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Technology Is Your Friend: Bob Orth on Embracing Innovation in American Manufacturing · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi of
0:17
today's guest is Bob Orth, the president of Go Industries.
0:21
This company, founded in 1978, provides top quality truck
0:25
accessories and enhancements for law enforcement vehicles, all
0:30
manufactured in the USA. Using cutting edge technology,
0:34
they offer everything from sturdy grill guards to
0:37
innovative winch systems, ensuring customers get the best
0:40
in durability and customization. Now, under Bob's leadership, GO
0:45
Industries continues to earn recognition for its expert
0:49
manufacturing processes featuring fiber optic lasers,
0:53
press brakes and robotic welding machines.
0:56
Bob has guided the organization since 1984, building on its long
1:01
standing reputation to keep it at the forefront of the truck
1:05
accessory market. Among their achievements is the
1:08
launch of a modular winch grill guard system, which brings
1:13
durability and adaptability to trucks across the country.
1:18
Bob's background includes overseeing new product
1:21
development and operations, making him a key figure in the
1:25
company's success story. He prides himself on fostering
1:29
innovation through advanced production methods.
1:32
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2:05
All right, back to our guest today, the President of GO
2:08
Industries, Bob Orth. I appreciate you making the time
2:11
to Share your story today. Absolutely.
2:13
Thank you for having me. So, Bob, you've been at the helm
2:17
of Go? For over. 40 years, which is
2:21
simply incredible in today's day and age.
2:23
Is this a family business? How did this first start?
2:26
It is it's and being at the helm is is.
2:31
It wasn't always me because my father started the company when
2:35
I was in college. I was a freshman in college and
2:39
my father was a salesman. He was a good salesman.
2:42
He was the type of person who it's kind of the life of the
2:44
party. You could tell good stories.
2:47
And he had had seven or eight different jobs when I was in
2:51
high school and different sales jobs.
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One of the jobs he had was to sell an item that would take a
2:59
pickup truck and turn it into a dump truck.
3:02
And I remember coming home and asking dad, why would anybody
3:04
want that? And he goes, well, pig farmers
3:06
want it so they can dump all their pigs out of the out of the
3:09
back of the truck. They can get him out of the
3:10
truck. I thought, oh, that's kind of
3:11
interesting. Anyway, he eventually one day he
3:15
was in the office and there's a man there trying to sell the
3:19
owners of the company metal, a piece of metal that would go on
3:23
top of the tailgate. And the owners looked at it and
3:26
said, we're not interested. And so the man left.
3:29
My dad had met the man when he passed one out.
3:33
About six months later, my dad parted ways with that company,
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but he remembered this guy with all these tailgate protectors.
3:40
So he called him up and the the guy said, I've got several
3:43
hundred of them. I don't know what to do with.
3:45
I can't sell them. And so my dad said, well, will,
3:49
will you take an offer on him? He says sure.
3:51
So he he gave him a price. He bought them all.
3:55
And my dad was always in automotive.
3:58
He knew all the dealers in the Dallas, Fort Worth area, in
4:00
Houston, Oklahoma City. And he went around, he sold all
4:03
those things in two weeks. How could he sell one the the
4:09
other guy could? He knew where to go with him.
4:12
He knew the market for automotive products, but then
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once he got done with that, he didn't know very much or
4:20
anything about manufacturing. So he needed to find somebody to
4:24
build the product for him. And Long story short, he
4:27
eventually found some people up in Tulsa to build these tailgate
4:33
protectors for him. And eventually they, they did it
4:38
part time at 1st and eventually my dad said, OK, I'm giving you
4:40
APO for 1000 tailgate guards a month for the next three months.
4:45
Well, you quit your jobs. They said, yeah, we'll quit our
4:47
jobs and we'll do this. And they started a company up
4:49
there in Oklahoma and they, they were very successful at it
4:53
because eventually they went into other things besides stuff
4:56
for go industries. But in the meantime, my dad
4:59
added out of the products. By the time we get to about
5:02
1984, I'm halfway through a PhD program.
5:06
My goal at that time was to become a professor of
5:08
statistics. I was going to Texas A&M, which
5:10
is a very good school for statistics.
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And I, I thought I had a good future there.
5:17
But in 1984, those of you that remember that that was a year,
5:21
those years were PCs were just starting to become on their own
5:24
where they were. People were starting to use them
5:26
for things, not just experimenting with it.
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And one of the things was small business.
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So I told my dad. I said, Dad, you know, you got 6
5:33
employees. One of them was my aunt.
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And I said, you need a computer. He said, I don't need a
5:39
computer. He goes, I got, I got my cards
5:42
here. If somebody owes me money, I
5:43
have a paper clip on it. So I, I've got it all under
5:46
control. And I said, Dad, I'm going to
5:48
set you up with a computer and I'm going to go back to Graduate
5:51
School and get my PhD. And that was 1984 and I still
5:56
don't have my PT. I'm still here.
5:59
You're still working on that computer for him.
6:01
Yeah, well, it just led to a lot of other things.
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At that time, I became very serious about my wife.
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My wife was from Taiwan, and Taiwan built lots of parts out
6:11
of for automotive. So there was a connection there.
6:15
We started to import some things.
6:17
The people in Tulsa made stuff for us.
6:20
My dad's model was, I'm going to give this, you take this piece
6:25
of metal and you bend it and Weld it and whatnot.
6:27
And then you send it over to this guy and he's going to
6:29
powder coat it. And then it's going to come back
6:31
in our place and we're going to put it in a box and put some
6:34
nuts and bolts in it and we're going to sell it as our product.
6:37
That was the model and that worked for about 20 years.
6:43
But anyway, getting back to the computer real quickly, just
6:49
because I know a lot of young people might find this hard to
6:52
believe, but my father, like I said at that time, had six
6:56
employees and he tried for some reason, he paid them every 10
6:59
days. I do not know why, but that's
7:00
what he did. He would add up all the hours on
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and what we call them an adding machine.
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I believe they call them a printing calculator now.
7:08
But he'd add them up and then he'd have to calculate the FICA
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and, you know, the federal tax and look at this stuff.
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And for six or something, probably took him 20 or 30
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minutes just to produce 6 paychecks.
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At that time there was a program called Lotus 123, very similar
7:25
to what Kids News now is Excel. When my dad saw that, it was
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just like, you know, you set up a spreadsheet, everybody's got
7:34
their rate. You just all you put in is the
7:36
hours. Everything came out, you write
7:37
the checks and you're done. And that was that was cutting
7:41
edge technology in 1984. And it made a big difference for
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small business. Eventually I wrote a some
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software and then eventually packages started coming out and
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we would buy packages. And then about four years later,
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my brother came to work with us in 1988, Chris, he and I have
8:01
worked together now for almost 35 years, like maybe more than
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35 years. Anyway, he, he, I, I studied
8:09
applied math and statistics. He studied pure math, so, you
8:13
know, we might have these really interesting conversations about
8:16
π and I'd say it's 3.1415. And he said, no, it's not, it's
8:19
3.141599. Then we got another brother
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who's an airline pilot and he says, no, it's not, it's 3 1/7.
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Anyway, my brother eventually took over all the computer stuff
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and he he did a really good job because eventually when we get
8:35
to the turn of the century, we get into manufacturing and
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that's a completely different animal than just buying and
8:42
selling. So and.
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What prompted that transition into manufacturing?
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You had a pretty good business already.
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Great question because my dad did not want to get into
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manufacturing. It's a whole nother business.
8:55
It's a. Whole nother can of worms is
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what he would say. And what prompted it was we in
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the mid 80s, we were making a grill guard that was very
9:06
similar to another grill guard made by a company of Minnesota.
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They had the name and we were kind of like the, the
9:12
aftermarket brand. Well, we're both aftermarket.
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See the, they, they had the name, let's put it that way.
9:18
And they had made an agreement with my dad before I came to
9:22
work that we would have all of Texas, that would be our
9:25
territory. Well, they reneged on that,
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that, that agreement. So my dad said, OK, we're, we're
9:31
going to find somebody to make it for us.
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And it was not an easy thing. Eventually we found somebody to
9:36
make it. They agreed to sell to us and
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two other people, two other companies.
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Those two other companies, after a year dropped out.
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They didn't really know the market as well as we did.
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And they basically built this grill guard for us.
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They were in a small town called Clifton, TX, which is a
9:51
beautiful little town just 45 minutes West of Hillsboro near
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Lake Whitney, about 3000 people. And those people, they built
10:02
their two gentlemen and they had, I think they had five or
10:05
six workers. They, they, they built the grill
10:09
guards for us. But towards the end of the 90s,
10:14
they got a little greedy. They, they, they were supposed
10:16
to only make the grill guards for us, but they started selling
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them kind of outside. Few grill guards here, few grill
10:23
guards there. And we'd get calls and say, hey,
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we can buy your grill guard cheaper somewhere else, you
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know, where'd you get that? You know?
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Well, so we decided what we're going to do is we're going to
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start a shop here in Richardson. We're in the Dallas area.
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We, we started, we started the shop with one man from Germany.
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He knew a lot about welding and whatnot.
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And we calculated how much money would take to duplicate what
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they had in Clifton. And we came up with a number at
10:50
that time at $300,000. And that's for the whole set up,
10:54
like the equipment and all the tools that you need.
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To on the building tools, machines, everything.
11:00
That's one problem, though. We didn't know who the heck we
11:02
were going to get to run it, you know, and some of that knowledge
11:06
at that time, you know, it just wasn't like you'd go down the
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street and find somebody to, to run these machines.
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Well, we, we were getting pretty close to making decision
11:16
breaking ground because we wanted to replace them when all
11:19
of a sudden, August 2000, I'll never forget it.
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I, they get a call and they said these two guys are about 65.
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They said we want to retire, OK. And we, we want you guys to buy,
11:30
buy us. So I came in and talked to my
11:32
dad and my dad said, you know, well, we better buy them because
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somebody else does. We're, you know, we're going to
11:37
be out of grill guards. So we got into the car, we drove
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down to Clifton. It's about an hour, 45 minute
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drive. Talked to the two gentlemen.
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We made a handshake agreement. We'd asked them how much money
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do they want, said $300,000, which is what we figured we'd
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have to put just to get started. So it was a no brainer, right?
11:56
And we, we paid them over five years.
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They agreed to that. Because you get their client
12:00
base, you get their expertise, their tools, that you get the
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sort of the built in know how. The biggest, the biggest
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advantage was one of the son in laws of the owners worked there.
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He kind of managed the shop and I said to him, I said what is
12:13
your plan? He goes, oh, I plan to stay here
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for 20 years, you know, as long as I can.
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I said that was, that was it. I, I knew that was a good man.
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I knew he would do a good job and he did.
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He worked for us for, let's see, till till COVID.
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So he worked another 20 years. So, but that's how we got into
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manufacturing it. It kind of hit us all at once.
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And once we did our the, the, the, the place in Clifton grew a
12:42
bunch and we started the shop up here with the gentleman that
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from from Germany we started to shop up here and that that's
12:51
grown well as well too. So you've got 2 manufacturing
12:54
facilities now. Manufacturing.
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Facilities, the way it works now is the manufacturing facility in
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Clifton has our fiber optic laser to cut metal.
13:02
You know, take a, it's like a, you know, you take a sheet of
13:05
metal and you want to cut it up any which way you want any, any
13:08
amount of pieces you want to cut out of there, you can program it
13:11
to do that. And they also have two benders.
13:15
They have press. I want to.
13:16
I want to hear about the laser a little bit more.
13:19
What is the backdrop to the laser so that when the laser
13:23
isn't cutting through the metal or once it's cut through that it
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doesn't then cut through something else?
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Well, there's a grid underneath to hold the metal.
13:32
It's usually out of copper or some kind of metal.
13:35
And then I think also depending on how thick the metal is, you
13:41
can program it the laser so it doesn't go too far or doesn't
13:44
go, you know, how far it needs to go.
13:47
Interesting thing about the laser, when we bought Clifton,
13:51
they're really, lasers weren't really a big thing.
13:55
You could get lasers that were run off of gases and whatnot.
14:00
They're very complicated machines, very expensive
14:02
machines. So we didn't want to buy that.
14:04
So what the laser was mostly used for in the beginning was to
14:08
build the grill guard upright. The grill guard upright is the
14:13
vertical part that goes across the bumper, maybe to the frame,
14:17
and then it'll hold the actual grill on the front of the truck.
14:20
OK. The grill guards, so to speak.
14:23
Well, every bumper, every truck bumper had a different
14:26
configuration. So before you had a laser, what
14:29
you had to do was you had to make a die and you had to put in
14:33
this giant crunch brush. Boom.
14:34
It was like a cookie cutter. Just cut it, cut that metal
14:38
right out. Take that out and then you might
14:41
have to form bend it or what you know Weld on it what not.
14:44
And you got to make a different template for each grill that
14:48
you're producing. Every single truck and, and at
14:50
that time, I remember it was like $4000.
14:53
Well, you better be sure you're going to sell enough grill
14:56
guards to cover that $4000 just for the upright, just for the
14:59
upright. Today's technology, which now
15:03
they have fiber optic laser. As a matter of fact, we're on
15:05
our third fiber optic laser. You, you simply program it and
15:09
tell it how you want to cut it. And and if you if you got like
15:12
50 of this part and 10 of this part and can you fit them on
15:16
this sheet, it'll figure out the most efficient way to put all.
15:19
Those in the math for you, that's great.
15:21
So that that's one thing that I think is real important to
15:26
anybody in in, in small businesses.
15:29
Technology is your friend and you got to You got to embrace it
15:31
and you got to use it because it may be your only edge against
15:35
competition. So tell me more about the tech
15:38
that you guys have. I cut you off as you were
15:40
starting to describe some of the other tools.
15:42
Oh, well, because the grill guards that we make were made
15:47
out of round steel tubing. We have tube benders.
15:52
And a lot of those tube benders, well, we've got two of them, but
15:56
a lot of tube benders are what we found were in Southern
15:59
California because they were used in the defense industry.
16:02
And OK, so the tube Bender takes a piece of tube and it bends it.
16:07
And then you can put something inside the tube called the
16:10
mandrel. So then when it bends, it won't
16:12
crinkle. That may be important if you
16:14
want that, that look, some people don't care, depending on
16:17
what you're bending. But The funny thing was when we
16:22
bought Clifton, they had a very simple tube Bender and they'd
16:25
bend one bend at a time. Now our grill guard, some of
16:29
them had 14 bends. So you take this piece of metal
16:33
and you'd bend it and then maybe you'd do that 50 times and then
16:36
you'd make the Becks bend and they put it in and they'd do
16:38
that 50 times. And then when they, they got all
16:41
done and they stacked it up, you could tell the difference
16:44
between all those different grill guards because there's,
16:46
you know, just a little difference.
16:48
And one of those bends would make a difference on how the how
16:50
the grill guards would look. It wasn't enough that when you
16:53
put it on the truck, it wouldn't fit.
16:54
It would fit, but they just were not identical.
16:58
When we got eventually we got CNC tube benders which you could
17:02
program. You stick one stick sheet, 112
17:04
foot stick of tubing in there and it goes through and it bends
17:08
12 different bends and every single time you get the same
17:11
part. That's a technology I've seen in
17:14
my lifetime, which is pretty amazing actually.
17:17
So we also have punch presses and press brakes, press brakes,
17:21
basically tape. They're they're just a thing
17:25
that goes up and down and you put the metal in there and it
17:27
bends it. So all they do is they go up and
17:28
down. But you you can have different
17:29
kinds of tools to make it bend differently so.
17:33
So give us an idea with with all these different tools.
17:35
Obviously in in the examples, we've been talking a lot about
17:38
the grill guards. What else is it that you guys
17:41
are known for? Well, we once we got all those
17:47
tools and machines, we realized we don't have to just make truck
17:50
accessories. So we started to make other
17:52
things. We've made projects for the
17:58
cable and wireless and cable and wire industry where they have
18:01
these giant reels and they hold lots and lots of wire.
18:05
You could, it's hard to believe this, but even though in any
18:09
major city like Dallas, Houston, you know, I'm sure New York,
18:13
whatever LA, they have warehouses that are just full of
18:17
all kinds of cable and not just one.
18:19
They might have a dozen warehouses throughout the city.
18:21
They have different kinds of cable, whether it's coax cable
18:25
or telephone wire or who knows what.
18:28
And they've got spools and spools and spools of this cable.
18:31
And somebody wants to build a building or something and it
18:33
says, well, I need 100 feet of this, 1000 feet of this and
18:36
they'll just spit it out and sell it to them.
18:38
Well, they need, they need, they need several things.
18:43
They need the spools which we can we built for some people and
18:47
they need rack system to hold the spools because otherwise you
18:50
just get a bunch of spools sitting all over the warehouse
18:52
and that's not very efficient. And then there's some other
18:55
machines that simple machines we make that can help, you know,
19:02
store the wire or cut the wire or whatever, whatever they need.
19:06
So that that's one of the things.
19:08
That we do. You guys do enhancements for law
19:10
enforcement vehicles too? We do, we do law enforcement,
19:14
most of it is stuff that we built for pickup trucks and we
19:18
kind of adapted for the, the police cars and whatnot.
19:21
So we we built a number of things for police vehicles, gun
19:25
racks, the grill guards, of course, push button, push
19:30
bumpers and. What's a push bumper?
19:34
Well, it's pretty much a grill guard, but the the the ring
19:36
doesn't go around the headlights.
19:38
It's just the it's just like the two uprights and two tubes in
19:40
the middle. And the point of a grill guard
19:43
exactly is what? Like is it just to protect that
19:46
grill from it's like bumping into things?
19:48
Front of the car? Yes, it's to protect the front
19:50
of the car. There's people in farming
19:56
communities that like to have grill guards 'cause maybe
19:57
they're on a ranch where there's lots of animals.
20:00
They don't want to hurt the animals, but they don't want the
20:02
animals to run into the. The car or the truck, we've
20:05
gotten letters from people in different parts of the country
20:07
that you know, they got hit by a moose or they a deer or
20:11
something. And if the deer, if the grill
20:12
guard wasn't there, it would have done thousands and $1000
20:15
worth of damage. So that that that's really the
20:20
main use of the grill guards sometimes to push other
20:23
vehicles, you know, you could use them for that as well.
20:26
So like like a law enforcement vehicle would like a law.
20:28
Enforcement vehicle. That's right.
20:30
That's right. You guys came up with something
20:32
the winch grill guard system for trucks.
20:36
Can you explain what that is and where the inspiration came from?
20:40
Well, we, as we got known for grill guards, a number of winch
20:44
companies realized that they could sell more winches if they
20:49
had a grill guard to go with it. So they would call us and say,
20:53
can you make a, can you make a grill guard for our winch?
20:55
And so we made grill guards for winch companies and we still do.
21:00
And then we realized that some of some of the, some of the
21:07
trucks now, particularly the medium duty trucks, the way the
21:12
the hood opens, the, the front grill is actually attached to
21:16
the, the hood. So it opens.
21:19
Thus, if that, like if this was your grill on the front of your
21:23
truck, it's normally the hood would open like this, right?
21:28
But now the grill is attached to that, so the whole thing opens
21:32
up. So why does that make any
21:34
difference? Well, the grill guards we have,
21:37
if you had that, the regular stationary grill guards, we just
21:40
bolt it to the frame or to the bumper.
21:42
That would be in the way of opening up the hood.
21:45
So you couldn't open the hood. So we designed a grill guard
21:47
that would open up front wise, little Cotter pins open up and
21:52
then you could get the whole whole hood and grill up and you
21:59
can get in there. So so in this system the the
22:03
grill is coming up with the hood.
22:05
That's right. That's right, but I'm guessing
22:08
that the grill is pretty heavy it it's not causing damage to
22:11
the edge of the hood as you're pulling it up.
22:12
No, no, because a lot of those are are, are plastic.
22:15
A lot of those grills, if you look at the they, they can get
22:19
them Chrome plated and they they look like metal, but a lot of
22:22
them are plastic. A lot of them are pretty light.
22:26
Oh, I just had assumed that this was some kind of heavy duty
22:28
metal that you know is going to withstand the impact.
22:31
Well, our OK, we're talking about two different things now.
22:34
I'm talking about the grill that comes with the truck.
22:38
So if if you have a. And so when you open the hood,
22:46
is are both grills going up with the hood?
22:50
Just the OEM grill go got it. And that's, that's all we have
22:53
medium duty trucks. So, so if you have a grill
22:58
guard, our grill guard, which is made out of metal, if it's
23:01
attached to the bumper or to the frame, it's stationary, it's not
23:05
moving. So if you try to open this thing
23:08
up, it'll wind up hitting the the grill guard.
23:11
So we, we designed a system so that the grill guard would open
23:16
itself. I mean, you can move it, it's on
23:18
a, it's on a pivot point, you can move it to here.
23:22
So. Pretty clever, I.
23:25
Shouldn't have brought pictures. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
23:32
Go ahead. Go ahead and look at it.
23:33
And I'll kind of tee up the next question here, right?
23:35
Sure. Because you were saying kind of
23:37
earlier on, you know, you met a woman who would become your
23:42
wife, She's from Taiwan. You started to source some
23:45
things from there. Are you guys still sourcing some
23:48
components from overseas? We we we do, but to a much less
23:53
Yeah, I. Mean there's certain components
23:55
you can only find in in certain places.
23:58
Right, right. You can.
24:01
Yeah, you might be. Yeah, that's true.
24:02
That is actually true because there's been some components we
24:05
tried, we used to buy from the United States, but they all just
24:07
went overseas. I would say about 1% or less of
24:12
our businesses stuff from Taiwan at one point it was 3738% back
24:18
in the 80s and 90s. And what's kind of interesting
24:21
is I remember people would call me up and they'd say, oh, who's
24:25
your contact over there? I want to get something from
24:28
Taiwan. And I said, well, you can ask me
24:30
and I'll try and get it and say no, I want to go direct.
24:32
I said no, you want your kind that you got to go find somebody
24:35
because it wasn't that easy to go.
24:37
China wasn't open up. And Taiwan is this little island
24:40
over there. And a lot of people getting
24:42
confused with Thailand, which it's not, but, but today with
24:48
the Internet that changed everything.
24:50
And that changed a lot of things, which kind of gets back
24:52
to our discussion about why we got into manufacturing.
24:55
Because the system that my dad started with where you build it,
25:01
send it to this guy to Chrome plated or powder cut it and
25:03
we'll put it in our box. It didn't work anymore.
25:06
The, the margins had been cut quite a bit from, from the
25:10
Internet. People would just go around some
25:12
of the some of our competitors now that were manufacturers of
25:17
truck accessories, buy everything from China and put it
25:20
in a box. It still looks like it's you.
25:23
They might have some part that's you must made or something or
25:25
maybe assembled in the US or something.
25:27
But but it the the Internet, it's great for a lot of things,
25:33
but for, for for manufacturers, it, it presented a new
25:38
challenge. So some of your competitors have
25:41
have gone the other direction where they've stopped
25:43
manufacturing a lot of their stuff they're sourcing from
25:46
China. But for you, it's been really
25:48
important to be almost completely 99% like.
25:54
Exact. We went exactly the opposite
25:55
way. And one of the reasons why one
25:58
of the reasons I think is, is those companies that went full
26:02
China so so to speak, they focus more on retail, they focus more
26:07
on the name. They focus very much on where
26:11
you know this, this name, I won't say any names, but this
26:14
name or that name and buy lots of magazine advertisement.
26:17
Now it's probably a lot of Internet advertisement.
26:19
So everybody knows their name. We on the other hand, we just
26:23
wanted the the wholesale business.
26:26
We're not really big into retail.
26:28
We do have a website. We do sell off that website, but
26:31
mostly what we want to do is sell to our distributors.
26:33
And that model worked for a long time.
26:35
Once again, the Internet has managed to break some of that
26:38
too. The way it worked in truck
26:42
accessories is the manufacturer would sell to a distributor.
26:45
Distributor might sell to jobbers or stores of his own.
26:49
There'll be other people that you could might buy directly
26:51
from a manufacturer, but the distributor network was pretty
26:54
strong. And when we first got on the web
26:58
with the website we made, we, we, we didn't want to sell
27:01
anything on the website because we didn't want to interfere with
27:03
what our distributors were doing.
27:05
Unfortunately, what happened to our distributors, much larger
27:09
companies than we are, they got their own brand name and they
27:13
got it made overseas. And now you're competing with
27:17
your customer, which is not a good, not a good situation.
27:21
So that, that that's just kind of some of the things that have
27:26
happened in the industry. I'm sure it's happened in a lot
27:28
of other industries. I've seen it happen in a number
27:30
of industries and I, I kind of refer to it as the flattening of
27:33
the, the supply chain or the, the distribution chain where it,
27:37
it starts to become muddled. Who's who's the brand, who's the
27:40
manufacturer? Who's the, you know, the the
27:42
intermediary? Absolutely, absolutely.
27:45
And you don't know. Sometimes you don't know.
27:48
So let's see here I got. You got a picture for us?
27:53
I think I got a picture here. Oh, hang on a second.
27:58
You know, they changed how you do the pictures, so not yet.
28:05
I'm going to keep looking and keep talking.
28:07
That's all right. That's all right.
28:08
When you find it, you let me know.
28:11
So, So what do you think the future looks like in terms of
28:14
like is it you know, still like largely through distributor
28:18
networks, is it going more direct to consumer?
28:22
Well, it is going more direct to consumer.
28:25
I think the distributors have kind of gone starting to go
28:31
through a process where the big ones are eating up the little
28:33
ones. It's harder to do what my dad
28:37
did 40 years ago because when he started, the truck was basically
28:42
a box. It was a box with an engine on
28:45
it and the big three didn't really care how it looked.
28:49
There are lots of accessories that we no longer sell that we
28:53
we sold quite a few of the, the tailgate protector in in
28:55
particular in the late 80s. One year we sold over 100,000 of
29:00
those pieces of metal that just went on a tailgate.
29:03
We don't sell those anymore because a lot of times the
29:06
pickup trucks come with rubber or plastic parts on top.
29:11
It's it's great. It's better than the metal, I
29:13
have to admit. But it, it, it wiped out the
29:15
market. There are people and we sold
29:17
some of these were called rocker panel moldings.
29:20
The, the rocker panels on the bottom of the truck would get
29:23
dinged up from rocks or what not.
29:24
And so they made stainless sheets that would fit there and
29:27
go on with two way tape. That industry is pretty much
29:30
gone because well, paints have gotten better.
29:33
The, the metals have gotten better things, things gotten
29:37
better. Of course, way back when you
29:40
might spend 10 or $15,000 for a pickup truck.
29:43
Today you can spend $100,000 for making a truck.
29:45
So you're getting a much better quality truck, but it's costing
29:49
a lot more money. But if you're spending that much
29:51
money, you're not going to want to put just anything on the
29:53
truck. The, the, the products have got
29:55
to be better. They've got to be engineered for
29:57
the vehicle. And that's that's part of the
30:01
challenge with what what we're dealing with right now.
30:04
What are some fun, new, interesting products that have
30:08
either been released recently or maybe that are coming soon?
30:13
We, we've come out with a line of boxes that get mounted to
30:18
utility vehicles. We've, we've started making
30:22
flatbeds. If you've seen a flatbed truck
30:25
that doesn't come from the, that doesn't come from the OEM.
30:28
What happens is someone has to build that bed and somebody else
30:31
has to install it onto the back of the truck.
30:36
This is this is the product that I was trying to tell you about.
30:39
You can see how, let's see how the grill guard has been pushed
30:45
forward independently of how they open up the hood.
30:48
I don't know if that's clear enough, but that that's, that's
30:53
a new product that you know, that wouldn't have existed 10
30:57
years ago. So those kind of things.
31:00
You know, for you and yeah, your family members, you've got a
31:04
strong background in math and statistics.
31:07
I, I, I wonder if how you guys kind of leverage that to find
31:13
kind of data-driven insights to, to guide the company's strategic
31:17
decisions. Well, I think a lot of that was
31:24
a couple of things. A lot of that had to do back in
31:27
the 80s and 90s with the computers because my brother and
31:31
I were able to make changes into the programs.
31:34
You know, as long as we have the, the, the, the code, we can
31:39
go in and change it and we would, and we'd fix it.
31:41
We'd, we'd customize it. And so a lot of that has has
31:45
gone away. Another thing that was
31:48
interesting is because I came to work here for the computer and
31:58
my dad was a salesperson, we didn't have some of the some of
32:06
the disagreements that I've seen other people have in their
32:10
family businesses. A lot of times the children want
32:13
to do what the dad does, which or the mom, you know, which is,
32:17
you know, honestly, that's what we all do it at some level, but
32:20
my dad and I didn't. I really wanted to focus on the
32:23
computer. I wanted to focus on importing
32:25
things from Taiwan. And, and then he, he just loved,
32:30
you know, trying to sell things, you know, he loved trying to
32:32
sell things. So we never really competed
32:34
that. And where I'm going with all
32:35
this is he also was a risk taker, a much bigger risk taker
32:40
than I am. And he, he almost broke, broke
32:44
himself before I got here. He he had an idea for Stagecoach
32:48
rails. They were made out of mahogany
32:51
and they were bolted on the back of the bed of the truck.
32:54
So he was trying to go for the Western look, you know, like a
32:56
Stagecoach. And he knew he was going to sell
32:59
just a zillions of these because this was just the greatest idea
33:03
since sliced bread, as he would say.
33:05
And so he bought $20,000 worth of mahogany.
33:09
And he had a guy hired a guy to cut him up and everything.
33:12
And of course he called all the people's head.
33:14
He had sold tailgate protection and said, hey, you want to take
33:16
10? I know you'll sell them if you
33:17
don't let me know. Well, everybody took 10, five,
33:21
whatever. But after a month, two months,
33:23
three months, six months, pretty soon they all came back and it
33:27
almost broke them. He, he, he wound up selling it
33:29
all off. So where I'm going with this is
33:33
we would have these discussions and he'd have a new idea.
33:36
And I'd say, dad, that's a great idea, let's see if it works.
33:39
He says, OK, we need to build 1000 of them to get a good
33:42
price. And I said, why don't we build
33:45
20 up? Oh no, no, no, no, you won't get
33:48
as good a price. We'll, we'll probably lose
33:49
money. I said we might lose money, but
33:51
at least we'll find out what people think about now that,
33:54
that to some people that's going to sound very obvious to the
33:58
sales type of person, the, the one who takes risk, that makes
34:01
no sense at all. But these are the kind of
34:04
discussions my dad and I would have.
34:05
And, and in the end, I think it, it benefited the company because
34:09
we both had a little bit of input on, on what we needed to
34:12
do. And, and a lot of times he was
34:13
right. And I in 2003, he wanted to make
34:17
this grill guard, which we called the Rancher grill guard.
34:20
And you know, we, we had, we were going back and forth about
34:23
do we take the time to do this or do this or whatever.
34:26
And I said, we're never going to sell that money.
34:28
He goes and he looks at me, he goes, I'll bet you within six
34:31
months we sell 300 of them a month.
34:33
And I said, Dad, there's no way we're going to sell 300 a month
34:36
of those grill guards. There's no way.
34:39
Well, I have to give my words. He was right.
34:41
After six months we are selling 500 a month, all right.
34:45
And, you know, some people just have that eye or that, but he's
34:48
not right every single time, you know, so.
34:50
And that's the benefit of the approach that you describe,
34:53
which I'll call the minimum viable product.
34:55
Like yes, you may, you're not going to get the economies of
34:58
scale. And so you may not make money on
35:01
each of those 1st 20 units that you sell.
35:04
But at least you can prove if the concept, if the demand is
35:07
there for the concept and then you can jump in with both feet.
35:11
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
35:14
So anyway, the next thing was once we got into manufacturing,
35:20
we tried to build other things. We built something for swimming
35:25
pools. It's this system where you climb
35:28
through ropes at everything and and jump in the pool.
35:32
I've got a picture I could pull off the wall real quick if you
35:35
if you want to see what I'm talking about.
35:37
I think I can envision it, yeah. Like a rope system that's sort
35:40
of strung across the pool. People can, yeah, like a little
35:43
ropes course and they can just, yeah, use that and then sort of
35:46
drop themselves into the pool. Right.
35:48
It's not our product. We build it for someone else.
35:51
But we do have an engineer on staff that can say, OK, if you
35:54
change this, we can make it better this way or it'll be
35:57
more. But do you?
35:59
I'm sorry. You have the picture right there
36:01
on the wall. You want to grab it?
36:02
Yeah, yeah, sure. Let's show everybody.
36:09
And it's starring my grandson here in the front.
36:12
Oh, that's even better. Oh, I'm glad you grabbed that
36:15
because that's different than I was envisioning.
36:17
That's cool. Yeah.
36:17
So that goes across the Olympic sized pool.
36:20
We built all that. You can see the rings and you
36:25
know they have things to climb on and all this other stuff,
36:27
but. And you could see it's a hit.
36:29
I mean, kids are lined up waiting for it.
36:31
We've installed probably. Well, we don't do the
36:34
installing. We built 8 of them.
36:36
They've gone around the world, you know, different ones, places
36:38
in the world. Hopefully we'll be sending one
36:41
to Los Angeles pretty soon. We'll see.
36:43
And where does it anchor into? Is it just?
36:45
Is it anchored like into the interior of the pool or at the
36:49
edges? No at outside past the edges of
36:52
the pool. So that's that's all another
36:56
another thing because in this. Picture.
36:57
Obviously we can't see the whole thing, but I can't see where the
37:02
close end gets anchored in. Yeah.
37:06
That's that's even further on the other side of.
37:10
Yeah, it's all the way across on the other side.
37:12
Yeah, so and they make some that just hang from the roof.
37:16
So if it's an indoor pool, you know, you could put the system
37:19
in there. We made some of those for some
37:21
pools in this area as well. So, but that's kind of one of
37:24
those fun little projects you know that you don't you don't
37:27
get to see every day and so. And so you guys can do pretty
37:32
much anything that involves this cutting and this bending of
37:36
metal in in tubular steel. Yeah, we sure.
37:40
We sure can. We sure can so.
37:43
What's something that you've wanted to try?
37:47
Haven't had the chance to yet. Well, one thing I've, I've, I've
37:51
always wanted to get into is aviation.
37:54
But in order to do that, that it requires a lot of, a lot of
37:59
certificates and a lot of time. And we've just never put our
38:01
energy into it. I always thought it'd be cool to
38:03
make parts for planes and things like that, but we we've never
38:06
we. That's kind of a frontier we've
38:08
never gone to, but maybe someday we will.
38:11
We talked for a moment about how you guys do enhancements to law
38:15
enforcement vehicles. I'm curious if you've ever heard
38:20
a story come back about a way that your product has had a
38:25
tangible impact on their operations?
38:30
No, we haven't because the way that the way that works is you
38:37
don't really talk to the departments.
38:39
What happens is there's a customizer, there's there's a
38:43
guy who we'll have 100 trucks maybe for the city of Dallas or
38:48
whatever big city, and he has a contract with the city of
38:52
Dallas. And the city of Dallas says, we
38:54
want this on it, this on this, on this, on it, this on it.
38:56
We want these radios, this grill guard this, you know, whatever.
39:00
And so then he goes and sources all those products.
39:04
So it's a very tight niche industry and you've got to know
39:11
the right people. So but we don't ever get to meet
39:14
the people who actually use the vehicles because they go to a a
39:22
person who decks out the the vehicle and then they sell it to
39:25
the city and then the city gives it to the policeman.
39:27
So I'm. Sorry.
39:28
Players removed from these guys. You know, I'm curious kind of
39:33
hearing you talk about you being, you know, early in the
39:37
curve with computers back in the 80s and telling your dad, hey,
39:41
we need to get in on this and showing him what you could do in
39:44
Lotus 123. And it blew his mind.
39:47
Where are you with AI? Is this something you have
39:50
dabbled in? Are you utilizing it at all?
39:54
How do you think about it? We, we really haven't.
39:57
I'll tell you this story. When I was 18 years old, I got
40:01
some. Some kind of got into some
40:04
program that I got to go to Utd and, and talk to professors,
40:08
which was supposed to be a big deal, you know.
40:10
And I remember talking to this one professor and I wanted to
40:14
know what he thought about computers.
40:15
And he was probably my age or maybe a little younger.
40:18
And he just said, no, I'm too old for that.
40:21
I don't need to learn it. And I could not for the life of
40:24
me understand why anybody would say that, you know, But now I'm
40:28
65 and I know the best place to be right now, the last 10 years
40:32
has probably been the website and whatnot, but I'm just don't
40:37
really want to take the time to learn it.
40:40
I'll hire somebody else to do it, you know, So I, I guess AI
40:45
is even another section beyond the web.
40:51
So I don't know if I'll ever get to that point, but you know,
40:55
we'll see you never somebody might come along with something
40:57
that'll make it easier for a person like me to to use it or,
41:01
you know, it's not off the table.
41:04
So. Is there any interest from
41:08
younger generation of the family?
41:10
There are not, I'm afraid, Go Industries is similar to a lot
41:16
of small businesses where the business started as a way for my
41:21
parents to make a living and it, it, it accomplished that my, my,
41:25
my dad, like I said, had many jobs and sometimes there are
41:28
some tough times. I even had to loan my parents
41:31
money one time for the, the house payment.
41:34
But you know, once go industry started, everything went well.
41:40
You know, things went got better and then my brother Chris and I,
41:43
who had no plans at all to work with our dad or mom or anything
41:47
like we had no plans to do that at all.
41:49
It just it just worked out and I'm glad it did.
41:52
I mean, it's been a nice ride. But then our children and my
41:57
brother, I have another brother and sister and, and their
41:59
children have all become successful in other things, you
42:03
know, and they want to go on and do other things.
42:07
My, my son is a web developer with Snapchat or you say chat
42:12
snap. I get it mixed up.
42:13
One of those two. So, you know, it's truck
42:18
accessory is just not the thing for him.
42:20
My, my, my, my brother has three daughters.
42:23
All of them are very, very successful in what they do.
42:25
They, they went into engineering programs and, and did some
42:29
really amazing things. And my, I have two daughters.
42:32
One of them's in Spain. She's married and writes music
42:35
and she's happy there. Yeah, there's Houston and she's
42:38
married and she's happy there. Nobody's.
42:41
So it's kind of, it's kind of like in the United States, we
42:44
always want our children to do better, right?
42:47
Everybody, everybody wants their children to do better.
42:49
And sometimes they do better enough that what you got ain't
42:53
interesting anymore. It's kind of.
42:56
Sad, I mean, but there's some families that they stay kind of
42:59
multi generational and at some point, you know, a lot of them
43:03
just the kids, yeah, they they go in a different direction.
43:06
They go in different directions. So and we, we, we never tried to
43:10
force anybody if they, if they're interested, that would
43:13
be very nice. But you know, there's so much in
43:15
the world you know today, so. Bob for people listening who are
43:20
like, oh, like what? You know what Bob's describing
43:23
his his capabilities sound really interesting.
43:27
Who who's kind of a good a target customer for you?
43:31
It's somebody who needs what it's somebody in this industry
43:35
or this geography. Well, it's anybody who needs
43:38
metal parts. Metal manufactured parts made
43:42
out. Yeah.
43:43
So it could be something, it could be something that they
43:51
just dreamed up and they they'd like to see it created.
43:54
It might cost a little bit of money to get it creative because
43:56
sometimes you got to make one of something to start.
43:58
It could be something where they're making or building
44:02
something out of metal parts and they got two or three parts that
44:05
they make. But really they could have been
44:07
combined it into one. And they just like to see that
44:10
happen. And that could make a big change
44:12
and on the amount of money they're making on the profit.
44:14
Or it could make the product better.
44:16
You know, it could be somebody who has an idea for well, like
44:20
these the swimming pool thing. That was somebody's idea.
44:23
And he, he got money behind him and now he's been ordering these
44:26
things and putting up all over swimming pools and things like.
44:29
That so so somebody can come to you with hey, I need a prototype
44:34
of this as well as come to you and say, hey, I want you know
44:39
hundreds of these made. Right.
44:41
Our sweet spot is like 100 to 1000.
44:44
You know, we, that's what we'd like to build.
44:46
We have done prototypes for people.
44:47
The only thing is you have to have engineering design drawing.
44:52
We have an engineer. If you don't know how to do
44:54
that, we'll, we'll charge you and, and, and make one for you.
44:57
And you can have us build it or somebody else build it, but you
45:01
can't come with a napkin and a piece of paper and here, take it
45:04
from here and let me know when you got it so, but.
45:09
Doesn't work that way. That's right.
45:12
OK, so I want to shift gears for a moment, and I'd be curious,
45:16
Bob, to hear about a serious challenge that you've overcome
45:20
in your life, whether it's something personal or
45:22
professional. Yeah.
45:24
OK, I have one, One thing if you're a small businessman, the
45:30
word lawsuit strikes serious fear in you.
45:34
And I'm going to tell you a story about a lawsuit that we
45:37
went through and we survived, but there was questions at the
45:43
time whether we would. In the late 80s, there was a
45:47
company that made sun visors, sun visor not from the inside of
45:52
the truck, but on the outside of the truck.
45:54
And we made a sun visor as well. And we decided to make one very
46:01
similar to this other company's sun visor.
46:04
Now this is a sun visor. This sun visors were made out of
46:06
fiberglass. They mounted to the top of the
46:09
the vehicle and they were to keep the sun off you when you're
46:14
driving the truck. And the company that that made
46:18
them had a patent on them, but it was a design patent.
46:23
There's two kinds of patents. There's a utility patent and a
46:25
design patent. And with a design patent, the
46:30
question is, what did he actually patent?
46:33
You know, what is the design? So we came up with a design we
46:39
thought was different and they didn't think it was different.
46:45
So they proceeded to sue us and the battle lasted.
46:51
While there's a lot of a lot of things that went on, eventually
46:54
we got an injunction against us from 1 judge.
46:57
We appealed it. We went to a federalist appeal
47:00
court where they had three judges and they overturned the
47:03
injunction. And like all things, like almost
47:08
all things in legal, it had to go to mediation.
47:12
And eventually, eventually we settled out of court.
47:14
But in the meantime, we were paying lawyers more money than
47:18
we're paying ourselves. And a lot of it had to do with
47:22
my father didn't want to give up, the other side didn't want
47:25
to give up. But they were much larger and
47:27
richer company than we were. So that was that was quite a
47:30
challenge. So we did eventually survive and
47:34
and make it through. But, you know, there's a lesson
47:37
learned. And if you're a small
47:38
businessman, you want to avoid lawsuits as best you can, so.
47:42
If you had that to do over again, would you have and, and
47:46
it was your decision. I understand your your father
47:48
was involved and you know, he wanted to go One Direction with
47:51
it. Yeah.
47:52
Would you have handled any part of it differently?
47:55
Yeah, I would have in in the the beginning he had when they first
48:02
threatened to sue us, we had made an agreement with them.
48:04
It's kind of interesting actually.
48:06
We made an agreement with them that we would pay them a royalty
48:10
for each of the ones, the sun visors that we sold.
48:14
And it wasn't that much money. And, and compared to what they
48:16
were selling, we were, you know, we were like small, small.
48:21
And so my brother and I was fine with it, you know, but my dad
48:24
wasn't, he did not want to give up the ghost.
48:27
So they defined the design as two intersecting lines that come
48:31
to a point on the sun visor at the leading edge of the sun
48:34
visor. And my dad said, well, we're
48:36
going to get out of this. We're going to make it a curve.
48:40
So now our sun visor is a different design and we don't
48:43
have to pay the royalty anymore. And I really didn't agree with
48:47
that, but my dad was determined to do that.
48:50
And that's what he did it it resulted in another lawsuit that
48:54
all that, you know, I pretty much told you the the gist
48:58
about. And in the end, he, he, even
49:01
though he had a patent on that, he had to give it up in part of
49:04
the settlement, he, he designed another sun visor that was even
49:08
a little bit more different. And that's what we sold for a
49:10
while. What's very interesting about
49:13
this whole story is you don't see any sun visors on trucks at
49:18
all hardly anymore. Part of the reason is because
49:22
the trucks in the 80s and 70s and even the 90s, a lot of the
49:26
windshield was almost vertical. So when you put a sun visor
49:30
there, it blocks the sun. Well, what's happened is a lot
49:34
of Times Now the windshields are here and now your sun visor
49:37
really isn't doing much at all. It's not blocking very much sun
49:40
at all. The other company was bought
49:45
out. It was a family company too.
49:46
They went public and they they're very successful.
49:50
And then they're bought out and now they're owned by probably
49:53
some private equity firm, but they don't.
49:56
They don't sell sun visors anymore.
49:58
Why? Why did windshields go from this
50:00
to this? If you if you look.
50:04
Functional thing like more aerodynamic or?
50:07
It could be, I don't know. I, I think, I think a lot of
50:09
things in automotive is styling. We, we, I was like, tell the
50:14
story. We like, we, we sold bed rails
50:18
that went on the back of the truck, right?
50:20
You know what I'm talking about, a piece of metal that's kind of
50:23
like, you know, just kind of like that and it's bolted to the
50:26
top of the bed so you could tie things to it.
50:29
The first bed rail we we made was one and 1/4 inch steel.
50:33
It was strong. He bolted the truck.
50:35
He could tie pretty much whatever you want to it.
50:37
Then my dad got the idea. All right, I don't know if he
50:40
got it or somebody else. We'll make 2 by 1 inch.
50:44
And they were fatter, you know, and they look better.
50:48
Didn't really do much better. You could still tie things.
50:51
You could tie more stuff to it, I guess, if you want to do it as
50:53
thicker metal, but OK, So what? That lasted about six months
50:57
because the next thing came out was round and round.
51:01
Just took the bed bed rail market by storm.
51:04
After a year, you couldn't find any more 2 by ones or one and a
51:07
quarter. Everything was round and all of
51:10
it was just aesthetics. That's all it was.
51:14
They they all did the same thing, but people just like the
51:19
looks of the round. So I I don't know for sure what
51:22
the OEMs were thinking when they changed the windshield, but I
51:24
assume it was more aesthetics. It just, it just looks better
51:27
than having a big flat sun visor off your hood like this.
51:32
It looks very square ish. Basically did away with the
51:35
market for sun visors on on the outside of trucks.
51:40
And so when you're going through this difficult period, the
51:43
lawsuit, the uncertainty, the, you know, filing the appeals,
51:46
not knowing what's going to happen, spending more money on
51:49
the attorneys than you can pay yourselves.
51:52
Opening up attorney bills. Yeah, just like probably wanting
51:57
to throw up in your mouth every time you do it, you know, Like
52:00
what, what gets you through? What got you through that
52:05
difficult, uncertain time? Like what or who could you lean
52:08
on? Well, I will say one thing and
52:12
for my dad and he was very adamant about this and it turned
52:15
out he was right. He said that company did not
52:19
invent that sun visor. He said that that was and the
52:23
reason they settled was we found Sears magazines a few years
52:29
before he filed for the patent that they were selling it to
52:33
Sears, which you have to file for a patent within one year and
52:38
that's not what happened. He decided to file it after a
52:41
couple years so the patent could have been invalidated.
52:45
Most likely. Would my dad wanted to go after
52:48
him and the lawyer told him, no, you're not doing it.
52:51
We're settling that and this is it.
52:52
You're not, I'm not going to let you go through that because it's
52:54
already been too much. But that's kind of the way the
52:57
law works. It's it's you never really get
53:00
to see a judge. Nobody ever solves everything.
53:03
How much money you have has a big difference of how far you
53:06
go. It's, but especially with
53:07
patents, so. What's Bob, what's your approach
53:12
when it comes to building your team?
53:16
You know, everybody, every industry, it's hard to find good
53:18
folks. It's hard to hold on to them.
53:21
What have you done in terms of recruiting and retention that's.
53:24
Worked well for you. So what I tell everybody that I
53:26
hire is I said I am not going to make you rich, but I am going to
53:30
make a good place for you to work, a place where you'll be
53:32
respected, a place where you'll be listened to, a place that I
53:36
hope will make you will make a home away from home.
53:39
That's the kind of employee that I'm looking for.
53:42
Now, of course there are there are exceptions for different
53:45
positions, but for most employees, I want, I want
53:49
somebody who wants to be here, who likes what they're doing,
53:52
that likes the people that are around around them.
53:55
And that to me is more important than than really anything,
54:00
because how people relate and work together is is very
54:05
important. How about daily practices like
54:10
habits or rituals that are helpful to you, Bob, and sort of
54:15
starting your day, keeping you on track, keeping you centered.
54:19
Well, you know, my wife and I go to a Bible denomination church
54:25
and non denominational church. We, we, we tend to read the
54:30
Bible every day if we can. You know, she's better at that
54:36
than I am. And we, and we try to, we try
54:41
to, you know, our mantra is to, is to follow Jesus so that
54:45
that's kind of where our heart and soul is.
54:48
That's your North Star. Yeah.
54:50
Yeah. Is that something you were
54:51
raised with or that's something you found later?
54:53
A little bit. My dad was was Catholic.
54:56
He was a disciplined Catholic. He went to Mass every every
55:01
Sunday, every day of every holy day of obligation.
55:06
He had last rites before he died.
55:08
He, it was very important to him and it was very hard for him not
55:12
to see all his children become Catholic, remain Catholic.
55:16
But that's that's a topic for another day I guess.
55:20
Fair enough, Bob. If we're talking a year from now
55:24
and you're celebrating something, what would you want
55:27
that thing to be? Oh, a successful year where
55:38
everybody worked together and we put a little money away.
55:41
And you know why? We had a nice, maybe nice
55:44
dinner, nice party together, the whole company.
55:46
That would be that would be my dream.
55:48
All right, how about the best decision you ever made for your
55:51
business? The best decision I ever made
55:55
for my business. Wow.
56:03
So my, I told you my dad was a salesperson and he, that was his
56:09
thing. I mean, he, he, he believed that
56:11
sales was the way to get ahead. Sales was what he wanted to do.
56:15
And there came a time when I had to tell him, dad, we're going to
56:19
hire this guy to be the sales manager.
56:21
And he didn't like that very much at first, but he, he
56:25
eventually accepted it and, and it was good for him because it
56:28
allowed him to do other things that, you know, he wasn't tied
56:30
down anymore, you know, so I think that was a really good
56:34
decision. I'm, I'm proud of the fact that
56:39
after seeing my dad and mom struggle before I went to
56:42
college, I'm proud of the fact that I was here from, for most
56:47
of their adulthood and I was able to help them be part of a
56:52
company that accomplished its mission in that it, it, it
56:58
provided a very good standard of living for both of them.
57:00
And they, they were very happy. They didn't have to, they
57:03
weren't stressed out. As I mean, of course you have
57:05
things in small business, things happen, things go wrong.
57:08
My dad had a heart attack in 1989.
57:11
I joined in 1984. My brother joined in 1988.
57:13
As I said, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if, you
57:19
know, if I, we didn't come, you know, I mean, he would have had
57:23
this business that was running, but nobody to run it.
57:25
You know what would have happened?
57:27
So he had a triple bypass and you know, it took him a while to
57:30
recover so. But he came back into the
57:34
business eventually after that. Oh, yeah.
57:36
I mean, he, I mean, he, he might only come for an hour or two
57:41
after his surgery or whatnot, but he, he had to be here.
57:44
He, he lived to be 88. He died a little more than two
57:47
years ago. Until the last couple months
57:50
when he couldn't leave the house, he was here every day.
57:52
And even if it was just for an hour, he'd go down and talk to
57:55
my brother in his office and tell him a few jokes.
57:58
Then he'd come down to my office, tell me the same jokes I
58:00
could hear. But.
58:05
But you knew well enough to go ahead and laugh at the
58:07
punchline. Exactly.
58:08
Exactly. Exactly.
58:10
Give your dad some purposely good.
58:11
To know my parents as an adult, I know that's kind of a
58:15
privilege. Not everybody gets that.
58:16
And I, I, I value that and I'm very grateful.
58:21
I'm very grateful. But what is something you wish
58:25
more people knew or understood about your business?
58:32
I think just some of the things we talked about, like the
58:34
technology, like the way things have changed so much.
58:37
I think I think it's, it's valuable on a lot of different
58:41
levels. Another thing we didn't talk
58:43
about was cash. I mean, people used to pay for
58:46
things in cash, you know, or you know, or checks are practically
58:50
going away now too. Everything's ACH and we've seen
58:54
that in our lifetime. You know, it's, it's just
58:56
amazing that 30-40 years ago people thought having a lot of
59:01
money was what you had in your wallet.
59:05
And most people today don't even have any money wallet.
59:07
They got credit cards or debit cards or something like that.
59:11
So or they just have this, you know, this is just their.
59:14
So that to me is I think my grandson comes up every once in
59:20
a while and I've got a whole water bottle full of coins and I
59:25
dump it out and I say we're going to roll coins today.
59:27
And I'll bet you there's lots of kids out there that never rolled
59:32
quarters or pennies or nickels. They probably don't even know
59:34
what they are, you know, So but it gives us something to do, you
59:37
know? So yeah.
59:39
So I yeah, I think the. Last.
59:41
For you, for for people to know it's, it's maybe it's not
59:44
specific to go industries, but I think there's a lot of stuff
59:47
that's just, we've gone so fast, so quickly in the last 20-30
59:51
years. I think there's a lot of stuff
59:52
that just gets forgotten, you know?
59:54
Yeah. I just have one more question
59:58
for you, Bob, But before I ask it, I want to do 2 things.
1:00:01
First of all, everyone listening today, I'm going to invite you
1:00:03
to hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app there so
1:00:07
you can continue to get more great interviews like we've had
1:00:09
today with Bob. Worth the?
1:00:14
One of the several family members and the leader of the
1:00:16
NIPCO industries. I also want to let people know
1:00:19
about the best way to get in touch with you or to follow your
1:00:22
story or your company. What?
1:00:24
What would that be? Well, we have a website
1:00:28
www.goindustries.com. It's got a lot of products on
1:00:32
it. If you want to get a hold of me
1:00:34
my my e-mail is ro2likerobertorthroandthenumbertwobecauseimajuniorsoro2@goindustries.com.
1:00:43
So that's we'll include that in the show notes.
1:00:46
So last question for you, Bob. As we look to the future, what
1:00:50
exciting changes do you see coming to the business in the
1:00:54
next few years? Exciting changes?
1:00:59
Well, there's just so many different kinds of things to
1:01:02
build. I think for for me, it's it's
1:01:04
just getting up in the morning. Note there's something out there
1:01:07
we can build. There's so many things that
1:01:08
could be built and we just need to find a customer that wants us
1:01:12
to build it. You know, that to me is
1:01:13
exciting. So I don't think that directly
1:01:15
answers your question, but that's the best I'm.
1:01:18
Just excited for more ideas to come to you, more things to
1:01:22
build. You just never know, yeah.
1:01:24
How can we use the really cool tech and the tools that we've
1:01:27
got to make something else? That's right.
1:01:30
That's right. Well, Bob, I want to be the
1:01:33
first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your
1:01:35
story with us today. I really appreciate it.
1:01:38
Well, thank you for listening. I appreciate it.
1:01:39
I think, you know, we can all learn something from everybody.
1:01:43
So I hope, I hope some some little piece of nugget
1:01:46
information got got to somebody through this podcast.
1:01:49
I know that it has, so thank you for that.
1:01:52
And folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired
1:01:55
Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us
1:01:57
today.