Shaun Newman Podcast - #285 - Robert Oswell

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

From living in his garage to being the CEO of Roswell Global; Robert pioneered new tech into the water sport world. He helped create the first universal tower, first weightless cam latch tower & the first telescopic tower for boats. We dig into the trials he's been through and how he went from small town Sask kid to living in Florida with a world wide business.  Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Support here:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast⁠

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Here we go. This is Robert Oswell. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Robert Oswald. So, sir, thank you for, I mean, this has been a little while in the making, but thanks for making it here and getting in the studio. This is going to be cool. I'm really excited. excited to be here. It came a long way. You have come a long way. Florida all the way to little old Lloyd Minster. Yeah, thousands of miles cranked it out, flew in, you know, battled everything. COVID, prairie winds, everything to get here. Wildfires in the west. Just excited to be here. Well, you know, this is a throwback, a little bit of a throwback because when I made my original list for the podcast,

This is going back to late 2018 while I was building the first studio. I put a list out of all the community people, athletes, business owners. It was just kind of like this running list of like, well, that'd be a cool story, right? I've never heard that story before and I've never heard that one and this one. Anyways, your name was on there because of Roswell and everything you've done there. And I'd always heard this story of you buying a house, living in the grass, and renting out the rest of it while you worked on your designs and everything else. I'm going to let you tell it, but I'm like, really?

That's, I mean, you hear about that all the time. Like everybody knows, Elon Musk living in his office, sleeping on the couch. That's the story that I've always heard about him, which is I just come back. This is a throwback to a long time ago because the first year, all I was after was just trying to find different community stories that I wanted to capture on audio. Right. and let people listen to firsthand because the rumor mill or sitting you know playing the game phone is probably inflated that's well maybe it is maybe it is there was a garage and I did live in it

and I did rent out the house that that did happen so we can dispel that rumor how old were you when you were doing that uh it was uh the summer I turned 20 really 20 years old yeah 1998 started roswell and I ran out of money quickly, you know, as at most small businesses, and ended up moving into the garage, which was also the workshop, and renting out the house to pay the bills. And that's where Roswell was born in a garage right here in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. I guess when I was, A, when I was 19, I was still playing hockey. But when you first bought your house and you're like,

you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to live in the garage. would like I mean clean up would be nice you just grab a broom away you go but like I feel like that's just um your brain works differently than a lot of different people the you know most people want to have the bedroom and everything else I guess I I want to stick there for a second because I'm like yeah I don't know like what we're the beginning I mean everybody wants the hustle but like that's hustling hard when you're like, I'm going to rent out everything.

I'm going to live in the garage. And in the meantime, I'm going to do this. What motivated you to get to that point? Well, survival. I mean, perseverance, survival. At that point, you know, when I bought the house, I didn't intend to move in the garage. I had a bedroom.

And by the summer I turned 20, I was a fourth-year electrician. Bought the house. It was my first house I bought. And I was doing businesses at nighttime. to actually raise enough capital to patent one of the first inventions. So starting at about 1718, I was drawing product ideas, which was a kitchen appliance, was the first invention. I was reading books on how to patent it.

I had visions of grandeur, you know, how are we going to sell some kitchen appliance patent to some big company and make some money? And at nighttime, the first businesses were started out of necessity to raise enough capital to patent the first idea. and during the day I was an electrician, so I really didn't buy the house intending on living in the base or in the garage, for say. So it evolved. What did you, what was the kitchen? What were you trying to? Well, funny enough, and my wife will tell you this 20 years later,

I've never told anybody what it is because it hasn't come to market yet. So I'm keeping it a secret. It's in a file, you know, and maybe someday it'll come out. So no one knows what the kitchen appliance is. It's what started everything. I have drawings of it still to this day. So you're telling me you have an idea, never come to market, but it's sitting in a file folder, but nobody knows what it is.

Your wife doesn't even know what it is. Correct, yeah. Why are you keeping it from your wife? Well, I mean, it's just one of those things, you know. I don't need, you don't have to share all your ideas with the world. One at a time. You got to space them out, whatever the world's ready for. Interesting.

Yeah, true story though. And started Roswell that fall of the day I turned 20 with an idea of we came out of the Arctic, me and a good friend, and we were doing electrical in the Arctic Circle at the BHP Diamond Mine. And we went out to Vancouver, bought our first boat, and that's where the wakeboarding started. That was the new sport. It was 1997, 98. And people are wakeboarding more than water skiing. So we did that. And I found out right away that you needed a tall pylon in the boat to be able to jump higher. If you're being tied from the base of the boat or the stern, you jumped and you're being pulled down and forward. So we were like, well, we need these tall poles. That's what the pros are doing down in California and Florida. So no one would build them in Canada. So I built

the first pylon for our boat and then designed what we thought was a better pylon. and wanted to patent it. So that's where Roswell was born. That's cool. A, like I was looking, you know, you're coming on. I creeped the, the Roswell, like, website. I'm like, man, this is going to be, like, you walk in here and you're like,

oh, this is really cool, right? Like, and don't give me wrong. This room is pretty cool. It is cool. Yes. But getting to, what has it been, 24 years? Is it 25? Yep, 24 this fall.

24 this fall. You've been innovating. and delivering cool products to the boating world. Is that basically what I can say? Yeah, yeah, it's bizarre, really. From right here, Lloydminster is where it started in the prairies to be one of the largest accessory boat accessory companies in the world. Living in Florida now in offices all over the world,

it's a little bit bizarre, yeah. I would not have, you know, if I'm sitting back in the early days, you never could have imagined. I had no vision out that far. What advice would you give? If you could go back to 19-year-old, you, sitting where you are right now,

what advice, because like you think about it, you've taken this, you know, like you say, home on Saskatchewan, which, oh man, that's, you know, having yourself and the likes of Wade and different people from our area on Heath with Crudemaster and different people coming out of that little, a honeypot or whatever pot it is. That's where great people were born.

100%. Yes. Honestly, right? Yeah, there's been a lot of good people. Yes, absolutely. But if you could go back, what would you tell them? Because I mean, like 24 years, you know, where you're sitting, I mean, just to look at the last decade, some of the things that have gone on.

And in the last 24 years, there has been a lot. This has went on, a lot of trials and tribulations and everything else. I'm sure you've learned a lot about not only. patenting things, but business as a whole. I mean, you take it from Canada to the United States. There's a whole, I mean, I'm hopping all over the place on the story, but hey, I'm curious. What would you tell a younger you?

Or maybe somebody who is listening to us and going, I'm 19. That's exactly what I want to do. Well, I mean, looking back to 19-year-old me, you wouldn't want to tell them too much, you know, if you don't want to scare them. First of all, what they don't know won't kill them. But in the end, if you've got a dream, I mean, I always looked at it from the early days. I started with nothing from the garage and, you know, I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. And I fell in love with an industry and I fell in love with building products.

And if you can, the cliches are true. If you're doing what you love, you never work a day in your life. And it sounds funny, but that really is how it feels and even 24 years later. but there's a lot of ups and downs. There's challenges along the way and perseverance and, you know, too stupid to quit really plays a part, right? I have to say, you know, it factors in somewhere. What's along the road from here to Florida? What's maybe, you know, when you look back, what's one of the years that sticks out where it was, you know, like in our emails, you mentioned 2008.

You know, that was a tough time. But I assume, is it 2008 or is there other times? Like this last couple of years had to have been a real interesting go as well. And now with supply chains and all that jazz, you know, honestly grinding to a halt almost. Those are new challenges that I'm sure you see too. What's something that sticks out to you over the last little bit? A little bit or the 24 years. I don't know, 24 years.

Yeah. You know, yeah, there's moments in time. Those are defining moments in any business or entrepreneur where you're going to, you know, it gets real. And those are the defining moments that makes the business, makes or breaks it. Early on, just figuring it out, the corporate structure and how do we run a business and deliver a product and take orders and set it up, set it up. You know, that was one thing. We did it, first of all, in Lloyd Minster, which turned out not. quite to be big enough to manufacture our parts out of, with all the oil field work. So we ended up

in Edmonton. And, you know, the real next thing we ran into is, you know, the designs got some traction. I designed the first universal tower in the world to fit all boats, swiveling board racks for these wakeboard boat towers and some technologies that companies wanted. But our cost to manufacture was high. And you started to have companies in 2002 that would go offshore, starting to bring in some offshore projects or products from Asia and other places. And that really turned the whole manufacturing world upside down. Home Depot, big companies were offshoring a lot of stuff before Marine. But in early 2000s, when you had competitors bringing in products similar to what you're building,

maybe a little less quality, obviously, at a half the price of what you could build it for, that was really the first wall. How do we stay in business? How do we compete? And the bigger we got, the more orders we got, the more money we were losing because we couldn't, we just couldn't compete on price and labor. So it was very challenging. And early on, the big OE's we started working with, so we, 95% of Roswell's design,

build, manufacture for large boat companies. And back then, maybe it was 40% versus 90%. 95 today. But those companies then said, listen, we want you to figure out how to go over offshore and figure out how to access those low-cost products and manage it with the same quality, your designs. We want you to do that. So I think that was one of the first big TSN turning points of saying, okay, and we did the SWAT analysis, you know, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, everybody's heard about that. And we found out, you know, we had great designs and product that people wanted to buy, but we couldn't manufacture it and be

competitive for shit. So, you know, backs against the wall. I remember we had an accountant in the room. We probably had 40 employees in Ebbinton at that time, maybe 10,000 square feet. And the accountant looked at me and said, there's no way we can make this work. And I said, we're going to make it work because we have to. You know, failure is not an option. I'm in this. We're going to make it work. And we went over to Asia. We audited 45 factories in person. We set out all the operations we needed machinery, welding, fabrication, assembly, bending, all the things we were doing in Canada. And we had to figure it out. Implemented a management team. And 18 years later, you know, I've been there 65 times. We've had people living there. And we did. We figured it out

and we figured out how to do that. So that was one of the big hurdles. And then 2007, 8 came, and the whole world fell apart in the financial crisis. So we lost over 55% of our revenue overnight. And that presented a whole other issue, didn't it? So that was probably step two. What's a common schmuck like me? Although at one point in time, you were a common schmuck. Still a pretty common schmuck, really.

When you first go over to Asia and you're auditing all these businesses, Like, what stuck out to you? Like, you know, like, I mean, that had to have been like, yeah. Oh, man. We're going to die today. Yes. That's what stuck out. And the year of the lockout, Wade came over with me.

If you can imagine two farm boys from Hillmont in vans, cruising through China, touring factories. And this was early, this is early 2000. So Asia, at that time, especially China, had opened its doors to U.S. manufacturing, Canadian manufacturing. and there was an energy unlike I can explain today. And there was massive investments in manufacturing. And Tesla has a plant just down the street from us today and Mercedes and, you know, all these big companies. But early on, you know, 18 years ago, when you were driving around, people didn't know how to drive. People are driving on the wrong side of the road.

People are, you have lunch with them. You know, what is that? You don't recognize a dish on the table. It's dog. They're like, dog. What kind of dog? no just a dog roof like you've never seen a dog before we're going holy you know it's it was it was quite enlightening but uh but it was also exciting i mean there's a lot of investment in manufacturing

and and being able to get over there and have the challenge of putting in the qa systems and setting up a management team and you know monitoring it and building quality products in another country in another language, that challenge was exciting and it wasn't easy, as you can imagine. I mean, there was nothing, there's no easy in any business. I mean, all businesses have challenges every day. But it was a really exciting thing to be a part of and to deliver on. And we delivered on a lot of products from there. All I can get in my head is two Hillmont, Saskatchewan boys touring around eating dog.

Look at it. Well, I didn't eat it. I'm sure Wade did, but. You didn't try it? No, I don't remember trying it, but I couldn't get past the rough, rough part. And, uh, but overall, I mean, there's a lot of amazing food over there. There's been a lot of good people over there along the way we've met. So is there been, has there been push? I mean, like, there's been a lot of talk on China.

Uh, you've been in the States now. Um, when Trump was in, they were trying to bring in, you know, trying to pull back some of that manufacturing business. Oh, absolutely. Has, has, has Roswell or just you in general, Have you seen any pullback? Have you seen it start to come back this way, or is it still very much all in China? Well, it's definitely a huge part of discussion everywhere. I mean, in the last 10th. So first of all, what people probably don't know is that it was Western world that pushed China into manufacturing, right? And they do it everywhere all over the world, low-cost manufacturing.

So they move country to country to access that. and somehow along the way we've looked at China and said, okay, now this is a bad thing, right? And granted, there's some things there, human rights and the way they run their country, that we wouldn't agree with. But at the same time, there is a willingness now to bring manufacturing back to North America

on-shoring or near-shoring manufacturing is a term we hear quite a bit. And starting probably 2010, 2012, you would hear people want to bring products back, you know, in lots of different industries, including our own. And the truth is they didn't want to pay the price, right? We want it. We want it here. We want to build it local. When you lay out the pricing, they go, whoa.

I mean, I was just kidding. You know, what I want really is to pay the price that I was paying when it was offshoreed, but I want you to build it here, so it feels good. And it's been a tough grind for 10 years doing that. So, I mean, we never, you know, in early on, we didn't know we were going to go over there. We've held out as long as we could. You know, it feels good to provide jobs to a local economy. I mean, that's a healthy thing for any economy.

And I think countries in general that lose their manufacturing capabilities weakens the entire society, right? and, you know, it became a point of survival where we either have to do this and stay in business and hire professionals, engineers, designers, and more professionals outside of the laboring side, or we're going to go out of business. So we chose to stay in business and figure it out. And, you know, now to see that willingness to bring some things back, like Trump's tariff policies and some different things, they've really changed some of the mindset to allow us to build premium products domestically again. You know, so it has come full circle 20 years later

where we've got the ability to start building some products in North America. And the technology is advanced too. There's robotics and we have, you know, automated systems and processes. We're designing and building products now in North America competitively or cheaper than Asia, which is something that was unfathomable 20 years ago. ago. The first project we sent over and started working with a factory that we'd approved on. We had quoted out in North America, we quoted out in Asia, and let's say an extrusion of aluminum, which is a shape of aluminum you design, and you pay for the tooling, a dye, and they push

the aluminum through it, and you're probably familiar with a tubing, but you could use any shape you want. And to give you an example, in Canada, we would have had to put a 10,000 foot minimum in on that aluminum, like 10,000 feet of it. The dyes were 30,000, and the lead times of six months. So I flew over three weeks later after sending the drawings over to Asia. Again, this is 18 years ago. And there's a chunk six feet of extrusion on the boardroom table three weeks later. And the tooling costs were $2,500 with no minimum.

So you know what I'm saying? Yeah. The gap was so astronomical. astronomical, it wasn't apples to apples. I mean, it wasn't even apples to oranges. It's like apples and elephants. Okay. But now, I mean, it's come full circle. So just stick with it and hone your skills manufacturing in another, you know, know the whole other country in another language to be able to start manufacturing back in North America, some, you know, some products and premium products. You know, if you can do it in another country and another language, then you can do it

here. So it's a, you know, you learn a lot of lessons along the way, for sure. Yeah, the big thing is, is if you're, if you're not selling products, because you can't, nobody wants to pay the price, what are you going to do? There is a, right, there is a, there is a cap. And when you've got competitors that are, that are bringing it in at less than your cost to build, you know, it makes it pretty tough. If you do the SWAT analysis, the, the whiteboard doesn't lie. You know, you're going to see where, where the rubber meets the road. So, you know, you know, it makes it. Yeah, it's it's It reminds me of

I don't know Have you ever heard the guy named Quick Dick McDick? Yeah Well he's a guy who You know When me and him have had our chats He's got his QDM

Clothing line right A hat shirt Huities Or bunny hugs Whatever You get the point And he's tried

Really really really hard To make everything Canadian Right He doesn't want anything to be And so he's He's gone to great lengths We tried that too.

Yeah. And like at the end of the day, I think it's noble. I think it's 95% in QDM if you're listening and shoot me a text and I'll update that. It's very close. Like he's gotten as close as he can. Yeah. But you know, you go back. The price for anything is you can see it, right?

A hat that somebody can sell for 20 bucks or 25 bucks. He's got to sell it for closer to 50. And once again, I'm not exact on my pricing. Just that's what it is. Yeah. but it is a Canadian-made hat. And you just wonder how long before, you know, government or whatever starts putting in more regulations to try and pull more of that here, just so that spurs on local economy and

other things because for, like you say, you talk about the astronomical difference in what you were talking about. It's not even conceivable because it's pretty tough. Do you want a business or do you want no business? Yeah. Well, that's a pretty easy choice for a lot of people. Well, and like you said, the tide's changing. There is a different wind out there and people, there's more of a willingness to buy local,

buy domestically, and people see more value in it than we've seen 15 years ago. And it's a good feeling. I mean, to be able to invest in manufacturing, you know, in North America, like I said, we've had great partners overseas and it's not a scary place to work. when we first toured over there, it was very shocking. Like you have marble floors or granite floors, QA teams, organization, 3D. These guys were very sophisticated,

and they taught us a lot too. And there's a willingness to work that we've maybe lost as a culture over here, you know, on a level that those developing countries have. And it's going to take a while to bring that back. I mean, you can put policies in place, but if you're not teaching kids, in school, the manufacturing is cool and building stuff is a good job, right, because we pay benefits

and we, you know, we machine in and welding and fabrication and wiring and painting and auto body. And there's a lot of disciplines. But if kids come out of school and think that's beneath them, we've got a problem as a society. And I think there needs to be programs in school to, you know, somehow we've got to change that as a culture, right? because manufacturing in general domestically props up. It props up everybody. That's a good question.

How do you change that? Because you make it sexy somehow, right? I don't know. But that's an interesting question because I was listening to, oh, shoot, I'm going to have, I'm in a space here, HBO show. Anyways, older guy talk. he's talking about the new generation and how they're uh you know everything basically should be given to them and how none of them want to work and i listen i maybe i got a ton of young listeners and

i'm not going to shit on anyone because i'm sure at some point my generation they said the exact same thing but you do notice that uh you know the world the western world is moving you know like growing up could you've made millions of dollars playing video games i don't think that crossed anyone's mind. No. And now we can. Now you can, you know,

you can buy land in the metaverse and, you know, and just like things that make zero sense. Like that has no value, like the world goes to shit tomorrow, which it can. And certainly we,

we got some interesting times on our hands right now. I don't think anybody's worried about the metaverse. I don't think anybody's worried about video games, you know? And yet that's become really big industry. And, you know,

the, a mom and dad used to give us shit. What was the video? Like for us growing up is like Nintendo 64, the Super Nintendo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're playing NHL on PlayStation or whatever it was or Nintendo. Nintendo. But it was pretty basic to the technology you have today.

But the parents had an easy out. They were just like, listen, you're not going to make money playing. Can you imagine having it? Well, you probably have. Or just shut it off. I mean, it wasn't. But you think now it's like, listen, get the video game out of your hand. You need to go do something productive.

You're not going to make a live. been playing video games. Well, Mom, actually, you can make millions of dollars playing it. I got a buddy from college who's an agent for him now. Oh, my gosh. And I'm like, this is, this is, well, they've got tournaments. I mean, it's a, it is a big deal. And not to take anything away from kids that love technology and, you know, I don't pretend to understand that world, the intangible world. But building tangible things can be cool too. Okay. And not, Everybody's going to make a million playing video games. So once they come to that realization, there has to be another layer, right, for kids and people in general to say, again, I think there has to be education, a cultural shift to say, listen, as a society, as a country, you can't just keep taking, right?

You can't keep paying people to stay home. You can't just keep taking. You've got to get innovative, right? The big empires over history, if you look at the last 500 years, strength comes through. innovation and building things, right? You're manufacturing things, you're building things, you're building, you're providing jobs, everybody gets propped up together. And when you start to lose that and things get, you know, fat and happy, that's when, you know, all the conflict starts happening, right? And I feel like that's what we're seeing. And we've seen it for a long time now.

This isn't a new thing around here. But it gets, it's a slippery slope, right? How do you turn that And that's what has to happen. So there's protectionist type policies coming in, especially in the U.S. to start. Where does it go? I mean, there's, like I said, I think somehow you've got to start off with youth and just showing them that there's a lot of,

you know, there's a lot of great exciting careers out there that has productivity tied to them. Well, I think Roswell could probably do some educational videos on how cool working. The stuff you sent me, I was like, man, this is slick, you know? Like even the color scheme of some of the things you guys build, I'm like, yeah, that would just, it just looks sharp.

And attention to detail, I don't know, maybe I sound weird for saying this, but I think attention to detail is cool. Like when you really focus in on making things like as close to perfect as can be, one of the things I enjoy about, whether it was an article that I read on you or one of the videos, just talked about how you love to get sound perfect. Like you needed, and how you guys will take sound for different boats and change it. I was like, oh, that's, that's cool.

As a consumer, as a person, if I own boats, which is funny. I love going on boats, don't own one. But in saying that, as a consumer hearing that, I'm like, man, that's attention to detail. I like that. You're going to come, like, make sure that different variety of boats because it isn't all one, the identical, and how you can change sound. I'm like, that's super cool. That comes from your brain?

Yeah, I mean, I think what you're seeing and reading is it comes back to passion. I'm passionate about sound, you know, how I wanted to sound. And what I didn't know when I started designing speakers, we got into audio because the audio that was available, I felt didn't perform in an outdoor environment. in a boat the way it should. So it didn't have clean sound waves, and it was distorting at high volume, and we were amping them up so you can hear it in a boat,

an open air environment, drive down the lake. So there was all these failure points that, you know, a person that's passionate about music and passionate about quality, you know, which I'm obsessed with, you know, again, you're seeing the result of that. So what I learned in that process is really a speaker itself, Take the speaker itself and you can tear it down, you know, a single speaker into 80 different pieces and parts and components and material.

And then as you build it back up, being the creator, you can really make it sound any way you want. And then further to that, it's personal preference. So what you hear in the Roswell Audio is specifically my preference, you know, and I don't think people realize that. But in a sound chamber, as we're designing the audio, we can play with the sound curve and we can really tune it. I like a really clean, powerful mid-base with a clean but soft tweeter. You know, the highs, I like them to be soft, but I like to be clean and hit all these data points.

And so, you know, we'll use a silk dome tweeter, nano-coated like the iPhone circuit board, and the different materials we use are the highest quality we can. buy anywhere, regardless of cost. And that really becomes personal preference. And tuning that to a boat, again, that's just one person's obsession with making it sound the way they want us to sound, which is, in this case, is me. But, you know, a lot of other people may have a different ear say, you know, I want it to be screaming loud and high pitched. I mean, you could do that too. but, you know, again, peeling back the onion, you're just seeing a piece of what I want it to be

at the end of the road. I envision Mr. Oswald rolling around Florida in a boat, tunes cranked, going, we've got to change this. Or putting one in the spot and going, I thought that was going to sound better. And that taking the process of, I don't know, days upon days.

Or months. Or months. I wanted to say, the lake but on the on the on the ocean well it all starts off on the lake and then the ocean yeah it starts off on the lake and uh wake and water ski boats yeah so all in the lake and all in the smaller boats i i i as you know the guy who you know goes out to loon lake and gets to hop on a a uh a surf boat and get the tunes pumped up and you're just like oh this sounds good i never it never like dawns on me which is silly because any product is got to

to have hours upon hours put into making sure that it fits right right and that this or that fits there and everything else but what you've done to a boat or what you're trying to continue to do to a boat is make it this experience where it's just like everything is like this is awesome right and music I'm a big lover of music as well and on a boat when you're going yeah you know I you get it and it's tunes are pumping and you can hear and it just creates a vibe, the lake creates a vibe, but then having to give music on top of that. Yeah. Just makes it almost a surreal experience.

Good. Well, that's what we want you to have. It's, um, it is. I mean, it's all part of an experience when you're on, when you're on the water, you're in the boat. It's more than just the sport side of it, which, which there is. The wakeboarding, water skiing, um, you know, now wake surfing, but everything comes back to the experience in the boat and we've been really fortunate to be part of it since the early days some of the first guys putting speakers into towers and assemblies and thinking about your experience when you're inside of the boat and whether it's ambient lighting or how the music flows through the interior of the boat so it's neat it's really neat to see people's expression how much people enjoy it and i mean

that's what it's all about we build people by design we build products that we try and make people lives better with. So it sounds a little, you know, sounds a little funny, but it's simple. We want to build products that people spend harder and money on and they can go out and just have a great positive experience. And that's really, we do that by getting in the boats, running them and testing and designing and redesigning and just trying to, every touch point, right, when you touch the tower, you have to fold the tower, you have to move around inside of the boat, how much head clearance, how does, how, where the sound waves hitting you, when you, when you you're inside of there. How's the, how do you interact with the mirror, you know, the rearview

mirror system and the bimini, the shade system, when it rains, what's happening, right? I've got to go under a bridge. I've got to go in a boat house. So I'm thinking about every variable related to that experience on the water for each individual boat. And we're trying to just approve upon it. And that's that's really where all the products come from. Did your brain ever shut off? Do you ever just, do you ever just like walk into a studio and you're like, well, this is sweet, sit down? and you're like, I don't know, I'm not going to look at this table and this and then the next thing and the next thing. Does it ever just shut off or have you already analyzed everything on your way from Florida out of here? Yeah. No, doesn't shut off. You know, that's a blessing and a curse, I guess, right?

But no, no, it doesn't shut off. So I was looking at your epoxy in the middle of this table from your Marshall speaker and the material they used to build the plate holding your volume buttons on your speaker over there. So I mean, I'm always looking at materials and products and yeah. Well, then it's, I'll say this, the listener didn't see you walk in and go, oh, this is a cool space. Then it's, then I've done my job then somewhat and going like, well, this is, this isn't, this is what I thought it was going to be. Or maybe it was what you thought it was going to be. It's pretty good.

I like it. Yeah, you nailed it. Well, I didn't know what to expect, actually, but it's a great studio, great space. What did you think then when I was just, you know, I've never, I don't know if I've ever asked, anyone this question, but you know, you're sitting in Florida, I can't remember how on earth I got your number. I harassed a bunch of locals and somehow it pops up and then you're getting a text for me. Like you're going, a what now? Or were you like, oh, this is cool? You know, because it's, it's been three, pretty much three years since I initially started harassing you going, okay, I want

to have you in. This is what I want to do. Well, has it been that long? 2019. It feels like two weeks to me. Yeah. I mean, when, I first got the text and seeing what you were doing with the podcast, I thought, wow. My very first impression was, wow, the ball's on him, you know, good, good. Why do you say that? Well, I mean, it feels like a really crazy idea. You know, I think of Lloyd and I think of the farming community and everything. And I think, you know what?

He's going to take on podcasting out of Lloydminster. I think it's phenomenal. I think it's exciting. I was like, you know what? it's ballsy. It's a little out of the box. It's like a guy growing up out here in Hillmont deciding to move down south and build boat parts for a living. It's not the first thing I'd think of. And that's, I think, what makes it cool. Well, it's, they create interesting stories, right? Like, I think what you've done is exactly that. Going from, you know, it's not like Hillmont

is a little town on a lake. Don't give me wrong, there's lakes that are close. Yeah, not that close. Not that close. right honestly yeah and so you go what you know you talk about balzy i laugh that word i'm like balzy is starting uh a water sport industry in a place that grows wheat and canola and you know right right what did your what did your family say when you're like this is what i'm going to do well yeah in fact we didn't have a powerboat um growing up and when i first got the 16-foot cober with the 90 Johnson on it and brought it brought it back to sandy beach and started wakeboarding and water skiing with richard every day um you know that was one thing right but to

try and start a boat company and you know quit electrical then subsequently moving to the garage and and take out mortgage my house to pull out the first business loan to put the patents on the first product. And I think my family was probably, you know, and they were just not knowing what it is I was trying to do. Nor did anybody. I mean, at that point, both products for wakeboarding were really infancy. They're in infancy. You know, in California, maybe Florida a tiny bit, but there wasn't really any of these products around here. So I think there was probably some closed-door conversations that maybe this guy was a little crazy. But, I think I heard that right

You were an electrician And then If I rewind the story You went out to Vancouver Started surfing and we're like Oh we need this Started doing I guess I didn't clue into the fact that you were working full time

Mm-hmm Quit your job Before I became a journeyman So I was a fourth year I had fourth year hours yeah So you can imagine The initial reaction was just finish electrical. I mean, we understand that.

Finish it up. You're so close. Give you something to fall back on, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And so what are you going to do? What are you trying to build? And, I mean, my family's always been incredibly supportive. You can't fault them.

They've been incredible through the whole journey. But in the early days, I mean, I can't blame anybody either. I mean, what were you trying to do? You couldn't see it. I was in my garage designing. stuff like a mad scientist and the banks wouldn't loan me money to do it. I can tell you that. And it was a local program through the Lloydminster Community Futures Development Organization. And it was four entrepreneurs. It was a high interest loan approved by a local board up to a certain

amount of money that you could apply to for entrepreneurs in Lloydminster. And I found this program and applied. And that's, you know, really it was the first seed capital of Roswell. used to establish the business and patent and prototype the first product. But I mean, even at that time, the family's got to be sitting back and going, well, we'll see. I mean, he wants to do this. They didn't stop me. And again, there was a lot of support. But I don't think anybody knew really where I was going.

And to be fair, I didn't know either. You know, all I knew is that no one was building these products in Canada. Thought I had a great idea. and, you know, called up the only company I could find in California doing it for Malibu boats, flew down there with a pylon in a bag, Ontario, California. They had a boat on the water in Canyon Lake. They had a pro athlete waiting to test the product. And I stayed for a couple weeks, went to the first boardstock in Shasta, or my first boardstock,

and fell in love with the industry. I'd never seen anything like it, you know, boats and people and energy. And I was like, all I knew is when I came home, I was like, wow, this is, it's pretty neat. I mean, and they validated that I had a product that people would want to buy. So, I mean, that's kept it going. But I think about that. And I go, I just, I'm in this weird spot, right? So, like, I'm going to try and, I'm like, I can always come back to Jordan Peterson because I feel like he's the most notable

for he just says it right i'm thinking and speaking a lot at the same time and sometimes that takes a little bit of time and you're getting raw thoughts but i'm listening to that and i'm going like i feel like that's a ton of entrepreneurs it's like i don't even know if i know what i'm doing and i'm sitting here podcasting with you right and if you came three years ago i would have been like well i don't know i just want to talk some people and then you know you fast forward and it's like holy crap i got a sponsor and i didn't i didn't know that was going to happen right and You fast forward a couple more years, now you're doing full time. And I'm still waiting through the gray zones, wondering where this goes.

And what uphill battles are coming because they're coming or they're already happening or, you know. And I listen to that and I go, so you flew down to California. Yep. Called a number out of the magazine. Went. I think it's awesome. First, I want to say, I think it's awesome. Right?

Fly down to California. Spent a couple weeks there. seeing a product but realistically I can just imagine the thoughts that I'd be going through like I mean sure it's cool you're down there but you're I mean all the the thoughts that must have been

the stress that must have been going on at that time you got alone you're living you know like all these things balled up whether you were a duck on water or not oh yeah like you don't even know what you don't know at that point that's right yeah absolutely yeah but I think like you said that's all that's all

entrepreneurs, right? And there's a there's a desire if you're entrepreneurial to chase a dream or chase a product. It's a it's something inside you that says, you know what, I need to do something. And I think to be successful, I said at the beginning of the podcast, you know, perseverance, you know, too stupid to quit. There's a lot of those things that play a part, but if you believe in it and you're not willing to fail, you slowly start putting the pieces together during that journey and you're going to make some mistakes. You figure out what you're good at, what you're not good at. And there's mentors.

There's people along the way. If you're excited about something and believe in it and you get these people around, you, I think, that start to believe in you. And without that support, right, you picked up some sponsors. You're passionate. You're doing a great, you know, you're doing an amazing thing. You're chasing your dream. And you find out, you know what, there's like-minded people.

They're either entrepreneurial or they just, you know, want to believe in something or someone else's dream too. There's a lot of people that love doing that or inspired by it. And, you know, if that starts to kind of fall into place too, you know, and I definitely didn't do any of this on my own from day one. You know, I've got people that have been with me and behind me since the beginning. But, you know, it's a, it's a great journey, right? And you learn a lot of stuff along the way. Yeah, I always come back to life being a bit of an adventure, right? Like I got, it's in my blood. I, you know, I got to travel with hockey. I got to go to a lot of different communities. And then, you know, going back to 2006, Dustin and I and a friend Lori, who I knew

nothing about at the time by Canada, I got to see like everything. And so, you know, once you get a taste of that, right, you're kind of like, I miss that. That is, you know, that is life. for me, right? Like chasing this adventure. And adventure comes in many forms. It doesn't have to be a podcast or a boat company or accessories to a boat company. It can come in many forms for a lot of different people. It's wherever they find, their passion, whatever. But to me, chasing an idea that maybe other people can't see, that is adventure. Oh, yeah. That's adventure. You know, like, I at least say the story. I'm like, oh, man. Like, what a cool spot to finally end up getting to do it.

Because, you know, two years ago, as I listened to you, I don't know how much meaning it would have given me, you know, and I certainly would have. You know, I think here of Cletus, no man enters the same river twice because the river just constantly flowing and changing. And, well, obviously as individuals, we're constantly changing as well.

Right. And I think, you know, when I bring up the question of talking to your 19-year-old self, I do that little game in my head all the time to even three years ago. to, you know, going back to when I was told, don't get into radio, right? Would it have been better? I don't know. You can't change any of it. It's not like you can actually do it, right? Yeah. And every, I look at it, you know, it's an adventure. It's all about staying engaged, right? And growth.

If you're growing, you're challenging yourself, get a little uncomfortable, you keep growing. You know, I think I look at it as well as every experience or these segments of your life, there's like a new chat. in your book, right? And there are, you know, whether there are a two or three year chapter or four year chapter, if you really start stacking it up and looking back, there are all these chapters and defining moments that once you get hooked and you've overcome some challenges, because you don't learn anything from the successes, everybody says that and it's true. But when you overcome a failure, right, and you get around a wall, you climb a wall, you kick it down, you get through something challenging, you're in a new place personally. And that can be anything from

business to chasing a dream to a health issue. And you want to do it again, right? I think a lot of people that are motivated and growing or chasing a dream, chasing a business, you get, you get, we're okay. I've done that. Now, how can I do it better? How can I, what's the next challenge going to be? And if you've got that passion, and you keep marching forward it organically really, like I can't imagine, I look back now, man, there's been a lot of chapters over 24 years. And each one in the moment was this massive change

and learning and growing and great people around me or not, or scary people and scary experiences, and the sky's falling and the financial crisis and we're sleeping under the benches and we're trying to keep the life. lights on. But as you come through that and you climb another hill and I really, I think it's a great, great piece of it for an entrepreneur to have that experience and continue to do it. And I think the people that support you along the way, they're part of that journey, right? They live in their

own life, having their own journey. But as an entrepreneur, you get to share that with sponsors, friends and family and people that are supportive. They're really along for that ride with you, which is incredible. And, you know, me at this point and Roswell, I'm now able to watch all these great people grow their own careers and have their own experiences and challenges and grow. And that's a whole other level of enjoyment that I never expected. You know, I used to be me and Richard, you know, executing and doing everything. And now there's, you know, there's hundreds of people.

And some of the key people are growing and meeting their own challenges and overcoming these obstacles on their own. So it's just an incredible thing to grow a business and chase a dream, right? You know, you started out, you and Richard. Yeah. How many employees you got now? Globally 360. 360, globally 120 people in Florida in the main plant.

And we've got 12 or 15 in Emmeton, Alberta, and a handful in Australia. that has to be an interesting perspective to have now you know to go from just like I'm going to decide everything boom boom boom to now I have probably people who are just as smart if not smarter than you being able to add in their thoughts and perspectives and everything else plus I mean over 24 years like getting to know you know works a funny thing right like it's probably the one of The most difficult thing I've had from switching from being an employee working for a company and being around the camaraderie of being around a group of people who you spend more time with than your family. Right.

Like to being in this room where I'm like, I need to, you know, continually seek people out because you don't have a team. Well, not yet. Right. Right. Right. But. I remember being that guy. the guy with no one in the room with no one else around yeah yeah it's uh it's exciting and scary too

and scary right like lonely and uh there's a lot of weight on your shoulders at this point and i mean the first sales trips we did it was just me on the road in a farm truck you know and i couldn't afford hotels driving out to bc stopping at boat dealers walking in with a bag and products and you know peddling my wares door to door, sleeping in tents, you know, campgrounds and stuff with, you know, people doing all sorts of crazy beside you in the campground and you're literally by myself in a, in a farm truck. I'd like to look back and say it's character building. It was some of the greatest moments in the in the story, you know, Richard's back at home, building a couple pylons and I'm on the road in the farm truck and it was, but I know where you're at.

You got a lot on your shoulders right now, and it's exciting. I'm chuckling over here because I literally just did a road trip where I'm like, I can't afford to stay in a hotel. And the gas money right now with the current gas prices, I'm like, yeah, not a good time for a road trip. Yeah, I'm like thinking I'm like, okay, oh my God. But if it works, it's worth it. And it worked, and it was worth it.

And so the excitement, the, one of the things I think come from being in the oil field is the absolute high of getting a win on this side now there's nothing that even closely rivaled it when I was back selling chemicals in the oil field and that was a great job great team great people I got nothing ill to say about where I came from but going okay I'm gonna spend this much on gas and and figuring it all out and going is it worth it yes it is the stakes are a little different the stakes are different you living in high stakes for a long time. Yeah, I've been all in for a long time. Still, all in.

And all along the way. Yeah, I know all about that. It's exciting. That's why I don't have to go to casinos. You know, I'm all in. Don't gamble. I mean, I mean, I'm in business. Yeah. I'm in business. And no, I'm not really no. I mean, if we went to, uh, A bunch of guys we're going to go to Vegas for a show or something. We're going to hit the tables for an hour. Sure, maybe. But no, I feel like every day in chasing in business is enough of a gamble that I, you know, I need to focus on that and keep the eye on the ball.

So I get enough. Like you said, the wins are big and the losses are big. And that doesn't change. It's been the same level at stake since it started, you know, 24 years ago. and coming through 2008, 2009, the financial crisis, getting some wins and staying in business and coming through that, the wins are big. And so those feelings, you know, when you go in somewhere and you have a win, the stakes, what's at stake is a lot more than I could put on a black tech table. When you go back, what was maybe the darkest hour? Like, where you maybe

doted yourself or the loss that came across a table financial crisis, whatever it be, where you just couldn't, you know, see up essentially. You couldn't find your bearings and it was a dark day, week, hour, month, year, whatever it is. And then how did you find your path through that? Well, as you can imagine, 24 years, there's going to be a few dark hours. you see my thinking about it as I go back and you know probably one of the first really dark days or dark hours or weeks early on we had moved to Edmonton and we I designed one of the first universal towers to fit all foot all boats and really timing was good people were understanding the product everybody wanted to put one on a boat one of the dealers in Calgary who was incredibly supportive ordered 50 or more, maybe ordered 70. He paid a deposit up front to help me with the manufacturing.

We probably sold 100 of these things right out of the gate. And we were going into manufacturing. And we had the welding in-house. We set up a shop. We got into a bigger manufacturing plant. You know, this is our first big order. You know, it was big. There was a lot at stake.

And financially, just, you know, we probably had a couple hundred thousand just materials to build these things. And, you know, I think we got the orders probably March, April, right? Plenty of time and the dealer wanted delivery end of May. Should have been a no-brainer. We put all the material process orders out. And, you know, we ran into a wall. We had a machine shop up in the city. And it was the only thing I didn't have in-house, you know, the machining.

And we had all our parts drawings and we were weighted and we had these towers sold. and the dealer played a deposit, and we had employees hired to weld them out. We were, you know, we were excited. There was a huge excitement going into the spring. And the machine shop was supposed to deliver parts, and they never did. And a week goes by, and two weeks go by, and we're calling. We're going over there. We're having meetings.

And as it would turn out, the machine shop owner was a sheister and was not building the parts or had built some parts to make it look like he was building parts, but he wasn't building parts. And he had a different strategy all along, which at that age, I just didn't understand. You know, I'm early 20s and I had orders. I thought, you know, everything should be by the book. I've issued the POs. I've given you a deposit.

All you've got to do is deliver the parts. And this stretched out into end of June or going in July. And now the dealer had also sold the finished product to people with boats, right? So you can imagine the supply chain all the way down to the retail consumer. And then people start getting upset. Then people are angry. People can't get their product. They want their product.

They don't want to cancel their order. They want their product delivered. They want what they bought. And we couldn't deliver. We couldn't get the machine parts to weld these things out. And I had paid for all the tubing, lined up the employees. Now we're three months in. We don't have any parts.

Four months in. Don't have any parts. By August, we'd had several meetings. I mean, I remember sitting on the work bench just doing. Like, this is going to end us. You know, what do we, what do we do just the anger and anxiety? And I've got people and employees and responsibilities. And, you know, that was probably the first really dark days.

And figuring out that not all businesses are the same. Businesses are a reflection of the leader at the top. And if the leader at the top is a shyster, he's crooked or him or her, and they want to take advantage of a young entrepreneur, they're going to. And their plan on that end was to hold the parts until we lost all the orders and couldn't pay our bills and then they were going to take over the company. And they sued us. Before they delivered the parts, they then sued us for not paying them, which was another strategy. And they didn't think we had a law firm and it got really ugly. And then in the end, we learned

we lost all the orders for that year. And it was a really heartbreaking dark hour. And when you talk about how you get through it, you know, you dig deep. And I remember going over to this building with Richard at the final hour. You know, we're now in August with trucks and we wouldn't leave the building. The owner snuck out the back, if you can believe it, got in a Jaguar and tried to drive away. We had to block a street to get a conversation. We went in and took whatever parts they had. And we'd already paid them more in our, you would already paid them more than the parts were worth.

You just can't even make this stuff up. we bring the parts back and try and weld out some towers and the parts were built wrong. So I'd hire another machine shop to fix the parts. Meanwhile, the same company was suing us. And we found out that this guy had a history. Later on, we found out. And this was a big shop. Lots of machines, lots of employees, owned buildings.

And this was my first experience with a, well, with a crooked or sheister, you know, as an owner of a big business. and their strategy was to run us into the ground. And, you know, so anyway, there's the first one. And we just, we did push through, we built whatever towers we could, we delivered on a few, whatever we could for the dealer, made it right, struggled through the winter, and took another run at it.

So, soak that up. Now I need a cocktail. I'm going to get you a cocktail. Yeah. This is the first. That's all right. Right in the middle of the podcast. Well, that's all right.

If you're listening, we're drinking a little Woodford Reserve. Could be a sponsor. Robert's a bourbon man. As soon as I saw him, like, bourbon. Jeez, Louise. Okay. Well, we'll go there. I'm never afraid of a little.

taste test no actually where where my my thought was man that experience how do you trust a sure because I know I'm at this weird point right now where I'm like naive no green right right and that's a dangerous thing because I listen to that story and I go I understand that right like everything you just said I'm like I don't I don't fault you for anything because I go that make sense to me. But after going through that, almost losing your company, realizing they had a strategy to try and buy you out, take over what you're doing, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're like, holy dinah. Then I would assume the next go-around you're like, well, I'm not going to trust anyone for a while now. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you're learning lessons all along the way. And you're not,

you know, I mean, I was a trusting, I just didn't know what I didn't know. And one thing, you're, that you learn is that if you're out there and you're an entrepreneur and you want to take a run at this, just understand that in your first five years of business, maybe seven, you're vulnerable. I mean, you just are. And there's going to be a lot of good people that have genuine intent and they want to work with you and support you. But there's also just as many bottom feeders at that point, that first five or seven years that are there to exploit young entrepreneurs, and that's what they do. I swear they're out there. And if you can imagine, that situation with that machine shop didn't happen once.

It happened twice. Two different shops. Even though you're a little smarter and you're a little tougher and you're trying to build your teflon coat, you know, we were at the mercy of these shops that looking at a young kid, you know, 23, 24 years old with all these orders and trying to build a product. And they thought, you know what, we're going to, we are going to roll this guy over and we're going to take advantage of them. And it wasn't just machine shops.

It was, it was, you know, I seen it with different professionals, different firms, different consultants. And there's a lot of people out there in your first five or seven years that are going to take advantage of you. And I think that that's part of the, you know, you're going to have to survive it. And hopefully you can put, when people say you need mentors or people you can trust around you that have been through it, they're not kidding. You want to put a couple good people to talk to to keep your same.

vanity. You want to, you know, you need those people too or you probably won't make it through. And I think a lot of people would throw in the towel along the way. And that, that, those little defining moments is what separates someone just trying something and someone following it all the way through because it doesn't matter whether it's a machine shop not delivering parts or a factory and overseas that doesn't deliver on your order, whatever type of products you're building or local comes like again local companies or overseas companies it's been my experience that you know it's the it's the same you're going to have the same challenges here as you will anywhere that doesn't uh well you well that it terrifies me just a smit right i'm like it should i got i got to draw it in a little bit yeah

soak it up because yeah you get the mentor thing is an interesting how did you find your mentors Or did they find you? A little bit of both. I think people around me watching what I was trying to do. There's a couple of my first mentors. My aunt, I think, introduced me to a couple older gentlemen who were consultants up in the city. And Harry and John were their names. And they had a little consulting company.

They acted as a management team for entrepreneurs. And she probably seen in need. she recognized that, yeah, maybe I needed some mentorship. And these guys took a meeting, and I think I was also seeking help to understand financial management at that time, which I didn't have a lot of experience with early on, like year two, year three. And, you know, those two stick out for me because they put me in a boardroom and I met them. I didn't have any money to pay them.

But I knew I needed to understand financial management. and I needed to understand how to properly set up the business plan for this business financially. You know, I can design. I'm an idea guy, right? I'm a tangible product guy. But how do I monetize this at a price and, you know, how do I market up? And how do I create that matrix and understand it? And what's EBITA and what's net margin and earnings?

And, you know, so these guys put me in a boardroom for a better part of a year for half days. And they were willing after meeting me. I said, you know, straight up. I can't pay you, but I would love to work with you somehow. And they, you know, I give them 5% of Roswell to be my leadership team. But there were more than that. They were mentors because obviously in those early days, 5% of nothing's nothing. So they're really doing it for free.

Let's not forget that. And they believed in me and taught me a lot. And then along the way, they introduced me to another gentleman, Warren Stevenson. And, you know, there's a lot. of people again your family they're always a sounding board that you can trust and and talk to and so some some you know i guess i was looking for and some found me and seen something that they wanted to be a part of like maybe there was a glimmer of hope i don't know but i'll tell you what if it wasn't for the different mentors along the way you know it's a lonely road but if you've got people that

you can trust you know you're gonna you're gonna have those bad days and those battles but when you've got those people that you can use as sounding board keep your sanity um it's all the difference so and the mentor thing i find um extremely interesting because i i used to do this little thing well i i've already done it with you right you know if you go back to 2019 what you tell herself etc but further on that you know when i was 18 i thought i was i thought i was smart and then at 25 i thought i had the world by the balls and at 30 I still thought I was this and then something clicked and I just realized like I'm a dummy like I got a lot of good qualities but overall I don't know jack squat right and I'm sure at 40 I'm going to look back at 35 and this is going to go on and I'm excited about it I think

honestly that just you got so much life left to learn and continue to figure things out but a mentor can steer you away from some big old pitfalls or give you some information early on that can actually save you a bunch of time of spinning tires or going and doing things that aren't going to bear fruit, et cetera, et cetera. Just, you know, like you said, keep your sanity. Like part of it is just keep your sanity.

And the mentor thing in our civilization and maybe across all civilizations is such a cool idea to help people, people with, you know, you're talking about, you know, I'm an idea man. I'm like, oh, I know all about that, right? The idea is never stop flowing. And actually, one of the, one of the toughest things about my brain is while you're talking, I'm trying not to think about 70 million questions. It's like, I mean, it's a good problem. Yeah. But at the same time, it's like, I'm trying to quiet it so I can just listen. And then it can come, it's, it, it is, it's a talent or a skill. And I'm still working on it. I'm, I'll be working on that until I'm 70 because I as you talk questions just keep firing. I'm like okay brain let's slow this down but a mentor going back to the idea of mentors I think it's just like everyone in civilization could use mentors because they help steer you

away from pitfalls they help balance you out because you talk of anger stress all these different things they can you know well they can point out things that right away can alleviate all of it. You know, like, oh, yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way. And I just think it's super cool that, you know, when I see successful people, they always bring up mentors. And I'm like, that's cool. I always am curious on how they stumble on them. Because for me, I look at mentors and I'm like, I think mentors are needed no matter what stage of life you're in and no matter what occupation you're in. It doesn't matter if you're in the oil field or doing boat design. Well, and I think if you're going to be successful, you're going to, you're an entrepreneur.

And I think it comes down a lot of different things outside of running a business. But, you know, you realize early on, if you're lucky, you've got to check your ego at home, you know, and there's a lot of things you don't know. In fact, probably most things you don't know, right, early on. And then, you know, the successful guys will tell you. having a mentor or just a sounding board for these things. It's a big deal. And I think that the willingness to understand that you're not going to, you don't know everything.

You know what I mean? Why don't you just start, even if you maybe think you know something really well and you're good at, maybe it is its strength. Why don't you just assume you don't and listen and try and develop it. And I think that that approach with every segment, because your business is going to have so many pieces of the puzzle to be successful. You know, I think about it a lot like you're trying to build a championship sports team. And it's never anything somebody can put their finger on. There's a secret sauce between talent, grinding, hard work, perseverance, personalities, synergy, chemistry.

They have to get this feeling, this energy within that. group. You can have the most talented group in the world. They can't win shit. And business is like that every day. So there's personalities and people that play into it and you're trying to, you've got this never ending puzzle against the wall and you're trying to fit the pieces in. And that person is incredibly smart at that. I'm never going to be as good at that as they are. And you keep putting the pieces in and you keep moving them around. And if this piece doesn't fit really well, there's no synergy, you start to learn, wow, that, wow, that shirt took the whole thing sideways. And if you're going to win a championship and have a great team, which is similar to trying

to have a great company, it's something where you really got to leave the ego at the door and start building it from the ground up, assuming, man, I got a lot to learn every day. And we're going to get our asses kicked. And we're probably never, we're never going to get there, you know, to the finish line. because if you get to a finish line, then there's no journey left, right? But you can have a championship team that gets some wins. And when you do that, what do you want to do the next year? You want to win a game and you want to keep the team together.

You don't want anybody to leave. You don't want to keep your salary cap and check. You know, you want to keep them. You're moving the pieces around and you want to do it again. And you want a dynasty. Then you're like, okay, you get a little taste of it. The business is going. And there's a leader there.

And there's a leader there. And there's a character player there. And I think a business is a lot like that. And, you know, think of your mentors as your, you know, general managers in the room and our ownership group, right? And it takes everybody. It takes a village. Sticking with the sports analogy, because as you can see in the room, I do enjoy that. I do too.

Do you feel like you've won a championship? Yeah, I think we've won a couple championships. One, we're still in business. Okay. 24 years later, we're still in business and we won innovation awards. We're partnered with some of the greatest boat companies in the world, which is a real privilege. I mean, these are people that run incredible companies that we're learning from every day. And I think being able to do that and do what you love 24 years later, I feel like we've won a couple championships along the way.

But we're not, you know, we want to keep doing it, right? We won. I want to see wins in all sorts of new ways, right? So yeah, no, I feel like there's been a couple wins along the way. I'll bring it back to me. I've had two kind of like surreal moments since I started this. There's probably more than that. Like, I mean, I got to interview Don Cherry, and when he came on, I was like, this is freaking cool.

Deep breaths. Right, absolutely. But aside from gas, the two surreal moments is April 1st, which I always chuckled April 1st. It was my first day of full-time podcast. Right. Like no April Fool's joke. I woke up and I'm like, holy shit. Yeah, we're doing this.

We're doing this, right? We're in. We're in. You just push the chips in the middle of the table. Yeah. And that's a cool feeling. It is. And then the other one was I had this idea in my head.

I did an SMP Presents. And as you talk, I'm like, man, I already got, like, we'll talk after. Anyways, SMP presents. I had this idea in my head of doing what I consider a live podcast, right? Creating an event, having people get a great meal and then listen to some speakers. And then literally a roundtable, a live roundtable that I just moderate, just throw questions and get feedback from the audience, just kind of this interactive thing. And at the time, I did it. I was like,

this may bomb. Like, it's literally an evening of people talking, like, and not trying to make you laugh. Like literally trying to talk about some complex ideas and this and that. And different backgrounds, right?

I had a politician, a doctor, a lawyer, and a media personality all up on stage. They got to talk and, you know, the audience had this way to vote things up and down so that they could, so that they could interactive.

dictate where it went. But it didn't have the guy grabbed the microphone and tell a 12-hour story. It was literally everything was fed to the computer. And from there, you just ask questions and let them run with it and just kind of see. How to work. So I definitely had my pitfalls of like, oh, got to change that for next time. Yeah, we've had those moments. But overall, like, I was terrified of that night because I'm like, if this bombs, I don't know if I got a career and moving things along.

That was my like and when I looked out into the audience, I don't know if you could have heard a pin drop, but that's what it felt like. It just everybody was like so engaged. Right. And I'm like, this is cool. And that was. And you create it. Yes. And that was kind of an interesting.

And that was before I quit my job. That was about a week and a half, 10 days before I quit my job. So April 1st was the morning I wake up, but I already had the experience of like, if I was, This bombs. I don't know if April 1st is the right idea. And it was like this super cool moment of like, wow, this is going to work. This idea works. Like this idea, people want to explore ideas. And I go back. The reason I tell the story is I go, what was your validation moment? What was your surreal moment of like, whether it's sitting in Florida or whether it's in Eminton, whether it's sitting in your garage where you're just like, holy crap, I think this is going to work. well I mean for me similarly there was there was a lot of those along the way I mean the first the first one early early on was stopping in with my product in a bag in a farm truck and having dealers say yeah I think the quality is great we want to order five of these we want to order 10 like orders or people you know paying for your idea your product is validation um and then people

feedback saying that they're happy with what you're built, that's even better, right? Or the first time we put a big stereo system in an OE and people's eyes light up and they, you know, blind sound test with big companies, big competitors that are multinational and having a group pick that boat with our sound system and go, wow, that's the one. That's a validating moment. What's a blind sound test? Well, if I were doing a blind sound test for you and you owned a boat company or you ran a boat company, we might put our audio system, you know, all acoustically designed performance in one boat and then two competitor boats right beside it, that they would also engineer and put their systems in. And then they would put the three boats together and they would do blind testing,

not telling the sales group or the executive team, usually executive team, whose audio is in each boat, and then let them just pick, you know, which they think sounds better. That's a blind sound test in the marine world. It's like Coke or Pepsi. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, make your pick. But that can be a validated moment. And along the way, I mean, really for me, it's probably product and seeing people's reaction to interacting with the product. Those are my validating moments. When I see someone these days with a we do a telescopic tower on the Paragon stuff, which is-

The videos look super cool. Yeah, it is cool. And there's an interaction with the product where you're in the boat, you don't fold it anymore, and you bring it down and you've got, you know, but talking to people that are just like, this thing changed my life. And this is how my family used it. And a storm came in and we were caught out.

North Carolina and this lake and and the thunder came in in our last boat. We got slammed and my kids were crying and this thing came down and protected us and kept us dry and thank you. And I mean, those are the moments that I mean, I really live for for sure. Those are defining moments. That would be, that's one thing listeners don't get to experience because they're the one obviously sending you the feedback and I get let me be clear I get both sides of it right like the good comes with with the bad or the ugly but the the those moments you just talked about with the family saying you changed their life and everything those are those are pretty cool anytime that comes in you're like oh man like I just got told I'm a you know I did my job I mean

I just got told that we did our job yeah you know my team and then you know there's a sense of pride you know think about when your kids score a goal or your kids do something amazing it's a similar feeling as a as a entrepreneur or business owner that's got a team a great team when you hear that unsolicited feedback you can sit back and go yeah my team you know we did our job you know I want to give you want to give you have a sense of pride yeah right I don't know I was give them that feedback I'd have to keep them on their toes you know but there's enough people pat him on the back all the time these days

but now I'm kidding. There's a proud moment, so. You know, I hate to switch to a topic that I feel like, you know, right now, it's too bad the Oilers weren't still in the playoffs. Oh. Did you watch the game? Oh, yeah. I was, you know, my travel schedule, I would have been up here for the final round,

and maybe, maybe I would have caught a game. And it broke my heart that we didn't kill a little further. but I'm obviously really excited about what they did this year. And I'm in Florida. There's me and Richard. We got the jerseys on. We're watching the games. We're still there.

Do you go to any of the Lightning Games? I mean, obviously they're in the Stanley Cup finals again. Yep. And what an incredible club. Yeah, great environment, great location. What a venue. We try and get to a game a year, you know, one or two. It seems like I'm chasing around with.

the business, the family, and the sports, and don't get a lot of breakaway in time to go catch a game with the guys. But some of our guys got over there a couple times here during the playoffs. And in a future version of myself, I'll probably get to some more games as well. What sport do you pay attention to the most? Like, what's your sport? I mean, is it water sports, or is it like? It's still, I mean, my sports business, okay? That's interesting. No. It is. I pay attention. The oil, I mean, when we get to playoff time, we're tuned into the oil, it's probably the one I follow the most. As far as sports in general, you know, that's about it, really.

Can we talk about Ron DeSantis for a second? Yeah. You know, to just do a hard 180 left turn, whatever. Yeah. You got to live in what people in this area looked at like God's country. Yeah, like, I'd agree. Through COVID, the amount of times I watch Ron DeSantis have a video go viral, et cetera, and meanwhile, we're locking down, we're this, we're that, we're everything.

Here's a guy that could very well be the president of the United States in the future, possibly. Yep, he's going to make a run. Yeah. It's incredible. It is incredible, isn't it? And you've got to live in the state that he was championing. Yeah. What's the last from a kid who grew up in Hillmond and heard probably all the stories that went along here.

Oh man. Yeah. And visited it once or twice. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that for a little. Ruthless. Well, to sum up Florida, my feelings in a word, fortunate. Florida has had an energy.

You know, Desantis is pushing some incredible policies in that state that are probes. business and again I come back to my politics are pro business okay I strongly believe that businesses and innovation provide jobs it props people up I said it earlier I'll say it again and DeSanto's um has done an incredible job keeping business is my pronouncing his Desantis yeah okay how'd you pronounce it I think I said DeSantis I don't know DeSantis okay anyways I'm cutting you know I want to make sure I'm not butchering because I do that from time the time. Maybe we're both mispronouncing it, but I'll never know. You know, I'll invite him for a tour of Roswell. There you go. But, you know, Florida's pro business and what he's done, and he did

it knowingly and openly and aggressively, he said, listen, we've got to keep businesses open. We've got to let people get on with their lives. And we're, you know, it's not that we weren't taking the policies seriously. You know, COVID affected us. Everybody's known people where it was a big issue. And it was a nasty bug or it is a nasty bug, whatever variation we're in now. But in Florida, we work the policies, we work the mask policies, we give people some flexibility, you know, if you're, you know, to work through it. But we fundamentally tried to keep businesses open. And then we got kids back to school and we kept people. And I think from even just a mental health piece, the energy in Florida as an incredible vibe.

It's a positive vibe. It reminds me oil and gas up here 20 years ago when there was an energy. People are making money. People are innovating. People are starting new companies. And there was just a positive energy all the way around when the West was pro-business. And, you know, I feel like Florida is doing that right now. We've been fortunate enough to be there, you know, 13, 14 years to 07 when we opened the office in Florida.

and the growth we've seen in that community has been incredible. There's people flocking in and there's a lot of professionals, engineers. We've got SpaceX right there in our backyard. We've got NASA booming, Harris, Defense, you know, everything, technology companies, manufacturing companies, boat companies. And what he did early on, I mean, I think we were even all watching it as business owners are going, is he going to get away with this? You know, is this going to be well received? and it wasn't well received, of course, across the country

because there's such a polarized divide right now. And that's a whole other topic. I mean, it's a little bit scary where everybody's at. You know, you're far right, far left. There's not a lot of moderate. But being in Florida and living in it and being able to travel throughout the U.S., right, into other blue states, California,

up here into Alberta and Canada and see the policies and how it affected business, how it affected travel. I fortunate back to that word I feel incredibly fortunate that we're there um manufacturing building products and uh yeah that's how i feel you know it's it's been a i mean here in canada overall like it's been a strange world oh yeah it's been a strange world you know like just justin trudeau aside it's been a strange world but you know we had a stint there through this past winter where you just like I don't know I was worried about you it was a strange time and you know you talk about

mental health you talk about drugs you talk about it all I think I'm pretty sure the listener can agree that you were impacted one way or another whether it was depression whether it was And I don't mean one person, like the person listening, but you saw that. I had good friends that are healthy and everything that suffered from depression. Drug abuse, suicides, all these things just crap, crap, crap, and weren't allowed to be talked about. Right. And was strange. And you watched at Santas, and you're like, man, we need that up here right now.

Like, especially in Western Canada where we should be. It's a real eye opener. I think the whole two year, two and a half year journey was an incredible eye-opener about how fragile our freedoms are. You know, we think we walk around, you know, we can do what we want, when we want, start a business. You know, I want to play hockey. You want to do sports. My kids are in school. We want to travel.

You know, we were traveling the world, global businesses all over the world. And then in a heartbeat, everybody shut down overnight. And to hear the stories up here. I mean, you talk about the mental health stuff, but even just, I don't know if it's true or not, but I mean, I was hearing stories in Florida about neighbors turning on neighbors because people are over visiting and stuff and policies and fines. And I mean, it just sounds, I mean, it sounds, on this podcast, alien to me. I've interviewed a lady who was in Quebec at the time of the curfews. There was curfews in Quebec?

Yeah, oh, yeah. And listeners don't remember Kate King. She's a paramedic in Alberta. She was out there visiting and she's basically on her way back. She's like, you know, we were there the one night and cops were, you could hear the cops going in because you weren't supposed to have anyone over to your house past a certain time and blah, blah, blah. And so cops are going and, like, gone are the days where I be like,

where I'm like, this can't happen here. Right. Right? Because I was there two years ago. I won't happen here. Everybody's just a little chicken little. And, you know, it just. kept going and going and going and going.

Yeah, and here in Canada, there are some crazy stories. And are they exceptions? Well, maybe a little bit, but like even on Christmas Day two years ago, maybe it was this year, geez, time has kind of been in a vortex. They had the snitch line. The snitch line. Oh, yeah. So, like, you could call on your neighbor or whatever and say they were having people over.

And in a small town, rural Alberta. That was happening here in Alberta. Oh, yeah. It's just incredible. Right? And here's the, you know, I don't know if this is true or not. So please people don't don't take this for verbatim. But a lot of it was family on family.

And you think that's where we. Right. And I put a lot. I'm hard on our politicians a lot. Because I'm like, they're the ones that stood up in front of the screen when everybody's watching and pitted us against each other. And that's where we got to here. And that was tough.

It was sad. Yeah, absolutely. That's why when the trucker convoy went, it was such a galvanizing force. of all Canadians, even though the CBC wouldn't talk about it, even though, you know, it was tried to be deemed this like far right. Oh, yeah. Like crazy group of people. They were, from what I saw, great group of people that were there for the right reasons that just wanted some life back. Well, and I was watching the live feeds from that. As everybody went out to Ottawa, I was watching it every day from Florida on the live feeds with a sense of pride. And I never seen anybody that was, uh, abusive or violent or, you know, any, and obviously we don't get the CBC feed down there, but to hear, it seems like a lot of misinformation. And I think that's an issue overall. People are losing trust in the media and the press they're being fed.

And, you know, everybody knows there's a certain amount of propaganda in media overall. And, you know, obviously, I mean, that's why people are drawn to podcasts, is because that you can get a real conversation that's not being swayed. by a party in a lot of cases but scary times up here i mean ray dalio has a book the changing world order have you read that yet i know the book i have not read it yeah you i mean you probably want to give it a read it's worth the read and it you know i follow him on twitter there's he's a smart man very smart man yeah yeah no he's he's a smart man and there's a lot of indicators there i mean people are becoming polarized. We've got some extremist stuff happening on the right and on the left. And

these are not, these are moments in time. These are defining moments, just like a business has, but these are defining moments where we need politicians and people to do the right thing and find some middle ground. And it seems like they're having a hard time listening to each other, communicating and finding that middle ground. So you hope that a leader can come through the, weeds and rise up and have enough strength to do that. Obviously, in Florida, we've got a great leader right now that's got some strength. And the whole country is, you know, getting behind, you know, getting behind them for doing that. But it's stuff that everybody has to pay attention to because if we can look back and say,

okay, well, we've not had any of these defining moments, you know, the civil war and chaos in our lifetime but if you don't have to look very far back in history and they're there and they're there and things can get weird in a hurry and they did this last year I mean if you can imagine him mobilizing the guard wasn't it he'd mobilize the military to pull the truckers out the whole thing seems surreal but I think everybody has to realize it can get a lot worse and you know if you've got a voice you've never need to use it we literally had there at one point. All the premieres talking about consequences

for the unvaccinated, how it was a pandemic of the unvaccinated. They wouldn't talk to anyone, like there was just things going on in here like, this is strange. You had, you know, Trudeau's last election, he ran on a platform of basically I'm going to make life

difficult for people who don't get vaccinated. It was very strange to hear out of a leader. And then to be, you to get voted in I mean you can imagine the chills that sounds down yeah six million people's backs and then on top of that you know we always talk like there was so many people that were coerced not only in Canada but across the world yeah like you know in and even where I worked yeah without a choice there was

there was email sent that said listen you do this or you're done on this day and and some of us couldn't travel and you can't get in there out of a country you can't do business you can't you can't perform the duties that you you're obligated to perform for your people unless you unless you do it and I mean just think about the freedoms that we're we're understanding we're not just putting hands in fire here you know we're we're throwing grenades into into groups of people um and it's it's uh it's scary i'm trying to think right now i'm gonna i'm gonna make sure i get the name right here yeah when when trudeau called i it's not the war measures act

It's the emergency act. He incited the act of what year was it? Well, that's, I was just, I was just going to say, like, the emergency act gets invoked to get rid of the truckers, right? And now the big thing coming out is like the cops, they were saying, oh, the cops wanted, the cops won, the cops wanted. Well, the cops didn't want it. Nobody asked them for it, right? And that basically eliminated everything. They just remove you.

And one of the craziest things through all of COVID, you know, one of the cool things I think about a podcast. You know, one of the cool things I think about a podcast is you can kind of hear me go from like, well, we just need to be good human beings. Right. To even where people are being haul off. And I'm like, well, that isn't that strange to where I am now. Yeah. And I think that's the track record. But where we got to in Canada was, Trudor and Rights and Freedoms was, I mean, it was toilet paper.

Stomped on. I mean, it wasn't even. Right. It meant zero. And yeah, there's no freedom to choose in that, you know, I've got a real problem with that. I mean, just as personally, it feels wrong. It's super strange. It's not how we were raised either.

You're raised to think you're living in a free country. I think a lot of people living in a democratic country like to pat themselves on the back and say, you know what, there's a lot of things we've got to deal with. And this isn't pain in the ass, but you know what, it's a free country. and in a lot of ways it is we've been able to start businesses and chase dreams and do a lot of things but when you look at the type of personal you know freedoms being taken away in a situation like this because of a difference and opinion on it's it's it's a whole other level it's a whole nother level and it's a gateway really right the door's cracked open and you know again I think people throughout this pandemic in the last two years and this has happened all over the world

the polarization you see now between the left and the right or the red and the blue or you know however you want to describe it never see anything like it and this is this is in families is in groups of friends and what used to be a friendly jarring of conversation like you're voted this and I voted that and you know this sort of conversation it's now become very different right people are on another level. So again, this is one of those defining moments where you've got to kind of strip back the layers of nonsense and find, you know, come back to the basics and say, listen, especially

from a guy says pro-business, if you're providing jobs, right, and raising up people's, focus on innovation, focus on jobs, focus on business. and people are working, they're happy. It's when you take that away from people, all of a sudden, you know, the expectations change and the polarization increases and people start getting more ambitious and motivated in the wrong ways, right?

Or, you know, anyway. Yeah, the temperature in the world right now is hot. Hot. Beyond hot. Yeah. but it doesn't matter if you like kFC somebody's going to call you out for not like a mary browns you know it's like it's just right right and it applies to a lot of stuff and the attacks aren't on your thought process it's on your character it's on who you are and people i see you know like i've been guilty of it myself right getting uh angry about it someone's idea and and not actually

following through and and like maybe just seeing the headline, reading the headline and the motion that comes from it. When if you dig into it, maybe there's more to it. You know, I just had, I don't know how long ago it was now, but I had Daniel Smith on, and she's running for Alberta conservative leadership.

And one of the things here in Alberta is net zero. It just makes zero sense, right? I've never heard of that. Net zero? Net zero. Oh, carbon emissions. Carbon emissions, right? And I think...

It's a whole other can of worms on it. Isn't it? But the way I've always thought of it is, and I'd be opening your thoughts, you know, like is wind and solar aren't going to sustain here. Driving EV vehicles here makes zero sense. And I mean specifically for here Lloyd Minster, because like everything we do, we drive.

Right. We get eight months of anywhere from minus five to minus 40. And you go like, we can't live on intermittent power. Right. It doesn't make zero sense. Then I had Daniel Smith on. Now, I don't want to commend her too much, but one thing the interview did do for me is she rattled off like 15 different ways to get to net zero, which I don't. We could talk about the net zero goal of getting to zero carbon and what that does, what ramifications that has for the planet.

There's some positives. obviously. Yeah. But she rattled off like 15 different ways that had nothing to do with wind or solar. And I was like, hmm, I kind of like that. That is taking this argument from the only way we're going to reduce carbon emissions from wherever they're at right now is not to destroy the oil field and our livelihoods and the way we heat our houses and everything else. But she like rattled off all these different.

ideas and I'm like that's innovation and I think one of the things one of the things we've struggled with here in Alberta Canada not Alberta yeah both is like what makes us great is how we dissect problems create solutions and move forward right right like everybody wants to harass the oil patch because it's so dirty and all this thing and I don't know like yeah is it uh butterflies and caterpillars and I don't know well maybe not but I mean like compared to other oil industries in the world like Canada is top notch right and they're always trying to innovate yeah be better and I think if you have the idea of let's be better right good things will follow support innovation support businesses you know put a goal

out there that's realistic which in this case in this topic is a it's a long leader I mean you start talking about you know zero missions and electric cars you know however we're going to get there, houses, everything else. You're talking about a complete revamping of the electrical grid in North America and the world, but you were not there. I mean, the technology is not there to support this revamping. It doesn't matter what you do. We're not there.

So if you don't support the innovation and, you know, up front to develop those technologies, I mean, we're just arguing about stupid shit, right? We all want to get these, you know, yours are 10 ways, but I mean, how the fuck you're going to do it? If you don't innovate and provide solutions that can actually physically get there in different segments. But, I mean, a can of worms. It's a lot of talking and not doing out there. Well, yeah. Yeah.

But you just said right there. Yeah. Yeah. And we're chastising the oil and gas. industry and the fact is a lot of the people with that verbatim don't I mean they're not providing solutions they're not supporting innovation and businesses and technology that can completely revamp a grid they don't even have the capacity to lay that out on a national scale and say all right well this is how fast we need

to charge a car to make it viable when you pull up you know one million cars a year to the charging station right which don't exist and they have to all charge within five to ten minutes that's technology doesn't exist and the power grid to support it doesn't exist but yet in the meantime let's chastise oil and gas and and talk about all these you know you know the rubber doesn't meet the road so you've got a lot of people that are talking for the sake of talking and the rubber's not meet the road and it's you know I don't know how many other people are sitting back like me that's you know it's a little disappointing but these are areas that I'm not an expert in you know I'm not out

they're innovating and trying to build solutions in those areas. But politically, you've got a lot of hurdles because there's a lot of people talking about these issues and not fundamentally building the building blocks and the infrastructure to make real changes that are going to be necessary in the next 50, 100 years. Yeah, that's, there's a lot of people, you know, what's the old saying? don't bring me problems bring me solutions about 100% and right we all love to bitch about things but how we just find solutions and move on right and support and be honest about it right I think that measuring setting expectations every you know is important and they've got to be realistic expectations um so yeah there's a lot work to do in that in that in that area um you know I I I

I'm sure we could talk for hours and pawn hours while we are. We're closing in on two. And I've really enjoyed this. I don't know for you, Robert, but this has lived up to expectation. Like I was like, I'm really interested. You know, I go back to my, you know, if I always talk about rewinding the conversation. But like, if I really go back three years and built my list, you know, some of the guys on there, Wade would certainly on there, right? And I got to interview Wade multiple times.

I've got to visit Wade in Colonna. and do some cool things like that. Incredible guy. Oh, genuine. Yeah, genuine, top notch. Good farm stock. Yeah. I think this conversation was, I really was intrigued by it because I had your name and I'm like,

oh yeah, that's like super cool. Farm kid to, you know, CEO of a marine company, you know, like, it's almost like, that's interesting. It's kind of like the look you gave me when you walked in and said, Farm Kid to podcast or how does this. You got a studio. It's incredible. How does this happen, right?

Yeah. It happens with an idea. And you keep pushing it forward and see what comes of it. But I got to, before I let you out of here, here's another Helmon man, Heath MacDonald. He was on here and talked about it. It was a super interesting chat. So he's a sponsor of the podcast and one of the sponsors. And we do a little segment here at the end.

It's a final five brought to you by Crude Masters. So shout out to Heath and his wife, Tracy, and all their family for all their support they have shown me in the three years. They've been not only to the Hillmont community, but to this podcast. They've been just like fantastic. And he said when he was on here, if you're going to stand behind a cause that you think is right, then stand behind it. Absolutely. What's one thing Robert stands behind? Oh, well, I stand behind.

standing behind my people. I stand behind my people and their dreams or my dreams. And I stand behind everybody who believes in what we do. If you find good people, dad has a thing. You ask dad about different stories and just say good people. That's right. And if you can find good people,

they're worth their weight and gold. I mean, if the listener thinks back, if I think back to this conversation and some of the trials and tribulations that you've had, it's been on people that weren't top-notch. Yep. You know? Absolutely. And you can't, I mean, no one does alone.

And it doesn't matter if it's a business. You're running the town. You're running the city. You run in the country. You need good people. And you got to, when you find them, you've got to stand behind them and support them. So good people. Friends, family.

and chase, you know, chase what you love. Chase the dream. What's one thing you're chasing right now? What's something that you're excited about here in the future? Is it the kitchenware patent or is there something else? The new kitchen appliance? No, it's not. I mean, I can't really tell you what I'm.

chasing it's all it's all top secret Sean it's all confidential stuff I'm bound by confidentiality um you know I'm I'm chasing the next championship you know I think that's really what we're chasing at Roswell we're chasing the next big championship or the next big win the next defining moment and the next lesson that's going to make us better so I'm going to keep chasing that well there's nothing wrong with chasing another championship in my opinion hey right Confidential or not, that's a hell of an answer because at the end of the day, I think we all want a championship. Absolutely. Go get it.

Well, I appreciate you making your way here and doing this. I hope you've enjoyed it. I've certainly enjoyed it. It's been great. Pick your brain. I've enjoyed this thoroughly. So thanks for hopping on. Okay.

Thank you. Good luck.