Illuminating why Maryland Zoo light nights is perfect family fun this spring

After Bill Cole joined Nestor at Kooper’s North on the Maryland Crab Cake Tour for a spring chat on zoo lights, solar power, bad pitching and the real cost of tariffs in industries like his at Cole Roofing and Gordian Energy, it inspired our intrepid host to take the Aparicio family over to Druid Hill Park for the Spring Illuminations. We highly recommend getting back to The Maryland Zoo with your family at sunset soon!

Nestor Aparicio and Bill Cole discussed various topics at Cooper’s North, including the Baltimore Zoo’s light show, which Bill Cole highly recommends. They also touched on the impact of tariffs on businesses, with Bill emphasizing the importance of backup plans and the unpredictability of Trump’s policies. Bill highlighted the growth of solar energy, particularly community solar farms, and the potential for American innovation driven by rising costs. They also mentioned the importance of local government and community assets like the zoo. The conversation concluded with plans for upcoming events and promotions, including the NFL Draft and a visit to the Maryland Zoo.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Zoo lights, solar power, pitching, tariffs, Baltimore Zoo, community asset, economic impact, innovation, solar farms, community solar, energy costs, American ingenuity, Maryland lottery, NFL Draft, local government.

SPEAKERS

Nestor Aparicio, Speaker 1, Bill Cole

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

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Beautiful. Welcome home. We are W, N, S T, am 1570 tau. So Baltimore. We are Baltimore. Positive. I’m feeling a lot more positive because it just had a big vat of the delicious gumbo. We’re here at Cooper’s north. It’s all brought to you by the Marilyn lottery, our friends at the Back to the Future scratch offs. We got the giveaway that’s winners out here as well. We’re gonna be wrapping things up here. They’re doing a big ll less turn here. We’ve had Nick out and Mike talking about LLS, and Kate Paris has been a part of that and visionary year and all that. This guy, I’ve known him since before accelerant. He’s also an accelerant member. If you don’t know that, Google that up. It’s great local networking event. But around 10, you’ve been ducking me, dude. I mean, what a roofs. We got roofs on fire. We got solar. What’s going on? Bill Cole is here. Cole roofing and Gordian energy, our friend, sponsor and the sponsor of the wnst tech service. I want to send some more text that to get more pitching is what I need to do right now. Pitching All right,

Bill Cole  00:58

well, whatever, there’ll be more texts coming about something. Just wait a day.

Nestor Aparicio  01:02

How’s your spring? Man, your kids playing sports? What’s happened?

Bill Cole  01:05

Yeah, you know, pretty normal soccer stuff, trying to fit in some basketball, not too much going on to this works. Been busy, you know, like it was a rough winter. We’d been spoiled the last couple years and had real mild winters, so we kind of worked through the winter. This winter was very coarse, very cold, so everything just

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01:25

stacks up, though, though, right? More

Bill Cole  01:27

than you think. And then, even if you get two or three inches, and then it’s

Nestor Aparicio  01:30

snowy drama, right, yeah, and it just doesn’t go anywhere. You can’t work that day, right?

Bill Cole  01:36

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That day, or until it all melts, right? So, like, I don’t have labor in there to go and shovel the roof off. Well,

Nestor Aparicio  01:44

I’m that’s why I never thought about I’ve known you long time. So snow on the roof, you don’t just shovel it off and keep working. I mean, like my driver

Bill Cole  01:54

now, you kind of let nature take its course, usually in Maryland, right? Because it’ll snow, and then two days later it’s 45 and it all melts. So we don’t typically have to worry about that. Well, I

Nestor Aparicio  02:05

have NFL Draft. I have the Orioles are playing every day, so the sports part of me, it’s kind of taking care of itself, and the Orioles are writing their own story, and the Ravens will figure out Tucker and all that. But Friday night, I’m not going to be watching the draft, at least in the early part, because they’re going to be doing one of your favorite things. I’ve talked to Mike evitz in the the group over at the Baltimore Maryland Zoo. I keep want to call it the Baltimore Zoo. The sign out on 83 still says Baltimore Zoo. I found that out, and they’re light thing, spectacular night time. Have you done it yet? No, I have not. I’m doing it Friday night. What do you what do you know it’s

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Bill Cole  02:39

gonna be awesome. I think you’ll be completely it will exceed your expectations, like, I don’t think, and they’ve been pretty consistent about that. When they’ve done these sort of one off, you know, kind of change the zoo a little bit and make it fresh and new and exciting. They did this dinosaur thing and I went, and I didn’t have very high expectations, because they’re whatever dinosaurs. Yeah, that was awesome. It was, like, super cool.

Nestor Aparicio  03:03

Even have little kids anymore, yeah, so are a little I’ve done with you every year. You’re like a child at the zoo, they that Snow Leopard freaked you out, didn’t it?

Bill Cole  03:12

Yeah, that was a good one. They, they consistently outperform and exceed expectations. And this light show seems to be just another example of that. So I love the fact that Kirby and Shannon and that they just bring energy and ideas and new stuff, and they keep it fresh and, you know, and there’s always the animals, right? And, you know, there’s a new animal. Did you know that? Did you know that I was

Nestor Aparicio  03:35

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a baby giraffe that was born? Right? See, I keep up with stuff. Notes, I’m working

Bill Cole  03:41

very exciting. I mean, I think everybody loves giraffes. They’re pretty awesome. Well,

Nestor Aparicio  03:45

Kirby sounds like a surprise. You get surprised with baby giraffe, but,

Bill Cole  03:50

yeah, I don’t know how much you know that that, yes, that struck me as odd as well.

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Nestor Aparicio  03:56

You have this thing about animals and the zoo that is very childlike for you and I talked to you about different things, like sports and stuff and full disclosure bill here would have been me had his life gone wrong and his family not been in roofing because you were an intern at my radio station. 2627 years ago, when you were younger and I was younger and sports, you were on road trips of mine in Nashville. You went to ravens games and all that. I feel like you’ve peeled away from sports a little bit in the last decade or two, like just in a general as you’ve gotten older and grayer and losing your hair and your kids get older, you would way rather go see a light show at the zoo for 25 bucks with your family than to deal with tailgating and foot like there’s something about you, I don’t know that’s changing.

Bill Cole  04:44

Well, yeah, so me too. I’ll be honest, this is the

Nestor Aparicio  04:48

second ownership group that’s trying to tell me to not be a baseball fan at some point, guess what? I just might not be a baseball fan. Yeah, it might just stick, you know, if they treat me like shit long enough,

Bill Cole  04:57

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I spent time today trying. Trying to understand what it looks like to try and get into CFG for the mystics and the fever game at the end of May, 200 bucks. Caitlin Clark, oh, I mean, it’s all over the place. I couldn’t believe it. I found two tickets courtside, right? Because I’m just curious. $6,000 WNBA game. Maybe nobody, right? Maybe that’s a stupid number, and no one will ever buy it. But I was blown away

Nestor Aparicio  05:27

the night she played at XFINITY with you, with Iowa. Yeah, tickets were $100 that night when she was her last year, and it was a solid 100. It was like packed to get in to see her play college is 100

Bill Cole  05:41

we we went down to college park when the NCAA, when they hosted in the first round, or whatever. I went to that first round game, Saturday day game. I never knew this. They sell, like, general admission tickets for all but like three sections, so you just get a ticket. You go sit wherever you want, other than these three sections, the ladies. Yeah, okay, yeah. And even the three sections, like I got tickets, there we sat super close. It was super fun. There was it was pretty crowded, like, I am extremely curious about the women’s games. Having daughters, and now it’s the Curiosity has gotten to a point where the business side of it is very intriguing to me, because it’s a business on the come, there’s a growth here, yeah, and it’s where

Nestor Aparicio  06:35

they’re gonna do a lot to grow again. And like,

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Bill Cole  06:38

you know, it’s different. So if you watch a woman’s basketball game versus a men’s basketball game, it’s different. It’s a different game. Skills are different, that what it requires to be good is different, and it’s fun to watch, and they’re competitive. And, you know, I mean, it gets all the juices going. And, you know, you learn a couple names and you root for how much are you really going to

Nestor Aparicio  06:59

spend on seeing Caitlin Clark play at CFG band? I don’t know that’s TBD. It’s TBD. You got, you got a limit. Is this, like Taylor Swift, where you’re like, you know, your daughter, need to see if they don’t know

Bill Cole  07:10

you. They don’t know yet. They don’t know yet. So if I tell them yes, then it’ll be like, you have to go, yeah.

Nestor Aparicio  07:17

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Then you have to fork over, yeah. So instead, when you find it for 75 bucks. Like, you should,

Bill Cole  07:23

I don’t know. Is this really? I mean, is Caitlin Clark, like, Michael Jordan, like, am I supposed to, are there 12,000 people going to pay $200 Yeah. I mean, like, Is it, like, is that the deal? I don’t know. Taylor Swift

Nestor Aparicio  07:34

is, I promise you, that you knew that you found that

07:37

she is confirmed. Well, I’m doing the zoo

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Nestor Aparicio  07:39

thing, and so

Bill Cole  07:40

I want to animals, yeah, well, I want to clarify something about the zoo, because I do like the animals, but it really is not about the animals for me. So the zoo for me is more about the stability of our community and like the important role we have in protecting historical institutions, yeah, that are like the fabric of our community. You know that that where this, you know, the park and where it sits, and the neighborhoods that surround it, and like, we have to have that has, yeah, can’t imagine if we lost that, and something were to happen, and that wasn’t, like, that’s, that’s a big problem. It’s the third oldest zoo in the country. Like, I feel responsible, like, I don’t want it to go away on my watch. Like, if you

Nestor Aparicio  08:36

bought the Orioles to be a philanthropy, the zoo is truly a philanthropy. It’s truly a it’s a civic asset. It’s a community asset to teaching asset more than that, it’s also outside. It involves walking. It involves so much education you can’t go to the zoo unless you’re a complete clod and not learn something about the animals, the and the people there are there to teach you top

Bill Cole  08:57

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notch they’re amazing. People don’t understand the amount of sustainability work that goes on behind the that goes on behind the feeding them, cleaning them, just even out there in the universe, how we’re protecting animals, and you know what the ecosystems that we’re building. So I did have a really good experience with my kids, with volunteers going around the zoo. I always tell people, go on a rainy day, because there’s nobody there, and like, you get all the attention. I

Nestor Aparicio  09:25

don’t like to be outside on a rainy day. Pick one of those. I was told when it snows because the animals play in the snow. That’s

Bill Cole  09:31

that is another interesting thing. But the misting, you know, 60 degrees, and misting is really good, because you get all the volunteers, and they have your on their attention. Yeah, they tell you everything, they teach you everything. My kids had a wonderful time so,

Nestor Aparicio  09:48

but they got wet, kind

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09:51

melt, we don’t know.

Nestor Aparicio  09:53

So, you know the animal thing? My wife loves animals. So any anything that’s like involved in that i. I probably shouldn’t say this out loud, because it’s true, but like she she feeds the animals, like the squirrels and and she big in the Birding we have Orioles now that have come back. I haven’t seen one yet, but the Orioles are back right now, and I’m looking for the orange belly tour. But we have a chipmunk that she has taken. The chipmunks taking a shine to her. The chipmunk comes to the door and will eat out of her hand. Wow. This happens every day. This has been going on for weeks. She’s committed that there is a chipmunk that eats from her hand.

Speaker 1  10:34

Can’t even get that at the zoo. Chip or Dale. Which one is it? I don’t know if it’s

Nestor Aparicio  10:37

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a boy or girl. He’s kind of free. I think it’s a dude. He’s kind of frisky. Runs off nothing better chipmunks. But you know, you could say, well, I fed a pigeon, or a fed a squirrel, everybody’s done that, or whatever.

10:46

Chips are pretty special. Man, that’s pretty I

Nestor Aparicio  10:49

didn’t realize you could feed a chipmunk from your hand and train a chipmunk. Now, of course, our cat has some other ideas for the chipmunk. Bill Cole is here. We’re at a Cooper’s north, not Cooper’s and fellas point not at cilantro. Where will be? I did have the slancia Delicious gumbo here that they serve at Cooper’s north. And the fish tacos are great here, the burgers, all that stuff, all it brought to you by the Maryland lottery. Back to the Future is as the promotion room right now, handing these out. It’s been a nice a nice batch. All right, springtime, we’ve done animals, we’ve done the zoo, we’ve done roofs, we’ve done your miserable life and roofs in the winter and all that stuff. Give me a little economic thing here for you, tariffs and and equipment and where things come from. Give me how is this affecting you? Because I’m trying to talk to everybody in business about this, because I think any, not all your products come from America, correct? Yeah,

11:41

so most stores do actually strange. Okay, okay, good.

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Bill Cole  11:48

I am a big backup plan guy, like we have backup plans for our backup plans. And I think that, if I had to pick one of the reasons why, you know, our companies lasted over 100 years is because of that sort of cautious backup plans. For the backup plans, grandfather taught you that somebody, yeah, someone else, something. And then, you know, that helped a lot in COVID and the housing boom and bust and all that, and like all that stuff. You know, if there’s one thing that I am attempting to really just lean into is that I believe Trump is consistent, and the consistency comes from he’s going to say ridiculously outlandish things, and then reality is somewhere much closer to normal. So in this instance, so what he’s going to try and

Nestor Aparicio  12:42

talk about, what he’s going to get away with? He’ll get away he’s a criminal. He’ll get away with as much as he can. But there to the point where you push back, and that’s where the courts, that’s where CBS in 60 minutes, that’s where breaking the law and for journalists to being invested. I agree with everything you’re saying, but the idea is I’m gonna say something that’s illegal and try to do something that’s illegal. It’s then up to you to stop that person from doing that. And in our society, we call the police to do that, or we do something like that. I don’t know where we are with that when you’re breaking the

Bill Cole  13:12

law. I shouldn’t. I knew if I brought his name up, it would set you off. Well, don’t worry about the it’s not the legal part. That’s not where I’m at. Where I’m at is, he’s a he’s a deal guy. He gets his Joneses from doing deals. He wants to win the deal. It’s what makes him get out of bed every day, right? But his methodology is, I’m going to start this negotiation in a completely ridiculous place. And everybody’s like, Oh my God, if he does that, do you know how many times a car crosses the border, and it’s 25% tariff every single time it goes back and forth, but they never land there, right? So consistently they don’t land there. So I, for better or worse,

Nestor Aparicio  13:56

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as a citizen, I’d say he’s full of shit. I mean, that’s he

Bill Cole  14:00

is, but, but you can be full of shit, and we can still negotiate Right? Like, I think you’re full of shit. How about running a

Nestor Aparicio  14:08

country where you’re dealing with trust, with the rest of the world? It’s not a good policy, it’s poor, it’s a problem. It’s why we we’ve never elected anybody like this, because it would blow the country up. It wouldn’t be good for the country where is good for

Bill Cole  14:20

the country where, well, we don’t know that. I know that because this is in the economic see, the color of my skin, trust me, it’s the economic discussion. We’re

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Nestor Aparicio  14:29

being a white guy and being everything else is different. Fair enough? Yeah, that’s

Bill Cole  14:33

very fair. The economic discussion. You have to separate the different discussions, because it has different. He doesn’t act different, which is what’s really scary, but it has different consequences, right? You can be blusterous and Bs with tariffs, right? And get us to a good deal. Somebody told

Nestor Aparicio  14:52

my wife, nobody 2% of her 401, K in two days because of this stuff. That’s the issue. That’s that’s the panic button, right? Right? The panic button is destroying the stock market. For most people working and living and looking at the things that they’ve saved in their life, that’s where the panic is. The panic is when taking Social Security away from older people, that’s where the panic is. The panic is taking social service away. I have a friend. Your 401

Bill Cole  15:17

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ever allowed to go up? No, no, no. It’s just

Nestor Aparicio  15:21

not allowed to forcibly go down in two days because of something stupid. Well, he did that.

Bill Cole  15:26

He didn’t. He didn’t forcibly do anything. He attempted to tariff another country and started to talk about policy changes.

Nestor Aparicio  15:34

And everyone who’s read a book thinks it’s a bad idea. Everyone has read a book. Fair enough. Fair enough.

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Bill Cole  15:39

And a whole bunch of people went and sold stock because of that, but, but did that turn out to be true? Right? The losses were but go ahead? Well, no, because as soon as he the beating up, as soon as he backpedaled off the tariff thing and got more reasonable with his discussion, the stock market shot back up, like if you’re watching your 401, K, and the President says something and it has a negative effect on your 401, K, and that bothers you. You should probably look and figure out what your 401 k is invested in, because you’re a risk adverse person. Crazy stuff’s gonna go in all the time. I understand, you know what I mean. But COVID was crazy, causation, housing bubble. Crazy, crazy, setting

Nestor Aparicio  16:24

the house on fire and then walking out and saying, but that’s who he is. I want I

Bill Cole  16:29

don’t know why people reacted that way. He’s a knucklehead. He’s been saying crazy stuff since

Nestor Aparicio  16:35

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his to your business, but you’re telling me you’ve created a psychological barrier have I have what is and what could be and what is said? I

Bill Cole  16:46

do not allow myself to read the rhetoric and go falling freak out every single time he says something, because it’s I don’t have the energy for that. There’s nothing about

Nestor Aparicio  16:57

it that’s made our country better, nothing in any walk that I go to, including the people that support him, be taking on the abusive characteristics of that human okay? And because of that, it’s created a fissure in our society. I don’t I fully, I’m telling you, in my world, in the world I live in, I know people of color, women, yeah, it’s not good. I

Bill Cole  17:22

am not. I’m not taking the bait on this, because in order for us to have a proper discussion, we need to be

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Nestor Aparicio  17:29

here for the perfect

Bill Cole  17:29

place to do like, four hours. Because if I say 15 minutes worth of stuff to argue with you, it gets cut off

17:40

about I understand, I

Nestor Aparicio  17:42

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respect you enough to at least hear and you roll with enough Trump people in your world that you hear the rhetoric. I have sort of locked the rhetoric out when I begin a conversation with lifelong friend and they begin the conversation and telling me, Well, he won the 2020 election. I’m like, it’s over. Take the keys, as I say. Like, that’s the end of but not that’s where those conversations begin, in Middle River and Dundalk and Bel Air for me again, that’s, that’s how they come at me, right? So I understand that’s problematic. I can talk about any number of issues. I can’t talk about fiction, you know? I mean, I can’t, I can’t talk about beliefs you have that are, do you think the world is flat? We’re having I don’t have a base for conversation on that. I’m

Bill Cole  18:26

not taking the bait because, honestly, I’m not really paying attention right? On affecting

Nestor Aparicio  18:31

business. It is affecting business to some degree. It’s affecting the psychology of the country. That’s that’s where I’m taking it. I’m not trying to say, right, he’s the president. He’s gonna be the president. Though he’s not right? I

Bill Cole  18:42

agree that is affecting the psychology of the country. However, I am really disappointed at how easily we allow ourselves to go into crisis mode, like we are now, just like everything that happens is going to be a crisis, and that’s when

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Nestor Aparicio  18:59

you do know. If there’s a pandemic, you’ll lie to you about it and disband the government trying to you’re like that, we saw that the first time. So like, again, there was a lot of things that made him unelectable the second time. But like, indicting, my wife went to the COVID page this morning. My wife went to the COVID page in America, the American government’s COVID, COVID information page. It is now a it was all a ruse and a farce. It was all Anthony Fauci. She showed it to me this morning. I went to the page. They’ve indicted Anthony Fauci on the COVID page and saying that it was all his fault.

Bill Cole  19:32

I find this portion of our discussion, it’s unbelievable, completely useless, because we’re not getting anywhere. You asked me if it’s affecting business. I haven’t had a single contract pulled good, right? I love this. I haven’t had someone tell me, well, you’re saying nobody’s taking him seriously. That why? That’s sort of what am I? Okay? I I’m not saying that, that the things he’s doing aren’t going to have consequences. They. Totally are and like and if

Nestor Aparicio  20:01

you’re fired, so if you’re getting fired in NSA, then the

Bill Cole  20:05

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chainsaw at USA Id like that definitely affected people. And I get it, and there’s not a lot of excuses, and I don’t even again, we, we need four hours to fully unpack stuff. But we’re

Nestor Aparicio  20:18

good people. We want good things to happen here. When I see bad people doing bad things to good people, that’s when my parents and me burrow up. You know what I mean?

Bill Cole  20:28

Yeah, but the argument you’re gonna get as you walk around is, yes, nobody disagrees that the government is inefficient, that there’s too many people, that they waste money. Like everybody agrees with that. So it’s just like a non starter argument, right? Because none of us have the numbers, none of us get into the details. Honestly.

Nestor Aparicio  20:45

You and I talk about Trump till we’re blue in the face. But the real problem here, for everybody I talk to is in the state, and that’s not a Democrat or Republican problem. That’s a budget issue. And Kerwin, I had Tom quirk out former Councilman who’s a Democrat, but really would caucus with Republicans on fiscal issues, talking about everything that Todd marks has been crazy about, about the advertising tax, and obviously it affects my business. I don’t have a lobby, but I’m not sure the guy running the state government here really understands money and budgets, and that’s been sort of born out down in Annapolis last three months, that the state problems we have are much closer to home. I believe that from from a taxation standpoint and from evacuation standpoint, that if you were too rich over at cole roofing and you were 10 years older, you’d say, I’m just out of here because I’m not going to get taxed to death in Maryland. And there’s that’s, that’s a real, real issue.

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Bill Cole  21:40

I can totally agree with you that as I make my way around this town and the people I talk to there, they do seemingly have a bigger focus on concerns about the state than the federal government. And that’s should be appropriate, right? Well, when I get together, the way the government is structured, is we really should be like in our community, better at local and then, right? And then it just kind of keeps building, and things that the federal government are doing should be built and come out of all that local politics that pushes up and pushes up and pushes strong

Nestor Aparicio  22:16

communities. You don’t need much from the federal government, right? Because you got jobs, you got housing, got employment, you know, you’ve got all of that going on in whatever you would think is the strongest community in the country, whatever, not the richest, but the one that’s functioning well, paying its bills, employment under 3% you know, kids are getting edge. Wherever that place is, that’s good local government, and that’s a place where the federal government doesn’t have to come in and be as helpful as, let’s say, Mississippi, where they’re 51st in education, or Oklahoma, where they’re 53rd in whatever there are behind Puerto Rico and stuff like. So when I see states that are struggling, that really is where the federal government has to come in and help farmers and help things.

Bill Cole  22:59

Yeah, you have accused me of being a libertarian numerous times when we’ve talked and I can’t argue. You’re not as crazy as libertarian. I can’t argue too much. I mean, they’re like liberty in my mind, like, like the federal government has to protect us from other sovereign nations. Like, that’s their job. There is a role for the federal government around fiscal policy and monetary and I don’t, I’m not smart enough. I didn’t, you know, get enough course

Nestor Aparicio  23:36

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classes to that’s why I’m gonna have out Obama soon. So like,

Bill Cole  23:39

you know, protect my liberties, keep the trust equation that you and I have that says $1 is $1 Right? Like, if $1 isn’t really $1 anymore, we’ve, we’ve bigger. Can I sell

Nestor Aparicio  23:53

you some bitcoin? Because the President’s into that too. So, you know, the values are dollar. But go ahead

Bill Cole  23:59

the Bitcoin. See, people want to make that controversy too, and it doesn’t have to be like, if I sell you a Brett Farve autograph jersey for 300 bucks. Guess what that Brett

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Speaker 1  24:12

for autograph jerseys were? I feel like I got that 300 bucks,

Bill Cole  24:15

right? It’s worth 300 bucks because you’re willing to bet that’s what Bitcoin is. It’s nothing else. If you got some, and I want some, and we agree, want to pay, it’s done. Why? You know, I

Nestor Aparicio  24:26

got half a bowl of gumbo. What do you give

Bill Cole  24:28

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me? Probably not, probably a lot, because it’s delicious. I’ll get my own. Get a whole bowl. Get your own. The only other thing about well, because, again, we can’t talk about anything. In short, we need long. The problem with Bitcoin is that it, it was used for illegal activity. Aha. So, so you have to, you have to recognize that that is what it is, and deal with that. But I don’t think that means you should get rid of it. Well, the best part is not

Nestor Aparicio  24:52

to worry about you doing anything illegal, because he’s only up and up. Bill, Cole is here. Cole roofing, Gordian energy. Give me some solar education here. Because. Is, I met a fellow here a little earlier said he sold solar. And I’m like, I’m meeting more people in the world that when I asked them what they do, they’re in a solar space. When I met you 15 years ago, I mean, sponsor, you were solar, the only thing I knew was the solar agitator and the Man with the Golden Gun with James Bond. I know I brought that up, but solar is a thing. It

Bill Cole  25:19

is, it’s it’s going Gangbuster. So solar as a business, especially the way we’re doing it, which is around community solar and solar farms and kind

Nestor Aparicio  25:32

of these, we hear so much about BG and energy cost and all that, right,

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Bill Cole  25:35

yeah. I mean, there’s a tail to solar. That means, right now, there’s a lot of activity that really began its journey after COVID And like when they passed the IRA inflation reduction act like that, kind of got a whole bunch started, and then it just takes because we don’t know what we’re doing, because we’re still infantile in this universe, like 18 months, 24 months for those projects to, like, hit the street, hit dirt, right? Let’s start shoveling stuff so, so there’s a big swing right now. My concern on the solar is that the sort of restarting that would occur, right? When you create chaos in the marketplace, and he gets Trump gets elected, and he’s over about his comments about, you know? Oh yeah, right, good people are skeptical, right? There’s chaos. So they’re like, all right, where am I gonna go do work? When am I gonna put my work? Where we’re gonna put my money to work? I don’t know what I’m gonna get with him right now, so I’m gonna move elsewhere. So I think that’s what’s going on, sort of in the site like, there’s enough established businesses who are just a machine, right? Need solar, build solar, turn solar on, next job, next job. So there’s a bunch of us that are like that, but then there’s a whole bunch of people who are kind of like playing in the margins. They know a farmer. He doesn’t want to farm anymore. Hey, man, you ever thought about solar? And all of a sudden this guy’s like a deal maker, right? And now he’s got to go find a solar company that can help get it together in a finance there’s a lot of people like that. Are farmers doing okay in that world? Yeah, well, I mean, it’s a great deal for farmers. I mean, forget the you know, anything, right? Preserving agriculture land and all that like, that’s not we’re debating. I’m debating that if a tenant farmer gets 300 bucks for soybeans and he gets 1500 bucks for solar. That’s better for him. He doesn’t have to do anything. Like he wasn’t doing anything anyway, because it was tenant farmer. But so yes, it’s good. We don’t have zoning figured out. We don’t, you know what I mean, like, it’s not like we think about, hey, you’re not allowed to put townhouses here, or you can’t put a shopping center there. Like we kind of think about that stuff. And to our local government concept,

Nestor Aparicio  28:09

we thought about powers. You know, power to me is I come into Cooper’s and I plug in, and I don’t think about what it’s costing Patrick for me to be plugged in right now, the bill comes every month. We’ve become desensitized to how and where and what, until BGE tries to stick it up your backside, you need the government to go in and protect yourself. Or in places like even Ember, California got real expensive on energy and different stuff like that. Different still is very waters, that way, in a lot of places as well, you know. But the power part of it, it feels very automated. It feels like it’s sort of a set cost to many of us goes up in a win. You know, a little more air conditioned, summer, winter, heat, like all that. But there is a point for you saving people money, and if you haven’t considered it, especially if you have a business and you have the space, you should at least know that’s always your thing, right? Know what you’re getting. Right? That is

Bill Cole  28:56

100% what I tell people all the time. Know the math? Yeah, do the math. I will make one comment about, you know, rising prices and everything costing more and all that. Like, the only silver lining that I always try and remind myself with that is that innovation comes when the pain gets big enough that we innovate and we’re lazy creatures, fundamentally Right. Like, if you make it easy for us, we’ll just keep doing easy. The minute it gets hard, all of a sudden that that good old fashioned American ingenuity shows up and we figure out a better, cheaper, faster way to do it. And I think that our country’s in that mode right now, like, if you’re gonna tariff everything, I’m gonna figure out how to make it here for cheaper. If you’re gonna, you know, raise my price electricity, I’m gonna go find out about solar. If you’re gonna make gas prices super high, well, I’m gonna do EVs. Like, we there’s an element in our society right now where, I guess maybe this is just too much, too much optimism. But, like, I really hope. This is, like, the birth of, or the rebirth of, you know, American innovation, the ingenuity, like, let’s when was the last time was something really crazy? I mean, AI, I guess, is driving it. But like, we can come up with some really good stuff. We should be making more stuff here, right? Like, like, we should be making more of our own stuff. Like, what anything? I listened to a podcast the other day. Guy wanted to make a $7 t shirt, right? Because he wants to compete. He wants to make it in America. Didn’t think it was possible. Six months later, he’s making a $7 t shirt with cotton grown in North Carolina, the manufacturer facility, you know, he figured it out. We thought the only place you get a $7 t shirt, $7 t shirt was from China. Well, this guy, mean, we put his head down, and he figured it out we should be doing that. There’s no reason why we can’t do that. All

Nestor Aparicio  30:50

8

right, all right. Look for the American label, long as it’s not on your Maga hat. He is Bill Cole. He is Cole roofing, according energy. He helps us put this thing together. You have also sponsors our wnst tech service, which we hope is good with acquisitions all weekend for the NFL, for the NFL draft and spring and summer. You got any vacation, doing anything good? I mean, you’re going to Vegas, right? We’re

Speaker 1  31:11

doing Vegas. We’re doing Vegas. Excited to go. I hope it’s not 130 this time. That’s

Nestor Aparicio  31:16

all, you know, yeah, just 9295 something reasonable. Two digits, not three digits, right?

Bill Cole  31:21

That’d be good. I’m getting mixed reports, like some people saying they aren’t going, some people are saying they’re going. Howard

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Nestor Aparicio  31:26

perlo is coming on next week at Coco. So we’re going to get a little report on the Maryland party as

31:32

it is, right? Yep, that is what it’s called.

Nestor Aparicio  31:33

Well, you told me for years I should go. I went once, and now you got me on the cusp of going back.

Speaker 1  31:38

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Yeah. Well, we’re going Vegas, baby. That’s it all right.

Nestor Aparicio  31:41

Well, pictures will be there. My big appreciation to Patrick and everybody out here at Russell. Russell’s, Patrick Russell and everybody Cooper’s for putting this thing together. And our friends at the Maryland lottery. I have the Back to the Future scratch offs. I will have them at Cocos next week, with Howard Perlow, also going to be joined by Jamie Costello. Senator Corey McRae is going to be with us at Cocos next Wednesday, and then on the seventh of May, we will be at red brick station in White Marsh. And I talk about ingenuity. I went to Bill blocker, 1998 90 whenever they open. 9798 I moved out there. First thing I said was outdoor shopping in White Marsh. Who the hell is going to go to this place, this avenue play? That was the first thing I said. And then he built a brewery. Nobody had a brewery then, right? And I went in there, and Nick’s daughter’s over here drinking Saranac root beer. He used to make root beer over there, and he made root beer, which I would drink. And he made all these other beers there in red brick station. I’m talking turns. I’m talking before you’re old enough to drink. Probably right. Well, over there you were, and I would go in there, and I was Bub wiser sponsored, and then I was Coors Light. I said, you can’t get a button. We make our own beer. How’s this place ever gonna survive? Gonna make your own beer? Hang out here ahead of his time. 30 years later, plenty of people are drinking beer, so I owe Bill blocker, a massive apology, and I want to let him laugh at me on May 7 as well. That’s good. Yeah, I was, I was an innovator. Am radio. It’s gonna die, is what he’s gonna do. Except for here, everybody’s here, he’s Bill Cole I am Nestor. My big appreciation all of our guests come out. Nick’s doing a great turn here. Nick Schultz for LLS also had Terry Beck here. He’s a two time leukemia survivor, and the general manager, get your delicious cheeseburger out here. He’s been trying to get me to do that seafood club thing. I just was not in the mood for a crab cake today. Believe it or not, even though it’s crab cake tour, I had the gumbo because it’s delicious here. We’re signing off for Cooper’s north I am Nestor. We are W, N, S T. Am 1570 tasks in Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore positive you.