In this episode, host Nick Portillo speaks with David Youngberg, CEO of Stonefire Grill, for an insightful conversation about the vast opportunities in the food service industry. Drawing on a career that spans more than 40 years, Youngberg shares how a commitment to operational excellence has been the cornerstone of his success. He reflects on his early days as a grill cook at McDonald’s, where he first developed a deep understanding of restaurant operations.

Together, Nick and David explore the evolving food service landscape, highlighting both time-tested practices and innovative strategies that are key to thriving in today’s market. 

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There are a million ways to make money in the food service industry. You just have to find one.

On the Titans of Food Service podcast, I interview real life movers and shakers in the food game who cut through all the noise to get to the top. My name is Nick Portillo and welcome to the Titans of Foodservice podcast. Let's jump right into it.

Welcome back to another episode of Titans of Food Service. I appreciate you joining me here again on my journey. Interviewing the movers and shakers in the industry today, I welcome David Youngberg.

He is the CEO of Stone Fire Grills. He's the definition of an operator at heart.

His journey started more than 40 years ago behind the counter at McDonald's where he fell in love with the heartbeat of the restaurant business, operations. The details, the pace, the people, the systems. It hooked him at an early age.

And that early passion for getting restaurants run better, faster, cleaner and more profitably has guided his entire career.

Since then, David has grown into a respected industry leader with decades of hands on experience, improving unit performance, building operational playbooks, developing teams and helping food service organizations scale with discipline.

He understands the restaurant business not from just the boardroom, but from the back of the house, the front line, and the day to day realities that make or break success.

In his career, he's been the managing partner of Pacific Ocean restaurants, VP of Ops for BJ's restaurants, and now obviously the CEO of Stone Fire Grills. In today's conversation, we delve into what operations really means at a high level.

What has changed and what hasn't in the past four decades in the lessons David believes every operator, leader and branch could carry into the future. Without further ado, let's go ahead and welcome, David. All right, David, welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast.

I appreciate you jumping on here and meeting with me.

No, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, of course.

I know we were talking a little off camera about the rain and how crazy it is here this week and, and last week that we just never, you know, we never really experienced it, but. But here we are, you know.

Right.

And all in rain, in all its glory.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So tell me, how did you go back to the beginning? How did you get into the food business?

High school.

My first job at 15 and a half was at McDonald's and they were opening a brand new McDonald's in the town I was living in and applied and got a job as a grill cook.

And it was just, you know, I tell this story to anybody I can Tell it to you don't realize it when you get there, but as I grew older and the system's in place, like there was a specific way of doing everything there. And they taught that to you, Right. Like I would have to say. And you go back now, and I go back 40 years, right, to that date.

And I can still remember how they taught me how to put burgers on the grill, taught me how to put ketchup on the bun and the mustard and the two pickles and how do you make fries and exactly how to rip the bag and pour it in. And fryers. And there wasn't timers on the fryers. Right. We had little timers that we had to that in order to do the fries.

So just everything was so meticulous. And I didn't really realize it until I jumped to another job in food service, which was very chaotic.

And one manager told you one thing, another manager told you another. This was a full service restaurant. And I just was so confused. And McDonald's just, just taught me the basics of.

And also the basics of training, of managing people.

The franchisees were in the restaurant all the time, husband and wife, team, and they were always talking to us, the team members, and asking us how things were and asking us what guests were saying. And just. They always wanted feedback.

And it just told me that when I vaulted my career forward, let's say when I went to work for BJ's, the founders were in the restaurants all the time. They were in the restaurant. I remember training in the restaurants, and they were in there wanting to sit at a table and have you wait on them.

So that entrepreneurial spirit of just wanting to be ingrained in everything you do. And I. And I find now in the position that I'm in, I'm an operator, right. I'm not a CEO that was a CFO or a cmo. I was an operator.

So I'm in the restaurants all the time. I want to know what's going on. I want to see how things are happening. I want to know, is every team member happy?

Do they have the tools that they need or all the things that we're doing? So I really think that some of my experiences vaulted me to where I'm at now that really allow me to be involved in.

In every single detail of the operation.

Yeah. On the, on the McDonald's front, what do you think is, you know, at that time?

And I mean, if you look at them nowadays too, like they're huge global brand and the way that they're able to run their business.

What were some of the keys to success in terms of when you go into McDonald's, whether it's in the city of Tustin, where I grew up, West Covina, where you're at, it's the same. The, the, the layout is the same. How do, how are they able to do that so. Well.

Look, I think, you know, if it's interesting now, trying to mirror every restaurant that you open, right? And every restaurant that you have in the chain. We have, we have 13 restaurants in our chain, one of them being a full service restaurant.

But the other, the other 12 are fast casual restaurants, but they're all different size, they're all different boxes, they all have different kitchens and so forth. I think what they did right back then, they started building that box, they had that prototype exactly the way it needed to be.

I think that they already had efficiencies laid out 40 years ago on how they were going to grow the business and then they just refined it from there.

I think also when you think about training systems, I still remember exactly the procedures that they put in place for how you cooked burgers and how you flipped burgers and like how you, you know, how you wrapped a burger. I mean, everything was just down to the little details. I still remember those things. It's really crazy.

I would love to like find somebody who works at McDonald's and say, is this how you still do it? Because I still think it is. Because if you go to McDonald's and get a cheeseburger, it's still wrapped same way.

If I put the bun off the top, there's still, I believe, two pickles and you know, your ketchup, your mustard, your cheese, how it's late, you know, it's all the same. But they, I, I believe the trading systems were in place back then too.

So, and, and, and I would, I guess I would have to say is that for someone like them, it's franchising, right? So you're, it's.

If they're all company restaurants, it's one thing, but when you're franchising now, you're having to hand something over to someone and say, here's exactly how you do it. And if you mirror this, your operations will go well.

But you have to hand them something that is scalable, that's understandable, that people can learn from. I mean, you can't hold, you can't hand them a big plate mess and go, here you go, right? Like it's very.

And so I, I think about that in Every little thing that, that we do in our business today, everything that we do has to be understandable. It has to be clear. The expectation has to be understood, you know, what we're expecting out of it, everything.

So in, in my business, I'm a food service broker, so we represent different food products. I think we worked with someone on your team a few years ago on Kings Hawaiian, maybe.

Oh, yeah. And great promotion we do with them. I love that brand. I was so excited to do the pulled pork sliders with them. That was fantastic.

Yeah, it's a great product. So essentially what we do is we go and work with restaurant chains or casinos anywhere people eat away from home and present different products.

Then you could buy it through whatever distributor that you use. And so that's the nature of our business. We have offices in Southern Cal, in Northern Cal, Las Vegas and Hawaii. And it's very interesting.

You know, in a people business, everyone has their ideas of how they want it to be run. And, you know, Las Vegas is uniquely different than Honolulu, Hawaii.

Um, when you came into Stone Fire, you know, looking at the business, how were you able, you know, with the operations background that you had and where they were at at that time, how are you able to come in and build that structure so that each location feels and operates very similar to one another?

Well, the, the number one thing was people. You know, you said, it's a, it's a, it's a people and, and people first business. And, you know, I, I, I've said it. I don't know.

I read Charles Schultz books on Starbucks, and he said, we're not in the coffee business, we're in the people business. And I took that and molded it into, we're not in the food business serving people. We're in the people business serving food.

And I literally have lived by that statement forever because we can't do anything unless we have great people. The beautiful thing was coming to Stone Fire. They already had a people first program. So my thing was, great. How do we take that now?

Let's make that better.

Because the only way we're going to grow, the only way we're going to have great team members, the only way they're going, going to do the things that we needed to do and cook the food the way we want them to cook them and be able to talk to the guests the way that we expect is by making sure that we have the right people. It's hiring 51 percenters. It's making sure we have the right people in the right seats. On the bus to make sure that we can move forward.

So that was really making sure that we had the people piece and the leadership piece. I'm constantly stating two things.

The most important person in our organization and Stone Fire's organization or any restaurant brand is the person who is standing right in front of the guest and interacting with them, taking their order, you know, delivering their food, fixing maybe something that's wrong, complimenting them like that. Hospitality piece, right? Making it's how they make them feel, right? That's the difference between service and hospitality services.

Something you do for somebody, hospitality is how you make them feel. So that's the most important person in there. The most important role, I believe, in our company is in general manager.

Because the general manager hires, develops, trains, you know, gathers the team. They're not only the offensive coordinator, but they're the defensive coordinator, but they're offensive coordinator.

By building sales and keeping everything where they're, you know, everyone moving in the right direction and then defensively, they're making sure that I got staffing right, I got these things right and so forth. So I think that was the piece with Stone Fire is that they already had it.

So all we had to do is just rally everybody together and kind of focus moving forward on it. But that was really the biggest piece.

And once we have that and we have that now, we have team members that like their jobs or love their jobs and they understand their jobs and they know what's expected of them on a day in and day out basis. And now it's just bringing in tool sets to augment that and make it better.

When we do our hiring process, you know, as a, as a.

We're a family owned business, so we like some of the things that we look for is, you know, someone who's family first minded because we find that when someone's happy and healthy at home, it kind of, it translates into the workplace. Right.

I like what you said, that the most important person is the one standing right in front of the customer, making sure that they have a really great experience. It was funny, I know you mentioned that you worked at BJ's. We got a new BJ's in Tustin where I grew up many, many years ago.

And I think we were there for like the first week when it first opened and our food came, you know, it was a little slow, I think, to start. And the manager came over and I'll never forget this, he goes, I want to get you guys a free pizookie.

And my parents, I was a Kid at the time, my parents were like, what's a pizookie? We just want our food. But you mentioned in your hiring process you're looking for 51 percenters. What is that?

It's a, it's a Danny Meyer term that you want to hire people with a 51% emotional capability. The 49% are all the other pieces. But you want to hire someone with, with the emotional capability to be able to engage with guests.

They want to be, you know, you want those people that are driven by service, they're driven by hospitality, they're driven by those extra pieces, right? Those, those little things that are going to make it better for the guest.

How do you find that in someone in the interview process?

I get the questions that you ask. You know, you can definitely, you know, when easy question is, so how do you handle a guest that is, had a problem with their food?

How do you handle, you know, someone who's complaining about something, you know, if say we messed up an order, how would you handle it? Or give them a scenario, maybe a role play situation and say, you know, walk me through how you would handle this.

I think it just questions that you ask about their job and like you said, their family. And I know there's, you know, we live in California, so there's only so many things you're going to ask somebody. Right.

But I do think that you can delve into how they treat people, how they understand people, the, the how, you know, are they empathetic? Are they understanding? Are they, you know, just, are they giving people, you know, are they genuine? Are they authentic?

I mean, I think that's a biggest piece is finding people that are authentically true to themselves. And are they, they're emotionally connected with other people.

You know, it, it's, it's, this is an industry that's really based on people come into a restaurant and they want to enjoy, right? They want to enjoy their food, they want to enjoy. I've always looked at the restaurant business as being an escape from home.

You got a, like right now you got a husband and you got a wife and, you know, or just a family with kids and they, both of them are working and they don't want to have to cook dinner. So let's just take the family out. Well, great.

If you're going to take the family out, we already know now, especially in this day and age, it's incredibly expensive to take your family out to eat. So if you're going to take them out to eat, you're going to have to get something in return for that money.

Not just great food, but you want a great experience. So I've always looked at the restaurant business as being an escape from reality.

So if you have people surrounding you, like when you go to a, I don't know, if you go to Hawaii and go to a resort, there's an aloha mentality, right? Like kick back, like, enjoy. We got a beautiful beach, have a Mai Tai, whatever it is, like, that's a vacation.

Dinner out is a vacation from having to do dishes, having to cook the food, having to serve it. You know, your kids can order what they want. I mean, I just, that's, that's why I think that piece is so important.

Yeah, it totally makes sense because I, I, I view in my own life, you know, when I go out and eat or take my family out is. It is an experience like how you said, it's an escape. It's something I look forward to.

And it's the places that you build memories as well, is when you eat out. And what about. I know. So the setup for your locations, it's fast casual, right? You, you order at the front and then you go sit down, correct?

Yes. Yeah.

So how do you take the customer experience to another level with that where you don't have like the traditional waiter or waitress that comes by and takes your order?

Well, we're really like almost a hybrid business, you know. We are. I call it, I call it premium fast casual because it's not. You're going in your ordering.

You're going and sitting down, and someone's calling a number and you're going up to the counter and you are, you know, yes, you will place your order at the table. You'll go find a table or place an order at the counter. You'll find your table. You go fill your drinks.

You can grab some sauces or condiments or whatever you need and sit down, but someone's going to bring you your food. Someone's. If your beverage needs to be refilled, someone will refill the beverages.

We have, we went with, we switched our point of sale system over to toast. And with that we have toast handhelds. So look, we have a, you know, one of the best carrot cakes in the world. It's made from scratch.

Every day we've got a cheesecake that's the same way we've got a brand new dessert that's cinnadonks. They're just like these little pillows of goodness you dip in cream cheese frosting and eat. It's amazing. But so how do we order those?

Because when people, a lot of times when people are up at, they might not think about ordering the dessert. So we actually have team members that have the handhelds that can walk through the restaurant. Well, they can also grab you an extra beer.

They can grab you and you know, if someone wants an additional side item of something. And we also were recommending dessert.

So we're out there talking to the guests, we're out there clearing plates, we're out there doing those type things. So that's, that's a little bit of the extras.

I mean, I would tell you that every team member at Stone Fire Grill on their chest has a, has three words, happy to serve. And that is the embodiment of who we are at Stone Fire. We're happy to serve, we're happy to take care of the guests.

Incredible. What about when it comes to the general managers, you know, training, all of that. Do you have a formal training process in place?

We do, we do. We. Over the past couple years, the only thing that we've added to our structure here at our, at our restaurant sports center is operations.

We added directors of operations to basically make sure that they can oversee the restaurants and hold the standards and make sure that everything's taken care of. But we also added a director of training.

So between our VP of ops, our directors of operations and now our director of training and Alyssa is fantastic and she brings with her a wealth of knowledge and operations who is a restaurant manager and a restaurant general manager. And so she completely understands and in full service. So she really understands that hospitality side of it.

But we wrote, we rewrote a brand new manager training program. We do now quarterly development by general managers.

So we've really amped up the role in general managers to really provide them with a stronger business acumen, a stronger leadership acumen and the ability to just be all around well rounded restaurant professionals, but also true, you know, relationship people to make sure that the team members are well taken care of.

Yeah, it's hard. You know, I, I find in my business it's. You can get caught in your day to day. In my case, you know, our team go out and selling, right.

Meeting with operators and presenting our clients products.

But you have to, it's working what I call in the business and then working on the business would be training the team and building their skills, career skills.

But it's hard because sometimes you're like, I'm so busy in the day to day that I don't have time to create the, the Time or build the time to train my team. How do you find that time?

I know you mentioned there was quarterly, but how does it structured so that you do have, you know, you are open to be able to go in and train the team?

Well, I think, you know, we have a really good structure to our kind of our master calendar. So it's really looking outward and saying, how are we going to.

So actually bringing them together at one point in time in the year and celebrating wins and giving out awards. But there was also a whole day of learning that goes along with it. Right.

We never miss an opportunity to teach, we never miss an opportunity to review. So it really was setting those things up. And then our vice president of operations has weekly meetings with, you know, his directors of operations.

The directors of operations have either daily meetings or weekly meetings with their general manager. So it's creating a structure and it's also creating the structure that works.

And it's informative, but it also allows, you know, you said working, you get caught up in your day.

Well, if we have to be very careful that if we put too much on a general manager, we take away from their ability to actually work their day to day business.

And to me that's, I think the only thing that we did or some of the only things that we've been really focused on is making sure that we have our general managers get the tools that they need and the tool sets that they need, the feedback that they need so they can go execute their jobs. We want them on the floor. I don't want a general manager. I don't want a manager.

I don't want an executive kitchen manager tied up in the office doing some type of reporting. So our IT department is busy making sure that we generate reports for them.

Like, you know, we've got HR people that can help them with all the HR things that they need so that they can focus on the business. I want them out on the floor like I want a general manager on the floor.

80% of the time, you know, I maybe 20% of needing to do admin work because they have it. But all the rest for the managers, man, your focus is with your team and with your guests.

And so whatever we can do here at the restaurant support center is make it easier for them so that they can do their jobs every day.

I love that. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. Clearing the pathway so that they can do their job.

Yes.

We have a similar structure that we have a general manager for each of our markets and the sales team reports into them. And we find sometimes they become kind of a gatekeeper. Right.

Trying to manage our clients, in this case like our customers, and not making sure that they're not buried in reports and paperwork, sitting in an office, that they're actually out there, you know, working hand in hand with the team, training them, making their own deals and sales. It's hard, though. It's a fine balance to, to be able to do that. For sure.

It is, it is. And it's. And especially in this industry, in this business, there, things change every day. Right.

And it, and it really can be easy for you to get pigeonholed on. No, we got to do this right now. No, we got to execute this right now. And it's like, hold on. Like, let's, you know, we have a.

We have what's called a weekly all in. So it's a newsletter that comes out for all of our managers and all of our team members.

It comes out once a week and we make sure that we try to gather all the information so that it comes out in the all in, so that managers aren't coming into their restaurant office. And there's 75 emails right, from the home office saying, read this, read this, read this, read this.

So it's, it's just we really are trying to structure it so we limit. And, and we've also done. I had some time at this year's general manager summit to be one on one with the general managers. It was just them and me.

No one else was in the room. And it was a great time to just say, what are we doing right? What do we need to fix and how can we help you be better?

And that was a big piece, was the amount of time, being able to have enough time to do the things that they need to do, have enough time to get their reporting done, and limiting the amount of time we're taking up for them to be in meetings. And how can, you know, it's just little things. And that was the streamlining, the. Streamlining the newsletter for them.

You know, like, you know, we have food to cook. You know, we've. We have guests that want takeout orders that, you know, that we need to get food over to doordash, like all these things. Right.

And that's the most important thing. That's what drives the Company forward.

Yeah.

So it was really important to get time with them to then be able to say this is how we're going to do things.

It makes sense to me.

Going back to your time working in McDonald's, you know, seeing the franchise owners, I think you mentioned it was a husband or wife couple that, that owned it and seeing them work in the units every day, you know, and that kind of inspiring you. And now doing that here in present day for Stone Fire. What does your day to day look like?

I would love for my day to day to be out in the restaurants every day, but I do know that, you know, there's a lot of pushes and pulls. I do my best to, to get out into restaurants as many times a week as I can.

But yeah, you know, my day to day is, is, you know, I have a staff of 30 people here at the, at the restaurant Sports center, that we have a great team.

But you know, like, look, I understand that, that it's my job to keep the momentum moving forward, but you know, my day usually typically, you know, my day starts waking up at 5am and looking at sales, right? And you're looking at sales and knowing where your sales were at.

And now you know how your day is going to go and, and who you're going to make your first call to and how you're going to, you know, how you're going to message that. And it's, you know, I remember a CEO from one of the CEOs I worked with at BJ's.

And you know, his piece was you got to get up every day and you got to figure out how you are going to move the business forward, you know, inch by inch, however it is. And I, you know, I took this from. There was a young man, I think his name was Nick Nickic and he was the first autistic person to run an Ironman.

And he wore shirts that said 1%. And he and his family's whole piece was get better 1% every day. Like 1% every day. And I love that because that's how I thought about it. Right.

I thought about, okay, I just have to come into work every day and just make it better. So I think I bring that, or at least I try to bring that each and every day to the business to say, how are we going to get better?

What do we need to do? How do we need to motivate people?

How do we need to inspire thought and vision and collaboration and innovativeness to move the business forward each and every day?

But ultimately the best Time that I ever have is going into a restaurant and talking to the team members and thanking them, but then also asking them questions. What's going right, what's not right? Because those are the people that we're impacting, right? That those are the people that we're impacting.

That those are the, as I said, the most important people that we have in the organization because they are the guest facing folks. So my ability to interact with them as much as I possibly can is, is paramount.

Yeah, it totally makes sense. And I like that, that, that comment too. On, on 1%.

I've, I've done a couple Ironmans and in the training process, it's, you can't do it all in one day.

You know, it's, it's every day kind of going through the pain and suffering of, you know, long hours of, of exercise really and, and living in your head of like I remember I did like a six hour bike ride and then tomorrow I would do a four hour, like little mini triathlon. And then the next day, like it's hard to like you get that little sense of accomplishment.

But then you're back again tomorrow, like just trying to slowly get better at something until the ultimate, you know, the race day.

I 100% believe, Nick, I 100% believe that it was Ironman training that has helped me to be a better CEO. I really never believed that I could reach this plateau. And our private equity group, good partners, gave me that opportunity. It's been a blessing.

But I will tell you that I really do believe that what I learned from doing my first Ironman, which was kind of, you know, hey, can I get this done? Okay, I'll just go train and get it done. Just long hours, long hours, long hours. Right.

And then I found a coach that basically said, here's, you know, like, no, you can't just run. You need to do interval training, you need to do hundreds, you need to do two hundreds. You know, you need to do wind sprints.

And then on the bike it was, you need to do, you know, like here's how you build. And it was then it was looking at every single thing you did, right?

How many calories you're putting in your body, what do you need to train, how much, you know, how, how many carbs do you need to take? And then it's dissecting, you know, you were in a heart rate monitor, you got, you know, you got a bike computer and everything.

And then at the end of the ride you're analyzing everything that you did, right? Every Little detail of your ride. Did you get, did you hit the wattage that you want? Was your heart rate in the right zone? All these things.

And Nick, I swear to you that all of a sudden, it clicked in my head one day that, okay, if I started applying every one of these details to going back and looking at my business, looking at my restaurants, and not just looking at what their sales were for the day, but how were their hourly sales? And then let me look at labor per hour now. Oh, let me look at guest sentiment. Where are they strongest?

And they're like, oh, okay, this restaurant's a little off on their lunch sentiment. So what are we doing here? Hey, maybe we need to ply a little bit more labor.

Maybe we need better cooks that are going to get the food out quicker or accuracy. I kid you not, I, I, I would love to write a book on how I took what I learned from, from being able to complete an iron man.

And that's made me a better leader because I 100% believe that. 100%.

It's a great analogy. I remember my first one just training, and I didn't realize until when I crossed the finish line. And I felt terrible. I was so tired.

I was like, there's a science to this. It's, I, I was, I was the first one. I was like, this is just a bucket list. I'm gonna do it once and then I'm good.

And I was just going just for sheer brute strength and will, like, I'm just gonna make it. But then I, I found out that there's a nutrition component. There's your heart rate.

There's so, you know, your salt content, you know, leaving through sweat and all this. All, all this. Like, it's a science, like I mentioned. Yeah. And that's, I like the, the analogy between Ironman and running a business.

All the details and metrics that go into it to make it successful.

Any small detail will tank it. Right.

Like if, like, like you said, if there's one thing off in your nutrition, if you're not taking enough salt in, if you're not getting enough nutrition, if you're not getting enough carbs, if you're not just little, or if you push too hard on the bike and you're, then you're just don't have the leg strength to finish the run. I mean, it is, it's a science. And I think the, you know, the, the coach I have was one of the best in the industry.

He's local and sent you names, Joby Gutierrez. And it Just learned a tremendous amount from him on the whole piece. But it really does apply back to business. It just, it was, it's.

It's crazy to think that it took that long for the business, the light to go off of my head. And I always knew that details mattered on both sides. Right. But when you melded them together down to the, to the micronutrient. Right.

So take it to the business and to the minute and to the, you know, to the check and to the guest and all those type things, it's, it really did open my eyes to the business in a different way.

Love it. Looking into the future, what is something you want to achieve in your career that you've not yet achieved?

I, I want to double the size of Stone Fire Grill. You know, I want to, you know, 23 years of working at BJ's and I started there when there was 17 or 18 restaurants. When I left, there was two.

We opened the 217th restaurant. I left right after that. And it was one of the most amazing experiences. I mean, obviously I spent the majority of my career there and it was so.

It was so wonderful to work with so many people and watch the business grow and get to where it is. And I look at Stone Fire Grill and say, it's BJ's. At 17 restaurants, we're just worth 13.

But it's there, it's got the right base, it's got the right core component. We have fresh ingredients and everything's made in house fresh and the food's healthy and we're wallet friendly and all those things. It just, it, it.

I just believe that there are 20 other cities out there that could, we could put a Stonefire Grill in and would be fantastic, you know, and be able to compete with those out there. So, yeah, I would. That's my dream is to, is to stick around this place and keep growing it.

Incredible. My final question, which Ironmans did you do?

I have done Arizona. Full Ironmans. I've done Arizona twice. Madison, Wisconsin, Texas and Cozumel. And then I've done 20.70.3.

Wow. The Arizona one was just this last weekend.

It was the last time. That's what I heard last time. And I have a big number that I hit next year. 60 years old. And I really wanted to do another full.

Just to say I could do it and I wanted to do Arizona. And then I found out this year was the last year for it and I was really disappointed.

But yeah, yeah, that water was, it made me pretty sick. I did the, the training. Oh, my gosh. I woke up in the morning of the race with 103 degree fever, and my wife, we were like, what are we gonna.

It goes like, what, five in the morning or something? She's like, do you not want to do it? I'm like, I came all the way. I did all this training. Like, I have to go today.

If I. I could stop at mid swim or whatever and we could just call it a day. Made it all the way through and. But, man, I felt terrible.

There were always the. The Facebook or Instagram reels during COVID That said, if you. If you swam Tempe Town Lake, you're fine for Covid.

Totally. Oh, my gosh. It's gross water. And it was. It was pretty cold too. I hope to do Coeur d' Alene at some point in the future.

That seems like a beautiful one to do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautiful course.

Well, David, thank you so much. I appreciate you.

You coming on, sharing your story and just so excited for you and look forward to watching your growth and Stone Fire's growth now and into the future.

I appreciate the time and great conversation. Thanks so much, Nick.

Thank you.