Episode 6 - Mark Scherer of Scherer Bros.
Episode #6 | Mark Scherer | Navigating a Family-Owned Business
Mark shares his experiences in operating a 3rd generation family-owned business that has prioritized its people while promoting the culture and values that ensure its long-term success. We discuss navigating the past 2 recessions and how they are different while making a key point that relationships are the key element.
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About Mark Scherer
Mark Scherer serves as President/COO for Scherer Bros. Lumber Co., a third-generation, family-owned, building materials distribution and manufacturing company. With both a legal background and a strong liberal arts educational foundation, Mark brings a unique set of skills to his work as the operational lead of the successful 90-year-old firm. Born with “sawdust in his veins,” Mark has dedicated his professional career of over 29 years to growing and improving Scherer Bros. as well as supporting the Twin Cities housing community as a whole. Mark’s experience transcends operational duties, with a clear commitment to creating incredible employee and customer relationships, as well as working for the betterment of the housing industry.
Mark and his wife, Heather, have been married since 1994 and are parents to 4 children (Jacqueline, Andrew, Francesca, and Claudia). The Scherers reside in Wayzata, MN close to their families. Mark is an active member of his community, schools, and church. Mark enjoys travel above all else, especially any and all opportunities to more deeply immerse himself in other cultures…rarely will you find him laying around on a beach. Mark’s additional pursuits include a profound appreciation of nature and hunting whenever time permits.
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00:00
Welcome to the curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host, I am here with Mark shear of shear brothers lumberyard. Welcome, Mark, thanks for coming on.
00:06
Thanks for having me,
00:08
over family of shears,
00:09
there are a family of shears we are a third generation family run business started in 1930 by my grandfather and my great uncle, presently my two brothers myself, my cousin, run the business, but we have a number of family members who still have an active interest in it. So I just want to be very clear with that because it can be distorted and or, you know, occasionally it might upset somebody understood with with the wrong perception out
00:38
there. That's funny, because, you know, I can relate to this from the standpoint that when you have a relationship with somebody, like I've had with you, I've known you for quite a while now. And obviously my dad built homes, and he knew your dad who's passed away. And, and obviously the rest of your brothers as well. But when you identify and like you're my point of contact, like for me personally, I speak mostly with you. And it's kind of funny how that person represents the company. Actually, you can even be in a salesperson, I was having someone on the podcast recently. And I was like, you know, Are you the owner of the company? He goes, No, I'm like, I've worked with you for almost two decades, I thought you were the owner of the company. It's just funny how, when you have such a deep relationship, sometimes with a specific person, how they do represent the brand of the company, I think it's good for us to remember, as owners of companies that are salespeople, too many people are the owner, in the sense that they represent us to the client.
01:25
You know, the whole notion of ownership transcends just the the leadership, the the actual ownership of the organization, and even salespeople. I mean, I want everybody in my company to feel like they're an owner. And in fact, we do have a small portion of our organization as ESOP. So the employees do have a have a chip in the game, as it were. But hey, there's some smaller builders, you know, the truck drivers are the company to them, that what the truck drivers do, how they represent us how they fly the flag as it were. They that's, that's your brothers, and they don't know me, quite possibly, you know, bumped into them, or they've come to continuing ed classes or something like that. But, ya know, it's it's really, from a team dynamic from a corporate values kind of communal sense that that ownership component is just a huge, huge thing to keep working on. And you can't mandate it. You can't say you will act like No, it just doesn't work that way, you have to legitimately just be so engaged with your teams, at all various levels, that that just becomes part of who you are, as as a company,
02:41
you would you say I mean, colloquially, people often refer to it as company company culture, right? I mean, I think that's what you're speaking to, like, if someone's going to act and represent share brothers or miraculous custom homes in a certain way. It's not like you can't just give them a mandate and say act like this. You mean you can coach them up, but ultimately, if they believe it, and that's why I've always said didn't sales? You know, if you believe what you're selling? I mean, obviously, it goes some maybe some people can sell what they don't believe in, I can't, but if I believe in it, man, I can sell it.
03:09
Yeah, I culture used to be that particular term, especially when I was young. For me, it was like nails on a chalkboard. And, you know, you'd hear the word culture and you go, Oh, what's that? Yeah, that's you cannot affect exact culture, that that was kind of my naive approach to the world when I was in my 20s. And really, what I've come to believe, is that that culture is really just, it's, it's a repetition of historical actions. And it needs to be consistent. You know, the weakest link in the chain, as it were, the same thing applies to culture. Because within your culture, you can say, Hey, we are a moral integrity based organization, but if the leadership is cheating on their wife, or if they are, you know, taking funds out of the company and doing things, employee see that. And so it's, do as I say, not as I do, which any of us that have children know that that doesn't work, you know. So, it truly is a reflection, I believe, of the values as practiced, not stated of the owners, the leaders of an organization, and, you know, it takes time, and you have to be very conscientious about it. That reminds
04:32
me of something I heard once in church, actually, and it was I'd rather see a sermon than here one any day. I mean, I think that's just what you said, basically, don't be a hypocrite. Do what you do live what you say you want. I've never really thought about it that much in terms of a corporate setting, but I think you're right. Interesting. You have a how many people do you guys employ? Oh, well over 300 300 Oh, man, I was guessing before I was talking to someone on before the way over and I was explaining you were coming on I was like, I don't know. Maybe be 70 to 100 people 300 My goodness,
05:02
oh, it's we've got a fair amount of things God, yeah, we were joking about I went to St. John's University of Minnesota. And one of the things I'd heard, I believe at St. Francis that actually set up but he said you preach, often. And when necessary sprees speak, oh, that's a good one. I like that, you know, so and that goes back to actions versus words. And even when you look at so many companies out there, and they have their mission, mission vision value statements. And one of the biggest tricks for any organization is to really identify who
05:41
you are so funny, you say not who you want to
05:45
be, because the second that your mission or your values are aspirational. Your employees check out on you say, What do you mean? That's not who we are, right. And so when it comes down to running a business, and a sizable chunk of what I do, is continued to further just those those values, that culture element within the organization, and not only within our employees, but certainly taking it out to our customers. I don't consider myself a preacher by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm certainly an ambassador,
06:22
right? What's interesting is that we're in the middle of a rebrand, we're almost completely done. And I've been very impressed with how their writing skills as they write, they've helped us develop our mission statement. But it's interesting, because really how it started and I'm a small company, right? We're five, six people. I mean, my name you actually you were very helpful. About six months ago, I called you and I was debating whether I should rename my company thinking that, hey, 20 years from now, you know, selling Marquis Williams Custom Homes is a little bit harder entity than you know, Aspen homes are a mountain range that I like, just because I like that and you're you were very helpful and to say, Hey, you're a third generation people know your name, like you reflect you are the company and like, for better for worse, don't don't like own that. Like it's okay. And that was really helpful at that time to hear that. And as we've done in this rebranding deal, as you send in sons are a very talented firm, but all the characteristics when they write it, I like I can see, it's almost like reading a horoscope, which I don't believe in, but like you read it, and you see like, oh, yeah, I like that line. I like that line. But you're right, I didn't write the mission statement myself. Because it's hard sometimes to describe yourself, it's a lot easier to like, interview with somebody and let them be, you know, basically write it for you and say, This is your personality. This is what we've experienced in talking with you. And this is what seems to line up and then you're reading, you're like, wow, that that does describe me. And so I just thought that was helpful. I don't know if you've ever tried to write a mission statement yourself. And certainly, it's not easy. I mean, it's actually to your point, I think you nail it on the head saying like, if it's too aspirational, it becomes the thing that you want it to be, but it's not what it is. And there's well and it's
07:49
got to be simple. And it's got to be memorable, and easily stated. So ours and husband isn't has been for 2025 years is working together, filling needs. Like that. Simple, you can put a tagline on your email, sign off, employees get it, it's it's broad, like a horoscope. But I think Truett genuinely reflects kind of the approach we want to take with all of our teams. We're in this together, everybody's got different needs in the process. And we're gonna do whatever we can to make sure that we are enhancing and or adding value to what our customers are doing, or our coworkers, and that gets lost to a lot of times your customer is not somebody outside the company, it's somebody internally. And recognizing that not taking it for granted. It's a little bit like fighting with your siblings. It's gonna happen every once awhile, but hopefully, you're still celebrating the holidays together,
08:50
right? And you respect each other. Actually, before we go on to some of our next topics, we you know, just it's interesting. So and I know the story, but I'd love to hear I think the audience and people would be interested in this, I've told the story 2030 times, because I think it's so valuable. It was told to me just high level, and I'd love for you to speak out a little bit more at length, but just the wisdom and who created it within share brothers of how you can actually work for the company and what some of the criteria was, meaning you had to you know, I think it was what five years you had to work outside the company and walk us through that because I think I've told that to some other companies. I have a cousin who's down in Kansas City has a company of about 50 people. And I've asked him, you know, hey, when your kids get older, and so we talked about this, and he's like that as a everyone I've told this story to is like hats off to them that it was a great idea. So
09:33
I don't know if I can attribute it to any one individual. Certainly it was always communicated to me by my father. But I know that between he and his brother and their two first cousins on the second generation, they wanted to ensure that the business was neither here to serve the family nor was the family here to serve the business. They're two separate entities. So we don't really talk shop at family functions. Keep it separate because not everybody's involved. But, but perhaps even more importantly, we wanted to have qualified individuals working for the business, adding value, and, and to further the business. And I guess we've never put a cap on how many family members we can have. But the whole notion of, hey, go get an education. Go get a job, you know, what it drives, it drives the kids. And this, this applied to me too. It drives us to be good at something to be inspired by some subject matter. Now, for me personally, I was a political science and philosophy. Major, yeah. Which lends itself great to the lumber business.
10:42
I was a speech econ major. So you know,
10:45
well, that's when you can't do speech. I'm teasing. That's true. But so for us, and everybody's got a different journey, a different story. And then I went and worked for West Publishing Company, which is now Thomson Reuters. Before I went to law school at William Mitchell College of Law, I did that while I was started out, fledgling in the business, I had a brother who's a CPA, another brother, who was a finance major, both of them worked at Well, Chris worked for Arthur Andersen back in the day and then for TCF Pete worked for a couple banks, and was heavy into commercial land development deals, and got to know some of our customers that way. But so it's kind of on the periphery of the industry, but not necessarily doing what we're doing. But you know, you get promoted. You get recognized, you have skills you learn from other people, because it's not like we have the greatest ideas in the world lumber industry is not necessarily cutting edge. I hate to tell anybody that's, you know, not super fashionable.
11:42
The one thing I would say about that, though, if you look at you know, social media is become such a massive platform. Even this podcast would not exist without social media. You know, I followed someone I went to their conference, they had me on their podcast, and I'm like, This is amazing. I want to do this. And so well, certainly podcast essentially is like old, old style radio broadcasting, which has been around forever, right? Finding out about these industries, people are so interested. So I think about wood, right? I mean, you see something on Pinterest, or Instagram are all these photos of amazing wood products. I think people probably today know more about the different cuts of wood than you did 30 years ago. And I say that only because now you'll have someone who you know will graphically see like, hey, that's rough cut, quarter sawn, you know, rough cut white oak or a quarter sawn white oak. And like, I'm sort of amazed like, especially from an artist standpoint, like how did they know that? Like, I know that because I'm, you know, designing cabinets, and I'm working through this detail, but I'm sort of impressed that, you know, some of our clients not all of them are more educated because of this. They're also sometimes more dangerous because
12:37
it's a good and a bad both it look at I go back to this lumber business used to be pretty simple. It was you know, you'd send out two by fours for your interior walls two by six for the exterior walls, you were using two by 10s for your floor joists, you know, doing all that stuff. And your decking. Now he's like, I love to use decking, you have three choices. Do you want a cedar deck? Do you want a redwood deck? Are you gonna do a pressure treated deck? Now? Well, first of all, redwoods completely off the table. And if you've seen the price of cedar lately, and that's not going to get much better. Very expensive, but you have all sorts of exotic woods. And then you've got all the composites, you know, do you want to compressed fiberboard? Do you want plastic bottle, you know, different different products that are out there. And they all serve different purposes. I think we always have to be careful, though, because a lot of people get this. They get caught up in the notion that it's maintenance free. And I know nothing. Nothing within a home is
13:38
ever made. Nothing in life is maintenance free. And even a rock roads over time. My wife is maintenance. Smart man, I can see you've been married for how many years now?
13:46
What do you want us? 29 as of Saturday? Well, congratulations. We're pretty excited.
13:53
Going back to the to the family part, you know, in you had mentioned family dynamics. And that was interesting to hear, like, because not everyone's involved when you have family gatherings? You know, it becomes not a topic, let's say because you know, not everyone's a part of it. As far as family members, and it sounds like you've clearly defined roles is that pretty much how you handle family disputes. When I say family disputes, let's say your business opinion is x. And let's say Pete just because I know him his as y How do you navigate some of those things as a your family but you're also treating in a business setting? Is that more challenging? Or is it actually kind of go by the wayside because you respect each other's opinions like you do anyone else in the workplace. And you sit down, you know, you have a board of directors or I'll walk me through because a lot of people have had on the podcast or either husband and wife. I've had you know, smaller teams that maybe have a sister, but nobody that we've had on so far has had a family as large as yours all also work together. And just kind of be curious. I'm sure people out there listening, have family in business and would be interested in some of that insight.
14:49
Well, I think this extends beyond just the family. I mean, when you're when you're talking about a dynamic organization with committed hard working people Whenever a decision needs to be made, I think fundamentally, you have to ask yourself one question, which is whose decision is it with whose input? Now, a lot of times my managers will have a decision to make. Am I going to make the decision for him? No, that's their area of responsibility. Might they seek my input? Sure. And I think the same thing applies with my brothers and me and my cousin. We do have an outside board of directors for more heavy issues, five, and three. So we have three, my two brothers and myself are on the board. And then we have five outside directors not affiliated with the company don't have any ownership in the business that lend perspective provide a fiduciary basis for us because of the ESOP. And because we have outside minority shareholders. But that's kind of how you get through all that stuff. And, you know, obviously, I'm always going to differ, you know, my, my brother, Peter is the CEO of share brothers Lumber Company, he is my boss. And occasionally we'll have conversations and I'll have to ask, okay, are we talking as brothers here? Are we talking?
16:01
You're asking me, what's the birth order? who's older?
16:04
Peter Peters? Five years older than okay. Yeah. And then my brother Chris is in the middle. He's, he's three years older. Okay. So yeah. And we have sisters who are not in the business, but, and plenty of cousins. And you know, they're all They're all keenly interested in the success of the business. And they trust us to do our jobs. And we do so with, with honor. And, and with a vigilant eye on maintaining our integrity, our reputation, our brand, as it were, because that means something especially in the Twin Cities, I mean, it's Oh, man, it's a big town, but it's a really small town. And so that name is very important to us and one slip up, and you can do a lot of damage very quickly. So So back to the whole decision making process. Yeah, I mean, believe it or not, probably on the same page 85% of the time, and even when we're not completely on the same page, we still fundamentally have the same end result in mind. It's basically how you get there. And that's why it goes back to whose decision is with whose input and like marriage, and so many things within leadership can be compared to our daily lives.
17:12
100% agree. Yeah, it's
17:14
compromise. Where I tell you what, what Hill Do you want to die on? Right? Yeah, how firmly? Are you going to plant that flag in the ground to say, Oh, absolutely, no, I'm not going to budge from this position, Hey, I can't think of a time even in the most trying times, when you draw go back to 2000 789. When we were strictly a non for profit business. Even then, I would say we were probably closer, just because we were going through it together. And it's Hey, we got to make decisions. And you know what, we're going to make some good decisions. And we're going to make some bad decisions. The most important thing we can do is recognize when we made a bad decision, and not hang on to our pride and say, well, that's the call we made, we're gonna stick with it. No, we are going to regroup. You know, was it good decision, bad execution? Or was it bad decision? Bad execution? Yeah. And go back and just continue to revisit that and our employees were very
18:09
good. Reminds me you just talked about the family. And I think you're right, that you know, y'all have you know, the same last name. You know, for metaphoric even if someone let's say, one of your sisters was in there as well, without her maiden name is not the point. But just like everyone is writing for the brand. I don't know, if you grew up removing the more books, but there was one of the books was very well known, I was writing for the brand. And it's just like, you don't have to question like, your family wants to share brothers brand to continue and to be successful. So I have to imagine that there's some part of that when you are pulling the sled in a single direction, like, hey, everyone here wants this to go? Well, and you know, we all know we're not perfect. We all make mistakes. And I like what you just said, like, Can we can we shuttle our ego to the side or pride to the side and say, Well, you said it really well, just, you know, it was a good decision or a bad decision? And what was the outcome of it? And let's move on. Yeah, it
18:55
starts with some basic philosophies, too, which is, you know, it gets a little cliche when I started going down this path, but when you own a business, or you're part owner of a business, and you're running a business, if you feel an inherent need to take credit for things, you probably shouldn't be there. Interesting. You need to give credit to the people that are doing it right. And frankly, you need to accept full responsibility when it doesn't go right. And if you largely view if, again, people are back to whose decision isn't right. If you confine your decision making to that which is within your immediate realm of responsibility. There's nothing that any employee can do that's really going to jeopardize your business. Now, further to the left, you go in the organization, you know, Peter could make big decisions. Yeah, that could that could cause problems or myself or Chris or whomever. But you allow people to make decisions. And if for whatever reason it doesn't work out, well, what first of all, you just invested in their education. but also now here's your opportunity to regroup and say, Okay, what did we learn? What do we do differently next time and, and you just you build a more dynamic organization, if you've got a culture predicated on fear, or oh, man, that's bad, I don't want to screw up. I don't want to make a decision because I don't want to go, well, then nobody's ever going to make a decision. And sometimes, the best decision you can make is any decision just to keep things moving.
20:24
I agree. I mean, I got wise advice. And it was one time that there's no difference between decision and decision B is what you do after the fact that makes it a good decision. I've used that a number of times in business or frankly, life in trying to make a decision because sometimes there's not a clear outcome. And that is, you know, we often say like, you go into home or, you know, let's say there's a warranty call. And we almost want to, we wish it would fail in a dramatic way. So we could find the problem. Sometimes you'll come into a home, you know, seven, eight years later, and there's we don't know what the issue is. And it's like, so you open something up? Well, that wasn't it. You just wish it was clear. It's like going
20:56
to the doctor. Hey, I don't feel good. Tell me what's wrong. I don't know. Right? No, you just hey, no, you've got this, then this is how we're gonna fix it. Yeah,
21:04
I get that. Yeah. I had a cousin who was a surgeon, he says, Just say ice and elevate. I'm like, that's all you got your surgeon? He's like, I don't know, the answer. Must have been an orthopedic. Nope. He was a he's he's done a number of fellowships. So who knows what he's added at this point. So hernia surgery actually done in Cleveland Clinic. So let's play it is. So anyway, second only to male. Ah, that's what I told them. He actually tried to get in and male but the technology of the developing so the DaVinci robotics is what they do a lot of hysterectomy and a lot of other robotic surgeries with his and I don't know if it's the DaVinci method that they use, but he's does sports hernias and hernias in general. And I guess Cleveland Clinic is basically on the forefront of that in the world. And so he was very keen on doing that. So
21:44
I'll tell anything, Cleveland, Scott Collins just lost our Ohio membership, listenership?
21:52
Well, you know, we're pretty local here. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, the last, you know, we talked about difficulties of Oh, nine, you know, let's call it 789 10. Like everyone in building, and really, frankly, United States, I mean, some way somehow we're affected no different than COVID, I'd be interested to hear your parallels between the recession that we had, you know, in that era to, I wouldn't call it a recession, but just like the dynamic of the COVID. Just how it's changed business. And if you've learned anything from it, and I'll maybe go first here on this, just that you had mentioned earlier about when you make a mistake, can you learn from it, and I'm a small company, I wish someone had once told me that in eight, nine and 10, that I because we lost money, like anyone did during that time. And we were lucky to survive and very fortunate that we frankly, didn't have enough to lose. And so you know, we didn't have land positions, or any of that stuff that took a lot of people under and I remember getting this advice, saying that you got a master's education in business, and half the time and quadruple the cost, congratulations on your education. And I've used that a lot, because that was very difficult time. But man did I learn a lot of really painful life lessons. And so anyway, with that in mind, I'm just kind of curious with that question. Do you find that there's parallels between what we've navigated through COVID? And where we're at today with that recession? Or do you feel like they're just so different that they're not worth comparing?
23:14
The parallels are going to be more, I guess, approach and perspective. Yeah, I think that's fair. I learned we learned as as a collective within the organization, back in the 2000s, that anybody that tries to predict anything, is wasting their time, I put five economists in the room, and none of them are going to agree on anything. And so really our philosophy adapted to more of a concept of, we're going to be prepared for anything. Be prepared for a big spike up, be prepared for a big spike down. Know what your key triggers are, know what your leading indicators are much more than your lagging indicators, you know, looking backwards doesn't help you make decisions for the future. And so with that out with that mindset, with that approach that that came out of the 2000 2007 recession, I think when COVID hit our perspective, was far more healthy, because it's like, okay, this could be really bad. Conversely, this might be really good, right? So to that end, and I think I may have shared this with you, brother, Peter, and I got in the phone, call their top 100 customers, we talked to 98 of them, and all but two said, you know, our phones are ringing off the hook. Nobody's canceling orders. People are requesting you know, how quickly can they get into a new house? How quickly can you remodel what I have because this pandemic could last for 1015 years and I'm tired of staring out the same wall and I've always wanted to do this and yada yada And so after doing that incredibly unscientific right Data Research survey, we determined that, hey, you know, what, we're going to invest in our employees, they were concerned, you know, little things, you know, you get them the cards, and all that that's a, you're an essential worker, the way that our government set things up, you had to have those, yep. We negotiated our union contracts, we opened them up, we, we gave them more money. We tried to do some other things with bonuses and the like to keep them engaged and to let them know, genuinely, that we care, you know, we want to see you be, I forgot to turn my phone off so that we care, and that they're important to us. And, and that we're in this together. And so so with that having that proximity to the customer, which is unique for us compared to a national supplier, let's say, yep, we were able to make the best business decisions we could for this point in time in this market, not based on anticipatory predictions. But on what we know what we're being told. And to that end, I think we, we fared pretty well through,
26:18
I think I loved your comparison of the two that basically the first recession taught, you'd have the mindset that when you we got to, you know, the COVID era, if you will, that you had a different take on it. I think that's true. I remember a number of times thinking like, there was about one month where everyone took a deep inhale, right, I remember we had a house in the Parade of Homes, it was the dream home, it was the spring of 2020. And, you know, they think it was four weeks long, after two weeks, they cancelled it, because that was, you know, things were shutting down. And, you know, a couple weeks later, were essential workers we kept going on. And then it led to what a two three year just incredible boom, you know, that, you know, we as a small company had a hard time navigating that tidal wave of interest, because so many people were at home, I mean, the office, for instance, just like the dining room before the dining room has been gone from a lot of architecture for a while now. I'm really large homes, you know, you got to fill it with something. So that will still be there. But for the seems like for a lot of the homes that we're building between the 3005 1000 square feet, the dining room, formal dining room, I should say is not really highly requested. Once you get beyond that, you know, just a matter of having a dinner probably. So adjusting. So the office for a long time the office was gone for the new the office was very big in that that square footage of homes between 3000 to 5000 square feet, but I saw probably for about a decade, the office was kind of like, we'd rather have a media room, or we'd have a gaming room for the kids or, you know, son room or
27:38
whatever. And now you're putting in two, yes. Three. Yeah, it's crazy.
27:42
So now to build a house without an office is just insane, because, of course of all the Zoom conferences, and, you know, although, you know, working in the hybrid models, and so anyway, it's just been it's just very interesting how the market of course, shapes housing. And anyway, there's just some lessons learned. And
27:58
we're looking at we're always, we're always evolving, although, you know, that whole notion of cocooning came out 15 years ago. And you know, I don't remember that. You're not familiar with cooking? No, I've never heard that term. cocooning is, you know, rather than living a lavish lifestyle outside the house, it's really investing and putting your priorities inside the home. That's where your family is. It's a it's a safe haven for you developing the creature comforts that, you know, theoretically, you could do a staycation anytime you want, and you've got everything you need. Now, that was never an anticipation of a worldwide pandemic, right. But certainly a notion that you saw in a lot of houses that are being dealt with and developed. I mean, look at I built a house in 2003 with a sport court, I might have been one of the first sport courts around early on, and I did under the garage did all the rest, but now you see it, it is a it's a mainstay at certain price point. Homes and people want to have that additional recreational space. They don't want to go join a club, they want to play basketball at Iran, it's Minnesota with their kids or you know, teach them a slap shot or do different things like that. So you have that you have the office, you have more gourmet kitchens, you have more comfortable rooms and spas and steam showers and all these other things that maybe one would travel to a resort to get where you can get it at home. Right. And I think you'll continue to see that because there's always gonna be this COVID hangover and and fear frankly of hey, what's next? What's what's coming up again and again, your your home is safe. It's a place where people can't tell you what you can and can't do. You were married for 29 years. Well, outside people can't cannot do.
29:51
Hopefully my wife doesn't listen to this one. Sorry, honey. My question was, you know around that I think a lot of it is lifestyle or Right. So I think the community that you're in and you know, we build a very high end product, I often tell my clients, you know, don't feel that I can't afford my work either. And I say that kind of tongue in cheek, like, you know, we build beautiful homes, sometimes, you know, I go home to my own home. And I'm like, you know, you've been building this four or $5 million home or design, you're like, Well, of course, I should have this article. And I don't and I don't feel the need for that. But it's just kind of interesting when my job my skill set is designing a home that's far above my own personal means. It's kind of interesting how you look at some things differently. And I don't really have a judgment on it. Other than now that I have kids, I view a sport cord far differently than I did when I was single, right, just for if I was single, and I wouldn't want a sport cord in my house, because I would want to go to the gym to play with 10 other people. Now I can appreciate as someone who has three children, I'm like, Man, I can really see the wisdom of having the kids and their friends over to the home, I can see what they're doing. I can play with them. It's a place in you know, obviously, Minnesota, we have, you know, six months of, you know, whether that's not as nice as other parts of the country. And, you know, you can embrace and go outside and do your winter sports. Or you can move to Florida, or you can move to Florida. No, thank you. Although the taxes are pretty nice down there. I hear what we've gone all over the place. I had a question for you. One thing that you told me a number of years ago, I don't remember if you remember this, I'm guessing you do pretty sharp guy and what you say, you had told me one of your primary goals was to always have material for somebody. And I've explained that to clients before, you know I get a lot of pressure from clients saying hey, we're looking at the market, the lumberyard the lumber prices are way up or futures are way up or you know, right now numbers are coming down. Oh, so my lumber bid is gonna come way down. And you helped me with this. And just saying like, you know, we cost average meaning share brothers and our dealers customers homes, we're gonna, we're a partnership in this. And the number one goal is like, if I call you, yes, we're gonna have materials so you can build your home. Is that still? I mean, it was that Where did that come from reselling. That's our number one priority. Well, it's a little tongue in
31:54
cheek between brothers. And brother Christopher is our CFO but he also oversees all purchasing, and, frankly, having a family member purchase for you is a huge advantage. Because again, there's no fear of making a big mistake there and you work with it. But I've always been, again, tongue in cheek with them about just don't ever make me call a customer and say I'm on a two by fours. I just I never want to be in that position. Right. And there's different ways to look at the market. You know, it's funny, because the lumber bill for a house makes up about 15 20% of the cost. That's fair. I'm not including Windows millwork. Crammed. Yep. And and I throw trusses in with that. Yes. And so of that lumber Bill, how much of it is actually commodity goods, you know, and that's, that's your dimensional, your, your, your sheet stock gets treated like, are your panels gonna get treated like they're commodities, but really not, they're a manufactured product, they play supply and demand a little bit, but, you know, so that's gonna go up and down. And we saw just a ridiculous rise in the midst of COVID, probably about six months, eight months into COVID, where demand was so much higher. And with when COVID hit a lot of states, the mills had to shut down because they were not essential up in Canada different things. And people scale back production, because they fear that nothing was going to be going on. And the last thing you want is a ton of inventory sitting on finished finished goods. And so then all of a sudden, there's this huge demand. And so price has shot way up. So there was an impact on the home, but it was never as much as what people thought it was. And so even now, you know, you're gonna see a bump along and I guess I got some visual, so I can do this. Yeah, you know, so. So when you're talking about amplitude of a wave, you can, you can have really big tight peaks and valleys, ridges and troughs, whatever we use. Or you can kind of level it off and just kind of smooth things over. So we've always been slow to raise prices, slow to lower prices, because we're doing it off of cost average. And one of the greatest services for people out there is looking at the futures. What does that mean? And now, it's like, okay, hey, the Barrett price per barrel on oil is us. What does that mean? You know, because that is one specific, it's oil, you still got the refinery cost, you got the transportation, cash, the other things, people talk about lumber prices. And what they don't understand is transportation costs on lumber, whether it's via rail are on track,
34:32
as tripled. True. No, that's, that's amazing.
34:35
And you know, it's a small part of the cost, but it's still there, and it adds up and nobody is in this for free, obviously. But so our deal is to try to take the volatility out of the lumber market as best we can. And so that's where you know, when you're bidding houses, you know, here's where your numbers are right now. Once we're in the project, can't come back and say well look at the futures market. When the futures market is in the future, there is no past market. It's all future. So that can be two, three months down the road, you have to bring that product, then you have to process it, you have to turn around and you've got other product on the ground. So you blend it out, like like many commodity based businesses will do, and then you sell it and you sell it at a reasonable, a reasonable markup to make everything work.
35:24
I have a question that I've been maybe people listening, if they're buying lumbers in large packages, they would know this, maybe not. So when we let's say, we price out a $2 million house, you know, let's just say the lumber packages 200,000 for an easy number. So 10% it, we will, it'll say it right on the bed, it'll say this is a say this is an estimate, or this is a bid mean, implying that it can change. And I have an analogy that I'm curious to see if you think lines up with this. I've always wondered why I mean, I get it because I talked to my sales rep. And Tim says, well, it can go up and down. Because obviously as the market fluctuates as we're delivering this product, that that can change. What I don't understand is like, you know, if I asked my plumber for a bed, he gives me a bed for let's say, 50,000. And you know, his bed is locked in when I get done with the home like Now obviously, I picked out a different light or different fixture or something or the clients picked up something it won't change. Is it a little bit maybe he's factoring in volatility is this very similar to fixed bid versus cost plus like it from a GC standpoint. So for instance, when I when I build a house for a client, I'm saying I can give you a fixed bid, it's $2 million. And, you know, if I make it, if anything that I make under that 2 million I can keep but that price won't deviate. If you don't change versus most of the stuff in the high end market. We're doing cost plus, hey, here's our percentage, anything you change kind of is that is that a good enough? A good analogy? It's
36:39
a perfect analogy, okay? It really is. Because in any situation, the more volatility you want to take out of something, the more you pay for it. I hope that makes sense. If you want to eliminate risk in your life, you're going to eliminate risk in my life, too. And so, yeah, there's a little bit of playing the game back and forth. But again, the numbers aren't that significant and absent change, you add a whole new wing on to the home or something like that. But then obviously, there's a play. And some people want that. Some people just want to say, Okay, this is my price, this is what I'm going to do, it ends up costing you more, but some people value that they value that that continuity. And I it's tough to do on a 30,000 foot house, it's going to take four years to build 100% I can't do that. Right. But you know, for your standard house that takes you know what your typical house takes nine months to a year.
37:35
Yeah, for me personally, but I mean, the Nationals probably do one what in six to eight months.
37:39
You know, and no disrespect the nationals that are not part of our niche.
37:44
Yeah. And that was gonna speak to that. And I did not know that actually, you know, obviously, I know who I am. And you're, you know, I'm your client, and you help us build these beautiful homes that we do and support us in a number of different ways. I had not known that so what is your niche I mean there's there's other lumber yards you know, within Minneapolis St. Paul, but you know, I'm not gonna speak for you what is what is your what what is your brother's niche?
38:09
i We really focus on I'd say more of the local custom home builder remodeler. That's, that's really who we cater to. And we have, we have some local custom higher volume builders that we work with, and they're they're good long standing customers, and we have fabulous relationships with them. It just we've moved away from focusing our efforts and energies on the national builders. Again, they said they serve a valuable purpose and they add a lot to our community. Not only from a number of homes, but they build nice neighborhoods, and have price points that are good for different demographics. We just I I guess I want to do business where I can have a relationship. I agree at the end of the day, that's just that's so critically important. I need a reason to get out of bed mark. I do. And my life just as my brothers agree with me on on this too. We're we're on we're lockstep my cousin to there's more to life. And if, if and when this ever becomes purely transactional, probably the day that I get to retire. I'm almost 55 I mean, I see looks like he's 45 Sooner or later. I'm gonna go Yeah, but I'm enjoying. I love what I do. I love my team. I love my customers. I love a lot of my vendors. Sometimes I'm not very happy with them them but I still love them right. Back to how my wife feels about me. Yeah. And, you know, it's just look at We're building something. I mean, literally and metaphorically. Yes. So we're building homes, but we're also building community We are building culture and we're supporting a massive economy. If you look at the residual impact that that homebuilding has on the economy, it's crazy. I mean,
40:11
obviously you hear about all the time in terms of, you know, the American dream in, especially in our age. In above us the American dream was to one home and still is. I mean, I think there's it's interesting that messaging, you know, the GDP that's tied up in building is incredible. You would probably know the stats more than than I do. But I know, you know, from your Home Depot's to your hardware stores to the lumberyard. I mean, there's so much that goes into home, the products, everything that's affected by it, it's massive. It's interesting, you travel other parts of the world. And obviously, the homes are not nearly as big. They don't have the land. That's true. That's true. And I'm thinking I guess, most mostly of Europe and as much smaller than they think about things differently. Some things are better. But you know, we're in some things aren't. And so it's just interesting what people prioritize,
40:55
but a lot of times that's cultural differentials, too. I agree. You know, in Italy, they have the, what they call LaBella Fiat. So it's really an image, the beautiful flower. So people that have very meager financial means, okay, the type of car they drive doesn't matter, their house doesn't matter. But there were in the nicest clothes you've ever seen. They're out in public. They're dressed to the nines. And that's that personal image for them is everything other people care or other cultures care less about that. It's about the family. It's about the food, it's about this. It's about that. And each their own. And you're right, that America being the melting pot that it is. How many times have you ever heard somebody say, hey, when I grew up, I want to rent a house? Yeah, no, but I want to find a great house to rent something. But look, there's a value to the rental market. And right now with the economy the way it is, and all the rest, I think you'll probably see more rental homes coming on board or rental properties coming on board, because you know, people are going to be able to cough up 20% Down. And
41:59
it's a hot topic. It's a hot topic here in Minnesota. I mean, we have a fairly high cost of living across the country. And it's interesting, because I think I'd heard a stat, maybe six months ago that we're 60,000 units short, meaning we're 60,000 homes or rental just places for people to live. And people have often asked me Do Do I see a recession coming? And I'm not economist, right, because we're all we're all gonna be wrong. But I just simply say this, like, I know there's a great need. And I know that my phones are very busy. And we're bidding a lot of remodels. And we kind of do, you know, I'd like to be about 7030. But you never get to pick what rate you're at meeting new homes to remodels. And you can aspire, yeah, and you're right, you set a goal and it is what is but you know, it changes. And you know, if it's a good client, we are trying to model the business in a way that you know, everyone says we want to work with good clients. Well, that's true. I mean, that's kind of an obvious statement. But you don't always get to pick and like, you know, sometimes in building a stressful, let's be honest, someone told me the other day that outside of your marriage, building a home is the thing that people aspire the most and like their dreams and aspirations and what they want. So like, you know, first get married, and you're thinking about your you know, especially your missus, you know, your wife is thinking about, you know, the wedding day, how it's going to be who's inviting and but a similar amount of effort goes into building a home, someone comes in to build their dream home, which is different to every person, they have all these ideas of aspirations of what they wanted to be so it's stressful. I mean, you ask anyone during the wedding process, you know that that time leading up to the wedding is very stressful. I've actually never I should bring on a wedding planner actually be very interesting to see if being a project manager and a wedding planner would be somewhat synonymous. I bet it would
43:32
use the other microphone. You can have dueling dueling occupations. It actually there's so much emotion in whether it's the aforementioned wedding or building a home. I mean, it's I don't know if there's any more personal decision you can make. Aside from choosing a partner, right? Then building your home, you're gonna live there and look at I I'm truly blessed. And I moved pretty much seven years, every seven years. With my wife, we built several built three and remodeled one. My current home, it just it brings me joy. You know, and I know that's just such an overused term, whoever the person is, you know about ditching stuff, you know, it doesn't bring you joy. My home was my fortress of solitude. I mean, I just, I love everything about it. It's comfortable. It's us and we spent years planning it and when you're downsizing, you got to put a lot of effort into planning your home. It's not easy to do, right? And we've downsized twice now, but the kids are all gone. So we don't need a lot but what we have is just ridiculously reflective on our lifestyles, our persona. You know who we are and what we like
44:55
an interesting question to ask you. So I am technically a I am a client of yours meaning that I'm a reoccurring client, right? And we're partners as well. Right? So like, I buy lumber from you to build my homes. And so our relationship is something that, you know, generational, right, my dad bought from sure brothers, as do I, and we build these homes together. I was commenting the other day that as far as an industry goes, like, the average person, you've built a few homes, but the average person, you know, will build a home for somebody, you know, it's been a lot of times people always ask, like, how long is your sales process? It can be as short as a couple of months. I'm working with a couple that I've met the other day, I've met them eight years ago, and we're finally going to do you know, a remodel for them, which is fine, you know, relation. Yeah, thank you. And that sales process is, like I said, is an extremely long, it's unlikely that I will do another project for that couple. Now that I'm younger, my career, I've been doing it for 18 years. And so I guess I'm in the middle age of my career potentially. And so you know, let's say you built before two years, maybe the couples that you built for, you know, the first 10 years of your career, maybe they downsize, maybe they do some but what 10% 20%, you'll get again, I'm just interesting, as a business model, we spend so much time and effort. You know, creating a relationship with this client, you build a house, now I'm building my homes take, you know, a year, two years, three years, if you can't design in some of these larger homes, it's like you said, it's very emotional, you've watched this couple for so long. And then it's like, kind of like, over it's almost like a breakup, in some ways. I mean, we do a lot of things to continue this continuity of, you know, just doing different events or stopping by and you have a general care for some of these people. And likewise, they care about you, and they get to see your kids, I guess I'm just interested in your, you know, a lot of builders, I'm just one of many builders, that you have a relationship with what you ever thought of like, wow, as an industry, it's interesting, they're doing all one off sales, versus like, you essentially are b2b you are you're selling business to business, or I'm business a customer, but it's not residual,
46:50
it makes me happy. Well, you tailor your business to how you derive your revenue. Right? So if anybody was to meet any of my salespeople, and these are these people are fabulous at what they do. And they're great at building relationships. A majority of them are not, you know, stereotypical salespeople cold calling doing this and that because their relationship based that's that's the nature of who we are, those are the types of people we hired. In fact, you had touched on different groups that you belong to and I spend a fair amount of time with lumber dealers from around the country and people that are kind of parallel to the lumber side of supply side of things and
47:38
is that similar to like a builder 20 group like your peers and outside of your
47:41
Yeah, like minded independent lumber dealers, similarly situated different markets not competitive, okay. I very much like a builder 20. And some of them are, some of them would be a roundtable where there's kind of a, an open kimono component where you're a little bit more vulnerable and exposed and you're sharing, you know, pretty, pretty detailed information, and others are just more theoretical on the rest. But it's really interesting talking to dealers around the country, how they view sales, the type of business they have, and the type of salespeople they need to further their business interests, versus how we do it and it's just there's no right or wrong, right? We just have Twin Cities has a ridiculously professional and stable building community. That's very diverse, you know, between nationals and high end guys that build one house every two years.
48:37
Curiosity when did the Nationals come to Minnesota because I don't remember them, you know, in the 80s and 90s Was it late 90s When did one of the Nationals come to Minnesota?
48:44
Oh, you know, Marv Anderson homes sold out to polti I think that was back in the late 80s early 90s Don't Don't quote me on it but you know, they were here polti was here. US homes built bought out Oren Thompson then merged with Luminar bought out Lundgren. i The history is not great on me but you know it's usually most most of the national builders you know, came in and acquired somebody of some prominence in town that had significant land holdings that had reputation that had teams and systems in place and they've done very well with it. Some came and some left pretty quick Yeah same thing happened national suppliers by the way to you know 84 lumber was here for a cup of coffee a number of them
49:39
are here Fred cover You're right. I totally forgot about 84 lumber. Yeah. That doesn't seem oh, by the way that I mean, while you can come in and be a builder, I mean, I still always say like, you know, people asked me like, Oh, we love your stuff. Can you build us a house in Montana? And I'd be like, I'm sorry. You know, I could design a house for you with my you know, architecture contacts here and we could go on site visit but I'm only as good as my people around me right in So like, well, I don't have a large, you know, employed staff. I mean, we use the same people on every project, that's how I'm able to look clients in the eyes and say, you know, you like the home that you're in, we can do exactly the same product, because I'm not, you know, we're not a low cost provider, you know, just like our partners, you know, we are not well, we're good value. And I think this is where I often in my initial conversations with the client is trying to understand your value statement, like, what do you value? And maybe our values align, and maybe they don't, and that's okay, if they don't, I might not be for you. And that's okay. I think as I've gotten older and more mature, and just more established in the business, like understanding like what your story is, and understanding who you are. It's funny, because when you come across that confident, and that it's like people like yes, sign me up for that. And I'm like, Man, I wish. I wish I knew that 18 years ago. Well, okay.
50:43
So here's, I get to ask you a question. All right, I'm taking over your
50:49
birthmark. You know, here's builder brought to you in March, here we go.
50:52
So I have contended for a long time. That as a homeowner, as a homeowner, building a house, the finished product of the house, you build, not not the designed product, because there's different ways to quote it, and different allowances and different things and you make changes along the way yada yada. But the finished product. When you're done building that house, I'd say there's usually at most the way that ends up there's going to be a point or two difference between pretty much any builder in town and what that house casts
51:30
Yes. If you're assuming the same strategy mean, the same the same materials, same talent, same all those
51:35
things, the finished house, I mean, you have to leap forward to the way it ends. Okay, gotcha. If you went back and did not forget
51:42
process forget all that just hey, this house a house be the exact same materials, same everything put together the same way?
51:49
Absolutely. 100% apples for apples, except for a different builder belt? Yes, any people, sometimes they're they charge a little less profit, but a little bit more overhead or a little bit less overhead, a little bit more profit, but you know, it kind of all comes out in the wash. It is my basic philosophy. So what I tell people, I'm gonna want to St. John's I know lots of people that build houses, Chinese like to do that. But is you're going into a two year process with somebody, and you're going to be spending a lot of time with them. Make sure you just you're aligned and that you feel comfortable with their personality, their persona, their values, the all the rest, because that's what's going to matter. That's what makes or breaks the process. You're not going to save 10% building with this person over this person. Once you have the finished product. Yep. It's just it's just not there's not that much volatility, especially when you're talking about commodity goods. You know, Marvin windows, I say Marvin windows because that's we like to sell an Andersen windows as well. The price for my Marvin Windows versus somebody else's Marvin windows. Yeah, that doesn't change. Right? Yeah, it's marking it up. X percent or x plus 1%. Yeah, you know, there's gonna be just little nebulous variations along the way. But it all comes out.
53:15
I say the same thing to our clients. So if the question is, Do I agree with you? Yes. And I think if you are, I mean, you said exactly the same house, but I just say same strata, like if you were to have the same talent level, and you know, let's say your builders, you know, you're building against, you know, set competition, and they're interviewing me interviewing them. And let's say they have the designs, you know, usually we try, of course, to the more time I have with the client, it's the relationship because I'm like you, I'm interested in relationship. One of the reasons why we've stayed small is to have a relationship. And it's a challenge, when we've gotten an influx of work, I found that I probably need to spend more time working on the business, and I actually enjoy it. But I sort of also like to be in the weeds a little bit. And I like to, I think this is pretty typical of a lot of owners is, you know, to step back, let my team do their thing. And that's not an easy thing to do, especially with Type A personalities, I'm told, and you know, you want to have control of your product and doesn't mean you can't, you know, give a input and quote, clients want that, like, what's your homeowners still want to engage? They do? And so how do you balance that and you know, I'm heavy on the front end of sales and design. And that's not like, you just want to drop them off and leave them away. It used to be a huge competitive advantage for me if I went up against another competitor, that you know, they had a much bigger project management staff and all this other stuff, I'd say, Guess what, I'm going to be with you at every single meeting the whole way through, people love that they love that message. I mean, I used to just slay with that message. Because I also back to that I did it. I can't honestly say that anymore. Like, you know, well I care what the home looks like. Like I'm not gonna go pick out knobs with you. Like that's interior designer stuff, and they do it way better than I do. Let's be honest. So I think understanding who your clientele is and our clients have led us to the strata that we're at today. I've always just wanted to build good homes like if someone's to build a really cool sauna, like I'm in in fact it's funny I use that as example cuz I just got a call. People know that Like saunas and you know, exercise and all these other things. And one of my reps said, hey, my neighbor wants to build like a ridiculously cool sauna. And he knows you're, you know, you build these beautiful homes, but you do that. I'm like, oh, man, like, I don't even know if you know anything more about it if he's willing to pay for cool design, like, I'm not going to be the cheapest sauna builder. Like, if we're gonna make this cool, like, it's gonna be amazing if he wants to do that. Amen. And so as I like to do cool projects, and sometimes probably too much, I'm an optimist. You know, I think that's what makes me good at remodeling. I can walk into a home and, you know, I'm like, Yes, I can make this amazing. It also makes me really bad spec home builder, because I am not good at I can value engineer that's not really, I'm way better at selling the dream, selling the optimism because I'm just so excited about their home taking somebody's
55:47
vision and making it a reality rather than trying to impart what you think the community's vision might be
55:53
much more eloquent than I was going stumbling through there before.
55:56
So being Asana guy, you would know that why do you only use clear a ye cedar when you're building Asana, if
56:05
you if you have nots, they'll absorb the heat, you'll sit down, you're gonna burn your butt, you sit down, not once, you'll never say never done it before. I was told that and it's funny because we're actually building a sauna for a Finnish NHL hockey player, which is just kind of cool. And he told me, he went over to Finland to visit his family. And he said, it's kind of part of the Finnish culture that you'll have, like, you know, like an antler horn or like, you know, and I just built one of my backyard, and I was like, now I said, when you go over there, can you get me like, you know, a caribou horn or something like that? He forgot. So now I'm, like, thrifty. I'm not a super big hunter. So it's like I can help you. I need some horns. I need some horns to put on my, my sauna. So anyway, I have I have a pair to loan to, you know, a loaner. Okay,
56:46
I'll just, it's like a unlimited loan to the Guggenheim. Except for it'll be your backyard, but can never give them when they come back to me.
56:56
It's funny. Well, we're getting close to the end of our time, obviously, so soon. I know we could talk for hours. Frankly. My question for the listeners are, you know, obviously, I know where you are. But people that don't know you, where can they find you? Where are your What are your guys's handles, and we'll have all this in the show notes as well. But if people want to reach out to you and to your brothers, where should they go to look? Me personally,
57:16
I really don't do social media because I try to avoid all that. No. Yeah, we have. We have retail locations and Hopkins Arden Hills in Shakopee bought 95% of what we do is to for professional builders, remodelers and commercial folks, but we do work with the professional do it yourselfer, I guess is the way to put it. So because of our focus on millwork. And you know, we stock all the exotics. I mean, and we do very little on the low end, we have some MDF, you gotta have it around, but come to our stores. We can we can take care of that. But for the most part, really, we leverage our stores to be convenient for our customers specifically in the selection process.
58:02
Just showroom in Hopkins is where I used to send my clients as close to my, you know, realm of where I build a lot of my homes, but it's a beautiful showroom. So if you haven't been out to, it's on 169 and Hopkins crossroad.
58:13
Oh, no, Hopkins is I think it's 11th street and Excelsior Boulevard. Now it's right across right across the street from Wendy's and just north of North New I was getting the white rails going,
58:24
you would know where your building is better than I thought to get
58:27
there. You know, mark up a little bit like Chevy Chase and Caddyshack, you know,
58:31
I know a guy not quite sure where they are one last thing, it's always fun to have a kind of a curveball question for you. If you were to a lot of people listening to this either owned businesses or interested in it, if you could give some business advice, either an example of someplace that either you failed and you've learned it, we talked a little bit about that. Or if you were just going to start a business today, what are some advice you'd give to somebody listening to you know, that what has been a key success for you to have to be a part of a business ownership group that you feel like has been extremely valuable and that you know, someone could apply it to their own life?
59:08
Couple things, family first, always. You can get caught up in business pretty quick. And you know, regardless of what you do, you're still living it 24/7 365 But just make sure you can turn it off when you need to turn it off and don't lose sight of it. I've got hindsight on on my behalf. My wife stuck with me for 29 years and Ken all intents and purposes doesn't look like she's going anywhere. kids or kids are out of the house. Now. I don't have a lot of regrets on missing anything. So So for me, that balance equation, which is very, very important to my organization, to my family to me, and frankly for our employees is huge. The other thing is don't take yourself so seriously, you know and I slapped on a jacket today just cuz I put on a jacket. And of course I walk around the office people are like, Hey, do you have a funeral today, I'm sorry, who
1:00:07
are watching us on YouTube channel marks wearing a very snazzy plaid sports jacket.
1:00:12
I like sparkles, but I never have costume because we used to be far more serious pre recession. And we got to lighten up a little bit. You know, let's have some fun doing this. Nothing is ever the end of the world. You know, work hard and be better and trust other people. That's one of the most difficult things for any entrepreneurial, spirited individual is to let go. No, in fact, that's that's ends up being the demise of some really great ideas is that entrepreneurs hang on too tight and their strength was the idea. It's not the maintenance. So bring good people on. Trust them, compensate them. Give them the vision and turn them loose. That's how your businesses thrive. They ain't gonna fall and ain't gonna go through you. You see your limitations. Now as you've grown in either side. You got to do a different. You got to do a different but you got to enjoy life a little bit while you're doing it.
1:01:13
Great. Thanks for coming on
1:01:15
today. Thanks for having me. Can we do it again? I agree. Sita in an hour. All right. Thanks for having
1:01:21
me.
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