Episode 309: One Industry, One Goal with Matt Warner

All right, Jimmy, let's get serious now. Wait a minute. He's got these things numbered wrong. Brad, what are you trying to do to me? The top of the first one is Brad. I know, but it don't It says Dolly on my sheet number one. No, Dolly is on the second. Well, tell Brad that, Brad. I'm coming in there.

Well, I thought we was going to do something important like uh like be on a Brad Paisley record or something. Yeah. No chance of that. Oh my goodness. I'm waiting for old brother. Okay, I'm ready. Hey, what's going on? We got a super good guy in the house. Is that you, Matt? What are you in there? What is going on? You're in the computer. I don't see you. Take your fogged up glasses off, man. What have you been doing? W. So, all right. For those of you out there that don't know who this gentleman is, it's Matt Warner, the myth, the man, the legend, not the legend. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Not that not that it needs to be told, but tell tell the quick story. Well, let's see. I shot a a 498 pound bear one time. That was cool. This is this is a great story. So, I'm out in Hyde County uh with the Seagars family and we're bear hunting and and we chase down this bear. The dogs get it. We go in there, we kill the bear. So, then we're laying there, the dogs are all jumping all over and I got this little dude with me like like my guide kind of. I call him Little Bear. He's he's laying there and and he's he's smoking a cigarette. He's got a big old dip of chaw in and he's smoking that cigarette. And I said, "Hey, little bear. Man, these dogs love chasing these bears, don't they?" and he goes, "More than Peter loved the Lord." Just like that. Right out of the hillbillies, baby. So, yeah. Hey, I am so happy. Uh, we totally put a lot of effort into this. You called me today, said, "Let's get on and let's go." And here we are. I go, "Hey, what? We prepped for this thing for a while, everybody. So, uh, you know, tune in, right? And make sure you stick to the script." I know the boss lady gave you a script. Yeah, I know. You weren't supposed to hear that. You came on early. You could see I'm I'm Susan's puppet. She You're just just dancing like that, aren't you? Dance, monkey, dance. Make be funny. I love it. I love lighting it here in a minute. Yeah, she's do your do your do your intro. So, all right, everybody that's tuning in right now. Uh, we're at the trade industry, uh, contractor edition. It's one of our first, uh, episodes after we've kind of done the transition here, a little rebranding. Um, we're hoping to get more people involved in the industry, not just, uh, just the fencing because we've noticed that the gate industry and even the a industry, everybody's kind of branched off and and done other things. We want to bring everybody back in. And, uh, you know, and speaking of that, watching what you guys have done up there at your chapter is amazing. I mean, that's not the same chapter it was five years ago. I I'm telling you, the Midwest chapter is really really strong right now. We we've got a good a good culture. Hey, by the way, we are human. We still make some mistakes. Um actually, we have over the road training coming next um next week and there's still spots available if anybody does want to sign up, but we're also doing a chapter meeting. So, anybody that's watching, if you want to come up just for a chapter meeting, we're gonna do we're going to do our normal meeting. Uh, I'm actually going to do a keynote message that I've been working on called Unleash the Inner Monster. Uh, which which is kind of a metaphor by by let let it out. Let let who you are out. Uh, so I think it'll be really well. It's about 20 minutes long. And then, uh, we're going to be right around our place. I'm even going to do a little bit of tour because we are not just a fence company. We we have we have the software. We have a fab shop. We have unlimited sports solutions. We have uh a real estate arm. Uh we're doing we're doing our first development. I sold my first uh three acres out of my 60 acres that I'm developing uh just the other day. So like like we're we're doing other stuff. And that's what I tell people all the time. I said, "Listen, when when you're in the fence industry, you don't just have to do fence. You can do other things. This powder coating company that we're going to do, man, we're doing this this awesome semi-automated line that we're going to be making and and we just picked up a $700,000 contract for that." I mean, so, so come up. Uh, if you're in the Midwest area and you want to come see us, come up. I'll give you a tour of our stuff. And I'm always an open book. I'm always happy to help anybody I can.

I I think I was going to reach out to you. I'd like to rent a room at your place. That way, I can qualify to be in join your chapter. I want to come up there and be part of it. Done. Done. You know what? An address. I really like our little Midwest chapter. I I think and you know, we are chap We were chapter of the year. You know, we wake up every day and piss excellence. That's just what we do here in the Midwest. And you know what I've seen is uh you know I've always stayed uh in close contact with Shane and uh everything that the the camaraderie you guys have and then the how you guys are reaching out and you're not looking at it like uh it's a zero sum game. It's uh you guys are you guys are looking at it like the whole industry whole industry wins we all win. So I love that how we we support and participate in everybody's stuff and uh watching what you guys are doing it inspires me. So uh I appreciate that. We got we got some old some some guys that have been in the industry a long time. You know, Barry Baker, I don't know if any if you know who Barry Baker is or not, but he's out of Witchah. And I'm going to tell you that guy, he has been in the in the industry so long and he's so smart and um and then we've got uh Randy Ward, which Randy Ward is just a salter. There and one of the best looking dudes around. Randy Ward is a sexy sexy son of a I've heard that. No. Yeah. But anyhow, to hear people say it, you know what I mean? It's like I it's making me hit the gym twice a week now. I do I do love uh I do love our our Midwest chapter. Let's talk about Ken, though. You know who what I'm really excited about is next year. You got Ken coming in. And if anybody doesn't know him, he's just a genuine dude, you know? Yeah. I I sent him a text today. I said, "Man, just keep being who you are." Because he's kind of in that hot spot right now and he's catching a little bit of heat from some different things. But but here's the thing I want everybody to understand too is is is an organization is only as good as what the members are willing to put into it. So so I have a hard time pinpointing or blaming any one person because it's our organization. Uh and and we do and you you treat yours the same way. You say, you know what, guys, what do you want to do? You have to tell me what what we want to do and we'll try to do it and we'll probably mess it up, right? But that's part of also growth and getting out of your comfort zone. The minute that you decide that getting out of your comfort zone is it isn't worth it, then get the hell out because you're not ever going to accomplish much. Here at Empire, we are constantly pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone. I was just telling Jamie, we're going to have the single biggest month we've ever had. And I told Jamie, I'm like, what about backlog? What does that do for you? I mean, we discussed this. Backlog is something we all deal with. All right, here's a learning moment. If we don't, let's just get right to the point early in this show. Let's have a learning moment. I I have really started to put a lot of value on my decision makingaking in my backlog. So, when you're looking at your backlog, let's just say that you're a a $3 million company, you need to make sure that you have three to four months worth of backlog of work, no matter what, at all times. So, if you have that one month where you're like, "Oh man, we're going to get a bunch of work done. we're gonna chew through uh $500,000 worth of this work. You you probably need to hit a little bit of the oh crap button and say we got to get some bids out. We gota we got to start making some phone calls. You know, get those phones ringing. Call those general contractors. Hey, hey, what what about this? Hey, I gave you a bid for this. And then go back and and recirculate some of those bids that you already put out. But that backlog can make you ballsy too, right? It can make you swing for the fit. Like, so right now we're sitting in a spot where we have a ton of backlog. We we have more work in the backlog than we ever So I told my team, I'm like, "Hey, that big job coming in in Lincoln, I don't even care if we get it." I know. It's nice, isn't it? Yeah. Because because we know it's going to be a hard job. It's a prison job and it's huge and it's going to be hard. So, I'm literally sitting there going, do we really want to It's a three-year project. Do we really want to tie up all of our resources and go beat our head against the wall to to get down in the gutter? And by the way, folks, we need to make money. We need to be profitable.

And if you're not profitable, you then then one, you might want to look at getting out because right now the fence industry is actually pretty good. We're making good money. A lot of people are making good money. If you're not, then then you probably maybe you're not cut out to be an entrepreneur. It's not always the industry's fault. Sometimes it most of the time it's yours, dog gone it. But with that with that backlog, I I challenge everybody tomorrow morning when you get to work, go look at your backlog and say, you know what, I think we need a little bit more. Or, hey, we need to raise our margins so we don't get quite as much work, right? Raise our margins up. And if you do get that, that way you can afford. And by the way, there's also three types of overhead. There's a direct overhead, indirect overhead, and then what I call a growth overhead. And if you're not managing for growth in your overhead, you will implode. There's my life. There's my lessons in business. And I love that I love that you said it. You said it is as perfectly simple as you it can be. Sometimes we over complicate the the process of this. Okay. If you've got more work than you can get done, raise your price. I mean, it's that's all there is to it. You know, you don't have to stop bidding. You bid, you know, and maybe you stop bidding the stuff that's outside of what you you would, you know, the easy stuff to do. Like we've narrowed it down now because we've got enough work backed up. We've narrowed it down to uh basically these six styles of fences that we install. And uh you know those are our most popular ones. And unless we get down below a certain number of jobs, then we don't bid the other stuff that's a little more complicated. So I love that. And raise your price. You don't need to be a mathematician to do this. Raise your price if you have to, you know, so you're not just passing on the work and not bidding it and getting bad reviews for not making your quotes either. Hey, I got to tell you, I had a friend of mine, uh a new friend, his name is, uh Tony Rossi. He lives in way up in the northeast like he almost Canada in Washington. He came in, flew in from a Monday morning meeting. And here's the other thing I I I that I love I love that's going on in the industry is there's so many people that are willing to help, that are willing to teach and that are willing to coach. There's tons of videos. There's tons of things. I I've opened up my Monday morning meetings to anybody that wants to come in anytime. Matter of fact, I've even gone as far as saying, "Listen, if you fly into Omaha, I will pick you up or my team will pick you up. We will put you in a hotel. I will feed you. I will take care of you and I will be an open book for you." Tony Rossi, young young, young young little lad. He's up there trying to run a $2 million fence business. He flies in and he left so excited. But we spent time talking about backlog, talking about profit, talking about, hey, bid that fence over there and and add another seven or 8% on top of your normal because you have enough backlog. Yes. That gives you power. Yep. Yeah. I agree. I agree. And that's and I don't think enough people focus on that. They don't even look at it. But it's a conversation that comes up all the time with your sales people to your because sales people often is disconnected from the field, right? The people that are actually scheduling it. So, how many times do you get asked, "Hey, uh, can we squeeze this job in? Can we do this? Can we do that? It's amazing how little everybody knows around the company about the backlog, but how important it is for the sales people, you know, they're doing it. Hey, and don't forget one of my absolute favorite quotes is most people will will overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in five years. So, so fill up that backlog. Let's push on the gas and let's go win. Yeah. Speaking of Sean, we were just talking about Shawn earlier. I do like Shawn. I Yeah, we were just say Sean, we literally just said what a good guy he is. I I really appreciate Sean. Let's see. What does it say? I was told if I came to the Monday morning meeting I could get a steak. Yes. Yes. I I will I will I will do that. That is a very true statement. We eat a lot of meat. You know, we are the number one uh state in cattle production. Uh we're going to slaughter close to 9.3 million cattle this year in Nebraska. Yeah. And you know, I mean, oh, I mean, processed meat, you guys pioneered that stuff. What do we got? Uh, oh, what is it? Is it Kool-Aid as

Well? You've got Kool-Aid beef jerky. The McRib. Matter of fact, the guy that invented the McRib lived in Waverly, my hometown. Um, yeah. And by the way, we also have the largest underground body of water in the world called the Ogalala Aquafer. That's what everybody's been wondering, too. Yeah. So, speaking of Sean, though, we got demo days coming up and I think we briefly talked about it and I'd love to get the Midwest chapter involved in this. is up in your area. So, we're going to get back to Indiana. Now, don't forget, we're not Indiana. We're Midwest is is um over on the other side, it's Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, uh Missouri. Well, I'm just starting to learn what the Midwest is because I I always considered anything uh anything on the other side of Texas was the East Coast. Yeah. So, I'm like I'm like, "You're on the East, right?" They're like, "No, I'm in the Midwest. What the hell is that?" Fine. Yeah. Ohio likes to think they're in the Midwest, too. And I always tell them, you're not the Midwest. Feel like some battles going on in You're the Mid East. You're the Mid East. I don't know. But yeah. So, yeah. Hey, so tell me about Demo Days. What's going on with Demo Days? So, we had Demo Days at the show last year and uh everybody loved it. But it was uh it was really hard to maneuver outside at the same time. A little hot, but uh a lot of traction behind it and a lot of people reaching out saying, "When are we going to do it again? When are we going to do it again?" And uh rather than do it at the same time as the fence show in October, um we're actually going to be doing it this time um over on the I don't know is that it's not the Midwest, it's the Mid East. Is that what that is? In Indiana. So in Indiana over in South Bend. Yeah. At the CMM facility. So we were out there a month or so ago if you followed us on social media and there was a good 100 or so people out there and uh it was a great time. Great property he's got out there and uh you know great bunch of people at CMM. So we're excited to be out there. So that's going to be uh April 16th and 17th. So, we'll be getting the information out there for people to kind of get signed up to go to that. So, equipment 16th, 17th. Yep. So, should be a lot of demo days, equipment, uh, a lot of outdoor booths. And it's another way to give back to uh, and I hate to say things like give back because I mean, it always sounds so cliche when like, oh, I just want to give back to the industry that's given so much. You know what I mean? I just I don't know why. I just hate to hear it. I hate to say it, right? Because it just sounds fake to say it. But in this case, it's a it's another way to say, um, I want to give back to the people that have been supporting us at the fence show and all this. And I realized how expensive it is for people to and I don't think a lot of people realize that when they go to the shows, how much money you guys all put out to go and be exhibitors at these shows, whether it be Fence Tech or our show or whatever it is. So, we want them to have a place where, you know, maybe the maybe the booths are a fraction of the cost, right? And it's a a 10 x10 tent outside kind of thing, but we could still have the same the same draw of people, the same uh you know, same environment and everybody having a good time and bring some new people that couldn't travel all the way to to the West Coast. It's weird. You know what I found about uh you guys back there? You guys will drive 12 hours in your car, but a four- hour flight sounds horrendous. So, it's like, you know. Yeah. Actually, I love driving. So, I tell people all the time, it just doesn't bother me. But I grew up, remember, I grew up in a tractor going four mile an hour for like 16 hours a day. So, in order to get in a car and go 75 or 80, I'm all I'm all about it. What would a contractor say? This is us, man. Susan's going to be pulling up. I don't know if you remember, we had this before, but Sus is going to be pulling up some uh questions. I haven't seen these yet. I know Matt hasn't seen them if I haven't. And these are questions from Fence Industry Only Group on Facebook, so on and see what some of the comments that other people said. So, uh we'll let you take this first one, Matt. Hello. So, I just got my first couple of jobs that will require core drilling. Uh I've never used a core drill, so I need some pointers. Uh type an installation. Not looking for someone uh to price my job, just looking for advice. Man, core

Drilling, core drilling is uh such a such a funny thing. And I will tell you that there's a lot of different ways to core drill, and there's a lot of different machines out there for the core drilling. Now, ours, we have this core drill that actually uh sucks down to the concrete. Uh but sometimes we'll even put it like on um on our dingo bucket. We have a little dingo that we'll put it on that dingo bucket and that way we can move faster. So, we we'll actually suck it down to the bucket and and there and then we'll hook the water to it and then just uh core through it. It's it's actually pretty pretty slick. It's a great way. Every once in a while, we'll do core drilling even when we don't have to just to let the concrete guy get going a little bit ahead of us if they're slowing us down. Um but I also right now I love core drilling especially when they let us just pound the post right through it. So, we core drill and we just pound right through it. Man, it is slick nickel. Yeah, we do a lot. I mean, we do a lot of uh commercial, so a lot of it is uh inside warehouses and things like that. So, it's a lot of plated stuff, but when we got a core drill, we got the wet one, similar to what you were talking about. And then we, you know, we buy the the dry bits, go up to like three and a half, four inches, and those are also super nice. You're only going to get down three, four inches, then you got to pop the core out, go down three, four inch, keep popping the core out. But I think that's our go-to. So, I guess my, you know, to answer his question would be really depends on the size of your core, too. I mean, if you got to do a 12inch core, you know, then you're talking about a wet drill, right? But if you're going down to like 2 inch for some handrail or even three three and a half inch for just a regular fence, you probably can just use use a a Bosch or a Hilty large hammer drill with a a nice uh diamond bit, right? Dry one. So dry bit dry bit. Oh yeah, we have we have some dry bits, too. Yeah, I agree. Well, that's really cool, Brian. I didn't know you were doing this. This is this is kind of cool. Yeah. So, uh we got Jay uh Jay from uh fence industry only. any commercial guys, gals, figure out a real solution for the fall protection or restrain of modular retaining walls. It's interesting. See, we get this is what I was saying about how um we need to reach out to more people that are really connected to our industry that we're not bringing in enough wall guys are doing a lot of iron, believe it or not, and a lot of chain link and things like that. So, I'm excited to see them interacting in our groups. But, so they need a place to go just like the rest of us and communicate. So, we have a few methods of how they do it. um we've used over the last 20 years, but I've had safety guys shoot all of our ways down um unless so unless it's an engineer gets involved to test compaction. Um anchoring our lifeline anchoring their lifeline support looking for a new portable way to get this done. Uh man, I don't think either. I don't know, man. You might you might have some solutions, but yeah, I guess I don't understand the question. Are we talking about tying off or we talking about the soils compactions and stuff? I think he's trying to avoid having to deal with um the regulations or the dealing with the engineers getting involved, which if you come from an area like we are where it's really overregulated. You get an engineer involved, you're talking about three, four months of your thousands of dollars, three, four months of your time and rejection after rejection. Here's what I tell all of our our all of our people. It's that safety guy's job to help you, not to hinder you. So So I always say this, we have a safety guy. I love our we have two safety guys the full-time. That's all they do. But I always tell our guys, hey, if you ever catch somebody doing something wrong, I'm gonna be pissed. We want to educate them to do it right. So, what I would recommend, Jay, is go to that safety guy and and just tell them, say, hey, here's here's what I'm up against. Here's what I'm trying to accomplish, and if we do this, I feel like I'm putting myself in more danger than if we do this. So, can you help me come up with a a solution? I always think it's better to work together than to try to come up with. And by the way, you don't have to come up with it on your own. You don't you don't have to. they can they can help you. All safety guys should be helping each other. And I wonder if this is I

Mean like we have we have a pretty close relationship with our um we we have a a kind of a a joint workers comp thing that's like one for the industry over here in Nevada that we that we joined which is a little like self-funded kind of organization. So we get pretty good rates and stuff from it. They have a safety guy that comes out and inspects our place. Not and it's way better to have your guy do it, your insurance company because they're going to come out and say, "Hey, you should have a cover on that outlet. You should put these signs up." and you're not getting some sort of violation. They're catching you before we get our, you know, we get annual inspections for our hot works permits and all this stuff. So, and by the way, Brian, they want to help you. Your insurance company wants to help you because they don't want a claim. Yeah, believe it or not, folks. So, we lean on them all the time for DOT trailers, all that stuff. We lean on our insurance company all the time. Even mental health, they'll even help you with with some of your mental health stuff because they don't want people hurting themselves or or getting hurt. Yeah. Human resources. I mean we I'm in you wouldn't think it because sometimes people are afraid to call. We call our we have a couple guys at the insurance place that we call and we have them come out and do inspections on things for us. We volunteer them, you know, ask them to come out. So definitely get involved in your insurance company. Whoever's doing your general liability or your workers comp probably has safety guys on payroll ready to go. So give them a call. Uh Connor Taplan. Anyone have rock breakers? Oh. Uh. Uh, rock breakers. What are they talking about here? MT100. We don't use those. But these must be mini uh mini uh Bobcat things. Is that what you got? Mini. Oh. Uh. Yeah. A breaker. But that's not a rock breaker. Rock. What I call rock breaker is is an air actuated hydraulic pounder that you that you break it with. But um man, I got to tell you, we have one, but that thing, ours is like 30 or 40 years old and it's just like an iron tank and it just keeps on ticking. It's amazing. Yeah, we use stuff. We use like the the jackhammers that big compressor we pull behind 190 or whatever it is. And uh that's typically what we use. We've tried to use some of the smaller gas powered stuff. It just doesn't it for us it doesn't work just because of the ground conditions and the guys tear them up. We found that if we give them those big in, you know, indestructible ones that weigh 90 lbs, they don't break them. You give them, you want to go buy the nice ones with the even the electric jackhammers with the nice handles and everything for them to hold on to. First job, they put it up against a wall, let it fall, bust the handles off, and you're just like going, "Okay, guys, you know, no more of the 40 pound ones. You're now back to the 90 pound ones that you don't break, right?" But hopefully that answered their questions. But yeah, we'll uh that's pretty cool. Well, we'll probably go back and uh tag them uh in the video as well and make sure they know that we tried to answer their questions. I appreciate that. What else you got going on, Matt? There's all kinds of exciting stuff. Oh my goodness. So, you know, we're getting our new powder coating company is really rocking. Uh we're getting that going. Uh Unlimited Sports Solutions is just rocking it. They're having an outstanding year. And that's the arm that does all the sports equipment, the netting, uh foul poles, dugouts, uh press boxes. We're really growing that. Uh we're going to be introducing uh a CIP program, certified installer program where uh if we're going to train you and then if you if the contractors use a certified installer will extend the warranty uh because we know it was installed, right? Uh so that's going on. Um I'm really having one of those years where I just clarity is really clear. I I uh this morning we were in a in a officer meeting and I just I told everybody I said even even the stressful moments are pretty easy right now for me. So I I just really think that my my mind is clear my my I'm clear. I I know what I know where we're going. We have so many great people. Uh I'm constantly in in uh like John Maxwell's leadership books. I'm I'm I'm learning so much that it's just been a just a a real blessing of a year. I I just I feel very honored and blessed that I get to work with all the people in our in our that that we have working for us. Is that John

Maxwell? Is that where the Whiters are at right now? Yeah. Uh they are. Yeah. Actually, this is the book I'm on right now. This is I thought I saw something about that. Yeah. Yeah. Developing leader. We're actually doing that. Some of my guys are doing that with uh with Robert and and Michael. Um yeah, they're out there. You know, Robert and I have become good friends and we we kind of lean on each other and push each other in that leadership space. That's kind of the area I really like to be in. That's it's something I just don't get tired of. I talked to him today. I tal Well, I talked to Michael today. He's gonna be on the show next week. Oh, good. Yeah. So, so I always I always whenever I'm with him, I always say I'm the cream in the Whitaker sandwich, you know, those two those two those two dudes because they're twins, you know, and then then you got little old Matteo stuck in the middle there. So, you weren't though. Uh, I mean, obviously you're you're probably really focused because you took a good solid nap today, but uh you I did. I did. What? Don't judge me. Well, you're going to take a coffee nap, though, right? Pretty soon. Oh my gosh. All right. So, everybody out there, listen. Brian told me this thing. I'm going to do it tomorrow. And so, when you if you see the show, if you know, if you if I'm friends with you on Facebook, I'm gonna post how it did. But here's what Brian challenged me to do. I'm gonna pound a large double espresso of coffee. Just a cup of coffee. I don't know. I've never tried large. No, I'm going all in. I'm going big or going home. And then I'm going to take a 20 minute power nap. And they say that when you come out of it, you're like, whoa. So, I'm gonna see what happens. It's because you could, you know, you don't get you don't get an instant rush from the caffeine, right? So, it takes a good 10, 15 minutes sometimes to kick in. So, that means you go straight, you could still fall asleep, but then when you wake up, you are just like boom. It feels like you just slept for like six hours. I am a I am a two o'clock napper. I like my two o'clock naps, man. That's just how I roll. And you know what? Everybody knows it. But I get up early. I get I get going. My day gets going around 3:30 or 4. Yeah. And you don't want to end it at two just two just because you're a little drained. I mean, sometimes that 20 minutes closing your eyes makes a difference. But you you know I love that you said you're doing other things and earlier on you were saying that hey you don't have to just do fencing you know and and you can you know and I think sometimes we get so fixated on thinking that this is this is what we have to do for the rest of our lives and and you're a lot like me. If somebody told us to stay in our lane we're like well you better build a bigger lane. Yeah. No I I always say hey listen there's six lanes. I'm going to use them all. Yeah. Yeah. So I um I love that you said that and but because you weren't always uh this diversified and all this stuff. So when you started out, what was your first company? So, so well in in 2009, we started out as a netting company. We were going to really specialize in netting and and quickly found out that there's just not enough netting jobs at that time. A netting really wasn't that popular at that time. We were kind of early, a little bit early on there. It was on golf courses, but we wanted to get in the baseball space. So, so we we got into that and what what really happened was we got into that and then we were like, well, you know what? we need to do something to fill in the gap. So, we started doing some residential fence. Then I created my salesman because I got tired of going on the dead end leads. Uh, and right now, oh, by the way, let me get a little I forgot all about this. I'm going to give a plug for my salesman. Here's what happened. So, get this. So, I hired a developer in 2011 to build me a software. And they are a mapping company. They do maps. That's what they do. So, I was like, matter of fact, I was walking by the window one day and I saw a computer nerd on his computer had a map thing. I knock on the window. I'm like, "You do mapping?" He's like, "Huh? You do mapping?" So, I So, any long story short, I went in. I I told him what I wanted to do. He's like, "Hey, you should we'll partner with you. We'll help you get this thing built." Great. I'm broke. I don't have any money. Let's build it. So, we build the software. We release it. Um, years later, I kind of I bought them out. I kind of got but they still own part of my code and and because it was their

Proprietary stuff they were so I was always like no big deal. Well they sold to a private equity firm on December 17th. The private equity firm calls me up and says hey we don't want to help you. We don't want to be a part of you and you owe us a half a million dollars. Oh, holy crap. Yeah, my heart melted. It sounds like my ex-wife. Yeah, I feel your pain. Sounds like my current wife. No, no, no. All reality, Brian, this this was an extremely heavy lift and and I don't know if you followed my story or not, but we we basically are rebuilding the whole thing. We negotiated a $50,000 buyout with them. Uh and in June uh June 30th, we're we're done with them and we're going to be releasing it. But here's here let me tell you the whole story. When we go through the storm, you you you come out stronger on the other side. We went through a storm and I'm telling you what, this this is heavy. Uh horrible, right? We're we're hemorrhaging money. I mean, I had to I'm I'm putting my savings that I had into this thing back in. Plus, I went and had a bank and borrowed half of the rebuild. Uh, plus, uh, I'm I'm I'm pulling in all the money I can. Plus, we've lost customers because they're not maintaining it, so things are breaking on there and they're not fixing it for us. No. So, we're we're in this. By the way, I had full transparency with all of our customers. I said, "Hey, listen. This thing might break on you. If it does, just let me know. We won't charge you. Uh, but we really don't want to lose you as a customer. We're doing everything we can. Please, please, please stay with me. Yeah. So, so we're going out, but get this. For five years, I've been trying to get Eagle View to share their mapping with me. They're the king of the mapping world. They have the largest private mapping or um plane fleet in the nation. They fly everywhere all the time taking pictures. We're going to have Eagle View on this next version. We couldn't do it before, but I got Eagle View. Eagle View actually came out to the uh Fence Tech, met with me, said, "We love what you're doing. We love what what's going on. We love your software. We want to partner with you on your mapping." Now, it's going to be an upgrade because they're they're going to charge me for the maps because they are their maps. They they go on and take pictures. This isn't Google. Uh but you should see these maps, Brian. They're beautiful. Matter of fact, I think the industry is going to thank me because even if you're doing uh commercial work, you're going to want to use our maps to go look at the layout because it's better, more detailed, and and it's more current. I think, right, I think you'll love them. Yeah, I'll take a look. Definitely. I love I you know, you know, innovation, I love it. Anything we can do to advance uh what we're make our industry move to the next level, I'm all for it. So, I love it. Yeah. This is going to be some of the best mapping uh best maps that that that the industry's ever had. Now I don't know like like in Ogalala Nebraska they don't have maps of Ogalala Nebraska. So I'm so not everybody's going to get but then we'll just use Google. Yeah. Okay. So that was my second business. And then we landed this huge job. By the way, I'm done with that story. We're back on the original story of the businesses. So then we landed this huge job down in Kurville, Texas. And and we were building these dugouts um because uh the contractor came to me and said, "Hey, we don't have a dugout guy. Will you make my dugouts?" And I said, "Of course I'll make the dugouts." So, I found a a fabrication shop and they were making it for me. Well, the fabrication guy was falling behind. So, I go to him and I say, "Hey, can I help you or what can we do?" And he's like, "Matt, I just want to retire. Why don't you just buy me out?" Call the bank. I write a $40,000 check. I called Scotty. I'm like, "Scott, I just bought a whole bunch of stuff. I don't even know what it is. Come help me get it." So, so that's what how we started our ESC, our fabrication shop. So, uh, and then in 20 and, uh, in 2021, we started the USS brand. And then uh last September, we bought into a powder coating company. Uh and and we're we're probably going to buy two or three more companies that aren't in the fence space. Uh you know, we have like 70 vehicles. We we we we have our own mechanic shop. We we're talking about possibly doing outside because what I've learned is that if I can do my stuff and if I can do about 30 or 40% of outside

Industry stuff, then that's a good business model. 60 or 70% of our work is us. the rest of it we'll bring in from neighbors and friends and the community. So, we're we're really I'm not a fence guy. Yeah, I'm an entrepreneur and and I wish more fence guys thought like entrepreneurs and not like fence guys. And by the way, I love and I'm sure Sean's watching here. He's a fence nerd. Yeah, I love that. I love it. He's really good at that. Me, I'm a business nerd. I want to study business and I'm very passionate about culture. I If I had to say that I wish I could leave a legacy in the industry, it would be culture, taking care of your people in the Monday morning meetings, that's what I want to leave to the industry as a gift. And we're going to still do, we talked about this at FencTech when we were down there um in Salt Lake. We're still going to pull off a one-man Monday morning meeting to show everybody that these Monday morning meetings aren't, you don't have to have 15 people to do it. Nope. And I think that when we see them, I mean, we see a lot of your videos and stuff and there's always this big, you know, this big room and there's big, you know, full of people and a big circle and you in the middle and everybody talking and you're bringing Tony Thornton in and guests. You watch those? You see them all? You I mean I I I mean I I you know, you and I mean we have a unique friendship really. I mean we stay in touch. We do. I mean and we there's not a single time we don't talk that we don't have a great time. There is true. You know to where we we see each other's name. I mean I see your name and I'm like I want to grab it. Yeah. What's up? It's just a it's a positive uh conversation. So I I love I think I answered today in two rings. Yeah. Yeah. And I love and I and we don't even we don't even look at the phone what time it is. I'm just like what just I call up and it's nice but uh I like what you're doing and I like to see that and I think I I told you though I think what would be great is to show people that you don't need 15 20 people to get that same that same kind of energy. And sometimes you might start with one or two people and that's all you have. I mean, I have a good friend of mine that has a very small business and he has three three people and the four of them get every get together every Monday. They do a life skill, leadership skill, and safety topic. And it's just it's just the four of them. Three three people in him and and they do it. And he goes, "We love it. It's changed our it's already changed who we are." And he goes, "We everybody's on the same page and we're rowing the boat." And it's so important to to make sure that you don't lose track of who you are. Yeah. Let be who you are and let your people know. My our people know who I am because I'm I'm with them every single Monday. Well, let's let's wrap it up with people um letting them know again about your event you got going next week. Is it next week? Yeah. So, next week we are doing um over the road training for the AFAS coming to Waverly, Nebraska. If you're interested in being on that uh let us know. Uh but Wednesday night we're doing an AFA chapter meeting. We're going to have a dinner. I'm gonna be I'll be the keynote speaker, which if you don't want to come for that, leave early because I might put you to sleep. Um, but you know what? And in this this this whole this whole industry right now is really trying to do a better job of training and helping educate people. And by the way, that did not happen in 2009. Did not. Yeah. Nobody ever helped me out. Yeah. A matter of fact, everybody was mad at me. It's like, "Oh, you're my competition now." And I'm like, "I'm just getting started. I'm trying to figure out how to, by the way, so Sean Sean, if you're on here today, you had a vinyl fence that you're looking at." And I started laughing because I was like, "Oh crap, that looks just like a couple of the fences I put in early when you got somebody making a video tearing apart a fence." And you look over like, "Okay, don't take the camera any further left so they don't see my fence sign." Yeah. I'm like I actually I wanted to text Sean and say did that have an Empire sign on it because that I built that I built the fence just like that. I was I was in the car once and I saw this fence alongside the road and I was like I was like oh look at that. You see that? And all a sudden I remember uh I think my wife was in the car looks over and and then I realized that because it was a crappy looking fence.

Look over and I see my fence sign. I'm like what? She goes what? What? Never mind. Never mind. Nothing. I love it. I love it. Well, I will tell you though, I I hope we give each other grace in the industry also that that sometimes we just make mistakes and we do things and sometimes we say things, but you know, I had a young man call me today and and he he he he just needed needed a friend and an ear to listen to. You know, the number one thing I told him is is um Steven CVY talks about the speed of trust and and one of the first things you do is you just you do what they call straight talk. Yep. And and and Brian, I give you my word. If I ever have a beef with you or a problem with you, I'm gonna call you up and say, "Hey, what what the heck is going on here?" Because I think that's the greatest friend to be is to be somebody that say, "You know what? Uh if somebody ever says, "Hey, Matt Warner was talking about you." They're more than likely that person be like, "I know." Because he called me also and he talked to me about it. And that's just I hope that we have honesty with each other. And and I want you to do the same with me. you see me doing something or saying something, you'd be like, "Hey, what what what is this all about?" So, that's that's who I want us to be. I've said it a million times. We uh nobody benefits if any if anybody doesn't succeed. It it hurts the whole industry. I mean, we might lose you never know. I mean, somebody going to your event or going to one of these events or something for the very first time. That may have been the very first event they tried uh in our industry. And then if it flops, we may lose that person forever and they may not be involved, you know, in our industry. And and now they they could have been going to all the events, right? And now they said, "Well, I went to one of those industry events and it was uh it was a flop and I just I don't go I'm not gonna waste my money anymore and I'm not going to go travel. There was no networking. There was no whatever it was, right?" So, um anyway, it it's important that we all um succeed. There's no doubt, especially especially on what we're trying to achieve. So, hey, I appreciate it uh Matt coming on. It was it was awesome like always. Are we done? That's it. We're gonna we're gonna wrap it up. I appreciate it. All right. Everybody listening, one more thing. Yeah. I gotta tell you, I'm so incredibly happy for you to be able to go to Greece and and the look on your wife's face just gave me goosebumps. And I think um you know, I posted something on Facebook the other day uh about about living in the moment and and and and really knowing where you're at and who you are. And I think I I get that better than I ever have in my life. And I think that you get it too, my friend. And when I saw those pictures, I was goosebumps happy for you. And and I knew that you and your wife were having a good time. And I I literally was like hugging you through the phone saying, "Soak it up, baby, and have fun." And I hope that more people out there spend more time living in the moment and being where they're at and not trying to be somewhere else mentally. Be where be where you're at and enjoy the people in your circle. And I enjoy about watching you. Yeah. And I always say there's never a good time to take off. If you're waiting for the right time in the fence industry or whatever industry for you to have 10 days off, it's not going to happen. It'll never happen, right? Just do it everybody. All right. Thanks a lot for coming on. We'll talk to you. See you.