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Today we're joined by Dan and Chris of NuDoors and United Finishes. A couple great guys with a great story. Check them out:
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www.unitedfinishes.com
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Greene Street Joinery is a custom design & build shop located in Monmouth County, New Jersey. We build multigenerational furniture with an eco-friendly and sustainable mindset.
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Transcript
Sponsorship and Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
The American Craftsman Podcast is sponsored by Hayfla. Hayfla offers a wide range of products and solutions for the woodworking and furniture making industries. From hinges and drawer slides to connectors and dowels, sandpaper, wood glue, shop parts, and everything in between. Exclusive product lines such as looks LED lighting and Slido door hardware ensure that every project you create is built to last. Learn more at hayfla.com.
00:00:48
Speaker
Alright.
Meet Chris and Dan from New Doors
00:00:50
Speaker
Backing better than ever. Welcome back to the show. Look who we got here in the studio today. It's always hard deciding how to intro guests.
00:01:03
Speaker
So we got the guys from New Doors. Hey, what's up, guys? I'm Chris. This is Dan. We've sort of been priming everybody for this episode over the last couple of weeks. Yeah. You know, ever since you came down, Chris, we.
00:01:19
Speaker
Yeah, we told people that you were coming. So cool. Yeah, everybody's expecting it. I see. Yeah, we listened to the past couple of episodes over the past few days just seeing who was on here recently and whatnot. And after I came here and brought you guys stuff, it was like. And I saw this cool ass room. I feel like I'm on Joe Rogan. He got the whole set up and everything. So.
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's like an office from like Anchorman or something. I got the tweed curtains over there. Yeah. Battling. Yeah. What did Jacqueline call it? I think she called it the sex room or like the porno room. Yeah. Yeah. That was a popular episode.
00:02:02
Speaker
Yeah. So we got a lot to get into. Yeah. For folks that don't know anything about new doors.
Innovation in Cabinet Manufacturing
00:02:10
Speaker
Why don't you, somebody step up and tell us a little bit about it. Yeah. Yeah. So we manufacture replacement cabinet doors. They're made to be painted and they're one piece doors completely routed out. Our shop is fully automated. We could produce orders and have them shipped in typically 48 hours. And we can manufacture thousands of doors a day or we'll just do one door.
00:02:36
Speaker
So whatever your order is, uh, it doesn't matter how big, small we can process it and that they get taken care of no matter what size client you are. So you've been specializing a lot with kitchen cabinet painters that instead of cabinet painting the cabinets, they're replacing them with doors. And then a lot of shops like yourself that are turning out built-ins and they're using our doors now, uh, and able to process them much faster, uh, than, then they typically were able to before.
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah. I was wondering if that was going to get into the audio. And muted my mic. I had to turn that fan off. I could hear it in the headphones. Yeah, no problem. So, yeah.
00:03:20
Speaker
And we got people yelling outside. It's the garbage man. They hit our side of the street at like 5 a.m. and then they don't make it to the other side of the street until late afternoon. I lived off the BQE. Oh, God. Like my apartment touched. Oh, one of those places. Oh, man. That never stops.
00:03:40
Speaker
Like fourth floor, like everyone, especially late at night, like two in the morning, like a Lamborghini driving a hundred miles an hour down it. Yeah. That'll, that'll get you. Yeah. That that's my karma coming back to me now because all that stuff bothers me. And I used to be one of those idiots.
00:03:58
Speaker
I used to think it was funny that I could go down the block setting off car alarms on my bike. The stuff that you would do as a kid and now I'm like, I see exactly what someone was talking about when they were saying that. Yeah, I was a teacher.
00:04:18
Speaker
I was like, all right, calm down. You know, this is nothing comparable. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, please don't do any half of what I was doing. Yeah. Um, yeah. I live on route 36 and the motorcycles are just, you know, in the summertime, you know, light to light. They're just like.
00:04:35
Speaker
I can open it up here and the cars too, but I used to I had a street bike and that's what you do with it. Yeah, that's what it's made like drive as fast as you can open highway as fast as I possibly could go and make it as loud as possible. Yeah. What it what'd you write? I had a jigsaw. Oh, yeah. I was the typical Staten Island, you know, white BMW.
00:05:04
Speaker
I worked at surf club. Oh, did you? Yeah. The Sunday jam. Oh, you kicked me out a couple times. So you were, you guys were jammers. We called, we called you guys jammers. Yeah. That's, we were talking on the way up. You were like.
00:05:18
Speaker
about DJs and all these places. And I'm just like, man, thank God I'm not doing that anymore. I worked at Karma and Seaside too. So you got nothing. You can't say anything to us. You were hanging out in the mix with it at the worst places. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're not there no more. Yeah. You guys crossed paths for sure. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Especially if he was kicking people out. We were definitely. I worked at the restaurant, but
00:05:44
Speaker
One one Sunday, there was like 13 overdoses at the start of Jesus insane, like some one person actually died. Yeah, the Sundays there were just insane. Absolutely insane.
00:05:57
Speaker
That's what New York man, they come down to. Yeah. They get reckless. Yeah. It's like you let out of the zoo and you're just like, just go ballistic and they, we would come down with like get ups. You'd have your hair all down. We were just showing everybody here. It was like a costume. I didn't think of it at the time. Like you were saying before. Oh my God. All the sweat bands and tank tops with the sweat bands and. Lucky that they didn't have everything documented the way they do. Yeah.
00:06:24
Speaker
And it was like, you know, the early and mid 2000s. So it was like, you know, the fashion was looking back. It was so bad. Oh, it was absolutely terrible. He said we were looking at videos on the way here of just like others. We were just talking about this and he's pulling up and it's like, wow.
00:06:40
Speaker
What was I thinking? Let me untag myself from those Facebook posts. I don't even want to say I was friends with those kids. There are also that might be involved with pictures that that happens. Like, oh, you have them with that type of guy? Oh, man. So we're definitely going to digress quite a bit today.
00:06:57
Speaker
We'll just go back to, you know, a little bit of a plug for what's going on here. You know, you got new doors and we can vouch for the quality of the product because like what was that commercial that razor commercial we, you know, not only like the product, but we use the product. Yeah.
00:07:16
Speaker
Yeah, no, we kind of got into it because prior to us just right now we just strictly manufacture doors. We don't do anything else there. We specialized in that and took it to its fullest and are still trying to do so.
00:07:32
Speaker
But prior to getting into this we were making five-piece doors like the rest of the world and once pigmented lacquer. Became a thing which really was kind of like in the recent past five years or so. All the problems of pigmented lacquer on wood started to show especially on cabinet doors.
00:07:50
Speaker
There's expansion between wood that happens no matter what, and it doesn't matter if it's a brand new door, especially if you're refinishing old cabinets, you have those five panel issues plus cleaning and everything else that goes into that side of the business. But even from the carpentry end, it doesn't make sense to use something that moves by nature.
00:08:14
Speaker
While you're trying to make it look like one piece it just like everything about it doesn't make sense and I got sick of it even on my own cabinets. That's the kind of how we like moved into the one piece doors because I built Excuse me my entire kitchen. I came in the next day. It's all maple. I had all in everything was done the right way and
00:08:34
Speaker
some of the frames are moved, some of the doors are racked and cupping in areas. And it's like, I can't keep doing this. There's got to be a better way to do it. Again, when they're stained, that's the only way you can do it. And you don't notice a lot of that movement in the door. But on paint, it's going to crack every single time. Oh, yeah. And I'm sure you guys know it. And on the light colors like white, which is so prevalent. Yeah, we've talked about it a lot how
00:09:02
Speaker
Much more forgiving stain grade work is people think of stain grade work like you know i started out as a finished carpenter and i looked at. Stane grade is this sort of very high and very difficult thing when you start to do you realize no painting is the hard part yeah stay great stuff is easy you can you can get away with so much more.
00:09:22
Speaker
Um, you know, if you're, let's say your joint between your style and rail open up on a painted piece, you could see it from across the room on a stain grade piece. You can't see it. Yeah. And you can fix it too. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say that the touch up is really hard on, on solid things. Cause you, you see it as a stain thing. You could rub a marker into it or some old stain and it usually covers it, but that like the sheen is off the colors off the crack is like not flat anymore. It's like every single thing about it.
00:09:51
Speaker
And it really got amplified when we started refinishing cabinets. It was right before COVID, we started the refinishing business that we were trying to scale. And it really just magnified all the downfalls to painting five piece doors from manufacturing to the amount of pieces that we were doing.
00:10:14
Speaker
4.2 million in leads a year just for a cabinet refinishing. And we just noticed that it's something that you can't scale just because the amount of variables involved with that, where the cabinets clean. What have they been cleaning them with? Are they oak doors, expansion, contraction, bridging?
00:10:41
Speaker
You see even someone that had, there's people that you're not thinking like they have a coffee maker on their island or a candle or all that seeps into the end grain on wood or gets through the finish because this person's been cleaning their house with bleach or whatever on the doors that all wore down and now all this everything in the air seeped in and you're trying to paint over it.
00:11:06
Speaker
And it doesn't matter what you use to isolate it. All you're doing is locking down problems. Yeah. And would always like you were talking before, you see some warping and stuff. It's going to fight back and it wants that out of it. And you made something that's trying to breathe. You're trying to trap it in and it's going to come out of somewhere and nature is likely going to win over your coding. So. And the client doesn't care. All they see is a is a paint job that failed.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah. And that's even when it went good. You know, we're talking with a lot of even cabinet stores now that, you know, sell nationwide to, you know, full sets of cabinets. And they're complaining because the customer, you, the door leaves perfect.
00:11:52
Speaker
And then it moves and it cracks. And now you look like the worst person and there's, there's nothing you can do. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter. Yeah. You, you could have had a climate controlled shop and you spent the time, it glued all of the stuff. Doesn't matter. Yeah. It, it moves. Um, and especially with the practices that happen nowadays with building traditional five piece stores. I know you guys are doing, uh, stuff a little more ornate here and super high end, but those manufacturing of five piece stores.
00:12:22
Speaker
They're putting them in a clamp, they're nailing them, and they take them out. Yeah. That's why they got little pinholes in them. That's because they were rushing. Period. They can't let them sit in there for 24 hours where, you know, you typically would want to do on a traditional glue up, but even with that, again, it would move. So. Yeah. Even if you're just saying too soon, you know.
00:12:46
Speaker
you're gonna end up with valleys in your joints because you sanded this swollen wood, it's swollen with the moisture of the glue, you're gonna sand it down and then you end up with these hollow sections on your door. We do everything. We process all of our lumber, we mill it, oversize, sticker it, go back, re-joint it, re-plane it,
00:13:12
Speaker
it and still i mean nothing's ever really perfect perfect and you still have to cross your fingers sometimes like man. These big doors going to you know have a little ball in the middle of cop we can have to correct something is that and and the big big point what exactly that is.
00:13:32
Speaker
Even if it goes smooth and what people don't think about is the long run of something. Oh, yeah. One of how it's going to hold up there to what I was saying with expansion and contraction, but even the time between, because I know you guys do installs. We've done them our whole life until, you know, obviously we're just manufacturing now. But prior to this living the dream, you guys made it out.
00:13:59
Speaker
That was the greatest moment of my life, not being able to do that anymore, for real. Except we were installing Manhattan, like the worst of the worst. I know you guys know the deal with that, but you know, you were a guy drops a door.
00:14:14
Speaker
or you get there and the door's the wrong size. Think about the time that it takes you to remake one door. You can order from us and a recut comes to you in 24 or 48 hours. Oh yeah, we can attest to that.
00:14:31
Speaker
Well, yeah, we said it on the podcast. You know, I ordered those doors at like 10 a.m. on a Monday. And then you called me at like 8 a.m. Tuesday. You're like, hey, doors are ready. Yeah, thanks, man. We tried to just it's been the hardest thing I've ever done. Honestly, we've owned a lot of different businesses and tons of stuff with this industry in itself, but.
00:14:55
Speaker
Scaling something to be repeated every single time is 10 times harder because once you realize the process is wrong and it could be just in something simple as we were talking before where the wrong sandpaper wrong. We got to get rid of it and we can never do it again in from
Business Systems and Efficiency
00:15:14
Speaker
that exact instant because we need to be teaching people how to do this.
00:15:19
Speaker
That can then turn into automation through machinery and you can understand the automation of machinery you need without knowing the processes and those processes have to be exact every single time no matter what and that's been. Incredibly difficult because you can't just say I'll just fix it this once and get through with it, you know. Yeah.
00:15:41
Speaker
Yes, creating bad habits and bad systems. Yeah, when your whole business is a system, which it should be, you know, any business, no matter what you're doing. But the more, you know, at least we found that out. We've seen like, wow, every single thing is a system. It doesn't matter what it is from how you're writing a number on something to how you make something.
00:16:07
Speaker
So, yeah, me and you guys in here in this has been kind of a little bit of an inspiration for us, too, as far as like trying to adapt and adopt some of these things, you know, as best we can and fit it into our way of thinking and doing. Yeah, I think a lot of people think maybe they're too small to like have systems in place, but it's it's the total opposite. Yeah. They're the most important thing you could put in place. It's like you could have all the skill in the world.
00:16:36
Speaker
But until you create that system and it's not just a system that you work off of you hire somebody. You have something written down to immediately give that person to help explain through the job and it's not going to be that they're just reading a piece of paper and immediately knowing how to do that.
00:16:52
Speaker
But it gives you that same structure every single time, the same framework. And if you deviate from that, that's when you start to see mistakes like we were talking about before. We all learned from the amount of mistakes that we did. You joked and said, well, I made them twice. I'm like, well, that's pretty good because I made the same mistake a lot more than twice.
00:17:12
Speaker
But that's the point of having these systems is to avoid all of the mistakes, to take all of those, condense it, and to put it into a formula that works. That's what we try to do every single day. Our operation is not absolute. It changes every day. If we find something better available, we use it. If there's a better technology, we try it. And we evolve with the rest of the world because you have to.
00:17:38
Speaker
Technology moves so quick now. Manufacturing is moving quick. You just got to keep up with it. It's overwhelming. And you got to be ready. You got to brace yourself for
00:17:50
Speaker
the evolving of it, but it never stops and it's only picking up. We see it every day. That's a great description because a lot of people, especially my age and my age group, they've been doing the same thing for so long. They get rigid and they don't want to change. It's like, I've been doing this for 40 years and it's been working for me.
00:18:14
Speaker
Well, as is. We've all seen people with tremendous skill and it's not just in woodworking or whatever. We've seen it in the restaurant industry. People who have a ton of skill, but they don't have the systems and they're
00:18:31
Speaker
Not. Sorry, I lost my track of thought, my train of thought. They're resistant to change, you know, so they're not willing to adapt to the changing market and changing technology. And and you see people who have all this skill in their one particular thing whose businesses fail for those reasons, not because they don't have skills, because they can't implement good systems in their business and they can't adapt to how things change over time. Like Rob was saying, you can't do it the same for 40 years now because
00:19:01
Speaker
39 years ago, you should have changed it. And then 38 years ago, you should have changed it again. You know, if you're not constantly changing, you're going to fall behind. Change is hard. And it's harder for some people than it is for others. But you have to, you can't be static. It goes against human nature. People don't want to leave their comfort zone. It's just you get used to doing something that's certain way. And that's what you get comfortable with. You got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable to succeed.
00:19:27
Speaker
I've heard it somewhere before. I feel uncomfortable when I start to get too comfortable. I mean, that's good. You could probably see the changes in the shop since you were here a couple of weeks ago. I mean, constantly just trying to think a ways like how can we do this better? How can we do it faster? How can we be more consistent? And when you think it, you have to do it. Not everybody, but I see a lot of people that
00:19:52
Speaker
You know, we have a conversation like this and you highlight things or understand, they learn things and then they don't ever do it. And right now, like Dan was saying before, like.
00:20:04
Speaker
We live in an age now, like as everyone has heard, you know, with technology that this stuff changes every single day and technology is brought into the woodworking business now. It's into the finish. It's into every single aspect of your life and your business, no matter what type of business you own, technology is with it.
00:20:22
Speaker
food, millwork, painting. And if you don't change on a dime, like Dan was saying, where, wow, we see that this doesn't work. Why do you keep using it? You know what? Because your software took you three weeks to learn. Like.
00:20:39
Speaker
Who cares? Dig it and go with the next thing. You're going to sell yourself back three years by sticking with the thing that took three weeks. Yeah. Like the bad draft pick. Yeah. He's our quarterback now. Yeah. And the world moves so fast that, you know, some of this stuff you don't get to choose like.
00:20:57
Speaker
I might not like that, but it's not about what I like or what, you know, what does the world want and what are they doing and how are they thinking and how are they producing? And the world is producing different today than it did last year.
00:21:12
Speaker
Uh, and that's what everything, you know, so anyone who's thinking that they're just sitting back, I think that they're going to keep getting run over and run over because it's not going to stop. No one's going to spend making things easier, more efficient, and you can calculate your losses and understand where now.
00:21:33
Speaker
Am I losing time on this? Am I making time on that? Am I losing money? You know, all these things, like the tools are right there. You just plug it in. It takes a little bit more effort and you get accuracy that you could at least start to calculate your results on. Yeah. That's, that's one thing that, um, I want to emphasize is that you guys aren't just doing something that's efficient and, you know, systematic. The end product is really something good. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. We started backwards.
00:22:03
Speaker
Yeah, we're here to work with the contractors. The contractors are 95% of our business. And we're here to walk the contractors through the process, be it how to finish our doors, how to help create their business, how to help with questions that they have. If you're successful, we're successful, and vice versa.
00:22:30
Speaker
Great philosophy. Yeah, we're trying to make partnerships. Customers are great, but we want partnerships and that's what we're here to do. We're trying to share our knowledge throughout the years of what we've done across a wide variety of things and just help educate because the education never stops and that we constantly look for people
00:23:00
Speaker
uh, above us and skill to get, to get lessons. And we just try to spread and pass them on. Yeah. I mean, you guys came out and spent two hours or more with us this morning, showing us some, uh, tips, tricks, skills and the paint booth in the prep.
00:23:19
Speaker
Area and i value that quite a bit because i didn't start out painting anything you know for ten twelve years i didn't paint a single thing i did all stuff that i just knew how to do you know i work by myself and i thought well i don't have the
00:23:34
Speaker
facility to pay, I'm just going to do all, you know, oil finish because that's something I could do by hand. And, you know, I learned quite a bit today, actually. That's great. It's good to hear. Yeah, we're learning, you know, every single day. Like you never saying before, like, if I'm getting bored, I'm around the wrong people. Because
00:23:57
Speaker
I want to help anyone I can. I'm sharing knowledge with you that one, you guys are doing a lot for me. I love that you guys have the setup and everything. I see your dedication into what you're doing. Why would I not want to help you? I don't want to do this stuff anyway.
00:24:14
Speaker
Why would I just die? Seriously, it's you know, we just want to do this. I've we've been successful. You guys have been successful in the numerous walks of things like to not tell someone how to do something and if I can show them. And like Dan said, any questions like I tell people all the time, you're never, no one's ever bothering me. Like a question I'd rather you ask it than be mad at me afterwards because you didn't.
00:24:38
Speaker
Now you don't know what you're talking about. You're spreading something about something I'm doing that's not correct. I'd rather help you. And again, you know, even with anyone's business, I don't, we don't know everything, but I've done some stuff that I could see someone else getting into that's going to be a problem. And, you know, people are helping us out with that, like nonstop. We've been surrounded by tons of great people that that's all we do is learn and learn and learn.
00:25:05
Speaker
Yeah, you can always pick up something from somebody, whether it's, you know, somebody in the trade and a different trade, just somebody in passing has a little tidbit of knowledge for you. I always used to say when I was working in the restaurant business, you know, keep your ears open because, you know, the dishwasher might have something for you to learn. It's like you're never above anything. It didn't matter what my title was.
00:25:34
Speaker
No you and you're always bumping into people the more that you're open minded and that's like what drives me nuts like. Side note like these groups on facebook there you know everyone's trying to learn and whatnot. People afraid to ask questions because people everyone's pushing them down and whatnot like.
00:25:53
Speaker
Who knows what that guy knows like? Yeah. Or who he is. Right. Who she is. A lot of presumptions going on. Yeah, I met so many people like that I didn't know was going to be anything that turned into years later is like, man, that's that's how you can make it. I mean, it always is that one person and just for credit somebody or one.
00:26:13
Speaker
nuts. I mean we're guilty of being totally naive to certain things and you know some things we know where I'd say we're whatever experts at and then some things that you might think like painting you might think is common knowledge we have no idea yeah um but yeah you can't judge people off of just that one that one thing but it doesn't frighten us off from learning no yeah no
00:26:40
Speaker
Saturday morning, we're both on our computers. And, you know, you'll probably work and I was working, you know, doing light work on the weekends. And Jeff texts me out, there's a paint booth over in East Patterson. Yeah, you know, 10 minutes of like back and forth. Oh, we got to go get it right.
00:27:02
Speaker
He's like, I got somebody. It's pending pickup today, but if it doesn't work out, I'm like, what if I come right now? Yeah. So so he went from, you know, no paint booth or anything like that, like just talking about needing something to just jumping in head first and picked up like a bucket of sheet metal. And then you guys made it happen. You're set up and we're spraying in it like that's legit. Yeah. And that's that's how we started this.
00:27:30
Speaker
The new doors itself, like, you know, I guess officially, um, about, or I guess our whole business, you know, changed. We have another business on the side of this, but, uh, we had all traditional woodworking machinery. Like I said, we were doing these five piece doors and tons of other stuff. Um, me and Dan were sitting drinking a beer.
00:27:52
Speaker
at the shop after work and going over like man every single time someone's slipping with something and you know now that made that piece of wood is that a square like making doors especially like who usually you don't have enough of the same material that you really want to be just like caught in an extra style and rail and you know just like on the side.
00:28:13
Speaker
So you don't or you make one and then something happens as the guy runs it through the joiner. Now it's at a square. So those kind of issues kept happening to us or was going through a table saw and it's like, you know, whatever it is, uh, it's like, why don't we just, uh, sell all this stuff and go automated? That's a crazy story. Yeah. And we sold that week. I swear to you, you could look it up, but everything was gone. It's crazy.
00:28:39
Speaker
You have anything good? We missed out on that auction. We still got a tape. You want a table saw? That's our last view. We have a Powermatic. We're SawStop, guys. Yeah, dude, I don't blame you. It is, we see for us this table saw.
00:28:57
Speaker
What selling all the stuff did is it pushed us into, you know, I'm like we said before, I'm 100% in when I do something. There's no, uh, I'll think about it. I'll like, someone's going to pass you when that happens. Uh, and if I, I believe enough of myself, you know, and we have industry knowledge from a tons of people over the years and.
00:29:17
Speaker
You know where we went for it but a hundred percent we still are and you know branding and expanding with that but the tools. Started to from what we were trying to do turned into a crutch and our table so now that's over selling it.
00:29:33
Speaker
If you're cutting something on the table saw in our shop, it's because you messed something up. And if you made a mistake, yeah, if you made a mistake, we want it fixed now on the computer so that it never happens again. Um, so that's why the table saw is going, uh, outside of that, everything in our shop is completely, uh, pretty much automated to where we could get to a degree.
00:29:54
Speaker
Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about the origin story, how you guys met, you know, and all that kind of thing.
Origin Stories: Chris and Dan's Partnership
00:30:01
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, me and Dan, uh, going back. Yeah. Long time. Yeah. We, we've been in childhood friends since we were around like 10 years old or so. Uh,
00:30:14
Speaker
My mom, when I was around, I think like a junior or so, so 15, 16, I wanted to go to school down in Georgia and my mom said, oh, if you're going to do that, you need at least $10,000. And I'm like, how the hell am I going to get that? Yeah. I wanted to go to school for cooking actually.
00:30:36
Speaker
So. When I don't know how the the intermix of what happened but she was dating a guy that ran a small business and I said. Hey I want to get into something with food try to do a business and he thought I wanted to paint houses for some reason I still to this date on. So he calls me and he's like hey.
00:31:02
Speaker
Cause I was trying to get my ad in the paper, like just, you know, generic, whatever it was. And, um, he's like the guy that you need to answer the extra questions to actually needs his living room and stuff painted. So I'm like, all right, this is what I'm doing. You know, I'm going to try it. I went out even to go on the estimate and I'm like 16. Uh, I went to Home Depot. I didn't even know that there was like paint chip things, you know, like a book of them. So I took every single one that Home Depot had. Yeah.
00:31:30
Speaker
because I wanted to be prepared to show, hey, if you want to pick a color, you know what I mean? I got a shirt, you know, and again, before this, I was like digging. I was always the kid caught in grass and we're out shoveling snow, you know, hustling. And where's those kids going today? But I don't know, dude. I've been talking about that. Yeah. Can't find anybody. So anyway, did that job. It went terrible.
00:31:53
Speaker
I dumped a gallon of paint onto started shaking a gallon of paint. They put the carpet, but they kind of did things reverse. They put brand new carpet down before we went into paint. Oh, yeah. He's sitting there talking to the customer, start shaking the can of paint. The door was standing right there watching me do the whole thing, like black carpet, brand new. The lids off the can and just.
00:32:17
Speaker
all over the carpet. White paint, black carpet. Dan ran to the hardware store. We got it out of the corporate summit. Dude, the daughter watched me do this. And we're in high school, and I know this girl. This is her parents' house, and I'm like...
00:32:32
Speaker
Yeah, boom, whole gallon. So we get it. It just ended up in the subway. I don't know how I don't know how we got it out. Dan Hall dance to the hardware store. And so that was like problem one. I broke some other shit in the house. And then the last finally we get the job done.
00:32:55
Speaker
They let you back in the house after that. No, no, no. This is still going on. I was out. I broke their candles, you know, like just like little stuff. I didn't know that. I thought taupes was like kind of anything. You know, I'm 15, 16. So we put sheets from your bed to cover the floors, painted the ceiling.
00:33:16
Speaker
Whole floor is covered in a little speckles. And the last statement piece as we were leaving that job is, we're putting all the furniture back and Dan's looking at me, I pick up, it was like that typical, it was like an oak coffee table that had the glass. Like Superman over my head smashes all over the floor.
00:33:37
Speaker
I mean, that's what these people get for higher in high school. Yeah, exactly. A hundred percent. We can't make this up. But we go back to learning lessons. Yeah. And we learned a lot from one job. Yes. What not to do. Yeah. So yeah, as as that anyways, fast forward. So we I took the 80 dollars that we made from that job.
00:33:55
Speaker
They paid you. Yeah, they paid me. That was the profit. 80 bucks. It was 80 bucks. I went to Staples. They sold these kits that were make your own magnets for your car. I had a 1994. I couldn't drive actually for a while. Dan would. We had next tells and we would talk. I was still in high school. I graduated early. Yeah.
00:34:15
Speaker
We had a Toyota Tercel, it was like five different colors, homemade magnets. And we took the 85 bucks, put it into the newspaper that that guy that I painted his house showed me how to do. Started, you know, getting some jobs and by the end of high school,
00:34:31
Speaker
We were painting commercial work. I was still in high school. Dam was out. We had like probably like six to eight guys working, painting new construction, commercial new construction, repaints of houses. We were messing stuff up left and right. You know what I mean? By no means were we professionals at all.
00:34:53
Speaker
Everybody you don't have to be good to be busy. Yeah, that's all that it's about is is problem solving and again seeing that there was a problem. What was your customer base back then? So we started with just again local
00:35:15
Speaker
local advertisement in newspapers. Um, so we were getting homeowners, but we were hustlers. Uh, I, we printed out like, you know, our own postcards and stuff. And we would go to commercial places and stick them in the doors where I would see them doing, you know, they're working in the space. Hey, who's doing the, you know, and we got a ton of work from that.
00:35:36
Speaker
Uh, new houses where the builders are, hey, we'll walk in. Yeah. We need a painter. You know what I mean? And that's how it wants to pay. No, no one wants to paint. And, but the thing is now also no one wants to go out and get the jobs.
00:35:48
Speaker
They're there and they were there. I was 15, 16, getting jobs. Like that people today would still be like, how are you getting that? These have evolved by the time we graduated into big projects. You know, painting interiors of houses for 15, 20 grand at 17 years old. Having guys work for us and understanding, it taught us the basis of a lot of things, like just your image, how you carry yourself, you know, how to get work, all of those,
00:36:17
Speaker
you know, basics of things that we just kind of kept carrying on. And as we were going through the years, we did a lot more painting. We got a lot into commercial and we were also added a call carpentry into that and we started building Dunkin Donuts, KFCs, doing all the painting for Wal-Mart, the exteriors and whatnot. Wow. Yeah, we were very heavy into commercial work as well as high end residential. It was a
00:36:46
Speaker
a mix of businesses that right now, I'm like, how the hell did I, why would I ever do that? But at the time, you know, you're trying to get whatever you can. Right, just take the work. Yeah, especially, you know, as anyone knows, when someone dangles that carrot that you've never had before, and it's like, you wanted to get it. And before we were doing this, like social media wasn't all there and whatnot, you know, we didn't even understand how
00:37:11
Speaker
When I got into this, how, how does someone even have a nice work truck? Like people have a work truck and a car. Like how do you even get enough work to do that? You know, that was my thought with it and you just kept, uh, pushing with it. And, uh, anyway, yeah, we, we did tons of residential and, and, uh, high end stuff and whatnot. And as Dan said before.
00:37:35
Speaker
Uh, we started transitioning and our other company did a lot of big commercial work. Uh, and we kind of got into that. I was living on the couch, uh, in our shop. That was, I sold all my stuff. I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. Cause I was, I was mixing residential, commercial, you know what I mean? I was all over the place. So many tools, so stressed out.
00:37:56
Speaker
And it was just like one of those points in my life, like I had been selling all the tools was I can't do this anymore. I sold my stuff. I had no money or anything. I was by no means financially set to do this. Moved, lived on a couch that I got off of Craigslist and they like Roach infested and Cock wrote a rat shop in Brooklyn.
00:38:20
Speaker
And while I was there, just through connections of talking to people and I was just kind of doing whatever, you know, just hanging out all day and odds and ends stuff. But I was kind of like happy for once, not stressed out. And along came this girl that I knew that she said, hey, you know, we need the hallway painted in my office. Do you want to do it? And I'm like, yeah, sure. You know, so we're there painting it.
00:38:48
Speaker
And as we're painting it, I hear someone, her, complaining about the cleaning company saying that they're doing such a bad job. And keep in mind, this is still me on that couch with Dan and like, you know, a bunch of her friends, like, you know, painting this hallway. And I said, listen, can I clean it? He's like, there's no way. This is 10 floors, 100,000 square feet. It's Buzzfeed in Manhattan. Okay.
00:39:18
Speaker
She's like, there's no way. We don't own a company to clean, don't anything. I said, listen, let me just try to put it together and just, you know, let us see. We put an estimate together.
Expanding Opportunities: From Cleaning to Millwork
00:39:30
Speaker
They gave us a shot and we started this company with $2,000 and it just kept evolving from, you know, we got the cleaning contract and then it got us into
00:39:42
Speaker
More millwork from being in there with more clients that we wanted to work with and got heavily into a lot of commercial millwork for all the big brands and their stores and furniture fixtures and whatnot.
00:39:59
Speaker
Once COVID happened, again, we were right before that running into a mix of these commercial people started to want lacquer and painted finishes. But we couldn't fire a painter because it wasn't enough work to do that. There's a lot of laminate and edge banding as you know, you guys know that. So we're like, how do we fill in the void? Like, let's just start painting cabinets. We know how to finish. We've been doing it forever.
00:40:22
Speaker
And that company that Dan told you about just like really skyrocketed went off and but we saw all the pitfalls with refinishing cabinets and That kind of brought us to where we are today Wow, like a real Cinderella story. Yeah, I love the story because All these opportunities that flowed from the hey, I'll clean I'll clean the yeah, yeah
00:40:49
Speaker
office building. I mean, who does that? Who steps up and says, I'll take this job that seemingly, you know, most people would scoff at? Oh, yeah. And I was the one cleaning. Yeah. That's right.
00:41:08
Speaker
Jeff and I take turns cleaning the toilet here. You know, it was clean when you went in there. No, it was. It was the last thing I did last night. And I like the door. I like that the door is a nice quality. I heard you guys talking about. Yeah, the door we built. The old one was, you know, the original to the to the place and it was all delaminated. And, you know, this place was a hovel when we took it.
00:41:33
Speaker
There were homeless people there was a mattress. The roof was all caved in. It had been raining in here. There was, you know, animal and human waste everywhere. There was no electricity.
00:41:49
Speaker
So we come in here with that shop light, and we're just in the dark, playing it around. And probably like you guys, we go, oh yeah, we can make this work. Yeah, exactly. That's what it is. Walking in, you'd never know. Yeah, no, it doesn't look like that. You guys definitely put a ton of work into it.
00:42:10
Speaker
So, you know, we we came in and, you know, we had them. They put it had to put a new roof on the owner of the building, put a new roof on and they took all the garbage out. That was nice. But we came in with the it's like one of those wagner sprayers. And we sprayed the whole thing with like that industrial white. The same thing at that. Yeah.
00:42:37
Speaker
Yeah, that was step number one. No, but exactly. You guys saw it. You know, most people want to. And who doesn't? But everyone wants to start on top. Right. You want the ideal situation. Yeah. Jeff, I was telling him about how we came in here with our little searchlight. And this place was. And Makita Lake. Yeah, it was such a wreck. And we just somehow we look at each other and go, oh, yeah, this will work. Oh, yeah.
00:43:06
Speaker
It was just like raining into the shop at the closing doors. Like, is that rain? Oh, man. It didn't look like it was raining through the window. Yeah. Yeah, sure. I'm all right. I got back to school night. I wanted to I wanted to ask one thing and then I wanted to get into like asking about the machinery and stuff that you guys have. What's like the you shipped to anywhere in the lower 48?
00:43:32
Speaker
Yeah, we've shipped to every state. I don't think we've shipped to Alaska or Hawaii. Yeah, but we will. If there's somebody listening, we'll ship to you. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, yeah, we've been.
00:43:48
Speaker
Yeah, and we got some Puerto Rico. Yeah, there's no there, you know, the barrier to entry for like buying doors online can be kind of hard to get through. And you guys, you know, you could just go on the website, sign up for a account and just order the doors. Yeah, that's the cool thing about is like, yeah, we're located local to you guys. We're in New Jersey, but most of our.
00:44:11
Speaker
Most of our clients are out of state. We have a good client base here. It's just we're dealing with everywhere. How do people find you? Like, not like somebody that's listening. They go, that sounds like someone to check out. Where do they go?
Custom Door Ordering and Customer Feedback
00:44:27
Speaker
newdoors.com, n-u-d-o-o-r-s.com. Cool. And yeah, our site kind of explains a little bit about what we do. And then we have obviously our ordering system that you put the price in, you click what kind of door you want and it gives you, I mean, I'm sorry, you put, click what kind of door you want, put the size in.
00:44:45
Speaker
And it shoots out a price and you can pick your finish and we sell the doors unfinished, primed or painted. And we also, if you get them painted, we sell the paint as well that matches the face frame. So everything is a, you know, one uniform look. That's something I really like about the website is that like, so the job that we got the doors from you guys.
00:45:05
Speaker
I went in when I was bidding the job, I plugged in all the sizes, it spit out a number, I put my markup on it, and it's an easy way to bid the job. When we get the job, I can just go back, you know, make any changes to dimensions if I had to and just order the doors. It's not like, you know, we buy like five-piece doors and stuff from Meridian.
00:45:28
Speaker
Well, I have to fill out a quote form. I have to submit the quote form. I got to wait, you know, 24, 48, 36 hours. It's complicated. Yeah. Yeah. They'll send it back. It's just time consuming. You know, anytime that I can go online and check pricing, it saves so much time. We love that. And people want quotes fast. Yeah. They don't want to wait three, four days. They want everything fast. Yeah. They want you to build custom work fast. It's just like you got to give the client what they want. You got to.
00:45:58
Speaker
you know, adapt to what the customer needs are. And we, we tried to build everything the way that we thought would be the easiest for, for us to use, like, and we take everybody's feedback and put that, put that live. Like if you said, Hey, I, I like what you guys are doing, but this is kind of a pain in the ass. We take that and, you know, we'll change that for you. Like we'll, we'll adapt everything with everybody's input.
00:46:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty cool. One thing I'll say, obviously we've only ordered once from you guys, but something that we like is like, I mean, you deliver the doors so that we can meet and everything, like having a local delivery. Obviously, I don't know if there's a demand for it, but to have the ability to like receive deliveries just via like a truck delivery. Yeah.
00:46:47
Speaker
For us, it saves a lot of time breaking down boxes and unpacking. And even if it was the same price as having it shipped through FedEx or whatever, that's a big value to us. And I think maybe other people as well. Yeah, there's been a mix of
00:47:07
Speaker
I guess how we started even shipping the way that we did because what was happening is your traditional way that most places are shipping doors is via pallet and crate. So most shops don't have a forklift. So now you're having to pay a tailgate service, which is usually around 130, 150 bucks. And now you have to do something with this pallet. You know, the driver doesn't want to lug it too far on that path.
00:47:35
Speaker
They just show up and say, yeah, yeah, you get this offer. I'm driving it back. We had all that stuff. Yeah. I mean, we spent a whole day breaking down pallets and putting them in our dumpster. We had a full dumpster of debris from shipping. That costs a lot of money to get rid of. He's like, you got to take this pallet. He's like, I'm like, oh, it was like a 10 foot.
00:47:58
Speaker
Yeah well that's that's what you know we saw that being a problem when when we were smaller you know doing ordering doors from other people as well as uh that's what we were running into is like a lot of guys aren't working in huge shops they're in their backyard they're in their garage or maybe they don't have a shop at all like these painters and they work out of their house uh
00:48:18
Speaker
How can you take an order like that and really cut down on it because it saves on one thing. Yes. Uh, like you said, unpacking the boxes. You guys are different and closer to us, but, uh, the rest of the country, you know, unpacking the boxes. Uh, also we found that the boxes, we do custom boxes and our boxes are double walled really packed well because shipping in the pallet.
00:48:41
Speaker
your shipping actually goes to multiple points when they take it off a truck. It doesn't just drive to, you know, most people think it's like, oh, it's in the truck. It's like it gets handled more than than regular box. Yeah, it goes to the terminal. Yeah. Yeah. And you think those guys care that we've seen pallets smashed. It's like, how did this, you know, even happen to drives a fork into it? The pallets get so much more damage than the boxes. It's unbelievable.
00:49:06
Speaker
Yeah, we were building three-quarter plywood crates to send stuff, and it's like they would be destroyed. We send someone's doors painted in Volvo boxes. Perfect. No issues. And they were much easier for everyone to handle. You can take 10 boxes here, put them in the corner, in the middle of your work cycle, and it's like, okay, we'll deal with it. The truck shows up with a pallet.
00:49:31
Speaker
Everyone's stopping. Yeah. You know, you're especially if you don't have a forklift, but even if you do, you got to clear everything out. Got to get the forklift out. Yeah. Pull the band out. And store it somewhere now. Get rid of a pallet, which most people don't want. I got piles of them behind our building. I wish they didn't come on. So, but I see your point to where, like we were talking before, like the local sheet good delivery companies and whatnot. Yeah. You're trying to.
00:49:56
Speaker
Get on with it. But yeah, that's that's why we wound up in cord board boxes was trying to save That aspect of it and it's FedEx that you guys ship. Yeah, there's a UPS No, now we now we do FedEx. We were using UPS But we were getting more damage with their stuff. So
00:50:15
Speaker
We've got pretty good fat we've actually got really good fedex drivers here at the old shop. It was the worst if we saw something was coming FedEx. We're like, we're not gonna get this. We bought this little moxie with edge bander. And the first first day was supposed to and we needed it like we needed it bad. We had to get this job, whatever done.
00:50:35
Speaker
It it said it was out for delivery and a lot of these FedEx guys are like independent contractors, I guess. So they just have a truck and it says FedEx, but they whatever their contractors. So it goes out for delivery. Doesn't show up the next day. Same thing goes out. And I think it was I forget. I don't know if it was a Saturday or a holiday or something, but we were literally standing on Rob's porch. Yeah.
00:51:04
Speaker
because it would get delivered to the house. House was in front of the shop. And I get a thing. It's like your package was delivered. I'm like, I'm like, I didn't get any package. And, you know, you know, said it was delivered. It wasn't delivered. And then, yeah, that was the height of sort of what would you call it when they try to be a duplicitous or whatever. Yeah, it got real bad with them. But here they're great. The guy he slips in now, we don't even see him. Yeah. I'm like, dude, you're sneaky.
00:51:32
Speaker
There just be a pile of boxes in the middle of the shop. I can't even hear anybody. I got a thing that one day it's like your Lowe's order was delivered. I bought a bunch of eight inch takeoffs because we're going to switch over to barrels on the dust collectors.
00:51:46
Speaker
I'm like, bullshit, it got delivered. I'm like, we didn't get any delivery and I'm working. And then I turned around and it was sitting there. Yeah. I just never noticed it. I never saw something. This out just holding it in front of you. Yeah, he's good. Yeah, he's funny. He likes the idea too, that he slips in and slips out. Like the guy from Mr. D or something. That is sneaky. But it's funny, like you were just saying, like you're waiting outside for this.
00:52:11
Speaker
That's the one thing that customers never understand. Like, you not only took the job, you're stressing out over finishing the job, but you're waiting outside. Like, that's what you're doing in here. Like, and you're making me feel bad about being late or something. Like, especially in those scenarios. Like, I, what do you want me to do?
00:52:31
Speaker
It's like, listen, I want the job to be done more than anybody. We tell people that all the time, you know, when we were doing all this mailworking, why not? Because they were hounding us. Where is it? Do you think that we won?
00:52:42
Speaker
What was a hundred sheets now turned into cabinetry and whatnot in here? Like because we're waiting on hinges or handles or something crazy thing that you picked out. Yeah. Like I didn't ask you to not pick a stock thing.
Supply Challenges and Production Solutions
00:52:56
Speaker
You knew that this was, you know, when they said four to 12 weeks, you just told your client four weeks for some reason, knowing that it's probably going to be 12. Right. Probably going to be 14. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We just, so we got, uh, got this salon job. We bid it.
00:53:14
Speaker
They verbally okayed and then it was a little while until we got paid. So then I go to order the material to be delivered to our CNC guy. It's this Tafissa melamine pattern. So I call Atlantic. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, we need 34 sheets of Tafissa frostflower to go to parts cutter.
00:53:34
Speaker
Uh, we're only showing 17 sheets and those are in Long Island. And that's like, people don't think about these things. You drug your feet for two weeks. Now there's only 17 sheets. Not my fault.
00:53:48
Speaker
So now we got to change the plan. Either you're going to have to wait three to four weeks for more to come in, or we ended up going all white on the insides. And just using that for the outsides, but then, you know, make some more complicated for our CNC guy. It makes it more comfortable for him. It's just whatever, but makes it more complicated for us. We got to, you know, make sure that everything is in order. You know, we got two different materials and you can't flip things now. And yeah, it makes it all. And plus you had to spend the time figuring out an alternative.
00:54:18
Speaker
Yeah, I called everybody who was a Tafissa dealer and obviously nobody had it but
00:54:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is all the stuff, as you guys know, it goes on behind the scenes. Yeah. That the customers, not only don't they know, they don't care. It's our job to figure it out. That's, you know, as Dan was saying, it's a customer driven business. You know, we're here to make the customer happy. And Jeff and I both come from high end food service backgrounds where that's part of our DNA. You know, it's sort of like,
00:54:54
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And then you grumble in the kitchen, you know? Yeah. You do your grumbling away from the customer. When you're having your shift drink afterwards, you let it all out. Yeah, that's always the, it's always so hard to say no. And everyone always says it's the hardest thing. And it really is like, especially when you're the one that drives you making money. Like, Oh, yeah, man. I like, especially if you're hurting too, you know, it's hard to pass up a job. Yeah, it is.
00:55:24
Speaker
There's there's there's the job that you don't think there's going to be one behind. Yeah. Right. I don't say yes to this one. Is there going to be another? Yeah. Right. Then you end up like we got we had 11 jobs running simultaneously. It's like we should have said no to a couple of these. But you always think that's the last one until the next. Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:43
Speaker
And it always looks that way until like, you know, a couple days before the bank account runs dry. They say, you know, most people quit right before you're about to succeed. And it's true. Like when you live on the edge like that, whether you want to or not, you know, you see that more and more. It's like, wow, damn, that is true. You gotta be uncomfortable to.
00:56:07
Speaker
There were a couple of times we were beating bushes for any kind of job. I mean, we were like, we've got to install this job today because the lease payment tomorrow. We've got to collect final payment. Yeah. Well, we just start making phone calls. Remember someone sell that called, you know, like, you know, get on the phone. Call. Did you call so and so? Did you email so and so? We said we couldn't do it for that price. Yeah.
00:56:35
Speaker
Yeah, it happened to be, it's the 54 days before Labor Day sale that we're about to have over here. But it's true. It makes you, it makes you, you know, think in different ways when you put yourself in that situation, act more aggressive, which in the, in the true nature of any business, you know, you've heard from anybody is you have to be aggressive. You have to be forceful and try to just get whatever you can. And I think like,
00:57:01
Speaker
Right now, you're seeing a huge, I'm sure you see a lot of guys online. I follow all these forums, that's why I was talking about it. But you see the network of what these guys are talking about. And a lot of them are saying that they need work. How do I get work? Because my opinion as to what I think happened is that during when the COVID started happening, you had a lot of guys that
00:57:27
Speaker
saw their boss making a lot of money and that was such an influx of work. So they quit and started their own thing. You have guys that, and know some of those guys knew what they were doing. And then you have guys that didn't know what they were doing. Yeah. And that's, you know, they're, they're out there. But when no one understood that started the business during COVID, especially in this industry, particularly this industry.
00:57:54
Speaker
is you started in a boom and they never understood and were taught the fundamentals of starting something, you know, like what you're saying, like calling people like they don't even, you don't even know what to do. You know what I mean? Like you don't know that you need a business court. You don't know that your phone to ring. Yeah, because they didn't have to store, you know, you just took whatever you learned from somebody else, whether these guys that started and only worked for a month and quit and went to work for somebody.
00:58:24
Speaker
or people that were working there a long time, thought that running a business was easy because they watch them and do it, have some skill. And you're dealing with people with either, you can have, if you have no skill, you have to be able to run a business. And if you have skill, you can make the money, but yeah, to run a business is a different story. And that's where I think there's a mix of guys right now that
00:58:51
Speaker
I see it every day. You know, the guys who are really talented and their hands are gold, you'll always make money. That's such a New York expression. Yeah. From New York. So yeah. So a lot of that after Sandy to say a lot of guys broke out on their own. And then the work dried up, you know, a couple years after Sandy and people went under.
00:59:15
Speaker
Yeah. And the problem now is this was a nationwide, you know, instant thing. And especially in this industry in particular. Painting foremost. It's an easy trade to get into because it's inexpensive. You know, you don't have to invest in huge amounts of equipment and whatnot. And guys became carpenters because all they needed to spend. Oh, I got a saw. I got it. I mean, I got a fucking fucking full of Ryobi tools.
00:59:45
Speaker
Exactly. And now you're seeing people talk nonstop that they're competing with these people and they're gonna because homeowners, 90% of them are looking at price. They're looking at how quick you can do it.
01:00:06
Speaker
That's generally all they care about. There's always going to be money when in that 1% of super high-end jobs, but there's limited staff. And unless you make yourself superior in that, that you can attract the best talent that's still out there to do that.
01:00:25
Speaker
You're now floating between that guy and the people that all don't know how to run a business and are catering to everybody that you now fell a part of. And that's also the same guy that's undercutting you by half your price. So you need to figure out how to be more efficient.
01:00:42
Speaker
Or are you going to go out of business? Period. And that's, that's what, you know, what on our side, even with the doors, what we're seeing with a lot of companies like yourself there, you can produce more and do what you're good at. There's nothing wrong with that. That's, you know, to Dan's point, like we're not in competition with anyone that's doing this stuff. Like.
01:01:02
Speaker
You do good. We do good. You sell more cabinets. We sell more doors. You know, I don't want to make cabinets and you don't want to make doors. It's a happy marriage. Yeah. You know, it's, everyone wants to do, do the stuff themselves and you just have like that pride in you. Um, who doesn't, you know, we, me and you were talking about earlier, it's like, I want to do that, but is it making me money?
01:01:29
Speaker
Right, right. It's, there's certainly satisfaction in knowing that we can still do it. Yeah. And I have some satisfaction knowing, all right, I did that already. Oh, yeah. And you know what, I was lucky because I had a shop behind my house. And I had my wife's medical insurance, everything like that.
01:01:52
Speaker
And I literally did like 10 to 12 jobs a year. That was my whole business You know because each job would take me like, you know six weeks to complete. Yeah
01:02:04
Speaker
And I made a little living at it and, you know, I was going along, but, um, that's, that part of my life is done and the market changed. That's exactly it. That market doesn't exist anymore. Those people are, they're, they're not around. We have a whole new thing. And like we were talking about earlier, you got to change or, you know, they put you out to pasture, sink or swim.
01:02:31
Speaker
And that's why I'm lucky, you know, I got Jeff around because, because, you know, Jeff's he's young. He's really enthusiastic. He's youngish. He's youngish compared to me. Everybody's young, you know, and he's he's more cutting edge. You know, like I couldn't think of all these things to do on my own.
01:02:52
Speaker
No, it's true. Like I said, and there's something every day. Like you guys showed me before, like the tape, like, yeah, we got cool machines and everything, but like this tape thing, you know, that's all I'm looking at. Like, wow, this is sweet. Yeah. For like five bucks. I mean, that's like a, it's a game changer in masking tape. Yeah. But, but there's, think about the guy who is taping stuff all day and not using that.
01:03:15
Speaker
Right. How many times you, you know, cut, pull the piece of tape off, you put it down, then you got to get the edge back up, you know, and it's all ratty. And, and for the crazy people out there like us, you have to deal with that uneven. Yeah. Cause it always rips out like a 60 degree angle. Yeah. Yeah. Just nice and straight. Exactly. But that's what it is. There's so many things like that at every level.
01:03:40
Speaker
It's part of the system. That's why you would like the bear. Did you guys watch the bear? Yeah, I don't get Hulu. I can't. It's and I don't have that FX X or whatever. Well, he you know, they have the role, the tape. He's like there's scissors next to it. He's like, no, no, he's like. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's I do. That wasn't good. He goes in the walk in and the tape is crooked and he's like having like a like a brain aneurysm.
01:04:07
Speaker
Yeah, because we were talking about stuff earlier about how, you know, we draw lines and measure where we're going to put our screws. Yeah. Things that nobody sees. It's just because that's the way we're used to doing it. Yeah. It gives you certain mental sort of this safe feeling. You know what I mean? You feel good about just putting those screws in. Yeah. And you know, if anyone ever sees it, yeah, that there's nothing bad for them to say. Yeah, that's that's.
01:04:37
Speaker
Jeff, you have that phrase, like when we delivered the cabinets over. Oh, perceived value. It adds, you know, screwing on the back of a cabinet. It adds zero value to the cabinet for all the screws to be lined up.
01:04:52
Speaker
But if the homeowner sees that, they automatically think, wow, you know, really, you know, taking their time where you deliver the cabinets and they're all strewn around, doesn't change the value of the cabinets at all. But if they're stacked neatly, the perceived value is more. Oh, that's, that's everything in the service business. Yeah. And when we deliver the cabinets, even though maybe nobody notices
01:05:14
Speaker
You could see all the exposed caucuses and everything's all lined up. All the screws are set. They're all countersunked. There's lines where it shows we laid things out and it's nice. People judge you. No matter if you want to be judged or not.
01:05:34
Speaker
The minute you pull up in front of their house, if you pull up, like that's the minute that someone starts thinking about who you are, what type of business you're running. People think about stuff like that. It's did he pull up and knock on my door and ask if he could pull in the driveway? People love that. You know what I mean? And every step from that, that second you get there, are you all wearing shirts? You know, all of it seems stupid. It's huge.
01:05:59
Speaker
Yeah, there's something that stuck with me. So I wasn't I'm still an EMT by the state of New Jersey standards. I don't practice anymore.
01:06:07
Speaker
But an EMT school, my instructor said, you could have the best EMT in the world. You could have him dressed like a bum, and you could have the worst EMT in the room in the world in a nice press uniform. You show up to an emergency, they're going to pick the guy that looks good every single time. It doesn't matter what your skill level is. Your first impression is, I want that guy. The clean cut.
01:06:32
Speaker
Good presentation, individual. And that stuck with me for 20 years now. I'll never forget that. Yeah, that's true. We know some guys who, you know, they're like, I would never buy a new van. I wouldn't spend money on a wrap. But, you know, I mean, we bought a nice van. We got it wrapped. It's all about.
01:06:53
Speaker
When you pull, like you said, you pull up to the job, they look out the window, they see a nice new van with the branding. It makes a good impression. You could pull up in a 2001 E350 with spray painted windows and you could build the best furniture in the country, but they don't care. They know what I mean.
01:07:14
Speaker
and going back to the kitchen job you know we heard from other people that worked on the on the job how difficult the client was. And they didn't like this didn't like that so we were braced when we had to go back and replace a panel.
01:07:32
Speaker
They were, they loved us. Yeah. They couldn't have been nicer to us. Yeah. It's, it's all, all perception, all, and it's what you also set your standards at, you know, for them to think of you about that. They're going to, they're not going to look at certain things when you can make them look at something else. And when it's like you said, your image is perfect. Like, and you walk into a house that you guys are working in and
01:07:59
Speaker
The minute that the person pulled up, they see, again, a truck. They go inside. There's a tarp down and it was taken, you know, and now the cabins are stacked up. And so they're not now, you already made them believe in you, you know, so they're not nitpicking as much. So that.
01:08:16
Speaker
Yeah, and then they see the cabinets lined up like you said, and it's like all the screws and all this. It looks like someone didn't just go to the nail together and. Yeah. And when something goes wrong, which they inevitably do. Yeah. Instead of thinking, man, Rob and Jeff are some real friggin idiots. I can't believe they screwed this up. You know, they're. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
01:08:37
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was great. We left there looking at each other like, is that the person that everyone describes? Yeah. I believe it. You hear it all the time. And like you were saying, like, it doesn't want to get a new truck.
01:08:51
Speaker
You have a new truck and look at, you know, yeah, we're paying for it. Yeah. I mean, I, I wouldn't say, you know, the secret to a good business is having a nice truck, but it's definitely part of it. Yeah. We talked about it a hundred percent. Yeah. There's a great book, uh, by Tony Mello, a home service millionaire. It's a short book. Like anyone should read that book. Uh, if you're working any type of service business, cause he breaks all that stuff down. The guy's super successful. Uh,
01:09:19
Speaker
and everything he puts in there are like so many things that we practice in our own business along with other things but he pushes that nonstop with the wrap, with the truck and it's so true and I've done that in so many different things like look when you go into a restaurant you know you go into a restaurant and you see a dirty bathroom people just now think
01:09:39
Speaker
It's a dirty, it's a dirty restaurant. You know what I mean? That's like just off of that. Yeah. Yeah. People think about that, that way with everything. We get a lot of compliments on the van from other guys on the job when we show up. Yeah. It looks sweet. It sticks out. It looks nice. I was like the outside of the shop. You know, we didn't, we leased the building. We don't own the building. The paint job was, you know, it wasn't,
01:10:07
Speaker
Totally failing, but it was fine enough. But, you know, we wanted to paint the building so that it looked nice. People drive by when people come to the shop. It's just another one of those things, you know, the better you can present yourself to the client. Yeah, we made the investment to do it. And the neighbors are really great. Everybody that lives around us, they all come by, they stop in. Thank you so much.
01:10:32
Speaker
I mean, just that alone is worth having done it. Yeah. Again, it could be one of those things that you do that the neighbors are happy and who knows who someone knows. I mean, like that's always what you never know. His brother-in-law runs.
01:10:47
Speaker
a hundred percent. And they said it looks more presentable to your customers that are coming here or contractors, whoever it may be. And that says a huge number of things. And we feel more pride. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. You know, just your own intrinsic valuation of the whole thing. You know, when you have nice stuff, you feel good about going to work and doing your job.
01:11:12
Speaker
And your guys, if you, you know, when you have workers, they'll typically take care of your stuff nicely when you have nice stuff. You start off with shitty stuff. Who's going to take care of something shitty? It's just me, you, I'm sure. Yeah, we could tell you stories about places we've worked and it's the same thing. You know, people don't value it. And, you know, even you start to, you know, trying to.
01:11:38
Speaker
sort of teach them the value of what they already have. And I believe that you see that it doesn't work. And so you kind of throw your hands in the air and go, all right, yeah,
Automation in Production
01:11:49
Speaker
whatever. What can I do? Why don't you guys tell us like a little bit about the machines that you're running at the shop, like maybe walk through, you know, an order comes in. How does it go into production? How's it produced? And that's cool.
01:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, we're, we're in the works right now. Oh, we're actually optimizing our space right now to actually take your online order. It goes directly to our machinery and it gets cut right away. So you didn't put your order, a 12 by 24 door input, you order, it goes directly, converts it into a file.
01:12:27
Speaker
sending it to our machine that cuts the doors and then we said it goes from there goes into paint production and we're rolling the jobs out like unfinished and primed within 48 hours. Paint the doors taking a little longer. We're still doing those.
01:12:49
Speaker
for the most part, the old fashioned way. It takes, so our automated spray line can spray 21 doors a minute, which is...
01:13:01
Speaker
Yeah, a lot. The thing is, if you're putting in a small order, we're not we're not juicing that thing up to put, you know, 10 doors in. Yeah. If we're running a full production line, we'll put that in. Otherwise, we're shooting it by hand. Yeah, we run our primer through the flat line, typically. So every day we kind of schedule that prime everything at three o'clock. We're going to fire. Yeah.
01:13:24
Speaker
Yeah cuz they they could do it turn the room on typically around like two o'clock and can do a few hundred doors in like twenty thirty minutes. Give it for the nerds like us give us you know brands and model numbers. Yeah we like that.
01:13:43
Speaker
Yes, so we run on our flat line system is we have a make or flat line with all Kremlin pumps. Our edge banding machine, you know, we do slab doors and veneer and whatnot, but all that stuff is done on home AG edge banders that are all hot air applied.
01:14:02
Speaker
So you can do glue or hot air, which is pretty cool for anyone that doesn't know that you don't see any line in the glue and supply with hot air. Plus it's also allowed in hospitals because no moisture can get between the edge banding and the surface. So does that come in pre-glued or?
01:14:19
Speaker
No, it's so there's there's something in it. Yes, it melts. So the machine melts the plastic onto the board at 1200 degrees and it could process at I think 42 feet a minute. And so it takes the board, it pre-mills it, attaches the edge band, scrapes it, cleans it. It's like ready to go in a box. There's no anything else to do with it afterwards. So it has a glue pot.
01:14:43
Speaker
It pretty much welds the edge band on versus glue when you're dealing with hot air. Two different tapes. We can run regular glue, P-U-R glue, and then hot air.
01:14:58
Speaker
Yeah, we can run regular glue or PUR. We haven't tried the PUR. It would take up too much space in the mini fridge. You're asking for problems. Yeah, apparently it's a lot of... Yeah, I've heard we don't use it at all in our shop because we have the hot air. But I've heard a lot of nightmares with the PUR that if you're the only one using it, you know, that's one thing, but a guy doesn't change it out. And now your whole...
01:15:26
Speaker
system needs to get sent back. Yeah. Oh, geez. Because it dries by air. And you leave it in there, you know, overnight, maybe, but I wouldn't, you know. So you're using the same unglued edge banding for either regular glue or the hot air? No, no, no. Two different, they're two different edge bands.
01:15:47
Speaker
The one that could be glued, you could run your traditional glue. Or PUR. Or PUR. And then there's a different edge band. Excuse me, same colors and whatnot. That gets applied with hot air. So it must have some sort of something on it. There's probably something in it. It's like a patent to technology, honestly. There's one or two companies in the country that are allowed to use it right now.
01:16:12
Speaker
I was not compressing. Yeah, that should mostly get edited out. Yeah, there's there's like two different brands in the country now that really kind of sell it. But that is like you're if you're doing gloss, like, I mean, it looks like you dip this thing in wet paint. There's no glue line. It's like wow. So nice. We got to come down to you guys. Yeah. Yeah. We love you guys. I'll see what's going on.
01:16:38
Speaker
But yeah, that's, that's the edge banders. That's a, that's a home ag. Again, the flat lines make where we have tons of other machines there. Full cell CNCs and again, a full paint store that we have there as well. It sells all the material and yeah.
01:16:56
Speaker
So when the order comes in, when does somebody, when does a person get involved? Not until it's off the machine. So our, the order gets processed, like Dan was saying, everything's completely parametric and pre-coded in our system with your order. So it shoots between a couple of different
01:17:16
Speaker
Software is that we have with internally and shoot straight to the machine machine picks up the board by itself on yeah cuts it takes it off the machine puts it at the person at the end. I'm in one person he said we run a small small crew guys we don't have tons of boys or anything.
01:17:34
Speaker
we're just very efficient. So yeah, no one touches anything, including your order of even, you know, making the designs on it until it comes off the end of the CNC. So there's like a cradle of sorts where the stack of sheets sets in. So you just keep that thing full. Like a jack table. It has suction cups that'll pick your board, put it on a conveyor belt.
01:18:02
Speaker
I can't wait to see this. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty sweet.
Maintaining the Workshop Environment
01:18:06
Speaker
Um, and we just use one type of HDF. So it's an American made product. Uh, so you're getting consistent everything every single time. And we just have, you know, hundreds of sheets of that stuff. That's just sitting next to it. And we just keep feeding that just cuts and cuts and cuts.
01:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, we've seen pictures and the place is looks like as Jeff describes it, a laboratory. Yeah, it's clean. Yeah, we we aim for for clean. Yeah, it's good for the machines, that's for sure. Yeah, it has to be when you're dealing with computerized equipment, electronics, the more dust you have, the worse the environment for the electronics. Anything with computers. It's all ran off computers. So we try and everybody that comes into the shop always says it's
01:18:53
Speaker
a very clean shop. I don't want to say the cleanest places ever been, but yeah, we take a lot of pride in keeping it that way. And it's a lot of work to maintain. I want to know what kind of dust collection you have. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, we mainly saw the CNC. So we have different rooms in the shop, too. So we have a little under 20,000 square feet and it's broken into different categories. We're cutting in one room, finishing one room, packing one room.
01:19:29
Speaker
Blue. Elphab. Elphab, yeah. It has, I don't know the exact model, it has six bags. The largest one you could put indoors. Yeah, 15 horse, I think. The most impressive thing that I think we have at the shop that's like a random thing is the compressor. Is this screw compressor? Yeah, it's a screw air. 60 horsepower, I think.
01:19:51
Speaker
So the main dust collector that we have there is a
01:19:54
Speaker
That's a big boy. Yeah, 50 or 60 horsepower, 250 gallon holding tank, a full dryer, not something that we were intending to buy. Oh, by the way, you need this. Shit. That's like when we got the instrumental, same story here, just like it's smaller on a smaller scale. How much electricity you have down there? We have a thousand amps. Wow. We have 400 and sometimes it's like, man, I wish we had some more.
01:20:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's a crazy amount of electric that we got fortunate with the building that we were in. They actually were producing medical plastic in it. So we have a lot of cool features like the room that we finish in was it cost one point four million dollars to fit out this room. It's a legit clean room. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Sterile to the to the tea.
01:20:44
Speaker
Yeah, we didn't, you know, put the prior customer did that. So the whole room is filtered. It's been in like Pfizer and things like that. It's the same exact thing. That's that's what that's our finish room in there. And that's, again, we keep it as clean as we possibly can. But that's a pretty sweet set up with that. Yeah.
01:21:05
Speaker
Wow. Um, so you have any like small, like what's hooked up to the CNCs? Is that the bell? Yeah. So we have, uh, the bell fab on the, on the big CNC. And then there's a five by 10 in there. That's hooked up to a, um,
01:21:24
Speaker
seven and a half horsepower dust collector. Yeah, I forgot the name of it. All bags style. Yeah, they're all bags. We're looking into, you know, like we were saying before, we're constantly adapting to and that's been our biggest, like, you know, some of these machines, they're huge machines, you know, it takes a lot of money to even move them and whatnot. But we've been moving stuff nonstop trying to get like good
01:21:47
Speaker
situated system because we really do want like an outdoor collection, but I'm glad that we didn't buy one right now because we're constantly moving stuff. Yeah. All the piping is can be costly. Oh, yeah. Time consuming. That's why we still have a hodgepodge because it's like we can't commit to, you know, one set up.
01:22:09
Speaker
Yeah. And every time you move it and, you know, people think that they're, you can just go buy a machine and like, that's it. We learned that lesson too. And the bigger you keep going with it, like, it just gets more complicated, more expensive. Yeah. And it's like, you got to figure it out too. It's not like they come in and say, okay, you need this, this, this, and this. It's just like when the machine gets delivered, it's like,
01:22:35
Speaker
Oh, you don't have this? Yeah, nobody told me. Oh, yeah. Trying to get like the specs and everything, you know, and then, you know, our our edge banners made in Spain. So there was like some translation issues with the dust compressor. It was like, oh, yeah, you need like four CFM, like only four CFM shows up. It's like the thing is just shutting down because we only have seven CFM. It's actually like 17 CFM.
01:23:03
Speaker
That's that's the constant. You learn it as you keep going and yes the bigger the problem is the bigger that you keep going with it at least that we're running into or have run into is. You can ask questions because what you're doing is relative you know I mean like everyone there's someone to ask that question to.
01:23:23
Speaker
The bigger you start going with it, very few manufacturers are talking with anybody, sharing with anybody. There's not a Google or look up or find a video on. It doesn't exist. We ran into that with the compressor. Yeah. We, we got the compressor and then we learned that on startup, it draws like 300 and the first initial switch. So it was shutting the edge band down because it's got all these safeties built into it.
01:23:51
Speaker
So we didn't know what to do. We, you know, we thought maybe a soft start. What was the other VFD? Yeah. VFD. So we couldn't find anybody to tell us what soft start to get. Like nobody wanted to commit to it. We couldn't find anything online and it wasn't like a, just a cheap throwaway thing. Oh yeah.
01:24:12
Speaker
So we decided we'd get one and then it comes and it's got like a little tiny little thing with a schematic on it that doesn't really apply to what you're trying to use it for. Spend half a day over there like touching wires together. You don't break it. There was a big pop at one point.
01:24:33
Speaker
It was the same thing with the paint booth yesterday. Now we've done this a couple of times. So we kind of know, it's like, I think these wires go in here. And Jeff goes, yeah, that makes sense. You hold them all, turn it on. That's what we did. And then it worked. And I was kind of like, I can't believe it worked.
01:24:55
Speaker
Yeah, the same thing happened similarly with the compressor as the booth. It's like, all right, we'll turn it on and turn thing. Nothing. It's like, oh, the breakers off. Yeah. And then it came on and we're like, that works. Yeah, that's the unfortunate thing, like.
01:25:13
Speaker
is now we're too scared to mess around with this stuff. I'm like, oh, man, I'm not I'm not touching that. Yeah, we're at the point where we can't. Oh, style service department must have you guys on a big routine. But we deal with several. Yeah, the department said they're not our buddies at our machine. They're not as helpful as you would think.
01:25:33
Speaker
You gotta get hooked up with RT. Yeah, I know. We know those guys. They've come by the shop a few times, or maybe the old shop. I'm not sure if they've been to the new one, but they've been great guys. The thing is, what we're using and what we're looking after now, we were prior buying random tools, all sorts of different stuff. Like you were saying before, we've got a project, I need this for it. Let's get the thing.
01:25:59
Speaker
We're so specialized in what it is now that it's, you know, we're looking for like. One machine in the world to do these type of things, and it's like stuff that's fully integrated with the other machines. Yeah, that's the amount of time and all this integrating everything into the system, how to create a loop as it is just like you have that home ag edge banding organizer that's like all barcode
01:26:24
Speaker
Yeah, we have the program. Yeah, we have the production assistant, but we have a different type of holder that we just made because that one was ridiculously priced. Yeah, I saw something. I'm like, this seems a little crazy. Yeah, a melamine cabinet with lights. It's kind of nice. But it has this little touchscreen over here. It's rainbow color. You're like, all right, 15 grand.
01:26:51
Speaker
And then you get it and they're just like, man, I can't believe that this is this is all that this was. Yeah. Well, they got to make it up somewhere. Right. Yeah. A hundred percent like movie theater popcorn. Yeah, exactly.
01:27:06
Speaker
But yeah, no, there's just so many different things. Like I was in someone's shop and about dust collectors that I didn't even think about is they have a huge problem in their shop. Like I was saying earlier with the spray booth situation is they turn on the dust collector.
01:27:22
Speaker
One, all your heat and air in the building gets sucked out almost instantly. Flames, so your pilot, which is also a problem with the spray booth, and just suction inside. You don't realize when you put in a system like that and it has that draw and all your machines are hooked up to it,
01:27:45
Speaker
And you're busy and now all the ports are open. Like think about just like a eight inch thing, just all day, sucking all the air out. And like also static, if you haven't grounded, a lot of guys forget that part. You start to build static and.
01:28:01
Speaker
A spread ball. We don't deal with it here. And especially most people in Jersey is spraying solvent and dealing with static. That could. That's a good quick recipe. Oh, instantly. It's like just one little. Spark. Mm hmm. The shop where we used to work, you know, in the wintertime had to crack the front door when they were spraying, you know, to get some makeup there. And the shop was freezing all winter. Yeah, we we have a hard time. Like I said, we have between our Maycor
01:28:31
Speaker
And the handspray booth, as we keep the climate controlled, we have the humidity checked. We have temperature held. It's just as soon as you turn all that equipment on, it's gone. So to do that makeup, it's just constantly, you're constantly running heat, constantly running AC. And it's just working overtime in between your production runs to maintain that that climate.
01:28:56
Speaker
Yeah, especially with paint. That's like the most important thing. I ran into that with an exhaust hood in the kitchen. Somebody, they got this massive hood over their massive range. And I had the specs because, you know, I had to build the cabinetry. I was like,
01:29:14
Speaker
You know, you guys, did you read this thing about the makeup air? So I had to build like a whole row of dummy cabinets to hide this like 10 inch piece of duct work. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually code now that you have to have a certain amount of makeup. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Like I said, even in a restaurant, they'll pull all the that hood. Mm hmm. There goes all your air. And yeah, now and then like in the booth in the winter, I'm sure that guy was sweating his ass off if you have the heat on. Yeah.
01:29:42
Speaker
because it's like 90 degrees in there and it's just like hot air just like from the whole shop getting sucked into you which now also isn't good for the paint you're spraying yeah yeah a bunch of weird weird things that you don't think science yeah science and math yeah and the spray booth you know the spray booth salesman isn't going to tell you this because he knows he just wants to sell the booth yeah dude i don't they don't ever tell you no one has told me
01:30:10
Speaker
us anything to do with this. It doesn't matter what you spend. I was going to say you're buying a six-figure machinery. Yeah, they don't tell you. They want to sell it to you. And again, it's hard to get in touch with people that are going to give you this information.
01:30:30
Speaker
You can go to the shows, you can, you know, did all the same stuff. But when you realize that your edge bander that you just bought, like we had our, we thought ours was going to work, but you got to buy another compressor and the guy didn't tell you.
Learning from Mistakes
01:30:46
Speaker
that compressor is 50 grand. Now what? Like, you know, I forgot to let you know that, you know, it's all the auxiliary equipment to run this thing that needs a certain amount of dust collection and chip collection or whatever you want to call it. You know, you need a vacuum.
01:31:02
Speaker
Might need a transformer to go, you know, from 208 to 440 or whatever. Yeah. Oh, you hear that so many times from guys like that. The electric was never checked. And I've even heard it from the machine guys a ton of times. They're like, oh, this guy bought whatever it is, didn't check anything. And now they're trying to like bring service into the building, which is a pain. Oh, yeah. Especially over here. They're like, yeah, good luck. We'll see in a few years. You know, exactly. That's some list. Yeah.
01:31:31
Speaker
But yeah they never they never give you that information so definitely if you're looking into buying more machines i'm sure you guys can agree. Yeah do some homework and ask people don't be scared to like you got some contacts that you could ask to or whoever because.
01:31:49
Speaker
Right. And no matter how big or small you may be, because it's all going to be relative. Yeah. If you're small, you're going to be looking at, you know, you're going to be in a small place and your machine, you know, you're probably looking to get a bigger machine. And you like when we were in the old shop, we were tapped out. We had to like 100 amps, unplug things to to run things literally. Yeah.
01:32:12
Speaker
Yeah we had the laser running so we're doing that first run of a thousand of those boxes in the old shop. Which was you know eight hundred square feet so like two or three of these offices yeah so we had the laser running. You know that was a ran for two weeks straight ten hour days and then we're running a smoke extractor on that.
01:32:33
Speaker
and compressor compressor ran nonstop because it it's 70 psi air assist on the ceo on the co2 laser so with a seven cfm compressor it literally the compressor ran blow up 10 hours a day god bless that it might have stopped when i was changing over pieces in the laser and that was it
01:32:53
Speaker
That thing still runs to this day. Somebody bought it. He still doesn't pick it up. I mean, a thing runs like a champ. But if we turned on like the table saw, the laser would shut off because it sensed, you know, it wasn't enough voltage.
01:33:07
Speaker
Dude, I've been in the same spot. You know what I mean? But everything is to what you think. You know what I mean? Like, I thought when I bought probably our first table saw, you know, like a regular job site, DeWalt, that like, man, $200. Like, I can't believe I got it. And then I bought my first Festool and I'm like, $700 for this. And then you buy this and you just keep going up. But you don't even realize. I mean, like, look at you guys. You guys started.
01:33:35
Speaker
A few years ago with nothing, now you got nice trucks, but you don't even realize it's happening. You know what I mean? You don't realize that you work yourself, do those things that you did learn like we were saying earlier. Like, you know, you don't, it pops in your head, but it's so much knowledge that you just by trying and doing, and you know, now you could find out this information like so easily. That's what drives me. And that's when people are like, Oh, I didn't know. It's like, did you look?
01:34:02
Speaker
Just go forth a little bit. Pick up your phone and if you just googled it, like I hate to be one to even say that, but you know, how much shit here did you figure out before you could Google it? And now you can. And you're making stupid mistakes that it's like the minute you Google it's like, don't do that. Right. And you're like, man, I've been trying to do that for 15 times and I keep getting the same result. Right.
01:34:27
Speaker
It's not like when I started, we had like yellow pages. Yeah. I had to go to the library and check out a book. Exactly. Figure out how to cut a dovetail. Yeah, it's true. Exactly. And that's what it was, but it made you try and you keep doing it. But yeah, I tell Jeff the story a hundred times, like that's how I learned, you know, from a library book. I cut the joints and then I'm still looking at it like, how does this go?
01:34:55
Speaker
Do we? Destroyed like when we first started getting into the painting, you know, we again had no way to learn like YouTube but there was nothing there to do that with and
01:35:10
Speaker
Started seeing like faux finishes. It was sort of become real popular. So, you know. Yeah. Yeah. There's a guy across the street. Yeah. Especially Staten Island. That's if you don't have Venetian plaster and a fucking lion. I was about to say the lion. Or fountain. The lion and the oversized columns. Going up to the second floor. Yeah. That's that's how you know you made it in Staten Island. You've got a fucking lion.
01:35:40
Speaker
And you got the couch inside with the plastic on it that no one can touch. Oh, God. I'll tell you stories about growing up like that. Forget about it. That's the nice room. We never got to use it. My mother had a runner on the carpet that you had to stay on.
01:35:59
Speaker
Yeah, you don't want to smoosh it down too much just if there's company. That showed you not to take a right turn into that company living room and dining room. It's unbelievable. I mean, the stereotypes are so spot on. Oh, it's 100%.
01:36:20
Speaker
Everyone was doing that at the time. And you know, we didn't know how to do it or anyone to teach us and do that. Me and Dan, my mom was at work and I wanted to try.
Partnerships and Product Support
01:36:31
Speaker
I never did molding or anything before. So I had a bunch of like that five and a quarter inch base. You know what I mean? The fancy stuff at the time. Yeah. Speed base we call it. Yeah. Now it's speed base. At the time, like you were classy, man. You had that in your house. Yeah, exactly. We had something to brag about when I put that down there.
01:36:50
Speaker
But I don't even know what crown molding was. And so that's what I put it upside down. I put it upside down along the ceiling. But listen, that was the best part. That's like an Airbnb move. Oh, the Airbnb part was the fact that again, we don't know what what
01:37:11
Speaker
you know, Venetian plaster, you know, that there's different types of things with things at this point. This is not long after me collecting cards at Home Depot, not even knowing that there's paint chips. And we took concrete and we mixed it with joint contact.
01:37:26
Speaker
She went compound and did my mother's wall like a stucco job. Yeah, we didn't tell her, you know, we took I saw guys taking like the sea sponge. Yeah. And, you know, I didn't know they were using just joint compound at the time. I was like, I must be concrete. You know, so we lost it. It wasn't.
01:37:46
Speaker
My mother comes home and sees that, dude, I can't get like the whole foyer. Not even like in a room that nobody goes on. The whole entrance of the house, going up and down the staircase. Yeah, absolutely terrible. Yeah. Talk about, she still talks about it to this day. She actually, she owns the company with us as well. So we all started it together. But yeah, that was,
01:38:10
Speaker
Definitely a learning curve at that point. What about the finish story? Why don't you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. Yeah. Dan, you see the way on that? Yeah. So we saw, obviously we're making the doors and we saw the need. A lot of people were asking us for matching paint. So we linked up.
01:38:30
Speaker
So we're using Enduro by General Finishes. We're using their 1K, and they're under code in our production line. So that's what we carry in the United Finishes. So United Finishes, we carry all American-made products.
01:38:48
Speaker
General Finishes is one of the oldest paying companies in the country, 95, 96 years old. One of the first in waterborne coatings, the first in waterborne poly in the United States. Excellent company. Yeah, we've been to their facility. Amazing facility. Just like your definition of like the American dream company, like you walk in, it's just like, wow,
01:39:17
Speaker
The employees, the whole operation is fantastic. They had employees there that like have been working there. You know, they're in their sixties now that have been there since they were like teenagers. Yeah. The first employee still works there. That tells you everything you need to know. That was our first, one of our first questions to the owner was like,
01:39:35
Speaker
How did you keep these? And it wasn't just one guy, like their whole business is built off of these employees that are still there. It's like that in itself was a really... You have employees, we don't have any employees, but you know, and we're both from the restaurant industry. The worst of all. Turnover and retraining is so costly.
01:39:59
Speaker
So costly. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. So like I was saying, but just a great company, their product support is unmatched that we've had their knowledge and they're willing to adapt to their customer needs is by far the best we've dealt with. So that's what we have in our line. And that's what we sell. We stand behind the products, everything we sell on on the finish store we use in our production. So we use surf prep.
01:40:28
Speaker
You sell their abrasives and their sanders, big kid blocks. Started out in the auto industry and now they're morphing into the woodworking industry as well. Just another great tool to put into your toolbox. Just for your small details and just your one-off never need, never know if you're going to need type thing, but it's a great thing we use every day.
01:40:51
Speaker
Apollo sprayers, the first HP LP true HP LP sprayer on the market been around since 60s, I believe. Well, the world's fair. Yeah. Dry tech, dry tech. All great companies, the best of the best. It's Union, New Jersey, right? Yeah, they're they're not too far from. I think it is. It's union. They're all they're all pretty close. Yeah. But we run everything. And yeah, that was cool because
01:41:21
Speaker
You have hands-on experience not just like a sales rep coming in. This is how we do it. My hands get dirty doing this. We wanted to be able to walk everybody through the products and not just reading it off a sales sheet. We've seen that.
01:41:43
Speaker
We want to be that resource that if you do have a problem with anything that we sell, we're your point of contact to help you through that problem.
01:41:54
Speaker
knock on wood. Hopefully, nobody ever has problems. But we've been doing this job long enough to know they're going to happen. Problems are part of doing business. That's how you solve them. That's really key. And we want to be that product support through everything that we stand behind. And we only stand behind the best products.
01:42:11
Speaker
we currently use. So it's a little bit about the finished store. We take orders online, ship next day for local, I think 300 miles from our shop. Yeah. It's a real mile radius to, to most, you know, unless you're living like some boondocks somewhere within 300 miles, Delaware, Maryland, New York. Is it the same point of contact at new doors or is it something different? That's a unitedfinishes.com.
01:42:38
Speaker
Okay. United finishes. Yep. And you guys color match to basically what anything any color? Yeah, I mean, we could do custom color matching which
01:42:50
Speaker
We'd rather not, but we can. But we can match any Sherwin Benjamin Moore, Farron Bull, any bear, pretty much any. I got this Valspar HGTV edition. We got that, too. Oh, yeah.
01:43:12
Speaker
We still got Dutch boy. We still got Dutch boy paint chips on the computer. I forgot that was even a company. So did I. So I sort of scrolled through the tint machine. I'm like, oh, shit, they got Dutch boy in here. There's a lot of other there's a small there's a lot of paint companies. Yeah. Way more than you think. Just around the country. What's up?
01:43:39
Speaker
Cippersteins. Did they still make a thing? I don't know. I haven't seen them in a while. Yeah. We have a Cippersteins Ace Hardware. They still make their own paint? They had their own line, right? I don't think so. That's what made me think of it. They had the one on Route 9 for a while.
01:43:54
Speaker
Yeah there was a few of them over here that were all sporadically placed but I haven't seen one in a while. There's more bigger companies are taking everything over. That's it. The way it's going. By the competition. Yeah. And what I like about the Enduro doesn't come in that pretentious European can. Yeah.
01:44:13
Speaker
Yeah, they rebranded. It's modern and clean. Yeah, it's modern, clean. And the biggest thing that we tell everyone is like, it's what obviously works for what you're doing. And what's available to you, you know, to get quickly, which this stuff is. And who has the most stock?
01:44:35
Speaker
Uh, a lot of people don't think about that. And the more that you start growing, that becomes an issue, you know, to what we were talking before, like waiting for stuff. And like, you want to be partnered with people that have stuff now, like, and just for the paint itself, just with them, like they, I forget how many millions of dollars in inventory, but they had like a 30,000 square foot warehouse full of paint.
01:44:55
Speaker
Um, which was huge for us knowing that again, no matter what comes up, you know, we want to be able to say yes. If someone needs 10,000 doors tomorrow, yeah, I could do it. If I don't have enough stuff, I can get it. You know, that's, uh, that's part of the service equation, you know, being able to say yes.
01:45:12
Speaker
Yeah, no, 100%. Like you were saying earlier, you have to pick and choose what's worth more to you. And for me, it's always in service and what's available.
Business Relationships and Philosophies
01:45:25
Speaker
I mean, it's a big part of why we chose to go with RT and the Sahis Edge Band.
01:45:32
Speaker
And you know it's kind of what attracted us to new doors you know you guys you're you coming out the first time. And you know bringing Dan along it just kind of cemented everything we're all about the relationship is what we love about. Hey full. Yeah.
01:45:51
Speaker
I don't want to call an order from some faceless person thousand miles away. You know what I mean? Like, this is how business used to be done. It was a handshake and face to face. And it's, you know, the closer that we can get back to that. I think it's better for everybody. You saw Joe, the driver. Yeah. Yeah. They're all hanging out here. I know. They don't even come in our shop like that. I got a problem with it. This is the way we like to do this. You know, usually Alan, the UPS guy comes in
01:46:21
Speaker
It's just who we are. The last couple of days, the neighbor comes in. How's it going, guys? Oh, it's good. I see you working. I got some extra weed killer. Can I spray around the shop? Yeah. Knock yourself out, please. That's the way it should be.
01:46:38
Speaker
Yeah, this is how it goes around here. No, yeah, it's definitely it's something that's been forgotten about in business. You know, you and now you bump into it. And it's like, like we're saying with general finishes, there's plenty of, you know, excuse me, great brands that serve prep all these companies have been working with have been like, so helpful. So their roots of business or exactly what you're saying, which, you know, attracted us to them. Obviously, tons of customers to put them in the place of where they're at. And yeah, that's like,
01:47:07
Speaker
And bottom line price isn't always the bottom line. I mean, you know, getting what you pay for, so to speak. There's so much more to roll into the cost equation, like they do with cars, like cost of ownership, you know, things like that.
01:47:26
Speaker
Yeah, everyone's, uh, you know, good until something goes wrong. And, you know, that you don't need that. Yeah. And the thing is that something goes wrong. You know, if, especially if you're building relationship with that person that, you know, is maybe kind of shaky, your business is growing. So now that client that you're fucking over is even more important. Uh, and it all started on to just say, you know, not too good of a foundation, I guess. Well, what's cool, like what you guys, you could
01:47:56
Speaker
person with the like mind. You know what I mean? That's what I enjoy about meeting you guys and hearing your story and then being able to do business together and stuff like that.
01:48:07
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I was excited to come here. I told Dan, I'm like, after meeting you guys that day, I'm like, oh, we're going to be able to go hang with him. No problem. Yeah, I was excited. This is my first podcast. Yeah, you guys doing good. Have you been on one or no? Yeah, I was on one other one before. Not like a set up like this, though. This is like a remote where you were. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, this is like I feel like in person, you could see you could talk forever. Oh, yeah. Oh, 100 percent. There'll be topics we don't even touch today.
01:48:39
Speaker
We haven't even crossed the bridge yet
01:48:46
Speaker
comment. Yeah, we went what, three hours and 15 minutes with Cory and Rob? Yeah. I believe it. You could just keep doing stuff like not face to face. Yeah. Like, you know, we're having these meetings with people and whatnot. It's like, it's impossible. It is. At least for me. COVID amplified the Zoom calls. It's just like, I was never comfortable with doing
01:49:09
Speaker
Just like still to this day, I'm not comfortable doing the Zoom calls. It's just like you don't have that real connection with the person over the computer. Yeah. And my wife would tell you, I'm not a real people person. Like I don't like going out to like dinner parties or anything like that. But I get along with people when I can sense, you know, yeah, there's there's this camaraderie. We talk of me and Dan say this all the time. It's like I know we've heard it from other people, but
01:49:38
Speaker
When you start seeing that you're on the same level as other people, like it sounds bad to say. You know what I mean? It sounds bad to say, but like there's certain, you know, tears of where people get in their life. And sometimes like if you want to keep growing, there's nothing wrong with, you know, you have to adapt new people that are more on your level that
01:50:05
Speaker
Again, can help you, you can help them, not at even just in a, like a business sense of things, just like just saying wrong as a personality. You know what I mean? Uh, that's what, that's why I love talking to everybody and just, you know, again, being around people that yeah, like you can tell like you guys are trying to do something. We're trying to do something. Uh, yeah. And not just make money or not a business. It's there's a much bigger picture. Like, I mean, one of the reasons.
01:50:35
Speaker
we don't have any employees outside our office, help Julie, is that, you know, we would, we wouldn't want to bring in somebody on the cheap, so to speak, we want to be able to provide a good job at a good wage. So that that's, that's sort of where we need to be as a company to do that to offer somebody something worth having.
01:51:00
Speaker
And to have a good connection that's that's our like we tell anyone who's ever worked for us.
Balancing Passion with Business Demands
01:51:06
Speaker
My first thing is like I don't care. I truly don't care about even money even I'm just even between us like I'm obsessed with doing this. The money aspect of it really I guess I know we got to pay the bills and I think
01:51:19
Speaker
business minded, but my passion is this business, my drive, everything that I think about to do with this is I'm obsessed with the perfection of doing this. So everything that, you know, we lean towards with that. I'm sorry, I was even lost where I was even going with that. But yeah, I get I get held up because I like it so much. Oh, and hiring is is telling people when they come in, listen, if you could be the best in the world,
01:51:48
Speaker
But if you don't get along with us, oh, yeah, you got to go. You know, that's as simple as that is. You guys are all hanging out here. You need to be able to hang out. Like this is a huge chunk of your life. Yeah. We spend whatever 50 hours a week in the shop. We spend more hours awake together, Jeff and I, than we do with our families. Yeah, same here. I mean, you have to drive. It just is what it is. Yeah.
01:52:14
Speaker
We've worked with people who are miserable. Our old partner was miserable. Yeah. And it just drags everybody down. He used to come in and say stuff like, oh, I hate Monday. Yeah. You know, it's like I said one day, it's like that's kind of offensive. I mean, this is as good as it gets. It's true. Get better than this. Yeah. You know, it's work. Yes, it's hard work.
01:52:40
Speaker
It's not a rose garden on your own business, but it's still as good as it gets. Yeah, and you chose to do it. That's the main thing, is you pick to do this. What are you upset about for you? People forget that. You can do anything you want. And that sounded like a preacher as a kid. You can.
01:53:04
Speaker
Well, if you don't like it, do something else. Right. If you're a tradesman, this is this was the best situation. Yeah. Yeah. You're a partner in a company. You get to come to a picturesque shop. Yeah. You know, heated, air conditioned. That in itself. That was one thing about the little shop. You can feel how hot it is in here right now.
01:53:24
Speaker
The little shop was like the new Yankee workshop. I mean, it really was. If we had, if we were a minuscule little company getting paid, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to build little one-off pieces of furniture, it's the shop. But, you know, that's, as Jeff said, that doesn't really exist in the real world anymore.
01:53:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's hard to, you got to separate, you can include your passion, you just have to figure out how to make money with it. That's a great way to put it. Hit the ceiling, you know? Yeah, we and indeed, we haven't excluded anything. You know, we still do all those things like
01:54:05
Speaker
the stuff we did out in the Hamptons. There were a lot of really nice pieces. You designed those walnut cases and the vanities, all really, really unique stuff. You know, that it takes a craftsperson to build. Of course, the acorn. Yeah, that was cool. Those were the original doors for the
01:54:38
Speaker
together they're an inch too big. I know I think they're an inch too big. It was the tenant. That's right. It was the tenant. So you know exactly what I was talking about before you get there and you're like, Dan, this door, I was putting it together, you know, and like, especially when you're building a big door like that, everything was nice and
01:54:58
Speaker
flat and everything was just working. You know, it was I was really feeling myself and I didn't subtract the length of the tenons. So. Did I say I saw some girl the other day on Instagram doing the same thing? She took some video. I don't know if it was bullshit or not, but she's like takes off the door, like chisels everything. Let your girl put some work in to get this door rehung and goes to shut it. And it's like a 36 inch door and a 32 inch frame.
01:55:34
Speaker
It makes me think of one time I built these big, solid walnut doors.
01:55:45
Speaker
for this place up in Hoboken. Is it Hoboken? Frank Sinatra Drive? Yeah. And they framed out this big opening in a loft to make it the size of a door.
01:56:02
Speaker
And I said, you know, I wouldn't do that. You'd have to have a contractor come and frame out the door and I make the opening and then I would put it in. And I, so these doors were super, super heavy and I arranged to have somebody come and help me hang them and stuff like that. And maybe about two weeks later, the door was, uh,
01:56:23
Speaker
the the jam was giving way so you could see the plaster was cracking a little bit where they had so i said all right get those guys back i i came and i really didn't know exactly what i was doing you know but i had them take the door off and i had this big plane and i i you know i just looked at and i like did a couple of swipes with my hand plane and they're all watching me there's like six guys in a room that
01:56:51
Speaker
Perfectly and I just put my plane in my bag We called it smokomirs in the restaurant
01:57:12
Speaker
You know, you just got to look like, you know, you're done. Yeah. Baffled on the bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my other big door story. I know. Compliment the doors that didn't fit at all. Yeah, that was a big cabinet. Yeah, those are those are pretty solid. Yeah. Yeah.
01:57:32
Speaker
It was a big foyer piece. But it ended up over eight feet tall, right? Yeah, yeah, we actually didn't even use the entire base because they thought it was too imposing. So we only use part of the base. Oh, no, we said it like right down. Yeah, it was just, you know, it had like a five and a half inch bottom rail on the face frame. So much streets.
01:57:54
Speaker
Cause we had like this, you know, added base that was going to jack it up even a little further. Yeah. That was me nuts when that happens. And it's usually that that's the part that I took like time on and it's like, Oh yeah, the base. I can't leave it out if this door has been done for two weeks. And then you get there and they're like, Oh man, nevermind. It was like an add-on too, that we didn't charge for. They're like, what if we put it like on a base? I'm like, Oh yeah. Okay.
01:58:40
Speaker
The floor was so out yeah that it was gonna have to be scribed and we kind of talked about we're like Yeah, you know probably better without the bees
01:58:47
Speaker
And then we didn't have to cut the base molding, the installed base molding. Yeah, because our base was only say four inches and the base molding was seven and a quarter or something. So you'd have like to, you know, you have to cut this chamfer shape and then a straight line into this ornate. It's like, yeah.
01:59:05
Speaker
Well, that's the thing you get from having knowledge with something and which drives me nuts when someone is like going, we'll go against you saying that really like, listen, I know, yes, this is easier for me to do this a hundred percent, but also it's the right, it's the right thing. It's going to save you, you know, from this turning into a serious problem. Let me guide you. Yeah. With my, you know, with our 50 years of experience, let us give you
01:59:32
Speaker
some insight. No, that's what in this industry. It's crazy that people often will tell you what to do. Like you don't go into a kitchen and tell the guy, oh, this is how you make it. No, you ordered this.
01:59:48
Speaker
And that's how you get it. But you do something and especially when they're watching you, like I remember being younger in a lot of these things and like leaving jobs because like, you know, the customer's telling me, Oh, you're doing it wrong. It's like, and they're holding like a Home Depot pamphlet. Yeah. You read three instructions and you're going to tell me that I'm doing this wrong. Like, dude, here you go. Here's the, whatever it is, do it yourself. What'd you call me for?
02:00:10
Speaker
oh yeah yeah that's there's the old joke you know it's uh it's a thousand for me to do this job it's fifteen hundred if you want to watch 100 see if i can pull up this foyer piece i still can't believe those are inch and a half solid cherry yeah
02:00:32
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I was thinking when you show him. I'm like, God damn. That was about 500 board feet just for the cases. Really? Yeah. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's all a quarter. There it is. Yeah.
02:00:48
Speaker
Oh, this is where the one with the. There's a look a little familiar, actually. If you need any doors with acorns cut out, we've been looking to get rid of those. You can build a piece around them. What was the acorns about? It's just the client wanted some acorns cut into it.
3D Printing Innovations
02:01:07
Speaker
Yeah, that was a laser. Yeah, I think it does cut like super crisp. Yeah. Yeah. What's the thickest you could cut on that?
02:01:15
Speaker
We've done three-quarter plywood. Straight through it? Yeah. You have to do, you have to either go really slow or you could do a couple passes. Does it just keep, I'm assuming, laying, layering down? Like you don't have to flip it or anything, right? It'll just keep going. No, yeah, it'll just. Quarter, quarter, whatever. Like if you go five millimeters a second, you can go right through a three-quarter. Oh, wow. Yeah.
02:01:35
Speaker
Yeah, the one one guy at the shop, he has a few 3D printers now. Yeah, we did a bunch of that man. What a cool able to make anything with it. Yeah, we actually were selling these. Actually, are they still in the shop? We invented these glue bottle clips. So you put them on your like bottle of type on. Yeah. So you can clip it to your tool belt or whatever. I don't know why the Internet's being so slow.
02:02:01
Speaker
But yeah, so we. Yeah, it is. Oh, shit. That's a good idea. Yeah. So that's for 16 ounces for the eight ounce. Oh, well. That is convenient. So we sold these all over the world. Yeah. It was like sort of like a flash in the pan. It went crazy for. Oh, look, our polo shirt shipped. Our golf shirts. Yeah.
02:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, it was like a total flash in the pan for a couple of months. It was like I had those printers. I had to run it 24 seven had all these like little box like like those plastic shoeboxes that you can buy with all the orders. You know, orders coming in, orders going out every morning. I was dropping stuff off at the post office. How many things you sold? Thousands, thousands. Wow.
02:02:50
Speaker
I still have a bunch in the basement. I was going to put it up on Amazon and do like some packaging and you know, you know how it is. You got a thousand ideas and there's only 24 hours a day. So I wish that someone could just like on my back, just write down everything I say aloud and comment it somehow. That's a good idea, though. Yeah, I don't know. You guys were even selling stuff on your site like this. Yeah, we had a bunch of other stuff, too. We had you ever use the type on quick and thick? No.
02:03:18
Speaker
It's like a really thick glue. They recently just changed the cap, but it came with this cap that had like a little blade in it and it would go inside of us. The tip was slotted because it was so thick that you needed like a plunger. So that was what started this whole thing, I think. We created like a little collar that goes under the cap and then it had a silicone tether. It was the cap that they sent with it was loose. So you would just lose it immediately.
02:03:45
Speaker
And this actually was tethered to the thing and you can put it in there. Yeah. So then, you know, started coming up with some new ideas and. Oh, wow. Yeah. You still selling what happened to that glue? They still sell it or? Yeah, they change the cap. What do they use it for? It's just like a really fast drying molding sometimes, right? Yeah. And it's thick, you know, so it doesn't run.
02:04:07
Speaker
No, those are good ideas. Yeah, he started the kid at the shop store. His name is Nick. He started selling like all sorts of random with this 3D printer. He seems like he's doing pretty good with it. Yeah. There's there's a market for everything. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we make those soap boxes. Yeah, I can't believe still like how
02:04:28
Speaker
Like I get it, but I don't get it. Like how? I think if they put up 2,500, they'd all sell out. Do you think they're only putting a few just to make it like that? Yeah, like that. Oh, I have to get one. We won't make any more. Oh, you won't do any more? We're kind of the ones that set those, where you set the numbers. I don't blame you. Oh, you guys tell them how many you're willing to do. Yeah. Adam approached us with the project and he's like, yeah. So like, if you guys, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, I think we could probably do like, I don't know, a thousand.
02:04:57
Speaker
So we did a thousand and we're like, okay, we're not doing a thousand again. Like that was too much. We did 500. And then so we got now we got the new laser. So we're like, oh, let's try 650 this time. And how did how long do you think it took? It takes about three weeks probably, right? Yeah. The first the first round took a month. Yeah. Because we're figuring it out as we go. The last one that we did
02:05:26
Speaker
was less than that. Yeah. Maybe three man weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Still, like, I would love to see. There's a video. There's a video on it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The original guys have them like hanging up and stuff. That's what I want to see. All these clothes. I don't know if of ports. I have a picture of that.
02:05:50
Speaker
I probably have one on my phone somewhere. We had wire struggle. Yeah. Crazy. This is the hooks. Oh, this this was a video. This is just like Instagram imported into our website.
02:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, so we're just dunking them into the tongue oil, hanging them out. Was that like one of those things that you thought about after you started to realize that you had to do something with six hundred of these or we pre-planned to hang them up? Jeff plans everything. Yeah, that's good. I'm like, OK, how can we not fuck up this job? I get up in the morning and my coffee go, let's see what Jeff's
02:06:29
Speaker
already been up to for the last hour. Yeah, that's definitely one of those things that I feel most people would have probably have an oversight on.
Event Production and Logistics
02:06:42
Speaker
Wow, this is a lot of ports to do something with, which I found myself
02:06:47
Speaker
I was like this thing that we were supposed to build this 10 foot tall dome. We're like, yeah, we're going to buy a weather balloon. So we're going to paper mache it. Yeah. That's how we're going to do it. And do like spray foam to kind of make it rigid on the inside. We did a lot of events like this that were
02:07:08
Speaker
for Sony and like all these, we did DaBaby, that rapper. He had a big homecoming party. And I just liked that one the most when I was talking about it, but they called us on like Thursday and it had to be in North Carolina on Monday. And this was a 40 foot wide full service saloon that you could go into, signage, everything. And it was a full bar inside. We also had to build
02:07:34
Speaker
a life size house that was a trap house. Trap house. Yeah. To look like that of one of his videos and they were serving food out of it. And it's like and they throw everything out. So you have to think of these wild things like you guys are saying. You got used for a five hour event. Yeah. Put it up. And then as soon as the event ended, it went into a 30 yard dumpster to the trash. It's crazy, isn't it? I mean, I was a caterer in San Francisco.
02:08:05
Speaker
That's a nice area. Yeah, not anymore. Money-wise though. Yeah, this was back in the 90s when things were still really hopping. We did all this high-end stuff and like one Thanksgiving dinner we had full-blown like 20-pound roasted turkeys at every table as part of the garnish.
02:08:27
Speaker
Oh, just as a look. Yeah. You know, decorated and stuff like that. Roasted, fully edible. I mean, and so that at the end of the night, there's like 20, 20 pound turkeys. I couldn't throw those away. I literally went out in the alley and was handing out
02:08:49
Speaker
roasted turkeys to homeless people with a roll of paper towels, like Happy Thanksgiving. They throw everything away, I know. And when we had the cleaning company, like I said, we were doing corporate like that all the time. You bought this just to do this with it. It's just like, nah, we don't want it here. Exactly.
02:09:12
Speaker
food because it's perishable, like there's like, like city harvest and stuff place like that. They have all these rules. Yeah. So I used to bring like clean, you know, garbage bags are clean, you know, on the inside. And I used to use like those banana boxes, you know, those Jeff, they're really sturdy. I used to line them. And I'd make all these like food kits. Yep. On the way back to the shop at
02:09:40
Speaker
I'd be dropping them all, you know, every other block where there would be all these like encampments of people. Because when you have foods like that and you're throwing away, you can come back to your shop and there's like literally two people inside your dumpster trying to find something to eat. Yeah. It changes your perspective on like what you need to be doing in the world.
02:10:02
Speaker
Oh, a hundred percent. And you see that you said the corporate companies like this, they don't give a shit. No, it's paid for. And they're just like, get rid of it. Yeah. We got what we wanted out of it. Get rid of it. And I couldn't bring it back to the shop because there's just not enough refrigerator space. I mean, there are parties going out. Yeah. And you got to get rid of it anyway. Right. Right. So. And now you're stuck with all these chickens and your right hand. So the only way I was to get
02:10:32
Speaker
They see the car coming, they're like, oh, he's here throwing chickens out the side. I was like, you forgot the gravy. It's like food Santa Claus, you know. You get the guy, listen, I appreciate it, but next time you think maybe a loaf of bread would be nice turned off. Believe me, there are those people, you know. Actually, I'm a vegetarian. Oh, yeah. Seriously. Tenderloin of beef again.
02:11:01
Speaker
But yeah, those those types of things been they always these were fun the event things they always have your head like Twisted in ladies. Oh, yeah, I was losing some sleep. I was losing sleep just bidding the job. Yeah The math is funny, right?
02:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, you're done like there's going to be 300 people there at seven o'clock and exactly gone by that time. Yeah, the amount of stress that you have on on those deadlines. Yeah, that's kind of what took us out of that. It was like the excitement of.
02:11:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
02:11:50
Speaker
Doing it was fun and you're getting to build like things like where else would you get to make these flowers? Well for tall flower but like the energy that it would take out of like me like you said you're thinking about this stuff like imagine you got it and now it's like and Also when those deadlines are there like we were talking materials and you committed to saying you could do that You committed to having there by Friday and no one has a weather balloon. Yeah
02:12:20
Speaker
I got one to buy like a polyethylene stock tank to use for the bottom and then it's like I'm looking it's like six weekly time eight weekly time like this isn't gonna work I'm like now we got to build this thing and that's that's why we bought our first CNC because we were doing so many of these events like after we got in with the cleaning and stuff and getting asked for it and we couldn't rely on
02:12:42
Speaker
We didn't need the machine to be like cutting all day. You know what I mean? I haven't figured that part of it out yet. It was just let's just make sure I don't have to rely on somebody else. Because you know getting stuff cut like that from people is unreliable. You get parts cut like from a reputable place. That's all he does.
02:13:03
Speaker
Asking someone to make you, you know, cut out this thing for a 10 foot flower is like, I don't know, man, I'll throw it in when I can. Yeah. They have their own projects going on. Yeah. So we needed to keep consistency just with doing that. And that's how we even got the CNC because yeah, we started getting asked for, and we were, we were doing tons and tons of events for all these brands and the stuff they think of, uh, and they pitched the client with.
02:13:25
Speaker
before asking you. They saw the client on the idea before it's even engineered. Yeah, like design. Yeah, like that's when we work with designers who do that in residential. And they're like, wait, it's how much? They're like, we have to redesign. I'm like, you came up with the design. Yeah, just just call you before. Like, you know, you got this design together. You know, you're going to ask Green Street to bid on it.
02:13:53
Speaker
Hey guys, I got a relationship with you. Can you just, uh, you know, take a look at this? What do you think about it before? And you'll be able to look at it half the time and be like, dude, you're nuts. We can't construct something that way. We would joke all the time. It was like, these companies need a feasibility manager. We'll be the consulting service. Just call us when you come up with these crazy ass ideas and we'll tell you if they're feasible or not. Yeah, it's all feasible. It's just, can you pay for it? Yeah, that's true. And can you get it in that amount of time? They want it in a month.
02:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, and what it could do, you know, they're saying, you know, especially with these event things, it's like, all right, and even work in Manhattan, or you guys know, like,
02:14:32
Speaker
I can do that, but can it fit in the building that way? Mm hmm. Can it stand up? That's all watches. Yeah. Can I deliver it on a truck? Yeah. On the block. Yeah. Yeah. We've we've dealt with that. It's just like, oh, yeah, we have a loading dock. Oh, no, they don't. And now we've got to unload. Yeah. A 26 foot box truck two blocks over around the corner. Yeah. And a firelink. That's like when our edge bander showed up in a box truck. He's like, where's the loading dock? Like there isn't one.
02:15:00
Speaker
14 foot long edge bander in a box truck. Remember the ropes, waiting on the ropes for the wall. Oh, yeah, we did this rope wall in a residential building in Newark. Like so it was like a new wall and then all these ropes with like a little carabiner on a bracket from the wall up to the ceiling. And there was glass between them, like two rows of ropes. 80 ropes. 80? No, 300. Oh. What was it, 150 each side?
02:15:42
Speaker
We were going to have to buy the, you know, the two brackets. It's like a climbing rope from like gym class. You know, was it cut already? Yeah. Yeah. So that was the thing we were going to have to if we bought them, you know, through Amazon or whatever, we had to buy the bracket. We had to buy the rope. We'd have to cut the rope, shrink, wrap it, put it in the thing, drill the hole. So we bought them two length assembled everything direct from Mark Chen at the. Yeah. Did it come out good? Yeah. I mean, the ship make that you just go. Yeah. I hear him go.
02:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was 300 ropes. Yeah, we bought them direct from the manufacturer in China.
02:16:16
Speaker
It was on a boat for like a really long time. You know, they were like, oh, it shipped and they shipped like an empty box via UPS so that they could fulfill their shipping date through Alibaba. That's a little trick. Yeah. So, you know, they showed up and then we ordered all these screw eyes. We still have them. I don't know if you guys need any six inch screw eyes, but we have 900 of them.
02:16:39
Speaker
Oh, no, that's. Yeah. So originally, you never know. Originally, it was like, oh, yeah, 450. So it must have been 225 ropes because each took two. We ordered 450 and they're supposed to be black. So then I get a thing. Oh, you know, the factory actually changed their minimum. The minimum is 900. So I'm like, all right, fine. Give us 900. They show up. It's just raw steel. And he goes, oh, no, no, in China, that's black.
02:17:08
Speaker
I'm like, what? You just misunderstood her own message. So wait, did you have to spray paint them all or something? You did, didn't you? Is it worse than that? No. It turned out. It turned out with the with the length of these screw eyes, you know, we had a fixed distance from the top of the wall to the thing and we put in a piece of black melamine.
02:17:38
Speaker
that they were too big. So then we had to get smaller ones and we couldn't get them in black. So then we had to get them powder coat or no. Did we get these ones? I had to cut each one by hand. Yeah. Cause it could only screw in so far. At least there's only 900 of them. So then we got them powder coated. Oh, we had to order them from Granger. We had to order new ones from Granger, get them powder coated.
02:17:59
Speaker
And then it turned out that I accidentally only ordered half the amount. Yeah, so you had to get more from Granger. And get him powder-coated again. Probs cutting him with bolt cutters. We haven't done any crazy shit.
02:18:15
Speaker
That's one of those lessons that you hope never do again. But I guess you did it a few times in that project. But we made some money on that job. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we had to put a lien on the bill. That's what he was saying. Yeah. He's like, I'm not going anywhere for 15 grand. I'm not going anywhere now. Yeah, certainly not now. That's the thing. They were they were good money, like all those projects. And they usually are. It's just like. Again, you don't.
02:18:43
Speaker
That was some of my favorite Jeff moments though with that job because the guy was slippery. He was a little slippery. So we were like, we usually take 10 and 75 and then collect at the end. And then the guy's like, no way. There's no way. Nobody gets that kind of elevator companies only take 50%.
02:19:04
Speaker
So we split it up, we split up to 75 into two payments. And so the second of the payment, Jeff tells them flat out goes, if you don't have a check there, we take, we turn the truck around and we go straight back home. Just tell them like, right. The guy was like,
02:19:21
Speaker
They're like a scooby shaggy kind of double take on it. And then we waited forever for final. Yeah. And I'm like, listen, I'm like, if we don't have a check by Friday, Monday, I'm calling Essex County. I'm filing a, you know, a notice of unpaid balance. He's like, I'm so disappointed in you. Like you owe us $15,000. Yeah, I'm disappointed. Yeah, that's. Yeah. You got to direct as possible.
02:19:46
Speaker
Turns out we were just one in a line of people who were not paid because we got served. We never actually Essex County never actually discharged the lien. So we got served this stack of papers. I'm like, this is I start flipping through it. I'm like, we're we're listed as a defendant among like 10 other people as a kitchen company was suing the same guy. You know, we were being shown as lien holders on the building. So wow. Did you did you get paid or?
02:20:12
Speaker
Yeah, we had gotten paid already discharged the lead, but it never actually was discharged. Yeah. Yeah. They were like 250 or something like that. It was like, yeah, a quarter million dollars. That's what they say. You know, from a lot of the people that know in the industry of this and the machine companies one, I said a lot of companies, especially commercial.
02:20:34
Speaker
The bigger they start getting, you know, come to your level here at now and up, go bankrupt because of that. Yeah. You go into one of these companies on 90 day terms or 60, 30, whatever it is, or even just like some, like not being firm. Like you just said, you drop the stuff. They don't pay you and that's it. Like, you know, you don't get paid 50 grand. Yeah, exactly. Even if you could, what are you going to sell it to somebody else? Yeah, you're screwed. That's, that's what we started moving into.
02:21:01
Speaker
I think when we were doing it, it was almost like near a 70% deposit, you know, uh, give or take. And then once we started getting through things, you know, more and more, I'm not having you owe me money because you wanted something. Uh, yeah. Like you don't get, especially with custom stuff. I never understood that mentality. Like obviously with our doors, you pay a hundred percent upfront. Uh, you can't walk into target or Walmart, right? Take it off the shelf and tell me you're going to pay me later. You can with a credit card and we take credit cards.
02:21:30
Speaker
So outside of that, why should you sit there and do this and build these beautiful things and then deal with someone? Just hope that you're going to pay our final 15%. We did some work for a developer who we hadn't worked with.
02:21:46
Speaker
And got some sketchy feelings. I'm like, listen, I'm like, first, I'm like, you know what? We're backing out. We're not. We don't want a job. And then the designer called beg this, beg this. I said, we'll do it. 100 percent payment up front.
02:22:03
Speaker
So that's it. They did it. We built. It was just a reception desk. That was, you know, the scope was huge. And then that's all we ended up doing. It sat in the shop for three months. We needed ASAP ASAP ASAP. Three months later. Hey, we're ready for the day. We built it in a week. Yeah. You know, two days. I mean, within the week, they get pissed if you tell them you want to charge them storage. Yeah. I said you got three months of free storage out of us.
02:22:29
Speaker
Yeah that's that's what i try to preach to anyone and we listen we were guilty of it ourselves even still to this day.
02:22:37
Speaker
as much as you could put on paper. Oh, yeah. Prior to you doing anything like listing out those stipulations and being aggressive with like, you know, your your payment structure and whatnot. Like, listen, who's ever not benefited from that? It's good for both sides. Yeah, it helps the customer. There's there's clarity. There's expectations between what you're getting and what you're receiving and vice versa. And
02:23:04
Speaker
It gives you something always to go back on. And again, I'm not saying that we're flawless up. Everybody skips the step every now and again. And we keep trying to, you know, record that and fix it and whatnot. But so many people mess up just on that. Like, you're too scared to ask for your money.
Managing Business Finances
02:23:20
Speaker
Like, yeah, I know guys who are still taking like 40%. Yeah. How? Like, the material costs more than that. How are you? How do you live then?
02:23:29
Speaker
Exactly. And you're robbing Peter to pay Paul. It's the only way. You're spending the other person's money to do the other person's job. And a lot of the a lot of the times, like I've been guilty of that. You know what I mean? When we first started them, what? Not 100 percent. You had no other choice. No. That's also what benefits you being more credible to, though, because, you know, like we're saying before, you guys got the nice truck yet. You look trustworthy. You have a place that people could come to and can complain to. But
02:23:56
Speaker
without doing it that that way and you're like going on the street, you never know what the hell is going to happen. Some person doesn't pay you and now you're out of business because you don't want to write something down or ask someone for your money that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we don't have we we don't start working until we're paid 85 percent. And I could count on one hand the number of people who have had an issue with that. Yeah, literally. Yeah. Yeah, we just have to ask like, yeah, people. That's what we hear all the time. They're like, oh, you get paid up front. It's like, yeah, like what?
02:24:26
Speaker
Why would I do this without doing that? Like the only reason we really do it that way is because we have the installation is like, yeah, I see that. But if you do that as a separate line item and it's, you know, your, your T and M or wherever you break down your install, like listen, that's, that's a separate check. You should have that as a separate line.
02:24:46
Speaker
Yeah, and then a lot of guys I've been talking to they're like do T&M on install. I got sound a lot better. That's what we ran after because also like and with that and you see guys we did T&M on everything when we did all this commercial stuff. You know structure building is a different thing but anything that was install or repair was T&M and I mean T&M to everything.
02:25:11
Speaker
The T&M is not you using your leftover screws on this person's job to help them out. It's buying another box of screws with their money. And you will amass a huge amount. It's very beneficial for a business that's doing that type of stuff because you should be and you start seeing what you should be charging for.
02:25:31
Speaker
No, you will need 500 screws and they do cost a hundred bucks. Like, you just didn't think of that. But now you don't have to. We would just break it down as what we assume this job will take and what we assume the materials to do it will take. Until the field conditions fuck it. Yeah. Yeah. Which they always do. Which is fine though. If that happens. But you're covered for your time. Yeah. It's not my fault that
02:25:55
Speaker
someone hid something behind your wall. Again, you asked me to come here. And this is your building or house or whatever it is. Why the hell should I have to pay to figure it out? Yeah, we're expensive. And you should have checked that before if it was something that mattered to you. Good working, cheap and cheap working. Yeah, where the plumber didn't show up and there was a pipe and now you had to cut the back of the cabinet and put a thing.
02:26:21
Speaker
You know, because we're nice and we're good. It's like, all right, we've done this before. We'll do it again. But two hours go by as you're trying to fit and jam a cabinet in that you got to cut the back and the floor off and the pipes are not in the same line. Supplies in the floor and a drain in the wall. It's like how geometrically, how do you expect us to do this elegantly?
02:26:47
Speaker
Yeah, no. And but the thing is, when you when you are getting paid for it, even you would like to go out differently. You know, you're you're not. Oh, yeah. We're in full panic mode. Like, let's get this fucking shit done. We got work at the shop that we got to go finish. No, exactly.
02:27:06
Speaker
You get really grouchy because you start feeling taken advantage of. You're losing money. You're unprepared usually. Right. Like you were talking about with the table saw. We have a job site saw stop in the van. How cool. And it's great saw, but we always like to say if that comes out, it's because something's wrong. There's a problem. We don't want to have to use that machine. If we do, it's there, but we don't want to have to use it. Yeah.
02:27:35
Speaker
you
Commercial Job Challenges in NYC
02:27:36
Speaker
know that's that's uh i highly recommend the time material whoever says that i don't know what they're thinking not to do it because you always make money you'll never you'll never be able to know what variables you have it's you're always going to lose money trying to guess what it's going to cost you
02:27:51
Speaker
that's what we that's where we are right now we have it julie on that yeah right above just do the lab we're alone and like those you know things that you're using that you're not really thinking about yeah we have a line item for that stuff yeah but the thing is when you're on the at least this is problems that we would run into is that yeah you go on the job you're prepared with your line items yeah that you went to there with and now
02:28:18
Speaker
You don't have TAF cons. You don't have, because they told you it was sheetrock. You gotta buy the bit. Yeah. And you're in Manhattan. There's 200 bucks. Yeah. Oh, forget about that. And you have to go get it. And you gotta go to the store to buy it. It's a half a day. One guy, half a day running around. Dude, we would charge the minute that the truck showed up to the building where someone stepped onto the property of the building. Again, this was all commercial work at this point.
02:28:42
Speaker
The minute we showed up, we clocked in. So if we had to sit with five guys at the service elevator, this guy's an asshole and doesn't want to bring it. I don't care. You're paying for five guys. If you show up and the place isn't ready for what they said it was. Sure. We'll stand here. You know what I mean? And there's a minimum of eight hours to bill out for what it is like.
02:29:04
Speaker
I'm not losing my day. Like you need that money to run your business. Like why should their mess up? Elevators in Manhattan. That's a whole, that's another podcast. Oh man. Like it's, it's whoever is listening, not from over here. It is a hundred percent what you think it is that they show on TV where you got to walk in, pay the guy off. Yeah. Holy cow. It's crazy. And there's, there's a lot of buildings that you could only work. You could only work till coffee break. Then you got to leave the building. Yeah.
02:29:32
Speaker
go back, leave for lunch, just like by the time you get set up, you're working for like a half hour. God forbid you need one of those tiny dumpsters, you know, those little ones. Oh, the carts? Oh, you need a cart? Bang you over the head for the price and just get in it. Yeah. And then the times you can use it and then protect in the floor. Masonite. No one knows anything unless you worked in Manhattan in one of those buildings, because that is...
02:30:00
Speaker
it's crazy and they really like the elevator guys i'm sorry but their job is like how can i stretch this as much as possible to get those guys much i don't know how much they make on this yeah it's crazy oh
02:30:16
Speaker
bottles for Christmas and all. Thanks. Like, thanks for letting me use the elevator that you get paid. Right. It's here for me. Don't know why. I mean, click the button. You know what? Yeah. This is because it's the service elevator. Yeah. Going through the back. It's got the left side. Yeah. We just were running one to get that thing down.
02:30:37
Speaker
I almost, I almost caught my fingers in the, in the doors. Yeah. Oh yeah, that'll get you. Oh, like an old school one. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. I know the New York elevator racket. It's, it's, it's, I mean, just some of those buildings, what a, it's bringing stuff into them. Like you would assume some of these buildings like are huge. Yeah. Oh, they must have a big elevator. 30, 40 story buildings. Yeah. No.
02:31:06
Speaker
Yeah, with the closet and like and a guy's that's the other part is it's a tiny elevator and the guy has to ride with Guy has to ride with you and he's sitting in a chair We were just the last jobs we did that it was this exact situation and the guy dude he fell asleep while we were we're staying in the elevator we
02:31:32
Speaker
standing there and he's sleeping and we're like, yo, bro. Oh, man. Sorry. I fell asleep. You guys just got here? No, we've been waiting for a couple minutes. But you can't say anything because I'm like, if I pissed this guy off at the first thing in the night, like, I'm not getting anything else up or down this building. That's the other thing. When you got to do the night, you got to do
02:31:53
Speaker
all the shutdowns at night. Everything's at night. That's like also you just... Yeah, commercial everything is at night. The residential stuff, you have to have the short days. Yeah, two completely different types of customers and everything to do with it. And people used to wonder why everything cost a fortune of money.
02:32:16
Speaker
Oh, there's there's no cheap way. We when we go into the city, we already know we're spending 200 on a ticket like that's. You got a parking ticket. Yeah. So you got to plan for that. Yeah. Even if you find a spot, you know, it's 150 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. Because you got to if even if you find a spot now, you got to keep sending a guy down. That's more expensive to pay the meter. Yeah. Than it is to just take the ticket.
02:32:41
Speaker
What cracks me up is like, if you pay for four hours, which is like a four hour maximum or whatever, it's like, it costs more than paying hour by hour. They're like, we know it's convenient for you, so we're gonna charge you more. And the worst is when you, I couldn't tell you how many times, this is why we started taking the tickets is, you pay it, you pay it, and then you forget. Then you get the ticket. Then you get the ticket. It's like, I just paid $45 in meters. And I just got the ticket. You got the ticket.
02:33:10
Speaker
get you from from both ends there. Oh man. This is some of that stuff that's only funny now. It's not funny then. It's so aggravating. So so frustrating that whole entire process. Just the thought of going into the city and working there especially at night like you said on commercial
02:33:35
Speaker
You gotta think like all your resources, like even though it's Manhattan. Everything's closed. Everything's closed. Like there is, there's always that hardware store, you know, whatever. I mean, now they have Home Depot's and stuff. Back then they didn't have them. Yeah, they got a Home Depot, but you think you're, you're downtown and you got to go to Midtown to go to Manhattan. Like, yeah, it's only a mile away, but it takes forever. Yeah. You can't move the truck. I'm not losing my spot. You know, so I used to have a skateboard and I used to go around, go around on my skateboard to try to cut time out because it was, uh,
02:34:05
Speaker
having to do that stuff. Yeah I mean the city stuff like I had it on in San Francisco too but the whole thing about parking and not losing your spot yeah it's it's it's hysterical because if you've like I've been living out here for 20 something years and one of the things I value most is going home at night and pulling into my driveway oh hell
02:34:34
Speaker
You can't comprehend the anguish of like having a vehicle in the city. Dude, I had a, when I was still living in Brooklyn, I had a 14 foot box truck. Oh shit. That was my like driver. When I sold all my stuff, I had my truck and I had this living on this couch. And it was like, I remember specifically, it was Thanksgiving Eve, trying to find the spot. That's the biggest drinking night of the year. Oh, I had to sleep in my truck.
02:35:03
Speaker
Because you can't leave it. They'll tow it out of the, you know, then might, and to get a truck out of, uh, you know, the pound is like crazy. So yeah, you're sleeping in the truck, like trying to make sure that I don't get towed and I can't. So you got the alternate side. And I mean, I remember nights coming home because you don't want to move, but sometimes you have to.
02:35:28
Speaker
And you do the circle, you know, the ever widening circle in your place. And it's like, all right, come on. I'll take it. I'll take one on union. I'll just give me a spot on you and then you'll have your wine. All right. I'll take I'll take a spot on Berkeley. Give me Berkeley. Just give me a spot. All right. I'll take a spot where I have to move it at 6 a.m. Just give me a spot. I'll just take a camp to my house after I park wherever it is. It's fine.
02:35:58
Speaker
going for two hours. Oh, yeah. Looking for a spot. I've had I had to sleep in the truck like there's plenty. Yeah, you can't go into a spot or you find a spot. And yeah, it's a place that you have to move in the morning. Yeah, it's like now you're fucking exhausted because I've been driving around all night trying to find a spot. And I got to get up in four hours to move the car.
02:36:21
Speaker
so long, you're starting to get the early morning people that pull out. Oh yeah, you see people starting to go to work and now you're like, wow, man, that is fun for now. Should I just drive back to work now?
02:36:36
Speaker
Oh, God. That's a certain kind of misery. Yeah. Oh, it drives you crazy, man. Now living in Jersey and going back, I'm like. And I live here. Yeah, dude. Just the anxiety. Like, have you ever driven
Contact Information and Customer Service
02:36:51
Speaker
a truck, like a box truck in Manhattan? Yeah. Sure. Through it or whatnot. Like, you're just like panicking.
02:36:57
Speaker
like low overpasses look like in the streets are so narrow people running in front of you like yelling at you for like I can't say what you want me to do you know scream wanted to fight you double parking now you can't get the truck down the street you ended up on
02:37:13
Speaker
Well, I hate to do this, but. Should probably start. Yeah. I gotta get to back to school in an hour and a half. All right. My guys. Yeah. Well, let's, uh, let's cap it off and remind everybody who you are and where they can reach you.
02:37:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We're, uh, new doors at N U D O O R S dot com or we're on social media at the same thing at new doors. And our finishing company, uh, supply company is United finishes.com. That's U N I T E D finishes.com. And the same thing at social media as well at United finishes.
02:37:51
Speaker
Yeah, so you can go check out the website. You can plug in your dimensions and pick your door style and, you know, and get live pricing, which is cool. Yeah. And seriously, guys, call us with if you have any questions. I don't care if you're ordering one door or you need 10,000. We will help you with whatever it is. And no question is stupid. We've probably been asked it five times that day as well. So let us know.
02:38:14
Speaker
That's the alarm going on. Yeah, the pricing. I'll say the pricing is really good. You know, when we place the order, I'm like, yeah, this is great. Yeah, it does make more sense for you to get more than typically buy them. So and like we're friends now, but we didn't know you guys had them and we ordered like 10 doors and they were here the next day. Yeah. Yeah.
Conclusion and Next Episode Preview
02:38:37
Speaker
No, we again, we try to.
02:38:40
Speaker
pride ourselves and build our business around, again, being efficient and treating everybody. You know, I don't know that your one door could turn into 100,000 doors down the road. You never know who we're going to bump into that needs 10,000 doors. That's the way it goes. That is the way it goes. So I know I appreciate you having us here. And we obviously, as I told you before, we would love for you guys to come down. Oh, we're going to do a vehicle video for the YouTube channel. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
02:39:11
Speaker
All right, guys. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week. Next week is I guess season finale. Yeah. Episode 52. 52. Cool. All right. Thanks, guys. As always, Rob and I, thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next week. If you want to help support the podcast, you can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Again, we appreciate your support. Thanks for tuning in.
02:39:53
Speaker
been a change.