We're not there yet.

Unknown Speaker  19:57  
Oh my gosh. Okay, so

Sarah Huffman  19:58  
did you You graduate from Savage? Where did you graduate from?

William Huffman  20:02  
Where did you go to elementary school.

Chad Jeske  20:04  
So I was going to public school until third grade, third grade, my parents woke me up. And they said, you're going to school with Andy down the street today. And I thought it was like, a bit, you know, bring a friend to my school thing. I didn't realize what was happening. So I said, Okay, well, when's the bus show up and they said, there's no bus, you're gonna get in his family's car, and they're gonna drive you to Prior Lake. And they did do that. And they pulled up to a church with a couple of gutted out trailer homes with chalkboards at the front and said, This is where you're going to school. And tell me more. There were eight other kids in my grade. And the only reason why I didn't freak out is because I remember walking into the classroom for the first time and there were grapes on the wall with our names on them, of course, and I recognize one of the names is I went to T ball with this guy. So I had a friend. And that was good enough for me. There were eight other kids in my grade, and I went there until eighth grade. And then I was taken out of that. And I was put back into the public school system, and I went to Burnsville that wasn't awkward.

Sarah Huffman  21:14  
Why did they make that? Do you know why they made that decision?

Chad Jeske  21:17  
My parents it's a good question, right? It's like, was a bad child? Did I have bad grades? What was happening? I don't know. I'm sure I was angry about it in the beginning, but you know, interestingly enough, some of my best friends are part of those eight I'm in touch more with those people in my life now than I am the 600 plus people I graduate. Yeah,

William Huffman  21:43  
I mean, that just makes sense. I mean, you it was a much more intimate situation. Yeah, like I mean it's it's you and your seven other eight homies. And did they

Sarah Huffman  21:50  
all transition to Burnsville or others?

Chad Jeske  21:53  
No, they scattered so I was living in savage so that's why I ended up going to Burnsville but the T ball guy was was going to Burnsville, okay. But everybody else was Prior Lake Shakopee and, and stuff like that.

Sarah Huffman  22:05  
Bow. So, did you have a mascot for those years?

Chad Jeske  22:10  
The elementary school in the trailer, the trailer school? Yeah, get this we we had just enough players to have a basketball team. So co Ed. No. Oh, no. So if, if we were at a basketball game, nobody's taking any breaks. We're all playing. Yeah. If one person doesn't show up, we have to forfeit or if somebody falls out, right.

Sarah Huffman  22:34  
And if you fall out, I guess that ends the game, huh?

William Huffman  22:37  
Yeah. Thanks for playing.

Chad Jeske  22:38  
I think they were called the Lancers fight and Lancers. Something like that. And then Burnsville, Burnsville was the Burnsville Braves.

William Huffman  22:48  
I'm not gonna say that actually.

Chad Jeske  22:50  
It's okay. Ironically, my senior year, the

William Huffman  22:55  
southern Blaze, they switched to the blades of Blaze the other fight plays Yeah. And I'll say for all 10 Fighting Braves. I mean, you know, we've changed now now we're the fight and blaze know that

Chad Jeske  23:05  
both of both of them are great. And you know, the blaze. was ironic about that is my senior year. That school was set on fire. Yeah. So if

William Huffman  23:18  
you're gonna yawn, you gotta let me know. I gotta change it. Your high school,

Chad Jeske  23:22  
principal High School.

William Huffman  23:23  
Did you do that? No. If you did, would you tell me off camera? No.

Chad Jeske  23:30  
You know, it was interesting, because, you know, they, they're going back and forth about the mascot change and everything's fine. And then they switch to the blaze. And then it was around. It was before prom. I remember in the early 90s, then it would have been 1994. Yeah. And then. Yeah, it's just one day. Our phone was ringing in her house back when houses had a phone. We all know this. And then

Unknown Speaker  23:56  
it was a phone cord, or were they wireless? No, no, there's

Chad Jeske  23:58  
courts. Yeah, definitely courts. And a buddy of mine called me. And I said, Dude, you're calling my house at 630 in the morning, what's going on? And he goes, hey, hey, hey, turn on the TV, turn on the TV. And I turned on the TV. And there's news and there's our school and flames and smoke and stuff like that. And I my response was, Well, it doesn't look like we have school today. I'm going back to bed.

Sarah Huffman  24:24  
And that was it. And how ironic that the mascot was the blaze.

Chad Jeske  24:28  
Yeah. I believe there were three schools that were victims of arson at that particular time. But yeah, you can't ignore the irony of of that one.

William Huffman  24:39  
Did they ever find out who set the school on fire? I don't know. I really don't. I should Google that real quick. live updates

Chad Jeske  24:47  
1994.

Sarah Huffman  24:50  
Coming to live from a Good Life Group media co

Chad Jeske  24:53  
there's definitely some some new stuff

Sarah Huffman  24:56  
so. Okay, I have more questions at this point. Did you then go to college or what was your plan?

Chad Jeske  25:02  
My plan? Well, first of all,

William Huffman  25:06  
I hold on hold that in high school. Did you play any sports were your nerd Rhea jock Rhea band geek like, Which one were you?

Chad Jeske  25:13  
I floated around all over the shocker. I was not conduct shock to me, specific team. I played soccer 100%. I played soccer for eight years. I didn't play in high school. I played other sports like baseball and stuff like that. But when I got into high school, I mean, I was coming from a school that had a basketball team. That was basically it. I mean, sports was kind of foreign to me. So I didn't think I should even try you know, for baseball. This is this is a different level. Right? So when I started going to high school, I didn't do anything like that. But I, a lot of my friends were you know, I I had a lot of buddies that were captains of, you know, soccer teams, football teams, wrestling teams dance line, which is kind of random. But so I feel for

William Huffman  26:10  
you. It's not well, it's right in line with the rest of the story. So far, we're on par I I'm just waiting for the time he told me he went,

Chad Jeske  26:19  
NASA I like different types of people. I like putting myself in a box and saying, Oh, well, this is the only way I'm going to act and the only people I'm gonna hang out with Yeah, I'm sure people are interesting. So yeah, just kind of floating around and participating in this stuff. That's fun. You know, that's, that's kind of it.

William Huffman  26:36  
All right. Now, baby. Go ahead. And I just want to know where I could have guessed that to be quite honest. Is that where you picked up your infinity for bicycling? No. Okay, so that's still. Okay, cool.

Sarah Huffman  26:47  
Yeah, not at all. All right. Now you get what you do after high school.

Chad Jeske  26:51  
I went to school for music management and psychology.

Sarah Huffman  26:54  
Music management.

William Huffman  26:56  
Do you say that again? Music management? No, not you you

Sarah Huffman  26:59  
music management. Music management. But that is what were you in band. How did you get into music management?

Chad Jeske  27:09  
Music. So back in the back when I was in like ninth grade, I started playing guitar. And I started being drawn to people that were really good at playing different instruments. And I love watching just regular people grab an instrument and just blow your mind is jamming. Yeah, it's just it's awesome. It's it's always people you least suspect and I like

William Huffman  27:40  
you. I didn't know you had that. I knew you liked music. But I didn't know you had an affinity for this much for it. Yeah,

Chad Jeske  27:46  
yeah. Well play. Okay, you played the guitar. So yeah, I I played drums a little bit. I'll never say that. I'm great at it. I have a good job. I guitar was what I started with. And I was playing that for a long time.

Unknown Speaker  28:03  
Electric or like,

William Huffman  28:04  
both like broken acoustic. Oh, I was gonna peg you for an acoustic like around the bonfire. You were that guy?

Chad Jeske  28:09  
No. Oh, okay. I read that, right? I don't, I don't sing songs. I don't I don't do karaoke singing. Well, and part of that comes down to I am not comfortable playing an instrument. If there's somebody in the room that I know for a fact is significantly better than me. I feel like it's offensive for me to

William Huffman  28:32  
try interesting. That's a very, very limiting belief.

Chad Jeske  28:35  
Thank you. You're welcome. Therefore, yeah,

Sarah Huffman  28:38  
I wish I had a guitar.

Unknown Speaker  28:40  
Yeah, but

William Huffman  28:41  
I should have props in here like that. Like, well, you play the guitar. Here

Chad Jeske  28:44  
you go. Yeah. No, I play guitar. I

Sarah Huffman  28:46  
wish I had the outcomes.

Chad Jeske  28:47  
Yes. With with my sisters. I mean, we had a piano in the house. And rarely was a time somebody wasn't jamming on that. Yeah. And they were all singers. So it was, yeah. Oh,

William Huffman  28:59  
I can't sing. I love to sing. So to Sarah. Which part you can't sing but you love to sing. And you don't know the words to anything?

Sarah Huffman  29:08  
Yeah, it just doesn't.

Chad Jeske  29:11  
So yeah, I started to go into school for music. Okay. And but where? Mankato, okay.

William Huffman  29:17  
Phyton Mavericks?

Chad Jeske  29:18  
Well, what's interesting about that is I I had no plans of going to school because I didn't know what I wanted to run somebody over. No. Okay. Let me Sure. Honestly, what happened was, I was in a relationship with somebody at the time. And I said, What are you doing after high school? I'm going here. And then she said, Well, what are you doing? And I said, I was thinking about going to Mankato to where you know. I did not see that school until I was unpacking my Geo Metro. When I showed up.

William Huffman  29:54  
Tell me more about the Geo Metro, What color was it? Light blue, just like that. Did you have a system in it? No. Okay, did you have a CD player?

Chad Jeske  30:03  
No, it was given to me by one of my sisters. She was with the Air Force and she went to Germany. And she's like, well, I can't have I can bring this car. Here you go. And I didn't think she was going to take it back. But eventually she did. Which was kind of weird.

William Huffman  30:17  
What? What? Yeah. So she gave you a car while she was in Germany, said I'm back

Chad Jeske  30:22  
when she came back. You know, a few years later. She's like, a car. So

Sarah Huffman  30:26  
did you. Did you end up graduating from Mankato? No, no, no, you did that. Match up to like a break break up?

Chad Jeske  30:33  
No, no, no, no, no. Well, yeah, that that relationship didn't work out. But when I went to Mankato, I remember I was there, maybe a couple of weeks. And I got a tuition bill. And I showed it to my parents. I was like, Hey, I got this. I got this invoice here. 1000s of dollars. I don't know. I don't know what, what do I do? Well, what's the rule? What's the protocol with this, you guys, and very gently, my, I remember my mom saying, she goes, hmm, that's a lot of money. You should pay that or they're gonna kick you out. And that's when I realized, I need to figure this out. I need to figure out how to make some money. Or you're gonna kick me out. So I, right out of high school, I took a job selling Cutco cutlery. Oh, yes. And I wasn't good at it. You know, my first couple of months, I sold about four grand, which is not that great, even back then. And once I found out, I needed to earn some money, I started looking for jobs. But all the college students had snatched up all the jobs. So I was like, Well, gosh, now I gotta, I gotta go back to the Twin Cities all the time, if I want to earn some money, but I was taking 19 credits, holy crap, and I was I couldn't work during the week. So ironically, I found out that there was a 19 year old that had sold $50,000 worth of Cutco in the same period of time I sold for he was from dodge center, Minnesota. And there was no excuse. And he was going to Mankato State. So I tracked him down, and I knocked on his door.

William Huffman  32:18  
Of course you did?

Chad Jeske  32:19  
Of course you did. And I said, Adam saw you I said, You don't know me. i You don't owe me anything. But will you please teach me something? And he took me in. Adam had this you got to be close. Adam has this really long ponytail. He wore these black cowboy boots all the time. He wore the same outfit on all of his appointments. I think that's an Einstein thing. Yeah, I don't have to waste time thinking about my outfit. He jabs bunch of people. Yep. And he just, he was very good at focusing on sales activity, and just dominant. So he taught me a lot of things. And one of the things that he taught me was the art of dropping down, which sounds kind of weird, but I said, Hey, man, when I make a sale, I saw like, $80 where the stuff when you make a sale, it's always like $450 worth of stuff. Why? Why you? Because you know, Dad's center, isn't this wealthy metropolis? What's going on? And he said, You know, I think it's, I spent so much time talking about the biggest package, that by the time their shoulders drop, and they become comfortable with the value proposition that's going on. We're looking at something that's about half price. And I said, Well, if that's true, and there was something bigger, you would sell $800 all the time. And he laughed a little bit. And he's like, Yeah, maybe. Well, I went to the college computer lab, and I took out my prospectus and like tore out all these pages of what's a prospectus prospectus. It's just, you know, a little flip book of products.

William Huffman  33:58  
Okay. I thought I knew what it was just wanted to make sure.

Chad Jeske  34:01  
And I I went to a Xerox machine and I made a copy of something that I called the complete set. That was it. It was $1,369. And I

William Huffman  34:13  
just wasn't like, we'd love Cutco. So, so that's what it was like. Yeah, that for 1400 bucks. It was like, it was everything.

Chad Jeske  34:22  
I remember exactly what was in it. I'm not gonna rattle it off. Yeah, you should do it. No, no, it was it was a homemaker plus eight. It was a super shears. It was a deluxe carving set. And kitchen tools that was in the deluxe carving set was the miscellaneous $400 item that's in there. And I just said, you know, if it's part of a package, people aren't going to needle stuff out. So I went back to the cities and I started doing appointments. Honestly, really just kind of praying for a sale. It's like, Hey, man, I don't want to quit school because of this. And on my fourth appointment I sold $700 For the first time, and then on like my 12th appointment. I was like, Yeah, this one's 1369. And they're like, Yeah, that sounds good. Let's do that. And I remember just kind of pausing, thinking, don't ask them if there's get out. But it was, thank you. Bye. It was it was kind of the beginning of my, my career with people interacting with people for a living. And I, I didn't know it at the time because it was It wasn't my dream to sell Cutco. It wasn't my dream to be in sales arena, you know, I want to be managing bands, you guys write some concerts? And I was doing that stuff. And then one day I was at my college computer lab, and something called Napster came out. Yes. And I just kept doing the math. And I was just like, wait a minute, so there's no more money in music musics free. Well, wow, what am i You really had that foresight? Yeah, it was it's like well, I'm going to school for something. You know, I want to do something like this, but I don't want to have that just be my hobby. I need to make some money doing right. So I I panicked and I so kind of back up a little bit. When I was with Cutco. And I was going to school I was doing pretty well. That that fall I ended up selling about. It was like 20 grand. That spring, I ended up selling another 30 or 40 grand. Wow, I placed number two nationally, I lost number one by $87. Which to a gentleman by the name of Chris Bombeck.

William Huffman  36:43  
I knew you had no,

Chad Jeske  36:44  
you're just that type of guy. He lives in he lives in Toronto. And I was going to see some Little Caesars, Little Caesars restaurants. And I remember I lost my $87 and I did not buy anything from myself. I can't say that about all of my competitors. So call it what it is. But I

Sarah Huffman  37:07  
showed you one in my book.

William Huffman  37:08  
Yeah, you're never one big guy.

Chad Jeske  37:10  
I honestly it doesn't matter a whole lot but it

William Huffman  37:15  
it doesn't matter but he knew the name of the person where they live and the amount

Sarah Huffman  37:19  
and what he does now.

Chad Jeske  37:21  
This is this is this is a quote from Rounders, right? So the movie Rounders, poker he he talks about Doyle Brunson and he says I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I can remember with impeccable accuracy, the times I lost it. And I think that's true with everybody. So I that was like, Well, that was 1995 It isn't good. Yeah, that's great movie. So I I did pretty well with that and then in the summers rather than just selling Cutco in I can't remember what year it was. I think it was actually do it was 1996. I went to Sioux Falls, South Dakota and I opened an office. I thought that I was a Cutco office. A Cutco office.

William Huffman  38:02  
That's the thing. Yeah,

Chad Jeske  38:03  
I thought I was going to be leaving school and doing that because I was making good money. And about a month of living in Sioux Falls. I concluded I did not want to live in Sioux Falls, I needed to get out. Understand, younger person, younger person looking for stuff to do. It's like, wait a minute, your town stops here. What's beyond that? It's like I was land. There's

William Huffman  38:26  
been staring at the edge of the woods. Exactly,

Chad Jeske  38:29  
exactly. So at the end of that summer, I moved back to the Twin Cities, and I felt like I had failed and I had let some people down. So I did not ask my parents if I could move back in with them. Instead, I asked my best friend's parents if I could move in with them. Yep. And much to my surprise, they said sure. And what was interesting about that is my friend's dad. If you ever heard of the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, yeah, that's, that's the situation I was in. My parents never sat us down and went through financial education. You know, most parents don't. And I never held that against them. But when I was in this guy's house, well, he was CEO of a company called Ellerby. Beckett. And he was not an off putting executive. He was just a very jolly. I mean, he helped build the church, that we got married in just all these positive giving thing giving back. Yeah, I remember having conversations with him just being a sarcastic kid. It's like, Hey, man. Why don't you guys have cable? We have cable at our house. You guys got no MTV you got like four channels. And rather than arguing with me, he would just go Chad, do you know my children? Yeah. What kind of grades do they get? Well, Brad's one of the smartest people I know. And he goes, are we still having this conversation? So how long

Sarah Huffman  39:59  
did you live there?

Chad Jeske  40:00  
It's not very long. I No, no, no, I it. Well, it was kind of weird because I was living there. I had chosen to not go back to school because I didn't think the music thing was going to work out. And I needed to figure out what I was going to do next. So I was there that fall, and then I decided in the winter, I was going to move to Rochester, Minnesota and try again.

William Huffman  40:30  
The metropolis of Rochester.

Sarah Huffman  40:31  
Trani say try again. Are you saying school or Cutco?

Chad Jeske  40:35  
Okay, well, I opened another office, but it didn't go the way Sioux Falls went. We place nationally and we started collecting some hardware.

William Huffman  40:48  
I want to know more. I'm really intrigued by this Cutco thing because that's a hustle, man. That's a grind you believe in the product. I actually believe significantly the product. If I were

Sarah Huffman  40:57  
to buy a knife set right now, it would do not need anyone to call me for this. But yeah, it would be a cut

William Huffman  41:03  
because because Yukako people are relentless.

Sarah Huffman  41:06  
Like like Jeff turrisi. I get a text message every month. So

Chad Jeske  41:10  
Jeff is so good. I know, Jeff. Yeah,

William Huffman  41:13  
he's persist. He's been doing this for a long time. So I want to know more about this. Like this is this is I mean, I know his name. Yeah, it works. We have we have his name on one of our things.

Chad Jeske  41:22  
He knows what he's doing. Yes, he does. And interestingly enough, this is 100% relevant to what I do now. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It is 100%. Yeah. So we

William Huffman  41:33  
see so so you get a brick and mortar. Yeah. Okay. Where was it by the Apache Mall? Or?

Chad Jeske  41:37  
Oh, sounds like you've been

Sarah Huffman  41:40  
I've Yes. Time and Roger.

Chad Jeske  41:43  
is called the 1500. Building. It was a block off of Broadway. Yep. Okay. All right. Right behind a place called grandma's kitchen. Yes. Which was kind of a secondary office of mine. Yeah. Okay. So I, yeah, I was there. And I was recruiting people. And I was keep in mind, I was in my early 20s. So I was just excited that somebody was paying me a decent amount of money to do anything. And I thought, You know what, I don't need school. I can just do this. Everything's gonna be fine. And I was I was there about five years. And then

William Huffman  42:17  
not and then No, no. You ranked nationally. What does that mean?

Chad Jeske  42:22  
What that means our office did well, I didn't know there was Cutco

Sarah Huffman  42:25  
offices. Yeah. There's one of the Dyna right over by

Chad Jeske  42:29  
it's a completely different structure these days because of people being able to work remotely and things like that. But at the time, there were about 350 offices around the nation. Really?

Sarah Huffman  42:40  
Yeah. And I give you a fun example of something that happened to me with Cutco. Sure. So yeah, I want to hear this. Someone was back when I was younger, I want to say it was like maybe middle elementary or middle school. It wasn't old. And the neighbor came by and did a demo for my mom. Maybe it was like the neighbor's nephew. It was like something it was some relation like that. Right. In this in the cutting demonstration?

William Huffman  43:07  
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, don't tell me. They missed

Sarah Huffman  43:11  
no and got their thumb to the bone. Like Cutco knives are very

William Huffman  43:18  
good. Your mother by No, my knee.

Sarah Huffman  43:23  
I think he got credit for like his, like he had to do so many appointments or whatever events. So like, he got credit for that. But then he did have to go to the hospital. Because they're like, it was like bone exposed.

William Huffman  43:36  
I would have bought I'm like, Damn, that's sharp. So me. There's a

Chad Jeske  43:39  
scar right here. Looks like a V. Yeah, I was. I was running an interview. One point and I had the scissors and one of the things we do is we cut cut the penny penny. Yeah. Yeah. So I went to cut the penny. And for whatever reason, I went halfway through and I just thought we'll just squeeze the blades and you'll just finish it off. You put your Oh, when I did that. My, my my poem got in between the blades. And there it went.

William Huffman  44:08  
So did you have a flap of skin?

Chad Jeske  44:10  
Well, it i i knew what happened. The second I did it. And I looked up. And you know, there's there's people in an interview and it wasn't just one person. Probably like a dozen people. They do group interviews. Yeah. And I saw the blood. I reached my pocket and I grabbed a napkin. I put it in my hand and I made a fist and I looked at my assistant, I said, Hey, can you do me a favor? Can you go grab a rag for me? And I just went back to the interview. And it was Yeah, raise everybody's spilt a little blood. Yeah, doing that.

Sarah Huffman  44:46  
It must be like part of like the rite of passage.

William Huffman  44:48  
We might not get past your Cutco experience or this interview. This is no I love this. I love this. So for five years, you're running the store

Sarah Huffman  44:55  
brick and mortar co knives at your house. What's up? Do you have Cutco at your house?

William Huffman  44:59  
Oh yeah. So people could come in and buy. So was it like a retail location? No, no, they didn't do that. Okay, so it was just where the recruits or the homies hung out. It was it was in home. Yeah, yeah. Yep. So it was like your base of operations. So

Chad Jeske  45:13  
I would run sales meetings. Okay, teach people things, motivation, okay. All of it. And it wasn't just a couple of people. You know, that summer. I recruited I believe about 170 people. Wow. And then not too fast for the story. But when I so I met my wife, ironically, in 1996. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, she applied for a job. And, you know, there was no interest or anything like that, you know, she she worked for me those two or three months I was there. And then remember, I went back to the cities and I decide I'm going back to Rochester. Well, when I was going to Rochester, I called her and I said, I need assistance. I remember you, you were nice, you know, Rochester for the summer, aren't

William Huffman  46:03  
you recruiting? And you were recruiting?

Chad Jeske  46:05  
Well, no, no, there was no interest. And that's loud and clear. I believe you she she was dating a guy and she was not the same person. And then, fast forward to 1998. Good Year. She hates the story. She was engaged. And oh, she she had been an assistant. She had worked in we got along. And I knew she was supposed to get married. But I didn't. I didn't remember getting an invite. So I picked up the phone. And I called her her house in Luverne. Minnesota. Oh, yeah. And her sister answered. And I said, Hey, just need to know where and when is this wedding? And she started laughing. I said, Well, it's so funny. She said, Oh, that wedding has been off for a long time. I said, Oh, well, that sucks. Where she now she's like, well, she's going to school in Mankato. She was just going to Bethany I said, Okay, well, maybe I'll call her if I'm in the area. And we'll just hang out. Say hi. So I ended up going to Mankato, and I called her to hang out. And it wasn't a date. It was just hanging out. But that person that opened that door was not the same person that worked with me before. There was a different level of maturity. Let's call it and yeah, she actually just told this story last night to somebody that it I said, it sounds like a stalker situation the way way people tell it. Yeah. We just we really got along and she worked overnights at a restaurant, you know, serving coffee to a bunch of drunk, drunk kids, all trousers to but you're drunk. Yeah, yeah. But you know, it's party school and stuff like that. So she was doing that. And she was working in a hotel. So what I would do is I was running a business in Rochester. I would run interviews, I would run training. And then somewhere around nine or 10pm, I would get my car and I would drive to Mankato, and I would drink tea at that restaurant, just so I could chat with her as she was wandering around. And working.

William Huffman  48:13  
You were smitten? Yeah, you fell hard. Hmm.

Chad Jeske  48:17  
And I would I would sleep in my car more, more often than I like to admit. And yeah, that's, that's kind of how it started. That's how we met. So we've been married 21 years.

William Huffman  48:29  
That's awesome. That's a great story. Isn't that a great story? Man.

Unknown Speaker  48:31  
That is a great story. Love

William Huffman  48:33  
you love good marriage.

Sarah Huffman  48:35  
Much love a good romantic comedy movie? Yeah, that's a good one worse. I want to know, like, how do people meet in the

William Huffman  48:42  
summer of 95? Well, he was sharp with knives. She was quick with the coffee.

Unknown Speaker  48:49  
Perfect. Perfect. You're not wrong.

William Huffman  48:53  
But it was tea.

Sarah Huffman  48:56  
So when did you sleep?

Chad Jeske  48:59  
When I could? Honestly, this is the

Sarah Huffman  49:01  
thing that love does to you when you're young. Yeah. Young Love that those that young love moments like, you can go on

Chad Jeske  49:08  
mostly mostly people I was working with were college students. Yeah. So a lot of my work was evenings and weekends. Yeah. So I would finish work. I would go hang out with her. And then I would go back to Mankato, and I'd crash for as long as I could. Yeah, I'd wake up and go to the office.

Sarah Huffman  49:24  
I mean, now at age 40. Do I need a full eight hours?

William Huffman  49:29  
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I need to eat. Like we had to postpone that for about 40 minutes because this was not happening until lunch happen.

Sarah Huffman  49:37  
I'm like, we have like certain pillows we need.

William Huffman  49:40  
Like you woke up you're here now podcast over Get the hell out. Were like

Sarah Huffman  49:44  
that young relationship. It's like, oh, I

William Huffman  49:47  
have to stack my pillows up. Asleep sitting up like

Sarah Huffman  49:51  
yeah, it's very high maintenance. Okay, so you guys got married man with 88 got married in 2001. And oh, you met into that you met 98 You got married in 2001?

Chad Jeske  50:01  
We met in 96. Oh, not listening at all.

Sarah Huffman  50:05  
I got excited about 98. We started dating in 1998

William Huffman  50:08  
is when the wedding was broke off. And that's when he started stalking her at the coffee shop that was stalking you. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's not stalkerish it is a stalker story. Okay. And I'm very good. Yeah. How

Sarah Huffman  50:23  
long did you have to stalk her before? Like, does she know dating?

Chad Jeske  50:28  
I you know, I don't know the answer to that.

Sarah Huffman  50:31  
Oh, interesting.

William Huffman  50:34  
Did she ever ignore you like trying to walk by like, No, you're again. Also she was into to that she kissed me. She was into you to that.

Unknown Speaker  50:41  
Okay. She made she made the first

Sarah Huffman  50:43  
usually need to do that. Okay, that's

William Huffman  50:48  
taking cameras back on chat. Did edit. She's your camera for you.

Chad Jeske  50:52  
tells me this day that she's like, oh, you know what that girl is trying to say to you, right? And I'm like, I got nothing. I was just right over my head.

William Huffman  51:00  
Oh, I used to think I was this Casanova. God, I have no game. Nine. It's a good thing. I'm charming. And the camera on me amazingly good looking. I don't know why you said yeah, let's go. That was awkward. But ya know, like, yeah, we are. I mean, there are some guys who have I guess maybe they're good at that. But they're like, very, like suave. Yeah. Like they've got that charisma. They've got that game. Almost like you're talking about somebody. That's not me. It is

Sarah Huffman  51:31  
not yet.

Chad Jeske  51:34  
I mean, honestly, I I can't blame my sisters. For older sisters. I thought guys suck. You know, that's just they're all jerkbaits like, why am I gonna try? They don't like us? No, but everything worked out. And then we, after we sweet. We got engaged when I was still in Rochester. I was living in touch. Hold

William Huffman  51:56  
on. How did you ask? What's that? How did you ask her?

Sarah Huffman  52:00  
Did she ask you?

Chad Jeske  52:04  
I proposed on Christmas, which was never part of the plan. Yeah, it was never part of the plan. i A lot of our friends, were starting to get engaged. And so I went and bought a ring. And I was all excited. And I was putting together plans. And then all of a sudden one of our friends is like, guess what? We're engaged. And I was like, Well, dude, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna propose now we're not. This isn't a group at all get engaged. Yeah. So I was like, Well, I'm just gonna hide this for a little while. Couple months go by another person. We're engaged. Oh, all right, we're just gonna keep this thing in the dark for a little bit. And my wife always says, I'm glad you proposed when you did, because I was seriously thinking about calling this thing off. Because you weren't proposing. And I was just like, what's going on? What's going on with us? It's taking so long. So

Sarah Huffman  52:57  
I know nothing about them nothing.

Chad Jeske  53:01  
So I brought the ring with me on Christmas. I was at my parents up in North Branch at the time. And I just woke up. And I looked at her and I just fell out of the out of the bed, ironically, on my knee. And when I pulled out the ring, she had no idea what it was. She's just kind of looking at me. Like, there's something you need to fix. What is that? You know, she's got bad eyes. So it's just

Unknown Speaker  53:31  
oh, that's one of the reasons. But it all it all

Chad Jeske  53:33  
worked out. And we were engaged. And then we got married in 2001. And

William Huffman  53:38  
yeah. So was it. So it was a pretty short engagement?

Unknown Speaker  53:42  
I think so. No, that doesn't seem very short. No, it

William Huffman  53:45  
it didn't get engaged in 98.

Chad Jeske  53:47  
I think we got we got engaged. And we got married within about a year. Yeah, they

William Huffman  53:53  
got me engaged in the year 2001. And we got married in 2001. Right. Yeah. I'm listening. Are you even at the same place? I am right now. Get on my level. Oh, look at me.

Chad Jeske  54:12  
So yeah, that's

Sarah Huffman  54:13  
that. And now what is your way? I'm

William Huffman  54:14  
gonna glue this mic to your chin. You got to stay. Oh,

Chad Jeske  54:18  
it's it's a little weird. I can taste it. Yeah.

William Huffman  54:22  
Like I did burp on that one earlier. Awesome. Rose. Well, these things out.

Unknown Speaker  54:28  
That's just gross. Rude.

Chad Jeske  54:29  
What was your question?

Sarah Huffman  54:31  
What is your wife do?

Chad Jeske  54:32  
My wife stays home. Okay. Yeah. stays home with our kids. Yeah. That so she went to school originally for biology and chemistry. And ironically, I thought she was going to be a pediatrician. She was going to guess Davis at one point and then she was going to Bethel over and she's She's very smart, very, very smart. And when we moved up to the Twin City, So we got engaged, we got married, I was still down in Rochester. Okay. And I was still renting half of a duplex and I had a roommate. So I remember my roommate he was like, so you guys get married, where you're going to live here with? Let's go and let's go on. Yeah. So that that kind of lit the fuse were like, Hey, man, we're out. We're gonna go back to the cities. And that's what we did. And I forget where it's going with that. But when we, when we got married, I didn't think there was a particular career she was going to chase. So she she took some jobs, a couple places. At one point she was working at visitation. All girls school is you

Sarah Huffman  55:44  
know what that was Mendota heights. Yep. Okay, moving on. Well, my first career Hi, nice to meet you. Hi. My first career was a teacher, huh? Yeah. Weird.

Chad Jeske  55:54  
Yeah. So she was working at vis and the crews and that is, I was, I was running in Eagan office for Cutco. I had moved that business up.

William Huffman  56:05  
So you close down the Rochester one guard, you sell it, close it out, and then moved up to Eagan, urgent take over one are established in New York, there was one

Chad Jeske  56:13  
in South St. Paul. And let's just say it wasn't doing as well as it probably should have. So I replaced somebody. And in our first three months, we had done triple what they had done the prior year.

William Huffman  56:29  
Wow. Interesting what Leadership and Skills will bring to the table? I don't know.

Chad Jeske  56:33  
It was it was weird, but right off it was a compliment. Thank you Yankee Doodle Road and 35 e Yankee Doodle Yankee Doodle. Yep. And I, I hired over 400 people, those first three months.

William Huffman  56:46  
Well, I have a question. So I used to work at true green lawn care. And that's a that's a that's a they burn and turn through people. They're like they'll hire 100 By the end of the year. There's 15 left and they might bring back one or two for the following year. I was there for seven seasons. So I literally, you made the cut. Yeah, I don't good at this. Cut. Oh, that was a pun was that upon because of Cutco. I like

Sarah Huffman  57:08  
that. No, but it works on many levels, low and grass cutting the

William Huffman  57:11  
grass. We didn't mow root. Hello. I worked in lawn care. Alright. So that was a very burden sharing mentality because it's not an easy gig. And I'm assuming maybe it's the same thing like you hire people with the best intent. But you know, it's a numbers game.

Chad Jeske  57:30  
Yeah. And it's that's something that was responsible for me wanting to leave that business. Yeah. Is I the relationship guy? Well, yeah. And the analogy was I can't retain anybody. I feel like I'm building sandcastles on the shore and expected to be excited about oh, look it it's gone. Yeah, it nothing ever stayed built. And that eats away at you after a while. And especially when you started thinking about having a family and buying homes and things like that. You. You just want more stability. Yeah. So that's one day I saw it. She stopped working at villas, and actually got her real estate license. And we bought a place in Newport, early 2000s. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, we bought a place in Newport. It was a farmhouse. It was on a double lot. And we just thought, let's start flipping houses and doing that. So we we bought that place. And I remember I was taking door you'll appreciate this. Because the way you get in there with some of these houses. Oh, yeah. I went in there. And there's a heavy smoker that oh, yeah, I lived there before. And I start rather than repainting the doors, these wooden doors. I just took them off. The hinges went out in the yard. Put it in the fire pit. I had four firepits Yeah. And I don't know what the laws or rules were. I just knew

William Huffman  59:00  
back then. And Newport. It's obvious 61 There was also farm to country. There was nothing there back then. Yeah.

Chad Jeske  59:06  
So I was I was doing that. And I was standing out there watching a fire and I just called my my superior and I say I think I'm done. Really and I the next week, I went in started taking real estate classes. And then that's how I got my real estate license. So Okay.

William Huffman  59:27  
Wow, a lot just happened there. Let's just break this down. Yeah, this one, because we're not going to get too much more into this because otherwise, we could talk for three hours to get to where you are. This one's gonna be another part two. We're getting to a lot of parties and that's okay. I kind of want to recap where we are right now. Sure.

Sarah Huffman  59:47  
Cutco. No, oh,

William Huffman  59:49  
we went to a trailer church school. You burned down a high school. I didn't know whatever. I mean. That's what you're saying now Spread these. You went to Sioux Falls, you hated it. You went to college and realize you made a big mistake when Napster came out. Then you decided to stalk a woman. She left her husband because he you

Chad Jeske  1:00:16  
say, that is not what happened. I'm just

William Huffman  1:00:18  
saying this is this. This is what I'm thinking. This is what I remember. Sure. You run a pretty successful business down in Rochester. This woman agrees to marry you. You move to even though she she's obviously very smart. You go to Newport. No, no, no, you bought you buy a flippin new port. You're burning some shit. Because you burned high schools. Now you're burning doors like Gosh. And at that moment, like, I mean, a lot of that was kidding. But I mean, there's a lot that happened there. And at that moment, you're just like, I need

Chad Jeske  1:00:55  
something different. Yeah. Everybody hits that moment. And that was yours. Yeah, I was pretty cool. We were renting the top of a house in Richfield. And we picked it because it was kind of down the road from my office. And my wife at the time, she was kind of an assistant. She wasn't interested in sales or anything like that. But she was answering phones for applicants and quarters, doing all the stuff that needed to happen. That made us look good. And I never have given her enough credit for for what she did. I mean, there's there's no way we would have been able to do any of that without her. Doing all of that stuff from that house in in Richfield. Yeah. You know how it is when when you're working alone. It's tough to keep motivation. Oh my

William Huffman  1:01:45  
gosh, I would I would fail miserably if I was in this career alone. But she

Chad Jeske  1:01:49  
crushed it. She crushed it. So So what do we think you Well, I knew I didn't want to rent anymore. So we could only afford a house. Like this stuff. We found a new port, but I she she had gotten into real estate. So I was like, Oh,

William Huffman  1:02:05  
I've heard of people. I mean, that was the best the flip. That was I mean, honestly, you were probably sub $100,000 Back then in that location.

Chad Jeske  1:02:13  
was two I we do. I bought it for 180. Okay, and I think we ended up selling it for like 234

William Huffman  1:02:21  
Okay, so still 180,000 but it's a double lot. All right, cool.

Chad Jeske  1:02:25  
So we bought that and I decided to get into real estate. And I thought everything was just gonna come naturally. Everything everything was gonna be easy. And this

Sarah Huffman  1:02:35  
was about like 2005

Chad Jeske  1:02:38  
I don't know. I try

William Huffman  1:02:40  
not to think about it. Shit was going crazy then kinda like it is now but a different way. So the do

Chad Jeske  1:02:45  
it yourselfer and me kicked in and my wife goes to Switzerland to see a friend of hers for two weeks. I call a buddy of mine and I say grab a sledgehammer and get over here. We're going to remodel this kitchen in this bathroom before she gets back.

Sarah Huffman  1:02:56  
Oh, boy, joke's on you. Yeah,

Chad Jeske  1:02:59  
we got the braking part done. thing. I mean, it took me months. It took me months to get that stuff and but that's that's how I learned what I want to do and not want to do. So we were doing that. And this is around the time that I started working with Ryan O'Neill, Minnesota real estate team and the nicest guy in real estate. Absolutely. 100% Ryan wasn't working alone. He had a couple of music buddies that were with him and I knew Ryan from Cutco. Ryan was really is that how you guys met? Yeah, Ryan was a Cutco sales rep. I knew this but didn't know too much about it, but get this. Ryan was a Cutco sales rep with a friend of mine named Adam. Adam is the same person that I tracked down at Mankato State that I wanted to learn from the hell out. Adam was running in office in St. Paul. And he ended up recruiting Ryan at one point. That's,

William Huffman  1:04:01  
we have to get Ryan on now to hear about it and Adam. Yeah, Adam would be that'd be a fun guy to interview. But he's got some it'd be long stories.

Chad Jeske  1:04:09  
He's he still has that here.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:11  
I bet he does. Yeah, no, I

Chad Jeske  1:04:12  
mean, not on his head. Like, you cut it off. And he still got the ponytail. Somewhere.

William Huffman  1:04:20  
That's not where I thought I was going. No, no, no, no, I wouldn't take the Niner in my pocket.

Sarah Huffman  1:04:33  
Is his hair friend?

Chad Jeske  1:04:35  
I don't know. We can text them. We can ask them.

Sarah Huffman  1:04:37  
Oh my god. I

Unknown Speaker  1:04:39  
have to talk to Adam

Sarah Huffman  1:04:40  
and Ryan Of course.

William Huffman  1:04:42  
For those who are listening and they may are watching and don't know who right O'Neill is. He's a big deal, not just locally, but nationally. And he's he runs a fantastic huge business. And legitimately it's freaking annoying. That He is literally The nicest guy in real estate. One day I, we were in Vegas a couple years ago ever in

Sarah Huffman  1:05:05  
a bad mood.

Chad Jeske  1:05:07  
I know I I've said to a couple people, I've given him reasons to legitimately be upset with me and say bad things to me. But never one syllable. And that's, that's remarkable control.

William Huffman  1:05:21  
His people love him. Yeah. Love him. Yep. And

Chad Jeske  1:05:24  
if I mean, if you want to cross analyze it, that is one of the reasons why he's successful. Most of the people I've met that are successful at that level. They lead with gratitude, and people are drawn to them. And that's, that's it, and it's never going to change. Yeah. So back then it was just him and a couple of music buddies that were kind of working part time and he, the market started changing. And he started pitching investment property. And one thing led to another, you know, my wife and I were like, Oh, we're gonna start buying properties and flipping properties now. And I got sloppy we bought a place in Eagan is a three bedroom three bath townhome it was bank owned. I was looking at the numbers, like if we buy this and sell it tomorrow, we're gonna make 50 grand was do this. And we bought it. And it was only a few years old. There's just light damage that I had to fix. And I was showing it to a renter. And neighbor walks over and he's like, What are you doing? Show this to this guy who's going to rent it? And he goes, No, you're not going to read the association documents. We don't allow that. The associate it was an attached Townhome. six units total. The entire association was six units. Half of them were on the board. So I went home and I was like, Honey, what do you think about moving to Eagan? Yep. Let's get rid of this Newport nonsense. Yeah, let's go to Eagan. Isn't that a better idea? And you did. And we had to. So we did. And we rented out the new port place for a while. And the market really started to tank that that property went underwater almost immediately. And one day, we said, you know, we should probably start having kids. So we had all three of our children in that place. And when the third was born, we had to get out. We had to get out. i There's nowhere to put anybody as like, you know, I'm not raising my children in my bedroom. We're not doing that. We already had two of them sharing a room downstairs. So we decided to start thinking about buying a house. And I was honestly very nervous about it. Because my finances when we were doing that, it was not good at all.

William Huffman  1:07:56  
I, I, I might have to pause this here. What No, no, no, no, no, no. Because this because that was the first half of your life. Yeah. This is a really good stopping point. Because this is 2008. shit hit the fan. You're underwater. And you're like, you know what, let's bring kids into this.

Chad Jeske  1:08:18  
I honestly, I was looking at my mortgage payment thinking, This isn't very much, you know, we're, let's, that's the time to do it. Right. Versus I gotta, I gotta pay all this money for all this house. I just figured it was an efficient idea.

William Huffman  1:08:36  
This is where we're gonna stop the story. This is where part two I what I'd have to say about Ryan O'Neal. One time. Yes. We were in Vegas. And this was just this last year. I do believe it was. And I walked up to one of the Hey Ryan, how you doing William with a big smile on his face and stood up and give me a handshake. And I go just so you know, I set a goal to beat you. And he goes if I can ever help you just let me know. And he was dead serious. That that I was just like, you son of a bitch. Like yeah, I it he meant it. He meant every word of it.

Chad Jeske  1:09:08  
I hear a positive story about Ryan O'Neal. Every week. Yeah, every week, unsolicited. In a lot of cases. If somebody's flipping through the publication or they're looking at stuff we have on social media and they see them just boom, there it is. Yeah. And it's it's motivating for me, because working with them, watching how he carries himself and how he operates. sets the tone for decisions I was going to make. Yeah,

William Huffman  1:09:40  
moving forward. See, there's a lot more and there's no way we can cover the rest of the story.

Chad Jeske  1:09:44  
And at the time at the time. I was I was frustrated because I wasn't good at selling real estate and it's, you're you're in the same room with somebody. It's like, Well, why is it they can do it and I can't we're using the same guitar. Right. I made it going back To the music analogy, and it was just frustrating, but different than a lot of people I've met in real estate. Ryan would take any idea he had, and give it. He'd be like, here, do this. I remember going to a Perkins and you're meeting with a client. And wasn't

William Huffman  1:10:20  
50th in France? No. And 100 I mean,

Chad Jeske  1:10:25  
yeah, rip, right. Yeah. So it's gone. Yeah. But I just remember the etiquette of how he didn't look like he was selling anything. He's just like, hey, we will go to that place. What do you think, Kate? Let me let me let me show you what those numbers are. What do you think of that? And it was just, I was blown away by it. And I was trying to figure out ways to catch up and maybe even blow past that. And it was just one experiment and failure after another. I didn't realize there no shortcuts. So that's kind of the way it was.

William Huffman  1:10:58  
But we always say when you skip steps, you miss steps. Yeah.

Chad Jeske  1:11:01  
100% 100%. So that's, that's how I got into real estate. And I I'll never tell people I was great at real estate. Because I don't think I was, I know that. My assumptions were sphere of influence. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, right? I thought, Well, gosh, I'm gonna get some automatic business out of this, right? Isn't that what's supposed to happen? Oh,

William Huffman  1:11:26  
yeah, absolutely. You get a real estate license, and I'm gonna totally trust you no matter what, even though I was there. When he broke down the school.

Chad Jeske  1:11:31  
I'll tell you a fun story about this, that that guy. So he knew I got my real estate license. I used to live in his house. And we went to the same church. And for every Sunday, he would say I was real estate going, Oh, stay at it. You'll get it. You got this. You got this, you know, always words of encouragement. And then one day the conversation changed. Hey, did you hear the good news? Look at news. Bought a house. You bought a house? I didn't know you're looking for a house. We weren't looking for a house is just, we're driving around this area after church one time, there's probably an open house. And there's this house. And my wife's like, oh, let's let's look at it. Let's I know just let's look, let's look,

William Huffman  1:12:14  
we're just gonna look just it's gonna look just check it out. Yeah,

Chad Jeske  1:12:17  
just make sure it's okay for whoever is gonna buy it. And. And I said, in my head, I'm thinking, this guy is wildly successful, probably knows 1000 realtors that he owes favors to? I shouldn't I shouldn't be offended that he didn't call me or give me a shot at by. So I said, so out of curiosity. Who did you work with? I wonder if I know him. And he goes, Well, that's the thing. There's the sign in the ground. And there's a number and we call the number and the guy was nice enough to come over and show it to us. And I was like, Well, yeah, I'm sure he was nice enough to do that. And then I started thinking, all right, Chad, forget about that. They live in a house. Somebody's got to sell that thing. Yeah. And it's on an acreage. Oh, yeah. And it's an it's nice. And I said, so what? What's going on with that? And he's like, Well, that guy on the site and said he'd be willing to help us with that. All right. And I remember, remember my quote earlier, remember the times with impeccable accuracy, at times you lost it. I consider that a loss, even though it was never mine to begin with, or yours to lose, but you lost it. But I felt it. When when someone purchases a property for over 800,000 And then they they sell a property in the millions. You notice, you notice. So I I had to figure out how to work in real estate without depending on prior relationships and stuff like that. And it didn't help that the market started imploding. Everything was becoming bank owned. So relationships were all very vulnerable, funky,

William Huffman  1:13:58  
and then like what's happening right now? Yeah, relationships are vulnerable.

Chad Jeske  1:14:01  
And and Ryan, shifted gears started teaching people how to value investment property, and genius. Everything shifted that direction. And everything statistically started just jumping. I remember, I was just looking at emails from 2005. The other day, and I remember in my email signature, it said, you know, over 200 sales last year, we're over 200 sales this year so far. Things like that. I I was very, I was kind of a team player, right? Like we did this we did. Yeah, for sure. Knowing that. Yeah, that's that's not my numbers, but we're happy about it. Right. So everything, everything worked out. But you know, one day I left real estate, kind of by accident.

William Huffman  1:14:49  
Alright, hold that. Stop, stop. Stop. We're done.

Chad Jeske  1:14:52  
We have to be done. We had it because you gotta go. I do.

William Huffman  1:14:55  
How much do you have? Do you have three more minutes? Yes. Okay. Top five restaurants. We finished The episode with everybody don't just put you on the spot with your top five favorite restaurants and they can be anywhere they can be for any reason we had one person who says it's because he used to go to Olive Garden with his mother and it was an astrologer thing. So it's not because it was the greatest fruit in the world. Top five restaurants. Yeah, so we'll start with number five.

Chad Jeske  1:15:21  
It's a bar. It's a place called the slippery noodle. It's in Indianapolis.

William Huffman  1:15:25  
I did not expect the word noodle to come out after there.

Unknown Speaker  1:15:26  
There are there are two three expecting triple o shot

Chad Jeske  1:15:32  
there to lose bands that play simultaneously and I just love live music. That's awesome. So slippery noodle Indianapolis.

Unknown Speaker  1:15:42  
All right, number three for

Chad Jeske  1:15:46  
you. I really like Hazelwood. If we're talking about local restaurants, I think their food is amazing.

William Huffman  1:15:51  
I just went to St. Louis Park, right. Obviously,

Chad Jeske  1:15:53  
they've got a few of them. Yeah, yeah. One of Excelsior. Yep. Same owner is tavern four and five. I believe. Another one.

Sarah Huffman  1:16:01  
So what do you like their brunch or their? Their lunch dinner better? You know, I haven't had their brunch. Oh, their brunch is real good. I can tell you exactly what I order.

William Huffman  1:16:10  
Number three.

Chad Jeske  1:16:13  
You know, it doesn't come up very often. But I really liked Granite City. Really? Yeah. You just mentioned brunch. And I was like, you know, they got a pretty good brunch.

Unknown Speaker  1:16:21  
I hard pass. Hard pass. Hard pass.

William Huffman  1:16:25  
I'm not going to be spot on.

Chad Jeske  1:16:25  
Honestly, my, my favorite restaurants are places that are usually not duplicated. One of my favorite restaurants, I don't even know the name of it. I was in Italy. And the bus we are on was breaking down and the bus driver said we have to pull over to this town. We have to figure this out. And the town was half built. A bunch of the walls were literally half built. And I was like what's going on? And he goes, there was a plague or something that came through this town long, long time ago. They left all the structures like this to remember lets people here. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we weren't going anywhere, right. So I said we're hungry and person pointed down an alley at a door. There was no signage. He's like, go there. I knock on the door. It was delicious. It was amazing. It was amazing. I had this bourse do I I don't know where else you can order stuff like that. And I remember the way I ordered it was it was a mother and her daughter that was it. And like three tables. It might have been their house for all I know. But it was yeah, they they sat us down and they handed us a menu and I couldn't read most of it anyway and he just said surprise me. We're hungry. You know this place born

Unknown Speaker  1:17:43  
to number two. Mr. Steak.

Unknown Speaker  1:17:48  
Okay, Mr. Steak

William Huffman  1:17:49  
was super beaten. You didn't go there for a salad?

Chad Jeske  1:17:53  
carnivore. I? That one is nostalgic. Okay, very good. My grandmother would just automatically take us there all the time. That was their spot. Was the spot. It was like Ponderosa.

William Huffman  1:18:04  
Okay. 100 Yeah, yeah, pick it up to put it down. That's awesome.

Chad Jeske  1:18:07  
I'm trying to remember the name of it's not bonfire. There's a place down in Rosemount I'm sorry, Farmington that we we go every once in a while. Actually, you know what? There's a place called Volstead. i That's

Sarah Huffman  1:18:22  
exactly what I was thinking. Yep. So

Chad Jeske  1:18:25  
they have more than one restaurant and they've got a great story. You know, they started selling their barbecue out of a gas station. And then they ended up acquiring the place next door, which was an old liquor store. Yeah. And they had just this little makeshift bar. And then then they threw a curtain up and they said, well, let's let's build a speakeasy back here. And it's legit. I love that place. Yeah. Yeah.

William Huffman  1:18:45  
Is that your number one then? No. Oh, number one.

Sarah Huffman  1:18:49  
But that is number five.

William Huffman  1:18:51  
Number three,

Chad Jeske  1:18:52  
maybe it is maybe it is whatever. That's places that were badass. Right? Or there's there's a place in Linden Hills that I really liked that I went to with Aaron's Metiria a couple of times. I think it's called Tosca. And it's it's incredible

Sarah Huffman  1:19:03  
set on 43rd. It's the Italian Yes. Yep. Yep. Wow.

William Huffman  1:19:07  
Nice work there. And those are Linden Hills.

Chad Jeske  1:19:09  
I love I love restaurants. I love foods from different cultures specifically, I seek it out. Anytime I meet somebody that's from another country. I asked them is there a restaurant locally? That is an accurate representation of what you have I love that I call and it's it's a lot of fun. I just I like spicy food. Nothing really shocks me. I'll try pretty much anything.

Sarah Huffman  1:19:35  
I'd love to get you back on because there's so much more to who you are that people probably don't know.

William Huffman  1:19:42  
And learned a ton this

Sarah Huffman  1:19:42  
has been great. CO has been amazing. It's so much fun. I love it. We never know what stories are going to come up but the stories that do come up are the right ones. Yeah,

Chad Jeske  1:19:50  
I like stories. Yeah, we

Sarah Huffman  1:19:52  
did not know that. No should know

William Huffman  1:19:54  
I told you guys in the beginning he's a talker. I got to keep them on point here. This because I know I will wear I want to go with this. Well, I thought I did and then we went down the carpool lane because I was awesome. So awesome, Chad well we'll have you on for part two superduper appreciate it. And as always, we out deuces

Accouncer  1:20:10  
tune in each week. For more in depth conversations about life behind the highlight reel. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform to make sure you never miss an episode. For today's show notes head over to lb thr.com