CONFIRMEDthe owners’ own recorded words
This is the plain-language version of the cited update, written to be read out loud. The podcast is public, the disclosure document is a public government filing, and every quote is one of the owners’ own words. Nothing here is a court ruling, and everyone named is presumed to have acted lawfully.
The two brothers who own Bricks & Minifigs went on a podcast. The man hosting it runs a real estate company that Bricks & Minifigs tells its new store owners to use. Over about an hour, the owners said a lot of things in their own voices. The chief executive, asked to name his single greatest strength, said that he tends not to see people as humans, that he sees them as “output machines.” That is the headline, but it was not the only thing they said.
The host asked each brother to name his own superpower. Ammon McNeff went first. He said he is a long-term thinker, that he looks far down the road, and then he said what comes with that: “because of that, I tend to not see people as humans. I tend to see people as, how is this person going to help us accomplish this thing. And if they can’t, we need a different machine in there.” He said he sees “people more like the output machines.” He then said his brother Matt is “very good at helping me see people more as the individuals, not just the output machines.” The question had only been about his strengths.
Earlier in the same hour, asked how the company grows, he reached for the same idea. The right person in the right role at the right time, he said, “and then they expire.” They cannot keep growing with the business, and you have to know when someone is no longer the right fit, “because their time has expired.”
On choosing new owners, Ammon described a process that ends with a required trip to Utah, and a reason for it: they look for people who will “maintain that culture” and “continue to be champions of the brand without significant dilution.” Talking about the owners who came before the company brought in a firm to find their stores, he said “most of them were terrible at it” and “they’re not experts in that space.”
Near the end of the same episode, asked what makes Bricks & Minifigs special, the owners answered in single words: passion, connection, community, and, in the last word one of them chose, joy. Both descriptions, the machines and the joy, are from the same recording.
The host is Jonathan Hill, who co-founded Morrow Hill, the real estate firm that Bricks & Minifigs’ own recruitment materials tell new owners to use, “at no extra cost.” This site wrote about those materials, and the disclosure question they raise, on July 22. Hill also put both brothers and Bricks & Minifigs on a public list he called his “Utah Franchise Family.” On the show the owners praised the firm, saying they wanted someone to “manage the real estate side of things” and to “plug it into the system,” because before that “every franchisee was left to their own devices.” Right after the praise, the host, who co-founded the firm being praised, said: “I promise I did not pay these two nice guys to say this.”
The brothers did not start Bricks & Minifigs. They bought the company that sells the franchises, about a year after opening a store of their own, and here is how they described it: “It was not investment bankers. Initially it was absorbed into the other business that we were running. And we didn’t take on the full stock either. There was a CFO who stayed on board as well, who ran the Boise, Idaho store. And Reed is still with us, as part of the board and our CFO. Eventually we split it out from the other business.” The other business, in their own earlier words, was “legal structuring services for healthcare providers.” This site has written about that CFO, Reed, and the jobs he holds at the same time, on July 10.
Asked about the LEGO Group, one owner described a change: “Starting in April we will be distributing all new, in-box LEGO to our entire brand,” through “a direct distribution relationship with the LEGO Group” and “a weekly meeting with them, with our rep.” When a company that sells franchises becomes the supplier of the main product its stores sell, that is something a disclosure document is supposed to cover. What the document already says is in the July 25 update about the approved vendor list.
The host said, “since 2023, you’ve opened more than 150 locations,” and neither owner argued with it. This site’s store map, built from the company’s own filings, shows how many are actually open. It is a smaller number than the openings announced.
Ammon told the story of where the brand came from. Two men were invited to look at an older woman’s LEGO collection. He said they “can’t really get the story straight, whether or not she knew what she was doing by inviting two people there,” and that “instead of bidding against each other, they decided to partner up and buy the whole collection at a cheaper rate and then just split it amongst themselves.” That is the company’s origin story, told by its chief executive: two buyers agreeing not to bid against each other, so the seller was paid less.
Bricks & Minifigs tells the people it recruits that it sells passion, connection, community, and joy. On the same recording, its chief executive says he does not see people as humans, that he sees output machines. He said it on the show of the real estate firm his company recommends, and that firm is not named in the company’s disclosure document.
To be fair. How a person describes his own management style is not evidence of a crime, and this is not presented as one. The founding story is the owners’ account of other men’s conduct, years before they arrived. That the recommended firms are not named in the disclosure document is a fact; whether the rules required them to be named, and whether any money changed hands, are the questions in the fuller updates, not claims made here. Every quote is the owners’ own words, said out loud, on a public recording.
This is a plain-language retelling. The exact quotes, the timestamps, the audio, and the links are in the full update. Nothing here is a finding of law.
The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; the criminal charges referenced are unadjudicated and every defendant is presumed innocent. Sources are linked so readers can check the record. · Home · Map · The law · Bodycam