The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Conan Owen, Owner, Sir Speedy Of Central VA; As UVA Grad, Thoughts On Jim Ryan Resignation

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

The I Love CVille Show headlines: Conan Owen, Owner, Sir Speedy Of Central VA As UVA Grad, Thoughts On Jim Ryan Resignation Is UVA A Good Steward For CVille Biz Ecosystem? Pros & Cons Of Doing Business In CVille Area Inside Charlottesville Area Business Development Does CVille Politics & Activism Impact Business? Restaurant & Local Business News And Notes Executive Offices For Rent ($350 – $975), Contact Jerry Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air Conan Owen, Owner of Sir Speedy of Central VA, joined me live on The I Love CVille Show! The I Love CVille Show airs live Monday – Friday from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The I Love CVille Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible, Rumble and iLoveCVille.com.

Good Tuesday afternoon, guys. I'm Jerry Miller. Thank you kindly for joining us on the I Love Seville Show. We're live on every social media platform possible, and we encourage you, the viewer and listener, in real time during the show to help shape our discussion. We pride ourselves on the I Love Seville Show with offering fresh content to you. That's the whole concept of the program. Fresh content tied to Charlottesville, Almaro, and Central Virginia to you, the viewer and listener. Crowd sourced content because we want you

to provide us information as well that's reliable, that's credible, that we can then trust but verify, and then pass along to the masses on our platform. And that's how today's interview kind of materialized. One of the viewers and listeners that we saw routinely having quality insight, quality insight on who was opening a business, who was closing a business, who was expanding a business, who was looking for funding, who was taking over the space next door, who was really putting their, not just their retirement or their cash position on the line,

but their heart and soul on the line to launch a business. Conan Owen was routinely in my inbox, direct message, text messaging me, in person. And I was like, damn, this guy knows what he's talking about from a business development standpoint. This show materialized our relationship relationship and we're now going to feature Conan Owen on the I Love Seville show and you're going to see what I saw over the months of chatting with him about business in this community. We'll welcome him in a matter of moments on the program. I do want to highlight one of our fantastic partners, the Vermillion family. Charlsville Sanitary Supply on East High Street. 61 years they have been in this business,

proudly serve this community. John Vermillion, who is a namesake with the business, much like his son, Andrew, has joined us on the program and has highlighted the trials and tribulations of doing business in this community. We'll do the same with Conan Owen today. Judah Wichower is behind the camera. My friend, Judah Wichower, if you can go to the studio and then a two-shot and

welcome what is going to be a household name after this interview. Conan Owen to the program. He's got an MBA from the Darden School. He owns Sir Speedy of Central Virginia. I believe his wife is a business owner as well in the spa category if memory serves correctly. My friend, the show is yours. You got a lot of people watching. Introduce yourself to the viewers and listeners. Well, thanks, Jerry and Judah. It's great to be here. I've enjoyed watching your, listening your show for quite a while now. And yeah, business development is my lifeblood. So I've been in Charlottesville for, you know, coming up on 20 years this fall. I went to Darden back in the 90s, took an international

detour to Mexico and Australia and lived in D.C. before moving down here with my wife in 2005. And back then I was in the hotel business and my wife opened a rolly spa in Barracks Road in 2006 and she's been downtown on West Main Street since 2016. So coming up on 10 years at that location. But yeah, I fell into the entrepreneurship. COVID killed my hotel business. So I purchased the Sir Speedy franchise almost three years ago, and it's put every one of my consulting

and Darden skills to use all my 20 years of business to business and business to consumer marketing experience. And I tell you, I love working with local small businesses even some of the national brands that have lots of local operations and the nonprofits too. In fact we just did a big job for the botanical gardens that was a wonderful treat. He is very philanthropic with the services he provides always working with nonprofits he works with small businesses, mid-cap businesses, large businesses. If you can put a logo

on it, Sir Speedy can certainly help you. COVID killed the hotel business. You touched on that briefly with me. Tell the story. Well, I was in the hotel spa business. So we manage hotel spas in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and then we did in-room services in about 20 cities. It's a concept we started in 2005, long before Soothe and Zeal and the on-demand services. We were on-demand with telephones. And we partnered with the Kempton Hotel Group, which is over at the North Grounds at the Forum Hotel.

In fact, the general manager there I knew 20 years ago when she was fresh out of college working the front desk up in Boston. So unfortunately, being in the business of having strangers rub you during COVID wasn't exactly a winning proposition. So had to put that to rest after 20 years. And this great opportunity came up with Sir Speedy had been here 30 years, run by the same family who grew up in the business.

And I was fortunate enough to take over a strong customer base. I had to upgrade a lot of the equipment just you know some of it by necessity but a lot of it out of my desire to position the business to do more for the community. Tough question right out of the gate. With the benefit of hindsight and how everything was managed with COVID what comes to mind from Conan Owen? Um, the shutdowns were just brutal. Um, I mean, my wife's business was shut down for, for many months. I mean, I knew mine would be, but that wasn't as, as, as crucial for me.

Cause I wasn't paying that much in rent for our small call center offices here. Um, but, and the fact that she was a medical facility, you know, it was like, if anyone's going to take precautions, it's going to be, you know, RNs and LPs and folks like that. Just the shutdowns just seemed unnecessary for the school kids. I mean, the learning loss for them has just been horrific. And then I won't say necessarily the, the, the downside to it, but definitely one of the big implications that's affected Charlottesville is the influx

of people from the cities. Everybody, you know, we, we looked to sell our house before COVID. It didn't work out four months later. Every real estate agent in town was asking us if we wanted to relist and every possible venue that we looked at buying a house or buying a lot, they were all gone. So that changed and it's still it's still going on today because we are dramatically under inventory for housing in this market. We I've said this on pass shows I think

Charlottesville is going to look at COVID and the pandemic much like other cities in America as a turning point for its history, its legacy, it's the flip book of its brand identity from a business development standpoint. The influx of new blood to the Charlottesville, Alamaro County area specifically, pro or con to locally owned business? Well, they become locally owned business. You know, if you move here from DC and cashed out of your corporate job and decided to start your own business, you are by definition now a locally owned business

and great. I think there are just other implications that happen. Things like, you know, how can a place like Hotcakes just close without someone wanting to take it over? I think there are just other implications that happen. Things like, how can a place like Hotcakes just close without someone wanting to take it over? Well, because COVID decimated the workforce and decimated the food industry. So no one in their right mind

was gonna buy that business at that time, even though it was a great and very successful business. And there have been way too many of those around town folks that just couldn't recover. I remember I used to work out at Albemarle Square and right in that same plaza was Kurt's ice cream. He made great ice cream. He was selling it in foods of all nations and COVID hit and I don't even know where

he went but that stuff was a great post-workout treat even though my trainer would hate me for that. I'll throw this to you. You and I are very similar in our line of work in that we're providing consulting services for businesses. Business owners come to you and I and say, here's the good, the bad, and ugly

of what's happening for us. I attribute it to being the confessional of business, where they're coming into the box and confessing what's on their mind business-wise that day. We hear it. Most of the stuff, we don't repeat it. And that's why people trust us to do business with us. The labor piece, not finding labor,

is something that is constantly mentioned to me. I'll throw that to you. How often are you hearing it? The impact it's having on the small business locally. It's, I had that my first year that I took over. My first year was just a horror show of trying to keep- What year was that? Find people. Well, for me, it was 2022, started in October 2022. It took me a good year before I had a,

at least a year, closer to a year and a half before I had the team I've got now, which is just outstanding. They are all just hitting it on every cylinder and I'm looking to hopefully grow quite a bit. But there've been a lot of businesses. I mean, the biggest example for me is A Squared Pizza up in Hollymeade who took over the end zone pizza space.

And he could only open for dinner because he didn't have staff to produce lunch. He was coming in on Thursday at 10 in the morning to start baking pies to build inventory for the weekend. He couldn't find people. Then you have kind of compounding issues with things like that is you've got, you know, our wonderful county ordinances, the new crate place out in Crozet. He, by zoning code, is not allowed to put a now hiring banner out on 250 for people to see, oh, maybe, you know, my kid that I'm dropping off at Western would want a job there. So it's restricting that.

I think the gig economy is still killing us, that people work when they have nothing better to do, and it allows them a way to do what I call a subsistence career. Is all I do is get enough money for food and rent, and when I need a little more money, I'll work a little harder to go on vacation or treat myself to something, but they're not building any savings, they're not building any wealth, they're not really consuming much, which may be a lifestyle choice, but I think the lifestyle choice is more just the, I'm doing what I want to do

when I want to do it, and that's making it really hard for businesses to find people. And it's not just burger flipping, it's everybody. Viewers and listeners, let us know your thoughts. You can put your comments in the feed. We'll relay them live on air to Conan Owen on the program. Ask him questions. I'll highlight some of the viewers and listeners that are watching the show. John Blair's on LinkedIn. Always appreciate John Blair watching the show. We got TV, radio, and print. They watch every single show. Watch it now. John, is it wages? Has given you some props. Hugo Arias has given you some props right now. William McChesney, thank you for watching the program. I try to characterize the health of our locally owned business community on the show often. The word that comes most

to mind for the business community from my vantage point, I'm very curious of what your word is or how you would describe it. For me, it's vulnerable or fragile. You see otherwise? Yeah, I do. I see a lot of people on different Facebook groups or next door Bemoaning the demise of a local tradition and that is unfortunate and they go out for a lot of different reasons There's a lot going on with lack of succession Nobody like hotcakes. Nobody wants to take over the business after someone built it up for 20 something years But what I also see, because as you said earlier about me being one of the first calls

after you get your lease signed, is for every business that goes out, there's somebody coming in pretty soon after behind them. Boy to a few that you've seen. That you can speak on. Well, you see, Uplift Training took the hardware store space which had been vacant for a very long time. The old Don's Florist location over on McIntyre by ACAC. Yeah, it's got a construction crew

going in there. The dominoes on Stuart Avenue, the windows already papered over and there have been some pickup trucks parked there and I had a discussion a few weeks ago with some gentleman who was thinking of leasing the space and I think he took it. Can you offer any insight not putting you on the spot there? Latino restaurant. Okay. Okay. So not Honduran but that's okay. And then, you know, so I mean, they're just that come off the top of my head. Rita's bright beginnings has moved to a larger space over on the corner of Commonwealth and Westfield. She's having an open house at the end of the month and we're just met with the county yesterday for her signage project. Beautiful facility.

They took an old turn of the century single floor like an old dentist office and pop the top on it and added an extra 2500 square feet in this really cool modern setting and she finished it beautifully and she's got space for four times as many kids as she had at her old location and daycare we know is a huge need in this community or any community. So yeah, I mean people are growing, people are expanding. So you call it, do you describe it as healthy? Our business ecosystem?

For the most part, yeah. For the most part there are some ways that our infrastructure, and I don't mean the physical infrastructure, but the government, the school system, UVA can play a bigger role in making this and doing more in terms of supporting local business. Start with UVA. How so? Well, UVA, I went to their small business forum, I've gone to two of them, and Amazon was there or whatever division of Amazon that supplies was there.

It's like I'm sorry, they're not a small business. Why are you buying from them when you can buy all that stuff locally? You know, UVA is competing with developers for real estate and they're tax advantaged not having to pay property taxes in the city so they can always bid higher because they know their ROI is going to be much better in the long run They're building more dorms on their own grounds. So they're competing with you know, private housing Organizations in that respect which I'm all for I think we need more housing and you and I may disagree on that But for that part, I'm all for it it but they're definitely they're definitely driving that. In my world they have their own print shop, they have their own sign shop and just the

number of things that get outsourced to people out of town because they don't know of or haven't looked into local resources. I hear this all the time when people say I didn't know you did that. It's like well yeah we do more than you think we do because anything you can put a logo on, we can do. And I went to a meeting at the city economic development office and they said, would you like a bottle of water? And it had their logo on it. It was like, you didn't buy that from anyone in town, did you? And it's like, but you could. And a lot of it's education. People just don't know. But at the same time, you get to the end of the budget year and they're having to spend their money on

this and that and they oh I'm gonna go online and buy stuff. Well everything you can find online you can find locally. No doubt. Economic development in the city of Charlottesville how do you characterize it? We're talking from City Hall. They're trying, but a lot of the stuff's beyond their control. What does that mean? Safety on the downtown mall, for starters. OK, that's a great topic we talk about. The maintenance and appearance of the downtown mall.

Have you ever seen it like this? No, in 20 years, this is not a great place. The number of vacancies, and they're going to remain vacant. I've been here 25 years, I've never seen it like this. Yeah. As someone who owns real estate downtown, I am extremely scared. I was having a conversation yesterday on the Padel courts

with someone who is an extremely heavy hitter real estate wise locally. And this person said, I would not do business development. We're talking real state development in the city of Charleston. The downtown mall has got its issues. There are other neighborhoods that have their issues. And then you also look at just the lack of proper commercial space. When I moved my business almost a

year ago from Harris Street to the Market Square Plaza with my friends at Woodard. That was the only suitable space available and I was looking for about four months. There was another space but they wouldn't subdivide it or they wanted me to pay for the improvements, you know, because there's such a shortage that the landlords think that they can ask the tenants to pay for, you know, putting in fire doors and things like that, even though that's going to be there for the life of the building. So I think there is there, and you know, they just shot down that thing you know they wouldn't fill in the floodplain to put in it was a manufacturing industrial and when you talk about you know what does this community need it needs more things along the lines of you know semi-skilled skilled manufacturing and industrial you know printing is a great example not that we need another printer

we got we got plenty in town but. But it's the kind of thing where it's a skill that you can learn and you're operating some pretty technologically advanced machinery and doing some creative stuff. But it's not a work from home job. What is the, gosh, so much I want to cover with you. Conan Owen, our guest, the owner of Sir Speedy of Central Virginia. The crossroads of politics and activism and business in the city. Do they complement each other? Do they work against each other? There's a group on Facebook that is actively an active group on Facebook where they're not looking to support Charlottesville City because of its politics and activism. And that devastates me and breaks

my heart. It absolutely breaks my heart. As a guy who has two young children now, you have children? No. As a guy who has two young children now, there's nothing more that I would want to do than have our kids grow up in the business, pass the business on to them. I know they're young, that's asking a lot right there. Just, I can have dreams here. But the crossroads of politics and activism in business, where do you want to go with that?

I don't think there's any room for politics in business. As soon as you politicize commerce, you're gonna alienate a portion of your customer base. And in this case, the city has alienated consumers from coming downtown. If business owners, and I've seen things on Reddit and other places. You're active on Reddit. It's often incorrect. Somebody was outing Shenandoah Joe's as being owned by a MAGA

supporter. It's like, I don't know if you've met Daryl, but I don't think that's the case. People will do those kinds of things and say things. And my bottom line is who cares? You know? It's just like I will, you know, your money is green. As long as your money is green and it's American, I'll take it. You know, I've done yard signs for political candidates here in town, not very many because the Democrats unfortunately have a rule that they have to use a union sign shop and there isn't one in all of Charlottesville, so they ship their business out of town. The Democrats of Charlottesville have a rule they have to use a union sign shop.

The State Democrats. State Democrats. State Democrats will not print anything that doesn't have a union bug on it. Once you're in the Democrat system, and the Republicans always go for the lowest bid. So that pretty much cuts out any local players for just about everything. So one thing would be, hey, there's a good, when I talk about our infrastructure and institutions supporting local business, there's a perfect example of it.

I was approached by the Republican committee to say, can you print these yard signs? And they came back to me, and I gave them the cheapest price I could come up with. And they said, well, one of the other committee members found it you print these yard signs. They came back to me and I gave them the cheapest price I could come up with. They said one of the other committee members found it in Ohio for a dollar less. I'm just like, you know, it's like do you really want to go around saying we support small businesses except when it's our money? So I think there's a lot of issues with that. I've heard stories from

other retailers in town where members of the Board of Supervisors will come in and complain about the price because they can get it cheaper online. It's like, well, you know, that's not what local business is about. Everything is available online and sometimes it's cheaper, not always. It certainly gives you the illusion of being cheaper because it's more convenient. But even if you order online and pick up in store, you're at least supporting a local employee at Sam's Club or Walmart or Target that has to go pick and pack your order for you. But when you push the button for Amazon, it's just like you've got all these vehicles driving

around adding Lord knows what to the pollution interest. We all talk about trying to be a green community and I see them pushing all the development out to Crozet because they don't want to spoil the bucolic views on Ivy Road. Now you have a two‑lane road and all these very wealthy people sitting up that can't even see the road. And you have thousands of people commuting in from Green County and everywhere else driving which doesn't add to the stated goal of preserving the environment.

Hutch Carpenter giving you some props here. Neil Williamson, the president of the free enterprise forum, giving you some props. He says it's called creative destruction when small businesses go out and new businesses come in. He's dubbed it creative destruction and shared a link from the free enterprise forum. Comments put them in the feed. I'll relay them live on air. Well I will say to Neil we don't always, some of those people who get destroyed weren't looking to get destroyed. It just happened for a variety of reasons. Deep Throat in Montana. I'm gonna get to your comments here in a matter of

moments. Jason Nobles photo on screen. Mr. Noble says sadly it's hard to compete with cheap mass-produced products that you can find on Amazon. How do you combat that as a business owner? Well, a lot of it's the value. I mean, I get people who come to me saying, you know, I printed this thing online and, you know, it came out wrong. In fact, I got, I won't name who it was, but some nonprofit sent me an invitation to an event and the card inside didn't match, the name on the envelope was correct, it got to us but when I opened it up it was the wrong thing and it was done. They ordered it and I could turn it over and see who printed it

online. It's that kind of thing because you upload a file and it disappears. We read everything. We aren't there to proofread it but if we see something that doesn't make sense we're going to raise our hand and say, hey, this isn't quite right. So part of it is the service aspect of it but it's also tying everything together. Are you doing just a, are you still just mailing to your supporters or your existing customers or are you looking to add new customers?

You know, because I can sit down and using some databases and looking at, you know, who's your customer profile? What are their buying habits? You know, I can generate a what they call a look-alike list of customers like yours based on the demographics of your customers or who you perceive your customers to be. And we can find those people and reach out to them, which is something that you really can't do online. Comments coming in quickly, put them in the feed, viewers and listeners, I'll relay them live on air. This is from Deep Throat in Montana, his photo on screen.

How does Conan think industry composition will change or must change as Charlottesville has gone from a cheap cost of living market with housing cost costing below replacement to a desirable higher cost of living place with housing priced at or above replacement cost. Well, I think the number one thing we have to do is build. This guy is pro build. This is the only thing I think we may disagree on.

There are probably a couple others, but this is a big one. If there's a great article in the Wall Street Journal about ten days ago talking about the difference in rents in New York City versus Austin, Texas. Now Austin's a lot like Charlottesville. Deep Throat used to live in Austin, Texas. College town, pretty liberal, booming technology aspect to it. They have their own version of the TomTom festival there in Austin. Similar things. In Austin they just said build. Since 2022 rents are down 11%.

You sent me this link. Down 11%. So this new zoning policy in Charlottesville, great. Build. County office building, move it to the county, put deckers on the side of that thing, take out half the parking lot and put in affordable housing for who? For teachers, for first responders, for low income people. They're on the bus line, they're walkable to most major employers in town. Give those credits to have cops buy houses in the communities where you're having all these shootings. Have somebody live there and help them live in the city which they

serve. There are a lot of opportunities there. But that's the number one thing to get Charlottesville going is you have to have a workforce to do more than, you know, nasal gays, naval gays. Charlottesville, two thirds of the population have a college degree. In the rest of the country, it's less than a third. You know, the national average. So you've got a bunch of people in the realm of ideas, but we also need, you know, what do those ideas turn into? You know, they talk about, you know, during COVID, they talked about building PP&E.

How many factories in Waynesboro are sitting empty that you could convert to manufacturing something? Would the city give you a deal on that? I bet they would. Where are the factories in the city? Well, Charlottesville has never really had them. I mean, with the little one, there's the silk mills over on Harris Street, which is now some biotech and a few other smaller offices. There are a few other industrial things on Harris street but there's still a lot of industrial things still being used for industry. I got ties

to some of those. We've got a concrete mixing plant right there on Harris street. I used to be in that industry as opposed to having it out of town. Ix and textile, that's another example of what you're talking about. Now three notch the flagship over there. Stuff over know stuff over on Broadway kind of heading over to Woolen Mills I mean look at look at Woolen Mills how long did that sit empty before somebody took it over why wasn't that turned into housing if that was our major concern in this region you know not that I have anything against you know the folks

there but you know they could take their app company and put it anywhere. Yeah, it's a cool building. It was a good deal. But when you think about the hierarchy of needs of the economy in Charlottesville, close in housing would have been a good one. We disagree on housing. Comments are coming in quickly. I've been to relay them on air.

What else do we disagree at? As you listen to the show, I just had a curiosity, my own curiosity. And don't hold back. I got this. Honestly, the big thing that comes to mind is the approach to housing. That's the big one. There would probably be some other thing. I don't know all of your positions on different things. Like this e-bike voucher. It's just like an e-bike

costs close to $2,000. They're giving you $1,000. Well, guess what? People who need a cheap mode of transportation don't have $1,000 handy to go buy an e-bike costs close to $2,000, they're giving you $1,000. Well guess what? People who need a cheap mode of transportation don't have $1,000 handy to go buy an e-bike. I'd all for the e-bikes. Well there you go. Love the e-bike idea. But it's just like I'm not sure if you're giving the $1,000 to the right person and if you're only giving them half the cost and they can't afford the other half. Oh so your issue is the voucher going to people that don't need the voucher money.

Exactly. Yeah. Which is how the game is played. Because the people that are going to apply for the voucher money. Exactly. Yeah, which is how the game is played. Because the people that are gonna apply for the voucher are probably the sophisticated that understand how the application process works. Yeah. I mean, like the tax relief is similar.

The folks that truly need the tax relief aren't applying for the tax relief. Yeah, and it's things like that. They all sound good and they all support the city's mission for green this or green that. But it just gets into, it's the well intention that ends up turning into a mess. Deep Throat pushes back a little bit. He says, Austin, Texas has one, massively grown outward.

Two, Austin, Texas has tighter zoning than Charlottesville does. And three, Austin is down recently because developers overbuilt. Still has massively increased, more than SEVA over the past decade. Perhaps people misinterpret the Austin situation from time to time. He also throws this to you. Like the example I use, is there are no junkyards in Aspen. Out here in Montana, Sealy used to be the lumber processing town, those have all closed because Sealy is now priced

as a remote work vacation home market. Let me throw this to you. I've compared Charlottesville to the birth child of a menage-a-trois between Austin, Texas, Greenwich, Connecticut, and Vail, Colorado. Those three. I said Charlottesville's the birth child of a menage-a-trois between Vail, Greenwich, and Austin with maybe Southampton, New York watching in the corner.

I'd switch Vail for Sonoma. Okay. So give me your Charlottesville birth baby. I like you, Cody. You're good at this. Well, the reality is that, I mean, Sonoma is simply because of the winery. You know, and you've got this whole, you know, and not just the winery, but everything surrounding it.

I mean, the whole landed gentry vibe here is pretty big. And a lot of that also comes from the UVA alums who have gone to New York or elsewhere, hit it rich, and moved back here and set up a hedge fund. Vanity play. Vanity play. But they also set up a hedge fund. Vanity play. Vanity play. But they also set up a hedge. They may come here and just live in a nice big house in the country, but then they brought their hedge fund or they started a new one or they started some kind of investment group

or they're doing other things in the financial world. How often are you seeing that? Pretty often. Pretty often. Yeah, I just had my 30th Darden reunion and a lot of people, you know, we're all at that, you know, late 50s, early 60s age thinking about, okay, what's what's the final? What's that final step? You know, where's my you know, where am I going to retire to? Where am I going to

donate my money? You know, where's all that gonna gonna happen? And what was the common theme? Well, people love I mean, I came back to Charlottesville, never thought, you know, when I got a Darden degree, I grew up in Northern Virginia and every preppy schmuck I knew went to UVA and I could never imagine coming to Charlottesville. But I came for Darden and loved it. And I was like, how soon could I get back?

100%. That's how I was. And I brought my wife down one weekend and she was just like, yeah, I could move here. And totally get it. And we decided literally one weekend, when it rained and we couldn't play golf, we went looking at houses in 2005. And it's like, we're going to go put our house on the market. We left DC.

I knew my first year at UVA in fall of 2000. I would say by the spring semester of my first year, I'm gonna call this place home. It was just so obvious. But getting back to your point, if you look at the money from New York and other sources, what is it that stat that we're the 17th highest concentration of dining establishments per capita? 14th in the nation. 14th in the country.

Because there are a lot of people who have a lot of people who have the disposable income to eat out regularly. So you've got that side of it. You've got beautiful places to live. You've got a lot of land still. It's further out and it's not really commuter friendly, but it's great if you don't have to come to work downtown every day. So you've got a whole aspect of that.

You've got the Austin vibe between the kind of funky, edgy college town. Food trucks are now a big thing here like they were in Austin 10 years ago. You've got TomTom is the south by southwest for the mid-Atlantic. It's a great combination, but at the same time, you've still got UV still got, you know, UVA plays, you know, Austin at least has the government to balance them out in terms of what's driving a lot of going on there. I think a lot of people would be shocked to learn in the Charlottesville area, the number two industry behind, not individual, but the number two industry behind UVA is defense.

Yeah. 1.3 billion, according to an analysis commission by the Chamber of Commerce, Almore County in the city of Charlottesville. And that was a 2023 number. So that number perhaps up, perhaps down depending on the Trump cuts though, but 1.3 billion, the economic impact

of the defense sector. I think it's definitely up and it's gonna be growing because the kinds of things that they do at ENGIC and the space orbital, whatever it's called, you know, the black box stuff up there is definitely something that's growing. But then also when you look at the broader region, Northrop Grumman is putting in a big plan over the mountain in Waynesboro. And you know, there's going to be a lot of, you know, who knows what's going to happen

with the data sciences and the biotech school. So there's a lot of possibility for that. And that's one of those things that doesn't fit from either three of those birth parents. You know, military, because it's not even really DC driven, because a lot of it is contractors. You might have me changing my menage a trois here. So what do you think Charlottesville's the birth? Well, I still think it's Sonoma. I say Sonoma. Austin.

Austin and the New York, the greater New York area. Okay. Maybe the Upper East Side. Okay. Upper East Side of Manhattan you're gonna throw in there? Yeah. Okay. Lots of former and Wall Street types down here. Lots of very fashion driven people. I mean, you look at the growth of Scarpa as a business, they started off with one stall in Barracks Road, now they've got three of them contiguous and they just did a pop up in the Hamptons. Yeah. So there's a lot of growth in the luxury end of the market here in Charlottesville. So I think those three are fair.

But you've got this fourth thing that's happening with defense being the number two source of revenue for the business and employment for the Charlottesville area. And I think that's going to grow for a variety of reasons because once you get Northrop Grumman going in Waynesboro, you're gonna need, there's gonna be a lot of support to that, there may be some subcontractors that are associated with that facility. Yeah, I worked for, I did some consulting for Lockheed back in the day.

And I mean, they, massive organization. And with so many subcontractors feeding components to their, you know, whether it's a missile system or systems integration work, there's just a lot of, you know, people around that. And you've got, you know, and I honestly think Stanton is such a cool place that it's one cool tech employer away from being the hottest thing on the tech.

I think Stanton is 100% agree with you. I think Stanton is going to boom. I thousand percent agree with you. Conan Brenner is watching the program and, excuse me, Owen Brenner, Owen Brenner, he says first you have a great name and he says this dude is super smart. He's calling you super smart. Spencer Pushard is watching the program.

Similar issues with audio and video industry. Consumers would rather pay one to two X my cost to Best Buy Crutchfield or any other big box competitors to mount a TV strictly off the convenience of jointly buying a TV and having it mounted via the same sale even though I may be cheaper on the install and a higher quality install. He's talking Geek Squad there. Yeah, well it's vertical integration. It's like you sell the TV now you sell the service that goes with it. Seamless. It's frictionless. Yeah and it's you know business 101 when you're looking to grow it It's like I can't sell more TV, so how do I get more of the TV value chain for these giant TVs?

Complementary services. Yeah. Exactly. Georgia Gilmer watching the program. Not sure what happened, but a great local store, Maddox Lighting, has closed. All of a sudden, John Maddox is a true Charlestown character. You also have, goodness gracious, you've got a lot of people watching the program right now. Neil Williamson is on board with you with the More Housing Everywhere for Everyone. Curtis Shaver is watching the program, one-time owner of one of my favorite restaurants, Peloton Station.

Now Guajeros, watching the show. Goodness gracious, you got a lot of people watching here. Dylan Owen is it? That's my brother. Okay. Dylan is watching the program right now and giving you some love. A handful of states watching the show here. You mentioned, I'm going to just give you an open ended topic here. How do you make Charlottesville and Almore County better? You already had one really cool idea. Take the Almore County office building out of the city of Charlottesville, which a lot of people are still

like, how is the Almore County office building? It's not in the county. And the city of Charlottesville, right. Almore County are still like, how is the Albar County office building? It's not in the county. And the city of Charlottesville, right. Albar County Courthouse is another example. Yeah, it's not there. You cover that one. Other ideas of how you make Charlottesville and Albar County better, because I know you got a lot of things.

I do. Part of it has to do with, I mean, to get that zoning thing back in place. That's going to be a long time. How is that not legal malpractice? Are you talking gentry law? Yeah, that. That was just absurd. Absurd. But also just looking at you know what are you know I spoke with one client who relocated to Louisa they were looking at a business up on Rio Road I think it's the old

bright speed or it's currently the bright speed lot that has all this space and the county said no you can't grade the back because of environmental issues. So you've got this giant lot that's been for sale that no one will buy. I think you're taking a more realistic look at what development is and what kind of development you're looking for because that was very much a blue collar kind of industry that they were in. I can't remember who it was right off the top of my head. But there are a lot of trucks involved. And we decal trucks, by the way. We can do that. But it's looking at things like that. It's looking at, you know, when you look at little manufacturing around town, it

was that thread manufacturer out on the way to Afton. It's now a tasting room for flying fox vineyard, but it's empty forever. There's a lot of stuff like that. There's still a junkyard in the city. There are opportunities there to say, is there a better place for that? Harry Wright you're talking about? Right off of Carlton. Right off of Carlton. Right next to the mobile home park. Just like there are opportunities there. There are other developments in that area that are all low rise in terms of commercial.

It's like is there a way to change that and put in something that has a little more space for it? Because there's also a lot of tech manufacturing that's happening. Icarus, they 3D print their knee braces. They're a client of ours. That's an awesome client. They almost took our old space, but we didn't have the power draw. For all their, they needed a whole lot of three phase power to run those printers and

to keep the place not a million degrees so their workers wouldn't. The owner of Icarus, every time I see him, I'm like, this guy looks like Thor or Fabio, like a model. He's huge. I think he created Icarus because he ripped up his knee. I think that's the story. You've got places like that. I think it's Luma Noah is located over on 29 across from Bodo's in the ground floor of that building and they're doing light manufacturing because they're assembling components in there. So I think there are a lot of opportunities like that but in some cases it's going to need, you're going to have to

run additional power because an office building usually just does 120. I can't put some machinery in my operation because I don't have three phase power even though it's an old warehouse. And there are a lot of opportunities like that when you get into some of these heavy draws whether it's, you know, forget about Bitcoin mining, that never fly here. But you know, there's just building that in that commercial infrastructure is Really got to work better also thinking about where you you know, what kind of a business it is Where are you locating it? What are the transportation options? Is there on-site parking? You know, what is that whole situation? Because you know the

Charlottesville I don't think has a parking problem. I think they just poorly utilize the parking spaces. You have a take on this What do you make of the Woodards of the World outsourcing their downtown parking lots? Not happy about that. You experience it. I experience it, yeah. Park Mobile was great. We used it all the places we liked to go and then they switched over to an air garage as the new folk and didn't realize we had to check out because before we used to just go in and say we're

going to be here for an hour on park mobile and I guess on air garage you have to check out and we forgot to check out and we got a bill for the max and we're just like, well, that's weird and kind of forgot about it and then they sent us a fine doubling that. It's just like there's no way, you know, for casual visitors to downtown are going to risk you know paying more than their meal for parking. Would you pay out of pocket with the fire? I think it was $70 in the end. That would piss me off. Did you fight that? I did, yeah no. You just paid it?

But you know what? Haven't been back to the parking lot since. Of course not. Yeah. Spending a lot more time over at Tavola and some other places because it's just not worth it. I shouldn't have to remember to check out. And if I do, you shouldn't be charging me more than I paid for brunch. Yeah. I know. It just seems like common sense. It just seems like I totally agree with you on that. Jason, what's Conan think about the potential data centers that are coming around here?

Well, the ones, data centers meaning Louisa, Amazon, and all of that. 11 billion plus. Now I think it's up to 12 billion. I mean, that's great for Louisa. The thing to keep in mind is businesses, they pay two taxes. They pay a business property tax,

which is gonna be a huge bill for those folks in the county because they're paying for the value of their building, all those servers, you know, they're in a whole lot of income from payroll taxes, local sales taxes. So they're just not going to employ that many people once the construction phase is done. But they also pay a business revenue tax. I don't know how that works in a data center model because it's just an extension of another business, but I will say the business sales tax for your license here in Charlottesville, it's based on total revenue, not on profitability. So if you're a startup and not only based on total revenue, but paid in Q1 on projections for the whole year, which is like, come on dude Q1 on projections for the whole year.

Which is like, come on, dude. Yeah, which is the opposite of your income tax withholding, which is you decide what you want to withhold, and at the end of the year, you settle up. Here you pay upfront, at the end of the year, you settle up. We should explain to the viewers and listeners who I don't want to use the word nuance,

who are not in the game, how crazy this is. Well, it's completely crazy for a couple of reasons. First of all, that the fact that it's based on a revenue alone because most new businesses lose money the first couple of years maybe even longer. And even if you're a million dollar business, you can easily lose money the first couple of years. But if you're having to pay a 1% tax or whatever it is on a million dollars, you know, $10,000 for someone who's

already losing money. That's a lot of money to put out the door. That's an employee. That's equipment. That's a lot to put out. And it could be for multiple years. So first of all, the idea that it's based on revenue to me just doesn't make any sense at all. At least the feds in the state tax you on your profit if you have any. But then the other thing is like you say, it's like, okay, here's your estimate, based on last

year, what do you think you're going to do this year? It's like well, what I want to do versus what I want to tell you I'm going to do, you create this idea of well, I don't want to be optimistic because I'm going to have to pay money today that I may not, you know, if I overestimate it, then I'm going to have to get it back and I could have used that money in the meantime. And if I underestimated it, there's probably going to be a penalty involved because there always is.

You know, with the government, if you're a dollar short or a day late, they give you a pretty good smack in the head. And it's first quarter. Yeah. And it's first quarter. Which is the slow time for everyone. For most businesses, that's a slow quarter. Post Christmas. Yeah, the holiday hangover, sure.

Especially retail and services. Right. This question's come in the feed. Which jurisdiction in central Virginia is most pro business? Which jurisdiction in central Virginia is least pro business? And can your guests compare Charlottesville and Albemarle county to each other? It's a great question. I can't really speak to the other counties. Okay. But Charlottesville and Albemarle are equally bad and they are bad. Charlottesville and Albemarle County are equally bad. Equally bad. They're both bad.

Okay. Who's worse? And you got to give reasons why. You don't have to say businesses by name, but why? Yeah, I'd have to say I think the county is worse. Okay. Because that's where all the growth is happening in the county. And I think they're not certain how they want to handle it and manage it.

And they're kind of freaking out and they'd rather say no than say yes to something and then catch grief later because ultimately they are all politicians. That's what happened with Pro Renata and Stanton. John Shave, the owner of Pro Renata, asked Ann Malek and the board of supervisors for like 100, it was a nominal amount, a couple hundred yards of water line so he can brew more beer at Pro Renata. And they said no.

And he took the business to Stanton. Well, look at Deschutes. The Schutes. Deschutes is another one. And Deschutes was going to open a brewery here. Amaro County eventually said no. Now, they went to Roanoke. They'd ended up closing the Roanoke spot.

Deschutes did. But for a period of time, they would have employed 100 and some employees right off of 29 South where Virginia Eagle is located. Everything was buttoned up. The Virginia eagle guys, the executive team were closing that deal. Almarra county could not see the forest through the trees. The thing is if Deschutes closed it isn't because they were in

Roanoke. If Deschutes closed it's because of Deschutes. The crowd of beer category is softening. I'd rather have a business come here and try than scare them away and let them fail somewhere else. 100%. I don't think the county is wired that way. You look at 29 North, those shopping centers are sad. Home Depot looks great. It's going to be great.

But you've still got a whole lot of square footage there that would be a great place for a county office building. Vanessa Parkhill sent us a photo yesterday of Home Depot very close to opening. August 28th, I believe they said. Very close to opening. It's really going to give some good competition to Lowe's, which is a good thing because the service at Lowe's is... It's like anything else, finding good employees.

I'm not sure where Home Depot is going to find them, and if they find them, I'm not sure how they're going to keep them. Because we've got a ‑‑ I honestly think there's also a generational component that if things aren't perfect, you know, I'm unhappy and I quit. If I can't have Saturday off with no notice, then I'll just go find another job. And they will. And you can't check references anymore. So it's really easy to ‑‑ what do you mean you can't check references? You can't check references. Also, when you call someone, all you can do is confirm start date, end date, salary and are they eligible for rehire. Legally

you can't check references. Are you eligible for rehire? Yes or no. But you can't say why. So you can say, yeah, they ‑‑ they were ‑‑ you can't say they were So you can say, yeah, they, you know, they were, you can't say they were chronically late. You can't say they, you know, you fired them or they quit because they said they wanted Saturday off for their brother's birthday. It's like, well, birthdays happen the same day every year. You should know this in advance. Ask two weeks in advance. No, I forgot, or, you know, they wanted their friends coming to town. Whatever. People quit jobs at the drop of a hat. So I wish Home Depot all the luck in the world.

It's a great operation. I miss not having one nearby, but good luck to them keeping the employees. Success stories on your client roster that you want to highlight? Aerial resupply. When I met Mike Clemmer about two years ago I was at Jack's shop kitchen in Rutgersville and there was one of his bags of coffee on the display there and I bought one and it was really tasty and I said I would like to print your labels. Is this the guy getting in my DMs all the time? Is he in the military? Yeah.

This guy is. Army logistics officer. He is very good on the DMs. I time. Is he in military? Yeah. This guy is? Yeah, former Army Logistics Officer. Yeah, he is very good on the DMs. I probably have a dozen DMs from this guy. So he started having somebody else roast and bag his stuff, selling it out of his garage. He opened a roasting facility over on Dale Avenue with a small tasting room. It's not a cafe. Don't bring your laptop and expect to sit down.

He'll make you do push-ups. But we started with him, I would say, about a year and a half ago. He had probably 15 different varieties of coffee and he wasn't at the volume where he could print special bags for each. So we printed a generic bag and we printed labels for the front and the back. So the contents and the usual health stuff and then on the front would be his brand for that particular coffee. And his daughter drew some really cute labels for some of their different varietals.

And he was coming, you know, every two weeks he was like, I need 500 of this, I need 500 of that. I haven't heard from him in six months because he's gotten so big where he can now have somebody print his bags specifically for each varietal. You know, we still do some other little projects for him, but you know what? Good for you, Mike. I'm not sad that he's no longer a major client. And at some point, he's going to be so busy that he can't stuff his own coffee in boxes

that he's going to have us do his fulfillment for him. And I look forward to that day, but or maybe he's gonna want us to do their swag for him because he's selling merch on his website. But I you know people like that I look at just like good for you think you know I'm glad I was part of your growth and at some point you know he'll give me a referral or he might have a project only me to work on. Client from your current roster or former roster that disappointing, should have been a success story, did not materialize a success story and why?

I'll have to think about that one for a minute. Oh, Jack's Cafe out in Crozet, where the crepe shop is now. That's the bar in Crozet where the crepe shop is now. That's the bar in Crozet. It was Jack's Bar and Grill where the crepe shop is now. When he first opened, I was out there, did a few projects for him, had a couple other things kind of on the works and then he closed. But obviously, Crozet needs more food. I'm hoping that I had breakfast at the crepe shop and boy, that stuff is good. He closed. But obviously Crozet needs more food.

I'm hoping that I had breakfast at the crepe shop, and boy, that stuff is good. What do you think of the Crozet market for business? Well, for the right business, it's great. I mean, look at Old Trail. Look at Western Albemarle. For the right business, you've got plenty of opportunities out there.

There's a reason why Crozet Creamery, why it could sell, you know. The original, the founder sold it to a new family and it's booming. We go there quite often when we want a frozen treat. There are a lot of new things and now with the development going on the downtown square in Crozet, I'm really excited to see what that does. But again, you know, when you get back to you're saying about what's going on with the county, it's like excited to see what that does. But again, you know, when you get back to your saying about what's going on with the county, it's like, did you know that there was an ordinance in Crozet where each store had to have a certain number

of parking spaces available based on their store frontage? So the little hardware store there in Crozet and far downers, they were all fighting for the same number of spaces. And then when, you know, the condemned part of the lumber yard or took part of that away, you know, they condemned part of the lumber yard or took part of that away, there weren't enough spaces for all the businesses.

It's just like, that's just ridiculous that you're having them jump through all these hoops. You know, it's just like people find a place to park. You can't mandate the number of parking spaces for a business without, you know, especially a building that's been there for 100 years. Comments are coming in quickly. My phone is blowing up with comments here. Harold Hertz watching the program, giving you love. Olivia Branch at Keswick Hall watching the program and

giving you love right now. This is a very interesting comment. Can he, because you've talked about this in the past and you mentioned this on the show. Can you put in perspective the evolution of what he saw at Mel's Cafe? Sure, actually I'm working on, I just put in the proposal for the permanent sign there to go way overhead there at Mel's. But yeah. Delicious.

Delicious chicken and fish. Cutest logo in town. We love pretty his logo. It is just the coolest little thing. Is that pickle? No, it's a catfish with a chef's hat on and a chicken holding a spatula. Okay, gotcha. Adorable. Gotcha. We made him a whole roll of stickers to give out when he first opened. I saw that. We thought it was so cute. So he took over Mel's Cafe in July of last year and I don't think he was able to open for business until January or February. And it was one thing after another with the city inspectors. It was this wiring isn't up to code. The fire suppression isn't up to code, the vent isn't up to code.

And it's just like I don't know if that's because Mel was there for so long that he was grandfathered in all that stuff or the inspector stopped checking and I know for a while there weren't any building inspectors shortly after COVID. Charlottesville had no building inspectors. But the biggest problem was they didn't come in and give them a punch list and say here are the six things you need to do and he could sit down and do them. So he would do one, he would get inspected and get signed off. Then the other inspector would come in and say no but this

plumbing's wrong and then the food safety inspector would come in and say no you needed this and you needed that and he was there it was six months it was horrible. Six months without opening. Six months without opening while he while he had everything ready. While he's paying rent. Yeah. I don't know how that worked out for him because these things were, yeah, I don't know how that worked because in some cases you say I'm turning over a, you know, it was a functioning restaurant. Yeah.

I don't know why that would be an issue. And we have the same problem, you know, just selfishly from the sign side of things. Even if I put an exact same, you know, if I swap out the sign that's there, you know, it's still going on that same stand. It's not any bigger. It's not any different. It doesn't have new lighting. I still have to go through the zoning and approval process with the city. Let me ask you this. This is just two guys with a bunch of people watching here. Why why even go through the would they

even know? Does that Does that fall on you? It does because, and we offer the option is we will handle the permitting process or we let the client do it. And most of them don't wanna do it because they're not masochists. So we take that on for a fee. But yeah.

It's money well spent with you. Because what ends up happening is if they come back and they say, you know, no, that's illegal, you do have to take it down. And that's what happened out in Crozet. The county came and told them they had banners on the side of the road. To the Cray Place. Not the Cray Place. Jax had them up and the Seafood Place had them out.

And they said, nope, off you go. Over here on Carlton Road, the, what is it? The catering company in that restaurant that's next. Walter Slosky's catering outfit? He had a bunch of flags out on the side of the road. So he said, nope, can't have those, take them out. So, you know, and he spent, he spent thousands of dollars on feather flags that he can't use anywhere. So yeah, I mean, you do have to go through, I mean, I think some of the rules are ridiculous, but that's, you know,

like replacing an existing sign with the exact same thing, why does that need anyone's approval? It's like unless the other one was out of code, and that's on you, but just replacing an existing sign and an existing space with the same everything, it shouldn't be a problem. Jim Ryan's resignation. Yeah. Big news around here.

Your take on that. You're a Darden graduate. Yeah. You know, all the inner workings of everything, you know, I hear all the stories and this and this is like, you know, if he got letters from the DOJ and didn't respond, it's not a good luck for a southern institution to be ignoring civil rights complaints from the Department of Justice. Wasn't good 60 years ago. It's not good now even though times

have changed dramatically. It's just, you know, those are the rules. You got to play by the rules. You know, all this other stuff that's going on, they're talking about, oh, the Board of Visitors was packed with Youngkin things. It's like, yeah, and four years ago, they were packed with McAuliffe or Northam. Northam.

Northam allies. Oh, they donated all to Youngkin. It's like, well, guess what? The old ones all donated to Democrats. It's just like, that's the game. That's the game. Whether or not they were buying their way on the Board of Visitors, I don't know. But Frankly, I don't care. Because they're all alumni. They all care

about the organization. They all care about the institution. The one thing that I've got a real problem with ‑‑ Rampant cheating at Darden? Yeah. Just the honor code in general. When I was at Darden, I was ‑‑ my hands were shaking every time I signed that pledge. Because it's just like, this is me. Either I learned it or I didn't. And I sure as hell wouldn't want to get run out for violating something that went back to Edgar Allen Poe's days. But we're here at our 30th reunion and everyone's got their checkbooks out and nobody was saying

anything about oh, we had a cheating scandal here and here's how we're addressing it. It was not mentioned at all. And the fact that it occurred is insane. The fact that they let the inmates change the rules of the asylum by saying oh, it's no longer mandatory expulsion. It's just like look what happened in California when they said we're not going to prosecute shoplifting less than $1,000. Guess what? Everything up to $999 went out in the pocket of a personal shoplifter.

You could send them a list and get me anything you want. And that's what happens. If there are no consequences, people aren't going to care. And that was one thing that truly made UVA unique. The biggest issue for me with the rampant cheating at Darden, and viewers and listeners, the rampant cheating is around artificial intelligence, chat, GBT, Darden students utilizing it for every assignment.

And it's so rampant. Jefferson Council did a good job covering this. The biggest issue for me was the cover up. Well, yeah, the fact that I've seen nothing official from the university about it. Right. Because it was so rampant, they did an investigation, found it was so rampant, then chose to keep it on the QT.

Yeah. That's a big problem. That's kind of, that's corruption. On, well, yeah, I mean mean you could say it's even, you know, corruption on a monetary basis is they don't want to lose their reputation that brings, you know, especially the foreign students coming in paying full boat. Yeah, it's not a good look for the university and certainly not a good look for Darden. And my classmates and friends were just like, what cheating scandal did Darden? Well, you knew about it.

Only because I heard about it through the grapevine here in town, not because it was anything official coming from Darden. You were fantastic in this setting, man. Well, thanks. Other things, other items from the notebook that we haven't covered. You mentioned off air, UVA corner.

That's an item from the notebook that we haven't covered. You mentioned off air UVA corner, that's an item from the notebook that we haven't covered. Do you want to get out? Sure, for all you cane-iacs, Raising Canes is reopening August 4th. Okay, on the UVA corner. On the UVA corner. Those are summer hiatus. Yeah, they're just closed for the summer. I get it, you know, when you look at what happened to Sheets that was there before, I'm sure, you know, between the tail end of COVID and the summer just wasn't a good fit. But you know we work very closely with Raising Canes throughout the DMV. They're one of our best clients, one of my favorite clients. And yeah it's you know they're coming back. Hopefully they'll bring back the basketball promotion this year. I love it. I love it. Can we have you back? Anytime.

You are seriously a natural at this. Well, thanks. Close with the who, what, when, where, why of your business. If you can put your logo on it, we can do it. Anything from a business card to a tent for a festival. We do direct mail campaigns. Right now, direct mail is the biggest thing in marketing. You've got a whole generation who don't know what mail is,

and they're fascinated when things show up in their mailbox just sent personally to them. A lot of great analytics that can drive you know customer bases really get to your core customer or more importantly grow your customer base by finding look-alike customers who share your customers demographics. So that's a big part of our growing business and you know signs, banners, swag and merch is a big part of our growth this year. I think we're up to, when I took over the business, we were only doing about 10% in promotional products, and now we're about 25. So we just did the t-shirts for our Freedom 5K.

We're getting ready to do a bunch of work for the Women's four-miler as well as the men's 5K. Christopher Ketchum, great company, fantastic owner in the comment section. Can you go to the studio camera? I want to highlight something they did for us at SIRS-Media. We on the studio camera? And if we need a one shot at me, let me know as well. They did this step and repeat backdrop right here.

Judah's looking at that. Real time. I love that, Judah. this step and repeat backdrop right here. This step and repeat right here which is the best one we have, we have three of them here. This is by far the best one that we have. It wraps around the frame. The execution of the logo is crystal clear. And the whole process with his CRM, his customer relationship management system, it's seamless, it's frictionless. I mean, it was just a breeze to work with you on that.

Yeah, we're the only folks in town who have that system. Yeah, step and repeat right here from Sir Speedy. And as first hand, the experience was fantastic. Dude, you're great. Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. I sincerely mean that. It's easy to do interviews like this. You have a lot to say.

That I do. Yeah, he has a lot to say. And I like that. That's good for a talk show. That I do. We appreciate you guys joining us, guys. That was 75, 67 straight minutes, excuse me. You see what it's about. It's just about doing local talk and local content in an approachable way for you, the viewer and listener. Judah Wickhauer behind the camera. Thank you kindly for joining us on the I Love Seville show.

Back in the saddle tomorrow at 1230. So long, everybody. Well done. He's going to tell us when the lights and cameras are off...