What does it take to build a business that lasts—not just decades—but over two centuries? In this inspiring episode, Joe and OG welcome Cheryl McKissick Daniel, President and CEO of McKissick & McKissick, the oldest minority and woman-owned design and construction firm in the United States. Cheryl shares the incredible history of her family’s five-generation business, from Moses McKissick I’s brickmaking in 1790 to modern multimillion-dollar projects, including Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. Along the way, she reveals lessons on resilience, relationships, negotiation, and making every decision the best decision.
In our headline segment, we cover recent changes to Medicare Advantage benefits and why even “set in stone” plans need regular review. Joe and OG break down how to create a rhythm for updating your financial plan so you’re ready for any changes Washington—or life—throws at you.
Plus, Doug brings the trivia heat with a question about walls coming down (hint: not just in Berlin), we share a TikTok that’ll have your financial common sense shaking its head, and we even cover a scratch-off lottery win that has some questionable math behind it.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- How the McKissick family business survived slavery, segregation, and systemic barriers to thrive across five generations
- Why building strong champions in your network is as important as delivering excellent work
- The value of saying “yes” to opportunity—even when you don’t have all the answers (yet)
- How to set a schedule for reviewing your financial plan so nothing slips through the cracks
- Why “permanent” laws and benefits rarely are—and how to adapt quickly when they change
Resources & Links:
- The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissicks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers by Cheryl McKissick Daniel — Available here
- Wall Street Journal: Medicare Advantage Benefits Are Shrinking (subscription may be required)
- Visit our Stacking Benjamins Bookstore
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Mentor: Cheryl McKissack Daniel
Big thanks to Cheryl McKissack Daniel for joining us today. To learn more about Cheryl, visit Home – Cheryl McKissack Daniel. Grab yourself a copy of the book The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
Our TikTok Minute
Our Headline
- Insurance Companies’ Medicare Pullback Is Here (Wall Street Journal)
- Maryland couple win lottery prize just before both of their birthdays (UPI.com)
Doug’s Trivia
- In what year did the Berlin Wall come down?
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Other Mentions
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Tune in on Friday when we discuss is work/life balance really what we should be aiming for with our free time, our money, and our work?
Written by: Kevin Bailey
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Episode transcript
[00:00:00] opener: At some point far in the future, historians will probably ask, what was daily life like in the early 21st century? Well, one thing we know for sure, nobody will ever point to these two clowns and say, this was how you should have been Stacking Benjamins. [00:00:25] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:40] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on today’s show, let’s share a story. You probably haven’t heard the story of a black family who built America from the McKissick family of McKissick and McKissick fame. We welcome Cheryl McKissick Daniel. I’m not sure if you caught that, but that’s the McKissick family joke of the McKissick and McKissick fame in our headline segment. [00:01:06] Doug: Medicare benefits are a change in what does that mean for your wallet? We’ll share of course. We’ll also share a TikTok Minute, yet another headline and way better than everything I’ve mentioned so far. I’ll also include at no extra cost, my incredible trivia. And now two guys who treat summer like their investment strategy, just winging it with sunglasses and fruity drinks. [00:01:31] Doug: It’s Joe and oh, ju. Oh, I ran outta breath. Gee, you just get on with it. Said too many McKissick. I like, I have no breath left. [00:01:43] Joe: Believe it or not, Doug, we only have one McKissick here with us today, but Cheryl McKissick Daniel is, uh, well that’s some McKissick coming down to the basement. They are the, they are the family. [00:01:57] Joe: Uh, I had not heard the story. I did not realize how much of America the McKissick family has built for us. Uh, Cheryl McKissick Daniels, the award-winning president and CEO of McKissick McKissick. She is the principal in charge and project executive on, well, we’re gonna hear how many of the, of the amazing projects around America. [00:02:17] Joe: This single family is built. So if you’re interested in hard work, overcoming adversity, entrepreneurship, dealing with people, negotiation, it’s all here today along with my co-host partner in crime. Mr. OG is also here today. How are you, man? I’m just happy to be here. Thank you for having me. It’s first time caller, long time listener. [00:02:39] Joe: It it, it’s incredible. I love these history lessons. We get maybe three or four times on the [00:02:43] Doug: show. I’m just laughing at OG saying, first time caller, long time listener, which I think is actually the exact opposite of reality. Long time caller, first time he calls in on every show. He’s phoning it in on every show. [00:03:01] Doug: Definitely not true. I don’t know when the last time was that he listened. To the episode after he recorded it [00:03:09] OG: oh seven if memory serves. So [00:03:11] Doug: may [00:03:11] Joe: never have happened before. [00:03:13] OG: So as, as a complete side note, I was on YouTube the other day just scrolling and I go, oh, that’s me. And we were talking about something like, go, when in the hell did we talk about this? [00:03:24] OG: Because yeah, I have no recollection of any of those words. Or that comment or you two idiots talking about whatever you’re talking about. Like it was completely new to me. This whole con, I was like, wow, that was really good. Like that that AI has really done a good job of, I was gonna say, fascinating me. [00:03:42] OG: Let’s just say our new social [00:03:43] Doug: person [00:03:44] Joe: knows AI Well, good night. Well we have not resorted to that yet, but, uh, og even minus the memory, always showing up Max Head bringing the gold. So Max Headroom gotta go way back from Max Headroom. We’ve got a fantastic show today. Cheryl McKissick Daniel is our mentor teaching so many lessons we’re gonna hear from her. [00:04:07] Joe: But first we have a couple of sponsors who make sure that we can keep on keeping on and we get the phenomenal mentors like Cheryl coming down to the basement. So let’s hear from them. And then our sit down with Cheryl McKissick Daniel learning about the black family who built America. [00:04:33] Joe: And here she comes down the basement stairs. I’ve been so looking forward to meeting this woman. Cheryl, McKissick Daniels here. How are you? [00:04:39] Cheryl: I’m great. So nice to be here, Joe. [00:04:42] Joe: So nice to meet you. And you know, as I told our stacker family ahead of time, I’m married to a Cheryl, so I’m already predisposed to like you. [00:04:50] Joe: And obviously being a fan of the work that your company has done over the years. There’s so much stuff, Cheryl, for us to talk about. I’d love to talk about the early years in America of your family and then really your career. So we can dive into a couple things. Your family story begins in the age of slavery. [00:05:11] Joe: Tell me about the earliest McKissick and how they came to North Carolina. [00:05:15] Cheryl: Absolutely. So it dates back 230 years to 17. Wow. 90. When the first McKissick came to America, his name was Moses McKissick. The first, obviously given the name of his slave master, he was taught the trade of making bricks, and that was his craft. [00:05:37] Cheryl: He lived in North Carolina, which was a very interesting place at the time because each state treated their slaves differently. In North Carolina, they did not have as many large plantations. They were much smaller plantations. So slave masters had, you know, 10, 15 slaves, not two or 300, which created a very different dynamic. [00:06:02] Cheryl: As opposed to oppressing and making sure the slaves stay in their place and don’t up rise. That’s one way of treating a slave. But then it was, you only have 10 to 15 slaves, and I believe the McKissick had like 12. The slaves became more like family members, you know, people who were eating with you, uh, and with you all day long. [00:06:25] Cheryl: So it was a very different dynamic. Uh, so slaves were more protected. The reason I bring that up is because in the book we make the case of How on earth did the McKinseys stay in business? Five generations. Yeah, [00:06:40] Joe: yeah, yeah. [00:06:41] Cheryl: That’s an incredible thing. When one out of five businesses fail in the first year, you know, and passing a business down to a second generation is like 45%, and then to a third generation it’s 18%, and then to a fourth is 3%. [00:06:57] Cheryl: And here we are at five generations as a black family in white America. I bring up the fact that we got through that first segment of slavery because of the location. And so Moses McKissick, the first, uh, his son was Moses McKissick the second, and he was a master carpenter and he was given as a wedding gift. [00:07:23] Cheryl: To the Cheers family in SpringHill, Tennessee. So then the McKissick moved to Tennessee and that’s, that’s why my roots are out of Nashville. [00:07:32] Joe: I wanna ask you about Tennessee, but you brought up something Cheryl, that I find incredibly interesting, which is that so often kids don’t wanna follow their parents. [00:07:42] Joe: I mean, I own my own little company back, back when I was a financial planner. It’s been a long time since then. But even then, like my daughter, my son, my son interested in engineering. Like you, my, my, my daughter interested in research and ai, but neither one wanted a piece of the family business. But your family over these generations all seem to be not just good at, but excited about the family business and the idea of construction and design and engineering. [00:08:13] Joe: Your dad, mom, were that passionate about it, that you, from the beginning, thought you wanted to do it, or did you find yourself growing into it? How do you think that happened? [00:08:22] Cheryl: Well, we didn’t have as many choices and we didn’t have as many influences, you know? We didn’t have our handheld phones. We weren’t on social media. [00:08:32] Cheryl: Our only models were the people we saw. Those were our parents, our parents friends, and our friends. We only had three TV stations. [00:08:42] Joe: Right. I know those days. Right. I [00:08:44] Cheryl: remember a lot of my friends at the time, because we went to a private school called Peabody Demonstration School in Nashville. A lot of my friends were going to Ivy League schools. [00:08:54] Cheryl: They were applying to Harvard and Yale, and Rice and all these places. And I remember my father said, Harvard, you mean? He’s like, you can go to any school you want to, but the only school I’m paying for is Howard University. So, and when you get there, you’re gonna be in architecture and engineering. Oh. So w. [00:09:19] Cheryl: What do you do? And so, you know, I was a double major for, you know, the first two years and, and I mean 24 credits every semester. And oh my goodness, late at night in the design studio and early in the morning doing statics and dynamics. It was just difficult. And I remember saying to my mom, you’ve gotta talk him out of this. [00:09:42] Cheryl: And she did. And I said, I want to be, if I have to make a choice between these two, I want to be an engineer. I don’t wanna be an architect. And so, you know, my life got easier from that point on, but we didn’t have a choice. And now, you know, I think about the sixth generation that I’m looking at, walking around the house, they both work in the business, but I don’t know how passionate they are about being in the business. [00:10:11] Cheryl: And there’s a period of time, especially for me, I remember. I didn’t wanna be associated with the McKissick business. I wanted to go and work for any company that didn’t bear the McKissick name. And I went and I worked for Turner Construction and Weinger associate, but I quickly saw that there was no future there for me. [00:10:34] Cheryl: You know, you go to the executive floor, nobody looked like me and they were all men. [00:10:39] bit: Yeah. Yeah. [00:10:41] Cheryl: And I’m in a males industry. Okay. And most of them were Irish. Okay. I’m like, I quickly began to understand that if I wanted. To have my own company. This was the best route to go. Then I shifted back to the family business. [00:11:00] Cheryl: But there is this instinct to kind of rebel. [00:11:05] Joe: You know, a lot of the vice over the years that I’ve gotten, some of it sticks, some of it doesn’t. I’m sure it’s been the same for you. I heard a quote from a woman named Dr. Langer at Harvard who said, we should stop trying to make the perfect decision and instead make the decision. [00:11:21] Joe: We made the best decision. Meaning I like that. Yeah. Instead of regretting all the time, and I feel like that maybe is what you did, you’re like, you know what? I’m going to enter the family business. I’m gonna make this the best it can be. And then the joy stems from making that a great decision. [00:11:38] Cheryl: I totally agree, because it hasn’t been easy. [00:11:42] Cheryl: Initially, my mom, I went to work for her ’cause my father was already incapacitated. My mom. I’ll never forget when my fa father first got sick and my mom had to take over the business. You know, she said, I’m gonna hold onto this business even though I only know the telephone number to the office. Gonna hold onto this business because one of my three daughters might want to come and, and be a part of it. [00:12:11] Cheryl: And. She had a master’s degree in psychology, and I’m telling you, she would say that that helped her deal with the Manus and phobias of men who didn’t understand that a woman could run a construction company in the 1980s. You know, that was long before women could borrow money from banks. Their sons could, their uncles, their husbands, but women couldn’t borrow money from the bank until the Women’s Business Act that took place in 1990. [00:12:40] Joe: It’s so well to believe that it was that recent [00:12:43] Cheryl: 1990, I think that was what Colin Powell was, vice president, you know, that was, was Spike Lee’s movie came out. She’s got Right, it was the, you know, the, the song doing the, but, right. This was like yesterday for me. [00:13:00] Joe: We can, we can listen to doing the but, but we can’t borrow money if we’re a woman. [00:13:08] Cheryl: You can’t, you couldn’t borrow money. Right. [00:13:11] Joe: Well, can we focus on your mom for a minute? Yes. And I wanna get back to Tennessee, but, but your mom, just reading about her, what were the traits that you gleaned from your mom that you think somebody who’s gonna be successful in business needs to know? [00:13:27] Cheryl: Okay. She was fearless. [00:13:30] Cheryl: She would go tell people about her firm, whether they wanted to hear it or not. She would go in rooms. That made me extremely uncomfortable that eventually I got used to being in myself. Also, she was an educator. She had been a teacher in a past life. So she could stand up in a crowd and just start talking. [00:13:51] Cheryl: I had a fear of public speaking when I graduated from college. I didn’t really wanna go and speak to colleges and universities and much less clients in business, but my mother didn’t have a problem with that. She also had a lot of integrity and was a good business woman. I’ll never forget we went to Tuskegee. [00:14:13] Cheryl: And the president of Tuskegee University said, you know, Ms. McKissick and she had just taken over the company. When they designed this building, we told them it’s really hot down here and we need operable windows, but none of these windows open. My mom’s like, what? Are you kidding me? She said, you know what, I’m gonna switch out every one of these windows and I’m gonna pay for it ’cause that’s our mistake. [00:14:41] Cheryl: She stayed away from confrontation and you know, bringing lawyers into issues. She tried to work it out person to person and tried to do what was right. She was also very innovative and creative. On the same trip, she looks over at this old dilapidated building where they were literally keeping the lawn equipment, but it had a beautiful structure, and she said to the president, now. [00:15:11] Cheryl: Didn’t you say you need a new residence? He’s like, yeah. She said, I see you living in this building. She’s like, it’s beautiful cold law at the top. You know? It’s a stately structure. And he’s looking at her like, are you crazy? This is literally a dilapidated place. We are gonna tear it down. And mom’s like, no, you’re not. [00:15:32] Cheryl: You’re gonna commission us to design it. So she fixed the windows. That’s fabulous. [00:15:37] Joe: She [00:15:37] Cheryl: got another project at the same time. [00:15:40] Joe: But I love that doing the right thing leads to more work versus I feel like Sheryl, so many people are short term and obvious when there’s a longer play. [00:15:48] Cheryl: Yes. And he hired her on the spot and he loved that for his home, he and his wife for many years. [00:15:57] Cheryl: And now it’s called Gray Columns. And it’s on the historical register. That’s [00:16:02] Joe: Well, well, your, your family has designed how many buildings that are on the historical register. I mean, even in chapter two or three of your book, there are four right? At Fisk University, I believe. [00:16:13] Cheryl: Yes. Fisk University. It’s the Van Becton. [00:16:17] Cheryl: It’s Carnegie Hall, which is where the Aaron Douglas murals are on the walls. And that’s the administration building is Jubilee Hall. Matter of fact, I was just there like two weeks ago. It’s amazing. Uh uh, right next door is Meharry Medical College. There are 10 buildings on that campus. The McKissick designed and built nine of them. [00:16:42] bit: Wow. [00:16:44] Cheryl: Tennessee State University, you know, all through the south. At least 29 historically black colleges. And I like to say we documented the black experience through our buildings. [00:16:58] Joe: You have, I mean, 200 years of building. [00:17:01] Cheryl: Yes. [00:17:01] Joe: There is so much that happened early on to your family when you got to Tennessee. [00:17:05] Joe: But I want to talk about some of the interesting things that I found about you growing up. So you mentioned earlier you attended the Peabody Demonstration School. You were one of the first black students admitted. What was that experience like? Cheryl, [00:17:20] Cheryl: that was very interested. You know, you’re in an environment with people that don’t look like you, but I wasn’t alone because I had a twin sister. [00:17:31] Cheryl: And so the two of us were best buds. We were able to have our own little enclave and world within another world, and so that was interesting to everyone around us. So we began to attract a lot of attention, and then we got a lot of friends and it just opened up our world. [00:17:53] Joe: Yeah. But I feel like somehow as I was reading, I felt like I felt bad because sometimes the way you described it, you also sometimes felt like an animal at the zoo, you know? [00:18:03] Joe: Yes. The people were like, who is this? Who is this person who’s different than us? Right. [00:18:09] Cheryl: Who’s different than us And then, you know, we lived in the black community. Most of our white friends lived in Bellmead and in the established and beautiful communities of Nashville. They would invite us over for pajama parties and, you know, sleepovers and things like that, and we would go to their house and we had never seen anything like that in our life. [00:18:30] Joe: Yeah. Your, your houses, by the way, the firm was already huge. You guys were doing amazing business already, but Uncle Calvin and the McKissick houses, which were gorgeous, were nothing like these people’s houses yet. [00:18:42] Cheryl: Oh, no, nothing. Their houses were new and 10,000 square feet. It was just incredible with sprawling land. [00:18:52] Cheryl: But you know what, everybody treated us nice. They treated us like we were them. It was not terrible because we, we got used to it. It, for me, it just gave me the beginning. I needed to enter into. A white male world in New York City because I’m telling you it was, it was the exact same. [00:19:15] Joe: And I just thought about Cheryl. [00:19:16] Joe: The powerful part there for me was just reminding yourself that being around people who aren’t like you and learning different perspectives and seeing different points of view and understanding people that are different, how much that served you throughout your career. Like some of the stories you talk about, these, you know, multimillion dollar, a hundred of million dollar deals that you’re doing and dealing with people who are nothing like you. [00:19:40] Joe: Like I feel like those early lessons really served you well. [00:19:44] Cheryl: I truly believe they did because I learned deep down inside we’re all the same. You know, at the core there’s no difference. [00:19:52] Joe: That said though, Cheryl, there was a piece I wanna shine a light on. Okay. ’cause it wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows and people being nice. [00:19:59] Joe: No. You were nine years old when you had this moment that made the civil rights era of the sixties feel very personable. You were at a birthday party that went wrong. Can you tell us about that? [00:20:11] Cheryl: Yes, sure. That was my mother’s godson, Avon Williams, and I wanna say he was two or three years older than me, his father. [00:20:22] Cheryl: Was a civil rights attorney, and he lived right down the street from Jay Alexander Luby, and he lived in a house that was right next to honor Bonam, who was a writer out of the black Renaissance where Langston Hughes would go visit. Mm-hmm. I mean, these are the icons of the Black Renaissance, and we’re at a birthday party and all of a sudden we see it’s, it’s probably like five, six o’clock. [00:20:49] Cheryl: The sun’s going down, it’s dawn. All this light is shining out of a window. So we run out and there’s a huge cross burning in the yard, which was astonishing to me. I had never witnessed anything like that. I wasn’t even aware of the hatred in the world at that point until I saw this cross and I understood how vulnerable we really were, because now these people had come into our neighborhood. [00:21:21] Cheryl: And we’re able to erect this cross and burn it while we’re sitting right inside. And this is a block from the Fisk campus. It was scary and it was traumatizing. Our parents tried to comfort us, but you can never get that out of your mind. Even at the age, I don’t even know how old I am, 64. [00:21:50] Joe: That’s a good problem to have, by the way. [00:21:51] Joe: You gotta hold onto that problem. [00:21:56] Cheryl: Even at this age, if I go into some environments, all of that fear can come right back. [00:22:01] bit: Yeah. ‘ [00:22:02] Cheryl: cause you don’t know what people are thinking and especially today where we have, uh, open carry and you know, you just don’t know what people are thinking. [00:22:12] Joe: Well, and there’s so many stories of business deals you tell in your book where people present themselves as one thing and then you find out later on, and I’m thinking about. [00:22:22] Joe: An instance in Philadelphia that you had that I’ll let people read about later. But I want to go specifically into one of the many big deals that your family, uh, and that your company and with you at the helm that you went through, which was the new basketball arena coming to Brooklyn and the basketball team coming to Brooklyn. [00:22:41] Joe: Initially, you weren’t involved in this deal at all. In fact, I, I think did you hear about it on the radio? How did you squeeze McKissick and McKissick into, into this deal that had nothing to do with you? At first? [00:22:54] Cheryl: Yes. I heard about it on TV that Bruce Ratner was, was gonna buy the nets and build this arena in Brooklyn. [00:23:03] Cheryl: And I knew Brooklyn, you know, had a very large African-American population, but that population was really Caribbean population, which is very different than where we come from in the south. So I began to go and meet. A lot of the black leaders in Brooklyn and I said, well, if I can get all these people to know who McKissick is and just to mention our name when the construction comes up, maybe just, maybe we can weasel in there. [00:23:37] Joe: Can I, can I stop you there, Cheryl, for a second? Because I just want our stacker audience to get every piece of this. Like before you barreled into the room or into the situation, you got to know who the players were, who the people were. I mean this one woman that you met, especially you found out this woman, Bertha Lewis Bert was a woman that you needed to know, like you had to know Bertha Lewis and then Bertha kind of was able to help you meet a lot of the other players. [00:24:04] Cheryl: That’s right. And that’s happened throughout my career where there has been this. Person that I have been able to meet and become their mentee. And that happened with Bertha Lewis. That happened with Bessy Clark and Ion ASCO in Philadelphia. Bertha was a force of nature. Bertha would do sit-ins, she would, you know, shut down people’s establishments. [00:24:31] Cheryl: And she had a real true following. And, you know, not a social media following. Real live people walking around with her. [00:24:40] Joe: I remember General Norman Schwartzkoff saying this at a thing I went to early in my career. He said, in any military unit, and, and I think it’s the same here, Cheryl, in any military unit, there is the defacto leader that has the name on their chest and you know, they’ve got the name nameplate on their door. [00:24:57] Joe: And then there’s the person that if they’re not doing it, nobody’s doing it. That’s correct. And you need, that’s, you need to find out who those people were. And I think that this is who Bertha is, right? I mean, Bertha was, yeah. The person, if Bertha ain’t doing it, it isn’t happening in Brooklyn. [00:25:11] Cheryl: Right. But you also have to make sure that those people identify with the same values you have. [00:25:19] Cheryl: They have to also see that promoting black business is important. If they didn’t see that. Or if they didn’t understand the economics of that and the impact of that, then they weren’t gonna help. [00:25:34] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. [00:25:35] Cheryl: But Bertha did understand the impact of that, and she also knew that if she got me in place, then I in turn would have to help other subcontractors come in from her community, which would then turn into jobs for her community, and she would be in control of that because she would’ve helped me to get a piece of the action. [00:25:59] Cheryl: And so she understood that whole chain, that whole ecosystem. She understood that. And so she made sure that she told me what to do, and she made sure she told others what to do, because you want someone to speak good about you when you’re not in the room. [00:26:18] Joe: That is so huge. You end up getting a meeting then with Bruce Ratner. [00:26:23] Joe: Yes. I’m just envisioning you walking into this meeting, Cheryl, like my stomach. You talked earlier about public speaking. There are big moments and then there are big, big, big moments. I can’t, I imagine, how did that meeting go? [00:26:35] Cheryl: He, well, he was a very wealthy man. Uh, he had his own plane. He was that wealthy. [00:26:41] Cheryl: Okay. And Bertha would fly with him places. So he just was so nice. He was like, if you’re a friend of Bertha, you are a friend of mine, so nice to meet you. Uh, he said, I’m gonna introduce you to the head person over all of our construction. And it turned out to be this wonderful Italian man named Bob Santa. [00:27:04] Cheryl: And he said, he’s gonna help you. So I go to see Bob and Bob says. Well, we already have a contractor for the arena. Sure. It’s kinda late [00:27:13] Joe: in the [00:27:13] Cheryl: game. Yeah, you’re late in the game. He’s like, but we have to move these train tracks, uh, which is where the MTA was storing their trains during the day, and once we’re moved, those then we’re able to place the arena here, so we’re gonna move them to a temporary location and then to a permanent location. [00:27:32] Cheryl: He’s like, do you wanna look at that? I’m like, sure. Whatever you have, I’ll take it. Well, I couldn’t believe it. Five days later I got these huge drawings on my desk conference. They cover my conference room table. [00:27:46] Joe: You said it’s like what? 500 pages? [00:27:48] Cheryl: Five. I like, what am I supposed do this? But it’s one of those, I call it the glass cliff, right? [00:27:57] Cheryl: Not the glass ceiling. It’s a glass cliff. Like, you know, either you’re going to jump and fly or you’re going to jump and fall. You know, I just figured it out. I figured it out. I brought on the right staff who could handle the actual work. I hired people that were actually working at the MTA at the time, which is the, the subway and the train authority for the city of New York. [00:28:19] Cheryl: And we got it done and we started off with a small $230,000 contract to do estimating and constructability and ended up. With a $300 million project, [00:28:32] Joe: which, which is that I read and, and by the way, stackers, Cheryl and her company had a week to put that together to get $230,000 worth of business, which, you know, may sound a lot. [00:28:47] Joe: Like a lot to just an average working person, but to run a, you are not running a company on $230,000. Like this is a nothing project. Right? To turn that into $300 million, I felt like Cheryl, that’s where you had to be your mom over and over and go, well, how about this? We could help here. We could do this. [00:29:04] Joe: So [00:29:05] Cheryl: I used to go to every meeting on Tuesday, we’d have construction meetings and I’d just sit there and hear whatever Bob was saying. And Bob was saying, well, I gotta, and before he would get it out, I’m like, okay, we can do that. We can do that. And our contract just kept growing and growing and growing. [00:29:23] Cheryl: And Bob Sand and I are the best of friends today is unbelievable how that happens. I [00:29:29] Joe: think there’s a huge lesson there. I mean, ask for the business and then do kick ass work. I mean, it’s not one or the other. It’s gotta be a combo. He learns to trust you and as he trusts you, you end up with a ton of work. [00:29:41] Cheryl: That’s right. We’re working together now. That’s what’s so funny, [00:29:48] Joe: but I think that’s how you know friendships are formed too, is that you know who, who has your back. [00:29:53] Cheryl: Yes, [00:29:54] Joe: yes. Your story overall and stackers. We just went through 2% of Cheryl’s story, but it’s all about family fortitude and finding this way forward. [00:30:05] Joe: What’s the message, you know, people walk away with when they hear your journey? [00:30:10] Cheryl: Uh, I guess the message is defining yourself and being true to yourself and living that out. You know, I so love what you said about making a decision and making it your best once you make it, because you don’t know, but you have to make a decision. [00:30:28] Cheryl: Yeah, right. You can’t just keep floundering around trying to get more information. You need to make a decision and move forward with it, and then make it the best you can. And I found that has worked for me, just being who I am, showing up every day knowing that I’m giving my best to whatever situation I’m in, and knowing that I can add value. [00:30:51] Cheryl: Because my perspective is different than everyone else’s, even my twin sister. So someone can can gain something from a different perspective. And we talked about that as well early on. [00:31:04] Joe: It is so funny, Cheryl, how at a very surface level you and I have not much in common, but I have twins. My wife is named Cheryl. [00:31:12] Joe: I’m the, the lessons from your book are so universal. It’s the black family who built America, the McKissick, two centuries of daring pioneers, and it is available everywhere. Correct? [00:31:26] Cheryl: Yes, everywhere. [00:31:28] Joe: Cheryl, thank you so much for mentoring our stacker family today. I super appreciate you and your time and just all the amazing work that you’ve done. [00:31:37] Joe: Thank you so much. [00:31:38] Cheryl: Thank you. [00:31:43] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor Duggan, to celebrate Cheryl joining us today. Let’s detail some demo work that made headlines worldwide capitalists around the world were horrified on today’s date back in 1961, because that’s when East Germany began building the Berlin Wall, a wall that when the demolition began many years later, spurred on parties in the streets and worldwide celebrations have it on good authority that immediately Cheryl’s firm was hired to build a Starbucks with a nice outdoor patio area over in East Berlin. [00:32:18] Doug: Now, they didn’t, didn’t do that. All right, my bad. Maybe, maybe not. Here’s the question. What year was this breakthrough? See? See what I did there? Yeah. Here’s a hint. Paula Abdul and Millie Vanilli were topping the music charts at the topping. They weren’t just up there. Millie Vanilli girl, you know It’ss True? [00:32:38] Doug: They were topping the music charts. They were at the top. I’m gonna be back right after I go. See if mom will help us. Tear down the wall [00:32:48] Joe: a little Pink Floyd reference. [00:32:56] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m wall hater and a guy who’s always up for some demolition. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Today we’re celebrating tearing down walls, literally, because not only did we hear about that from Cheryl McKissick Daniel, but a wall literally came down when the literal wall between, literally between west and east Berlin came a tumbling down and the walls come tumble and down. [00:33:26] Doug: I just can’t not sing it. But what year did that happen? It was the same year when Paula Abdul and Milli Vanilli dominated the pop music charts. Did you guess 1990? If so, you would’ve been only a year late because the answer was 1989. But we are far enough away that we’ll give it to you anyways. You’re welcome. [00:33:48] Doug: And now back to two guys who believe the only thing hotter than August and Texarkana should be your net worth. Let’s get back to Joe and og. [00:33:58] Joe: Hopefully that is the only thing hotter than Texarkana, but we’re coming out of it. Og literally, it’s only supposed to be literal, literal, literal wall, literal border, let’s say McKissick and literal about 5, 5, 4 times. [00:34:12] Joe: By the way, big thanks to Cheryl and, uh, so many, so many great lessons. It is OG getting in the room and knowing the right people and then that can’t be all. Then you gotta do some kick ass work, but it’s not one or the other. I have a family member who really struggled with entrepreneurship because he just believed if he built better stuff that people would automatically call him. [00:34:39] Joe: And that’s not true. And I’ve also seen people on the other side of this argument that thought, if I just know everybody in the room, I’ll get the deal. No. ’cause if you suck your reputation Yeah. Really, really goes downhill fast. It has to be both. [00:34:53] OG: Gotta [00:34:53] Joe: deliver. It has to be both. [00:34:54] OG: Yeah. I mean you can get, uh, what’s the phrase about luck? [00:34:58] OG: You know something about uh, better than to be lucky than good? [00:35:02] Joe: No. Oh, no, no. Vince Lombardi, the harder I work, the luckier I get. [00:35:06] OG: It’s the same you hear all the time, Joe. [00:35:10] Doug: So basically you just literally have to be better at your job than anybody else. You just literally have to be in the room to know every, to get to know everybody and network. [00:35:22] Doug: And you just literally have to work hard. Literally, [00:35:25] OG: it’s just not one or the other. It has to be both. And if you’re not good at both of those things, then you better surround yourself with people on your team that are good at the other one. You know, if you’re like, I don’t like being in the room. I don’t like Glad Hadn, I don’t like being the the one that’s out there doing all the deal. [00:35:40] OG: Well, you better get somebody who can. If you’re a tactician and you’re really good at producing the thing, then do that. [00:35:47] Doug: And 3, 2, 1. Here comes Joe’s E-Myth reference. Maybe not this episode. We’ll skip it ’cause you made it [00:35:56] Joe: for me. Let’s do a headline instead. [00:35:58] headlines: Hello darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. [00:36:04] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from the Wall Street Journal. David Waner wrote this piece. This is a conundrum, OG that I think brings up a much bigger issue. Insurance companies, Medicare pullback is here. If you’re somebody who is, uh, receiving Medicare or you’re thinking about Medicare in the future, of course we’re all thinking about Medicare in the future for the United States. [00:36:26] Joe: You’re gonna need to maybe do a little more planning. Many seniors, David Wrights, enjoy the perks that come with Medicare Advantage, but those extras, like dental coverage and free gym memberships are being scaled back. Insurers are cutting benefits and exiting from unprofitable markets and Wall Street’s cheering them on. [00:36:42] Joe: Once rewarded by investors for rapid expansion in the lucrative privatized Medicare program, companies are now being applauded for showing restraint amid rising medical cost and lower government payments. I don’t wanna talk too much specifically about Medicare because this is gonna depend, thank God. [00:37:00] Joe: Well, it’s gonna depend specifically on which company you’re working with. Uh, Medicare Advantage is you’re gonna go and you’re gonna look in the marketplace and you’re gonna choose the one that fits you the most. But og, what I do wanna focus on is this, early on in this Medicare Advantage game, what Wall Street loved was the fact that these companies would add more benefits and they would take over more territory. [00:37:24] Joe: And so, uh, they would reward companies for expansion Now in a different environment. They’re rewarding companies for cutting back. And I think what we think is that once I do this Medicare thing, or once I do this tax thing, or once I do this budget thing, like it’s gonna be set in stone. [00:37:45] bit: Yeah. I [00:37:45] Joe: think this is another reason to focus on, it isn’t about making a plan, it’s about this ongoing planning that I do. [00:37:53] Joe: So I can roll with the punches, whether it’s Medicare, the Trump tax changes, whatever the latest new thing is. I gotta redo my plan. My question to you is what’s the right timing around that? Am I gonna look at things like this once every other year to redo my plan completely? To like take it down? You know, we had Cheryl here the first half of the show, right? [00:38:17] Joe: Take it down to the studs and remodel it. Uh, the plan, am I tweaking for five years and then I remodel, like, what’s the right cadence to redo my financial plan to make sure I’m catching things like this big Medicare change. [00:38:32] OG: Well, I think it’s about the system for having the conversation. The way that we look at it. [00:38:38] OG: Not that our way is necessarily right, but it’s a system that’s worked for us over the years is the CFP board that says there’s six different areas of financial planning. When we work with clients, we look at one of those six areas every six months. So the cycle is about every three years. Right. And so you think about it and you say, well, what if there’s the tax law thing that happens, you know, in the middle of, you know, it’s not tax season, right? [00:39:03] OG: It’s not the we, we just did taxes last year. Are we gonna do it again? Yeah, absolutely. Because the reality is, is that that’s a big radical change or you know, insurance or something like that. We had in our personal lives, a huge change happen on the insurance front because I had another child turn 16. [00:39:22] OG: Everybody knows that my first kid wrecked my car and then wrecked his own car. And so, you know, we’re being penalized for two wrecked cars and an 18-year-old driver, 18-year-old male driver. And so our premium doubled to add him by just adding our second kid at 16 to our insurance. It doubled again. [00:39:43] OG: Didn’t add a car, it just doubled. It’s like, oh, you have a 16-year-old male, give us twice as much. Congratulations. So our car insurance bill for three cars, all paid off, all reasonable vehicles is $24,000 a year. And I’m, you know, I can take it, but some at some point it’s like, okay, this is, this is a little crazy. [00:40:07] OG: So it was time. We had a big radical change. It was time to go. All right, we gotta dig into this a little bit. [00:40:11] Doug: You’re just, you’re just getting into crazy land. Like that’s just the entry point to crazy. That is flat out crazy, man. But it was a [00:40:18] OG: thousand a month. That was already nuts when it went to 2000 a month. [00:40:20] OG: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went crazy. The crazy train. [00:40:23] Joe: But that is, I think you partly answered my question, OG, is that you’ve got a three year, you’ve naturally this three year rolling cycle, but you also have the flexibility of, I might need to take this plan and retool it before three years if one of these major life events happen. [00:40:40] OG: That’s a much more succinct way of saying it versus the story that I was getting into the TLDR by the way, is, uh, we were able to switch it to a lower cost provider and still get most of the same coverage. It wasn’t all the same coverage, but it was closed. I think having the system for, okay, this is the rhythm, and then knowing, okay, if something comes up, then I gotta, then I gotta look into it, you know? [00:41:04] OG: If you have a child, you need to redo your estate plan. You shouldn’t wait three years and go. Well, the estate planning review session I have scheduled isn’t until 2029. So, [00:41:12] Joe: and the important piece of this is, and I think we look at Medicare, we think things we think permanent and how often have we heard even influencers? [00:41:21] OG: No, no, no, no, no. This is my favorite thing, Joe. I’m so glad you brought this up and I hate to interrupt you, but this is my favorite thing lately. People have said this to me. Well, now that the tax laws are permanent. [00:41:35] OG: Oh, it’s so funny. Do [00:41:36] Doug: you laugh in their face when they say that on the floor? Oh, [00:41:39] OG: I laugh. Just like I just laughed right there. I’m like, really? [00:41:43] Joe: You a silly child. There’s been so much permanence over my 30 years of doing this. [00:41:48] OG: Yes, but they did lean into that. They’re like, you know. This bill makes the tax laws permanent. [00:41:53] OG: You heard that a bunch, so I think people kinda latched onto it. Yeah. Listen, it’s not permanent, right? It’s, we’re eight months away from the next, uh, kickoff of election cycle, you know, as the, as the next half of the House of Representatives are, well, I guess all of them for the house representatives and half the senators are, are for reelection or a third of them, and it’s like, this is as permanent as the next 18 months probably. [00:42:13] OG: So yeah, there’s always gonna be changes that are going on and having a rhythm for looking at it. We, you know, we have a rhythm or an automation for looking at our investments right on. The first of every quarter, I review my investments once a year on my birthday, I hit the rebalance button. So you have that rhythm. [00:42:30] OG: Why would you not do that for [00:42:30] Joe: all the other areas? Yeah. This should be written in investment policy statement, and I was about to ask that same thing. Oh gee, I think this goes on your calendar. I think this is a calendar event that every six months put the new thing on the calendar. So once every three years on your calendar, you’ve got review my estate plan, review my tax plan, review my investment plan, my IPS statement, take the six areas of financial planning and just one every six months, and you end up with this revolving thing that, um, at the very, you have an [00:43:01] OG: opportunity to not let anything go too far. [00:43:04] Joe: This is the same reason why I have set up make a minimum payment on my credit card, because I pay my credit card off in full. But there have been times when I’ve been on vacation and I have forgotten just because I’m on vacation, and then the automatic payment goes anyway. So buy this [00:43:22] OG: automatic minimum payment. [00:43:23] OG: So you’re not gonna, you’re, you’re never gonna blow up your bank account. [00:43:27] Joe: Yeah, [00:43:27] OG: and you’re never going to blow up your credit [00:43:30] Joe: making sure that at the very least, so at the very least every three years you’re looking at this. I think that’s a great automation. You know, it’s a little bit of a potpourri headline segment because I knew that we would be able to get through that one fairly quickly. [00:43:44] Joe: I have a second one. This is a news just from last week, guys. Uh, Maryland couple wins lottery prize just before both of their birthdays. This is from a UPI and Ben Hooper wrote this piece. A Maryland couple scored a $50,000 prize from a scratch off lottery ticket just in time to celebrate both of their August birthdays. [00:44:08] Joe: The Prince George’s County duo told Maryland lottery officials, the husband of the pair, bought the $50,000 cash scratch off game from Tony’s liquors in Laurel, which in quote is his favorite place to buy tickets, which means. He won $50,000 today, but how many times OG do you think he bought tickets before this? [00:44:32] Joe: If it’s his favorite place to buy tickets, it’s his favorite. Now I know it’s that. That like cracks. It’s his favorite place to buy tickets, but he was incredibly lucky this time. Not like the other 9,757 times that he’s done it. I mean, I wonder how much money it cost him to win the $50,000. Scratch off. [00:44:51] Joe: Tony’s is the spot. He said they have big winners there a lot. And how would he know? Because he’s in Tony’s all the time buying a scratch off of which he got incredibly lucky with this time. He scratched the ticket off while watching TV later and used his phone to scan the barcode and confirmed he’d scored the big prize. [00:45:13] Joe: It was $50,000. The winner said, I told my wife We have to go to Baltimore, and I showed her the message on my phone. I thought it was 5,000, but had to look again because there were so many zeroes. The man’s wife said, I tried to stay calm, but I just couldn’t believe it. That is a kickass day, by the way, when there’s so many zeroes. [00:45:32] Joe: You’re like, wait, what? That’s [00:45:33] OG: fantastic. Yeah, and [00:45:34] Joe: then I love the way this ends. What do you do when you win 50,000 bucks, of which it might’ve cost you 49,000 trips to Tony’s? To win. The couple said their winnings will allow them to spend more extravagantly for their birthdays. [00:45:50] OG: Absolutely. Which are coming up in the next couple weeks. [00:45:52] OG: Absolutely. Look, the largest winning I’ve ever had is $5,000 and that went into the bank account. But you can guarantee that if I went 50, oh, I’m spending some of that, we’re gonna have some fun and then I’ll be mad about the tax bill. I’ll forget about the tax bill. Dang it. I stole Owe 20 grand in taxes. [00:46:12] Joe: You can learn from the positives, like people teaching you stuff and then you can also look at people and go, yeah, I don’t wanna do that. [00:46:18] OG: It’s like the video. It says, uh, guy walks in, he goes, Hey honey, real quick. Uh, what would you do? If I won the lottery and she goes, easy. I take half and divorce your ass. [00:46:31] OG: He goes, well, congratulations. And he hands her 20 bucks. [00:46:39] Joe: And on that, it’s time for our, uh, last piece of our Potpourri headline, which is our TikTok minute. This is the part of the show where we shine a light on a TikTok creator who’s either doing something brilliant or air quotes brilliant, you know, planning around, oh, that’s gonna be fantastic. [00:46:53] OG: We’re on a roll Today. [00:46:54] OG: We’re talking about Medicaid Scratchers 50 K divorce. [00:46:58] Joe: It only gets better. This is a TikTok from Dirt Spigot, which is where I get all, all of my, [00:47:06] bit: I love it. [00:47:06] Joe: Headline news is that, is that a porn name? I wanna take advice from this guy about. Well, you know how to, uh, make good, uh, budget decisions. [00:47:17] TikTok: I’m not saying you should spend money you don’t have. [00:47:19] TikTok: That’s irresponsible. I’m saying if you’re going to do that, a vacation isn’t the worst thing you can buy with fake money. It’s not like they can repossess a vacation you already took. What are they gonna make you take them on a cruise to pay it back? Don’t only listen to me. I’m not trying to give you bad advice. [00:47:33] TikTok: I’m saying weigh the pros and cons and then just do it. Just, [00:47:41] Joe: you got your pros, you got your cards, and then it, let’s do it. What are they gonna do? Take a vacation [00:47:47] Doug: with you to repossess it? What could go wrong? That’s great advice. [00:47:51] Joe: I gotta tell you, early in our life, you were talking earlier in the week, oh gee, about, uh, taking a trip to Disney on Monday. I took a trip to Disney early in my marriage and we had no money, and I put all of it on credit, like the whole thing. [00:48:03] Joe: And I just remember coming home and the huge number of regrets I had, and I said so many regrets. [00:48:10] OG: But Disney was awesome. [00:48:12] Joe: Yeah, it was gonna be this, I deserve it. Vacation. And I will tell you, none of that was true. I, and if I’m happier, then I’ll [00:48:19] Doug: work harder when I get back. Yeah, [00:48:20] Joe: exactly. Oh, I was like, why did I dig the hole even deeper whistle while I work. [00:48:31] Joe: Yeah. I felt like I was going to work in the mine again with the seven doors. Not great. Thanks for sending that in, Theresa. That was, that was a great addition. If you’ve got a TikTok minute for me, send those to Joe at stacky Benjamins dot com. Alright. Uh, Doug, let’s mosey out onto the back porch. What’s happening in the community [00:48:49] Doug: today? [00:48:50] Doug: Joe, I wanna talk about a, a really good review we got, although when I first saw the title of it. I thought, oh the word, this is gonna be a doozy ’cause the title is aftermath, which just sounds like a disaster movie. I’m like, oh God, did we just crash and burn? And he wants to talk about the aftermath. This is from Eyes Up Mindset. [00:49:13] Doug: So this is clearly somebody who’s maybe got a bigger chest and they’re trying to tell people like, eyes up your sailor. I don’t know. Here’s the review. Rural Minnesota Science teacher and longtime SB Fan hashtag Go. Doug, I enjoy listening to your episodes every week while I’m working my before school slash summer job at 4:00 AM Really enjoyed the aftermath interview with Ted Denter Smith. [00:49:37] Doug: As soon as Doug wrapped up the episode, I downloaded all of Ted’s audiobook from my. Library app. I can’t agree more on how the US education system desperately needs more real world learning. I’m nervous. AI will limit these critical thinking skills. Duh, my, I added the, duh. My, my wife and I plan to homeschool our children after sixth grade, despite me being a public educator. [00:50:00] Doug: So I can teach them wood shop welding, horticulture, personal finance, and other life skills. Keep up the good work. SP team. I’d love a copy of Ted’s newest book or a t-shirt, wink. [00:50:13] Joe: Ted did mention that he helps out community. So if you put together a book club, I think you can write to Ted and he’d be happy to send you some. [00:50:22] Joe: I know that he’s doing that for our Minneapolis meetup group, so he’s sending them a bunch of copies of aftermath and they’re gonna do a book club, uh, piece on that. So thanks to Ted for that. By the way, that’s episode 1715. This guy, the work he’s done in education, the number of schools that he’s visited, it’s definitely must listen for any educator, anybody interested in education. [00:50:46] Joe: That’s great. Thank you. Thanks for those kind words. I’m looking at the clock. I think we’ve gotta move out today, guys, unfortunately. But fortunately at the end of every episode we’ve got Doug telling us, well, what are those big three things we should be focused on, on our to-do list after today’s show? [00:51:03] Doug: Lucky you, Joe. First, take some advice from Cheryl McKissick Daniel. There will always be adversity in your way. Find your champions network and do great work and things will go your way. Second, Medicare changing things always change. We call it plan, not just a plan for a reason. So make yours flexible and keep on tweaking. [00:51:32] Doug: Can’t say. Keep on twerking. I tweaking. Like they’re, you’re a meth head or something. I can’t say that is, is that what meth heads do? Is there tweaking? They call ’em tweakers. Yeah. Really? Like if you’re a tweaker, you’re a meth head. Yeah. Oh, I did not know that. Well, how’d you know that? I just wanna know how you know that. [00:51:50] Doug: Because the internet exists. How do you, same way. I know what furries are, Joe, [00:51:56] Joe: whatever. No quote. Experience in those areas. Keep all this in Steve. [00:52:02] Doug: No, for God sake. [00:52:08] Doug: But the big lesson. Yeah. What’s a big lesson? The big lesson is I gotta learn when to keep my mouth shut. That’s what the big lesson is. The Berlin wall fell in 1989. The wall in mom’s basement fell last week when Joe leaned back too far in his chair. Different kinds of revolutions. Same level of shock. [00:52:29] Doug: Hey, can we get Cheryl back in here to do a quote for us on this drywall? Thanks to Cheryl McKissick Daniel for joining us. Today. You’ll find Cheryl’s new work, the Black Family who Built America wherever you buy books. We’ll also include links in our show notes at the Stacking Benjamins dot com website and a copy just for you in our Stacking Benjamins bookstore at Stacking Benjamins dot com slash books. [00:52:54] Doug: I think we said Stacking Benjamins as many times as we said McKissick. Right there. This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. [00:53:21] Doug: Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:54:34] bit: Welcome to the after [00:54:34] Joe: show. This is the part of the show that doesn’t exist. I had some people write in going, Hey, Doug promised us a mountain lion story, and instead we can just gee with Yeah, just [00:54:45] OG: got confused. He was thinking cougar story and uh, it’s like, that’s inappropriate. Couldn’t [00:54:50] Doug: tell that story. [00:54:52] Doug: Both good stories. I’ll tell the one about the animal. Yeah. Furry animal. I’ll tell the one about the four-legged mountain lion. Deal. That’ll be a show appropriate. Years ago, my oldest and I were out doing some nighttime astrophotography in Arches National Park where you, you go out, set up your camera on timed exposure. [00:55:17] Doug: You take hundreds if not thousands of photos and you use some software to put it all together. And that’s how you see those photos that have star trails and you know what an amazing, beautiful, amazing place. Yeah. Gorgeous. And we did get some unbelievable photos, but uh, we’re out there in the, in the middle of the night. [00:55:33] Doug: I think it was like 2:00 AM there’s almost no cell coverage where we were, but there was a little bit of cell coverage about halfway between the park entrance and where we were setting up our shot in front of one of the arches. So we set up the camera, we go back ’cause it’s cold, uh, I think it was February when we were out there. [00:55:52] Doug: We go back to the truck and we wait and we had nothing to do and. My son says, why don’t we go back to that spot where we last had cell signal. We can just sit there for like an hour and a half, two hours. So we go there and we get nothing. Looking at my phone, trying to find stuff to read and I decide to look up what kinda wildlife is roaming around Arches National Park and you get all the usual stuff you’d think of and Mountain Lions, not many, but they’ve been spotted there. [00:56:21] Doug: And I decide to look up well, what would mountain lion eyes look like at night in a flashlight? And they look gold. They reflect black. Gold. Deer would reflect back. Greenish mountain lions. Cats. Big cats. Gold. Huh. So now this is burrowed into my brain. ’cause we still have to go back out, hike a mile to get to our camera. [00:56:49] Doug: Set up in the middle of the night. And all you can think, my camera gear, I don’t tell my son this, but I am scared walking out there at 3:00 AM three 30 in the morning to we go wrong, freeze this camera gear. So I’ve got a headlamp on and we walk out there. No path. You know, we’re just blazing our way to get back to our stuff. [00:57:13] Doug: He’s tearing the stuff down and he’s getting all detailed, like, oh, maybe we should set up for one more. No, I think we’re good. I think we, we probably got the shots we need. We’re good. No. Maybe if we just pivot the camera like this and we do it for another, no man, we’re good. Let’s go. And he’s just taking his sweet ass time, taking the camera gear down the whole time. [00:57:31] Doug: I’m just scanning with your flashlight, with my headlamp on and I’m just scanning it all of a sudden. There’s a pair of eyes. Did you? No. And it’s somewhere between green and gold. Can’t quite tell. But in my mind, those were gold. But I, I just, and I had to act cool. I’m the dad. I’m the one that’s like, gotta steer the ship here. [00:57:55] Doug: Now you’re, now you’re being hunted. Yeah. And I just keep looking and then they go away and then they come back and I am really scared how far away I cannot. Um, a little ways. Probably 75 yards. 75 yards. Yeah. Yeah. That’s about what I was gonna say. Yeah. And so I’m just kind of urging him and then we’re walking out and as I we’re walking out, I’m, was that a scream you just played? [00:58:24] Doug: Oh, geez. Got the sound effects. Unbelievable. I was having that in my head. And we’re walking out and I’m just whistling and I’m making sure I, I’m talking to him, making lots of noise. We get all the way back to the car and. Once we shut the door, I’m like, all right, I gotta tell you. He goes, you were scared about something, weren’t you? [00:58:42] Doug: I said, yeah, how’d you tell? He said, because you never, you never talk that much in the middle of the night in when we’re out in nature, all of a sudden, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And I, because Dad, you’re loud. Listen, you’re [00:58:52] Joe: loudmouthed dead, but not that big and loud mouth [00:58:55] Doug: not, yeah, not when we’re out doing that stuff. [00:58:57] Doug: So anyways, I told him the whole story and he said, I’m glad you didn’t, glad you didn’t tell me. So then we keep doing some research and found out I did the worst possible thing I could have done as a father trying to protect my son. I led out and if a cat, a big cat is gonna attack you, they’re doing it from behind. [00:59:15] Doug: Sure. So they were gonna take my son, they, you know them, those damn cougars. He was toast. Like if that really was a cougar. My son was gone. [00:59:27] Joe: We were a great basin where they have, uh, mountain lions. They, they gave us a whole during their night sky talk while the sun’s going down. They talked about the mountain lions in the area and about how few there are and about how your goal with a mountain lion, because they’re incredibly smart, is to make the mountain lion believe it’s not, you’re not worth their time. [00:59:50] Joe: You are not worth their time. Like it’s gonna be too big a fight. Like when a bear locks in, you can’t unlock the bear the way the bear’s brain works, once he decides he’s coming, you just have to pretend you’re, you know, a toy and he gets bored with you. But when it’s a mountain lion, you gotta make it where the fight’s gonna be way too much. [01:00:10] Joe: ’cause they’re doing calculus in their head. So I totally agree. Putting your son behind you, the mountain lions thinking, oh, this is easy fight. [01:00:20] Doug: And I’m also a little, I got a little bit more meat on my bones, so he probably didn’t want my son. I mean, I was the prize. I think that’s right. Yeah. All that good fat on me. [01:00:29] Joe: He’s thinking about you with some, uh, uh, sweet baby rays, [01:00:34] OG: little keay and some fava beans. Look, [01:00:39] Joe: I had the opposite story, Doug. We were hiking. My kids were maybe 11 and we were hiking in the beautiful hills surrounding Mammoth cave. And so we went down into the cave a couple times, but then we did a bunch of hiking and canoeing. And one time it is dusk and we are making our way back through the forest. [01:00:58] Joe: And I keep hearing these leaves behind me and, and it just feels like something is behind us. I tell my family, I’m like, okay, you guys stay here. I’m gonna go see what it is again, complete stupidity. What the hell am I gonna do? But I walk back a little ways and I see behind this tree, I see these two huge ass legs. [01:01:25] Joe: And I’m like, oh my God, it is a mountain lion. We have a mountain lion out here. [01:01:35] Joe: We’ve got a new sound engineer on the show. Holy cow. Oh, she’s on fire. So I go back and Cheryl goes, are you sure it’s Mountain Lion? I go, I go, oh yeah, you gotta see these legs. So for some effing reason, I take Cheryl back, back again with me. Come on, [01:01:52] Doug: let’s all get eaten. Kids. Get right up next to it. This will make a great photo for the Christmas card. [01:01:58] Doug: Yes. Well, I go back there and Cheryl’s like, yeah, that’s [01:02:02] Joe: a deer. Yeah, that that is a deer. And sure enough, the thing pops its head out and it is a deer. And so now every time my kids were 11, my kids are 30 now, every time we see a deer, my kids are always like, dad, look at the mountain lion. Let’s get closer to the mountain lion. [01:02:21] Joe: That’s hard [01:02:22] Doug: to live down. [01:02:22] Joe: It is so bad. [01:02:23] Doug: It’s so [01:02:24] Joe: bad.
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