Latest / Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment) / The Great Chicago Fire: The American Story That Rebuilt Me | Sloan

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The Great Chicago Fire: The American Story That Rebuilt Me | Sloan · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Murders to Music Podcast.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to take you on a little history lesson.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Something you might have read about in the history books way back when, but today we're going to talk about it.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about how it affects you.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even know it.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about how it affects me.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know it.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And talk about how it's going to affect our future.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: These are, you're going to hear some things you recognize, but you're going to hear some stuff that you didn't even know, consider, and you're going to learn something from today's podcast.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want to rewind the film.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go way back to October 8th of 1871.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: 8 30 p.m.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: What were you doing that day?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can tell you, Miss O'Leary, Miss Catherine O'Leary was in her barn at 137 Decovin Street in the beautiful city of Chicago.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: She's in the barn, she's milking her cow Elsa.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, a fire broke out.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: That fire.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, while the story says that Elsa kicked over a lantern, started the hay on fire, the hay started the building, the building started the woods.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: You get it here.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: You've seen these things happen before.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's really no evidence that old Elsa kicked over a lantern.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: But what they do know is the cause and origin started at that address in the barn next to the cow.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what they got, right?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that fire burned for 36 hours straight.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the the thing about that is her address was located in the downtown core area of Chicago.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, Chicago, even then, was a major metropolitan city for the United States.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at that time, Chicago was nothing more than a giant tinderbox.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: The entire place was made of wood.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: The buildings, the houses, the streets, the sidewalks.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, wood burns.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a fuel.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it just ripped that fire through the city.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: When you combine the wood in the city and the wind coming off the windy city, the lake, it just started a complete tinderbox effect.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And before you know it, coals and ashes were spreading everywhere.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: It jumped the river and continued to burn north through the city.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: During that fire, about 17,500 buildings were destroyed.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: There was roughly 3.3 square miles that were affected, and about 300 people lost their lives.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: About 100,000 people were left homeless.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, that's significant because that's one-third of the population.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: At that time, Chicago only had about 300,000 residents.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So one out of every three persons lost their home due to that fire.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: It burned the downtown core area, it burned the buildings, it burned everything in its path.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: The fire was devastating.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: But anytime there's devastation like that, it gives you an opportunity to rebuild.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Whether the devastation is in the city of Chicago or whether it's in your own life, it gives you an opportunity to rebuild, come back stronger and better than before.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the interesting fact about October 8th of 1871 is that is not the only fire that kicked off that day.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: In October 8th of 1871, the Pashtigo fire was raging in Wisconsin and Michigan.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: It started that day, it burned about 1.5 million acres, and that fire was the deadliest fire, killing about 1,200 people.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, while that fire was bigger, it did not make the history and the history books like the Great Chicago Fire did.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: You see, the Chicago's population, I said, was about 300,000 in 1870.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And despite the destruction of the fire, by 1880 it grew to about half a million.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then by 1890, sorry, it grew to just over 1 million people, about 1.1 million people.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: It continued to build and grow and prosper.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it was the busiest growing city in the United States during that time, even with the Great Chicago Fire and having to rebuild the city.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: I love Chicago.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've been to Chicago several times now for work.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in Chicago, you know, uh, if you walk around, you can still see plaques on some walls and say this building survived the Great Chicago Fire, or this was melted in the Great Chicago Fire, and you can see the artifact that's been melted there because the fire and heat was so strong it was melting steel and glass and all the other stuff.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: All those artifacts are still around.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: But Chicago is a great city.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love visiting there.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Would I want to live there?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, probably not.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's a great city to go visit, and it's a great city.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've taken my wife there and it's been awesome.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what I like about the city Chicago is the history lesson that's involved in the rebuilding and how that has directly affected me and my family and my life.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to that, let's talk about the buildings and the construction there.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: During that time, the buildings were all made of wood and there wasn't a lot of steel construction, there wasn't a lot of concrete or the things that we see today.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a lot of wood.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And understanding that after the Great Chicago Fire, that wood burns, they had to start looking into different ways of doing things.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: But building a very tall building out of wood is very difficult.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, skyscrapers were considered 12-story buildings.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So anything 12 stories, up to 12 stories, was a skyscraper.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And 12 stories was about the top of you could go.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't go a whole lot higher.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is water.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: The reason for that is they needed to have water on those upper levels.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I today, we are used to having pressurized water come in from the street, and we just turn up the pressure and it blows it to where it needs to go.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: You think about getting the water from the street level to the 77th floor of the Columbia Towers building in Seattle, Washington.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to have something to do that.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at that time, we're talking the turn of the century, there was nothing there to get the water up to the top.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So they had to have water storage tanks on mid floors and on top floors of buildings.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that water storage tank stored 20,000, 30,000 gallons of water and was used in the flushing of toilets, dishes, showers, etc., whatever the needs or demand of that building was.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the way the water got up to the top is not what you might think.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a pump.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, well, it's kind of a pump, but it's not uh an electric pump.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is not just water pressure.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: They had what's called a screw pump.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the screw pump was in the basement of the building.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that is like a pump in the middle of what looks like a hub and spoke of a wheel.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And as that wheel got turned by either immigrants or people of color, typically black people, would turn this wheel and it would pump the water to these mid-level and top level storage tanks.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what it would take.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that was their imagine being in the basement of a building all day, walking in circles, pumping water to keep these tanks filled.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is devastating to even think about.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: But that is the way that the world worked back then.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And these large storage tanks, they they were incredibly heavy and they had to weigh the building down.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: So because of the weight of these tanks, it limited the ability to go taller into these skyscrapers that you see today.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's why 12 stories was about the max.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, with that being said, at about the time of 1900 to 1904, Chicago understood that they had some problem with the water, and we couldn't use the demands of water.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I should say we were using the demands of water more quickly than we could keep up with filling that tank.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: For example, at that time to flush a toilet, it was about 15 gallons of water.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And let me put that in perspective for you.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Perspective is this perspective is your current toilet in your home right now flushes about one gallon per flush.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine every time you went to the bathroom, it was 15 of those.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's how much water it took to push the waste down into the waste system and get it out to sanitary sewer or the river or wherever it happened to deposit.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: So understanding this and understanding that with the progress and growth of the city and the amount of people moving into town, they had to do something different.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I say they, the municipality of Chicago.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: So what they did is about 1900 to 1904, they actually raised the street level about 16 feet.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of what was at ground level, it is now about the third story.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys have ever played Grand Theft Auto and you've drove around on Lower Whacker Drive, or if you have ever been in the city of Chicago and you've got on those underneath uh little streets and and the byways and the little dark alleys that are, you know, you're like, man, I'm like, I feel like I'm underground here.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: You are.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: That is the original ground.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: That is the original basement or ground level of these floors, but they had to build the street up.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when they built the street up, they did it for a couple of reasons.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the reasons was they are starting to pressurize the water mains coming into these buildings.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of having the screw pump in the basement, now we're able to supplement that or even exclude that altogether by adding pressurized water mains into the buildings.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now that water pressure is able to carry water up the building and maybe help fill those tanks or supplement the flow into those tanks.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And here's a side note.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't pretend to be a construction expert, but in those days there was the monodoc building.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the monodoc building was one of the newer buildings that went in post the fire.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: But even that building with technology changing and pressurized water and smaller water tanks, even the ground floor walls on that building were 40 feet thick, four zero feet thick on the perimeter walls at the ground level.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the kind of structure that it took to hold the weight of the 12 or more story building and water tanks they're putting on top of it.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was awesome.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you think about that today, in today's technology with steel and concrete and all the stuff that we're used to seeing when we walk around on these beautiful, gorgeous, architecturally designed buildings, I mean, sometimes the building's not 40 foot thick.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh back in the day, that's what it took to support the weight.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: But we're still using 15 gallons of water per flush.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So in 1906, a gentleman named William Elvis Sloan invented the first flushometer.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the flushometer was a device that you could use on your toilet that took from 15 gallons per flush to about seven gallons per flush.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you have all seen this.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is the same device that is on the back of every urinal or every commercial toilet spread out across the world.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: It is the device, it looks like a little bell, there's a handle off the side, you push it down, you kick it, you beat it, whatever it is, it flushes the toilet and you move on with life.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you've never even really thought about it before, other than it works.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing you've never thought about before is how universally recognizable it is.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: If all you had was a silhouette of a flashometer, you would immediately be able to say, I know what that is, I know where it's used, and I know how to use it.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that is pretty awesome.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So William Elvis Sloan, 1906, there he is, making his first flashometer.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: In 1906, he sells one of them.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's taking that pressurized water and washing the fluent down at about seven gallons per flush.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, 1907 he sold two, but over the next decade, he's starting to see these things expand across the United States and eventually across the world.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: In today's day, the Sloan flashometer is the leader in bathroom technology when it comes to fleshometers and flushing toilets.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And next time you're in the bathroom, just look at that top cap and it's probably going to say Sloan, S-L-O-A-N across the top.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that is one of our products, right?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: That is the same product that William Elvis Sloan developed in 1906.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what's cool.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you had a 1906 fleshometer out there in operation today, there are still repair parts that are sold for it.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can completely rebuild and continue to use the 1906 fleshometer if it were installed in an old building in Chicago today.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: The oldest one we know of that is still in operation was installed in 1910.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: I challenge you to give me something else made in 1906 that you can still go to the local hardware store and buy repair parts for.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is pretty cool.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's another cool thing about this company.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So as the company continued to develop and grow, in about 1974, they invented sensor technology.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So now you go to the bathrooms and you go pee or you sit down to go poo and you lean forward for the toilet paper and the toilet flushes and gives you a little bodet.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like an extra feature if that happens.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: So when that happens, 1974, Sloan, in their current building, which is in Chicago, Illinois, that is where they developed sensor technology for the bathroom.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: The other nice thing about Sloan is Sloan is a family company, meaning that they are currently on their fourth generation of ownership and they're moving into their fifth.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so that's enough on the history of Sloan, but let's talk about how Sloan has directly affected me.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, as you guys know, coming out of my previous world, I was an expert in the homicide and child abuse game, right?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I could do the homicide cases and the child abuse cases I felt like in my sleep and be fairly successful at it.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: But when I came out of that world, I came into the commercial construction world.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the commercial construction world was different for me.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I knew nothing about it.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: I literally didn't know my right hand for my left hand, and it was very tough for me to hold a conversation.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what I did is I found a product group that I felt like I could wrap my mind around when I started with my company.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the company I work for today is a factory rep company.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we represent Sloan Factory.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So sort of, I'm an extension of the Sloan family.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an extension of that Sloan company.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: So my first year, I had to find something that I felt like I could master and be an expert in.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that is where I picked up the Sloan valve.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the same one you flush on the back of that toilet.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a very simple device, but a lot of people don't understand it.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was able to learn, I was able to educate myself and then start teaching people about it.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the best way to learn something is, in fact, to teach it.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's exactly what I did.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I got out, I started teaching people about it, engineers, contractors, distributors, everybody involved in the commercial construction space, and even owners, and teaching them about what their products were.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then we talk about sensor products and all the other stuff that Sloan offers, right?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I have never thought I was going to be excited about bathroom stuff.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I got hired with this company, I went to the first Christmas party and I hadn't even been hired yet.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was still considering the job, but they invited me to the party, which I thought was cool.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And during the party, they have a slideshow.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And mind you, at this time, I am still a police officer.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still a homicide detective.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I still have active ongoing investigations of homicide stuff.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, they do a slideshow.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the slideshow is a is of a bunch of shitty toilets and terrible installations and flashometers that are mounted backwards and upside down.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they were all excited and giddy and clapping and laughing at this.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought to myself, and I even told my wife, I'm like, man, these people are getting excited about toilet pictures.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: I could show them some cool shit, and it's not going to be a toilet.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I'm like, I don't know if I can get on board with this.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: But now, if you take a look in my cell phone, I got thousands of toilet pictures because every time I go into a cool bathroom, I take one, and my kids even take them and send them to me, which I thought is kind of cool.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, back to the whole Sloan thing.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, becoming an expert for Sloan and teaching their stuff, uh, word got around what I was doing.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And about a year into the job, I get an email from a gentleman named Kirk Allen.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the email says, Hey, Aaron, I was just in a sales meeting.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: I heard about you, and I just wanted to say thank you for doing what you're doing.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say thank you for pushing the brand and continuing to educate, train people.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing a great job.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Keep it up.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know this isn't your normal career, but we love having you on board, Kirk Allen.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't even know who Kirk Allen is.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I Googled him.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Kirk Allen is the president of Sloan Valve Corporation.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: He is the top dog.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: You see, Sloan is owned by three brothers and a dad, because I said they're in their fourth generation.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the three brothers all have equal shares, but Kirk is the oldest of the three, and Kirk is the one that is emailing me.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I emailed him back and I'm like, hey, I said, thanks a lot for the email.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate you noticing.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I love doing it.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: I love wrapping my arms around something and becoming, you know, knowledgeable in it and helping others solve their problems.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And thanks for taking the time to reach out.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So he emailed me again and he says, Hey, I don't know if you know this or not, but we have Sloan Park.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sloan Park is the Chicago Cubs spring training center in Mesa, Arizona.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I want to invite you and your wife out to Mesa to meet me, to have a beer with me, and just to hang out and watch some baseball.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's exactly what he did.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: He brought me and my wife out.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: We got to go hang out at Sloan Park.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I got to drink some beers with him.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: We got to chit-chat.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was amazing.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the first time I felt like I was a part of the Sloan family.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: The Sloan family is exactly that.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my experience since that first day several years ago is every time I'm around them, I feel like I'm one.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: I feel appreciated.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I feel acknowledged.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like what we're doing is it's a good mission to be on.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I walk into spring training sessions and I see familiar faces.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: I walk into the annual sales meeting in Arizona, and people I don't know are coming up to me.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: They know who I am, they're introducing themselves, and that is a pretty amazing feeling.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it's because I cover Alaska, and Alaska's just got some mystique and coolness to it.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: But uh it's pretty cool to be recognized and known.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: If this last two weeks I've been at Chicago and I've been at the Chicago uh corporate office for Sloan, and in there, people recognize me, people know me.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's not a prior ego thing because it's nothing that I've really done.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just because we feel like family.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that is a great place to be.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: So many years I spent working in an agency that didn't care who you were, what you did, and you had zero recognition for who you were as a person.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel that is so different than the environment I'm in now.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I absolutely am blessed to be where I am.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I would go as far to say that I believe Sloan has made me a better husband, a better father, a better friend, and a better employee.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I say that because of this.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: In my darkest moments of transition from cop to corporate, it gave me something to wrap my mind around and become knowledgeable in and feel like I had some value.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then, unbeknownst to Sloane, unbeknownst to Kirk Allen or anybody else that I was feeling this way, Kirk reached out and acknowledged how much he appreciated what I was doing.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that brought me into the family.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I now text Kirk.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've got, we text back and forth throughout the year.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: I see him at events.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: He is now a part of my people, and that is pretty freaking awesome.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: When you're thinking about a company that he is the top dog for, that it was designed in 1906, developed in 1906, that every single person listening to this podcast right now, from here to New Guinea, has flushed a Sloan flushometer.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: That is pretty freaking cool.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think some of the opportunities it has given me is it's allowed me to go to Wrigley Field and watch some baseball games with the Cubs and get onto the field for batting practice, and it's allowed me to bring my wife to several different events, including Wrigley Field.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And those are things that I never got before.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Those are experiences that I never got.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm getting them to experience them with people that I truly feel are friends and family, and I absolutely am blessed to be where I am today.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this journey that we're on, we never really know how it begins, and we really never know how it's going to end.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: We never really know what is coming around the corner.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, I love where I am right now.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: I love what I'm doing, and I love being a part of this family.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: As a factory rep, I get to be a part of several different factories, about 24 of them to be exact, and we're an extension of all.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: of those.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I can totally tell you that my experience and my kinship with the Sloan Corporation and with Kirk Allen and company is different than anywhere else.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, it's been a blessing and it's made me a better human being.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I am blessed to be where I am today.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think that God has me right where he wants me when he wants me there.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is this where I'm going to be forever?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, four or five years ago I'd have told you I was going to be a cop for the next 20 years.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that clearly didn't happen.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I've stopped trying to guess what this journey is that God has me on.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I believe he has me right where he wants me right now to build these relationships and to be the person that I am and to interact with and to connect with people on a deeper level.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: In this world so many times people forget how to listen.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Listening is an art and people are so busy waiting to just interject or even walk on top of and just say what they want to say and they don't really truly care about the person they're sitting across from.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: All they care about is their own mission getting their own story out.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, I believe that where I am right now I'm connecting with people and while I want to sell the widget I mean fine I I want to sell the widget.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want to add some money to the bottom dollar of my company because that's what I'm getting paid to do.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day I would rather build a relationship than chase a sale.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is what makes me successful in the world that I'm in is I know how to listen.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I spent so many years doing it and I know how to listen for what is not being said.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that is how you can connect at a deeper level and make a friend and in the business world make a relationship that it becomes a band of brothers that you know you can always count on there is two great debates in this world that has separated families for years.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: It has divided Thanksgiving tables it has split families up and moved people across the nation.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is a cheesecake a cake or a pie that is really that is really something that has been discussed till I'm blue in the face around Thanksgiving dinner.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is cheesecake a cake or a pie?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the second one I'm going to bring this full circle right back to the toilet are you a toilet paper crumpler or a toilet paper folder?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: That is the distinction of the person that you are ladies and gentlemen I hope you have enjoyed learning about the city of Chicago learning about the Great Chicago Fire learning about the devastation the rebuilding of American history the 1906 Sloan fleshometer four generations going on fifth the fact that this has changed the face of the world and every single one of you is familiar with the product that I get to call a part of my family.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love Kirk Allen the family that I have ladies and gentlemen don't don't don't ever lose sight of what you have right around you and don't lose sight of the blessings that God has put in your path.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen that is a Murders to music podcast