Slow Growth Secrets: Why Raising Capital is a Trap

Raising venture capital is an absolute profit trap for 90% of small businesses. When founders prioritize immediate micro-trends and massive funding rounds over organic market demand, they trade sustainable growth for crushing, artificial overhead. In this episode, we sit down with Cameron Magee, owner of avad3 Event Production, to discuss how he built a powerhouse national live event brand without a single dollar of external funding.

We sit down to unpack the grit behind scaling a seasonal, project-based firm from a 12-year-old’s church volunteer hobby into a massive multi-state logistics machine. Cameron digs into the hard data behind managing a 25,000-square-foot facility, replacing expensive travel overhead with highly synchronized local crews, and utilizing an air-tight 240-item checklist to keep execution flawless. He also shares his unique philosophy of market money, proving that your best form of working capital comes directly from the customers who actually value your service.

The narrative around building a company is too heavily romanticized by Silicon Valley, masking the operational friction of execution. Cameron pulls back the curtain on the mental strain of overhiring, facing massive staff restructuring, and realizing that fixed overhead will completely crush a project-based firm during predictable seasonal valleys. You’ll walk away with a severe warning against scaling just for the sake of appearances, a concrete strategy for asset management, and a renewed respect for letting a business evolve iteratively over time.

If you care about logistical scaling, avoiding bad debt, and protecting your equity through organic cash flow, you’ll get a lot from this conversation. Make sure to Subscribe and Share this episode with a peer who needs to hear it.

Subscribe and tune in for new episodes of Big Talk About Small Business with Mark Zweig and Eric Howerton. Each week we focus on practical insights and real-world strategies to grow your business!

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Transcript

Deposits Or The Truck Stays

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Yeah, I'm not like a mobster, but like I won't unload the truck if we haven't gotten our deposit. Exactly. Like we'll back the truck up to make a scene. I've only had to do this one time. We backed the truck up, and I walked over to the client and said, So darn this thing, I haven't gotten that deposit that I've called you about every week for for five weeks. And he's like, Yeah, sorry, the check's stuck. And I said, Well, the truck's stuck.

SPEAKER_04 0:23

This is another episode of Big Talk about small business. All right, we're here with Cameron McGee today. Good to meet you, Cameron. This is a fun show to be on. I'm excited about it.

SPEAKER_05 0:37

Thanks, man. We have fun with it. We get all kinds of fanfare like comments and emails and letters and photography.

SPEAKER_04 0:46

Can't with 3D busts of ourselves made on 3D printers. Yeah. I mean, Cameron, what did you bring us today?

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Yeah, nothing, apparently. Yeah, that's that's a high bar.

SPEAKER_05 0:56

We we do accept just straight cash. What?

SPEAKER_03 0:59

In gold and silver.

SPEAKER_05 1:00

Water. Jewelry.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:02

Yeah, gold, gold, right.

SPEAKER_04 1:03

Gold, yeah. Gold is where gold is where it's it's solid. Um I love gold. Remember gold member? No. No, you didn't you know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

I know exactly what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_04 1:16

Yeah. You don't watch movies and waste your time, okay? But anyway, that was uh one of the Austin Powers movies. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've definitely seen that. Yeah. I don't remember that part. Yeah, he's it's great. I love the best part, is when he says, I am from Holland, isn't that viewed? Isn't that viewed? An unfortunate schmelting accident. Yes, Mr. Powers. All right, here we

From Church Sound Booth To Business

SPEAKER_04 1:45

are, though. Seriously, we got Cameron McGee with us. Cameron's got a good story. Cameron, tell us a little bit about yourself and your business.

SPEAKER_03 1:52

Yeah, well, my name's Cameron. This is crazy because we're we're in our hometown. I've been doing podcasts a lot this past year, and this one's actually here, which is a treat. Great, man. I'm sure from Arkansas, like y'all. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I wandered up to the sound booth at my church when I was 12 and started doing A V and then formed our business in my dorm room here in Arkansas. And then yeah, AVOD 3 today is really more of a national uh AV team. We're all over the country doing conferences and uh yeah, this week we're at home because it's Walmart Associates Week, so there's plenty of work to do. Oh, I bet this week. Me too. Well, it's a testament to a good team. I'm I'm honored and privileged to be here now. I'll be I'll be loading trucks till midnight, but I'm here right now. Yeah. God's love doing that, huh? I love it. Yeah, actually, that's one of my goals for this week is I wrote I have three goals every week, and one was uh it says pig and mud. And I just want to be back on the truck tonight and just having fun.

SPEAKER_05 2:44

Man, that's such that's good stuff. It's so keep your hands dirty, man.

SPEAKER_04 2:47

Oh, I'm telling you. I'm so we are so sick and tired of this. Work on your business, not in your business. Oh no, I'm beyond that. I only do strategy. Strategy, my ass.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

But it's it's it's good to work on the business, but as far as the team respect, there's no respect like midnight in the semi.

SPEAKER_04 3:05

Exactly. Yeah, right on, brother. Yep, right on. So now the name of the company again, say that slowly so our audience can get it down.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

Nobody ever gets this right. That's the number one tip. Don't name your company something that nobody knows how to pronounce. That's that's a big tip here in the podcast here. But yeah, our company is Avid 3. AVOD 3. AVOD is a Hebrew word for serve. And I'm very I'm very big into service and customer service. So I can see that. Um it's very important to me personally and professionally. And we put the three on the end just for basically SEO. Like you can't just Google AVOD, you'll never find us. So it's AVOD 3. Yeah. The three, we've made up meanings over the years. It's it's got some spiritual meanings for me, it's got some professional meanings and things, but yeah, AVOD 3 is the name of the company.

SPEAKER_04 3:48

Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, you said you're grateful like two or three times already, so I believe it's real.

SPEAKER_03 3:53

Thanks.

SPEAKER_04 3:54

Well, where does that come from in your case?

SPEAKER_03 3:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:56

I mean, I'm Did you grow up poor or did you What was your background?

SPEAKER_03 4:01

No, I mean I I I grew up here in Arkansas. I mean, some people would say that's poor. You know, I feel like I feel like I was rich with my parents.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

We have shoes and dentists and steam at ponds now, but in most of the time. There are places. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know. But so no, seriously, though. So what did your mom and dad do?

SPEAKER_03 4:20

Yeah, no nobody in my family's really been entrepreneurial. That's kind of the weird thing, is is starting my own business and stuff was was a bit out of left field for them. Um my parents moved here in the early 90s when I was two. My dad's always worked for uh banks and and done professional jobs like that. My mom is an executive assistant. I worked for the mayor, and and they're they're wonderful people, but um I I guess I've said I'm grateful three times already. That's interesting, because I can't believe that I'm getting to do what I love, which is AV. I'm getting to own and operate a small business. Um I I just I just feel like it's like the American spirit, like it's the greatest form of being American. The only time I feel more American than being a small business owner is I like to fly small airplanes for fun as a hobby to fly Cessnas. There's there's nothing more free than just lifting off out of Bentonville and being like, where do we want to go today? I mean, it's just so freeing.

SPEAKER_05 5:10

Yeah. How long have you been flying?

SPEAKER_03 5:12

Uh about five years. Really? Yeah, I finished my instrument rating a couple years ago. That's what really kind of opened the door for getting to do it more often.

SPEAKER_05 5:19

Where did you do that at here in Bentville? Here in Bentonville, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:21

Cool.

SPEAKER_04 5:21

Yeah, they got a good program going on. Really good. That airport's great over there. I love that little business field.

SPEAKER_05 5:28

I would love to learn to fly because like my problem with flying is I'm not in control. Oh, I believe. I figured it out. Like I don't trust anyone.

SPEAKER_04 5:36

And your lit moves like three miles from the airport. Oh my gosh. I could be all up in it. It's fantastic. I'm like, this is I would love living there because I just come and go. But it's expensive though, right?

SPEAKER_03 5:47

It's it's not economical, I'll tell you that much. It's an expensive hobby. Yeah. Yeah, I have to kind of self-control how often I do it and stuff.

SPEAKER_05 5:53

But it's either that or a skid steer. I'd have to be on it.

SPEAKER_04 5:56

I was moving, I was on the skid steer last night. I should have you over at my house right now. We just had a load of dirt delivered today. Topsoil, dude. We're out there grading. I could be out there with one bucket, don't. I'm telling you, I love it. Uh no, anyway, so Cameron, so your parents weren't entrepreneurial. They were they were solid citizens that were well employed. Yeah. But so what made you start this business that you did when you were a freshman?

SPEAKER_03 6:23

Yeah, I I had always done A V, just like volunteering at church when I was really little, and then I started doing it around town. I started I was at church all the time, but still wanted to do more. So I would I would ask like the Pee-Wee football team, hey, do your parents mind if I like record the last game and sell DVDs for 15 bucks? I was 13 here in Bentonville. And they were like, Yeah, sounds that's cute, kid. Knock yourself out. We'll see if you actually did that and then and then ran sound at different like choir concerts and weddings and stuff. Said, can you give me 50 bucks and a sandwich? My mom will drop me off. And and just I ba I basically think that I became entrepreneurial out of a necessity to do what I love more often. There there's not a job in Bentonville, Arkansas at age 14, 15 to do A V. You could you could get you work at McDonald's when you're 14, you could push carts at the super center when you're 14. That's what my friends did. Um but to do AV more often, I had to start something. And so yeah, when you're in high school, it's just

Turning A Dorm Room Into Scale

SPEAKER_03 7:20

cute, it's a side hustle, it's not anything serious. But then in college in the dorm room, I was majoring, I was gonna be a high school history teacher, and realized I've got four years of of roof over my head. I could make this a space race to see if I could outpace a teacher's salary, which is a very low bar, $29,000 at the time in Arkansas. And so I made it my four-year college goal to not lose my scholarship, to not drop out, but to outpace that by senior year. And I did that, and and so I just never taught. I've just been doing this ever since.

SPEAKER_04 7:49

How long ago was that? 15 years.

SPEAKER_03 7:52

I'm 36.

SPEAKER_04 7:53

Wow. Okay. Yeah. So how big is um is the firm now?

SPEAKER_03 7:58

Well, we we we're 18 full-time people, okay. Um which in the event is a lot of people. It's actually a lot of people. Full-time, yeah, it is sure. You have lots of subs then to Oh, we have, I think, uh between 100 and 300 freelancers on every just on the cruise all the time.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 8:13

Uh, but yeah, 18 full-time. Now, we were bigger than that at certain points. We've it's been a roller coaster of deciding how many do you have internally. How many do you freelance? You know, and my heart for trying to build a place that I want to work and build a a a production company in Arkansas, where the I think the largest in Arkansas I've never checked, but surely, and trying to build that, I've I've been quick to hire a lot of folks over the years and then realize later like this is not a valuable, yeah, you know, viable, I should say, maybe valuable, but not viable position.

SPEAKER_05 8:41

And so it's too have a full-time staff keeping it.

SPEAKER_03 8:43

Of every single position. I mean, I had a full-time everything over there. We had 51 people at one point. And it was just like this is a bad idea, you know. Right.

SPEAKER_05 8:52

Bad for them, bad for you.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

It was awkward. Yeah. Super awkward during some of those years of okay, we've got a full-time person doing XYZ, and that's a kind of a weird fit, you know. And and our business is very project-based. You know, we don't have these retainer, like you either do a show or you don't. Right. And after COVID, nobody really signs multi-year. We have a couple of multi-year contracts, but most of them are just year to year. And so you have to imagine, like, we'd have a great year. You know this from the marketing world. You know, you'd have a great year and I'd go hire a bunch of people. Yes. Well, that's that's a terrible business move to add all that overhead. And then the next year when that project goes away, not because you did a bad job, but just because there was a merger or we're not doing that this year. And then so I've had to learn the hard way about what's the right size internally. Um, and that's what I've spent a lot of time trying to share with others this year because my heart gets in the way of my head of like, well, we want to hire this person.

SPEAKER_04 9:42

Yeah. Oh, we all get that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Work for try to find a job for them. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 9:48

That's right. Make a job, create a job. Right.

SPEAKER_05 9:51

What do you employ full time? Is it more like back office admin type project management?

SPEAKER_03 9:57

Yeah. There's 18, and I I guess you know, two-thirds of them are folks that really lead the shows that lead the crews. We've got four production managers and four technical directors, and those duos lead every project. Almost like in marketing, you have like an account manager and a and a project. Creative shorts. Yeah, sure. And so those duos lead every project. So those core eight, and that's how we were in Washington, D.C. last week. You know, we're we're all over the country constantly. We can send two people in a semi-worth of our gear to a city. Yeah. And then do you own your own trucks? We don't own our own trucks. That's another thing that I had to learn the hard way. That is not worth it with the DOT right now for us. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 10:35

And so we third party with the DOT. DOT.

SPEAKER_03 10:38

And our volume and it just doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_05 10:40

But the Department of Transportation. The Department of Transportation. Yeah, because you have to get certain licensure and all that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 10:45

And and we do, you know, we do about 144 shows a year. Half of them are here in region, you know, regionally, and half of them are on the road. So only 72 hauls a year. It does it actually doesn't make sense, believe it or not. I thought it did. Farm that out, sure. Um anyway, so we can we can fly two teammates to DC, send a semi, they meet about, you know, two freelancers who we flew in, like the key audio lead, the key video lead. We'll hire maybe four locals on the crew. And then maybe we get a box truck locally of just generic stuff, pipe and drape, heavy stuff that you don't need to truck that's not, you know, show critical. It's more like we're gonna bring our consoles.

SPEAKER_04 11:20

But the show critical just some of that is uh union supplied in some cities.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

Yeah, we work with a lot. We work with Chicago. Chicago's heavy, Las Vegas. Yeah, there's a lot that are most of California is is extremely unionized.

SPEAKER_05 11:35

So after those eight, do you have people that are helping to coordinate this stuff? I mean, like what's the rest of your full-time looking like?

SPEAKER_03 11:41

There's there's four of us that are kind of the leaders in the company, my wife and I being two of the four.

SPEAKER_05 11:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:46

And then, yeah, we've got um a salesperson, a marketing person, and then one coordinator. And that coordinator role is really the glue holding us all together. Being a pilot, I think of it as the ATC. Like there's this one person, there's a hundred planes in Arkansas. Traffic manager. That's right.

SPEAKER_05 12:00

And so that's one person that can that handles all those shows.

SPEAKER_03 12:03

We've really we've got it. It sounds crazy that it's one person, and we hope she doesn't quit. You know, we've got all these chicks. If you're listening here, whoever you are, yeah, she's appreciating you. Yeah, I love you. She's very appreciative. Yeah, we tell her every day, thanks for what you're doing. But we've got it down to, you know, most shows, it's about a 20 240 item checklist that it takes to do a show from start to finish. Yeah, we've we've refined that over the years. Right. We know it takes 240 things 144 times a year. And so it's some of those checklist items are like, have we packed enough gaff tape?

unknown 12:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:35

You know, it's you've probably gotten better at this over time. It's amazing. It's a constantly iterative process, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_03 12:42

And I think event production is super kind of niche and obscure when I'm on these shows. They're like, What is that? It's weird. You guys understand it, but some people don't. But the the closest cousin is just construction. You know, construct a general contractor builds a hundred buildings a year. Yeah. You know, some do they get yeah, some do. And they get good at okay, we've got to make sure we've scheduled the painters

Full-Time Core Team Plus Freelancers

SPEAKER_03 13:00

three weeks before the drive. You know, and yeah. And so that level of coordination, it's not insurmountable, but it's a lot of traffic.

SPEAKER_05 13:07

It is. It is. And then so when you're loading the trucks, I mean, do you outsource that or do you does your team internally take care of that?

SPEAKER_03 13:14

Well, we we most of when we're loading them in our shop, we just pitch in. Like our, you know, our marketing girl or our sales guy will just go out there and load the truck. It's kind of fun. You know, you use if you spend 40 hours a week at a desk, you want to pop up for an hour or two. It's actually cool. Now in the summer it's hot, so everybody wears shorts and t-shirts because they're gonna sweat. Yeah, yeah. But we actually we load the trucks ourselves. It's fun. I love to go out there and load a truck. Hurt my wrist loading a truck.

SPEAKER_05 13:35

And that's and that's what you're doing at midnight tonight.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

We'll be unloading a bunch of trucks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:40

So you're loading for an event on the semi, takes across the country, they come back, you unload, put it back in the shop.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

Yeah, we we did um last week we did um nine events in 11 days.

SPEAKER_05 13:52

So you're loading and unloading daily.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

Yeah, some of those are well, one of those was in Washington, D.C., like I was saying. So it's it's gone for 11 days, you know. We had to load it and unload it once. But the other ones are more of a quick turn. It's because last week was commencement and graduation season. So we do that at the University of Arkansas in Bugwalton and Barn Hill. But then we also do every high school within an hour here.

SPEAKER_05 14:10

Sure. I would imagine you have a massive inventory management. I was just thinking, like, what kind of facility do you have?

SPEAKER_03 14:16

It's a big it's a big old room. Yeah, it's 25,000 square feet.

SPEAKER_05 14:20

It's 25,000 square feet stuff.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

Stuff. It's road cases and equipment. It's super cool. I'd love show tea. It's yeah, I'd love to come by and check it out. It's super organized. I I that's one of my favorite things. When a client comes by, they're always like, oh wow, every case is color-coded, every case has a barcode. We scan them in and out when they cross the dog plate like a library book. We have to keep track of it.

SPEAKER_05 14:39

Who implemented that process?

SPEAKER_03 14:41

A teammate, her name is Karen years ago. Um, we we we kind of switched from spreadsheets to like, let's get a database and software. And she helps. That's probably 10 years ago we plugged that in. We're 15 years old.

SPEAKER_04 14:51

That's got to give a customer or client a lot of faith if they see that. I love when they can come. Because it says these guys are organized, they're not gonna drop the ball on me.

SPEAKER_05 14:59

Well, I mean, if you invent the client, like this event is extremely important. But they're staying here. They're biggest influencers, contributors, donors.

SPEAKER_04 15:07

You remember the events we used to do, the hot firm conference called Elevate.

SPEAKER_05 15:12

It's huge now. It's got like 600 people or whatever. So important. Here you are talking to an event contractor that's gonna put this thing on for you.

SPEAKER_04 15:20

You got all these expensive people there paying 2,000 bucks apiece and expect it to be good.

SPEAKER_05 15:25

Yeah. And then you walk into an inventory management system that he has a warehouse and it's barcoded, and you're like, okay. And you meet this guy and he's clear-eyed and clear-headed.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

That's right. It's unusual. Good handshake. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:39

I'll trust this. Yeah. I'll trust my entire business, my reputation.

SPEAKER_04 15:44

I just kind of got in trouble on LinkedIn today over that, though. There was uh this morning, there was a guy that put this picture out and said, you know, does this look like an estate tourney? He met me with a baseball cap on backwards, and he shows a picture of him, and he's got his his golf shirt with with overly tight short jeans, okay, and those really bright white shoes. And then they showed a picture of the same guy, obviously AI done, with a suit on and everything, a double-breasted suit and all. And and I said, I wouldn't dress like that one guy ever.

SPEAKER_05 16:19

With the hat on backwards?

SPEAKER_04 16:21

Yeah, with the what I mean, his hat wasn't on backwards, but they said it was. Yeah. The the author of this. And I, yeah, I said, I think your shirt was bad. I go, There's tight jeans, never. Okay. White shoes like that. Come on, you know. And then this guy responded, he goes, That was me. But I mean, seriously, I said there's gotta be somewhere between that and the double-breasted suit, though. You know, I mean, to give a little faith in it. Yeah, but but no, um, so two subjects I want to touch on, though. One of them is um your wife works in the business. Yes, super cool. How did that work out? How how does that work out? How do you deal with that?

SPEAKER_03 17:06

I'd love to talk about that. Yeah. So she was super involved the first three years of the business just out of necessity. In college. Yeah, we were dating and then we got married our senior year, and when I was really getting the business going. And and so her involved those first three years, you know, it was just me. So you can almost imagine it's almost like a typical like carpenter who's who's maybe their spouse does the books or something like that. You know, just very much a helper, a partner. And so she would help me prep for a shoot. I did a lot more video shoots back then with events, you know. So she'd help me prep, she'd help me call the footage, she'd help me send the invoices. And around the third year, we actually started getting like sort of legit a little bit. I had four people working for me, and she said, Hey, I'm out. And I was like, What do you mean you're out? She's like, it's a real business now. I'm nervous. We didn't sign up for this. Yeah, she was like, We have we have to run payroll, you know, like you could screw up the payroll taxes. And like, she's an ER nurse, and she was like, We don't need an ER nurse in charge of our compliance, you know. And I was like, We're still four people, it's fine. Calm down, it's fine. She was like, No, I'm out. She's uh and so she stepped away. Smart lady, very wise, yeah. And so she stepped away. That was the third year. So and she just came back about two years ago. Really? Um, and so ironically, she was missing from that period. And then about two years ago, it's so funny, we got so big that I got scared. And I went to her and said, Hey, it's funny, you left because you were scared we were getting big for people. This is when we had like 50 people. And I said, I'm now scared our entire life savings, yeah, our entire risk profile, our home, everything's, you know, it's personally guaranteed somewhere or the other. You know, we have a lot, we have a lot of assets. So there's we understand that. Yeah, the risk.

SPEAKER_04 18:41

And I said, listen, I said, 20 million in debt before, so I know. My goodness, yeah. I can't. That's that's that's incredible.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Yeah, that's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_04 18:49

I have too much right now. But anyway, go on.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

But I just I told her, I sat her down and I said, you know, I I don't think it's responsible because I'm I'm the boss, like I'm accountable to customers, but I don't have a board. You know, and I said, I feel like I need objective accountability. Right. Like if I used to be if I wanted to buy a speaker, it's like $800, I'll go buy it. Well, now we're spending $80,000 on a line-based speaker. I said, like, I don't want to be allowed to go buy that because I think it's cool. You need to come up here as an objective true owner, not a not a pig in mud, and and and bring some maturity up here.

SPEAKER_04 19:21

And so just make sure though that she doesn't s slow you down too much. I mean, seriously, because not every spouse understands the risk that you have to take to grow a business. Nor do they understand necessarily the value of the business. They only think about what you can take out of it.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 19:39

Okay. So I'm not saying your wife would do that, but I'm just saying you'd have to do that.

SPEAKER_05 19:43

But to the listeners, be cautious about that.

SPEAKER_04 19:44

Yeah, it's not I'm not gonna bring anybody in and and and let them tell me how to spend money or not in my business.

SPEAKER_05 19:51

Right.

SPEAKER_04 19:51

I guess I have a higher risk profile. I know if I have a CFO or a COO or whatever, they're all gonna be telling me not to do it.

SPEAKER_03 19:59

Yeah, she for sure she for sure has a lower risk profile. Yeah, exactly. That's for darn sure.

SPEAKER_05 20:04

It's a good balance. I mean, and that's saying it's not at the same time to your point, Laura, but it helps you it ensures that you're thinking through those things. But if you still make the decision. That's right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

It's an accountability check. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I can't.

SPEAKER_05 20:23

And there's been a lot of times where I've had that accountability check, and I'm like, you know what? I'm actually not that confident as confident as I'm not. That's right. This was actually a pretty good idea. No, I think that's a valuable decision.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

Yeah, I'm a high quick start. I'm quick to just jump and go. And she's not there to erode my confidence. That's the last thing she wants to do either. And so I want to be confident, but I don't want to be confident knowing I I passed the test. I actually have I had to run a one pager by somebody, and she said that sounds good.

SPEAKER_04 20:46

I mean, she's taking the risk too. I mean, that's a good thing. It's for her to not be present. It's her, it's her money.

SPEAKER_03 20:52

It's like a publicly treated company with the shareholders not getting to look at the book. Yeah, like it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_04 20:57

You do have to respect that.

SPEAKER_05 20:58

Yeah, I think. And we've talked about this before, like at least as males with female wives, spouses, right? Like their intuitive ability is so is a lot higher. So much better than that. There's been a lot of times I'll tell my wife what's going on, she's asking, you know, and I'll say something. A lot of times it's about other people that I'm bringing into my brain. She's like, I can see right now. I don't like that. So, so true. And then she'll do this. She'll go, you know, go ahead and do what you think, but just remember that I said for six months from now

Checklists, Barcodes, And Warehouse Control

SPEAKER_05 21:30

what I've saying to you right now. I'm like, damn it, man. That's a you know.

SPEAKER_04 21:33

Oh, Sonia always says when I say you were right, she goes, I don't want to hear that. I want to hear you are right.

SPEAKER_05 21:39

By the time it's worked, it's too late. And you know, I'm totally gonna hear her. Totally say that I was right.

SPEAKER_04 21:46

But no, I mean I I think all that's that's great. And and obviously your wife's got a unique understanding of the business. She's been there since the beginning. She sees everything you go through, and and and she's you know, witnessed every up and down. That's right. And so she's very valuable.

SPEAKER_05 22:02

Well, let's can I ask one question about so she is an ER nurse, you said? Yep. And so was she ready to lead that industry, or was it kind of more about the helping out your business that she she loves it.

SPEAKER_03 22:15

She loves it there still, yeah. And she's not active up there anymore. They have her, I get you could say they've promoted whatever. They've given her more responsibility to do that. She has to basically do remote. So she hasn't she probably hasn't worked a shift, at least an overnight shift, maybe.

SPEAKER_05 22:27

But she still does a little bit for them.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

Oh yeah, she's still active with the hospital. Oh, wow. She still does stuff with them. Oh wow. Because she loves it. Yeah, because she loves it. Because and she's painted a very clear picture for me. She's like, you know, production's your passion. Yeah. And small business is your passion. Nobody in her family, nobody in my family wanted to sign up for this. Sure. But she married me. It wasn't a trick, it wasn't a bait and switch. It wasn't like I like worked for the bank when she married me. Then I said, hey, I'm going to go jump off the deep end. Like she knew what she was signing up. Yeah, obviously. And she understood when we were getting that large, and I was overhiring because I didn't have an accountability check when I was overspending because I didn't have a deal check. She was able to look and say, Oh, yeah, that's that's a problem.

SPEAKER_05 23:04

So let me ask you a quick question because my wife's a is a nurse as well. That's cool. Nurse practitioner in oncology. But I don't know about you, and your wife being an ER. I'll come home from my hard day of work. Exhausting meetings. Yeah, you're you know, exhausting meetings, freaking 2,000 emails, text, just spinning. Psychologically, and everybody was saying no. And I had nothing but problems. Yeah. And I'll and she'll ask, How was your day? I'm like, man, it was like this and that. And I'll say a couple things, and I'll say, How was yours? And she's, or sometimes I'll ask her first, which I learned to do, how was your day? Yeah, somebody came in, they were 35 years old, and you know, they they got better, but now they all of a sudden took a downturn and they're not doing well. And I'm like, okay, my day was actually pretty tired.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

Yes, perspective.

SPEAKER_04 23:52

Yeah, it's kind of like when my yeah, yesterday my 15-year-old texted me and said, How come Lily uh Lily just got a new Bronco given to her and it's black with a brown interior? How come I'm driving Sophie's old car? Okay. And I said to her, I said, You do realize, I said, Lily doesn't have a mother or a father. She lives with her grandmother. Would you rather be in that position? Have a new Bronco? Yeah. Okay. Perspective. Completely shut that down. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:23

All done. It's like, can we go drive in this? But hats off to the healthcare project. Life and death. My gosh, man. Yeah, I think on the thankless. I don't know how eager it was. Can't pay him enough. Intense, uh bad, the worst news can happen. I could never do it. It's like I have so much respect for them and inspiration. I mean, so thank you for her service on that.

SPEAKER_04 24:49

It's awesome. So let me ask you though, another question about having your wife there. Okay. So she was gone. She came back a couple years ago, right? Do you find, and I don't know anything about her personality or anything, obviously, but do you find that other employees are afraid of her? Yeah. Just because of her last name and they know who she is?

SPEAKER_03 25:10

Yeah. Honestly, I think it's hard to, it's hard to split the difference, but she came back around the time we had to do layoffs because I overhired. And so I think it's really more the season and the timing of what she came into.

SPEAKER_04 25:21

Yeah, so she was associated with.

SPEAKER_03 25:22

I mean everybody's scared of her. Probably everybody's scared of me. You know, it's like, oh, you know, scared of me because I was reckless and overhired. Yeah. Scared of her because around the time she came back, we laid everybody off. Right. You know, I don't know that they're now she's super servant-hearted. I've actually never met a more selfless person in my wife. That's why I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_05 25:37

Well, she has to be married in her freaking ER.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

Yeah, I married her quick because she's so selfless and just beautiful. But she she comes in and she doesn't sit at a desk. She doesn't stay in the boardroom. She's always in the shop. She goes, she walks in and she's like, Do we have to talk about any of this like business stuff? She's like quick to be like, Can we get the nonsense out of the way? And it's like, look, you gotta review these bank documents. You gotta look at this. And so our EA and and our lead will like get stuff done with her. She's like, okay, is the insurance happy? Great. I'm going out in the shop. And she goes out in the shop, and you know, cases will come back from a show, all dismayed, you know, the raw cables. She pulls everything out, puts it back up. And I ask her all the time. She's been doing that for over a year. I said, What the heck are you doing out there? Like, as the owners, there's a lot of big stuff we need to be deciding. That is literally the most entry-level job in the company. And she she everybody respects her because she's out there doing it. She's not, she's actually not doing it for their respect. She's like, it's so satisfying. At the end of the day, I've put all these cases back. And so it's such a pure like, she's not entrepreneurial where she's always thinking, what's my highest contribution? She's just there to help. You know what she's doing?

SPEAKER_05 26:41

She's preventing a problem that happens down the road. Yeah. To make sure everything's tightened up when it comes back in, because inevitably, like what you don't want to have happen is get to the event and the guy's that the last guy didn't do exactly.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

That's what she's doing out there.

SPEAKER_05 26:56

Every time she's helping you be scalable.

unknown 26:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

I give her a hard time because I'm like, it isn't scalable if the owner's doing it.

SPEAKER_05 27:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

It is though, because the owner's gonna levy the consequences that needs me.

SPEAKER_05 27:08

They're they're gonna know levy.

When Your Spouse Joins The Company

SPEAKER_04 27:10

They're they're re uh that low-level employee may just fix it and that's it. They don't they don't know why it's important. Right. Or they don't take the next step to go, why was it wrong?

SPEAKER_03 27:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:20

Okay. It's not their place. They just put it back.

SPEAKER_03 27:23

Yeah. What's beautiful about it? It's almost like, you know, like if this was my dad's business and I, you know, at 22, he started wanting to teach me the ropes or something. It's it almost feels like that where she wasn't in the business, she feels like she needs to learn it from the bottom up in the most wholesome way. Yeah. It's just out there doing that.

SPEAKER_04 27:37

She's we love her. What's her name?

SPEAKER_03 27:39

Laura.

SPEAKER_04 27:39

Laura, we love Laura. Yeah, she sounds great. Now, second question though, I got. Um, trying to build this business, and obviously you've been successful, but doing it in a place like Northwest Arkansas. Okay. I would imagine like the biggies that do what you do are probably in like LA and New York City and Atlanta and places like that, right?

SPEAKER_05 28:03

Yeah, it's probably the worst, worst decision I can make, literally. We mean as far as having a company starting.

SPEAKER_03 28:09

To try to establish a national AV event production company in Arkansas is what it seems like on paper. Yeah. And again, when I was in high school, when I was in college, if I was really serious about scale, about being entrepreneurial, no way. It doesn't make any sense on paper to have it here. But I didn't make the decision to have it here as a professional decision. I made the decision to have it here as a personal decision. Sure. Sure. You were here. I grew up here. Right. I want to raise my boys in the same woods that I ran around. I think there's no better. I mean, I get to see the whole country. I travel all the time. Every single time I'm flying home, I ask myself, I'll give myself permission. I could move. I'm the entrepreneur. We could move. We could be quickly. Do I want to be in Vegas? Absolutely not. Oh, I think. Do I want to be in Orlando? Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_04 28:50

Those are my two least favorite cities. They go there all the time. Orlando. And Orlando's do you guarantee? And New Orleans, number three. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:58

Why's Orlando? Because of that's where Disney.

SPEAKER_04 29:01

Soulless. No, it's just it's soulless. Everything is clean. It's poor. It is. It's brittle. It's absolutely soulless. Really? Yeah. And Las Vegas was just designed to suck money out of people who can't afford to lose it. Yeah. I can understand.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

It's just a vial, in my opinion. It doesn't make any sense to be here professionally. And even if I would just move us to like but Tulsa, like anywhere but here would have a hope.

SPEAKER_04 29:25

No, but you say that, but I mean, on the other hand, I mean, this wasn't, it has gotten a lot more so. It wasn't the most expensive place to operate. We do have pretty good employee base around here to pick from. Good people. Good people, good work ethic. Um, there's, you know, there's a lot of places that could be worse. It's pretty business friendly.

SPEAKER_03 29:45

I I made the choice to be here again, knowing this thing may only ever have four people working at it, and I'm okay with that. At a piece. Again, I'm not I'm not a serial entrepreneur. You know, this isn't an episode for serial entrepreneurs.

SPEAKER_05 29:55

You're not trying to make billions and just run older people like Mark Zwag does. Oh, come on.

SPEAKER_03 30:00

And I'm not interested in uh basically.

SPEAKER_04 30:02

You're the one with the billions, okay? You don't run over people. You're unbelievably nice, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:08

I I wasn't trying to grow it and build it to sell it. I want to work here. That's the that's the weird thing about it. Like if if we were trying to start I'm I'm sure you guys have interviewed all sorts of people, you starting a coffee shop and trying to make a hundred locations and then sell it or something like that. I just actually like making coffee. Yeah. You know, and so I'm trying to build a place that I want to work. And again, when I graduated from college, I would have not been entrepreneur. My whole family wasn't. It's just there wasn't a place in Arkansas that I could get a job doing this. Yeah, yeah. So I said, well, I'll start my own thing. We'll have a trailer and a storage unit, and I'll have three or four guys by the time I'm 40, and and it'll be that'll be my how I make my living.

SPEAKER_05 30:45

Do you do you think that I feel this is my perspective, but the area is kind of becoming more attention towards like the oh yeah, the I guess the credibility of like if you're out of Northwest Arkansas, like it's it's easier to recruit now. Yeah, it really is.

SPEAKER_04 31:01

And people have come here, like I was at a meeting a couple weeks ago with some people that aren't from here at all, and two potential investors, one's in LA, the other one's somewhere else. But he was like, Oh yeah, Northwest Arkansas is fantastic. I was there, I couldn't believe how great it was.

SPEAKER_05 31:17

But I even say on the professional side of like where they recognize that we do have major like obviously Walmart is. Oh, yeah, there's more media.

SPEAKER_04 31:25

We're getting much more PR.

SPEAKER_05 31:27

Yeah, yeah. I mean, from that professional business sense, you know how to handle bigger business. Yeah. No. I'm getting a little bit of that, not as much as probably once you get in a bigger city, like in New York or whatever, but there's definitely some credibility there.

SPEAKER_04 31:39

But I mean, but don't, you know, you travel around a lot. I used to fly all the time too. Don't isn't it a great feeling when you step out of the doors of XNA Airport and you go that's right, the fresh air. Especially after bakes.

SPEAKER_03 31:52

The greenery smells good chicken home, home. I can walk to my car. It's not like a tram ride away. It always feels so good. Every time I come home, it does.

SPEAKER_05 32:03

Like so back, I was like maybe 19 or 20. I moved out west and I lived out in Colorado for summer and I was driving back home because old Honda Court, hot, going through the deserts and stuff, and I started hitting the greenery, you know. And then I but I'll never forget I started smelling chicken. Yeah. But well, it was really great.

SPEAKER_04 32:24

I was like home, baby. You can smell cow poop at XNA when you get out. It's beautiful. I I do I don't smell smell cow poop. I know I love that. So, so so yeah, I mean, so so naturally, if you're out there dealing with national clients and and they're I mean, has anybody ever said to you, like, you're in Arkansas? How can you do this, Joe?

SPEAKER_03 32:49

I love that. Yeah, I love that question. I love it. Well, the first thing I say is, well, we're we're in Walmart's backyard and we've been honored through personal relationships to serve them for over a decade. And a lot of business comes through Northwest Arkansas. And so we've met PepsiCo, we've met different, you know, Ecolab, different people who have come through here and then taken us with them. And then even we we're honored, we get to serve the White House, the president of the United States, through multiple different administrations, not just the current one, but the previous one. And we met them because a campaign manager came through our hometown and then remembered us when he got the big job. Cool. And so we we we're small and then we're in the kind of the middle of nowhere, but also the center of everything logistically. So if we do a show in Vegas, the the diesel is the exact same next year because most of our national events they move them every year. So the next year when they move it to Orlando and they say, Hey, we moved to Orlando, what's the new budget? It's the same budget, it's the same distance. That's fair wherever we go. And so that's a good point. We've we have found a way. Again, I didn't I didn't found it here because it was the center of the country. No, I don't know why Sam Walton founded his here either, but that's where he was. But they ended up realizing this is a pretty good spot.

SPEAKER_05 33:51

He did because Helen loved this area. He was living here. Well, he was from uh Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. Yeah, but Helen was from a Tulsa area or or eastern Oklahoma. Uh-huh. And she's like, we want to, I want to live around here. And she didn't want to big to be in a big town.

SPEAKER_03 34:07

So they made the same decision for personal reasons. They chose to be big towns. Exactly. And then that ended up being blessed, and it worked professionally.

SPEAKER_04 34:13

That's right. I think a lot of us start these businesses. You already said it. It's like you don't necessarily go, I'm gonna be uh X number of people or so many millions. You just start out doing it because you like it, you see a need, and then it just grows over time. It's not all a function of planning, like we set down. I worked for a guy when I was young and in high school, I worked for a guy who owned a bunch of bike shops. And this is a guy who did do that. He worked for the federal government

Building National Credibility From Arkansas

SPEAKER_04 34:40

as an economist, and he decided it was in the early 70s, he he decided he wanted to start a business that was going to be one he could employ his three sons in that would be positively affected by an energy crisis and was good for people's health. And he came up with the bicycle business. Wow, because he knew nothing about it. Then he did a study and came up, and of all the places that he could start that, how many days of sunshine they had per year, how many bike, uh how many people per bike shop, and he decided to do it in St. Louis. That's a logical process. That's incredible. Okay, he was very successful at one point. Out of respect for that. Yeah, but that's not the way most of us do it. No, you know, he was like 45 when he did that. It's a totally different deal. Yeah. We all did this stuff when we were young and stupid, didn't really have a plan. And so what advice now you've been through this, you've grown this business significantly. You said you had too many employees at one point. Does that mean that you scaled back on your revenue, or does that just mean that you outsource more of it?

SPEAKER_03 35:45

Yeah, both. Uh we you know, we we certainly outsource more now. And it's it's better for the customer too. You know, we were we were employing essentially the whole crew for any given show in-house. So the audio tech, video tech, lighting tech, the camera operators. Jeez.

SPEAKER_05 35:59

And then we were flying them to too much overhead associated with Vegas, Orlando 15, 20 grand just an airfare.

SPEAKER_03 36:04

Yeah, well, that's a for the client, it's airfare, it's it's the it's the hotels. But what it meant for business that wasn't good is you know, events are seasonal. You know, around the 4th of July, nobody's doing a national conference. Everybody wants to be off around the 4th of July. We we can't we can't pull a rabbit out of a hat and make a show happen the 5th of July, no matter what we do. Yeah, one time in 15 years we did a show on the 5th of July.

SPEAKER_05 36:26

The 5th of July is. This year'd be a good year. This year's a good while meals.

SPEAKER_03 36:32

Yeah, a good good year for outdoor, you know, Tom Petty or whatever. Yeah, but not not necessarily our core business of like corporate conferences, you know, around the 5th of July. Right. And so we were trying to pay for those people in the valleys off of the volume we did in the peaks. Yeah. So we're running them ragged. You know, from a work-life balance standpoint. In October, they're working 80 hours a week. Right. In July, we have to keep them employed. Right. For the client, it's not good. And so we realized this is not good. Let's let's hire a local crew in whatever city, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, wherever we're going. Let's hire a local crew. It's better for the client. It's better for the local economy, too. I don't really like showing up as a circus or roadshow and not using anybody local. That probably gets people mad. It makes me mad. I make it when somebody comes to my hometown and completely self-contained, I'm like, come on, call us for something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:22

And so I realize a little bit of the money around locally.

SPEAKER_03 37:26

Come on. So I realize that there's just a better way to run the business that way. So we but also we've had really big projects. Kind of our our PL has gotten lumpy over the years where you do a really big project. And again, I would scale up for a big project, not realizing this is not a retainer. This is not a sure thing. You can't add overhead for a project. It's a project. Sure.

SPEAKER_05 37:48

Yeah, and in your industry, it's kind of hard to get a subscription month of recurring revenue that doesn't exist. There's nothing like Hey, pay me $20,000 a month for your bet next year.

SPEAKER_03 37:56

We have to work to eat. Yeah. There's no such thing. And so yeah, it's been a function. So yeah, our our revenue has been lumpy over the years. It's a scatter plot up and to the right, but it's lumpy, you know?

SPEAKER_04 38:06

Yeah, those big jobs are like a freight train when they pull out, right? It just leaves this void.

SPEAKER_05 38:11

Yeah. Well, you know, speaking of all that, like there's a like you just discussed, there's a lot of intensity around certain uh areas. Yeah. And then even but even your smaller local full-time team, when those seasons come in, then intensity rises for them, even though you do have freelancers that are helping to take that burden on. But how do you how do you keep the team motivated, not having burnout during those high peak seasons, yeah, and being able to to kind of keep that culture energetic?

SPEAKER_03 38:40

Yeah, I don't have a like a magic pill for that, but it's I just try to lead through just being as open book as I can and just very pragmatic about explaining to them look, there's sprinting and there's resting. And we all know the 5th of July we're gonna rest. So take that PTO. Yeah, get out of here, go enjoy some sunshine, like get get lost, get enjoy it and rest.

SPEAKER_05 38:58

Yeah, just for the love of God, please do not try to take two weeks off.

SPEAKER_03 39:01

That's right. And they all they all understand October. We call it Worktober. Yeah, there's plenty of work in October. October is it? Yeah, it's and they all understand that.

SPEAKER_05 39:10

Why is October in it in your your industry?

SPEAKER_03 39:12

The the calendar, it's like a McDonald's M. Like April, May is a huge peak, and then it dies in the summer because nobody, no corporation wants to ask their people to do an event, you know, no conference wants to try to sell tickets then, and then September, October, it's another peak, but then you know, Christmas and New Year's, then we don't do anything. And so it makes this double bell curve every six months. It's fascinating.

SPEAKER_04 39:32

So let's talk a little bit about the financing of your business. Um, do you deal with a lot of corporate clients? Are they all paying you promptly, or do you have these 60, 90 day?

SPEAKER_03 39:42

We've had some, yeah, we've had some net nine situations in the past.

SPEAKER_04 39:46

Do you have a bank line of credit for that?

SPEAKER_03 39:48

Yeah, we I certainly stay active where I can draw it. We're not drawing down on it currently, but I have a a healthy one that we can if we get a problem. Okay. Um but yeah, the our industry gets around a little bit of the procurement simply because let's say a vice president at, you know, whatever, uh Unilever wants to have an event. Hey, we need to get the department together in September for a a kickoff for our new initiatives, whatever. Sure. And they decide, you know, six months out or 30 days out sometimes, we want to have this big event. They have to pay the hotel a deposit, they have to pay the venue a deposit. And those deposits, they don't hold the place until it's received. True. And so they have ways to get around procurement saying, no, no, this is the same.

SPEAKER_04 40:28

Yeah, it's like you don't show up unless you get some money.

SPEAKER_03 40:31

Yeah. I'm not like a mobster, but like I won't unload the truck if we haven't gotten our deposit. Exactly. Like we'll back the truck up to make a scene. I've only had to do this one time. We backed the truck up, and I walked over to the client and said, So darn saying I haven't gotten that deposit that I've called you about every week four for five weeks. And he's like, Yeah, sorry, the check's stuck. And I said, Well, the truck's stuck.

SPEAKER_05 40:47

Truck stuck. I love the one time. Hardball. Truck stuck, but they can go forward, get all that rolls in.

SPEAKER_03 40:59

But we usually, you know, they can get the deposit paid. And then I don't mind net 90. We we we don't have to do most net night. Usually, if they're paying upon receipt on the deposit, we can get net 30. Um, but again, our events are always rolling, and so I'm sort of okay with just realizing we have to manage a pretty large amount of cash on hand so that we can ebb and flow like that. We have to do that because we have to make it through summer. Sure. It's like hibernation. It's just like in nature, you know, like you have to have a little bit of a nest.

SPEAKER_04 41:25

So, how about all your equipment? I mean, you're very asset intense. Do you buy that? Do you lease that? Do you finance that?

SPEAKER_03 41:32

It's purchased. Yeah, it's purchased. Um, most of it we own outright in cash just by growing slowly over the years. Now, again, if I if I was more of a serial entrepreneur and 15 years ago said, hey, I want to start what a VOD three is today, yeah, we'd have to go get multiple millions of dollars in loans to do that. You know, if I was trying to build an office building, but I started my dorm room. And so I bought four speakers. And then, you know, we got those, and then I bought four more, and then now we have 90 speakers.

SPEAKER_05 41:56

This is a transition to one of the hottest topics that we always talk about, where Mark starts banging his hands on the table. The problem with a lot of the new entrepreneurs today think that they have to go raise capital in order to build a big business. I disagree. Disagree, right? Because now, again, I do think there's a sliver of whether you're in if you're in tech, tech is different. Yeah, different, but 90% of the other businesses that are out there, you can build, just keep investing and just grow.

SPEAKER_03 42:27

Mentor told me it's a crock pot, not a microwave. And I just got a big dosage of patience.

SPEAKER_04 42:32

Well, the other thing though, I mean, I agree with that. I mean, I started my primary business when I was 30. Okay. That's kind of late in a way, though, because I needed to make so much money to make the jump. Because I already had a kid, and I was married at a house, all that. That's right. I I wasn't able to do it.

Seasonality, Burnout, And Cash Management

SPEAKER_04 42:50

You were 18. You don't need to make anything. Wait, you're married? I thought you just got married a few years ago. Oh, shush. Um so, yeah. So I I do think that's part of it for a lot of people, is they're unequipped to make the sacrifice that it takes to bootstrap it. And they think like, oh, I make uh 150K a year working at Procter and Gamble, therefore I need to make 150K out of this.

SPEAKER_03 43:14

I pity that person who can't make the leap. I talk to friends all the time who are like, You're in small business, I've always wanted to own my business. And it's like, well, if you're 40 and you make $150,000 a year and you have incredible benefits, that I respect that you're in a different position than I was in the dorm room. You know, I completely I completely respect that.

SPEAKER_04 43:31

But you're also very vulnerable because you got one client. That's right. You're employed. One check. Yeah. That's right. And that could go any sense of the city.

SPEAKER_05 43:38

And at this time we see that that's a false sense of security. Totally false. That's right. It's it's it's fabricated and intentionally fabricated by companies to make you feel that way. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 43:48

I never lost a client. I just in fact I just said this to one of my daughters on the way here that I didn't replace with somebody better. Well, every single time. That's fair. Okay. That's fair. But when you're Going through that, you don't feel like that, right? Yeah. But freeing up the time and the energy that it takes to serve a bad client, boy, it's invaluable.

SPEAKER_03 44:10

Well, and I had a there was a a business that I watched when I was in high school college. I had a lot of respect for regionally around here that had a production company. And they went and got a $400,000 loan and bought the best gear. And and it was great, you know, but it didn't work. And I think it's because they bought, you know, you spend $400,000. Imagine building this building we're in right now or building a home. And you don't know, do we need like more bathrooms or more conference rooms? Like you don't know. You're not spending the money wise like you can't know what you're gonna need exactly. I bought four speakers. I thought we were gonna be a video production company. We were doing a lot more video back then. Sure. YouTube was booming. It was an early stage, and so it's like everybody wanted us to make a video for them. And so most of our business was like we would do a video and then they'd have us come do like their annual events, whatever. I if I would have taken out a million dollars back then, I would have bought all these red cameras and expensive stuff. It's so true. And then not been able to finance it because the volume didn't come in. I bought four speakers, I put them in a trailer, and then I bought four more, and then I bought two microphones, and we just slowly over time have learned what people actually respond to. I would have thought, even doing events, I would have thought we'd be mostly doing concerts. Because again, in Arkansas, we don't see a lot of 3,000-person conferences come through here. We have one little convention center, but the shows that we do on the road, they can't come to the store and so they go to real market set.

SPEAKER_04 45:29

Yeah, they don't have big enough facilities to support. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:32

And so again, even imagining back in the day, like, oh, I need to buy one of those mobile stages. I need to have a really big subwoofer array and do live music because that's what I thought you did, you know. Here. Here at the amp at the mall in Fayetteville. I thought that's what shows were.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:47

And I would have bought all the wrong gear because I realized, you know, it's like, oh, Walmart needed me to do a meeting. What are these meetings? Oh, it's hundreds of people, and they need big projectors and screens. We should buy projectors. I that wasn't that wasn't in the plan, you know. And now projectors and screens and LED wall is you, but just a little at a time and being patient. But I could be patient because I was 21. Right. If I was 30, if I was 40, you would feel impatient. And I respect that.

SPEAKER_05 46:10

You might, yeah. Well, you I think you you you might have followed one of the greatest golden rules, is which the best financing, the best money is the market money. Yeah. Like everybody doing something. Everybody tries to go to investors, VCs, private equities, credit lines, credit cards, whatever. If you the your best form of capital is coming directly from the market because it's telling you what they need. That's right. It's has no interest to it that you got to pay, right? I mean, it's just it's the absolute best form of capital.

SPEAKER_03 46:41

Yeah. The last year I've been doing more of these podcasts and stuff, and I've been fascinated because I've I've always been like, who wants me on their show? What are we talking about? But the my story five years ago was boring because my five years ago, everybody wanted to talk about tech and rapid startups and stuff, and now there's more of a trend of like, hey, I just want to buy an oil change place and run a good old business. And so this has been a more interesting story, apparently, for people to listen to the last year of just well, it's just a good old business, and we kind of grew it small.

SPEAKER_05 47:05

And I actually want to do it. It makes me happy to hear that. I mean, hopefully the point's starting to get across because it's a danger zone to think that all business is Silicon Valley. That's the part of the problem with media and in you know popular culture. You know, that's the problem in academia for a while.

SPEAKER_04 47:20

Yeah. I think we're finally learning that.

SPEAKER_05 47:23

That's good.

SPEAKER_04 47:23

But yeah, everything was geared in entrepreneurship that tech-based companies.

SPEAKER_05 47:28

Well, and we really need to understand that here in Northwest Arkansas. You know, because like, man, unfortunately, I think that there's a lot of decisions being made about venture capital and how it starts entrepreneurship in Arkansas.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:39

And that's like the damn opposite of what we're really good at. We're really good at starting business and being entrepreneurs, not trying to be Silicon Valley. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:47

And we're good at lots of meat and potatoes businesses. Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 47:53

Just do it better.

SPEAKER_04 47:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:54

That's the definition of entrepreneurship, right? Isn't that the French word? It says like taking two things and and like making them better. Isn't that where the word comes from? No, that's a good that's a good point. I'll look it up later, but I think I think that entrepreneur, that French word is like two normal things but combining them and saying, hey, it's sandwiches freaky fast. Okay, that's a different business. That's not Subway, that's Quisna, or where it is, that's Jimmy Johns. Like it's normal things, but combining them differently. I think that's where the word comes from.

SPEAKER_05 48:20

Fantastic. Yeah. Well, Mark's got some text messages to get through, so I think we probably should go ahead and show up.

SPEAKER_04 48:26

Such a mess.

SPEAKER_05 48:27

We're actually out of time. I'm just giving you shit. Well, you did tell me to sush earlier. Like live on camp. Well, you did. You said shut up, Eric. When I was brought up, asked about you being married. Like I thought you got married a few years ago, and you go, shut the hell up, Eric. Oh, well, you were just BS at that.

SPEAKER_03 48:44

You guys might spend too much time together. I'm not sure exactly. It's great to be anywhere.

SPEAKER_05 48:48

Our shells get worse because longer if we do these. Like we're now we're like two old freaking you know, men that just hate each other. But no, we don't. We're we're stuck. We're stuck. Well, we got too many people, too many fans. Too many people depend on us, you know, to get like our sponsors. Just like our sponsors. There's so many people that want to invest. Yeah. This is it right here, okay? You know, you share your story, Cameron. It's a lot like what we're going through right now. Like we started this out, now it's gotten huge. Like their show is just like mash energy.

SPEAKER_04 49:23

I mean, you can't go anywhere with that like crack. I know, but it's thrown. Like we didn't ask gathering around us.

SPEAKER_05 49:30

That's right. We didn't ask for this. We're just here. But no,

Bootstrapping Versus Loans And Investors

SPEAKER_05 49:35

we are out of time. Karen, uh, how do people get a hold of you? How do they get a hold of AVOD 3?

SPEAKER_03 49:41

There you go. You nailed it. See, that's good. It's my fault for naming it that. That's fair. Um, I want people to add me on LinkedIn. You know, for a long time at the end of these shows, everybody said, Oh, you need to give them your website and stuff, and that's great. In the rare chance that one person listening to this is an event planner that needs an A V team for the national conference. Yeah, it's AVOD3.com. For everybody else, just add me on LinkedIn because I'd love to be friends and I'm fascinated by kind of the interconnectivity of LinkedIn and starting to follow different people and stuff.

SPEAKER_05 50:06

And so they'll get a hold of you, Cameron McGee, M-A-G-E-E. Yep. Yeah, M-A-G-E. Via LinkedIn. Yeah, absolutely. And you can you can write as that $20,000 check that it's great requires for us to sponsorship.

SPEAKER_04 50:18

Yeah. We'd love uh gold. We'll give you the platinum sponsorship. Right?

SPEAKER_05 50:23

You can get like a special parking place. We got about four other people looking into that. So we need to talk about it. Well, maybe we can scarcely. Maybe our ad inventory is filled up. Yeah, it's great. No, this has been a great conversation, man. I think it's very encouraging for listeners. I mean, really great story. You know, Mark's, you know, good point talking about the family involved in the business. You know, hustle is what you've been doing, little by little, learning from your clients. And now you have a fantastic organization. Made a good thing. That's actually thinking process first, keeping inventory clean, taking care of your assets, which we didn't even get into. But that's super important, right? Keeping the value there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:03

Good stuff. Yes. And and learn, and obviously you learn as you went. But you know, it's just the the that works. I mean, it's just like you were saying, you can't just go buy everything and start out. I see that with people, they want to get a building right away for their business. They're like, I want to go buy a building. I'm like, you don't even know how big you're gonna be. That's right. You don't know what you need yet.

SPEAKER_05 51:23

Yeah, and that's one of those things you buy and you're pretty well stuck with.

SPEAKER_03 51:26

Yeah. We owned we owned a building. We had to move out because we outgrew it because we didn't know how big, and so we outgrew it. And now we're releasing it. It kills me. I want to buy again, but Laura and I are too scared to buy. We don't know how big we need it.

SPEAKER_04 51:35

Exactly. Everything's better when it evolves over time. Iterates. Like ketchup. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:42

Like high. Yeah, like a molting. What are you talking about? A ketchup.

SPEAKER_05 51:45

You know, patience. Good things come to those who wait.

SPEAKER_03 51:48

Yeah, I guess.

SPEAKER_05 51:49

Ketchup commercials.

SPEAKER_03 51:50

Oh, okay. I haven't seen that one. It's good.

SPEAKER_04 51:52

That's been a long time. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 51:54

Um maybe you're the only one who saw it. Maybe. I think.

SPEAKER_04 51:58

Uh I wish. Um I'm old enough to be his daddy.

SPEAKER_03 52:04

I know it's like a dad reference since I've been in the room. Not a dad, but my daddy.

SPEAKER_04 52:09

It's hard to believe. Yeah. I could have given birth to this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:13

I can't wait to get out of here, honestly. This is a great room to be in. So who fucking went.

SPEAKER_04 52:19

All right, everybody. Well, thanks again for being here with us today, Cameron. It's been great meeting you, and I can see why you've been successful. You're obviously an extremely smart guy and hard worker and very much trying to do the right thing. Thank you. Appreciate

How To Connect And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_04 52:35

it. So good stuff. It's great stuff. This has been another episode of Big Talk about Small Business. About small business.com.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

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, brow episodes, and ask questions about upcoming shows.