In this episode of Off the Record, Paul Adam and Colin Gerstner sit down with Ryan Creamer, Executive Director of Family Service, to discuss how the organization is addressing hunger, poverty, and homelessness throughout Yellowstone County and surrounding communities.

Ryan explains how Family Service operates one of the region’s largest client-choice food pantries, serving hundreds of families every day while also providing rent assistance, utility support, clothing vouchers, educational scholarships, and other resources that help people get back on their feet. He also shares why many of the people receiving assistance are working families and seniors—not the stereotypes many people assume.

The conversation explores how nonprofits collaborate throughout Billings, what Family Service needs most from the community, and how volunteers and donors make a direct impact on local families. The episode wraps up with a fun rapid-fire conversation covering Billings restaurants, favorite movies, fundraising, travel, and a few unexpected questions.

In This Episode:

🍎 How Family Service feeds hundreds of families every day
🏠 Rent assistance, utility support, and housing resources
👨‍👩‍👧 Why many clients are working families and seniors
🎓 Educational scholarships that help break the cycle of poverty
🤝 How local nonprofits work together to serve the community
❤️ The biggest needs Family Service has today—and how you can help
🌮 Ryan’s favorite Billings restaurants and hidden gems
🎬 Rapid-fire questions on food, movies, travel, and more

If you’ve ever wondered how you can make a difference in the Billings community, this episode offers an inside look at one of the organizations working every day to help local families build a better future.

Connect with Family Service

🌐 Website: https://billingsfamilyservice.org
📘 Facebook: Family Service Billings
📸 Instagram: @billingsfamilyservice

If you’d like to support Family Service, consider volunteering, donating, or organizing a food drive in your community. Every contribution helps local families in need.

Paul Adam 0:07 Welcome back to Off the Record, a Gersner Adam Law Podcast. My name is Paul Adam.

Colin Gerstner 0:12 Colin Gersner

Paul Adam 0:13 And today we have a special guest, Mr. Ryan Creamer.

Ryan Creamer 0:17 Thank you, gentlemen, for having me.

Colin Gerstner 0:18 We’re excited. We’re gonna try to make an effort to trot out some guests here that you know help shape our community. Paul and I grew up here, much like yourself, and there are a lot of people out here that do a lot of good work, make our community better, and you’re one of them.

Ryan Creamer 0:34 Thank you for saying that.

Colin Gerstner 0:35 Yeah, we’re excited to hear all about it. Ryan is a man that needs some level of introduction here. I’ve known him a long time, and his present role is as the executive director of Family Service.

Ryan Creamer 0:47 Yes.

Colin Gerstner 0:48 What is Family Service?

 Ryan Creamer 0:51 So, Family Service, first and foremost, 501(c)(3) nonprofit here in Yellowstone County. We essentially exist with this tiny little goal of really eradicating homelessness and poverty and hunger in Yellowstone County, which I say that in jest because that’s a job that’s never going to be done. But at the base core of what we do, we focus on feeding and clothing and furnishing individuals who are facing poverty in Yellowstone County.

Paul Adam 1:14 I mean, are these families coming to you? Do you seek them out? I mean, how do you find the families that are in need?

Ryan Creamer 1:21 In a nutshell, yes, people coming in through our doors on a daily basis who are in need. Typically, when people think of us, they think about us for supplemental food. So anyone who passes through our doors who’s looking for additional support, you know, with supplemental food, we kind of talk about the breath test. If you come in and you tell me you’re hungry, you’re walking out with food. So we do have to do a couple of demographic questionnaires about, you know, where you are so that we can turn that back into the state, USDA, and federal government because we do have to fill out all the fun stuff for the feds. But beyond that, no one is ever going to leave without receiving that. So you can make a million dollars or you can make $1, you’re still going to get fed the same way. You can come to us once per week, and that’s not like you came on Monday. You can’t come again until Monday or Friday till Friday. We just say it’s one time in that week, and then we just ask for you to shop for what your family needs. Don’t go overboard. But we’re really not here to judge on what you need when you’re coming in. So for the most part, when people think about us, they really do think about us for the supplemental food side. On top of that, we offer rent support, utility support, deposit assistance. We have vision assistance. We have scholarship for better education. We have a thrift store. We can vouch our clothes, and we even do free clothing. So, yes, for the most part, the community knows us. But beyond what we do in the community, we deliver food as far east as Mile City. So we have a food bank- not our food bank- but we partner with Montana Food Bank Network sites across the state, so we deliver food as far east as Miles City, as far west as Big Timber, as far south as Bridger, and as far north as Lewistown. So, when we say the numbers that we’ll talk about today, and we talk about who we serve, we serve those individuals in Yellowstone County, but we’re you know Yellowstone County and our surrounding communities is what we always say. So we partner with Montana Food Bank Network, who’s based out of Missoula, and then the USDA, where the only USDA and MFBN drop site in the entire city.

Paul Adam 3:08 And you mentioned before we started filming that you quantify this food in pounds that are coming through family service, and I thought it was a pretty remarkable number.

Ryan Creamer 3:21 So we’ve hit its highest 4 million pounds in a year before, and that is what we are physically giving out to individuals in need. The question that always comes up and follows up after this is like, how are we getting that? So because we are a partner of the Montana Food Bank Network, we can receive food from grocery stores, who then get a write-off for food that is about to expire, so every Albertsons, Walmart, Sam’s Club, anybody that’s in Billings essentially would like to take advantage of that tax loophole. So they donate food to us; they get the incentive for it. It’s pennies on the dollar, but one, it keeps food out of landfills, and two, it’s feeding our neighbors in need. So that’s the greatest support that we’re receiving is just from local, you know, grocery stores and support like that, but then on top of that, Montana Food Bank Network is who’s sourcing food from around really the region. They can get pennies on the dollar for food, so we can purchase from them if we need to, and so can all of those other sites like the Rescue Mission, Salvation Army, Saint Vincent de Paul. All of these are entities that do exist within Montana Food Bank Network, so they’ll drop that food off on my site, and then they would pick up from us. But if they have a wish list, essentially, and say, “Hey, we could really use ground beef or chicken or whatever they request, if I have that within our inventory, we can help them out as well. So again, as we talk about going to Miles City and Lewistown and Bridger, we also have about 20 other organizations here in buildings that we support with food as well. So, like I said, Montana Rescue Mission, Salvation Army, Safe Institute Hall, YWCA, any of those entities that you’re thinking about for food support, we’re helping those guys as well.

Paul Adam 4:53 Okay, cool.

Colin Gerstner 4:53 Okay, you said something that was interesting. You said people can shop for food. Obviously, it’s not in a traditional sense of. Into a supermarket, but I guess how does that work? People show up and pick their meals, or

Ryan Creamer 5:05 What is interesting about this is it-it is really in the traditional sense of a grocery store. We call it the client choice food pantry because it is literally your choice what you take. We are we are unique in that way. Where it’s not a box of food that we put together and we pass out. So when you come in, you get scheduled, and we treat it like the DMV. So we have an online check-in platform online, obviously online. We schedule about eight households every 15 minutes, and then if you aren’t able to use a cell phone or have, you know, a computer at home, walk in just like you would at the DMV. You get your number, and then when your number’s called, you’re going to go in. You get a grocery cart and you shop our food pantry like it’s a store. We’re always going to have fresh produce. We’ll always have baked or canned produce. We will always have some sort of carbohydrate. We’ll always have bread. We will always have canned food. But on top of that, we’re always going to have fresh meat, whether that’s going to be beef, chicken, fish, pork. We will always have that. Usually one to three of those items, we’re always going to have dairy items. We do partner with other nonprofits here. We talked about Family Promise before that started, and they’re kind of the the place that people go to for diapers and children’s needs like that. But we do have diapers and wipes, baby food. Not every single day, but we try to keep it stocked. So yeah, you’re shopping for what you need for your groceries. On top of that, we have a thrift store. We sold about 270-5000 items last year, and the average price was under $3. But if you can’t afford that $3 we can also voucher items out. So, a lot of situations we’ll see your, you know, mom and children fleeing a domestic abuse situation with the clothes on their back, so they can come to us and ask to voucher items. We can do twin beds. We can do clothes for kids, and then even beyond that, now one time a week we have a free day. So, any item that we can’t sell, whether you know there might be a small hole in it, there might be the tag that’s missing. So I don’t know the size of it. We put that into a free day. So now we’re seeing anywhere between 305 100 families coming in on our Wednesday, which is the free day today, and yeah, completely free for what you’re taking. Now that’s not out of the store. We shut down our drive-through and we fill that up with items starting at nine a.m. until the end of the day. And yeah, so a lot of times we’ll see that’s also senior day for us. So seniors will come in right around 8 o’clock, do shopping with us, do a free day. So we are one of the true full wraparound services and a nonprofit in Yellowstone County. So long answer to a short question for the grocery side to it, but yes, we do treat it like a grocery store. It’s amazing. How many people per day would you say show up at the grocery store? Well, I would guess 164, which is our exact number. So right now we’re seeing that be our average. When we had the SNAP issues last fall, we were averaging right around 150 households per day. We went into the 220 range right after that. So for all of the SNAP shutdown, we were averaging over 200 families. It scaled back to about 175, and now we’ve settled in the past months right around that 164, 165 number every day.

Paul Adam 8:00 Wow!

Ryan Creamer 8:00 And those are families; those aren’t individuals. So the true number to that really is more like 400 people that we’re serving on a daily basis, and the rough average is about 10,000 pounds of food that go out of our doors every single day.

Colin Gerstner 8:12 And are those people who would otherwise face hunger if not for family family service? Yeah,

Ryan Creamer 8:17 and what we like to talk about is again, it’s a supplemental program. So we know that we are not going to be the only thing that you’re going to be able to eat for that week. But the reality to it is that if we can cut your bill in half, then you can use those finances to offset something else. And the majority of the people who are coming in, the vast majority of the people who are coming in, are working individuals. We’re seeing a lot. We just did some statistics on this. A lot of seniors coming back to us, which we know is happening. We know seniors are planning on retirement because of circumstances in the past several years, just with some inflation, some issues that you know outside of their own control, they have utilized us for their food. You know they might be focused on just social security. That’s the only way that they’re going to receive any income. So yeah, without this, you know we hear it on a daily basis that yeah they would be going hungry. Excuse me, going hungry or having less than they’d like to have.

Paul Adam 9:07 Yeah, no, certainly. I mean, you’ve been there. How long have you been there? So

Ryan Creamer 9:13 I’ve been there for five years. I’ve been executive director for three.

Paul Adam 9:16 And I’m I’m sure that you see, I mean, so many families, but I would imagine you build some connections with these folks. You know, you watch, you know, how those services help these families, you know, get off the ground. Maybe it’s someone that came in, you know, just had a bad run of luck and needs just a small slice of time to get back on their feet, or just people that just can’t get out of it.

Ryan Creamer 9:43 Yes to both of those. So I mean, like we see the cyclical issues for you know just generational poverty. Yeah, you know, and we’ve we can go on a whole tangent, a whole nother podcast on generational poverty. But for those circumstances, what we’re trying to do is is break that cycle, and the way we can break that cycle is rich. So we do offer a program that is for bettering your education. We can scholarship individuals. You know, we’ve got great stories about. There’s a kiddo a couple years ago who was a freshman MSUB. She got a scholarship to be a pitcher. It was partial. She had everything covered besides, like, her parking pass, her books, and a couple other expenses. She was the first in her family to go to college. Her mom was sick back home, and because of just those costs, she also couldn’t work because she’s a softball player. She had come to us and she had asked for the grant for this, and basically just said, “If I if I don’t have some other income, I’m gonna have to drop out. So said, obviously, don’t do that. So we actually paid this for her for three years, graduated, and she ended up going into her master’s program. So she’s the first of her, you know, her house, that’s going to graduate, and I think she’s now a radiology tech. We’ve had a lot of individuals come to us like this, who’ve, you know, come to you when I was a kid. My parents got food, and I’ve come to you now for rent, and now I’m trying to get the scholarship for education. We know a couple other individuals who’ve now gone through their master’s programs, and they’ve broken that cycle. Second to that, with you know, is it is it a generational issue or is it just because of a you know something bad luck? That’s the other side that we see a lot of people going about their day to day, everything’s going good, and you’re hit with a medical bill and now you’re bankrupt. We’ve seen that so many times where now you can never, you know, pay off this medical bill, and you’re either going to be faced with paying your rent, paying your utilities, or food. So if we can help with two of those things, it’s going to keep you in your house. What we have funded for you, for rent and deposit assistance, is that an individual who is living in their home has to be served an eviction notice. Once they’re served an eviction notice, we can then pay for the rent. But beyond that, I’m not allowed. It’s not that we’re not allowed to. It’s just the policy is that you’ve shown that you’ve expended every other income before you’ve gone to receive funding from us. So we are keeping individuals in their homes. We also partner with the United Way in the Bezos dollars for individuals who now are homeless families who are working to get into a home. We can work with that as well. We can do deposit assistance. So yeah, we see a myriad of issues, but we get to know these individuals because they might be coming to us for a short time or a long time. In the sense of folks that are coming to us for a long time, we get to know their stories. And yeah, the best thing, honestly, for us, and this sounds like such an oxymoron. Like the best day is when they don’t come to us anymore because we’ve gotten to them to a place where they can fund everything on their own. So it’s awesome. We see about 100 new families every single month. Our numbers aren’t going through the roof, though, so that tells us that we know some families are dropping off a little bit, day by day.

Paul Adam 12:39 Okay,

Colin Gerstner 12:39 Amazing. Yeah, there’s this unfortunate stereotype out there. A lot of people receive these, or you know, to use a crude term like welfare queens, right? Just milking it, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the truth at all.

Ryan Creamer 12:49 No, and actually, we just actually ran some new numbers on this. So right now, the percentage that we’re seeing actually for for working families is about 34% of the people that we see. But you can cross over with all these. So we have 40-6% are seniors, 30% are children under the age of 18, which is usually the biggest number that you see when we talk about individuals living in poverty. That number is typically children because there’s typically more than two in a household. And then working families, single parents, you can be more than one of those statistics. Yeah. But right now, 30-4% of the people that we see are dual-income working families. The highest number is seniors who’ve come back, and they may be working as well. They may be on Social Security. But yeah, the vast majority of the people that we see are dual-income working families who just, you know, for whatever reason, hit a string of bad luck. They’re coming to us, but I would say it’s, you know, it changes annually, but under 5% of the people that we’re serving at any given time are actually individuals who would say I am homeless at this time, or keeping them out of homelessness. There’s other nonprofits that exist for that exact purpose, which you’re talking about, but it is that stereotype, it’s that stigma. We talk about it a lot with client choice. How we want to do everything we can to have this sense of, you know, pride, and we never want to take that from you. We want to make it, you know, the best place that you can come and just say, look, I just need some help, and that is the vast majority of the people we’re serving.

Paul Adam 14:16 You know, a lot of our a lot of our listeners are Billings locals. You know, business owners. You know, some folks are listening. You know, to get law advice or to hear things about the law. But it’s members of our community, just like we are. You know, we could talk to you about this all day. But I guess one thing that I’d like to know, and I’d like you to talk about, is what is the need for family service, and what’s the message that you want to give to the community? Like, is there something, you know, maybe seasonally this summer, or things that are coming up, or you know, what’s the message to the Billings community now that you kind of want to get out?

Ryan Creamer 15:00 So I’ve worked a nonprofit for 20 years, and and that question comes up all the time. Like, what do you need? What what can the community give to you? And it sounds so desperate, but it’s always like, well, money, money, and manpower can make anything happen. My wife and I, like, we had this realization. We were in Rome in 2017 We were looking at the Colosseum, and we just like asked, how can you do it in this time period? And the answer that we got back from somebody was money and manpower. Like they had the most money, you know, of any generation or any civilization, and they had slaves to build this thing in whatever time period they wanted. So, if you have money, you can really do anything, but you still need the manpower to get it done. You can have the manpower, but if you don’t have finances to do what we need to do, like you’re still, you know, SOL. But to have both of those things- money and manpower- is what all nonprofits need. The nice thing is, you know, we’ve been very, very financially sound for the past several years. You know we focus our funds specifically right now on rent and utility assistance and the day to day because right now we have so many partners that are assisting us with food insecurities, so what do we need? We need a lot of manpower. We need folks who are willing to pitch in. It is cyclical, so we see, you know, the majority of our volunteers that are coming out are typically over the holidays. That’s the same for most nonprofits, but we still need a steady influx of food. So money allows me to purchase that for pennies on the dollar, but also if people want to donate, there are so many individuals, there are so many schools, there are so many organizations that do food drives. Those are awesome. I mean, that is never going to be something we don’t request for food drives, clothing drives. Really, just it’s the same thing that we kind of answer when people are asking us about being on our board. Well, what are you expecting from us? And there’s three ways you can give. It’s through your expertise, through your pocketbook or through your time, right? And that’s really, I think, what all nonprofits need more of. Selfishly, we’re always going to plug like, well, funding. The best thing that we can also say, though, is that for every dollar that’s given to us, only 7% goes to overhead. So 93% of all of our funds go directly back into our programs. We keep extremely tight ship. Same thing for our store. Every dollar that we sell out of the thrift store, 93 cents goes directly back into the programs themselves. So we always like to say that because we want to be good stewards of dollars. We want to make sure that they’re going to the places that we say that we’re actually using them, and we want to make sure that the individuals in our community are getting those needs met.

Paul Adam 17:20 You bet.

Colin Gerstner 17:21 So, this is all great stuff. We’re a law podcast. Many people say maybe the preeminent law podcast in Montana.

Ryan Creamer 17:30 My understanding is three years running on best law firm in the city.

Paul Adam 17:33 Don’t insult me, Ryan.

Ryan Creamer 17:34 Four years now?

 Paul Adam 17:35 No, keep going, keep going.

 Ryan Creamer 17:37 Five?

Colin Gerstner 17:38 Yep. Yeah. Not that I’m counting.

Ryan Creamer 17:39 I always drive by and see the billboard on my way home on the overpass.

Colin Gerstner 17:41 You can cut that, Ben.

Paul Adam 17:44 No. That stays in.

Colin Gerstner 17:48 I guess what legal needs do you see your clientele facing on a day-to-day basis?

Ryan Creamer 17:54 So this was before I started. We actually partnered with Free Legal Law Council. I don’t know exactly which firm was doing that for us, and how long ago it was. My understanding is it’s always kind of tough to offer any free counseling, so I think that’s exactly where it kind of went awry. But what we see a lot of issues are with landlords. One of the things that popped up, and it’s coming back again right now, is we how we pay for anybody’s rent assistance is they’ve been served an eviction notice, so we cut the check directly to the landlord. We would never cut a check to the individual themselves. Same thing for utility assistance. I’m not giving you 500 bucks to go cover a bill. We’re actually going to pay it off through the utility service themselves. But what we’re seeing is a lot of property owners are writing into the contract, not in the first year, second year, third year. It might be on the you know fifth year down the road. They want to jack the price up. To do that, they’ll add a line item stating they won’t accept third-party payments, so they won’t let me cover the cost of someone’s back dues. Interesting. Which is we don’t understand the benefits of that other than you want to increase the rent and you would like to increase that sooner rather than later, so if you can put something in there that says you won’t take third-party payment, that means that you’re not going to take it from anybody. So if somebody ever falls on difficult times, you’re not going to take any payment rather than from that person themselves. So we’ve seen that, and we’ve seen it come up actually with the lease that didn’t have a line item that said that. So we felt like that would be something that we need to go talk to an attorney about. Other than that one specific that comes up, we do see a lot of individuals who are facing issues just with going through divorces or custody battles, things like that. Mainly property rights, things like that. I’d like to dig deeper, but I’m like those are the ones that just completely come back regularly. Third-party payments, I don’t know why, and that may be something for you guys to look into.

Colin Gerstner 19:43 That’s interesting. I don’t know the rationale behind it. Like, why? Why would they care?

Ryan Creamer 19:46 Yeah, I’m not sure. Other than because we’re gonna make the payment, but if then they break the contract, they can get a new person in there, and they can lift the new rate on it.

Colin Gerstner 19:54 Gotcha.

Paul Adam 19:54 Yeah

Ryan Creamer 19:55 We had a lot of questions. I think most of it’s been you know solved with the water issue. The past couple of years, we had somebody bring us a $2,000 water bill, and looking at it, we were like, “This is like a year’s worth of back pay. So the question to us always was like, “Well, one, how are you letting somebody get a year behind? Which is, I mean, I guess in our situation, we’re happy that the person was able to live in the house for a year, but now they’re never going to be able to pay this off if we don’t. So we saw a lot of issues with the water over the past couple years.

Colin Gerstner 20:24 Sure.

Paul Adam 20:25 Yeah, a lot of people did. Colin, I know that you have. We’ve probably got time for maybe one more question here, and I’m. I’m sure you have a burning question.

Colin Gerstner 20:33 We’re not even halfway through the outline. What?

Paul Adam 20:36 I mean, if you have more?

Colin Gerstner 20:39 Oh yeah.

Paul Adam 20:39 All right. Well, let’s keep rolling. All right, we’re just warming up.

Colin Gerstner 20:44 If Family Service had a mascot, what would it be?

Ryan Creamer 20:47 If we had a mascot, what would it be? This is going to be from me entirely, with no input from anybody.

Paul Adam 20:54 Yep.

Ryan Creamer 20:54 So, I was just talking about this. The bear hawk has been what I’ve had for like everything for a long time. So that’s even my fantasy football name. This goes back to college days with some of the roommates. It was actually started in a class we were talking about evolution. We were talking about interspecies, and it came up because bull snakes and rattlesnakes were interbreeding, which was like this was by no means the first time this had ever happened. But like bull snakes were now becoming poisonous, which was crazy, and then ligers, lions, and tigers, right? Mating. So we were talking about if if any species could intermate, if a bear could fly, like that would be this devastating thing for mankind. So the bear hawk in general.

Paul Adam 21:35 Family Service Bear Hawks,

Ryan Creamer 21:36 The family service bear hawks, yeah.

Colin Gerstner 21:38 Just crusading as poverty.

Ryan Creamer 21:40 Nothing about this is polite or positive or anything.

Paul Adam 21:43 Oh yeah, this is very positive.

Ryan Creamer 21:44 Yeah, the Bearhawk, and it’s funny because my nephew’s baseball team got voted as the Bear Hawks. They had to. They were coming up with a name two years ago. It was actually I think Tucker’s kid too. Okay, but yeah, they were the Bear Hawks. So I always love that name.

Colin Gerstner 21:56 I love it. Shifting gears entirely.

Ryan Creamer 22:00 Yeah, that one wasn’t a shift?

Colin Gerstner 22:01 Yeah, you’re also a well-known food and beverage connoisseur.

Ryan Creamer 22:05 Connoisseur

Colin Gerstner 22:06 And one time you contributed to a blog, maybe still do, called Better Off in Billings.

Ryan Creamer 22:11 Yeah, so Better Off in Billings came from the ambassadors for Better Off and Billings, which was part of Big Sky Economic Development. That ambassadors program is no longer, so I’m not currently writing that blog for for food and buildings, but had like eight different episodes of that. Wrote about the bar scene with with your input, and

Colin Gerstner 22:30 So that’s a question I had. So it was me, you, and our good friend Duncan Nelson. We went around some breweries.

Colin Gerstner 22:36 This was strictly for science.

Colin Gerstner 22:38 Yeah.

Paul Adam 22:38 No, I know.

Colin Gerstner 22:39 When we wrote, all three of us contributed this blog piece. I had an awesome time. Why was I never invited back?

Ryan Creamer 22:47 This was always a solo thing that I. I mean, honestly, I think the only person that’s ever really even eaten with me on these is Holly, my wife. The whole goal for this for this blog, honestly, was to be completely unpaid and give my unsolicited advice about places and billings. I never wanted to give a negative review on anything, and really just eat the places that I wanted to eat at. And that was the goal. I thought this was going to be something we’re going to do for quite a bit longer. And then I started getting restaurants who did reach out, and they were like, “Hey, when are you going to give me a chance? And hey, can we cook for you? Which is great, and it was something I wanted to do. But at the same time, then I’m like, well, now you’re kind of forcing me to write about you. And if it was a negative experience, I really didn’t want to do that. So I was always me solo. But I could just say that your input was so strong, and it made my writing skills look so weak that I just didn’t invite you back.

Colin Gerstner 23:37 Thank you. That’s what I suspected.

Ryan Creamer 23:39 That’s exactly right.

Colin Gerstner 23:39 Yeah. What’s your favorite restaurant in town?

Ryan Creamer 23:42 What’s my favorite in town right now? My wife and I have been like on a dive. We’ve just been eating dive restaurants for so much for for so long right now. If I go on the non dive side, I’ve always loved Walkers. Walkers has always been one of my go tos. Love Enzo so much.

Colin Gerstner 23:58 Shout out Nick Steen.

Ryan Creamer 23:58 Nick Steen’s an awesome guy. Hi Nick. We’ve been eating a lot of now, as I say, dive. A lot of I won’t even give the restaurants names now, but a lot of a lot of Mexican food. There’s a couple of pizza places that we really really like. Art House Babcock is not a dive by any means. I’m on the board there, but Pink Patty’s Food Truck. They have a secondary location within Art House Babcock, and if you haven’t had their burgers, burgers are fantastic. I just had a new one last week. It’s like a steakhouse burger with truffle aioli on it, and it’s fantastic. Other smaller places, let’s stop calling them dives. Latinga is one of my favorite go-to places. I love Indian food, so I’m really really thrilled that we have a new Indian restaurant downtown. Two new restaurants that are going to open up in the next few weeks, I’m really excited about. There’s a restaurant opening up, a new Filipino restaurant opening. Saw that, yeah. But we kind of been creatures of habit. We when we travel, we then get kind of stuck on like whatever that food was that we ate the last time. My wife and I were just in the Nordics and the Baltics, so we’ve been trying to cook a lot of that stuff lately. But we tend to eat a lot of people. And a lot of Mexican right now.

Colin Gerstner 25:01 Okay

Ryan Creamer 25:02 We’re actually going to Mexico City in a couple of days, so I’ve been trying to like get all of my guilty pleasure of like Tex Mex before I’m ruined for the rest of my life.

Colin Gerstner 25:11 Did you any borscht?

Ryan Creamer 25:13 I had borscht several times when we were in Lithuania and in Latvia, and we had a Ukrainian restaurant in Estonia, which was fantastic.

Colin Gerstner 25:20 Oh man, I made a great borscht with venison. You know, a deer that we got, and it was awesome. I was the only one in my family that liked it.

Ryan Creamer 25:30 I love elk. But when we go to the venison side, that’s huge in Finland, and their native peoples have several restaurants across Helsinki focus a lot on venison. Some of it was awesome. Some of it was definitely tough gamey Venice. Reindeers.

Colin Gerstner 25:46 What’s the best movie of all time?

Ryan Creamer 25:47 My favorite movie of all time is probably going to still be Saving Private Ryan. I’m a war buff. I really, really like war epics. If I was going to go beyond that, I would probably go something with like Paul Thomas Anderson or Quentin Tarantino, but I’d probably always say Saving Private Ryan for whatever reason. It’s kind of my guilty not guilty pleasure just to go to a long war epic that’s going to make you feel bad at the end of the day. But that’s typically what I tend to watch.

Colin Gerstner 26:12 Sure, yeah. If you’re appointed dictator of Billings, what would be your first executive order?

Ryan Creamer 26:19 Oh man, I would probably go something like towards what I really should focus on, like for my job, and say something like Medicaid for all, or you know, food for all type thing. If it’s a dictatorship, then I can just impose it, right? Oh yeah, you just you say it. Oh yeah, just cap food costs, cap gas costs, cap rental costs. Yeah, just everything.

Colin Gerstner 26:37 There you go.

Ryan Creamer 26:38 Make life more affordable and easier on individuals in the community in some capacity.

Colin Gerstner 26:44 So imagine your job involves fundraising, fundraising events. What’s your most awkward fundraising moment?

Ryan Creamer 26:50 Sending like correspondence to the wrong person. That’s like a you can get fired for that in this field, and yeah, send somebody like, hey, thanks so much for your donation of this amount to the wrong address. Super embarrassing.

Colin Gerstner 27:04 So, for context, I’m on the record on a previous podcast that there are some legal phrases that I think are dumb and need to go away. And Latin phrases. What are we doing here? We speak English, right? Get rid of the Latin phrases. Yeah. If you can permanently ban a phrase from the nonprofit world, what would you ban?

Ryan Creamer 27:21 That’s the way we’ve always done it. I think that’s just not nonprofit. I think that’s like in every single world. Well, that’s just the way that we’ve always done it. So we don’t always have to do it this way. In nonprofit, you do a lot of event planning, and that’s like my biggest no-no. Is, well, we’re doing it this way because we’ve always done it that way. We’ll think different, and we can make it different.

Colin Gerstner 27:42 So I okay. I was trying to guess what you would say. So I’ve corresponded with you know various nonprofits and boards over the years, and about half of the emails involve the term “circle back. How many times do you use the phrase “circle back”

Ryan Creamer 27:58 I don’t use it. I can think of like all of those buzz things though that you type like per our earlier conversation or any of those are just I think old phrases that probably need to be done away with because we know what we’re all thinking when we say that like hey let’s circle back to that really means like you weren’t paying attention I’m going to reiterate what I was saying yeah there’s plenty of them okay.

Colin Gerstner 28:22 What’s the most overrated sport?

Ryan Creamer 28:26 NBA. I don’t watch NBA actually, so I love college, and I know that you’re a Nuggets fan. I know you follow basketball. I love college basketball. I love love love baseball, and then obviously football is what I’m going to watch the most. Right now, as I’m watching World Cup, I told my wife, I was like, I’d so much rather watch soccer than I would rather watch than NBA, but I only like watching college basketball, and I don’t know if it’s just that once they get to NBA, like there’s no defense, everyone’s you know traveling, 13 steps counts, Euro step counts, and that’s just me being ignorant too. I just don’t watch enough of it.

Colin Gerstner 28:58 No, sure. What’s the worst food that everybody pretends to like?

Ryan Creamer 29:10 Worst food that everyone pretends to like. Honestly, I even this is probably a hot take. Steak, like I feel like we’re at a steak and potatoes state. It’s so easy just to do it yourself, and I feel like if you’re going to go to a restaurant and pay like $75 for like a moderately priced steak, everyone, you know, oh, it’s so good; you can make it better at your house. Pasta falls that way though too at a restaurant. Everyone can make pasta, and pasta is going to get upcharged to like 30 bucks. It’s like $5 worth of ingredients, and I assure you, if you just work at it, you can do it yourself. But it’s always going to be good because it’s a ton of butter, ton of salt. Same thing for steak; you can just do it at your house for $10 instead of $60.

Colin Gerstner 29:48 That’s so funny. My kids and I are having the same conversation. Whenever order steak somewhere, you’re always like disappointed.

Ryan Creamer 29:53 Yeah.

Colin Gerstner 29:53 Like I paid a lot of money, and it was Ryan Creamer 29:54 Because you know how you would cook.

Colin Gerstner 29:55 Yeah

Ryan Creamer 29:57 and typically, I think a lot of restaurants like I want mine rare. Like I want it rare, rare, rare. Like kiss it,

Colin Gerstner 30:03 And good vet could bring it back to life.

Ryan Creamer 30:04 Like blue, yeah. And no one really wants to do it because they’re terrified to do that. So I usually my my go to question for most staff was like, you need to cook this however like long legally you need to cook it for, and still it come back like medium, and I’d be pissed.

Colin Gerstner 30:20 Last one that I have, I’m sure Paul is a whole lot. This could be a really stupid question. Do you have any gear in your house for a hobby that you don’t actually do?

Ryan Creamer 30:32 I have a guitar that I never touch. I have a guitar sitting up in my attic that’s never been touched. Holly’s trying to talk me into buying a drum set because I played drums, and I went and looked at a drum set, like the electronic one, so they wouldn’t even make noise. But I was like, “This is gonna also just sit upstairs and not get touched at some point. We have a piano in the house that Holly hasn’t touched in probably 10 years either. So I guess all of the musical instruments that we pretend that we can play, we don’t touch them.

Colin Gerstner 30:56 Yeah, gosh, I mine my answer would have been cornhole.

Ryan Creamer 31:00 I don’t have a cornhole set.

Colin Gerstner 31:01 Yeah, so I you know you show up at a barbecue or an event, and if you’re good at cornhole, you look so cool, right? You look like you’re the boss,

Ryan Creamer 31:07 Or you look like the guy that does nothing but plays cornhole. Like why is this guy so good?

Colin Gerstner 31:11 I wanted to be that guy, so I got a cornhole set. You know, I’m like, I’m gonna work on my my spins, you know, my various techniques, and I just never played it. Eventually, the weather ruined it, just being in the backyard, unused.

Ryan Creamer 31:22 My baseball glove hasn’t been touched, and I couldn’t tell you how long. But that’s-I feel like that’s something that you just have, like that’s gonna stay forever. I’ve worn the same baseball mitt since I was probably in like middle school because my hands are, you know, same size. Holly tells me like the only hobbies I have right now are cooking and going to the gym, so I’m sure there’s plenty of cooking appliances that I never touch, but yeah, all the sporting stuff is probably sitting in my garage right now, completely untouched.

Colin Gerstner 31:46 Nice. What questions you got, Paul?

Paul Adam 31:50 Colin, you made the outline, and you covered all of them. All right, I will say, Ryan, you were not prepped in any way for this podcast. You had no idea what you were getting into, and off the cuff, you are a fantastic guest.

Ryan Creamer 32:05 I appreciate it.

Colin Gerstner 32:06 Top three so far.

Paul Adam 32:08 The top three all-time guests of the Off the Record Podcast.

Ryan Creamer 32:12 I’ve finished like in the bottom third.

Paul Adam 32:14 Yeah

Ryan Creamer 32:15 I mean, I’ve kind of always said like I don’t feel like I’ve ever walked into a room where I’ve like not known someone, and luckily I’ve been able to talk for most of my life, and don’t really ever get nervous in front of rooms, and I can keep talking and talking and talking. That’s why we’re going to cut this at 30 minutes.

Colin Gerstner 32:30 If someone wants to learn more about family service, how can they do so?

Ryan Creamer 32:35 Our website’s the easiest place to go. So billingsfamilyservice.com, excuse me.org. On top of that, you know, just Google us, Facebook. You can find us on Instagram. It’s easiest places to find us.

Colin Gerstner 32:50 Sure.

Paul Adam 32:52 Yeah, and you know what? This wasn’t planned either, or on the outline. But if any of our listeners have gotten this far in the podcast, there’s going to be a spot on our web page. If you go to the community tab, you can drop down. There’s going to be a code that flashes here at the end. The first person to enter that code will receive a donation to Family Service on their behalf. So if you listen that far, thank you, thank you.

Ryan Creamer 33:19 Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Paul Adam 33:23 Ryan, again, you know, you know, people are looking for nonprofits to trust leadership that is authentic, and you are exactly that. I certainly appreciate you.

Ryan Creamer 33:36 That’s you’re completely accurate. I mean, too. I mean, just not working at I mean, just working in a nonprofit, but you know, I’ve been on nonprofit boards, and we support nonprofits across the community, and that’s exactly right. You’re always looking for people. Always give. This is an old phrase, but people give to people, not to the organization, because they trust the individuals in leadership roles. You know, when was the last time you gave to something that you? No one’s going to say, like, well, I don’t support this specific thing, but you don’t know them, so typically you’re not writing a check to that place. So we always really pride ourselves on kind of being as honest as we can be and really do what we say we’re doing. So I appreciate you saying that.

Paul Adam 34:14 Yeah, no, you need a connection. So make a connection to family service. We’ll have up. You know, you said you need three things: you need volunteers, you need money, and you need

Ryan Creamer 34:26 Money, manpower, and support. Yeah

Paul Adam 34:27 Money and manpower. So we’ll have your website up at the end of the podcast here. Thanks again, Ryan. We really appreciate you.

Colin Gerstner 34:35 And we’re looking for more guests. And if any of our listeners know professional golfer Stephen Jaeger, tell him to check his Instagram DMs.

Paul Adam 34:43 Thanks.