Fence Week Recap and What Is Next for FWA with Brian, Sean, and Susan

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Good evening my pants life. Like we have this much more time. Wait, we have like this much more time. Like what's going on? Jesus, guys. This is an absolute chaos right now. Okay, I got logged off. Crashed the computer. I got two seconds left. I see. Boop. We're live. That was it. I know. I know. And I No, I just stopped it. I couldn't watch it anymore. It was going on and on and I was too excited. Today's a special episode. I mean, how often do you get Brian, Sean, and Susan on the same podcast? I I mean, when was the last time we were all on together? Never. I don't think we ever have. It just doesn't happen. That's crazy, right? This is uh this was I I mean we were kind of the original uh original FWA team right here. This is this is the epic moment. Yes. I I didn't think I was going to make it back from Cali for this too. I think Susan was like texting me. She's like, "What are we gonna do? What are you doing? What are you doing?" I go, "I'm all day long. I'm gonna make all day long." She She texted me a little bit ago. She goes, "Can you handle running tonight?" I'm like, "What? Where's the prank?" I wasn't sure. Yeah. For once, I had time to be here. I'm like, "Yeah, I'll be there." Uh but um yeah, and you're stationary. Yeah, normally we got your motor home in the background or uh you're moving around. We can see we can see cop cars flashing behind you. But no, we're officially back home for just a little bit. Uh brief period of time and I am I'm focusing on the business. Yeah, traveling everywhere in the country takes a toll on some of those bigger pieces that back home, right? So, uh when you ignore those things long enough, pretty soon they they get your attention. Yeah. Yeah. And I think uh I'm on the same thing. I mean Susan will tell you it is, you know, that three, four, five months even before the show and stuff that we're doing. It is just all FWA, all fence show, all everything that we're leading up to it. And you you're involved in it. We're all we're all just getting geared up and I think we neglect our businesses and it just uh you know, it hurts. Chaos is uh is waiting for us when we're done. It's chaos. You can either do the work at a consistent pace or you can not do the work consistent pace but do just as much work at one single amount, you know, short period of time. Yeah. And I think that's what creates chaos. But it also for me it creates this uh for me it's probably just as much of a benefit for me to focus intentionally on something and knock it out. I get distracted if it's just a mundane consistent cons uh pace and okay, this is the fence business. I come in every day. I do this and I do that. I do this. I do that. Look, you're gonna lose my attention. Let's just be honest, okay? I'm gonna go whoop. But if it takes all of my energy, then you get all of my 100. I seem to be able to do massive amounts of work in a short period of time. And I think actually perform better under that type of parameters than just casually clicking along. Maybe I'm built different. It's weird. But or maybe it's just the way it's always been. I have no choice. I could be making things up. Entrepreneurs, I think it's it's just it's in us. I mean, even me, I I mean, literally when things are going too smooth, I I don't know what happens. I just start sabot for no reason. I mean, no reason. I'll decide to just change it. I'm like, you know what we should do is just completely revamp our work orders for no reason. We should just change something that's working. And this is working just fine, but I think I can make it a little better. And all of a sudden, it's like this like why? And Susan's go, why are we why are we making it better? What what is happening? What what are we doing? And you're like, why do we need a new logo? Why do we need that logo redone 10 times? Why? But we can. But we can't, right? We had to rebrand. Even restaurants rebrand. We can give you a ton of reasons why, but let's just worry about can we or actually in our case, we just did. Yep. Right. It's like, oh my god, what? Well,

I've already done that. Yeah, we did that already. So, go for shiny. We're gonna go from shiny silver fence signs to blue ones back to shiny shiny silver ones. And that conversation happened today. Uh, yeah. Actually, I legit I have a text of a of a shiny Mr. Fence sign, old school chrome. Do I have That's the new blue. I've got both of them. Can you see them both? Oh, yes, you do. See? And so, the I see it right there. So, the problem with the shiny one is you can't look at the camera, guys. Can you see it? I can't see. Light hitting it. It's It's gone. So, the team's like, "Well, we have a whole stack of these. What do we want? Put them on the fences?" No. I We bought brand new blue ones. for chrome from JC Gur. Don't get me wrong, badass signs. They did both, but there's a reason why I did that, right? So, find another for use. Give them my way to homeowners or give them to other fence companies, but don't hang them on a fence. I keep one of them in my backpack when I go hiking in case I get lost so I can signal to planes and helicopters and stuff when they're searching for me. Just a reflect. I I love it. I love it. Yes, we can see Cajun fence sign back there. Yes, we can see yours back there, too. Right. Right behind. I need more fence signs, everybody. If you get them, send if you got them, send it over to us. Squeeze it in there. Squeeze it in there. So, speaking of fence signs, one of the things I was focusing on this week was I need to get more leads like everybody else. Okay. How do we get more leads? Well, we got to go back to the basics and do some of the [ __ ] that we just we know works, right? Yard signs. We've always had yard signs. Yard signs. Never done it. Never done it. You've never done yard signs? Well, I mean, well, I mean, maybe it's it's definitely a residential thing, right? We have always done yard signs over the years. great experience, but we have great uh success. Have not done them in a while. We used to have yard signs that said, "Coming soon." When we sell the job, coming soon, a new project, Mr. Fence, that we build the fence and we change it out and say, "Look at the new finished fence." Right? Change it out. So, I had this thought the other day, and I don't know why it took me 35 years to figure this out, been in the fence business, but the yard signs, and and I'm not the only fence company. Almost everybody's yard sign is unique in that the yard sign says your fence name, big bright colors or whatever. But everyone has a fence sign in their business and I have never seen anybody make the yard sign exactly the same as the fence sign that continuity. You see it on the fence and you just I don't know if anybody anybody's watching has done that comment. Let us know. Let me know. So what I did is I went to dirt cheap signs by the way guys here. Uh they do have dirt cheap signs for yard signs and I had them they don't have you know remember it's 24 by 24 18 by 24 yard sign and I said no I want to match the JC Guri sign but 2X so exactly the same shape I even want the holes in the corner like it looked like and I want to say warranty I want to be the same exact sign 2X and we got them delivered today in our meeting and I pulled these things out dude and it's like it's an exact replica of the fence sign. So now think about when people see the fence sign on the fence and then they see these yard signs everywhere, they will absolutely connect the dots because it's like when you see that that color scheme, the the ratios, right? I mean, I'm expecting some pretty positive results. This is brand new. I've never done this, but I'm expecting some pretty positive results from the fact that so simple. It's so simple. For me, that that brand recognition, I think, is really important. People forget about that consistently. Like, you know, you're wearing your shirts, I'm wearing somebody else's shirt. You know what I mean? But like Yeah. But I mean, like, exactly like that that brand recognition across the board uh is invaluable and and monetarily has a value on it as

Well, right? Like simple things you can do for inexpensive cost. this was very easy. I mean, I had them cut the signs in half. They don't make that sign say shape, right? So, I had to take two fence signs, print it on one big sign, and cut it in half so that these yard signs don't look like anybody else's yard. Like four feet. What are they like 2x4 or something? How big is that? Oh, no. They're they're uh they're going to be 12 by 24. 12 in tall. 24. You make that out of a corrugated plastic or something that we And you leave them there. I heard some people leave them after they're done with the fence. Oh, yeah. We don't get them back. No, we put them But see, we're we're putting them in the day we sell the fence. So, it sits there the whole time and then you build the fence. And when it sits there for another till the homeowner gets rid of it. Sometimes they throw it away immediately. Sometimes they call you to come back and get it. Just let it ride, man. Just let it ride. Some homeowner associations [ __ ] about it. Then let them pull it out. But I bet you I bet you if you set those fence signs in concrete, they wouldn't be able to get them out and then uh probably be there forever. You know what? We could probably start pounding some stakes in the ground. That way we all equipment from pounding and attach them because right now they're little metal poles, right? Say, "Pull that out. that out. You know what I wanted to build? I wanted to build uh in front of the business here, not really a yard sign for, you know, the property of a homeowner, but I wanted to build out front like a 20 foot tall and I drew it up. I was going to try to get a permit to do it, you know, from the building department to build the sign. And I wanted to build a 20 foot tall like uh I don't know section of fence almost with a sign on the side of it like you would put on your fence uh except for a giant sign. So, it looked like a 15, 20 foot tall fence, but the sign would be kind of what you said, but a sign would be your actual sign on that fence as your uh sign for your your business. I I think there's a lot of value. Your signs are very uh you could very very um noticeable, right? The way your sign is laid out. So, that even bigger, they're going to they're going to correlate the two together. So, they see the little sign, they can't read it all, but they've seen the big sign, so they know what the little one says. Right. And so for me, when I put the yard sign in the yard, when a homer sees it, they're going to now notice it on everybody's fence. Kind of like if you're looking for red cars, you'll see red cars everywhere. If you're looking for brown cars and someone asks you how many red cars you see, I don't know. Right. Yeah. So, having that yard sign there is going to call attention to all of our fence signs in the neighborhood as they drive. Man, there's another one. There's another one. There's another one. Where they probably wouldn't have normally noticed it. Hey, that's my hope. I'll let you know how it works. Get some pictures. I had a tourist stop in to actually purchase a Las Vegas fence sign once. I mean a Las Vegas fence shirt as a really as a souvenir because they saw were like at the they were at a a trophy place. I guess we're in town for some sort of competition or something. They were at the trophy place next door to us and they saw our guys in Las Vegas Venture. So they came of course we gave them a shirt. They were thinking like the pawn shop or something. Yeah. They just wanted to take one back so they could wear a lo something that said Las Vegas on it. Las Vegas vent shirt. So that was that was kind of cool. That's what I told everybody. I mean, we're going to get a kiosk and go down to the strip and start selling Las Vegas fence t-shirts. I mean, you probably could. I don't know if they're the ones buying fence from you if you were to think it through. I don't think they're buying fence, but You know what I did a long time? This was like 20 years ago, I had a bunch of shirts printed and uh I gave all the shirts. We just had a bunch and uh people were giving out clothes and stuff in the winter time to um homeless people and stuff. So, I would just give them all uh fence shirts and then everybody and everybody was rocking around wearing

Fence shirts. So, we did that one time, too. We the Goodwill and next thing I know, the safe house the here had full of inmates wearing our clothing and walking around. This is good. And this is might be a little bad because it depends on what they do when they're wearing clothing. We've had a couple guys get arrested and their mud shot has our shirt and they never work for us. Yeah. Yeah. The only inmates I want wearing my shirts are the ones that work for me. Like, wait a minute. Hold on. There's some liability exposure happening right I'm drinking out of my South Point cup. We just ended up with a bunch of Southpoint cups left over from the show. I love that. I have a king cup king of cups today. But but I agree, man. It is just been since the show, I have been just like engrossed back into the company and it's amazing how much complacency kicked in and how um Oh, for sure. I can relate to that. ended up losing a couple guys because they just got used to not having that order of you being there that uh and then you know they're used to stopping and getting all the food on the way to the jobs and this and that and they stop you know they'll stop doing the truck checkouts or checkouts or and it's really hard even though you have these systems in place to go back to them once you got to police them. Yeah. Once they get used to not doing them and then you try to enforce it and they're like oh man this is I go but it's not new. I'm not inventing any I'm not inventing any new policies. These have always been here. You just stopped doing them for for Right. That's that's exactly correct. We're dealing with that. We're reevaluating some of the stuff we were doing before, but we had to go back to the basics. Like we've always had uh a fivestar review program in our team, but I can't tell you the last time anyone submitted the a review because we give a bonus um if they get a review, but no one's filled the format. I think I looked at like seven, eight months like what the hell? And we've only had a handful of reviews. So I seriously everybody like remember this? Oh, that's like it was something new. Like it's No, it's not new, but yeah. How about So today we got four five star reviews. Wow. We've had 20 in like six months, but today we focused on it and I said, "Hey, you guys all get 50 bucks per five star review you get. You submit the form." Binging bing bing. Like oh that was well that was easy. How about you just do that all the time? Like Jesus, guys. We did we've done 450 projects so far this year. We looked I pulled the math up and showed them. I said we've done 450 projects and I think I've gotten 20 reviews. That is literally embarrassing. Absolutely embarrassing. You don't normally get I mean, for every one bad review, there must have been a hundred good uh good customers that were happy. So, it's it's really hard. It's really hard to get people to leave reviews when they're happy. It's the weirdest thing, right? It's like, okay, I did a great job. Why are you struggling with leaving a review? Yeah. The easy thing, you know, I think residential people probably are more likely to leave reviews, though, right? I would probably say that. I don't have very many reviews from commercial guys. No, I think that's even harder one to get done because they're not really connected to the project as much as a homeowner that bought their fence to keep their dog in. Commercials got, oh, we got to get this job done because the boss man wants that secure over there. What are they going to leave you a review? Yeah, they're not on their personal account on their personal account. Like, come on. They got to go, they got to go find whoever controls their business account and try to leave a review from that. They're just I mean, it's just too much effort. They're just they're just not going to do it. I think every bad review I think I've ever gotten is from not even a customer. It's been Oh, yeah. It's been a neighbor or a disgruntled employee or I mean never none of them are real. It's hard. The most recent one we had a

Guy claimed that a rock flew up off the roadway from one of our truck tires, cracked his windshield. And so, we're not hauling a rock. It's just that we ran over a rock, the rock picked up and hit his windshield on it. I said, "We're not going to pay for that." One, I can't even guarantee it was our tire, our truck, our the rock. And even if it was, it was on the roadway, roadway hazard to begin with. I don't believe we're liable. Woo! He lost his mind. Oh my god. So, we got five star or got negative review there. Well, then his best friend did negative review. We had like four one-star reviews because so and so knew so and so who knew somebody who had a rock chip. Like what? What's up, Craig? Craig Eubanks in the house. Craig fence guy Friday. Well, I've noticed that neither one of you have the notes open. So, can we do our next segment? What? Like, oh, I thought I thought I made show notes. I made show notes. I thought you said we were whatever you want. What would I don't even know if that was next, Susan. Yes, that was next. Oh my goodness. I can't stand you guys. Where's the notes? Well, I had to get rid of the notes so I quit freezing. Oh. Oh, maybe. Yeah, it was that's what was causing him to freeze. Okay. Okay. Okay. Check Taylor. And for some reason when I open up your notes, it makes me go revalidate myself and I'm like, well, it's Susan and Sean. I'm not even going to open them. She says FWA factchecking. All right. Chad Taylor, uh, he's a top contributor, too. Thank you for being that. This is, uh, this is from Fence Industry only on, uh, Facebook. So, if you follow our group over there, um, there's a good 20,000 some people in there. um pretty active by by the way over 16,000 of that 20,000 are active and that is after weeding out that is after weeding out you know as much as we can all the the stuff that you don't which is probably 700 people I think 700 people a month we decline 700 people get kicked out only 700 get in so that's that's to keep it so it's not a lot of spam so Chad Taylor thank you for being a top contributor um and he says I have been in business for five years now I believe I'm ready to hire out some of the work. So, I'm assuming he's talking subbing out some work, right? Um, I c I can't wear all the hats anymore. In y'all's professional opinion, what was the first hire you made besides labor? I think he's talking about like he's actually hire ready to hire. Office people. Okay. Maybe the sales or maybe somebody in the office to help with some of the administrative stuff. I I would say the first person would be someone in the office to answer the fedam phones because I can't even focus on sales or or scheduling order until that phone is off my plate. Phones. Yeah. Yeah. I I think it's uh it depends on what your role is. I mean, what's your what's your strength? Is your strength administrative? Is your strength HR? Is your strength sales? And maybe you need to step more into the sales and hire somebody from the administrative and answer the phone. But maybe his strength is maybe Chad. We don't I don't know Chad that well obviously. Um but if uh if we knew him, we'd be coming. He looks he looks a lot like Donald Trump. Yeah. I feel I feel like he's big. Really really he quite possibly could be the biggest in the industry. But nonetheless, I guess if he if his strength is sales, focus on the sales, hire someone for the administrator for the phones. If it strength is the, you know, doing the work orders, doing the paperwork, then maybe he needs to look into um his first hire being sales. I always was stronger on the sales than the paperwork and administrative. So like Sean, uh my first hire was more office admin stuff and answering the phones and taking care of some of the daily activities and and stuff like that. But great question and I think it's going to be different for all of us, you know, um from depending on your company. Not some notes.

I don't know. Uh, so Jorge Hernandez says, "How do you guys keep your guys to keep the trucks and organized and all the tools put in their own trucks?" Oh, wow. I see. I think I think right Jorge, you got a piece of pen and paper because I'm telling you, you better get a video camera ready. This could go on all night long. First thing you do is you I'm not gonna say it on air. Yeah, I will say Brian has Brian has checklists. He's got clipboards and everything has to be checked in and everything has to be checked out or vice versa. Checked out and then checked back in again. Um I know um what's his name goes through and verifies that everything that they said is true on their checklist. Like it's so like Yeah. And that's what I was saying. If you're not if you're not on it, and it's what Sean was saying, you got to really police that though. You have to be on it every day. You can't literally ever stop and skip a beat at it because that they'll they'll stop checking the trucks out. They'll or they'll just check they'll check stuff off that they're that they don't even have and just sign the bottom of it if they don't if they don't know that you're checking it on the way in. So, uh for us for us at Las Vegas Fence, we have checklist after checklist. So, um, not only do the work order have, you know, saying, "Hey, what if you're doing plates, uh, you know, if it's a bigger than a 3/8 inch, um, hole that we're drilling, we take a large hammer drill. If it's, you know, things like this, we note it." But the trucks actually have a extensive 8 and 1 half by 11 checklist of tools they taken, we write down what they're taking. Um, and then on the way back in, we're supposed to somebody else is supposed to check in to make sure that um, that everything came back that they left with. Because honestly, if it's like a even even a couple rock bars or a post hole digger or something, if the guys sometimes they're tired, man, they've been out busting their ass all day digging holes in in the sun and here it's 115 and if nobody's checking it, it's not their rock bar, right? It's not their comealong or their wheelbarrow. And if they know it's going to be checked, they might circle back and go get it before they came back to the yard. Or if you know something's missing that night, you could go back to the job and you might find a $600 hammer drill still sitting there that night. but the next morning it might not be there. So, I think it's a big deal um for us to do that. And I don't know about you, Sean, how do you get your tools? So, we're a little different, right? So, there's nothing coming off the truck every day, right? Our trucks are set up a little differently. So, I'll give you a uh uh couple of ideas here. The one worked really well for us in early uh in the beginning, we were building out our trucks, utility bed trucks, and inside the utility bed, you open up the box and all these tools. So, first off, we labeled all the tools and color code coded those. So, this truck is all red, that one's all blue, that one's all green. So, we spray paint them, color code them, and then etched them. Here's where the the magic was to get the guys to put the tools back in the truck and to make sure they had the tools at the end of the day. It's like painting with by numbers. I took a put the tools in there. I took a picture. I took several pictures. I laminated the pictures and we stuck them to the inside of the door. So when the door opens, you can see exactly what tool is supposed to be where and what that tool looks like and and how many of those tools there are in every single compartment. That worked pretty well. Now what I don't have so much of that going on. I might need to revisit and go back to that. But what we have used more than more lately is company cam. So we use company cam for all of our pictures in our business for our fences, but we also use it for a truck. So, we have a truck and company cam file and they go take a picture of all the tools in the company cam and there's a history now of where the tool was, what the shape of the tool was, what the serial number is on the tool, everything about the tool and it's associated to that truck forever. And if you ever have to go back and reinventory, it's a fact take a pictures and then that's your inventory list. We have Excel sheets to go along with that. So, we we aren't checking in and out

Tools, but in order to verify tools, we do do random checks on the trucks, reinventory trucks. I realize here's one thing you need to figure out. Uh, is that the cost of doing business in the fence business, it's like pawns, it's going to cost you drills, it's going to cost you saws, it's going to cost you markers, tape measures, all of that is gonna it. If you think you're going to go to war and build a fence every day and keep the same tools you worked your ass off to buy this year, five years from now, you're absolutely wrong. So, just put it in the budget that you're going to buy $5,000 of tools for that truck every single deal because somebody stole it, because somebody lost it, because somebody left it, because somebody broke it, because somebody wanted to borrow it. At the end of the day, we just plan for it and I just re retool it up because uh the stress it takes to try to the ROI of trying to get that one little tool on the truck that just use the damn thing and when it's broke, I'll get a new one or if you lose it, we don't want too much of that, but I'm going to get a new one. Like I like I get frustrated with some of the owners I talk to in our business in our in our industry guys that will say they got to figure it out. I already bought them one saw. So the guys are out there with a handsaw and the owner's not going to buy them a new saw because they lost the corded saw. So they're stubborn. They're like, "Well, they're going have to do it the hard way." Who is that costing money to? Who? Yeah. These aren't your children. Who's paying the time? Who's paying the time for them to handsaw the board? Right. This is your business. How much labor you're losing? And you know how many jobs aren't getting done? They're like, "Yeah, but they but they lost it." So they got what? They don't give a [ __ ] have to get paid by the hour. You're literally giving them a bonus, To saw by hand or drill by hand or whatever it is. Like go get the tools for your team members, put them on the truck and make sure that they're there, but never discipline of like, "Oh, that's it. You broke it." Dude, I I have a battle just getting them to take the tools. I mean, you're I You don't Do you park your trucks indoors in a warehouse or something? Well, we're not in Las Vegas, bro. We're in Indiana. Okay. You've been here, right? A little different. They're parked outdoors. It isn't a fencing lot, but I don't have like ninja monkeys coming in every day looking for leftover snacks, Yeah. Yeah. No, we Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, I'm the only fence company, I think, in Las Vegas that's never been robbed. Knock on wood. Why do I say [ __ ] like that, right? But yeah, why did you Now, you do have cameras that talk as you walk by. That That's pretty creepy. I've got all that stuff around there. And I get alerted obviously. We got that. But I I've learned a long time ago even even the guys they can't even keep personal tools in there. I mean they all want to keep like you know they'll go and they'll lock up their like they'll get their their own impacts and their own personal drills. They want to lock them in the cabs of the truck. And you know what happens is somebody comes through and they bust all my windows to get to their drills. And now I've got employees standing and they're pissed off because they've lost their tools. They want me to buy their tools and I got broken windows and I got all these broken windows. So now they can't leave anything. They put it in the warehouse. Everything comes off the trucks. And I think the only reason I I don't get robbed is because everybody everybody that's ever worked for me, anybody that's ever been in there knows there ain't [ __ ] on my trucks. So, I mean I mean if you want you can uh if you really had some energy and go maybe steal some diggers and some rock bars or you might be able to get a generator. I don't do so much on the generators, but those things are what three 400 bucks. I mean and you and you got to go in there and cut with the chain and get the chains off of them and and those things are a pain. They're heavy, right? So other than that, you ain't getting nothing out of my yard unless you're getting in the building. By that time, you've set off tons of alarms and and the big bad dogs coming. Oh, we have another question.

Oh, yeah. Out of curiosity, has anyone used one of the Billy Goat augers? And I have very limited use with this. I love them. I love the idea. It looks pretty similar to the um groundhogs that we use over here. The hydraulic. It looks hydraulic for sure, isn't it? It's hydraulic, but the groundhogs operate with two tires. The nice thing about these Billy Goats is they're a stable platform. Generally, always four tires and they're powered tires. So, you literally drive it. It drives itself, right? You don't ride on it. But, uh I haven't seen the kind like this exact one with the with the pivoting front wheels and two drive in the back. I normally see one that you almost has four turf tires on it. So, it looks like it's I mean, does it actually have any down pressure from that as well or? Uh much. Not a whole lot. Probably more than you see typically though. Yeah, but is there a is there a is there like an arm that a hydraulic arm that actually pulls it out of the hole as well? I don't see that. No, you know. No, I don't see that. Or do you physically have to lift it up back up out of the hole because that'd be nice. It would be nice. There is a second set of hydraulic hoses there actually. You know what? Yeah, one for the augur head. There one might be a ram to go up and down there. Yeah, that would be nice getting it up out of the hole, right? That's that's the part that wears you out after a day of or going down the hole. Yeah. Why anyone dig holes anymore anyways? Who does that? I mean, this looks like something my grandpa would have, isn't it? Yeah, I I think it's Yeah, that's probably from Call him your grandpa right there. 1975. I still We still dig. I'm telling you, man. In Las Vegas, man. Are you digging for treasure? I told you, man. Yeah. Every every hole feels like it. Yeah. You've been digging. You figure, man, if you're going to work that hard, there must be some gold or something down there, right? Give me something out of it, man. Give me some gold. I don't work this hard. Problem is, man, you guys just have all those freedoms because you don't have all the regulations and [ __ ] You don't have building departments on your ass. You don't have We do too. We just tell them to go eat lunch. Yeah. Yeah. You'd be stand be standing in front of the contractor's board here. They'd be all over your [ __ ] Were Were there anybody um who had any issues during fence week for with the contracting boards? And I definitely didn't I didn't hear about that. There was all kinds of little issues which was fantastic for learning for sure, right? But I didn't hear about any issues with contractor boards or even inspectors, let's say. I have recently international building codes and stuff like that. No, not not on the Well, not on the training stuff out there. They wouldn't be out there on that. Yeah, but no, all the trainings were on real sites. So, Oh. Oh, you Oh, we're talking about Fence Week. Your stuff? Oh, okay. Okay. I thought we were talking about I thought we were talking about out at demo days. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. So, Fence Week, we did have some challenges for sure, but I don't think we had any inspector issues. We did recently have uh I don't know if it was on Facebook, guys, or they sent me a message, but somebody did have an inspector issue up north where they require a footing and they were requiring a two-ft deep footing up north, which is ridiculous. Okay, it's not deep enough up north. And the person that was putting in the fence was going to do a post driven four feet. And the guy's like, "Yeah, but it has to be two feet in concrete." He's like, "I'm gonna go four feet deep." Um, so it was a conversation they had with the building building um, commission there and they actually got that approved. It wasn't terribly difficult to have the conversation and show them that you're actually building a better fence better than two foot deep. So if you're

Listening to this and you're in those areas and you're like, "Well, I can't pound because of this reason. Have you tried to have a conversation with them yet?" Go talk to the engineers there. Go talk to their building commission. Show them test. Do a field day. Go to the courthouse and pound some post in the front lawn. Let me know how that works out for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to see some videos of that. Just go and start pounding post. Just make sure you're alive. Everybody go down to the town hall tomorrow and start pounding some post in the ground right in front of it. See and then and then ask the building commissioner to pull them out. Go ahead. Go ahead. Back your truck up and tow on it. Right. Let's just see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't say you should do that. Brian said you should do that. Just remember. Yeah. Brian said it. I heard that. I heard that. It wasn't me. Send your video to Sean. Definitely send me the videos because I'm gonna put them all over. probably has gone viral. What are you doing? Yeah, but I mean Trump won. So he they're gonna they got that whole um what it department of government uh doge efficiencies efficiencies going to happen? They're going to start getting rid of some regulations and stuff. So um I know we're gonna I I can tell you one thing. The liberals in our industry right now are going to are scrambling like wait a minute, how are we going to get more laws and regulations in? So, you're gonna be speaking of regulations. We're gonna have less regulations and we're gonna have guns. Oh, no. What are we gonna do? You know, we're going to pound post in the freaking courthouse lawn. But speaking of laws and regulations, yes, here we go. Will be in Louisiana next week at the Louisiana Life Safety Security Association convention. Uh we were invited. We're going to do an entire course on making gates safer because I'm sorry that that conversation isn't done for us. We are still having it. Um but we will have uh the opportunity to sit in front of the state fire marshals. So I'm pretty excited about that. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll be doing some continued education stuff as well. And then um this is this is going to be everybody's chance to I mean come down, have a voice. This is the stuff we all complain about. So is everybody how do they how do they get an invite to go? How do they get there? So to the fire marshall's breakfast, that's kind of a close like just for exhibitors and we're considered an exhibitor. Um but the fire marshall will be at the entire convention. They do have a booth. You'll be able to stop and talk to them and actually um have a conversation. So all you have to do is register to go to the convention. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it's be kind of cool. So we're going to be there um tw I'm coming in what the 20th or something? I don't even know when I'm Oh, hold on. Have you bought a ticket? Wait. I heard he didn't even buy a ticket yet. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's accurate. And hold on. Are we bringing Michael Brooks? Brooks is going to be coming down, I think, too. So, we're going to be doing we're going to be um talking about the gate monitor and stuff like that as well. We want to take it to the next level. We want to make um not just the the new gate operators and everything safer. We want to be able to go back and anything that's not, you know, that wasn't built and tested through the laboratories, we want to make sure that that those also have some monitor safety devices on them and stuff as well. So, we want to take it to a whole new level and um but practically, you know, on a on a practical level as well. So, we're excited to to actually go and launch some new stuff and talk to everybody and and stuff in Louisiana. So, if you're in the area around Louisiana or something, you can make it down there. Reach out to Susan or myself and um Susan will have information, too. Did Can you scan that QR code that you just had up, Susan, to get to go?

Absolutely. That's the register. And if you're scared of QR codes like Brian is, you can go to llssa.org. Wait a minute. Scared of human. Hold on a minute. Scared. I'm not scared. Get your phone out and scan that right now. I don't like to scan QR code because you have one of the kid phones. No. No. Because I think what's going to happen don't work with your phone if you gonna happen eventually one time. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to send me over to some Apple freaking video game thing where I'm going have to pay for an app or something instead of getting it for free, you know? I'm gonna This may be true. No, when I switched from Apple to uh to Galaxy a long time ago and I was all paranoid thinking this was like 15 years ago, 10 years ago, whatever it was, and I was all paranoid it was going to cost me a fortune because I bought all those apps, right? You buy all those apps and you download those programs and stuff on your phone from Apple. And then I went to Galaxy and I swear to God like 75% of them were free on the app store for for for Galaxy and that they were charging for in the Apple. So, um, just throw that out there. But no, the QR code thing is Susan is right. I I I don't like the QR codes and I'll do it if I have to, but I don't like them in the restaurants and stuff because I want to look at a menu, but um I you don't like to scroll through and [ __ ] when I'm in the dark and looking at menus, you know, and trying to pick one item. What was on that page? But it's because I think how easy it would be for somebody and I'll probably say it now. Somebody's going to do it. I think how easy it would be for somebody to go and stick a sticker like on a on you know on a on top of the other QR codes and next thing you know you scan one and it goes to a site that gives you a virus or something or takes you where you not want to go right because you don't know where that's I have I have never ever had that thought cross my mind but think about it time how do you have time capacity in to even consider that like what no I'm just saying at least on a website address I mean you would see the sticker on the QR code. What's funny? I mean, what if you see a website address that looks like it's a scam, you wouldn't type it in your computer, but you'll scan any QR code to go anywhere. If it says pound town here, I'm going to type it in. Yeah. Thanks, Susan, for bringing that up. You know, that was uh I just stuff I shared with you. Uh you know that you you could have mentioned it to Sean before we went live. All right. You didn't have to like wait and bring this up now. Do you know that he won't eat anything that is white? Oh, no. I don't like white creamy sauce. Be a good show. I don't I eat barbecue sauce and like steak sauces and that's it. Now, I do know that he does like his steaks well done. And his analogy is if it's well done, it literally it's in the name that a steak was job well done. Yeah. Whereas rare means it's not even quite there anywhere yet. I learned all this. Come on. I mean, you're going to pay them full price for not even have to fully cook your food. I mean, see, anybody This is exactly what I dealt with when he was here. It's like anybody can undercook a steak. I mean, how hard is that? And that's I mean, you don't have to I wouldn't even call yourself a chef if you didn't even cook the damn thing. You just sear it on two sides and hand it to somebody. Then it comes down to the quality of the meat. A real chef can cook a well done steak and have it come out. And did I cook you a well done steak? First steak was probably one of the best steaks I ever had. Well done at your at your house. There's no doubt. So, I mean, I I got to give you your props on So, there you go. I chef, but I did do it well done. I like doing things well. Yeah. And it was still juicy. So, I don't know, man. I just You go to some places and it's all dried out, but yeah. So, but nonetheless, well done on that. Fantastic.

Oh. Oh, I I talked to Megan this week cruise with the fence cruise. Right. So, by the way, she's not in the Miami area. So, I'm trying to find us a hotel for everybody like to make sure we're all in the same place. Um, that has a shuttle to the fence cruise and everything like or to the cruise itself. Um, so I should have those answers in the next week or two. Um, what hotel we're all going to stay at. But yeah, the cruise is filling up fast. So, I went on a cruise out of Miami and got a hotel one time. I need to figure out where the hotel was and make sure you do not recommend that one. They gave us a door key, a physical key to the door. And when I got to the door, it looked like a L uh had louvers in it. You could see through the door, the door to the room. Okay. It had like louvers in it. I got in, there was blood splatter on the wall. Oh, yeah. It was most disgusting. There was [ __ ] on the floor. I slept with my hoodie on, my hood up over me, my shoes and socks, everything on top of the bed going, "Oh my god, oh my god. Oh my god. What have I done?" because it was uh I thought was saving money. Bad idea. Bad idea. Dates for the Prince Cruise. Frank, you got to be there, man. Come on. I'll pull it up again. Yeah. So, it's Monday. It's gonna leave. It's going to come back on the 7th, right, Susan? So, it's uh it's three days, but really one day is kind of at sea. So, um it leaves on Monday and it comes back Friday, right? Well, yeah, I think so. Yeah. And then we also I was talking to um Sean from CMM as well today in fact about um about his event we're be going out and doing. Right. But also though um we're getting a lot of traction behind us doing a kind of like a kind of like a social like a fence social thing going on and a lot of it around vinyl and stuff as well in Miami on the 8th. So, right, we get back on a Friday, the next day we do this and we kind of bring all the people that couldn't make it on the cruise but still want to kind of do something. Uh, we meet up somewhere on the 8th in Miami. We're working out the details of that. I am working on Miami. Getting it. Yep. Got it. Working on that. Yeah. So, we're doing what we can to keep the overhead as low as possible. So, I'm reaching out to um BFW and um and a couple of like uh sites that do just like basic party planning and stuff like that. So, yeah. And I'm checking local dive bars. So, she's looking, you know. So, are we talking about doing a little bit of little bit of uh demonstration on the ETH? No, that's just more of a uh just a get together and also a thank you for um we're going to let all the exhibitors know from the f show and stuff as well. anybody wants to kind of show up. Uh, you know, they shouldn't have to spend a fortune just to meet everybody all the time. So, I love it. Um, you know, as an industry, we got to do better to represent these people that that make all this stuff possible for us. So, um, we're going to try to get as many of them involved and uh so they don't, you know, stuff that they can do to just kind of like a midyear kind of thing to to um get them get everybody together. So, that'll be kind of that'll be kind of cool. So, we have we have another event that's not officially announced yet. I'll go and leak it right now. Okay. It's leaking right now. heard about it the other day. Let's hear me. You already know. So, uh March 5th and 6, Ankorb in Texas, Homeland sponsoring this. There'll be other vendors there as well. Be a two-day training uh open to the public. Uh it'll also have party and a band. Like, it's going to be a shindig. Uh March 5th and 6. So, if nothing else, write that on your calendar. March 5th and 6 in Texas. We're in Texas, though. We're in Texas. Anchor B. I know they're 40 minutes from Fort Worth. How about that? I have to get this area. Perfect. Let's see if I can figure that out. DFW area. That's perfect. That's all people need to know. About that's about what, a three-day drive once you reach the Texas Texas border. For me, that's like six hours for me.

Yeah. Everything's three days apart in Texas. But yeah, Texas is freaking large, dude. I think I've told that when I just decid when I was driving across the country once and went through Texas, man. I think I started in the morning. I drove all day. I got a hotel room that night and I'm still in Texas. I drove like the next day and I'm like barely made it out of Texas after the second day of driving. So crazy. I could be wrong, but I think it's near Weatherford. Uh you verify that. Yeah. No, I'm already working with him to make sure that we get something into the fence magazine so people can hear about it and know about it. Um yeah, we'll verify all that. This will be sponsored by the AFA. I'm sorry, not AFA. be sponsored by uh this is Homeland Homeland and uh sponsor and and hosted by Ankerb Ankerb. Yes. Yeah, they're cool. They're cool people. Also, Brian, aren't you doing a training with Sam coming up very soon? Yeah, it's coming up December. I got to give Sam a call. Um we're kind of still Well, no, we have a meeting tomorrow. You didn't know that, Brian? I don't know. I do. Yeah. Yeah, of course. I mean, I have it all over your calendar for the like the next three weeks. Don't worry. Oh my gosh, dude. This has just been a busy busy I mean, like you, I was focused on um I was focused on the business. So, I think that's kind of that's kind of getting back in line and now um it's time to get some of this stuff going and then just it's I think I feel like it's just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth like you said. I just it's like everything's going to go smooth and then I'll just kind of distance myself and sabotage it and then um I'll go back. Yeah. Well, we we got to talk about fence week real quick because this is the week after the event and fence week was an absolute fantastic hit uh last week. Successful across the board uh beyond what I what I could have uh ever dreamed of. So the commodery, the collaboration, the teamwork, uh the inclusiveness right of all of the event was phenomenal. We had 20 plus guys here. I heard it was like 15,000 people total across the country. Yeah. Yeah. Not quite. Not quite there yet, but I don't know. I don't know. There were something like 25 people like in in Homa. Like it was amazing. It's It's crazy. So, if you think about I put some stats out there. These are crazy stats to think about. We did over 40 projects in four days. These are like real homeowners, real job sites, real anomalies, real problems. Like material wasn't right, job wasn't laid out right, the terrain wasn't neighbors pistol, like everything you could dream of. We had a little bit of everything. 40 projects, right? Over 8,000 credit hours of training hours, like 8,400 credit hours, 7,000 feet of fence. That's a [ __ ] ton of fence in the ground, right? Uh hundreds of of lives, uh you know, affected positively, right? In one one shape, fashion, or another. Uh ton of positive feedback and u I think the energy is people can't even wait for the next one. They're already ready. So, we're looking for people to uh host locations next year. Uh Brian and I have both said some silly numbers like, "Can we get to 100 locations?" And I think that's really not that silly, right? We did 10 locations in two months. Uh with 12 months under our belt and one full year behind us, can we get to 100 locations? If we can get to 100 location with 20 people, do the math. What is that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is significant number of people. It it's not so much that it's a training, it's a collaboration. That's a significant number of people coming together, breaking bread together, sweating blood, tears together, uh making a difference, and giving back. What's so cool about the event is every one of those locations were giving back. They were donating their time. They were bringing on the vulnerability of their job sites. They were bringing on the vulnerability of them building fence. And others came in with experience and no experience. Yeah. I mean, at my location, we had two or three people that have never built a fence before. So, like Brian said

Before, how do we get the next generation into our industry? Well, it we got three three of them out of 20 have never built a fence and they're like, "Well, this is a perfect opportunity to learn how to build a fence." And Sean, when we first started talking years and years ago now, I mean, it's been years now when we first started talking and all of these events in our industry got stagnant and it was like and it consistently were training, you know, 10 people, 15 people at these events, you know, for a fence week or something like that for a year. Yeah. For a full year. That's it. So I mean look and yeah so to to see this kind of growth and to see that uh the energy that all of us and and even the industry and everybody that everybody that's got behind all of this has done that we've gotten to the point where we've we've taken stuff that was stagnant for 10 15 people a year and now it's hundreds of people that are going to get you know that are they're getting trained in that same fence week that would have normally been 10 people. You can't you can't undo this momentum. You can't stop it. It's that's the thing. You can't stop it. This choo choo train is running. It's bigger. It's bigger than just you and I or Susan or any of this. It's people people love it. They love this this hands-on stuff. They love this to feel connected to it and and to learn on a different scale and to get to feel like they can actually join this stuff again. It's not just for the large companies, right? And uh that it's for that guy that's just working out of his truck. And I mean, look at that. Look at your house when I went out there. They're just camping in your backyard. That's insane, right? And and they were freaking loving it. So, I mean, of it. Yeah, it's awesome. Everything that's being done right now has never been done before and it's and it's working and people are getting involved. So, man, Sean, the fact that you put all that energy into it, I know you put in this part of it, you put 10 times the energy I put into it. Yes. And that was my baby. That was my baby. Right. So, I'm glad to see it's over and behind us and but I'm already working on the next one. I'm already I've already got instructors committed, uh, locations committed beyond what we had. So, we've already had two or three more to say, "I'm in. I'm in. I'm in." So, uh, I'm excited for that for next year for sure. So, Fence Week is great. Fence Camp Fence Camp I don't if we've officially announced that, but Fence Camp is Hold on. Let's Let's quantify this. Hold on. Hold on. That is by invite only. So, just so you know, we're just randomly show up. You contact somebody. Uh, but Fence Cap is like Fight Club, right? You don't talk about Fight Club. It's doesn't exist, right? So, uh, but yes, it's going. The word on the street is, uh, there's a guy, Big John. That is gonna have fence camp. Yeah. Big John. Big John. It's already scheduled. It's already happened. And we're going to put a ton of fence in. Yeah. That's cool, though, man. It's just You got it, man. The energy right now is just It's still It's still It's still buzzing. It's changing, man. I I Would you ever have expected where we're at right now? Three years ago, I didn't even know what I mean. No, I couldn't even fathom. I don't know. I I couldn't see this this broad of a future, right? So, uh the goals that we had three, five years ago were pretty short of where we are right now. That's just life, man. You just don't know what you don't know until you learn what you didn't know. Like, just can't be upset about it. It It's cool. No. And I think we're really kind of evolving into something uh different than what we originally envisioned, right? Like we never thought we'd be doing hands-on training across the nation for free for as many companies as possible that could show up. Like come on. Like you know what I mean? Like when you say it out loud it sounds completely insane. It is. It is insane. Like you know there was nothing like it before. 800 hours you said of 8,000 8,000 hours,000 hours continue education. What you know fence week is going to be

The place where every year they know they got to go get their um continued education. they'll just show up to one of these events and get it. So, it's uh and again to be able to offer this stuff is is crazy. I never would have thought that would have been happening. And look at Susan. Susan, our very first full-time uh you know, staff basically executive director for it. I mean, none of this none of us expected all of this. I don't know how long ago, how many years ago it was we were talking about doing this, but here we are now. We're all three in a live video going, "What the hell just happened here? What is going on?" I mean, as we approach like the end of the year, like we we have to look back and see like how different our world is from January of 2024 to to December of 2024, right? Like maybe that's maybe our last episode of the year should literally be like where we were, where we are, where we're going, right? Nobody knows where we're going. I don't think we know where we're going. Yeah. Our members decide that, right? Like like we we take a left turn and everybody's like, "No, that's not working for the industry." And we're like, "You know what? You're right. It's not." Or Brian goes, "Let's go this way." And nobody goes that way. Let's go this way. Hey guys. Hey guys. I love it. I love it. Hey you guys, I appreciate you guys coming on. Uh always good catching up. Uh everybody that's watching, if you're watching live, thanks. Thanks for the comments, thanks for the likes. Thanks for uh your involvement, everything you guys are doing. and and uh you know supporting it and and uh definitely encouraging us to go because that's uh it definitely is the fire beneath all of us you know there's no doubt Sean your commitment to the industry just uh it's it's it's crazy I appreciate it man all your hope everybody notic yeah everybody notices Susan you're my rock don't worry I'm sorry we don't read your notes Susan but next time you're built that way okay you read the notes when I'm off screen So, I appreciate that. We're not talking about that. I'm going to go back and read them and go, "Man, that's right. I should have mentioned that." That's why she's here, though. She would have mentioned it if I needed to mention it. Yeah. Good show. Great. All right. Good show. Good show. Good. Good seeing you guys. We will talk to you guys later. If you're watching it live, thanks. If you're watching it pre-recorded, thanks for that, too. We'll see you guys. Have a good one. Security team plus one. See you.