After 36 episodes of interviewing other people, Josh and Zach turned the mics on each other. What we're building, what we'd do differently, what we're reading, and what's actually happening at home.

Josh gets into why he won't use the word "lost" — in sports or in business — and the story behind the hardest call he's had to make at ERC and the surprising aftermath.

Zach walks through two and a half years running S2 Pickleball from four hours away, what a great manager can and can't do for you, and the community that grew out of a business — including a couple who met there and got married.

Then the part most business podcasts skip: a 14-year-old calling her award-winning year "kind of mid," a dislocated knee days before tryouts, a private school rejection with no explanation, and a Kyrie Irving free throw that changed how one of our families talks about hard weeks.

Books and shows mentioned:
Wings of Fire · Project Hail Mary · The Comfort Crisis · The Human Connection (Cody Bateman) · Bluefishing · The Logo (Jerry West) · Soul Power · Suits

Chapters:
00:00 — Cold open: how air conditioning built Phoenix
00:33 — Why there's no guest this week, and the new Mountain Green studio
05:00 — Passion business vs. necessity business: two and a half years into S2
07:20 — What changes when the owner isn't in the building
09:40 — Going from 1099 contractors to W-2 employees
10:30 — The community that didn't exist before
11:00 — 80 people had to go. All 80 volunteered.
12:30 — The Facebook group the former employees started
13:45 — Books, part one: Wings of Fire, Project Hail Mary, The Comfort Crisis
16:30 — Why we're all too comfortable
18:50 — The sixth-grade bike ride from Mountain Green to Morgan and back
21:15 — The Human Connection, and the follow-up habit it started
23:30 — Bluefishing and asking better questions
25:00 — What we're watching: The Logo and Soul Power
26:00 — "This year was kind of mid"
27:30 — A dislocated knee at the worst possible time
29:30 — Kyrie Irving, a torn ACL, and two words at the line
31:30 — Two state championships and a summer selling door to door
33:30 — The private school rejection nobody explained
34:30 — Charity: doing more than writing a check
37:30 — Why we're not taking June off this year

Jason Haugen has bought and sold more companies than most people will work for.

He grew up watching his parents run about forty of them — they helped start Costa Vida and owned the Utah franchises, and built a few hundred million dollars of commercial real estate in South Ogden. At 18 he went looking for his own identity in network marketing. By 2018 he and his dad had bought an RV dealership doing $12 million a year and making nothing on it. They made it profitable in twelve months, then ran it to $110 million.

Then interest rates went from 3.25% to 11.5% with $59 million of inventory on the floor. $700,000 a month in interest. A bank that could call and ask for $2.5 million the same day, on the morning his CFO told him there was $100,000 in the account.

Jason's answer to how he handled it goes back to a mountainside when he was 18, watching his father walk down to a brother everyone thought was dead and say four words that became the operating principle for everything after.

He sold in 2024. Then came the part nobody warns you about: the identity was gone, the planes were gone, and most of the circle went with them.

Also in this one: how a joke at a golf retreat turned into acquiring Wedge Golf, why Datos monitors 305 million people without storing a single record, what SOC 2 actually costs, and why he'd rather run a $100K-a-month company well than a million-dollar one badly.

He made $20M by 21. Went bankrupt twice. Now sells one door every 6 minutes.

Jeremy Barker's story is one of the wildest we've had on the pod:

→ Created the metal frames used in Tuff Sheds — as a teenager

→ Was doing $20M/year top line by age 21 supplying Home Depot

→ Partied like a 21-year-old with $20M. Went bankrupt.

→ 2008 crash hit. Went bankrupt AGAIN.

→ Became a firefighter at Roy City. $762 every 2 weeks. House payment was $2,311.

→ Lived a full year in the extra-cab of his Dodge Dooley

→ Borrowed $24K from his neighbor John Porter to start Murphy Door

→ First door sold for $3,000 on a red-and-black website with green-screened fake photos

Today: one door every 6 minutes, $60M+/year

In this one we get into failure as a system, the Britney Spears analogy for why untested success breaks people, and the line I can't stop thinking about — "There's no firmer ground than the bottom."

#murphydoor #entrepreneurstory #foundermindset #podcast #resilience #flatbillinvestor #thejoshz