Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / Let Your Customers Sell Your Product: The Hidden Sales Pitch You're Missing (with Jude Nosek)

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Let Your Customers Sell Your Product: The Hidden Sales Pitch You're Missing (with Jude Nosek) · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  Jude Nosek, is that how I pronounce it?
• 0:02
  That's perfect. Wow, Nailed it.
• 0:03
  OK, so I'm one of the owners of Kesson.
• 0:05
  That's correct. Man, I'm on a roll.
• 0:07
  I mean, that's not, that's not the bar's not very high for
• 0:09
  that. But we get Keesan a lot so.
• 0:11
  Keesan OK, like Nissan Keesan Yeah, I can see that.
• 0:14
  Well, I appreciate you coming on the show, man.
• 0:15
  I'm I'm excited to have this conversation.
• 0:17
  We'll do a quick cheers and we'll get rolling.
• 0:20
  I So how big is your guys company?
• 0:23
  Now we're about 50 employees. That's yeah.
• 0:26
  Like when I worked for a big company, I would like 50
• 0:28
  employees. Oh, it's like a smaller company.
• 0:29
  And then when you run your own business, you're like, man, to
• 0:31
  get the 50 people, Like that's a lot of people I used to like.
• 0:34
  The one before this was 5000 employees.
• 0:36
  Really. Yeah.
• 0:38
  That was a big company. I mean, it just gives you a
• 0:40
  whole new lens. At least it did for me because I
• 0:42
  work, I mean, we work for multi billion dollar company.
• 0:44
  It's like there's thousands of employees.
• 0:46
  And I was like, Oh, yeah, it's that's what's the big deal.
• 0:48
  And then you start your own company and I'm like, we have a
• 0:50
  very small team. It's like to go to 50 would be
• 0:53
  like, whoa. And 100 and a wow, that's like,
• 0:55
  man, I saw, did you see Jeff Bezos?
• 0:58
  Well, actually Amazon laid off 16,000 people recently.
• 1:03
  I did not. And then Jeff Bezos spent $50
• 1:05
  million on his wedding. I saw that I'm.
• 1:07
  Curious what you think about that.
• 1:08
  I have my own thoughts on. That I I would not spend $50
• 1:11
  million on much. I mean, so I have like two
• 1:17
  thoughts on it. Like, I mean, I guess I'll ask
• 1:20
  you from a leadership standpoint.
• 1:22
  I don't think it sends a great, great message.
• 1:25
  Not a very good lens. I'm just not an extravagant
• 1:28
  person. It's not how I was raised.
• 1:31
  You know, the founder of our company was grew up during the
• 1:33
  Depression, so he was not one to throw dollar bills around quite
• 1:39
  likely. Yeah, certainly not going to
• 1:41
  have a $50 million wedding. That's So I, I look at it like,
• 1:44
  man, you got to lay off 16,000 people.
• 1:47
  And then in the news we see you're having a $50 million
• 1:49
  wedding. My first reaction is that just
• 1:53
  doesn't land with me from a leadership standpoint.
• 1:55
  Like if it's your company, it's your baby.
• 1:57
  Like you started this thing in your garage.
• 1:59
  Yeah. So I think about my company if I
• 2:00
  had to lay and I know it's they're at scale now.
• 2:03
  So it's like. Right, he's not doing the I
• 2:05
  don't know he is particular he's.
• 2:06
  Not even the CEO anymore, I guess, right.
• 2:08
  Is he? I don't know.
• 2:09
  I don't think he is. I think he's just like one of
• 2:10
  the owners now. Yeah.
• 2:11
  So maybe it maybe that's separate and none of my business
• 2:14
  and whatever, but I just think, man, if you had $50,000,000 to
• 2:17
  blow on a wedding, wouldn't you try to save some of your people?
• 2:19
  But maybe those people weren't needed.
• 2:22
  I don't know, maybe changes in technology and the changes in
• 2:25
  what people do and how they do it with robotics, with scanning,
• 2:29
  with, you know, production. Yeah.
• 2:31
  And all that stuff we were talking about just before we got
• 2:33
  started. Yeah, it's a lot easier to do a
• 2:35
  lot of things these days. That's true.
• 2:37
  I mean, yeah. And it's like, hey, who am I to
• 2:39
  judge? Maybe, you know, the capitalist
• 2:40
  side of me is like if that's what he wants to spend his money
• 2:43
  on, then that's what he wants to spend his money on.
• 2:45
  But I don't know, that's just a, it's a tough kind of contrast in
• 2:49
  headlines, I guess. For sure.
• 2:51
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:51
  So you you could you maybe describe a little bit about just
• 2:54
  a quick, maybe a couple sentences about what your
• 2:56
  company does and then your role in the company.
• 2:58
  Now, maybe, you know, you're obviously one of the owners, but
• 3:01
  also just kind of what your day-to-day is.
• 3:03
  Absolutely. So Kesson LLC is a provider of
• 3:10
  measuring and marking products to the construction and trade
• 3:13
  industry. So it's builders of any kind.
• 3:16
  Anybody that the way we kind of define a professional is anybody
• 3:20
  that measures as part of what they do for a living.
• 3:23
  And that's a lot of different people.
• 3:25
  Yeah. Like I look around this room,
• 3:28
  this room itself, the building it was in, the sidewalks that
• 3:32
  led up here, the roads, the landscaping, the the guy that
• 3:36
  did the asphalt in the parking lot, the guy that painted the
• 3:39
  lines on the asphalt. All those things are measured
• 3:43
  and marked and we make those tools for people that do that
• 3:48
  sort of thing. So on a construction level, not
• 3:50
  like microscope or really fine tools, but construction tools,
• 3:57
  yeah. Yeah.
• 3:58
  And then your role in the company is what?
• 4:00
  So I am the Vice President of Marketing and Sales and I've
• 4:05
  been with the company for 21 years now, 22 years.
• 4:09
  Yeah. So I think it'd be fun to dive
• 4:10
  into some sales stuff, some marketing stuff.
• 4:12
  I think all that's interesting and relevant to founders and
• 4:14
  entrepreneurs that are trying to grow their business.
• 4:16
  And a lot of them have people that they're managing sales
• 4:19
  teams are leading or marketing department that they're trying
• 4:21
  to, you know, get more performance out of.
• 4:23
  And some of them are doing the sales and marketing themselves.
• 4:25
  It just depends on the company. Yeah.
• 4:27
  So very recently, within the last, I've had this role as the
• 4:32
  VP of Sales and Marketing for 2 1/2 years now.
• 4:35
  And after some difficult conversations and some
• 4:44
  realizations, I came to realize, as did most of the, I think
• 4:48
  everybody realized it before me that I was a bottleneck in this
• 4:51
  company, that so much had to go through me that I was preventing
• 4:56
  us from moving forward in some ways.
• 4:58
  So we had to find a way to change the role that I had and
• 5:03
  get some people in some different seats on the bus.
• 5:06
  We didn't hire anybody new for some of the roles.
• 5:09
  We had to hire 2 new people for like 2 other roles within the
• 5:13
  last year. So it's, it's been a very, very
• 5:19
  strange year because of all the transition that we made.
• 5:22
  So we hired a senior sales manager and we hired a very new
• 5:30
  to sales sales Rep internally. So one of the guys we hired was
• 5:37
  at the end of his career and another, the guy that reports to
• 5:40
  him now is at the very beginning of his career.
• 5:43
  So it's nice for me to have two people on kind of opposite ends
• 5:47
  of the, the spectrum, giving me insights into what's needed
• 5:52
  from, you know, they, the, the generation that's coming into
• 5:55
  this role. That's right.
• 5:56
  And trying to capture everything from the generation that's going
• 6:00
  out of this role in the next two years, five years or so.
• 6:05
  I'm going to be trying to distill from a couple different
• 6:07
  employees the lessons that they've learned over the last 40
• 6:11
  years of doing this kind of work, which used to be, you
• 6:14
  know, handshakes and face to face meetings.
• 6:18
  And their stories of my grandfather, who was the founder
• 6:21
  of this company, driving around the United States with a shoebox
• 6:26
  full of coins so that he could stop every couple of hours, drop
• 6:32
  a bunch of coins into the to the to the phone booth and call back
• 6:37
  to the office to see if anything had come up in the last, you
• 6:41
  know, two hours that he'd been driving around versus today,
• 6:44
  right? Which is completely different.
• 6:46
  Totally. Different world.
• 6:48
  He had no GPS. He's using a map.
• 6:50
  He's, you know. That's kind of wild to think
• 6:52
  about. I sometimes think about that
• 6:53
  like, man, I remember and I was old enough to remember like when
• 6:56
  you had the MapQuest and you had to print out MapQuest and stuff.
• 6:59
  When I was a really youngster, there was no like GPS on your
• 7:02
  phone or you maybe you had to buy one expensive one.
• 7:04
  For your passes. Yeah, the garners and stuff like
• 7:06
  that. But.
• 7:07
  But before that, I remember, like, taking vacations when I
• 7:10
  was little and my parents, like, printed out the MapQuest.
• 7:12
  Yeah. And it was like, that's how you
• 7:13
  got to where you needed to go. And sometimes you're like, shit,
• 7:15
  do we turn here? Do we?
• 7:16
  This isn't clear. And then you know, wouldn't just
• 7:18
  reroute you automatically? Oh no, figure it out.
• 7:20
  Yeah, you have to stop and and refigure it out.
• 7:22
  Yeah, yeah. I don't know.
• 7:24
  Sometimes I wonder if like that world is better or not.
• 7:26
  It's different. I don't know that it's, I don't.
• 7:28
  I mean, there's a lot of choices in business that come down into
• 7:32
  is it better or is it just different?
• 7:35
  And I wrestle with that, like literally that particular
• 7:39
  question a lot, whether it's bringing new products into the
• 7:44
  and, and it's interesting because of the measuring
• 7:46
  products that we do, you know, people have electronic tape
• 7:50
  measures and people have lasers and people have newer, you know,
• 7:55
  GPS systems that they'll use to measure parking lots and things
• 7:59
  like that. But there's also the old school
• 8:01
  way that they've been using for hundreds of years, in some cases
• 8:05
  thousands of years to make straight lines.
• 8:08
  For instance, with a chalk line reel, you know, to make a line
• 8:11
  that's longer than three feet straight, very difficult for a
• 8:15
  human being to do without a straight edge.
• 8:18
  But a, a piece of string coated with chalk, you know, colored
• 8:22
  dirt, you snap that on the ground, you get a perfectly
• 8:25
  straight line that lasts for a few days, a few weeks, and then
• 8:30
  it'll fade away and disappear. And you can build to that line
• 8:33
  versus a laser, right? You're paying $300.00 for a
• 8:36
  laser or maybe $3000 for a laser.
• 8:39
  And you, you can see a straight line now broadcast on the
• 8:43
  parking lot, for instance, for $3000, where I can do it for,
• 8:48
  you know, three cents with a piece of string and some chalk.
• 8:51
  You know, that chalk line costs about 20, thirty, $40 maybe.
• 8:55
  Yeah. And I can get thousands of lines
• 8:57
  and I can change them and move them.
• 8:59
  And that's the way people have been doing it since the
• 9:02
  Egyptians. Wow.
• 9:03
  Yeah, Well, it's a good point because it's kind of like, hey,
• 9:05
  just because there's better technology, it's more expensive,
• 9:08
  doesn't mean it's got to make sense.
• 9:10
  Like the math has the math, you know, Like it's got like, why
• 9:13
  would we spend this much money when there's something that's
• 9:15
  way cheaper and still just as pretty much just as effective?
• 9:18
  For sure it does. So it's like, you know.
• 9:20
  It's not necessarily. And that's where the question of
• 9:22
  what's better comes up. Is it a savings of time?
• 9:25
  Is it a savings of scale? Is it a savings of money?
• 9:28
  Is it savings of efficiency or convenience or those sorts of
• 9:33
  things? I mean, the chalk boxes are
• 9:34
  very, very messy. I mean, it's colored dirt and
• 9:37
  you're snapping it and as you pull it out-of-the-box, there's
• 9:41
  there's colored dirt that's going to get everywhere.
• 9:43
  And if it's a windy day, it's going to blow all over stuff.
• 9:46
  So yeah. So you got a sales Rep that's,
• 9:50
  you know, more senior and then you've got one that's more.
• 9:53
  Yeah. And we, we've got a mix from 20
• 9:56
  to 65, OK. Yeah.
• 9:58
  I'm curious from your perspective, how is sales
• 9:59
  changed over the last couple decades?
• 10:02
  I was very worried obviously when COVID happened there was a
• 10:07
  huge shift big time is in how we meet and you know the the number
• 10:11
  of video conferences and video calls we did before COVID versus
• 10:15
  I have I had before COVID one a month.
• 10:21
  So I'll say this, I was in corporate sales for six years
• 10:25
  before I started this business. And I started this business in
• 10:27
  late 2019, really early 2020 and then left my full time job in
• 10:30
  2020 to do this from the six years I was there selling B to B
• 10:35
  services, staffing and recruiting services.
• 10:37
  So I mean high ticket, you know, high touch.
• 10:40
  From 2014 to 2020 I had 0 video calls.
• 10:45
  OK. I mean, yeah, I didn't wouldn't
• 10:47
  even have thought to do 1. The technology was there.
• 10:50
  Yeah, we had. Zoom was around.
• 10:52
  Yeah, it was just people just never would have even.
• 10:56
  It was like you either called someone or you went and saw them
• 10:59
  or obviously e-mail or. Something like that.
• 11:00
  Texting too, was texting was happening and especially with
• 11:03
  the right, the younger, Yeah crowd, right?
• 11:06
  Yeah. And it was just like we just
• 11:07
  never and never did it. And then to your point, COVID
• 11:10
  happened every single meeting video, every single one.
• 11:13
  This is my, this is my first, this is my first in person
• 11:17
  meeting today and I've had five meetings today.
• 11:19
  That's right. Yeah, one guy was in Wisconsin
• 11:21
  right then we had people from all over the world.
• 11:24
  I was talking to somebody with our team in Austria this morning
• 11:27
  at 8:00, which is 330, you know, 3:00 in the afternoon, their
• 11:30
  time all on video conference call.
• 11:33
  So that's a change for the better.
• 11:35
  My. I think so, yeah.
• 11:36
  I mean, my territory was all local.
• 11:38
  So for me, it was like I was either out seeing them doing
• 11:40
  lunches, dinners, or calling, you know, there was no like,
• 11:44
  hey, let's set up a Zoom call. It just wasn't even a thing.
• 11:46
  But if you're not local, you're in Wisconsin, you're in
• 11:48
  California or Austria, you got to have that.
• 11:51
  I mean, it's, it's just. It's better than a telephone
• 11:53
  call because you can you're you're sharing documents and
• 11:56
  you're working in real time on those documents.
• 11:59
  And you get a feel for somebody's emotion, their
• 12:01
  personality, non verbals. All the non verbals which is
• 12:04
  such a huge part of conversation.
• 12:06
  I mean, you can my brother, I work with my brother.
• 12:08
  He and I can almost have a conversation without saying
• 12:11
  things like when we're in a room with people that watch us, like
• 12:15
  interact with each other, when we don't say a word, they're
• 12:19
  they're able to say. I don't know what was going on
• 12:21
  between you and your brother. I'm glad the tension got less or
• 12:26
  whatever, you know, because of just the non verbal stuff that
• 12:29
  that, you know, we've been doing since we were three and four.
• 12:34
  Yeah. So, well, one thing I've noticed
• 12:36
  is buyers are more skeptical and then more educated than ever.
• 12:39
  And a lot of that is there's just so much content out there.
• 12:42
  There's videos, there's podcasts, there's Youtubes,
• 12:44
  there's articles, there's, I mean the Internet of Things are
• 12:47
  out there. And so it's like in one sense
• 12:49
  they now can educate them. They're self educating before
• 12:52
  they buy. We know that, right?
• 12:53
  They're often times 7080% of the way through the buying cycle.
• 12:56
  Be time that by time they talk to a sales Rep, click the.
• 12:58
  Thing, yeah, they kind of know what they want.
• 13:00
  They know what they want, but they're also a little more
• 13:01
  skeptical too because, you know, maybe they've had some other
• 13:04
  service or offering or there's so much noise out there that
• 13:07
  they're like, is this the real deal?
• 13:09
  How do I separate the real stuff from the fake stuff?
• 13:11
  And so it's kind of like in your marketing, you kind of got to
• 13:14
  think about those two. Things well and in this industry
• 13:16
  for sure because you know, it is a trade where younger people are
• 13:21
  working with more veteran more. Yeah, that's right.
• 13:24
  There is a word of mouth, there's, you know, there's a
• 13:28
  dynamic that happens on the on the job site between maybe
• 13:32
  somebody new that comes in and has a certain set of tools on
• 13:36
  the old timers that are there with maybe some different brands
• 13:39
  and things like that. And there's, you know, there's
• 13:42
  some high school dynamics that are involved in that sort of
• 13:44
  thing as well. It it's fascinating to to
• 13:49
  participate in that market space for sure, yeah.
• 13:53
  Yeah. If you had to go back like 10
• 13:54
  years though, do you think you'd bring some things with you to
• 13:57
  that? You know, if you go back and
• 13:58
  talk to a person that's doing sales in your industry 10 years
• 14:00
  ago, do you think there's a big difference in how you approach
• 14:03
  sales in general or even marketing?
• 14:06
  That's a really interesting question because I've been doing
• 14:09
  this, this job for 20 years. So even 10 years ago, there are
• 14:13
  tools available today that I wasn't using, right?
• 14:16
  Short form video. Fantastic.
• 14:19
  Especially for you guys, because, yeah.
• 14:20
  Yeah, not only me, but for any, any product.
• 14:23
  That you want. To see how it works or how it
• 14:25
  gets fixed or how it gets implemented, or I'm going to
• 14:31
  tell you. So I was selling one of these
• 14:33
  chalk line reels to a distributor that also sells
• 14:37
  those chalk line reels to professionals.
• 14:40
  And I'm talking about the features and the benefits of
• 14:42
  this chalk box. And there was a, a man there who
• 14:46
  was watching me do my sales pitch, who was a user of this
• 14:50
  product and kind of wanted to see what I was saying.
• 14:53
  And he bought this kind of thing from the gentleman I was selling
• 14:56
  to. And as I was going through my
• 14:58
  pitch, I made a mistake with the product and literally like shove
• 15:02
  my thumb into the into the box itself as I was closing one of
• 15:07
  the latches. And the the guy that was
• 15:09
  watching laughed and he said, you're doing it wrong.
• 15:13
  And I said, what do you mean? He said the way you close that
• 15:15
  chalk box is not the right way to do it.
• 15:17
  He said, do you mind if I show you?
• 15:18
  I said, yeah, by all means. And he took the box out of my
• 15:21
  hand and he turned to the guy that I was selling to and he
• 15:24
  took over. And he started talking about why
• 15:27
  this was such a great chalk box, how it gets used, how to how to
• 15:31
  open and close it correctly versus the guy that made it
• 15:34
  right or the team, you know, I represent the team that made it.
• 15:38
  And I had this, I had this realization at that moment is
• 15:43
  I'm an expert in the product that we make and, and my entire
• 15:47
  company is an expert in the products that we make only to a
• 15:50
  certain point. The gentleman that took that box
• 15:54
  out of my hands and uses it for a living has a completely
• 15:57
  different relationship with that product.
• 15:59
  And he is an expert in how that product gets used everyday.
• 16:03
  And there's a lot that he can teach me about it, right?
• 16:05
  I know how to get it built. I know how to put it together,
• 16:08
  put it in a in a package to market it.
• 16:11
  I know how to do the pricing. I know how to compare it to the
• 16:14
  competitors. I know how to position it
• 16:17
  correctly, or maybe not through a lot of mistakes, I'm sure.
• 16:21
  Whereas this guy uses it on a job site and he uses it probably
• 16:25
  different than some other people use it too.
• 16:27
  And there's an expertise there that I do not have because I do
• 16:30
  not use that product every single day and this guy does so.
• 16:34
  I think a valuable lesson there too is getting, just getting
• 16:36
  your customers and the people that use what you're offering or
• 16:39
  putting together, getting them involved in the content.
• 16:42
  I think a lot of times, you know, because this was like a in
• 16:45
  person sales call, but we've noticed a big difference where
• 16:47
  you're just sitting on a call with a customer and they're
• 16:49
  talking about their experience and their journey.
• 16:51
  And really what you're doing is you're laying your customers
• 16:53
  sell for you in a lot of ways. Yeah, for sure.
• 16:55
  In that case. In that case we did because it
• 16:57
  was, it was it was great. We got we got a sale out of the
• 17:00
  deal and you know his the gentleman that took the chalk
• 17:06
  box from me, his endorsement meant more to the guy that sells
• 17:12
  him the product. Than mine did right so.
• 17:15
  That's the word of mouth. That's the you should listen to
• 17:19
  me, the user, because I use this thing versus Jude, the seller,
• 17:25
  because I mean, my job is to get that product in front of as many
• 17:28
  people as I can. But it's it's a little bit of a
• 17:32
  different message. Yeah, totally is.
• 17:34
  Yeah, and on the job site, that sort of thing happens all the
• 17:37
  time, right? There's a a new guy that doesn't
• 17:39
  know how to use the tools looking to the veteran that does
• 17:43
  and just watching what they do, how they do it and trying to
• 17:47
  repeat that sort of thing. And yeah, asking those kinds of
• 17:49
  questions, if they're courageous enough to ask, Yeah, those
• 17:52
  questions it. Reminds me kind of you've ever
• 17:54
  been to the store and you're like, looking at purchasing like
• 17:56
  a snack or a piece of food or whatever it is, and someone kind
• 17:59
  of walks by and they go, all those things are amazing.
• 18:01
  Yeah. And instantly you're like, I'm
• 18:03
  getting this, like this has got to be good.
• 18:04
  For sure this one. They didn't make it.
• 18:06
  It's one person's word. It's just a word of mouth.
• 18:08
  Yeah. It's just like someone else
• 18:10
  referred and I think, you know, we're doing the same thing
• 18:11
  online now with whether it's Amazon or wherever you're buying
• 18:14
  from. We want to see the videos from
• 18:16
  other. I don't want to see some like
• 18:17
  fancy promotional video from the company necessarily.
• 18:20
  Sometimes that's nice, sometimes that's nice, right?
• 18:23
  But I also want to see like customer.
• 18:24
  Testimony. I want the endorsement.
• 18:25
  Yeah, I want to see someone use it and give their thoughts on it
• 18:28
  because that's, that's where I'm at, the consumer and it's a
• 18:31
  little bit more. Well, it is just very unbiased.
• 18:33
  It's not. Right.
• 18:34
  It's very there's no agenda there other than you use the
• 18:36
  best thing. Yeah, whether it's good, good
• 18:38
  review or not so good review, yeah.
• 18:40
  My my son is obviously much younger than I am but over the
• 18:45
  be weird if he wasn't. It was very it was over the
• 18:48
  Christmas holiday two years ago. I was in the market for some new
• 18:53
  running shoes and he walked through the room I was in and he
• 18:56
  looked at me and he asked me what I was doing.
• 18:58
  I said I'm a little research on a new brand of running shoe that
• 19:01
  I'm thinking about doing. And he came in like 3 days later
• 19:05
  and I was also looking at running shoes and he asked me
• 19:08
  said, Hey, how, how long have you been researching new shoes?
• 19:13
  And I thought about it. I was like, well, it's probably
• 19:15
  been about four or five hours. And, and he laughed.
• 19:18
  He's like, you're not that good of a runner, which is, he's
• 19:21
  right, I'm not right. I'm recreational.
• 19:23
  I do it for fun and health and stuff like that.
• 19:26
  And I did not need to put that much time in doing this
• 19:29
  research. I could have bought 4 pairs of
• 19:31
  shoes for the amount of time that I spent and tried all four
• 19:35
  of them. But his point was, you know, as
• 19:38
  because he thinks about it differently and he's he's going
• 19:41
  to try something more quickly than I than I was ready to pull
• 19:44
  the trigger because I'm a little old school and that sort of
• 19:48
  thing, I guess. But if I had asked somebody too,
• 19:51
  I would have gotten a different kind of recommendation.
• 19:53
  I just he saw right through it, which I thought was.
• 19:56
  Agenda buying shoes or. What I did, you did.
• 19:57
  I did, yeah. Probably look at some pictures
• 20:00
  and videos and. Reviews and listen to people and
• 20:02
  yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:04
  What is your son in the business too?
• 20:05
  He's not OK. He's not.
• 20:07
  We have a what's he do? We have a 4th or he's teaching
• 20:10
  English in. France right now.
• 20:12
  Wow. Yeah, that's freaking cool.
• 20:14
  Yeah, this is his second year doing it.
• 20:15
  Last year he did it in the Czech Republic.
• 20:17
  Wow, what's he teach? Just the English language.
• 20:20
  Wow. Yeah, to French speakers.
• 20:22
  OK. Well, that's doable, yeah.
• 20:23
  So they're all learning English as a second language, and he's a
• 20:26
  native speaker. Of course.
• 20:29
  He's good at what? He does.
• 20:30
  I'd love to go to France. France and Italy are like my
• 20:32
  two. Yeah, I'd love to go there.
• 20:34
  Yeah. Been in the UK once and that was
• 20:36
  a cool experience really. I got to go to Prague a couple
• 20:38
  times. A no, I heard that's cool.
• 20:40
  It was really cool. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:42
  So with the sales team, but how have you found?
• 20:44
  Cuz there's, you know, obviously founders, entrepreneurs
• 20:45
  listening right now trying to get more out of their team, you
• 20:48
  know, trying to get them to produce at a higher level,
• 20:50
  trying to get them to their potential.
• 20:52
  What are some things that you've seen that really help get people
• 20:55
  there? I would say discipline,
• 21:00
  especially in sales. What?
• 21:03
  Do you mean by that? Well, I'm watching like I, I, I
• 21:08
  was, I was the head of marketing and I let the sales people do
• 21:11
  the sales stuff for probably 16 of my 21 years.
• 21:16
  I was mostly in marketing. I was definitely doing some
• 21:19
  sales analysis and some sales suggestions and hey, maybe we
• 21:23
  should be pushing this and that sort of thing.
• 21:25
  So I but I wasn't directly in charge of the, the sales force.
• 21:30
  And I see in particular that, you know, if you have those good
• 21:37
  habits of the discipline of making the calls and recording
• 21:43
  the calls and following up and doing the next right things that
• 21:49
  those yield results. We have some salespeople that
• 21:54
  are, I, I think they're, I think they're all excellent.
• 21:58
  We have them. I, I talk about this spectrum
• 22:02
  that I have. We're on one end.
• 22:04
  I have a salesperson that is like a quartermaster that makes
• 22:08
  sure, you know, everybody's going to get to the, to the
• 22:11
  battle with their socks dry and their shoes tied and everything
• 22:16
  buttoned up. And then I've got another set of
• 22:19
  salespeople who are, you know, like the Inglourious Basterds
• 22:23
  who are just going out and wreaking havoc in a, in a good
• 22:28
  way, but I, I mean wreaking havoc with the competition
• 22:32
  versus the, the disciplined style.
• 22:35
  And, you know, as a owner, I've got this spectrum of people that
• 22:39
  behave and, and respect each other and all of them have, have
• 22:46
  skills that are worthy of understanding and enhancing and
• 22:52
  sharing with each other, but they all definitely have
• 22:55
  different styles about going about it.
• 22:56
  So the discipline, I, I think, you know, for me, that's
• 23:01
  attractive to me as a, as a person that, you know, I found
• 23:04
  through, through my own life that, you know, sticking to
• 23:07
  certain routines and things like that.
• 23:09
  I, I definitely have better personal success and I know
• 23:14
  from, from having done marketing for almost 35 years that if you
• 23:18
  have a disciplined approach to the way you communicate with
• 23:22
  your customers, you know, you have a timely mailing, you have
• 23:27
  maybe once a month or twice a month you do e-mail
• 23:29
  communications. You're consistent with the
• 23:32
  layout of your catalogues and your brochures and your
• 23:35
  communication pieces that your customers get used to that sort
• 23:38
  of thing. And they, it, it become the way
• 23:42
  you communicate becomes more like a newspaper where they know
• 23:45
  what's the thing. They may not know exactly what
• 23:47
  the contents going to be, but they know what's going to be in
• 23:51
  the newspaper everyday. So we're always talking about
• 23:53
  the features and benefits like this in this section, or we're
• 23:56
  always talking about, you know, the, the competition or the, the
• 24:03
  people to whom to sell this product in this way.
• 24:05
  And it's always going to be in this place.
• 24:07
  So there's kind of a shorthand that you build up if you're
• 24:09
  consistent that your everybody, the entire chain of
• 24:16
  communication from the internal team, the sales, we have sales
• 24:20
  reps that work for us around the country.
• 24:22
  There's nineteen other companies that we hire to help us get our
• 24:27
  products into local stores. We've got 5 internal guys or
• 24:31
  internal people that do it for us.
• 24:33
  And then we've got all these distributors and then we have
• 24:36
  all these end users. And the message to each level is
• 24:39
  is a slightly different message. But if you're consistent about
• 24:44
  it, you can you can check all those boxes and.
• 24:49
  What do you do if you got someone?
• 24:50
  If you know, let's say you got a team of five and they're just
• 24:52
  kind of underperforming. What's something you do?
• 24:55
  What's something maybe the first thing you do coming into a
• 24:57
  company and whether it's sales, marketing, whatever it is, you
• 24:59
  just got a team of underperformers.
• 25:01
  Well, some of the first things I try to do is I look at my own
• 25:04
  behavior, like where I try to identify the problem and then I
• 25:09
  try to find where in my my role as coach, as mentor, as owner,
• 25:16
  as supplier of information, where maybe have I fallen short?
• 25:22
  Did I give them, have I acted kindly?
• 25:25
  Have I acted respectfully? Have I acted with enough time
• 25:29
  for this person to maybe make a change or not make a change?
• 25:32
  Have I have I brought, have I been clear in my communication
• 25:37
  for if somebody's underperforming, I want to make
• 25:39
  sure there's a measurement involved in that.
• 25:41
  And we do measuring and marking so it, it plays into our values
• 25:44
  and things like that as well that we will will measure how we
• 25:49
  perform and things like that. So that, you know, I have
• 25:52
  something to, it's not just a feeling.
• 25:56
  I've got some empirical data that we can, we can point to to
• 25:59
  say, hey, we've talked about this, you know, three months
• 26:02
  ago, six months ago, a year ago or whatever.
• 26:05
  This is what the measurement was then and the measurements still
• 26:08
  the same today. I thought we were going to be
• 26:11
  working toward this. Has there been enough time for
• 26:13
  that change to take place? Is it a good fit personality
• 26:18
  wise and that sort of thing? So, yeah, over the last couple
• 26:21
  years I've let some people go and we've hired some people too.
• 26:24
  And I have often found that if I'm looking at my own behaviors
• 26:31
  and I, I can get comfortable around what I've presented.
• 26:36
  And then I check with some of the other people to make sure
• 26:39
  that, hey, am I out of whack here or did I do these things
• 26:42
  the way I said I was going to do these things?
• 26:44
  Is this underperformance something that is, is there
• 26:50
  another reason for it maybe that I'm not understanding?
• 26:54
  I mean, market pressures tariffs this year that, you know, there
• 26:59
  was a huge contraction in building and spending on
• 27:01
  building this year because of those tariffs and that that
• 27:05
  messes up the whole supply chain and stuff like that too.
• 27:08
  When the when that tanker got stuck in the canal, that screwed
• 27:12
  up the supply chain for months for lots of companies.
• 27:17
  And how you know that can affect a salesperson's performance.
• 27:20
  And that has nothing to do with that salesperson and what
• 27:23
  they've been or what they anticipated was coming.
• 27:27
  You know, if they haven't done anything about the new
• 27:30
  information once it's arrived, then you still.
• 27:32
  Got to control. You can control.
• 27:34
  Yeah, for sure. Well, I think that's a good
• 27:36
  approach from a leadership standpoint is to look inward
• 27:38
  first and say, am I showing up the right way?
• 27:39
  And you should I be spending more time with this person,
• 27:42
  coaching this person? And I think once you've done
• 27:44
  your due diligence and really put your effort and you've
• 27:46
  showed up the right way, then at some point you got to go, maybe
• 27:49
  this person is not the right fit for the role.
• 27:50
  For sure. And that happens sometimes it
• 27:52
  does, unfortunately, just what it is.
• 27:54
  Absolutely. I like the discipline.
• 27:56
  You mentioned discipline. That's actually, it's funny you
• 27:58
  say that because I was talking to my girlfriend the other day.
• 28:00
  I was like, one of the things I really want to do this year is
• 28:03
  be like the most disciplined man in the world, you know, or at
• 28:06
  least the most disciplined version of Alex that I can be.
• 28:09
  Because I think if you're disciplined, I think that's the
• 28:12
  key to like, I, I always look for the domino effects.
• 28:14
  What is the one thing you can do that impacts all the other areas
• 28:18
  of your business or your life, your relationships?
• 28:21
  And think about how much discipline can do.
• 28:23
  You'd be more in shape, more healthier, you'd sleep better.
• 28:26
  You'd show up to your business and your employees better.
• 28:28
  You'd produce better sales results, marketing results,
• 28:32
  you'd be a better spouse or husband, whatever it is like if
• 28:35
  you can just stay disciplined. And it's hard nowadays because
• 28:37
  we got these phones and these all this technology and it's
• 28:40
  like you just can go check things and alerts and pop in
• 28:43
  social media and it's. Tough sometimes so the.
• 28:46
  I mean, in my opinion, right, we have a couple of superpowers as
• 28:49
  human beings The. The number one thing is
• 28:52
  attention. What are you going to give your
• 28:55
  attention to Yeah. And if you can be disciplined
• 28:58
  around what you spend your time looking at and what you, what
• 29:03
  you consume, and I mean consume on every level, what do I bring
• 29:07
  into my life? What do I bring into my body?
• 29:10
  What do I bring into my mind? What am I spending my time
• 29:13
  thinking about or not thinking about being disciplined around,
• 29:17
  that sort of thing. Our attention is a superpower.
• 29:20
  And if we can use that well, we will change the only thing that
• 29:25
  we really can't control, and that's ourselves.
• 29:28
  And you can you can find ways to point yourself in a different
• 29:33
  kind of direction. At least that's been my
• 29:35
  experience. Yeah, I measure a lot of things.
• 29:37
  I love that. Well, you're literally a
• 29:39
  measuring company. It's part of what I do.
• 29:41
  I love that. For a living.
• 29:43
  Puns around that? Yeah, but you know, I found it
• 29:46
  to be a approach personally too. Like I, I keep a daily tally on
• 29:55
  some things that I, I keep a daily tally on how long I've
• 29:58
  slept. And I say, I don't even do
• 29:59
  sleep. I do rest.
• 30:01
  You were like, no, no, no, I, I do this all manually, but I, I
• 30:07
  journal. So I have a little, I have a
• 30:09
  little section of the first page of my daily journal where I'm,
• 30:13
  I'm recording. Hey, did I, did I do my
• 30:15
  meditation? Did I pray that I, how did I
• 30:18
  sleep? Did I practice gratitude?
• 30:21
  How was I, you know, was I did I reach out and help other people
• 30:24
  and I give myself a little. Sometimes it's pass fail,
• 30:27
  sometimes it's a score. How am I feeling physically,
• 30:30
  mentally, emotionally, socially, spiritually?
• 30:34
  It's a real simple checklist. Good self-awareness there too,
• 30:37
  you know, Just being conscious of it is a first step, I think.
• 30:39
  And then you can, I can see where things are out of whack.
• 30:43
  So if I feel discomfort, it's an easier way for me to look down
• 30:48
  the list and say, oh, it's financial or oh, it's
• 30:51
  relationships or oh, it's work versus home or it's taxes coming
• 30:57
  up versus, you know, the time of the year or, you know, the
• 31:00
  holidays, right? Everybody gets a little more
• 31:01
  stressed around that and then I then I can be like, oh, it's,
• 31:04
  that's why I'm feeling a little bit or likely, that's likely
• 31:08
  while I'm feeling a little bit off or not.
• 31:10
  I don't do it every day, but I do it as frequently as I, as I
• 31:14
  can. And I I built a little system
• 31:16
  for that. That's really cool.
• 31:17
  Yeah. How do you become more
• 31:19
  disciplined, do you think? If someone out there is right
• 31:21
  now, like, man, I need to, I just need to focus my attention
• 31:24
  Maybe. Maybe.
• 31:25
  I think a big problem too is people just consume more than
• 31:28
  they create. And by creating, I mean, it
• 31:30
  could be journaling, it could be making content, it could be
• 31:33
  having a conversation with themselves, it could be writing
• 31:35
  things down, whatever it is. I just think people take in a
• 31:38
  lot of stuff. It's a lot of clutter and noise.
• 31:41
  And I think sometimes I'm like, I just, I'm not watching
• 31:43
  anything. You know, if I'm in the car
• 31:45
  going somewhere, I'm like, what can I learn?
• 31:46
  Or I'll put a YouTube video or a podcast.
• 31:48
  And sometimes I'm like recently I'm like, I'm not going to watch
• 31:50
  anything. I'm not going to consume
• 31:51
  anything. I'm just going to sit in my
• 31:52
  thoughts and come up with something creative that I want
• 31:54
  to talk about online or this from my next video or.
• 31:57
  Well, giving yourself space. Is space, right?
• 31:59
  You got to have space. I don't think we get that.
• 32:01
  So one of the things somebody pointed out to me, we're here we
• 32:07
  are, I'm, we're in Chicago, right?
• 32:08
  And it's winter time here, right?
• 32:11
  And everything slows down here, right?
• 32:14
  The, the people slow down, the commerce slows down, everything
• 32:19
  slows down and we have to rest. This is the dark part of the
• 32:23
  year where if spring's coming, the building season's going to
• 32:27
  start and it's it's, but it's a long way off still.
• 32:30
  And in order for us to be ready for what's coming, it's really
• 32:35
  important that we rest up so that when the time comes, we can
• 32:41
  get out there in our best shape or form.
• 32:45
  So when you ask, you know, how do you become disciplined?
• 32:47
  One of the suggestions that I found to be useful.
• 32:50
  Find somebody, find out. Define what's important to
• 32:54
  yourself 1st and like what are your values, what do you want to
• 32:56
  get better at? Those sorts of things.
• 32:58
  Why do you think that's important to start there?
• 33:02
  I think if you don't start there, you will eventually have
• 33:05
  to come back there at some point because you'll end up going in a
• 33:08
  bunch of different directions and you'll be frustrated that
• 33:11
  you're not making the progress that you might feel you should
• 33:14
  be making or want to be making. I think you need a why to like a
• 33:17
  purpose to something that's driving you right to become more
• 33:20
  disciplined and. I think values help you do that.
• 33:22
  If you've got some core values that you're whether it's
• 33:25
  integrity or honesty or kindness or gratitude or there's lots of
• 33:31
  different choices that people may discipline is a is a core
• 33:33
  value for some people. The thing you want to do, find
• 33:38
  somebody that's doing it and ask them how they did it well.
• 33:42
  That's what I'm asking. You.
• 33:43
  I know, and they'll tell you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:46
  It's, I think people that you know, any skill you're learning
• 33:50
  and they're all skills. Communication is a skill.
• 33:53
  Woodworking is a skill. Living life, living life with
• 33:57
  grace is a skill, you know, Is it your grandma?
• 34:00
  Is it your aunt? Is it your brother-in-law?
• 34:03
  Is it your best friend from grade school?
• 34:05
  Is it Who out there do you admire?
• 34:10
  What are they doing? Ask them how they're doing it or
• 34:13
  ask people, you know, who their favorite people are.
• 34:16
  When I ask for recommendations, I ask, hey, what are your three
• 34:19
  favorite books of people I admire?
• 34:22
  You know, I don't want to overwhelm, but I want to kind of
• 34:26
  start building a dialogue and start asking, being able to kind
• 34:30
  of ask those questions. Finding a mentor, asking
• 34:33
  somebody to be a mentor. It's basically saying, hey, to
• 34:37
  this other person, you have something that I find
• 34:40
  extraordinarily valuable. Would you share that with me?
• 34:45
  And the answer is usually, yeah, I'd be happy to.
• 34:48
  I'd be happy to help. Yeah.
• 34:50
  Yeah, love that. Going back to the sales
• 34:53
  conversation, I wanted to touch on this.
• 34:55
  We posted a video clip that went mini viral and I asked the
• 34:59
  podcast guest, I said do you think cold calling is still
• 35:02
  effective? And I'm curious to get your
• 35:05
  answer on that. I'll tell you what he said, but.
• 35:07
  I would say it's absolutely effective if if through nothing,
• 35:14
  if if you learn nothing else, you're going to learn a lot
• 35:16
  about yourself from cold calling.
• 35:19
  Yeah, you're going to learn how to handle rejection or you're
• 35:22
  not going to keep cold calling. That's right.
• 35:24
  And not taking things personally extraordinarily important in
• 35:28
  sales. That's a good point.
• 35:31
  And you know there, if you're taking every one of those
• 35:35
  rejections personally, you are good luck.
• 35:38
  You're not going to be a happy person, but.
• 35:41
  Do you think it's going to hurt? Do you think it's effective for
• 35:43
  the business? For our business, probably not.
• 35:50
  Yes, I will say is it the most effective and this is the
• 35:54
  question of degrees, right? Where do we do we spend a lot of
• 35:56
  our time doing cold calling? No, we don't because I think
• 36:01
  there's, there's easier ways to get warm calls established than
• 36:07
  to just shoot out of the phone book to pick up a, you know, go
• 36:12
  to Kansas City and then choose drywall and then choose the word
• 36:16
  supply. Yeah, that's really cool and.
• 36:18
  Kansas City Drywall Supply Company, There's probably
• 36:20
  somebody that's got a name like that in Kansas City or any
• 36:24
  trade, right? It could be HVAC, it could be
• 36:26
  pool installations, could be tile, whatever.
• 36:29
  There's probably somebody like that there.
• 36:31
  But if I can find a, a warmer way to get in with the my
• 36:35
  contacts in Kansas City or the local Rep agencies, we have
• 36:39
  those sorts of things. Usually an easier way or through
• 36:41
  a trade show or something like that.
• 36:43
  That's usually money probably better spent because everybody's
• 36:47
  going to that show for a reason. They're already, they're already
• 36:51
  there 'cause they're looking. It is just a.
• 36:54
  It's a the barriers are pretty high.
• 36:56
  The trust is low when you come in completely cold.
• 36:59
  I mean, it's just, I mean, you can do it.
• 37:00
  I did it for years. It's possible, but it's a harder
• 37:03
  path. And if you can use some
• 37:04
  channels, whether that's online, offline, whatever it is, to
• 37:08
  start conversations and start relationships.
• 37:09
  There, I mean, there's so many connections now, right?
• 37:12
  If if you and I were to go and identify a human being in some
• 37:16
  form of business here, like we picked somebody off of the
• 37:19
  LinkedIn or whatever, within 3/4, probably at most people,
• 37:25
  we're going to find a connection to that, to that person.
• 37:28
  I'm going to know somebody or you're going to have interviewed
• 37:30
  somebody who knows somebody who knows that guy or that woman.
• 37:34
  Yeah, that's right. You mentioned tariffs that they
• 37:37
  were the tariffs. What was it last year, 2025 and
• 37:40
  even I guess? Going into this year, yeah,
• 37:41
  they're still going on. How did the tariffs impact your
• 37:43
  guys's business? Hugely.
• 37:47
  Extraordinarily. Like overnight.
• 37:49
  Yeah, there was no warning, right.
• 37:52
  So there was nothing. So we for instance we get some
• 37:56
  of our products from Asia and we get some of our products from
• 37:59
  China and that tariff went from you know 10% to 180%.
• 38:07
  While our product was on the water.
• 38:11
  The tariff was in put in place so that when it arrived here it
• 38:14
  we didn't even have a chance to turn it around.
• 38:17
  It got here and we owed, we owed that tariff to the US government
• 38:22
  when the product arrived. So our cash flow, you know, we,
• 38:26
  we anticipated spending a dollar out of every five or something
• 38:29
  like that to spending $12.00 for every $5 we spent, right?
• 38:35
  That's that's what that did for us.
• 38:37
  And what'd you guys do? How'd you handle it?
• 38:39
  We stopped bringing as much stuff in, so we ran a lot
• 38:43
  leaner, which wasn't great because their supply chain
• 38:48
  issues. And if they're not buying your
• 38:50
  product, they may not be there to just to buy our brand.
• 38:54
  If our brand's on the shelf, they'd be happy to buy it.
• 38:57
  But if our brand's not on the shelf, the guy still needs a
• 38:59
  measuring wheel or a level or a chalk line.
• 39:02
  He's going to buy somebody's to get his job done.
• 39:05
  And that's how it can affect some things.
• 39:09
  You know, it's just the fact that cash flow, it was a huge
• 39:12
  impact on our cash flow as well because we did not anticipate
• 39:17
  having to spend that kind of cash out at the times we had to
• 39:21
  spend that out. So I mean we got through it.
• 39:24
  There's all kinds of things that happened in business, right?
• 39:27
  And you don't know what's coming next, which is kind of the fun
• 39:30
  of it. And it's how do you respond to
• 39:32
  those sorts of things when they happened that will, I mean, I'm
• 39:36
  sure there's people that went out of business because of it.
• 39:39
  Jeez, So what is it at now? If it's was 100 something
• 39:41
  percent before, what is it now? Is it?
• 39:44
  It's over 50, I think. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not down
• 39:48
  to where it was by by any means. It's no longer over 100%, right.
• 39:52
  So if you bought a $5 item, you would have to pay five extra
• 39:55
  dollars, right? So, so your $5 item is now $10.
• 39:59
  It's a big jump. It's a huge jump.
• 40:01
  And that's only at 100% tariff. And this was higher than that,
• 40:04
  so. Did you see cost of goods go up
• 40:06
  in stores? I mean, maybe I don't pay
• 40:07
  attention. Oh, yeah, they had to.
• 40:09
  They had to. We held our pricing as long as
• 40:12
  we could, yeah, because we weren't sure what was going to
• 40:15
  happen and we didn't. We, you know, we don't want to
• 40:18
  react every time something happened because every, every
• 40:23
  time you change, it's like doing something from the very start.
• 40:27
  Like if we come out with a new set of pricing, so tariffs got
• 40:31
  enacted in February. If we came out with new pricing
• 40:33
  in March, we have to do all that pricing work again.
• 40:38
  And then we have to do all the communication on that pricing
• 40:42
  again. And everybody that we're
• 40:44
  delivering that pricing to has to update their pricing.
• 40:48
  And then all the end users that are coming in to buy that
• 40:50
  product are like, whoa, what's going on here?
• 40:54
  And then if things change in March?
• 40:57
  Which they do is. Trump, which they change.
• 40:59
  His mind every three days. Yeah, yes.
• 41:03
  You know, if we react to every action, then it's a never.
• 41:09
  You'll never get caught up. So you know, we took a, we took
• 41:13
  a breath, we paused, we said, OK, let's see what happens.
• 41:17
  And we sat tight and we didn't raise our prices, but our
• 41:20
  margins went down significantly, our cash flow went down
• 41:23
  significantly. And eventually we had to, we had
• 41:27
  to make some changes. And then so we tried to be very
• 41:29
  strategic and that sort of thing.
• 41:30
  And it, it, it's, I mean, I, I am by no means making any or all
• 41:34
  of these decisions for our company.
• 41:36
  It is, we're talking to the sales force.
• 41:39
  We're asking them, hey, what are our competitors doing?
• 41:41
  What are the distributors saying?
• 41:45
  You know, what does it look like at the store level?
• 41:48
  Are the shelves empty? Are the shelves full?
• 41:51
  Is, are people still buying things that, you know, maybe
• 41:53
  they wouldn't have spent the money on?
• 41:55
  How, what does that look like? So we can make the best decision
• 41:58
  we can at the time. And they're never perfect.
• 42:01
  They're never perfect. And that's, that's also kind of
• 42:04
  what's fun about it is you do the best you can with the
• 42:07
  information that you have. You'll never have perfect
• 42:09
  information. I'm doing the best I can.
• 42:14
  And the people who are for tariffs would argue that, well,
• 42:18
  a company like yours should. That should encourage them to
• 42:21
  start, you know, doing more in the states.
• 42:24
  Do you buy that? Do you buy that or is that?
• 42:25
  We do as much as we can here for sure.
• 42:28
  We make the chalk lines here, we make the measuring wheels here,
• 42:31
  we make the chalk here. We have never made our tape
• 42:35
  measures in the United States. We have since the founding of
• 42:38
  our company in 1968. We bought those products from
• 42:41
  overseas. So it's, we didn't outsource any
• 42:44
  of that stuff. It was, that's where we were
• 42:46
  getting it from from the beginning.
• 42:49
  So I we don't, I mean, we'd have to, we'd have to do tooling,
• 42:52
  we'd have to. Do.
• 42:53
  Manufacturing expertise, these things that we don't do, we have
• 42:57
  never done. Did it start getting you guys to
• 43:00
  think about maybe? Sure.
• 43:01
  We've always thought about it. Yeah, we, we think about it a
• 43:04
  lot. The more we can do here, the
• 43:07
  more you can control your supply chain, the, the, the safer, I
• 43:11
  guess you are or the, the more you understand where and what
• 43:16
  and when. And you know, when, when one
• 43:19
  thing goes down, what's going to go up, that can be healthier.
• 43:23
  Well, because it's like, you know, encouraging people to
• 43:26
  build in America, I understand, but it's kind of coming at the
• 43:29
  expense of the American companies, unfortunately.
• 43:32
  It can for sure. It depends on what you're doing
• 43:34
  for sure. For us, you know, there are
• 43:36
  things that we do here and we do very, very well here.
• 43:38
  We compete with those other product lines I was talking
• 43:40
  about with overseas competitors just fine, just in this one area
• 43:46
  of the tape measures and things like that.
• 43:48
  We. Yeah, it's not something
• 43:50
  overnight. You can just flip a switch and
• 43:51
  start making them probably a year or more.
• 43:54
  Right, at least and in capital investments and you know,
• 43:57
  there's borrowing that comes with that, there's delays,
• 44:01
  there's, you know, there's, I mean, trying to bring a new
• 44:03
  product to market is is not an easy thing to do.
• 44:06
  That's right. Regardless of what you're
• 44:07
  bringing, yeah. Yeah.
• 44:09
  So Speaking of that, how do you stand out in a crowded market
• 44:12
  when there's a bunch of other competitors that sell similar
• 44:15
  things to you? Yeah, us in particular or what?
• 44:20
  Yeah, I think you have to make your choices.
• 44:22
  I where are you? Where are you going to position
• 44:24
  yourself? Are are you going to be the
• 44:27
  lowest cost, easiest to get item?
• 44:29
  Are you going to be a, a stalwart, you know, something
• 44:35
  that's going to last and last and last?
• 44:37
  Are you going to be the highest priced, absolute best in the, in
• 44:40
  the space? And for us, we know we try to
• 44:45
  choose that spot that we can do over different categories.
• 44:49
  So it's not like in measuring wheels were one thing and chalk
• 44:53
  line wheels were something else and tape measures were something
• 44:56
  else. You know it for the identity of
• 44:59
  a of a company's offering. It's best easiest to be
• 45:04
  consistent across the board of what you bring out there as you
• 45:08
  can. So that if there's an end user
• 45:13
  who's using one of your products in a certain product category,
• 45:17
  if he sees your product in a different category, he's going
• 45:19
  to trust that the brand you will perform similarly in that other
• 45:24
  category. So it's finding your finding
• 45:28
  your spot and kind of sticking with it.
• 45:32
  Yeah, until your baby forced to change or you have to be
• 45:37
  flexible sometimes and do some things.
• 45:39
  But for the most part, I discipline and consistency.
• 45:42
  I'm going to come back to that stuff.
• 45:44
  I mean, it's true. I think you're right.
• 45:45
  You have to find what makes you unique in your your unique
• 45:48
  position. And you know what you do that's
• 45:50
  different than other companies do, other products and services
• 45:53
  do, and then you got to try to lean into.
• 45:54
  Yeah. I mean, so for us, right, we,
• 45:57
  we, we're, we're either at the highest we have, we have two
• 45:59
  brands. We have the Kessen brand, which
• 46:01
  is my family brand and we've partnered with a team from
• 46:05
  Austria that does these levels. And fortunately both of those
• 46:09
  brands are at the top of their game in their categories.
• 46:13
  So for us to team up, it was really easy to you know, kind of
• 46:17
  incorporate those two offerings that were different, right.
• 46:22
  We had measuring products and wheels and chocolate wheels.
• 46:24
  They had levels which fits in that same space and they're both
• 46:28
  brands are at the either at the top or the top three in those
• 46:32
  different categories. If I go to Home Depot or Lowe's,
• 46:36
  will I find your products or no? No, OK.
• 46:40
  Do you measure and mark as part of what you do for your for a
• 46:43
  living? Definitely not, right.
• 46:44
  And that's the kind of the thing it's it's not where you would go
• 46:47
  to buy your stuff necessarily or me even as a marketing guy at a
• 46:51
  tool company. It's the guy that built your
• 46:53
  house. Where would he go to buy his?
• 46:55
  Where do they go? They usually go to a a
• 46:57
  construction supply store or. So I don't even know that.
• 47:01
  Yeah, like as you're driving along, if you know what you're
• 47:03
  looking for, you'll see, you know, like the, like pool
• 47:06
  stores, but if you don't have a pool, you never go.
• 47:08
  There. No, that's true.
• 47:09
  Yeah. Tile stores, that's true, but if
• 47:11
  you don't install tile, no clue where they're at, you have no
• 47:13
  clue where they're at or why would you even go right in and
• 47:16
  around Chicagoland? It's such a great city for this
• 47:18
  sort of thing. I'm sure like if you spend any
• 47:20
  time like driving from one end of Cicero Ave. all the way from
• 47:23
  the South side to the north side, you will pass so many tool
• 47:27
  and die companies and construction and roofing supply
• 47:30
  companies and plumbing, HVAC, you know, places that you and I
• 47:35
  as marketing guys or salespeople would never really go.
• 47:39
  But the trades people go and they have accounts there and
• 47:43
  they, they buy from the people that they, their fathers bought
• 47:46
  from and the guys that they've been buying from for 20 or 30
• 47:49
  years. And they trust and have those
• 47:52
  relationships. And we've got them now too,
• 47:55
  because we're pushing product in and those guys are pulling
• 47:58
  products out. So it's it's really fun and it's
• 48:02
  but almost, well, not almost, but a lot of the cities in
• 48:05
  America are, are the same way. Like there's a ring around every
• 48:09
  city that has kind of this industrial.
• 48:12
  Yeah, that's true area. That's true.
• 48:14
  And that's where the professionals go to get their
• 48:17
  work done. Yeah, yeah.
• 48:18
  What is the state of the state of the skilled trades industry?
• 48:21
  Oh my gosh, it's going to go bananas.
• 48:23
  Really. Oh yes, Why?
• 48:27
  The price and value that you get out of a college education today
• 48:32
  is almost at its lowest return. I would say it's scam in most
• 48:38
  cases. Well, just because of how much
• 48:39
  it's it's become to cost, it's not really the best way to say
• 48:44
  that as an. English major How how cost has
• 48:45
  become. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 48:47
  The value to cost ratio is way out of whack.
• 48:51
  I mean, I was an English major and, you know, getting a job as
• 48:55
  a writer was a good use of an English degree for me.
• 48:59
  And then it got that kind of got me into marketing and it got me
• 49:02
  into these trades. But if I came out with an
• 49:04
  English degree today, it's if I don't have a master's.
• 49:10
  And you're going to teach. Yeah, it's going to be really
• 49:13
  tricky and difficult, especially with AI and things like that,
• 49:16
  that are going to be able to maybe not write the entire
• 49:19
  article, but you know, a description that gets me 80% of
• 49:24
  the way there and then I can just finesse it to finish it up.
• 49:28
  You can't outsource these trades and people are going to need
• 49:33
  people that can put two bricks together and can put 2 tiles
• 49:37
  together and can build A room. I mean, my skills as a as a
• 49:42
  builder of any kind I can, I can get you in a building or a lean
• 49:46
  to that's going to keep you dry for a night or a week.
• 49:50
  It's more than I can. Do, but you're not going to live
• 49:51
  in that, right? I mean these these they're I
• 49:55
  mean they are Craftsman. They are they are artists in
• 49:57
  some senses. You know, it's really cool.
• 49:59
  It's and that's it's amazing to watch these guys do their and
• 50:05
  it's not all guys, but it's amazing to watch skilled
• 50:08
  Craftsman for me to do their work.
• 50:10
  It's amazing so. Do you think it's going to boom
• 50:13
  because there's such a high demand and everyone's been
• 50:15
  taught to go to college and do the tech thing.
• 50:17
  And you know which I agree. That was my generation was like
• 50:20
  it it was almost like if you didn't go to college, you were
• 50:22
  screwed. Yes.
• 50:23
  I mean, that was like the mentality.
• 50:24
  It's like you got to go to college, you're gonna be a
• 50:25
  loser. And it was like really like, and
• 50:27
  now it's just not the case. You could go start a business,
• 50:30
  you could become tradesperson, you could go to vocational.
• 50:33
  There's so many other options and at the same.
• 50:34
  Time. Well, those options were there
• 50:35
  when we were young. Yeah.
• 50:37
  I mean, I'm older than you are, so they were certainly there
• 50:39
  when I was younger, but I was dissuaded from.
• 50:42
  That's what I mean from doing anything.
• 50:43
  It's not that they weren't there.
• 50:44
  It's just like and yeah, and, and being an entrepreneur and a
• 50:46
  business owner that really, I never heard anybody talking
• 50:49
  about that. Yeah.
• 50:50
  I mean, you may grew up in a family business, maybe a little
• 50:52
  different, but but for me it was like if you did trades or
• 50:55
  anything else, it was like, what are you doing with your life?
• 50:57
  You got to go to college, you got to get a that's your
• 50:59
  opportunity, That's your golden ticket.
• 51:00
  Yeah. And then?
• 51:01
  It's like now in some cases it was right.
• 51:03
  Yeah, you could. You could trade that degree in
• 51:05
  or not trade it in, but you could you could lean on that and
• 51:07
  leverage that into a position somewhere.
• 51:09
  You can get access to a company because you had a bachelor's
• 51:11
  degree. Correct.
• 51:12
  But now I think people are starting to say, well, it's kind
• 51:14
  of meaning less and it's costing more.
• 51:17
  Yeah. And so it's like doesn't make
• 51:18
  now people are evaluating them. I like how you put the
• 51:20
  separation between meaning and the word less, right.
• 51:24
  You didn't say it was meaningless.
• 51:25
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not that.
• 51:26
  No, no, no. But it definitely does mean
• 51:28
  less, I think. For sure.
• 51:30
  And like you said, like anything, you got to weigh the
• 51:33
  pros and cons. You got to weigh kind of your
• 51:34
  ROI. What am I going to get from
• 51:36
  this? Just like we would do in
• 51:37
  business. We're not going to spend 5100
• 51:39
  grand and go, wow, if it doesn't work, whatever, whatever, right?
• 51:42
  We're going to go, alright, I'm spending 50 grand, fine, what am
• 51:45
  I going to get from this or what's very likely to happen
• 51:47
  because of this, the other examples?
• 51:49
  Of this well, not only that, four years of my life too, at
• 51:51
  least. Yeah.
• 51:52
  Exactly. It might be 6 years.
• 51:53
  Exactly. It's a massive time commitment
• 51:56
  and money and all this stuff. And for you, I mean, if you're
• 51:58
  doing something like that, you should be able to get out and do
• 52:01
  something incredible right away and have, you know, guaranteed
• 52:04
  jobs almost or have some type of highly valuable skill set.
• 52:08
  You know, even like the military.
• 52:10
  I think going four years you probably come out with a lot of
• 52:12
  skill set, experience and life changing type opportunities.
• 52:15
  Yeah, I don't feel that same way about most colleges.
• 52:18
  Well, yeah, there I would agree with that.
• 52:20
  And I went to college, and so did I.
• 52:23
  A bachelor's in corporate communications and.
• 52:24
  Right. Well, that's what you're doing
• 52:26
  right now, I mean. I guess you were communicating
• 52:29
  to corporations. I mean, everyone's communicating
• 52:31
  so I guess. That's I'm amazed at how poorly
• 52:34
  I communicate even after I've been doing it for 2022 years
• 52:37
  professionally. Actually more than that, like 40
• 52:39
  years professionally and I'm still horrible at it.
• 52:44
  Yeah, it gets me. So I was at a, a Mason
• 52:49
  association, one of the masonry associations, they have a, they
• 52:53
  had a trade show 2 weeks ago. That was the show I was at.
• 52:57
  It's called the world of concrete.
• 52:58
  And it's all the things that people, tools and things that
• 53:03
  they need to, to build with concrete.
• 53:05
  And so this masonry association, I think they said that we're
• 53:09
  1,000,000 Masons short of what we're going to need to meet the
• 53:13
  housing supply and demand that's coming.
• 53:16
  So that there's yeah, and, and there's opportunity.
• 53:19
  They're looking for the trades are looking for people, they're
• 53:23
  ready to put people to work it. That's exciting to me 'cause I,
• 53:27
  I think there's a lot of people out there where college might
• 53:30
  not be there. The best use of their their
• 53:33
  skill sets or their disciplines or the things that they they are
• 53:37
  interested in doing and want to get get working on.
• 53:40
  Yeah, so it's just good people have options now and you know.
• 53:43
  We had them, but they were deemphasized or.
• 53:46
  Not focused on, that's what I mean, yeah.
• 53:48
  Like yeah, you could have always done it, but it was just like,
• 53:51
  look down upon if you did anything else but go to.
• 53:53
  College. Yeah, it's not.
• 53:54
  That's not the case in Europe. Yeah.
• 53:56
  So now, now we're paired with this European company who has a
• 53:59
  completely different model on education as they come out.
• 54:03
  And the the company that we're partnered with is Austrian.
• 54:06
  So, and I'm, it's, I'm not speaking for all of Europe, but
• 54:09
  they have a very disciplined system where, you know, you're
• 54:12
  starting to work in the area that you're interested in after
• 54:17
  like your second year in high school.
• 54:19
  That would be our equivalent. See, that's so good.
• 54:21
  Yeah, it's great. And then you can find out for
• 54:24
  success. Yeah, they're teaching them like
• 54:26
  you kind of go into like a logistical route or an
• 54:29
  engineering route or a product development route or a, you
• 54:33
  know, all kinds of different ways that we don't think about
• 54:37
  education here. Well, my kids, I have two
• 54:39
  daughters, 12:00 and 9:00 and yeah, 12:00 and 9:00.
• 54:44
  Had to double check that, but this summer they're gonna be
• 54:47
  little summer interns for me. They're gonna work.
• 54:50
  In the business and I'm gonna teach them about running a
• 54:52
  business I'm gonna teach them about marketing, sales, creating
• 54:55
  content and it's not to like push them into what I do I want
• 54:58
  them to do whatever makes them happy.
• 54:59
  I love them and want them to pursue their passions or
• 55:02
  whatever they're interested in. But it it's like I look at that
• 55:04
  like that's an opportunity for them to really learn things and
• 55:07
  build skills, skills and decide is this something I'm interested
• 55:11
  in or is it not? And maybe next summer they try
• 55:13
  something completely different. Yeah, they'll make a little bit
• 55:15
  of money, you know, and they'll put in the bank account, We'll
• 55:17
  invest, I'll show them how to invest a little bit of money and
• 55:19
  save some money. And I think it's going to be an
• 55:20
  incredible opportunity and we'll be able to bond through it and
• 55:23
  have fun together. I think you will.
• 55:24
  And I think that's more like the education that I think is as
• 55:28
  beneficial as your hands on. You're doing something, you're
• 55:31
  building a real skill. It's not theory and pie in the
• 55:34
  sky type. Stuff and it'll come back, you
• 55:37
  know, years later, maybe like the thing that I did.
• 55:39
  Oh, this is kind of like that thing, Dad.
• 55:42
  Oh, I've seen business plans, I've seen strategy.
• 55:45
  I know how to think or, you know, apply simple matrixes or
• 55:50
  simple business tools. Most of the tools I use in my
• 55:53
  personal life I stole out of the business, out of the business
• 55:57
  world because we're very good at measuring things in business.
• 56:00
  We're not so good at measuring things for ourselves.
• 56:03
  That is a good point. Well, Speaking of family, you're
• 56:07
  in a family business. Yes, Sir.
• 56:08
  What is running a family business like?
• 56:12
  It's great. I'm third generation.
• 56:15
  The second generation there was no like direct leadership
• 56:20
  involved. So in like my father and my
• 56:24
  brother is the president, I'm the VP of sales and marketing.
• 56:27
  Our father was a lawyer and not like a corporate lawyer.
• 56:32
  He's a defense attorney in Chicago and our one of our
• 56:37
  cousins works in the business. His father was a dentist.
• 56:40
  Oh wow, so they it separated like it kind of skipped so.
• 56:43
  My my grandfather didn't want his kids going into the trades.
• 56:46
  Interesting. He wanted them to be
• 56:48
  professionals. There we go.
• 56:50
  So there's a surgical nurse, there's two dentists, there's a
• 56:53
  lawyer. Yeah, so we had to go outside
• 56:57
  the family to to get a couple of leaders while there was nobody
• 57:01
  inside the family that the family was still the owners, but
• 57:05
  we didn't have the skill set in house to be able to run it.
• 57:10
  So, you know, when I was growing up, it wasn't like the be all
• 57:14
  and end all around our house. I was the son of an attorney.
• 57:18
  I wasn't the son of a tool manufacturer.
• 57:21
  Right. So I went off and did my own
• 57:24
  thing, and my brother went off and also became an attorney just
• 57:26
  like his dad did, right? Which is pretty typical.
• 57:31
  Yeah, that is. Yeah.
• 57:33
  So I went and learned marketing at A at a $8 billion company at
• 57:37
  the time. That's the one that had 5000
• 57:39
  employees and my job was making communication tools for that
• 57:42
  company. So I learned marketing and
• 57:44
  marketing communications there and then I kind of got to the
• 57:49
  point in that company where I wasn't going to go any further.
• 57:51
  So I left and my family company said, hey, could you come in and
• 57:55
  evaluate the marketing that we do and maybe tell us where we
• 58:00
  could spend our time and energy and efforts better?
• 58:03
  And I said, yeah, sure. So I came in and I took a look
• 58:05
  at what they were doing and I was like, Oh my gosh, not only
• 58:09
  do I know or I see some areas that could use and some
• 58:13
  improvements, like I know how to do that stuff too, because I've
• 58:16
  spent 12 years at this other company.
• 58:18
  I said I've got contacts and creation abilities and my
• 58:23
  brother had already been at that company for a little bit.
• 58:25
  So they offered me a position. And then so I was working with
• 58:31
  my brother and my father was the attorney for the business, but
• 58:35
  he wasn't really, you know, he wasn't the president of the
• 58:38
  business or anything like that. So we were working for somebody
• 58:40
  else and that was, it was a, it was a difficult dynamic, right?
• 58:45
  I'm working with a, a person that had been not only one of my
• 58:48
  greatest supporters of life, but also one of my biggest rivals
• 58:52
  because he's my, he's, he's old. He's a year older than I am.
• 58:54
  So, you know, we were competing throughout our whole lives and
• 58:58
  our father was in charge. Like that was it.
• 59:01
  He was in charge when we were growing up.
• 59:05
  But here in business, I mean, I've had 12 years of marketing
• 59:08
  experience at a $5 billion company where I was learning how
• 59:12
  to do these things. And so I had an expertise that
• 59:16
  my father, the attorney, did not have at all.
• 59:20
  And, you know, I would be like, hey, we should be doing this
• 59:24
  sort of thing. And they're like, well, we've
• 59:26
  never done that before. And I was like, well, we're
• 59:29
  going to have to do this now if we want to.
• 59:31
  And it's not just me, right? It's, and it's not just my ideas
• 59:35
  here. I'm not trying to turn this into
• 59:36
  myself or, but I brought a different level of perspective
• 59:42
  into the conversation and it became a working relationship
• 59:46
  where some of our personality differences really started to
• 59:55
  come into focus. And one of the people that we
• 59:58
  ended up hiring to, to be a consultant for us came in and he
• 1:00:02
  said, you know, Jude, you and Aaron are are really very
• 1:00:07
  similar in some ways. But you're very different than
• 1:00:10
  others. And, you know, we were very
• 1:00:12
  similar in how we treated people.
• 1:00:13
  We were very similar in our ethics and our communication
• 1:00:17
  style was pretty similar. Whereas I had a much higher risk
• 1:00:22
  tolerance and my brother has a very low risk tolerance.
• 1:00:27
  And when I went back to reflect on that, I think we have those
• 1:00:30
  risk tolerances because I have a brother that has a low risk
• 1:00:34
  tolerance because I know and trust him and he knows and
• 1:00:39
  trusts me. So he can let me be the gas.
• 1:00:45
  And I know that if he's saying we need to put the brake on,
• 1:00:49
  we've got to put the brake on. And I don't think we would have
• 1:00:51
  developed that way if, you know, if I'd been on my own or if he
• 1:00:54
  had been on his own, which was, you know, that leans into our,
• 1:00:59
  our birth order as well. And all the, all the siblings
• 1:01:03
  stuff too. But it was, it's really been
• 1:01:05
  interesting to me to have a family dynamic that is now
• 1:01:09
  turned into a, a working relationship that's in in our
• 1:01:12
  case, I think it's extremely healthy.
• 1:01:14
  It's hasn't been for every generation of my family in this
• 1:01:18
  family business, but I think ours is, is working really,
• 1:01:21
  really well. Do you guys hang out a lot?
• 1:01:23
  No, no. No talk on the phone or is that
• 1:01:25
  business at work? Mostly at work, yeah, Yeah, I
• 1:01:27
  mean, we like. To say you just had the, I would
• 1:01:29
  imagine a lot of your conversations just like have to
• 1:01:31
  naturally do with work. No way.
• 1:01:34
  We we both got kids, they're about the same age and stuff
• 1:01:36
  like that. So there's definitely those
• 1:01:38
  sorts of things that we're talking about.
• 1:01:41
  Are any of the kids, yours or his in the family business?
• 1:01:43
  Or we have a one of our nephews, our cousin's son is in the
• 1:01:47
  business. We have a.
• 1:01:48
  None of your guest kids. No, I've got, I've got my, my
• 1:01:51
  first child is going to be a occupational therapist like her
• 1:01:57
  mother, who's a physical therapist and my son's teaching
• 1:02:00
  English and, and France. So maybe at some point, but not
• 1:02:04
  currently. And my brother's children,
• 1:02:07
  really, really talented kids, fantastic at sports and things
• 1:02:12
  like that. And they've gravitated more
• 1:02:14
  toward athletics and things along those lines.
• 1:02:17
  Maybe they'll skip another generation.
• 1:02:19
  Like it could. Yeah, it could for sure.
• 1:02:21
  It's. Interesting, because you think
• 1:02:21
  about, man, you got this family business, like would you be
• 1:02:24
  interested in in going into it? But maybe because you're around
• 1:02:26
  it all the time, you're kind of like, I want to do my own thing,
• 1:02:28
  you know? Yeah.
• 1:02:29
  For sure. I'm really glad I went somewhere
• 1:02:31
  first because when I came in it was I had a level of
• 1:02:37
  professionalism. So nobody really thought I was
• 1:02:40
  being handed anything. And I was contributing with
• 1:02:45
  outside ideas from the very, very beginning, which was
• 1:02:48
  really, I think healthy for the organization and for me.
• 1:02:52
  And I was able to kind of see like, Oh my gosh, everything
• 1:02:57
  that I've been able to achieve in my life has come from what my
• 1:03:01
  family has provided. My father in particular and my
• 1:03:04
  mom for sure, but my grandfather also, and this business that he
• 1:03:08
  put together. And I was like, holy cow.
• 1:03:10
  And then as the more I learned about this industry, it's, it's,
• 1:03:13
  there's a ton of family businesses and this, you know,
• 1:03:18
  all the builders, it's sons of builders, it's grandsons of
• 1:03:21
  builders, it's brothers, it's cousins.
• 1:03:23
  It's, and then, you know, somebody gets hurt and they
• 1:03:27
  can't build anymore and they go to work for a supplier and then
• 1:03:32
  they buy the supplier out. And now their family is gone
• 1:03:34
  from the building trade. My great grandfather was a
• 1:03:37
  bricklayer. His son started this company.
• 1:03:41
  And so you know it, there's a lot of family involved in, in at
• 1:03:45
  least in the trade area of, of what we do and what I do.
• 1:03:49
  Do you guys plan to sell a company one day?
• 1:03:51
  There are no plans currently to do that.
• 1:03:54
  But if someone give you a great offer.
• 1:03:55
  Yeah, you know, it's not going to be up to me so.
• 1:04:00
  Well, certainly you'll have. I'll have some say for sure.
• 1:04:03
  Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
• 1:04:05
  I don't know. I really don't.
• 1:04:06
  We don't think about that currently too much.
• 1:04:09
  That's probably. A good thing.
• 1:04:10
  We're, well, we're definitely coming to the point in our
• 1:04:13
  careers where we have to start thinking about what's next.
• 1:04:17
  So we definitely think there's enough room in the marketplace,
• 1:04:20
  right. Yeah.
• 1:04:21
  There are so many businesses that are being consumed by LLC
• 1:04:27
  or not LLCS, but venture capital there are.
• 1:04:31
  Especially in the trades area, in general there are eating
• 1:04:34
  companies. All the tool companies are
• 1:04:37
  consuming other tool companies. And even consumer facing, you
• 1:04:41
  know distribution like concrete companies and this and that.
• 1:04:43
  Yeah, yeah, it's kind of wild. I think what they're seeing is
• 1:04:46
  the opportunity like we talked about, I think they're seeing a
• 1:04:49
  big demand, a little bit of a shortage in supply come in these
• 1:04:53
  companies. A lot of them are family run, a
• 1:04:54
  lot of them like don't have. Business, right where their kids
• 1:04:57
  go out and do something different.
• 1:04:58
  Their kids want to be an artist or an engineer and they're
• 1:05:01
  they're selling construction tool supplies.
• 1:05:04
  All right. I think it's great stuff.
• 1:05:07
  It's so much fun and it's so interesting because of all those
• 1:05:10
  stories that come together, but. What's your plan the next 1020
• 1:05:14
  years? What would you love to have
• 1:05:15
  happen? I would love to be able to.
• 1:05:20
  That's a long time. One, it is a long time 1, but
• 1:05:22
  it's it's a fair question. I think I, I know that my
• 1:05:28
  marketing skills are quickly falling out of usefulness,
• 1:05:35
  right? I'm print marketing and writing
• 1:05:38
  and, and the, the need for those is less today.
• 1:05:42
  And so one of the one of the moves from your very first
• 1:05:44
  question that we put in place was, you know, there's a guy
• 1:05:48
  almost 15 years my junior who is now the head of our marketing.
• 1:05:53
  Department, I think I. Talked for both brands, Ben.
• 1:05:55
  Ben, yeah. Ben Yeah.
• 1:05:56
  Ben's, he's from Austria. But because we're working
• 1:06:00
  together and we work together so closely, we think, you know,
• 1:06:02
  he's going to be good for both brands, not just the he was
• 1:06:06
  focusing on the Austrian brand, wanted to do some things here in
• 1:06:10
  America with that Austrian brand.
• 1:06:11
  The Austrian brand is a little European in its approach to
• 1:06:15
  things and Ben is very interested in doing things more
• 1:06:20
  the way we kind of do things in America, which is a little less,
• 1:06:24
  it's a little more aggressive. And so in order to, you know, a
• 1:06:32
  kind of give Ben some things to, to do and work on, not to do and
• 1:06:35
  work on, he's got plenty to do and work on.
• 1:06:38
  I want to let him do some of the things he wants to do with our,
• 1:06:41
  with the, the US, you know, Kessen brand and hopefully get
• 1:06:45
  some good successes there so we can start doing some of those
• 1:06:47
  things with, with both brands. Yeah, good stuff.
• 1:06:51
  Yeah. Well, I, Jude, I really
• 1:06:53
  appreciate you coming on the show.
• 1:06:54
  I I told you before we got on, you guys didn't hear this
• 1:06:56
  because we weren't on air, but I was like, can research and look
• 1:06:58
  it up LinkedIn and trying to find a bunch of stuff.
• 1:07:00
  I had a hard time finding a lot of stuff about you.
• 1:07:02
  I was like, I wonder how this conversation is going to go.
• 1:07:04
  But what? Great.
• 1:07:06
  Yeah, it went great. And I appreciate being a good
• 1:07:07
  sport and going with the flow. And I thought, I think the value
• 1:07:10
  of the audience is going to get a lot of value from this.
• 1:07:12
  I hope so. I really appreciate the
• 1:07:13
  opportunity. Yeah.
• 1:07:15
  You know, I, I, I work for such a great group of people and with
• 1:07:21
  such a great group of people, it is really important to get the
• 1:07:24
  right people around. You for sure and where can
• 1:07:29
  people connect with you guys, learn more about what you do get
• 1:07:32
  in touch with you, buy from you. Yeah, I think both websites
• 1:07:35
  would be great. So there's the Kesson brand,
• 1:07:38
  which is my last name, just flipped backwards.
• 1:07:40
  So it's NOSEK, but KESON is the the Kesson brand and then Sola
• 1:07:46
  is SOLA ones.com that's Kesson and dot US is the solo version
• 1:07:52
  because they have an international presence as well.
• 1:07:55
  So that probably the best start. Cool.
• 1:07:57
  We'll link it up. We'll link your LinkedIn in
• 1:07:59
  there too. So people want to get in touch
• 1:08:00
  with they can. And again, I appreciate you
• 1:08:01
  coming on. The show, Yeah.
• 1:08:02
  Thank you. Thank you very much for having
• 1:08:03
  me. Thank you.
• 1:08:04
  Really appreciate it.