Why We Delete Pricing Posts: Antitrust Law and What Every Fence Contractor Needs to Know

Hey,

Hey.

Hey, hey.

All right, Sean. There's an intro right there. Freaking [ __ ] man. What's happening, man? I know. I saw saw some videos of you earlier today. You're out in the field every day now. Look. What are you in a hotel? I'm in a fancy ass hotel, right? It's my third hotel this week and I still got one more to go before the weeks end over. It's a grind. Where's the motor home? Yeah. So, this trip I didn't bring it because Well, truth be told, the new badass war wagon's not built out yet, right? So, you probably saw people saw some pictures of the a video on TikTok of the big ass war wagon we're going to build out. I hadn't even started it. So, when I get back, I'm going to start that. And hopefully my next trip in June. I What are we in June now? I don't know. July. Next one. And I'll take it wherever I'm going. I don't know where I'm going next. Brian, people are always saying, "Brian, I don't know how you do it." And I'm always saying, "I don't know. Sean does it." I go, "I'm gonna stop when Sean stops." That's I say that [ __ ] all the time. As soon as I feel like I'm doing good, I look at what you're doing. I'm like, "Fuck, I'm barely even in the game." Bro, you pioneered this. So, I I don't care what anybody says. This hands-on training, you pioneered it. You You literally are the reasoning behind almost everything I'm doing out here on the West Coast for hands-on stuff. I mean, I'll never be able to take it to the level you take it, but I'm going to do my best to try. But, but FWA can take that to real deal, real training, real job sites, real results with real fencers, right? I think it's a big deal. We need that. I think it's important to add that piece into our industry. uh just an additional training a resource where we're man we're out there grinding today I literally was hand digging holes next to the dude's been digging for all of his life uh and just just getting after it like there's no easy button like yeah we had rocks we had cable lines we had power lines we had gas lines we had hell yesterday we put the [ __ ] holes in the wrong house okay this [ __ ] happens like the guy says this is where build the fence we literally dig all the holes and the superintendent shows up and says why are you is here. Why don't context says and the former was like, "No, no, no, no. Right here, right here." And then he was he had reversed the numbers. And sure as [ __ ] we had dug all the holes in the wrong house. Yeah. I've been there. We've all been there. Well, I mean, I've been there. Training's about what do you do? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. You just uh you kick some dirt in the holes and you move over and hope that neighbor don't come home before you're done, I guess, right? Oh, man. Yeah. That's exactly what happened, right? And then we had to recover and still get the job done even though we were We were an hour and a half in the training at the wrong day. But that's what this training is about. I mean, it's real life, real circumstances, real issues, real problems, real stuff is not done inside of a classroom, real because you can't simulate real problems because we couldn't even predict what's going to go wrong on a project if we wanted to. When I show like I can't make this up. Wrong material or the wrong design or hell sometimes like we're building fence that we shouldn't even be building, right? Or material defects. I can think of in the last two weeks two training days where the supplier uh missed they missed the mark. They missed the mark. Material not going together. Holes not right. Pick not locking together right. And I'm not going to pick on any of the supplier. But the reality of it is this is the [ __ ] we deal with. So what do we do when that happens out there? Was it ideal? No. I had to work with them like all right this does not fit. This is not going. This is going to happen to you when I'm not here. Yeah. So, here's a suggestion. Here's how we could probably fix it. And then the next thing we do is call the supplier and say, "Unacceptable."

Yeah. Like, you can't do that to these guys again. We had some panels today uh where the rails wouldn't fit. And what would take two to five minutes was taking 15 to 25 minutes because it didn't fit. You add that up on 35 panels. Yep. That's a lot of money on the table that got lost because of a of a manufacturing tolerance defect, whatever you want to call it. Shouldn't go together like that, right? So, end of story. And that's interesting. I mean, I know we're going to talk about antitrust stuff, but I we you and I we chat chat about this all the time. We go on and on about the problems are out there, you know, that happened on the jobs before uh that we could we're doing our best to try to predict, but we can't find, you know, we just can't we can't find us. we can't find every problem that's going to happen before we the crews get out there. So, the training you're doing and the training I've watched you do, you know, even before we started talking, watching your videos and stuff before we even knew each other. Um, it inspired me to do what we're doing out here and realizing even with the manufacturers are bringing products and stuff in for the training that we are doing in in the, you know, we have a mix of classroom with the the hands-on out here. I'm like, hey, that's a great system. Let's go take it to the back and hook it up. We need more of that because, you know, my capacity is only here. Our industry needs this much, right? Guys that have experiences you're you guys have way more experience in chain link and iron than I ever will than I ever will have in my entire career. I have no dimes in that part of the world. So, I shouldn't be the one beating the drum and and heading the spearheading the training. But yeah, you guys out. You can do it, right? So, uh, gate operators, I mean, absolutely you guys have the capacity for that. That the FWA team has the capacity for it. So, uh, run with it. That's where I stop though. Gate operators, chain link, and Iron Man. I I think I told you before, you give me 50 feet of vinyl fence, and I will be on that for three weeks. The customer will be filing a complaint against the contractor's board. I'll never get paid for over 50 feet of fence. It would be a disaster. It would be a disaster. And I'm the opposite. I don't really want to mess with gate operators, and I don't want the high uh high-end uh I say not high-end. I don't want the commercial uh type projects, right? I mean, they sound cool, but I'd have to learn what you I like them because like you were saying, that extra 15 minutes a section over 30 sections, that's the difference between going from a day job to a two-day job. And when you're bidding jobs that are only two or three days long, that extra day is the difference between you making money or breaking even. The extra second day is losing money. I can absorb a little bit of a hit on a larger job, you know, if something happens. So, it's tough. It's even harder on small jobs to turn a profit if anything goes wrong. So, your training is huge. It's huge. Logistics are so important. It's there's a lot more to the residential world than just building fence. The logistics are almost just as important because of what you just said. If we miss the mark on any piece of that, you're going to take the one day job in two days and you've lost it. Yeah. You're breaking even on the next day, then you're losing money. It's I mean the potential to do another job. So even if So just all being like, okay, I have my labor covered. Yeah. But you weren't on another job making your margin on top of that job. So you you've killed a day. 250 250 days a year approximately roughly you have in a year to work actually on a job site, you know, especially if you're working 40 weeks. If you lose one of those, that's a big deal. You start losing one, two, three, four a month. Add that up. I know we could go on for we could go on for a week about this. Yeah, we're not but we're not here for that. We're here for you and I have been chatting about this and we have pretty similar pretty similar outlooks on this and opinions on

The antitrust laws and and what started all this was us you know you have pretty good sized groups we have pretty you and I both manage pretty good sized groups and we manage some groups together and we get a lot of people that are upset um even on Facebook and in LinkedIn and these other ones when we have to delete a comment or we have to not approve comments and and we're talking about really nasty messages we'll get sometimes saying why did you do that? Why don't you let that through? This is not a, you know, this isn't against the law and this blah blah. And it just goes on and on and on. So, and I lost like a three or four hours of my life last Sunday dealing with somebody was so pissed off because of my stance on the antitrust and I'm like, really? This is Sunday and I'm bantering back and forth. I'm dying. But but I think we we should have a conversation because I think what we're doing is not explaining why uh and and and what the goal is and it gets misunderstood. like my bantering back and forth with this guy on Sunday, he was stuck on is it or is it not illegal and I was I was like that that's not completely the whole story of why we're doing what we're doing. Yes. And no, that's where we get into and and what can be interpreted as illegal. So, you know, which sometimes interpretation is worse than the than the truth, you know, so we're Yeah, we got to be careful on that. So, I think we kind of agree on that. So, I was glad that I got to bring you bring you on to discuss this. So, I did obviously I did some research on this, you know, beyond what, you know, what I, you know, I'm going to share some information and I'm going to bring Brian on here and uh have him explain it a little bit better and then I want you and I to recap it and and and kind of go, you know, go over what what we what we feel about, you know, this video afterwards. So, I'm going to bring Brian on, tell me what Yeah, I'm bring Brian on. Tell you, see what he thinks. Brian, too. All right, let's hear. What's going on everybody? Hey, it's Brian T. Frederickson here from My Fence Life and also Las Vegas fence. Today I'm coming to you on a subject that I think it hits all of us a little bit. If you're on social media at all and you post something in one of our groups or one of our pages or maybe you're just having a conversation with somebody or you're at an a meeting or at a trade show or association meeting, whatever it happens to be, and somebody says, "Whoa, we can't talk about that. We can't talk about pricing." And I wanted to just dive into um antitrust a little bit. And um by no means am I an expert in this and this is not legal advice. As you can see, we we always advise that you go consult with a legal professional. This is basically just my opinion um solely based off information that's been available to me throughout the years. Um and it's a very valuable very valuable thing for you to know. Um the Sherman Antitrust Act, it was enacted in 1890 uh by US Congress as you can see on the screen here. And the concern at the time was the monopolies and the companies and the some of these were called trusts and they would get larger and larger and larger. And with that kind of size comes a lot of power and a lot of um resources to squash your competition which wasn't good for our economy and for small businesses and stuff. So um wanted to dive into this a little bit and um explain my view on it and you know why it's important that we know what's you know we know about it and what's the issue with it. What's the issue? Why do we even worry about it? You know what was happening? Why did we care if um some of these large it doesn't affect me right? I'm not a large company. I'm I go to work, you know, for uh Joe's hot water heaters or something, you know, so what does it matter, right? Well, they were hindering competition. They were manipulating pricing and creating an imbalanced market as you could see here. And um it was designed to curb that so that we could have fair trade so that you could start a company because you may want to go from being an installer um to starting your own company or maybe you already own your own company and it's not fair that you don't have the opportunity to grow. And what do we need it for? you know, what's the, you know, what's the big deal, though? You know, still again, what do we need it for? Can't we just go battle that on our own? Well, it was the first law that was passed. Um, which was, it was a really big deal. It was the first law that was passed to protect, um, businesses and

And to reduce some of the activities that were going on um that were reducing the competition in it, you know, and why is that relevant, you know? I mean, how does that apply to construction contractors? That's always interesting. Um, we all make a living doing this. This is what we do for a living and we must respect. How does it apply to us? we must respect the rules of the competition. Um if we don't respect the rules of competition, we're we're no better than these monopolies that were trying to take over um back in the 1800s still trying to do it a little bit today if we don't uh have the you know if we didn't have these laws to come into place. So, um, while I am the last person, if anybody knows me, that would be out there saying, "Let's let's push for more laws and regulations," there are some laws and regulations that do help, um, our industry and and and our economy and our businesses as a whole. So, this is one that I wholeheartedly support, you know, without a doubt. And um we're going to get into a little bit more about, you know, what happens if we disregard those rules. You know, should we cross the lines, you know, um disregarding these rules, you know, it can lead to severe penalties, both legal and financial. So, I mean, not only can you get in trouble and get, you know, get a slap on the wrist and maybe affect your contracting company, but there could be huge financial financial ramifications to this, including jail time, you know. So, when it comes to the pricing, you do not want to cross the line. And um it's just it comes down to you know if I'm talking to somebody that's not a competitor I mean sure can you can you mention something like hey that's um what I charge or can you encourage you can I think you can even actually say again this is just from my experience and my knowledge in it you can say hey I think you should charge this amount of money but if I don't go into an agreement with somebody um to actually do price fixing and things like that if I don't go into an agreement saying hey we're both going to reduce our pricing I can suggest that somebody lowers their price and they can just not listen to me. And if they don't listen to me, then um it's really kind of irrelevant. But um if they do, even if it assumes, even if it looked like it was interpreted like we had an agreement, you could get into trouble. So you don't want to cross those gray lines. And it's better just to um just just not discuss it at all. You know, it's crucial to avoid any any agreement or understanding among competitors um about what rates to charge. Doing it could literally um it could be viewed as price fixing, you know, illegal under the Sherman Act. And again that is a huge huge mistake. It's a huge huge area you don't want to get involved in. So you know when you get into the uh communication dos and don'ts um engaging with uh again engaging with competitors on social media um and other platforms it's risky really really risky um if you're discussing certain topics especially if it's pricing bids market division and market division is another thing that if something you don't even want to touch on. You don't even want to be discussing with somebody, much less have some sort of paper trail or some sort of digital trail that you're talking to somebody saying, "Hey, I'm gonna take these customers on this side of the river and you take all the customers on this side of the river." Um, it's illegal. You can't do that. You can't you can't reduce competition. You can't reduce the options that these customers have um for calling and making phone calls and getting quotes. You're going to get in trouble for that eventually if for some reason the wrong person finds out this is predatory bidding and you're not allowed to do that by any means. Um, what are the gray areas? I I'd love to have your opinion what these gray areas are. Um, you know, what is it? Um, I would say anything has to do with pricing like we were just talking about. Um, I'd love to have your input on this though. Reach out um reach out to us. Do in the com do something in the comments here. Post something and let us know. Um, and it's it's generally okay though. I mean, not not every interaction um with your competitors is is uh harmful or illegal. I mean, it's generally okay to talk to your competitors. I mean you can even post your pricing up and and things like that. It's not it's not illegal just to do that. But activities like uh you know discussing industry standards and

Practices those are all those are legal. You can have those. You can participate in trade associations and trade shows. Um you can do this but but the reason you see everybody get so skeptical when you start talking about pricing is it's perception. I mean it can be perceived and you could be joking and somebody heard this or or um somebody could actually follow suit and um or you know follow follow your guidelines and what you're doing. So, when it comes to pricing, and me and Sean are going to get into this a little bit deeper, it's really up to you to determine what those pricing are. You can't let people um help you determine those pricing. It's going to the pricing in Indiana is different than the pricing in Las Vegas for the very same fence. And it's up to you to come up with those. Um I have to close this thing out in conclusion that uh it's a big deal. It's a big deal. And I think that you need to protect yourself and absolutely absolutely do not want to be on the side of somebody that was helping manipulate the market or do anything like that that could put you at risk. Always consult with legal advisor or somebody that fully understands antitrust laws. Don't just go don't just go off somebody saying don't say this, don't do that. You can say this, you can't say that. Don't even go off of this podcast. Um find some legal advice on it. But I just I'm one of those people likes to dive in a little bit deeper and I don't like somebody just saying, "Hey, don't talk about pricing." You know, it's not that you're you're breaking any laws. It's not that you're doing anything wrong talking about pricing. You're just doing something wrong. If you enter into whether it's a verbal, written, any kind of agreement to manipulate the market, divide the the customers up, um do anything. And that might even include that might even include um somebody that comes into your area and says, "Hey, um uh it could be a manufacturer, could be a supplier, it could be anybody says, "Hey, I'm going to come into this area and I'm going to drive the pricing down so low that I can afford to lose money and all the other competitors go out, you know, their competitors go out of business and then they raise it back raise it back up." You don't want to be any part of that. You don't want or or or competitors say we're going to we're going to um raise our prices up together. That's also so it's not always necessarily just raising your price is part of uh violating the the Sherman Act. So stay stay cautious when you're talking about pricing and that's why you see us as groups. We don't want to get our group shut down. We don't want to get our um companies in trouble. We don't want to get anybody else in trouble. So um yes, you can talk about pricing. Just be careful. It's a it's a it's a slippery slope and that's the reason you see everybody avoiding it. So we're going to go back over to the studio. Sean and Brian are talking about this a little bit more in depth. We're gonna take some of your questions and see what's going on. Wow, that guy, man, he is always hat colors or shirt colors, right? Like alter ego, right? Uh but he had some good points. O'Brien over there had some good points. Even though he rambles, Brian made sure that he took no liability at all with the words that came out of his mouth. I can almost guarantee that's a fact. what I'm saying is completely uh my opinion and you should go vet it out yourself. I get it. And so that has a lot to do with the liability with the groups. So yes, I do run a group and I do delete the price when people say how much do you charge per foot or how much should I charge per foot? Normally gets deleted immediately and that's that liability piece like I don't have time to watch that whole post thread, right? So as soon as that question comes up and I'm not paying attention, there could be a whole thread of guys saying this what I charge this what we should be charging and then that slippery slope you mentioned starts to happen and all of a sudden I'm guilty because it's in my group and I had zero to do with it. Right. And I don't want the liability. I don't want the liability. Now, I also believe Brian, you and I talked about the fact that to help our industry, I think is more important than the Sherman. I'm more worried about helping our industry

Than I am the Sherman Act. I really believe the reason why we should not just blatantly ask what we should be charging is because that's setting you up for failure. If we don't teach you how to fish and we just give you the fish, soon as we leave, you starve, right? Y so if we teach you how to understand what you should be charging based on your cost, the profit margins you want to make, the overhead that you have, then you can go to war. And you can control your pricing all you want, right? I think that's the most important piece is people get stuck on is it or is it not illegal and just like you said, yes, it can be illegal, but just saying I charge extra foot isn't necessarily illegal. Yeah. It's it's getting a group of people to co to to collaborate and all agree to charge that in an area that is completely illegal. We all agree. And so the first step in that direction is the first state that Sean King charges this. And if I do that, I promise I will influence people in the industry to say, "Well, Sean charges X. I'm going to charge that." And that's not illegal on its face. 100% I agree that is not illegal. But that is going one step closer. To getting the city legal. And at what cost, Brian, why do we do it? Why? Why in the first place would we even do that? There's no advantage. If you have no idea what to charge, I'll tell you right now, I told you earlier, Brian, we talked. I will help anybody in our industry with a quick phone call, email, text. I will help anybody for free and tell you a formula or the I the things that you should be paying attention to. I won't tell you the price, but you got material costs, you've got labor costs, you have overhead costs, and you have profit. You figure out what your material cost is, your labor cost is, what profit you want to make your overhead, and there's your price. I like that you said that because I've been there when you've taken these phone calls from people calling you and asking you questions like that, and you'll I've seen you step away 30 minutes on a phone call and and helping helping somebody do that. I got one I need to take today. I haven't called back yet. Uh there's a company that's messaged me twice. I've been very busy digging holes. Uh but Mrs. Fence has has messaged me. There is a Mrs. Vince company out there and and answer questions. You bet your ass I'm going to call them back and if they ask me, you know, how should I price? I'm going to say these are things you should consider. these are things I did not consider. The reason I wanted to do this podcast and why um I you know obviously we were talking about it um and why it was important to me was because I think our industry has done a great job putting out more and more education you know even now than has been in the past but we've also done a great job just telling people know your numbers know your numbers okay we're not going to help you know you know what no don't take off price just know your numbers well some companies have no idea how to figure that out what you're talking about know your numbers know your numbers and we don't do a good enough job explaining them how to figure that out. And there's simple ways to do it and there's there's more complex ways if you want to get more detailed, but we got to put more information out there to somebody that just started off on how to get those numbers, how to get to those numbers. But we're quick to say build that gate per this standard. Uh know your numbers, do this, and then we just send them out and say, you're doing it all wrong. And I'd like to see us as a whole get to the point where and and you know if we're going to tell somebody to to know this or do that that we should we should at least be able to back that up with this is how you do it. Well, so saying saying something like know your numbers is is kind of a copout [ __ ] answer, right? Like what what value does that give to anybody? Know your numbers. Like what exactly are we trying to tell them? So there's more to the story. What numbers should I watch? How should I measure those numbers? Why should I be looking at those numbers? Right. So, I I'd be careful with, you know, you know, we say know your numbers, I think too much. I'm guilty of saying I've said it, know your numbers. But the reality, stop

And think about it. Look about a brand new fence company. And I' and I've met several that have never built a fence. They come into our industry. They're brand new and they hear know your numbers. What do you think that means to them? Like, oh, it's just it's just what numbers? Yeah. Measure. Yeah. It's almost patronizing in a way, you know. It really is. It's it's like it's to the point where you don't even want to listen to that person anymore and you feel like they're uh you feel like they're talking down to you when somebody says like when somebody says something like that to you and you you have no idea what they're talking about. You don't you just you just I block it out and maybe you do less of a a good job trying to track those numbers after that or you just say I'm going to do it differently than that guy and I'm just going to take the materials and labor and come up with a a percentage that I mark it up. Uh and they don't ever really ever really get to that point where they're where they're knowing their numbers because they were they were turned off by it once we started doing it. So, um, yeah. So, I think that we got to come up with something we can tell people, you know, this is this is a good formula to do it and figure it out. And it's a big difference between one truck and three trucks. I mean, when I'm running six trucks, you know, the daily rate that I would charge for my truck is half of what I would charge if it was three trucks. So, it's it's a huge difference. And you got to be able to help somebody figure that out. I think just understanding that there are that they need to at the basics at the basics the four buckets you know I've preached this for for many many years you can make this as complicated as you want but at the end of the day in our industry we have material we have labor we have overhead we have profit so if you can just know what those numbers are going to be per job you're going to have to figure out what you have to go buy to build Mrs. Jones fence what type of time it's going to take to build Mrs. Jones fence. And then the hardest one for people to understand is that there is a thing called overhead. Whether you believe it or not, one truck or 50 trucks, a lot of the guys at one truck don't see overhead. They just don't. They can't wrap their mind around it, right? 50 trucks, those guys probably understand overhead pretty well, right? But at one truck, it's hard to see. Even two trucks, it's hard to see. And most of the time, they don't understand the depth of of overhead. It goes a lot deeper than um a lease payment or it goes a lot deeper than insurance costs. There's a lot of costs just to get into the game, right? Just to play the game, things that we don't really put our finger on that add up. So, so having extra amount of having extra money in your quote to cover overhead means that you're not taking out a profit. I hear too many guys say, you know, C labor material was X that means lef over I made profit. And that to me makes my heart sink because no, there's not a single company that I've ever ever met, Brian, that has zero red. Y ever. So when you say materials and labor cost is X and now I made this much profit, I want to say [ __ ] How do you think how do you think it's affected it? Things are different now than they were um five years ago. And you I remember I used to just say I used to think I I still think COVID was like last year, but it's it was like what four or five years ago, right? You got to stop using that excuse. That [ __ ] has sailed. You know, I know, but I'm just saying what do you you know I mean the labor force might be a little bit different and bringing people in and sometimes um you know obviously we're rebuilding our office staff up and all that stuff and and do you think that people have as qualified of office bookkeepers and staff and people as they used to have in 2019? So, you know, and how would that affect you knowing your numbers? Like we may know how to get to our numbers, but we may not have people that are qualified to actually keep track of all that for you. So you think that's changing that's changing you know why why there's more people that don't know I think the other side of the token is I also believe we've become we've we we want more demand more from our our

Members our team members and we're d we're diving further into the numbers so the team member that was capable of doing it four years ago is falling would fall short now and then you're talking about the fact that we are finding less people than we found before that had the talent so there's it's going two different directions it's getting more complicated we're we're wanting more in-depth numbers and we have less qualified people. So, it wasn't like this. It went whoop opposite directions. I think there's a little bit of both happening. Uh that people are working elsewhere or uh don't they're not they're in a different industry or not. Uh well, I have they're not readily available in our industry, right? And then we're demanding we're at look at where we've been the last four or five years in our industry. I can confidently say we have ris raised the bar in our industry as a whole across the board as far as people that uh are watching their business as a business and less as a guy who builds fence. There's more people in industry that are looking at uh this as a financial um you know a business. Let's make some money. There's more people focused on that which in turn means that we need higher caliber people to help manage that piece. Right? It's just not going to be a guy in a truck that that pays nothing no attention to he's his goal is just build fence every day and doesn't realize if he is or is not making money. So, uh we've done a great job in the last four or five years. I mean, look at the caliber of companies that are coming out. Like it was I don't remember I've been in this industry for 30 plus years. I don't remember a time where we had this caliber of fence companies across the nation. Yeah. And it's access to information. It's access to more education, more training. There's just more available, more resources. I think that's that's what's really driving everything up. And everybody in our industry right now is stepping up their game from right down from the installers to the consultants to the associations to the shows to the resources. Everything on our podcast, you name it. I can't think of anything in our industry. The quality of product we're putting out is better than second to none. we've been doing for years. I think we're putting out a great product across the country. I think that we are we have great individuals in our industry with the right motivation, the right talents, the right uh attitudes. I I I believe we're definitely moving in the right direction as a whole um across the board and that has has to do with that communication. I I believe um that we have access to so much information. We have people come in our industry. Brian, I have firsthand um firsthand experience of meeting people coming in our industry that have never been in any construction industry. That are coming into our industry and thriving in less than a year. Thriving like absolutely blowing me out of the what took me 15 years they do in the first year, right? There's more of that happening right now than I think we've ever had. And I also think that um you know the the clientele or caliber of of individual we're attracting to our industry is changing because we the fence industry looks pretty attractive. Right. So if you look at this from the outside there's a demand for fence that it will always be there. Okay. Security, safety, privacy, aesthetics. It's not going away. The first area is fence for God's sakes. Right. It's not going away. And I think that people in other industries are starting to look over at the fence industry go, "Wait a minute. You mean to tell me this whole time there's this fence industry over here that no one's messed with the entire time, right? Franchises and private equities are in Why do you think they're all like all over us now?" There's a honey hole uh in the fence industry. And somebody told me a statistic that I again I can't vet this to be true. Sounds impressive. We're a nine billion dollar industry and in the next 10 years going to go to 18 billion. I heard it was higher. But even that that's doubling our size in 10 years. You think we did that in the last 50 years? No way. No way. So we have the attention

Of people um outside of our industry, private equity, franchises. There's multiple franchises already and there will be more. There's conglomerates. There's Kais that are are putting locations everywhere. Uh and so it's it so the downfall of this is if you continue running your fence business the way you always have maybe the last 30 years and your and your one or two trucks, things might get a little more difficult for you because competition is going to get a little bit more aggressive. Does that make sense? Like they're going to raise the bar and the cost may not go up with that equally, right? So they may have better competitive prices, better product and you need to be you you need to know your numbers and figure that out like what are your cost and what profit margin do you want to make for what effort it takes your maybe you need to stop teaching people to build better fences you you know maybe you're part of the problem you know what I mean and that way that way we can keep we can keep everything at a at a quiet level nobody wants in and we can all we can all continue making money. Yeah. Tell me that's on some antitrust [ __ ] right there. You got to shut Sean King down. That's it. He's coaching all the little guys and big guys. I mean, it's the petition. I literally I coached a company the other day had a brand new fence company, one employee, one team member, and then I've coached, you know, the same the same week a company has 30 crews. Right. So, both sides. Yes. The big company's like, "Wait, why are you teaching little guys how to uh how to make more money?" And then the big guys are upset like I'm teaching them how to be more productive which now the other big guys are like wait a minute that's not fair right but it but it is it is fair and it raises the bar you know competition uh is is what we need because that makes all of us better right so if we didn't have and that's why that's why this whole anti-ouch thing is so important we need good competition it it holds us all of us accountable I'm not the only coach in our industry. And that's great. I'm not the only, you know, consultant in our industry. Perfect. That's great because if I was, I would eventually become lazy. and I wouldn't continue driving forward, right? But you bet your ass I'm working my ass off to make sure I'm staying ahead of the curve, right? What do you think my competition's doing? Same thing. And so who wins? Everybody. The whole industry. Everybody, right? So, so that that mindset there is the same thing for the fence business, the installing portion of it, right? Getting fence on the ground, selling fence materials. We need that competition because that is what makes this thing move forward. Iron sharpens iron sharpens iron. That's absolutely true. But we need to be held accountable and checked sometimes. Um, right. being lazy, getting tired. you need to get checked because as soon as you take a breath, you know, there's a Kevin Pool that's gonna stomp all over you right out there. I know because he don't sleep. He don't sleep, right? He's coming for you, right? He works a full and build some badass fence on I'm happy to see all I'm happy to see how much energy there is. I I I It keeps me going, man. I sometimes I can't sleep at night. I know. I'm just on my phone and I'm seeing everybody just posting pictures, commenting, and it's just it just energizes. I knew you didn't sleep. I knew damn well because because I'm getting like three hours and I wake I go to sleep, you're online, and when I wake up, you're online and I'm there's no way that some [ __ ] is sleeping. You got some sort of special pill. Yeah. Like Yeah. You're the one to talk. You got videos and stuff going on top. And this, you know, this has been fun um taking over my fence life, um hosting that show as well. So now, um, you know, we're going to be on here more, and just so everybody knows, we're going to be doing a lot more in the field, uh, videos showing, and we're going to be interviewing, um, some installers in the

Field as well, instead of just talking to us boring old business owners and consultants and guys that run associations. And you can only see our faces so much before you probably just tune us out. The real heroes are the ones out there building fence every day, right? So, we need to go have conversations with them and and talk about their fence life. I wanna I want to interview some other people that are crazy enough to go out and dig holes with us because, you know, I had about five four of them with me today, right? They weren't real happy about it. Uh, but they were getting it. They thought this gringo was crazy, right? Digging 21 there, but that'd be a great conversation to have. Now, today there was quite the language barrier. I don't know. I I'm embarrassed. I don't know Spanish to save my ass. I can say tacos, enchiladas, and Yeah. So there was lang lang l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l language barrier today I need an interpreter to interview some of these guys because some of the guys in our industry don't speak English but yet they have a lot of experience a lot of talents a lot of things to share right I need some of them fancy earbuds that you can I I think they were talking [ __ ] about me all day I know they were away today they said that a couple like yeah we get done today no yeah Yeah. Yeah. Let's go. See you tomorrow. Thanks. This shit's getting done. I higher hell water. But I think the interviews in the field with the, you know, the real fence life, the people that are living it and breathing it in the trenches. Um, we need to share those stories. And we're going to be doing something unique uh coming up in the next couple of next couple next episodes. We're gonna we're gonna be doing some live streams from your um your training classes as well. So, that's going to be kind of exciting. um and vice versa inside of uh you know our training going on over here. So you're going to be able to see some training going on on the east and the west coast all at the same time uh popping in and out. Um I'm looking forward to some of that. I know I promised you I'd keep this at 30 40 minutes. So I do you got dinner plans I heard. Uh and I don't I got to eat at some point. My wife's like you better damn well eat, right? So I mean I got 10 minutes and then I got to get out. But you're right. I gota She's like you are eating, you are drinking, right? I feel like you know Heather's not with me on this trip. I'm I'm on my own, right? Oh, man. Oh, yeah. This is like You know, my wife just uh she's flying. She just drove down to California. She's going to fly out at midnight. I think she's going to Mexico to see her mom. So, I'm the same. Um and of course, without her here, I don't leave. It's uh I It's the craziest thing. I'll, you know, I'm here right now and I'll just sit here till 8 n o'clock at night. So, you know, I think they keep us alive. It's We got something wrong with us. I'm sure we were to fit some. What are you gonna do with all this free time? Um, I got a lot of [ __ ] I can go do. I'm I'm gonna call Sean. I'm make some videos. I'm gonna put I spent like an hour and a half or two hours sitting on a balcony and I dreamed up a complete new way of how to build aluminum gates, vinyl gates, and wood gates. And we're already have Instagates. And I'm like, "Yeah, scrap all that [ __ ] What if we do what if Oh my god, what if?" And I'm throwing on a napkin and I'm thinking to myself like, "That's not right, is it?" Like I called my office and I told Al like what I want to do. He's like, "Are you [ __ ] kidding me? I haven't even finished the last one you talked about." Like, "Yeah, scrap all that [ __ ] Here's what we need to do. We don't have a surgery for that." I don't we can get that. We get this. We get this. Buy this machine. Boom. That's what I researched aluminum welders a couple nights ago. Keep in mind, I've never done an aluminum fence in my life, but um you know, I think one, right? So, we don't do aluminum. We do steel, right? So, I researched aluminum welders all night long. And then when I got back to the shop the next day, I start talking to our welder and I wanted to drill him. Hey, you think you could weld

Some? I have no reason to do this, right? I'm like, "So, what do you think of this?" I even printed it out. What do you think of this welder? This aluminum to the So funny because I did the same damn thing about three weeks ago. I mean, I went, "We got to buy an aluminum welder for us for the kids, right?" So, I don't know [ __ ] about this. I asked my welder which one. Of course, he tells me one. It's like 15 grand. I'm like, "Bro, we don't need a $15,000 welder what we're going to do." But that's the coolest looking welding I've ever seen. I mean, it's that shiny. If you've seen it, right? You see that? You watch a video and you watch that bead and you're just going, "Man, I want to do that. I want to build like a I want to build a buggy rack or something. I don't know. I just want to build something out of aluminum for no reason." We literally with the with the new gate design thing I was talking about last night today, I was trying to buy a Dragon 400. Like, that's what Matt Warner has. that badass machine. You feed it with a pipe and it just cuts everything for you. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. We need that. We need that. My team's like, "Where were you gonna put it?" I don't know. Like, empty this [ __ ] out of the shop and put it on the other side. We're gonna What about for everybody? Did you see the unhinged thing that came out? It's coming. I got the box. Did you get a box? I got the box, but I'm waiting on my new box. My box. My box. Um, my box, my box, uh, went the rough route. How about that? So, so we opened the box, it wasn't in one piece anymore. Oh, man. My box was either I I don't know. It was the weirdest thing, but it had everything in it. Maybe someone in my front the front opened it, but that was weird. Well, no, mine was crushed. Oh. Oh, yeah. You got to get a new one. I'm saying my box was run over by the competition or something. I don't know. That is too funny. Yeah, it was cool. I I I scanned the QR codes. I I gotta let everybody know, man. It's going to be pretty cool. It's going to be really cool. Matt's gonna hit coming. Uh I got a message from Rachel today. That's next Tuesday, right? Tuesday. Tuesday is uh I believe they're gonna have a live event. Let me I don't I don't want to misspeak right now. Let me just check. I have a text from her. Uh let's see. Ra Yeah, she was messaging me earlier, too, about it. So, yeah, I was gonna Tuesday would be what? We're airing unhinged on Tuesday. They are airing unhinged on Nice. Not what's today? Wednesday. [ __ ] So, I'm gonna recap it and then I'll recap it on Wednesday for anybody that missed it on Tuesday. I'll do a quick recap on No. How cool. How cool is that? You talk about, you know, the cool things in our industry that are happening right now. That is a an awesome idea that the team at uh Empire, right? Matt Warner and the team and Rachel at My Salesman have come up with a way to get information to our industry delivered differently than a podcast or a magazine or Sean King screaming at you on the damn YouTube video or Tik Tok, right? They've taken the time to put learning nuggets into a story. Yep. That's crazy, huh? Uh the first thing I thought of is how do you have the time and the patience to even fathom that idea? I somebody I don't know who knew I'm going to talk to him one day about how he wrote all that or he had a team of people helping write it. I'll probably never get that information out of him 100%. He did have to hire a badass team. That to to pull that off. Right. This is not fence guys and girls writing this. These are talented people that are taking our industry. They're not from our industry in writing this content. Yeah, it'd be like you and I trying to write one of those. And then Billy went to the hardware store and bought some concrete. Hey, Billy. Billy, are you gonna fix that concrete? Billy, we go a whole damn tangent. It would go on and on and on.

Stunning whether it's dry or wet. It would just it would just turn into a debate and they'd be like all they did was talk about pounding posts for like 30 minutes and we still don't even understand the concrete. It'd be the worst. Concrete and we're talking about pounding post for the next hour. I mean it would be like four episodes of the concrete mystery they call it. What it'd be like what happened to his concrete? It was missing. Did they pound the concrete in the ground? I you know what are the concrete? Hey man, thank thank you for coming on man and uh doing this with me. Any last thoughts on the antirust thing before we go? Um no I think you will you you hit the nail on the head. It's not the fact that we can't say what you charge per foot. It is absolutely that's the first step to getting engagement of what we should all be charging per foot and that is where we start getting illegal. Right. So for me it's a liability issue. I don't want to have a lot of that. Plus, it's more important that you learn how to price it properly. Like, learn how to fish. I'm not going to give you the fish, right? I'm afraid that we get people that'll be influenced if we start throwing numbers per foot up. Oh, well, that's what Sean charges. I'm gonna charge that. That's not good. That's not good for anybody. So, uh, no, I don't think that that price up there is gonna going to send anybody to jail, but we could if we took it further and start collaborating. So that I think you did a great job of talking about this because when we when we just respond in a comment or a text, there's not enough conversation to understand where we're going with this and just tell people that it's wrong and illegal. They ask questions. Well, what part of it's illegal? Well, the collaboration part and moving the in, you know, eliminating competition is where you start getting illegal, right? Y and I think we we didn't do a good enough job explaining it's not just talking about price. It could be talking about dividing customers up y or territories, things like this. You you have it's a slippery slope and and so if you get one of your comments deleted or you don't get a post approved, it's not that we don't it's not even that we don't agree with you. Y give us a phone call. I don't know. But it's not that we just can't have these threads go on for and for some reason those threads get the most traction and if we approve a comment, we go we go eat dinner and come back and there's 8,000 comments and somewhere in it there's a violation. We guarantee you. And we just try to avoid it. So keep posting. We love all your posts. We love all the engagement. Don't get offended if uh we can't let something through. It's not that we don't love you. It's just we're too tired to to to watch the entire thread go on for two days. That's it. Absolutely. I cannot vet every damn comment. These things there's a lot of great content on our on our page now. Okay. So, yeah, help us out. Yep. And and just if it's price related, keep it to a minimal. Don't do it. All right. Thanks, Sean. Go get some food. I'm gonna go get some food. Hang on a second. I'm gonna bring Susan on here. Watch. Susan's been here the whole time. I knew you were gonna do that to me. For everybody, say goodbye to Susan. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be able to pull any of this off anyway. She's been the one uh bringing up all the comments and and connecting to all the stuff in the back end. So, uh we will see you guys next week. Sean, get some rest. Sus thing. All right. Bye, guys. See you.