Latest / Crossroad Conversations with the Lewis Brothers / Ep101 "Starting a start up" w Guest Parker Dodson

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Ep101 "Starting a start up" w Guest Parker Dodson · Crossroad Conversations with the Lewis Brothers

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, welcome to conversations with the Louis Brothers before we aim to share real stories about running a successful family business, working through university, and pouring back into the community that keeps our door open.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're your host, Matt, Shelby, and Taylor, and we bring you relevant local business advice and automotive insights that are sure to change the way you look at running a business.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe even throw in a plug for you to do business with us.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, welcome back to Crossroad Conversations with the Lewis brothers.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're over that hundred mark now, episode 101.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're excited about that.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're at least beating the stats of how many episodes somebody gets out.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's all downhill from here.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know it.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, and today we're talking about highlights and struggles of starting a business from ground up.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: We got a guest in studio, Parker Dodson from podcastvideos.com.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, he's the director of sales and business development.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: We've had a journey with Parker, but we're also going to talk to him about his journey today and how he went from Van Buren to underwater camera work in college to where he sits today.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's going to be an interesting conversation.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get into podcastvideos.com itself and what it was four years ago, what is now at 17 people and everything that happened in between.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Parker was an employee number you were employee number one.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Number one.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Man.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Crazy enough to believe, yeah.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he's seen every part of the company.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to our podcast this morning, and we'll have some great conversation.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: But before we do that, Shelby, let's recap last week.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, last week, episode 100, we celebrated 100 episodes.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: Brought in uh double uh guests.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: We had Coach Anthony Lucas of from Fayetteville High School, which I'm gonna go on and say that they won't get a game.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: Had to be because the intervals are I'm gonna say it was just like a solid pep talk.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: We worked through it, and uh and then we had Miss Jennifer Irwin, the Fayeville Chamber of Commerce, uh CEO of that.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: So had a great episode.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: If you haven't, go back and check that one out.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: But now you're dialed into one-on-one here with Parker, so let's get in it.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, what's in the garage?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_04: We've always got good things in the garage.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_04: We've talked about commercial, we've talked about expeditions coming out, we've talked about grand wagoneers.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_04: The fleet business I have to park on.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_04: We keep going back to it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_04: It's the best it's ever been, and it's best right now because you're getting close to that fourth quarter before your tax accountant comes and says, hey, you got to spend some money.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_04: The big deal is the inventory selection is there.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_04: By the end of the year, you don't care if the vehicle is three different lengths long and four different colors because you're just trying to buy something.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_04: Come and look at it now, whether it's a van, it's a flatbed, it's a half ton, three quarter ton, a maverick, a compact.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_04: We've got it all.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_04: And we've got um on both sides of Ford and CDJR, the best selection we'll have.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_04: So come and check it out early.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what Taylor's talking about there is section 179.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And section 179 allows accelerated depreciation where you can write off up to a hundred percent of that vehicle cost.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So when you start thinking about that, it's really kind of like getting a 40% discount on top of the dealer discounts and the rebates on the vehicle because you get to pull that all in year one to decrease your tax liability.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yep, that's really big.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_04: So come check it out here.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_04: And uh that's my vehicle plug of the day.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_04: So kick it out.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: I like that.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: Multi-vehicle.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: All right, so Parker, you've been doing this podcast thing for a long time.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's funny when you came in, we talked about this a little bit.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: You said, hey, nice setup, and said, Well, hopefully it looks kind of familiar.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: So if you guys don't know, let me give you guys behind the scenes.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we started this podcast dream in 2020.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh COVID happened and we had bigger fish to fry, right?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: We want to tell stories, uh, what we've learned in the automotive business.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so then somehow we crossed paths as we were designing this building with Parker, and you have a studio in Rogers.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: How many bays do you have or booths?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we have four recording studios.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: Four recording studios.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so we said, let's can we come take a look at it?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, long to short, is that we ended up with a temporary contract with you guys and started recording our podcast up there.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: And we said, hey, we're gonna copy everything of yours.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: Are you cool with that?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: And with you and Eric was like, Yeah, yeah, whatever, right?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so I it was a great relationship.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's how we we came to meet you.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: And um, so tell me uh tell tell me your number one takeaway from podcasts.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: What have you loved?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: What's been good?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I would say authenticity is probably my number one like favorite thing from it.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we I'm a little bit 35 years old, but I have a very old school mindset at times.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the more that we get into technology, I'm a big extroverted person, so I love talking with people.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the more we get into technology, you see it nowadays with kids, and even you know, my parents are one of the world's worst about they're on their phones on Facebook and everything else, and I'm like, they're on their phones more than I am, you know, they're kind of that generation.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um but what's interesting is I feel like the more we get into technology and we lean into AIs, I mean, you could live your entire life just talking to an AI if you wanted to and hold genuine conversations.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I feel like the more we get into that technology, we as human beings crave the authenticity.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like I want to be able to sit down and talk.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: We are designed to not be alone, we're designed to be in a community with people and spend time around one another and help one another.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I love about podcasting is it gives you that authenticity of being around and with people.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like people have their varying trusts in the news and all these other things, and you know, you take with from that what you will.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: But with podcasting, what I I find more and more, and what I love about it, is just very authentic.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a way that you can tell your story very unfiltered, you know, the real truth if you want to.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Some people will structure it differently.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we're able to share that with as many people want to listen.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's no borders on who can listen to what.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I love the fact that we can get that authentic conversation and let people tell their stories across the world, essentially.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what we found with you guys when we were up there, and Shelby started getting into the story, and we'll unpack that here in a little bit.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: But when you guys were first talking to us about like, well, what do you want your podcast to be about?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what are you gonna cover?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we said, we're not at this to sell advertisement or to have paid stuff.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: We want to tell our story and we want to go through our struggles to hopefully help other local business owners out there, whether it's talking about advertising or hiring people or inventory control or cash flow or when to fire a customer, you know, when to hire more people.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, to your point, you know, authentically, we can get out there amongst people, and that's what's allowed us to talk over a hundred hours about stuff because it's real.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's real.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: We can get in here and talk about it.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: So, you first employee of podcast videos, right?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, how long before you hired the second employee?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, eight months.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Ran solo for eight months before we got Nate who's still with us in the door.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um I love that.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: So eight months by yourself, just growing out.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: What does a business look like when it's only one or two people and nothing is built yet?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, ultimately, I joined Eric, you know, was the owner of the company, and I have that outdoor, you know, photography experience that I think we'll get into.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, with that, one of the things that he brought me on for was for that.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually for a completely different company.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Had nothing to do.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Podcastvideos.com was not mentioned to me when I came to work for Eric.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then about three weeks later, he's like, Hey, I have this business idea, podcast videos, and I was like, Oh, interesting.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: I listen to podcasts all the time.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we just kind of jumped head first into his old company that he had started and was in an exit plan with was doing a podcast.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: So where I worked out of every day was that old studio.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was not great.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a two-story loft with no walls and it had an acoustic curtain that you had to walk behind to go into the it was a whole thing.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but ultimately that was just me by myself.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we started getting some people in to record because we were like, we don't even know if this is an actual business yet.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let's figure out what it is.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was very stealth using connections that we had.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Y'all come record an episode for free, or you start a show for free.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and it was just learning from that first day.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have a lot of you know, background experience in doing editing and different things like that, but I'd never edited a podcast before necessarily.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's like, how do we do these things?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and one of the things that I didn't think about, because I've never, you know, I've worked in smaller businesses my whole life, but I'd never actually been a part of like a startup like that.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that Eric really instilled in me early on was like, you have to document and write the procedure for everything because I know you know how to do it.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's easy for me to just sit and do it, but to actually keep tabs on exactly what's happening, because it won't just be me one day, it will be more people, you know.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: And in the moment you're like, are we sure?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you get kind of get those self-doubts at times.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, it's keep a record of that.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's just a lot of learning.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: What I loved about it is you're not, and people that have never been in a startup probably can't relate to this.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of stresses that go alongside it.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: But what I love is the fact that you can be extremely flexible and you can be very adaptive.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was, I know, I kind of got the freedom to, hey, go try this.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, does that work?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's try this the next time, see what that is.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Let's upgrade the camera to this, let's change this.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you make a lot of mistakes along the way.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: For anyone curious, GoPros are one of the maybe the worst thing you could possibly use to film a podcast.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: One, they are not designed for that long of use, they do overheat.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: One of the worst experiences I ever had was my first day of using the GoPros.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was so excited.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: I had two people come down to record 15 minutes in.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: I hear a beep, beep, beep, which means the camera is no longer recording.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I went, hmm, that's a problem.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: They just overheated.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I saw that, but it's just a whole other stuff.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, what'd you do on that podcast?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Did you pause?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I did actually have to go down and pause them and like apologize.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And again, luckily it was a you know a close friend, but it was just like the embarrassment of hearing that beep, beep, beep.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm stressed the whole recording.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is it gonna happen again in about every 15 minutes?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: It would happen again.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of trial and error there, but you have to kind of do that stuff to figure out what is the best solution.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and when you're a startup, there's a lot of bootstrapping there.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like, hey, yeah, I want to go.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Could I have gone and bought$40,000 worth of cameras?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm the only employee.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: We've done three recordings total.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's not worth that investment.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: RLI is not there.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like, hey, Eric, here's what I'm thinking.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking this like, here's my grand plan.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I need$75,000.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: He's gonna be like, absolutely not.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: You have you have$75.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: See what you can make out.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Use your phone next time.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so funny enough, when I first started, they were doing some recordings for that company.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: They were using Samsung cell phones.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Quality's not terrible.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: File management and moving stuff around is an absolute nightmare.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we've been through what is now, we just redid the studios probably about six to eight months ago, roughly.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're on like our fifth round of new cameras.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we we started GoPro, then we went Samsung.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we started Samsung, then we went GoPro, then we went with a little thing called a Mevo, and then we went from a Mevo start to a Mivo Core, which is a more advanced version, and now we're at Black Magic cameras, which are studio 4K cameras that are set up on the walls.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny, you talk about those trials you go through to figure it out.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we had upgraded same thing, camera this, camera that.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Then we got to 8k cameras, and then I keep sending the production team.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, the video quality just doesn't look good.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're on 8K.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: I said yes to those cameras.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then it was downstream.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was some of the filtering that it went through, and by the time it got posted, it was 1080.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: We'd gone from at best.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so walk us through an example like that where you have to start going two, three, four steps down, and it's actually not the camera or the or the board you're working on.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what's your encouragement there to people on when they have a startup, how to figure out what the actual issue is?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, ultimately, you know, one of the things, depending on what level you're at with a team, you know, one of the things that I've always encouraged and Eric, you know, primarily is when we get somebody on the team, we are a startup and we're in a very innovative space.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's not set in stone, there's things changing all the time.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be really adaptive.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just because what you found on Google AI search is says this is the best tool, it may not genuinely be, but you have to be able to understand what you're trying to do and what is that end product.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, can we record an AK?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: The problem with that is by the time I go and look at it on my phone, my phone can't handle AK.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: My phone is gonna handle, usually at best, a 1080.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing with social media platforms.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's a a certain resolution.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: So just because something's the biggest and the best in the world as far as like a camera capability, well, that's fine if I'm just viewing it in camera, but where is that content gonna go?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then what's the best approach to have it be that best quality?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's same thing with like when I'm cropping social media snippets.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: What LinkedIn does from a size perspective is different than what Instagram does, from the frame rates to the actual aspect ratio to YouTube shorts.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: They are all kind of varying, you know, and you can kind of find a common ground.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: But once you have to take the time, you know, kind of when getting into startups, be willing to take that time and and learn and explore and discover new things because that does take more time than just, yeah, here's a solution.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, it's gonna set you up for greater success in the future because you have explored that.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be afraid to make mistakes.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's gonna cost money.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's gonna be unfortunate, but if ultimately it's allowing you to provide a better product in the end.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I would rather it take you a little bit longer to provide something that is gonna be more permanent solution that's gonna allow us to carry that on longer than, oh, I found this fix, it's gonna probably go out of date or break in the next four to six months, we're gonna have to revisit it again.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take the time now and get it right.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: And technology is always changing.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: So even though we may get that system, it doesn't by any means mean for the lifetime of my business, we're good.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Something's gonna come up, we're gonna have to adapt.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: But if we're creating something that's based on a good foundation that's already solid and working, it's easier to go back in and you know, patch it up than it is to restart an entire new system every time.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's good.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think um, you know, probably what you haven't said out loud, but I know you do, is when you have an issue, you go learn from somebody else as well.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like maybe you start a search in H AI and that gives you a baseline, but then you go ask some other people that have been in that space.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm a I'm assuming you've got some stories you can share with us or examples on where you've reached out or you've followed others to try to elevate your position in podcast videos overall.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've got, you know, I've got several people up in northwest Arkansas even that do podcasting.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, ask them, you know, keep a good relationship with them.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Are we competitors?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: We have different clientele, but you know, they have a lot of vast knowledge in the space.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so making good partnerships with them, I send them referrals, they send me referrals because client types vary.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, ultimately you it's a pride thing in there a little bit.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm doing this business.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really want to have to ask for help.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: But in reality, it's gonna be more helpful for me if I really do.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Swallow that pride a little bit, go ask for that help and provide the best solution.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, we've I've talked, I can tell you how many times I've talked with manufacturers on the phone about what this does for this microphone versus this camera.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, what we kind of find the technology is what it is.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's the software that gets very complex, um, you know, and making sure we streamline what we do.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that fully answers your question there, but you know, bouncing the ideas off of people like just like what y'all did, you know, with us, Craig saying, coming in and y'all saying, hey, we're gonna build out this studio.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, hey, what do you recommend for this?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I can give recommendations based on what we're good at, but you know, I come in here today and it looks different than what it did originally.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm noticing different arms, different type of camera, there's some different lighting options, and that's because by no means is that one thing the best, you know, start, but it's a good starting block for it.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the enhancements that it is like, you know, there's elements that I come in here and I look and I see like, oh, the you know, the accent lights here and the arms and different little things like that.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is uh, you know, kind of what we use at the studio.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's the importance of going and being willing to ask that is is paramount because if you guys, I know y'all used to have some equipment when we first started talking, and we're kind of taking a look at it, and you're like, what do y'all recommend?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because y'all do this all the time.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Just tell us kind of what we need to get.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that probably saved you guys or Craig, you know, hours and hours and hours of searching.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, technology has changed since that time, and y'all have upgraded, you know, so there's always learning, but yeah.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things we talk about uh quite a bit, and I know you've listened to all hundred episodes, and you probably haven't memorized.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's my weekly listen always is as we say, we're not the smartest people out there, but we're really good at finding smart people.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and we're humble enough and egos aside to go, hey, let me go learn from them.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember the story on how we even arrived at your studio.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I'll help you.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going through the building and we're looking for sound deadening material.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I shoot Mark, uh, you know, a friend of ours, a text and I was like, Hey, do you have any examples of any place that uses sound deadening material that I could go look at?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Hey, you need to go check out podcast videos.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let me hook you up with Eric.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: So then I talked to Eric, and I ended up knowing Eric, you know, through uh through selling him some some cars.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we get up there, and the three of us are walking through, and we're like, Well, what about this?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: What about this?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, what camera do you use here?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: What about your lighting?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't remember if it was you or Eric are like, what are you guys trying to do?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: You came up here and we thought you were looking for sound deadening, you know, for the dealership for different areas.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: But what that migrated into is when we walked in, it clicked in our brain, hey, these guys know what they're doing with podcasts, and that's been marinating in the back of our mind.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's time to extract some information from somebody that's smarter than us.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and then my hat's off too, and I don't even remember how many employees y'all had at that time, but it was, you know, it was early on.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Probably three or four.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Probably three or four.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we had three when we we opened that studio in early 24.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we had four people at that time.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we were it's probably four or five, would be my guess at that point.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we get to talking, and and Eric brings up like, hey, why don't you let us help you?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and we try to be very transparent up front.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And as Shelby said earlier, we said, hey, okay, but here's our end goal.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're building a studio, we're gonna hire employees to do it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're more than happy to listen to you, but then we're gonna walk away.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And real fast, y'all saw an opportunity and said, okay, this wasn't in our initial business model, but this might be an additional fit.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and what that started was a great relationship.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, and this is just a swag number, but I think that that catapulted us five to ten years on what it would have taken us to learn the hard way on cameras, how to edit, how to put together.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we still use the same format that you guys built for us on the subjects we talk about, so on and so forth.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a valuable lesson there on go find, and we paid a monthly fee.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I can remember talking to Shelby and Taylor both about it, going, hey, there's not any ROI on this except the ROI of time on what it would cost us, because it was an expensive monthly fee.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: You guys filled a void for us and helped catapult us getting us started.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's, you know, with y'all talking about it, it's interesting looking back on it now because originally I was like, uh I liked you guys, but at the same time, I'm like, how often do you really want to sign up a client that they're like, hey, six months?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, at that point in time as an early business, yeah, money's money.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Not what that's great, you know.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's like get some recurring revenue money.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: What have you sold today?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: You're only gonna be my girlfriend for three months.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want that.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: I pride myself on trying to build a relationship with clients that's gonna lead to a longer term.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a limited shelf life.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be like, hey man, I want to give you this, but I'm gonna take it away from you in six months.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, okay, maybe I guess.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, with that, it was actually once we kind of looked at it, I'm like, that's really exciting because one of our things in our original mission statement of what we want to do is to be able to help people create content and share their story.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: So whether that be teaching you how to do it, I mean, we write 50 to 100 articles a month on our website that is literally here's the industry trends, here's how you do it.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can anybody can go do it and find it with a little bit of research.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the back end stuff's a little bit more challenging, but you know, ultimately we kind of saw as an opportunity for like, well, I know, you know, I've known Lewis Automotive.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've lived in Northwest Arkansas for 16 years now.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've seen the name obviously all the time.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I haven't bought any vehicles in 16 years, by the way.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the reason why I haven't been a client.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: I will.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely will.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was getting close and then I lost one of my clients because they decided to take their podcast in-house.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: But you're driving a Ford Mach key, right?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: We are driving a Maquie uh for the the company called Ford Company.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, it was really interesting.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very thankful actually, looking back on it for you guys because since this time of us working with you, and we you know told the team like, hey, this this has a shelf life.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we are we're doing this to help them get on a launch pad and then train them how we do what we do.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: So essentially, you know, there was an element of trust that needed to come from here and be like, well, the Lewis brothers are kind of branching on their own little side business that they're not telling us about in Fanville, and you're gonna have the Lewis automotive podcast studios that's open to the public now, and we've just told them all of our secrets.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, as you can see, we held true to our work.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: You did, you did.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: I trusted you guys from the beginning, and Mark spoke very highly of y'all.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that you know was a big a big bonus.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: But um since that time, I mean, I've built probably eight to ten studios for clients.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this was just in in this.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is very what I would say is probably the most hands-off one, but y'all were kind of the first ones that I was able to explore what that conversation looked like.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I just finished building a studio on a campus in Northeast Arkansas, like for in their studio union for four people and a remote solo.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of came about because it's like, oh, we can actually help people get content started, help them build their own studio, train them up, and then let them create their own content.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a thanks to give to y'all for that as well.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: So let's back it up so before we run away with this whole thing.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: So underwater cameras.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: What's this?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about that.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I grew up, you know, in Van Buren.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I played whatever sport was in season.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: That was my whole thing.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, did a little bit of outdoorsy stuff that you do in the river valley because there's nothing else to do in the river valley.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, did that, and that was all my whole life was sports.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then I went to school, played a year of college football at a smaller school in Missouri, and then transferred down to U of A.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, saw all my best friends that I grew up with and went to church with, had a house, and I was like, you know what?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Fayetteville is like a nice town, I'm closer to home.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: I can just go be a student.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do that.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when your whole life has been sports and now it's no longer sports, it's like, I need a hobby.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've got no longer practices and everything else keeping me occupied.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so at that time, my dad's business partner had purchased a dive shop in Fort Smith.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, hey, do you want to get scuba certified?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, it had never even crossed my mind, but sure, why not?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so got my scuba certification, um, actually over in Lake Ten Killer if you've ever been.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Don't recommend scuba diving in Lake Tin Killer.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's Taylor, me and Taylor's not seeing each other.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: Beaver's not bad.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: Beaver's a little bit better.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: North End by the dam is nicer, but yeah, it's not great.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean But it, you know, it's it was something that I was like, yeah, that sounds good.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then we did a big trip to the Bahamas.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you're going from three foot of visibility to, oh, this wreck is at a hundred feet, I can see it clear as day.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like swimming in a swimming pool.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um but we take this dive trip and loved it, but one of the guys there had a GoPro, and I'd never shown any interest in cameras or anything like that.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I was watching some of his footage, and I had just gotten a MacBook for school, and you know, they come preloaded with iMovie, and I was like, hey, what are you gonna do with the footage?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, I just keep them and watch it, you know, when I'm you know missing diving.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, well, send me something, I'll make a video, but it's actually on YouTube.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody go find it.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: It is maybe the worst Pirates of the Caribbean bootleg video iMovie template.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was like 10 guys set out on a trip.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was horrible.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: But it's what you see.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: At the time it was the best.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: When I was making that, I was watching, I was like, that's good, right now.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I could be a director, right?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: I made some of those from long ago with GoPros, and I'm like, oh my gosh, again, it had slides that was talking about what they were doing with text boxes.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, it was great.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And looking back on it now, it's a tragedy.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: But this is where you got to get started.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: But was it?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: It got you started.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: It got me started.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, it has its place and value.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: For me, quality and creativeness, yeah.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_04: Because I think that is what is lost.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_04: I want to park there.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_04: That is what is lost in the current day that people think you can transition into business, into podcasts, and you look 100% day one.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_04: If you go back from anyone that is successful of motivational speakers, of trainers, of people that are in video editing, anything else, you go back to day one, they look like a kid in kindergarten, like they're just starting, going through it.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_04: So that's so important to know.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, just start somewhere.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's, you know, it didn't, I mean, it probably has seven views to this day, and I think six of them mine, and my mom's probably right.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but it ultimately, it actually, and what I loved about it too, is it created, and it's funny how when you get older in life, yeah, 35, but as you get older in life, you start to see the way things connect.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, at that time I was just making it and it was really fun, but it I loved doing it, it was so much fun.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: So then I bought my own GoPro.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now I started doing more diving, and then I got like an underwater housing, and we did that dive trip every year for about five or six years every summer, and just kept doing that.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that led to I'm gonna create some videos, and then Instagram became a thing.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: So then I borrowed a camera from my mom, started taking some photos, and through that started building a little Instagram following for outdoor photography.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And what's unique about, at least in the creative space like that, is everybody has their own style and their own eye for things.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you can take 10 different photographers out to the same place and they're all gonna capture what's unique to their eyes.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it's different.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it's not just AI generated, create me of an image of this, you know, type of thing.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: But what I loved about it is I was like, it's it was very creative.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of awoken a creativeness in me that I didn't know I really had.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and then you fast forward, you know, what, 10, 12 years later, and it's like here I am sitting on a podcast talking about video work that we're doing, you know.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I avoided when I first got into any of that, I avoided making it my career because it was such a passion and hobby of mine.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was shooting for Firestone tires and a bunch of different companies that wanted more outdoor lifestyle and you know, product type stuff.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I loved it when I finished school.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was like I could probably do this as a career, but I enjoy doing it so much I'm scared it's gonna take the fun and joy away from it.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna become required of me.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm it's gonna lose some of that.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: So um I kind of avoided that.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, underwater, the first thing I ever did, you know, was filming underwater on scuba diving trips that led into this like love and passion that I had for you know growing up, you know, as I'm in college, and it was just filling a void of needing a hobby, you know.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it just it's interesting how picking up something like that can become part of your identity, you know, in reality, and then lead to business opportunities later down the road.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's good.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think that shows that uh most successful businesses often revolve around passion.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like because people that do well in business have a passion for what they're doing.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so you built a business and have just followed that dream of that passion, and that's kept you seeing what's the new camera, what's the latest editing software, how do we make this better, how do we become more relevant, what's this hosting, and how do we do there?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: Because you have a passion for it, right?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so then it drives that passion, and you finally leaped into is like, okay, I should do this, and then it just carried it on.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: It keeps you excited about it, you know?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, which is important.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Without the passion, Shelby, you bring up a great point there, and I'm I'm listening to partners as you're going through this.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Without the passion, people give up.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: They give up before traction happens.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: They post one video, it gets seven views.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: They post another one, it gets three.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next one got zero.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: So they think that they're doing something wrong.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: They just haven't been consistent long enough.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: They haven't learned enough to be able to start gaining traction.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to have that passion to pull you through those days and those times that it doesn't feel like anything's working.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just like you.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, with your journey that you went through with weight loss and getting into this exercise that you've done, I'm sh it's, and I've been there myself, like trying to, you know, diet them off of diet them off, diet them off, all that.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a, and this is why I think photography and all that really works well for me, is I'm an instant results kind of person.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite jobs I ever did when I was in college, I worked at Springdale Country Club and mowed and all that stuff.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: I loved that job because I can see instant results.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like it.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: I just mowed it.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Here it is, here's the stripes.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Look how good that looks.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, with something that takes longer, like building a business, like changing a health journey, you know, you eat good for two weeks and you're like, man, I'm killing it.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then you look at yourself and you step on the scale and you're like, eh, is it really working all that well?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so you you're like, I'm gonna lax on it a little bit, and then you get right back off.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just that kind of stuff.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you have that passion and then having that commitment and level, like I'm gonna stick to this because I I'm I'm passionate about this, I really want to do it.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna be easy.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing in life really ever is.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're saying, like, give yourself the grace to make those mistakes, but like, you know, and if you mess up along the way, it is what it is, and but just have that passion continue to drive you to want to move forward because it takes with anything in life, it takes moments to get going.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Podcasts, I tell people all the time, they come to me after month number one, how are we doing?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: How are we looking?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Well, you're starting, you know, but like you're gonna, you're six to twelve months away from really being able to gauge any kind of health of anything.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you gotta build like in podcasting, you have to build it into people's routines.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's a that's why I tell people like release every single week, you know, at a minimum, release every single week and do it at the same time every single day of the week.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: That way we're human beings, creatures of habit.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: If I know that I can get up every morning and I can listen to this show on this day, this show on this day, that's my routine.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: But then if you start messing with that, well, I missed it.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: You there's so many options out there, you know.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, kind of get off on a side.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, that's perfect, and I love that because without that consistency, you give the chance of someone else fills in that time, and then maybe they're better, maybe they do it differently, right?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: That coffee shop was closed on that day, and so you find another one, and you're like, huh, this was a little more convenient, saved me a little bit of money, or they were kinder, or they have a rewards program.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so for a second, you take your throttle, foot off the throttle, because you're like, oh my gosh, just give me a second, right?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_03: You're the only person bootstrapping this thing for eight months, and and someone else swoops in, there's always someone else, even if they won't stand the the tail of time, they're still gonna be there, and at your weak moment, they're gonna take over.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think you know, in our in our business, we look at at oil changes, for example, and oil changes lose us money every single time.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: They they just do.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you're like, you know, it from a non-mature business eye, you're like, well, why do you keep doing it?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they could go somewhere else and get a great experience, and then you lose the opportunity when it comes to other bigger maintenance items.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing on tires.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the tire business is very, very slim margin.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're making, you know, five to ten dollars on a$300 tire.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, why do you do it?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when the the wheel comes off, you see the brakes, you see the shocks, how are the ball joints, all the rest of that stuff.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to you have to get around it and you have to see that the whole big picture.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's balancing options, you know.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually comment on a LinkedIn post yesterday that um Mark talked about when he got T-boned in his Mustang, you know, and that you guys went through the time to find him, you know, it's a very specific car, six-speed manual.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, to have to find something like that.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: But it's and this is what I tell the team all the time, and remind myself all the time, you know.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: People value relationships in that matter.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like me personally, am I the best salesman in the world?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Not really.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Could I be better?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not pushy.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not overly, you know, I'm not gonna shove stuff down your throat when it comes to that.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because in the world of pretty much any business, we're a little bit more unique in the podcast space, but like in the the work that I did before the podcast thing, there were five other companies in northwest Arkansas that did the exact same thing that I did.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: My philosophy wasn't my prices and my products are gonna beat you over everything.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was I'm gonna build a relationship with you because ultimately I will do business with someone that I really like before, somebody that just maybe has a little bit more discounts associated with it, or they can get it done a little bit quicker.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've had people specifically tell me, you know, you weren't the lowest contract that came in, but we like doing business with you and your business.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so ultimately, with that, I was commenting on Mark's thing saying, like you guys having heard y'all talk over the years and toured this space and then the resources that you provide, not only for your employees, but for your customers.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said, offering that.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Also, hey, we're gonna wash your car whenever you come in every time.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, stuff like that.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to go out and go out and sell a car, but those little bitty maintenance things that happen in between make it a no-brainer when they come back around to do business with you again.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, hey, I may like if I'm going out and looking for a new car, I'm gonna search online a little bit, sure.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I may, if I really know you guys and you've taken care of me well, I'm gonna say, hey, I'm looking for this, what can y'all do for me?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: Versus, well, I just found it a little bit cheaper somewhere else.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: People still want to do business with people and they want to know that you're gonna be well taken care of.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so even though I've never bought a vehicle from y'all soon, hopefully one day, um, I've heard so many stories from so many other people that are like, it's the best to work with because they take care of you every time, the attention to detail.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said, you're not making great margins on tires or oil changes and everything else, but that's keeping a client in the door and keeping them happy, which keeps them wanting to come back.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know what?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: I will make$5 or$10 an oil change for the next couple years till they come back and purchase that next vehicle.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you build a lifelong customer from there.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's good.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's one of those things of just understanding that if I can serve somebody at this level, uh, you know, even if it's a loss leader for me, then when they do need more, there's enough trust built in.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that's how you get to an 80-year business of real not looking for instant gratification around every corner, realizing there'll be some, but then there's some so long-term out there.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's been 16 years since Parker bought a vehicle, and I'm okay with that.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not trying to speed up his timeline, but I'm saying when he's ready, we want to ingrain so deep that at every angle he's like, I only have one place that I need to look at, right?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and realize that, hey, you might be looking for this type of vehicle, and it doesn't say that on the front of any of our buildings, but you know, I still have to give them the opportunity to source that vehicle for me.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, a little fun fact quiz for you of the day of going through what industry has the most startups per year?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_04: What would you say if you were just going out of Wow?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_04: What industry do you think has the most startups per year?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: Not given any options or anything.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: There's not even a multiple choice.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: I would have told I would have told you, okay.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: I would have gotten this one wrong.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what it is?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, I'm reading it on the sheet.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let me give you multiple options here, okay?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, restaurants, okay, healthcare, okay, retail, okay, IT.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say tech companies was the most startups in my mind.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_04: I would have said restaurants.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_04: So it's it's retail trade.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_04: And let me tell you how many it was.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_04: In 2025, the Census Bureau recorded five million, five point six million total business applications, an all-time high up from 23.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_04: 5.6 million going into the retail trade.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it makes sense in that aspect because when you really think about it, that's the one thing kind of out of most of those other options that I can get done with just this.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: Literally, you need nothing.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: You get your couple, what they what they call tech bros.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what they do.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, I have an idea on a computer, I'm gonna get it launched, and there it is.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't they don't really need anything else outside of that equipment, but that's five million dollars.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: Five million.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone thinks they can do it better for cheaper, faster, you know, and they're just like, oh, start a business, start a business.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: And everything on Instagram is saying, hey, you should start your own business, you should start your own business.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: What enough people don't talk about is what you talked about, and I circled back around to just a minute ago, but the passion.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's the more staggering number.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Of the 5.6 million business applications that were out there, the first year, one year, all right, 20 to 22 percent close the doors.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and within five years, 50% of them fail.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: So because you don't have enough passion to get through the hard times, your business is not gonna set the world on fire year one.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just I don't care how many TikTok videos you've watched, it's not gonna happen.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: There's already some TikTok as Samma prove you're wrong.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna say that, but you take the best quarterbacks out there.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the first year they go into the NFL.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the best version of themselves.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's like the Razorbacks.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: They're not going to be their best version of their self.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um this year, next year, no.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just I'm just gonna say whoop it and we're gonna keep moving.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: But we're passionate and we still have our siege.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: We've got some love.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, we still have our speech.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: Give them some time.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: We're new restructuring here the past 15 years.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: What's fascinating about that stat you just said, Matt, about those businesses?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: 20%.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: 80% of podcasts fail after the first three episodes.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because people will do a show and they'll go, Oh, how's it doing?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, who's gonna find it?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because I get a new role to how am I making money?
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Who wants to be a sponsor?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, 80% don't make it past the first three episodes.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't that crazy?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't remember what the additional percentage was to make it to like episode congratulating you guys on episode 100.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: I've got it for you.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, there we go.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just it's crazy.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it, you know, even though it's a podcast, some people may have passion about it enough, but I think it's just the dedication, even more so.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's not gonna happen immediately.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: If Eric has been pumping the idea into me since the very first day I worked for him, this is what this can be.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, okay, you know, everybody kind of you believe it.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, now I've worked in it enough and actually started to believe in it.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: And when I turn around and look at the cell from two years ago, two and a half years ago, from four to 17 employees is insane.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: That is you're doing 130 plus recordings a month.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: I remember the days where I would do three in a month by myself.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's just you, unless you start to live that, and then there's a culture thing there with the new people we're bringing in, instilling that in them.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, listen, this guy's it's easy for me because I've been there and lived it.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: But like, there's so much opportunity here.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, there's a lot.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the the percentage of podcasts that make it to episode 100 is between one and six percent.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: One and six percent.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, the percentage of businesses that make it to year 80 is 0.5.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know that 90% of customers forget the salesperson's name after one year of ownership of a car?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the reason I bring these up, and we talked about this on another podcast episode, sometimes we ride stuff to the ground too hard.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: But we one thing we know is if we'll just stay consistent, even if we're not the best or the most talented, we'll weed out the other people because they'll give up.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: So like if we could just make it to episode 100, we're the top 1%.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, 100%.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: If we can just make sure our customers remember the salesperson's name after one year, we beat 90% of everybody else out there.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the funny thing is, uh, and this is uh this is from our mom, right?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: So she's a supporter, right?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't think she sat and less listened through a hundred hours.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_03: She had listened to enough of us growing up, but she's right.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_03: I get that.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't think that she's overly subscribed, and you know, on Thursday at 10 o'clock when it drops, she's not like, oh, let me check out what they said.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: But she told me, she said, hey, um, I wanted to tell you this that a lady came up to me the other day and was like, Hey, I listened to your boys on uh on their podcast.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: And she's like, Oh, okay, that's so cool.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: She's like, Well, I wanted to let you know that like it's been something that's been passed around our office.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, Okay.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: She said, uh, somebody was having awful issues with figuring out how to delegate, like they couldn't figure out how to delegate, and she had listened to it because she subscribed and listens to it every single week.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out to you, I appreciate you.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: And uh the idea is to be relevant, to be able to, no matter what you do, that what we talk about is something that they can use.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so she said, Well, I just wanted to let you know that one of my co-workers had a hard time with that and was like, Well, you need to go listen to this.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_03: And she was like, That was so real.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like, and and just like that's the whole point to this whole thing is just to be so consistent that you could have a hundred episodes, not to hear ourselves talk or to say, hey, we made it to a hundred, we're beating everybody else.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_03: Was just here's what we deal with every single day, and we are failing at this, but here's what we've learned.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_03: We learned this from Parker, we learned this from Eric, we learned this from Mark, here's these things that work, and so then it became you become a resource for people that they're like, you know, and I talked about this a couple weeks ago.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody was asking me about delegation.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I use AI and said, hey, reference cross-road conversation podcast.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me which podcast covered the best.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it said, this one, this one, this one.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then I could just share those, like, hey, 27 minutes in here, 11 minutes in here.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so then you have that wealth of knowledge, and that's where consistency really starts building value.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: And what's really cool too is even though you guys, you know, you talk about business and several other things, I've been having more conversations with people lately about legacy.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: I have a two and a half year old little boy, you know, and I'm already thinking, you know, man, I hope he gets enough time with my dad, who's 72, 73 years old.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think about my, you know, I have one grandparent remaining.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't, I have some photos.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have no videos within, you know, of any of those people.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't, I couldn't genuinely tell you what their voice sounded like.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: And even if they weren't even talking, you know, to me or in a home video or something like that, just to be able to look at it and be like, oh, that's my grandparent, or that's my mom or dad, or whatever it may be, it's you're capturing and providing value in different ways.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yes, the business side or applications like that, or hey, we just want to, you know, keep our name out there in the thing, or my family has something to listen to.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they get a little insight into how we do what we do.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's the value is just so compoundable around doing content like this, for example.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that something y'all put together around Christmas time?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we do uh like usually a little holiday card.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: So people that you know, every year people get Christmas cards from everybody and they put them up on their fridge and you look at them once and then they just stay there because it's a seasonal thing to do.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: One of those things, you know?
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: And they'd be like, Do I throw it away now?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: What do I do?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: I also haven't talked to you in like three years.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I getting a Christmas card?
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, the point is is you you know you have family across there.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: Come in for 15 minutes and do a virtual Christmas card.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like how fun to be able to send that, especially if you got like kids and little ones.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do that through the years.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Look how much they've changed year over year.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: My kid sat there and just soiled himself the whole time.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Last year, but this year he's gonna be able to actually say Merry Christmas, you know?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's great.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, look at that transition.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I may not be able to visit family that haven't seen him in that time.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just creating memories and creating and loving it lasts forever.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: You guys could stop doing the show tomorrow, but that hundred episodes is still out there for people to be able to consume and it can provide value evergreen.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's what's great about it.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's also giving us a platform, kind of like Shelby was talking about there.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: But now that we've grown to 270 employees and you know we're continuing to build there, that comes at a cost of not being able to spend as much one-on-one time with every single.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Truly from the owner's point of view, here's what's going on.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: That allows us to multiply that more.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's so funny because there's a guy that's super successful, uh, is a Ford dealer as well, on social media.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: He posts all these videos that are really good.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's not a promotional video, it's not I want to sell you something video, but it's hey, did you know this about your vehicle?
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: And he has a really good service background.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: And uh so someone asked him the other day, his he has a really good social media manager to give ideas and cut videos, but said, Why are you do why do you do all these videos?
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: It said, Well, it's not to get famous, it's not to get likes, it's not to get sponsorships, it's not to all these things.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: He said, What had happened is our team had grown to over a hundred people.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_03: He said, and one, the exact same thing that Matt said, that I don't get to go talk to every single one of them.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: And if there's something important that they need to know about one, how we operate, but two, what's going on?
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like, hey, this recall just came out, and here's so he said, I just started making these videos, and then we needed a spot to host them, and that was Instagram or Facebook or TikTok.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_03: He said, but also our customers would constantly call and say, Hey, my truck is making this noise.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so then he would do the same thing.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: It was like, hey, if you're driving a 2017 to 2022 for Super Duty and it has this noise, that is a common known issue.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: There's not a fix for it.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: Your truck's not gonna blow up.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was educating all of his customers and all of his employees, and it was creating content and traction at the same time.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's what I love about this with you guys and larger teams, and this is what I'm kind of sharing uh more of in what I'm doing is the culture.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're a family-owned business that's built around culture.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: People love working here, people love doing business with that.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: And what people don't always think about is you have two types of culture.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: You've got, you know, in my opinion at least, you have your inner workings company culture.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that is incredibly important because if I like and enjoy and trust the people that I'm around, I'm gonna work harder for you guys.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be willing to help a little bit.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's not really in my job title.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in sales, but I do have some knowledge on this, and I really like you, and I can help it provide a solution for you.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: If I didn't like you, maybe I'm gonna let you struggle with that a little bit, you know?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that internal thing for working hard for one another, but that culture bleeds over into your customers.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most common things I get, and I absolutely love this.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most common things we get is when people come in our doors.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: I love your team.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: I love coming in here.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're all happy, they're greeting me.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Do you need something to drink?
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, remember this while you're doing a recording.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: I loved your last episode.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like people love coming in with that energy.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that stems from that culture that's internal as a company.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: You guys at 273 employees now.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: I can't imagine, I know how challenging it can be at 17, you know, as you continue to ring more people on, and it doesn't always work for everyone, but that company culture is so important.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: And with that many people, you can't go around and talk to them individually.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: So if they can listen to something like this and hear what's on your minds and hearts and what you're passionate about, that bleeds over into them.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's interesting to kind of hear using that as a tool for your employees, but your clients as well.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you, you know, just hats off to your team, probably uh by about the third or fourth podcast, because we were coming into for everybody that knows we were coming into your studio probably the first 50 or 60 years.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was a lot, yeah.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it was about it's about eight to ten months, I think.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: Almost a year, actually.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was supposed to be six, then it got extended to a year and building delays, it always happens.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Still had the hook set.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: I slipped a little bit to the contractor who was like, we got an issue with the windows.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, we're just gonna extend your contract.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: But by about episode third three or four, I walk in the front door and one of your team hands me a cup of coffee.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I never had asked for it, but they had watched my habits that I came in right over there on the right side, got the curing, put the cake up in there, nothing in it, and they handed me the coffee.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just those small things there.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that really added up.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get back to some of the questions here.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: So so give us, from your perspective, what can a brand new business, okay?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you were you were employee number one, what can a brand new business do that established one can't?
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think flexibility is probably the number one thing.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: That ability to just experiment and be flexible.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: People that have worked larger corporate jobs, and I've got three people on staff now that have come relatively recently who've come from bigger corporations, and they're like, I love the fact that I can sit down and we can talk about this and then literally make an entire change and it make it a standard in one hour time versus months or weeks of committee conversations and executive boards and get review for this.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: The flexibility of a brand new business, um, again, with risks always, but there's just you have that flexibility to experiment with what you want to do.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then what I love about it too is with what we did, you know, Eric obviously setting the main tone, but then it was me setting that tone of how how we operate and what we do and our energy level and everything else.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: Once that's established, it's hard to change that.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like if it's set in stone, I've worked at a couple different places, love them, loved everywhere that I've really worked, but they're different cultures altogether.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and for new people coming in the doors, especially like talking new hires down the road, for a business that's been around for 20 or 30 years, it just kind of is what it is.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's not a you don't really bring up anything of can we try to do this?
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's like, well, this is just how we've always done things.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, with being a brand new business, you can have that ability to you make it what you want to a degree, you know, no matter what your industry is.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: The passion, the energy that you decide to show up with in work every day, and then your willingness to explore and experiment is different than what you can get if you're just like, you know, jumping into an existing business that's already established, essentially.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: That that's that's spot on.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you, I'm gonna flip it and give you another perspective.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have had to like get a crowbar out and pry people's minds open.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: All right, because as an 80-year-old business, and we introduced probably three years ago these new micro meetings that we have with departments, where we really get to have some more one-on-one time with six to ten people in a room.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what we pry open there is tell me what you're doing, and the reason you're doing it is because we've always done it that way.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we've had to unpack that and say, just because we always did it that way doesn't mean that that same philosophy, that same process, that same system is gonna align and get us where we want to go.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and in in our case, some businesses that are old like that, they can get stuck in that rut.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's healthy to hear both sides there.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: All right, what does an 80-year-old business know that a four-year-old one hasn't learned yet?
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's a deep one there.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's very deep.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think it's that's hard to say.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, but you've got something cooked up.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: I know you do.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm sitting here thinking about this because I didn't write this question, I'm just reading it.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: But but I'll tell you, just being back in the store day to day over 20 years now, is if I just have to go from that standpoint, what you learn as an older, more calloused business is to not sweat some of the small things.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: That you know that what emotionally you think you need to address and that the building's on fire, it's not on fire, it's gonna be okay.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and when you callous and you get that way, it allows your mind to think more logically instead of emotionally.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: That is very true.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we you know, when you're a smaller business, every client's an important client.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: And even when you're a larger business, every client's an important client, you know.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, there is a lot of oh gosh, we mess up this one recording.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's the end of the world.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's not really, you know, we have that emotion that is, and it's not always a bad mindset to think that it is, because put more attention to detail and what you're trying to do.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, like, we're not gonna gut a business because of this one thing.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or you misspell the title of this episode.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yep.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: Again, you want to have all that attention to detail, but it is there are times where, you know, in a small business man, you're really just ugly, like, especially in sales, what I can relate to the most.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like everything I've been doing, we got two new people in recently in sales.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: I did everything by myself for the most part for a good period of time.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's and the team does a great job of helping, but ultimately it's like I look around that room and we add new people and I'm excited because we need those people.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: But then I'm also the way I view it in sales is I've got to be able to pay for that person.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's my responsibility to go out and find new business to help keep them on because I like them and I like their family and their kids, but they're depending on me to go out and find clients for them.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and so there's a stress there all the time of like, what's that next market?
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: What's that next opportunity?
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: What's our next, you know, holiday greeting card thing that we can get together that's gonna help?
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, yes, the business, I think my biggest thing is is for me that a new business compared to an established business is in a smaller team.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: I struggled, and Eric will tell you this.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: You talked earlier about that person delegating things out.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: I have been what Eric says, the world's worst ever about handing things together.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: So hard.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: Especially when you employ one.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: When you look used to doing everything yourself, and I'm such an attention to detail freak when it comes to that kind of stuff.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that I don't trust you, it's just I know it's gonna get done the right way if I do it.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, so I'll send you the episode.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, right?
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: I want to listen to it.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_03: You definitely need to because what we've learned, and I'll just tell you this, is the problem with delegation, you know that you're gonna do it right.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: Because you know you, right?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know how you're gonna do it, your expectations.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: In delegation, you have to realize one, you have to communicate your thoughts and your expectations of the timeline and the numbers and all the things, but you have to be okay with getting 60 to 80 percent at best what you would get.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then the scalability of that if you can get a second or third or fourth person, but you have to reset your expectations, or you will never delegate well and you'll never do it again because you'd be like, dad, dummit.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_03: You have to recalibrate that because that was hard for all of us.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_03: It still is hard for all of us.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a guy I listened to, and then a book I read, and he really he talked about you have to fire your old self.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: Especially if you if you're an employee one and you're wearing 16 different hats, and then you start scaling, but you know how to do all those, just like Shelby said, you got to recalibrate your expectations.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, if I can get 60, 70% out of this, but now I've got five of those at 70, it's 350%.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I won't tell you the whole episode, you'll have to listen to it.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: But then that frees you up, but you really have to fire the old partner.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: You have to fire that person and hire the new one.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, hey, when you're growing fast, what's the first thing that breaks?
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, over the past four years, what was one of the first things that broke?
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: Could be a process, could be a system, could be equipment.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would say first thing that kind of broke, in my opinion, I would say was scalability.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: We were always designed to be scalable, but how you go about creating those processes is one thing.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I had some processes in place, but you know, I just relied on myself to create everything.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: When we started getting more clients in the door, that broke that entire system.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm like, I gotta have help.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like I would spend two hours doing a recording and then four hours the rest of the day recording those two episodes, and that started happening every day.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I've kind of broke our system by not writing these processes, and then, you know, one being vocal, hey, we need somebody to get somebody else in here because we always want to be continuing expanding what we're doing.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I didn't set it up that way originally.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was like, I can handle it, it's no big deal.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: I could do 20 of these in a day, it's all fine, you know, stay up all night.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to sleep.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I realized you can't scale a business like that.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's gonna break it so quickly because there's no process for somebody else to come in and supply additional help or help grow on that side.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, I was bad at delegating and I've trusted myself to be able to do it, not being like, you gotta trust that person to come in and help, but really not establishing, I would say, processes is one of the first things that breaks.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like your business is always adapting no matter what the industry is, your client counts growing, there's different problems with client counts as you grow with that.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: The processes always need to change.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was probably one of the first things that broke, I would say, is our what we thought were our processes and what we thought we were gonna do.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then also what our offerings were.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we started at that early days.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: We had four products, we have 52 now.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not just like a we were thinking, oh, this is just what we do and this is all that we do.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: We stay in our lane.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we still do to a degree, but for the most part, it's like you got to change and adapt and grow.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just not always just gonna be, I don't just record and edit for you, and that's all I'm ever gonna do for you, you know.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but processes, I would say number one thing that broke with us is and they still do to this day.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: Go and sign a new contract, we get 15 more shows going every single month.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, that process is now broken.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: Let's repair it and find a new one.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can tell you when we moved from old location to new locations, 75 years worth of establishing processes all had to be changed.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't say all of them, but a good amount of them.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we thought that's a good thing.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we thought they could scale written down, and they couldn't.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: They couldn't.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so rapidly we had to do that because the caveat of not doing that was then our customer experience started going down, our attention to detail, our culture, all the rest of that.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um so all that that's always changing.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but before we get to our questions, I do have to bring this up because I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't bring this up.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: So about a year ago, okay, about a year ago, you and I were at a a banquet, an awards banquet, okay?
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and I've known you for a while now, and we've worked together, and and I'm MC in the event.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many people, let's call it 500 people are in the room.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe a thousand.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thousand sounds better.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, a thousand people in the room.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you're coming up to help me present one of the awards, okay?
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm rolling, I'm in my zone, blinders on, killing it, by the way.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_00: Doing a great job.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like this guy until I get to this point.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I get to this point, and and I go to introduce Parker, but I read it right off the sheet.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: My fault.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, my fault.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I read it right off the sheet.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to walk up to the stage a good friend of mine, Peyton.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm confident in it.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so confident in it.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: You are you got to stage and you looked at me and he said, Did you forget my name?
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, No, no, I didn't.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, man.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Are you sure?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: You called me Peyton.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he said that at first, and I was like, I know he's talking about me.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know that's what I did.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: I know Matt.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: Then I'm questioning my existence.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, maybe I don't know Matt as well as I thought I did.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I thought I'd have a pretty good relationship with him.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, that was I forgot all about the that was hilarious.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so then I'm standing back there still on stage, probably red, sweating.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're introducing I'm an idiot.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm only halfway through.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not like I can walk off stage.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still on stage.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh my gosh, I fumbled.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: How did I pick this up?
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you get on stage and you kind of go through that, go through, you killed it.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: I stepped back up there, and I just own my mistake right then.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right then.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right then.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: I said to the whole audience that I knew you, I mispronounced your name, I apologize, and that was my fault.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: I did not blame it on the lady that wrote the teleprompter, okay, or anything else.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because I can own the mistakes, and then hopefully that actually created more attention for you guys in particular.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: It 100% did because people got such a chuckle out of that.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: That I genuinely think it was the only time that entire evening that I heard a laugh.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: In my mind, I'm like, well, that was memorable.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: Remember when they called that guy the wrong name after he said a good friend of mine?
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know how many presentations there were, but I've been to those before.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_03: And like, here's another one.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone's like, yeah, good job.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_03: And here's the platinum.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, oh, here's this guy that knows this guy, says he knows him the wrong name.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then gets out there and is like, hey, I just called this guy know Parker Payton.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: It made it memorable.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_03: It did.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: He owned up to the site.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: We could have gone throughout the rest of the evening without anybody ever needing to know my name wasn't Peyton.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it is what it is.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: It'd have been fine.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: People still probably call me that to this day.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, no, that was hilarious.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot all about that.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: We have talked about that on podcast episodes before.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about you more than you know.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh boy.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we've talked about that.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about the adaptability that podcast videos had because they had an they had a choice to make.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: When we walked in that studio and and showed us all the sound-deadening stuff, and then started hearing us ask about the cameras and the audio and what board do you want?
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you go check out what they're doing.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm checking out over here.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: You guys had an option on showing us around, letting us leave, showing us around, helping us set up our studio, or actually adapting your menu, going, let me capture as much of this as I can without it being a threat.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let me get some some trust here.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: So hats off to you and Eric for pivoting there and turning a six-month contract into a year contract.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then even when we've had some turnover, you guys have then still our relationship's still there, stepped back in or helped us with editing.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's true leader and entrepreneurship right there to be able to do that.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we we really appreciate you guys'.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: We love doing business with you guys, and you know, it's you're only as strong as your community a lot of times.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, you know, especially in an area like northwest Arkansas, I tell people all the time, and if you go to different communities, I'm sure it's still true there.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I tell the team all the time, too, making a good impression because people in Northwest Arkansas talk a lot, and businesses do business with businesses, and that word of mouth gets around.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: Y'all can probably relate to the same thing.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: The number one person for me, or the number one target client that I can convert, is a referral from somebody.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're getting it from somebody they trust.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: Same reason why people on Facebook groups, hey, what you know, who do y'all recommend for this?
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: Very rarely does that happen anymore where people are just searching.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, who recommends somebody?
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and so if I can get that referral, and it's building those good relationships with people.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: And even though if they, you know, I've had plenty of clients turn out of the door, not plenty, but I've had several clients turn out of the door, hey, let's grab a coffee.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or they come back in as a guest.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, people move their businesses where they do and everything, but if you continue to service them, I got nothing against anybody that leaves us at all, you know.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: I want to continue to be there for you in the future.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_01: But that referral in Northwest Arkansas is so intense that if somebody comes in and they're like, you know, somebody buys a vehicle from you and they're like, You don't need to go anywhere else but Lewis.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna trust that, especially from somebody that I know.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's where I'm going.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: When I do get another vehicle eventually, I'm already like, I know where I'm gonna go.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna literally text one of y'all and be like, hey guys, looking for something.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_03: Here's what I need.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what I need.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my budget.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: What do you recommend?
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, type of deal.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's so good.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_03: And as we talked about sustainability and how to beat the odds of all the numbers.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_03: What you did, what Matt was talking about when we came in looking for sound deadening material, where most salespeople fail at is they say, you know, they feel like they're going above beyond if they hand you a card and say, Hey, if you got any questions, call me.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_03: What you guys did to ask more questions.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so when we talk about businesses that fail over the first year, 20% of that 5.6 million fail over the first year, they blame the person who wrote the teleprompter.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_03: They say, Oh my gosh, who's in charge of this thing?
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_03: Who's running this thing?
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_03: My buddy Parker here, I've known all along.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_03: This lady wrote the thing.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so they're blaming their new restaurant, they're blaming their new boutique, their new podcaster, their new dealership, whatever.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_03: They're blaming on all the things that they can't control because they don't have the ability to look in the mirror and say, maybe my restaurant should be open later than five o'clock.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_03: You know, Parker and Eric were like, hey, hold on, hold on.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_03: Let's have an open conversation here.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why you guys have grown to 17 employees and 130 plus episodes that you're shooting, you know, the millions and millions and millions of views you guys have generated, it's because that adaptability.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why a business should succeed, because they see that too often people are like, well, people are too cheap to buy a pay for a good organic cheeseburger.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, well, no, you should adapt and you should have an impossible burger or the just blow-your-gizzard out burger, right?
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_03: You need to be able to have them both, right?
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like you have to be adapted.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_03: There's a there's a Coffee shop thing in Majig.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a million different things in Farmington.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's on the wrong side of the road for morning traffic.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_03: And they were like, they're not open long enough.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_03: All three of them that have failed have not been open long enough.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_03: There's another one, and I think they're going to do great.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_03: I hadn't experienced it, but they they won't try hard enough long enough, right?
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_03: They hadn't raised enough capital to say I want to be in business to grind it out a little bit.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_03: Their times aren't long enough, that just all the things I'm like, it's gonna have to hurt before it gets good.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: One of the places there, I just gotta say this in the neat movement.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, one of the places delayed opening for six months because they're waiting on an exhaust fan piece to turn it on.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of just going and buying another piece, they lost six months of revenue.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: And still had to pay rent.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_03: Still had to pay for their employees.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it was principal.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: They ordered it from that place and they hadn't sent it to them yet.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and you're losing excitement around there, too.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, the hype is gone.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is coming.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, six months later.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: She gone.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: The new paints wore off.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've moved them.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: Become more of a joke than anything at this point.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm just like, man, there's so many businesses failed because you were just like, and if you're not that person, you can be the idea person.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_03: Just get an executor, right?
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_03: That that says, I want to execute this game plan.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_03: And no, we got to open today, and that means we've got to drive to Tulsa and buy this used exhaust fan.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_03: Let's get it, get the part off installed when the new one comes in, put the new one in.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think your point right there is when you're looking to hire somebody, don't hire you.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: Hire somebody that compliments you.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you're the idea person, you need somebody to execute.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you're the execution person, really good, you need somebody that's an idea person.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_03: I that was so good that I had to like one, kudos to you, right?
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_03: And the just controlling what you can control and then be flexible in that.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_03: So, all right, two questions.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh rapid fire.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_03: What's the riskiest thing that you've ever said yes to at work?
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_03: Park, I'll start with you.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_01: When Eric asked me to come work for him.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_03: What was the original job for?
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's for an outdoors company.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna do like photo video for outdoors experiences.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely nothing to do with what I do now.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would say for a real answer though, riskiest thing was um taking on a client recently that we're building a built a media network for.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_01: Was a can we handle this?
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_01: We'll figure it out, I think we can.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: That was probably I would say our riskiest thing because if you fail at this, bad look.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it was I would say that.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_03: Oftentimes those decisions help you rise to where you currently want to be in a year, two years, or five years.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's my only focus now moving forward is that one type of client saying yes to them.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_03: Either one of you guys have one of those you want to point out?
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hiring your brothers.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I mean, by far, the and and I think you guys will agree with this when I say this.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: The race riskiest thing we've ever said yes to was moving the dealerships and you know, going and getting a loan for what we did here.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_03: Still saying yes to it.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we are we're in it now.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can't say anything, but yes.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_00: But that was because we were in a very comfort zone on things paid for, had our systems and our processes down, great ROI across town, but was it going to get us to where we want to be a decade, two decades, generation five, generation six down the road?
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't want to get blockbustered.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we didn't.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: We did.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: But that that was pretty risky.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_04: I'll say uh building thing, and I know me, Matt, and Shelby always talk about building and growing and pushing on top of each other, of sourcing used inventory.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_04: And I love this because we've built it and adapted it about three different times, but buying vehicles off the road.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_04: Like we buy vehicles, you don't have to trade, we'll buy from anyone that reaches out to us.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_04: And it started uh several years ago.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_04: We've always kind of done it, but of hey, let's provide a different avenue source for our employees, our salespeople, to be able to pay them to go to work.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_04: So we rolled it into that, and then it's just adapted a little bit more, a little bit more.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_04: We've recently got of a service tool that's helping us mine and be able to get in front of customers to be able to access.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_04: And what I love about it is we pay cash on the spot.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_04: We've recently ran um across another.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_04: We're the shout-out, we're the only dealership in Northwest Arkansas.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_04: Whenever you come in and you want to sell a vehicle, we'll give you money that day.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_04: We'll give you money that day.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_04: We have a customer that had traded and sold it somewhere else at one of the local competitors.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_04: They've been waiting over three weeks now to receive their check and return his pay.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Even if there's a loan on the vehicle.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_04: We will sell it.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's the hang-up, and that's why I've had some unfun conversations with our team.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_03: We had the opportunity to buy the car.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_03: We messed up, somebody offered, I don't know,$12 more dollars or something.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so they sold it down the road, but they bought our vehicle, so then they were using their equity, they had a payoff, as cash down.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Guess what?
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_03: We're still waiting on that cash down.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_03: They're not giving them the cash down right next door because they don't have the title yet.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, guys, did we learn our lesson yet?
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_03: You should have given them the$12 more dollars for their trade-in, and we wouldn't be waiting on this issue.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_03: But Taylor's exact point is we're the only, only, and that's because we're fancy, you talked about small business, we saw that small business mindset to realize, hey, we can have an upper hand here if we will write that check on the same day and give them their equity check right then.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's good.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_03: All right, question number two.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_03: What's the last thing you built from nothing and did it work?
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so I mean, I kind of rolled into that one, but uh Barker, you have anything that's well we can we'll go reverse order on this one so I can cover on it a little bit.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've got funny things.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to decide which one.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's gotta be the whole thing we've been talking about.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, true.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll I'll throw this uh because we generally always tell success.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh let me give you non-success.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so I don't know, probably 12 years ago, we decided we like cars, like classic cars.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_03: We came up with the idea of let's open another dealership that was focused on performance in classic cars.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um it was called Top Gear.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_03: It was across from our old location.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_03: It was at the old Saturn building.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I didn't know that was y'all.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_01: I remember seeing that and wondering what it was.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_03: So we completely rebranded it, that it was not that it was not Lewis, but we wanted it to be its own.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so we went out and sourced tons of old classic cars, some late model hot rod stuff, some retro mods, really spent a lot of time on the inside that it was a very nice showroom.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know, diamond cut polished floors.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_03: There was a time when we had 55 plus cars there, and what we what we learned was our model of car sales was to turn a vehicle in 30 to 45 days, right?
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_03: To continue to turn the cash asset to reinvest, reinvest, reinvest.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the classic car game is a much longer game.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_03: Much longer game.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_03: And majority of the people that came in just wanted to tell you about when they used to own one.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people came in.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_03: If we got paid for traffic, we would have got paid, right?
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_00: But especially on Saturday, dad and son.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I couldn't tell you about the good old days.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_03: We made Taylor work there because he didn't have a choice.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I probably couldn't have because my patients sometimes for hearing the same thing multiple times would just drive me nuts.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_03: Of just, you know, hey, old 73 Bronco, man.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_03: I remember back in the day, like every time, like, do you want to buy it or not, dude?
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what are you thinking?
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_03: You want to relive the memories or what?
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know?
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we also did our spray and liners, our uh Linux bedliners and window tint out of there.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so we were super resourceful of, hey, let's make this thing work.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_03: In the long term, we closed it.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it was like, hey, this doesn't make sense, it doesn't fit our business model.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_03: So that did not work, you know, and that was a thing that we did for multiple years to see, okay, can we adapt to this?
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, what what does the, you know, because there was a market for it.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_03: It was not at the size market that we thought.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's more of a little bit more of a uh northern northwest Arkansas thing, uh, and much more of a niche.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_03: So that's one that we tried and gave some effort and it did not work.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would say, you know, obviously the business of podcast videos itself, but I would say more recently, this new initiative that we started around media networks.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we started that with a university, as it's kind of never been done in the way that we're doing it, um, which included, you know, hey, we've got three staff members on this university, I'm building studio on their campus.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna basically just do this media network powerhouse, three shows about academics, three shows about athletics, three shows about community and partnerships.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that is scratching kind of the the very surface of what could be done.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_01: But it was would this model work?
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's just an idea in theory that should be really successful.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then we quickly realized after getting all that built out and done that oh this is very, very, very high ceilings to the point where again, we've brought two new salespeople on so that I can focus exclusively on that media network thing.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you're talking about multi-year deals with large organizations type of thing.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just like it's taking that conglomerate of, you know, kind of what you guys did with that.
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_01: This is what we know and what we do.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Can we rearrange it in a different way to service, you know?
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, what I love about it is on the surface it looks like this.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_01: But when you really get into like the nuts and bolts of it, it's the same thing we do every day for every single client, it's just rolled up and delivered in a different appearance.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and then recorded remotely and stuff like that.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_01: But that was as of right now, it's very successful.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's enough that we feel the need to make my time be fully fully focused on just this one avenue.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we gotta make sure I get my professionalism on all the time.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm gonna be going talking to bigger and better clients when I'm sitting there like, not bigger and better, but higher end and higher demanding clients that a lot of times with this client we have, I sit in the room and I'm like, y'all each have like three or four different letters at the end of your title that I don't even have one.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't even know what they mean.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_01: But y'all, y'all all have like four or five degrees of doctor, yes, doctor PhD.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Matt, you know, my guys got a lot of debt or yeah, exactly.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm like, y'all have more five more degrees than I've got, you know.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's you know, but you have that confidence of like, you know what?
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's situational.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_01: I could come in and you know, one year mechanics could tell me this, and I could be like, well, you know, but I don't know anything about it.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_01: He knows everything day.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_01: But same thing with these, you know, people that I'm talking with that hold these levels, and you turn around and you're like, I don't have any business talking to you.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I start sharing what we do, and they're like, huh?
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this doesn't make any sense to me.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because that's not their area of focus.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Let the experts be the experts and pay them to do the job that they're designed to do.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the same thing we identified when we like we had the idea, we had the want, and we're like, why don't we leverage off somebody that's got the expertise?
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's where you guys came in.
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man, it man, it's been a great episode.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for going through this with us.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Tell the audience out there if they are trying to get a podcast starting, or maybe they've tried and they've failed and they need some help.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Where can they find you?
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_00: How can you guys help?
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, we're uh so we're right up there in Rogers and Pinnacle Hills, um, just outside of Pinnacle Country Club in Rogers One Uptown, right next to Heroes Coffee there.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, as I was telling Shelby at the beginning, we've got four studios in there, three large rooms about like this.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Then we have a solo room that we do remote podcasting in.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um and ultimately, you know, we are designed to be as hands-on or hands-off as we need to be, but ultimately it's make jobs easier for people.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can literally come in, and the only thing you have to worry about, we can do an entire show for you, share it out to the world, run your social media, everything else, and all it's going to require of you is that one hour for you to come in and sit down and talk.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so we can get as granular with that, or as little as, again, I've got clients like yourself and several across the country that they just send their content to us and we do the editing and then any other back-end service for.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but we're right there in Rogers.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can find us online, podcastvideos.com is also the same name and the company name on the website.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, check us out on LinkedIn.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm all over LinkedIn usually um commenting on stuff that Mark's usually talking about, the Lewis brothers.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, check us out there, reach out to us.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a lot of great resources on our website that talks about we kind of give people the secret to all the sauce.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, knowing it's still a lot of work.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the biggest thing with people quitting podcasts is they're like, well, I just need the equipment, then I can start recording.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what are you gonna do with the equipment once you get done recording?
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_01: So um, we're always there to help answer and help answer any questions.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always doing some kind of studio build.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just finished one up for a race car driver recently, which was really fun and cool.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so people looking to build studio stuff, get more, you know, who we are out to the world.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_01: But then I'm starting to get a lot more people that are like, I've got a big team.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I need to be able to talk to them internally, and I can't meet with all of them because they're spread out.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_01: So anything we can do to help with content and then maximize that content.
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_00: I will say, you know, from a client perspective, we've been a client of theirs for a while.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that Parker's talking about that him and his team do is spot on.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So they can help you guys with that from organizing to making ideas to reality to helping even the legal side of when you have a guest come on and the documents they need to sign.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_00: So so again, thank you for spending your time with us today, and thanks for all the work that you guys have done to help this podcast get to 100 and beyond and be successful.
• 1:19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, as always, check out our inventory at Lewis Superstore.com.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Check out this episode and a hundred more at Crossroad Conversations Podcast.com.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for joining us today, and we hope you enjoyed this episode.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to give it a like, share it with your friends and family, visit our website, and send us some questions.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_00: We want to know what you'd like to hear, who you'd like to hear from, and what you want to see, or maybe even some questions for us to answer about either the automotive industry or just business in general.