Barn Talk - How To Run A Successful Trades Business w/Mike Miller

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

Welcome to Barn Talk!  We figured a call to the plumber was in order. We had Mike Miller on to talk a lot about the need for people in the trades and how fragile our society really is if we don’t have the folks to keep all this infrastructure running. Barn Talk Merch! 👇🏻 https://www.thislldo.co/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4 ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠ The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens in the barn? Stays in the barn. Until now, we're going to let it all out for you again today. With everything that we've talked about, about our society and about being self-sufficient, we really wanted to showcase the trades in this country and the people that, for lack of a better, for a better term, keeps the wheels of progress moving because all of the people, all the people in the trades, the plumbers, the electricians, the concrete guys,

if it wasn't for them, our society, well, our society would cease to run. So our guest today is a local guy, friend of ours, a plumber, and I think he's about third generation, and just a great guy, and I thought he could give us some insight on what it takes to make it in the trades today, the struggles he faces, and the struggles he faces both in the jobs and labor, but also regulation. I think it'll be an interesting conversation and one that we just really haven't heard anywhere. So we thought we'd do it. Yeah, I'm excited for this one. But before we get into the show, guys, pay the fee.

You know the drill. It's kind of the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. So share it out with your friends, family, coworkers, employees, whoever. The more you guys share the show, the better content we can make, the better guests we can have on, the more we can post. So it just is a win-win for everybody. also leave a review on Spotify or Apple. Also, a new feature that Spotify has just rolled out on podcasts. Every single episode, I'm going to have a question for you guys to answer and kind of

give your feedback on that episode if you're listening on Spotify, which is pretty cool. So if you guys have any thoughts at all you want to let me know on, go to Spotify and you can comment there or you can follow us on YouTube and subscribe and give us your thoughts there too. So without further ado, let's get into this one. Mike Miller, welcome to Barn Talk. It's a pleasure to have you. Thank you.

Yeah, I'm super excited to be here. That's good. Why don't you give us a little history? So you're a plumber in our local area, but there's a lot of history there. So how'd you get started? Maybe I know that there's more than just you involved.

So just give us the 50,000 foot view. So I think in 62, we'll say 62, my grandpa bought a plumbing business in Waylon. and he got off the farm because he had allergies. And so raising livestock, it wasn't in the cards for him. He had allergies and asthma, you know, that sort of deal. And so he went to town and he's told this story a gazillion times, but, you know, he went and talked with a guy last name was Berg,

and Berg says, you know, what do you know? He's like, I don't know nothing. He's like, all right, show up on Monday, you know. and so he showed up and next thing you know he bought the business and you know and then uh my dad and uncle uh got involved and then um yeah and then as as i got older i got a part of it too and and uh so yeah it's been a lot of a lot of plumbing yeah of hvac we did well work down there so a lot of that stuff yeah a lot of unplugging drains a lot of nasty stuff did you know that that's what you always wanted to do or did you think these guys i'm getting

out of here. It seemed normal. Yeah. You know, and I know, you know, your dad's a farmer. You're a farmer. My financial guy, his dad's a financial guy. Yeah. You know, so grow, like, I thought when, when I was my son's age, my son's fourth grade, um, I was going to be a, like my goals were to be a firefighter and a plumber because the fire phone would ring. Everybody knew, don't say hello. And then somebody would always say hello. So then we'd get the memo like, hey, when the, when the fire phone is ringing, just pick up. Don't say hello. And then, you know, six months would go by, hey, don't say hello. And so we were slow learners, but like hanging out at the shop just seemed normal. And then people would show up. They'd talk about their troubles. Dad would go fix the troubles. And then I got to

a point where, uh, I would go on calls. And then some like super nice old lady, cookies and pie and milk. It's like, this is okay. This is barely even, this isn't even work. Yeah, yeah. And then I think dad kept me busy by, I mean, I remember like trudging out in the dark to get a cressorange and I'd bring back a socket.

And then he'd be like, nope. And it was clearly just a way to, you know, keep me occupied so that I wasn't being annoying or whatever. One wasn't underfoot all the time. Yeah, yeah. But it was, nope, that's not. not it. Go try again. I'd go back out in the dark of my little flashlight and, you know. Kept you busy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you don't just do plumbing. You guys do HVAC too and do some other

stuff. Tell them a little bit about all that. I would say, so new construction plumbing, HVAC, so sometimes that gets boilers involved. We do, we do drain work, which is with a power tape, a water jetter. So then sometimes that involves digging. So sometimes we'll go down that rabbit hole. We, you know, HVAC, we, you know, we're just fixing and installing new stuff,

fixing old stuff. Plumbing is basically anything with water, you know. You're kind of, you're kind of one of the few, though, that does digging. Correct. Like so many plumbers now have got, gotten to the point that all they want to do is install. Well, let's face it, you're probably,

I mean, everybody's that way. If you had your choice, if you could just do new construction all a time, who wouldn't want to do that? Yeah. But there is definitely a demand for it. And there's not very many people that will actually come dig up your problem, find your problem, dig up your problem, and replace it and put it back. Yeah. I would say that is because of the, norm from the company that I grew up in. Yeah. You know, it was, it wasn't about, you know, our yearly meetings where like next year we need to hit this quota. It just always seemed like, hey, Tork Whistler called, their drains are plugged, go up, you know, figure it out. And then if you could figure it out, great. But if you could track down the problem and it was outside,

well, now you got to call one call, that da, da, da, you know, line somebody up to pump it out if it's suspectic, you know, locate the problem. And just, I've noticed that too. When I was, when I was by myself, it seemed like, or when I was first getting going on my own, it seemed like having people help me solve problems was an impossible task. Yes. Whereas, you know, hey, do you have a locator? Do you have this? Do you have that? No. Like, we don't do that. Yeah. Huh. Everybody has gotten, specialized in just their niche what they want to do. And there's just not very many people that really do, do it all. Yeah. And I was talking with somebody the other day, like, you know, do you want to be a Swiss Army knife or do you want to be a buck knife or a, you know, a filet knife? You know,

do you want to be a Swiss Army knife where it's like, oh, you know, here's the right little tool for that's that problem, you know, we'll, you know, we'll handle it with this, you know. Whereas, yeah, I'm sure you can make way more money or you can do this and be specialized and but then maybe you're laid off in the winter you know right yeah true maybe it maybe when it rains you go to the bar right well it probably keeps things makes things kind of fun and interesting you get to do a bunch of different stuff and you're kind of serving the local community a little bit you're kind of an all-in-one which is nice and the same people that have a plumbing issue can probably call you for an h-fack issue and be like hey yeah so that happens a lot yeah yeah

The old story is, you know, if you bill somebody for an hour and the job takes a half hour, you know, the old joke was like, well, we're changing light bulbs. You know, what else he got? Yep. And it's amazing, you know, hey, my stove doesn't quite work, right, you know. Or, you know, just when people are just happy to have you there, it happened to me yesterday, a friend of the family, her water heater went out. and she's like, my kitchen sink or my faucet just, it always drips unless I have it to the left, you know, and it takes a Delta cartridge.

So I said, well, it's fine, you know, we'll get, we'll get that. And then my hydrants, what do you think I should do with my hydrant? Should I leave them on? And well, we're already putting a water heater in. We're already soldering something. Like, you want us to put a valve in? Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. Yep.

Like, okay, here we go. Are you just based out of Southeast Iowa or do you kind of do all over Iowa? Well, when I left my old company, I had a non-compete. And so I was in Cedar Rapids probably three days a week. You know, Iowa City, we did one job in Oskaloosa that took, you know, all winter. So the miles that got traveled were just ridiculous. ridiculous. That went away, that, you know, time expired. And now I don't want to leave, I mean, Washington County, Henry County, you know, we get into Jefferson County some, Lawhiza County,

and we'll get up to Iowa City. So Johnson County. But, you know, other than that, it's, you got all you can do anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no, there's no reason to leave, you know. Demands here. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, you can always find something to do. How do you feel like how is your business changed from when you started or is it pretty consistent? I mean, cell phones, you know, so I graduated in 2000. Yeah. So cell phones have probably made the biggest difference. Yep.

And it's, it's a, it's a crutch and it's a, you know, it's a heck of a tool. Yeah. But it's also a crutch. One of our older guys, Mike Conley. Yep. Right? So he'll remember where somebody lives and it's just like, bam. Yep.

862 3rd Street. You know, it's like, okay. no, I believe you. And whereas our younger guys, say we, we do work in Riverside a lot and we do work in this, you know, subdivision a lot. You know, hey, we're going to go to that subdivision. Can you send me the address? Like, yeah, no. You've been there five times. You've, you know, this month. Yeah. So, like, they, they are used to cell phones, you know, whereas I remember driving to Fairfield and the way my dad would go to Fairfield, we'd go through Copac, take a lot of. left, kind of go through Germinville, but it's a lot of left right, left right. And I got sent back

to the shop to get something that, you know, we're closer to Waylon than Fairfield. So it's, you know, head back. And so my solution was we had a bunch of Lennox white screwdrivers in the truck. And so I just leave them at cornerposts when I needed to turn. So I knew the way back, but I, you know, you weren't sure about getting back. Wasn't quite sure. So, yeah. hindsight's, I should have sharpen the pencil and use it for what it was meant for. Right. Right. I used it as, you know. Well, the other thing is, you know, before that, before you had cell phone in your palm of your hand, if you got in a situation like one of your texts, you had to figure it out

because you could just pick up the phone. Yeah, or use a landline. Exactly. You don't wait for him to, you know, you're not texting somebody like, or you, you, you know, YouTube and something or like how do I, you know, where, where's the, where are the wires going off the thermostat? Like, you know, you actually had to figure it out, you know, nut up and call somebody's landline. Yeah. So the first, the first service job I had when I went to work for precision, um, we had truck phones. Oh yeah. But we didn't have cell phones to carry. And the customers only had my pager number. They didn't have, the phone to the truck. And I picked the service truck up on a Friday afternoon, and I got my first

page Saturday morning, and I went to Lost Nation Iowa. And I had no freaking idea where Lost Nation was, no idea. Went to Robin Hewers. And he had a curtain machine. He had a hired hand curtain machine. The block was stripped out of. Never seen one. Everything that I worked for Craig, everything Craig had put in, was chore time or AP, never seen a hired handkerd machine. But this truck that I got, it was loaded with parts. And I didn't have anybody to call because I was the only service guy and the guy that had been the service guy, he left pissed and I had replaced him. So I sure as hell wasn't going to call him and he wouldn't answer it anyway. And I'll never forget that. I, it took me two hours to change the block in this curtain machine. And for reference, by the time I

retired, I could change a block in like 15 minutes because I knew how to do it. I ended up taking the whole top off the curtain machine, vice grip of the cables and basically just practically disassembling it to get to what I needed to when I could have just dropped the bottom. But I couldn't, there wasn't anybody to call. So I had to figure it out. Yeah. And that happened so many times. And, I happened so many times. times when I started the first two years, that's the best thing ever happened to me because I had to it out. And now I got in on the end of that when I had guys working for me and they called me just ruthlessly because it was like, you know, how's this go? Which wire is this? You know, what board do I need? It's like figure it out. You just want to scream at them, you know, figure it out. But you can't do

that because you don't want them to quit on you. You need them show up the next day. I mean, I'm guilty of that. I mean, I feel like I've grown up with technology and it's always, yeah, it's always like YouTube it or Google it or I'll just call somebody because it's just there. And I do, I kind of am envious of that sometimes of, you know, when your back is up against the wall, you're kind of just like, well, I got to figure this out and you figure it out. But now it's just like so easy to just whip your phone out. What's funny about that is, uh, You can't YouTube a problem that you know, that you have to figure out like that. You know, if you're fixing a furnace and you can't YouTube, how do I fix this furnace that's right in front of me?

Yep. What's in front of you? Well, it's this model number. And, you know, maybe if you're lucky, there would be a how to guide or something. But otherwise, it's like, no, no, no. You know, go ahead. You know, you can't YouTube how to, you know, well, like, where's your septic tank? I don't know.

Okay, YouTube it. You know, figure that out. And when you get into the fringe, you can YouTube it, but chances are you're just going to screw it up because what you see on there is probably not close enough to what you're dealing with that it ain't going to help you. It may make it worse. It can, yeah. In fact, I'm sure, and we'll get into this, but I'm sure you've run into people that have many people that have attempted. to fix their own problem, only to make it worse for you to come fix.

We've had those phone calls where, you know, if you're too expensive, we got this. Yeah. It's like, okay. Yeah, you know, and it's always cool. Like, hey, you know, yeah, just let us know if you got problems here or whatever, you know. And then, you know, six o'clock at night,

you know, you're ready to take a shower, seven o'clock at night. Hey, our water's off. We cannot get this to solve. Yeah. Huh. Yep. Well, you know, then that's a decision. I'm very surprised that you're calling me back, but not really.

Yeah. Do you feel like what are some basic, what are some basic things that you think every man or I guess somebody in the household should know when it comes to like HVAC or plumbing? Like, what are the most common things you see that easily could be solved if they just knew a little bit about it? You should know where to shut your water off. it's really that basic like well you can solve a lot of problems if that valve works yeah like hey my toilet runs okay

well you know this is gonna suck go shut your water off yeah whatever it is you mean you can dump a lot of gallons in a minute yeah you know if if if the pipe under your sinks leaking yeah yeah you can shut the water off it's a little problem drywall blow like it's it's ruining the cabinets Yep.

Just go shut the valve. It's okay. Yeah. You know? And if that valve looks sketchy when you move in, replace it. Yep. You know, pay to have that replaced. I mean, that's, that'd be the biggest thing.

Yeah. I mean, if, say your water heater, you have an electric water heater and it, and it pops the breaker. No big deal. But if that thing, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Big deal fast.

Yeah. So I'd say that, you know, that's HVAC. You should, you should know some basic things. You should definitely change your own filter, you know, because a lot of times when somebody calls for a, I'm sure in bigger cities, you know, hey, come check my furnace out. And they look at it and they change the filter.

Yep. And then, you know, I don't know what all happens with other companies, but I'm sure that there's people that, you know, get taken advantage of. Yeah. You know. So that, that ties that plays right into this and we might be jumping ahead a little bit but i was i was on

tic talk the other day and i just i laughed and i thought of you because it was some hvac guy and he'd gotten the call and he was one of these guys that homeowner states i think his whole channel is service calls and he starts them out he says homeowner states that and then fill in the blank and it was homeowner states that furnace runs he can hear furnace running no heat comes out of any of the ducks and he goes down there and he flips the lid and he pulls the furnace filter out brand new furnace filter still got the shrink wrap on it so no obviously no airs moving through there so he pulls the shrink rack off puts it in good to go like the preacher you know like you're healed yeah yeah and i just and that

got me going and I was just thinking so and this is more of a cultural question than just a this is a broad this a broad question but in all of your interactions with people do you feel like do you feel like society is just is just in a gradual state of decay like do you feel like some of the stuff that you run into now is stuff that you're grandpa would have never thought about, like the level of, either the level of neglect or the level of not knowing that you shouldn't do X has gotten worse. It for sure has gotten worse. I mean, people aren't getting smarter. Yeah. And if they're getting smarter, it's from reading books. It's not from practical knowledge of, yeah, how things were. Yeah, they're, you know,

they're not solving problems for themselves. And, One example of that is we had a drain call where I think this is a few years ago. And the woman, I think they just moved in the house, you know, maybe a year, six months or something. And it's one woman and one man and there's a pile of tampons in the drain, right? So we'd pull this tape back and it's just, you know, cluttered. And so, you know, you take them off and do it again, pull more back. and say, hey, you know, so we got the drain open, you know, pros and cons, you know, good news, bad news. Yeah.

Got the drain open. Oh, what was it? Got to be tree ritz, isn't it? I knew it was tree ritz. Like, well, actually, it, you know, you shouldn't flush tampons. You know, I never do. I'm like, okay. Well, somebody did.

Right. Well, I only use the ones that say you can flush them. Oh, yeah. And I said, they don't make those. I know, I know. Don't, don't, you, don't get me wrong. I know, but I only flush the ones that say you can use them. I'm like, they don't.

No. No. The answer is no. Please stop. Like, we can come back. Yep. Or you could just stop doing that. Yeah.

And then finally, of that back and forth of that she deny it, deny it, deny it, probably five times. Yeah. And finally, the light bulb went off like, okay. Oh, I get it. I get it. So, yeah. Other than that, like, we had a, I had a woman once that her drain was backed up too.

And she was convinced that it was going to come out of the laundry. Everything's on one floor. Yep. You know, so if you would fill the room up with water, it would go down the tub first. Yep. Because that's the lowest part. Right. Then the toilet.

Yep. Then the vanity. Then usually the kitchen. Yeah. But she was somehow convinced that that water was going to go. back into the washing machine. Even though there's an air gap. Like, I was, I mean, I, you know,

we basically had to start with the sun is going to come up over there. It's going to end up over there. And in the meantime, the water is not going to come up your washing machine. So, I don't, you know, it's, it's, I wouldn't say, you know, saran wrap or the, the plastic wrap on a filter. I haven't had that lately, but yeah, it might be tomorrow. So biggest, biggest thing not to. to do when it comes to your septic tank is probably wet wipes too.

Yeah, for sure. Wipes are a big one because they have those too that say, oh, you can flush these down the toilet. They're flush but wet wipes. We had a guy spend two days at a guy's house. They have a daycare and little kids. Oh, Lord. It's either, he spent two days there of just trying to get, yeah, pulling them, trying

to get through them. And he'd call me like, what do I do? I'm like, are you still pulling him out? Yeah. Well, keep going. Do it again. Wet wipes, tampons. Condoms.

Condoms, too. Yeah. Seriously. Don't flush those bad boys. Oh, my gosh. Yep. Well, what's meant to go down to toilet, you know? Yeah.

Not those three things. Right. Yeah. And you'd think people would sit there and think. Well, I think it's the guilt, right? Like, God, what am I going to do with this condom? Yep. Gosh.

Got to sneak it out. Got to sneak it out, kid. Yeah. I'm going to flush this thing. I'm going to sneak it out. Your girlfriend's house. You know, if you're man enough to do the deed. Yep.

You know. Own it. Yeah, own it, I guess. Or don't own it and call Mike. Yeah. I don't know. You just, you see, I think you see people that just, you know, how can I make this problem go away, you know? Yeah.

Another misconception, people will call every year in August or July, you know, it heats up in July. and they'll say, my air conditioner's not keeping up. And then you'll go, and it'll be like on a Friday at 4, you know. Air condition is not keeping up. You know, back in June,

it was struggling. You know? So let's like, let's walk through this. So when it was 78 degrees outside, it was having a tough time maintaining 72 in your house. Yeah. It was about 70.

Okay, that was the time to call. Yep. Now that it's 90, you know. Here's a good analogy. So there's a guy in our local community that does a lot of flat roofs. He's, I think he's semi-retired, but he's done just a pile, Jim Taylor, done a pile of flat roofs. And the best, when you guys bought that, bought your first,

commercial building. It had a flat roof on it. And I said, and I knew his son pretty well, used to work for me when I started, did construction. And I said, I'll call Jim and ask him. And Jim's kind of like Mike Conley in the fact that he's been everywhere. He's been on every building in the town of Washington. So he, you know, he already knows. And I call him. I said, Jim, how's it going? We talked to a minute. I said, my boys are buying this building. I said, could you come look at the roof? And he goes, well, he goes, you know, I could come over there and look at it for you but he goes i'll tell you what i was up on horrocks building which is right next to it i was up there about five years ago and i can tell you that it didn't look very good then and i kind of doubt that

it's healed itself and i said fair enough when can you when can you come you know give me an estimate he's like i can get there next week but you know same kind of deal well if it could keep your house cool when it was 78 uh it's not going to keep it any cooler when it's 90 yeah i i don't know how their mind works you know if if if i have a car that i'd yeah i had a 79 cj 7 right yep it's a fun little jeep 35 miles an hour was about the max you'd want to go yep the wheels start wobbling she'd want to dance a little bit i'm not going to take that on the highway going 70 nope that's right you know if i my air conditioner doesn't keep up when it's 75 no chance in common sense yeah it's just not common anymore it seems like is the uncommon yeah yeah that's true like i think about the number of

the number of trades people, just the number of plumbers, you think about the number, the, think of the average age of plumbers, it's a lot like the average age of farmers. Yeah, 60s. Yeah. And we've had the pleasure of buying a lot of old properties in our little town. And what you find is, when you start thinking about the volume of, the volume of, of housing in any given community and what the average age of the plumbing and the septic and everything that's in it that's going to go bad if it hasn't got bad and usually it goes

bad after we buy it it seems like but i think we're no different anybody else and then you think of the plumbing heating cooling business and fewer and fewer and fewer people doing it i feel like we're headed like we're if we're not already there i imagine in some cities we are there that it's like a crisis level of doesn't matter what you're going to charge there's not enough people to do the job yeah i i think we talked about it once where my secretary nancy wanted to advertise you know we should advertise on the radio but i said when i said okay so we're going to spend x amount of dollars and then say we gain 50 customers maybe yeah do we push aside 50 customers for these new customers.

We're tired of the ones we have. Yeah. Like, you know, we're not, we're not dating, you know, like, like, you know, if we like, you know, we like these people, you know, they pay their bill. Let's, let's keep working for these guys. Yeah. So, but we deal with it in Kyoto a lot. You know, I like Kyoto. My niece and nephew went to Kyoto.

I know a lot of people from Kyoto. Kyoto is not Washington. And so if I'm working in Washington, if I'm, if we, we have 12 jobs in Washington and one in Kyoto. It's not that that one's not important. Right. It's just, you can't get there.

You can't get there. And so, you know, but oddly enough, I had a friend of ours, he called and Mike, you know, speaking of Mike Connolly, he was right down the road.

And he texted me at 1047, hey, stopped home, furnace isn't working, called Mike, because I knew from the morning that he was going west. And,

and I said, hey, you know, can you stop here? and he right away I routed off the address. He's, oh, yep, I know right where that is. Like, okay, cool. So within an hour, he had it fixed.

Yep. And then the guy texted me back like, hey, you got me going, awesome thanks, you know. But that that's the service that you can provide if you're close. Yep. But if it's, if everybody is, say, on the east side of town or even Ainsworth or. Yeah. And then it's not going to happen. I mean, it's a job by Talley, like, yeah.

Okay. Yep. We'll get done and get there. So do you want, like, you say like about the advertising, which I totally get, like, you can't, you can't, you literally cannot take 50 more people on. Is there, like, do you have a desire to want to grow the business so you can take those 50 people on or you have that desire, but you literally can't find the people to do it? Like, you couldn't even find the workers to do that right now to even grow.

Like, is that a problem, like scaling? I've been really lucky on people, you know, uh, we definitely had, some bumps in the road to find good people. But now that we found them, we have a mix of young, we have a mix of old, we have, it's just like a good NBA team or, you know, baseball team. We can't all be outfielders, you know, we can't all be catchers. So, you know, and you can't all have rookies, but you can't all be, you know, the, the hundred year guys. So it's a mix. somehow we've dumbed into people that a few years ago, my second year, I think, I mean, I was struggling to find help. One guy was a farmer that the season kind of ran long for him,

and we were just, we could not find anybody. And I walked out of, we were on a bigger job. There's a port-a-party there, and there's a Mexican crew, and I walked, and I knew him pretty well from different jobs. And I walked out. I was like, I said, hey, I was George. I was, George, you know anybody looking for a job? He's like, I know Jose?

Like, in my mind, I was like, if I had a million dollars on the table, I would bet that you knew a Jose. Yeah. And sure enough, I was like, where's Jose live? He's like, Columbus Junction. I was like, if I had a million dollars on the table, I bet there's a Jose that you know in Columbus Junction.

Yep. But here we are. And so I called him, met with him. And he's awesome. I mean, and so, and that's just by asking. Yep. And so instead of putting a one ad out and and going through 12 candidates, if 12 people would apply. Yep. And then you kind of, you know, you do the weird. Get rid at eight because they don't have a valid driver's license. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this guy, you know, spends more time in the bar than out of it. So that doesn't work. And then, but yeah, we just dumbed into Jose and Jose's great. Yeah. You feel like that's kind of like how

trades are. Like, you think most tradesmen, most trades business, when they try to, businesses, when they try to recruit employees, they don't go the traditional route like corporate America goes as far as sit down. We're going to, we're going to get you on Indeed. You're going to come. You're going to get an interview. And we're going to hire you and yada, yada. It's more like, hey, let me ask around. I see if this guy's a good, good guy. another guy that we met through Jose, we were there fixing her furnace and she goes, yeah, my son's going to HVAC school. Cool. Let's talk to your son. And he's super awesome, but we never would have found him through Indeed. And I think that, I think if you go to Indeed, I mean, I've spent plenty of time there myself, you know, when I was looking for this or that. And what are you looking for a lateral move? Are you looking for? most people, I think, are chasing a dream where they, you know, like Elon Musk, you know,

you can pretend to work somewhere else from home. Yeah. That's a good quote. You know, do you want, what kind of job do you want on Indeed? Well, you want to work as little as possible. You paid a whole bunch and not be bothered. Yep. And we're, the trade that we're in, you're going to work a bunch, you know, and you're going to get bothered. You're going to get, You know, there's just going to be, it's a different animal. Right. So I don't think I'd have good luck with it. Yeah.

And I haven't had good luck with it. Do you feel like that's your biggest challenge today as a small business is labor or is there something else that's government regulations? What's the biggest challenge you think right now? Taxes suck. Yeah. Amen. I think we're at the level that we're at.

And I think that we could grow. but in order to grow, something else has to change. You know, if we have more guys that are just turnkey ready, where they can go, there's guys that work with us that, you know, they have their own little, they actually have their own little customers. I haven't even met some of them, you know, and that's fine with me. You know, it's awesome if things don't run through me. every decision gets made by me. But then, you know, there's other ones that do. Yeah. And so if there's

more employees that want to work and are self-sufficient, then yeah. But if you, if you need help with, you know, every decision, like there's only so many decisions that I can make in a day to help you make those decisions. And so right now, we're good. Yeah. But in the future, yeah, I think, you know, I'd love to have more. Yeah, that's the hardest part is if you've got to bring somebody on and you have, if they have to be trained, it just limits to what you can get done because you cannot move as fast when you're dragging somebody along. But you also run the risk when you hire the guy that supposedly knows what he's doing.

that can it's they might not actually know what they're doing and that happens yeah yeah we've between my you know old shop and this one you know you just go through people and yep what do you mean what do you mean that's not the way you do it well that's not the way we do it yeah so yeah it's i i don't know it'd love to have more but um it does take like when you're running when you're running the service crew of PSI, like there's only so many phone calls that you can make and still get something done yourself. Oh, yeah, 100%.

When you're in a trade-based business and you get to a point where you have to have people to help manage that business, it's very difficult for them to understand what it takes to make that work because a good example of that is when I was doing service, and we are really, really busy, well, we just need more people.

Well, when you hire more people, but then all those people are calling one person because they've never seen this problem before, or they've never seen, or they don't know where this is, or they don't know what this part is, your best person, who is the person that everybody wants to ask, their productivity...

Thanks. Yeah, is trashed because they're not... getting anything done other than helping everybody else. Yeah. And then, you know, the people that are outside of that loop look at everything and wonder why we're not getting more done. Why aren't we getting more done? Yeah. Our payroll went up. Yeah. Right. And that it's just, it's, it's, it's tough. It's really tough. I feel like if you can have the buddy system and if once you can, once somebody is self-reliant and, and then then you kind of let them, do a little teaching.

Yep. There's, there's just only so much a guy can get accomplished and, and try to have billable hours. Yeah. We were leaving the shop yesterday, and I talked with the guy about fixing my forklift. When we bought our new building,

it came with an old jalopy, yeah, fork lift. But by God, if that old jalopy forklift does forklift things, yeah, that's the forklift I want. Yeah.

And so the dude showed up, and I didn't see him, but sure enough, so now we had to stop, drive back. talk about forklift things. Yep. You know, and so that's, you know, it's 15 minutes, but that's 15 minutes that,

and I was paying somebody to be there with me, talk about forklift things. Yeah. Speaking of learning shit and, like, guys know what the hell they're doing, what do you think is the best way for young guys or girls, whoever wants to get in the trades, to learn a trade? Do you think it's trade school, or do you think it's come work for a guy, like for you, like come work for a guy that's doing it, and you get paid to learn while kind of, you know, get paid to learn essentially.

If you can find the fit, that's what I suggest. You know, and if you don't, if you're a high school senior, you don't know what you want to do, go be a waiter somewhere. And then, you know, say that's three days a week, go help an electrician for two weeks straight. Go help a plumber. Go help a drywall guy. Go help. You know, you can't just go help an accountant, but, you know,

hopefully you kind of know that you want to be an accountant. But, I mean, just go help somebody. And then if you find something, I think you'll find the fit with people, you know, because you could say, I want to be an electrician. And then the first electrician you work for is just a dick. You're like, I hate being an electrician. Like, you don't hate being an electrician. That guy's just a dick, you know.

And so find a different electrician that's not a dick and move on. But, or maybe you hate it, you know. And so, but there's branches, you know, there's a little spider web that you can go through with just being electrician. Yeah. Or, or with us. Like, if you're a high school senior, we have a really good vibe at our shop. Like, everybody, you know, everybody pretty chill, you know, there's, there's no drama. You know, there's no, everybody just shows up for paycheck, doing their work.

And they do a good job. But it's a good, it's a good situation. I think if a high school senior would come in and, and they're like, I don't know if I want to be a plumber. And then you just roll in and like, these guys are cool. I could do what these guys do.

You know, I think that's how that works. And you're getting paid. It might not be a, you know, a huge salary, but you're not paying to go to school. And while you're there,

you get an OBI because you are partying. Yep. Five days out of the seven, you know, like, that's a great way to tank yourself. Yep. 100%.

You know, Kirkwood's great. great, but if you could go work for somebody, you know. And move up. Yeah, you can move up. Yeah, you can move up. Yeah. Yeah. There's no better incentive to move up than if you're the, if you're the power auger, if you're the power auger kid, it's a good incentive to do something, learn something so that you're not the power auger. Power auger kid. Do you, do you, you, you were talking about like your company's culture a little

little bit right there. Like, is that something that you kind of like try to focus on with like building that kind of vibe. Like are you always talking to guys about that? Or is it just kind of happen? I think it needs to be natural. And, you know, my dad works with me. And so, you know, we get some dad jokes.

You know, we, like I said, we have a good mix of, you know, so my dad's 71. I think Mike's 62 or 64. And then I'm 41, 40, you know, 30. So from there, we just, you know, taper down and down, one of the guys, Ruben, right? So Rubin walks in the door and he gives everybody a fist bump as he walks by. And so everybody is just like, hey, you know, cool. Yep. And it's, that's a no, like, that doesn't, you don't do that for money. You do that because like, hey, you know, like, we're in this. You know, let's go. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I don't know. I, I think part of it, I, I, I want the best for the guy, that work with me. You know, I want you to have a nice truck. I want you to have a nice house. I want you to succeed in your life. And so I think that, I think that shows. I think that rubs off. Yeah. You know, if, if you say family comes first, but then you're like, well, I know your son's

surgery is tomorrow, but really could use you. Yeah. You got to put your money where your mouth is. Right. You know, so if that's the case, you know, not only does your son, you know, if the son's surgery is tomorrow, you know, hey, do you need anything from town, you know, like, yeah, you know, be, if you're a family-owned business, then support each other like a family. Yeah. Right. It's, I would say also just to add to your point, I bet it's encouraging that for them to see

you and your dad out there doing the work too. Yeah, for sure. not like you're just, I think a lot of people have strife with their bosses because they say, oh, do this work and then they take Thursday and Friday off, go fucking golfing. And then they're like, you preach all this shit, but you're not even in the trenches with us half the time. So, Hoffer and I used to call it whitewashing fence. Yes. That sounds like a good Hopper term. You remember the Tom Sawyer, you know, where the kids, why, why, any, you know, he's painting the fence. as a punishment, but he's like, I love this. So I always think of that as, hey man, let's go whitewash this

fence, you know, let's, let's go. And so today, uh, I, I popped in our West shed and, and our two oldest guys. So when we got pipe delivered on Monday, uh, they just, they, you know, threw it on the ground. Well, it's now, we have a big pile of pipe on the ground and the pipe rack is 10 feet away. And my dad and Mike took it upon themselves like, hey, let's get this pipe on the rack. And so like that, that attitude that you're like, hey, let's, this isn't so bad. Like, we're just painting a fence. You know, come on. Come on.

Yep. Let's throw this pipe on this rack. Yep. So I think it's a, it's a contagious, you know, attitude to have. Yeah. So I think that culture is a very hard animal for people to tame. That's whatever that analogy is. I don't know.

but I've worked at, I've worked at companies where, so I worked at a company where the culture among the crew, the people out actually out doing the work was great, but the culture within the company was toxic. Because the management was not good. And then I worked at the, company where the culture was good throughout because everybody had the mentality that it was kind of like us against the world and everybody wanted to be everybody wanted to be the best

and wanted like but then we saw it change like we saw it as it's harder as you grow As you grow, you get more people, but the personality of that business kind of changed and the culture changed and it suffered. And that was really one of the reasons that I left there. I mean, it wasn't the most important reason, but it was definitely headed that direction. And then I've worked for a company where they spent a lot of time talking about culture because they've all been to a seminar where somebody gets up and paces around on stage with a wireless mic and talks about how important it is and how that I. But nobody there has any freaking idea how to make that work.

And the culture's terrible, but they all talk about, you know, it's everything they do. it's like well and then what they pay those speakers to come in to to give this good vibe yeah you know and it really goes down to that though within those companies when that happens when that culture changes part of the reason it changes is because the people at the top lose that site and they aren't going to go whitewash that fence and the there's there gets to be a disconnect between the people that are actually out in the trenches doing it and the people running it. And it's really hard to cross that, shrink that divide. So one of my favorite customers, a lot of times we do is plumbing and HVAC, but we did a really big house that was far enough away that I was like, we'll just do the

plumbing. Like, okay, cool. You know, and it's not a knock on him, it's not a knock on me. It's just what we both felt comfortable with. And he called, he texted me Thursday night and he goes, hey, we have water coming through the kitchen ceiling. And this is a gorgeous house, $2 million house, whatever. So it's a sheetrock ceiling, custom kitchen, all wood plank ceiling. Like, you know, if you can't just replace one board, you know, you're starting at one side and going to the other.

Like, ah, okay. You know, and I texted back like, is water coming through the ceiling or is it just, He's like, no, it's just temporary. Like, okay. So I went up there the next day. There's a tub on top of the, because they said that they gave their son a bath. So that's right where you should start.

And I'm looking, you know, and we ran so much water. So I was confident it wasn't in the drain. And then the guy said, well, the humidifier to the HVAC was off. The valve was off. I noticed it was dry in here. So I turned it on.

But then there was a little drip, so I turned it back off. I said, okay. So then we turned it back. on. I found a little drip. We got it fixed. And then we left it on because it's good. I came all the way back and we started, you know, going back through the about noon. And he calls me. He's like, it's coming through the ceiling even worse now. Like, duh, be right there. So as I'm driving, you know, I had about a 45 minute drive. I said, it's got to be off that humidifier. So it's either leaking down the duct

work somehow that I didn't see. Dada, da, da, da. So, and luckily we had a little access panel in front of the furnace for something else, you know, along the way. But so I popped that up and I noticed that the drain tube for the humidifier, we had, when we, we ran it and we had to go down underneath some duct work. So we attached it to the bottom side of the ceiling truss, you know. And so as they shot the drywall screws up, they caught it.

or the nails for the wood. Either way, it's got a big hole in it now. But as he was coming up, the HVAC got put in by a much bigger company than me. And, you know, as my, as the customer called, you know, he got transferred to this guy. And then that guy goes, it's going to be Monday before we can get out there.

Yeah. And the customer, he goes, it's a Monday? A million dollar house? Like, you can't, you can't find anybody? Like, no, we're doing no heat calls. Huh. Okay.

He's like, so my plumber is going to fix your equipment, which we, you know, it turned out to be my drain line. But yeah. And as, as he was telling me that story, like, if that was me and I had a crew of 50 and we were all busy,

I would leave the office. Well, yeah, I would leave the office and like, yeah, I might not know anything. I'm what I'm looking at. But by God, I'll give it an effort. Yeah.

I was just sitting here thinking, and I think we all can agree, cultures like everything. Like, it's really, really, it's not everything, but it's really freaking important. And I think that it's back to what you said. Like, I think you got to have your mission

and your values of your business and every action you make as a team, as the business, as the boss or whatever, you have to like align it with that mission and core values. And like what you were saying about family, like you run your business like a family business. Like what you guys do and your actions says that.

And your employees see that. When you start, when your core value is one thing and your actions go the other way, that's when employees go. Well, now I don't give a fuck. 100%. Because it's like what you just told me is complete and utter bullshit. And that's not your core value.

and your actions don't back it up. Well, you can put whatever you want on a, on a, right. That's the, on a mission statement. Yeah, mission statement. Yeah. Yeah. Like, we're here for you. Yeah. Hey, by the way, we're going to need you this weekend. Yeah. There you go. If I get behind, I mean, this happened last weekend. I texted a couple guys like that's in their field what they normally do. Like, hey, you know, you want to help me, you know, a couple hours still noon Saturday? One guy's like, yeah, yeah, you know.

And I mean, do you want to make more money? Yep. Yes. If the answer is yes, then, and you're willing to work on Saturday, which. Yeah. That's a great, that's something I wanted to ask you about because do you notice, do you notice today a difference in like how people view, well, how they must be how they view money, but how they view money, but how they view. the balance between want and need because I'll give you it I'll give you an example that really blew me away I needed some work done and I called I called these people that you know do what I needed done

and they said and this was like on Tuesday or Wednesday and it wasn't an emergency but it needed to get done sooner than later. And they said, can't it wait till Monday? And I said, well, I said, if it has to, I said, I don't think it's going to take that long, but I said, you know, if it has to. And they said, well, we're probably not working Friday because everybody's going to have their 40 in. We've been really busy this week. And guys don't like to work overtime. And I thought, and I, I didn't really, like it didn't make sense. And I thought that he was saying that, you know, they were going to have to charge me over time. And I said, I said, well, I think it's like, I think it's going to take them like an hour and a half. So I said, if you need to charge me over time, it's fine. And they're like,

no, no, no, no, nobody wants to work because they're going to be over their 40. And I was just like, what? I said, you're telling me none of them guys want to make like money. I said, did you hire people that are all independently wealthy to do service work for you? Because I'm thinking back when I, like when I started doing service work, the great, it was the greatest thing. I mean, we were broke off our ass. And so it was like a, it was like the greatest thing ever because there was so much work that it really came down to how much do you want to work. Yeah, because I could work Sunday afternoon. I could work Saturday. I could work till 8 o'clock every night if I wanted to. Yeah, 12 hour days,

seven days a week. And if the water heater broke or if this happened or that happened, I knew that I could do it. And, you know, we were just starting out. The kids were little and all that. But I said that to him and he said, yeah, he goes, it's just, he goes, it's just different. He goes, these guys, they just they don't want they don't want to put any more time than what they have to and they just get by and i was like wow but those are the same guys that are spending how much time at the at the porta potty yeah or at the water cooler or you know they just look at their day different yeah like this is eight hours i got to get my my tent my four tens in and man, I'm out of here then. It's like, yeah. Or, you know, when do you, when do you, when do you put your

tools away? When do you, when do you organize your stuff? Yeah. Well, that's on the man's time. Like, okay. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I had a kid that worked for me, uh, this is years ago. And you could just, you could go through his service tickets. And every morning, every morning, every morning, he would literally write out a ticket because every hour that you turned in had to be accounted for and every ticket for every day there would be an hour and it would say office warehouse fuel up truck every day well yeah geez got to get done sometimes i finally i i mean it went on for like two or three weeks and our the bookkeeper is like uh you you you we this i don't care what he built it to but it can't bill it to this and I I was like I'm not paying you to sit in the office and

drink coffee and to go out to your truck and sweep it out you got to get out of here and get to your first job I said you can't you can't build my mom had my mom used to work with you and she it was say that eight o'clock start time right and so now that you Now, does eight o'clock mean that you should be at your desk with your computer on and your coffee in hand? Yeah. Like you're ready to rock? Or does that mean that you're walking in the door and then you're going to take the elevator and then you're going to get your coffee and then you're going to go to the bathroom? On premises.

Yeah. I mean, what does that mean? Which is it? And so, and some people, you, they think that that is such a cardinal sin. Yep. If you would say, well, it actually means that you should be ready to work. Yeah. Well, no.

You know, I mean, that's a fight that you just got to move on with a different employee. Yeah. Because they will never get it. And you can either afford them or you got to move on. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if that's a company culture thing from that, that guy. I don't know if that was like, like, I don't know if it's just the employees he hired or what. That was just, that was interesting because he, I remember.

No, I'm talking about the guy you called with his 40-hour and all his workers don't want to work. Oh, yeah. Past 40 hours. I don't know if that's a company, company problem. Like, he's not instilling the right things or he just hired a shitload of guys that don't have. That's always wild to me, too. If your attitude is, I'm going to skip lunch, I'm going to work through lunch so then I can leave early. Okay.

Well, are you doing service work or are you doing new installs? you know, because that's different. If you're doing new installs, you're done when you're done. Yeah. You know, if you're doing service work and it gets to be that time and, you know, and you could go do this other job for half hour, but you're, eh, ah, it's, my time's done. Yeah. Like, it's all about, I think it is the culture.

I think, you know, if you're so worried about the clock. But, I mean, like I was coming here today, so I knew, you know, where I wanted to be at a certain time. Yeah. But most days it's just like, yeah, we're going, we're going, we're going. But it's dark. Yeah. Let's go home. That's right. I feel like people, I mean, I don't know what the problem. I don't know why that's a problem. I feel like it's probably because people are just so short-term thinking. Like, you, they're not thinking about a promotion. They're not thinking about if I put in more hours and every, especially on that crew, you got every single employee that doesn't want to work 40 hours. If you're the one guy,

oh, I know. They says, I'm going to work overtime for a whole freaking year. Yeah. He does, they're not, none of them are thinking what that's going to look like to the guy that owns the business, what you're going to get out of that. But the one guy that decides that he wants to work more, I mean, just might, I was thinking of it like the being the turkey and the odd turkey or the odd pig in a, yeah, in a hog barn. Like, once you're the odd pig, like they pick and pick and pick and next thing you know you're dead. Yeah. So if you're, you're the one guy that wants to work more and that culture's not there, you're not going to make it. Yeah, it's like, it's like I've told the story about the shop towels at the printing factory.

Have I told that story on here? I don't know, but you sure, you sure came. Okay, so there were, so before I ended up getting into construction, when I got out of hogs and I didn't know what the hell I was going to do, I actually worked for the, I actually worked for the more, I think it's R.L. Donnelly now in Iowa City, the more people. printing factory on the south side of iowa city and i worked there for three months i was the last person that they hired they got a contract for uh some some i don't know they got a big contract so they hired a bunch of extra people because they added some presses i was the last person hired then they lost a contract because they used to print the airline tickets for american airline and

they used to print all of the order forms for the jc penny catalog and then a whole bunch of other stuff but one of these jobs they lost and so then it was all on seniority i was the last one hired and i was the first one fired and that was fine it's the best thing that happened to me because it was i worked third shift and it was it was it was a good paying job but i could never get used to that overtime and it was hard on my marriage and all that but one if if anything if one of these presses broke down at night you couldn't get parts for them and unless it was something easy you want to weren't going to run. So you basically had nothing to do. So if you had nothing to do, you cleaned your press. And then if you cleaned your press, you'd have anything to do,

you'd sweep up. And then when you got beyond that, you didn't do a damn. I mean, really literally, you didn't do a damn thing. And we cleaned everything with, well, basically, like gasoline. It was, you know, whatever. It was this cleaning fluid, but it was all flammable. And tons of shop rags, because you cleaned everything with this. cleaning solution and the barrels would be clear full of these shopwrecks and they'd always be full every night you'd come in and they'd be full and so our press went down and you know we cleaned it did whatever and finally i was like i'd been there about a month month and a half and i was like i'm going to dump this i'm going to dump this barrel and the guy that ran my press you know he'd been there for 20 years

and he goes where are you going to dump it and i said well there's got to be a place where they dump all these rags and he goes oh they do that on first shift it's so and so and i go well it's not is it a secret i said there's got to be somewhere that i can dump this barrel rags so i put it on a forklift and i take off and i'm basically just driving around and i drive past the office and the nice shift manager was ronnie kalupa from riverside and i go past and as i'm coming he looks up and he comes running out of his office and he flags me down and he goes what are you doing and i go i'm going to go dump these rags he goes no you're not i go what he goes if you go dump those fucking rags that son of a bitch on first shift he'll never do his job you take them back and i just stood there and i go i guess that makes sense

so i turned around it took them back and i'm like now that's that's your culture right there because everybody bitched about that guy but they were not going to do his job for him because then he would just he wouldn't do it so how many people walk by something on the trash

that's on the floor by the trash can oh like just you were literally walking that way just it's a it's a second out of your day just and then now we have a clean floor look at that yeah yeah I don't feel like people

take pride in the saying when you do one thing, you do, what is that, you do one thing, right? You do everything the same way. Yeah, I don't know. I've heard that. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Yeah. And that's kind of completely out the window now. This, there's really, well, there's not that attachment. You know, we talked about that. So there was a whole generation of people. So that's one thing where like the trades are different in that. That is a culture where the people that are in that, they might change who they work for, they might go out on their own, but they're in that and they're,

you know, they spend their life doing it. And it hasn't been that long ago that we had a whole everybody, most people only change jobs. If they changed jobs, they only changed it once. They worked for a company their whole life. They were invested in that company and they identified. like, you know, I can remember when I was a kid and we went to church, everybody that went to the church to me is a little kid because I couldn't remember their name. My dad would say, that's so-and-so, he works at Wilson's Concrete. That's so-and-so, he owns the welding shop. That's so-and-so he works at coast-to-coast.

Everybody was equated with he was the guy from here or there or wherever. You don't have that today because, I run into people, I don't go out as much as I used to, but I run into people, you know, it'll be like, hey, how's whatever. They're like, oh, I don't work there anymore. You know, I'm doing this. I'm doing that. And not that that's bad, but I feel like there's a detachment from people are not nearly

as invested in the companies they work for, which that hurts culture. But I also feel like companies do a much poorer job of getting people invested in it. Yeah, I think it goes both ways. So 100%. With the culture and looking at people at church, on the third Sunday of the month, I do the audio controls at church. Yeah.

You know, I thought you were going to say you handled the snakes. Yes. I'd cut the heads off of loud chickens. Yes. Yes. No, so I was, you know, had some employees that, you know, me some grief and I was kind of like I was not focused on the sermon and I I was you know pushing

the little knobs and and then I was looking down and like the light bulb kind of went off for me. You know, I was looking down and just like what you're saying, I looked at that guy. There's Jerry. He used to have a painting shop. He sold it to Neil. He's right there. Neal's wife as a teacher. And I'm like, and I'm just going through the pew and he's like, you know, Neil and Renee, they have an excellent marriage and they've raised these three boys that are all awesome they're all going to be awesome kids and as i'm just going down like she's a teacher she works with the county he's a farmer he's a farmer you know that and i'm like and i was just putting labels on all these people you know i don't even know why like that's just where my mind went and then i went to some of the employees that

that that of the other culture that we've had you know where you struggle and where you where you're and it's like And I think of them at the bar. And then I thought of the bar culture. And when, you know, before the old marriage days where he'd spend more time with the old tavern. Yep. You know, it's like, okay, that guy works for this other guy and he thinks he's an asshole. Yeah. That guy just got an OBI because, you know, he blamed it on his wife.

She's probably not going to go home with her husband tonight. You know, and as you go down, it's like OWI hates his job, hates his job. Hase his job. Hase his job. Boss is a dick. Boss is a dick. Boss is a dick. Hase his job. H. W. W.I. It's like, and if that's the culture that you're in, yep, then you bring that to your job. You go. And next thing you know, if I go to say something like, hey, let's all have a good day. You know what? You want you go. You know, and that's what that's the response you get. Yeah. Whereas if it's, you know, the dude on Sunday, like, hey, have a good day. Hey, you too. Yep. It's just, it's wildly different. You wouldn't think, a bar at Saturday night versus, you know, seven o'clock on, or eight o'clock on Saturday night versus

eight o'clock in the morning on Sunday, it would make that much of a difference. But it, you're a hundred percent right though. That's, that's kind of a really good analogy because what is it? The five people you spend the most time with, you're the average of the five you're the average. You're the average. You're the average. You're the average. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a hell of a lot of people that the five people they hang out with are I think I think companies sometimes like all they focus on with their employees is work yeah but it's more than that and you're that's a perfect example you just talked about it's like yeah you want to instill not just great qualities for them to have it work but like great qualities in general because they're going to be showing up day in day out

what they do at home is going to affect what happens here at work Yeah. And they totally just dismiss that side of it. They're just like, you're here, you're under, I'm your boss. This is what we're going to do. And I, you know, and then they just dismiss everything else. And then they wonder why that guy tells them to fuck off Monday morning. And they're like, well, why they're doing cocaine in the truck? It's like, oh, I didn't realize you had a Coke problem. Yeah. Whereas if you talk with them for a minute, why are your eyes, you know, why are you so excited to be here? hey let's go let's go yeah um i we kind of what we're kind of on business right now so i figure this is a good question but it's kind of a broad one so do your best to answer it but best business slash life advice you've ever received you kind of dropped a good one on your previous i've ever received or ever heard something that stuck with something that just really stuck with you it's good enough it's stuck flow uh uh

just keep cash coming, you know, and business-wise, that's probably the big one, you know, like your creditors are going to need money every 10th of the month to hit, you know, to hit your deduction or your bonus deal. So I'd say that's a big one. Know where you're spending your money. I mean, that got tossed out a couple times, like, you know, keep control of your checkbook. You know, don't be letting, you know, we don't need everything new. Right now.

Yeah, right now, yeah. I got a lot of terrible advice, you know. Once I went on my own, it's amazing how many people just were just dumping advice at me. And it's like, you suck at life. Yeah. I do not want to listen to you. whatever you're saying like how do you and how do you do that politely but i i i you know tried my best but i would say cash flow you know in my business it's you know it's an hour at a time you know

so bill out your hours yeah and you know if you can't bill it don't do it yeah yeah or do it and move on. Yeah. I mean, not every day is going to be a money-making day, you know? Yep. Some days, some days the old wheels fall off and, you know,

take the lows with the highs, but, yeah. I don't know. Just, so, I don't know if this was a Hoffert deal or not, but we would always say,

like, I'm just chopping a tree, right? So every day, you're just chopping a tree. Yeah. And if you only get one whack out of the day, some days,

sparks fly or you know like some days the the wood chops just comes out but other days you know you got a pretty dull axe you know and so but every day you just just chop the tree you know and i think i i i go back to that a lot in life like you know what are we going to do today well we're going to go down chop that damn tree yeah so i i don't know i'd say that's about it is i'm gonna i'm not it's not ready yet i'm going to give it another five to 10 years, but I'm going to write, I'm going to write Aaron Hoffert's autobiography, and it's just a wisdom. It's going to be just, I'm going to try to sit him down and get every one of his phrases

because there was no. We got to get him on the podcast. He's legendary. I always hear these freaking stories, and I was like, God, I wish I was older because I was a kid all these times. The only time I saw him sleeping. you'll like, I mean, we were running bank lines and there's three of us and, uh, like, they called him skip, right? I mean, he was just, he was just on all the time. He had six percent body fat, ate like a garbage truck. Yep. But like, I mean,

bouncing off the walls. He's just, he was a go getter and still is. Still is. It's just go. It's just go. But he drank enough one night that I walked in on the floor. He was just passed out on the floor and I'm like, hey man, you're going to make it? And that was the only time that I was ready before he was. Yep. And, I mean, I tied one on the night before too, but we got down to the boat. He's like, bottoms up, boys. Yep.

I mean, I had to choke down a beer. And he's just like, we're doing this. When I worked with him doing construction, I'll tell you what, that kid, I mean, I was old. I was old compared to everybody else on that crew. I mean, I was 10 years older than everybody else there. And I tell people that doing construction was the hardest but yet most carefree job I ever had because you didn't have to think about anything. You just showed up, pounded nails, and you could drink as much as you wanted to.

you could eat as much as you wanted to and you never gained a pound because you sweat it all off or you froze it out or whatever. And I mean, and I would have worked there for free knowing today. If I knew Aaron Hoffert was going to start working there, I would have said, if I could have afforded, I said, no, you don't need to pay me. Because it was just, it was like getting paid to go. It was like adult story hour. Every day was adult story hour. and he would get going about something and you were just whatonga wotonga oklahoma yeah but to your point you know about he would have a rough he would have a rough one and you'd show up at 730 and he would be like oh boy boys i tell you what today when we're done i'm going home i'm going home and i'm going i'm just i'm

going straight to bed. And 9 a.m., he would be behind the tool trailer, probably puking. And then he'd be like, oh, man, all right, we're ready to go now. And by noon, he would be like, you know what, boys, one beer would taste pretty good about right now. And then by three o'clock break, he'd be like, what are you all doing? What are you doing after work? You want to stop at hoodwinks and let's play one game of pool. Go, we'll stop, have one beer. play a game pool and then by the time you were on your way home from wherever he'd be like hot damn boys where are we going what are we doing tonight they'd be like i'm going home oh the hell you are we're going here we're going there i mean every day i just am like damn was that the

when he's staying at the blue moon out there yeah yeah yep the old blue note i that was before my i dumbed into him when i was still i think i was at kirkwood and i came back for the summer and I worked out at the Washington feeder pig. Oh, sure. He was staying out there. Yeah. And so that's how we met. And then we saw each other at the county,

or at a party by Columbus Junction. And, you know, just best friends for a long time. Oh, man. And he is. And the thing about him is, you know, if you had, it didn't matter what he did. It was 100%. I mean, it was the best employee. I mean, there isn't anybody I'd rather work with in him.

Because when it came time to work, there's nothing but. work. But when it came time to play, you wanted him to drop you off because you didn't want to take you with you. He couldn't keep up. We need to just send him this whole clip right here and tell him. He needs to get his ass. Get his ass on this podcast. We can talk about all the legendary stories. He'd show up and just be gravel flying the whole way. Just fish tailing. Yep. It's got to be a black he showed up one time with, I loved busting his balls. But he showed up with a black F-450 welding rig. everything was just perfect on it. And I was like,

God damn, that's got everything but a GMC sticker on it. Yep, 100%. 100%. We got a few more here. And we're kind of on a high right now. So let's keep it going.

What is your most memorable job you ever done? It could be the smelliest job. It could be the shittiest job. It could be whatever comes to your mind, they're like, holy shit, that was something. Never going to see that again. Well, there's several. One of my favorite memories of, like, hanging out with my dad, I don't know, maybe I was,

maybe junior high-ish somewhere, maybe high school, I don't know. And we were putting an air conditioner in, I think, or fixing an air conditioner. And he didn't need my help, but I think it's, you know, hey, ding-dong, you know, come with me. And we were walking through this basement. And so it's like a ranch-style house. You go down through the walkout. and every copy of National Geographic that you could that they ever produced is right here. And it's just on this little bookshelf.

But then you're walking on a path like this. And because everything else that they've ever owned in their life is in the basement. And it's just this cascading down to a path. And, you know, I'm looking around like, this place is kind of a dump, you know, but I was, you know, it's still. green enough to not be disrespectful or, you know, like, I didn't say it out loud. And I don't think I said anything about it, but it's just like, hey, what else do you need? And for some reason, dad was stripping. So maybe we put a new one in and he was, we ran a new wire, the 182 wire, the communication wire.

Yep. And he was stripping it. And he just cut off like a, you know, six inch long piece because it was just too long. And he just threw it over. his shoulder without looking. And he goes, they'll never find it. Yep. So, uh, that just stuck with you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, because I mean, dad was a man, a few words for a long time. Yeah. And so for him to actually, you know, to have an opinion. Yeah, yeah.

That was, that was, that was fun. Uh, I don't know. I mean, I remember we were putting a, um, Tom Evans is, uh, rental house out there where, where, where they used to live. Yeah. We put, I think, a furnace in. And I think we had to cut a hole. I was up above. And so I cut this hole and it kind of went down to the, like an old staircase maybe. And there was a guy there that was helping us in the wintertime. And a bat just went right on his shoulder and just. Just there. Just there it is. You know? So that was like a, that was just a split second. But it's like, oh, oh, oh, we're live now. We're live. I don't, you know, it's, every day is different. Every day. Every day you could, you could go home and, like,

that's one of the big things that when I was working in the office, uh, in between plumbing, I spent a year and a half doing a project management job. And I remember I'd go home and I'd have just, have nothing in my pockets, you know? Whereas now, um, like I'll go home and I'll have my, I usually have Apple iPod or AirPods in my left hand pocket to keep them a little cleaner.

And I have a knife and a small screwdriver, a Sharpie, usually some bits. And then like a six and one screwdriver and a straight screwdriver in this pocket. And like you just kind of unpack your day and you're kind of untalking and you're, you know, I'm talking to my wife. And then, but when I worked at that job, it was just, I'm home. Yep. And then, you know, I remember my dad asking me one time, like, what do you do they? I'm like, nothing. I wrote emails. Yep. They were really important, but wrote emails about some gutters.

And then about some porta-potties and insulation. It was just a different world and I just didn't like it. There's nothing to really show. Like there is, but it's like you don't come home and have any stories. Emails. one thing that I wanted to talk about a little bit, and this is something that you told dad that dad told me, but it was like you said to dad, I feel like podcasts are where like the real Americans are. Like the conversations hashing real shit out is happening on podcasts. It's like the coffee shop of the 21st century. And that, you know, I really didn't think about that until you told me that, that you said that. And I was like,

you know, he's right there. And like, I just feel like it's really important to have on guys like you that are real Americans doing real shit that like doesn't really get highlighted and it's kind overlooked. You know what I mean? And like what do you, you let's do a lot of podcasts. What do you feel like is the biggest problem that us as Americans are facing right now? Like some of the biggest shit that, biggest problems that you see in your day to day, what you do? And like, what, what, what are the problems on it? Like, how can we fix them? Or what you think? Well, I think locally fuel, you know, gas prices are, you know, are you buying, you know, the flag behind it? Like, are we, are we spending more because it's American made? Or are we just spending

more? So, like, you know, that's a problem. Um, I do think that the conversations, the long, the long, you know, hour long, two hour long conversations is where you figure stuff out. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. The sound bites not. No, no. I mean, nothing gets figured out there.

A 30 second, or, you know, if you watch a roundtable discussion on, you know, like the Sunday morning political shows, that is just chaos. That is dogs chasing cats. Yep. And whereas if you would listen to those people on their podcast with maybe like with one or two other people, you can't have five. But if it was one or two people, you know, he'd be like, oh, okay. I get it. Joe Rogan had the guy on that owns Rolling Stone magazine.

Right. And until I heard him say some of these words, I didn't think that people thought like this. You know, and then just some of the stuff that was coming out of his mouth, I'm like, oh. like you you really think that yeah and and as a rarely do I think man you are wrong you know like but as he was talking more than once I was like who I don't know what this guy like what world this guy lives in put it on and you know keep going but I remember he he was saying about taxes and he's like we don't pay enough taxes and And Joe's like, well, what do you think, what do you think we should pay?

He's like, I think 50%. I'm like, whoa, buddy. Like, and you make a lot more money than I do. Yeah. So I just, but until, until you hear somebody's words like that, you think, well, nobody, who would think something so, so silly? I think that's, I think that's the reason. that you've seen the viewership and the listening of mainstream media is, I mean, basically,

it's in collapse. And the reason is because people are tired, people are tired of those sound bites. But the other reason is because exactly what you said, you can't, you don't know, you don't know anything, you don't learn anything about the people that are making these decisions. And what I think is really interesting is the people that won't go on a podcast. Oh, for sure. Because the reason they won't is because they don't want anybody to, they don't want people to hear the long form of what they really do think. Because they know that the majority of people will go, wait, what, what they say? Is that right? Is that what you really

think? Because that's, that's wrong. Yeah. When they caught Chris Cuomo, you know, outside his house. And he's just nasty to those people. Yeah. And then they, somebody called him, uh, Guido. Yeah, yeah. Guido. Yeah. I couldn't remember what it was. Yeah. And they, I mean, he just lost it. It's like, but he's still on TV and he's in his suit and they, and they're, everything's cool, but you see him on, you know, on an iPhone video and it's like, hey man, that's a, that guy's a dick. Totally different. Totally different.

But could you imagine, what conversation would he have with Rogan? Yeah. I'm sure they. He never would have a conversation. No. He couldn't. And that's, that's what I think is nice about podcasts. And I don't think they, I think most podcasts are real because you can't, you can't go that long

without being your true self. Yeah, you're, the truth, the real you is going to come out. There's not like, it is. And not many podcasts are bought. Like, yeah, they have sponsors, but they're not like bought like the mainstream media is. It's like real conversations happening. I just thought that was an interesting thing you said because I was like, he's right about that. I think that's the tipping point right there.

I told him that. And he goes, we got to get him. That's a deep level shit. Good shit right there. Legendary comments. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But I don't know. That's all I know. I think it is. I mean, it used to be, you know, a coffee shop, a tavern. Yeah. The corner cafe in a small town, you know, you know, whalenstahs is a roundtable in their restaurant, the frontier. Yep. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, uh, deals that get made at that small table and a lot of, a lot of, you know, township decisions. Get sorted out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if, if, if. If, if. If, if.. If, if.. If, if. You know, if. Well, it. You know, we're all looking at your phone. Well, I think that's the difference is.

I think today there's so few places that people ever congregate. Yeah, they don't have the connection where they have a longer conversation than a text. And the other thing about, the other thing that I think is excellent about podcasts in general, but a podcast like Rogan is there are people that will. listen to that, that absolutely don't agree with the person he has on, but Joe is the, Joe is the steady hand in the fact that I don't, we were talking about this, I don't think there's anybody that gets asked to go, invited to go on there, that feels defensive going on there because Joe has created, he's just not, you know, you could say that you want to burn the

town down and Joe would be like, really? Like, why do you think that? He's not going to say you're completely off your rocker and, you know, get the hell out of here. He might be thinking it, but he's so, he's so conscious about not judging that that's how he gets the people with the different views he has. And so as a result, you get people that there's people on there all the time that I'm, that I absolutely don't agree with. But I'll listen to him. them on there where I wouldn't listen to him anywhere else because when they're I like that Joe does a

nice job of if you're Bernie Sanders right yeah you know he kind of comes out from a conservative aspect yeah he wouldn't have Trump on but you know Ben Shapiro right so he had Ben Shapiro on those a couple times and it was and it's more more liberal questions like like why do you think this you know and and that's just how but if you if you would have Bernie with another like AOC yeah their conversation would just be like yep we agree on everything 100% problem solved yeah and then like Ben Shapiro with Matt Walsh yeah conversation like they'd be a dead conversation you know they they would just agree too much absolutely you know so I like it I think I mean I drive so much that podcasts are just...

Yeah, I think that as a country, we, I think we're at a point where we need more... We need those conversations to happen, and they aren't going to happen at the coffee shop because everybody's got their AirPods in and are reading, you know, tweets and Instagram and all that. We did work at a coffee shop in Iowa City, and we'd go back and do this or that,

and you think it's a fun atmosphere, right? Like, I think occasionally they have bands and stuff, but you go in on like a Tuesday, and everybody has their iMac, their MacBook up, and they're just like just plugging away. It's like, why are you here? Yeah. Just for the coffee?

Because, I mean, you can do this at your house, you know? But it just seemed like such a dead space. Well, I think that's the problem. So many people. day though, whether they're at their office, at a coffee shop, or at home, their lives are exactly the same 24-7. For sure. They just go from sending email for business to read in social media for personal and transition back and forth with coffee shop. Well, they live on a screen. They literally, their life is on a screen. And their world is this freaking big. I mean, it is. That's scary.

after you guys invited me, I was thinking about, you know, what would I talk about? What the hell am I going to say? Yeah. And one of the things I came up with is that about my job is that it's hard, right? And so, you know, I have a story to tell my wife. But also if, let's say we're shoveling something, right? You know, we're doing ground stuff. The job is done when the pipe is exposed. Yep. The job, like if you, if you don't have it, it fixed, you don't move on to step two. Whereas if it's, if it's a different world, we're like, well, you know, we're just, I'm done for today. Yeah, I'm done for the day. It's like, or, you know, we're outside and storm clouds are coming like, hey boys. Yep. You know, we got to figure this out. We're either going to get wet, yeah, or work a little faster, you know. So it's just a different, I think, you know, kind of going back to like working in the office, whereas sending the emails and doing those things.

When we're done, we're done and we have something to show. Like we did this and it works. You know, let's test it with water. Let's test it like turn it on. It works. It doesn't work. Okay, we're not done. You know, it's just it's a different.

Yeah, that's very satisfying. Yeah. I mean, that's a satisfying deal. And some people, some people are wired that way that they need that. and some people aren't. You know, I think I'm wired that I need variety, and that's what I love, which you're the same way in that it's variety every day.

You don't know what's going to happen, but that's what I love about farming so much is, you know, there's stuff I have to do every day, but then there's stuff that I can, I can go off and work on this or go work on that, and Sawyer goes, what are you doing that for? Well, because I wanted to, you know, whatever. And that's the, that's part of the luxury of being self-employed is, you know, you got,

you got to pay the bills, but then you can also, you can also bend the rules a little bit and do what you want to do too, which is good. Another podcaster I like to listen to was a soldier, and he's described war as playing chess, playing 3D chess in a dryer when it's running. And I think that's what life is, even not war. Not war. Like, if, in my case, if my phone is ringing and this guy's sick, okay, so now we're going to, you know, catch the rook, put it down here and, you know, that the-

Ride it up to side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, oh, okay, while we're in this, while we're in Wayland, we need to stop by check this out. Okay, well, all right. and then so it's it or it's raining today we're not going to do that yeah we're not digging today yeah yeah we're not going to put that air conditioner in today you know like all these and the variables are whereas if you're i mean i've been in offices where their biggest bitch is that it's it's 72 instead of 73 yep you know and okay but you that's that's the difference between

people because you take somebody like that, people that thrive on that structure don't do well when you put them in the dryer. And you and I wouldn't do very well when you put us in that office. So, yeah, I always tell, like, I always tell people that, so I had a, I had a, I had an office. Yeah, I remember. Yeah, I know. And I was never there more than, the, The longest I was ever there was like if we had two meetings in a row and say I had to get like all the overstocks paid that day. And I was there for like, if I was there from 7.30 in the morning till after lunch, holy cow, by the time I got home, I had it, like, I was ready to take a nap. That was like so exhausting. But other than that, it was like, I would just,

be like all the sudden like, all right, yeah, I got to get the hell out of here. Well, your clock starts going. Yeah. Like, you're like, I got to go do something. Where's my next move, you know? Yep, that's right. So. Yeah, to each their own.

Yeah. And that's what makes the world go around and that's, that's great. But we're, we're thankful that I said that in the beginning. And I don't think people, I don't think people realize how fragile. our society is when it comes to you can have all this fancy stuff and we can all work in offices and we can all send email but if the water doesn't come out of the tap

and the toilet doesn't flush or the lights don't work shit goes south pretty fast and our whole society is dependent upon people like you to keep it running and I don't think people, I don't think people give you enough credit for it. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Because at its basics, all that stuff has to work before any of the rest of it can thrive. Yeah. You know? Because you're not going to get anybody to show up at the widget factory. If there's no power, there's no water, and the shitters don't work.

Yeah. I mean, it's just not going to happen. So I agree. I think that's good. Look at that. So you know. So are you going to, a plum till you're 90 or what's kind of your what do you got in the store for the future if you even know

no i don't know i mean just rock when i went on my own i knew i needed to work like 31 hours a week to pay the bills and so i would pack as much stuff into monday as i could i would try to work all 31 hours in in a 24 hour monday you know and then because i was just so nervous of not not having yeah not staying afloat. Yeah, yeah. So that was my goal. And then really now it's like the five year plan is to pay things off, get better, get guys better, not new, not new guys, but like continue to learn, continue to grow. Yep. Um, you know, just see what happens. But I don't, you know, it's not a, I don't want to work till I'm 90. Um, um, um, I think, like my dad's 70, and he just doesn't do some things, you know, but I don't, I think

if we, if I would still have a shop to go to, it would be cool to go and, you know, maybe take a long weekend, but catch up with the guys and, and just be useful. Stack that pipe. Yeah. Yeah. Damn young kids, they're not stacking this pipe. I better do it. Yep.

So I don't know. I mean, planning on being independently wealthy here, you know, the next year or two. So hopefully I don't have to do manual labor. And no, I don't know. I don't, it's just my wife's a teacher. I'm a plumber. It's just who we are. You know, when the lottery got to like a gazillion dollars.

Yeah. I talked with Nancy. And I was like, Nancy, we should buy a lottery ticket together. She's like, what would we do with it? I probably have some new shit. And she's like, well, you'd quit. I said, I don't think I would. I mean, kind of like what you said, like,

I think that I think I'm important to society. You know, even if I'm not doing as much plumbing, I think I'd still be here to be, you know, somebody to rely on. Yeah. So you have purpose. You love what you do. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, who doesn't want to not be needed, but, you know, be. be a part of a cog in the wheel, you know? Yeah, that's right. You know, could you imagine just, you know. Having no purpose. Yeah.

I mean, I have this gazillion dollar house and all these Ferraris and why leave? Like, why go anything? Like, well, you know, I'm sure it's a great life. Death by a thousand bowls of Cheetos. Yeah. I don't know. It's just. Sounds like life's good and you're just like going to keep chugging along.

It could be worse, you know? Our kids are cool. I would say that's one thing I didn't say is if you, you know, like the best advice, pick a good partner. Yes. You know, and nobody ever told me that. But I've seen people with with wives that don't quite agree with even with whatever they're doing. And boy, they got a rough life. Yep. And so my wife is super cool. If it, if it is a Friday night and, and it is, is a work later than expected it's okay i think there is a i think that there's a there's a quote by somebody that's it goes something like life is hard enough without coming home to an angry woman i i think that's how it goes something like that and i think you can flip that the other way

too i think that goes both ways oh for sure i who you well i think jordan peterson the three keys to life, right? Like, get a high school degree or get a high school diploma. Don't have kids so you're married. And I don't remember the third one, but yeah, those, well, I got two out of the three. I'm sure the third one's important too. Yeah. But it's, there's a lot to be said with just though that little bit and picking the right person. Oh, 100%. That, I mean, it's, it is so true because, uh, And you know, being in the employees that you have, but the employees you've had, but people you've worked with, I mean, I have seen so many, so many people's lives that they literally can't, they can't focus on anything to do with their professional life because their personal life is just an endless, I mean, it's just one disaster after another because of the choices they made. partner-wise.

For sure. I mean, before you even get to the marriage part, I mean, I had a guy help me. He, about two weeks, and I think out of the two weeks, he worked about three days. You know, it was kind of a part-time. I wasn't sure how much I need him,

but, you know, it was kind of, I learned quickly that it was, how many excuses we can come up with to not work. Yeah. But when he would show up, his phone would just be like, ting, ting, ting, and as I said, does your wife work? No, no, she stays home with the kids. Like,

oh, I thought they were all in school. Yeah, they are. Okay. But she was just a bored housewife. Yep. That ting. I'm like, I don't know how you're, what are we doing? Like you, yep. Red flag. Yeah. It's like, man. It just petered out because his life was chaos. And, but how can it be? There's a lot of people like that. And it goes back to that, it goes back to that, those five people and that crew that if you're sitting in the bar or you're sitting in church on Sunday morning,

there's people that run in a group that that's all they know. They're all running on chaos. So when everybody's run on chaos and that's all you know, then that's the norm. And you don't know there's anything better because that's all you've, that's all you're ever around. that's what you've immersed yourself with. And that is a scary damn place to be.

And I don't know what the answer for that is, but... Pick the right partner. Well, exactly, pick the right partner. And roll with the right people. Yeah, right. Oh, Aaron Hoffert, Kings run with Kings. I've heard that so many times. Whist, I tell you what, Kings run with Kings.

I told him the same thing to write a book once. Yeah. I was like, you have to have an autobiography. Yeah, one time we were. in Watanga, Oklahoma, and chasing bull snakes and that, that, that, that, that. Yep.

Yep. Well, I think we're going to wrap it up. We appreciate it, Mike. We appreciate what you do, number one, but we appreciate you coming on the podcast, talk about things. I think it was a really good one.

I think people will get a lot of value from it. So that being said, you guys know the drill, pay the fee. We'll see you guys back next week for another episode.