In this engaging episode of Must Know People, John welcomes Scott Siepker, a fascinating individual whose story unfolds from the small town of Mount Carmel to the broader stage of life. With heartfelt anecdotes and humorous tales, Scott reflects on his upbringing in a close-knit community that shaped his values and character. From losing his wallet at a concert to nurturing an absent-minded nature, Scott's narrative is both relatable and inspiring. A true testament to the bond of family and the spirit of small-town connections.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey everybody, it's John. We're back with another episode of Must Know People. We've been trying to line this one up for a long time. Had a couple of misfires there, couldn't quite get together enough, but he's here today and I couldn't be more thrilled. Scott Siepker is here with us.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hello, John. I'm glad this finally worked out. So the audience knows we had this scheduled maybe three months ago and I didn't show up. We were going to do it at my house in Mount Carmel. My mom's house, I should say, is the house that my grandmother grew up in. And today, actually, we're celebrating her 90th birthday party, which is why I'm back in Carroll County. And so certainly Lakeview is not too far away from Mount Carmel.
SPEAKER 03 :
I had a great conversation with your mom, though.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, and my mom, she's a burgeoning superstar. That's my hope, at least. Eventually, yes, her charisma of being a small-town lady will eventually just make her world famous.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yep, she kept going, well, I have no idea where he's at.
SPEAKER 01 :
I don't even know if I can contact him. She grew up with me being absent-minded, and I've gotten so much better over the course of my life. I am inherently absent-minded, and so I just have to work extra hard at it. And it's one of the things my mom, I think, is still a little perplexed about with me, is how can you do what you do and you lose your billfold all the time? You can't find this. I know. And no joke, I can't believe this, but two nights ago I was at Gillian Welch at Hoyt Sherman Place, seeing that concert. And guess what I did? I lost my little fool while I was there. That happens to me all the time, too. I had to go back and get it.
SPEAKER 03 :
My wife and I go out to dinner all the time. I said, honey, got bad news for you. wallets in on the dresser at home. You're paying. Yep. You're picking up the tab on this one. So let's talk about it. You grew up in Mount Carmel. Tell me about that. What was it like?
SPEAKER 01 :
I mean, Mount Carmel, I think is the best place to grow up. And I know that sounds hyperbolic, but I truly, I feel like I got so lucky living there because we could get into the right kind of trouble. I think there's trouble kids should get into now. I don't have kids, so I can say this easily right now. But then there's those trouble you shouldn't get into. When you're living in Mount Carmel, which at that time, I was a paper boy. I did a census in third grade, very official. And I figured out that it was 101 people and 26 pets. That was what Mount Carmel was. And we just rode our bikes everywhere. Now, granted, we only have... seven stop signs i think so it wasn't uh it wasn't a lot of action no but we we nascar was big when i was growing up jeff gordon dale earnhardt so we we made different tracks we made darlington in one little place uh we made talladega around the big loop of the big loop of mount carmel And growing up, I mean, ultimately, it's where I learned what it is to be a good neighbor. And essentially, when you grow up in Mount Carmel, your neighbors are your family. I don't want to be too cheesy about it, but that's just true. And since Dad died... Ten years ago, mom's still living in the same house in Mount Carmel, and that town of Mount Carmel has just turned out for her, has become her network of family. Everybody looks out for everybody else. Me and my brother, we both live in Des Moines. And, you know, it's to have... I feel so indebted to the folks of Mount Carmel. I wouldn't be the person I am today, John, without them. And I certainly wouldn't feel as comfortable about my mom's happiness level if she wasn't surrounded by the great folks there.
SPEAKER 03 :
Do you try to explain that to people that are from bigger cities or wherever you've traveled to? You've traveled to Japan.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Here's how I grew up. And they're like, I don't even understand.
SPEAKER 01 :
I give I give a lot of different keynote speeches. And growing up in Mount Carmel is a huge part of what I talk about, because I can't tell people I can't explain who I am without telling them what Mount Carmel was like. When I was growing up there, there was no convenience store or grocery store or store. We had nothing. The only thing that we had there for, I guess, economic value, I suppose besides the church, was the pop shop. It was run by Miss Fleskis. And the pop shop was not a real business. It was just the back part of Miss Fleskis' house. And she would leave the door unlocked, and then there's a refrigerator in there and a little bowl. And you put a quarter in the bowl, and you could take a pop. And so once a day, me and my brother and the gang running around Mount Carmel, we'd go, and on the honor system, we'd get a pop from Mrs. Fleskis'. And so that right there tells you the environment in which I was able to have my most formative years.
SPEAKER 03 :
It's funny because you couldn't get away with anything. I mean, there was 107 parents, basically.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, yeah. And Kevin Tigges, who lives next door to me when I was growing up there, Kevin, he was one of these incredible guys. He's worked for Mackie Motors in Lake City for 30-plus years. I'm sure people listening to this, some of you might even know who he is. But he's one of these old-time guys who somehow had enough spies in every corner of Carroll County So if you did anything, it didn't matter if you were in Coon Rapids, it didn't matter. It was going to get back to him and he was going to come up and he was going to confront you about it. So you knew that the little spies were out everywhere and Kevin Tigges was really plugged in. Social media was not needed back then. Absolutely not. I honestly have no idea how Kevin Tigges found out about some of the things that we did.
SPEAKER 03 :
Who were the bigger influences when you were growing up there? I mean, obviously your mom and dad. They're huge influences. But who else that really kind of impacted your life that you look back now and go, thank God they were in my life?
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, yeah. So I talk about sort of the Mount Rushmores of parental male and female figures in my life. And certainly, of course, my parents were on there. But Kevin Tigges, as I just mentioned, he's my second father. He's one of these guys who just knows how to do anything practically. He is the quintessential common sense American. And he is such... My father was much more... loud and uh much more of a gambler uh he he's where the outgoing yes he was yes uh because i don't see your mom being that no no mom is uh is much more uh be behind the scenes and um you know a lot of ways she was she had to play second fiddle for most of her life and so she took that role on it's been nice to see since she's since dad has passed away She has taken her wings have spread out a little bit more and she's been traveling by herself and just getting out there and being like, gosh, I have a whole second life that I have to leave live here or that I get to live here. And and so she just it's been wonderful. One of the better things I've seen in my life is just my mom growing into this wonderfully complex and layered woman. Mm hmm.
SPEAKER 03 :
Have you always been really outgoing and things like that? Because, I mean, you could walk in front of a crowd and you're totally comfortable.
SPEAKER 01 :
No. Unfortunately, when I was growing up in Mount Carmel, I was going—Christ the King was—the school was going, not the person. Christ the King's school was going— Not that long ago. Not that long ago. First through fourth grade was in the Mount Carmel School, which we still had there. And then fifth through eighth grade, we'd come to Brita, and we would finish up there. And then everybody would—my class of 25 would then go to Kemper. But I was the only one in my class who went to Carroll High. And part of the reason was is that I was just, I had to, I don't know if special ed's the right word, but in second grade I had to, with a couple of the other kids in my class of 25, we had to leave the school building and go over to Miss Fleskis' pop shop where she would teach us reading, math, spelling were big problems for me. And so I got special attention, if you will, having to leave the school and walk the entire block over to, which is half the distance of Mount Carmel, by the way. But when you're a little kid, it's a lot farther. sort of socially i struggled academically uh and so even though it was a class of 25 i have to i tell people that i was in popularity i was like 24th it was like it was that was it like i it was a struggle um and so when i ended up going and i i tried to be liked and and i was one of those kids who tried too hard and i had this flash temper and i was scared of everything john i was scared I was so terrified that the wind was always a tornado, and I would hide under my parents' blankets in their bed, or at night I would just hide her in a mine. I was just scared of it. I was scared that the haze on the horizon was pollution or that I was always going to get an ingrown toe. I was a neurotic child, we shall say. You had a very active mind. You know what? That's the most polite way to say it I've ever heard. So thank you. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
How long did it take you to deal with the issues around your reading and things like that?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, so I eventually, when I chose to go to Carol High, which was a... You know, a small town was sort of a big deal because my mom and dad had both went to Kemper. My brother was going to go to Kemper. It seemed pretty clear he's three years younger than me. And my 70,000 aunts and uncles all went to Kemper as well. And to be in a class of 25 and not go meant when I showed up at Carroll High School and now a class of 155 and I didn't know anybody, I had to redefine myself. And it was crazy. It was quite a laborious process. At first, you know, I don't want, this isn't a sob story, but I, you know, I was bullied pretty hard. I took ag classes because I thought I was going to be a veterinarian, which were combo classes with the Kemper kids. So the Kemper kids were extra awful to me. And the Carroll High's kids weren't very nice either. So I pretty much for the first part of my high school career didn't have any friends. I had to sit at the loser table at work. I'm sorry, at lunch. And I could say that because I was a loser. And it was just rough. And then eventually I figured out. that instead of letting everybody else to find me, I need to figure this out. I need to find myself. And I didn't know that at the time, but I realize now. And so what I did was at Kemper, you could not have chewing gum ever at Christ the King when I was in elementary school, but you could at Carroll High. And I noticed everybody was always asking each other for a piece of gum. So I started carrying chewing gum with me at all times. and what happened was everybody whether you were cool or a loser you needed a piece of gum and i was there so i now started long before i was the iowa nice guy i was the chewing gum guy yeah nobody knew me as scott sipker sipker's too hard to do you can't it's zeep cat you know like a or skype or skeep or whatever nobody could pronounce it but chewing gum guy that was pretty easy so I finally kind of got my foot in the door with being able to show that I'm a nice person and slowly but surely also sort of figured out being funny. Not really. But what I did figure out the most was being a really good listener, John, to all the most attractive women in my class. There you go. And I all of a sudden became the guy who was put squarely in the friend zone, but I was friends with all the popular girls. And so that sort of switched my high school experience.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, it's funny because I interviewed Eric Noggle a couple weeks ago, and he had kind of that same experience. And honestly, this could be any school anywhere. It doesn't matter if it's Carroll High, Kemp, or whatever. You switch schools and you go to a different one, you're that outsider.
SPEAKER 01 :
And I'm not the person I am today if I don't make that decision as an eighth grader to do that. I still don't know how, because I was such a scared kid, as we talked about. Somehow I was able to know that I shouldn't do that. Now, I've done a lot of therapy, John, and I've actually found out that the truth of the reason that I went to Carroll High was because I felt bad about how much my parents would have to pay if I went to Kemper. But even though I made the decision based off of that as an eighth grader, it turned out to be one of probably the most important and best decision I ever made in my life. Is that a true story? That's absolutely true. Honestly, yeah. As an eighth grader, you're concerned about the finances for your parents. Yeah. It took me 20 years to remember this. But yeah, I remember getting out a calculator and typing it down. I would also do the same thing for a variety of other things my parents were spending money on. And I have just this deep neuroses about being in the way. And it has... I'm so lucky to live now in a time where mental health is something that people actually talk about. Because my dad, I could tell, my dad's been passed away for 10 years, but I look now at how anxious I get about things and I project back. And so maybe I'm just projecting, but when I look back, I should say. My dad, I can see, had some of the same things as me, but he was working at Pella Roll Screen for 30 years in a factory. He was around guys of that generation who didn't talk about their feelings. And I think I probably would have ended up being more like my father if I didn't have the opportunity to talk about how kind of nuts I was. Yeah. Or am still. My therapist, I... I shouldn't laugh at this. No, do laugh. It is funny. We have to laugh at these things. My therapist says, and I love this line, that I am the most confident neurotic she's ever met. There you go. And she's been doing this for 30 years. So I feel very, very good about pulling that one out.
SPEAKER 03 :
So is that how you wound up in, like, theater and doing things like that? Because, you know, you tried the sports and things like that. You did play some sports.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. So golf was the thing that I loved, and I was able to, if I may brag a little bit, I was first team all-conference my senior year. Nice. Thank you. Now, don't look up what I shot at State Golf. That is irrelevant. And then I played basketball. We could do just a podcast on just my basketball stories, because I was the kid who sat on the bench. They gave me the Smile Award at the end of the year, which was... They had to give the seniors some award. And since I went two for five inside the arc my senior year, which means I scored four total points. We won every game I played in, though, John. Adam Haleska was on my team, but they gave me the spot. You carried him the whole time. That's what I say. I pushed him in conditioning is my claim to fame, at least what I try to be my claim to fame. But I did that, but when I got into theater, actually was more one of the loves of my life. All the girls that were my best friends, I was madly in love with. They put me squarely in the friend zone. So I didn't have my first date until my senior year, and that was with a junior. So, you know, watch out. But mostly I got involved because Dr. Paulson had a daughter named Kelsey Paulson, and she was my best friend. I was madly in love with her. She was homecoming queen. And she was in large group speech. And so I thought, well, if Kelsey's in large group speech, I'll just, I'll audition. And so I did. And then I got not put in her group. I got put in her sister's group. So it didn't work out at all. Best laid plans. But where I did, I did kind of find I had sort of a natural knack for it and did a little bit. But it wasn't until high or in college when I took an acting class my sophomore year. And I went to Iowa State to become a psychologist because I was so good at listening. I thought I should become a counselor. And then I took an acting class my sophomore year, and it changed my life forever.
SPEAKER 03 :
Was it instantaneous that it did that, or did it take a little while to absorb in?
SPEAKER 01 :
I will never forget the first day of Acting 101 and Patrick Gowron, this little, short... you know, first generation Irishman. He said, old school guy, he looked at the wall, he pointed at the wall, and there's nothing written on the wall, but he goes, No acting allowed. No acting allowed. And I was like, I don't even know what this means. He's like, no acting allowed. And when I finally came to understand, like, when you are actually good at acting, you are not acting, it changed. Now, I was awful, John. I was absolutely awful. Everybody is, though. Oh, yes. Nobody's a natural at that. I was so absolutely bad. But luckily, I found it, like, unlocked something. I wanted to do it. I think it's because I'm so interested in so many different things that acting, I realized, gave me the opportunity to be a doctor for six weeks or to be a funeral home operator for another six weeks or whatever. It scratched all those itches. And so I just fell in love with it.
SPEAKER 03 :
I would think it would be about attention. You kind of felt invisible in high school a little bit, but here's a great way to draw attention to yourself without actually having to be you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Another life, you should be a therapist. Podcast over. We're sold. You're absolutely right. I have this desire to be liked more. And theater is a great place to get that spotlight. Now, over the years, I've come to see how unimportant being liked actually is because nobody actually cares all that much about you. I think it's Seneca who says, not Seneca Wallace, but the old Greek philosopher, you know, that we worry more in imagination than we do in reality. Or we suffer. It's suffering. We suffer more in reality than we do. I screwed up. Suffer more in imagination than we do in reality. And that is absolutely true. So I've been able to get more control over that. But we are that same person still, right? Like getting up there. And when I figured out how to do it well. Wow. Then it was like, this is a way for me to truly express myself. And it just became something that made my life happier. Now, did it make it more hard in other ways? Trying to explain to your father who worked at a factory for 30 years. You have to produce something. You have to have something tangible. And that's why I eventually got out of doing theater and realized if I were going to make money at this, I had to become a filmmaker. And so that's how I started doing videos. And that worked out just fine.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, a little side story. My former father-in-law, I was in radio at the time, and I was dating his daughter. And he's like, so you're in radio. I said, yeah. He goes, well, how do you determine how much you make in something like that? And I said, it's whatever you can command. And he looked at me and goes...
SPEAKER 01 :
huh and i knew he did not understand at all so i'm sure your dad was exactly the same this this whole idea you know when you grow up in a blue collar house my mom worked at the carroll candy redemption center for 25 years my dad worked at the factor the pedal roll screen factory for 30 until the day he died and uh so i had those jobs too in the summer i had to work those jobs And there is a practicality, a common sense that is instilled in you. And I hated working those jobs. I'll be frank. I absolutely hated them. But they are vital to me being, I think, more successful in this artistic world than some other folks because I do have that that understanding that at the end of the day, you have to still be able to produce. And maybe you don't like that thing that you're doing today, but you got to do it. You might have a 14 hour day of grinding and you got to do it. And so I'm so thankful to my parents who instilled that work ethic into me. And then that not bitching and moaning complaints either. It's like, This is the job.
SPEAKER 03 :
Go do it. Okay? See, I could launch into a whole thing about the older generation is really judgy about the younger generation now, I think, anyway, like the millennials and all of that, the Gen Zs or whatever. They're like, oh, they're just not like us. They're not interested in doing a good job. And it's like, no, just their interests are different. I think that nobody quite gets that. We've got to figure out what motivates them. And then you'll see a whole new side come out to everybody.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. I can just feel this now that I'm 41 somehow. I'm 41, and I can feel this about myself looking at the younger generations now. And I remind myself that probably the first humans that figured out fire, the generation before them would look at that generation and be like, pshh. They can't be cold. They got to eat their food cooked. They're such wusses. Back in my day, we ate the buffalo heart raw. And so I can sense that in myself happening now. But really, us as an older generation, we craft the world that we sort of wanted, that we couldn't quite have. And then And then the next generation comes up and we've created a little bit more space. And then they take that space maybe a little farther than we originally intended. And we get upset about that. But this is the normal. It's the way it's supposed to work. And so I have actually become. I've tried to stay more in touch with the youth. Trying to not fall into that same trap. Especially as somebody who is trying to be out there. creating content uh that does appeal not just to my generation but to an older generation and to a younger generation you have to be exposed to all of that stuff so that you can get those little references in and uh who who's busted through like who are the older generation hearing about from the young and vice versa who do the young know about that you could maybe relate um and it's so I just love being a human. I love what we've been able to do. There's been some terrible things that we have done, absolutely. But I feel at our core, we really are social animals who want to come together. And how do we do that? How do we actually do that is one of those... existential problems I try to solve that of course I can't if you got that answer you got life nailed right there so let's let's talk about we got to move on to some other things here Iowa State did it was it like college or was it like high school for you would go into college or was it a completely different world by the time I had finished high school I'd sort of somehow I had figured out the popularity game which is a game by the way it is absolutely way I figured out how to play it for my freshman year of having no friends to then all of a sudden being On homecoming court with Kelsey Paulson. Oh, my God. I can't believe this. So when I get to college, I'm living in this dorm in Helzer Hall at Iowa State. And it is the best two years of my life. The group of guys that just coincidentally got put together turned into being incredible. It was a wide swath of different folks. It was much more diverse than growing up in Mount Carmel and Carroll. And it changed my entire, how I attacked the world, how I approached the world. And a lot of that is I bring back to this moment It was Christmas, before Christmas, heading off for Christmas, my freshman year of college. So I'm 18 and I'm sitting in the room, one of the dorm rooms at Helzer Hall in Livingston, third floor, strong floor. And I'm talking with my friend, Rehan Ali. And I'm like, hey, Rehan, you excited to go home? And what are you doing for Christmas? And he's like, Scott, I don't celebrate Christmas. And I said, what? What do you mean you don't celebrate? You just dropped a bomb in my world. I had understood that there were different religions out there, Muslim. I just hadn't really ever had a conversation with a Muslim before. And he's saying, yeah, I don't celebrate Christmas. And this blew my, like, again, intellectually, I knew this was the case, but emotionally, it just never had hit me. And my whole life is built around, as a kid, the excitement around your birthday and Christmas. Now, unfortunately for me, my birthday is two days after Christmas. so really only christmas mattered so to have that touchstone be so important to my life and to have somebody be like we don't celebrate that at all i immediately got up out of the room and went and talked to our one jewish friend in the in livingston hall michael hoffenberger And he's like, yeah, I don't celebrate Christmas ever. And this just changed. It was a shock. And so I realized in that moment I had to start not just seeing the world or even just answering questions from my own perspective, But when somebody asked me a question, how would it go from somebody else's perspective? And I picked up a religious studies minor because I got so fascinated by all this. And Dr. Hector Avalos, a professor of mine who, when you would take a class with him, he would never let you answer the question from a personal perspective. He would always ask you, I want you to give me this answer from the Jewish perspective and from the Christian perspective. or from the secular perspective and the Buddhist perspective. I don't care in this class what your opinion is. I want you to put yourselves in the shoe of everybody else. That has changed how I've just approached life in the last 25 years.
SPEAKER 03 :
Did that change? I mean, honestly, you can probably look back at that point now and say that affected every one of my projects that I did. Iowa Nice Guy, Kinnick, Hoodoo, what you're doing right now and some other things.
SPEAKER 01 :
You can't, at least one of the greatest inventions, maybe the greatest invention that humans have had is storytelling. It is the thing that connects us. Before we could write things down, the only way we really could connect was sitting around that campfire all those millennia ago, and we would tell stories. And you being able to relate to those other folks in your tribe are so vital to making sure the next hunt, the next day goes better. Because you're a little more connected. Maybe you have told that story about the hunt that went poorly. Storytelling is so absolutely vital to what sets us apart from all of our other cousins in the animal kingdom. And being able to look at stories from a different perspective allows you to be a good writer. And I don't know if anybody would consider me a good writer, but I'm a better writer because I enjoy, I seek out looking at things from other folks' perspectives. So I can tell that story.
SPEAKER 03 :
That leads exactly into the Iowa Nice Guy video, doesn't it? From that perspective, it brings a whole new little light for me when I see it now or think back about it. I haven't watched it before. I watched it when we were first getting set up once again for the interview, but I haven't watched it since. And by the way, just looked it up this morning, 1.5 million views on that one. Huge. So, yeah, that perspective. You were looking at everybody else's perspective of Iowa and saying, you're wrong. Yeah. You are good at this. Yes, you are a very good interviewer.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you. That's a great insight. Yeah, you can't have that without realizing what people think of Iowa, what Iowans think of themselves, what I think of Iowans, what I think of what other people think of Iowans, right? It's all built in there, and when you can tap into it, and on the original Iowa Nice, one of my original filmmaking partners, Paul Benedict, He grew up in Iowa, up in Pocahontas, not too far off Highway 71. But he has that same sort of empathy that he could really lay in. And he was originally listening to a report about Iowa. And he was like, this isn't, this can't be what Iowa, this isn't the Iowa I know. And that's when he first came up with the idea for that first script. And yeah, it's... How many different scripts did you go through with that script? Was there a lot? I remember that so well because I was working at Wells Fargo at the time and Paul emailed me this script that at the time was just called So I Think You Know dot dot dot. And I start reading the script and John, I'm crying at my desk. I'm reading it and I'm laughing so hard. And We made a few changes here and there, added a line, whatever, but it was pretty much set. When I finally figured out how to deliver the line right, because the first take or two, I'll never forget. This is 12, 13 years ago. We were standing in front of CNN satellite trucks at the state capitol. This was a couple days before the caucuses, so everybody was in town. Yep. And I remember the first couple times I delivered the line, that first line, so I think you know something about Iowa. It just didn't work. And then I go, Paul, actually, wait, let me try something. And I started with this smile on my face. So I think you know something about Iowa. And then I dropped it. And then I said the infamous, I don't know if I can swear on your podcast. But I said, bleep you. But I did it with this total deadpan release of the relaxed cheeks. And that moment, it was born. Yep, exactly. It was shocking to hear that. That moment, yeah. And then it was like, oh, now I know how to deliver these lines. And so it was just one of those moments. And then I am so much... People call me the Iowa Nice Guy, and I love it, and it's awesome, and it's helped me buy a house. I'm not mad about it at all. Do you still go by that? It's been interesting. Sometimes I use it. Other times I don't. It's been really interesting to see the folks on the street who you yell at, hey, it's the Iowa Nice Guy. Or, hey, it's Sipker. I could kind of tell, like, people who have listened to the Murph and Andy show for the last 12 years that I've been on, like, generally speaking, if they're yelling out Sipker, either they're from Carol or they listen to the Murph and Andy show. If they're saying Iowa Nice Guy or It's the Nice Guy or It's the Iowa Guy or whatever it may be, then they've been exposed through my video work and not necessarily the radio. It's been really interesting to see how that goes. I have been, because I'm so neurotic, I kind of ran away from the Iowa Nice Guy name right out of the bat. Especially once we got onto ESPN, I was really worried. I was like, but I'm an actor. I want people to know me for all my diversity of skills. And, you know, Keith Murphy at the time was just like, you should just stick with this. And I was just a little too pretentious. So I ran away from it for a while. But I've come back full circle, and I embrace it fully. I'm thinking about doing my own podcast here at some point called Iowa Nice just because I'm like, gosh, it is a title that people know. Absolutely. And James Earl Jones just died.
SPEAKER 02 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 01 :
And he is one of the most established, incredible actors of all forms in any medium ever. And when he got done doing an incredible job on Broadway and winning a Tony, he would go out into the street and people would say, Oh, do that line. Luke, I am not your father. Or Luke, I am your father. Do that line. James Earl Jones has done all of that, and he's still known by most people as Darth Vader. What am I complaining about? For one line he said in a studio decades ago.
SPEAKER 03 :
And they're misquoting him, but it doesn't... But that's so iconic, they just love it. And that was the whole... f-bomb thing in the iowa nice guy i did ask your mom by the way i said what did you think of that with you know your son's dropping the f-bomb there and she just kind of looked at me for a second rolled her eyes a little bit and went i understood why he did it why he had to do it but i wasn't fond of it yes i that was a it's one of those things i feel like i i'm proud of the use of that effort there believe me i've used it in my life at times that uh
SPEAKER 01 :
It maybe wasn't all that great. But I feel like in that moment, William Shakespeare, this sounds so pretentious, but William Shakespeare would have been proud of the way that we used that word because there was just no other word in the English language that could capture everything we needed to say in one word as we did right then and there. Yep. I totally believe that. Shakespeare and George Carlin would have been proud of that. Oh, George Carlin. Yeah. Man, I wish I could have met him.
SPEAKER 03 :
So what did that do for you? I mean, immediately put your career on a new level, on just a new trajectory and all. But what happened after that?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, so Iowa Nice happens, and we get over a million views, which at the time was national news. Now, millions of videos are getting millions of views a day. But back then, going viral was a real big deal. I was shocked when I was like, that was a guy from this area that did that? And we did it three days before the Iowa caucus, so all the international media was there, and they had never covered an Iowa story like that. So I'm on Slovakian TV, for instance, doing interviews. And so right away, you have the challenge. There was no way to really monetize that at that time, so I'm still working at Wells Fargo. And eventually we figure out, I don't want to do politics for the rest of my life. That sounds exhausting. And if you see the original Iowa Nice, if you look back at it now, it's kind of sort of become a thing. And that's the thing, going back, just putting a loose, tying up a loose end with that James Earl Jones thing, is that when you do art and you give it to the public, you have to understand that now it's theirs. Yep. It's not yours anymore. It's not yours anymore. So you have to, you know that, and you've got to take it. And so once eventually I wanted to get out of out of politics and we went to sports and we made fun of. you know I thought it was really funny Mark Twain would appreciate that since in the original video we were making fun of everybody who was stereotyping us that now the satirical thing to do the Mark Twain thing to do would be to stereotype everybody else yep and so we do that and we make fun of all the schools in the Big Ten and the Big Twelve and Nebraska twice because it's too easy and ESPN eventually puts us on the air and man now we're cruising but I'm still working at Wells Fargo I can't quite figure out how to turn this into money And that starts to change when people start inviting me to give speeches. Eventually, people start asking me to make videos for them.
SPEAKER 03 :
Did that kind of blow your mind a little bit when they started saying, hey, we want you to come talk to our group about...
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. And this was the problem is one of the reasons why I had needed to get away from the Iowa Nice guy is that character is so much more offensive than I am. He's so much more of a jerk. OK, and I'm not. And if you and they would want the Iowa Nice guy, they wanted the Iowa Nice guy to come and give a speech. But I'm like, look. The Iowa Nights guy is going to give a speech for 90 minutes. You pay him for 45. He's going to say a couple F-bombs, drop the mic, and he's going to leap. We have to figure out a thing here where I can show up and I can be a little bit more animated and goofy and carry a speech for 45 minutes. I'll still give you some of that. I know what you're looking for. And so once we sort of figured that out, line to walk. Then, yeah, I got speeches all over Iowa. And it was so cool because it's something I always wanted to do. I wanted to be a person who could speak on something that they are a champion of. And I truly want to be a champion of this state. I want to be Iowa's storyteller. At the end of my career, that's what I want to try to be. And that's kind of why I got started. Ultimately, money has always been the thing. I make a good living now, but I don't make the stupid amount of money that I need to make to be able to tell the stories I want to tell about Iowa in the way I want to tell them. And so that's why eventually, or recently, almost two years ago now, I got involved in a tech startup in Iowa, which sounds crazy, but I think Iowa can do anything, and I think we can do a tech startup called HUDU, which, if it can take off, it's an odd job marketplace. If it does take off in the way that I think it can... Then I will be able to produce the Jack Trice documentary the way I want to do it. I'll be able to tell the Kate Shelley story that I want to do in a dramatized version. It's a means to an end. Oh, absolutely. And now, granted, hoodoo is something that I think can be great for all over. I think it's going to be great for people making ends meet and getting those stupid odd jobs you can't get done done finally.
SPEAKER 03 :
So explain Hoodoo real quick before we talk about Kinnick and things like that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Explain what exactly it is. Yeah, Hoodoo is the odd job marketplace we've all been looking for. Those jobs that you want to get done around the house that you can't get somebody to come over for unless you're going to pay them $300 or $500 to do something. My mom has this issue. She's a widow. She's got one little tile that's cracked on the front steps. It's a little dangerous. It's a tripping hazard. But you can't get somebody out there to do that. But on Hoodoo, what you can do is you download the app HUDU, you take a couple photos, you just write a couple sentences about what you want done, you post it, and then people will bid on it. And then you, as the lister, you decide who you want. There's no obligation. It's free to get the bids. You see what it is. If there's somebody, there might be a price you like, but not somebody you like. Then you don't have to do it. Maybe you like somebody, but not the price. You can chat back and forth. You don't have to talk to anybody. You can just do it over text. And with AI now being instituted, it will help you kind of build it out as well. Has it gone statewide? We are technically in the state statewide, but we've only been able to put resources really into the Des Moines area. We've seen 300% growth over the last month or so. It's been incredible. It's really starting to take off. My hope is to eventually really—I think it's something that will really be able to help out rural Iowa because— It's just not like it used to be where all the men are handymen anymore. And you have these projects around town in your house where you just can't get them done. And you can't find, maybe it's that one or two handy guys that are left or handy gals. But they're so busy. You can't get them over. On bigger jobs, making more money somewhere else. Yes, and maybe there's somebody that's good that's 20, 25 miles around. Oh, wait, that's not very far here in rural Iowa. You list it there, people bid on it, and you get some good folks. We've got a lot of veterans who are doers on our platform, and they do an incredible job. Our founder's a veteran, a Rocky War veteran, so that's something he's very passionate about.
SPEAKER 03 :
I can see that would be great for somebody who just wants to help other people. You know, if you've got the time on your hands, maybe you're retired, something like that. Boy, it's a great way to just help them. Yeah, you're going to make some money on the side of it, too. But, yeah, it's a phenomenal idea.
SPEAKER 01 :
And the cool part is it's not just your handyman projects. It's really anything. If it's legal, you can list it. So we had a dad, a single dad who wanted to take his daughter to the daddy-daughter dance, but he didn't know how to do her hair. So he listed it on Hoodoo, and a lady bid on it. She came over, and then they went to the daddy-daughter dance, and they were able to have the time. Now you're going to make me cry about this stuff. And so that's the thing. That is cool. It's like photography. Obviously, all the things around your house that you think of that are on your honey-do list or your must-do list or your to-do list, all that stuff can list it there. Right. Once you realize, like, we never thought of that idea, the doing the hair. Like, it's going to be incredible to see what people realize they can use the platform for that we haven't realized before.
SPEAKER 03 :
Again, you put it out there, they turned it into something that is useful for them. It now belongs to them again. So we got to talk about Kinnick. Huge, huge project for you. Only like four people put the whole thing together. It took you years to do and research. And what a monumental project. And we watched it the other night. We got Hawkeye fans. We're a Cyclone family here. But everybody just absolutely loved it. And we're just marveling at the intellect behind it. of Niles Kinnick. A story we didn't really know. We knew who he was. He was a Heisman Trophy winner, whatever. And that was the least of his accomplishments that we were impressed with when we watched the movie.
SPEAKER 01 :
Niles is an incredible human being. And the fact that we lost him in World War II, as we say in the documentary, he had a real chance to become an important American figure Beyond being a football player in a great order, as he was during his Heisman speech, he could have been president. I often wonder if Niall Kinnick could have survived World War II, how different this world would have been if... The election wasn't—the Republicans nominated, instead of Richard Nixon, Niall Clark Kinnick Jr. to be their nominee for president. How different things like Vietnam would have gone, or certainly there would have been no Watergate if Niall Kinnick was your president. So he's a real loss. But the process itself, yes, was tremendously long. It took 10 years and a lot of research, a lot of starting and stopping. And again, it comes down to funding. Funding is the bane of a filmmaker's existence. That and audio, of course. But I need to solve that problem. So I don't want my projects to take 10 years anymore. Now, I'm happy it did for Kinnick because it eventually came out at the right time, and we were better filmmakers by the end of it. But I got a lot of stories to tell in the next half of my life, and it needs to happen faster. And that's why I got to get the funding thing figured out. And that's what Hoodoo is going to be for me. The biggest thing you had to overcome was certainly the funding, right? Correct? Absolutely. And then figuring out how do we tell this incredible story in 90 minutes. The original cut of the film was over two hours. It was hard to spend all that time, 10 years putting that film together and then chopping out 30 minutes of it. But we knew we had to do it. 30 minutes of your hard work and 10 years of your life. And research. Some of it was the core research that we had done. But what happened is that we noticed when we put the film together that once Niall had passed away and we got into the legacy of Niall Kinnick, the film just felt different. And so we needed to back it off. And I think the film is much stronger at 90 minutes than it would have been at two hours and two minutes before. and I am hopeful that we'll eventually get around to telling the Duke Slater story. We haven't started really on that. We have pieces of it, but Jack Trice is very close. Just got to get that funding down, and then that one shouldn't take more than maybe six months to complete. We've got all the filming done really that we need, so I'm really excited.
SPEAKER 03 :
What was the holdup on that one? I know you had talked about it right away when Kenna came out. You really wanted to do this, but you were having some different problems with that project.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. Kinnick, it was originally going to be a film called Halls of Heroes, where it was going to be Niall and Jack's stories together. And we were going to dissect that and figure out why is it that we choose the heroes that we choose. But then once we got into discovering about both men and doing more research, there have been wonderful folks who have come before us. And we were able to stand on their shoulders to reach higher. But once we were able to start reaching higher, we were like, oh, my Lord, there is a lot here. Yeah. And it was too much for one doc, so we split them up into two. We're not Ken Burns. We can't do a nine-part documentary. That's right. And so we thought, well, the Nile one will be easier to do. It turns out we were probably wrong about that because there's so much more material about Nile that piecing together that archive was a Mount Everest climb. And then taking all of that, the process of making it and turning it into this All the writings that we read, all the aspects that we had collected together, putting all that into a big, thick script, and then going through that and being like, okay, chop, chop, chop, chop, and then putting that edit together, and then being like, oh, no, we've got to chop that. It's a big, long process, but I'm so fortunate that I had... Paul Benedict, who I mentioned before, with Iowa Nice, Christopher Cook, and Brendan Dunphy. I can't say that we didn't bicker, but we were able to figure out one way or the other, for the sake of Niall's story, how to finally get that to the finish line. And it probably wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for COVID shutting down all of my other sources of income. and being like, well, I guess we have time. Let's work on this. Got nothing else going on there. So how close is the Jack Trice documentary? Really, I'd say within a couple months. Once I'm able to focus on it, Hoodoo is my main focus right now. But I'm very confident a year ago now was the 100th anniversary of Jack's passing. And we were able to document all that and then We went out to Ohio in the spring, shot some more. That's where he was from. Got some more stuff done. I mean, we just have stuff that nobody else will ever get. And we need to get that on onto the screen for folks. And I'm not going to put a time frame on it because it's already been 12 years since I started. But I'm hopeful that soon, very soon. 2025 is my hope. Soon is a relative term there.
SPEAKER 03 :
By the way, what did you think of the throwback uniforms that Iowa State did for the 100th anniversary?
SPEAKER 01 :
I love them.
SPEAKER 03 :
I absolutely love them.
SPEAKER 01 :
The pants I could have done with it because it looked like they weren't wearing pants at all, but the tops were awesome. The old khaki look of the pants. I love the aims on the side of the helmet. I'm a sucker for a white helmet anyway. I'm a Buffalo Bills fan, so I have that suckerness in me. Bills mind. Yeah, that's right. I it was a nice I like the jerseys. I love seeing the bars be kind of a thing that I'm seeing kids wear now. I hope that they fully realize what they're wearing. The university has done a good job of highlighting Jack. And I hope that our documentary not only leads to more tension for Jack, but that it would eventually lead to me producing a dramatized version of his life the same way I'd love to do that for Niall. So I'm going to come back. I just have to get so rich I have a lot of money I can just throw around, John.
SPEAKER 03 :
That's the one thing standing in the way.
SPEAKER 01 :
The first thing that I'm going to do if Hoodoo hits, though, is I'm buying my mom, Janie Sipker, any beach house in the world. I've told her this. She's like, oh, you don't have to do that. I'm like, mom, look, you worked at the Carol Cameron Jamson Center for 25 years. I know what that was like. You've earned this. You've earned this. So we'll see. I bet she's not leaving Mount Carmel. You know, I kind of hope not. I don't know what I would do, in all honesty, if I don't have that anchor point on this planet of that house at Mount Carmel. My grandmother grew up in that house. To have that legacy, I know that there will be a time. Again, of course, in case I just become so rich that I can just buy the house myself, turn it into a little museum. Why not? Museum of Mount Carmel? It can be whatever. If you're that rich, you can do whatever you want to do, right? That's right. But I really... I'm just so thankful for everything. It's all the things, the highs and lows of my life. It just wouldn't change anything.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, if you're not busy enough with doing the Jack Trice documentary and with Hoodoo and some of that other stuff, you also start a little podcast network. Oh, yeah. The Gig Podcast Network, right?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
And I've seen it online. It's a pretty cool idea again.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. So we got Murph and Andy, the Murph and Andy Radio Show, Andy Fales, Keith Murphy. You might know them, any of your listeners, if they watch Channel 13. Sure. I certainly grew up watching Keith on Sound Off. I can't believe he's become one of my best friends and my mentor. He is, you asked me before about the people who have been effective, influential in my life. And on the Mount Rushmore of male figures, Keith Murphy is there, along with Kevin Tigges and my father and Patrick Gowron. as I mentioned before. And I'm so lucky. But we just left doing terrestrial radio on KXNO and went with a new network called Iowa Everywhere. Yep. Chris Williams. Yep, Chris Williams, Chris Hassel. And so we have our show there. We just had our second show yesterday. And, yeah, it's really fun now. I mean, I dropped the first F-bomb in the history of the Murph and Andy show yesterday. The ceremonial throwing out of the first F-bomb. I didn't tell Keith I was going to do that, and the look he gave me, oh, my goodness. It was so funny, but he was really mad at me. And Fails is just laughing. He's like, no, I wanted it to be me. So I got one in, and so maybe that'll be one of the things I'll be known for forever. See, Murphy's like me. He's like, it's been ingrained forever.
SPEAKER 03 :
You don't say that stuff on the air. So I would really have to bite hard to do that. Yes, you have to be careful.
SPEAKER 01 :
On purpose.
SPEAKER 03 :
Because I've done it by accident.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
The hot mic. I have said every combination of swear word possible all at once on the air one time, and that's a whole other story. Oh, well, we'll have to do a podcast about that. Oh, that was interesting. But yeah, Keith Murphy, again, he's one of those guys that everybody raves about. You know, everybody's got a story about how Keith helped them out. And I'm sure he's got his detractors. Everybody in broadcasting does. You better have a thick skin. Otherwise, you just get out of the business. They're going to criticize what you do. But the people, the professionals that are in the business respect him.
SPEAKER 01 :
Respect. Absolutely. He is the quintessential... Midwest sportscaster. He is the guy who ESPN offered, and he said, you know what? I think life here in my small community of Iowa is better. I think my way of life here is better. I think I'm going to be happier. Not many folks can Live their life with that wisdom. Yeah. And he's so such a giver. He's he is an incredible assessor of talent and then being able to figure out how to get the best out of folks. He is truly he's one of the most incredible human beings I've ever met. He's so kind and giving.
SPEAKER 03 :
He's got a great sense of humor, too. He just knows. He's got great comedic timing.
SPEAKER 01 :
He is... Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. I like old things. you know did jerry lewis and it was always the funny one eddie martin didn't get as many of the last but jerry is not nearly as funny if it's not for being being that straight guy and uh... keith has figured that out over the years like keith with hassle and fails. He can, he's funny. He's so funny, but he knows that if he sets those guys up, it's going to be even funnier. So he knows how to play the straight guy so well. He will, he's just, he is a brilliant, brilliant, beautiful man.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. We're going to let you get going here in a quick minute, but we're going to have to do this again. Let's do it.
SPEAKER 01 :
When the hoodoo hits big and when Jack Trice comes out. And honestly, I want to have a Carol plan because I want hoodoo. We'll figure it out. There's also fundraising that goes into a tech startup, by the way. Mm-hmm. So once we have our lead investor and we have some more to play with, I definitely want to come back to Carol. And I want to see if my idea of who to being able to really help out a smaller community could happen. So stay tuned. Love to be pulling some ads and doing some stuff like that.
SPEAKER 03 :
If I could ever help you, just call me. You got my number. All right. Quick questions time here. Random questions. What's your go-to cocktail?
SPEAKER 01 :
Old-fashioned.
SPEAKER 03 :
Old-fashioned. And who would you want to have an old-fashioned with? I mean, who is it that you would? I know a Kinnick would be an obvious answer, things like that.
SPEAKER 01 :
I know this is going to seem a little lame, but having a cocktail with Keith Murphy is honestly one of the coolest things that I've ever gotten to do in my life. But to go beyond that, There's so many people. I would probably, I love presidential history. Like it's one of my main hobbies. So if I could, if I could go back and have a cocktail with Abraham Lincoln, I'd love to do that. If alive. Gosh, it's such a good question. I want to give you a really thoughtful answer. I probably go Steve Martin. Steve Martin? I love Steve Martin. Yeah, interesting. Jeff Daniels. Those types of actors who are not just comedic or serious actors, but deep, deep thinkers. How many pairs of shoes do you own? Are you a shoe guy? No. Okay. So when I went through my divorce four years ago, I thought, of course, it's because my fashion is not very good. So I thought, maybe a lady will like me if I have more cool shoes. So I got a bunch of boots and different types of- Clearly, your footwear game was not up to par. I know. That's what it was. so i have way more now i'm gonna say i have like 20 pairs i got like five pairs of boots at this point and then probably 15 pairs of you know a couple two sandals some you know workout shoes a lot of casual nikes and adidas those types of things what time do you wake up in the morning Is it always the same time every day? Recently, I've changed 5 a.m. as the time that I've been getting up. But if I let myself go, it's like if I had, let's just say, no alarm, Scott, would probably naturally go to bed around 2 or 3 in the morning and wake up around 9, 30, or 10 in the morning. That is not how society works, however. Nope. So 5 a.m., the alarm goes off. But you've got to have the alarm. You're not the person who just wakes up at that time. No, God, no. The hardest thing I do every day is get out of bed. And what's the first thing you do after that? I go pee. And then I brush. Okay, after that. And then I drink two big full glasses of water. Then I brush my teeth. Uh, and then after that, then I will meditate for 20 minutes. Then I go to the gym and then I come home. I have my shake, my protein shake, and I'm started for the day. That's my, that's my morning routine. So you're, you do exactly what they tell us to do is drink water right away in the morning to do all this stuff. had a cup of coffee in my life haven't you I know I've recently been thinking about starting to do it just drinking black coffee seems to be quite just fine and healthy and the caffeine really does help with some focus and as you might be able to tell from this conversation I might have a little problem with that but so I have been recently considering it I also love traveling the world and coffee culture is something that is important to I've just missed out on that yeah but no water for me the thing I haven't done that I'm feel like i'm getting close to actually doing is after i do that glass of water and brush my teeth it's cold plunge time i haven't started doing it yet i'm a little scared it seems terrible but all the benefits the dopamine rush and stuff something that i that i struggle with regulating all that sort of things in my brain I don't know. It seems so hard, though.
SPEAKER 03 :
I don't know if there's a caffeine drink out there that could equal jumping into an ice bath. Have you ever done that?
SPEAKER 01 :
No. Oh, gosh. Maybe next time.
SPEAKER 03 :
Quote a line from your favorite movie.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, the one that just popped in my head is Go Back to England. Tell them that Scotland's brothers and sisters are free. That's from Braveheart. But the one that really just comes to mind for me is from my favorite movie. It's not the best movie ever, but Midnight in Paris. And they're just a couple of quotes about suffering from golden age thinking, suffering from thinking the past is always better than the present. And I suffer from that golden age thinking, that nostalgia. And so I often when I think about that. And you could even hear it in the way I talk about past in this podcast is remembering those lines and being like, no, actually, right now is the best time. Right now. Because I'm here and I'm with these people. I'm having this great conversation with you. And this 18-year-old cat who's just been laying here watching us the whole time.
SPEAKER 03 :
I mean, it's incredible. Mo, the cat, has been here with us the whole time, sleeping throughout the whole thing. So we have not been entertaining enough to keep her awake. Right.
SPEAKER 01 :
But I always try to keep this line in my head is, I'll be back. Terminator. That's right. It's a good philosophy. I'll be back.
SPEAKER 03 :
I was thinking Hamilton, you know, they always talk about what a great time to be alive.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
And throughout that show. Video games or board games? I mean, if you're an old school guy, you've got to go board games, right?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I like a few video games, but I am a big, big nerd when it comes to board games. I think people might say I take it a little too much. I go to board game conferences. John, I don't know if I should reveal this. I play games that you probably might not have heard of. My favorite game is Twilight Struggle. It is a two-person simulation of the Cold War. One player plays as the Americans, one plays as the Soviets, and you play through history. It is absolutely incredible. Absolutely incredible. You get riveting there. All the different scenarios. The choices that you get. What I love in a board game is interesting choices. And so a game like Monopoly, there are no interesting choices to make. You roll the dice, there's no choice there. You land on a spot, there's no choice there. And you buy the property, there's no choice there. I love games with great choices. And then War of the Ring is my other super favorite game. If you're a Lord of the Rings fan, this is a two-person simulation. of the Fellowship of the Ring, and it is absolutely awesome. And I also like non-serious board games like Wavelength, family games. They're really fun, too.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, last question I got for you. Growing up in the Midwest, I grew up in Pierce, South Dakota, and you grew up in Mount Carmel. One of the real pleasures, after I got a little bit older, were blizzard days. Everything shuts down. Man, you can't go anywhere. You can't hardly do anything. What did you do on blizzard days?
SPEAKER 01 :
We, one, woke up and felt like it was a second Christmas. Uh, but what we would do is we would make little home videos. We'd tell stories, we'd make up things. We'd have one of the, the tickets, we didn't have a camcorder, the Sipkers, but my neighbors, the tickets says Kevin, they'd had to have a little camcorder. So we would come up with little scenarios and we would. all have characters, and then we try and tell a little story and figure out how to edit in the camera. Like, if you needed to cut to black, we didn't know how to actually do that, so we just, like, put our hand in front of it quickly. And so, yeah, we would just create. We would just have... It would be us and the Tigus boys, us five kids, and we would... Either we'd create something or we'd pretend we were the new kids on the block and we'd do dances, whatever. Whatever came into your head, popped into your head.
SPEAKER 03 :
It was a day of imagination. It was. It was one of the great times I remember growing up in the Midwest. And people on the West Coast will never understand that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Seasonality is so important, I think, to who we become as people. And winters, there is something just... ecological about how important our winters are with those hard freezes where we do get that fresh start every spring winter like that for us people is the same like we it brings us closer together to those people who we are closest to because it's cold outside and we got to get closer and so we kind of get this hard reset every spring and i think it's a a really important i think winter is just a People think of it as the dead time, but it's really where we get that chance to have that rebirth.
SPEAKER 03 :
It took us months to get together, but, man, totally worth it. I appreciate your time.
SPEAKER 01 :
Let's do it again.
SPEAKER 03 :
It's been a phenomenal time talking to you.
SPEAKER 01 :
You ask great questions. Well, thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
I appreciate the thoughtfulness. I put very little thought into them. I just kind of listen to you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, you say that, but also how many years have you been interviewing people?
SPEAKER 03 :
I just had my 30th anniversary at Carroll Broadcasting.
SPEAKER 01 :
So you say you didn't put any time in thinking about it, but it's for 30 years you've been showing up to work, putting in the work, and that's why you're able to do it in such a natural, honest, authentic way now. Give yourself some credit, John.
SPEAKER 03 :
I will. I will. But yeah, it's funny because the people at the station, they posted it online and a ton of people were very gracious and said congratulations on 30 years and wow, that doesn't happen very often and things like that. The people at the station would sit in my office going... 30 years, that's a really damn long time. And I'm like, dropping the Iowa Nice guy, the F-bomb. I was like, being around 30 years, just showing up doesn't count. You've got to make an impact. So that's hopefully trying to do that. And you're making an impact with all this stuff. And can't wait to see Jack Trice, the documentary. I am very excited. I'm as excited to see it as you. I can't wait. Scott Siepker joining us today here. It's on Must Know People.
