Episode 297- Dan Blanc The Fence King

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To the things you can purchase and things you can build yourself and what are the advantages of the boat I'm excited to bring you

Man I don't know why that song jazzes me up every time it's not even a song it's just a tune uh today's exciting day I wasn't even going to get make everybody wait 10 minutes 15 minutes listen to us ramble on before you brought Dan on uh because Dan's here come on Dan man what's up man what's happening guys been a while yeah man it's been ages I know I talk to you frequently anyway but uh what's been going on man what's about how's this uh how's the little bit of Freedom you have here from your Wednesday nights what have you been up to I [ __ ] love it the world misses you though I got a new schedule man um Brian's like you gon to watch the show and I'm like well I'm sitting at the cigar bar kick back with some friends um I got a little weekly thing I do every Wednesday now I leave the office at like um I don't know 1:32 o'clock going over to the cigar bar kick back with a bunch of fellas and uh we smoke cigars and talk business and just you know enjoying it man really enjoy that didn't change much that was your normal Wednesday except now you're at a cigar bar I was uh meet Dan for cigars like a few weeks back but Brian called me like two days before he needed me in Vegas so I had to cancel oh you were gonna go hang out with Dan yeah so I mean you're but man Dan what I don't know if I thought this was your little brother at first or something what's going on man I mean you you were looking fit um dude I've been steadily working on my uh my health and working on my business yeah I mean I hate to say it but I mean I don't hate to say it but I hate to say say it you know when I stopped podcasting and started focusing on my business the um the business just started doing better than it already was so when I go back and look at the numbers it's like wait a second we were doing 30% better than last month you know 28% better 35% better and then in April I kind of started checking out after I got back from Connecticut and it went to like 55% you know and I was telling um telling Susan and then may it was you know 80 something percent you know June we did 155% more so wow in all actuality man it's been really good I've been able to focus on the business and um I'm really focusing on my marketing and just just kicking [ __ ] ass every day and holding no prisoners um I'm contrary to popular belief dude I'm out there and if you're in my way I'm gonna [ __ ] Crush you yeah I don't think anybody ever thought anything otherwise though so what are you at like 36 branches now or something didn't you just expand some more no um I've got the uh the Covington one which we moved as you can see I got a new office bigger bigger bigger space and um I think Susan you came to my office did oh no you haven't been I haven't been to your new office yet no yeah it's great man I got this huge freaking window I can see the cruise coming and going I can see everything I I love that um uh so we moved my office from one Covenant location to another and moved my yard so now my yard is literally 500 feet away I can walk out the back door and in a minute be at my yard so that's been a big deal being there every morning and being able to you know pop in and there you know it's not like oh he's across town at the office you know now they don't know when I'm going to pull up so that's been a good thing and then we've got um we've got a location in Denham Springs and man we we're kicking ass out there and I don't even have a Google listing yet um it's because of my local service ads you know we got nearly 500 festar reviews so why get a Google listing when I just added it to my service area and then I pop up first you know um so we're we're killing it out there I I say I have a location out there but really it's just a lay down yard we've got a big huge 12 by 16 shed out there with stuff in it we've got a dumpster there we wrap the yard with um with fence King and uh it's just kind of a you know we're doing a big job out there we'll get material sent there so it's not a full-fledge branch but it's working its way there if the numbers keep doing like they're doing um and I can actually get boots on the ground every day in Denham Springs sitting there it's gonna some people are going to feel it so you keep trucks at all these locations or you still run trucks out of like one main location and then it depends sometimes we'll have uh we keep at least

One truck and trailer in denim you know so it does come back and forth but yeah we're uh we're pretty constant over there man so now we're just pretty much just freaking dominating i12 corridor from slide L to Denham Springs and 80m stretch of Interstate um there's not much of um of a up and down of that you know on that stretch you don't go south of the lake if you go you got to go across the lake to get into New Orleans so we just got about a 15 to 20 Mile Stretch along the entire corridor from Slidel to to Denim Springs man so uh so is this all one one one big company you set individual companies each location I mean what I mean right now we're running two different um two different pnls on them but it's still under one company but I'm running I'm using I've got one card that I use that I buy everything for that Denim Springs location and then we split up the salaries a little bit this and that so we're it's not a true p&l but it's giving me something you know yeah look at that Dan Dan and Shane about to make a comeback I feel like we should I feel like Susan need send Shane a link right now get for Old Time sake yeah man he's he's probably hustling to connect to the DFW Wi-Fi right now just in case you send it oh man poor Shane getting stuck in those airports huh Man Poor Shane come on I'm sure he enjoyed himself at the bar I Cano himself everywhere so anyway man but other than that bro we just been [ __ ] kicking down doors and taking names I even have on my voicemail if you call my phone I don't know if you call my phone I sent you a voicemail lately but it basically just says can't answer the phone right now I'm too busy kicking in [ __ ] doors and making [ __ ] happen because that's what we do around here yeah that's awesome you know nobody expects anything different yeah huh nobody expects anything different from you customers don't call my phone you know it's friends and family they talk to all your automated systems they don't talk to you no more yeah really really no seriously like the first time I met Dan do you remember the first time you met Dan over a phone yeah I was I was checking in at a hotel no that is not the first time we met oh no I remember I was this was back in um 2019 20 no I could look I know I have it in my phone maybe it was 2017 or so you went SAS yeah I was like brand new at SAS I was practicing my like cold calling skills that's right so um I don't know if I called her or if she called me but called you I was asking questions about gate operators and this and that and um I took a bunch of notes and then when I finally realized who she was years later I was like hold on a second I pulled up my notes on my phone and she was like you honestly still have that and I'm like Yep this is everything we talked about but you even got me on your automation system like you were showing like you just started like the automated text and like I mean they were amazing like I still was getting them for like almost a year yeah I think she bought two fences from you and I think she was living in an apartment that's how productive were right man we're uh the automations are killing it we're doing a hell of a lot of follow-ups we're um we're I mean we're getting jobs from people that you know a year year and a half you know out sometimes we'll make a task in you know next February to put somebody back into the automations because they say next spring they're going to possibly do that project no so I just make a task on my calendar January 1st go ahead and put them in in a that certain Automation and every 30 days and then they're calling up man I can't believe y'all call me back yeah so you're like you're that important to me that's why followup is where it's at if you're not following up you're not getting the job oh yeah you'd be amazed the the the jobs you can get and follow up on um with the uh like my assistant the phone's slow I'm like get in this column and start coold calling yeah getting people and she'll easily pick up two or three estimates a week just from doing that when she has the time to do it yeah it's amazing how we only tend to do that when we're slow and when we're slow all of a sudden we pick up uh go through all of our old estimates and we pick up two three four five jobs out of it and if only we did that the entire year long even when we weren't slow we'd probably be able to pick up a whole another truck and keep another crew busy you know just off of following up so it's uh yeah it's

Funny you mention that Susan though while we got Dan here it's not every day that you got the fence King himself sitting on here let's pull up some questions we normally do a a little segment where we uh we read some questions from fence industry only group on Facebook and uh just so you know Dan I haven't seen him either so she's gonna pull couple random questions so let's see uh let's see what she's got for us today Nathan fry top contributor hey Nathan thank you for that too uh what are you guys using for software tracking leads this is a good one for uh for you Dan uh tracking leads quotes and just overall organizing everything on all your jobs I've just been using my note section of my cell phone and some people are starting to slip through the cracks and I want a better system well heck we were just talking about that so that was a good question to pop up what are your thoughts Dan uh I mean you have to get some type of CRM man everybody out there knows that I'm a big uh job nimus guy um but job nimus last I heard had changed up the way they do things so it's kind of an investment to get hooked up with those guys so if you don't have the money to do that and you want something that's affordable and ready to go and I don't even think they have a contract it's just month-to month I would go with um contract accelerator those guys over there um they got a pretty pretty awesome little setup I like it I went through and did a demo with them and I was pretty impressed you know and for the price that's what I would do you know if you just want to dabble in it and see what's going on but just just know once you get into it you're gonna be in into it for a while yeah because you're not gonna want to let go because you're like I got all this information in there that's how they get us too I'm the same I've been used jobber for I don't know seems like a decade and it's even though it doesn't fit everything I want I don't want to I don't want to let it go because all that information that data is in there and it's really hard to uh import you know export it and import it into another system because nothing just it just doesn't mesh right yeah um I didn't start using a CRM until I hit about 800,000 I was doing everything basically created my own CRM with a with a couple notebooks and I had a highlighting system you know okay this guy paid his deposit so I highlight the date you know we set post I'd highlight his name right we completed the job I'd highlight the address when they paid me I highlight the total um I mean literally that's what I was doing in a notebook and I could go back and see what was done what wasn't done yeah um and it's funny man I had my new assistant was cleaning out um the storage room and she's like what are these planners I'm like well that's the stone ages girl you know so that's how I used to do things man wow and I got so busy I hired somebody when I hit 800,000 and on the iPhone when you get a voicemail you can text that voicemail to somebody body yep I just would text the voicemails to uh kirston my first assistant she would go ahead and listen to him write them down make a list and then she would scan them and email them to me in the afternoon and then I'd sit down and make calls boom boom boom boom calling people back yeah just started setting up systems that worked for me and constantly tweaking them constantly tweak we're still tweaking the day yeah you know yeah yeah we've never perfected it in a matter of 20 years we haven't perfected it like you we started off with just uh you know those those rack file folder racks and uh we'd have literally racks for each one okay you know uh customer these are quotes needed to be done quotes that were looked at needed to be bid jobs that were sold that needed material work orders and stuff like this it would just move along a rack system of file folders and everything was just in file folders but I think right now it's a pretty lucky time for someone getting in defense industry because there is so much software options out there that we didn't have when we started um so it's in CRM it changes your life I still use a shitload of spreadsheets man I see chance Roy in the bottom chance that spreadsheet that I shared with you um I don't even really use that anymore we've already tweaked it built it out broke it up in some different different ways but man I literally can pull up any number that I need to know yeah you know um Zach was saying something today I was like hey

Man we got to get you know something done in a certain area and uh he was like man do I have to do that but I'm like look that one area we don't get as many jobs but the jobs are bigger than everywhere else and the profit margins are bigger than everyone else so I need you to go to this area and I need you to do what what needs to be done yeah you know so uh he's like well how do you know that I'm like hold on one second and you can see I got this computer screen right here it actually mirrors what I'm looking at right here yeah he'll go stand over there and I'll be like look at this boom boom boom boom and he's like oh [ __ ] I'm like yeah so get on top of it yeah I'm with you I live in Excel I mean I I live in Excel I'm probably in Excel three quarters of the day in front in my computer and it doesn't it doesn't matter how many uh software programs I buy how many crms I have I am in Excel no matter what I still send my quotes out and I've yet even software that we're you know that we've worked on for years and stuff I can't seem to be able to find anything that'll get a quote out the same way I want that I've done for so many years in Excel and maybe it's just because we're so familiar with it you know and everything from the drawing modules and I think I just love Excel I mean spreadsheets are the way to go to start tracking numbers I mean we literally have a spreadsheet from the date the job was sold who the salesman in is who the installer was if it was commercial residential you know drop downs all the way through their name their address we tracked the ZIP code the growth profit margin and then on the tail end that is the production you know when did it start when did it end how many man hours we had boom boom boom and you know we're we're getting it dialed in really well um I know I could probably do that with a CRM but then I gotta get on the phone and beg and plead someone in in an office somewhere in the United States to make a change so it can do what I want to do when I can just open that spreadsheet and comment on it and get my spreadsheet guy and say hey I need this by Friday and just get it done but but I mean even with Excel though like I said this generation's lucky because uh you know a lot of people didn't grow up in Excel like we did so um the software that's out there it gets them to where we are uh you know with the Decades of experience in Excel without having to go and learn Excel to the level we did so um kudos to all the software people that came up with stuff I mean they've got it down you know to they got it down to a nice little system now that we we didn't have that same luxury when we first started out so I'm excited about to see what's you know what's coming up with all that but um Susan I know you don't just have one question what's what's the next one I never dare I never dare so this is this is uh from Robert Grant also another top contributor he said he's been looking for a good handheld augur U major of the reviews majority of the reviews I've been seeing on them aren't so great what's everyone using I guess handheld auger are they talking about just like a one two man augur is that what we're thinking yeah I think so I don't know my opinion he could be talking about two different things he could be talking about a a oneman arur with the motor right here like um The Stills or the Earth Quakes or whatever you can pick up yeah um or he could be talking about uh little beavers you know I mean look man when I used to have three man Crews I bought a beaver for $5,000 took a man off the crew and we did more feet per man per hour with the with the with one less man just because we spent the money on that augur and saved my payroll yeah and then I was able to take that guy and this guy put them together and start another crew yeah well what were you using um I was using uh honestly you want to know what I was doing I was renting the uh I couldn't find a good augur and um I mean it's kind of [ __ ] up what I was doing but I was doing it um I was renting August from Home Depot and then I'd call him up and say man somebody stole it off my trail and they'd just bill me out for the payment on the augur and then I'd use it till it crapped out on me and then I'd rent another another one and from a different store and do it again I'm just hey man you do what you got to do

Right you know I think one of the first there's nobody out there that hasn't done some [ __ ] up [ __ ] to get to where they're at there's just nobody out there that just said it yeah they just don't want to say it they're too worried about what people think yeah that's what I used to do in case anybody's listening to this on one of the uh one of the streaming audio casts that was Dan Blanc not Brian I haven't done that in a long time though man because I moved on to the Stills and then um then we ended up going with beavers the Steels were great because I had a local guy the our steel distributor was like a gold star dealer or something yeah and they had a few mechanics in there so if I had one break you know I was buying them a thousand bucks you know I call them throwaways and they would fix them for me right away get me up and running and then I went to the beavers and then once I went to the Beavers I wasn't turning back but you know you can't be a guy doing $100,000 a year and buying a $5,000 Beaver right right you know it might be cheaper for you to uh to rent one I don't know we all got to take baby steps it's all about um you know Stepping Stones what got me here isn't going to get me there yep yeah I started out renting them I mean when I started up as a child we all had those before these either the beavers and the groundhogs everything even came out it was always those two man augers you know with that big old engine right on the top of it just spinning and you would just have you remember you'd always wrap that LE wrap that leg around it you know it' be all padded or something and that thing would just be pounding on you pounding on you and you'd leave the end of the day out it for a long day with a couple bruised up bruises on your legs or something but that's how we all kind of started back in the 80s and 90s but then then the the groundhog came out I think I don't know if that was before the Little Beaver or not but um I was renting yeah I was no it wasn't the toweh it was the mechanical one then they had the hydraulic the toweh so I was renting from aern local shop the uh mechanical one which was you know wasn't hydraulic so it didn't have reverse or nothing so it' get stuck but uh I finally my very first augur was I purchased that old beat up used one from Ahern and for like 600 bucks or something and that was my first first uh augur I ever purchased and then I bought the hydraulic ones the the groundhogs ever since then and I only tried the beaver um once I got to know you guys I was uh and saw how much you guys loved him over you know I never saw you guys working on any of the groundhogs so I went to one of the Expos I think it was a fence Tech in um New Orleans maybe I think it was in New Orleans one and I bought two of them off that guy and had them shipped out and I thought my guys weren't gonna like them because I I kind of like the groundhogs myself because I feel like it's it's I don't know you're just a little bit easier to maneuver for me and it's one man but I mean everybody loves those beavers man they like them they take that over the groundhog every single time man my guys when I first got them they were like dude we got to tote this thing around and then once they started using and like okay so if they call me up and say hey we're running behind because of roots yeah they they're in some major ass Roots yeah I know that you know yeah um somebody just cut down a shitload of a line of lustrum and didn't tell us about it right yeah and we're digging through all that [ __ ] or we're digging through um bamboo you know yeah you know when they hit something big and bad so but we're looking at getting a mini that's next on our list um I've got um I kind of got into the dumpster World a little bit so I've got a a dumpster guy that rents one of the office here leases sub leas is one of my offices and we use his dumpsters and um he just got a uh mt100 so he got an augur and a couple other things and we're kind of testing it out seeing how it's going to work and utilizing his um his right now to see if it's worth it you know I think it is I just don't know if we have enough work to do it but this commercial work it's it's looking like we gotta have it yeah you yeah we use our skider attachment you know a fullsize skider um not the Min ones but I me the ground is just hard out here so you need that that pressure the down pressure especially if you're out there and you want to dig a bunch of holes and it's anywhere where the ground you know where the ground's G to be a little bit

More work see I don't do a lot of that rule work I don't do a lot of you know thousand foot runs of four-board fence where I could use a a a sit in skider a full side skider I need to get in people's backyard and you start bringing that in their backyards they're like what are you going to fix my grass you going to do this you know because I see it happen I see it happen with these Tree Guys man they go in before us and cut stumps out and all this stuff and the yard's torn up and the people all pissed off and I'm just like man this this is why we don't have a sit in skiter I just don't have use for it yet but we're getting there man I just don't think there's that much backyard fence here it's a lot of black wall so typically it's going to be going around if there's any kind of like any any chain link or iron or anything going around a property it's going to be a little larger property where you can drive you know drive around it and we don't have the Landscaping I mean heck next year you're not not even allowed to have grass so it's all that desert dirt so we're not worried about tearing up uh we're not worried about tearing the the Desert Landscaping up you know man you know you mentioned uh buying that augur from uh the rental company I bought a few of those too um but they'll only sell it to you when a decent price when they've gotten their money out of it yep that's why I had to start doing the Home Depot thing but anyway um so when I had my grass business and we were doing some pressure washing I literally started that business off of rental equipment rental pressure washers rental blowers weed eaters all that stuff and that's that's how I went into business yeah all second Ed stuff I mean um funny story the guy that I sat down with and started fence King with over a rast be PoBoy walked in my door the other day and he was like holy [ __ ] I was like yeah man all over Rose be poo and he was just like golly what do you got going on here but um yeah I mean when I um and the reason why I said that is because his framer was the one who gave me all my nail guns to start my fence business wow wow I was using pass load framing nails I didn't frame Nails I didn't know any different man it nailed the freaking board up right yeah so um that's what I started my business with with nail guns that were given to me yeah and running three inch and two Inch Nails through a freaking framing gun yeah you know and a pancake air compressor I'd be using liquid nail guns man I'd be out there liquid nailing the boards right under that liquid nail guns huh liquid nail guns is what I'd be using you give me some wood I wouldn't know what to do you give me 50 feet of wood fence man it would just be a a [ __ ] showell i' never get paid that's for damn sure man yeah we got more questions what we got girl I got I got one more I got one more Oh I thought she was done uh nope so Dante wano curious what you guys bonuses are for your installers looking to give my guys something that's go/ money driven thank you in advance all right Dante um bonuses we we typically only do them during Christmas time and um I guess it depends if I've already bought a new truck or not no right I think we typically do some on Christmas time you know if they've been there a full year that's kind of the rule if you've been there a full year but we're always pretty lenient I mean it's it's hard to give that that new guy you know make him sit there while everybody else getting bonuses so we'll kick a little something but um not really based off of anything other than how we're doing I don't know how you do it Dan so we do it two ways um I know there's a lot of negativity out there about Christmas bonuses but um I I like a Christmas bonus I used to love getting my Christmas bonus but then again I was a guy that did what I was supposed to do every year yeah you know um I I loved it it was almost like an automatic savings account for me it helped me get um helped me with help me out get me over that hump at Christmas and I love them man but so we do that um talking with people through the industry you know some people do boots so we give our guys we buy them all boots every year at Christmas and I think I'm G to start doing it I was noticing the other day my guy's boots and I think I'm G to start doing it Midsummer too so maybe every six months buying them boots and then we do a uh a review reward

System people wonder why we have so many reviews there's a few pieces to that puzzle but one of the pieces is my guys are soliciting him you know they're out there telling the homeowner hey look you know I I know you just walked the fence with me and said you loved it but if you really want to do something you can go do a review and if we get a festar review on a job we get a bonus yeah so it's a way for you to tip us and it doesn't cost you anything but a couple minutes yeah so they're out there soliciting those those uh reviews that's one of the ways we do it there's a couple other things that we do but you yall going have to figure that out yourself um but uh that's how we're getting our reviews you know um the another thing that uh we're doing is is we're doing um production bonuses so throughout the month we're tracking hey this job's got 17 hours on it uh for two men so 34 hours um you get this done sooner than that then you get a bonus you know um but they don't like it when it takes longer so if a job takes longer we got to have a conversation about it whose fault was it you know okay Zach you didn't figure this right Dylan you didn't see that [ __ ] that's why it took as long you know what I mean so really what's happening is is not only are the bonus the production bonuses um giving my guy something to drive for but it's also so making everyone better at their job so now the instead of the installers hating the the sales guys because they're like oh you're just selling it you don't now they're having conversations hey look man when I do this you need to bid this because I want to get my bonus and you're not biding enough time because once it's done it's done I don't I don't care who [ __ ] up no bonuses are going out y'all need to figure this [ __ ] y'all get out there and figure it out yeah so what I got out of that was Zack and Dylan need to step up their game huh so it's causing them to differently you know and that's another thing man um you know Dylan he hasn't really done any fence work he's done more sales so he's been out and he's done a couple fence jobs and he's come back and I'm like now you know what it takes you know Zach he built fence for years for me so he knows he'll come in my off he's like look man look at these pitches I know it's going to they're going to be CH chopping on this [ __ ] they're going to be doing this or this is going to take that he's got more of a grasp um Dylan does good with it he's just he needs a little more out there doing it sometimes so but he's getting there and the way we're doing things now it's causing them to communicate in a positive way instead of a negative way yeah and I think the systems and everything that you do is it creates a good environment for everybody at least they start to understand why it's important to finish the jobs you know within a timely manner or within the budget that you had for the project and stuff so you're setting a good um you're setting a good environment for that there there's no doubt and I think that's probably probably a good place for them to learn and creating a mo a level of motivation to where they know well if I go and do this I'm gonna earn it you know what I mean it creates a level of ownership well then the other thing we do too is is um say you got a call back on that job and you got to go back three days later to fix something well guess what it's eating up the time on the job that you were supposed to be on it's got to go somewhere somebody's got to pay for it yep and you're never afraid to share your knowledge but speaking of that um let's talk about Dan Blanc uncensored what's the deal with that man I mean when is that when is that coming out people are waiting man I get calls and messages about that what's the deal with I go I don't know I don't know I'll check but uh reach out to Dan I've I've had people in my inbox and I've just kind of been um I don't know kind of been tight lipped about it I've been all over the place and I think I've had some conversations about this with um with Susan um yeah but I mean to be brutally honest I'm just kind of sick of it man and when I say sick of it I don't mean a podcasting I I mean look everybody's got a podcast now how many fence podcasts they got um they got all these fence podcast and 90% of them were doing exactly what Canon and I were doing four years ago you know um it's nothing new guys hate to bust your

Bubble man it is what it is you know you started something man I mean how many times how many times are you gonna uh interview Caleb Roth or Matt Warner or you know all these guys that are just making the circuit right um so I'm just I'm I'm SI so anyway I'm just kind of sick of the whole this whole space that I'm in to be honest with you I'm fed up with it I'm fed up with the fence industry and and it's um uh predatory mentality man just it it [ __ ] drives me when you get these people to come to events and pay $1,000 or even $5,000 to go to this [ __ ] event to get sold more [ __ ] [ __ ] right oh man I'm Glad You Came now you gotta buy this [ __ ] man I maxed out my credit card I used deposits from a job that somebody gave me cuz I thought I was going to come here and get all this knowledge and I got about this much knowledge and I got to spend more money I'm just tired of that predatory mentality man and I just I just can't stand by and not say anything about it so it's probably best I don't podcast you know um but you know if you're too unaware to realize what's happening then that means kind of have a responsibility to point it out you know I mean well it's never best if you don't podcast I think we all uh we need we need we need you out there we need your opinions and we need you to not be afraid to speak up so I think you you know you have a strong following you always have and um definitely you know I know you were talking about branching out Beyond you know a lot of your your conversations you have is about business and marketing and stuff that really kind of applies to a lot of other Industries as well as just fence so yeah I think that you know you definitely could reach a larger market so I think that's what we were all kind of looking looking forward to with the Dan Blanc on sensor so kind what the plans with it it was kind of my my thought and you know I I was dabbling in the concrete world and the alarm world and all this and I don't know man when I started looking at the uh the ROI on it and I started looking at um what maybe my business could have been doing more and then weighing out the money that was coming in from uh from uh the podcast world yeah I think the only reason why I stayed in it so long is to finally recoup all the money that we dumped into it because man it's not cheap it's expensive and it might not be expensive completely when it comes to um tangibles time right I mean Susan you're helping with this show now how much time does that take imagine if you had to manage you know 15 people and you know 550 600 F jobs you know um run trade show right right manage exhibitors right you know what it's like you know you do let's just use 550 you know we're going to do 550 600 fch jobs this year let's say we do 600 easy number yeah well that's 1,200 personalities we had to deal with husband and wife most of the time and then you got the [ __ ] next door you got to deal with their personality right you got all these personalities to deal with you're trying to run a business and you're trying to figure out who you're going to have as a guest and what are we going to talk about and then you want to make sure that people are tuning in and it's a value to them because they're taking time away from their families right so you dive into it even deeper and then when you start looking at the ROI on it it's like it just ain't worth it you know when I sat down and broke down the numbers on my spreadsheet you know the numbers look great but then you start deducting all the traveling and all this and this and this and this and you're like uh I made 50 Grand last year doing this I mean definitely don't do it for the money you definitely don't do for the money so yeah but but I feel like you still kind of have a toe in it like I've been seeing these everywhere uh updated by you know danam Blanc and sensor like what was what what is killer keys for kicking ass like what was the vision behind this well I think it was just things that come to mind or I'm listening the things that I'm taking in um and I'm scrolling through Facebook and I don't say a whole lot in those groups anymore um but I'll see things and I'll be like you know what man and I'll type something up and I'll drop that killer keys for kicking ass and I know they might not get a lot of likes it might not get a lot of comments but it's funny I talked to people and they like oh man I saw that today I was like

You didn't like it no no but I read it it was good you know um so it's just I still want to contribute and be a little raw with it but you know maybe that's my way of keeping it alive until I feel like that I got to come up with something new I'm gonna dive in and it's just going to be the same old [ __ ] right I need it's got to be something different it's got to be something new it's it it's got to be out of all those other podcasts why do I want to listen to Dan blonds because boom boom boom and I'm gonna listen to him tonight or I'm gonna listen to him on my way to work or I'm able to estimate instead of this other guy or these other guys yeah so if I can't if I can't get in there and just kill it and be different then I'm gonna sit back until something comes around and and I'm like you know what I can do something with this so I think I think those killer keys for kicking ass are my are going to be my segue into into uh what I do if I do it I'm not gonna have a single sponsor it's all going to be on me so I don't have any obligations I you know I already said whatever the hell I wanted but um you know I don't think sponsor stopped you yeah it's not GNA be none of that man it's going to be Raw it's going to be real and you're going to know what I'm saying is coming from my heart and I have a I have a love for young entrepreneurs because I was there and I got taken advantage of um and I know what it's like to walk up your driveway and go okay am I paying my house note and my car note this month right yeah you know um you know stuff like that and I think that's why it bothers me um when these guys are taking advantage of these younger guys and giving them these Big Dreams and they're so badly want to um they so badly want to make it but to the point to where they're willing to bend their integrity and and and that's that's a problem you can't come back from that and and I just don't like that man I don't think they should be put in that position yeah yeah well I mean maybe maybe you could do a twist and do it from like the backseat of that new BMW you've been driving around in or something huh let's hear about the new car I mean what H actually I didn't buy it man that son [ __ ] was nice was it that was the best three days of my life like Ral car the best I'm actually looking at some other things but I I had to give that one to try I haven't driven a sedan like that in a long time and yeah and I always like those long stretched out BMWs oh yeah so um they they came and dropped one well we we already have a BMW from the same dealership so this dealership's insane man they'll do anything for you so I was like man I'm looking at this I can have one in your office tomorrow and I was like uh okay yeah I think pepper says she wants to talk about um her new car talk about how she never gets to drive it you're cruising around in um driving my truck now man I've got a big um I got a big hammock in the back for the dog yeah so I leave I leave early man I used to get up at 3:15 and I was at work for like 4:15 but now I'm here for like 5:30 because I've kind of gotten my workload down and manageable um so I take her car and she takes my truck every morning and brings the dog so Scouts running around the office all day and um he's actually laying right there waiting for me so I can leave so I drive the truck home she drives it to work yeah I hear her birthday's coming up yeah man her birthday is uh the week of the fence show so we're gonna be in Vegas and Susan's trying to get me to obligate to other things and I'm like I I during business hours I'm trying to I'm trying to put my feet in both worlds I'm trying to get uh get pepper around Vegas she's never she went to Vegas last year and she went out one day by herself but um she never really saw Vegas and it's been years since I did the whole Vegas thing so we're gonna uh we're gonna go see Vegas while we're there we're gonna split split our time up you know well we're renaming the whole show Pepper's birthday party so yeah she already thinks she has a birthday month her a birthday convention and a birthday City I'm never here the end of that [ __ ] ring Scout to Vegas R Scout to Vegas oh I don't did he let dogs in

First South South Point is pet friendly too is it well it is let let all of us fencers in there I I'll be honest oh my goodness the internet's breaking over pe's birthday I think we'll have to do we're gonna have to do something uh something at the show we're gonna figure we're G have to get her up on stage or something and uh get Elvis or Dan to sing Happy Birthday to her maybe maryn Mor marn dude I don't know if pepper knows this since Pepper's watching um pep I don't know if you know this but my wife number two and I went to Vegas and we got married by we uh Elvis Just For Fun so you really want to know why I said that so she'll be like we're not doing that he just saved about $10,000 right there yeah one little comment right had a reny cake and rened people I'm like Jesus Christ all you guys you got anything planned that you can share with us or is it going to be all just a secret everything you got going on I'm gonna tell you exactly what I told her I said P this is what you need to be doing and I really think it's very clever um what you're doing Brian you're posting things to see while in Vegas yeah so I told her I said look you just need to scroll through and see what Brian's talking about jot it down and um we're going to spend a Sunday together you know y doing what we do on Sundays on the Sundays that we stay home you know and I'm gonna be on my MacBook and like all right let's do this we're g to schedule this schedule that she's like we don't have any reservations for my birthday for dinner I'm like it's Vegas yeah eat any freaking way I'm not I don't want to be on a time schedule you know yeah so we're flying in Monday night and um we rented a car through Toro if uh Shane K's listening and Brian Harris they know about these Toro cars that we rent but uh we rent a car from Toro we're going to drive out to Hoover Dam she's never seen that in the Grand Canyon and um I wanted to see the old strip I wanted to go on the old uh what is that the golden the Horseshoe or whatever yeah um when you go in and it's like eight foot ceilings in a casino and you're like the hell got those horrible ceilings smells like stale beer it's like that's that's big yeah like horse heads laying around but um yeah so I want to take her down to see the old strip and of course you know bagio and we're not going to the Tiffany store pepper we have a bunch of those so yeah man it's like the mech of brands that go you can't even avoid a Tiffany's here that's for sure you're like I know we'll just go to this hotel we'll just see and oh there it is look at that so dude did you know the guy I don't know this cat's name but the guy who owns tag Huer bought Tiffany so when you go look at TAG Huer watches now you're going to see a little hint of that Tiffany blue in places and it looks good and I was like man that kind of looks like Tiffany blue and the guy is like well yes a lot of people don't know that we bought out the our owner owns a bunch of businesses and he bought out tag Huer yeah so um yeah man so now she is eyeing up this tag and uh because it matches her Tiffany bracelet and [ __ ] it's blue yeah yeah yeah well I just saved a bunch of the blue boxes from my wife thought I threw them away so I just go pick up wherever there's some other place where that you know I don't get it because it's the same earring it's like $1,000 less other stores so I just keep putting in that same blue box and she hasn't noticed yet I mean she gets she said it hurts her ear normally sometimes but I just I don't know maybe it's something something with her not the earrings man I'm sure you could buy those blue boxes on uh on or something yeah yeah and save yourself like $10,000 on some earrings that's a good know Nicki Moto pearl earrings Jes she'll never know she'll never know pepper most people Nicki Modo is yeah anyway I'm looking forward I'm looking forward to seeing you guys I know we got some plans to meet up with you um I was talking to adir so um we'll be seeing you out here right when you get right when you get in hopefully I'll be com and picking you guys up at the airport or something but um yeah we well we got a car so we're going to jump in it we're going to roll out to the uh to the airp I mean to the hotel and yeah I'm definitely looking forward to um to uh hanging out and smoking some cigars man did you see that new guy Fiera cigar called the knuckle sandwich that came out uh yeah and it's box pressed so um that's a box pressed and um it's so a

Knuckle sandwich is like a a combination of all the scraps from premium cigars so they take all the scraps from those and make a cigar so it's almost like when you go to a steakhouse and they got the beef tips so they got a steak sandwich for lunch because it's all the steak scraps from the night before yeah so it's a hell of a cigar man so I'm gonna make sure I bring one for Benji and a couple more yeah they're not they're not cheap so um but I feel like this is a trick I feel like you're going to be like hey do you want a knuckle sandwich or something when you get here like yeah man and all a sudden I'm going to get socked so I'm going to be I'm going to be cautiously optimistic about these knuckle sandwich cigars I'm just letting you know man did you see uh Benji and I he came down a couple weeks ago and we were smoking at the rooster man we had the best time it was just him and I um we went got a bite to eat and we literally I don't even think we ordered a uh an entree I think we just got an appetizer we were so ready to get out of there and go relax and we sat in there till like 11 :30 at night they closed at 10:00 they let us stay it's 11:30 um and we just smoked and hung out and they vacuumed around us and cleaned up and it was we had a hell of a time man it was some Benji just moved from Athens Georgia all the way up to North Georgia right by um um Blue Mountain or whatever it's called I don't know Blue Ridge or I don't know anyway got a beautiful spread that he just bought and he's like man I need a break from moving so we just vegetated man we had a great freaking time that was probably my favorite time in Oklahoma we all went to that Cigar Bar there was a me you Benji was it Nathan DS um good old Nate Dog yeah who W who else was there um I was there Susan was there but that's where you y'all ended up like selling a booth there for the F that's right yeah somebody ended up buying a booth for the fence show and then and there was two different people there guy upgraded yeah while we were there they just happened to been there they uh was Sasha hey are you Brian from the fence show coming up I go yeah we ended up talking to them they were local from Vegas too yeah yeah that was crazy man well we're doing cigars on Thursday though Thursday's gonna be a big cigar night I think um if we get enough people interested we're even GNA get the shuttle bus going for that and we're already gonna have a shuttle bus going on um Wednesday out for the Homeland party did you register for that yet no I didn't I didn't we got to get him over the link yeah got that's gonna be kind of cool they they literally bought out the entire stonies rocking country so uh the band I saw which was pretty cool um they got a band everything going in there okay so okay that'll be Wednesday over there the same same uh same mall area where the Cigar Lounge is so it' be a good chance to check it out but Thursday I've dedicated that entire that entire evening we've got dedicated for all of us to go over and smoke cigars what Cigar Bar you are you are we going to I want to check it out Triple Crown Cigar Lounge okay so Triple Crown show as well yeah they'll have a booth at the show too so um oh really yeah and and demo days y so man me and Benji had this great idea so You' seen the new Dan uh Dan blonde sensor logo the skeleton with the cigar um anyway if you look on a cigar guys it's got a r the the ring on it the wrapper yeah yeah says ftg and that stands for [ __ ] that guy so um Benji and I were gonna get those made and and bring cigars to hand out for the podcast but no time now well I just I don't know I just maybe next year I think that'll be awesome man to have that ring on it and bring it to and hand out cigars to everybody you know yeah yeah this this is episode what is this episode of my fence life Susan episode number what 297 it's 297 yes I know last week said 297 but I might have done a little math wrong okay that's that's what I this week is actually 297 okay this is 297 ad ad ad you took this thing a long ways man you pioneered this for all of us so there was a lot of people that help helped me get to where I was at man and I wish Canon would have stayed long enough to enjoy it to the end but um you know he him and I talked not too long ago and he was like man I was telling him this and that and he's like now you know what happened to me he goes I didn't miss it let me tell you I didn't miss it I'm like yeah I'm not really missing it either yeah so it's you know you don't realize um people don't realize is that you just

Think oh we're just come on for 45 minutes and that's all it takes but you know like right after this show I'll be like going man I don't have to think about it right now it's like I won't think about it Thursday I won't think about it Friday much and then I'll get into panic mode come the weekend and and then Monday on your if you're stressed out on Monday on your you got to verify somebody's goingon to come on it's just it takes over your Monday Tuesday you're like calling each other saying hey did they verify they're going to be there do you have the notes what are we going to talk about I mean this literally so that 45 minutes it's amazing how much of your energy it consumes well it's not only that man it's the people that call you or get in your inbox afterwards yeah you know I mean it's one thing to interview people right but it's another thing when you're getting on there spewing out knowledge and and processes and procedures so now they're in your inbox and they're blowing it up and you know they're calling the office and I mean it's freaking insane man it really isan I'm not as smart as you so I I don't share as much valuable information so my phone doesn't blow up shortly after other than to you know they'll just call to tell me to f off they like something I said or something but I don't get like questions they don't want to follow up on my conversations at all dude I get more people hit me up and ask me how much you paid for the podcast I cannot tell you how many people and then I've had people say yeah you know somebody call me and they're like man I heard this I heard that freaking love it man I love it it's funny I thought you went out and bought a car that's all I know yeah that's all when I first saw I first saw that I believed it man I thought logos on the side or something you know I am looking at that uh that Porsche Cayenne uh SUV yeah looking at well you earned it you earned it I mean this is definitely wouldn't be the 297 without someone like you that uh especially you and Canon that put all that time and energy in and and you should be flattered that everybody else is out there you know kind of copying what you did because you did it well and you you know you laid the groundwork so everybody else could and I you know me I'm a firm believer I you know you we could we have room for 30 more podcasts and 30 more associations 30 more shows there's there's so much of our industry we're not reaching right now and every one of us reaches a small bubble within our own little circle and if we get enough of us together we're going to reach a a broader part of our industry next thing you know we've got not just the two or three% that we're always you know we've all been connected to these same companies but now we're talking about five 10% of the industry involved and that's how we change things that's how we get you know the resources out to everybody and it grows so I'm a I'm a Believer in in more man more and more more our industry is so big that we're not even touching it yet you know touching it and they can watch they can watch all of our podcasts some people don't some people don't like our show some people don't like one of the other ones they're going to find something that that fits them so we gotta you know and I think that's what it's going to take to connect to more people but kudos to all you guys man um you and Canon for starting this thing and you know everything you got it and I can't thank you enough for that and you know I know we talked about for a while but letting me to continue it on is a it's a big deal and I'm honored flattered yeah I love it man I love it I think you're doing great with it keep killing it cool I will see you um not next week but the week after I'm sure I'll be talking to you shortly but yeah I got a bunch of boxes here I'm getting ready to ship to you of all the my fence life stuff I got left over nice we're gonna have that in the media Booth um I'm sure you'll be spending a little time in there as well because we're going to be interviewing you live I'm gonna I'm gonna make you wear a my fence life T-shirt or something and walk around and I'm gonna I'm gonna tell everybody that I made you give me my money back my old life so I could get my life back so anyway thanks again Dan always good talking to you man um Everybody thanks for watching Susan we all love you man you hold this whole thing together for us you know you do thank you for everything you do all right we'll talk to you guys later y keep on fencing

We'll see you I'm eating animal crackers yes