Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Set the stage. It's September 20 of 1995. My father is diagnosed and is heading towards hospice. My mother leaves the organization to go take care of him, and my brother in law is diagnosed with stomach something and leaves and is actually hospitalized. So I spent the last October, November, December of 1995 running the business by myself. Absolute unexpected trial by fire, right up before my dad died on New Year's Eve.
Welcome to H. Rodney talks for the superstars.
Hello.
Today we're going to take you back in time to the early nineties, a tumultuous time for the Arnold Packaging company when George Arnold passed, when I was a much younger man. And we're going to run you through some of the trials and tribulations of how to save a family business when the patriarch passes away unexpectedly. I'm Mick Arnold, president of Arnold Packaging and Arnold Automation.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: And I'm Brit Arnold, president of Tigler Construction and supply.
So if you don't mind, it's almost gonna be like, I'm gonna interview you today. Cause I even have, as much as I know about this story, I even have a ton of questions. So why don't we start from what I would call the very, very beginning? Because I think that's important context for the audience. When you were a little kid, your introduction into Arnold factory supply at that time, what did that look like for you? And talk to us about your experience coming into the plant and working with your father when you were younger.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: So we had a two parent working household, which means, and I was an only child. I had an older sister who was a step sister who was out of the house already. So I was raised like an only child. And that meant that on the other holidays, if you will, that was president's day, Martin Luther King Day. When schools were off, I didn't have anyone to watch me. My parents didn't line up a babysitter for a day, so I went to work, and it became a playground of sorts. And depending on what age I was, there was different things I did. It could be play with a stapler, which was exciting when I was younger. But as I got older, I would start to do more things, or I would start to experiment and have some exposure. I was always very fascinated by the things that moved in the plant, pork trucks, some of the equipment, and how things got made and just evolved into it slowly that way. And depending on what was going on on a particular day, I would maybe hop in the car and go somewhere with my dad. He had to make a call, or he was going to go see a customer that was a friend. Where it would have been okay to have a seven or an eight year old tagging along, I would do that. But early on, I got exposed to a lot of different things. But generally, it was in those off school days. And as I got older, I started to spend a little more time in the summer. When I got into high school, I started working there in the summer and playing golf and competitively and doing some things. But I got introduced to the company very gradually. But a lot of it was in situations where I wasn't in school. I was too young to stay home, and I just went to work with my parents.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: And reflecting now on that, that was such an important, because we started at what is four, five, six.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I was probably. I probably was in tow in first grade, second grade, third grade. I think I remember my mom generally being home or getting out early enough because she worked for the business, too, being out early enough to come and get me at noon or whatever it is. But once I went to school full time, and then, you know, when schools had those holidays, president's day or whatever those were, that's when I just started going to school. You know, Monday. Monday came like it did. And all of my friends stayed home or did whatever they did. It was just. I got up at the same time, didn't put on my school clothes, which was a uniform, and instead got in the car and went to work at 06:00 or whatever target time was with, depending on which parent I rode in with. And that's how I started to get indoctrinated. Indoctrinated to the company.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: So where I was going with that was, now, looking back, that's really when your learning and understanding of Arnold's started. And for you, it was fun, but you were still learning about the business at that time, which I think is very important to note for your story as it's progressed.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I was immersed in it pretty quick. I mean, thinking back or trying to remember. And I will pre warn, I will get some of this a little probably wrong, only I'll know.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: No one's gonna know.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Only I'll know. But. And my mom, who's listening, if not wrong, then she'll at least get to see my perspective of it or what I remember of it. So that's a.
And, yeah, as I piece it back together, like, I get these flashbacks of different spots when I was a little kid in different parts of the. The building, which was two buildings, actually, two buildings ago on Hanover street. But long answer to yes, I was slowly. I don't know if this was intentional on my father's part, but he brought me in slowly, only let me do the things that I thought was fun. I like to tinker. I was very curious. So just short of breaking OSHA rules or getting myself into a position to get, he might have really.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: I think he broke a couple usher rules.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: He broke a couple thousand between what I actually was 18. When you can do the things you're supposed to supposed to do.
But he was great about and maybe he didn't know what I was doing was great about letting me mess around and try things. I was an ultra curious kid. So to just, I mean, to be in a place with all types of equipment and anything you could think of as far as making stuff, distributing all the equipment that goes into moving things around, it was an absolute playground for me.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: I'm gonna point out parts of this where it can be so relatable to people in other ways because there's few of us who have been in a situation like you're talking about where you take over a company when your father dies at a young age, but so much of your story is so applicable in so many of our lives. And as you're talking about, I don't know if my dad intentionally let me just have fun. I'm thinking about parents in sports and like letting their kids just play for the love of the game versus drilling down on them and being so hard and how that affects kids trajectories through sports. So I'm gonna point out these little similarities that I see in other aspects of life. So. Okay, so continue. You get a little bit older. Let's go to. Do you wanna go to high school or skip ahead to college?
[00:06:55] Speaker A: No, I think I'll just do a quick stop off. Cause I tell the story a lot in my travels. I started working this summer after my 7th grade year. So that was middle school, 13. I was 13 years old. I wasn't the greatest student in the world and it was because I didn't always apply myself. I was pretty scatterbrained and did not have a very long term thought process. I was very short term oriented. And I got a c plus in math when I was in 7th grade and my father was irate.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: I mean, can you imagine? I started to cut you off, but can you imagine how.
Cause we always talk about changing education and I know you wanna do a whole podcast about this. Could you imagine if part of your education in 7th grade was going every week, going to a plant and working with machinery and learning and, like, you would have gotten a plus in that class, right?
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, probably. Oh, of course. Yeah.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: I mean, I'm just thinking of like, okay, you got a c sitting behind a desk, learning about something you didn't give a shit about. Like, what about those other opportunity experiences, what you were doing that you loved and you were exceeding or doing really well at being at the plant. Like, interjecting those experiences into education, which is what we talk about all the time and you experience.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And trying to do it just. I think that however I learned that wasn't on the radar yet. I think maybe the education system has done a little better job in that 30 years or 40 years.
It's 40 years figuring out how people learn and maybe trying to not be so stringent and standing up a yardstick that only looks one way.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Or doing.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Or doing right. So it was almost the funny. I think the funniest part about that is my penance for the c was going to the plant, which was my favorite thing to do. It's like, who fooled who here?
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Got that c and got to the plant, plan to make stuff. Got you, dad. But no, and, but, you know, I wasn't home messing around with my friends. You know, I wasn't goofing off. And listen, my. It wasn't like I wasn't chained to a stone either. And breaking rocks. I had responsibilities. You know, I learned to get more regimented. There were things that I had to do. There were responsibilities that I had. But as I recall, there were things that were safe, fun. I did clean a lot of things. I mean, that kind of sucked cleaning sawdust out of saws. I mean, that will certainly have you working harder in the first of your 8th grade year. So I did have some pretty dirty jobs and some dingy jobs. They did not let me near the dangerous jobs. But, yeah, I do recall going back to school in the fall of 8th grade with a different spring in my step and a different focus. So if there was an intended lesson to be learned there, pretty sure I learned it. I think I was able to take away at least the work ethic aspect that my father wanted me to understand or why he put me there.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: And I would imagine too, as you're going through school and not doing great and you're learning all the subjects in the back of your head, it's like, but you can make money and build a business and raise a family doing really cool things. Cause you're watching your dad do it. So I'm sure that's part of your even more so, like, oh, my God, why am I sitting behind a desk learning this when you could be doing that? I can eventually do that, which is ultimately what you are doing.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Right. And then I think the big attraction to that was the short term or the instant gratification piece of it, you know, when you could start making something now and see the finished product, you know, in the very foreseeable future. It wasn't a semester. I didn't have to wait a semester. And that's why when, you know, fast forwarding now to high school, when my father started to run me through different parts of the business, I was really able to hone in on the ones that I love. So, for example, I got my driver's license. I got my learner's permit on the day of. Right, 15 years and nine months. I got my driver's license on 16 and zero days that day. And I remember the next day, you know, we had a smaller trucking fleet and smaller trucks as part of that. We just didn't deliver as much products. We had some vehicles that you just had to be 16 to drive. So the very next day, after I got my license, we had a driver not show up. And my father flipped me the keys to a truck and said, get your ass in that truck and make this delivery of Tomahawk rocket boxes to Gainesville, Virginia. I didn't know anything. He just said, I didn't have any idea. I barely recognized the keys, let alone the truck and the boxes and where Gainesville, Virginia, was. And so we had this older gentleman that worked in our transportation department, and this is just great. I mean, I hope our younger listeners can at least picture this. So when he would tell you where he was going, he never. He would draw these maps, but every time you made a turn, he circled it, right? So he's. I remember vividly him telling me how to get there. You go down 95, and when you get to the split, I didn't know what the split was. Now I do. You go right, and he'd circle it. And you go here and you go left, and he'd circle it. Well, at the end, I had a long piece of paper that had a straight line with 16 circles on it. I didn't have any idea where in the hell I was going, so, you know, absolutely right away, sir. Jump in the truck, head down, go the wrong way at the split. Find myself down by King's dominion in Richmond.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: So I'm just driving and driving and driving. And I finally decided to pull over at the McDonald's. No maps, no nothing, right?
[00:12:08] Speaker B: I was gonna say that like, it's either you stop when we had maps, when we did have maps. Eat. You stopped at fast food or gas stations to get your directions. There's always gas stations.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Because they were the ways. Right?
[00:12:19] Speaker B: The amount of gas stations I stopped at.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Yeah. They were like, walking ways. People in there, right?
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: So I pulled into the McDonald's. And so this is 1987, right? And the woman said, where are you going? I said, I don't know. I'm going to Gainesville, Virginia, off of 66. And she said, 66? Like, outside of Washington, 66? And she pointed to the moon. I'm like, holy hell, I missed this thing by one full universe is how far away I am. So sure enough, I got going in the right direction. And my father was like, yeah. When you get to 66, when you see the crane on the left, that's when you'll know you're there. Piece of paper with 16 circles, a straight line. And I'm looking for a crane, and.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: I'm trying to drive a car.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: And I've got a truck. I've got a 20 foot straight truck. Yeah, I got a 20 foot straight truck. That's a stick. I learned how to drive stick that morning in the truck. I had no idea. I'm like, it's like, just let the clutch out slow. It's a truck. And just make your right hand turns wide.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: See?
[00:13:10] Speaker A: In 3 hours, that's what I got for instructions. So turns out I left at 08:00 that morning. I got back at 08:00 that night. 12 hours. But you did it 12 hours later. Yeah, I got back 12 hours later. And then.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: But you delivered the product.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: I did. I did. I made it there in time. I just. I had to beg the guy. Guy not to close the gate, to let me in to unload, or I would have had to come back the next day, begged him. I might have fainted. I could have been that. I was so frustrated and tired that I might have cried at 16 years old. So he lets me in, make the delivery, get back. I get back, it's dark outside. It's summer, and it's dark. That's how late I'm back. Figure out how to get the truck back in the yard, show up the next day. Of course, I'm the laughing stock of the shipping department. I come in, and all the drivers are howling. They're howling like, arnold, where'd it go, good guy? Where'd you deliver those boxes. How's Venus? And I heard everything.
None of that way to stick in. There was none of this way to hang in there. We didn't talk about commitment or team first, none of that. There was none of that stuff.
So shortly thereafter, the same guy didn't show, and there was another load of boxes that had to go down. Well, now I knew where I was going, so I hopped in the truck, took them exactly there, came exactly back straight past my father in the hall at 10:00 and he said, what are you doing here? I thought I told you to deliver those boxes. I said, I did. I'm back. He goes, holy hell at your back. Well, what I did in the process was I set the new record for delivering to Atlantic research, and now the new number was 3 hours to get there and back. And now the guys in the back were really pissed at me because they had been milking that thing and hanging out and driving around the block, maybe sleeping under the bridge. Yeah. So I went there straight, you know, went straight there and straight back. And so they were pissed. They were laughing at me on that one day, and they were really frustrated with me the next day. But, yeah, so in high school, I drove trucks, devolved into sales. I made cold calls. I had a little mini territory. And this was all part of, you know, working my way through school.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: And this was all summers.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: This was all summers. Yeah, yeah. When I was in school, I was in school. But I. But I would work Christmas break from the second. Yeah, the second I was off of Christmas break to the second I went back, whether that was college or high school, I was at Arnold's factory supplies working. So it wasn't even. And there was no discussion about. It wasn't like, you know, why don't you take a couple of days? If we, you know, if we finished on Friday, if my last day was on Friday, December 21, and we were open on the 22nd or whatever the next day was, there's just. There was no discussion. I just went to work and did until it was time to go back to school, and that was it. And then came President's day. And then came, and then came. And those days when the world was open but school was closed, I just went to work. There was no conversations about it.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: So you did this through high school, you did this through college.
Take us to the point where you graduate college. Was it a conversation with your father about if you were going to work full time at Arnold's, or were you looking at other opportunities?
[00:16:07] Speaker A: So the whole way through when we were spending time together, and I was learning the business from the inside, there was always this conversation. So we were a distributor, just like we are now, and we had manufacturers like, sure, tape and three m and sealed air and signode. And the thought was that maybe I would go to work for a manufacturer, would be, you know, why don't you get out of here for a little while and go learn how big companies do it? And some of those teachings will be valuable when you come back. You'll be better set to help this organization if you go and get that type of training. So that's what we had always talked about. What I didn't know when I got home from school, what I didn't know was my father had fought prostate cancer because I didn't come home. You know, I was playing golf in school.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Would he have told you?
[00:16:52] Speaker A: There was no if there. He was able to hide it because he went through chemotherapy and lost all of his hair. And I was just at school none the wiser. Okay.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: So. But I did. In retrospect, I realized that the conversations about me going somewhere else slowed. There wasn't that, you know, we talked about it every so often. It was really like a check in. Are you still on track day, dad? You still thinking, I'll have to put an application in at sealed air.
And it just stopped. And then at one point, he finally went so far as to say, you know, we talked about you going to work somewhere else. I said, I do. He said, I think it would be better if you just came here when you were finished with school. There's no reason to waste that time. I can teach you what you need to know, and let's not have you out of here. Let's teach you the nuances of this business, and I'll get you what you need versus you going away and coming back. And I honestly didn't think about it. I was like, okay, I was a pretty happy go lucky kid anyway.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: I don't even know if that had to necessarily do with being happy go lucky. I mean, that sounds reasonable to me. That sounds reasonable regardless of the situation.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: I think, too, though, again, this is all retrospect, but I think he recognized that his health might be failing and that he wasn't gonna have the luxury of teaching me certain things himself.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: No, sure. And that's how I was taking it. But I would say, from your perspective, if somebody said that to me, I don't think you should have been picking up on this. Could potentially be a red flag or something's.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Going on? No, no, no.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: I would've been like, okay, he changed his mind, and that makes sense to me.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Just certainly in the moment. I had no idea. No, no idea.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: So, yeah. And he said. And then I remember the exact same conversation. He said, but here's what we're gonna do. You and I are gonna open the building every day at 06:00 in the morning.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: And this was right when you graduated college?
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Yep. This is right when I get out. This is 1993 ish, something like that.
But here's what we're gonna do. You and I are gonna meet here every morning at 06:00 a.m. and we're gonna open the business together, and we're gonna spend some time doing some things. And that was very evolutionary as we got into it. And then at 730 ish, I would go do my job, which is in sales. I was an outside salesperson. I had a territory, and I was a sales guy. And then I had to be back no later than 05:00 every day. And we closed from 05:00 to 06:00, and we did that every day for, I guess, what ended up being probably the better part of 18 months. We did that, and in the morning, it was like this tutelage 101. I just, you know, I learned about nuts and bolts stuff. Right. Just in college, but still not knowing anything. And we can weave that into our education conversation, just like. Here you go. Great. I'm supposed to know all this stuff, but I don't know what an account receivable is.
Know what a payable is?
Yeah. Did I have finance classes? Sure. Did I have accounting? Sure. Did I see this thing called receivables on a balance sheet or whatever the hell a balance sheet was? Sure. But did I have any idea how it all worked together or why it mattered or how I would manage an asset called that? I had no clue whatsoever.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: A question for you, and this could be applicable to somebody that is training, whether it's a family member or not, someone who is training a younger person. I think about my uncle a lot at grasmic with Ryan. He started training him very young. And if someone's going through that process, talk to us about the important things that your dad do. Cause even I struggle with, like, if I'm bringing a young person on.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: How.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Do I create that training program? And for you, it sounds like you basically just followed your dad around. You did your job early, you were following your dad around, then you did your job, and late you were following your dad around. Did he expose you to other parts of the business? Did he have you sit with people in other roles? Like, what did that whole experience look like? Or was it a little less intentional and more just, like, put in the hours, be here, and by default, you're gonna learn a lot.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it wasn't. It does. It didn't have anything that looked structured to it at all. But I will tell you that I was very interested. So our business, like today, had a distribution part, and it had a manufacturing part. And I was just generally attracted to the manufacturing part because there was a lot of innovation. There was building, there was, you know, you were creating something, and as related to military and aerospace, you would actually create. You would actually be working with intellectual property. You would be designing things that didn't exist to get a product from point a to point b. So that intellectual property, that curiosity, and then converting that into innovation, which I had no idea what any of that meant. That's what we'd call it now was attractive. So therefore, I spent a lot of time in the plant. I followed this poor man named Mister Foos around, endlessly nipping in his heels, asking, why? Why, why? And fortunately for me, between my dad and Mister Foos, they would actually stop and tell me why, which is huge. Which is huge. So the answer to your question is? I mean, I would say I got it through immersion. There were no other tools. I couldn't watch a YouTube video on it. There was nothing that was. That had a curriculum look to it. No, there was no packaging 101 in our business. Now, you actually. There's a class you can get from Clemson called packaging 101. Right. We were learning all of that on the fly.
And you learn the business by being in front of customers, right. I mean, the number of sales calls that I had to make over the years to learn the business and our customers business, which also made me better at running our business. I got to go into the Northrop Grummans and Westinghouse and Becton, Dickinson and McCormick. I used to watch world class companies make things, and then I was adopting and bringing a lot of those practices back. Real time. We were smaller, much smaller scale. But whether it was the way they went about it, some process, I was watching our manufacturers do it. I was lucky to sit on some advisory councils young in my career, and get invited into those conversations, and those were things that I was able to bring back to the organization. But as it relates to learning the business in those years, or from my dad in my early twenties, there was nothing that had a structural look to it. And the other thing he let me do, too. Back to your question is he let me fail a lot, and I failed a lot. And I failed on some pretty public stages in front of big customers. Northrop Grumman, which was Westinghouse in those days, I made some pretty bad mistakes, did it under my father's wing. And he knew the people that I was calling on and would even call ahead and have them beat me unmercifully at times. He would call ahead and say, my boy's coming in, make it hard on him. But he let me fail, but never to the point where I could do damage. I could certainly lose some battles. I'm a businessman. Yeah, exactly. Certainly lose some battles. But he never put me in a position to lose the war or hurt the mothership in any way.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: I think the immersion piece is important, and it brings me back to a conversation that we actually had in that emerging thought leader with our younger leaders, our company's conversation about having the ability to learn via YouTube and podcasts and all these other resources that we didn't have growing up and how valuable that is. But when we got into talking about when something is proprietary to your business, how important it is to be immersed in it, to be touching, feeling, talking, and I would still argue, and I wholeheartedly believe this, and I don't think my position on this will ever change, that immersion is the best way to learn, no matter what. Being there, touching it, feeling, talking to the people. I think the rest of the tools are great as supplemental resources, and I think they can expedite your learning curve, but I don't think there is anything that will ever surpass as far as learning goes, just being immersed in it.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And if there's anything that's unfortunate about that, it's a bit inefficient, it just, in how long it takes. That's the unattractive side of doing it that way. I mean, I wouldn't change it. It was the only way. Right? Everything was proprietary. I mean, there was not nothing like YouTube or Google pulling the lid, not like pulling the lid off of it, but so many people readily sharing this information and sharing these videos and knowledge. I mean, really, I mean, the vast majority of problems that you encounter, you can find someone that shared that solution on YouTube, right? Yeah.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: The right solution probably is immersion mixed with using your other resources, technology that.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: We have, and you'd have a trusted advisor tweaking that information to make sure you got it perfectly and the greatest points out of it and that's what I had. But it took me decades and decades and decades to get in all of those different customers, to see all of that firsthand. I wouldn't trade it for anything. But if I was able to do that and then mix in some of the tools that we have today, here's what changed, though. It's harder to get in. That's the difference.
In that time and period of time people were inviting, it was a lot more social. There was a lot more relationship orientation to that sales process. So it wasn't uncommon to get a plant tour or get to spend some time in the back. That part's become tough. So if I had to choose between then where you had much easier access to the floor without YouTube, versus now less access and tools, I would take access to the floor, the old route 100% of the time, sure.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: So let's move to the point where your father was getting sick, and either you noticeably started realizing something was going on. When was that?
[00:26:13] Speaker A: That was in spring of 95. We. So I'm always interested. You pass people that just can do everything by dates. Well, I remember back in 63, like, I'm not one of those people, but there are certain events that I do know.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: Cause this episode you've been impressing, what the heck?
[00:26:27] Speaker A: It's only because these moments I'm able to compare to my age in those moments. And I know when I was born, so I'm able to come up with it on the fly, but I'm definitely not one of those people. But I do recall this. In the spring of 95, my father started this really tough cough, and it was terrible. And I remember being out to lunch with customers, and he was even embarrassed about how aggressive this cough was. So I went to the doctor, and doctor diagnosed him with allergies. This is April. Fast forward to September. And he has full blown metastasized lung cancer.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Now, do you think that had that been diagnosed, and you'll never know. So this is probably a stupid question, but I'm gonna ask it. Had he been diagnosed earlier, it would have changed his.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: I don't know. I don't know that in 1990, in 1995, technology. If six months earlier would have been enough, I think it was already well underway. And as someone my father that spent a lot of time socializing, no one knew the dangers of secondhand smoke. And he was a guy that was a big entertainer, spent a lot of times in restaurants that were so thick with smoke that you couldn't see across the room. And despite him stopping smoking decades in advance, of dying.
I would imagine that that secondhand smoke would probably be what got him. And air quality in general, being in where we are now, right in the shipyard, in the steel mill. I mean, there's a lot of acres here that are off limits for a reason. He was in and around all of that stuff. And in Baltimore, a very industrial part of the world. In that time, he definitely was breathing and ingesting some things that probably. Probably weren't so human friendly. So I don't know. I don't sit around for a minute and think, if he hadn't called it allergies, I'd still have my dad. I don't know that that was the case.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And you'd be living in the past. I mean, what's the. That's not us. That's not really our mentality.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: So, so fast forward, that was in September.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: And question for you. So when he was diagnosed full blown cancer, did you, did. Did he have sit down and have conversations with you about, I'm not going to be here. Here's what you're going to have to do.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: No, it was never. No, nor would he ever.
So what happened was my brother in law was involved in the company at the time, which was my step sister's husband, who had been with the company for a long time. Like, he was my father's right hand guy. Very different than my dad, very different than me.
He had, I don't recall, some type of a stomach issue that was pretty serious. So about the same time, he left the company. So give. Set the stage. It's September 20 of 1995. My father is diagnosed and is heading towards hospice. My mother leaves the organization immediately to go take care of him. And my brother in law is diagnosed with stomach something and leaves and is actually hospitalized. So I spent the last October, November, December of 1995 running the business by myself. Anyway, they were all still around and reaching, but nobody was in the office. I almost got this one quarter, three month, absolute unexpected trial by fire.
Right up before my dad died on New Year's Eve.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Was your dad, was he available to answer questions for you at that time?
[00:29:48] Speaker A: He was. I would go down, I remember. So there's any number of things I remember that I would go down. I don't know if it was a day of the week, but I had to take mail. You know, mail was a very important part of the business then. So if nothing else, at least twice a week, I mean, made this mail run. I was living in Baltimore City at the time, so I didn't. I wasn't I didn't live at home, so I wasn't just bringing it home. It was this trip that I made south to Savona park and took mail, and that was our check in time. What's going on? What are you seeing? How's this? How's that? And we ran through this general list of things that I would check in, and I could ask questions. And my brother in law, Andy, was, was still in the hospital, and I think they corresponded. I don't recall ever actually taking a direct download of any kind from him. But I would hang out with my mom and my dad, and he would sit there in his recliner watching whatever he was watching, and I'd spend some time with him, and then I would head back to work for the next day or two, and then we'd do this every couple of days and bring in the mail. So I did have access. I did ask to get some questions. I did get to ask questions and get some support in that way, even though he wasn't in the, the office.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: So let's forward ahead to the end of December when your dad is very ill and no longer available.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Yeah, he went downhill pretty quick. December was. Was a really tough month. We spent most of the holiday, we spent most of the Christmas week in between Christmas and New years in the hospital. And knowing him, he held on intentionally until New Year's Eve. You know, he probably had some kind of clean cut off for tax purposes or something like that. If he knew my dad, then he probably had some kind of a twisted goal about making the tax filing easy. That wouldn't have been unlike him. So, yeah, passed away on New Year's Eve of 95. And, you know, I would say, you know, I was pretty robotic at that point. I had already been robotic in the moment, just trying to make sure that, you know, the business didn't fail on my watch. And it was truly on my watch in the month of December when everybody was out. My mom was taking care of my dad, my brother in law was out. And I was incredibly robotic. I mean, I would say even void of emotion at that time, just trying to keep things from falling apart. And at least the way I felt it or experienced it, I don't know what was. I don't know what the truth was, but I knew how I was experiencing it. So, yeah, the week, the next week or so, letting everyone know and getting a funeral planned, which we had already had a pretty good head start on and having the services. And I will tell you one thing that was very. That I still remember vividly my father fought in World War Two, so that gave him rights to be buried in the veterans cemetery. And we probably had 1000 cars at the veterans cemetery. I mean, the funeral procession was so long that it had a record number of Anne Arundel county police officers that had to get it on to 97. We messed up traffic for hours in the process. People, I don't know how far certain people walked by the time they parked and snaked all the way around the veterans cemetery, but it was a massive, massive show up. So, you know, and then almost like, just like that, it was over and it was back to work, you know, and. And I just remember, you know, like, okay, here we are. My mom was back to work. That was something. And then my brother in law was back. You know, he had gotten. So we went from, you know, four to one and then back to three. So it actually got a little bit easier in the moment when I had. When I had them back, you know, and started doing just, just working on the business. Now, my, my brother in law was left initially as the president of the company. My father felt that was the most appropriate. I was only 24 years old. My mother's involvement in the company was more in the customer service realm. She didn't have some of the direct experience with a lot of the other parts of the business. So my father felt that Andy would be the one that would be most appropriate to run the business immediately following his passing.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: So you said, I thought it was interesting that you said you were a bit robotic. And just in talking to you about the experience, that's exactly what it sounds like. It's just put your head down, go to work, keep the emotions and feelings separated. And it sounds like your mom did that a bit, too. And everybody for the best interests of the company and the employees. So take us through what happened thereafter with your brother in law, because you soon took over that president role. How did that occur?
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Yeah, we, you know, the business was in decent shape. Coming out of 95, we had. I had been in the sales organization. We had a very strong sales team. We had also started on. We had embarked on bringing a new software system live, which we were in the throes of. You know, my father did recognize that we had to do some work there, had no interest, didn't want any parts of it, but brought in a systems administrator, and we added some people to help get us through it. So we were, you know, we were. We were in a good financial position immediately in 96, but it quickly started to get difficult. You know, we. We lost some salespeople to competition. Shortly after, there was a company that was buying up a lot of local distributors in the market, whether they were packaging or janitorial distributors called unisource, and they're since gone, but. And they were buying salespeople. And we lost two. Two of our three very critical salespeople to them. So that was one of the first things that I remember. It was probably only March or April when those guys left a few months after. So that was a shot that we took.
And things just continued to go along, but not so well. And I remember we continued to lose some people out of our accounting team, and we were just struggling to get the basics of the business done, the blocking and tackling, bean counting and invoicing. And I remember we got to the end of the year, Andy, who was an accountant by trade, didn't know how to use the software system. He actually didn't know how to push the buttons to close months and keep the business going. And we ultimately brought in a software. A consultant from our software company who helped us through it. And I remember coming back, this was in January of the following year. And I remember coming back in, and the consultant was sitting there at 445 in the afternoon, and I said, oh, hi. Hi. I think. I don't recall her name at this point, but let's call her Jane.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: Right?
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Because everyone is Jane. Hey, Jane. How's it go today? Well, we didn't have such a great day. We still couldn't get October closed. We hadn't closed October, November, and December. So our system was just hanging open, which also meant we didn't have financial statements from those months. Okay, well, what. What's the plan? We're gonna get back after it tomorrow. Great. Where's Andy? He left at 435. Got it. So come in the next day, call a quick pep talk. Mom, Andy and I. All right, what's the plan? How are we gonna get this done? We have to file our taxes, but we don't have October closed. So this goes on for a couple of more days, where each day I come back at 445 or 05:00 expecting progress. And we hadn't made any. So the following morning, I called a meeting with my mom and my brother in law and said, this is not acceptable. So meanwhile, I'm 27 or 28 years old. This is not acceptable. We've got to get our act together. And I remember my brother in law reached into his pocket. He pulled out his car keys. He had a company car pulled out his car keys. Pulled out his company credit cards, set them on the corner of the desk that I was sitting at, and said, I can't do this anymore, and walked out of the company left immediately that day, and at that point, left my mother and I to try to figure it out. And it was just the two of us.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: And you immediately assumed that role as part of.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I immediately assumed the role, and I just took over. Right. I mean, and I had already been doing it anyway. It was becoming somewhat evident that the company was looking more to me for answers and leadership. I didn't know at the time. I was just doing what I had been trained to do.
But, yeah, immediately at that moment, it was, all right, here we are. Where are we going and how are we going to get there?
[00:38:15] Speaker B: So I'm assuming at that point, you were at risk of a few different things. One, your father, who all your customers knew, all your vendors knew, trusted deeply. I'm sure he's gone. So you're at risk of losing some customers and vendors just based off of that trust that you had developed through the years or your father had and thinking, wow, can this 24, five, six, seven year old hand handle this?
[00:38:43] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: And then internally, you said you had lost a couple employees. But for those that stayed, and I'm sure you were starting a recruiting process, that trust you had to build or were building internally with your existing employees. And then also you have to go out and recruit heavily. So how did you keep that trust internally and externally? And then how did you recruit successfully? Cause I know you did. Cause I know a couple of the names that you brought on board. How did you do that? Being so young and having a company that was on the outside looking in potentially at risk?
[00:39:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the people that were still there at that moment were obviously drinking the Kool Aid. You know, they had enough trust, or they had enough.
Belief is probably a word that I was going to figure out and that we were going to collectively figure it out. So I think I had taken with the people that had left. I think I had taken as many shots as we were going to take in the short term with people that were in doubt of our ability to survive because we were certainly facing extinction.
And those people were there and settled, and I remember going out to the market to try to recruit and just had to tell the story.
So at that point, the business was 62 years old. Right. So it wasn't, you know, we were founded in 1933, so it was a very established company. But I was having conversations that sounded a lot like what we talked about when you started Tagler, you know, and sitting across from the bank. I was sitting across from prospective employees and trying to get them to buy into the vision and where I thought we could go. And fortunately, you know, I got a couple of breaks.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: Quick question for that, going back to that vision, was the vision you were selling, for lack of a better word, that vision that your father had set for the company, or was this a new vision, vision that you were starting to set?
[00:40:44] Speaker A: It was still generally the same. It was, you know, we were a distributor and a manufacturer, so it was generally that, you know, we were, we were still choking down. Remember, we had, we had introduced a new ERP system, which is a colossal undertaking.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: Can you explain what ERP, I'm sure some people I didn't know.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes. So ERP is enterprise resource planning. It is. It is the term that's given to a software system that generally runs a distributor. If you were a manufacturer, you'd have MRP manufacturing resources planning. So we brought on a new software platform that was supposed to run the entire company, order entry and accounting and all of that. And it's a massive undertaking. And it's a massive undertaking if your business processes are strong. If they're not strong, then you actually have to be formulating or retooling your business practice before you can automate it or introduce it into a software system. So we had that going on. At the same time. It was incredibly tumultuous, I think is the word that I would use, just between an exodus of people in a short period of time while we're still trying to get our software to run, which is critical to order fulfillment and making sure that we have the right product on the floor and we're doing all the things we're supposed to do, because if we start to miss on delivering for the customer, then we really are in jeopardy of revenue problems and the thing probably comes crashing down in an incredible hurry. Fortunately for me, and we've talked about this fathers conservative nature. We had a very strong balance sheet. We had a very good cash position. He left me with enough assets that we were able to weather a reasonable storm, a reasonable, and by that I mean of a certain size and a certain duration. It couldn't have been a huge storm for a long time, but we were able to have enough cash to figure it out and not go under in the moment. So he left us in very good. Because of his conservative nature, we didn't have a lot of leverage debt. We didn't have a lot of, of things like that. So we were able to, we had some Runway to figure it out in those moments.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: So between the time that you were officially president and now the company has grown. Just to give the audience some context, roughly how much?
[00:42:59] Speaker A: About seven x.
[00:43:00] Speaker B: About seven x. Okay. So obviously you deployed some strategies, tactics, techniques, new processes, processes to make that happen. If you're parsing through your experience between there and now, and you're extracting the main reasons you believe you were able to create that kind of growth, what would that be? And I know there's more than one.
[00:43:30] Speaker A: Well, coming out of 95, we had some really strong sales years. And what I recognized quickly that we were imploding the business from its ability to deliver. And I mean like that fast. We had some aggressive growth years. When I got into the sales organization, I mentioned we had a really strong sales team. We were adding 20, 30% growth. And what I'm telling you, everything internally was imploding. We didn't have enough telephones, we didn't have enough trucks. Our software system wasn't capable of managing inventory and give us the type of intel and data that we needed to make sure we had the right things. I remember I would say at least once a week, someone in the salesforce had a product on the backseat of their car that they were delivering because we were supposed to have it and didn't and probably paid next day air to get it in to keep our customer from going lying down, running out of whatever the situation was.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: So you got very scrappy?
[00:44:23] Speaker A: I got very scrappy and really, and recognized that my father was a salesman. I mean, could he do the rest of it? He could. But his number one, one ABCD, two and three was sales. He was a salesman, a product expert, a subject matter expert, knew the technical side of packaging inside and out. The operation side was left to everybody else, including my brother in law. And that side immediately was our weakness, because it wouldn't matter what we sold if we didn't have the ability to fill and fulfill the orders that we took. So I went head down and became an expert while still selling full time. After hours we talk about the 05:00 p.m. to 05:00 a.m. times. That's when I was learning about software and I was learning about distribution theory and distribution practice.
And I would say one of the big answers is that we invested in systems early and we started to capture the data and convert it to intel so that we could get our fill rates up, so that we had the right product on the floor.
The amount of inventory we threw away over the years because we had the wrong product and just cash, incredibly valuable cash that we never got to convert because we didn't have the right data to buy what you sell and sell what you buy is a very simple idea, but if you don't have data in intel, then you don't know what that is. The amount of product that we threw away as we moved to different buildings. I've moved us three times along the way and consolidated two buildings back in. In addition to that, that first move, I remember the amount of inventory and dead stock that we cleaned off the books that we never got to realize or convert to cash was huge. I mean, it was massive, massive mess. So, along the way, getting our operations to work correctly and being able to service the customer by investing there, I would say, was the most critical thing in the moment, because we didn't need more sales. We need to be able to fulfill the sales. Fulfill the sales, yes. And then put in a structure that would allow us to grow measurably in a measurable way without risking imploding the operation again, either space or buy the wrong stuff and have cash tied up in the wrong area and all of that to finally start to work together the way a distribution business should.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And it sounds like to me, which I know this of you, you're still very much so like this. And actually, you have encouraged me to be more like this. I've always been, well before I met you, at least a little hesitant to invest and spend the money on the front end and to take that risk. I mean, I say that in certain ways I've been, because the unpredictability, you're like, if I spend x amount of money when I have almost nothing, and I'm not assured of what that return is gonna look like, that's very scary, and I've gotten much, much better. But it seems like, to me, you were very aggressive in taking the risks and looking into uncharted territories. You guys hadn't been very technologically advanced in the past with your dad. So you're saying, okay, let's not only start to invest and spend money on the technology, that we're not even really sure what it does, but also just spending that money and tapping a bank to do so, which your father had never done. So you started to take the risk in investing early, before you knew what the outcome would be, which is one of the scariest things for any business owner.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And we also made a lot of stretches and reaches in real estate. So when I got involved in the business, we were on Hanover street, we had this incredibly old cut up, diced up building, low ceilings. Nothing about it had any efficiency as related to distribution. So, you know, along the way, we moved our distribution operation out in 1997 and we separated the buildings. And then in 2000, we moved into the Washington Boulevard facility, into 50,000ft. And I remember those too, right? I mean, taking on big chunks of rent, big rent increases. And we got some help along the way. There was a guy named John Bloomer who owned the building, who let us back end all of our rent. He let us, he gave us a two year Runway to be able to grow into the space, because it's hard to just take on all that extra fixed cost when you're trying to grow and you're doing a lot of things. So we moved into that building, which let us consolidate everybody back together, which was a great move.
And then we took over the rest of the building along the way. We did an acquisition in 2011, we did an acquisition in 2018.
We moved our automation team out into a standalone building, again taking on more rent and risk and infrastructure, and then ultimately moved everybody to the tradepoint Atlantic facility in 2021. So that was another part of the investment along the way, was being willing to move the business and all of the disruption of picking everything up and relocating into a new space. And as certain things started to, and identifying what we needed to look like to execute the way we needed to. So when we moved distribution out of that decrepit old building on Hanover street, we moved into a building with ceiling heights and we bought rack, and we started to leverage our ERP system better with things like warehouse wireless, warehouse and warehouse management technology, and started to be able to make investments. And then it just seems like the way our evolution happened, it was grow some, move a unit out, go to a bigger building, put everybody back together, grow some, move a unit out, like automation, grow some, put everybody back together. Which was we did at trade point Atlantic. So that was the other part too. I mean, just looking back, it was that operational investment, whether it be software on one side, and then the talent is around it too. Like, I'm not discounting or underestimating the importance of the talent that you need to be able to execute on all of it. I will say one moment, I had, we bought a company about our size in 2011, and I completely missed. Remember we did an episode about things that almost took us out.
[00:50:42] Speaker B: Yeah, the bombs.
[00:50:43] Speaker A: Yeah, the bombs. And I remember we missed because we didn't know how transactionally intensive the company was that we bought. And I remember being out on the loading dock at 02:00 in the morning, trying to figure out how we were going to get all these orders out. And it hit me at that moment that I was no longer going to be able to do it on my own, that we were going to have to figure out how to get other people involved. We started a night shift, which was a brand new event for us. And scary. That's scary, operating a second shift and trusting the people that are going to run it when you're not there, when you've always been around a business that you had your finger very closely on. My father had a hand, a whole hand on it. Those were some moments that I remember along the way, bringing on a second shift, because we just couldn't make the resources work in 8 hours. We needed to extend to 16 hours to be able to make the building work. So I think of all of that, the operations pieces, and being able to understand what the investments look like, and then wrapping the people around it to be able to take those tools and be able to deliver for the customers.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: So, in summary, you did a lot of things, but you invested in the technology, especially on the operation side. You invested in the real estate, just moving into buildings that were, what's the word? More accommodating. Great work to your. Your business, and what you needed, what you were doing, and what you wanted to grow in, to be able to doing. You hired the talent.
You. What else did you say? Yeah, I would say, oh, and the acquisition of the company.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: Yep. Made two acquisitions.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: Made two acquisitions. So where I was going off all this is. Those are big moves.
I think this would be. You might have more to add, but my final question would be for anyone listening. Okay, so Mick made all these moves. A lot of investments, took a lot of risk. Your decisions. You made more right decisions than bad, which is why you are where you are right now.
How did you have the confidence to be able to make those moves? Because I think anyone that's sitting here listening, that is in a position or a role that they either fell into or was forced upon them, and they don't feel ready, but they know they have to grow, or they. In whatever way that means, and they know they have to make decisions and take the risk, but maybe they're lacking the confidence, or they don't know if it's right. And I can relate to this so much. Cause now I'm making decisions in my business that I would have never have made six, seven, eight years ago. And I have my reasons that I believe I'm able to make those decisions now. But I would love to hear how you had the confidence at such a young age and up until this point to make all those very bold moves.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: Early on, it was as much ignorance as it was confidence. I just didn't know.
[00:53:32] Speaker B: A little naive.
[00:53:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Where it was.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: And there is bliss in that night, however you say it, or that ignorance is.
[00:53:41] Speaker A: Ignorance is blissful.
[00:53:42] Speaker B: There is something, and I always say, I'm not sure I could have gotten to where I am without that, whether it was ignorance or being cavalier, whatever. But there's so many decisions I made then that I probably wouldn't make if I knew what I knew now.
[00:53:58] Speaker A: Yeah. I would just say it was, you know, one of our favorites is, you know, e equals r times c. Efficiency equals right times commitment. I would say that the one thing that was absolutely constant throughout between. From me and the organization and the team members that I had was commitment. Yes. And therefore, we made a tremendous number of high speed pivots. Right. We.
[00:54:16] Speaker B: Can you go back to that formula and explain it exactly? Because I think it's worth.
[00:54:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it's one of my favorites. Pinning efficiency equals right times commitment. And it's just a simple way of saying that as long as you're committed, you don't have to get it 100% right. And we definitely didn't get it 100% right.
[00:54:34] Speaker B: Everybody was committed to the same thing.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: That's right. And because we were so committed, and everybody was so strongly aligned, if we had to pivot, and especially at a very high speed, everybody was in track. You know, no one was an outlier. We agreed or we recognized in time. I don't know if it was in time, it was in time that there was a change, or that we had gotten at least a part of it wrong and we had to make a high speed correction. And because the commitment level was, was there, it was doable. It was absolutely doable. And then as I got more experienced, then my instincts got better, my diligence got better, my due diligence, when I was running things and I was trying to understand or evaluate an investment, my diligence was poor. When I was young, the 2011 acquisition we made was one of the bombs that almost took us out. And it was because my diligence, my due diligence wasn't as good as it needed to be. But you start to recognize situations, they become more familiar. There's a comfort level that comes with them. And it almost is, you know, you know, which tool to reach for in the toolbox when those opportunities present. It's like, oh, this is a hammer moment. This is a wrench moment. But that, you don't know that when you're a lot younger, if you haven't seen those situations. And despite having a lot of great counsel along the way, great counselors, they didn't know either. You know, they were experts in their chosen field. And a lot of it I had to figure out. And in so many moments where there was no ability to out think it, we missed that, right. We had missed the thinking part because we were inexperienced and we could only outrun it. And that was just put in raw manpower and hours and outwork it. Saturday, Sunday, clean up the warehouse. He made a mess of something. Institute a system. So, so many times, we just flat out worked it because there wasn't another option. And I still had the energy. And I guess part of it, too, was just this idea of betting on yourself. You know, I never, failure never occurred to me because I was betting on me and our team.
So fear was never part of the calculus because I was only betting on me and our team.
[00:56:41] Speaker B: Well, that's a huge part of it. You had to have the confidence to make those decisions. The confidence in your vision had to be so strong to be able to make those decisions.
[00:56:51] Speaker A: And then at times, too. And sometimes you just have to will it as such. Right? You just have to outwork it, and you just have to pound through it, and you have to will it as such, even though you didn't get it right. And the window is closing. The number of times they said, oh, I put it up on the block and the cleaver almost hit it again, and it was 3456 times that I can think of along the way. But managed to get it all to come together, at least in time, may not been the right time, but at least in time that we were able to leverage and continue to grow aggressively.
[00:57:25] Speaker B: And I think a great point is the more you put, put yourself in uncomfortable situations and the more you force yourself to make big decisions or take that risk or look fear in the face, the better you get and the more you're able to do that, just like anything else in life.
[00:57:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And it was a. It was a 30 year walk down memory lane in about an hour, but a lot of great takeaways. And, you know, you know, I always lace these into our conversations anyway, so they'll be, there'll be more to come, but hopefully this serves as a good background or a backdrop for the audience. When I'm referring, referring to things from the past or in the past, this is where it came from, or this is part of my track.
[00:58:00] Speaker B: It's so applicable to many aspects of different people's lives, too, that aren't in that exact situation. So, any closing thoughts?
[00:58:08] Speaker A: No. No. I would say in retrospect, a lot of hard times or a lot of hard moments in there. We can go into some along the way. We'll talk about some lawsuits, all of the family business, things that you could ever experience, family members suing each other. Each other, and any number of things we can talk about as we get into different topics along the way. But I simply say I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't change any of it in retrospect, just because to change one thing could have a different outcome. And I really like the outcome.
[00:58:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And. Well, we might not have met, so that would be. That'd be very terrible for you.
[00:58:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. No love or business or any of that stuff, so. Yeah. Yeah. So at least I got that part right. Yes, it. Hopefully it helps any of the viewers. And I do talk to a lot of people that are in family businesses that are making that evolution. Mine was different. You know, my dad died at 24. I look at other situations where you have, you know, the younger generation, very close to the next generation, and they actually experience some head butting or differences in philosophy or. And I can only imagine if my father had lived a lot longer, we could have been like two propeller heads budding together because of his risk of version and my general ability to, you know, I wasn't wild or a gambler by any stretch, but certainly I was willing to put chips down and bet on myself. We could have really clashed in certain spots, and that's what I observe very different from my situation where I, you know, wake in one day having to figure it out, not exclusively on my own, but. But mostly on my own versus counterparts that I see where they're trying to figure out how to get their 30 year old father out of their way, where my father was 50 years old. Right. You know, he was gone, and they were trying to figure out how to make it work despite being two very different generations. And in a time that's moving very quickly and I think it's putting stress and spreading what the generations look like.
[01:00:00] Speaker B: Well, thank you for that. That was, I really, really enjoyed that conversation, and I think people are going to take a lot out of it. And I quite enjoyed being the interviewer.
[01:00:09] Speaker A: We were good at it and I didn't actually have any tears dripped down my face, so that's a total win.
[01:00:13] Speaker B: No, but you did show most, which I think is great because it's all very real and raw and authentic.
[01:00:18] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:00:19] Speaker B: So cheers.
[01:00:20] Speaker A: Time to wrap her. I'm gonna make myself a liar.
[01:00:22] Speaker B: Well, that's. That's okay. Thank you for that.
[01:00:26] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[01:00:27] Speaker B: As always, thank you so much for listening and being a part of this journey with us. We really appreciate it.
[01:00:33] Speaker A: And if you like what you heard and you had some great takeaways, please, please, please subscribe. Hit that subscribe button. Lets us know that you liked what we're doing. And you'll also get notifications when new, new episodes drop. And we'd love to see you back here as soon as possible. And thank you.
Welcome to Ace Rodney, Rodney's touch for the superstar tonight. Tonight's guest, incredible, credible.
