Live from the Las Vegas Fence Show with Matt Warner

Hey,

Hey.

Hey, hey.

We are live right now. Yeah. Well, we're here at Defense Show and Security Expo in Las Vegas. I got Matt. I found him wandering around. What are you up to? Actually, I'm not doing anything other than going around and visiting all the other other I feel like I'm like half. Yeah. Get in. Get in here. I'm here. I'm really part time. I'm actually moving it away. That's what's going on. Take a hit. I love it. So, actually, I've went around. I've seen all the booths. Um, so I have I have we have two booths here. So, we have one for our software, my salesman, and then one for us. That net that you Oh my god, that net you brought. I think it's one of the coolest things here. I love it. So, so the guys are doing that. We've uh and actually so we have a lot of customers here that are already our customers for our software. So they've had uh oh I think Brian just Brian just did something. No, we're good. We're good. Brian, you can't trust this guy. Seriously, we're just talking about the fence cruise and how more likely somebody's going to fall off. He looked it up. He looked it up to see what happens. And the boat apparently has to It's like 10 hours or something to come back. Yeah. If you fall overboard, it takes like 10 hours for that cruise ship to fall. So you know I am not going on that fence cruise because I know I'll be puking in my bedroom the whole entire I can't do I can't do this cuz you looked at me the first thing you said what do you mean 10 hour why would you know that right because you can't plan a fence cruise without first looking up how long would it take to circle back and get somebody if they fell off I love it. So I went around to all the different uh all the different Where we at here? All the different out there all the different booths. And I gota tell you there's a a big variety here. Everybody has a a good spirit. The opening was crazy. These guys were beating these drums. What' you say? I can't hear you. What? These guys were beating me. Like seriously, it's still ringing. I could I literally could feel it pounding in my chest. Doom. It was amazing. Huge feather hat walking by. I'm I'm like this. And she's walking by. I'm like, "Get it. What the heck?" And then this that dude that's like 12 feet tall. We were going to ask him to hang our net. Oh, dude. cuz he he's right up there and Kevin just chopping it up on top. He's on his little thing, whatever it is. When we tear down, maybe we got to keep him. Yeah. Susan, if you're watching, let's keep him for tear down. You go up and unhook stuff. Hey, Susan. I see. Nobody can see her. Yeah, you should bring her on. Let's bring her on. Hey. Uh, did you come in? I'm in I took it off because I'm in registration and I'm trying to get off my feed and and just run your back end. She said she's like, I'm just going to log in and just deal with the comments and pull them up for you. Like Chris says quite the spectacle. Great show. You know what? You know what happened was we were out there. We started getting these drums going. We got 15 minutes before opening and it's just cranking. I mean, we're just you the whole building was vibrating. I mean, but I guess there's horses down below as well we didn't know about and stuff like that. So, I don't know. I think they were moving around or something. So, the hotel I think was trying to get a hold of uh Marissa or something from our staff over here and like you got to shut it down. Like, oh man, I'm going to keep going. We got We got too far. I love it. I'm like, you don't stop. I love it. You don't stop. You don't stop. They go crank. Well, then they came in here and I I thought you were going to go down every single row or something and they came in here and they were just being It was It was really really energetic. And I think I think that's cool. You know what I see mostly though is and I've only been in this industry since 2006. So I'm a fairly kind of a newcomer, but all the guys uh and gals just visiting, catching up, talking, what's going on?

How you doing? What what's going on in your world? What can we uh you know, what do you think? What do you think the economy is going to do? By the way, yesterday I I spoke at the Mr. Fence Academy. I told everybody I said I have the answer for the economy. Brian, are you ready for it? I don't know. Let's hear it. It's probably going to be about the same. It has been for the last 40 freaking years, folks. It does this. It goes up and down and up and down. And when every By the way, here's the good news. With every winter, there's a spring. Every spring, there's a summer. Here's the bad news. With every summer, there's going to be a winter eventually. So, we have to go through these cycles. And I was just having this talk with with some guys over here about if you manage your your company correctly and you have great culture. By the way, I'm a culture freak. Everybody knows that's my thing. That's what I study the most. That's what I'm most passionate about because I ran my first company in the ground because I wasn't worried about my people. I was worried about me. I thought I had to make all the money. Now I understand that I have to help my people and and take care of them and give them a good life and a good place to work. But anyhow, I can go on for hours about that. With that being said, also we have a party tonight, right? Party. Homeland. Uh, put that up. Homeland. Let's pull this thing up. Susan, I remember to to say it. There it is. Tonight, by the way, what is up with those guys with wearing that? I I was lucky enough to see these guys. It's the local Oh my god, it's amazing. You're going to love it. It's It's like everything we grew up on. It's I I wouldn't even call it a cover band. Would you, Susan? Susan? No. They're like super entertaining. Like they they keep you involved. Like they bring like everybody in on it. It's amazing. I love it. I love it. Oh, and there's a shuttle. So, for anybody that's here, the other thing I found out is there's a shuttle that's that's dedicated. Two of them. Two shuttles. Be passing each other. I don't know how long you think that's going to take. It's only like a a two-minute drive, right? Hang on. Hang on. Lopez J Lopez says shuttles run between 5:30 and 10:30. Yes. Yeah. I got that right from uh Miss Jackie. Yeah. Yeah. Right out right out at the right out the front right by valet. There'll be some signs saying fo pick up. Follow the signs. Follow the people. You don't even need signs when you got people. Right. Right. I got to tell you something. So, I won some money up in Reno. I came back. I came down here and I hired this guy to drive me around. Carlos. Dude, he is the best. You know what he is? He's the spirit of America. He's from Cuba. Yep. Uh he got um this not a citizenship but a working visa type thing and he's just out there driving and he's been picking us up and driving us around. I feel like I'm big time. I I'm like getting out. I'm like Carlos come back and bring us out for 20 minutes. We're going in for one. Well, I got a surprise for you because I did hear about that. You did? I did my driver. Come on. Let's bring Carlos on. But but hold on. Didn't you lose your players card? I did. I did. Didn't they find it and brought it to you? Yes. Over there. No. Who did bring it to me? Jens Sing. Yes. That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's a hot mess. But Carlos, I will say, but here's what I like. Uh, I I I just love this entrepreneurial ship, but also like even Carlos driving us around, he's like, "I love fence guys. I love fence guys." And I'm like, "You don't even know fence guys." But this is what's cool. We all get together. We talk some shop, talk some business, try to learn from each other, try to say, "Hey, what are you doing now? What are you doing?" So, it's good. Well, that was Peppermill, too. That

Place is awesome. Is amazing. I did well there. better than now. That's why it's even better, right? Let's just say that my stack was about that. It was awesome. I got it in the I got in the room upstairs cuz I'm too scared I'm going to lose it all. You know, you're going to go down. That's why you want to get after you're leaving today. I know you're leaving. I'm leaving. I'm leaving. I'm going. Hey, I got one more one more announcement today. What's behind us? This This is our series. Check this out. That's That's me. That's me right there. And that's Robert Whitaker. That's Kels. And then these are some of the other people that were uh that that were in our casting. So here here's what what Unhinged. For all of you that don't know what Unhinged is, it was uh Brad pitched the idea to me. Um we really don't know if it's going to take off or not in the industry, but here's here's what it is. It's it's an audio drama that's for the family. It's it's a mystery and it's got some fence lesson business lessons mixed in it. And if you really listen to it, you're going to hear how the characters struggle with different things in their business and how they solve the riddle. At the very end, we talk about joint venture. How many of you out there even know what a joint venture is or have ever tried to do one? Yeah, that's what it is. So, it's an opportunity now for you to either ask me or somebody else or maybe we'll do I'll do a live talking about joint venturing. I partner with fence guys all the time. We team up so I can take a smaller fence company, put some of our power with it. We do a JV right from the beginning and it's a document that says this is a legal partnership on this job and and you and it counts as one entity. So it's not a sub to a sub. Nice. It's Yeah, it's interesting. The whole thing is interesting lesson, too. I love it. It's entertaining while you're learning about it. I hope so. I I don't know how you guys came up with that. Who writes that? Well, it wasn't you and I a lot smarter than us. I will tell you though, I did find the microphone here at the show. So, so now I can make announcement. She shut me down. No, you're on. Oh, no. Hold on. Sorry. I found the microphone. Everybody, I found the microphone. If you're looking for it, it's up at the front desk and I'll 100 clean up. So, apparently you're not supposed to be doing that. So, would you stop hogging all the camera? Golly. Hey, so your happening. They have the microphone and they're making announcements. Get over the stage. Marissa told me yesterday. She said, she came up to me. She's like, "Seriously, you can't be doing that anymore. You can't do that." She says, she said to me today, she goes, I so I did that public service announcement. And she's like, you know, I purposely hid that from you. I know. I It was behind the counter over here. What's going on? How many microphones out there are hidden that people never found after you've been there? Right. Well, now now now I now I got this one. I'm going to take this with me. I'm going to stick it in my pocket. So, hi lady. So, are we doing open cast? Look at these guys. Oh, what the fa? Oh, you should take your laptop over to the women FWA booth. Yeah, you should. Go mobile. Go mobile. I love it. All right. I I have another announcement to make. Fence the my fence life is going live at the FWA booth. No, no, the stage. Stage. No, the booth. It's the booth right now. The cowgirl is headed that way. Also Oh, women of FWA booth right now. Yes, Brian. Don't worry, Brian. I got you. Also, we are doing casting for Unhinged. If you would like to be in the Unhinged series, we're gonna Oh, I should probably do it here. Here or here? Which Which place should I make? Either one. Either one. Right here. We're doing it right here. They can hear

You right here, too. You're good. Okay. Which one? Oh, where's she going? Where's she going? She's in the expo floor. Did they Did they check your bags at all or anything? You see that? Oh, hey. Look at everybody. That's a good idea. That's what you should have done is you should have just had her walking around the whole time. we're live on my That's awesome. Hey, so any on this unhinged thing, so if you want to be on it, you can read a part here. Come to the my sales. You have a script. Uh you have the script right here. Yep. We have the Billy Gates and Sheriff Sheeter. Well, not yet, but I'm trying my damn nest. Oh my goodness. Did you hear that? He just did it. What? He He's got it. Run. Well, but he would be hard to work with. Marissa's coming. Put the microphone away. Okay, she's coming. We're good. The guy came into the microphone already. He took it over the other side. You should go track him down. No, you can't miss it. He's wearing a shirt that's on it. So, hey, listen. Listen everybody, if you want to try to be on this thing, by the way, we want Vince people on this thing. So, what Brad has done is he's he's done a little script here uh for us and we're going to do a little bit of a back and forth and we're going to interview people and if you make the cut Oh, and you get a t-shirt. We have t-shirts at the booth that say welcome to no Oh, no. It says make noi great again. Make no t-shirts. Where are those shirts? They're in our booth. All right. So, when is this? When is this? When are we going to do it? Tomorrow. Tomorrow. during the show, come over. Brad will set up. Maybe Brad will even set up somewhere else, but we'll get him set up somewhere. You You'll read the script. Hey, by the way, if if if anybody wants to be a part of this, this is something completely weird. You sit on a with a whole bunch of people all on the screen and these characters start coming alive because they start reading the parts. Yeah. Right. It's a like you start to see the characters when they're reading the parties. So, uh it's Hi there. So, uh, so it's so awesome to have this. So, this is something brand new. I don't think the fence industry's ever done anything like this. No, it's the only one I've ever seen. Matter of fact, I don't even know if it's in any other industry. Is it, Brad? Is there any other industries? It's this is kind of And you and I follow all the industries. So, it's like, you know what I'm saying, so we know these things. You know what I mean? Yes. If we say it is true, you said it. It must be true. It has to be true. It's on Facebook now. So that that man fact checked it. So I was talking to Chris Steel earlier today. One of our things at USS, one thing that we're going to do is we're going to make padding and we're going to powder coat the backing the wood. Did you just hear what I said? We're going to powder coat the wood. How you going to powder coat the wood? Exactly. That's what he said. But I have a plan to powder coat wood. And that, by the way, that's the fun stuff that we get to do in this industry. And by the way, I don't know how it works. I I think I I feel like you're just going to throw some powder at it and and and cook it. You're going to wet it here. I figure you just you spray some mist on it. You throw some powder on it and it'll stick, That's what I love about about being an entrepreneur is that you can just come up with good ideas and if you have really good culture, really good people, you just turn wheels. Like let's let's be honest, Susan, he could not do this without you, could he? There's no way such a thing. She knows that. She holds it together. She holds it together. She knows it. You know, good. So Mar I was talking to Marissa over here because I keep getting I keep getting the microphone and she's

Like I go so do you work for B or whatever and she's like oh uh no I'm She said I'm parttime. I said you should say you're fractional like a fractional CFO. Say I'm a fractional Brian. No but when she walked up she was serious. She wasn't happy. Did you see her looking at us? She actually wanted the mic. Mad at you. Yeah me. I'm getting you always getting Yeah, but I didn't say a word. Oh they brought the mic back to us. All right. Hey. So, what else is going on here? What's going on tomorrow night after the show? Uh, tomorrow we got uh Well, tomorrow's Thursday, so we got cigars with Bryant, Cigars. Hey, look at that. That's inside the Poly Vinyl booth. She hasn't done a booth in probably almost 10 years. This is her first time back doing booths. How awesome is that? Yeah. So, so this is like a like we're uh she's like out on down at the football game and we're like the the color commentary people, right? She's she's over there and Oh, we got a battery run. Oh, we're good. We're going to run out of battery. What's interesting, you know, because it's uh I think the expo hall's closing in like what, 10 minutes or so. So, uh she's out there walking around, but she just went by the Homeland Vinyl booth. That is pretty cool. So, Homeland, instead of just getting one big booth and, you know, putting, you know, just some of their salespeople in it, they got one big booth, but they brought all of their customers in there, the distributors, and they brought them all, put them in one place. So, you walk along and and and they found them in regions. So, different regions. That's why. So, if you see those maps, you'll see that this this distributor, you know, covers this region and this region, this region. So, a great idea. Pretty much you came from anywhere in the country, your distributor for Homeland Vinyl is here. That's awesome. How unique is that? I didn't even realize that. Yeah. How many times have you How many times you been somewhere and it's like it's somebody you buy from and you walk up and they're like, "Oh, your rep's not here." Right. And you're like, "Oh, man." Right. So, not with them. Hopefully, we see more of that stuff happening. Right. That's actually a really clever idea. I was wondering cuz I saw Kim Thomport and some other guys there and I was like I was like, "Oh, man. That's cool. He came a long ways to to come. I mean, he's going across the country, man." Are we seriously dying? No. No. I'm going to turn this on. It's on. We're good. Okay, we're good. So, anyway, so so what do you believe? What are you turning over there for, man? So, you know what's cool also over there is Master Ho, they brought people that are sitting there with computers to sign people up on spot. Oh, to take orders? No. To sign them up new accounts. Oh, no kidding. To create new accounts. We have distributors down here after we've been talking for a long time and everybody's coming together and realizing that we've got all these fence companies here. Let's bypass that whole process of going back, filling out online applications, doing all this. Get them get them signed up. Create accounts so you can start start requesting quotes, start ordering stuff. You know, no more walking around wondering if you're going to have an account with somebody. Well, I have to stop there and talk to them. And that's a unique thing that hasn't been done at shows before. They're over there. Actually, last time I went over, oh yeah, we just sign we just signed up two new accounts. Oh, that's awesome. For fence companies and that's a big deal. So, and that's happening at a lot of places around here. We're going to see more of that, I think, in a lot of the shows coming. Were you really demo days? Demo days. Everybody loved it. I mean, it was it's never what I envisioned in my mind because what I envisioned in my

Mind is it's like a $2 million event, You know, that's that's also part of the gift of being an entrepreneur is coming up with these crazy ideas and then and then it down to a manageable size. When I built my first office, I wanted to have a running river underneath the concrete through each of the buildings and offices. I had I figured out that was 114. I don't see why that's not Yeah. something that you should have. Well, right. I thought so. But 114,000 the maker said you should probably cut the stream. You're probably going to succeed without the river running through your office. Right. You don't need that. You don't need to. Plus, then I realized, well, I'm every day I'm going to have to pee a lot. So, I was like, well, I don't have to do that. We already have to pee in. Oh my gosh. You're kidding me. But no, but the demo days out there was I wanted it was an experiment. See if it works. See if people would even go out there. And they went out there. Everybody loved it. I think some of the in fact before we even came in some of the people that set up booths are like man they're sweating dude it's hot right he's like dude that was awesome I got a couple good leads and other guys like I sold three founders while we're out there people were out there engaged they were building and and the people that came back are like I got to like try out the tools and build stuff and you know and all that stuff so so you'll do it again next year I think we're going to and we'll take what worked and we'll make that more and we'll take the stuff that uh that people weren't that interested we'll kind of cut that out we'll just do go bigger on the stuff that worked which is that's that's adapting Right. Have a plan. Plan the work. So, it's worth the investment to find something else. And I think what we're going to do is even build that up even more because that gives the attendees that can't get in the expo floor something to do while we're in here, Building the the booth out for them. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Yeah. I was actually in here putting my booth together and getting my team had all came in. So, uh we were all putting that together. So, I totally missed it. But that's awesome. She's literally just walking around. She's walking around. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there's Oh, she has the microphone. Why do Why do you look so angry? Leave us alone. Huh? How did you even do that? You said that. Well, I gotta tell you, Brian, you've done a good job. This is This is really cool. And I know that a little bit of it was kind of a dream, right? You said, "Hey, I think I want to do a show here in Vegas and and and just be a little bit different, right?" Yeah. Yeah. And you know when I when I first had the idea and I I I have a lot of ideas so I spit them out so my wife just kind of like goes oh well yeah that's a good idea that's that's so then they were it was just I got one person in my office at a conference table to help me do it and kind of secretly I drove around and started talking to all the expo hall places and I finally found one that I thought would fit fencers and something I created something that I felt I wanted as a fencer. By the way this this is great. Yesterday at the afternoon I went over and I watched the horse raining. Yeah. I was a cowboy when I was younger. Uh so I I did a lot of that horse stuff. I went over there. Wow. There's some powerful horses over there. Did you see it at all? 50 ft on the other side of the wall. Practice arena. Did you see the practice arena outside? Oh, on the other side. Yes. I was like, "Holy cow." So then I found out that this hotel actually does the team roping for the NFR. Uh so I was talking to a friend of mine. He's like, "Yeah, I go down there every year." So this hotel is really good. I I did run into one pit boss that's mad at me. Uh but Well, there's two. I've talked to both. Oh, you talked. It's not just one. Okay. So, it was two. The second one I was a little foggy. I don't remember it if I didn't. You thought he was joking. You know that banter you do when you're joking? Oh, she Oh, the other guy. So, she I know the two you're talking

About. Oh, you thought it was a girl. I love it. I love it. Well, this is good. This is fun. You guys are doing a great job and uh I'm taking off tomorrow. I trust that my team's my team's going to be here and do it. I've been on the road for about a week, so I'm ready to go home and recharge the batteries and uh spend a little time at home and hang out with You earned it. You earned it. It's been a long week. It's been good. So, I love it, man. Thank you so much for putting this on and thanks for thanks for giving me an opportunity to hop on here and and pick on you. No, man. Thanks for your support, man. You you I know you don't know it because I don't we don't talk as much as I'd like, but you inspire me. I actually learn from our convers and not as big of a as you. I take those little bits and I'm I'm fighting it and I see it though. I see it even in my guys. I see that I I could I could communicate better with So it it reminds me every time I talk to you that I got to work on it and try harder. That is so so my legacy that I would like to leave in the industry and I've only been in it for a short time. Uh but but uh when I leave this earth I'd like people to say hey he taught us all a lot how to care about others. Yeah. Servant leadership is my my my biggest thing. And I I want to be a servant leader. My people know that I I'll take out the garbage. I'll sweep the halls. I'll work it right right by. I'll be the first one there, last one leave if that's what I need to do. Uh but I also want want to share that that feeling with other business owners. And and you and I we have talked a few times about about that. And u I I just that's my passion. I guess I like to Well, I appreciate it. Keep beating it into me because I need that. I got I got I got to hear stuff three, four, five times before. I take little bits of it. Eventually, I'll get the whole thing. Make it seem like it was my idea. So, I mean, Right. Right. Well, everybody thought Unhinged was my idea. I finally I felt so guilty. I was like, "Listen, Brad is way more talented, way smarter than I am." And he put it all together. He We just We just had the opportunity and we jumped out. By the way, season two is coming out. We're We're starting to get worked on it. We just picked up our two sponsors. We'll be announcing them here pretty soon and we're working on a little bit of paperwork. So this time right now my salesman carried the most of the load for it and it was a big load. So I'm going to split it in half. I'm going to get two major sponsors and then I'll get a whole bunch of little people that just want to plug in. Well, I've been telling everybody it was my idea and he stole it. So um and I got proof. Look, it's on the stage. Look, it's on the stage right there. So this is a way better conversation. Let's AB and we'll let him see his way out. We'll see his way out. got poking in. Look. All right. Are we going to wrap this up? Are we going to wrap it up one more time? I'm going to pull up a QR code for you to scan to go to the Homeland Party tonight. Oh, yeah. Good idea. You know, just so everybody's got that. So, I don't know if some phones you can click on that QR code, but if not, you got your phone with you, right? Or go to must RSVP. I don't think that's I don't even know what anybody they said just get registered. So, they kind of have an idea how many people are coming. I'm sure they'll let you in. Just say you know Matt Warner. No, Brian. No, don't do that. Don't do that. I've already been yelled at by by Jack. Just put it on Put it on Matt's tab. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do All right. Very good. You ready? All right. That's it. Let's sign off. All right. We'll see you guys later. on the right.