From Homeless to Fortune 500 Lanyard King

I’m so glad a mutual friend introduced us. Mike Barnhill has such an exciting story from couch jumping and homeless to becoming #1 badge/lanyard supplier in the world. But how and why is this even possible? The answer is what makes this episode so extraordinary! It was ONE sentence in ONE book that changed everything for Mike. Prepare yourself for this fascinating journey of hope, redemption, clarity and healing. Thanks for coming on the podcast Mike!  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

All right, Mike Barnhill. Folks, what an episode this is. So, 2005, homeless and couch jumping. Today, badge holder kings of the internet. That's what we say. This story is so incredible. I'll never forget our time at the Waffle House where... It's just so incredible where you, I mean, you gave me all the details and, and you're saying your words to me were, sorry, man, this is, I know this is the long way, but I'll wrap it up and I'm going, oh my gosh, make it longer. Can you make this longer? Cause it's just so good. So to go from homeless and couch jumping to where you are today, many pivotal points, many pivotal points throughout your life, right? So let's go back to the beginning because we got to go chronological. I need to, where are you from? Okay. Yeah. I'm from Oregon originally. Well, actually born in Missouri and then moved to Oregon when I was about two or three. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Any interest in your childhood that stand out? Were you sports, academics? Man, I was chasing everything. I was one of those kids that just really wanted to be good at stuff. And so it would be whatever I could do to get recognition, whatever I could do to just try to get notice. And it would be something new whenever possible. So I played every sport. I played soccer. I played football. I played baseball. I played water polo. I wrestled, everything. Music, I got into music pretty young. Kind of got... told i was pretty good at it so i i really dug hard into that what instrument or all of them back then i was mostly singing but as i got older i started figuring stuff out on piano and people would be like oh how'd you figure that out on piano and so you know getting noticed for figuring stuff out i just kind of leaned into that and got really into playing piano yeah so pretty normal upbringing it sounds like for the most part yeah would you say normal siblings for sure yeah little brother little sister three years apart Okay. All the way down. And how long did you stay there before your next big move to Miami? So I stayed in Oregon until basically like college. And then I went to University of Oregon, got a little crazy in University of Oregon and just needed to get out of Dodge. Yeah. And so, yeah, I had visited my brother in Miami a year prior to my move and I had never seen how people lived like. Wow. Like Cribs on MTV or something like that. I'd never seen anything like it. And I broke up with a girl. We broke up with each other, I guess. And I said, I got to get out of Oregon and drove as far away as I possibly could and drove down to Miami. Literally. Like that's how you made your decision to go as far away as you possibly could. Yeah. Yeah. I needed to get. Yeah. It was there or Alaska and Alaska. Something fell apart in Alaska. So it was Miami and it was a good move. Moved in with your brother? Moved in with my brother, yeah. I was sleeping on his couch. Actually, not even on his couch. There was a little mattress we put under the coffee table. And I slept there for a long time in Sweetwater, Florida. Sweetwater, Florida. Sweetwater, Florida. Did you work some jobs? What was life like? Did you play music? What were you doing? Yeah, so I had actually been in a band that was in... Rolling Stone Magazine back in Oregon too. Part of the move, right? So we were in Rolling Stone Magazine. I was working in the music industry kind of after college and just realized like the only thing that that band had going for it was we would maybe be a one hit wonder. Yeah. So, and I was working with these other bands who I'd seen go down that one hit wonder path. Yeah. And I just saw the misery and like no one cared anymore a year or two later. Yeah. And so all my hopes and dreams about being a rock star kind of fell apart. And I said, this isn't going to work either. So I quit the band. I was part of it too. Left Oregon after being in Rolling Stone Magazine and talking to record labels and things and decided to be basically a folk singer in Miami. I thought, I know what I'll do. I'll go live with my brother. I'll become a monk. I'll play acoustic guitar and I'll write these songs. And what happened instead was I started working on South Beach and got a job as a waiter. It wasn't what I expected, but it was crazy. It was a whole new life from Oregon to working on South Beach. Yeah. Okay. At that time in life, did you, did you have any other goals you were shooting for in any other areas? Or was it like once that dream was squashed, that was it? I really wanted. So there was this like reconnection with music around that time. Right. So I knew like, I didn't want to be a rock star. I didn't want to do the one hit wonder thing. Like I wanted to chase music that was like, calling me you know so i had always written these kind of acoustic sad folk songs and things like that and so i actually went really hard and kind of doubled down on just writing and writing and writing and i did i still kind of wanted to be like this musician um that's why i really loved the like bartending and waiting tables jobs because i could always have the flexibility building the freedom to at least keep pursuing music so i did i really doubled down on kind of like music that spoke to my heart. Yeah. And so I really worked hard at that for a while. And that was as for fun or were you playing like out and about? I was playing out and about. I got some gigs and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. So what period then did you... Did you move to another house? Did you stay with your brother the whole time? How did that all work out? Yeah, there was actually one night when I got let go from work a little early and I felt like there was some sort of divinity on my shoulder because we needed to move out of our apartment. I was driving around, driving around, and I drove to Coconut Grove, which is a town I always liked. Yeah. And there was this little blue house. Wow. I just drove past it. It had a for sale sign, or not a for sale sign, but a for rent sign. Yeah. And called him the next day and we moved in and... It was like the perfect house for us. It was like the perfect little house. And we ended up moving in and we had a front room and a back room. So we actually built a recording studio in the back room and had like a practice room in the front room. So my brother and I kind of started a band with some friends. Okay, so he was into music too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a really good musician. Same style? Like you guys played the same kind of music? Same genre? Same genre, yes. We ended up playing in bands together, like rock and roll bands and things in Miami. That's so cool. What was he into music? his career like? So he actually studied international business at Florida International University. But he's just a really smart kid. And so he started his own consulting company on the side for photo ID badge access control companies and things like that. Um, or, and then he was bartending, he was bartending on South beach and making like a killing and just stashing it all the way, stashing it all the way. Just save the money. Were you stashing it? I was not stashing it all the way. No, no. You were doing the opposite. I was doing the opposite. I was spending more than I had. Right. Yeah. Nonstop. Yeah. Always in debt. Always in debt. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So how many years did this go on for playing music, working in bars sort of? Yeah. It went on for, for a few years. Um, uh, probably, yeah, a couple of years. And then, uh, one day I decided to just stop drinking, which was a big part of my story. Okay. Uh, stopped drinking and, um, and, and had all this time to fill, right? Like there was just so much time in the day that I didn't realize existed. So, um, my brother and I actually, okay, we had started a recording studio. So we had, before I quit drinking, we'd actually, uh, found this little warehouse, my dad who was homeless, uh, ended up getting a bunch of back pay for Social Security and for being a veteran and things like that. He'd befriend a lawyer. Lawyer helped him get off the street. Lawyer helped him get a bunch of money. And he gave it to his kids because he'd never paid us child support. Random story. That's incredible. So yeah, we ended up getting about$20,000 or$30,000 from our dad. And we decided to invest it in ourselves. And so we started a recording studio thinking we would, I don't know, become... recording engineers and yeah sure realize that you don't make any money doing that and what's the goal there like a recording studio is that to get other people to come in or is it for self-use it was for ourselves to use but then also we wanted we figured you know we were in the scene uh we would just have clients yeah we didn't know what we were doing studio is that exactly how we're paying to use the studio yeah so cool that's that's incredible it was pretty cool what does that speak to your dad It was amazing. To pass that along. Yeah, it was really cool. We're actually great friends to this day, my dad and I. And he'd been kind of absent from our lives for... 10, 15 years. I don't even know. But for a long time, we didn't even know where he was. He'd been living homeless on the streets of Nashville, Tennessee. But when he finally did kind of start getting some things together, the first thing he did was reach out to his kids and say, guys, I didn't pay the child support that you were owed. And so here's a big old lump sum of it all. And so my brother, like I said, my brother's a really smart guy. If it were up to me, I would have just taken it in savings or who knows. But he's like, let's invest in ourselves. So we did. Like we built this recording studio and that was the beginning of like something stable to start working towards. Wow. And so even though we didn't end up succeeding as a recording studio, our business was born there. All of our other business ideas came from that one facility and it changed our lives. Yeah. So something happened then. And that's what I wanted. So big, pivotal. I'd say it's the second point, the first pivotal point in your life, in my opinion anyway, is your dad and getting that studio going. But then soon after, something big happens in the form of a book that you read. Yeah. When in the picture, is that now you have the studio and now this book lands on your lap that changes your perspective? Yeah, the book you're referring to is one of the things that definitely changed my life. It was Good to Great by Jim Collins, right? Mm-hmm. And what we were doing originally was the recording studio. We couldn't keep the lights on. I'd pray every night, and I wasn't a man of faith at the time, help us not lose the studio. And so what we actually started doing was we found a distributor nearby that sold music equipment, and we could list it all on eBay. And so we started selling all this equipment from this other resource on eBay. When we'd sell it, we'd pick it up. And we'd ship it, we'd sell it, pick it up, we'd ship it. And we did it every day. And as we were doing that, we started saying, what else can we sell? Like, what else might you know, we want to sell on the internet. It was new at the time. And so we tried a bunch of different things. We started selling badge holders, you know, lanyards, badge reels, things like that from my brother's previous job. He had some connections. It was one of the things we tried. And at the time we realized we were just selling tons and tons of these badge reels on the internet, on eBay. And yeah, I started deciding I needed to learn because I hadn't really paid attention in school. So I started doing like my self-education, reading books. And the one that you were referring to is Good to Great by Jim Collins, where he says, you know, What can you be the best in the world at? Yeah. That's incredible. Just that statement right there. Yeah. We'd spent years, we'd spent all this time trying to be, you know, compete with Sam Ash and compete with Guitar Center and compete with like Gloria Estefan's studio, which was down the street. And we couldn't compete in those things. But we, as we saw all these badge holders starting to sell on the internet, we realized like, this is actually something we could be the best in the world at. And so that was kind of born the, you know, the preeminent, the world's preeminent badge holder experts was kind of our like, kind of catchphrase to say, well, we might not be passionate about like most people aren't passionate about like a widget but if we don't love this more than anybody else then we're not going to succeed and so we we really tricked ourselves into loving badge holders more than anybody else in the world that's so cool i think to this day we still do who gave you that book Oh, you know what? I don't even remember. Um, at that time I was, I just knew I was lacking so much. So I think I probably was just on the internet. Like what are the top five business books to read for somebody who's new? Yeah. Yeah. And I had just read, what was the other one by Steve Covey? Um, What's the Stephen Covey book? The Habits? Yeah, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. That's right, yeah. So I came around the same time, and it was just kind of like, what are the things that some dummy like me that doesn't know anything needs to know first? Yeah, 101. And so I just went down that list. Incredible. And of the book, there's a thousand great nuggets in good to great, but in the book, it's just so cool how a sentence

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reshaped... and formed a new way of thinking for you to go, wait,

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I can't compete against the giants with giant budgets and all this. It's fascinating. So what can I go and be the best at? I think that's just remarkable. So, so cool. But what's so neat about this, it's not over. So there's another real cool part of this story. So you start doing this, you start doing these badges, but your company splits and like, let's, let's move into that. Things are good. Okay. You're going badges, but it's not like, it's not what you ended up as right. So the company takes a turn.

UNKNOWN: 12:59

Yeah.

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Around COVID time? Is that what we're talking about? Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah. So we're doing the badges thing. We're doing the badges thing. And we're doing it for years and years and years. And it's going really, really well. And we were on the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies like seven years in a row. And we're just chugging along every year, a little growth, a little growth. We're having a blast. And then COVID comes, right? The lockdowns come. And we do not know what we're going to do. I would assume you felt the same way. Yeah. A lot of us did. Too many questions. Questions unanswered, unpredictable. Is this the new life? Do I need to close my business? What do I need to do? I think anybody out there who owns a business or works for a business felt pressure. So you either innovate or you die. Yeah. And you chose not to die. Yeah, it was definitely an innovate or die moment. And the first thing we did is we looked in, well, first, it took us a while to figure out what the heck's going on. And we realized like, all right, well, what are we going to do? Well, who's hiring hospitals. So we started going through indeed and seeing who are they hiring. And then, so we started, we make these things called badge buddies, which at a hospital, there's a little thing behind the badge that says RN or EMT or whatever your position is. Right. Just to help people identify it. So we started going through the indeed hiring site and just created a new one for every single person they were hiring. And we just started promoting the heck out of them. So you

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used

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indeed. Yeah.

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To

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find out what positions they were hiring for. And that was like the first kind of solution. And at the time I was training, I was just like, well, I don't know what to do. So I'm just going to start training for like a half Ironman. So I'm training, training, training, training, training. And then my knee goes out and I'm on the floor and I can't walk. And I ended up having to get surgery. But during that whole time, I can't walk. And so I have nothing to do but sit on this laptop. And figure stuff out, right? Where I would normally just be running and biking for hours a day. Still in COVID. Yeah, still during COVID. Early COVID. Early COVID. This is the very beginning. Very beginning. Yeah, just the beginning. And important to know. So just in case people didn't pick this up, your business was focused on selling badges to companies that had people... coming to those buildings to work and COVID hits and nobody comes to buildings anymore. So I want to make sure that was a very important piece that you should have died on the vine, but you innovated instead. So, yeah. I mean, the knee surgery, the knee injury was one of the best things that could have happened because at that time I just had all this time to sit and think and work and plan and say, what are, how are we going to solve these problems? I wasn't training anymore for the race. And so, you know, it kind of came up that there were these double ended lanyards that we have, right. That people wear for conferences and stuff. And we've all seen a double ended lanyard that has two hooks and whatnot. And it kind of came to our realization that like, these things are, exactly what people need to hold their masks, right? Everyone had masks at the time and you take it off and you stick it in your pocket and it's crumpled and you're, you drop it or whatever. And so, and so there was this like instant, like flash, there's a solution for the mask problem. And it's these lanyards that have two hooks and you hook it to your mask and then you wear it and it's a mask lanyard. And, and nobody was doing it at the time. Like it was just so early. We just, nobody had discovered that idea yet. And so we started doing a little digging, looking on Etsy, saw there were a few, you know, people selling them on Etsy and things like that. So we're like, okay, well, let's, let's, let's take some pictures of some of these and we'll repurpose them. We'll do some keyword research. We'll see what people are searching for. Got really excited. And so we created this listing for double-ended lanyards, you know, mask lanyards. And basically we're the first to market, went to Amazon, went to Shopify, went to eBay, went to Etsy. Like we did them everywhere. Right. And I was, I was going out to dinner with the, with the family, you know, with the first, like out to dinner with the family with masks on and stuff down there around perimeter and use it, took a took a ton of pictures and, and then, you know, posted that on post that up on Amazon within a day, we'd sold probably 50 packs of those things. Two packs, three packs, four. It was, they were the, we sold them in sets of two and five at the time. Okay. Two and five. Okay. And like we sold like 50 packs of those, like the first day we listed them. Yeah. Right. So there was search. There were people looking for these things, but they didn't exist on the marketplace. And, uh, When we realized that, we said, okay, let's buy every single double-ended mask lanyard that we can buy from all of our suppliers in the U.S. So we basically ended up buying 50, 70. We had 30,000, I think, already in stock because we stock a lot of stuff. We ended up buying 50,000 to 70,000 and kind of wiped out all of our local distributors. But then we went from 50 sales a day to 100 sales a day to 200 sales a day. Not just 200 sales. strings, like lanyards. Individual units. 200, like, packs of these things. Two and five packs. And then we started getting hospitals reaching out and schools reaching out and all this stuff. And we, for a while, we were the only people ever. We were the, like, the only company that had them. And we'd always had these goals about, you know, these revenue goals for the month and things like that. And, you know, we just, we would always get close. We'd never hit them that month. First month that we launched those things, like, we blew that goal out of the water. It was amazing. Never seen anything like it. And it was, and we felt good about because there was everyone selling hand sanitizer and all these other things, which was good, but nobody was selling mask lanyards and people needed them. Did you sell$100,000 in masks? More than that.$300,000? It was probably close to a million the first month. Maybe it was the second or third month, but our Amazon sales hit a million in revenue. We would usually sit around six to seven. How much was it? Was it all just mask lanyards? every other sale, all of our other sales were going down, right? Cause people weren't buying badger or something, but that the mask lanyards blew up. So we probably would have been doing about a month, a million a month in mask lanyards for about three months until everybody else kind of caught on. And there was a bunch of, but at the time, like there was, No supply left in the U.S. And we were flying them as fast as we could from Taiwan, from China. We had some U.S. manufacturers. I was making these things like I had just had surgery. I was making them in a chair with a little length adjuster thing. And I'm using a paper clip and I'm stringing them on. And I'm going to like Michael's to try to find extra components because we're running out of components. The whole thing was... It was a nightmare. It was a mess, but it was a blessing. We kept our business alive. We kept all of our staff. We kept all of our employees. I think we ended up letting one person go who just wasn't a good fit for the team anyway. But yeah, we're stronger than ever. Stronger than ever. Stronger than ever, yeah. So what year is this? This is COVID, early COVID. So we're 2020. 2020, yeah. You're in Atlanta? Yeah, I'm here in Atlanta at the time. When did the transition happen? You came from Miami to Atlanta. So yeah, I was living in Miami. I moved to Atlanta probably eight years ago. Yeah, for my wife's job. Okay. Everything I did was on a laptop. And there was no sense in me staying in Miami. Got it. So she got moved. She got moved. And we were looking for a place to move anyway. We were looking for something new. Yeah. I'm glad you got moved here, man. Yeah, I like it, man. I'm glad I met you, bro. I know, right? That's so awesome. All right. When in life... Would you point to the first time you remember showing a sign of being an entrepreneur? The first time? Oh, so I loved making money as a kid. Like I just loved making money. I didn't like, I didn't like asking for money. But I liked working. So from the time I was a kid, I was weeding people's lawns and walking people's dogs and all that stuff. And I don't know if you've heard of Tom Bilyeu. But Tom Bilyeu is one of my favorite entrepreneurs. And he's a billion-dollar kind of entrepreneur. And he said something to me one time that really made me feel like an entrepreneur. And that it was like, I always wanted to like deliver value for my neighbors. I wanted to, I wanted to walk their dogs. I wanted to weed their lawns, but I didn't want to ask him for money, you know? And so for a long time, I didn't think I was really an entrepreneur because I, Like I didn't like the deal. I didn't like the, I just didn't like so much of it, but I liked, I liked the work. I always liked the work and I would hope that people would just kind of see the work and then reward me for it. And so that would, I would think that I was that kind of an entrepreneur who were like, maybe do a paper route, but then be afraid to ask for people. To pay you, you know? Yeah, yeah. So I always liked the work. And then when I was 16, I got my first job. And I always worked in service industry. And I've always felt like service industry is kind of like running your own little business, where you have no overhead. You just show up, and your job is to make margin. Because you're getting tips, and you're making people happy, and you're adding as much value as you possibly can. But you have no overhead. You just show up. So working service industry for a long time, I always realized some people just make more money. Because they treat everybody better. Because people come back and see them again and again and again. And to me, that was kind of like running a small business. That's cool. Yeah. But I loved working from the time I was a kid. And I even had to sneak up to get my first job. I wasn't allowed to work.

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Really?

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But I just snuck up and got a job. What was it? I worked at an all-you-can-eat buffet called North Chuck Wagon in Oregon. Oh, that's so cool. And it was great because we got free ice cream and free fried chicken. I love it. It was cool. I love it. Was there like an– Was it because of your age that you weren't able to work? It was my mom didn't really want me to work. Okay. Didn't want me. Where'd you learn that good work ethic? Let me see. I don't know. I will, you know, like I said, like my parents got divorced and my dad, my dad struggled with, uh, with employment for a lot of his life. Yeah. Um, and I just always, as the oldest kid, I always felt like, I didn't want my mom. I didn't want to be a burden to my mom. Right. I didn't want to be a burden. And if I wanted shoes, I wanted Reebok pumps. Like nobody could afford to give me Reebok pumps.

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Yeah.

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I had to figure it out.

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Yeah. Figure it

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out. And it's just, you know, we were kind of the poor kids in the neighborhood. And so there was always this like overcompensation of saying, well, I don't want people to see me as the poor kid who doesn't have shoes, you know, who has. shoes with holes in them or has jeans with holes in them or doesn't have the cool toys for Christmas. So I would just figure out how to buy myself things. And so it was mostly, it was mostly just deep insecurity about not having as much as the other kids. And so what can I do to, to level the playing field for myself? You know? So when I show up at school, I'm not getting poked at and laughed at, you know, for, for being that kid, for being that kid. So that was a, that was a big drive for me. It was just, you know, not wanting to, not wanting to feel less than. Yeah. That's, that's, That's an enormous drive.

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Wow. Yeah. It's cool. Oh, I love it. I love it.

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All right. So COVID happens, three years, crushing sales. How was your personal life during that time? At the time, my personal life was pretty good. Yeah. You healed from your injury. Yep. Were you back out running? So I healed from my injury. I still wasn't running. But one of the other blessings I think that kind of came out was there was just so much uncertainty during COVID that a lot of us were just questioning our lives, right? What are we doing with our lives? Are we really pursuing the things that mean the most to us? And myself and about a million other friends of mine from back in the day started playing their guitars again, started playing the piano again, started doing those kind of things. And I really leaned hard into saying, I've leaned hard in this talk a lot, but I really got into just playing guitar again and writing songs again and recording songs again. And so I ended up building a little recording studio in my home, kind of like this little spot, and just got back into music. With all the guitars that you put on Facebook. I love it. That's awesome. I love it. But it really took COVID for me to say, what am I doing with my life? Like, what am I doing? And so I kind of revisited music. That whole piece of me that I just had not made time for for years. And how did you meet Chad? I asked you that yesterday on text. Oh, yeah, Chad. I saw he commented on a post, and he was so influential in my early days of getting started.

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Yeah.

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How do you know him? Yeah, so Chad is a friend of yours from way back. Yeah, 2006. 2006, I think I met him. Really? Yeah. He was

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so helpful to me in the beginning. Yeah. Graphics, that kind of thing. And I know he always loved

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music.

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And that's your connection

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with him, right? Yeah. So Chad and I, our band ended up playing together back in January. Yeah. Just randomly got paired together to play a show. Really? But when we found each other, so we connected on social. And then the next thing you know, Chad and I started these conversations about promoting together. Because he's kind of the leader of his band and I'm kind of the guy in our band. And so what are you doing? Do you have any art? So we started going back and forth and sharing ideas and sharing art and graphics and things and just promoted the crap out of that show. Yeah. And, uh, got to meet him and man, we, we, we felt like kindred spirits right from the beginning, you know, just kind of dudes who love music and had not made time for it and sort of making time for it again and are just going all in. Yeah. We're both working hard to both have careers and you're playing as a, okay. So does everybody who plays music have it in the back of their mind? Like, wow. Yeah. This could be the night where the right person's in the

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room

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and we shoot up. Or no. Or is it just you play and it's like, please, the audience, it's here. It's good. I got my career. God, that's such a great question. That's such a great question. You know, I think early on, early on, we were all looking for a Prince Charming. You know, when I heard somebody say, like, stop looking for Prince Charming, I was like, oh, that makes so much sense. So, yeah, early on, that was the mentality we all had. You know, looking for that lottery ticket. Oh, we're going to write that song and it's going to connect and all this. And, but, but no, you get older and you realize no Prince Charming is coming to save you. You know, you make your own way. And, uh, what it is now, I will visualize connecting with the audience. Like I love the connection that music provides because. To me, it kind of relinquishes loneliness. So many songs are about people's suffering and their struggles and the things they're going through and heartbreaks and things that are tough. But the music, what I love about music is I really feel it helps people feel less alone through that connection, even in the loneliness that they've experienced. And so when I perform now, my goal is literally before I perform, I will imagine myself just connecting with people. a few people in the audience. It doesn't matter who, but just connecting. And to me, that's the everything of music at this point in my life, just the connection.

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And you got it. So I want to know more about your son. Where did he learn

SPEAKER_00: 27:49

to play at the level he plays at first off? Let's let's start there. So 13, 12. Yeah. Yeah. So my son, yeah, he's 13 years old, 13 years old. And he is the most incredible drummer. I've ever known. I can't believe the videos on Facebook. I mean, unbelievable. Did he learn it? Did he pick it up? Is he getting lessons? How do you play at that level? When he was really young... he was a better drummer than I had ever been. And I always wanted to be a drummer. Come on. Like, I always thought like, I'm going to be a drummer. And when he was five years old, he could play, uh, you know, rhythms on his hands that I, that I, I was never able to, to knock out. So when he was, uh, I think it was in kindergarten or first grade, there was a black history month and he and a couple other kids were chosen to go up and, uh, you know, perform this African, uh, song. Yeah. Like on the Congas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and he gets up there with two other kids and they're, they're performing it. And, uh, he gets this huge bunch of applause, him and the other, of the other kids. And, um, and he just melts on stage, like so happy, like the joy of these people clapping for him. He's looking around and his eyes are this big and he just feels like something he'd never felt before, you know? And, um, And I asked him after the concert, like, do you like drums? Do you want to play drums? He says, yes. I said, would you want to take lessons? And he says, yes. So we get him into lessons. We get him into lessons. And he takes to it so quickly. He's always had this natural ability. But he just kind of kept with it for years and years. And then a few years back, we took him to see Blink-182, which Travis Barker is like the most notorious punk rock drummer of all time. And we took him to see them twice. The second concert here in Atlanta... my son just decided this is what I'm going to do. And he became, you know, not just a talented kid, but a kid who's got talent and works his. butt off does he drills and he drills and he drills and he spends time watching videos and then we actually took him to meet Travis Barker about six months ago up in New York yeah yeah yeah we took him to one of Travis Barker he's gotten really into wellness and so he hosts these like 5k races now and so we all flew up to go race got my son VIP access so he could you know meet him shake his hand and tell him thank you it was one of the best it's probably the best day of my son's life he still talks about it probably one of the best of your life oh yeah to watch my sun yeah it was really cool it was really cool yeah wow wasn't there a story about that flight Do I remember? Yeah, that was when none of the flights were working, right? There was that couple of days when Delta was completely shut down. And yeah, that was our experience. So we got there at like nine in the morning for our flight and we spent all day trying to book another flight because we kept getting pushed back, pushed back, pushed back, canceled. I got on the phone with my Amex rep and they somehow, somehow found me tickets on a flight for 10 o'clock at night that didn't get canceled. Otherwise you would have missed this. We would have missed this. And we had, we'd spent 12 hours in the airport and somehow, you know, I felt like it was like, and the whole, the miracle was the whole time my wife and I and my son were just like, well, it is what it is. We're just going to have faith. We're going to hope this works out. And somehow, by the grace of God, it worked out. We got there at 1 in the morning to our hotel. We fell asleep. We fell asleep probably at 2 or 2.30. We woke up at 4 in the morning, and we went and ran 5K with Travis Barker. We didn't sleep much, but it was crazy. And I just felt so grateful that we made it. But it was funny because I think we all knew that we would make it. It was easy to get mad. There was a lot of people getting mad, and rightfully so. But the whole time, we just... We just kind of felt it was going to work out, you know? Yeah. somehow it did so yeah yeah yeah what a story it was where can somebody that's interested find him playing because it's fascinating yeah type in your band name or the best way to find him it would be uh our instagram is team like a sports team yeah barnhill like a barn on a hill barnhill team

SPEAKER_01: 32:02

barnhill

SPEAKER_00: 32:03

okay he's asked me to start him his own instagram channel parent controlled so i have a bunch of old videos that we're going to start doing probably go chronologically and start posting them and but it's you know I'm a musician and I have a band and I'm always trying to get noticed and get people to come to shows and I will post stuff of me playing and that's great but when I post my son playing every single time it's like everybody wants to comment and talk and it's beautiful because what more could you want as a father you know than to see your child do what they love and be noticed for it you know and be better than you like I want him to be better than me sure so And he actually drives me to be better because I got to keep up now. You know, I play guitar and I'm playing rock and roll guitar. And like, I better learn how to play this stuff so I can keep up with him. It's amazing. I love it. Right. Oh man. So what's the, what's the gap in your opinion between where he's at, which to somebody like me who doesn't know music, I know how to find it on Amazon music and listen to it. I'm not sure what I'm looking at in the drumming, but when I listen to him and watch him take, Take Travis or somebody who's at that elite level. How far is that gap? Is it like... Is he almost there? I wouldn't say he's almost to that level yet, but I would say he's well on the path. You know, it's easy to fall into your comfort zone and be a really decent musician. And that's what I've done. I've fallen into a comfort zone. I'm a very decent musician. He's on a trajectory where, I mean, it'll take some, like Travis Barker does not stop practicing, even in his, I think he's 40, 50 now, something, you know, but he still works hard. And so I think to be the kind of caliber musician that my son wants to be, it's a never ending pursuit. And even if he gets to where Travis Barker is like, yeah, he'll get to where Travis Barker was, you know? And that's one of the things I love that Tony Robbins says is if you want to get to where I am, that's great. Cause you'll get to where I used to be. And, uh, that mentality of like, it's just the, the quest never ends, never ends. And so I'd say he's probably better than most of the drummers I've played with in my life. Like my son isn't, he's a better drummer than almost all the drummers I've played with in my history already. Who's the best ever in your opinion, in my opinion, Best drummer ever. I love Travis Barker. Okay, best ever. Him and I both. All genres and all categories of music. In my opinion, yeah. He's done for rock and roll and for pop music what nobody has ever been able to do. Wow. And that is to make constant dynamic and expression like changes and like just part of the song, part of the music. It like melts into the music. I love it. I never heard anything like it. And he's never going to stop. getting better. Yeah. So we both love Travis. My son and I, we fanboy together. Love it. Yeah. That's so cool. Let's come back to badges. Cause we got, you got a lot, you got a lot ahead of you and aspirations for the company. So we're out of COVID things are going good.

SPEAKER_01: 35:07

You lost, I would guess the division of the mask. Oh yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 35:11

Cause people don't need them anymore. For sure. Now what, what happens now? Yeah. Oh, yes. I love the company.

SPEAKER_01: 35:18

A great company. Let's just make sure that we're... Yeah, yeah. Because this could get confused out there with like,

SPEAKER_00: 35:25

oh,

SPEAKER_01: 35:25

I'm selling some

SPEAKER_00: 35:26

badge holders out of my garage. This is a legit... You guys are firing. Yeah, we still love it. What we've been... We still do everything to do with badge holders, but now we're going up to higher ticket items and we brought in the sales team and things like that. So we have a really great sales guy with his team that he's kind of running. And So we're kind of going up to the higher ticket things, the printers, the access control systems and things like that. We're bidding on big government contracts. We're working with huge clients. All the years we've spent doing this e-commerce thing, my brother and I with our team, we were too scared to follow up with... We weren't too scared, but we were never sales guys. We were never marketing guys. We had emailists like... hundreds of thousands of people that we'd never utilized right and so what we've been doing is just kind of growing up we've been growing up and realizing okay well we had a fun run uh doing something no one's ever done in e-commerce in our space but now we need to be a big boy company you know we need to be a big kid company yeah and uh so we you know we started using traction which is eos yeah we built a leadership team we're going to high ticket items we're bidding on big contracts we're building relationships with huge companies yeah you know things that we kind of like stumbled our Yeah. administrative assistant is looking to to build out a whole you know suite of of items that we can supply and so you know we're just kind of getting ourselves more and more integral into all the companies we work with yeah what are what are the printers you said printers like is that printer what i would imagine or just a printer like an id card printer so if you start a new job and they have they print you your badge your id yeah so we do like the id card printers and And things like that too, yeah. Okay. So they can do it right there in the office and then the employee has their, they have everything. Exactly. The car, the reader, they don't have to send it down the road. Exactly. Okay. So anything you need that has to do with an ID badge, we are now doing and we're trying to be the best in the world at it. When we were new, it was just, you know, we could be the best in the world of badge holders, but now we really feel like we're the company to work with. Yeah. To be the best in the world and to care the most, that's our core value, we care the most about about everything to do with your company's identification. I could feel that. I could feel that sitting here having a conversation with you. You love badges. This isn't just like, this is how we make money. No. You love

SPEAKER_01: 37:57

this business, which I love that you do. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 38:01

That's why you're here. It's fun to love something that nobody else loves. And it makes it so much easier. And really, it comes down to the relationship with the customer. We want their life to be better because they know us. We don't want to be like the private equity company where nobody really cares they're just kind of they're punching in punching out our whole team i credit our team our and our culture yeah we have an amazing team an amazing culture and our our number one highest value is we care the most you know we care the most i love it so so cool and Did this increase, improve, strengthen your relationship with your brother, I would think? Because you guys are in business together. Yeah, yeah. I would think so, right? Yeah, it really does. I mean, we've always been each other's biggest advocates, and we've always seen each other's blind spots. So when we were coming up, we used to consider ourselves like two ninjas with our backs against each other. He sees all these things over here, and I see all these things over here, right? And so we kind of have the whole scope. What I think has happened... Recently, it's just, you know, recognizing just... how wonderful the other one is, you know, and how different and totally unique. I think there used to be a lot of time where there'd be overlap at times where we're like, well, I want to do it this way. I want to think this way. I realized that my brother is one of the best leaders I've ever known. Like if it weren't for him, our team would have fallen apart a million times, but he is this North star leader who people follow and crowd around. And I got to give him so much love and credit for what he does, because if it weren't for him as a visionary, uh, things would have fallen apart a bajillion times. He's older. He's younger. Oh, he's your younger brother? He's younger. He's my younger brother. So how old is he? He is. Or how much younger? So yeah, yeah. He's three years younger than I am. Okay. So three years. I'm like, gosh, that's so cool. But he's really built the leadership team around the people he wants to work with. The warehouse we have now in Doral is his vision of a place he always dreamed of walking into work. So his vision, his dream, he's really... been bringing it into the world lately yeah over the last several years because when you know the covid thing was a big wake-up call for both of us you know we could either die on the vine like you said or we could continue to grow and and he wants to grow like he's a he's a growth-minded individual yeah and and and he just crushes it man i'm just proud of him for all that he's done that's so cool man when next time he travels i want to give both you i would love to hear it the same story, but through the two of your eyes together. Like

SPEAKER_01: 40:37

you said, you both see different things. It'd be so cool to hear this story told through his eyes as well. Like what was he doing? I'm just curious. What,

SPEAKER_00: 40:45

what did he see during COVID? You were at home on your couch and that was a blessing. Was he trying to innovate at the same time or is he, what was he doing? So he, he was in it. So he's, he was innovating in systems. I was innovating in products. So he was restructuring the warehouse so that we would have all the proper cleaning spray that came in in the middle of the night and disinfectants and hiring the people that would come in and clean every single night. And everything to do with keeping us alive, keeping our business working, he was doing all of that. And that was so visionary. And we have a great network of people. And he... he works with people that are systems experts, that are process experts. Got it, okay. And so he was doing all the things about like with PVP loans and all these things, how are we gonna, I didn't think about that. I thought about masculinity. That's right. Cause your brain's the other side. Wow. So, yeah, I mean, as you could sell all the masculinity in the world, but still go out of business cause you, cause everything else is falling apart. Right. So lose the profit because of everything else happening. Okay. What's on the horizon now. So here we are, it's 2025. What, where sort of are you? You talk like you have management team and you have

SPEAKER_01: 42:00

all this great stuff internally and you, it sounds like you've built infrastructure that you're ready to springboard.

SPEAKER_00: 42:06

What are you seeing out there? What does the future look like? What's this company going to do? Tell me about some of that. Yeah, man. It's one of those things that we talk about every quarter. We get together and we think about this because we're kind of in a dying industry, right? Are we going to need more people going to workplaces in the next 10, 15, 20 years? I don't know. Is an ID card, like a physical plastic card going to be irrelevant tech, not irrelevant technology.

SPEAKER_01: 42:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 42:35

Five, 10 years. I don't know. But what we're trying to do is just keep our finger on the pulse because we've pivoted so many times already. We've, that's kind of something we're good at. So we're just, you know, we're messing around with the AI. We're, we're keeping our finger on the pulse. We're building relationships with big companies. That's kind of the goal. Keeping the cultures solid, keeping everyone on our team asking questions.

UNKNOWN: 42:56

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01: 42:57

Hungry.

SPEAKER_00: 42:58

Hungry, seeing what customers need. And just looking for what's next. And sharing ideas. There's a lot of sharing ideas. One of the other things that we have in our culture code is we partner up and work as a team. So there's a lot of sharing of ideas. That's a big part of it. But we're in kind of a falling industry, but we still think that we can... be the most relevant player in the industry for a long time. Cause there's still, you know, there will still be some sort of identification needs going into the future. You got culture figured out, which is probably the hardest of all the things to figure out the product. Sometimes, most times the product is the product, but you really

SPEAKER_01: 43:37

differentiate. And that's what I love so much about this story is like you make a non-attractive product, right? You could say non-attractive. Really attractive. But you make it attractive

SPEAKER_00: 43:51

because of the way you run the business. And I love that. And I love that you came from nothing and you got to here and then you almost went out again. And then you innovated in COVID.

SPEAKER_01: 44:04

And you chose. It was a decision to stay alive instead of die in the vine. Right. There's just so

SPEAKER_00: 44:12

many cool pivotal points in here. So, all right. Um, so you and your, you and your brother now, are you thinking of other business ideas?

UNKNOWN: 44:21

Uh,

SPEAKER_00: 44:22

what do y'all, what does that look like? One of the, one of the things that we do a lot of is actually still make music together. So we, we, we both have home studios now. And so we are trying, you know, we've always kind of made it our goal for one another is Michael for him is I want him to spend as much time not having to work as possible. And he wants the same for me. And the time that we do spend working, we want to be spending as much time in our highest and best value use. We want to be doing what we're good at, but when we're not, My brother, he'll be an entrepreneur until the day he dies. He loves building and growing businesses. Me, I'm more of an artist, and I will probably not do this forever, just to be honest. Great. So we do still make music together. I record things in my studio. I send them to him. He mixes them. He's got a great mixing studio. So we still make music together. We're releasing music together. To this day, we actually have different songs coming out in the next couple months where we work together. And he will send me videos of him mixing them in his home studio and his little kids dancing to the songs that I've written. And so, you know, that's so cool. That's in my, my sister's a musician too. And so that's one of the things we've been doing is just making music together. Yeah. My dad's putting out songs still. He's in his seventies. And so we're working together as the Barnhill kids to get my songs that out into the world. What's that vet song that you sent? Oh, holes. Yeah. So my dad, my dad, like I said, he was homeless in Nashville for years and we, he wrote, he wrote, The song called holes. We recorded it in our studio, hired a guy here to make a video for it and just send it out to as many veterans groups as we could. Started getting a lot of traction. And yeah, my dad's an amazing individual. Yeah. He's had his share of demons, but he's, he's walked through a lot of hell. What a great story there too. What a great story of redemption there. Yeah. Redemption for sure. Yeah. What a turnaround. All right. Biggest, biggest company, biggest, biggest brand that everybody would know that you've sold badges to? Some of them we have NDAs with. Okay. But probably most of them. Yeah. If you look at the Fortune 500. I wish we could say one of them that I know because it's my favorite. Anybody that wouldn't mind if you said it? Or is it all NDAs? Yeah. Is it all NDAs? No, it's not all. I mean, like every... I still get excited. I look at all the addresses that we ship to whenever it's a big order. And it's everybody. It's everybody. We ship to every school, to every university, to every sports team. One of the coolest things was the big check we got from the Miami Heat. It was one of our first things. We wanted to deliver just a crap load of lanyards. Before COVID? Yeah, this was before COVID. We've worked with every sports team in the country. We've worked with every university. We have a lot of fun. Even the federal government, the FBI and things like that. We do a lot of the logos for them and stuff like that. We work with the Pentagon and we work with everybody. We like to sell badge holders to anybody that needs

SPEAKER_01: 47:33

badge holders.

SPEAKER_00: 47:36

Gosh, there's so many great stories in here. Passion and grit and curiosity. I think those are the words. Passion is clear. Grit you've evidenced. And you guys, I think what keeps it going, like the fuel in the tank or the electricity, if you have an electric car or whatever, but what's keeping that going, you guys are curious. Oh, I love that. You're curious. And Chris and I always talk about that word. We love that. If you had to pick from all the words out there, education, MBA, grit, all of them.

SPEAKER_01: 48:20

They're all temporary. They all fade without curiosity. If you're not dying to just find out how

SPEAKER_00: 48:28

this works, like I need to know why this is tall and thin. I never accepted that this is tall and thin. I never did.

SPEAKER_01: 48:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 48:35

I had to find out like, so I, I'm just thankful for that because I don't even know how you create that in somebody. I'm thankful to be curious and I can always recognize it when somebody is curious.

SPEAKER_01: 48:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 48:46

You're, trying to figure out how this is all going to fit with AI. And if companies are going to hire less people and, and are they, or are those people just getting displaced? Cause Bezos is going to start, start buying up shopping centers. I don't know, but you're curious to find it out. And I love that. Thank you, man. It's great. Just having that conversation. Yeah. Just having that talk back and forth. So, okay, cool. Now, how about you personally? I want to end on this part. Like, What's the future look for Mike? Because all this stuff doesn't matter. Kids, drumming, music, passions, business. If you're not well, what's wellness look for you? What are you into? What's your... Do you run? Do you work out? Tell me about Mike. Yeah, man. I love so many things. I could spend all day just doing things I love and still want more hours in the day. And for me, I have a wellness routine. I work out every morning. This morning I went for a run because I didn't have time to lift weights, but I usually will lift weights or run. And then I will try to meditate. I like to meditate a lot. I do transcendental meditation, and then I do just– All kinds of meditations just because I love it. Yeah. Try to journal and write down what I'm grateful for, the things I'm grateful for every morning. That's super important to me. Wow. And then, yeah, try to make music every day. Like, really, my brain. Yeah. My soul. Yeah. was put on earth to make music i just love it whether i'm great at it or whether i'm not like a there's a part of my soul my brain that just needs it every day yeah and so trying to remind myself that every day i should sit in the work the workbench is what i call it in my my producer chair in my studio and crank something out even if it's just for 30 minutes yeah and then other than that man just being a dad is being a dad is a key being a family man and then even when i'm resentful for working or I don't want to think about business. Like I just love business. I just, I'm attracted to it. I'm attracted to business books. I'm attracted to CEOs. I'm attracted to entrepreneurs. I could never really, completely separate from it because it excites me. I love it so much. So that's, it's part of my wellness too, is just reading and studying and learning and being, being curious. Curious is the most perfect word because there's so much hubris and thinking I know everything, you know, and every time I thought I've known everything, it's bit me in the butt, um, to be just to continue chasing curiosities is I think the way I want to live the rest of my life to just keep chasing these curiosities because they keep unfolding and they unfold more the more you start looking. And I love that about life. Yeah. It's cool. I have one more word to add that goes into your story and it's, and it is impressive. It's impressive to me based on the level of success that you do have in business

SPEAKER_01: 51:36

is balance, right? Cause I, I always say, and you can take any human being and have them work a hundred hours a week and then tell me they're making four

SPEAKER_00: 51:47

or five, whatever the number is.

SPEAKER_01: 51:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 51:51

Figure out how to do it. Under 30 hours a week or under 40 hours a week at the top. Right. And you've, you've presented evidence that you've figured that part out. You're doing music, you're doing this, you're doing that family. That is impressive to me. So from one entrepreneur to another, cause that's the number, that's, I live my life that way. Like I, it's count. We're not going over that. Yeah. I got four little ones upstairs. We're together. We're going here. We're going fishing. We're going to water park. Like, so I think that's really cool. So it's a compliment as much as like that. Like those are the words that I think, you know, really define what you're doing out there. So. Thanks, man. I think the balance is so important. We have one life, you know, we have one life to live. Yeah. We don't work it away. Yeah. We spend our years working and working and working and working and working. Like we put in the 60, 70 hour work weeks. We did that. Yeah. You know? Yeah. To figure it out. Yeah. To not have to do that. Exactly. That's the reason

SPEAKER_01: 52:50

why. Right? Yeah. I worked. What is it? I worked. I'm an entrepreneur. I worked. I work 80 hours a week so I don't have to work. 20 hours, whatever. 40 hours for somebody else. Yeah. Right. Like it's just so true. So, all right. So I want to thank

SPEAKER_00: 53:06

you first for your time. And then second and more importantly is just for being like, just, just your willingness to share, man. It was awesome. The vulnerability, the transparency, the stuff with your dad. And I know there's more there, but thanks. Cause that helped present the real story of where you came from. Things weren't great. They weren't great with you. They weren't great in your family. And you shared that. And that means a lot. And it's helpful to people to understand like you weren't given, you know, a free ride. Yeah. Thanks, man. I know that. When I was younger, I always wished I could change, and I didn't think that was possible. People say you can't change, and I just think that's the biggest load of bull crap in the world. I met so many great people on the path that helped me find different ways to think and do things and learn and know, and had mentors that made me change the way I thought about successful people. I came from a poverty mindset. I thought everyone that had any success was lucky, and they hadn't hurt other people. Yeah. I couldn't have been further from the truth. And I met some of the most generous people I could have ever imagined meeting along the way and so grateful for. And you're one of those people, man. So thank you so much, Jeff. You got a great story, man. So thanks for sharing, brother. My pleasure, brother. Appreciate you, man.

SPEAKER_01: 54:24

Yeah, yeah.