Ep. 121 - Partnerships, Pitfalls, and Payoffs With Joe Saumweber

Stop chasing startup fairy tales and start building a life that actually works. We sit down with Joe Saumweber, co-founder of RevUnit, to unpack how he grew an enterprise consultancy by bringing consumer-grade product thinking to frontline workers, landed the logo that changes everything, and timed an exit with uncommon clarity. Joe shares the partnership rules that made a 50-50 split thrive, the single best move they made before going to market, and why planning yourself out of operations a year in advance can unlock buyer confidence and deal velocity.

From there, the story veers sharply into real life. Joe took his family onto a 65-foot catamaran and crossed oceans for two years, trading pitch decks for navigation charts and due diligence for diesel repairs. It wasn’t all sunsets: electrical Franken-systems, storms, a tense skiff encounter, and the humbling reality of learning everything the hard way. Yet the sea delivered perspective, remote islands with resilient, hyperlocal food systems, and sparked a new chapter back home.

On 23 acres in Northwest Arkansas, Joe and Mary built Tuckaway Farm, a regenerative, membership-driven operation growing 75-plus vegetables and raising hens and pigs. They designed it as a lifestyle business with constraints to prevent runaway scale, stacking experiences like markets, classes, and hospitality on top of the land. Along the way, we challenge ecosystem “innovation theater,” argue for the overlooked upside in home services and blue-collar businesses, and draw a clean line between small business cash flow and scalable startup exits. Joe gets candid about post-exit finances, the shock of losing a monthly owner draw, and how consulting now funds freedom without burning principal.

If you want a practical playbook for choosing partners, earning enterprise trust, designing an exit, and building a life you don’t need a vacation from, you’ll find it here. 

Subscribe, share with a friend who’s weighing their next move, and leave a review to tell us which chapter hit home for you.

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Transcript

Rethinking The Startup Myth

SPEAKER_02 0:00

You don't have to be a tech startup unicorn to do that. That could be any business. And I agree with you doing people a disservice when you immediately point them down that direction, which has a very low likelihood of success. And they're going to find themselves back in that cubicle in 18 months. Yeah. Um, rather than saying, you know what? I would like you to go and do an audit of all of the service industries in your region and tell me which one is the most underserved.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Another episode. Big talk about small business. Okay, big talk about small business. And we got Joe Stomweber here with us. Joe is the man. Joe is the man. We need to we need to properly introduce Joe. Agree. It's hard to say. I mean, the guy's like sailed around the globe on his catamaran. He's founded businesses and exited successfully. Now he's got this massive organic farm operation. He's lived a lot of different lives. Hey, life is short. Make it exciting. Exactly right. And he's not even that old yet. You know? Not like me.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

I mean, you get it. Oh, you're not old.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

I'm they turned 68 in less than two months. That's great, man. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Killing it. But so, Joe, um, tell us a little, tell, tell our audience a little bit about uh about yourself.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Yeah, so um I'm a dad. I've got five kids. I'm a husband. I've been married for uh 20 years now, just barely reached 20 years in December, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_04 1:36

And um I haven't hit that milestone, by the way. Well, not with the same woman. No, right, exactly. I mean, collectively. But that's not what Joe's talking about.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

No, it's not Joe.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

No, I didn't skip over anything there. It isn't, in fact, the same woman, Mary. She's fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

And um, yeah, I do have I've got a penchant for um fun and adventure, and and that kind of exhibits in all kinds of forms from entrepreneurship to sailing around the world to learning how to farm at over 40, which I don't recommend. It's you know if you haven't grown up doing that work, I've never had some farming.

SPEAKER_03 2:12

Actually, I'm I'm in sure.

SPEAKER_04 2:13

I'm never going to do that. I'm gonna learn a lot because I do have strong interest in being a remote farmer.

Early Career And First Venture

SPEAKER_03 2:19

And farming is he just likes to have heavy equipment. Dig dunk. Okay, totally. I've seen his truck, I need to pull the brown stuff. If it's an excuse to buy heavy equipment, Eric's in 100%. Maybe you should own a trail building company. Caring for animals. Yeah. That's a good idea. I like that. Anyways, so yeah, so that's where'd you start out, Joe? Tell us a little bit about your.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Yeah, so I started out, uh, grew up in Chicago, um, graduated high school in Chicago, um, went and served a two-year mission for my church in in Long Beach, California, speaking Spanish. Came home and taught Spanish for a couple of years, enjoyed that while I was going to school at BYU. Um, never graduated from BYU, started my first business while I was in school, um, doing virtual tours for mainly commercial facilities. Um, back when that was a fairly novel concept.

SPEAKER_04 3:11

And to explain that, you're talking about photography.

Rockfish Lessons And Bureaucracy

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Yeah, so like what you see on Google Street View, right? We used to do for like student housing and hotels and yeah, things like that. A little bit different than the folks that were doing it for real estate. We had a little higher end product, but um, too young and dumb to understand that I had zero competitive moat, uh, that it was a highly commoditized business, and that 2008 hit and marketing budgets disappeared, and you know, it went the way of all the world. Yeah. And, you know, I was paying tuition in school and I was paying tuition out of school in my part of your education, too, right? Right. Doing that business. You learned a lot. I did. And I and I think the point was I I learned more doing that than I was in class, and so I ended up leaving school to pursue that full time. And I just never really enjoyed school, never jived with me super well. Um, couldn't tell you why. I I, you know, I was a sociology major, I was a construction management major, I was a business major. I like, I just kind of floated around too many interests, never got past the, you know, never got deep into anything and figured I was wasting money. And anyway, so um found myself, you know, at the end of that business thinking, uh, you know, I'll go back to school when it starts to inhibit my career progress. And it just never quite did. So I went to Rockfish after that, where I met Eric. That's where Joe and I met.

SPEAKER_04 4:32

It's Rockfish Interactive. Yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah. It was what, 2008, 9?

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:39

Right around there, 2009. Weren't they right there on Dixon in the building we were in?

SPEAKER_04 4:43

They that's where they originally were. They were in our office. Yeah. The old swag white building that we took over. Yeah. But when Joe and I joined, they were up at Horseborn Road and Rogers. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

You can trace a lot of entrepreneurial successes back to that core group that was up to the good people. Gathered a lot of great talent. And um, anyways, it's it's fun to kind of trace the lineage back. Um, spent several years there and then we were so young. We we were.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

You were good, but having fun. I tell you what, like I came in, I I had probably a little bit more like career experience at that time than Joe, just from like a timeline standpoint. I was older. And um, I've just gotten there before, but then Joe came in. Was we were both kind of senior AEs, basically, right? So same same kind of roles, different accounts. And I mean, Joe just really did a great job, like handling the accounts, obviously, and planning them and making them successful, but far better than I was ever at. Speaking to our original conversation of handling the dynamics of the internal organization.

SPEAKER_03 5:50

The sociology is great education, I think it's it's helpful. No, serious. I know another, well, you know, Kit Miyamoto of Miyamoto. Yeah, he was a sociology major before he became a famous structural earthquake engineer. Interesting. And it helps him because he works in all these foreign countries, yeah. And that he understands how to uh you know learn the culture.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Organizational organizational psychology has always been a really interesting field for me, and I I love it and I I like those dynamics. I don't have a lot of patience for bureaucracy though, right?

SPEAKER_05 6:25

Yeah, I don't either.

Founding RevUnit And 50-50 Partnerships

SPEAKER_02 6:26

And so it's it's why I didn't go work for one of the big three in town. I you know, worked for a smaller company. But even small companies, once they get to a certain size, can't help themselves from generating this bureaucracy and putting people in place that are you we were talking about um starters and scalers. Sometimes I don't have a lot of patience for scalers either, right? This like slow and steady, and um I just want this, you know, very incremental. Yeah, we've got a process, please follow it. Like, cool. Yeah. Is it a good process? Does it drive the outcomes we want? You know, yeah, yeah. Um, and so eventually found my way out of that. Um, starting RevUnit with Michael Paladino.

SPEAKER_04 7:06

And y'all were both a rockfish then too, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Yeah, we had we had the benefit of having worked together for several years and having a great working relationship first.

SPEAKER_04 7:14

But before Rockfish?

SPEAKER_02 7:16

No, no, no. Just while we were there, yeah. And so we we had a great flow, great team together. You know, it's the most the most expensive decisions anyone makes in the early stages of uh of a startup is which partners they pick and how they who they put on a cap table, right? Yes. Um and Michael and I did the thing that everyone says you shouldn't do, and we were 50-50 partners from the beginning. And I was blessed with two great marriages. Yeah, yeah. One to one to Mary and one to Michael for those years that we were together.

SPEAKER_04 7:43

Let's talk, let's talk about that 50-50 split because that's a I get that total lot, but that's been my partnership relationships, yeah, with JS. Uh-huh. Even my co-founder and wife spider Alex and my. We were 50-50, JS or and I were 50-50 when he came in. And then um, and then at Ad Fury 50-50 again. Yeah. I see it being extremely powerful if you have the right partner. That's the that's the big ticket.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

That's the big if.

SPEAKER_04 8:08

So it's not, hey, don't ever be 50-50, always be 50. Well, that's not the answer. It's like, I agree, don't ever be 50-50 with somebody you don't have absolute, you know, confidence on both sides that's your good partnership.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

Yeah, I mean, I think so much of it is that if you're both trying to do the same thing and you're 50-50, it's gonna be a problem. You're right. If you have really vastly different roles and skill sets, then it can work out fine. Agree. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

And that was Michael and I. Yeah, yeah. We we had very different skill sets. You know, Michael comes from a technology background. He was a coder that learned to speak English and be really good in front of a client, right? Which is a very rare skill set. Sure.

SPEAKER_04 8:48

For coders. Learn to speak English. You just talk about it in just general for colors. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

It sure is. I agree.

SPEAKER_04 8:54

Um and have another language.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

No, no, no. He was just really good at articulating technology and technical strategy and why things should be done a certain way. Um, and when you're in a consulting practice, which is essentially what we were, being able to go toe-to-toe with enterprise tech folks and walk to walk and talk to talk with them, but also be able to elevate to the business side and say, well, here's here's what your tech team is saying and why why you should listen and why it's important was really great. Um then I came from more of a strategy background and business development background, and um, and so that's the side of the house that I ran, including and as well as product development, you know. So product was was part of the organization I ran. Um, but having a partner that was 50-50 with me in everything, just as committed, yeah, and there from the beginning, yeah, was extraordinary and a wonderful experience. There was no like, well, I'm a minority partner, like that's yours to deal with. That's right, right?

SPEAKER_05 9:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

And that's someone who's truly like equally yoked with you in the business. And I think that's why it's powerful.

SPEAKER_04 9:54

I agree. I mean, it's literally like a marriage, right? I mean, it's even I think even more intense than a marriage in some regards, you know, because you don't sleep together usually. You don't spend all the time.

SPEAKER_03 10:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:06

Uh but I mean, if you have a marriage that's if I'm 40% the dominating part of the marriage, it's it's gonna cause a lot of friction. One person's gonna feel demotivated, they're not gonna feel included, the other person's gonna feel overpowered and domineering, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:21

I mean, it's just it can't. I mean, it doesn't have to be. Well, yeah, you're right. I mean, I had Fred White in initially, I it was 75-25, and then when we were you 75 or what? Yeah, okay, and then we made it 60-40, but I had a lot more experience than Fred. I was out there for 10 years before he was. Okay, I had all the clients and everything, and but it still didn't mean we didn't have equal weighting of each other's opinions, you know.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Well, I don't think 50-50 has to be the case, right? There's certainly a lot of scenarios where people just bring different levels of value and expenses, exactly, and it worked out fine.

Pivot To Enterprise And Hypergrowth

SPEAKER_04 10:56

Well, but you were also a good 60% partner for him.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:00

Because I mean, think about it though. I mean, I think it comes down to the person, is all I'm saying, right? The percentages, it really comes down to the people on the cap table.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

And the way you treat each other. Yes. And yeah. So, but anyway, you guys were both into it. You took this company, you started as a consulting business. Yeah. And you grew it.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

We did, yeah. We initially thought we would be like our conviction was that there's a lot of startups out there that didn't have good technical co-founders. And so we were gonna go be that for them. We were gonna help build their products, be the you know, the kind of the technical folks in the room to help them bring these things to life. And the the problem with that thesis is that there were no startups in Northwest Arkansas at the time with any money. There you go. That is the problem.

SPEAKER_04 11:44

Yeah, that's a poor problem. That's always true. Did you not look into that?

Product Focus: Modern Tools For Workers

SPEAKER_02 11:47

ICP was really poor. Yeah, they had they had zero funding and zero money. So I, you know, these are things that you learn because this is this is a lot of things. This wasn't Swycan Valley exactly out here, was it? No, it was not. It was a bit of a wilderness back in 2012. Sure. And so um we started getting at bats with some medium-sized companies in in regional markets down in Dallas, up in Kansas City, and St. Louis. And so we were working with um Mary K Cosmetics, Parkplace dealerships, uh, Virgin Hotels. Cool. Um, and and so we were starting to get some street cred, and these are these are clients that can pay, which is nice. So we're scaling the team. And then, you know, about a year and a half in, two years in, Walmart comes knocking and it changed everything. And so they, you know, asked us to start standing up teams for them. And then once we had that logo on the wall and we had that confidence of like, hey, if we can do it for them, we can do it for anybody, then a whole world of opportunity opened up to us, and we was we were just kind of off to the races. We ended up we we owned the company eight years, 84% compound annual growth rate for services companies, pretty wild. For tech companies, not you know, nothing to write home about. But um, great result, great um private equity partners um that that ended up doing the transaction with us. And um, yeah, we were, you know, I was able to write kind of write myself out of that plan and continue on to my sailing adventure with the family, which was which was a great payoff moment for me to spend that time with family.

SPEAKER_04 13:08

So before we get into sailing, just real quick on the business rev unit, like what what was the actual product? Like y'all were developing, I mean, at the end of the day, for clients, what were you mostly doing? Weren't y'all doing like a lot of apps, mobile apps for people?

SPEAKER_02 13:20

We did a lot of mobile apps. Mainly it was building um taking our consumer-facing technology skill set, like really polished applications, but applying that to the workforce of some of the biggest companies in the world. Because you had these huge companies that are building these amazing consumer apps, and we could have done that work, but their employees are sitting on a dusty green screen in the back room. Interesting. Okay. And they're having this really terrible experience, and their customers are walking in with more information than the employee has. And so we're helping take paper-based processes or you know, old archaic uh, you know, green screen processes and putting them on modern devices with modern design and liberating data for the first time inside the enterprise to help these folks make smarter decisions to get work done faster and more efficiently.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

Okay. Not like your typical intranet with all these clunky spreadsheets.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

SharePoint was like a customer.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

Exactly. Yeah, that's interesting. That is a really um that's a niche right there.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Yeah. And we loved it because we were going up against like these really big monolithic consultancies, you know, the Deloitte's and the McKenzie's and the Bains and the Accentures and Tata's, you know, and like we just look so different. And so we, you know, if you're small and you're, you know, you're David versus a Goliath, you you want to show up different, and we could, which is fun.

David Versus Goliath Consulting

SPEAKER_04 14:38

That's awesome. It's a and then hey, I I'll express like having some sort of similar experiences, the David versus Goliath thing. I had that on my LinkedIn profile for a long time. Like, I'm David, you're Goliath, you know, it was smack talking, but you smack talking? Yeah, I was. Can you believe it? It's hard to believe publicly. But there's I think there's so much honor and integrity in that. Like what you guys did, right? What you and Michael set out to do, nothing, hard work, nose to the grindstone, figuring it out, taking risk, really important sales meetings, big deals happening, getting the big logo, continuing to grow and win, and then building people. I mean, all from the scratch. I mean, that's there's a lot of esteem that comes with that, you know. So congratulations, you guys. Yeah, I mean, I was what was really cool is watching Joe and Michael. You know, I knew I knew Michael a little bit of Rockfish, just but I didn't, I was on the customer side like Joe was, so I knew Joe better. But seeing those, because I left Rockfish before they did and kind of started, I don't think I started White Spider then. I served something else, but um, but then to see Joe and Michael go out later and then they exited sooner, like they built their company really fast and were able to exit, I think at least two or three years before we did at White Spider. Uh, it was just awesome, you know, just awesome to see. And you guys did it.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Thanks, man.

SPEAKER_03 15:59

Yeah, it's a classic story.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

The ride of a lifetime.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

It it it really is fantastic. And you timed your exit so well, too.

Ecosystems, Theater, And Real Opportunity

SPEAKER_02 16:07

Perfect. These are things that you don't yeah, you know, you you don't want to attribute it to these things, but they're really real. Like we read it, we wrote an incredible economic wave, you know, we had a 10, 12-year run there of economic growth. We had tailwinds in an industry of you know mobile and application development, um, and you know, technology transformation of the enterprise. Like we just had so many tailwinds behind us. We had a really great community that was growing and starting to attract, like in the early days of Rev Unit, you couldn't pay people enough to move them here. And by three, four, five years in, everyone's like, hey, you know, I read about this place in Forbes. I read about this place, you know, top 10 places to live in. And so we just we had the support coming from the community that was interested in building. And so um so many things lined up to enable that for us. So we're just really grateful that you know the the fates aligned. Yeah. So um, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:59

I'm glad you brought that up though. I want to take this just a slightly different direction before we get into Joe's sailing adventures. Um what do you think about the quote entrepreneurship ecosystem that comes from forget the the money part of it? Let's just talk more about the the education part of it or the companies that are um, I don't want to say parasitic, but they're um uh rely on on public funding to support um entrepreneurs. Um how do you feel about all that? Do you think they're doing a good job, I guess, creating the future entrepreneurs? It's a setup.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Yeah, Mark, you asked that question in such a way that I feel like I should toss it right back to you to give your opinion.

SPEAKER_05 17:51

I'm curious. How do you feel about Mark?

SPEAKER_03 17:55

I I I want to know though what what you think because you're an experienced person who's done it. Yeah. Okay. So I I think that I I'm just curious. And you've been here and you see North, you know, you've been a big part of Northwest Arkansas for this, this, this run-up of our um entrepreneurial culture here, which is real. And it's it's it's, you know. But what do you think about are we doing a good job?

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Um, I have I have thoughts and feelings, um, some of them positive and charitable, and some of them less so. I think there there have been people that have been here for a very long time, yeah, that have been doing incredible work at building community. And like, like you talk about nose of the grindstown day in, day out, like scheduling meetups, running calendars, getting you know, things like Million Cups set up and um yeah, regular touch points for founders to get together and create community. And they they've lived here a long time, they're invested in the community and they care. And those are like the angels of the founder community in Northwest Arkansas in my mind. I think of guys like Jeff Ramarine, for instance. Yes, right. Like just day in, day out, killing it for everybody, right? Um and then you've got these, you know, entrepreneur support organizations that are more on a national level that have you know lots of credibility and they kind of swoop in and they're in and they do a you know big flashy thing and they gather everybody up and then they disappear, and you don't really know where they went, but they disappeared with a lot of money, right? Um we're not alone in this, but I think a lot of communities that want to become more entrepreneurial um have a hard time um working with the experts that are already there, and they just have this propensity to want to bring in outside expertise all the time. People that aren't invested in the community, and it I rarely see that work out well.

SPEAKER_04 19:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Um that's my opinion. I don't know if that's what you were going for or not.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

Well, that's part of it. I mean, I just think it's on the way to what we want you to answer. No, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Just tell me what you want to hear, and I'll be happy to say it.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

Yeah. Let me validate you, Mark. We can get you a script next to you. I don't know. I mean, it just seems it to me that there's a lot of of sort of um uh innovation theater.

SPEAKER_05 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Misinformation out there about uh there being a certain way to start and grow a business. There's overemphasis, in my opinion, on ideation and um coming up with something new that's never been done before. Okay. There's more uh when there's so much opportunity in just a zillion mature industries all over the place.

Small Business vs Scalable Startup

SPEAKER_02 20:34

That's real. Like I have you know people come in and asking me all the time, like, hey, what do you think about this? Or you know, someone who just exited, not exited, but left or was laid off from one of the you know major corporate. Sure. Yeah, they're like, hey, you know, what do you think about this app idea? I'm like, you know, that it's interesting, but what you should do is go start a plumbing business or a a pool care company, or like it's just as entrepreneurial, like it really is. Um and the way private equity is dealing with you know home services businesses, it's a huge opportunity for anyone who knows how to actually run a business.

SPEAKER_04 21:06

Yeah, there's some some sort of technology background that understands how to use emails and calendars.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Right. It doesn't have to show up on time and do what you say you're gonna do. Yeah, I know. That's such a big just be responsive and show up.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

It's good billing procedures. Yeah, I mean change the world. It's the inglorious side of entrepreneurship, but I think it leads to every bit as good of an outcome, a much more uh predictable outcome. That's it. Lower risk, in my opinion. Yeah, way, way lower risk.

SPEAKER_03 21:32

Maybe it's not a you know, unicorn. Yeah, maybe you're not gonna make a grand slim, but you can make a triple. Exactly. I mean, this is the thing. And so I think when you set that and everything's aimed at that, and this other stuff is basically poo-pooed. You know, we we're not interested in that. I mean, the whole the for years here, nobody was had any interest in any business that did not create knowledge workers uh jobs.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

There is no interest in that at all. That's about to change. Okay. So there's no question about it. That has to change. It is because knowledge workers are quickly being replaced by AI, right? So we're gonna have a bunch of knowledge workers sitting on the street looking for knowledge work that doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_03 22:18

And then plumbers that are needed. Exactly. Right? And we'll pay them 100K a year. That's right.

SPEAKER_05 22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:24

Yeah, it's I I get it. Well, anyway, I just one didn't I I I always have to get into that because I just think that there's so much misinformation, and we're not doing people a service if we tell them that that's the only route to go. My my theory on it all is if people think, well, if I can't come up with something new and have the next quote unicorn, then I might as well forget that, go to work at Starbucks. Okay.

Planning The Exit And Handing Off

SPEAKER_02 22:51

It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's funny because so many people like when you ask the you look at the profile of an entrepreneur and what they want and why they want to be an entrepreneur. And usually it's because they can't stand being anything else.

SPEAKER_05 23:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Um, it it's a profile of a person that wants to work for themselves, that wants to make, you know, be in charge of their own destiny, that wants to be the decider, um, and that wants to, you know, have a direct correlation between the work and effort they put in and the benefit that they get back. Um and you don't have to be a tech startup unicorn to do that. That could be any business. And I agree with you, you're doing people a disservice when you immediately point them down that direction, which has a very low likelihood of success. And they're gonna find themselves back in that cubicle in 18 months. Yeah. Um, rather than saying, you know what? I would like you to go and do an audit of all of the service industries in your region and tell me which one is the most underserved. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Put together a business plan to acquire somebody that knows how to do that. And then, you know, how are you gonna make that business better over the next five years? I'd much rather invest in that.

Sailing With Family: Risk And Reward

SPEAKER_03 23:53

I I'm looking for new accountants in a business that I'm involved with that's not here. But I have sent five um inquiries out to accounting firms. And you know how many I've heard back from? Don't tell me zero. Zero. Are you serious? Zero. The same problem. I think the ones I heard back from were astronomical. It it blows my mind. Don't get me started on accounting. I I I'm probably gonna deal with somebody here because even though the business is not here, yeah, only because they're responsive. That's right. You gotta go. Yeah. Okay, well, we can talk about that. But it's like we got to but it but it blows it, it just blows me away. Like you said, I mean, there's just all these opportunities out there where people are just doing a bad job and you can come in and do something well. And and you know, I'm glad you brought up like why entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs and what they do. I had a uh uh lunch yesterday with a fellow who wants to start a new business. He's an engineer, he's a sharp guy, he's done a lot of different stuff. He's got the wire, his wiring is right. He goes, I said, why do you want to do this? He's like, Well, you you know, he goes, I know this sounds terrible, but he goes, I just want to control my time. I go, that's the reason why a lot of people start businesses. That's not terrible. Yeah, you think it's to say you think any of us started out with our business that we're doing that because we want to make a lot of money. It was never even a consideration. It's an outcome. It's a potential outcome, but it's not what motivates you to start something, is it?

SPEAKER_02 25:30

No, I mean, yes, but so that I could have time later. Yeah. Well, that's another thing. Yeah. I was willing to put in the 70 hours a week and I was willing to grind because I had this vision that, you know, sometime at a reasonable age. You'd be where you are at. Exactly. Yeah, I can choose what I want to do.

SPEAKER_04 25:46

I mean, I think that on that topic, like I one of my things that bugs me to death, and we've discussed it before, uh, about this whole community and the way that it's being advertised, is the kind of the sex appeal about being an entrepreneur. Yeah. It drives me absolutely nuts. Like, entrepreneurism is the most dangerous career path that you could ever take. It's got the highest risk, you know. I mean, it's got the most uncertainty. It could have bankruptcy all over it, right? You don't really go bankrupt. Great opportunity for shame. Yeah. Shaming and failure. All of it's there. And I just think that it's like, you know, it's glorified, right? And Mark and I we've discussed it too, like prior to like the you know, the 1920s, everybody was a freaking entrepreneur. Everybody had a small business until big industry came in. But nobody was doing it because it was sexy and cool, you know, really. Everybody was doing it because who survived.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

Yeah, they had to. Because their dad did it.

SPEAKER_04 26:41

Yeah, because yeah, that's what you do, right? And now we've turned it around and make it into some sort of glorious, you know, victorious thing. And then I think those expectations are dangerous.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up to the work that it took, Joe, to get to where you were and the sacrifice you make, because that's another misconception, I think. It's, you know, most any of us who accomplished anything had to put in extraordinary effort. And that's okay, because it did pay off and it did give other options to all of us to do other things. But to say, oh, I'm gonna have this great thing and I'm gonna have this perfect work-life balance is it's totally unrealistic.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

I think trade-offs, trade-offs, trade-offs, 100%. And some people I you know get into a business where they can manage that better than others. But if you're in a scalable enterprise and you're going for an exit, I don't know that you're gonna be having a a lot of free time for a while. If you want a lifestyle business that pays you decently well into perpetuity and you're always gonna be working, that's great.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

Exactly. It's a different matter. That to me is the is the distinction between small business and entrepreneurship right there.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 27:58

Okay, the small business, they're gonna make a good living. Maybe they do have their lifestyle, but at the moment they stop, yep, they're done. They got nothing to pay off that sacrifice later. There's no buildup of value that you can cash in on. Why do you think it is that so many small business owners don't understand? You know, this is called, this show is big talk about small business. Why do you think so many small business owners don't understand the opportunity that exists to grow a business and have an exit and instead focus only on short-term results, short-term profitability, not making the investments in people and marketing and systems, which are the only three ways you're going to grow a business, right? But they don't make that investment because that compromises their immediate uh uh uh uh extractions from the business, therefore it doesn't grow and you know, and they don't have that exit. Why do you think so many people miss that opportunity that exists?

Pirates, Storms, And Systems Failing

SPEAKER_02 29:06

I I think they got into it for different reasons, and it's a mindset difference between a small business owner and a scalable startup. Yeah, right. Um the small business owners got into something because it's a passion or it's just something they they knew how to do, or they you know they fell into it because someone asked them to build a pool one time and now great. I know how to do that now, so I'm gonna go do that again. They never envision for themselves this day where they're selling that and exiting it, they never envision that that they're actually creating asset value that's appreciating over time. And until like until someone walks up and says, Hey, you know, there's there's five other companies like you that have, you know, across the country that have exited over the last 18 months, and these are the kind of multiples they're getting. And this is like the levers of value that created those multiples. Like, until someone has that conversation with you, I don't, I don't know that you can envision like you can't even fathom it, right?

SPEAKER_03 30:01

Um the levers of value.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

But it is a great gift when someone is willing to explain that to you. Because then you're like, oh, well, now I'm willing to invest differently. Now I'm willing to sacrifice differently, now I'm willing to forego some of those short-term wants for a long-term outcome.

SPEAKER_04 30:18

So speaking of those long-term outcomes, like you were talking about. So you had your exit. Yeah. And you said something really important I don't want to skip, is that you at the time of the exit opportunity, you scripted yourself into a different lifestyle, right? Correct. You you exited at a time of some sort of exiting point.

SPEAKER_05 30:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:40

Tell us a little about that. Like you already had in your mindset what your next chapter was gonna be and what you were gonna do. So you had a goal beforehand.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Kind of. Um, I didn't know that we were gonna go sailing, but I did know that I needed a break.

SPEAKER_04 30:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Um I get that. And so, right, like you just you feel like you've you've been running a sprint for the duration of a marathon. Yeah, right. And and just just running a process to sell your business is it's like a job on top of your job, right? So if you're the CEO and you're running the company and you're like, okay, but but I also have to run this process, and you've got investment bank involved, and you're having regular meetings, and you're pitch decks, and people are coming in and wanting you to beef up your data room and like always information, more and more information, more and more. Due diligence is a beast. Yeah. I was fortunate enough to know what I wanted before we started that process. And so when we first sat down with our investment bank to talk about going to market and selling a business, I said, listen, I'm out. Um, I want to be out. And they said, Great, you need to promote someone to president right now. Yes. And they need to operate the business for a year while we're good advice while we're going. And I said, Great. Very good advice. So we did that. Um, and that allowed, well, one, it allowed me more time to work on the process of selling the business, which was a side benefit I didn't anticipate, but was huge. Because you know, pulling out of the operations day to day was a huge gift because it is a full-time job to sell your business. Sure. Um, and then that was just the story. It was the story. Every time we met with someone, they're like, hey, who's staying? Who's going? What you know, what's going on? And everyone knew, like, Joe's going.

SPEAKER_05 32:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

And um the intention was to stay on the board and participate for for quite some time. I kind of after the after the everything was over and done, um, felt like I wasn't necessarily as needed or wanted because we had new leaders that were wanting to grow and step into that. And I wanted to give them room to do that.

SPEAKER_04 32:38

Sure.

Crossing The Pacific And Calling Time

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Um, and so I didn't feel bad when Mary and I had a moment where we're like, you know what, COVID just hit our kids that were homeschooling, anyways, we're doing church at home anyways. Like, we could do this from anywhere. Where do we want to do it from? We want to do it from a boat. Wow. And so it was fortunate to be in a position already where I could say, hey guys, you know, you already don't need me. I'm I'm out. Um and uh we went sailing. So what the boat? Yeah, you know, it's told. Did you know something about boats? Not a not as much as I really have.

SPEAKER_04 33:11

Now you do, right?

SPEAKER_03 33:12

Not as much as I did a few months later. How did you find this boat? What kind of boat was it? And what did you do with it?

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Uh so we ended up buying this old like 65, it's not, it was a beautiful boat. So 65-foot catamaran, it's privilege. Um, it was 20 years old, very well taken care of. But this thing is like under the hood.

SPEAKER_03 33:31

They are complicated.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

Uh, it had like the wiring had been redone half a dozen times. Like, so bear with me just because you'll this is like emblematic of what I dealt with for two and a half years of my life, right? You got a guy who's used to like I build PowerPoints for a living, and all of a sudden I'm having to learn how to run this boat. This boat was a uh built in the in Europe, so it's a it's a 220, 50 hertz boat, right? And then it's got an American owner who converts everything to it's some things to 60 hertz at 110. And then they've got appliances that have to be 220 at 60 hertz, and then they've got 24 volt electricity to run a lot of the rigging, and they've got 12 volt electricity to run.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

So I've got like inverters and converters.

SPEAKER_02 34:13

I've got five different kinds of inverters, five different kinds of electrical systems running around the boat, six subpanels hidden under like benches and beds. There's no owners, man. No, no. There was, but like everything has changed six times since then. I get it. I've got hydraulic systems that run sales, I've got four um diesel engines, two main engines, two generators, um that is complete. Sale systems. Like the easiest part is sailing the daggone boat. Yeah, the hardest part is maintaining all of these systems that are that are you know challenging, right? And I don't know how to do any of it. So that was uh the steepest learning curve I've probably ever had to go through in my life was was learning all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

And you got your whole family with you. You're actually your life depends on your ability.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

Where's dad? He's cussing in the air, throwing wrenches.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

You're like the the dad in the Christmas story in the basement with the boilers over.

SPEAKER_04 35:09

Yeah, constantly messing with it. So your family was in on this. Like Mary was just like, yeah, let's do it.

Health Scare And Perspective Shift

SPEAKER_02 35:15

Totally in, totally committed. Everyone's excited. Um and you know, like anything that is romantic, there's like the other side of that coin of like, oh, this got real. This is not quite what we envisioned. And that first year we were all in the Caribbean and we had a lot of those experiences. Like a ton of gear failure, like fire in the engine room, you know, hundreds of miles offshore. Oh my god. You know, your boom is crashing down, sails are flapping. Like, we just had gear failure out the wazoo, losing steering, you know, in the middle of the night. I I can't even walk you through it all. It was it was on pirates. Uh, we we did have some experiences where we had to like go dark because we had you know, skiffs, we're we're sailing from the Bahamas down to Cartagena, Colombia. Um, and on that passage, you you go in between Haiti and Cuba, right? Which is not the most the friendliest of places. You just you're you're aware of where you are. Geographically, I'm not in the friendliest of zones. So while we're in the you know, in between Haiti and Cuba, like the first thing that happens is we're dodging thunderstorms, and then the second thing that happens is we've got this skiff that starts trailing us about a mile off, and you know, evening is coming, and um and and you just we're alone. And so um we end up going dark, we turn off yeah, who knows, right? Yeah, and we didn't carry. Um, boats have different philosophies about that. Some boats are like, yeah, you know, I hide guns in my boat. Um, I'm like, what happens when you start shooting? What what are the chances that you are gonna outgun pirates right now? Like the best thing I want is to get outgunned, right? I'm not gonna start shooting. Might get to take a few of them down, though. I mean, like there's nothing about me and my five kids and wife that's gonna scare off anyone that wants to board my butt no matter what kind of problem if you took your shirt off and you painted your face.

SPEAKER_04 37:04

Maybe.

SPEAKER_03 37:06

He loves that Mel Gibson movie. Okay, he always comes back to break. You're turning Brave, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:13

They might get scared. Maybe they have to get awfully close to be scared of me. Closer than I want to be. Well, you want them close, but it's a knife fight. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:22

Anyways, we we we did. We had some experiences on that passage.

SPEAKER_04 37:26

Um dark, like what does it mean you turned off all the lights?

SPEAKER_02 37:29

You turn off all of your lights and you turn off your AIS, your your positioning system that broadcasts where you are. And then you change course. Um and you turn on engines and you change speed. So you're you're just you're you're you're wanting to go faster and you're wanting to be on a new course so that by the time the light comes up in the morning, you are in a place that they don't expect you to be and they can't find you, which is ended up being what happened, right? We never saw them again.

SPEAKER_04 37:54

Uh but you you have no idea where you're at either.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

We do, yeah. No, we have we have GPS. Like I know where I am, but I'm not broadcasting a signal that says where I am, right? And so you know, no one can find me. You know, that was one of two situations. We had another, we had a Chinese fishing vessel that made some very aggressive maneuvers in the middle of the Pacific, actually. Came up right on us, 100 guys on deck, shirtless, like not smiling, 50 yards off of the back of our boat. Like, you know, we're going like this, and they came in right behind us. I know no one who's listening can see this, but an aggressive change of course coming right on our stern, like looking like they're about ready to board us and followed us for about five miles that way. Did they think you were in there fishing ground or we're a catamaran, like I can put out two lines, like what am I gonna do? You know. But that was a thousand miles offshore, you know. Just you're in the middle of nowhere, you've got no radio contact with anybody. The most I've got is like a satellite. This is before Starlink. So I've got a satellite that works sometimes, it might allow me a text message. And that's kind of all you've got.

SPEAKER_03 38:56

So you did that for a couple years, right?

SPEAKER_02 38:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

And then why did you decide to end that? And what came after that?

SPEAKER_02 39:04

You know, we we were kind of we'd made it across the Pacific. Our second year was fantastic. Like we paid our dues in the Caribbean, second year coming across the Pacific, so many remote places, like French Polynesia, hundreds of islands, amazing, remote. You know, you can't get there any other way. Fiji, hundreds of islands, super remote. Tonga, like, and then we ended in New Zealand. And so the question was do we go back up and over Australia and into like Indonesia, which would have been really fun, or do we wrap up here? And we had a son that was coming into his high school years and he wanted to have that high school experience. And sure, it just felt like we had accomplished all the things that we'd set out to do. We'd made some amazing memories.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

Um what a great experience for your kids. I mean, to see all these different places and live like that. I mean, how many of their peers can claim that?

SPEAKER_02 39:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:51

You know, they're all just sitting around on their phones and talking about the Friday night football game or whatever. I mean, it's that's a wild. Must have been great for them. Let them see some other places in the world and how people live, right? It's a big deal. It is. It's a really big deal.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

It's a big world.

SPEAKER_03 40:10

It's one of the reasons why I think people aren't very empathetic. Yeah. Because they just have no experience dealing with other people and cultures. They don't know how other people really live.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:20

You know?

SPEAKER_02 40:21

So and to be clear, my kids still sit around on their phones. Nothing you can do about that.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

We do have that conversation.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Like you know, you can have this, is this real or not real? Yeah. You know what real is. Like you've experienced is what you're dealing with right now on social media or Instagram. Is it real or not real?

SPEAKER_04 40:40

It's not the only way you can teach your kids that is to separate them from that, like what you did. That's really cool. Two and a half years straight on the sea.

SPEAKER_02 40:49

Yeah, we did come home a couple times. I got deathly ill at one time and had to come home for like some emergency medical treatment. And so we were home while you were at sea for five weeks. We were actually in Cartagena. Okay. So we we spent six months living in Cartagena, Colombia, doing a bunch of work on the boat, and we'd done some traveling inland, and I got sick when we did that. Ended up having leptospirosis. Really weird thing. Like it's a it's a like your brain starts swelling. It it behaves a lot like dengue, which is what they thought I had. So they started treating me for dengue, and I didn't get better. And anyways, came home. The doc's here at Mercy diagnosed me like that, got me fixed up, but it was a close call. I was in like kidney failure, liver was on its way. Brain was swelling. It was a it was a tense moment.

SPEAKER_04 41:32

What's that cause from?

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Is like a virus or it it's a bacteria.

SPEAKER_04 41:36

Really?

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:37

Waterborne. Yeah. Yeah.

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Coming Home And Starting A Farm

SPEAKER_00 41:40

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SPEAKER_03 41:55

Well, so then um you came back. Yep. And you came back to Northwest Arkansas. We did. Did you have a house here all that time?

SPEAKER_02 42:03

We did, yeah. We oh so you kept home to the same house. Okay. We've lived there 10 years now. We just you know we love it, we're out in the country, and uh we've added onto it and made it our own.

SPEAKER_03 42:12

But um So what did you do with it when you were gone all that time? We Airbnb'd it, and it was awesome. Oh, okay, good. So you had made property manager and granite. Cool. So now you've got this organic farm. What possessed you to do that?

SPEAKER_02 42:24

Well, we've been all over the world and kind of interacted with these people who've lived much the way they have for hundreds of years. And you know, we come pull up to an island in Fiji and someone invites you over for dinner and they don't have to go to Walmart. You know, they go and they kill a pig on the hillside and they collect some you know, root vegetables, and they pull a fish out that they you know caught earlier that day and they make an amazing meal. And um and then everyone to the store, and like that happened so many times that we're like, man, like these people's relationship with food is very different.

SPEAKER_03 42:56

Yeah, and how we much healthier too, yeah, sure, than all the processed crap that we eat, right? Yeah. Mark just by the way, you picked him up some Burger King on the way. No, I did not. I'm I've changed my diet. I'm oh that's right, you did. I've got a trainer now four days a week. Dang, there you go, Mark. Yeah, yeah, that's great. My wife wanted it, and I got her that for Christmas and decided that I would do it too. I can't believe you would I would tell my wife no. I'm not, I don't use I tell her no about everything, but she asked me to know. Yeah, I have the exact opposite relationship with my. I tell her yes to everything she wants to do. We've been amazing, and it's so low stress. We're all like this.

SPEAKER_04 43:39

It's so low stress. It's love like but that relationship with food, and so you so what are you doing now? You're you're trying to re- you're doing that here.

SPEAKER_02 43:48

Yeah, we're trying to, you know, we came home. One thing I learned about myself after Rev Unit was like, I gotta have a thing. Yeah. Or I go through you know depression and I don't know what to do, and I wake up in the morning. It's a terrible feeling.

SPEAKER_05 44:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Um, and so you know, knowing that we started sketching out what would become Tuckaway Farm as we were sailing across the Pacific on graph paper. And um, we knew that that's what we wanted to do when we came home, and so we you know, we we did we came home, and about a you know, three days later we were putting shovels on the ground, um, building our little regenerative farm here in northwest Arkansas where we grow over 75 different kinds of vegetables. We raised layer hens for you know eggs, we raise pigs, and um, our whole mission and vision with that is to let people come and see what it looks like to interact with the land in a responsible and ethical way. Um we're about as granola as it gets. It becomes the farming methodologies and uh and it's really fun.

SPEAKER_04 44:40

We have So what's the economics to it? Do you sell the meats?

SPEAKER_02 44:43

Do you do we sell? So we have a farm membership program each year. Like last year we had 75 families that came each week and picked up their their member, their their membership basket. They get to pick whatever they want, the vegetables. We go to the farmers market and um we sell it to a couple of restaurants. Yeah.

Regenerative Food And Local Economics

SPEAKER_04 44:59

I see. It's too bad. Did you just say in in Bantonville? It sounded like you said Bantonville. I just said Bentonville. Well, we got the recording. I do say fable.

SPEAKER_03 45:13

I I'd heard you say fable. Fable. But that's different than Bantonville. Well, sorry, I forgot all you transplants over here come from other places. Okay. Yeah, it's not much of a worse than you, but yeah. Well, I'm from Missouri. Oh, that's right. Because I call it Missouri, where I'm from. Missouri is the southwest Missouri. Missouri.

SPEAKER_02 45:37

I'm I'm the Yankee here. I'm the Chicago.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

Oh, you are. Where'd you grow up in Chicago? Uh Aurora, Naperville area. Oh, that's yeah. Yeah. That's isn't that Frimmed High School? No, that's in Palatine.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

No, we were kind of right on the border of we were in Naperville and uh had uh Nekor Valley High School is where I was.

SPEAKER_03 45:56

Okay. Yeah. I knew a girl from Naperville. You know, I went to school at SIU Carbondale. Okay, right on. And they were all Chicagoans up there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:04

Every everybody was from Chicago.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:06

So, Joe, no exit plans for the Tuckley Farms.

SPEAKER_02 46:10

No, this is a lifestyle business.

SPEAKER_04 46:12

This is not an entrepreneurial venture.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

Yeah, it was and that was a negotiation with Mary, right? Like, hey, we're gonna come back, we're gonna do this thing. Um, we had learned to work together on the boat, wanted to continue that. And and I found that I needed boundaries. I've got 23 acres to work with. That's a boundary that I can't expand beyond, right? Um, and it has to, the farm has to fit on that. Yeah. And so it it has helped. And I can stack enterprises all day long on top of that, right? We can think about hospitality, we can think about events, we can think about farm to table cooking classes, but but it all has to fit on this 23 acre. And so that creates some constraints for me, which are important. Um but uh yeah, I'm getting to a point where I do miss um some of the the unconstrained side of what I do. And so uh about four or five months ago, I started doing some consulting, and that's been a blast working with you know early stage companies and enterprises who want to think a bit differently.

SPEAKER_04 47:10

Yeah, that's good. Start playing with those uh those old those old talents and yeah. Yeah, real quick before we close up, I do want to like say something about Mary. Like, let's talk about what her feelings were watching you go through RevUnit and working so hard, and then you know what it's like today.

Lifestyle Business By Design

SPEAKER_02 47:33

Yeah. Uh she's my secret weapon, and anyone who's been through it understands the difference between going home to a more stressful environment than your work environment and going home to a like peaceful, happy, restful place. We're both agreed. Oh yeah, I get it. Like when work is your like stress reliever, that's a problem when you're an entrepreneur. So Mary was always that centering force. Yeah, she's one of those people that's happy anywhere and any time in any circumstances. So whether I was successful or utter failure, she was gonna feel the same way about me. She loves you. Yeah, she just loves me. And and she doesn't need a lot to be happy, you know. And so that's great. Um now she has some expensive tastes. But but in absence of having means to do that, she you know, she wouldn't. And and anyway, so she she really is a the a strength, and and it's been fun, you know, for those 15 years where I was in, you know, working really hard. Um, I got a lot of professional development. And now coming back, she's the farm manager, and it's fun to give her that opportunity now for her to stretch and grow because our kids are getting older, they don't need her quite as much. Yeah, and she's learning to manage people and she's learning to run an organization, and she's putting together a revenue plan for the farm right now for 2026. And like that's great. And she's growing, and and it's really fun to be a part of that with her and to be doing it with her. So yeah, we have a great time. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 48:56

I gotta ask him one very personal question. Go right ahead, Mark. If you don't mind. Of course I'm so you had the exit from RevUnit, you did all the stuff that you did. Are you living on less than you are bringing in currently, or are you eating into your your cash?

SPEAKER_02 49:20

Yeah, I've got I've got lessons learned there for sure. Because I I'll stop you having the shit out of my case.

SPEAKER_03 49:27

I mean that's why I'm working so hard now. We like to spend it. I can't.

SPEAKER_02 49:34

So here's the thing you don't understand. So as an entrepreneur, yeah. As an entrepreneur, you are like fully geared towards capital appreciation. Yeah. Like all I care about is capital. The size of my exit, right? And then, you know, you achieve that and you write yourself out of the plan like I did, and you walk away and you're like, wait, but I used to get this amount of money every month. Like, where did that go? Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 50:01

And all of a sudden I start selling stock to buy groceries. Oh, dude, I hear you. I think that's also very common. And then we end up doing other things.

SPEAKER_04 50:15

Guilty, spend more money or more on this.

SPEAKER_02 50:19

And you're addicted to capital appreciation. So you go to your financial advisor, you're like, well, I just want this kind of income coming. And they're like, all right, well, to do that, you're gonna have to take this massive lump sum and put in this annuity that makes you 5%. I'm like, five percent?

SPEAKER_05 50:31

I got the freedom 50%.

Money After An Exit And Consulting

SPEAKER_02 50:36

Yeah, I can't do that. No way I'm gonna do that. It's so it's really hard. Yeah. So you're you're either selling assets to buy groceries, or you're finding another way to make money, or you're like, and so yeah, I think that's the other thing that that um consulting does is it it allows me to pay for our lifestyle. Yeah, with a portion of my time. It's intellectually stimulating. And so I was drawing down for a very long time. A very long time until finally I was like, this has got to end. And I need to. Joe is so humanist.

SPEAKER_04 51:09

I know that's Joe view. Well, and I love the discussion because it makes me feel better, a little bit better about myself. I mean, I feel like I might be worse.

SPEAKER_03 51:17

So many of us fall into that. But but I think like people that come from like corporate America and they're used to thinking about the size of their retirement fund, they're geared to do that. Yeah, okay. Yeah, but then I'll, you know, then after that, it's like, okay, like where do we go out to eat at four o'clock every day or whatever? Their life gets kind of boring. Yeah. You know what I mean? We're not gonna live like that. None of us are. We can't help it.

SPEAKER_04 51:40

No, that's why when you said in the beginning, well, podcast videos, I mean, not much of it. That's like shit the hell out of that. I well, bro.

SPEAKER_03 51:47

But dude, compared to the other stuff that you do, though. Oh no, it's they're all gonna be bigger and bigger. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger. You got the AI business and all that.

SPEAKER_04 51:58

Yeah, bigger, bigger, bigger. I love it. And then after these, it gets even bigger. I love it, right? It is our blessing and our curse. Oh, it's yeah, yeah. And my wife, she's a lot like what you're talking about. She's just like, okay, babe. Okay, babe. Very just yeah, just it's great, though. It's fantastic. Uh I think it's always good to point out the spouses, at least. I mean, I mean, absolutely cornerstone to all this. Couldn't do it without without them all. We had our spouses on the show. Did you really? We were scared. Oh, I mean, yeah, we were. We need to do that again.

SPEAKER_03 52:27

That's a great scared. Yeah, maybe they'll be a little nicer, a little more relaxed. Tensions kind of all part of it, though. I like the chart. Sonia is very relaxed. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

I'm getting a window into your marijuana.

SPEAKER_03 52:44

But yeah, it would be fun. Get all those spouses together. Should have all three of them on here. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:50

Wouldn't it talk about us and talk about talk to each other? We can learn something about ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 52:55

Give them the microphones and we don't get to sit in the corner and just listen for that would be really be interesting. Get us completely out of the picture.

SPEAKER_04 53:03

And then they record us watching it on that screen on the front. Yeah. Side by side. Don't go there and don't tell that story. That's we've got to stop this now. No, Eric, you can't.

SPEAKER_03 53:17

A good partner is truly invaluable, no question about it. All right. Well, listen, Joe, if anybody wants to talk to you about um getting your help as a consultant, where do they find you?

SPEAKER_02 53:29

Yeah. The easiest way is to email me. It's my name, Joe Somweber at Gmail. I'm a pretty um, I don't I don't have a big website. It's kind of a if you know you know kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_03 53:41

Yeah. Okay, so if you know, you know. Joe Salmweber is S-A-U-M-W-E-B-E-R. That's how Somweber's spelled. Uh Josomweber gmail.com. All right. Well, it's been great. Our time is up. We got to go back to our farms and business building and whatever else we're going to do today. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 54:09

Um, guys. It's been great having you here, Joe.

SPEAKER_03 54:13

Really appreciate you. Very interesting story, and and uh really admire what you've done, the way you live your life. Likewise. Um, so until next week, this has been another episode of Big Talk About Small Business.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Big Talk About Small Business. If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business. And be sure to head over to our website to read articles, browse episodes, and ask questions about upcoming shows.