From $0 to Multi-Millions: How Two Friends Built a Successful Business During COVID

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[00:00:22] They get shit done. So welcome to the get shit done experience.

[00:00:30] we find ourselves back in studio for the get shit done experience. We also call it the GSDX podcast. So I’m here today with two phenomenal gentlemen, they are owners and operators of United Door and Dock. We’re going to get into another DBA that they have as well. That’s pretty interesting and cool.

[00:00:48] But I want to introduce you today, Mr. Ben Wittig, Mr. Mike Curley, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Sean. Pretty cool. So last time I saw you, Ben, we were at a golf tournament for a little city. and that was pretty outstanding. You had a booth set up. It sounds like, you guys are pretty active in the community, giving back and, playing your part and sponsoring a fantastic event.

[00:01:14] it was great to see you there, but, I don’t want to get into too much about explaining what it is that you guys do, but you were there explaining everyone that was passing through some of the ins and outs of what you offer. You want to give a little detail on, some of the origin story and some of the, services you offer.

[00:01:32] Yeah. We do love the golf events. It’s. Out of all the different things that we get involved in, it’s one of the only ones where you get to talk to every single person that goes to the event for little moments of time. So we book as many golf events as we possibly can. What was great too, is he handed out some really nice golf balls there.

[00:01:49] And what was cool is the refurbished golf balls with just your logo on it. So that was pretty sweet. Yeah, it was really cool. We, had a customer that was getting rid of up like thousands and thousands of them and we took them and then, through, through, found a marketing company and they labeled all the balls for us.

[00:02:05] And then, we, pretty much anybody, they’ll put them in their marketing bags, when they, or we hand them out. those went directly to my wife, and I think she shot her best score just for the record. Was she taking a picture with it? She did not take a picture, but she has one left.

[00:02:23] So her best score still cost her two balls. Nice. But she shot her best score. No, not bad at all. Mike, you want to get into a little bit about what it is that you specialize in and how you’re impacting companies and property owners and so on? Yeah, so we specialize in The service repair, maintenance, installation of all types of commercial doors, loading dock equipment, perimeter security.

[00:02:53] So crash rated vehicle barricades. we get into a lot of weird stuff too, just like general warehouse solutions where, you know, warehouse manager. Uses us to fix their doors and docks, but then also just will come to us and be like, I can’t find anybody. No one’s going to touch this. They don’t know how to do this or really.

[00:03:14] Yeah. in welding is like one of the first thing, remember how many weird welding jobs we got into. the art of welding, if you ask anybody, you can’t just throw a drill from home depot at it. You have to have some skill, some know how. And so we’ve gotten a lot of work when they find out that we have welders on all of our vehicles.

[00:03:32] We get into a lot of weird stuff because we’d come there to fix a door or a dock leveler, and then they’re like, Hey, can you do this? Hey, can you do that? And then we end up, getting a bunch of time and, they have a hard time finding someone to do that weird kind of stuff. And we talk about all the time.

[00:03:45] We like to get weird. Yeah. Let’s get weird. Is that the best kind of business though? That, diversification through demand. Yeah. when you go out and you do something, one thing really great. And your customers are like, shoot, if you do this great, can you do this as well? And of course, naturally, especially as owners of a business, you’re like, absolutely.

[00:04:04] And then you go back and you figure out how to do it. Yeah. We were salesmen before owners of this business. So there’s, the yes. And no, is not in the vocabulary. No. That’s great. That’s perfect. Is it confidential? You were, before we started recording, you were talking about the library that you’re working with.

[00:04:22] no, not confidential. Okay, perfect. So you’re working with the Obama library. That’s a pretty big deal, right? To get, I would imagine that it was very competitive to bid on that job. Yeah. Or was it a circumstance where they couldn’t find somebody who could do, offer the unique value that you can? there was, there’s a bunch of different scopes of work.

[00:04:42] On the project. lots and lots of competition. Everybody wants to go after the high profile. big number jobs, so the procurement phase of that job was, I’d say, took a year and a half. it was wild. but at the end of the day, we ended up getting awarded 3 scopes of work.

[00:05:07] every overhead door. In the entire building. Nice. also, this really cool auditorium noise canceling vertical sliding door. That’s only made in 1 place in the world in England. Where we get it from, which was really cool. And then we also have the entire, crash rated perimeter security package as well.

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[00:06:13] Peace of mind, powerful innovation, TTSG.com. So you’re sourcing the product distribute. And then install and then you’re offering the service as well. Just for point of reference, you said it was like a year and a half sales cycle, right? What’s the traditional sales cycle for something that you do? Could be about 20 seconds.

[00:06:33] Yeah, I would imagine it’s on demand. Can you do this? Yes. Okay, cool. Can you do it tomorrow? Exactly. Yeah. Wow. Wow. What were your patients like on that one? Was it a big enough number that it made sense for you to hang in there? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool. number’s big enough. And, we’re still hanging in there two and a half years after word of the contract.

[00:06:54] Yeah. We’re, barely even scratching the surface of the amount of work that we have to do out there, the project’s going to go on for years. So that’s awesome. Yeah. We got plenty. That keeps on giving. Yep. Juice was worth the squeeze, as they say. Let’s talk a little bit about the origin story.

[00:07:11] Like, how long in business? How did you get started? and who wants to take that? Yeah, I’ll do a little bit. Mike and I, by the way, fill in very well together. we’re very close. Good. throughout this whole process, I came from a sales, my, my most before United, the latest thing I was doing is 100 percent commission sales, right?

[00:07:33] So that’s an animal that only a few people in the world can understand. Loved it. Love. Yeah. When you’ve had that taste, Everything changes, right? The way you manage your time, the way you approach things. It’s just completely different than being in a salaried position. So having that going into, build it, this is this company that I met Mike at.

[00:07:56] I knew how I needed to be paid. And I’m just looking for a platform or vehicle to drive all of my customers that built 13 years because they’re looking for good service and they want me. At the end of the day, so now you’re a trusted advisor and you got to make sure that you bolt onto somebody who’s going to provide your promise.

[00:08:13] You got it. And for new business, you need to make sure there’s enough room on the bus can take to take the new stuff that scaling that you want to add. And that was a frustration I had before is yeah. Great company, great people. Unfortunately, the bus just wasn’t big enough for the work that was coming.

[00:08:27] So now you’re telling your customers they gotta wait. Or we’re doing no show, no calls. Oh, Lord. We set something up and then something changes and we don’t let them know. I don’t want to talk about the past because we built something to Combat that beautiful. Let’s go. It’s really important to go to bed, not having customers that are like, Oh, United, I can’t stand those guys.

[00:08:46] Yeah. And I’m proud to say that I really don’t think we have that going for us. when I got to meet with Mike, things went really well, but. ownership decided to start changing the thing, start changing the ways that we were going to get paid and stuff like that. And I just had that gut feeling.

[00:09:07] And so much of what we’ve done with United has been based off our gut feeling. And I just had a lot of lunches with Mike had a lot of conversation. this doesn’t look like it’s going to go the way we want it to go long term. And a combination of that and then just realizing that our industry is very dated, right?

[00:09:24] It’s very seasoned. It’s stuck in its ways. This is how we’ve always done it. We put the paper up on the wall and we move the T cards around and we write the things down with the pencil and the mechanical pencil. I got to use a 0. 5, the 0. 7 breaks or whatever, all that kind of, all that kind of stuff.

[00:09:39] And, I’ve always been a techie guy. I came from a family that. I was, I joke with people. I was born in a gateway box. I don’t know if you know what that is, but gateway computers. You should have a cow box. Yeah, So my brother and I grew up playing in those things. Because why would you play with the toys that cost 50 bucks?

[00:09:54] You play with a box instead, right? That’s the way it goes. That hasn’t changed, right? No, not at all. So, Mike and I think really just said this could be done so much better. Okay. And. Yeah. you were at another place working together, right? Yeah. I worked there for 10 years almost to the day. And, yeah, started in certain sales at one point, sales manager, general manager, back to sales manager and selling myself a lot, as well.

[00:10:27] And, yeah, I was doing great there. And you were itching feeling the same way as Ben. yeah, I, just, Yeah, like Ben said, there’s got to be, there’s got to be better ways. I think I was going to change. Actually, I had a plan B. I’m always been a plan B kind of guy. Keep something in the background just in case.

[00:10:50] And I think Mike, I think said, what if we just do this on our own? what do you think we could do? what’s crazy is that when we did all that planning at this restaurant, there’s this restaurant called Dino’s and we met there 80 times. I don’t know what it was for like dinner. Was it breakfast, dinner, all three, all of it.

[00:11:07] we’d always plan for things like, what if it goes wrong? How much is the minimum? This minimum that always prepared for failure. We always prepared for failure. And what really our biggest, Take away from that experience was we didn’t plan for the explosion. We should have planned.

[00:11:22] We should have planned both. Interesting. We didn’t plan for that explosion. You would plan for failure, not for success. that’s really an interesting point because I don’t, I think there’s millions of people that probably have done the same exact thing. So then now you’re in a situation where, oh my gosh, I got this awesome big job that just came in.

[00:11:39] Yeah. Oh, how are we going to pay for this? Because we don’t have enough time built up with the vendor for them to just give us all this material. Now we worked with some strategic partners to get through a lot of that stuff, we probably should have borrowed a little bit more money or found a way to gain a little bit extra funds to smooth that because it was a crazy roller coaster in a good way though, right?

[00:12:02] because of all the success and the explosion, but there’s a lot of pain. There’s a lot of time in that all worth it. Don’t get me wrong. I think the other thing too, to your point about, the brand you were working for, maybe not living up to your greater purpose, your core values, your principles as an individual, like representing yourself, your family and the brand.

[00:12:23] don’t get me wrong when you, for a company that’s been around a very long time, united was this cool little jet ski. you can just dodge any kind of objection, anything companies that have been around for a long time, even if they have great culture in now united, we can’t steer as fast.

[00:12:40] Yeah, no, it’s turn a battleship. And so I almost really, I used to be really upset about that situation, but now I’m just yeah, now it is what it is. Yeah. But I think it also, that probably prepared you for that explosive success because you probably had a little voice in your head, Hey, you know what?

[00:12:56] We can, what happened over there where I was bringing in customers that couldn’t handle it. I gotta, work through that. So that doesn’t happen here. So you were trying to maintain the core values. Do you think that your experience in sales, naturally a lot of CEOs and executives and founders have great experience in sales or they’re tremendous technical experts and they find somebody to go out and sell.

[00:13:20] Do you think that the guts that you needed to have to be on straight commission for that extended period of time? Has been a tremendous advantage for you in building up this business. you were on commission. Yeah. absolutely. I’m trying to, I was trying to put myself in your shoes when you said that, but yeah, absolutely.

[00:13:41] It’s the, it is so scary, but then once you do it, you don’t want it any other way. Yeah. but right, like a lot of good at it, but a lot of things in life are like that. it’s really, it’s, we got, and we have a handful of sales guys now that are all paid exactly the same and they all love it.

[00:13:58] And if they were here, they would tell you that I don’t want to get paid any other way than this, because one of the things that gives you is not only does it give you control over how much you make, we don’t cap anything, right? So you can. The sky’s the limit, but it’s the time. And even now, as we talk more, like you’ll find that if there was a vending machine that I could walk up to and put money in it and get time back credits with my family or the things and the hobbies, Mike would do the same thing.

[00:14:23] if there was a way you could get like fish, extra fishing time or extra whatever time, like we would, I wish that thing existed. So craziest want that crazy while this part of the origin story is, we leave our former employer, on a Friday, the 28th of, February, something like that 2020. And we both left extremely well paying jobs.

[00:14:58] We were both wildly successful at that place. We bought houses. We bought, you have a lifestyle, but yeah. and we traded it all for leftover spaghetti for, two years and started the business on March 1st, 2020 that week. Two 12 days later, first official shut down from covid in the country. you guys are Teflon now.

[00:15:27] So what else could happen? Exactly. bring on, bring it on. But it was crazy because we were I remember sitting there and we’re like checking our phones and like Texas, I think was one of the first states initially, which is crazy for Texas to be the first, but they were starting to close the each state was trying to like basically follow suit.

[00:15:49] And, we’re, like, this, remember, I don’t know if you remember, but you’re like, this was before masks, right? So your walk, we’re going to Home Depot every day for stuff to run the business. And we’re like, Yeah, like that guy just coughed we’re wiping off our Amazon packages because no one knew what was really going on and then, then the sign started coming up, then the doors are starting to get locked and then, it starts to get so talk about, preparing for failure.

[00:16:18] My God, we thought it was over. Yeah. And then by the way, Oh, Hey, let me walk back to my old employer. Who’s probably furloughing people and be like, can I get my gig back? That is not happening. There was no safety net. And if there was, it disappeared immediately. So That is really a cool story because talk about guts, but then the fear when you, match guts and fear together, and then you’ve got a great partnership, people that you genuinely love and you’ve been through it with them before, like now, all of a sudden, you guys probably looked at each other like we have no other option, but to succeed.

[00:17:00] Yeah. and speaking of that, no option, but. Success was let’s add into the mix, a two year old child, a one year old child. I had a one year old child and throughout the first three years of this new endeavor here, we now have seven children between our two families. quite productive, and other things.

[00:17:29] there is no other option. but, But to make it happen, whatever it takes. So we’ve got, a lot of slogans around the business. Okay. And like the first one ever was, was nothing stops this train. That’s a great core value. Nothing stops this train. And then it but for reference, that comes from breaking bad, right?

[00:17:52] Yeah. it can’t, it comes from that breaking bad gift. Yeah. Okay. But, what a great t shirt. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Nothing stops this train. That’s freaking cool. And then the train would be with like your logo and it’s just going full speed. Yeah. Yeah. and that, birth.

[00:18:12] Another one is just whatever it takes. Yeah. Like we have babies and families at home. We have covid. We have nowhere else to go. And you got babies in the office too. They’re like, they’re looking at you. Yeah. Yep. We’ve got, just signed a five year lease for this warehouse office space. Like it, whatever it takes in every aspect and we, and you got to remember too, before COVID, before that COVID thing popped up, we had mutually said many times when we left these, intimate times at the diner where.

[00:18:50] borderline, like we’re gonna die before this doesn’t work and that mindset and like we’re going to the mat like we’re going to there is no failure. Like you needed success like you needed to breathe. Yeah, exactly. and not only that, and then another thing that put us in that position is. We drained our 401ks.

[00:19:10] We drained, we pulled all the equity we could out of our homes. and we had, had a personal guarantee, everything, right? Yeah. S corporation, I would imagine. So it’s up against personal assets. Yeah. We did LLC filed as an S corporate. Basically. Yeah. Everything is personal guarantee. Yeah. we’re putting, we were, Getting trucks the next day all or just maxing out.

[00:19:30] Yeah. Didn’t know when that was going to get turned off. who knows what during COVID you had cards, they were taking credit cards and just. They saw other stuff pile up. So you might’ve had this big limit on your discover card. And they just said, Oh yeah, we’re taking that down because of all, the things we see over here on your credit report.

[00:19:49] so this wasn’t a company you bought, right? This is ground up. if you bought a company, you could default and that’s going to hurt and it goes back and whatever. But that’s not even an option either, but this is ground up. The sales instincts kicked, it had to have. Yeah, so we’re in OfficeMax before they closed, because that place is gone now, wherever it was, Staples or OfficeMax.

[00:20:11] And the first thing we do is we’re buying foldable tables, we’re buying the cheapest office chairs we can. Keyboard. And a Keurig machine. It’s a really cool picture of me flexing with this Keurig machine. you have to have coffee to sell, We got, yeah, so we had the Keurig machine, buying pens and the, paper and, ordering, Chinese food and like all the, like all those things that you would think about starting up like in a garage or setting like that’s exactly like the Microsoft story where we started in the garage and nobody digs into the detail that he had like a billionaire father and all that stuff.

[00:20:44] But nonetheless, it starts bare, bare bones. There’s some street loans that we eventually got into with people, but Very small amounts of money to pull this off. yeah, we didn’t, no investors or pay ourselves. We didn’t pay ourselves a penny for about two years. Wow. Didn’t pay our mortgages on our houses for two years.

[00:21:09] Getting basically death threats from, yeah, and, whatever it takes. Yeah, it’s awesome. And I genuinely mean this when I say this is not for the podcast. Like congratulations. that is freaking amazing. And now we’re in year four. So you get through the two years, which was supposed to be two weeks to reduce the curve, right?

[00:21:31] It was two years. Now you’re in year four. What’s the growth been like explosive. Yeah, yeah. So, one, one really cool thing that. Was really fortunate, was that we got to start a business in a stale, always the way it’s been forever, carbon copy, rip off the pink copy for the customer kind of industry, we got to start a new company in 2020.

[00:22:01] So you brought digital innovation in. And so you’ve reinvented the operations of. How will business in your industry function? another slogan we’ve got is faster than fast and our technology, AI, the way we just operate our cultural, our culture in general is like we, we strive to be the Amazon of.

[00:22:28] Yeah, doors and docks. Love it. Yeah. And then when you say faster and fast, we’re talking response time. We’re talking service. We’re talking follow up. We’re talking estimate requested estimate delivered like that. Yep. we probably get, I’d say at least a quarter of our leads that call into to our company.

[00:22:53] First thing they say is I’ve called four other numbers and I can’t get ahold of anyone. I talked to one person. They said they can be out in about three weeks. And we’re like, are you, there’s a salesman on the way as we speak. I’ve said this to our sales team. I said, one of the biggest advantages that we have is our competition.

[00:23:12] Yes. Oh my God. you should look at your competition as that’s an advantage because we’re so different. And that sounds like you’re leaning into that big time. And, I wouldn’t tell anybody and Mike and I have always. the next venture from United find any industry, it doesn’t matter how many people are in it because a lot of people say, you’re in a completely saturated market.

[00:23:35] There’s nine, 10, 13 other door companies doing what you do, but you just have to make that list of what can we do better. What can we do faster and find the pain, you find those things. Oh my God. I like we were meant to talk today. Yeah, the pain is I can’t get anyone to come out.

[00:24:00] It took me weeks to get this quote. the price seems insane. I called and I left a voicemail and no one ever answered. I called, I spoke to a receptionist. They had no idea what I was talking about. If let me blow your mind with the phone thing really quick, just so you know. We had such a hard time setting up our phone system because we had somebody helping us ring central shameless plug there.

[00:24:25] They didn’t understand the concept of no voicemail. Yeah, so I told them, no, I don’t think you understand me. I don’t want anyone to have the ability to leave a voice message on any machine, any platform, any app. I want it to ring until a human picks it up. And we did that since day one, right? Cause we knew that was a pain point.

[00:24:45] So what’s so cool is that if you call our main number, you’re going right to a account manager in that way. Not, not, a receptionist, not, the accounting person, not, someone that has a script, right? Cause everybody’s playing that game. You go and call the furnace guy. Oh, what’s your address?

[00:25:06] What’s the best contact? All the situational bullshit questions, right? I’ll take down your information and we’ll get back to you. Yeah, so, we can help you. So we can help you right away. I just want to say the thing about the phone thing, because everybody asks like, huh, what’s the secret sauce? That’s a big part of it.

[00:25:19] That’s huge. you guys clearly, and when I say this, I’m not going to talk about the beautiful logo apparel that you’re wearing. The logo is badass, by the way. Thanks. I’m not talking about that. When I say branding, it’s all the feeling stuff. Like you just telling that story and I’m a branding guy, right?

[00:25:38] but it, but you get it. It’s about the feeling. If I’m on the other end of the line, and I know somebody’s always going to pick up, I’m going to talk to you human. That’s the differentiator of a technology driven innovation type world that essentially has eliminated the human to human belief system.

[00:25:58] Yep. So what you did was, everyone is zigging, you zagged. Absolutely. Yeah, you got it. and in the beginning, Absolutely. Everybody’s trying to set up some, How do I make it faster and easier instead of, more human? Yeah. And in the beginning to the, with the fear of COVID. when we started and everything’s shutting down, when you said, what did you just say?

[00:26:23] Are your, our competitors could be your biggest advantage. So when the PPP loans came out months after we started the business and we got pennies of it where I’m sure these other established companies got. Millions or hundreds of thousands, whatever he laid down. They laid down.

[00:26:43] It just felt like, it was an entitlement, like, the, road just cleared of traffic for us to just plow through the freight train. And, we were talking like during covid. Or, I don’t, it doesn’t matter for us during COVID or not, there was a time that lay down part that we’re talking about, which we should really name that period of time and make it a historical event.

[00:27:08] The phone is five, six calls a day. we’re running requests nine o’clock at night. Can’t get, if you guys get, if you guys get inbound traffic like that, that’s just glorious. It was absolutely insane. We had some really awesome people that were riding with us at that time to get to these places.

[00:27:28] It was, we were, we got so flooded that we were getting pictures, trying to help people through pictures and FaceTime in any way that we could. you got to remember, not only did we have COVID, we had the riots going on. So all that rioting, their doors are getting destroyed. These doors are not meant for what was happening to them.

[00:27:47] So we’re rapidly repairing those, trying to order, trying to. do all that kind of stuff. Maximum efficiency. So we with technology and our way of thinking of how to do things. Like we were doing things that never happened before. So there are times then, and still now we’ll, we’ll be on the phone with, with a lead, right?

[00:28:10] Someone calling in and saying, Hey, my, door’s broken. I need a, it’s not service, but I want a quote to get it replaced. It’s just old, broken, rusted, whatever. when do you think you come out? And I would say, Hey, is this your cell phone? Do you have, an iPhone? One hit, hit FaceTime real quick.

[00:28:31] And if they’re, they weren’t weirded out by that weird, right? No, they hit FaceTime and I’m like, Oh, Hey Bob. Hey, it’s Mike. yeah. Can you just turn your, camera around? You got a tape measure. Oh yeah. I got one on my belt right here. Can you just give me some rough measurements? Yeah. Left to right up and down and yeah.

[00:28:49] And just then just text me a couple of pictures. And then within five minutes, he’s got a quote. In his inbox. Yeah. Instead of scheduling to go on site. The extra step, the buyer’s remorse, the I want to like, just get it done now. and that’s just to get the quote out. So if Bob says, okay, we’re good to go.

[00:29:09] You just make sure in the quote that you got all your bases covered. And then when Bob says, okay, yeah, we’re good. Let’s get that approved. Then you spend the time and energy and resources on going to actually get the exact dimensions and everything to order properly. all these little things that, that’s a huge, that’s a huge thing between commercial and residential.

[00:29:31] You’re usually getting a quote for something you want to do in the future. If you have a commercial lead coming in, Okay. They want it right then. So the reason the speed is so important is that if you’re fitting into whatever fiscal idea they have in their head, it’s in the proving it as fast as we’re sending the quote.

[00:29:46] And that was something that was blowing our mind to is not only was all this stuff coming in so fast, they were approving it. So fast. And then now you can see the monster was starting to grow, it was starting to get crazy. I learned that in my previous industry, there was something called budget dumps when you’re working with universities because they get marketing spend, right?

[00:30:03] So the marketing spend, they have, they don’t spend it. A lot of times it’s through endowment or through government grant or state grant or whatever. And they’re, they allocate it to marketing. So they have to spend it or they lose it. So I, the first time it happened, it was like March 28th. And, All of a sudden our sales just jumped at that day, but like crazy numbers and I’m going around high fiving people and they’re like, not excited.

[00:30:30] And I’m like, why aren’t you excited about it? I didn’t really have to do much for it. I go, what are you talking about? I was like, it was a budget dump. I go, okay, what the hell is a budget dump? This is awesome. So when they explained that I was like, this is beautiful. You just gotta do the two weeks ahead of time to understand where they’re at in their budget.

[00:30:48] And then they’ll know to call you when they’re ready to dump that money. It’s pretty cool. Yeah. It’s mostly end of the year, fourth quarter for us. We love it. What a perfect time for it. Yeah. Break records. You had talked about, you had alluded to pain. I just had a sales expert on, I spent 20 something years in the sales and sales management field.

[00:31:08] We talked a lot about pain. I don’t think you can really. Move somebody to a solution unless they have pain, causes conflict, is the reason why somebody wants to solve something. So you have to identify that you had talked about some kind of surface pain where they are forthright and explaining that.

[00:31:30] Competition. Nobody answered the phone. Couldn’t get a hold of anybody. So that’s the surface pain. What would be some of the pains that your prospective customers would have that maybe are a little bit deeper? like it’s costing them efficiency or time or energy or money. So just to clarify, you’re almost you have to, that’s why it’s so important.

[00:31:49] The words that Mike used find the pain because so many people are just living with it. Not knowing that there’s a better way, which is, that’s what we’re getting at, right? what are some of those things? And by the way, a prospective customer always gives you the surface. And the surface isn’t the driver.

[00:32:06] There’s always, an emotional driver underneath. if I don’t get this done The boss man’s looking at me. I’m going to get fired. That’s real pain. The, Hey, we need a new door is surface pain. Yeah. It’s the consequence of not getting it done properly at the right price in a fast enough time is accountability pain.

[00:32:25] That is emotional to me. So now I got to do this, not just for the brand and the company, but I’m being looked at and accountable to getting this solution, right? Yeah. There’s no, there’s no customer or clients like representative, That’s calling us. That doesn’t have a thousand things on their plate at all times.

[00:32:49] So just for their own sanity and stress and sleeping better at night. If they have someone prices, the last thing in their mind, they thinks it’s the first thing. no, It’s not. it’s the opposite, right? You work with you, you got all these big companies that all they’re doing is cutting budgets and, Laying people off and not hiring any more people, but their responsibilities are still there.

[00:33:21] So say the, warehouse or plant manager or facility manager, whatever you want to call them, has these 10, 000 responsibilities, the peace of mind, knowing that when he calls his person from United, that one time a text message, an email, a phone call, it’s done. It’s so he could just offload that thing off the plate.

[00:33:50] You’re not adding things to the plate. You’re taking plates away. It’s done. He’s not even putting it on his list. It’s just going right to his phone and it’s done. Yeah, it’s I don’t know. you got knee pain, right? Just this lingering knee pain and 10 other things going on. And, somebody comes up to you, you go to 1 doctor, right?

[00:34:15] Doctor says, yeah, let’s let’s try. you can do physical therapy at home. It’s going to take about 3 to 4 weeks for it to start feeling better. But, you’re going to have to work on it every day. And then he goes and gets second opinion. And the second opinion goes, I got it. I got this quarter zone shot right here.

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[00:35:38] Yeah. And that we’re the quarter zone shop. Yeah. So love that. seriously, it’s tough to say that I can take the pain away. I can make it feel all better. Unless you poke the pain a little bit. Yeah. You got to remind, you got to remind folks. I know that’s a crazy analogy, but, segue here.

[00:35:58] there’s obviously a lot of pride of brand. Yeah. There’s a lot of pride of partnership. What do you love about working with each other? I’m going to let Mike go for it. Yeah, just to see how much good stuff he says you can measure. it’s, it’s scary how perfect the, yin and yang is, be between the two of us, I am a, not a very emotional guy.

[00:36:29] I let, I let a lot of stuff just roll off very easily. I’m very like, goal oriented. So someone comes in with, strategy and. And I think it’s, it sounds bad, but I think one of my, best traits is that I’m extremely lazy. So being, so you’re always trying to find a better system.

[00:36:58] I want the, path of least resistance. I want the smarter way, not the harder way. What a cool way to put, to describe a weakness into a strength. Absolutely. Love that. somebody walks in, usually Ben, hair on fire, big issue. I, don’t, there is no reaction from me. It is okay. What, my brain’s just going, what’s the end game?

[00:37:25] What’s the mission, right? To get to that goal. And what’s the easiest and most efficient way we can get there. And that’s just how I’m wired. And, I, I, always bring the temperature of the room down, So does that make Ben the urgency guy? And Ben is the exact opposite. Yeah, it’s funny.

[00:37:49] I’m thinking about a time where at the old building, I don’t know if something was happening or something broke and. And I just came into the office and I was just like covered in whatever black, black oil and I’m like, what is going on? I’m like, Oh, the thing broke. And then I had to get switched over to the other trailer and this and that.

[00:38:10] And, yeah, it truly is crazy because there’s a lot of people right when we went on this venture. there are a lot of people not supporting this whole thing, and thankfully, my dad is completely on the opposite side, but he, as a dad should be, he was very worried about me. He’s dude, you’re making a ton of money.

[00:38:28] He’s like the, you’re having kids, this is, it might not be the best thing to do. Timing. Yeah. I can tell you for a fact, we would not be here today. United would not be here today without my kind of both doing this. There is just no way. meaning if you tried to do it as individuals.

[00:38:46] Yeah, there’s no way. And I don’t, a lot of partnerships don’t work out. I can’t, I would have to sit for a while. We’ve been moving so fast. I can tell you exactly what it is, but it just works there’s never really a time where I’m like even worried about it. Like it’s just like this natural thing. It’s like a second wife to be totally honest.

[00:39:06] I was just literally is my wife and our exact opposites. Like I can talk in front of 500 people, not a beat of sweat. And if somebody comes up and says hi to her, she’s I’m not sure if I like you yet, right? and I’ll be like, Hey, what’s up? and on the other hand, I’m impulsive, see golf club by golf club, not allowed to go buy anything at Dick’s Sporting Goods or PGA store without, I got to call her and be like, she’s do you really need it?

[00:39:35] she’s very scientific, very strategic, very analytical. And so Cool. I think it’s really cool in a partnership that you found the right yin and yang, because it would seem like you hype him up. He cools you on the perspective. And in between that, you’re just like, you’re in the, you’re in the pocket.

[00:39:55] You find the pocket together. That’s cool. remember that big lift I bought the four by four? Yeah. Let’s scissor lift. So we bought this really crazy looking scissor lift that outside drive it around the mud, like four by four, all these options. First gut instinct was like, why did we buy this?

[00:40:16] Mike was very worried why we bought it. And then it goes out on a couple of job sites. And then, by the way, anything a service technician says works really, good. that’s like rare. That’s finding a goal. There’s always a, I don’t have enough equipment. Mike got two or three phone calls where he heard that.

[00:40:30] Oh my gosh, send this out every time. It’s amazing. And so, your, impulsive decision and risk taking played into his lazy strategic. not actually lazy, but let’s put it worked out, right? We do share a lot of the things, though. I would, we’re definitely not exactly the opposite. We share a lot of things.

[00:40:49] but dude, I was, I school was not my thing. Mike went to school to be a veterinarian. Like I was, I pulled off a couple. Community college classes. I was terrible. but but, what I did do is I grew up doing farm work for seven 50 bale and hay, which is one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done and running and doing landscaping for a landscaper in the summer are even today I can look back at and be like, that made me tough.

[00:41:17] Oh yeah. And that’s where I am the way I am today, but that was brutal work, but it’s all part of the ingredients into getting here because Mike, dude, we were, Mike wasn’t always there for all of it, but we would be, yeah, Trailers loading nine o’clock me in the morning. I’m an early riser.

[00:41:32] So I was four 35 o’clock in the morning, like moving trailers, getting things ready. whatever it takes beating all of the things to do whatever it takes. and that’s the thing is you got to get real dirty. Yeah, to do what we did, and even Mike, you never would have thought that we’d be doing some of that stuff.

[00:41:51] we were in the work. we were doing things that no owner you were working in the business, not on it for sure. For sure. In the beginning. and then through some groups and through, probably people like you and a bunch of others, you start to hear all this stuff and you’re like, wow, I got to start working on it, not in it, or I’m just going to have, a decent business X amount of revenue doesn’t really change that much.

[00:42:16] You’re going to be the guy that when people call you’re like, I’ll be there in three weeks or two weeks or I’m too busy. I can’t take on any work right now. And it amazes me that people still. they just do that and they settle, they just nestle in. There’s a new thing is we tell people, We were like, whenever they say, Oh, are you guys busy? We’re like, no. certain people we will, but if a customer calls me, I’m going to be like, no, not busy at all. Ready. We’ll be there. yeah, places literally, I was waiting for you to call. We’ve learned that we actually, I, myself and a couple of the account representatives, we always get into this habit where I had to send a bunch of guys home early because, the customer, once you approve the deal, what’s the net, what, do they say?

[00:42:55] They approve. When can you do it? When can you do it? And dude, it feels so good to be at a company where it can be like, I sent guys home early today. Cool. I wish I could. yeah, exactly. And that’s that we followed through on that. Yeah. So it’s are you busy? No, I’m in control. Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

[00:43:11] I’m in complete control. That’s awesome. I like that. All right. I’m not busy. I’m in control, baby. Let’s go. we could do this or maybe the answer is hell yeah. We’re busy, but we’re completely under control. Like I, I love that. I love that idea of their natural reaction because they’ve probably talked to other people as they’re expecting you to say you’re busy and it’s going to be a month.

[00:43:32] So almost preparing themselves for that answer, disrupt, and then you total disruption. I love it. They’re like, These guys ain’t busy. that’s good stuff. there’s a couple ingredients that I want to shout out to of our partnership, our lives. Let’s go. Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. Very smart.

[00:43:51] Let’s turn it up. So crank that up. Crank that up. This one goes to 11. I shout out to Jen and Stacy, who are, the, support, Like I said, you can’t do it without it. It’s just, how do you do it? Seven babies and the sacrifice because you’re not taking paychecks, no paychecks for two years, no steak dinners every Friday.

[00:44:16] He’s, 16 hour days. they let us work that. when we started this thing, they gave you grace seven days a week, 15 hours, and you’ll hear Gary Vee, all these guys talk about it, pick anything and do it 15 hours a day for a certain amount of time. Like I’m an expert, easier said than done.

[00:44:35] But to truly. Tell our wives that and then give us the space and opportunity to do that. yeah, a lot of people and they believed in us to, so that’s true. That’s a big thing. Yeah. if like you, there’s one thing to support, but to truly believe in someone and something and be on board with it.

[00:44:57] That’s true love right there. It’s price. And by the way, when you’re coming home at nine o’clock, okay. And you’ve dug in the two of you and you put out 90 fires and you’re driving home feeling validated. You two validated. And then you walk into a house that takes away that validation and is upset that you’re home at nine and your dinner’s cold and wants to ask you, when is this going to stop?

[00:45:23] Oh my gosh. that is what a destroyer. The fact that they were like, Pro I, correct me if I’m wrong, but they were like, how was the day? How are things going? more times than not, they tolerated it well, they tolerated, it very well. Maybe the silence is better that they didn’t say anything more recently.

[00:45:44] we probably get asked, why so late now that we’re, coming, cruising along here. but we’re working on that. the kids are getting older. My oldest is five is seven Lucy, and they’re getting into sports activities and it’s so awesome. That’s why I said the thing about the time, right?

[00:46:07] Is yeah, you cross this point where you’re like, okay, now I want to trade money for time. and isn’t that delegation, right? And so as you scale, you’re going to get to a point where you start to build the layers of management where you can start to delegate, but you’ll probably knowing you two for the short period of time, you’ll probably just.

[00:46:23] Try and double the size of the company and do it more. But the whole idea is you’re working this hard so that you don’t have to later. Yeah. Yeah. And how, what is doing that together? Who said, who’s the financial guy, Dave Ramsey, right? Yeah. Dave Ramsey says this thing where he’s live like when no one else now.

[00:46:39] So you can live like no one else later. Oh, and that’s, in the perspective of saving money, but it applies to this too, like live uncomfortable right now so that later. You can be super comfortable. thank you for an amazing sound bite that will be turned into a clip because that was cool. Bad ass right there.

[00:46:55] Your voice sounded cool too. Yeah, very therapeutic, inspirational. So you guys obviously are the partnership here. You’re the foundation, you’re the vision, you’re the mission. The core values are on point. The fact that you can rifle off your core values. I could sit you in a room with 15 other small business owners and they would not know what their core values are.

[00:47:17] They would be hope so’s not actual things that they’re living out on a daily basis. So good job on that for sure. And they’re good ones to fast as fast, faster than fast. Nothing stops the train. They’re good enough that I just remembered it 20 minutes later. So that’s pretty, pretty good. But you didn’t do it by yourself, right?

[00:47:35] Okay. So let’s chime in and have a little gratitude for the staff that you’ve collaborated with. Let’s talk a little bit about the monsters you got working with you. Yeah. You don’t, you don’t go from four employees to 45, 46, I believe. Whoa, wait a minute. In four years, you went from four employees to 40?

[00:47:57] Yeah. Is there hair or do you look like me? Oh, no, I got some, oh, damn it. Gosh, you guys are doing good. And you got hair for now but yeah, it’s, like you said, we call them monsters all the time. So it was funny. You just said that we call them, We actually have a massive mural in our warehouse right above our basketball court.

[00:48:24] that is a huge freight train with a big mean looking pit bull riding it that says home of the big dogs. Is it on here under contact us? Home of the big dogs. Let’s see. If anybody’s watching, I think it’s under contact us.

[00:48:42] We tried to go down. No, we didn’t put it on there. But we’ve got some, internal marketing. Yeah. so the home of the big dogs, maybe about us, I don’t know, the monsters, like you, you don’t grow like this without surrounding yourself with this, with like minded people. it’s not on there.

[00:49:06] Look at these guys. So man, do you have some air? the like minded starts with leading from the front. And very clearly establishing the vision and the culture. The best feeling for you has got to be that they adopted it. Yeah. Yeah. we, they bought into it. How long have we been saying that like one of the greatest things during the times when you know, money’s really tight and all that, it’s man, we support like 44 families.

[00:49:36] How cool is that? You’re talking about 120 something people. Yeah. And. And you know what? We have some bad ass employees when we started this business, Mike and I would use people’s, I don’t probably shouldn’t use them on here, but there are some people, they’ll know who they are. There’s people’s names that we would talk to back and forth in our offices.

[00:49:53] I’m like, can’t wait till we get, can we, till we get so and so here. Can’t wait, like thinking that we would actually hire them. And then we took them that we were using instead of a, job. That’s how the Yankees talk. Is it? Exactly. it’s gotta be. Just think about it. They’re the freaking Yankees.

[00:50:08] So a guy comes up for free agency and he’s on the Nationals. Yeah. They’re like, he’ll be on the team next year because they could do it. That’s exactly what ended up happening and what a concept. These people that we had worked with over the years, they, were awesome there and I think they may have not gotten treated the way they should have.

[00:50:28] Maybe no career path. Yeah. Or just dealing, a lot of it was just, they just, meh, I’m here, I’m dealing with it. And then to plug them into something so awesome, I think that they ended up, I can, we get to see them every day. they love where they work. They don’t even think for a minute of jumping, through, through COVID, all this crazy stuff.

[00:50:49] there’s terms out there about that jumping thing, right? Where they jump for the next dollar. Quiet quitting. They jump for that too. And they jump for the next pay position because there was a time. And I think it’s still going on. You can walk into a lot of places and say, Hey, I do this and this, will you pay me more than where I’m getting out?

[00:51:03] Absolutely. We don’t have the it’s not all about the money. Yeah, it’s the brand experience. It’s the brand experience. it’s the, pizza parties aren’t Fridays on, every other month, right? no, you, it’s a daily occurrence. The accountant probably doesn’t really, they’re not down with the meal and expenses budget of United Doorndock.

[00:51:25] But, we understand that’s a feed a belly, feed a mind. Yeah. things, yeah, it’s, and it’s not having a, culture, our culture is all that matters to us. So we. Also say sold from the field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. Yeah. So like we have built something so special that, mean so much to us and every single bit of it was exactly how we have always dreamed of, being at a place.

[00:52:01] and, The, culture isn’t just it’s not scheduled events, it’s, not, Oh, everybody’s down or we had a bad month. Let’s schedule the piece pizza party. You’re playing the long game. Yeah, no, it’s not even a game. it’s nothing. it’s, like a way of being.

[00:52:25] Yeah. It’s just the way that we exist. Like we, like the, We’re not like their bosses. We are one of, we’re, we work just like they, they do. every employee is just as valuable as we are. And if it’s a lot of little things too, would you like coffee? John. All right. This is a funny story. So we got this bat, this awesome K cup, like the commercial K cup Keurig machine.

[00:52:52] Yeah. We, were getting, the nice stuff, right? Starbucks, the breakfast blend. And, there was one time where, I was like, Oh man, I’m in Costco. I’m like, look at this 78 pack of Kirkland coffee. I’m like, Oh, I got to get this for the office. So I load up the machine. I load up the little dispenser thing.

[00:53:14] And you would have thought that the building was going to burn down the next day. And here’s the cool thing. I’m down with whatever coffee they want. I’ll drink Folgers. Espresso or whatever. Now that might be you, but like I heard, There’s some coffee aficionados. And I heard and I said, oh, get the Kirkland out of here.

[00:53:31] We got the Kirkland out of there. We got the Starbucks in there. Back in there, but what I’m saying is it’s a lot of companies would be like, they look at that kind of stuff and Mike and I are just like, absolutely, we have, so I don’t even know if you know this, but like The G twos, right?

[00:53:45] The pens, we call them the G twos. Oh, there’s no, no other pen that’s coming into our building besides a G two. Got the Kung Fu grip. So it’s like that. And the paper and the copiers. Yeah. Copiers. We have three Red Bull refrigerators on our property. I mean the snacks only. Oh, that’s why faster than fast is working.

[00:54:04] Absolutely. It’s, crazy expensive to an accountant. But, Everybody, loves it. Everyone that comes and visits loves it. And it just, it’s you’ve made the intangibles tangible, right? And that’s, what I think is really cool because, and it’s also not, I was going to say that you guys, appear just in a short period of time.

[00:54:28] Mike is the first time I’ve met you and it’s a pleasure, but I’ve met you three times, I think, but you’re very principled. And I think that yeah. That’s what kind of, what is it? Codifies. Is that what the word would be? A team is when there’s that beacon, that North star, and then you’re living that out on a regular basis.

[00:54:51] It’s easy to want to fight for you. And people are always, I think, looking for that big thing. what’s that big thing I can do? we talked about that one organization, but it was a manufacturer where they took all the salesmen on this Aruba. They took this huge trip. You know what you just did?

[00:55:06] You just set the bar. You just set the bar. So now Aruba once a year is now the minimum, even though that’s a great, amazing thing that a lot of us don’t get to experience. In those guys mind, you just set the bar there. now we, I would love to do that someday for United. It’s not in the cards right now, but again, it’s just all the tiny little things like that coffee.

[00:55:25] the Aruba is the one big thing at the end of the year though. If you can do the little things 24 seven, I don’t even think you need marinating. You don’t need Aruba. I don’t think you need Aruba, paying attention to all the tiny little things when kindness comfort when he was compassion.

[00:55:40] That’s it. Empathy days off are like a, a lot of places will say, oh, unlimited time off. There’s a lot of, fine print when you hear that in a job offer, but there’s also don’t hit your numbers. You’re fired. That’s how they do that. yeah, go on. Sure, go on vacation as much as you want. But, where were you at 10?

[00:56:02] Where were you at 11? Where were, there’s no grace, there’s no freedom. People, human beings want some freedom to be treated like adults. You set the expectation. Here’s where we want you to be. Here’s don’t ever do this. In between, go after and get it. Have fun, right? and that trust gives you not only respect but they trust you back.

[00:56:28] And that causes people I, we talked about the recording yesterday. I asked, can you motivate people? And he goes, absolutely not. And I agree with that. I don’t think you can motivate people. I think that, I think that motivation, if you have to motivate somebody, then that’s a problem. I think discipline and grace are far more important to building a successful business.

[00:56:54] Here’s the objectives in between that we respect you we love you we care for you go get it people respond much better than that give them a runway that’s what Ben has said a bunch of times like a clearer runway for them. and see what they can do. And we’re not there to change diapers or hold hands or anything.

[00:57:14] Like we’re all smart, hardworking adults. And time will tell if you belong here or not. And if you want to be, if you want to be here, you will do whatever it takes to belong here. Yeah. I love that. I think a lot of, founders, CEOs, and leaders think they have to be the quarterback. And I think the way that you just put it is you’re the offensive lineman.

[00:57:36] Yeah. Block and tackle. Yeah. if you can keep your running back and your quarterback upright, things happen really well. They can complete a pass. And we, I can’t tell you that we haven’t, we’ve had very low turnover, but the turnover that we’ve had, we look, Mike and I go through, it’s just seems like it’s weeks right of drama before you make the decision.

[00:57:59] But at that time is getting shorter for us. And we look at each other all the time and we say, protect, you have to protect your employees. We heard that from somebody too, but you have to protect them. And you’ve, you’ve read a million books. That one person is an amazing how it affects everybody else in the office.

[00:58:15] And we’ve seen it a couple of times now. And it’s you try to create all these policies and procedures and all this stuff that. People tell you to do in groups and books and then, wow, you just take that one person out of the equation just between everything just solves itself. It’s like getting rid of the blog.

[00:58:30] It’s like plunging it. a pip, right? It’s an HR term. Yeah, What do you think that person’s effort and attitude is after if you make them sign a document that says work. Yeah. You know what I mean? They hire slow, fire fast, set the expectations. You set the expectations. If you hire slow expectations set, you create a great environment and if they don’t want to be there, sorry.

[00:58:56] Yeah. We’re not, you might be doing them a favor. Yeah. And unfortunately we’re just not an organization that has an elaborate HR setup where like, where we provide like counseling or we provide these paths of improvement. we broadcast everybody’s numbers. Yeah. to the screens around our office for full transparency, things self govern themselves to scoreboards are important.

[00:59:18] Yeah, they really are. It’s yeah. And we, that’s a relatively new thing that we added. And it’s just crazy. It’s like watching a football, not having it was like watching a football game without knowing what the score was. Yeah. As soon as we put those numbers up on the board. Yeah. and I’m talking and it’s everybody.

[00:59:32] It’s not just sales guys. Everybody considers it like with selling stuff. I’m talking like with AR I’m talking with, yeah. everyone’s accountable service. Yeah. But what’s your number? what’s it looking like for you? And they have those screens that they work with every day. And they own that thing.

[00:59:47] Like they’re proud of that thing being zeroed out or they’re proud of that massive number or, they want to be at that number one spot. and there’s metrics too. What’s so cool too, is we’re able to tailor it where maybe you’re a new sales rep. Oh, yeah, you’re not going to be up top over there, but you could be number one for how many quotes did you do?

[01:00:05] How many site visits did you do? So there’s a way for everybody to do that. Oh, yeah, dude. It feels good. It feels good to be up on the screen. 100%. It also feels pretty damn bad to be at the bottom for two weeks and to have the whole company see that. And if you can’t get inspired to change your activity, strategy, get in a little earlier, stay a little late later, make the extra phone call.

[01:00:28] If you can’t see yourself at the bottom of the list two weeks in a row and actually decide to make a change in that, you’re in the wrong spot. Like you need to go do something different. So you actually probably are, it’s important that you give people a shot to be able to be successful, but you also have to be real.

[01:00:44] If somebody is not successful, it’s actually a disservice to the human being. They could be finding another place where they could thrive. And so we love our employees though. to tie that all together, like the supporting of the 44 families is huge. Yeah. it’s at the top. And I never want to forget that because I’ve worked at places where You know, I didn’t feel that kind of way.

[01:01:08] So we really do try to always find ways to appreciate the employees every way. We just had this four year party. when we say we had a party, like we didn’t go to Gibson’s and have a dinner, like there was multiple petting zoos, multiple face painters, a DJ ice cream truck, like. it’s, like a small fest basically.

[01:01:33] and we do that for our customers. We do that for our fam, for the families, for the employees, for the service tech, everybody to be a part of that. and it’s almost better than Christmas. for me, it’s way, up there. I look forward to it and we always try to find a way to make it bigger and badder and cooler.

[01:01:52] but yeah, dude, it’s just, Yeah, I love our employees, man. I really do. I can see it in your eyes. I get super involved. There’s probably things that they would never tell another boss because they just don’t care. they don’t see you as a boss. Yeah. And that’s a fine line too. But that’s why well, look, there has to be, there has to be, a chain of command, sure.

[01:02:15] But it doesn’t mean that it’s not like still human to human. at the end of the day, somebody’s got to make the call. and you’re, you, as you mentioned, you’re all, you all have equal value, you’re all extremely important, but somebody’s got to be the one to make the call. but if you can treat people like they’re equal, and they recognize the chain of command, then you got gold.

[01:02:37] You got some gold going. Well done. I was on a podcast as a guest, which is always fun. and the final question that I was asked, I’m stealing for you guys. Yeah. Cause I thought it was so powerful and I thought it was just a great way to end the experience. I’ll ask both of you as individuals to answer the question.

[01:02:58] And I’ll start with you, Mike, what are you most grateful for? Business life, whatever. What, are you most grateful for?

[01:03:09] Do you have one? Yeah. Oh, okay. All right. So yeah, we’ll come back. I’ll, patch it. I’ll patch it. So yeah. So what do you, I’ll ask you, Ben, what are you most grateful for? Whatever, however I got here, Whether it was the Darwin thing or God. Whatever anybody thinks it is. I, put that aside for a second.

[01:03:31] Just the fact that I have the opportunity, I have the, legs, the hands, the arms, and the ability to wake up every day. yeah, that’s it. Like I can ma, I can make a change, I can have a deeper relationship with people like you, with our manufacturers, with our customers, with our employees, and all the little things.

[01:03:52] that I can do and there’s so many people that are like in a country where that’s not allowed or they’re in a situation where maybe they’ve got like a family member where they have to take care of 24 7 or they’ve got a sick brother or a sick like, for me, like my runway has been very clear for me to make a huge impact.

[01:04:12] And Maybe you wanted a one word answer, but I’m just grateful for the 24 hours I get it. What’s brilliant about that is what you took was something that is so small, but it’s so big that that’s really that’s so it’s grandiose. It’s so big because that’s really what it is. It’s amazing how sometimes the simplest things with the right perspective are just giant.

[01:04:41] So I’d love that answer. How am I supposed to follow that? I felt guilty doing it. look, the reality is that your brand is driven by purpose, but your purpose is some, is your brand is the vehicle. To your greater purpose. So the brand is, so the way that you just eloquently put that is, the, it’s not about the brand.

[01:05:08] The brand is just helping you to live out the bigger purpose. so I w I would ask you the same question, Mike, like how, when you wake up and your feet hit the ground in the morning, where does your brain go? My brain goes to first, my family. Okay. my, my wife and kids, and I want them slash us to have just the best lives humanly possible, and then I want to cheat a little bit and add a extremely close second behind that is what Ben touched on earlier was about the.

[01:05:58] having a place, for these 40 plus employees, to feel safe and want and wake up in the morning and want to go to work. That’s huge. I don’t know how that’s me being grateful. I’m just, I’m just. Really happy that we were able to create a place where I truly believe that, it was always a dream of mine to work at a place where I woke up in the morning and I just, I couldn’t get, I couldn’t wait to get there.

[01:06:34] Yeah, who doesn’t want that? for real, And yeah, it took it to be the architect of that. Yeah, that’s powerful. Yeah. I don’t know if that really answers your question. It damn well answers the question. Just being at a place where people want to be and hopefully will be for the rest of their careers is.

[01:06:56] It’s just so awesome. that’s all right. Got the two of you nailed it. Clearly. obviously I’m very thankful for you to come on. I know you, this is the, by the way, if you don’t know this, is one o’clock on a Wednesday, the, these gentlemen have taken time out of their day to come in here and record this.

[01:07:15] I couldn’t be more thankful by the way. I didn’t know what to expect. I never know what to expect. And I made certain that you didn’t know what to expect either. So this was not curated. This is their true thoughts. They’re true beliefs. you, what is what you get and you just got it. And I want to remind the two of you, you just got shit done.

[01:07:35] Thanks for coming out. Hell yeah. Thanks dude. Cheers.

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