Well, Congressman Bean, welcome to the show. Excited to have you here today.

Marcia, what an honor it is to be on your show. I'm looking forward to it.

Well, you have such a cool story. So you've successfully built four small businesses, which I can't wait to talk about. One, a putt golf business that you saved. But before we get into all that, you've held elected office at nearly every level of government. So I understand that you began your legislative service as a city commissioner and.

Mayor of your hometown, Fernandina beach, named afterwards also as a daughter of royalty. But it's a special for you. I can paint a visual picture for your listeners, and it is at the tippy top corner of the state of Florida, Fernandina borders. It's on the Atlantic Ocean. It borders Georgia. So the tippy top Florida goes up there. That in Nassau county is where I was born and raised and am still there.

So even more north than Amelia island?

Well, it's on Amelia island, so it's north of Jacksonville, but we look across the river and can see Georgia. It's a funny thing, because when I started some years ago, I'm sure your listeners can Google and see exactly the numbers I'm talking about. But at the time in the. Was the youngest mayor ever in city history. And something happened two years ago, Marcia, some young whippersnapper ran for office, ran for mayor and beat my record by two years. And I've done some gigs with the mayor of Fernandina beach. And it's worse, Marcia, because he taunts me and lets everybody know that he is now the record holder. And, Marcia, we couldn't be more proud of him.

He's our son. So my son is now the mayor. He just turned 30, so he beat my record by two years.

That is amazing.

Really proud of him. And it's fun to watch city. You wouldn't normally watch city commission meetings, but just to watch him run the meetings. And it's tough out there. Boy. I didn't have social media to worry about back in the day, but he does. And it's a lot going on, but nevertheless, it's good when we talk about businesses. He has also stepped up and has taken over some of the businesses that I've done as well as we've launched in a new direction for this congress thing.

That's amazing. Okay, so you were the mayor, then you became Florida House of Representatives. Now you're in the US House of Representatives. So tell us all about how that came about.

Right? No, I had a chance leaving Fernandina beach city commission. There was a seat opening up in the Florida House of Representatives. Everybody said, marcia, there's no way Aaron Bean can win. He's a nice guy, but he just can't win. The numbers don't favor him. So in 2000, I was a Republican. Still am. The numbers back then, it was 60% Democrat.

The seat that I ran for, it was five counties, 60% Democrat, 30% Republican, 10% independent. And good thing you don't listen to the naysayers. And I bet some of your angel investors don't listen all the naysayers either. But when you listen to the naysayers, you never go down that path. We went and went door to door and worked our tail off, and we not only did we win, but we won really strong numbers, 55% to 45% that we beat the heads on favorite. We became the first Republican to win that seat since the civil war for 160 years. Fast forward some years later when we ran for the Florida Senate once again. The naysayer said, bean's a nice guy, but because he comes from little, teeny, tiny Nassau county, no way he could win.

Because that seat when we ran for the Florida Senate was 15% Nassau county, but 85% big city Jacksonville. And so there was the favorite son of Jacksonville at the time, or so he claimed to be. And once again, not listening to naysayers, we went out and we won 60 40 in that race. So we served that ten years in the Florida Senate. Did a lot of small business things in the meantime. And see, here's the caveat, Marcia, is the Florida legislature pays $29,000 a year, and it's nearly a three quarter full time job. So 29,000 will not feed a family of three hungry boys and a hungry family. So we had to hustle on the side, do some side hustles, and create these small businesses, including putt, the high energy auction company.