Risk and Reinvention Lead to a Blessed Life | John Weiss

On Above & Beyond: Where Excellence Meets Elevation, host Jän Simon sits down with John Weiss—owner of ProBlast LLC and co-owner of Minuteman Press in Mesa—whose path from Anchorage, Alaska to Arizona is shaped by constant reinvention. John shares a childhood rooted in old Alaska history and hard lessons, early work from shoveling driveways to gold mining, and a career spanning longshoreman work, the Coast Guard, firefighting, and more. He explains why he makes fast decisions, what the Coast Guard taught him about risk, and how entrepreneurship changed his view of time, money, and success. John also discusses building ProBlast as a surface-prep/sandblasting company, adopting laser cleaning, partnering with his wife Devin in business, and evaluating opportunities by defining how much you’re willing to lose and what could take a business out.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And that's one of the things I've learned about all my businesses that I've had is how much money are you willing to lose? If you're starting a business, how much money are you willing to lose?

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Hey there, welcome back to Above and Beyond Where Excellence Meets Elevation. I'm your host, Jan Simon, and this season we're raising the bar, diving into the passion, purpose, and defining moments of leaders who don't just aim high, they live there. Big ideas, real stories. Let's get into it. Today on Above and Beyond Where Excellence Meets Elevation, I'm sitting down with John Weiss, owner of Problast LLC, co-owner of Minuteman Press and Mesa, and possibly one of the most interesting. How did you get here? Stories we've had on the show. John was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, where hard work, self-reliance, and the outdoors were just part of everyday life. But what makes John's story so fascinating is the road he took from there. He's been a house painter, gold miner, longshoreman, Coast Guard member, firefighter, business owner, bail bondsman, real estate investor, and that barely scratches the surface. Most people spend their life trying to find one lane. John seems to have found 20 lanes, collected the lessons from each one, and somehow turned them into a grounded, adventure-filled life with his wife Devon here in Arizona. From Alaska to international travel, from the housing crash to entrepreneurship, from hands-on work to building businesses, John brings a story shaped by risk, resilience, reinvention, and a whole lot of you can't make this stuff up. John, welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Yeah, I appreciate it. So let's jump right in. You were born in Anchorage, Alaska. Yes. Very much different than Arizona. You got that right. What was childhood like for you? And at what point in growing up did you start to shape into I can't listen to people, so I need to start my own business.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Growing up in Alaska is pretty interesting. Um, completely different, like all over, but it's back then. I'm an 80s, my teenage years were in the 80s, so we all know what perfect time that was. But it was it's wild. I mean, my family goes back more than a hundred years. Wow. Up in Alaska. In Alaska. In Alaska, yeah. My great-great-grandfather actually started the first brewery in Alaska in Valdez, Alaska. Really? Yeah, he was a brewmaster from Germany. Wow. And made it there and ended up in Anchorage, Alaska.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

So your last name, is it actually Weiss? Would you say it with a V instead of a W? In Germany. In German you would, yes. Yes, okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yeah, it's very much uh now it's white because that's what it is. But yeah, but it it means white. Oh, okay. Well, there you go. Yeah. So but so going way back, yeah. Homestead? Kind of interest. Like I said, we go way back. Okay. Our family started there, and Valdez eventually moved to moved to Anchorage, and they built it was actually one of the first buildings, it was the first two-story buildings in Anchorage. The house is still there. It is the house, if you ever watch the Alaska Ididerod start, okay, where Balto the dog is. Yeah, yeah. That sits on the sidewalk in front of our house. And that's where the Iditarod headquarters is now. In that house. In the house. Wow. Yeah. So cool is that. So it's a historical landmark up up there. So that's pretty cool. Where it grew where I grew up part of my part of my childhood. Uh-huh. Grew up there for at that house, the house up on the the hill where I grew up as a very little kid. The childhood was interesting. Let's put it that way, meaning my parents met young, 20. Okay. 20, you know. And there's nothing better to do in Alaska. No, there's not much more to do in Alaska, you know. So they met, separated, but that's kind of where things where I learned at a probably of an age of about three years old, me and my older sister, how to be survived, how to learn how to survive. Okay. Um, it was chaotic. It wasn't the greatest kind of upbringing. Don't get me wrong, I know my parents loved me. Okay. I loved them and everything, but you had to look at the time. Yeah. You know, they got they got a divorce. My mom got got a hold of got both me and my sisters, but a 21-year-old woman back in the early 70s with two kids, yeah, no education, you know, after high school, what's your options?

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Not not many.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Especially in Alaska, you know. And I mean, she bartended, you know, she she she waitressed and stuff. But we spent more time in uh with babysitters. Gotcha. Chaotic stuff, so we'll just leave it at that. Yeah. With that. And growing up, my dad worked. Eventually, my dad got custody of us. And we uh lived with him at our at the family house, the the the one downtown there, with my great aunt and raised. But we at that time, the downstairs was a restaurant bar. Wow. So and it was one of the fun. I mean, everybody knew the restaurant. It was great food, but that's where everybody went. It was one of the party places, you know. And we lived upstairs.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Is it loud? What was that loud? I mean, like like legit, I'm thinking, okay, if there's a bar downstairs, it's gotta be loud upstairs.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Bar and restaurant, and yeah, I mean, you could, you know, you hear the noise, but it's like anything else. You don't it it's there. You you just it it's this this is normal life.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Yeah. Yeah. What w when well first question. As a young child, what's the first toy you remember having that you really liked?

SPEAKER_01 6:15

That's actually a pretty interesting question there. And and this is about as bizarre because there's a lot of uh blank spaces in my childhood that my mind chooses to remember chooses to remember or not, some good, some bad. Yeah. The one thing that I can remember is is a little kid and it was a stuffed leopard. And I'm not talking a little leopard or you know, the kind that your dog plays with. I'm talking about one the size of a hundred-pound dog. Oh wow. Uh why I I remember that, I have no idea. Hmm, but I remember that I had it for for several years. Yeah. I I d I couldn't tell you why that one just sticks out in my mind.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

That's interesting. I still have a Winnie the Pooh from when I was a kid. Oh, nice. That uh the the shirt is a red, you know, he's Winnie the Pooh shirt, but it would come off, had a snap snap in the back and it would come off. And I can remember as a kid, I was small enough when I first got him that I could actually wear that shirt. Oh and he's not a big poo bear. So yeah, it's kind of funny because I I don't know why you made me think of that. But so growing up in Anchorage, did you did you play sports? Were you involved in any extracurricular stuff?

SPEAKER_01 7:32

No. Okay. Well, uh sports I I tried a little bit. I I am not I'm not an athlete because my father worked. Okay. Owning were you put to work in the restaurant or things like that? Surprisingly, no. Huh. Okay. I I have such high respect for people that work in and own restaurants. To me, that's one of the toughest businesses out there. Yeah. And one to work in because your life is completely backwards. True. You get off at three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning, you gotta unwind, then you go and you're sleeping during the day, then you get up and you and you go forward there. So life's a little bit backwards. Well, as a kid, you don't necessarily can do that. Yeah. But you know, my dad was always downstairs, or family member was downstairs. We pretty much ran wild, I guess. Yeah, you know, I mean, uh you you you leave kids alone, they're gonna come up with their own adventures. Oh, for sure. And my world consists of uh a one-block area because we weren't allowed to go across the street without an adult until we for a while. So older, yeah. But we had one of the biggest hotels that was on the same block. Hmm. We we played in the hotels. Oh wow. I mean, we knew the people in the hotels, they knew us. I mean, we'd we could go through the back door and through the kitchen. I mean, you're little kids, you don't know any better that you're not supposed to do that, you know. Yeah we'd run, we'd run and have fun.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Yeah. So I've got I've got this picture in my mind of and probably because part of like watching whether it's Deadliest Catch or one of those Discovery channels channel shows. But I've got this picture of kind of a I'll call it a rundown fishing town, which I don't think I don't think Anchorage is, right? Anchorage is kind of a city, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Oh, it's the largest city, yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

But it sounds like you were really kind of in the hub of the city. You weren't I mean, were there other kids and stuff around, or was it just you and your sister?

SPEAKER_01 9:33

It was pretty much me and my sister or my cousins that that were around. So and you know, we'd you had your friends from school and everything that we grew up with. Well, because at the time there wasn't a whole there wasn't what four or five high schools, I think, at the time that were spread out. Well, it just happened because of where we grew up. We went to school with all the other old-time families up there because of where the s the house was and the neighborhoods and the schools. So all the kids that I grew up with and all the people I know, their families had been there for many, many years also. So what was kind of unique along that, but the interest back to your sports question. Yeah, no, I the the with sports, I'm like I said, uh I like playing a I I love golf. I like playing it. I don't play enough enough as like I should or I want to. Um but we're dad was busy, you know, so he didn't learn how to play catch with when my dad was not an athlete either. Okay. What my dad was was actually that's not true, he was a very good downhill skier. And that would probably be one the only real sport that I was probably really good at because probably around the age of four or five we had he put us on skis. Oh, okay. Because he loved to ski. Yeah. I mean, he one real quick story about him on that. The school called the house one time and said, Hey, we're looking for for Tony. He hasn't been in school for two weeks. Oh no. And the principal called and was wanting to know that where's where's Tony? Well, grandpa says, I'll take care of that. Sent his sister up to the ski resort, Aliaska, to go get dad because he'd been up there skiing for two weeks. Hadn't been home, hadn't been well, he'd he'd come home with night sleep and go back up sleep and go back up, or he'd stay up there with friends and stuff. And he was a very, very good skier. He could probably have gone pro downhill skiing back in the day. And so he got us into me and my sister into skiing. So at the age of about four or five, here skis, we got some ski lessons at the local little bunny hill. We took about four or five lessons. He's like, okay, we're gonna go up Tele Esca, because that's that's where they go. They go all his buddies go up there to go downhill skiing and partying. So he took us up, we went up there and we went down the kind of the little kitty trail, you know, the little lift for the kids. Yeah, we made one pass, and my dad's like, okay, I've had enough of this, and took my sister and I to the top of the hill. No kidding. Yeah. Took us up there. Baptism by fire. Yeah, took us up there and said, Okay, here you go. You know how to go down, you know how to turn, you know how to stop, and everything. See you down at the bottom of the hill. And off he goes. And my my sister and I, okay, it probably took us an hour or so to get down this hill. No kidding. And he'd he'd go down, he'd come back up, and he knew where we were at, and he'd come by and check on us and go, and that's funny, and everything. And he's like, Okay, you get down to the bottom of the hill. If you don't see us, go into the bar. That's where we're probably going to be. If we're not on the hill, yeah, yeah. They're in the the roundhouse. You know, so we'd down we'd go and you know, and back, you know, okay, you're done. Next round, you know, little kids, yeah, you're having a you know, we're having a good time. We're skiing, you know. So we got into skiing quite a bit, and we sister and I got going and they had downhill racing, mighty mites. And it's like, hey, dad, we'd would like to get into downhill skiing. And surprisingly, I guess now you think about it, is he's like, Do you really want to do that? Because you're gonna be down here every weekend, you're gonna be down here skiing. It's a commitment for you to go do that. Yeah. This is a guy that that loved skiing in passion, and he was talking us out of it. And so as a little kid, you're like, Okay, we'll do it.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

So so it was kind of interesting on that one because the the lessons that he was kind of teaching me was those skis are not going to put a paycheck in in the account.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Okay. Those skis aren't those tennis shoes. The, you know, whatever sport you're thinking of wanting to do, it's not, you know, not gonna put gas in the gas tank. Yeah. I'm six years old. This this is a conversation he's having. Yeah. So it's yeah, kind of interesting along that way.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

What was the earliest job you remember having?

SPEAKER_01 14:22

The earliest job. Now being that you can legally talk about. Legally? I I I can talk about myself as a child as a child on my legal job. I got older maybe, not so much. But being when I was probably s I can't quite remember how old I was, but they came out with the Alaska Permanent Fund. And what that is, is that all the oil money that the state got, they had to figure out how to give it back to the people because it comes off state land.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

And that's where everybody's like, they hear it all the time. Oh, the state pays you to live there. Gotcha, yeah. They don't pay you to live there. Well, the the first check that came out was a thousand dollars. Now, hand a nine, ten-year-old kid in the eighties, in the eight well, late, you know, seventies, eighties, yeah, a thousand dollars. That's a lot of money. That's a yeah. That's a lot of money. My friends are buying snow machines, three-wheelers.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Wow, yeah, remember three wheelers. Three wheelers. Almost killed myself on a three-wheeler. Yeah. Who who didn't?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

You weren't having fun if you push the limits.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

But my dad looked at me and I'm like, I'm thinking, I want to, that's what I want to do. I want to be out with my friends snow machining or running the three wheelers. And he goes, You can do that, or you can put the money in the bank and save it, because when you turn 16, I'm not buying you a vehicle. Because it's gonna look awful funny you taking a date out on the handlebars of your bicycle at 16. That's funny. And I'm like, Okay, if that's what dad says, that's what you do, you know. So put the money in there, but was always wanting to make money. And as kids, you know, one of the things I used to love it sitting in school. This is elementary school now, fourth, fifth, sixth grade, sitting there during the winter, and if it was snowing, it was great. Because how do you make extra money in Alaska? Shovel driveways. Yeah. And lots of work. The good thing is my dad had this tractor that had a blade on the front of it. Oh, nice. That he used for cleaning our driveway with. I think it came out of Montgomery Wards. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, I think he bought it from there. And I think my family, I think my sister finally got rid of it a few years ago out of his yard. He's like, okay, that's gotta go. But all the other for kids, we all thought the same thing. Hey, if we go get out of school, we go shovel some driveways. Five dollars, you know, was big money back then to shovel a four-car drive. Oh, back in the day, yeah. But my dad allowed me to drive it because as a little kid, you know, he taught me how to drive it and run it. So I'd get out of school and I'd run home and I could knock out quite a few houses fairly quick. Nice. And I'd I got to spend the money. He didn't monitor it too much, but you know, here, try to save a little bit of it and go that route. The other thing he taught me though was that he was like, okay, you're out here making money. One, you gotta do our driveway first, if he didn't do it, because he worked nights. Gotcha. And I want it done. But there was some houses around us with elderly people. He said, You're gonna hit their house next, then you can go around and do the rest and do the rest, but you are not charging the elderly people. Yeah, yeah. They're they're friends of ours, anyways. And he said, it's the neighborly thing to do. Yeah. I didn't think anything of it. Dad said, Go do it. You just went and did it.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

So that was probably my first job with not even thinking of it. It was, you know, yeah, ways to make money for bubblegum.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

You know what's interesting is I and I don't know if that's a if that's a time period thing or if that's a community like where you grew up. I can remember kind of the same types of things. I grew up in northeastern Washington and we would get snow, and I can remember I I I honestly I don't know if I ever got paid to shovel a walkway or a driveway, but I can remember dad saying, Hey, go shovel Mrs. So-and-so's driveway, go shovel. And I didn't question it. This is what I did. Yeah, you know, and actually part of it, I think too was like there's something kind of cool about being out when it's snowing, shoveling a walk and stuff like that. I don't know. You you didn't think of it as a job. No, not at all.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

It was like, oh, this is what we do. This is kind of fun. Okay, I'm outside. Because we used to have video games back then.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

No. We used to we used to have um so my my bicycle and I don't know, the BMX bike, whatever, but we used to ride those in the winter. We'd make jumps and all sorts of things in the winter and the snow and and oh man, just crazy stuff we used to do. But you know, because we get quite a bit of snow. Not every winter, but most winters, we'd have quite a bit, you know, and then the snow plow comes by, basically buries the driveway, so then you gotta load it all up at the corner of the driveway, and then you got this massive mound of snow to try to figure out what you're gonna do with to build forts and everything else in it. But tunnels, lots of tunnels. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Fun question of all the jobs you've had, because it seems like you've done a lot in your life. Yes, which one would make make the best movie?

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Oh wow, the the job that I've had. It it would be a toss-up between my Coast Guard career and firefighting.

SPEAKER_04 19:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

The there's the highs and lows on both the jobs, but the the people that I I served with on in both in both fields are are some of the greatest people. What did you do in the Coast Guard? I I my I was an MK3, what was a machinist technician, okay. Fancy name, engineer, normal name. Kept the boats running. Diesel mechanic. Gotcha. Okay. My my job what my job was to make sure that that the boat ran. Gotcha. And that it fire up no questions and it ran. That's that's what the job my job was. Now being in the the Coast Guard, you have more than one job. I was not, you know, that was my main thing that I took care of, but I was also the engineer on the boat when it got underway. Search and rescue, uh rescue swimmer, boarding officer. You know, there you there's only three, maybe four of you on board. Oh wow. Okay. You know, and this was the 44 footers. Okay. They're they're now retired. They've got the 47s, what replaced them. And what was great was the prototype for the 47. We got to do the be on the prototype for it. Oh, cool. So we gotta help put it. We're one of the stations that gotta help put it through its paces and find out what we could do with it. Uh it's probably one of the places in the Coast Guard that I learned it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. So there was a lot of a lot of fun things that it was like that could be in a gray area of what we're doing, but we were having fun. But when it came time to get down and get busy. When yeah, you you you switched it from we could be sitting there playing volleyball at lunchtime, and the next thing you know, you're out in the surf rescuing people. Yeah. So it it it goes from one end of the spectrum to the other.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Any crazy stories during that that time you can share?

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Probably one that that wakes you up. And I think a lot of people in the Coast Guard or in those types of f professions, you know, the military and stuff like that, or at least for me and everything, is you're young. One year young and you're still learning and you're having such a great time. But you don't think you're young.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

You don't think any because when I fought fire, I was a badass. Well now I look back and I'm like, I was a punk.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Exactly. You know, you I mean, you know, you you look at the you look at the the boat that we're on, you know, you're on a you're on a $10 million prototype boat, yeah, and the average age is 24. Isn't that crazy? That the government gave you the keys to run and put it through its paces and see what it can do. Probably one of the craziest ones that probably got me to realize, whoa, life is life's pretty short. You know, you you you you're sitting there, everything's kind of normal, and then it turns south very quick. We were we had a I was stationed at Cape Disappointment. That is the mouth of the Columbia River. Okay. That is the name of the station, is Cape Disappointment. Okay. Mouth of the Columbia River, some of the roughest waters in the world. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

You got the ocean and the river pushing on each other.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

They've got a the other station, the motor, the motor life boat school. What uh they those people train some fantastic coxswains out of there. And we're it's all one base, but we work together and stuff. But I was on the search and rescue side of the of the unit, and we got a call, we were ran out, got got the boat, escorting it back in across the bar, and the tide was dumping out, or the water's dumping, the tide's moving, everything, and we're probably in, I'd probably say maybe about 10 to 12 foot wow swells.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

Swells. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

With we've got some brakes off to the side and everything, and we're coming in, and we had one that it jumped. And when you're when you're on board, there's there was three of us on board. You have the cocks and what he's driving, and he's in charge. He's the one in charge, and the engineer, and then then a one of the deck hands or non-rates, the seamans. And when you're you're going out, or we were coming back, he's driving the boat, and he's paying attention to everything else, but he he's focusing forward and what's going on. And we're standing there, and it's one one of those places. It's where I learned to sit there and we could have conversations, but we are not looking at each other. Now that's a hard thing to do, is to sit there and have conversations. You want to look at the people in the eyes. Yeah, but you can't do that because you're looking out everything else. Well, this big wave came up. Now we're going in and it's coming up behind us. And it's it's called like a pitch bowl. Instead of rolling over, it rolls it end to end. It's one of the most dangerous things out there, and it's coming, and we're not out right, we're not outrunning it. And it picked up and we're up in into the surf part of it. And like I said, the the coxswain did a fabulous job. I mean, he kept it and he did what he needed to and got it turned, did a got into a 180 and went back over it and got back to the other side. We went out, sat for a minute, and we came back in on the next series. And we all got pretty quiet.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

We all got real quiet on the right end, we were paying attention going in, and we get back to the dock, tie up, do everything. The other shipmates, you know, showed up to help us clean up and everything like that. We got off and we were kind of standing there and we're looking at each other, and it's like, okay, somebody has to ask the question. How bad was that? And we all were like, we were very close to going in. We yeah, like I said, it was one of those freak things. I've been I've been 110 degrees rolled in a boat. No kidding. And what yeah, we were out there doing some training in in the surf and went sideways and we put it on degrees. I actually have a couple friends that rolled it.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

No kidding. Yeah, they now I've heard that the Coast Guard boats can't capsize.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

The the 44s, this they're designed to completely roll.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

And the like I said, that's why we went over 110. You're sucking water a little bit and you pop back up. Now, when the other boat, when it when they rolled it, it it went over 180 and popped back up. It didn't do the full 360, but it wow, it went down and it it popped back up. And it it took probably 250 gallons of water in the engine room. But you're harnessed in, you're strapped in, you're in your gear when you're out there and stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

Does that are are the are the engine rooms or the engines able to run underwater? Or does it like just like a car engine where it has to have oxygen?

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Well, you you you need to have the air and stuff, and this is kind of the the story that I was told going through school was there there are Detroit engines. And what the Coast Guard did was they at the time said, Everybody, we want one of your engines, you're gonna give it to us. I'm not sure if this is a story that was told told down through us to figure out which engine to use. And they had the manufacturers give them everybody, they gave them an engine, they put it up on uh on a stand, they fired it up and was running, and they rolled it over. And the last engine running was the one that got the contract.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

So they they they can run upside down, upside down for a while like anything.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

Huh. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Interesting. You have seemingly been through a lot of different jobs and businesses. Yes. Someone might think that you have a very short attention span and get bored very easily. Would you say that that's the case, or do you feel like you were chasing an opportunity through all of those different career moves that once you got in the opportunity wasn't there, or is it truly that you're just like you kind of master something and say, okay, on to the next?

SPEAKER_01 28:51

I don't truly think I I mastered any of them. Okay. Okay. I I don't think I mastered any of the careers that I've chosen or businesses. But having so many different ones, we'd like we'd go back. My decisions on when I do something is very quick. I I I was a long shore I turned 18 in high school.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

And my dad was a longshoreman also. What what is that? That is somebody that works on the dock and yeah. The a longshoreman is somebody that unloads the ships. Oh, okay. Okay. And he was a longshoreman. As soon as I turned 18, I could sign up to get in there and work. And it you only worked two days a week. Sundays and Tuesdays were the only days that the ships came in. Oh wow. Yeah. So that that was our whole life. I mean, we knew every Sunday dad was he was working down at the docks, and Tuesdays he was down at the docks. Sometimes he'd work other days and stuff, but those were the primary days. Okay. On top of being a bartender, working and what he did. So in high school I got got the job, or I signed up, and I was kind of like on call. Okay. So I'd get called maybe once every few weeks or something, or every couple months, maybe. It just depends because I was so far down on the list. But the longer you stay, the closer, the farther up you get, and the more calls you get. Well, I so through high school, not bad. I was on the list, sign up, did that, and I'd work. Got paid great. I got paid really, really well for that. Got out of high school, and what I didn't back then, okay, you get out of high school, you go to college. Well, my parents, they didn't have they're like, you want to go to college, yeah. Pay that yourself. Have fun.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

Well, I stayed in town, and apparently, when you pay the college money and you sign up to go to classes, you actually have to show up. Logic would say. Logic would say, but at that time, I was also working at running a a warehouse. Okay. So running a warehouse for a fiberglass company and the longshoreman. So at an 18, 19, 20 year old, I'm making great money for back in the late 80s. Yeah, late 80s, early. Late 80s. I mean, great money. Well, hand that kind of money to a teenager, a very irresponsible teenager. That the only what do teenagers do? We partied. Yes. We partied. Well, when my family owned bars and restaurants, I the like I said, the stories as a kid, people just shake their heads going. My wife shakes, she goes, I cannot believe you survived your childhood. I mean, it was like everybody else.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

There there was no seat belts. No. Drinking and driving was not against the law, really, back then. I wasn't old enough to drive back in those days, but the parents were. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Well, I mean, you've got windows rolled up, smoking cigarettes, a rainier beer in the cup holder. Cup holder. No seat belts. Oh, yeah. What else could go wrong?

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Yeah. And and this is Alaska.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

There was, I think, two state troopers on 300 mile stretch.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

Yeah, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

And there was quite a few ropes along that way.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Now the Now in winter, so where I grew up, when it would snow heavily and and you get the forest roads that nobody would plow, you'd take the snow machines or snowmobiles and you'd hit those roadhouses. Right? So you'd go barreling out, hit a roadhouse, a few drinks, next one.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Did you guys do that?

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Did that when I was a little bit older and stuff when I when I could buy my own snow machine.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

I gotcha. We should go back. Did you spend the thousand dollars on a car when you were sick turned 16?

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Actually, because I I put the thousand dollars in and I started doing work. I think I was probably 12 years old. Now my dad taught me a lot of things. He, you know, if he was working on plumbing under a sink, that favorite saying, hold the flashlight.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Working on the cars, building something, doing anything. He was he was very, very good with his hands on building stuff, and he taught me a lot of that. And he'd come home and the outboard engine would be in pieces because I I'm in the garage, there's something here, and a screwdriver. Why wouldn't it take me apart? But he he taught me a lot of different skills that pay pays off def definitely now. I can do a lot of it myself. Yeah. But I was probably about maybe 12 years old, and I ended up painting the outside of my mom's new house, or she had moved in. Okay. The this was not a ranch style house, this was a tri-level, oh gosh, split-level home, and it was summertime, and I painted the outside of the house. They bought all the paints and stuff, and I painted it by hand. Wow. That's a lot of work. Oh, yeah, it took me several weeks to do it, but what else are you gonna do as a kid during the summertime? I you know, I didn't play sports or anything, so I got up there and painted, and I think I got like $900, I think is what they paid me, or something like that at that time. Well, it was good money, but yeah, that money went into the bank. Anytime I got any any any money, it always went into the bank. So when I turned 16, I could buy a car. So that so when I was about 15 and a half, I was it was on a Sunday, getting ready to go to work, bagging groceries at the grocery store. Okay, dad comes and says, Hey, get dressed, hurry up, we gotta go go look at something. We went and drove over, and he goes, I spotted a truck. I went, we're gonna test drive it. Got out there, test drove it. He's like, You're he's he would not allow me to buy a POS. That ain't gonna happen. Yeah, you don't want a good, reliable truck. It was uh 90 XLT shortbed, not even rollbook, yeah, loaded. Yeah. And dad drove it. I couldn't even drive it. He drove it and he's like, okay, we got pulled. Was it a manual transmission or automatic? Automatic. Auto, okay. Automatic. Yeah, big four. It's got a four had a 400 in it. I mean, what what what kid would not want? It's like, man, this is a nice truck. Yeah, no doubt. Got out, we looked around, he goes, You like it? I'm like, Yeah, I like it. He the guy's standing there and he goes, Dad goes, pay the man. I'm like, what do you mean? Pay he goes, how much money do you got? I had $4,500 in the bank. Wow. I had saved up in that period of that time.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

That's what the truck costs. Here you go, $4,500.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. So so I How long did it take you to roll it over?

SPEAKER_01 36:07

I never rolled it. No, okay. No, I've got I've gotten it stuck. I mean, a four-wheel drive truck at 16 in Alaska. You got to test the limits. Well, that's what all the guy, all of all of us guys had was four-wheel drive trucks.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

See, there's something about that. You know, uh growing up here in this say growing up in the city, grew up in the small town. Depending on who you ask, anywhere from 4,500 people to 6,000 people on a good day, right? Yeah. And that's probably when they're releasing the uh Social Security checks because it's the county seat, so everybody comes into town to pick up their social security checks. But I mean, yeah, I had a 71 Ford F100 that was my dad had it, but I drove it, and it was a two-wheel drive, but I could get that thing anywhere anybody with a four-wheel drive could go. And the stuff that we used to do, and people look at and and I get it, there there is a disrespect in young kids today that I think is very apparent, but I also think having grown up where I did, and it sounds like with you, it's like you could disappear to the dirt roads and do stupid stuff, and nobody's filming it, nobody's doing anything about it. We might talk about it on the next Saturday afternoon, but then it dies. And and I think there's something beautiful about that, like just and nostalgic. I mean, I I think about growing up in the 80s, and I'm like, I couldn't imagine a better time to have grown up.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Oh, I I I couldn't either. I mean, the the stuff that that we gotta do. Yeah, I mean, like I said, everything the stuff back then is the statute of limitations just ran out. So I don't know. Oh, yeah, exactly. I could remember having six people in the front of the truck and a case of beer sitting on the floor at the age of 17, and the cops pull you over.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

Yeah. I I'm I hope my parents aren't listening to this, but I can remember racing. There was there was a Dick's Burgers in Spokane, which is like it's still there to this day. I think there's one in Seattle at in the U district, and there's one in Spokane. It's called Dick's Burgers. And we used to race to Spokane to get a bag of dicks, that's what we called it, it's a bit burgers, bag of dicks, and back to Caville, which is 75 miles, an hour each way, but we could do it in about 45 minutes. That's how fast we were going. We had our goal was to get there before anybody knew we were gone and get back. Hey, we're just gonna go cruise Main Street down to Spokane, get a bag of dicks, back or race up to the Canadian border a few different times. This is after high school, but going up to the Canadian border because the drinking age was 19. We go up into Canada, they're like way up here. Oh, we're gonna see so-and-so's grandma. Uh uh. Be careful.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

Yeah, okay. Oh, it the the interesting part because the drinking age used to be, I think it was 18 or 18 at the time. Oh, no kidding. But well, I didn't make that that cutoff. Gotcha. But some of the kids' brothers right before you before me. Like I was in uh junior high and the high school kids, some some of the high school kids could buy you know, and it's the same thing, you know.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

You you could do that. When I when I fought force fire in the employee handbook, you could have two drinks at lunch and still drive the fire engine. I was in the employee handbook.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

And it's like every time I'm like, what that I I vaguely remember some of that in some of my experiences, like you can have a drink, you just can't be drunk. You could have two and you're good.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

Yeah. So we we uh I remember one party we had when I was in northeastern Oregon fighting fire on the rappel crew, and I may have had a little bit too much to drink, and we stopped at four o'clock in the morning. So then I had to go the next day to open up one of the lookout towers.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

And so we show up, and I'm just I'm just not good. I probably was green as grass. And uh one of the guys, he's like, Yeah, we gotta stop, we gotta stop at the store. So we stop at Safeway, which is down the corner, pick up a case of beer, drove up to the to the guard tower. I'm sleeping the whole way up. We get up there up there, and he goes, You need to drink more. I'm like, What? You know, like 19-year-old kid. You you you need to drink it off. Yeah. So that was bad adulting at that point. But uh, anyways.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

No, I when I was between, like I said, up there, if you don't have somebody really guiding you too much, you gotta make up your own fun. And my dad had a simple rule: don't bring the police home, don't get involved in drugs, and don't bring some girl's father home.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

You take you do those three, you take you don't those three things there, yeah. Everything else is good. That's funny. I can I'll cover for you on your stupid stuff, but those three things you do not do. That's well, it was coming into the summertime at the end of sixth grade. We had about a month left of school. And long story short, the police got to my house before I did. Ooh. That's not good. No, no, sixth grade. You were in sixth grade. Sixth grade, a little bit of trouble. I got in a little bit of trouble. Matter of fact, they had shown up at my at the house and left before I got home. So when I got home, I thought everything was good.

SPEAKER_02 41:48

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

Things had changed very quick as I walked through the door. So I'm like, okay, I'm getting a beating here. This is a beating. And my dad came in and he goes, a little disappointed. Spanking ain't gonna work. You know, right from wrong, you know what you did was wrong. I'm like, yeah. He goes, You're on restriction for the rest of the school year, a month. And I mean nothing. I mean, you come home from school, you're in your room. And there's nothing to do back then. You couldn't even sit down and watch MTV. Yeah, nothing. So about a week before school got out, he comes, he comes to me and goes, Hey, our our friends, our neighbors across the street, they own a gold mine out near Central Alaska. It takes from Anchorage Driving, it's about a day and a half. Oh, wow. Yeah, to get there. Dang. Yeah, it's out in the middle of nowhere. Central Alaska at the time had a population of seven. That was the closest city. Wow. What they considered a city. And from the main road, it was another two hours on the dirt roads to get back, to get back where we were at. We were so far up on the creek, the gold mine, that we could literally hike up to the the head water where the water comes out of the ground, where it starts. I mean, we're there's nobody up above us. Our closest neighbor is probably two, three miles down the stream from us. That's how far. I mean, we're out off the grid. Yeah. And he's like, hey, they've got they've got the gold mine up there. I think it would be a great opportunity for you to go to learn. He goes, No kids, no kids your age, nobody you know, yeah, is going to get this opportunity. Well, at that age, you've already disappointed your dad. You're gonna do anything to try to get on his good side. I'm like, okay, you've said it, we'll I'll go. So the day that I got out of sixth the sixth grade, ran home, threw my backpack on the bed, climbed in the truck, and we left. And I came back. The day before school started. Wow. Three months.

unknown 44:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

Up there. No kidding. And I had no idea what what we're going to do. Okay, what? Sixth grade, you're what, 12? Yeah. Going on 13, 12, around 12 years old. Yeah. And they they came to me and we're getting ready to, you know, before we left and everything, you know, we're loading up the trucks and stuff. And they're like, here you go. Here's some choices you get to make while you're up there. Here is a 10-pound sledge and a 16-pound sledge for breaking up rock. Because we're get boulders and you got to break them up together. And I'm like, okay. And the other one was load the shovels. They had like 10 shovels. And they said, as soon as you use the shovel and it gets all nice and shiny, go get a new one that's all rusted and do the same thing. Oh, this is what they're telling me. And I'm like, I'm just going. Got up there and I learned I learned how to drive a truck at 13. What's not what's that's kind of cool. Yeah. But I got to learn how to drive a 1953 D8 cat. Wow. That is cable, no hydraulics.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

No kidding.

SPEAKER_01 45:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:16

Dang.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

I mean, a 13, 12, 13-year-old. Yeah. You know, get a play with the big piece of equipment. You know, they taught me all kinds of stuff up there. You know, moving earth, welding, just mining period. Halfway through the summer, my dad and came out, came, drove up there for a long weekend to visit and bring the supplies, beer, and got up there and learned how to was up there and had a great time.

SPEAKER_02 45:41

That's cool.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

And I ended up getting, I did it for four summers in a row. Really? Yeah. Every summer, as soon as it got, I was gone. My friends were playing playing baseball and riding their bikes and doing all that. I was out in the wood the wilderness.

SPEAKER_02 45:57

Yeah. Getting to do what what's the most amount of gold you think you've seen in like at Did they did they show it?

SPEAKER_01 46:05

I mean, like on TV, obviously they do the those are big, huge operations. Gotcha. This was there was only three of us working. It was a small, small family operation, not the big. When we ran though, we when we when we were up and running, we'd produce about an ounce an hour. Wow. But that's very good. Yeah. That's very good. At that time, gold was probably about $850. It was about $800, $800, $850 an ounce at the time. Wow. Well, the first year that I went up there, I got nothing. You're going up. I mean, I learned to cook. I learned, you know, you got a lot of life experience. I gotta go up and do all that. I gotta do that. Well, the next year I got to go up and I got paid $800 for this for the season. Wow. For the for the three months. Here, you're coming up, here's $800. You know, thank you for that. At that time, I was like, money doesn't mean anything to you, really. At his young kid, it's like, I got food, I got I'm shelters taken care of, we're happy. But the next two years, I got 10% of what the mine pulled out.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

Oh, wow. Yeah. Was that good?

SPEAKER_01 47:16

It was good. That's awesome. It was good. I matter of fact, I still have all the gold.

SPEAKER_02 47:23

No kidding.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

I had for my when I turned 19, I took some of it and had a gold nugget watch made out of it.

SPEAKER_02 47:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Because that was that's a big that was a big thing back up in Alaska, gold nugget watches. Gotcha. And we had a jeweler friend and made one. I took it in. I'm like, hey, I want one made. He goes like this. And my because my dad had one. I had one kind of matched his. Gotcha. And had that. And the rest of it is still raw.

SPEAKER_02 47:51

That's cool.

SPEAKER_01 47:52

Yeah. And you know, as a kid, back then you think about it, okay. And now it's that's 85 bucks an hour I'm making.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:59

Why why we're operating? Yeah. You know, we didn't always operate 10-hour days or worked what we worked, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:05

So what else are you gonna do when you're up there? Nothing. You're gonna yeah, you work. I mean you you obviously have had a lot of life experiences through some of this stuff that you've done. What has now, when you, when you look back on let's say the businesses that you've owned and and and the life lessons that you've learned, what has entrepreneurship taught you and and how has your view of entrepreneurship changed over the years or has it?

SPEAKER_01 48:36

I never realized that that's the title that that was given to me or given to people, you know, that own their own business stuff. I I never realized it because my family's have owned businesses and stuff, and that was just okay, what are you passionate about? What do you like to do? And that's kind of how it got started was what's something you like to do? And it's like, okay, let's see. I when I got out of when I got out of the Coast Guard, and then but I went into the Coast Guard, I turned 21 in boot camp. Like I said, my high school to 21, making good money, not making some of the greatest decisions. Now I worked. I mean, there's times I had three, four jobs, we worked, our butts off, we we didn't live at home, but we spent a lot of money, and my 20th birthday was a very big eye-opener. It was three people ended up in the hospital. Two of them had about 180 stitches in their face. Oh my god. Between the two of them, and the other guy had four broken ribs. Did you do that? No. Oh, okay. It was at my party. Oh, geez. Now I've I've always been lucky, call it the voice in your head or whatever you want to call it, guardian angel. My dad told me this at a young age. Listen to listen to yourself. You you are going to know when it's time to move.

SPEAKER_02 50:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

And do it. Something it just happened to be like, I probably have 150 people in my apartment. I mean, it it was it was a very great, great 20 birthday. Well, some other people like, hey, let's run over here to this other little party real quick. So I left and came back, and my place is empty when I walk in, and I'm like, where did everybody go? And then I walk in, see the disaster in my place, and then it's like phone calls, and I was like, Holy smokes, this is just getting out of hand.

SPEAKER_02 50:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

Well, I'm making great money, longshoreman, running a warehouse. How do you turn down that life?

SPEAKER_02 50:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

And I drank a lot. I drank a lot back in high school. I drank a lot after I how do you walk away from that and not come up and disappoint your father? Okay, what what are you going to do to get your act together, do something that your dad's going to look at you and respect you for your decision? Because that's how we grew up. I mean, our you know, you did not want to disappoint your father, you know. You you know, you wanted him to be proud of you. Yeah. And so with that, I'm like, what do I do? So I backed off, started looking and looking and looking, and probably five, six months later, I I figured it out. I was like, okay. And like I said, I do spur-of-the-moment things. It popped into my head. I had seen one time we were going out duck hunting, or taking our boat out in the w water out in the inlet, and there was a Coast Guard ship there moored up in the at the city dock. We went right by it. And I'm like, oh, there's Coast Guard. That's the only experience I ever had with them. Ever even thought of them.

SPEAKER_02 51:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:53

And I was probably 14, 15 at that time. For some reason, it's like, you know what? I need to clean up my act a little bit. I didn't want to go into any of the branches of the military. That that's not, it wasn't me. Little did I know at the time that the Coast Guard is part of the military. Yeah, yeah. Didn't know that. I literally went down one day, talked with the recruiter. He said, Okay, let's get you tested. Went and tested, got the test scores back. He goes, Here you go. What do you want to do? Within about call it a two-week period, I went from not knowing the Coast Guard to joining.

SPEAKER_02 52:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 52:32

And I joined, signed the papers, went by my dad's house, and he was like, Hey, what are you doing? You know, what's going on? You know, and I'm like, got something to tell you. I leave in four months to the Coast Guard. I joined the Coast Guard today. And he and was was his reaction good? Yeah, it was great. He's like, good, you need it.

SPEAKER_02 52:53

Yeah. Little structure.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

You need it. You're doing good, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:58

Let's kind of jump through a couple things really quick because I don't I don't want to run out of time.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 53:04

You okay?

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Yeah, I'm okay.

SPEAKER_02 53:05

I got all the time you're so Coast Guard firefighting. Was it structural firefighting? Yes. Okay. From there, when did you first get into business ownership?

SPEAKER_01 53:18

Probably probably not really understanding. It was more kind of a side gig. I painting houses.

SPEAKER_02 53:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 53:25

I did that kind of on the side here and there, but probably my own my first, I'd have to look through it. One that I got into was between Coast Guard and going to college and becoming a fireman. I had, you know, mechanical, I liked working it. I started a business called the Outboard Doctor. I was a mobile outboard mechanic. Oh, nice. Because in Alaska, where are the boats? On the lake or on the river?

SPEAKER_02 53:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:52

I want to go fishing. I want to, I want to goof off, I want to go fishing. Yeah. It didn't take a whole lot of equipment that I needed to work on outboards. I knew about what certain parts that I know I'd keep stocked, and I'd go down to the river and we'd go down, I'd go down the river and we'd go out fishing, and boats always break down for something. Well, in Alaska, if your boat breaks down, you pull it out and you take it to one of the shops in town, you're done for the summer. Oh. I mean, they're that backed up. They just kidding. They couldn't get to you. And it could be simple stuff, but they just can't get you in.

SPEAKER_02 54:26

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 54:27

Well, I'm down there and I'd be out there fishing, and somebody's boat would break down, and they're like, hey, John's John's at camp here. Go get him. So I'd go down there and be like, hey, my boat ain't running. My motor ain't running. Well, let's see what it is. I'd go down there, check a few things out. Oh, okay. You know, you got your water pump. You need a new water pump. And they're like, Man, I got to load it up. I got to take it. You know, it's a two and a half hour drive back into town to get it back into Anchorage because we're down on the Kenai. So their their weekend is shot.

SPEAKER_02 54:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

And I'm like, well, I've got a water pump that will fit this. And they're like, well, what do you charge? I said, well, the water pump's like 60 bucks, and I'm going to charge you about dollars to fix it. And I done. Done. And I could do it. I I could swap it out in about 45 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 55:15

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 55:16

And they're and they're back out on the they're back out there fishing. Right. So everybody kind of knew. So I'd got that going a little bit. And then just from there, you know, then I went and it went to college and became a fireman and just businesses. That's one of the things that my stepfather and my dad, because they own they both they both own businesses and stuff, is own your own business. You know, I I've worked for all different branches of the government, I've worked for private individuals and stuff, but you're working, you're working for somebody else. You're getting a paycheck, and if you show up, you're you give that person an honesty's work. Yeah. But as an owner, you've you you get first count. Yeah. You get to make the money, you get to make the decisions.

SPEAKER_02 56:01

Yeah, and I was gonna say that. I think the money can be great, right? The time it's interesting, and I heard somebody say, and I don't remember exactly how they said it, but something about you know, owning my own business gives me time, time to do emails, and time to answer the phone, and time to, you know, the type of thing. It's like but so you can kind of you you can meld your life around to an extent, yes, right? The business.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

Yes. I learned and I didn't learn it right away, I or I didn't acknowledge it right away. But what what I I've looked at, because not all the business all not all businesses make money. Everybody thinks you own a business, you got deep pockets and you make tons of money and you're richer than everybody else, or whatnot. A lot of people think that that ain't true. In a lot of situations, it is true. In a lot of them, yeah. I I tell people I said, My job Monday is to make sure all my people get paid Friday. Yeah, that is my number one job come every Monday.

SPEAKER_02 56:57

Yeah, which is a huge weight. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:01

But the the thing that I I've learned, and I love people that that want to start their own businesses. And I I could sit down and talk to people for hours because if they have an idea that but they don't know how to go about getting it started or they want to do it, dude. I I get excited about that.

SPEAKER_02 57:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:20

And there and one of the things I tell them is I said, here's here's how it works. I said, you get up and you go to work for whoever. Let's say you work for the city. You get up and you go to work for the city, work your 40 hours a week, you get your paycheck, and you have your life after that. I said, You you are changing your time for money. Okay. I I worship my time more than money. I have the freedom.

SPEAKER_02 57:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:50

Don't get me wrong, people that that that work jobs, you know, we all we we all have a spot in this world and stuff. Absolutely. And I'd never downgrade anybody for what they do for a living and stuff. That they they have to go out and they get a paycheck and do that. And they have to be there Monday through Friday. Yeah. And they they make what they make where I can decide, you know what, it's 10 o'clock in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 58:16

And go play golf.

SPEAKER_01 58:17

I'm gonna go play golf. Yeah, I'm gonna go, you know, it's 11 o'clock. What where what's my wife doing? Let's go to lunch. Am I working a normal nine to five? No. What a lot of people don't see though is yeah, I might be sitting at home working till 10 o'clock at night on paperwork. Right. Sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 58:34

Well, but I but I think that that that's a good point, though, because let's say you do decide to go and play golf at 10 o'clock in the morning. You're doing that, but you know there's gonna be something you've got to make up either later that day or the next day, or you it's not like, oh, I'm gonna go take four days or four hours to play golf and whip-de-ding-dong, I'm done. There's four hours somewhere, or probably six, that now you've got to make up because you took that four hours off.

SPEAKER_01 59:06

Uh kind of a good little bit of an example, my my sustain business. When I started out, I was working one, maybe two days a week. But okay, that's good. And then it kept growing and growing, and you get to a point where, you know, instead of working 15 hours a week, you know, you're now pushing 40, now you're pushing 50, now you're pushing 60, 70 hour work weeks. Yeah. And that's when you start going, wait a minute, this is not what I want. This is not the lifestyle I'm wanting. So we hired some people. So that took some pressure off of me. So I'm not working as hard as I was. Yeah. You know, I'm not putting in 70-hour work weeks. Yeah, I've got people doing work. My job is to go get the work so they can do the work, you know, so kind of balance it out. And then we grew. We hired some more people, we kept growing and brought more people on, and we get to we get to a point to where I want my I know what my lifestyle I want. I want to travel, I want to do things, I want to have the time because between let's say when I came down here at about four when I was about 45 years old, till now, I wanted to enjoy things. Yeah. Okay. I'm I've I've got my business and my stuff that I do, and it supports what I want to do instead of me dumping everything into it and having to work, work, work, and the business becomes my identity. Yeah. I I don't want that. I want to be able to go take a three-week vacation.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:43

Now you still have to do some business here and there, but I'm not sitting in an office all the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:49

I've got fantastic people that work for me. They they are fantastic. And that's and they and they know that. They're like, I'm I'm going on vacation. They got me covered.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:00

They've got it because that is the lifestyle I have chosen that I want to control it. I had some I read somebody something somewhere that somebody says, if you own a business, treat it like you would a child. Meaning you are the one in control. You are the one that is. Let it control you. Don't let the kid can the five-year-old throw the tinter hammer in the middle of a grocery store. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm the adult here. This is mine. I'm going to run it the way I see fit. Yeah. Have I been lucky? I'm very I've been very fortunate to where me and my wife are right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:37

Let's let's for a second, let's dig into that. You and Devin work together on the businesses.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:43

My understanding. Yes. How do you balance who does what and not rip each other's eyeballs out or throats out or whatever you want to say? I mean, how do you balance that and then and then keep a good relationship? Assuming you have a good relationship. I mean I've heard you say nothing but good things about Devin.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

So Yeah, no. She she is a brilliant, brilliant wonder. I woman. I cannot believe I we met. She owned a dance studio for 25 years. Okay. And I met her towards about the last four years of her owning it. And so she's a businesswoman. So she understands business, what has has to do. And she's she ran it, she did it all on her own. She didn't have anybody else, no business partners. She ran it. She had great staff, wonderful people, wonderful clients and stuff. But she was a businesswoman. So coming from my my side is I'm a business person. I was brought up, work comes first. You've got to pay your bills, you've got to take care of business. Because if you don't take care of it, you can't do the other fun stuff that you want.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:57

Well, I love to travel. I love to see the world. I'm all over the board. And we we met, and her her life was backwards because she owned a dance studio. Her her day started at the dance studio like at noon.

unknown 1:03:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:18

She just really poured herself into her business. And then she then we met. And at that time, I had came down to Arizona at the bottom of the housing market and bought up some property, rehabbed it, built it up, and had that. Uh while later, long story short, on that one, sold it all off. Had somebody that was looking for a property and that bought up my whole entire portfolio. Oh wow. So I really did not have to work. So I got to goof off a lot. And I was bouncing back between here and Alaska. I still have my house in Alaska. Okay. Because my whole family's up there. But I was bouncing back and forth. My rule of thumb was when it hit 100 here, I'd go north. When it hit 32, I'd come down. Gotcha. That was my rule of thumb. Well, we met, and I told her, I said, if you, you know, for us to be together, you gotta travel. And she's she was all over that. She's like, I'm I'm on board. She she loves it. She she loves traveling. So she was all on board there. So we start traveled. And about that time, I had a crazy idea, me and another buddy. We had we did a kind of a we did a fundraiser. There was four of us golfers. We went and played one round of golf in all 50 states. Oh wow. In 25 days. Oh my god. Counting, we started in Hawaii, went to Alaska, flew to Portland, and then we picked up the trucks and we drove the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:51

That would be exhausting. It'd be a blast, but it would be exhausting. It it it yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:58

Wow. Yeah. I came up with the crazy idea. I want to play one one round of.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:02

So did you you said a fundraiser? Did you raise money while you were doing it? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:07

Yeah. We we I I paid for a lot of the stuff. We had a lot of stuff donated, but we had people that donated money and different places that we'd go to, different golf courses. Some some golf courses, you know, we'd show up and there it'd just be us, and they're like, Here, go ahead, play your round, park your cart over here because we're not going to be here when you're done. And we've had others where we'd show up at six o'clock in the morning and there'd be a hundred people there. Oh wow. And they donate money money, and the money that we raised went to some military programs.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:45

Is where where all the money went. Do that. Okay. So I did that, got back, finished that up, and got back down to Arizona. And a very, very short time after that, because I was goofing off basically. Devin was like, You need to do something. I'm working. You're you're playing golf. You're having a lot of fun. You need you need to do something. You're clean, let's do it. You know. And being the mindset that I have is I start looking for businesses, business ideas. And I would come up with them all the time. And I'd be sitting there, I'm like, how about this one? And I'd turn her and I'd show her, no. How about this one? No. How about no? And one, three o'clock in the morning, I ran across mobile sandblasting on TV. So I researched it, seen it on Friday morning at a three o'clock in the morning because I don't sleep. And somewhere around Sunday afternoon, she's like, What are you doing? Because I had buried myself into the computer researching. And I turned it and showed it to her. She's like, This could work. That Monday I called the corporate office. The owner, they put me through to the owner, talked to him for a couple hours, got off the phone, did a little more research, called him back on Wednesday. Dev and I talked about it. Called him back on Wednesday, asked a few more questions, talked to him for about another hour. At the end of the conversation, I'm like, where do I send my check and when can I pick up my equipment? And he goes, Send the send your check here, and you can have your equipment in 30 days. And I said, Great, because I'm going to be. It was in Houston, Texas. I said, I'm going to be in Houston, Texas in 30 days. I'll just drive instead of fly. Yeah. So we drove down, picked it up. We by the time we got down there, picked up the equipment, and was driving it back. We had all our website, we had a website up, we had everything up and running. In about an hour outside of Houston, I get a phone call that somebody's wanting me to blast their car. It's your first job. My first job. And I'm like, what a thing I've learned in businesses, yes. Yeah. What can you do? Yes. Well, you no matter what the question is, the answer is always yes. Yeah, I can do that. Took the information down where it was at, told them I'd call them back, I'd call them back and get all the information and would do that. I got off the phone with her, with the guy with the gentleman. And now I'm from Alaska, and I still don't know what's what, where's anything around here, how you get around. And I'm going, okay, hey, I got this car to blast. I'm excited about it. It's in Yuma. Where's Yuma? Where's Yuma? And she goes, she goes, That's a couple hour drive from the house. I had no idea. Yeah. But I got up, it was it was about a 17-hour. But that's kind of how we got. I got into the sandblasting business and we grew it. But we were partners in it. Okay. And one of the things that that we we discuss is what is our big picture? What is the lifestyle that we want? It's very important to me and her that we're both on the same page, that our our our goals are aligned, that what we want to do, where we want to go, how we want to live our life. And it works. And we, I mean, she had that bit, we have the two businesses. She helps me with stuff that I'm not good at. I do the stuff, the heavy lifting, which she, you know, stuff that she needs help. And we just worked back and forth. We, you know, what's going on? What do we need to help each other grow the businesses? She got out of that business. She retired, sold it, and got out, and we just grew pro blast. And I'm like, take some time off. You've earned it, you know, and come around. We like I said, our our decision making on life-changing decisions are very, very short. So we were up and running, and we we can we talk it through. We've been together 15 years now. We've never had an argument. We we we don't argue. Yeah. We got we got married at the age of 48. She had never been married. I'd never been married, no kids, nothing. Just find two 48-year-old people that that you know either been married, divorced, kids, whatnot. I mean, we're we're very small percentage. And it's like, what's the point? One, what's the point of arguing? Yeah. Okay. Together we can solve anything. She comes up with brilliant ideas. I come up with them, and we put it together, and like, what what what's the best way to do this? Yeah. And it's it's a respect thing that we both respect each other, they're our opinions, and we are opposites in a lot of ways. But it works, you know. Um, and it works well with business because what I see she may not, and vice versa.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:06

And that's a great thing to have. Because you know, as business owners, you get in a you you see what's yeah, yeah, yeah. Your lanes and you're going, this is working, working, working, and something. It's like, wait, I here's a road bump. Yeah. And she's like, that's not a road bump. This is how you fix this problem. Thank you. Yeah. You know. Well, did that oh there.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:29

Unplugged a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:30

Yeah. So so we we we make it work. We do we discuss everything, you know, what what's going on. You know how you know how it is. You're you're with somebody for any period of time. You know, you know, if you walk in the house, if they're upset about something or or what's going on. You just you don't be embarrassed about asking. Yeah. What's going on? What's wrong today?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:52

Oh, this happened. Okay, well, let's talk it through. Let's do it. And at the end of the day, something that I was my mother told me long time ago, is one, marry your best friend. That you the person you marry should be your best friend. And I believe it. The other thing is she told me point blank, she goes, I I love you to death. I love all my kids, grandkids, I love love them all. But at the end of the day, it was her and her husband. And that's Dev and I, we you know, we say that all the time. At the end of the day, with our family and friends or anything like that, we love our friends, we've got great core of friends. I've got good family members, some I don't talk to, but we all have those. Yeah. But at the end of the day, when the problem, when the world is just crapping on you, it's like, hey, sweetie, it's you and me and the dogs.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:46

And it the we love everybody else, we we love doing things, but at the end of the day, it's us. Yeah. And we try to stay focused and towards each other. We are you get into you see relationships where you've got some that you've got somebody that's a taker and one's a giver. To me, that's a disaster.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:07

You know, somewhere down the line, it just isn't going going to work. If you got two people that give, in my experience, you get more back. The more you give, the more you receive. Yeah. And we have a very blessed life. We really do. That's great. I I am so fortunate that we met. She's definitely, like I said, I mean, we got married at 48. I was a bachelor all those years. But it you when you meet meet a a wonderful person and you better recognize it and you better hold on to it. Yeah. And that's what I make sure that I protect, I protect what I'm supposed to protect. Yeah. My family and take care of that. And I don't allow bad things to pop in.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:53

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:55

You know, if if it's that bad, it's gotta go. Yeah. And I've got I've got family members that I've I don't talk to because of that. And I I I don't lose a bit of sleep over it.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:05

Yeah, yeah. Talk to me about Problast. What do you guys do? What what was your focus? Where are you going with the business?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:13

We it's we're a sandblasting company.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:17

I we blast everything. The best way that I I put it is we are a surface prep company. Meaning if there is a surface that needs to be brought back down to the natural surface, let's say you've got steel beams that have been rusted and stuff like that, but we need to get the paint off of them so they could repaint them and protect them and stuff like that. We go in and we blast all the rust and the paint off of it, get it down to a great surface so the painters can come in and paint it and protect it. Uh we do wood. Well, I've got a we got a job this week where we're going inside a older, a little bit older house in Scottsdale. It's about mid-70s. Okay. That had the wood beams. Back back in the late 60s, 70s, they had all the raw wood beams. Yeah. And somewhere down the line the trends changed. Paint them. Paint them. Hate you people. Hate you people. So yeah, you know, they they they covered up beautiful wood beams. Oh, paint them white to match the ceiling, paint them black or brown so they look like wood beams again. And they've got multiple coats on them. And now everybody wants them back down to the natural color. How do you deal with that? Yeah. Break out of sander. Yeah. After after about 20 minutes of that, you will be calling it. You don't want to put up with this. It is very, very hard work. Yeah. I mean, like I said, my my team that I should say I work with, because they work their butts off. They're fantastic. But we go in and we can strip it down, get it down, blasted to whatever texture, whatever you're trying to get to. So we always my one of my number one questions is what is your end result? What are you looking for on your end result? Trying to finish so I know how to get there. We do decorative stuff. We do a lot of put stencils down on concrete and blast designs and them, blast names into them. We've done stuff all over the state. We've we just finished up a little project downtown Tempe along Mill, Mill Avenue there. They've got some mosaic designs that they put in the sidewalks. Oh, cool. And then we blast it, just blasted the name of what it is in the concrete. Um we've blasted at the ASU Stadium. I've done stuff out at the Cardinal Stadium, just you know, some decorative or cleaning stuff. Gotcha. If there's coatings, you know, paint that needs to be removed. A big one is the brick homes. Every a lot of people want the brick homes taken back to you look at a house that was built in the 70s. Yeah, I figure at least one coat of paint for every 10 years. Yeah. That's a lot of paint. And you need to know how to get that done. We do a lot of restoration stuff for with red brick. That that takes a skill. Okay. You've got to be very, very careful what you're doing because it's such a soft red brick is the softest brick out there, in my opinion. Oh, gotcha. And if it's a hundred years old, or you could pressure hit it with a pressure washer and you'll destroy it.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:32

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:33

So you have to know how to how to handle that and to make sure you're not damaging it when you're dealing with historic buildings. So we do we do a lot of that, a lot of industrial stuff, mining equipment, like I said, anything that needs to get back to where it's at. Okay. Down to surface. So I'm a sandblasting company, but I tell everybody we're more of a surface prep.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:55

And you were talking about a laser blaster?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:00

A laser laser machine for for laser cleaning.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:04

Some new technology out there. Uh there are several different types. We've got one that works great on rust, rusting beams for inside or outside or wherever it is that is out there. We just brought, we brought it in last year. We're slowly working, working it into our business. There's another avenue that we're going down uh that we're still doing some RD with. Don't want to let that out yet. Okay. Because I don't want a ton of phone calls on asking you, can you do this? Can you do that? And there are machines out there that for that for that part of the business. There are some out there, and we've played around with them, but none of them have given me the quality that I am looking for. Gotcha. And that is huge for me. I I'm not going to I I could probably cut, say, yeah, this is what it is, here you go, and let it go. That's not the quality I'm looking for.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:04

And I would assume those machines are not inexpensive. So to buy something that's not going to do what you want it to do doesn't make sense. No. No. Tell tell me about uh Minuteman. Minuteman. Is that what is it called? Minuteman, Minute Press? Minutes. Minuteman Press. Minute Press. So how did that come about?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:20

Like I said, we Devin and I, we we make very life-changing decisions in a very short period of time. Like when we decide to get married. I thought I'd never get married. If you had asked me the day before, but it was like, we're at our age, do we need to get married? And she's like, I don't care if we get married, but do I get the ring? I'm like, if you want the ring, we'll get the ring. I got no problem with it. Part of that story was we were going over to her best friend's house for a Christmas party. And my my sister, she's always taught, she's taught me a few things about how to deal with women. She was like, I'm not gonna have you an idiot out there, okay? You know, for one, when it comes to shoes, purses, and jewelry, you are I am not allowed to buy them. No. My sister taught me this. You do not buy them. If you want to buy them, you take the girl with you gotcha and let them pick it out and do that because that's most part of the experience. Okay. But you're not allowed to because guess what? My fashion is not good. Yeah, it's not gonna be right. Yeah. So we we were going over to her friends. I says, Hey, I said, let's stop off at this jewelry store. I want to look at getting you your Christmas present. I want some gold or some diamond earrings. Great. On the way over, we go, we go to this jewelry store and we go in, and I learned a lot that day was that the jewelry case closest to the door are a little bit lower end, and as you get farther into the jewelry store, the prices go up. Gotcha. And then the there's a little counter there that there's not any jewelry in, and that's the manager's desk. And that's where they bring the expensive stuff out from back. Oh, okay. We got over there and they're like, Oh, would you like to see any? I said, We're just looking for earrings. But the sales manager is like, Would you like to see some loose diamonds? And what what woman does not like diamonds? So brought out some diamonds and they're putting them on her hand and different sizes and stuff like that. And she found one that she really liked. And I'm like, What do you think? She's like, Are you serious? I'm like, Yeah, she goes, time out a minute here. We need to have a little talk. And she goes, first of all, are we is this for real? Are we doing this? And I'm like, yes, let's do it. Why, why not? Yeah. Why not let's let's do this. She goes, second of all, you cannot ask me to marry me in in a jewelry store. Ain't gonna happen. Not going to happen. That's awesome. Yeah. Like I said, she rules. So it's like, well, she's like, let's do it. So went, she found, found the diamond. She didn't, she found a setting to put it in. It wasn't the the right one, but she needed, she's like, I've got to find one, but I need one for now. So they put the diamond in in this. I said, Can you do this fairly? We've we got to be someplace in about a half an hour. We've got dinner plans. We got 30 minutes, about 30 minutes. And the guy's like, Yeah, we can do that, no problem. Took it, yeah, went over there, the jeweler put it in everything. Here you go. Everything she put it, okay. She gotta wear it. Okay. Went over to the party, and we're over there, and this is her best friend from college. They've been friends since they were 18 years old over at her house. We're there for probably about an hour. There's it's just a small little dinner party. There's probably maybe about gonna be about 10 of us. Nothing. We we weren't announcing anything, we didn't say anything, we're just sitting there, you know, drinking, socializing, everything. And one of her other girlfriends walks through the front door, and we're halfway across the living room and everything. She walks in and she spots Devin and she's like, What is that? And everybody stops and turns, like, what? What what what's going on? And then they they all see the ring and they're like, What are you? She's like, Time out. We're no, we are not engaged. He's not going to ask me in the jewelry store. She said, You can pick the time to ask me. That's awesome. It varies so funny. Yeah. So that's kind of the like I said, very, very short. Like I said, if you'd asked me the day before, not nothing.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:50

Kind of the Minuteman Press. She had sold a business, and I said, take about six months, a year off to start. Enjoy yourself. You've been busy, you've earned it. You can help. Problast was doing well, we were doing good. When six months to one year break turned into five years.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:06

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:07

Things were growing. We were traveling, we were doing a lot of things. And she was like, I'm kind of bored. I want to find something, you know, another business, something, something else to do. So I'm like, okay. So we got into the business mode of start kind of looking a little bit. Well, we were going up to we were driving up to Vegas for the weekend to go see for some shows. And on the way out of town, there was a franchise convention downtown. So we're like, on the way out of town, let's just whip in there real quick, see what they have, if there's anything that sparks interest. Well, we go in, she walks in, and they have and Minuteman Press has one of their booths there. And she goes right over there because they have all their promotional item stuff sitting out and all their people standing there. And I walk by and she stops and talks. She stops and talks to them, and I'm standing there going, Okay, she's gonna talk from them. Printing company? Yeah, I'm gonna go roam around. So I went and roamed around all the other ones, and I come back, and she's still talking to them. And I'm going, Okay, I better are they sucking her in here? I need to, I need to pay a little bit more attention here. So I started, sat there, and talked with them for a little bit, like a little bit more and stuff, and they took our name and and gave us a little bit more information, and we're like, hey, we'll talk. And they're like, this is like on a Thursday or Friday or something like that. I said, we're going out of town, we'll be back Monday. And it was like, great. So we leave and we're driving up to Vegas. We're about halfway there, and we get a phone call from the VP of for Arizona that we had just talked to like an hour or so before, a little bit a couple hours before. And he's like, Hey, let's set up a time, see if you're more interested. And I'll send you a little bit more information. So he sent us more information. We read through it and we're going through it, and we're like, Wow, this is with business, we put, you know, our business minds were putting them in there, we're reading it, and we're like, there's something here. This is this is something we need to dig into. And then he calls and we're like, Yeah, set us up. Let's let's meet with you. So we met with him on a I think it was probably Wednesday, went down there and he said, Hey, before you do anything, you got to sign these papers. We want to make sure you're serious. Yeah. You know, here's you know, here's the earnest money, you got to put money down, of course. And they're like, it's all 100% refundable. If you tell me tomorrow, I'll get hand you your check back. Gotcha. So it's like, okay, I really like that. Really great people. Went through all that. They went and we looked at some of the other stores, went through a bunch of the paperwork and stuff, and all the I think we went and talked with about three or four of the different business owners, and got looking at it and going, we can do this. And we're like, okay, let's go forward. So we started doing all our due diligence with them, and they're they're walking us through it. I mean, they're it it took it took a few months for you know, just with the paperwork, but we're going through it. We got to find a location, we have to find somebody to build out the store, get everything lined up, and we're starting to get everything lined up and go there. And then we said, okay, we we have one more meeting with the VP was there for Minuteman, and the contractor, the guy with the the property manager that we were gonna be renting the space from out in the area, had plans drawn up, had everything ready to go. We get up there and stuff. Okay, tomorrow morning, let's all meet. We're gonna sign paperwork, cut checks, do what we need to do. We're going forward. And we walk, like I said, for us to decide it, it was within a week that we were gonna decide to do that. And we get in the car and we're driving home, and we're like, you know what? That little voice in your head, you gotta listen to it. It sometimes we're looking at each other and going, you know what? Something's not right. We we need to we need to stop for a minute. And we kind of agreed to that. We got home. We called we called Jack. He's the VP, great guy. And said, Hey Jack, we're we're not we we're gonna we're not gonna do this. Okay. He's like, not a problem. Not a problem. I we will send you the paperwork to cancel the paperwork. We'll notify everybody that hey, we're not doing doing this. It it fell through, and we'll cut your your check back 100% refundable.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:38

We'll give you your check back, you'll get it in about a week. Not a problem. I mean, really great about it. The very next day the world shut down with COVID.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:47

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:48

We were that close to trying to we would have ended up with all this money out there, all these contracts, all these things, and a brand new a brand new business from scratch shut down. I mean, what do you do? Yeah. So we were like thank god. Thank God just what you know, wow that we did that. Well, COVID hit and everybody was pro blessed at that time because we we fell under construction that it was still we could still work and we're growing at that time. What what was a blessing? And towards the end of COVID was coming around, and every now and then Jack with Minuteman Press would call us and just chat with us. Hey, how you kids doing how you guys doing? You know, just you know, thank you know, just really nice people. We you know, connected with him real well and stuff like that, and just wanted to do that. Well, one day he calls, and we think it's just a phone call for you know, just to check in, say hi to us and stuff. Everybody else in COVID had nothing better to do. You shredded everything. You you cleaned your house more than you want ever, you know, every little project you got done. So we shredded everything we had from him. Well, he called and we thought it was to check up. He goes, hey, he goes, we had something that came across our desk at corporate, and your guys' name came up. Are you guys still interested in a Minuteman Press? And the first thing out of both Devin and I's mouth was no. And about 30 seconds later is send us the paperwork, send us the numbers. And it was like we're business people. You you're one instinct is like, nah, I ain't interested in that all, but that sidekicks in of going, what do the numbers mean? What what's here? Okay. A corporation, this I mean, they've got over a thousand franchises around the around the world. There's like almost 800 in the US alone. They're they're the largest one, is calling us. So they've got a deal or something that corporate and their people look through. They've all you know, their people have looked through it. And it's like, what's in these numbers? What's what is this? Because they're not going to open up a their what it was, it was an independent store that he was retiring. Oh, and Minuteman Press helps. If you're an independent, if you're wanting wanting to sell it or get out of it, they will help you find a buyer. Oh, okay. At no cost. Wow. And he was the guy, he'd been in business for 38 years, 75 years old. Wow. And they showed us the numbers. We went through it. We had our our people look through the numbers. I mean, I could I could get the basics out of it, but I I want the experts, you know, the financial advisors and the CPAs, what I think is every business you need to have. Yeah, those two. You that's a must, in my opinion. Go through them and they're looking at at all the numbers, and they're like, this is a great business. And we're like, okay, what, okay, we can do this. Why shouldn't we do this? Yeah. And that's one of the things I've learned about all my businesses that I've had is one of the first things that I always look at is one, people think I'm a little crazy for it, but how much money are you willing to lose?

SPEAKER_02 1:32:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:14

If you're starting a business, how much money are you willing to lose? And you need to put a dollar mount on that.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:21

Because if you don't, you could end up spending more and more money because you think, hey, I'm going to turn it around, I'm going to turn it around. And you go from I I should have got rid of it sooner, but now because I stuck into it way too long because the business is failing, I've now lost everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:40

You can't get out of it. You can't get out of it, and it's not a pretty picture. It's not. I've I've had my family's done it. I've seen my mom and stepdad their businesses, you know, people showing up at the front door at seven o'clock in the morning going, hand us the keys to the cars. Wow. I mean, lost everything. Yeah. That was back in the mid-80s when a lot of crazy things are happening. But that that's why that's one of the questions how much money are we willing to lose so we know how much money to spend. So we don't go over that number. The other, you know, then I start asking, what are five things that can take out this business? I want to know, I know it can make the business grow, but what what stuff am I not seeing? And I talk with, I got other business friends, like, hey, what have you seen that could take your business out? Because if you recognize them early, you it you they might not ever pop up, they're not a surprise. Gotcha. Employees steal from you. Yeah. Okay. Fire them. You you know, you you you put checks and balances for that. Your industry, okay. I sleep very well. Don't get me wrong. I hate writing those checks for insurance, but you know what? I sleep at night because of those. Yeah. Yep. So it's very important. Oh, I'm not getting insurance because of that. Well, you know, you got a hundred thousand dollar piece of equipment sitting there and it disappears. Yeah. You're you're yeah, you you're so you know, we looked at that and we're like, we can do this. Yeah. And we we did. That's awesome. We Devin looked at it and we looked at it. We're like, okay, how are we gonna, you know, we got two bit two different businesses. My sandblasting business. I knew nothing. I literally had a 15-minute little demonstration at the factory with my equipment printing. I didn't know anything. I know business, so and so does Devin. But the the key thing with the businesses, especially both businesses in the printing company, what made it very impressive was that they had a fantastic team working there. That they these people had worked there for a long time. Yeah, they made it through COVID together. The business made it through COVID. And that told me something about the bit the business can be anything, but it's the people that are in there working it. These are the experts.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:59

I'm not an expert on in print. I know how to run a business, but what I do know is I'm not micromanaging these people.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:07

They're the experts, they're the ones with the 30 years worth of knowledge that I could I could never make up with that.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:15

But what what is what is their our their job? And we came into it. These are people, they literally they found out that the business was being sold probably two hours before we walked through the doors.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:29

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:30

So you're dealing with some hostility. You're you just you just pulled the rug out from underneath these people, yeah and say, Here's your new bus. They don't know us, we don't know them. How do we connect?

SPEAKER_02 1:35:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:44

And I we told them very simple. I said, What we're doing, you guys have done great. We're changing we're good, we we're going to be changing stuff. We're gonna rebrand. This is what we're going with, but you people are the ones that run this.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:59

What do you need? Okay. What do you you tell us what you need, that's our job is to get it there.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:05

Is it more time off for your family? Is it more money? Is it different equipment? Is it what do you need? So as long as we we know what our employees' needs are, we take care of that. That that's that's the goal, is in in my opinion, is owners.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:24

They are the ones that are working there, they're the ones that are there 40, 50 hours a week, you know, depending on which business and stuff, you know. That they are the ones doing that. And that allows us to have our lifestyle that we want. Now, do we make, you know, when you start looking at it, business is about money. Yeah, that's the bottom line. Yeah. You see a lot of business owners out there that won't give their employees pay raises. They don't, you know, they they could care less. They're they're okay, you're here, I'm gonna use you, whatever you do, and for short periods of time. Yeah. We we told them as the company grows, you grow. Okay. We're we're we want you to grow with us. We want you to be able to to enjoy your life. Yeah. Like I enjoy my life when I'm not here. I'm out. I want to go travel. I want to go to the shows, I want to go, you know, do what I I do. Yeah, but I want that for my employees. Yeah. Family is very important. If, hey, oh, one of my kids sick, why are you here? Go home. Something happens, go home. Matter of fact, call, hey, I I can't come in, I've got an emergency. We'll deal with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:34

We we can make things run, but you need to go home and take care of it. So, with that being said, you want to to me, you want to make sure that your employees are happy, that they have a home life, a life outside of the business.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:50

And if they're happy there, because who who wants, you know, Friday come around? And you you see it in businesses, you see them. Friday comes around, they've worked their butts off, they're ticked off at something because they're not happy. So what do they do? They go and they go out and drink, they party, they do whatever they, you know, whatever they do to try to relax, and then come Monday, they're right back at it and they're ticked off.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:15

Or they're not happy at work. And it reflects in their work and the environment in there. Tars is like, enjoy yourself, go out, spend the time with the family, go do that. Yeah. You want time off, take it. You've earned it. Go.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:29

You know, whatever we need to do to make sure that you have yours. Could we make more money at it? Yes, we probably could if we ran a very strict type ship, but we're we don't operate that way.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:39

Well, I think there's multiple ways of looking at raising m or making money too. There is. You know, there's there's the right now gratification, and there's the building something bigger that over time will ultimately be worth more. Speaking of which, how has your definition of success changed from leaving the longshoreman going into the Coast Guard to now having business?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:03

That I've had several people ask the this question lately on success, and it it's a hard it that is a hard one, I think, to answer because I personally have never thought of myself as being successful. That I've hey, I've made it, I'm here. So is it you get a trophy? Oh, you're excess Do you get get the trophy? You get a gold watch. You've had that for a long time. I've worked my butt off for that. I don't I don't look at it as being successful or not. I look at what I'm doing is am I enjoying it? So that that could probably be considered success is I have to be in I have to enjoy what I I'm doing. And if I am not enjoying what I'm doing and it I'm not living life, to me that's not successful. That that's you're not doing justice to yourself. Yeah. I've had it to where I've had a I had a one of my businesses, and I've I've had business partners, some good, some very bad. I only have one business partner now and I'm married to her. That will never change. Yeah. I've had it to where the bus it was it was a great business. I mean, we we were doing really well, and but I I was running around with three cell phones. I it I had a Bell Bonds business up in Alaska for several years. But that is a 24-7 job. And you get I had phone calls during Christmas dinner. I mean, they were you know, you and you've got to deal with it, and it's not always the greatest thing. But me and my business partner weren't getting along. And I got to a point to where I was sitting there and I'm looking around, going, you know what? No. I grabbed, had my briefcase, all my paperwork, my keys, everything, walked into the office. She wasn't there, she wasn't around. I'm not sure where she was at. She just wasn't around. I said everything on her desk, the keys and everything like that, and I walked out. Shut the door. An hour later, she called me, she goes, What's this? I said, I'm done. Said, it it's yours. Wow. I I said, I am stressed out, I am not having fun with this anymore. This is not, it's not what I signed up for.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:29

I I don't care, I I didn't, and we were making great money. It wasn't about the money, it's about the lifestyle that I want.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:36

And it's like, take it and walk away. It's the same the same thing. So to answer your question about success is as long as I'm doing running my lifestyle the way I want to enjoy life and to be around great people.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:51

Yeah. You know, I feel like we've covered a lot of ground, and I feel like we could probably keep going for a very long time. Because I have a lot of questions. We've skipped a lot of history because you have a laundry list of businesses and jobs that you've been involved in, and I'd love to get in deep in some of those conversations. But I think for this episode, we should probably start to wrap. So but I I I do really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. Is there anything that we should know about you that I haven't asked you that would be important to get out?

SPEAKER_01 1:42:24

Something about me. Boy, tough question because you gotta look inwards on that. And probably one of the first kind of things that comes to my mind is one, uh, I care about people. Ever since I I mean, you I go back to my childhood all the way through, and I thought about this a little bit earlier today and stuff. One of the things that that I cannot stand is bullies. I I I cannot stand them. And I think looking back in my careers and my businesses and the things that I have done, they all have to do with helping other people. Coast Guard, firefighting. I've worked for the school district in Alaska. I worked for the Alaska Military Youth Academy helping troubled teens, helping people. I was a lifeguard, ski patrol, helping other people. And that's something, like I said, that's why I I hate bullies because they're always taking stuff from people or belittling belittling them. And that's I think that's one of the things that have got me through was because I was bullied as a little I was bullied. So probably I mean, if you look at my size, who's gonna bully me? Um that uh it's probably why I I wanted to help other people. Yeah. That I I had always for a long, long time, gave a lot of myself and put myself into the careers on helping people that are in that need rescue, that are medical issues, firefighting, bell buns, you know. Not all in not all people that are that go to jail are criminals. Some people are like, okay, that's a left way of thinking it. I'm not, I'm more on the other side, not that far, but I'm on the other side there. Right. But I've seen the system. Yeah. And there's a lot of people out there that are just having bad days. They are they they are good people and they just they have they make one bad decision.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:27

And they're not great bad decisions, but it's bad enough to cause it.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:31

Well, and I and I think desperation can force people to make bad decisions. They are. And I and I think sometimes good people are forced into bad decisions because of desperation.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:43

Yeah. Oh yeah, very much so. And so I've always wanted to help. So that's why I've some of the careers I've had and some of the stuff I've done that I'd helped help help s so many people.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:55

And I got to a point in in my life. My mom passed away. She she had uh leukemia and cancer. And I I was a fireman at the time, down in I was down in Oregon. I've just finished in college, I was a fireman. That was my dream job. And I left I left that to go back to Alaska to be around her because I I figured my time was going to be limited. I didn't know how much time to be around around her. So I went up there. I never got to be a fireman again.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:31

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:32

With I tried. I mean, I was on the list, I did it, just timing, but she had passed away. She passed away about two weeks before I turned 40. Oh wow. And life went dark. A little bit humor, I guess, if you want to say, Mom passed away. Two days later, I had to put my dog down.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:52

Are you making a country song?

SPEAKER_01 1:45:54

No, but my sister did tell me Willie was trying to get a hold of me because he had one for me. I this is the the truth. I could completely dog passed away. In a week after that, I wrecked my truck. And it was just completely life was very dark. And it was going in, it was winter time, so that's not a great time in Alaska and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:17

But I got things turned around a little bit, and that's where I developed this attitude that I have now, what I call it. Started out the summer of John. Bought a motorcycle that my mother would never allow me to have. Gotcha. She's like, No, I I will take you out before I ever let you get one. Six months I figured I was safe. Bought a motorcycle, drove around Alaska, traveled. My thing was if I could think it, I was gonna do it. Whatever it was. It was all it was going to be about my adventure.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:52

Well, Alaska summers are pretty short.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:54

So it rolled into the winter of John. So I went down to the BVI with some friends, and we sailed around the BVI for a week or so, and just any, just stuff would pop up, and it's like, let's go try that. Let's do that. Let's do that. And after about a year, it's like, you know what? Now it's the life of John. Yeah. What can I do to explore the world and enjoy and get great people around me? And what can we do to help and do things? Yeah. And that's kind of kind of where it ended up.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:22

Well, that's that's awesome. I you you are a very genuine individual. I mean, I can tell just sitting and talking to you, and and I appreciate that about you. I appreciate your leadership and some of the the groups that we've been around in. Thank you. And in the community and what you're doing with your businesses, I know one of your employees. I don't know all of your employees, but I know one of them. Yes. And uh I I feel she thinks very highly of you, so I think that speaks volumes. So someday I look forward to meeting Devin. But I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate you spending time with us, allowing us to get to know a little bit of the man behind the mystery of all the jobs. So thank you, John. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:02

Thank you. I've I've really enjoyed this. This is been another new little adventure. Something I've never done this before, and I I've I thought I'd be honest.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:13

I appreciate that. Thank you very much for being on.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:16

This is John White, and I've got the uh, you know, it's a very good idea.