Dan Reese tells us all about the amazing story of a family making chocolate for over 100 years that decided to get into the milkshake game. Dan moved from a high-level corporate job at Kraft Heinz to bootstrap it with a 4th generation chocolatier and shares the lessons he learned on the way. This is one you won't want to miss.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Dan's shift from a large corporation to a family-owned chocolate business.
• The amazing story of a family business that after 100 years decided to shift their focus and grow a brand.
• The birth and death of the "Jake Shake," may it rest in peace.

Brian Cannard joins us on the Dirt Dog Pod to chat about his wealth of experience working as a real estate manager for REI and Home Depot over 37 years. Brian shares his intense love of the outdoors and how he is currently spending his time following his passion in retirement as a volunteer park ranger at Mount Rainer. Brian is an amazing inspiration and has a load of stories to share with us.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Brian's love of the outdoors and how it led him to work at REI
• Some of Brian's deals over his career including the flagship REI stores in Seattle and Denver.
• Brian's transition from REI to a much larger RE team at Home Depot

After spending the early days of his career as a leasing broker in the pacific northwest Jim joined the expanding haircutting company Great Clips. Jim has worked as a real estate manager for Great Clips for nearly 25 years and been a big part of their massive expansion in that time period. Jim gives us an interesting look into the structure of the company as well as how they look at real estate and growing the brand.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Jim's wealth of experience from a long run with one company
• Jim's love of nature and the importance of breaking from the grind to get in the right head space
• The issues that many developers are facing with developing multi-tenant product like the kind Great Clips normal leases

Dan recently brought his talent and experience to the Swig brand after being an important piece in the massive recent growth of Dutch Bros Coffee. Dan has worked in fast food development for several years for some big-name tenants including Carls Jr., Dutch Bros, and McDonald's. Dan's drive for helping to build the next great concept brought him over to Swig as he sees it as a brand that is completely changing how people think about drinks.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Dan's experiences with past employers
• The importance of commitment to a community
• The future of growth for a budding new concept like Swig

For the first episode of The Dirt Dog Pod, we invited the king dirt dog himself, Aaron Harris. Aaron is the perfect example of a dirt dog, he is constantly moving and on the road looking for the perfect new site for Dutch Bros.

Chris and Aaron talk about the fast expansion and growth of Dutch Bros, the importance of culture in a brand, and professional wrestling. Some pretty wild stories came out in this episode and we are excited for you to hear and learn from Aaron's experiences.

This episode is meant to be a quick trailer to showcase what The Dirt Dog Pod is all about and what to expect from future episodes.

We hope you will be joining us in the future when we push out full episodes to the public. Subscribe for updates on the latest releases and listen to the stories of these amazing Dirt Dogs.