Scaling, Post Drivers, and Mental Health with Mark and Sean

Hey,

Hey.

Does that add us to the show? Okay, here we go. Hey, what's happening? Look at that. It's a big blue monster versus the catman and the Catman's lovely wife, Tanya. I wish we had the cat pajamas that he could wear. So, hey, we're going to see here in just a second. Who's you're seeing? I just went Yeah, I went live. I was just shocked. So, check it out. Uh Brian is stuck at an airport somewhere. Uh probably stuck in security. They're not letting him through. I don't know. So, Mark and I and Tanya have commandeered the uh My Fence Life podcast tonight. And uh who knows what we're going to talk about. What do you think, Mark? Oh, I didn't realize I was live. Yeah. Oh, I thought I was still backstage. Hey. Hey, folks. This is going to be wild. This is going to be one heck of a show. So, we uh we're a little late. Apologize for that. We had some minor difficulties. We call that in the IT world. Ain't that right, Mark? I'm not in the IT world. I'm in the defense of business. We had the audio together. This is going to be a great show. You're going to want to be here for this one. If we can make it through, uh we're gonna we will persevere. We will. So far, we've done quite well. So, uh we got viewers jumping on. JC Gur's in the house. We love them people. Uh, great signs. Absolutely. So, this is uh I before we get too far into this, I got to talk about this badass hat that I got today. Literally came home, open up the mail on the counter, and lo and behold, I open up I got two of these awesome blue hats. We all know I love blue. But I like how he put front rock fences upside down, the front rock part. But what's really cool is he didn't just send me a hat. He custom made with Mr. Fence on the side. And that's a way to get me to wear your hat. All the way out of Canada, too. Stand up guy. He sent me Yeah, Matt sent me a care package one day. I still have this hat and his shirt. It's nice, man. I think I got I think I got a sticker, too. You did? Oh, yeah, man. I need a sticker, man. Yeah, he hooked me up. Susan says, "Why is it upside down?" Susan, it's upside down. So, you will ask, "Why is it upside down?" Pretty much. It's Buzz. Oh, is Susan not joining us? No, she's behind the scenes. Oh, she behind the scenes. Yeah. So, Susan is behind the scenes. She's like in control of everything. She's like, she's the Wizard of Oz. She's the puppet master. This is why she was saying, "Oh, no, we can't see her." Normally, Ryan can see her when she's giving us the finger and telling us to go and do this and so we have the show notes. Well, I do. Gosh, she literally gave us full control. I had an idea. This seems like a terrible idea, right? Who knows what's getting ready to happen, but I have idea. She can type in all caps if she wants to to get my attention. And that's if I look down. So yeah, I was under the impression she was going to be like right here like helping us. I didn't realize I was going to be just kicked out of the nest and left to fend for myself. Fly on your own. Just we're fine. We got this. You got the biggest YouTube channel on the planet for fencing. Here it is. Yeah. Overnight success, I'm covering up the play button. Yes. You think head's in the way of Oh, there's a play button. I'd rather look at you anyhow. There you go. That's lovely. There we go. Awesome. Susan and awesome sauce. Susan will be in the background. So, front rock fence hat. I love it. Um, tonight we're going to get into I don't know whatever whatever we leads in our conversation. Couple of things we'll make sure we do tonight before we get too derailed is we're gonna have the Ask Mark and Shawn. Even though the audio is going to

Say Brian, this was last minute. Ask Mark and Shawn what would they say? Who knows what random Facebook post? Mark, have you ever seen this before? Uh, I haven't. I haven't. He has no idea what's gonna happen. What would Brian and Sean [singing] say? So, here we go. So, now Susan's gonna put up Boom. So, this is a Facebook clip from some somewhere in the past week. It's a question. This was on Facebook. Okay, hold on. Hold on. We got to get glasses. I'm really glad I brought these. This is That is a really small screen. I'm just going to say, let me see if I can make that bigger. Hey, there you go. That's a lot better. All right, hang on. I'm part of these things. So, I'll read it. Seems like no matter what brand I buy, the magnets keep falling out within the first five minutes of use. I have two big iron fence jobs back toback coming up. And I'll pay top dollar for the right brand nut driver. What do you guys use? His most common size is 38. I feel like you would have more experience with this, Mark, than me with the commercial steel jobs you guys do. I don't have a problem with this. I haven't had any problems with that, but I my favorite's the Milwaukee. I got to be honest. Um, I like the Milwaukee nut drivers. I like that they're colorcoded. I think they're I'm a big DeWalt guy, but I just like their design better for whatever reason. And I haven't lost a magnet one. I definitely dig the color coded ones. I have those in my trailer. They're not probably not Milwaukee, but the blue, the red, the yellow, and the brown. Like, that helps me tremendously. Go grab the blue one. Go grab the red one. Then, uh, 38 or 516. So, uh, did my fence slap get hacked? Yes. It'd be nice if we had full control though, Brian. So, we hacked your show, but Susan's on the back trying to control it the best she can. Our our debauchery is limited. Yeah, exactly. It's controlled. It's controlled chaos. Absolutely. Um, how do you guys transport your gates? I've seen someone who had a custom trailer for gates. I forgot who it was. I have not seen a custom like maybe can lever gates you're talking about potentially. Yeah, I think that's probably the big ones. I've seen the guys that hang them off the side of their truck. I think the most common thing that I have seen uh that we do is we just built some like especially really long ones. We've got probably 50 foot gates before 50 foot by 8 foot wide can lever gates and if they're if I have to go over the neck then we'll build deck deck leveling devices so that we can come out with the stake pockets and just level everything and then go clear out over the neck. I like that versus hanging it off the side because in Wyoming if I even thought about doing something like that, we'd be pulled over and stopped and we wouldn't get very far. The DOT would have our lunch, eat us for lunch. So yeah, I see these guys do that all the time and I wonder how what the DOT would say about that. Yeah, in Wyoming where they have nothing else to do, you're not going to get away with stuff like that. In big cities where they've got 9 million other things to worry about, it's probably a little bit more lax and lenient. It seems to be the case. But in Wyoming, we don't we have nothing to do except chase. I find the if you're ordering your gates, I find it easier when I was ordering bigger candle gates, I just have it delivered. Um yeah, and that worked right. Put the put the somebody else. My other favorite way to transport them is probably we've built some things uh Steven's Pip and Steel delivered our yard one day and they have little racks so they put in their steak pocket and it just kind of leans the gate back just a little bit. So that and then they can strap it down so it's not taking up the whole deck. They can put a couple cant gates on there. You just can't go out too far past the tail and still be DOT legal obviously. But yeah. Yeah, that's my favorite way as long as it's not too long. So Chris uh Scoutton here is transporting a 32 foot rod of iron tomorrow. Depending on how tall that is.

That could be quite the heavy gate out of iron like that, man. Big time. All right, one more. I'll let you take this one. Uh I don't know. You don't have your glasses on, so I'll take it. Need any panty car? I don't get it. You got it. Go ahead. It does. That first one was really small, man. And it was just too small. Uh, did you want me to read it out loud? Go for it. Okay. Okay. Needing panic cardboard on a vinyl gate. Never done it. Anybody got any recommendations and any help is appreciated. Thank y'all. Um, I haven't ever done panic. I mean, I don't think it would be a problem, especially if you did some of the steel reinforced panic bar gates, but I don't see why you couldn't probably adapt a standard panic hardware for a chain link gate right onto vinyl gate very very easily. Yeah, we we have done that uh attached it right to the uprightes of the vinyl gate fairly successful. It's the catch that goes in the latch post that can be tricky to get that mounted on there. Um but we have done it. It's just on too probably. Yeah. Yeah. it was for a daycare. I don't think I don't think it was really a much of a it'd probably be better to have a a steel post there on that latch post. And the vinyl is going to get beat up over time. That's kind of a heavy those panic bars with that backing plate and stuff. Pretty heavy. Yeah, can be. Absolutely. Don't be surprised if you don't tear out some uprightes, whatever you're using for uprightes. Your Instigate kit would probably work pretty good for that. I was just going to say that's a pretty good idea. I never thought about that. If you're doing a bottle like this aluminum, yeah, we got the new Instigate uprightes that might help you. That would work really good. Honestly, if you had a steel post and then the Instigate kit, you'd be golden. Yep. So, uh, I'm glad this next question here is for you, Mark. Um, so you participated in Fence Week. You're a big part of Fence Week. Uh, and you guys were in Florida down there. So, I'm just looking for how you think it went for you specifically and, uh, what do you think Fence Week does for our industry? Uh, I like Fenceweek. I think it was good. I'd like to see people. Um, yeah, because we're doing real jobs. And I think that's the really cool thing about it. I think that is probably the most successful part of the whole thing is the fact that when you go out and you do trainings and fields and stuff like that, you don't take everything completely serious. You don't worry quite as much about whether or not you're going to damage stuff. Uh, doing it in a real scenario is is critical, I think. And I think that lent to the I mean you're out on an actual job site. You got to watch the way you're behaving. You need to watch the way you're treating the customer's material, the yard, everything. Everything matters. And I think that's the real success. And I think honestly that's the way more trainings need to be carried out when possible. You just learn more that way. It it creates opportunity for more learning experiences that you couldn't even plan for. Anomalies, things that happen that we couldn't even have predicted, which does make it a challenge because it's hard to predict how your day is going to go if you all these people there and they're all there for training. and things start to go, you know, unplanned, unscripted, will we get done in time? Can we still get the job done? And is it still a good training environment? Right? So, it's there's a little bit of a risk there. Uh, I think picking the right job is important. I wouldn't pick one that's too complicated or too risky. How about that? So, yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't do first time oneoff jobs that week. But, yeah, I think it's I think it's really great. Um, I think it's good that here's the thing is none of us is the gatekeeper of information. And that's one of the things I've always really had a problem with is when people like, I don't want to tell you that because it might help you get ahead. And that's just never been what we're about. That's our whole YouTube channel is about

Giving away information. And so I'm the last person that's going to gatekeep as myself. I wish more people would be like that. Yeah. When you smash the gas line at 8 a.m. Yep. I think I think Chris is suggesting that they hit a gas line during fence week. I think Can Can you confirm that, Chris? because I didn't hear that story that uh it's very pl possible. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um so I I really look forward to the opportunity to have a conversation with you tonight about what you're passionate about at least right now. What you're really focusing on u you know is is uh what's most important to you in your fence journey u that you're experiencing right now. Yeah. So, and that's kind of why Tanya's here is the thing we realized as we did the startup journey, you know, the startup uh edition for successful contractor and it's just been kind of the channel's been sitting idle and thought, you know, what could I do that I can really sink my teeth into and be excited about. One of the things I want to do is I want to talk more about what we talked about Gatlinburg and that is just that good family family work kind of balance and how do you how do you juggle all that stuff and not only that but you know these these people like you and I that are out there fighting in the trenches and stuff. One thing I'm realizing is there's a lot of people out there that are hurting. There's a lot of people out there suffering and I think you don't realize how big the problem is. It's like I I'm talking in the fence industry even several people coming to me and saying, "Hey man, I was I'm I'm in a tough spot." And and and they're doing that because you were vulnerable, humble, and you shared your story. Yeah. It happens to me. It happens to everybody. You know, I'm mid-40s. I thought midlife crisises were a joke. No, it's for real, man. They can slap. But you're a superstar to so many people in our industry, right? And you are. And so oftentimes it's hard to look at a superstar and and see that they need help or that they have struggles, right? Oh yeah. Even mental health like I talked to I talked to a had to talk to a therapist just to kind of help me work through all the stuff. I didn't even know it was bothering me. Retrospective insight. Exactly. So like experienced it and we're kind of coming out of it and so now we can kind of look, you know, go retro retly look at everything and you're willing to share that, right? Because most people protect that and keep that very quiet, which is understandable, right? But but how does it help others? It doesn't share it. Yeah. Everybody's everybody's worried about embarrassing themselves. If I had to break it to you, my whole life's an embarrassment. You know how many embarrassing things I've done? Like literally, that's that's a 100% chance I'm going to do something embarrassing probably this week. Yeah. Tomorrow. Maybe before the end of the show. This might be something I look back on. Probably kept quiet. Well, but let's talk about that, Mark. Like, is it really that bad? That's who I am. No. Is it that bad? No. But it's But people are so worried about it. Yeah. And it's Why Why are we embarrassed is because people want to weaponize all that stuff, right? You know, there you go. We I did the cat video the other day. And I I alluded to the craziest cat person. Well, the reason that I've put that person at the top of my crazy cat is because somebody worked for us that was a crazy cat guy, and it was the worst experience of my life. And that guy about every two years he'll come out of the woodwork and find as many emails in the company as he can because he's just a real sweetheart and try and and try and spread hate and discontent and this happened probably four no this has got to be six years ago when we first started up Cheyenne and we we finally we met this this gentle soul. Uh yeah, he every about every two years he'll send out an email to everybody he can find in the company and just about how everything's still going downhill and we're going to fail tomorrow. And I I he he accused me of our hospital district failing or the hospital going

Through bankruptcy and uh here in town because I happen to be on the hospital board and just all kinds of crazy stuff. So I mean there's people like that that will take those weaknesses or those mistakes that you've made and weaponize them. You know, I just don't worry about those people. So my problem, you know, a different perspective of that is oftent times we're we're scared of challenging ourselves or taking an opportunity because we're scared of failure. And I really look at failure and say I think we're really scared of what others think of us when we do fail. And if we just can get past the fact that just like you're saying right now, it's uh there's more to be gained by failure, right? But we worry about someone weaponizing that. I like that word of taking the failure and making fun of or saying you're unqualified or look what this guy did wrong. Um, but we have so much to gain from helping others and then actually fail forward by making mistakes and learning from them. Dude, I wish I wish I could share that Tik Tok with you like on here and show you. There was a Tik Tok. Why won't you guys? And and every single comment in there is because every time I'm vulnerable, somebody decides to weaponize it against me. So that's why we're always tough enough. We're never going to, you know, you know, that's why we always have to just be the straightup badasses is because we can't ever be weak, you know, and that's why I tell people sometimes, I am the fireman. You know, I'm the last line of defense. There's nobody to call after me, It's like this goes bad, who do you call? You know, we always say that in fire service. When this goes bad, who do you call? There's nobody. Well, in this in this particular case, let's let's reference, you know, I have my wife and you have your wife, and that helps us tremendously, right? If you have a partner that understands what you're going through. Uh, but yeah, oftentimes we look at it and say, uh, I have to figure it out because there isn't another guy above me in my corporation that has gonna take all the heat or solve the problem. We got to go through the fire. We got to figure it out the hard way. U, but I find myself just as guilty of not taking out. I'll give you this example. When I went through law enforcement training, I really screwed myself because going through the FTO program was I don't know guys, four or five months. But during that program, I got graded every single day. And my mission was to make sure that I had the best grade out of anybody else that was going through the PTO program. So every single day, I made sure I had A+ on everything. Well, the problem is naturally I would steer away from anything that challenged me. So if a run come out that was like, "Oh god, I'm not sure what to do with that." I was like driving the car over here. Oh, I'm nowhere near that or something else and wait for someone else to get there. And the problem with that is I was scared of failure in front of my peers. I was scared of getting a B or a C because I wanted to try something hard. So, I took the easy way and I gra and I got through PTO and I was top, you know, best grade, best when I got released. How do you think that went? When I was on my own, that first their first call I go, someone needs rescued. I'm like, "Ooh." Mhm. Oh, wait a minute. That's not remember to do this not work out as planned, right? You mean my first time ever is going to be now? Like, you know, death on scene call. I'm like, "Oh, god." Uh, well, blah. And and and I kind of reflected on it, thought, "Oh my god, only person I did a disservice to was myself because the best time to screw up is during that training. Let's make all those mistakes right now." And so I think it comes down to, you know, the way that we teach and grade people, we're actually doing them a disservice. So you have to get an A. Well, you know what? We learn the most when we make the mistakes. So being humble making Well, I remember I was looking through all my socials. One of them on one of the socials that the quote on there says, "Success is the mountain of failures you're standing on." So the mountain of failures makes a lot of sense. Yeah. That you're standing on. Well, I like your term fail forward. That's

Yes. Fail fast. fail forward, fail off the three three apps, right? It's hard to do, especially when you're you have all the eyes on you and and you and I can relate to this. We have a lot of followers, a lot of viewers, and they're looking I know that I have my plethora of people that are looking for when we trip, okay? And and they like to pick at that. Oh my god, look at that. Human beings, I get it. I need to be more humble. I respect the fact that you're doing what you're doing. You're helping a lot of people by by being vulnerable. I can tell you that. Kevin Orlando on here says he's a I'm a crybaby is what he says. So I guess that means that he's vulnerable and soft as well. I I suppose that's what he means by that. Kevin, um Kevin's coming to the retreat. I saw he recently registered for that. That's awesome. Kevin, um you will one in what is that? April, March. March. March 13th through March 7th. I think we've got Tanya talked into coming with me. Oh, sweet. Good job. Susan, look out. Susan's on it. I just said retreat and she popped up. Retreat information. Nice job, Susan. You're thought I should You should Brian should give you a raise. Uh, you worry less about what people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That's interesting. Steven Moore, put that up there, Susan. Think about that. You Oh, I think about that all the time. We're so worried about what everybody thinks. They're not thinking about us at all. They're so People are so vain. I've never thought about it like this. Well, it's usually a fleeting thought. Think about you for a second, but then after that they're like, "Well, I haven't seen I haven't seen all Mark Olson in 20 years." Huh. What are people going to think about me? Yeah. We worried about That's like fear, false expectations, superior. We're worried about something that doesn't exist. I like that. Good job, Stephen. Appreciate that. Um, but no, I think mental health is a is a big piece. If you want to be successful in in the fence business, you have to learn any business, let's say, learn how to manage anxiety, depression, stress. I think you we all go through those pieces often times. Um, you're not going to win every day and it's not going to go smooth every day. I know for me, yesterday was a rough day and my wife's like, "Want to talk about it?" No. Like everything just seems to be going wrong today, right? There's a number of just continuous things. Nothing massive, nothing catastrophic, but it's like ah, that didn't work. That didn't work, that didn't work. It's just continuous reoccurring thing. But a couple days prior to that, I remember wanting to pinch myself. I'm like, "This is amazing. Good day." And then here we are. So, I think that cycle sounds like Mark. Yeah. Did you let your freaking co-ai wear off or what? Because that's what it feels like. I mean, we're just like, "Woo, I can do anything." And then we're like next day like, "Oh, shit." World's coming to an end. You know, but what do you do? what do you do on those days? What are you doing? Because I know what I do. I have that one person that I can call. I have two people actually. I always have Tanya that I can talk to and I will. I'll just tell her, you know, there's sometimes that I maybe keep things a little too close to the vest if I think it's going to be something that scares her. But there's that one person that I can call and I could just talk to and say, "My world's falling apart." You know, and everybody needs Everybody needs that one person that they can do that with, you know. Yeah. Because we need that someone to say, "It's not it's not really falling apart." Yeah. Just, hey, talk me off the talk me off the ledge. I'm just I'm really struggling here. I feel like my world's coming apart. Just talk me off the ledge and tell me it's not gonna be it's not as bad as I think it is. I'm gonna be all right tomorrow. Knowing Ryan Sloop does that for me all the time. that's my guy. I can call him with anything. He's and he's a good listener. I like Ryan Sloop. I've talked to him for quite a while before, too. I could see him him being a good help for that. Uh but just be a vent to somebody, you know,

Not even they don't have to fix it. I don't even need them to tell me it's gonna be all right at the end of the day. I need someone to hear it so they understand. Listen to me and car. Hold the bucket. Tony. Just hold the bucket. Just I just need somebody to hold my bucket so I can just vomit all over in it because it's getting ready to come out. But it's anything. I don't need you to answer. Just hold the bucket and just Your job is to just hold the bucket. It's not to talk about the bucket. It's not to look at the bucket. It's maybe pull my hair back, but we don't talk about the bucket. Just hold it. And it's so true. Right. And we need that. We need that person. For me, Heather loves to do that. I have a hard time just puking it all out because there's a lot. Typically for me, it's not one problem. When I get stressed, it means there's probably 27 problems at the same time. That's I think I think it's because this is the type of people that start businesses. Don't Don't you think? Yeah. If it's one problem, you can handle it. On one day, you have everything happen on that one day. Exactly. I'm telling you, it's I feel like I feel like a freaking junkie as a business owner because the highs are high and the lows are low and they could be six hours apart and they come out of nowhere. Like there'll be days I'm like, "Oh, it's gonna be a great day. What? Damn, I want to go home." Wake up happy and by the time 10 o'clock rolls around, you're like, "Huh, freaking punch my card because I'm done." Very true. Very true. Uh and I can relate to that. But how do we fix that? I don't know. Do we just learn to live with it? What can we do to make So from a from a from a wife's perspective, what do you see and what did you do? Well, keeping it from your spouse doesn't solve anything. Um but but from a woman's perspective, it's also very important that you do hold my bucket. Like just let them talk. Let them get everything out. Don't react to anything. Don't give your advice. Just let them get everything out. And don't ever freaking weaponize any of that. Yeah. And don't ever Yeah. Ever. If you are a woman listening to this, don't ever do that. You want to ruin your man's drive to do anything for you. Do that. Don't. And don't say, "Well, I should I would have done it this way." Or, you know, "Well, you could have done it this way." They don't need to know that. They don't that's not going to fix anything. The biggest thing is just to show that you're the number one support person and that you know you're like, "Hey, you you can come to me with anything and I'm not going to be scared. I'm not going to be shocked. I'm not going to I'm just going to be here for you." Yep. I think it's helpful. We need that. So, if you're watching and you have a companion in your life, wife, girlfriend, whatever we have, uh, help them. Help the guy out. Or it could be a female in the world that needs a guy to help. Absolutely. Yeah. If this is a guy at home, I don't care who it is. the spouse spouse at home sometimes doesn't know how much the the entrepreneur is going through. I want to switch gears just a little bit here. Uh something that u want to talk about and I'm interested to see what your feedback is. I didn't preempt this. I didn't ask you what you thought. So about this time of year I I start focusing on where our year-end numbers are coming in. And what I mean by that is not just gross revenue like how was our lead count, how was the number of jobs we did, what was our margin look like, what was the capacity we put in. These are the things I start digesting, you know, about this time of year because I don't want to wait till the year ends over with and be like, "Oh, okay. That's where we landed. [ __ ] where we going?" Looking at what we forecasting for next year. I like to compare the previous year. So, today was the day we did that. U looked at numbers and I'm I'm very surprised and I'm very anxious to hear what you experience how consistent uh we can be year after year. Even will we have people claiming a bad

Economy and and then a great economy and then this happened and this happened and election election like there's a lot of e es and flows throughout the year. It'll be missed months in revenue, higher months, low low leads and high leads. But this year compared to last year we did two less or two more vinyl fences and two more aluminum fences. Chain link and aluminum about the same. So you look at the volume of work we did and the number of leads we ran. They're almost identical. revenues off few hundred thousand dollars, but it's crazy to see the consistency of that and it helps us tremendously for planning next year. Do you see any sort of consistency in your uh business as well when you talk about like capacity wise? Maybe not the revenue but like the volume of work you're doing. Do you guys measure that at all? Only revenue? No. And the numbers? We looked at all that stuff. No, we looked at all the numbers. We we create a budget and everything, but yeah. Is it really easy for us to figure out? Not really. No, we've had we've had some tremendous growth. I mean, it's hard. This year, this year is maybe another 40 or 50% growth year. So, I mean, it's just it's tough to keep up. It's tough to keep up. And we've had a lot of years like that where we've just grown crazy. And so, we're we're always behind. We're always behind and catching up. And we we do every bit of work that we can find. And then we just add a crew and we just keep going. Um, so recently I had a gentleman um explain to me what he thought the difference of growth and scaling was and it it helped me kind of make sense of it. I've heard this for years. Not the reason I've heard people say scaling and I've heard people say growing. I'm growing my business. I'm scaling my business. And uh a guy mentioned to me that uh in his mind growing a business is increasing revenue by adding resources. So more crews, more trucks, more training, more jobs, increasing revenue or growing the company. Whereas scaling the company is more related to taking a a set of resources and increasing revenue from those resources. So becoming more efficient, more lean, and growing the business, right? Two totally different perspectives. And I got to say, my entire entrepreneur life, I don't think I realized when I was using the term growing and scaling. It makes sense to me that there's a big difference in scaling the business from that perspective. Have you heard someone suggest it that way before? I've never heard it put that way necessarily, but it it I don't know if it's right or wrong. I'm just saying it kind of clicked for me like, damn, that actually makes a little bit of sense. Um maybe someone can correct me in the comments if there's a better definition for that, but I kind of it hit me as it made a lot of sense. So, I guess what's going on in my mind when I think of growing? Growing feels like what I've been doing. Scaling feels like when you when you plant something here and it sets roots and then it just starts shooting out and then you start scaling and all of a sudden it can kind of take over on its own. Like it, you know, like a vine just kind of takes over the forest, you know, it just little tap roots all over the place. That's kind of to me that's what scaling means. But I don't know. Scaling. You've got a you've got a system and now all of a sudden your system's doing the heavy lifting for you. Right. Right. Which I guess is what we're suggesting. I mean the the guy is saying that scaling it takes the resources you have the systems you have and maximizes those. It's not a one for one like what you used to do one one bit of resource equals one more dollar growth. Now it's well two more dollars of growth for one more resource. You're you're multiplying impact right and that could happen with growth but yeah I don't know it makes sense. I love it. Um yes you were going over our numbers yesterday morning and planning for next year. Robert Evers was doing the same thing, planning for next year's. Google, oh, here we go. Susan's going to correct us all. Here we go. Google says, "Growing a business focused on increasing revenue and taking on more clients or customers while scaling a

Business involves finding ways to increase operational efficiencies and streamline processes." That's kind of what that's how it was explained to me. It makes sense. So, Google, I think, has verified the technical I'm I'm lost for words. the technical uh description. There's a better word for that. Dictionary uh for that. How are we on time, Susan? She's only telling me big bold letters read. Move on. Um she'll she'll she'll be all right. She'll be all right. Got to be on point. It's the first time we didn't have uh Brian here, so uh gota make sure we do a good job. May not be may not be welcome back. So, um, anything on your mind you want to talk about, Mark, before I get into I'll talk about whatever. Let's get some questions from the audience. You want I love question. I love random questions. Just anything like do you think Sasquatch really exists? Oh, boy. So, here we here's your chance. We got lots of people in the comments right now. Somebody hit Mark with the question that you got you're dying to know for him to answer. I love I love random questions like chupacabbras. You want to talk about chupacabbras? I don't know what tupacabas are. They're little myth mythical creatures that live Yeah, they eat chickens and they live down on the Mexico border somewhere. How do you know this? I don't know things that are important, Sean. But I know all the things that aren't. It's on the Discovery Channel. Jesus. Yeah, I've never heard of it. Yeah, we're from Wyoming, Sean. There's not much going on. Okay. Not much going on. We're trying to figure out how to freaking glue antlers on rabbits. Okay. Jackaloupe. Yeah, jackaloupe. Yeah, this is the home of the jackaloupe. So, that's my biggest concern. We have one here. It goes away too fast. Susan, go back to yours. I need control of this thing. I don't know what a That sounds the rugaro. That's a That's Susan saying That sounds like someone something would say in Louisiana. That sounds so That sounds like some cinjun thing. It's got an X in it for sure. Definitely. I don't even know how to say it. [snorts] How much should I reimburse? Reimburse. How much should I reimburse employee? I feel like this needs more detail. Context. Elaborate. All of it. Reimburse all of it. Because if it's a reimbursement, technically it's a legitimate expense. All of it. I guess wouldn't that be crazy if you have an employee, you reverse them 50%. You convince them that reimbursing 50% of that would not be a reimbursement just kind of implies that it's it's reimburse they spent they spent their own money for something legitimately. Yeah. Yeah. Legitimately and they they're owed back that money. So David, give us a clarification there. David, I'll be more than happy to tackle that question you got there. I think he is he watching from YouTube? Is that what that means? That's probably what that means. a little YouTube button next to his name. It's a YouTube follower. While we're waiting on him, I'm going to talk about a couple of events we got coming up. Uh if you have a question for Sean and Mark, Tanya, ask now or forever hold your peace. True story. So, a couple of uh events we're going to talk about here. The CMM event uh is happening in April. There it is. Bam. I mean, why even need to talk about it? There you go. Susie's got it up. April 11th through April 12th, this will be at CMM. There will be a facility tour, demonstrations by Mr. Fitz Academy. We installing some fence out there. You meet the staff. There'll be a cookout and then baseball game and fireworks afterwards. So, QR code right there. Scan with your phone and make sure you register for that. The uh fence crews, but quick before you get to this question, fence crews, are you guys going am I gonna see Tanya and Mark on

The fence fence cruise? Have you guys committed to that yet? No, I can't. Oh, wait. You're cannot. I've already asked you and you're not available. Yeah, I'll be in Costa Rica. You'll be Costa Rica. Are we going to Costa Rica? No, we're going to Nassau. So, winter fence cruise. They're going to the Bahamas. 4-day cruise. I'm going to be on that ship. A bunch of other fence guys will be there. Girls as well. Um, there's all your information. Talk to Megan. Use that pin code and the group code right there and get yourself a seat on that. We have a question. Let's go grab that. Um Okay, bro. I'll answer this. I'll answer this since I'm not I'm I'm so just just so everybody knows, I'll answer this question. It says, "What's y'all's take on the ball versus hammer?" You can't tell tell people you're going to answer a question and not answer it. So, anyhow, fair. I think that uh I told somebody the other day, I like the hammer. I think that there's some good qualities to it. But I like the fact that it doesn't have the lubrication system, but uh it really fatigued me just even trying to pull down on that thing. There's a lot of fatigue I think just with the handles having to twist that handle and have it vibrating and need to pull down all at the same time. I used it for a little while and I was like, "Oh, this isn't my this isn't my jam." I really much prefer the the Rhino style um for the gas pounders. Now, putting the hammer versus the bowl, I think the bowl is going to just destroy it. I mean, they're just air drivers. If you've looked at our driver poundoffs, you get into air drivers being air drivers and hydraulic drivers being so much more powerful than the gas drivers. It's just not even close. So, for for me, it's the US Hammer has great uh like what would you call that? Like flexibility, adaptability. I can just backyard. It's very easy, right? But if I'm I tell people all the time, if I'm go to war and I have a bunch of posts to drive, I'm gonna grab the Patriot to the pool and I'm gonna go to war because I think just it consistently hits it's robust. It's it's going to show up for work. But it does have a long hose to it, a big compressor, and I get all that stuff. So, it's not a lot more expensive setup and a lot more expensive setup. So, like I tell people like have a gas driver and have a hydraulic or an air on your rig. Don't go to war with one Don't go to war with one gun, right? No. And that's that's what we tell everybody all the time. Well, what's the best driver? I said, I don't know. You know how many drivers I own? I mean, we probably own 20 drivers and a lot of those are completely different types of machines because every driver has a has a type of ground that it excels in or a application that it excels at. And you know, these are just tools in my tool chest. Tools and toolbox have plenty of them, right? So, good question. Uh, let's see. All right, here we go. Mark the new structure of the new show. Will it be one episode a week, one month, once a month or live? So, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, what we're gonna do is I think we're going to go live tomorrow. I think they're just going to be live. It needs to be an easy lift for me. And the really the format that I feel like is going to maybe work the best is is to have people call in. So, um, watch my Facebook page. If you guys are following me, I'll announce it there. I'll put the call-in number on the, uh, um, probably on the page, the YouTube. I'll try and make a post or something on YouTube and then also on my page. But there'll be a call-in number and if you probably even the best is just message me on Facebook if you want to be on the show and we'll get you called in if you got some problems you'd like to go over and it can be as in-depth or as shallow as you want. I mean we can talk about the things are going on. I just kind of want to keep it about family and business. You know, if you're just really struggling in that area, let's talk about it. So, yep. What frequency are you thinking? Uh we're thinking every week and I think maybe I don't want the shows to get so long that people will get disinterested.

Uh I respect everybody's time and know that you guys got a lot of things pulling for your attention. So I think we're going to start off with maybe uh just a half an hour in the beginning and we'll see how that goes, you know. Um I I want to keep it short and sweet, but do it once a week at least. And if people have interest for more than that, then we'll go more than that. But um I don't like my meetings to go over an hour, and I rule my meetings with an iron fist in that respect. And I just respect everybody's time. If you can't get it said in that much time, give you something to look forward to next week if we didn't say it all. So, I love it. So, look forward to that and follow on your channel for more on that. I have another event I need to talk about. This is uh not really publicized a whole lot yet, but you're going to get the leak right now. So, March 6th and 7th in Texas, Anchor B and Duramax Fence are coming together to put on a open house at their place and a two-day demonstration. Um, there'll be all kinds of installation demonstrations from vinyl fence, wood fence, chain link fence, steel fence, aluminum fence, possibly even a deck being built. So, like there's going to be a lot going on down there. Um, so that's Anchor B and Duramax fence. Stay tuned. March 6th and 7th. That's like down in that Fort Worth area. Not in Fort Worth, just slightly outside of Fort Worth. Um, down there in Texas. So, we'll be down there for that as well. And look what's happening tomorrow. So, this is why Mark's on the or not Mark, this is why Brian's in the airplane right now. Him and Susan are meeting in the morning and they're heading down to the uh convention and trade show. Um, Louisiana. So, if you're able to make that, jump in there and surprise them. Uh, I would imagine what trade trade show is that? You put that back up there for us, Susan? I didn't understand what the trade show was. Uh this is the um the chapter Louisiana golf tournament convention. Um the I don't think this is this is kind of a regional event. Is that what it is? Definitely a regional event. There's uh I think they were there last year. Um educational content will be there as well. And Louisiana Life Safety Security Association. There we Well, this is uh last year they had a lot of discussions about gate operators and safety of gate operators and things like that for our industry. So um there's some leaders down there and so it's a very important meeting for to influence those that have the power to create uh restrictions. How about that? For our industry so alarm association, I have never been to one of those. Susan and Brian have been there before. So they will take care of getting there. So Susan, you got to help us out. What is the ro raro before we get off? Ruguro rug ro. Yeah, the rug. It's like um It's like the chupacabra for South Louisiana. There you go. Well, there you go. I don't know. It's a new chupacabra. It's a new mythical creature. Great. The rigaroo. The rigaroo. Rigaroo. Okay. Fabulous. It sounded cinjun. It sounded cinjun as all get out. So that's on the end of it. That's a dead giveaway, right? Like Yeah. The X. It was the X that gave it away. X 100% gave it away. The UX. The UX. Yeah. Which means like how do they're uh Cowboys? Boy, Cowboys Pokes. They got some weird names on there like MC College. They were using uh ux for some word that we would normally spell completely different and it sounded the same way. So I forget what it was. fwaalth.com. If you guys look for healthcare, check out. There it is. Go. Yeah. Go. Go. That's it. It was It was uh made these cowboys go. And I'm like I had to be the one in the freaking store and said, "What does that mean?" They're like, "Go. Go where?" Yeah. So they were like, "Go Cowboys." That's what it was. Our daughter is going to MCN College in Louisiana and uh they are the Cowboys. So their logo looks a lot like SWI's logo. I dig it. So,

Well, that is that's our logo's got Steamboat on it and that's a logo that was developed by the University of Wyoming. So, better not look too close. It's close. End up in the fight. It's real close. I was like, "Oh, that's for a cool logo. Now, I can be repping Mr. Fence and SWI at the same time." Well, it's kind of like the Broncos and the Broncos logo looks a little bit like the What's the one up there in Boisey? Whatever. Boise Idaho has a team Marcus. No, that's it's like one's college and one's Oh, I definitely wouldn't know. I don't watch college football. So, Mark, is this going to be a Q&A or like a fullblown therapy session? Oh, we can have I'll get a couch if you want. I mean, if you want to pull up the couch and just swing on in. You could just be live right here on the show and we'll just air all your dirty. You know, I'm kidding. But no, I really genuinely do want to help people and I think it's healthy to talk about these things, talk about the struggles we go through and find commonality in the fact that we're not alone, right? Yeah. No, definitely not alone. We may look different colors, but yeah, I'd say mainly I mean Q&A would be a good thing, but we want to take people's experiences and, you know, give them advice or Hey, and I that's for the wives, too. If you're a wife and you're struggling, that's for everybody. So like how do I understand my hard driving husband or you know how do I yeah there but like I say we're seeing even more and more women in the fence businesses which is why the FWA or the women of FWA exists. So I mean we've got some very powerful women in our organization. We do absolutely. Well the last thing I wanted to touch on, we've already touched on it once Academy retreat. Make sure you guys get signed up for that. Uh Mark has been there before. That is a very unique event. That's a must. I hate to even say that. I'm gonna say that I will not recommend anything else ever above that. This is This is the pinnacle of all the events that I've ever been to. This is definitely the best one I've ever been to. Probably the most impactful and just a really good tight-knit group of guys. It's worth every worth every freaking dime of money and time you're going to put into it. So, you heard that from yourself. If you only got one thing to go to this year, that's one I'd go to. I would put that above anything and everything else. Thank you. I appreciate that. So, that's register soon. That is limited capacity because the way the event is put on, it's in a house. We're literally all together. We're eating breakfast together, lunch together. Is it back the same place or is it different? Same place. Same place. Oh, that place. Oh, gee whiz. Yeah, this place is amazing. Same exact place. Yeah. But definitely come early or leave late so you can explore Gatlinburg like I did not do. Yeah. There's no time during the event. Yeah. Couple days early, couple days late if you really want to just explore it. So Tanya and I are going to come up there. Yeah. They've got some place called like Red Room Cabins in Tennessee. I think it's not too far. I want to stay there. Right. Well, before so either one. Miss uh Susan telling us our show time has come to an end. She says, "Wrap it up, boys. You're too busy yakking on the show." So um I will say she shut it down. Yes. Good job. Shut it down. So Tanya and Mark, I appreciate the fact that you guys jumped on with like 15 minutes notice. Uh I love it. It was a great conversation and look forward to your guys' show uh reaching out to help others. Yeah. Right. Thanks. Thanks for having us. See you guys. Take care of your team. Plus two. Thanks for jumping on, Tanya. Yep. Goodbye.