Mill Creek

and had employee staff of 60, 70 people scattered throughout those locations.

The main big corporate headquarters was up in Mill Creek, Washington, just north of Seattle, about 30 minutes or so.

I had another one out there in Mukilteo, which is just east of Mill Creek, but about the same distance up north.

Very nice neighborhoods, very nice communities to have a business going for that long.

I had a business also in the central area of Seattle on 23rd and Jackson, 22nd and Jackson, right in the heart of the African American central community right here in Seattle.

And we were there for about seven years doing the same work we did in Seattle.

In these two locations, I was back and forth between the most.

My corporate office up in Mill Creek, it ran with a great office manager I had, Rosemary Bennett, who did a great job for 28 years.

Find a comfortable spot, put on your headphones, and get ready for another night of terrifying Bigfoot encounters.

[mysterious music] It was July 12th, 1998, in the small town of Mill Creek, Washington.

My friends and I were deep into the summer break, those long days where boredom could push you into doing stupid things just to pass the time.

That evening, we were hanging around the neighborhood with nothing better to do when my buddy Chris got an idea.

first place.

I bought it for $252,500 in Mill Creek, Washington.

And my neighbor's, my neighbor's house identical.

It was a townhome.

But I think what's been reassuring and most Y professionals that have moved one place, serving the mission never changes.

Like that's going to be whether you're in Savannah, Georgia, or you are in Monroe or Mill Creek or Marysville, like anywhere.

It's everybody is serving the mission to what is needed in their community.

And I think out here I've been very blessed and thankful that even running with certain ideas can be talked about and can be explored and supported.

And finding professionals that like really believe in it and still feel passionate about it, like that's kind of the same.

Yeah.

And within our organization, you've been a branch executive at two of our branches, Monroe, and now you're currently at Mill Creek.

So what are some things that you have learned working at two branches that you might not have discovered if you had just stayed at Monroe?

I did have an offsite manager, but she can only do so much being offsite.

Like I would want to go home at night and I'd realize that My spa down in Mill Creek needed inventory.

So you don't go home.

You go and run inventory.

So we decided to take everything and put it under one roof and put it in one location.

And which location was this?

Mill Creek, which is about 30 minutes north of Seattle.

And I realized, why am I afraid of being at the destination when people like us?

Mine just said service families and save for retirement for folks and to a good job.

But I moved to Mill Creek, Washington.

during the height of COVID because we needed to get our kids into some semblance of sanity that all around us was going crazy.

And we chose Mill Creek.

And those two years, I ended up befriending a guy named Fred Philbrook, who owned the Mill Creek View, which is an old-fashioned hometown newspaper delivered door-to-door that he started in 1992.

He had moved out from Michigan, 82nd Airborne guy.

And I just fell in love with him because on this sticker on his shop's window said, I miss Reagan.

And then when we got to Tennessee, I did one show from the road, which was at the base of the Mount Rushmore.

I didn't know I could run a media company and turn a print paper delivered door to door by teenagers during COVID to keep them employed, keep them outside, keep them, um, give them a little capitalism.

Because the founder, who moved out to Mill Creek, Washington in 1993, uh, died in the hospital, not from COVID, but with COVID, and didn't let his wife have, uh, that they didn't let, uh, Providence Hospital didn't let his wife have visitation rights because this was the new protocol because of COVID.

And so we had to sue for that.

And so, but he did die, and so she had said, "What do you wanna do with your legacy if, if you don't make it out of here, Fred?" At the very end, she, the last day, she did have visitation rights, and he said, "Call Steve." And I didn't know why.