The Small Business Safari
Have you ever sat there and wondered "What am I doing here stuck in the concrete zoo of the corporate world?" Are you itching to get out? Chris Lalomia and his co-host Alan Wyatt traverse the jungle of entrepreneurship. Together they share their stories and help you explore the wild world of SCALING your business. With many years of owning their own small businesses, they love to give insight to the aspiring entrepreneur. So, are you ready to make the jump?
The Small Business Safari
Chad Abel's Journey through Engineering to Entrepreneurship
From the Zoo to Wild is a book for entrepreneurs passionate about home services, looking to move away from corporate jobs. Chris Lalomia, a former executive, shares his path, discoveries, and tools to succeed as a small business owner in home improvement retail. The book provides the mindset, habits, leadership style, and customer-oriented processes necessary to succeed as a small business owner in home services.
Tell me how you were able to instill that in your sales guys, because you actually scaled to a level to be able to sell. So are we able to take Chad and Jim's commitment who did every job in the company ever and then turn it into saying all right, here's what we're about. And how do you do that? How do you bring that down to people? Welcome to the Small Business Safari, where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in adventure team and let's take a ride through the safari and get you to the mountaintop. Here we go.
Speaker 1:Alan, another big day, big time. If you're in the truck listening, man, if you're a hunter, I'm throwing a shout out to you. Big guy. I was talking to you earlier today before we were taping this episode. You guys were all thinking about what do we do when we start a business and all the things I got to think about and I want to get all this great wisdom from people. And he asked me two things, man, like can you just give me two things, because I know you're short of time, because I was running late, maybe running a little fast, like I always do.
Speaker 2:Let me slow down a little bit. What did he want to do?
Speaker 1:He wants to start a handyman business in Colorado. He had just moved to this town. He asked me do you think I'm dreaming? I didn't have a chance to say well, it's going to be a tough fall, bro, cause you don't have a lot of friends to build off of if you just move there. But, um, he wants to build his own handyman business, but he doesn't want it to take his time or away from his family.
Speaker 1:I said two things. One one thing you got to learn is you always sell to your lowest level of belief and you got to believe you're worth the money you're about to charge and you're going to need to charge twice as much as you're thinking right now. Two you got to wake up every morning and go you're going to solve a fucking problem today, because you're going to be solving problems every day. And that's who we got on today my boy, chad Abel. I went to college with him at Michigan Tech. We went to school for engineering, did the whole engineering thing, but we started to get back together here lately and he starts telling me.
Speaker 1:He said, well, yeah, as a matter of fact, well, I kind of sold my business. I'm like, do what. I kind of got invested in another business. Do what. I kind of think I'm going to start another one. I'm like, do what I said. Dude, I got to have you on my podcast. I can't wait to hear this story. Now Chad Abel is on and he's going to talk to us about how you looked at a business that you were in and how you figured out a way to start a business in that same business, in that same area, in that same industry. And so, chad, welcome. Man. Can't wait to have the audience hear a little bit more about your story.
Speaker 3:I want to hear if chris was really all that in college. Well, hey, it all started with my left guard, chris, right? No, so he, he was an animal and that's where it all started, and actually my our, where my business partner for northwood's paper converting, which we greenfield started. He was our water boy, our trainer, so it must come all the way back to michigan tech football that's it.
Speaker 1:No name you, baby, that's what gottlieb called us. No name you, that's right. Well, frankly, we are, because nobody at atlanta I come across my son was waiting tables guy says comes up and, uh, he said something about being from michigan and my, my son goes hey, go green. He goes. Oh, yeah, go white, he goes. Well, actually I didn't go to state. I went to another school called michigan tech and he goes no way. That's where my dad went and the guy's like, go huskies, tell your dad go. Yeah, I'm like, oh, that's awesome. So but chad, your story is, I think, really cool because you, you took off, you got in the industry and I want you to tell that, the story about you got in the in the business that you did, and explain that a little bit, but when that opportunity came, so you can just give us that background. First, on the business and the industry you're in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, like Chris, my background was engineering out of college and I worked for a company called Marquip which manufactured corrugated and sheeting equipment, and I was a field engineer sheeting equipment and I was a field engineer and so I worked a lot on irrigators and sheeters and I was up in Toronto working on a cheater that was having issues, had issues for like six months. I didn't install it but I installed another machine that they had earlier on, a couple of years earlier, and so, anyway, this nagging issue was going on and um, so I ended up getting there within an hour, fix the issue. The guys are super happy. The two owners took me out for lunch and we were talking and they're like, hey, we're looking at expanding, uh, maybe opening up a plan in Chicago. You know, do you, would you have any interest in running that for us? And I think at the time I was probably I don't know 25, 26. And I'm like, what the hell do I know about running a company? And no, you know, I appreciate the offer, you know. No, thank you.
Speaker 3:And then, I don't know, maybe a month later I was back home. I was just having some fish fry with my parents on like a Friday night at a bar in Northern Wisconsin and then we were. I was kind of laughing about what, what had happened. And then so my mom, who's been in the paper industry forever, she was like hey, why why not you? You know, if they're asking you to do it and you know the equipment why not you? Why not? Why not go and research, create a business plan and figure out if, if you're you know, if you can do it on your own, just Greenfield started and put money you've saved over the last whatever five, six years and figure out if it makes any sense.
Speaker 3:So I talked to one of two of the original owners of Marquip who I worked with. The minority owner was bought out in the mid nineties and then he became a consultant. So I went and talked to him and he liked the idea. Basically, I went from being an employee of Marquip to being one of the largest customers of Marquip by buying sheeting equipment for them as we started the Northwoods paper converting business and then grown in over 20 years prior to selling it. So yeah, it was a cool story.
Speaker 3:I talked to Richard Thomas. He was the minority owner of Marquip and then consultant. A great guy, super talented. He's got a PhD, phd degree in electrical engineering, did some really cool designs on the you know, with drives and power supplies and four phase motors and all this stuff from Mark Webb. Really they had advancements in technologies that most in the paper industry didn't have.
Speaker 3:But so I met with Richard and he was like hey, yeah, you gotta, you know, like the idea. First thing I recommend is finding a business, you know, a business partner, somebody you could trust if something ever happened to you, where he or she you know can run with the business and continue to grow it. And you know, somebody maybe your future wife and kids could trust if something ever happened to you. So I called Jim, who also went to Michigan Tech, jim Morrow, and, like I said, he was a trainer for a couple of years while Chris and I played football up there, and convinced Jimmy, who was in the automobile industry, to resign from where he was working and try to make a go of this contract sheeting opportunity or idea. So, yeah, so we started off.
Speaker 3:We um that's the time we were 28 years old and um talked to many different people within the paper industry, got advice from different uh people and advisors um come across a really good advisor from us in the Minneapolis area told us that, hey, if you ever really decide to get into this, you guys should add large format sheeting to the normal sheeting business that everybody else is in, which is more of a commodity.
Speaker 3:And we kind of followed his direction and interviewed paper mills and printers and merchants and so on and so forth and we got some people to commit to us and gave us basically a letter of credit that we could take to a bank and allow us to buy our first sheeter. And the first sheeter we bought was obviously a Marquip, who I previously worked for, and we worked with them on the design of it, since Marquip had never built a fine paper sheeter. They were mostly sheeters that ran solid fiber, which is like a, a cereal box material, so, um, so it was interesting and you know, so we, you know we got, we got a building in, uh, central Wisconsin, which we thought was a great place to locate, between Chicago and Minneapolis, which were both big print markets. And, um, you know, we started up, we had a couple of employees, we worked crazy hours from All right.
Speaker 1:You got to stop there Cause we, we got to go back on a couple. There's so many things Ellen's just dying to ask, so we're going to pick it back up after you started, but go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So here you, you, you decide to take the deal. You, you know the equipment, but do you know sales? Do you know how to hire people? Do you know how to get the real estate? And oh, by the way, now you're actually working with a machine that you essentially had to invent that then you went and got the money from the bank. I mean, there's a lot of moving parts. How did you manage all that?
Speaker 3:Well one, it was nice being 28, where you're full of piss and vinegar right and uh, in some ways, you don't know how dumb you are yeah.
Speaker 3:So I mean, now I look at it, I'm like holy cripes, would I do that again, you know, if I had four kids and married and it's now and there's no way. So for me, when I worked as a field engineer, mar Marquip was really good in allowing people to develop on their own. They put you in the fire and you had to figure stuff out. You became a man real quick. And so when we first started, you know, as a field engineer, I'd be on the road for months at a time, working seven days a week, 12, 14 hours a day, so it. You know I grew a lot from that. And so when we started the business, you know it was the same thing, except I didn't have to travel anymore. It was 14, 16 hours a day, seven days a week. And you know, and then Jimmy, I just needed him to adapt because he came out of a environment where he was more office work and, you know, working whatever 50 hours a week versus 80 hours a week. And so, yeah, it was neat, it's, there was no doubt it was.
Speaker 3:You know, we kind of walked. I mean, we had advisors which were, which were huge, which included my mother, and I told you about Richard Thomas and then this gentleman out of Minneapolis, and they kind of you know, so we were kind of sporadic and then, like Richard, we talked to Richard. He's like no, this is the way you got to go. You know, you got to zone in here, this is where you got to go. And so we were great at listening. And then we were kind of the guys that put in all the work, blood, sweat and tears. Um, so, yeah, it was. Yeah it was. Either. You got to get lucky, right, you got to be in the game to get lucky, and along the way you got to get a little bit lucky.
Speaker 2:Well, but you got to be good, and the fact that there are a lot of people that get into business who don't want the advice because they can do it by themselves. And I was going to. I was thinking, when you were talking about your advisors, are they the kind of advisors that you consulted with before you made a decision, or was it after you made a mistake?
Speaker 3:Right, no, no, this was all before. You know this. You know we did as much as we could up front, so we had, you know. So we kind of made an educated decision on moving forward. So, yeah, and you know, without them we wouldn't be anywhere near where we were, you know, because we used all three of the advisors for heavily the first five years of our growth of the business.
Speaker 3:Advisors for heavily the first five years of our growth of the business. And, as you had asked, like you know, did we have any HR experience? No, you know, I was a field engineer, basically working on my own in the field. From time to time I'd have other engineers with me and then, of course, I was at customers' plants. So you're dealing with people that were janitors to presidents of the company, you know, and everything in between, with operators, presidents of the company, you know, and everything in between with operators, maintenance guys, engineers, so on and so forth. So so, yeah, it was good. We, you know, we got kicked out of a couple of banks when we were first looking to borrow money, just because they're like you guys are what. You're 28 years old, you think you're going to start a business from scratch and you don't have any customers right like yep, that's exactly where we're at.
Speaker 1:There's one thing you kind of slipped in there really quick that I think is really lost on a lot of people. At 28, you had actually saved money and your mom said you should save At 28, saving money. The only money I saved by 28 was the stuff that my dad told me I had to put away in a 401k, because that way he says, if you don't see it, you won't touch it. And thank God he did that because that's still my retirement money. But a lot of people don't save and don't realize you have to have that money. The bank ain't just going to give you the money and the bank ain't going to do this. And the bank and the SBA they're going to do it. They'll give you some money but they're going to do it to you. Man, that number right now for the SBA loan, I mean it's a pretty penny.
Speaker 3:I mean you're it's a big number right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so how much did you have to raise and how much did you have to get we had about 250,000 that we started with.
Speaker 3:So it wasn't I mean, that was significant to us at the time but we borrowed a million from the bank to buy the first machine. The advantage we also had with the machine was if our business plan or our idea didn't work out, as a contract paper converter I knew the equipment so I could uninstall the equipment and reinstall it and sell it because it was somewhat of a prototype and it was the first fine paper sheeter for Markweb that I didn't think that I was going to lose any money out of the million because it was a prototype. So I got it at a discount. We worked out a deal like a marketing deal with Markweb so that they could bring customers in and see the machine run even though it was our plant. So that helped us and reduced the cost. So net, net, I figured like, okay, worst case, you know, jim and I lose the 250,000 and yes, that's significant, but we're 30, 31, 32 years old and we can rebound and and move on. So that was a big part of our decision-making too, was you know, we just figured, hey, we're young, but people believed in us. They believed in our backgrounds being engineers, knowing the equipment, coming into an industry was kind of dominated by salespeople that owned the converting companies that were our competition. That really helped us when we would go and talk to whoever printers, paper mills, whatever, you know. We come in with engineering background, knowing the equipment inside and out, so that really helped us.
Speaker 3:And then the biggest thing was we had a niche that nobody else had. We could precision sheet, large format sheeting. That was kind of like, I said, the gentleman that was our advisor in Minneapolis that got our foot in the door in a lot of different mills and stuff where others, where the paper mills, had to take these big, large format sheets that were going to eventually into printing presses, they'd have to put them on a guillotine and it would take time. There was long, long lead times that add a lot of waste, there was injuries, so on and so forth, and we could actually precision sheet it.
Speaker 3:So that was kind of our if you want to call it your why, right, you know every business. I don't know if you've ever read the book by Simon Sinek. Yeah, start with why. I mean that that book is really good and that's kind of how almost every business you know. The why is what's your niche? You know why are they going to use you, you know is somebody going to buy from you, or you know whatever rent from you, buy your services, so on and so forth. So I think that's a key in any and all businesses is how do you differentiate yourself from everybody else? And the more you can differentiate yourself from everybody else, obviously, the more you can charge because of the more unique you are.
Speaker 1:I mean you can't talk about a more commodity thing. There are probably what I mean, 10 of the most basic commodities, but paper has got to be one of those things. Right, it's just such a commodity and obviously he's talking about a really niche within the paper world. But go in large format. But Chad, going back to it again, if you can't, guys, if you guys can't figure this out, man, he's an engineer, but he's not on the engineering spectrum. He can actually talk to people. He's a good sales guy. But I want to go back to what Alan was bringing up. But I want to go back to what Alan was bringing up. I mean, you're starting it. Who were your customers and how the hell were?
Speaker 1:you going to sell this shit, so there was a lot a lot of funny full stories early on.
Speaker 3:You know we, we weren't automated at the beginning. You know we, we had. We have recycling. So when you, when you cheat, take paper, we take rolls of paper and convert them into sheets, and to do that you have to take trim along the side. You're going to get diverted, rejected sheets, and so we were bailing all this stuff, if you want to call it bailing. But we were putting it into big Gaylords and we would take rejected rolls that a paper mill would feel bad because we were just starting up, and they would send us rejected rolls that we would use as like a compactor to compact paper inside of Gaylord's. We could send it off to a recycler. But uh, you know it's, uh, it was just uh it was.
Speaker 3:It was just a neat, a neat story of how we started and um you know how manual we were to what we became, and again to have four people that initially believed in us.
Speaker 3:That allowed us to hire them. You know, to come on board with a brand new company to what we became was pretty incredible. And then you know, a big part of it is Jim. Like Jim was an amazing business partner, you've got to have a business partner that believes in you and you believe in him or her. If you don't have that, you know.
Speaker 1:We've got to talk about that one, because I can tell you I know that's a big one for you, alan, and we've talked about this a lot there's a reason I'm not a partner. That's why I haven't taken on a partner.
Speaker 2:Chris doesn't play well with others. You may not know that. He does know that.
Speaker 1:You see that in person.
Speaker 3:Well, here let me go back to the sales. And so you know we were. We were scraping for anything and everything and again we got to look, we got lucky. You got to be in the game to get lucky. When I say we got lucky is so we, we would start off in the in the job lot side of sales. So it's the bottom of the bottom, like nobody wants to do that type of stuff. But we had to start somewhere.
Speaker 3:And then we had a paper mill it's called Temboard, they're out of Canada, and they were having some coding issues in a certain span of time and so some of the converters weren't happy with them and they weren't happy with the converters and it was just perfect timing where they were looking for a new converter. And then, but you know, we found them, they found us, and then they moved their business and we were about nine months in, I think it was October of 2000. And we were getting tighter with cash. You know spent. We spent a lot of the $250,000 of working capital. And I remember calling Ginny, my mother, and I'm like hey, mom, I said you know, we've got these three big projects coming on. One was a printer which came our way because another converter messed up. They may have a quality issue. So obviously again you get lucky because you're in the game. But I said Jenny, I said hey, you know, if these guys don't come on, we're not going to make payroll next month. I said what's your advice?
Speaker 1:Now my mother is a.
Speaker 3:CPA and she, you know, and so she was a controller of different paper mills, a senator, vp of finance, blah, blah, blah blah and she comes back and she's like well, you better start applying for credit cards. And I'm like great advice, thanks. Like what the hell does that do for me? Basically what she's saying is like she's basically saying hey, you better get your ass out on the road and get the sales, because nobody's going to be there to help.
Speaker 1:road and get, get the sales because nobody's going to be there to help. So it was great advice, it was funny, but that is funny. So you probably went there going, hey, ma, can I get a loan? And she's like, hey, chad, um, how about you go get some credit cards or get your ass in the car like tommy boy and go sell some shit out there? Hey, let's make it happen. So is that what happened, is it? Pretty much? Jim took care of the, uh, the, the warehouse, and making the operations work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know, jim and I uh, yeah, so early on, uh, I had to train jimmy just to learn how to run a sheeter and this and that, whatever. But we would do anything and everything, from taking calls, sales hunting, you know, hunting for sales, building skids, running the sheeters, packaging, so on, so forth. I mean, I mean we, we got, we, uh, so we're both from niagara. Niagara had a paper mill back in the day and they had, I don't know like two truckloads of caper that they were just gonna job lot.
Speaker 3:And uh, jim's parents both worked for niagara my mother worked for niagara for a certain amount of time and um, so they, you know, again I think they just felt bad. So they're like, hey, you guys want two truckloads of paper for free. And we're like, oh yeah, what are we going to do with it? So we figured out that we could take this paper and we wrapped it into small, like 50 pound bundles and then I would be in the plant running the product, because I mean, this was we're trying to find cash in any, any way possible and trying to find you know what's our niche. And um, and so jimmy's out, he would rent a u-haul and then he had, he would haul, he would drive down to like milwaukee, chicago madison, selling to moving companies these 50 pound uh bundles of packaging paper that you use for for moving and stuff like that oh, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1:It is like tommy boy it is like jimmy, get in the truck, get down there, start selling shit. It doesn't hurt so much here, so much here, but right here yeah. So I mean it's.
Speaker 3:I mean I wish we would have, uh, had an iphone back in those days. You know, just to kind of, and that was only in 2000. Right, but I don't know it was. It was really. Again, you have to be in the game to get lucky, I, I say that all the time.
Speaker 1:I love that you got to be in the game to be lucky Cause you're. I mean, that's just so right.
Speaker 3:You obviously have to do your homework. You got to put the blood, sweat and tears in you Obviously to get lucky. That means you did something potentially right to get in the game. You know you did your research and so on and so forth. But you know, we, again we. So we went from you know calling Jenny saying like hey, what are we going to do next month to the paper mill 10 board I talked about. They came on, they came on board with us and then the printer came on board and we had this job ladder. That all came on board within a month's time and we went from Jimmy in a U-Haul selling bundles of packaging paper to basically running 24-5 within a month or two.
Speaker 1:You know you talk about that, though, and I think that's the that's the biggest thing. You said a couple of things. I think they're just killer. That people don't realize is that you know you got to wake up every day and solve a problem as an entrepreneur. We talked about that. I said that in the beginning, but you guys did. You called, you, called Jenny and said hey, here's what I got, and she's like if you couldn't light a fire under somebody who's already working 12 to 14 hours a day. She lit a fire, or she at least brought focus down to what you had to do right now, in these next 30 days, and that's how you make your luck, right? We talked about that. Yeah, I love your phrase in the game to be lucky, but you've also got to make your own luck, and you guys did that by buying a little bit of time to see if those guys would actually hit, and that you landed them. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:yeah, after that, you know, our competition was mostly a lot of them were similar to paper mills in that the industry really changed a lot, the print industry going from standard size sheets to, like I said, large format sheets. And then the industry moved into digital printing and digital tiny small sheets. And then the industry moved into digital printing and digital tiny small sheets and we tried to, or we worked with Markup again on building a different style knife that allowed, basically added another knife to their dual rotary cylinders to allow them to run super fast in short sheets, or the digital sheet market, which again was so?
Speaker 1:uh, hey, alan, what was your major? Again? Uh, to teach art. So you just blew alan's mind. You. Just, you just laid down so many engineering. I'm not lying, you blew my mind, you just laid out so many engineering terms. So you guys. So you landed the first three and now you guys are perfecting and figuring out other ways, but you're using your engineering mind to solve those problems. Like, hey, there's a new problem going on because probably in 2000, let's see, starting in 2000. So 2003,. Four, the internet really starts booming again. Age yourself, just talk technology. And you probably heard death of printing. Right, no papers ever going to happen, ever again. I just heard a stat and I want to know if that's true there's more print going on now than there was in 2000. Is that true?
Speaker 3:Honestly, I'd have to actually look that up.
Speaker 1:But I mean yeah, don't fact check me, let's just go with it. Call me Trump. Baby, sounds good. Call me Trump.
Speaker 3:A lot of people are printing stuff at your house now, right, instead of wherever you know. You're printing out your own bank statements or so on and so forth. So it's probably changed. You know, from printing out at the manufacturer there's magazines or this and that whatever newspapers used to have, and now people are printing more things at home or at the office or so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:No, that is amazing. So you guys are in there, you're looking at it. But you went back and said, hey, we got to come up with something else that's going to keep us on the forefront, keep us not to be a paper commodity. So you went back to Marquip because you had a great relationship and again you're downplaying it. But, man, I just know for a fact that you worked those networks, you worked Markquip, you worked your customers. I know you did a good thing. You do the right thing by people. I just know that about you. But tell me how you were able to instill that in your sales guys, because you actually scaled to a level to be able to sell. So how were you able to take Chad and Jim's commitment who did every job in the company ever and then turn it into saying, all right, here's what we're about. And how do you do that? How do you bring that down to people?
Speaker 3:Well, the nice thing is that maybe it's the engineering background that we all have that we were very hands-on. So Jim and I were the sales guys. So we, we were till the very end, till we sold the business. But one thing that was unique is everybody that was all our teammates that worked with us. They all seen that Jim and I would work just as hard as them. We were on the floor, we were running sheeters, we were packaging, we were building skids, we were loading and unloading semis, we were bailing, so on and so forth. We did all the stuff in the office.
Speaker 3:Now, obviously, that changed as we grew, because we went from four employees to we bought our own building or built our own building, and then we expanded into Pennsylvania. We ended up with like 240 employees, 15 years in employees, 15 years in. So we couldn't be, you know, on the floor all the time running. You know cheaters every single day because we just couldn't. So then it was a change, right. So you start off, it was a learn. You know, we learned a lot. Again, our advisors were fantastic the whole time because they guided us the whole way, like okay, so hey, all right, we filled up one cheater. What do we do next? Well, maybe you guys got to look at buying a building or renting a building or finding a different facility. So then we did, and we you know Beaver Dam we moved to Beaver Dam. They borrowed us money to build a building.
Speaker 3:We started a second company the real estate, the commercial property side of the company. We paid ourself instead of paying somebody else to rent. That allowed us to buy the building after three years. And so then we were building two businesses, right? I mean, obviously, the easy one was commercial properties. But as we continued to evolve and gain momentum and informing people who we were and how we were different versus all the other contract converters that were in the paper industry and that we could, you know that we knew the equipment that we can run large format plus all the commodity sizes and and a lot of it was just belief. And then having people outperforming everybody else. You know you're outworking everybody else. You're, you know you're instantaneously getting back to people. You know if other competitors took them a day or three to get back to them, and we were, you know we were responding immediately.
Speaker 1:It all played a big part and um, and then you have to find the right teammates, right um so, yes, it sounds like did you find the right teammate every single time, all the time, because, let me tell you the anti.
Speaker 1:let me tell you the anti side of that. Yeah, so in the handyman business, alan and Chad I chose the wrong business and definitely didn't scale. And no, I did. I'm just joking, but I have to kiss a lot of frogs to find that prince and man. Dude, it was tough. I mean I've got, I have. Now. You know, my average tenure now is seven years, but when I first started it was seven months. I mean, I mean and I mean for the first four years if I kept somebody for seven months, I'm like you who I got a long term employee. So how did you guys find them? What was? Did you guys have a secret sauce that we should all be looking for?
Speaker 3:Oh, you're in a small community when we started and we probably hired 20 employees there. So I think being in that smaller community helped. And as we moved to Beaver Dam, which was only 15 miles away, but a bigger community, you know, I think it had a lot to do, a lot of different things. One, we were new to the community, right, so there was a lot of news about it. Hey, northwood's paper converting just moved into town, building a 60,000 square foot facility.
Speaker 3:Then Jim and I were active within the community. We were on certain boards. We were on the YMCA board and we would become a part of a lot of nonprofit organizations, organizations. We, you know, we had our own 5k race that we eventually started and donated all the money. So we were involved in the community, so that you know our name stayed out in the community. And then here again, I think, since we were on the floor a lot when we were growing early on, employees or teammates really like to see that they they're like hey, this is a little bit different, right, we weren't bigger, where they never seen the boss as much or this, that, whatever. And don't get me wrong, when we were at 240 employees, like I said, Jim and I couldn't be on the floor all the time anymore, but early on it really helped us grow and a lot of those initial employees, original teammates they're still with Beaver Dam to this day, even after we sold the business six years ago.
Speaker 2:Really, you created a culture by being on the floor though, yeah, and they passed on to the new people 100%.
Speaker 1:I think the thing that a lot of people might miss on this is that the culture that he showed was there is nothing beneath me. I've done every job in this company I have cleaned a toilet, I have taken out the garbage and I have talked to our biggest account that we have today, and I'm willing to put in the hours. If you're willing to go with me, I'm going to invite you on this journey and let's go do it. So the culture.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's. The key is a culture right. A hundred percent Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome Developing that culture.
Speaker 3:But why, you know, as as we grew you we had to find, we had to find teammates that could allow us to grow right Like Jim and I had to free up with some of the momentum that we had, you know, and interest and continual growth. So we were fortunate to hire, like we hired, jim's brother, um, who worked, uh, in the office with us and um, the anna on the floor. He had it up like safety and did a lot of customer service work for us and other.
Speaker 3:My sister came on and she was head of accounting and h, so we had a couple of friends from high school that worked with us in production as operators and managers, and so you had people that you trusted or that we were fortunate enough to work with as teammates, that we could trust and hand off stuff, because Jim and I we didn't micromanage. It was just like hey, here, this is what we got to do, you got to do this, we got to go do that, so on and so forth and um.
Speaker 1:so yeah, we found so how did you and jim as engineers? Uh, because here again, engineers on the spectrum, it's hard. I mean, you can't have. You can't be an engineer and have a personality. In fact, chad is proving that you can. But when I meet people they're like I've actually literally. I told someone I'm like yeah, I got an engineering degree. The guy looked at me and goes no way, I was a little bit different than everybody else, I have to admit. I didn't know it at the time, but I was, and so was Chad, and that's why we got along so well. So, as you're doing that and you're handing off things, how hard was that? And did you ever get burned in doing it? And where you went? Oh, shouldn't have done it, jimmy, we got to get back on the floor, or you know what? I'm not going to let them do this anymore.
Speaker 3:No, I think you know we, we kind of knew what our goal was Right and the only way we were going to get to that goal with continual growth, whatever that meant, you know there wasn't. We didn't have anything in the top. You know, we weren't sales guys, if you want to call it that, and we didn't have a number out there to say, hey, we got to get to 10 million in sales by this year, next year, five years from now. We just kind of took things day by day and, um, yeah, we, just, you know, we, we were fortunate to find great teammates and um, teammates who believed in us and then find customers who believed in us and yeah, they loved our story. Right Again, we came in with a little bit different background than most people for the contract paper converting industry, being engineers and I think for me it's always been and, and Jim, um, we were very open, right, we were honest people, we're open, we were open book.
Speaker 3:Um, what you saw was what you got you know, our offices probably weren't as clean as most other people's offices, but it didn't matter. It's like you know. So you know, we didn't come in in suit and tie. We came in with a polo shirt and jeans, and that's who we were.
Speaker 2:Dungarees, my friends dungarees so you obviously had to have a business plan to get the loan from the bank. Yes, my first question is did you continually reference that? Because then I hear, okay, we were just scrambling trying to sell paper to moving companies. Reference that because then I hear, okay, we were just scrambling trying to sell paper to moving companies and then all of a sudden, boom, a couple of things happen and you're 24 five and at that point did you guys sit back and start planning Like we may need a safety person, because now, all of a sudden, we've got all these people, we may need an HR person, we may. You know, at what point did you actually start trying to strategic plan? Cause it seems like that's more of a backfill than a proactive.
Speaker 3:I would say it was like the so in our toward the second to third year as we were looking to grow and add a second sheeter. You know we were running 24 seven and we knew that. You know we had more business to grow with and we were fortunate that you know, like Jim's brother had some you know, knowledge and in the paper industry and and and would take on, you know, safety and other things for us. And then Kim kind of being developed by Jenny, my mother. She's a CPA.
Speaker 3:Kim didn't have a four-year accounting degree but had like a two-year HR degree and then HR roles in the past, you know. So Kim was of interest to us because Jenny could train Kim in accounting. So we kind of got our HR accounting fill and teammates accounting. So we kind of got our HR accounting fill and teammates. And yeah, and to me, like I said to me some of that's luck that you know you had people around you that could help your weaknesses, because Jim and I aren't experts in I mean we we became to figure out sales but really the sales to us was just selling the people that worked with us and the equipment that we purchased and what it could do. I mean there wasn't really anything special about being a sales guy and just being honest and talking open.
Speaker 1:All right, we got to. Uh, we're coming to the end. I just, I love the journey and I knew this was gonna happen and I gotta I gotta tell everybody. So Chad is one of the most humble guys I've I have actually ever met. I mean, he's just, he won't say what I'm about to say. Man, he fucking killed it. And what he doesn't say is yeah, I use my engineering expertise and my sales expertise and my ability to network and use and leverage my people to help me get to where I wanted to go. And that's how by the way, I think that's how he got his wife, because he definitely outkicked his coverage.
Speaker 1:Hey, now, come on, now I'm kidding, and, uh, his kids are killing it too. You're doing a great job. But now we got to talk about nirvana. So when chad, there's more, oh wait. So when chad and I reconnected, he kind of was, oh shucks, yeah, I sold my company. Oh shucks, yeah, it was for like that number. You're like and I'm like I, I, so I, I I'd like, uh, he's texting. I was like oh, I'm so happy for you. No, you're not. Nobody is you're like, take me with you. How'd you do it?
Speaker 2:so I'm surprised you didn't change his number and that you didn't have the new one.
Speaker 1:No, I was I'm super happy for me. I can't even tell you this, but we uh, we got like 10 minutes left, but I just could, real quick, you tell people you were you looking for the exit, did you plan for the exit or did it just happen?
Speaker 3:so we had a customer, a paper mill, that was talking with us about trying to grow into Minnesota and California and we were already in the East and the Midwest. Our biggest competitor, progressive Converting, who ended up buying us, was national. They had a facility out East and the Midwest. They had one in Minnesota and California and Virginia and they tried to buy us out in 2006 and 2010 or 11, something like that or not buy us out. I think maybe the first time was looking to buy us out or partial merge, and then the second one was merge, and so I approached them. The market didn't need additional converting, it just needed to. You know, it needed to make itself healthier, right, and somebody needed to buy a couple of guys out, and so I went back. So Jim and I went back to Procon and said, hey, we've got an opportunity with the mill. Whether you like it or not, it's up to you. You've talked about buying us in the past. Here's who we are. This is our PA plant. This is our Wisconsin plant. They were close to us in PA.
Speaker 3:Their plant from our plant was like I don't know, a half hour away from each other. So the only way they would be interested in our East plan is, if we were to close it down, they'd buy a lot of the equipment. They would offer the opportunity for our employees or teammates out East to work with them. So that's what we did. And then Wisconsin still runs as it is today. They couldn't absorb Wisconsin because it was too big at the time and maybe still is. It's still a very profitable plant for progressive converting. But yeah, it was a great marriage for them. Jim and I stayed on for two years it's kind of a handoff and then they exercised the earn-out clause that allowed them to let me go. They already had their corporate team, so I would have done the same thing. And then Jimmy was released about a year after I left.
Speaker 3:A great opportunity for the people that were within Beaverdam because a lot of them got to move up. Our head of engineering and maintenance he's now the plant manager, so it was a great bump for him. A lot of the other people within the organization withim and I gone and and they let some of our csrs go and and kim go from hr and accounting because that was at a corporate level. So, um, so yeah, and you know, to get to the point of selling, it was we just kind of day to day, you know we would. We didn't really have like, hey, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta retire by a certain, we gotta sell by a certain point. It was just a feel thing. It was just like, okay, it kind of feels right right now.
Speaker 3:And, and you know, fortunately, we had, uh, you know, some conversations with progressive converting in the past, uh, stating that they had interest and we had some interest in them, cause we almost merged with them in 2010. So it just worked out, the timing was right and for Procon it's been fabulous. They bought out. You know, another converter shut down in the east, so they're super healthy in the east and in the Midwest they bought another one of their largest competitors. So and you know they're kind of the go-to guys. Now you know they've got all the different paper mills, they've got all the flexibility that the paper mills would need when they outsource converting. So, yeah, it's a great success story in many ways and hopefully, you know, a lot of people ask like, hey, you regret? No, I don't regret anything. I think it was the right thing to do. I think it was the right thing for the industry.
Speaker 1:I think it needed to consolidate some and then since paper mills have consolidated, so so you are one of the and this is a stat you are one of the 3% of the no regret sale clause. There are only 3% of people who sell their businesses that have no regrets.
Speaker 2:Did you pull?
Speaker 1:that out of your ass? No, chris Hanks. Sell their businesses. They have no regrets. Did you pull that out of your ass?
Speaker 1:no, uh, chris hanks oh okay, oh yeah, chris hanks, who runs my ceo group, has mentioned that and it's. It comes from books and it comes from studies. So, chad man, that that part is awesome and that's why I, uh, I love hearing the story you can tell, even if it's not your business, right? I'm not talking about paper. I'm talking about what chad did is he took a paper market, which I mean literally, that that's a commodity. A paper is a, I mean you can't get more commodities.
Speaker 2:Love this. It's such an american midwest. Yeah, I might do it.
Speaker 1:I freaking love it and I did say humble I, I actually was biting my tongue as other than the freaking packers, jesus, lord, I mean I was trying to find, like a Packer helmet to wear for this interview.
Speaker 1:So no, but uh, it just again a great story, because I mean it's from beginning to end. And taking that chance, and I you know, I go talk to high school kids I'm like I don't care, when you start a business there's, you're never too young, but you can always be unprepared and don't be unprepared. I don't care how old you are. And Chad alluded to it, but he really was prepared because he had saved, he had mentors, he was in the business, he saw an opportunity and he also knew the rebound. The rebound plan was hey, if it doesn't work, at least I can uninstall and reinstall and maybe at least get neutral.
Speaker 2:He didn't have the experience, but he had a plan Right.
Speaker 1:I think so yeah, again. I mean looking back on it, I mean it's just yeah, amazing story. When he told me the deal and then I'm thinking, oh awesome, he's out. Okay, good, chad, I'm coming up, I'm going to stay at your lake house, we're going to tool around the lake and then we're going to the Packers and I go up there and we do all that and he goes, yeah, so I'm back in Like dude what? Because you knew he can't. I mean you could tell from the guy already he's got too much energy, he just can't do.
Speaker 1:It Sounds like another podcast coming, or the wife picked him up and said, hey, we can't live together. If you're going to stay home.
Speaker 3:It's interesting. So I met another gentleman from, or not. I knew another gentleman from Niagara, which is where I'm from, we're gyms from. Also, my other business partner and TJ knew about this opportunity within the packaging industry and so, yeah, we looked at it and then we co-own All About Packaging and it's different. So it's the same thing, like we didn't greenfield started. So you're kind of you're inheriting, uh, what was there? Their, their culture, their background, this now, whatever, and then you're trying to tweak it to growth in the future and find your why, and again, you're trying to, um, bring maybe your past and culture into it. Um, so it it's and it's unique. Every opportunity is unique to another no, it's been.
Speaker 1:It's awesome what he did. He got back involved what's funny.
Speaker 2:I would love to talk to him about that on another episode, because that's a completely different animal. But before you go, I mean, is chris welcome back at lambo? Oh, oh, yeah, for sure, awesome man, you wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 3:So we got these tickets right behind the Lions bench and we were all pumped up right away. I think they threw first dry and Lions threw a pick, and we're going nuts, we go and we score. It's 7-0. And I don't think we scored again. I think it had to be like 48-7. So we were all over all the Lions fans there's a bunch of Lions fans around us and then we didn't say another word the whole time.
Speaker 1:But Chris.
Speaker 2:We're getting hammered.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, actually, he hasn't seen the video. Jerry videoed me and you can see the entire crowd started moving away and there's these four women with they wear the packer overalls, right, and so they had the green stripes and the yellow stripes and there's just me and them and they're moving away and he swears. In his video he sees a gun coming out getting ready to take me down and uh, that's what they. It's so fun, but no, it was. I mean lambo is uh, it that, that, that and that's on my bucket list.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm telling you what. You know that Chris was pretty quiet the whole day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I've been to a couple events with him, oh my.
Speaker 3:God as soon as the Lions got up 10-7, 14-7, he didn't stop talking no, there's no way.
Speaker 1:No, I did not stop talking, not until we got back to the truck and then you started driving. Then, bam, I passed out again. That's my job, chad. This is awesome. Thanks, buddy for coming on. Uh, I know you helped our audience. Hey, if you guys didn't learn something today, man, you got to learn this right. You can be a commodity. You got to differentiate yourself and Chad, he laid it down for you right. If you think you're a introvert, if you think you're an analytical guy, you got to go the other way. If you want to solve problems every day, you got to solve problems every single day. If you're not a solving problem guy and analytical guy and you're really outgoing introverted guy or extroverted guy, you got to get back in and get that and find that partner.
Speaker 2:And you got to surround yourself with really good people and good advisors and take their advice. And take that advice. I love that. Look for it before you've made the mistake.
Speaker 1:Love that Awesome. Hey, Chad, this is awesome. Hey guys, go out there, Make it happen.
Speaker 2:We've got to get out of here because we've got to roll to the next one. Thanks, Cheers everybody.
Speaker 1:See you later, guys.
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