Open Mic Christmas Party to Close Out 2024

Hey,

Hey.

What's going on, John? Yes. Come on. That's such a badass intro. End of 2024, though. Is this our Is this our last show of the year? officially word on the street is Susan said it had to be our last show. She said not tolerate she was gonna tolerate one more episode in 2024 boys are cut off. You never know. All I know is the last Wednesday of the year is going to be Christmas. Isn't it Wednesday? See, I'm just saying maybe No, we got this is never a chance, right? Christmas Eye with our families like let's do a podcast. What? Yeah. Come on now. This is officially the officially the last show. What are the odds of one of us calling the other one on Christmas Day saying you want to do the show? Tell us in the comments if you want to see us try that. See if you want to see one of us. We might be able to trump Susan. I I can try to find the controls. She has all of them, but we'll find some buttons to push. The first Wednesday of the year, we'll have another show saying whose wife was more mad, right? Because we didn't have the show, right? Didn't keep my husband entertained on Christmas Eve. He was playing with all the kids' toys. Should have been on my fence life podcasts. No, that's right. So, last one of the year and then uh right behind that we have the first one of 2025. I'm excited for 2025. 2024 is coming in fast. It's coming to an end. Uh and 2025 is going to be right around the corner. It's happening. It's been It's been a crazy year, man. It's like a roller coaster. This last like two three months of the year, I feel like it's it's been an entire year's worth of work we've done in the last two months. in two months. Nice, isn't it? There's been a lot of stuff going down this year. It's been like a very I almost thought like a very long drawn out uh busy year for sure. Um what is the beeping in my my headset? Is that people popping into the background or what? I think there's what's this what this episode's all about? I mean, this is this is something I don't think anybody's ever done. This is if anybody in the industry wants to come in, ask us a question or just talk to us or promote your product, anything for I think Susan gave us the timeline of everybody like what, five minutes or something. But uh uh she said we can go live for five hours tonight. Yeah. No, no, but you said, "Wait a minute." She's going, "No, I didn't say that. Take them down." Yeah. No, we want to hear from you. Uh yeah. Uh if you're if you're in the comment section, there's a link right there that says uh you'd like to join us, click that link. We'll put you in the background and bring you on and then you can ask Brian whatever you want. Hey, you're muted, Brian. Something happened to your mic. Brian's muted. Brian, he can't hear me either. Or am I muted? Is it me? I can hear myself. Thanks. What is going on? What in the hostile you uh is? So, tell me in the comments if I got to fix my audio or if it's Brian's my audio. I didn't touch a damn thing.

Oh, Brian. I can hear Sean. Yes. So, it's Brian's over there yelling. Susan turned off Brian's mic. Look at that. Susan can hear me. I think I can hear myself. I don't know. could be crazy. Uh, we need Susan's help. I can't can't I can hear Sean. They can hear me. I have taken over the show. Officially have taken over the show. So, what we're going to do, uh, speakers yet. There we go. Is that better? Am I back? Got it. Am I back? Yes. All right. I don't know, man. technology. We got it. Look at Susan's like, "Okay, forget those guys. I'm putting up the biggest event starting off 2025." Look at this. First ever fence cruise. Dude, this thing has been blowing up lately. This is crazy. We have the whole entire boat. It's the whole boat. The whole boat front to back. Everything. We even kicked the captain out. We had to take his room. And they're bringing in a bunch of dirt. I held I heard on the Leto deck they're calling it. We're gonna be pounding posts. Uh building fence, right? Okay. Officially, there'll be no fence building. So, the wives that are listening right now, yeah, no fence building. This is a vacation. This is a vacation. This is the closest. This is the closest thing. Yes. You What about those horses, man? Are we all seeing this correctly? Do you got a bunch of Hey, I'm the biggest fake cowboy in our industry. Don't even cowboy hat right now. But no, uh, we do have the horses in the stable right now. They're out there just chilling. Um, so we haven't put them in the uh in the pasture yet because it's raining for like four days. It's absolute muddy mess. I'm hoping to get them out tomorrow and see how that fence holds up to it. Yeah, that's Well, the fence that you guys just all built at the last fence camp, right? It's fence out there as well. So, I'm hoping that uh it all goes smooth, but they are out there um tucked in nice and neat in their stalls. We are officially a ranch. I don't know. Three horses make it a ranch. I'm gonna call it a ranch. It's officially probably nothing more than a house. What? No, dude. You're like It's like a I mean, I don't know what you got going on there, man. It's like a compound, dude. You got your own water supply. You got like a lake, waterfalls, horses. I mean, you probably got goats and crap out there. I don't know. Not yet. You're gonna be growing your own food. Yeah, we should get all that. All right, we got somebody wants to jump on already. Send them. Come on. Send them in. Yeah, I don't see them. Thomas. All right. Well, it's in the comments. Go to the comment section. Let everybody know. Absolutely. You see, uh, click the link. So, Blake Compass, jump on. Blake Thomas, maybe. Oh, Blake, man. Let's get Blake on there. Oh, I know. We also have We have a famous uh podcaster in the comments right now. He's just chilling right now. He's just hitting He's just trying to eat his popcorn. This guy's Friday. We got We got to get Craig to click the link. Come on. You banks. Yes, let's see it. We got to get him to chime in there. Well, we got some questions though, man. I mean, we've always got tons of questions from the fence industry only. Uh, let's go through a couple of them things real quick. Susan, you got those? But I think we got to do the corn. I don't know it like that. I I actually answered this question with this gentleman. He actually texted me directly today. Veterans fence. Yeah, they're good guys. I think first time I met them was uh Caleb Roth's uh staining, if I remember correctly, it was Caleb Roth Staining University over there in Tennessee. Oh, really? Oh, wow. Damn. Yeah, bunch of them. They were in the academy for quite a while. Uh got off to a great start. So, uh they're doing big things over there. But, you know, the question is, uh it's

About sales structure and pay and they're trying to they're trying to figure out a best way to make that happen. Most guys in our industry uh or most companies pay some sort of a commission. Yeah. Uh some are all commission, some are a commission split salary. I tend to believe in a commission split salary. I like to make sure that they're getting a check no matter what. I got to take care of their family, but I want to motivate them a little bit to go out and get get those sales. So, um Lord is a monster. What are you talking about? What? I don't know what she's talking about. Uh we give them a salary and uh a take-h home car, cell phone, fuel, that type of stuff. All inclusive. That's what we do. Yeah, it's uh you know, it's I mean for us I mean I remember my I started off doing sales obviously as you know when I was pretty young and it was man my first sales job was 100% commission man. We got paid uh every 30 days and you everything you sold up to the end of the month and you got paid like the 10th of the following month, you know, they took it up. So uh that was in the fence business. That was in the fence San Diego fence down in uh San Diego. Yeah. Wow. So I mean you and so basically you had that hustle and and they didn't collect any deposits or anything. So you got paid I think it was like 10% commission or something what it was, right? And you got paid for everything you sold and turned in. So you just had to get a signature and turn it in and no deposits. They didn't collect any deposits from anybody. So you just they build them when it was done. Everything was just build which was amazing, right? And so you would just man that last week you were just you'd call me calling saying, "Hey, hey, I'd really love to get this job going." You you'd even say it helps me out because I get paid once a month and it was uh you know back then I mean a big month was making three $4,000 though. So it's probably getting signatures on jobs that you probably shouldn't have sold as that. Yeah. Well, then it would come back out the next month though because uh if it if they canceled or something happened then it would be coming off your next month. So it really Yeah. Yeah. You couldn't win. But I think now I think a standard I mean for us I think you know a standard commission is 8 10% and you know I mean I I I fear the draws because I think if you give sometimes the the wrong person too much of a draw they get complacent and they if they can if they can 100% survive off that draw then they don't have any drive to go out there and push you know and actually get you the sales. Yeah. So for us I've seen salaries lower salaries 25 to $35,000 a year. That's not enough to live off of. which helps, you know, and then a commission of 3 to 5% on top of that with the vehicle and the gas card and the phone. So, I've seen the 8 to 10%, but a lot of times 8 to 10% has a lot less of the stuff up front, right? So, they got to find a lot of their own leads. They got to pay their own fuel a lot of times or they might have their own vehicle when they're getting paid 8 to 10%. So, I hear this in the industry guys will have this conversation and they'll hear 8 10% over here or 10 or 15%. But that's not the same as a guy getting three to five who has a W2 and is as uh is getting paid a salary plus all the benefits and holiday pay and vacation pay and health insurance. You know, some sales guys, you have a higher commission, they don't get any of that [ __ ] Yeah. Right. So, you're not always winning when you just have this higher percentage over here because all that stuff's got to get paid somehow come out of your commission out of your pocket from your commission. So, yeah. Yeah. I was uh when I say 10% I mean 10%'s what I pretty much always made when I was doing sales and it was uh definitely you you got other than gas and a company cell phone you didn't get nothing else that was it done what else we got? What else we got? Let's keep these questions going. Come on, Susan. What's she doing back there, man? I never know what she's doing. You know what I mean? Map. I I don't know.

What would Susan do? What is Susan doing in the background? Uh, I don't know if she's trying to get somebody on here or what. Put I think so. Put Fence guy. Did we lose her? Where'd she go? What's the deal with your phone, man? I was trying been calling trying to text. You got like six phones now. Is it broken or what? And none of them are functional. I'm in I'm in iPhone timeout at the moment. Yeah. So, I asked it yesterday morning. My iPhone said to because of this is all Tik Tok's fault, by the way. Just so you know. This is Tik Tok related problem. You you were downloading I was downloading all the all of it because I didn't want to lose any of it. Right. So I'm just downloading downloading every Tik Tok. Well, I'm downloading to my phone because it's easy. Well, you know what happens to the storage capacity of your phone when you put 155 gig freaking videos on it, right? It's just too much. Phone says storage capacity whatever. And it gave me like this little warning. And so I shut it off and it's never come back on since. Yeah. Oh man. And then I've been I mean all over town trying to get a new phone. All right, just buy a new one. And they're like, I mean, literally, well, we don't have any. What do you mean you don't have any in the Verizon store? And then I go to Best Buy. Well, we have one. They won't sell it to me. Literally said, we cannot sell it to you because you're a business account. So, pay cash right now for the phone. No, I can't. And Verizon doesn't have it. And you do. Oh, we got Gary. Gary Easy Luber. What's up, man? Famous. I've seen his videos. Yes. I wouldn't I I wasn't actually intended on being on your show. Somehow it just put me on, right? I just logged in to watch and Well, I gotta say you're I've seen your product. I I think I saw it at the fence show maybe is when I first met you. Uh and the louvers where the designer you can add them to like a wood fin structure and louvers in there and they open and close like there it is. There was there was a lady walking around with you I think when I saw you. Yeah. My wife Karen as a matter of fact. That's what we met too, Brian. That was a great show. So glad to be there and always always a pleasure. Sean, [snorts] h how's the product going for you, Gary? It's going good. Um, in fact, we got a we just uh we just launched a new website. Got some other things to do. Looking forward to Fence Tech this year and and about to, you know, put together a campaign to to get the word out to a lot of people. So, yes, let's let's Yeah, you have to keep in the loop. So, tell us about Easy Lver. I mean, you got you got a few minutes here. Everybody's going to get a few minutes. Tell us about the Easy Lver product. Sure. Um, so it's a product to help fencers differentiate themselves in the marketplace is is one thing. It makes it really easy, quick, and easy to build louvered fence type products with an existing crew. Um, we find that it's very useful in terms of differentiating yourself by offering something. Could be something as simple as a air conditioner, surround, trash, or really upgrade that that front fence that somebody might have on their property. Of course, sometimes they'll do a whole fence out of it, but uh but you know, it's a it's a specialty product, if you will. And it's pretty user friendly, right? It comes in short chunks, so you can mold you can add them together for different heights. Is that right? Yeah, they come in two ft uh two feet um sections. You can they're aluminum so that they work on the coast. Really? We'll we'll do a steel powder coated version in the future. Uh but we can cut it into individual louvers or you stack them, right? So, it takes three to do a six foot sixoot fence. We left enough room so that from the bottom of the fence if you're going to put a a cap board on it that you're coming out right at six fence. So if you're in a homeowner got the homeowners gestapo out there or something with a ruler we can we can still fit under six feet with three unstacked. Yeah, they're not going to violate the homeowner HOA. This is a whole new fence or is this attaching to an existing fence? Is that

What this stuff is? I don't even remember. I know we talked about I was running Yeah, it's all it's it's all good. It's for it's generally for a new fence going in. The other thing that we've seen it used for is that somebody might have a good existing post. They want to do something different, extend it out the top or something like that. So, it's also a nice way to kind of add or or it's not uncommon to use it for, you know, the top section of a fence as well. Okay. So, those attach to existing post. Is that what it is on the outside of it? Yeah. Or or most of them are going in with people putting in new posts, right? Okay. So, um it was originally designed to do on uh on 4x4 th uh you know, wood post. We've got some additional ones that are coming out. But of course, any any type of post that you can attach it to. Um I'm trying to figure out if anybody can help me figure out how to attach it to a round metal post. That part I haven't figured out yet, but I can certainly attach it to just about anything square. Sounds like a shot. Yeah. I was just like, "Yeah, try give me a shot at it." What application would you use a round post? I mean, are we Where are we using a round post that you would Well, I mean, part of my fence in my backyard has what is it? three and two two and 38 inch like galvanized galvanized post chain link fence. So it's a chain link fence. No, it's not a chain link fence. It's just part of how the picket fence is built in my backyard. I don't love it, but that's how that's how does Gary have a K plus fence in his backyard. Maybe No, you know what? For years a section of it that has not been replaced yet. So yeah. So he could have the old school with the brackets. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So you have the metal brackets attached to the rails. And so how do you I know how we do this, Gary. I have a solution for you. Oh, cool. So we we use a king plus box on your two and three post and attach your louvers right to it. Easy peasy. Looks good. We'll hide those. Those are so good because we're pounding into the ground. Those boxes go over there. You got the donuts. I think that they're called in this case. No donut needed in this case. So the box you're going to build, the king plus box is a five and a half inch wood picket. Standard wide picket, two 2x4s, nailed together, you create a U shape with that. Add another picket to the side. Now you create a box. Slides over the top. Louvers attached to the 2x4s. Done. Yay. Sounds like we need to do a video. It was that was a problem for Sean King. In fact, what I'm going to do is I'm gonna I was planning on replacing those posts because I got a section to do. What I'm going to do is I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna do that instead. Perfect. Let Let us know, man. Call it King Plus Louver. Okay, I feel like there's gonna be a King Plus louver video coming out. Stand by. Just a few minutes. I appreciate you guys having me on the show. How do I get off your show? Uh, that be Miss Susan. She don't mess around. Look at that. No goodbyes, no nothing. Oh man. Hey, let's get the other guy back. Let's get the other guy back. Where did the other guy go? How did that happen? Oh man, I made it on, baby. I'll be right back. What's up? Enjoy. Live from Las Vegas. I was just sitting in the studio. I didn't know I was gonna pop on. Yeah. Well, everybody's just popping in. Popping out. Our local our local Chick-fil-A knows him as Sunjoy. That's about it. Only Only real men drink SunJoy. I didn't even know what that was till two weeks ago. I asked for a lemonade and sweet tea. She want SunJoy? I said, "No, I want lemonade and sweet tea." Yeah, Sunjoy. Only real man can drink it without getting beat up. That's why takes a tough guy. Is it Tuesday already? I haven't I haven't been beat up this week. No, man. I just This is the first

Time that y'all have actually let just random people into the studio, right? Well, you're not random. Well, but I'm just saying qualify. Susan Susan put up a link for people to join in in the studio. So, I don't know if anybody knows that. Oh, yeah. The link's in the comments. So, what have you been up to, Brooks? Tell the world. Tell the world what you're up to, man. Where are you at? It's like It's like that Waldo thing. Nobody know nobody ever knows where the hell you are. Well, because of you and starting Off Fence University, I have uh decided to temporarily relocate to Las Vegas and help with Defense University um and help people learn about access control and automatic gates. So, I am uh at least for another year just signed a lease uh here in Las Vegas and helping people get hands-on training. So, a lot we had discussions today in fact about that. So, it's funny you came on. Um we're talking about the quick start class being uh quarterly. So, super cool about that. Yeah. Yeah. We need to uh uh get more people in that quick start class. I think that that's what we've really got the most positive feedback. But just FYI, I talked to Allan today. What's up, man? He's in the he's in the comments. Uh but uh we also have that uh class coming up February 12th through the 14th. Anybody can go to and there's Mark Cobb right there be there in February. Um uh JC Guri is going to host us uh at uh in La Habra, California. And we're going to have Luis from Automatic. We're going to be doing a hands-on installation on a practical gate with the Automatic SL90 and the new control board. Uh, so we're going to talk to Mark about what we Mark and Mary about what we can get away with. Um, there we might do some loops and uh, we're going to install a gate operator on their uh, chain link gate that they already have. Nice. Do you know what kind you're going to install yet? Yeah, the SL90. Okay. Nice. So, new new control board with a 7-day timer already built in. So, we're excited. Well, we got you here. You might on this as well. Let's see if you got some answers to this. So, um, this this is, uh, from Bob Ray from the again from the fence industry only group on on Facebook. If you don't if you haven't joined, you don't follow us, get in there. Um, I need I need a recommendation on hinges that will allow us to weld onto steel plates inside a column, but bolt onto aluminum gate on the other side. Uh, well, the bolts onto the aluminum gate on the other side. Um, I would weld it on to the an aluminum gate on the other side, but there might be a specific reason why you would bolt it on. Um, best person to talk to is Aberdeenegate. Um, you can go to Aberdeene Date Aberdeengate.com. Uh, Jeffrey Presb. He builds uh just the gates. Doesn't install the gates. Uh, doesn't uh install the gate operators. Um, and builds them out of uh Texas and puts them on a truck and ships them all over the world. Uh so what he does is a steel post, aluminum gate, buys a steel hinge for the post and aluminum hinge that fits with it for the gate. So it's literally you're just aluminum on one side, steel on the other, and that's it. And I want to say, I could be wrong. I want to say uses D&D hinges that have an adjustment built into them. So he just buys the aluminum version to steel version and then puts the aluminum version with the steel version and that's it. But agate.com would be a good person to check out. And I think they just started selling their gate plans as well too. Jeffrey Presbah if anybody wants I'll put it I'll put it in the comments. So Robert Evers and we know him pretty well. You know him pretty well. He says uh transition hinges. What exactly? And maybe I probably know them as something else. What do you what what exactly is that? I have not seen those before. I have not heard that term. So that's why I'm thinking we we know I haven't heard of transition hinges either. And I'm sure it's something we probably use. Just not called that from us. Yeah. And and speaking of Robert Evers, um you and him got a if you haven't checked it out, he's got another you guys got another podcaster called uh two smooth operators. Let's uh not forget Yeah. It's the only show about uh gate

Operator life. You know, you know, why not jump into the into the feray uh with gate operator uh talk. Uh, so we're pretty excited about that and I want to publicly thank you for giving us a shout out the other day. You took us from like 30 followers to like 150 followers in just like two hours. Very excited about that. But you can find us uh two smooth operators two smooth operators on all your social media platforms. So get in there everybody and block that. I mean watch that right away. And he's gone. Oh, what is going on here? We got to get serious right now. Hold on. Get serious. Oh man. Everybody, man, game on here. The master's in the room. Okay. First, I'm going to start off by saying, "Why is his mic so high?" Man, let's do something. Why? What do you mean? Tries to come out here with affective voice. First, I want to come on by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show." What you're doing in uh this first, I'm going to tell you guys bye. So that way when Susan just randomly takes me off screen, then you guys know I said bye. You see what we're dealing with, man? She makes I don't see you again. Good afternoon, good evening, and good night. It's like, holy crap. Hey, Mary. How are you doing? Um, yeah, I want to jump in, man, because I seen you guys were uh doing this and I thought, man, this is going to be crazy. And see how it goes. So, I think once we we're going to try to do this um every so often to kind of get everybody once everybody sees that they can jump on. And again, we want people to come on and just, hey, this is your chance. you get a few minutes, pitch pitch your product if you got a new product or something or if you just want to ask us a question, get on there. Um, your fence guy Friday though, man, that thing is blowing up. I I mean, it's it's awesome to see what you've done with that to a whole new level in such a short period of time. Yeah, we've been blessed. So, So, while we got uh Craig here, let's uh let's throw him under the uh fire here. oh. Send it. Take me off, Susan. No, no, no. Don't take him yet. Come on. You want to take this, Sean? And uh yeah, I've been following this route for a while and now I've come to the conclusion that I really want to get into commercial work. Oh, we've let this guy down. Admittedly, I'm very green and don't really know what I'm doing. I've learned a ton and I've gotten better, but I want to be able to train a crew or three to just focus on getting the work. What would you all suggest? How to train or learn how to do this the right way? I want to be able to provide pro qu quality product before I go out and try to get a bunch of work. It's fitting to get a bunch of work. Well, it does. It's if you're coming from the residential world and you're just getting started in the fence industry, there is a whole different beast to get into the commercial industry. It is a different animal from the from oh my god, just the quoting just just getting the leads is totally different, right? blueprints and and all this bidding uh backroom bidding stuff and then to get the pro and then all the requirements to get the project and then the requirements that you have to follow to to do the project whether it be safety and all these meetings or whatever it is it's a whole different animal and if you have no idea what you're doing um I'm pretty confident you're just going to sign up to lose a [ __ ] ton of money. Yeah. And first I I think we do need to say we do need to say just because there's the word commercial doesn't mean you're necessarily bidding through blueprints and general contractors and things like that. So um if you're trying to break into the commercial work, you know, that could be anything. That could be just doing for work for home owner or for business owners around parking lots. Yeah, you could work directly. I mean I do a lot of commercial work straight for the hotels down the strip. These are big hotels. It it's commercial but it's not for general contractors. So um I think those would be good ones to chase at first. you know, go chase the doing them directly because the contracts are

Almost the same as you do on your residential ones, but you'll kind of you'll kind of dip your feet in the water on on what it takes to do these commercial fences. The difference between digging a two-ft footing and a three-foot footing or commercial products, you're going to learn real quick that, you know, it takes two guys to hold up an 8 foot panel, sometimes two or three foot, you know, two or three guys to hold up these heavy eight foot panels commercial opposed to the residential ones. So, um, yeah, things like that. So, that's where I would say start off on commercial work and don't just think commercial work is nothing but general contractors because those guys those guys will tear you up if you if you've never done it before. I see fresh meat. They'll take What do you think, Craig? My advice would be don't get discouraged by bidding the first one and not getting it. Because usually it takes five, 10 bids before you actually land one. Unless you're just always like Mark Olsson said, if you're always just the lowest bidder, then usually they'll pick you and but you don't want to be the lowest bidder. So, but I mean other than that and then if you don't want to look through Blueprints, there's always Isaac Alexander. And he does all that stuff for you. And then I was a little confused though where he said, "I want to be able to train a crew or three." I was like, "What happened to the second crew? Hold on. just jump into it like money for the third crew. Like, man. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Training is on the job, man. I still think that uh you know, sometimes that quality comes from quantity and you got to get out there and make some mistakes and and you know, I mean, as long as you're not putting anybody at risk, there's nothing wrong with making a mistake. The customer is going to make you redo it. But, you know, you get out there, yeah, it's going to cost you money. you get out there and and reset post that you didn't lay out correctly or something the first time and uh you won't do it again. Definitely not. This is why you have an equalizer that way you don't miss set post. But on a commercial scale, uh your mistakes cost you a lot more. That's the that's the thing. So true. And times that times your three crews. Yeah, it adds up quick. Yeah. So, so what before Susan uh takes you off the show here, so uh real quick, how how is 2024? How did it go for you? Uh real quick, what like one sentence type thing? What was 2024? Fast. Oh [ __ ] Okay. No. And these break. Okay. This is uh way too big for me. Hey, what's up, Kevin? Hey bud. How you guys doing? How you guys doing? Kevin, what's going on, man? Yeah, I feel kind of uh very small here. Very small. Oh, turn your turn your camera your phone sideways. Turn your phone way. No, just the the the crowd I'm dealing with here between Craig and Sean and Brian. Yeah, you're the big dog here right now. Trust me. The only none of us have been the hinge that goes uphill, bro. I used to You can't hang a gate that way. Watch Kevin's like, "Oh yeah, watch this." That's I mean that's what I didn't like to say. Can't do it. Don't tell me you can't do something. Oh, I tell him you shouldn't do it. It's what I used to say. You should not hang it that way. Right. And they came. Why not? Well, I don't see a problem. Yeah. I think I didn't like I didn't like I didn't like digging out yards. So, yeah. So, tell us tell us about Orlando. It's Orlando Hinge Company. Orlando Hinge Company. Yep. It was just something we started. I've been working at Superior Fence for 13 years and every aspect of it and you know from sales to production to whatever you know whatever I was doing. So just didn't like having those conversations with people every you know you think Florida's flat. It's flat except for on the side of people's houses and didn't like just didn't like

Telling people you know didn't like telling people that uh you know we couldn't do that or you couldn't keep your dogs in or whatever. So um started started doing that about five years ago and then because of what Brian's uh and Sean have done here with changing the whole attitude of you know the whole fence community you know I'm like why can't everybody use these? So we just decided to market it you know. Yep. So frustrating, you know, frustrating for me driving around and just looking at all these literally just crappy gates and crappy installs and I'm like, you know, competitors, whatever. I'm not I'm, you know, it's not it's not what I do for a living, you know, like, you know, we I run the fence company. So, um, just want to get it out there. Everybody have an opportunity to use them if they need them. That's all. And it's helping a lot. Yeah. What's that? What's the flagship? What is it? Yeah. Which one's the flagship? Is it the same? Yeah, there's a certain hinge. The certain hinge that you're the one that you kind of with that started the whole thing. The vinyl. Vinyl. The vinyl. Yeah. We had we had one guy, he needed a had a 20 foot U-shaped driveway, went uphill, and he couldn't even use a 10-ft gate. So, we ended up making a biffold gate um folding the gate back on itself, a picket little 4ft tall picket fence and making the gate fall back on itself and then making it open up the hill. So, that's wild. So, we kind of did that for for that. And um a couple other jobs, you know, Woodgates, we it was a quite a process, you know. I don't know how I got here, you know, just, you know, it was a process, but uh I'm here. Yeah. It's not It wasn't planned because, you know, it was all in line of everything else that we were doing, you know, whether it was racked can lever gates or whether it was septic panel, you know, it was just like, all right, let's do this, let's do this, let's do this. And then finally, you know, the hinge was something that was marketable and something I thought that was easy enough to help other people. So that's kind of why we did that. I love it. That's exciting. And and just because and like I said, like and quickly because I know I'm going to get kicked off here soon. Um, you know, I went to uh by I went to uh I went up to Jacksonville probably three years ago up to Superior Fence up there and that's where I first met Sean and you know just my my reaction to wait you guys are going to train other people and other this and other you know what I mean and just everybody working together. So that's kind of what because that's you know that's the way I think you know like you know when you go into Steven's Pipe or something you see another fence company you know you want to start up a conversation with them and be friendly and whatever and I don't you know all the animosity with the locals and all that stuff that kind of didn't sit right with me. So just seeing that whole attitude change between everybody and you know Mark and Brian and everybody else and so that really changed my focus. So now I feel so comfortable just, hey, this is what we got. You know, if it could help you, use it. You know, that's a lot of awesome. Real quick before she uh she starts switching things around on us, how do they uh how do people find you? How do they get a hold of you online? Uh Orlando Hinge Company, Swanhinge, Uphill Hinge, Uphill Gate Hinge, um Facebook, you know, whatever. So yeah, Swan Swanhenge.com um and yeah, just come come find me and we'll and I talk to a lot of people. We do custom stuff for people. I'm working on a bunch of custom stuff right now for round post. I know we had that louver issue with the uh with the round post. So I got hinges that bolt on the round post now. So that's awesome. Oh, Bill Gro. It almost makes this it almost makes this show. She's like goodbye. I don't know. I don't know if it's on a timer and she does it right at a certain time or what, but she's even got me paranoid and I'm not even the one she's kicking off. I'm getting ready to kick off any minute right now. Like

I feel anxious. I feel anxious. What is the old game show where they used to like goodbye and you would drop remember the game show? You had to yank them out. I don't like the show, right? And you were like, you're like disappeared. Blew out. It's like that Dancing with Stars or something where they everybody once three people push a button, you're gone. You know what I mean? Yep. Billy Gro's in the house. What's up, Billy Grove? How you doing, man? Yes. Look at this dude all chilled. He's Look how freaking comfortable you look, man. Look how comfortable you look. your podcast night. He's not doing the podcast. He's like, "This is easy, man. I don't have to punch your butt." Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. I got my hat facing forward like normal and everything. I see what you see where you're going there, Billy. So, how how you closing the year out, man? How's it been? Oh, man. Dude, it's been good. Um, closing the year out at High Steel with some Black Line HHP. Um, yeah, seen that. That's good. Yeah, super super excited to work with that product. Very nice. Very awesome product. And man, I tell you what, if you never ordered for them, get yourself a trash dumpster just for the plastic wrapping that they wrap that stuff in. They they literally wrap everything. Every piece of material is wrapped in plastic and that. Well, to be fair, for years they had a problem with it would come scratched up, right? Yeah, I I I get they solved the problem, but now we're gonna [ __ ] about how they solved the problem. Like scratch vinyl. I mean, don't you just like take a lighter or something and just put a lighter on it and it fixes itself all that vinyl fence? I mean, what you worry about scratches? This guy's a chain link, man. These chain link guys are breed, bro. Don't do that, Brian. Don't you just like rub that with some rubbing rubbing alcohol or something? Take steel wool to it and just like rub it with steel wool. Make it worse. No. No, Brian. We don't do that with vinyl. Okay. Right now, Zach is freaking out right now. Like, no. I promise you, Zach, we did not do that. Hey, that's and that's official. That's what Zack That's what Zach told me to do. If you ever have any scratches on your fence, you just take a lighter and you just kind of like heat it up a little bit and rub it with some rubbing alcohol. No, no, no. He didn't say that. Text me in a minute. But yeah, so that's how I'm finishing up the year with High Steel and then with the podcast. Obviously, last night's episode was the last episode for the year because both my next times are on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. I'm sure you're the same, Brian. Um, so I've got uh two best of episodes that I'm going to air. Uh, they're not going to be live episodes, but they're still going to be best of episodes. Um, I went and found all of the most listened to episodes, which are obviously the most popular ones, broken those up, put them all together. There's still the there's still the commercials in there for all the sponsors, so everything's going to be like normal. But that's how I'm ending that off in that scene. Um, and then I'm ready for 2025, man. I'm ready for some more training dates. I'm ready for some new people on the show. I got I got word in the street that you got one coming up in January. I'm excited. I'm excited, man. Third week in January. Pensacola, baby. Well, we got Billy here. We haven't uh we haven't released the 2025 dates yet. So, I just think there's one in January. Well, hey, man, I can't wait to see him. And um and uh moving forward with High Steel, I can't wait till we get a couple more people hired. Uh we had a really good lead come in today. Really super excited about that. Nice. um uh very well-versed and he speaks Spanish as well. So that is a huge plus for us now. Put him on a truck. Huge plus for us right now. Speak Spanish and English uh like fluently. So Yeah. So that's where we're going for 2025. You guys stay tuned. Thank

Everybody who watches the Gatekeepers podcast. Keep watching mine. Keep watching Brian's. Watch all of them. Man, it's like he knows he's getting ready to get yanked off. You see this? Ask this question. Ask this. He's like, "Ah, it's going to I really do, man. I've been watching the time since I've been on." I'm like, "Okay, it's ticking. It's ticking. I got You don't know. I don't know if it's actually on a timer." She didn't tell us any of the rules or I don't know if it's a timer or what's happening, brother. What's up, guys? Oh, we're having fun, man. We're having fun. This is pretty cool format. No, for sure. It's like we don't even know what's getting ready to happen. All of a sudden, people appear and disappear. Didn't I Didn't I hear you were just talking to Brooks? I did. I spoke to him today about the some gate training. Did you tell him how to do it right? I hope you told him and told him how to get it done, right? Yeah. No, I'm always willing to learn. Yeah. So, I I've been trying to teach Brooks everything I know so he can uh get out there and actually teach it right. But Brooks knows everything I know of Date Operators and a lot more. Dude, the guy's Yeah, it's like uh he's like Sheldon from uh that uh TV show Big Bang Theory. Big Bang Theory except with Gate Operators. Yeah. He just uh he knows anything and everything about it. Right down to the stuff that uh everything you want to know everything you don't want to know. He knows too much too much about it. And he'd be brutally honest about it, too. Just like Sheldon like, "No, no, not now, Sheldon. Just the truth. These things suck. You're gonna learn you're gonna learn to do it the right way." I'm like, you just replaced it. No, I'm going to teach you how to diagnose it. Oh, man. True. All right, that's good. Good. So, but he's got Yeah, he's got a lot a lot of knowledge on this stuff, so it's really cool. So, um let's circle back to this. I was hoping to do this while Billy Gro is on there. So, um Allan, you do some chain link, right? A little bit. All right. Well, here we go. So, chain link question. If I have, this is obviously for someone that looks like just trying to buy materials. If I have a run of 400 104 feet of black chain link, can I stretch two 50 foot rolls to make that reach or do they come shorter than 50 foot? So, the answer is you can, but I don't know if you should because it I wouldn't recommend it, but but buying buying chain link is one of those things. I mean, you're going to use it in the future. So, I always buy I always try to buy more than what I need and then just store what I don't use. I'm going to use it again in the future. Yeah. So, we take it back to the shop and make gates or something out of it. And this black, um, being that it's vinyl coated, it's probably going to stretch a even out a little bit easier. It's going to be a little thinner, probably gauge underneath the vinyl. And what happens, it shrinks when the when you do that. So, when you pull it too tight, the diamonds are no longer square, right? You pull them like this. And so, the fence does actually get longer, but it will actually get shorter. We we actually installed about 300 foot of that today. And I actually had the the pleasure of watching I think Sean's video on how to do bias cuts. I've never done bias cuts. So I watched your video and I watched S SWIS and like I showed the guys how to do the the formula and we cut it and it turned out great. Oh, I love to hear it. That's awesome. I hate for the longest time I was nervous and scared shitless about it. And when I had to make the video, when they asked me to make the video I'm like ah uh is there somebody uh holy [ __ ] you again. Again though, I told the guys, you know, it was like I'd never done it. They've never done it. I said, "We got enough chain link on the job. Try it. If it doesn't work, we'll pull some more

Out. We'll string it back up and we'll do it until we get it to our perfection." Yeah. Just do just set the post crooked like this. Lean it over. And then you can just do a straight run, kind of roll up over that hill, you Oh, wow. Yeah. So, we're gonna teach you how to how to how to properly set up folks. not listen to all the advice from Brian. Okay, everybody in the comments section, he has to be censored. He's kidding half the time. I'm not serious. Yeah, you definitely shouldn't set your bows crooked to to avoid setting a bias, but Oh, but but you can you can though. I'm just I mean, nobody's really going to notice. Probably shouldn't. So, Allan, give me uh 2025 in one sentence. What was it like for you? So, this June, we actually got us a shop space and we've had quite a bit of growth. There we go. Uh, we had a November tornado in Oklahoma, which don't happen all the time. So, we've got tons of requests coming in. We're trying to book out. I've started buying some more of my lumber and and bigger packages, so I'm getting better pricing. And again, we have a storage facility. We've got a dip tank now set up. We've got a panel jig. So, like I am looking for 2025 to be a great year. I love to hear it. I love to hear your enthusiasm. 2025 is going to kick ass. Everybody's excited about 2025. And I mean, we haven't felt this kind of excitement in a long time. I think we all came into 2024 and we all I remember the attitude we were talking we were talking last year and we all said it's going to be a rough year, but we're going to push through it. That's how that was our attitude. And we're excited because we made it through it, right? We survived. It's like when you go and do an awesome workout, you're like, "Oh my gosh, this is dreadful." But when you get done, you're like, "Ha, I did it." And now I feel like I'm invincible. Right? And that's kind of like we did that with 25 2024. We smashed 2024. So now we're confident like, "Bring on 2025. Come on." 100%. Yeah. We're still here, world. I made it through that [ __ ] I got this. Right. So, all right. Any last comments before you know our uh wizard behind the scenes just like makes you disappear. Honestly, like I said, you know, when you talked about the commercial, a lot of guys don't take in consideration the payments, how long payments come in after you complete the job. A lot of them don't put any money down. Payments. Yeah. Lack of payments. It's like, where did all that money go? They they they rush you through the project. They want you then there. They want it done and then they ghost you until they're ready to pay you. And that sucks chasing the money. But [snorts] and extremely extremely competitive. Know your banker. You know, I've got a good banker that that helps me with my cash flow. And so that's how we've taken on some of the city and the commercial projects that we have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. Good stuff. Jeez. He always cuts me off when I'm talking. Have you noticed that? Kelly. Well, hi, Kelly. Hey, how you guys doing? I had your shirt on. I had your shirt on today. You did? It's not here now. You had actually her shirt on. Yeah, I have my NW Quickpull shirt on, right? And you're not wearing it now. Come on. Where's my underwear? It got dirty and then I got on the road. So, I changed. I changed. Kelly is relentless, brother. Relentless. Okay. Where's my shirt at right now? Like, I don't care you. Where's it at? What did you get? What the heck is that? Where did she even get that? I do like ears, Brian. Yeah, because I'm down in I'm California. We're going to Disneyland tomorrow. I'm nervous about this because if I see that she did this to you, is there something I gotta worry about next? I didn't know this was coming. This show was for her. Because by the way, everybody that's watching this, we have no idea about any of the questions, any of the images she's pulling up. This is hilarious. It's like I'm just waiting for the next

Flip. So, how are you and Rowdy? What's going on? Hey, we're doing great. You know, you're talking about um how 24 went and Sean, I just want to give you a shout out to your latest post the other day about and all the uners out. Uh so Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've been doing this a long time and and this year's been good. We are now available at Master Halco. Um you know, we did we did a lot of trade shows this year and next year we got a different plan. We're going to stick with the fence shows, right? But you know, our our tool belongs in so many different industries. So, we're going to cut back on shows and focus on smaller trips and do demonstrations like Rowdy Rowdy last month did a um demonstration with the Department of Transportation, the state of Alabama and Mississippi. And so, those are the things. Hey, if anybody's got connections with any of those kinds of people, please let us know. We want to come to your area. Another big thing is, you know, ours is a rental tool also, and so we are now growing in Sunb Belt locations. So that's that's making it more available to more people, more homeowners. Well, let's tell everybody what it is first because I think a lot I mean we just kind of we just assume everybody knows NW QuickPole and and what it is. So real quick, uh let's tell them what you have. Tell us about it's it's that blue tripod post puller. It looks like uh one of Sean King's tools, but it's really ours. Kelly and Rowdy Slogit. My husband invented it and uh I'm the woman behind the business. I had some some guy in your um in your post, Sean, that was saying, "Oh, well, I bent the handle and I I broke the chain." And I'm like, "Well, did you call me?" Because I don't know anything about that. Right. I mean, but it wasn't negative. They said that it was so powerful it broke the chain. They made a bigger chain and they put a longer handle on it and it's pulling freaking it's pulling boulders out of the ground. Right. So, like You would have There was another one though. There was another one that said, you know, he did this and I was like, well, did you call me? You didn't call me. I don't I can't fix it if I you don't call me, you know, or call us, right? So, we sell the tool. If someone calls us, we would fix whatever problem. But the reality of it is it's a piece of metal and guys can tear up anything. Okay. Period. You're not going to build a tool that's invincible. Okay. It works. Like if you run your car up a cliff, you can't call Ford and be like, "Yeah, but it doesn't run no more." Yeah. And you got one in every truck, don't you, Sean? Every truck has one and my guys love it. You know, we get we get all kinds of comments about like, well, I just use a skid steer. Well, that's cute when you can get a skid steer there. But then actually, this quick pull has more pulling power than the skid steer. And that's where the that's where the disbelief is right there. You know, people don't want to believe that metal pulling how many thousand skid steer skid steer can pick out 4,000 lbs, 5,000 pounds. Maybe this thing's rated at well over 10,000 pounds. Exactly. It's not even close. Yeah. You know, we we hardly ever pull post out. It's the weirdest thing. I I don't Maybe it's a lot more with the resident fences. Yeah. You know, and and I and I get it. If I was in if I was in a commercial setting, I would probably use a skid steer because I'm driving a line. I'm pulling a bunch of posts and I don't need 10,000 pounds. Not always do you need 10,000 pounds of pulling power, right? I think some of the push back we get is it they are able to pull post with a skid steer. You're right. You can, but occasionally you have one, it won't come out even with a skid steer. And the quick pull has the horsepower to do it. The point is this. when you're going those backyards where you can't get the machine. You don't want to truck the machine across the uh you know the city and unload it and unload it. You can carry this thing on your shoulder, walk in a backyard, pull the post out before you even get the machine loaded at the shop. Like this is the problem. The guys think it's a it's like, well, I wouldn't do that for 3,000 feet. No, I probably wouldn't either, okay? Because I would be tired pulling every single post out, right? Like

Why do we have to go to it's extreme every time? Well, that's not a good tool because it won't work in this extreme environment. Well, your skidster is not going to work in a five post backyard either. Not buy a skister. In Vegas, we just we bore a hole. We bore a hole down next to the hole next to the post, the concrete, and then go underneath it and then we fill that up with like gunpowder and then um we put a wick in there. We lay that and then we kind of just we kind of just push the blast the the post out of the ground. But that's just how we do it in the back. And then and then wy coyote shows up too, right? That's not quickpool. That's Yeah, that's shot fire. Wow, that is another useful tip from me tonight. Do not listen to Brian. Do not put gunpowder in the ground and light it with the weight. Okay, Susan. Well, you gota you got to be responsible about it, though. Don't you know? Yeah. Don't put too much gunpowder. Make sure you put the right amount and make sure you wear your headset and you stand back and safety glasses. Helmets. I mean, you probably already have a helmet on if you gloves on. And yeah, speaking of gloves, I found a set of gloves in my trailer the other day. It said QuickPool on them. I like what I thought was so badass is the right color blue. I'm like, how cool. How cool is it? They happened to pick the coolest blue on the market. Good job. That's right. Everybody thought it was yours. Oh, what do we got? Craig back on and Brooks. What a way to close this out, you guys. What a way to close. We got a party. It's It's battle of the podcast. Oh, that's right. Oh, let's get get Billy Grove back on here. Put him back Billy Gro back on there. Can you pull him back up? Where is he? Get Billy to click back. Well, he was like this in his living room. Oh, I knew. Look at this. See, Kelly, I knew something was coming. That's He's got hair. Sean, look. There's even a little bit right there. You see that? Oh, man. That's Dylan DDK right there. That's what fencing does to you, man. I mean, you could be like 20 and you look like you're 45. But I want to note this. This would look at still wearing a blue shirt. And this was way before blue was cool. Before I was all blue. This Look at that. Still wearing blue. I didn't even know any better back then. It's in the blood. Some would Some would say you don't know any better now either. Still wearing blue and I still don't know any better. It's It's a It's the coolest color out there, man. We We like it. See, that's all right. Well, hey guys, thank you guys for staying on. Um really cool show. Susan, that was really cool of you. I think we should bring Susan on here to say say goodbye, too. Yeah, we should make Susan get on here. Susan, everybody Susan, she's the one that pulled this whole show together and has been running the back end. And the rest of them, she's the one she's been like, "You're off. You're off." For everybody that's watching, merry Christmas. Happy New Year, happy holiday, whatever you got to do to celebrate this year. We're super excited you guys watched all of the podcasts and um interacted with all of us in all of our Facebook groups, our MySpace groups, or whichever one you followed us on. Yeah, my space together we together we get better. That's that's the reality of it, guys. So, this is awesome to bring our industry together. So, kudos. 2025 is coming in fast. Susan Susan, since you haven't been on here yet, tell us about uh your year and where you see uh the years going uh next year. I just see everything growing and getting better and us getting stronger. We found our dream team. We're getting in our flow and all the great things from here. All right, you guys. Thank you. I know we didn't get to say goodbye to a lot of people that were on here. Um we uh

Really appreciate everybody coming on. All right, take it easy. All right, see you. Thank you. Take them