Top Shelf Stories
In a world that often shuns the uncomfortable, we embrace it with open arms—and open laughs. Our candid narratives around our stories assure you that awkwardness is a shared human experience. Tune in, enjoy the ride, and maybe learn a thing or two.
Top Shelf Stories
From Gangster Rap To Tile Setter Glory
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We argue about what we thought we’d be as kids and how adult jobs actually happen through chance, pressure, and a few reckless decisions. Along the way, we bounce from cassette tapes and rap fantasies to real talk about unions, entrepreneurship, and whether you’re building a job or a business.
• childhood career dreams versus real-world careers
• cassette tape nostalgia and the short-lived gangster rapper era
• crime jokes that turn into a Bitcoin glitch story
• getting forced into tile work and slowly earning pride in mastery
• why most people never plan to land in “middle management”
• the leap from a stable union job to running your own business
• union safety nets, benefits, and the psychology of risk
• HVAC wholesale distribution, online sales, and adapting to market change
• ultimate dream jobs and what they reveal about ambition
Thank you guys for listening every Tuesday and next Tuesday we’ll have another one hit us again
Urgent Call And Story Setup
Top Shelf Stories with Jay, Chris, and Tony. What's up, guys? Not much. So I was driving home today, and I get this urgent call from Jay. It's urgent. And it goes everybody to the podcast lab. I have a story. What was so important that you made me miss family dinner to talk about? Well, I'm glad that you bring that up because really there is a story that I have to tell all of you. It better be good. That was the best thing I've ever learned. Is it better than the story of when your pants fell down at the oil change place? No, that was actually better than but you know, there's there's but there's good and good and bad stories. So everyone knows in the state of Wisconsin that I probably well, no, not probably, I am voted the number one tile setter in Wisconsin. I remember just three short years ago you getting a runners-up trophy. Well, it might have been a runners up, but I I accumulated the top uh tile setting uh accomplishment just recently. And weird. The thing about how did you get your mom and all of your wife's friends together to vote for you? Here's the thing.
Childhood Dreams Meet Adult Reality
I wanted to talk to you guys about what in your life when you were a child to what you are now today. What do you what what did you think you would actually be your career would have been or what would it you know what is it? Oh it's a good one. Because I never thought it would be the best tile installer in Wisconsin. I mean, maybe in the United States, I don't know. I always envisioned myself being a tile setter, so it's weird that I grew up to know the best one in the whole state. Chris is like, ever since I was 11 years old, and I got I got documentation from sixth grade career day. Yeah. I wanted to be, I wanted to run an HVAC wholesaler. It's been my life's work to work to run a I can't. I can't. So I wait when you're talking about being in sixth grade. I thought I was gonna be a firefighter. I used to dream of Schluters, and then you realize they're all poor and underappreciated, and you're like, well, maybe I'll do Tyler. His wife wouldn't let him stay away from the house that many nights in a row. I just figured that he's like, I was a firefighter for a while, but every time my phone rang, my wife's like, Who the fuck's calling you? What do you mean? Like a who's this bitch, 911? Like uh, like what are those, what are they called? The uh not the actual guys that stay in the stations, the ones that didn't call volunteer, volunteer firefighter. There you go. Yeah, no, I thought I was gonna be a firefighter, yeah. But then I was like, figured out, you know what, they're they're like big burly fucking huge guys, and you know, I I maybe I'm burly, but I'm they need somebody who can climb a ladder fast too. I can climb a ladder really fast. I bet you can. They'd have to bring special ladders with smaller steps. Get up faster. It's little legs. We're talking about like like steps in between steps out of the rugs being 12 inches apart. They're like nine and a quarter. You dig get Jay's ladder out. Fuck you. Look at the size, you gotta measure the man's shins. You can't go that high. No shin. Jay's gotta have his own special ladder on his own special truck they pull up in their PT cruiser. I would never fight a giant fire with that. No, so when I was a kid, like I thought maybe I'd be a firefighter, you know. Career day comes, you know. Firefighting. Well, yeah, fire. I mean, like, I just I was gonna be an Air Force pilot. That's what you thought when you were six, seven, eight, ten, whatever. Yeah. Because I had good eyesight. What is that? What is that sigh for, Tony? I'm like, I'm gonna be an Air Force fighter pilot. What did you think when you were younger? Then I was too I couldn't, I couldn't uh I I couldn't listen to authority. There was no way I was gonna work. Yeah, you gotta be fucking making your bed every morning. Oh no, man, this is kind of a wild ass question because uh when I was younger, it's weird, man. Like you give me a lot of people. You thought you were gonna be a pizza delivery guy? You give me like a certain time of my life, like there's there's a million things I thought I was gonna be when I grow up. You didn't have one specific thing. You're like, fuck yeah, that's cool. I'm gonna do that.
Cassette Tapes And A Rap Identity
So when I was nine years old, I walked like two miles, right? I can't even imagine my 13-year-old walking to the end of the driveway by himself. No, but like me and my buddies got together, we we each stole a certain amount of money. What wait, wait, what? From our parents. Okay. We were like nine, we each stole like three dollars, and we walked up to a place called mainstream music, and that was like the big record store, and cassette tapes were a big thing back then. Uh, I'm sure a lot of the people listening to us and all the robots that download our podcast have no idea what a cassette tape even is, but to this day, it's it's the back of my cell phone. It's my cell phone case, it's a cassette tape, and we walked for miles to go buy a cassette tape of some group we heard. CC in the music factory called NWA. Oh man, parental. I thought it was gonna be salt and pepper. And me and my buddies sat and we wore that cassette tape out, like four days into it, all three of us, like my core group of people, from the time I was like fucking four until I was almost probably 17, 18. I was inseparable from these two other people. Yeah. And we sat, I I mean, almost for a whole summer and listened to that uh NWA tape. What does that stand for? Over and over NWA stand for over. I think it's nightstands with attachments. Uh I'm not sure. Say it. What does it stand for? You can say it's the name of the band. But at the end of but by like the end of the first week, the three of us were convinced that we were gonna grow up and be gangster rappers. Gangster rappers, not regular rappers. So if you asked me what did I think I was gonna be when I grew up when I was nine, yeah, it was gonna be an astronaut. But if you asked me nine and a half, I'm a gangster rapper. Okay, and that lasted till like nine and three quarters, and then we realized all the other money we stole to buy other tapes of different gangster rap, we noticed the trend. There wasn't very many white ones. Yeah. So we moved on from that. Non-gangster gangster rappers. Let me ask you this. Since you thought when you were nine and a half that you wanted to be a gangster rapper, obviously you had some type of rap. Like you had something that you were rapping about or tried to, right? You had to. There's no way you didn't. I was the one who wrote the lyrics. I wasn't the performer. Perfect. I was the hype man. Well, I at that age, you don't forget shit. So I want to hear I was stealing money from my mom's purse to save up to buy my first gold chain with a clock on it. I want to hear a baby. I want to hear your first rap. Oh, I don't have them anymore. Yeah, well, just I mean, give me like a little bit of a beat. Not a beat, but a rap. Give me a little bit of a like a sequence. Give me a couple sentences. You gotta call my oldest. Don't try it. I jack your ass like a looter in a riot. Give me something like that. That was pretty good. Yeah, dude, like I'm totally not going to. But you know, and then there was another time in my life where I'm like, dude, I'm gonna be a cop, and then I change it to an FBI agent. And then I realized I realized that there's way more criminals than cops, and that's
Crime Fantasies And A Bitcoin Glitch
a much more lucrative job. So there was a time in my life where I wanted to be a criminal. Oh man, the life of to be a criminal. I still want to. That would have been amazing. I still want to be a criminal, dude. I look at them self-checkout registers at Walmart every time I walk into that place, and I'm like, man, the old meeting. They take pictures, they take pictures of you checking out. There are more people watching those cameras than there ever were checking people out. It's like the casino. They're watching you put your shit in a bag. Yeah, but did they see me change all the price tags on the meat with the Kool-Aid packets? That's what I need to know. No, that's a small time game. See, that's the $15.99 T-bone for 99 cents. But what you really need to do is start doing some big time white-collar crimes, dude. That's the kind of criminal I want to. My dream. That's the dream. But I didn't realize that until I was well into my 20s. There was this guy who figured out uh I forget what what it was, but when it was Bitcoin was just started, there was a website where for some reason there was a crack in the code where if you deposited money and you could withdraw it like three times really fast. So people, there's a guy who bought like he did it a bunch of different times on a bunch of different names where you deposited 500 Bitcoin and then withdrawed like 3,000 of them, like by clicking the button fast. He's fucking criminal living it up for years. For years. That was a glitch. It was a glitch. But it was it's like when the money wasn't worth shit. It was like a penny apiece, so who cares, right? True. So the guy was doing this like crazy, and he just collected the shit out of him, and then it went to be like a hundred dollars a coin, and the guy was a fucking multimillionaire. He was pretty smart about it, kept everything for secret, and then one day he got robbed. Like someone broke into his house and they stole some of it. It was like a Bitcoin wallet, the code written down, the passwords to it written down, and the guy stole that, and then he had doesn't he have the whole entire thing? No, it's all different. He had little bits of monies all over the place. Yeah. Okay. So then the guy stole, he reported it to the police. His stolen Bitcoin, he reported it stolen. And then he made a transaction after that. Because the police were like, Well, how the fuck did you get all this Bitcoin? That's worth lots of fucking money, dude. Yeah, and he's like, I stole it, but that was a while ago. But you basically didn't say anything, and then he like his name got on a watch list, and then he withdrew five hundred dollars or eight hundred dollars from an exchange where he had to KYC, like fill out information on who you were, and that's how they found him. And they found like five different computers buried in a basement closet box inside of a different box with like billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin on it. Billions? Yeah. The B. Yeah. Jesus Christ. So they found what they found, and then the guy got he served like a year and a half in jail, and now he's out again. So who knows? I would imagine if you I'll take a year you stole that many, you hidden them somewhere. But that's the type of criminal you want to be, where it's so hidden and quiet and nobody even fucking knows, and you're so slick about it that only years later when you fucked up just simply by making an eight hundred dollar trip up, you're like, oh shit, they're gonna find me now, and they find you. And that sounds way easier. Like, I was gonna be the kind of criminal that stole babies out of an attorney ward. Oh boy, and sold them on the black market because I'm like, dude, you could get a lot of money for a brand new, like a brand new baby. Like, I'm like, I'm gonna make that's a hard one bank, and then I was like, Oh, this is a lot of work actually getting them out of the plexiglass room and unattached from all the tools. In your younger, you in your younger life, you had a lot of different things you wanted. A lot of different ideas. I had one soccer player, but then like when I started to get to the rock star, there you go. When I started to get into the teenager, teen teen years, I went from wanted to be a professional skateboarder and then stopped that to a professional musician, uh, artist. Basically, not a rapper, but uh rock rock star, yeah. And uh through those teenage years, you didn't know how to play an instrument, you didn't know how to keep a beat, you couldn't sing very well. God gave Jay an instrument. Yeah, what instrument did he give me? The ability to rap. He just expressed my dick, those beautiful voice chords ears. Oh, I thought you're talking about my Jesus and Fergie had a baby. I I left my body and I was like another person looking down at myself. No, so uh after the after the teenage years, it gets into the grown age year. Oh, actually, no, I'm still in the teenage years, and this is where I started getting into trouble. I said, fuck, you know, life sucks. I don't want to deal with not um accomplishing my accomplishing my dreams. So I'm gonna just fuck around and get drunk and fuck shit up. So I did that was your dream? That was a part of a rock star. No, that was like I f I like I didn't have a dream anymore because I knew it was not a attainable unless I turns out being a rock star is kind of a limited gig. Yeah, exactly. So I I wasn't I knew it wasn't attainable, so I went to just fucking shit around life of crime, yeah. Yeah, but I didn't steal shit. I wasn't I wasn't like that. Oh I just fucked shit up. So you were bad at crime? So I got in trouble a lot living at home with my pops, and then he's like every time I got in trouble, I had to work with him. Yeah, he was like, You're just dumb enough to set tile. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so he made me set tile when I was 16
Teen Trouble And Learning Tile
or 17. I started setting tile, and after two or three years of doing that and getting in trouble for that time, I was like, I'm never fucking doing this shit because this is this sucks. This is the worst fucking thing ever. And I can see that in my kid now when I make him come to work with me. I can see him like I'm like, okay, you did a good job today. You uh we put today we poured three mud pans and I made him mix every single one. And he's like, I was like, Are you tired? Are you are you I mean, are you doing good, bra? You're doing good, dude. You did great today. He's and I was like, How do you feel about it? He's like, It was fine, but it all sucked. I hated it the entire time, and that's how I felt. So I'm like, I'm never doing this, and you know, now I'm the best talent star in the world. Mediocre at best, but you think your kid's gonna have a future in it? You think he's gonna He don't want to do that? Like take over. See, this is where you fucked up naming your business. Because now when you give it to him, he's gonna be like, uh, now yeah, change the name to Jay's kids style styles. Uh my business is not worth anything. That's all of your contacts? No. Uh okay, so cut that from the tape. If you ever sell your boss, your business is worth millions, Jay. Don't sell yourself, Sharp. Of course. No, definitely. Millions. Court side C. I love you, Chris. But no. Uh if my dad tried to sell his business today, people would laugh at him. He's been doing it for 40 years. He doesn't have he doesn't have okay. So Tony had. It turns out you only need to get tile done like one time in a geographical area. And most typically then you move to a new geographical area. And then you get to get it done twice a year. Twice. So let's put it this way. So repeat customers have got to be tough. No, repeat customers are the best customers. Yeah, but it's gotta be hard. Because like maybe you do another room in their house or something, but no, so let me put it this way. Tony has he Tony has a company. He does more than tile, he does carpet, he does hardwood, he does all types of flooring. That's why his name's gay floors. We are us. We're on our knees all day. So he has a company motto where uh he can do anything and everything, but again, he still has like a business where uh not only has employees, but like something to sell because he has uh tools, you know, he's got like a lot of shit like going on. Me, I got one truck, you guys seen it, it's got play school wheels on it, and it doesn't have much to it. So it's not like I have a business to sell. So like when I go when I re finally retire, my shit's not worth nothing unless I capitalize and uh gain traction as far as uh hiring employees or getting through just doing tile. Because you can't you can't make a business doing tile unless obviously you're very main, like complete around the whole world or or you know, even in the United States. I'm just Wisconsin. I'm just the best in Wisconsin. The best in Wisconsin, but I can't I can't sell that. You can sell that because I can't sell that because I'm the best. No one's the best, no one else is the best, just me. Okay. Does that make sense? I can't sell myself. I'm not a hooker. I think you could sell yourself to another to like that's what subcontracting is, is you're selling yourself. Yeah, but I would have to do their work. Yeah, that's because I'm the best. Yeah. They'd call you, and then you'd be like, all right, this is how much I cost. I'm the best. And I you know, the best part about this is the whole time I said the best, Tory has been silent the whole time because he knows it. He's seen it in action. This isn't even worth the argument. I'll let I'll let the Russian bots download our podcast. Just I just love just think that Jay is uh even above industry standard. Not even the best. I'll just let them think that you're like probably alright. Tony watches my videos on Facebook for to learn things to do with shit right. Yeah. Nah, when I see your videos, I just go find the Michael Jackson eating the popcorn uh meme that goes around and I put it in. I'm here for the comments. Tony, do you have to pee? Yeah. Jesus, you're I'm here for the comments. Yeah, that's your comment. Yep. No, but frightened people in the comments. But seriously though, like to be honest, I never thought I would be where I am today with my job. And uh, Chris, do you I want to ask both of you? Do you think you would have been thinking 30 years ago, do you think you'd be here where you are right now with your just your job, not your life, your
Why Nobody Plans For Middle Management
job? No. No. No, okay, Tony. I mean, okay, no, go ahead. Elaborate. Let me elaborate here. So no one wakes up when they're like 13 or whatever and goes to career day and just writes down that they want to be a manager of the city. You don't think it's ever happened? I don't think anyone was like, I want to manage a wholesale warehouse. Okay, look at that. Nobody's like, I want to be middle management. Look at the Williams sisters. I'm like opera managers. Hey, they were they were playing tennis when they were like eight. Yeah, I wasn't playing uh can I get 1500 pieces of steel on Tuesday. So do you think only the the incredibly gifted or incredibly um what's the word looking for? Gift uh not gifted parents who abused them into doing that like the Jackson 5? Yeah, yeah. That's those are the only ones that have ever done what they thought they would be doing at eight. Yes. Because everyone else got to be like 16 and was like, well, I can't be a rock star. That doesn't make any sense. Would that not be a good um way to just to like find out everyone's children's dreams and explain to them that they're not gonna turn out with it that and how many people actually at eight or ten really do do what they wanted to do when they were that age? Well, that's why they have you write it down all the time when you're a kid. That's the reason that's the only reason firemen still have new people that come in. Yeah, some people still do people do that, people turn out to be what they want to be. Like I want to be a school teacher, and then you turn out to be a fucking school teacher. But I was the most boring one to be. I was gonna be a millionaire. Well, that's not a that's not an occupation. Okay, dad. Whatever, dad. He's not like my dad. What I was telling him. What you when you say when you say I'm gonna be a billionaire, you have to find a way to be a million. Million fine, millionaire. I didn't find a way to be that. Oh, all you do middle management and become a millionaire. I don't know what I was gonna do. He's still working at it. He's buying pork stock. Yeah, you had no all these cryptos now. That means I'm rich. If I buy crypto. All right, let's let's skip ahead six years. 16 years old. No, let's do 18. Let's do 18. 18 years old. Okay, that's a little bit more in your life. You've gone through a lot of shit. Okay. You're out of school. Yep. Now you're like, okay, I had to fit. I was gonna be an architect. Okay. At 18, you thought you were gonna be an architect. 100%. Okay. Or some type of computer aided drafter designer. You just have buildings or construction areas and well, I I that's not too far away. I thought I was be a rock star at 18. Yeah, see. I had some and I was really good at it. Like I was remember in high school, I was like first in the drafting class, like sophomore year or something. And then I was like, I would do all my work, and then the instructors would just be like, all right, well, just keep going, and then like just do these extra credit things. And I really enjoyed it. So Tony, you worked for the union at 18, right? Mm-hmm. So did you think that that was gonna be the rest of your life? Yes. Okay, so the at 18 you knew what you were going to be. Yeah. But I knew it at 17. Let me let me let me back it down a little bit. You at the union you did everything? You did carpet, tile, no tile. You just did car tile and uh hard hardwood? Carpet and vinyl. Oh, so you just did carpet and vinyl. Yep. So that's huge. So you didn't know what you were actually gonna be doing because now you do hardwood, you do tile, you do, you do a lot more than just carpet. So no, you didn't necessarily get bored easy though. But you didn't know. You said you'd need to be able to do it. A lot of the guys I worked with would would like find one thing that they're gonna do. Did you know you would own your own business at 18? I want to say yeah, but I I don't really know for sure. I do. I mean I knew I knew kind of right away that I was gonna end up as my own boss eventually.
Quitting A Stable Job To Bet Big
I do like your story though, about uh go ahead and tell your story about you getting into the business without telling your wife and taking the leap without uh knowing the outcome and losing everything. So it's kind of interesting because uh everybody you know when you when you start working someplace, you know, there'll be some when you're young, I should say, because I was I was 18 when I started. It was like literally my 18th birthday. I was still I was already hired when I was 17 waiting. Um no, not yet. Close. I was 19 when I got married, so um but so you know you work with these guys. I w at that time I worked for a pretty large company, there's like 70 of us. And uh, you know, the old timers that trained me that I now look back on, and they were literally my age right now. Yeah. Um so I was about 26 at this time, 27. And uh he tells me the story because he knew I was doing a lot of like night and weekend jobs on my own, plus working for this company all day. He he knew I was ridiculously ambitious, and uh uh you know, I I just I all I wanted, all I gave a fuck about was making money. Like I didn't have a kid. I was as as my idol, who I got a lot of my financial advice from, um, this dude out of Houston named Paul Wall, he said he's allergic to being broke, and that stayed with me forever. I like that he's the people's champ. He is the people's champ. I mean, that's a lot of weird facts about Paul Wall, but uh he prefers to sit sideways in his car. That's a whole that's a whole nother story, though. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he has a whole a whole uh video series, a video documentary about sitting sideways. Yes, yeah. I'm actually having families. Yeah, no, it's a great documentary. I think it was I forget who uh directed it, but I think it's the same guy who did Transformer. So get out of here. Um but uh this old timer, we're sitting at lunch and he's like 50 years old, and he just knew I was fucking hustling around, yeah, doing whatever I could. And he's like, Oh, you you know what happened to me when I was in my 30s? He goes, uh he goes, I had an uncle that was in the flooring business, and he was like, but he was he was residential, he had a bunch of vans out, a bunch of guys working for him. And he goes, I was always like the union commercial guy, but it gave us something in common to like talk about at all family gatherings and stuff. He's like, This guy didn't have any kids or anything, and he goes, and he died, he died pretty young, you know, in his mid mid or late 50s, and he was still running this business on a daily basis, and he goes, uh, I got called by a lawyer, and he left me this whole business, and uh he was like, you know, I was like 30 years old. He was like, I had three young kids, I had this super stable job in the union and um, you know, good health insurance, all this stuff. I had just built a house. He goes, but he willed me this business, and uh he goes, the guy had like, you know, everybody came to the shop in the morning and got in a company vehicle and drove it to the job site, and he's like, he was running like 10 or 12 vans. And uh he's like, I was so afraid to leave this super stable job with the kids and all this stuff, and he's like, I looked at this business and I'm like, I don't want that. He's like, there's literally I I don't know what to do with it. Right. He so he went to the the like manager, the guy who was you know like mainly running the company and said, Hey, uh you want to run this business? And he says, Yeah. He goes, What do you give me for it? And he goes, Oh no, I'd give you like 10 grand for it. And uh he goes, Oh, perfect. He's like ten thousand dollars. He's like, I got young kids, you know, newly built house, like this is in the you know, early nineties. He goes, ten thousand dollars. He's like, that's a lot of money. And he goes, at closing, he goes, they they had to give me like the financial records for the business because technically I owned it from the day he died until the day I sold it. And he was like, I looked at the financial records and he's like, that business was doing like $1.5 million a year in business. Damn. He goes, that guy back then that business was making like $400 grand a year in profit. And he's like, I sold it for ten thousand dollars. Jesus Christ. And he's like, and at that time that company was still in business, and he's like, I their vans drive by me like every day. Now they got 50 vans out on the road. Oh stand it. It was called Ideal Carpet Service, okay. And it was for a long time, 90s, early 2000s. It was a huge company. And uh it made you think, it made you think, and he just kind of goes, it's crazy that I was too afraid to to leave this to at least try it on my own. And I gave that like two years of non-stop thinking about it. And this was Paul Wall that had told you this? Yeah, Paul Wall. Well, Paul Wall set the stage for for my allergy to brokenness. Yeah, and so now I'm like 29. Allergy to brokenness. And uh I like that. I was I was just doing I mean, if I was working 40 hours for my employer during the day, I was working 50 hours on nights and weekends. Sure. Like, and it was like that at all times, and then work started getting a little slow. Not slow where I was sitting at home, but like spotty, like I was getting an a couple hours, maybe only three days for the week. With work work, with work work, and on the week, weekends and nights, I was getting like busier than I had ever been, but my job couldn't like in the line of work wherein like things come up, things happen. Like they could never give me like notice for me to plan ahead with with these homeowners I was working with, and then finally I I just uh I don't know, man. I got home from work and I had to cancel on a job because I couldn't meet their time frame, because my regular job told me that I had to work, that it was gonna be nonstop, and I turned that job down, and the next day they told me that that job isn't going through and that they were only gonna have work for me one day for the next week and a half, and I had literally just turned down, it would have been my biggest job ever at that time. So I got I got like disappointed in my situation. I like I wasn't even mad about it, but I was just like disappointed, like well in the union. If you don't get a full 40 hours a week, don't they still pay you something? Well, you get unemployment if you don't and it's not it's like a what a quarter, yeah, or a third or something. It was like $350, and that was unemployment's maximum amount that they would pay out. Okay, all right. But I I was just like disappointed my situation. Like I wasn't pissed because I I understand like that shit happened daily, and yeah, but I was just like, dude, this is like fucked up. Like I just passed out, I just passed up on a job that I literally was gonna make like ten thousand dollars on. Right. It was like one of these jobs you don't want, and it would have been like a $2,500 job, and yeah, you're like, I don't know, give me $10,000 and I'll do it. And the people are like, Yeah, that's fine. And and then I couldn't get it done when they wanted it. So then I had to call them back and pass up on it. And you like it was just an irritating thing. So I just went home and I said, uh I told my wife, I'm like, yeah, I quit my job today. She's like, What do you mean? I'm like, Oh, we're starting a business. And she's like, Are you fucking crazy? Like, you have union health insurance, like we'll never have that again. Like, you have this, you're building a pension, you're doing this, and I said, Yeah, but if I don't try it now, I I never will. And that's out of respect about you, Tony, is the way you just jumped into it and didn't didn't look back. Well, so so the thing is, is like it you might not be the best installer like like me, but oh, but I can get by. Yeah, yeah. And you you made like I can make a very like lower middle class living being like in the bottom 10% of what I do. When you're in the jack of all trades, I mean you're never really the Yeah, they're like, Can you do roofing? I'm like, roofing? Yeah, I can do roofing. You're the master of carpet up there, waterproof carpet. You're the master of none. No, but but the way I figured and maybe this is joking with you, bro. Maybe this is like a union mentality thing. But so when you worked in the union, it was a little different because uh so the union's like a club, right? So your your company you work for is really not who's employing you, right? So I worked for Premier Flooring, like that was the company I worked for. And but really I worked for Union 344 because I can move to United Flooring or Lippert Tile, or I can move through all the companies that subscribe to this club, and I lose no seniority, no pay, no vacation time. So I can work at 25 different companies throughout the year and not lose anything. Is government subsidized like subsidized? It really is. It's how you say that subsidized, it's like one of the most democratic systems on the face of the planet. It's ridiculous. It really it really bothered me through a lot of it. Well, they didn't they they started a union how many years ago? And they did that because to funnel money. Well, uh well, they did that to help people, but then it it turned into something else that it is today. But and it may I be I don't people are probably gonna be mad at that I said that. I don't care. Yeah, I don't know. But uh the the nice thing about the union is looking like is not only could you come and go out of different companies, you could come out of the union. You could so the way I still go back to the union, yeah, pick up his pension, his seniority, they'd almost guarantee him a job. Yeah. Like, yeah, to this day, I could literally walk back into the hall and say, Let me hey, I'm coming back. Here's my union dues. Uh, you know, and then I could call anybody on the list of union contractors, and they would pick me up and they would have to pay me full full salary, full benefits, full everything. So did you struggle the first year when you said you need to quit this job and you went to your own yourself? Nope. So you you were just you're you're thriving, and then your wife hated at first, like all wife do, hit any change. They just want you to make money and supply uh health insurance that uh doesn't suck. Yeah, which you know you can't find that nowadays unless you work for the no, but uh they hate it, they hate change, and then you you proved it wrong. And then that's what you that's a that's the hardest thing is to to uh tell your wife we're do something totally different and involves uh everything. You didn't have kids at the time, but if you did, yeah, I think it would be a lot harder. But if you uh you just change shit and you and you and you and you move on. Yeah. That's that's nobody nobody's gonna come and change your life for you. Like if you're not happy with your situation, you're the only one who can fix that. I like to say, this is my these are my monkeys, this is my circus. That's what I like to say. You say it to your wife? No, when I'm at work, I used to say when I was an employee, I used to say, not my monkeys, not my circus, and I would just do my job. But now that I'm like the manager, quote, and I see something wrong, I pisses me off. God damn it, this is my monkeys. All right, look at it. This is
Wholesale HVAC And The Online Shift
my circus. Look at it this way, Chris. Tony was in the union. You're not in the union. I've never worked for the union, you're not in the yeah, you never worked for the union, but but say you you know the the ins and outs of HVAC, whatever the fuck it is. Uh could you start your own business and in and and climb to the the scales that Tony has? Uh not doing what I'm doing now because I'm in like a wholesale. I'm saying you leave your shit that you're in now and do your own. Yeah. You don't you don't think the company that you work for that I shall not name ever you think you think uh Mr. Well we'll just call him Baden? Okay. Do you think Mr. Baden was like, I'm gonna throw a hundred million dollars at this, I'm gonna open up ten distribution centers across the United States with small branches, right? Selling our wholesale train furnaces. Or do you think he just started with one and he was like, he went out in a market where all your guys are probably on the south side? Because I know like all the flooring distribution is like literally within one mile radius of where I am. Yeah, me and Tony. This is the this is like where we're sitting right now is the flooring mecca of the so you don't think you could you could go the business that I uh manage and operate within right now, in my opinion, then this is just my opinion, is a completely dying business. What's gonna explain? The only one the only ones that are the Amazon? I don't know if you've ever heard of Amazon. Amazon selling raw furnaces to Contra. There's a place called Supply House, but who's gonna? There's a place called Skip the Warehouse. But Chris, not only do you do you sell them, you install them. No, we don't. We don't install them. I'm just a wholesaler. Buy a bunch, I buy a bunch, I distribute a middle bit. But don't buy a bunch, distribute a little bit. But don't you go to their their house and tell them what they need? I sell to the people who buy that, who do that. I sell to those guys. Okay, I'm wrong then. Sorry. I'm in wholesale, big top wholesale distribution. So the way I could translate my skill set that I've earned through the last decade and a half or whatever of running in this industry would be to be a to start up a small uh local distribution of like one specific product. Like just pick a really awesome fan bathroom fan and be the bathroom fan distribu. Go find the buy who's making them and say, Hey, don't sell them to those guys anymore. Sell them to me and I'll get them into the market for you. And then some manufacturer says, I make an amazing bathroom fan. And I say, I make amazing marketing pitches for bathroom fans, and we make a deal, and I don't own any product, but his product ships from his warehouse through the contracts that I find for the wholesalers. You just want to be a like a manufacturer's rep. So the being a manufacturer's rep would be how I could start my own business within my current business structure. How often do you think of that? None, because I think it's a dying business. Like it would work for like five more years, maybe. Here's a super fun thing for you. You're watching your business move to online sales. Okay. It's it's I mean, in bigger companies, we're just gonna use the example of Thielman and Sons, sure, who has a warehouse of probably a hundred units of each thing they like. Sure. Maybe not that many, but uh maybe more. I don't know. But they hold stock at their facility of their everyday used products. Currently, they still have to buy it through wholesale, though. Yeah. So they just have a contract or purchase order with one company that ships it to them and keeps their employees. And Baden Company ships them from the manufacturer or your big distribution warehouse directly to them. Yeah. So, but you know, you got the small guys, like we're just gonna say douchko. Yeah. Okay. Which I think I'm saying his name wrong, but I don't know. I heard him say it. He likes it. I heard him say it to somebody, and it sounded really different. But Dushko, who is is running a one-man operation out of his own van, much like Jay does with his construction company. And and Duschko needs a place to go every morning and buy the furnace for that day because he doesn't have the room for it, much like Jay is not buying pallets of tile and then trying to resell it to somebody. Right. He gets the tile from the one place he can drive to pick up and bring to the job. So those those are the people who need local distribution. They're just logistical people. But but like Thielman and Son, who who's buying multiple units at a time and having them direct shipped to them, they don't give a fuck where they buy it from. And now you're saying that internet sales are internet to the trades is becoming a more prevalent thing. And direct to consumers become a thing for sure. Versus your locals brick and mortar. So with what you know about your industry, why wouldn't you start your own online wholesale to the trade only HVAC company and strike deals with the nine people that are doing what your company's doing right now to get the lowest cost so you could make some money shipping directly from bad and company to these people under the blanket of HVAC concepts online only. Well it's gotta be concepts I'm using a generic name. It's not I mean it it's not that I couldn't. I just like I said I don't think uh I mean you could do that absolutely I say we just we start it right now we go three ways on it Jay's on tech obviously but the dream is to run a business that's the dream and to write off basketball tickets under your business Easter egg hunts I got a flooring concepts Easter egg hunt coming up you do not yeah bring the families in your checkbook what what one egg has a $500 off coupon but you gotta present it before the estimate all I heard was $50. Must spend $28,000.
Dream Jobs Rock Star To Off Grid
Alright I uh let me end this with uh if you had your ultimate dream to be anything in your life any any job doesn't matter what I don't care if it's uh fucking sex star that comes to people's house and just for a living I would never want to disappoint multiple people on camera. What would it be? I'll go with you first I'm gonna tell you this right now uh if you took my dream job and I think about this often like my level of ambition outshines most people's and that's probably why I've gained at least a little success in a business that's typically unsuccessful uh I wish I would have applied my level of ambition and drive to something that ends a little bit more profitable. Okay can just just just say one thing money management. Like that's the most boring thing I've ever heard yeah but with a level of ambition and I mean okay I I'm not I'm not I'm not trying to I could go for I can go from making hundreds a day to oh yeah tens of thousands a day you're right you you're fucking I would I could be grouber right now I could be I could be Milwaukee's biggest lawyer you fuck with other people's money and not yours yeah use other people's money to make money Chris what would you do farmer like a big scale nope giant nope fucking so you you're okay with the live somewhere where there's no street lights for miles grow 20 acres worth of something have 15 cows I feel like you could do that right now Chris I could 20 I might twenty the proceeds of his HVAC online to the whole to the wholesale business. Yeah my only business is like selling honey on the Sunday markets I barely wear shoes I've got probably 15 kids they all work the farm 14 women you said it's a callback to earlier and go to go just completely off the grid completely off the grid I'd probably be like a cult leader actually where we go off grid we live somewhere way out there and in a little community of 20 and all have children then I have to probably put like a religion on top layer of to get the people to do it with me. So you fuck the internet non internet you'd mean no internet you'd not only do your own uh whatever you said you'd polygamy I think so wait that was Tony that said that you'd have your own city you'd have your own city yeah I'd be like a dictator I mean a mayor all right of a city so we got Tony as a money management Chris as a capitalist I mean hippie and then for me I would be uh I think to be honest I would just I I think I would really want to be a rock star. Because you can do that to the day you would have had to get raped by Diddy though. I mean how fun would that have been you can do that to I it's way harder to get in the limelight with Diddy locked up. But to be honest I don't care about being rich raped did you say you don't care about getting raped you just want to jump on stage I just have all these people screaming I just I just love being the front man of a giant fucking But we did that comedy show and the guy he sweated himself into a puddle well I didn't have a whole band behind me so there was no acoustics to play but you don't have a sound inviting guy snoring so thank you guys for listening this is Mike's story with uh top shelf stories I appreciate for listening every Tuesday and next Tuesday we'll have another one hit us again Jay that was terrible might be better it might be a better story too I like that our music's been going for like 16 minutes also I told you whenever you want to hit that music count to 20 shut up
