209 - TZL - John Wheaton

John Wheaton [02:44] Oh, Randy as Colonel Flag used to say on M.A.S.H, “I'd tell you, but I'd have to kill you. Well, first of all, we met on Twitter and we still follow each other there. In fact, you DM’d me when you were asking me about this, and then we shared an email. For those listening that may think what in the world would anybody want to spend time on Twitter for anyway. I get all kinds of reasonable DMs on Twitter. One guy just DM me the other day, hey, why don't we work together to build the largest curtain wall consultancy in the world? I'm like, okay, how? so he starts dialoguing with me. So anyway, I've been following you, I think since you joined Zweig, probably through LinkedIn and here so it's good to meet in two dimensions at least. So my superhero origin story that's funny. I was born in Berwyn, Illinois, which is a little suburb of Chicago, and lived there for eight years. I moved from a little lot, a little eight-acre lot with the Sioux Line railroad station behind us. My dad was an engineer. We moved from the Chicago area and he went to the Illinois Institute of Technology. We moved from there to a 60-acre farm in Kensington, Ohio, a population of 350 in 1968. I lived four years on a 60-acre farm. My dad had it as a hobby farm, and my mom did the animals in the gardens and it was a great time. My dad worked as a metallurgical engineer for TRW Corporation in Minerva. So we were there for years and had a lot of fun there. I was an only child. I always say that wasn't my fault. I didn't make that decision but I am an only child so people can take that takeaway however they want. So I had just great parents, a great upbringing, and great surroundings, and went to West Geauga High School in Chesterland, Ohio. I've had Dean Winter, who was one of the guests on one of my podcasts. He's a colleague of mine. We went to the same high school. He's an architect. He works out in California. There are some really good folks that graduated in 1978 from Westchester High School. Then I went to the University of Akron, which is a great journeyman engineering school. They've got a great polymer school. University Cincinnati and the University of Akron put a lot of strong journeymen get her done engineers So, I worked there, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. Wanted to be a structural engineer. In fact, quick digression, my uncle who I hope will listen to this at some point, is in his early 80s, John Lane. He is from Illinois originally, but he lives in Fort Smith, Arkansas and he has been there for many, many years. And when I was younger, I think I've told this on the podcast that my dad was an engineer and my uncle was an architect. I was torn between which one should I be, like what I wanted to do. I love to draw with a straight edge and draw perspectives, but I didn't feel terribly artistic in that way. I was pretty good at math and I like to think quantitatively. And my uncle, he said, Johnny, if you want to have fun be an architect. If you want to make some money be an engineer, which the architects may say, yeah, sure, whatever, because we all make reasonable incomes but that was his advice. But I was really attracted to the University of Akron program. When I looked at the coursework, I thought, that's what I want to do, I want to be a structural engineer. So I worked for a year at a company called Snell

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