Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
100 Years of Häfele with Ed Cohen
4 Plays1 year ago
This week we sit down with our friend, and regional director of Hafele America, Ed Cohen. Listen in to learn a little more about Hafele and what makes Ed tick.
Check Out Our Sponsor!
Visit Häfele at www.hafele.com
Support us on Patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/Greene_st_joinery
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.
Inspired and guided by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, we believe in the use of traditional craftsmanship and simple, well-proportioned forms; sustainability and ethical practices; and importantly, taking pleasure in our work as craftsmen to create quality pieces of enduring value.
Follow us!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greene_st_joinery
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greenestreetjoinery
Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-american-craftsman-podcast/donations
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome back. Hey back to the show.
00:00:27
Speaker
Let's do this real quick. There's probably never been a more appropriate advertisement for a podcast. That's right. We want to thank our sponsor, 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 courts, 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.
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah. And they're back online. They are. We are. So we're joined today by Ed Cohen. So is it Northeast director of Hayful America? Is that? It's, um, yeah, it's like, you know, the New York mid-Atlantic region director sales.
00:01:14
Speaker
So I'm up and down the Eastern coast, I guess from, you know, central Virginia up through Albany, New York. Wow. That's a big territory. Yeah. It's kind of funny. 26 years ago, they, they asked me to manage from central Virginia up through Maine.
00:01:31
Speaker
And over the years, it just kind of changes. I think we had seven sales reps back then, and now we probably have about 40 in that same area. Wow. Just the strata of people between that region, you know, Virginia, all the way up to upstate New York. And the business diversification, right? Anything from, you know, a two-man cabinet shop up to a, you know, 5,000-man cabinet shop.
00:01:59
Speaker
all kinds of industries. Wow. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. So we never really plan like what we're going to talk about. So I don't know if maybe you want to, I mean, cause we've talked about it, but we're, we're laymen. Maybe tell everyone a little bit about Hayflow, what exactly the company does, the history a little bit.
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's great. Thanks for asking. I always like to talk about Hayful as my family, if you will.
Hayfla's Family Legacy
00:02:27
Speaker
So we're getting ready to celebrate our 100th anniversary. We started in Southern Germany, just outside the Black Forest. And literally, you know, Mr. Hayful, who started, was producing screws. And he had a bicycle that would tow a wagon. And as far as he could pedal, it was sort of his territory region.
00:02:46
Speaker
He got to the point where he bought this little store fixture and he hired an employee to kind of work in the store and add on some little hinges and some little things. And it just kind of evolved from there. And it's kind of interesting because he had two nephews working for him.
00:03:02
Speaker
And he passed away at a young age. So his nephew took over the business and he had a couple of sons. And as he grew and it started becoming international, one of the sons came here 50 years ago, we're getting ready to celebrate our 50th anniversary and opened up Hayful America. So he opened up Hayful United States, Mexico, and Canada, and just built on it from there. So we're ready to celebrate our 50th anniversary in September. And we're about a $2 billion company.
00:03:32
Speaker
And we're still family owned. At the end of the day, it's a few cousins that own it. They're extremely committed to the business and just keep putting everything back into it for a long-term growth. So it's great to work for a family business. And as you mentioned earlier, we distribute product, but we also manufacture our own product. So Lux is LED lighting and we do really the best
00:03:55
Speaker
LED lighting out there for cabinetry. And not architectural lighting, but for cabinetry, we really do the best with it. It's our own house brand. And we kind of joked that in a few years from now, people are going to think of Hayfla. Well, they're going to know Hayfla as a lighting company that also sells some hardware.
00:04:14
Speaker
That's like the ultimate bootstrap story, you know, like it is making screws and selling them on a bike to You know now a two billion dollar. I mean a hundred years. It's not a long time. No, that's
00:04:27
Speaker
It's like a lot of those, like Macy's or something like that, you know, RH Macy, it was a guy and he started selling little things, had one little shop. And then the next generation was able to take it to the next level. And the next generation is able to take it to the next level, but they're very modest. So for an example, you know, my big boss, Mrs. Hayful, is she drives a Toyota Prius.
00:04:53
Speaker
The worldwide director for Haefel in Germany assisted our corporate office. The number one, it was a woman, right? It was the initial cousin's daughter. She drives a smart car. No, sorry, Mini Cooper. She drives a Mini Cooper. I mean, really, it's a $2 billion company. And they just don't look at material things as important. What they really think about is building the business. And if you need a new machine to do something,
00:05:23
Speaker
spend the money in the machine, invest in it. If you need a new high rise distribution center, it has a great business model, but just to spend things on frivolous things, it's just against their culture. They're in a region in Germany called Schwabie. So the Schwabie, which they're kind of known for, maybe a little even brag about being cheap, but wise with their money. Frugal. Frugal. But again, they'll easily reinvest in the business and they have.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah. From what I understand, it's really more of a European type of model compared to the US where the first thing that would happen is it would go public. Absolutely. And then you're beholden to the shareholders every quarter. And that's where the focus of the business goes instead of long-term health and growth.
00:06:12
Speaker
That's
Innovation and Market Adaptation
00:06:13
Speaker
exactly right. They're all about long-term growth sustainability, you know, the next generation and leaving it better. Yeah. It's instead of on four months or three months cycles, it's crazy. If you're a CEO, a publicly traded company, you are really judged by the quarter.
00:06:33
Speaker
Um, and here, you know, it could be 10 years. Yeah. I mean, even here, when we have a transition of president, you know, um, either at the international level or even in, in the U S level, it's, it's common to have the new president sit in with the current president for a year and to go through a smooth transition. Like how I got rid of that echo. Yeah. I was trying to figure out, you know, we have all these faders here, but there's like virtual faders too. I couldn't figure out that. It's some kind of, I don't know what it is.
00:07:03
Speaker
That was brutal. Yeah. It's amazing. It's, it's again, it's like you're talking about like the bootstrap story. It's like somebody starting with a fruit caught, you know, pulled by a horse and they're, you know, turn into Safeway or yeah. Yeah. I look at so many old pictures, you know, and it's just like really like even, you know, they were really legitimately, we're making screws like almost like one at a time and just, you know,
00:07:30
Speaker
Did they cast screws? You know, it's a good question. I don't know how they were doing it. You know, 100 years ago, I guess it was all, I think it was wire, maybe. I don't know. And of course, production has changed. And, you know, one of the big things for us was, as you picture it with Ikea furniture, where the assembly's with a cam and a bolt, you know, long bolt. And that was our original design. So we had the original patent on that long cam and bolt and really made, you know, RTA ready to assemble furniture big.
00:07:59
Speaker
So back in the late 80s and early 90s, there was a lot of RTA furniture people go and buy an entertainment center or a bookcase and put it together. And that's not really done so much today. But back then in the 80s and 90s, that was a big, big business for us. Oh yeah. I've looked at like a lot of the connectors you guys have. Some of them are really cool. I don't know what it's called, but it has like a red end on it. And we call it our red connector.
00:08:29
Speaker
Ray fixer. Oh yeah. Ray fixer. So Ray fixes is, is really cool. And what made Ray fix so successful is assembly and closets because the other cat connector I was talking about, which is mini fix has a long bolt. So you have to come from the outside and push it in. You need this with, well, with a Ray fix, you can just drop it straight down. So if you're in a tight closet and you just want to push it in and come straight down,
00:08:54
Speaker
or if you're working within a bar, some kind of fixed wall situation, Rayfix is an ideal situation for that. Yeah, so all you LaMela Zado P2. Hafel does sell that, but it's not the only game in town. Actually, it's on that mug. Everybody's using that thing like crazy now. It's the hottest. My issue is everyone uses it for these situations where it's like,
00:09:21
Speaker
You know, it's like you could have just put a screw in it, but they're like, yeah, I got this new tool. Yeah. So for me, the coolest thing is I'll go to a training class, you know, we'll go over, we'll talk about new products and we'll be learning from it, you know? And then when you go out into the field and you work with your creative Kathy makers, like you guys are,
00:09:40
Speaker
And then you come back a few weeks later, you're like, look what we did with it. And it's like something completely different that you would never learn in class, but it's like you learn so much from your customers and from their creativity.
Ed Cohen's Motorcycle Adventures
00:09:50
Speaker
It's probably one of the funnest parts about it.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's like anything. You want to have as many arrows in your quiver as possible. And then when you get, particularly us, we do all these jobs where there's always this weird condition. It's like, well, it's got to go around this angled wall, whatever. So the more options that you build over the years and with connectors and tools, and it just makes every job a little bit easier.
00:10:19
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. And I think that's the reason why you get a lot of work that you get because you don't get the easy stuff. You get the hard stuff, right? You guys are the ones that have to sit back and think it through and engineer it out and saying, you know, instead of passing on it, you're going to say, no, we can come up with a solution for that. Yeah. Yeah. We used to work for a guy who would say design on the fly.
00:10:38
Speaker
which we don't really design on the fly, but a lot of like the engineering, which I'm kind of using the term liberally, but, um, a lot of it's on the fly. It's like, we sell the job and we then we got to figure it out. Yeah. You can only plan so much. Otherwise nothing gets started. You got to get started, right? Then you dig into it, you know?
00:11:00
Speaker
Yes, even those three little jobs I was looking at the other morning for this designer and she wants a false
00:11:10
Speaker
panel on that desk so that they could create sort of like a chase for the wires to drop where your legs go. Yeah. Yeah. Except they want it removable. I'm like, well, yeah, we could do that. But I just want you to understand, you know, cause they always preaching budget, budget, budget. I'm like, we'll do that. No problem. But you're making it more complicated. Yes. You're making this complicated. You know, we're going to have to charge you to figure this out and to make it so that
00:11:40
Speaker
You know the client can take it on and off easily, you know, we could take it on and off but we want to make it so Yeah, I mean anybody could just like put a piece of quarter-inch with velcro on the back Yeah But they always have that wish list. Yeah, yeah and The champagne taste on a beer budget. Yeah. Yeah story of my life
00:12:09
Speaker
So, Ed, you're also an avid motorcyclist. Yeah, that's my passion. I have a couple of passions and that's really been one that I started about five years ago. I used to think that my ideal vacation was sitting on the beach and about 10 o'clock in the morning, getting a picture of Mojito's and just having my feet in the water. And then I had an opportunity to explore the national parks. You know, you're going out to Yellowstone and you look at all the wildlife and the bison and then
00:12:36
Speaker
camping by stream and looking at the big sky and just building a fire with your buddies and just, you know, taking a deep breath and appreciate how beautiful the country really is. And the people you get to meet along the way. And it's really been a growing passion for me. Yeah. And you take these rides solo. So for the most part, I got a really good friend in Florida.
00:12:59
Speaker
And he and I, we hook up and he was an ex customer, you know, and he was in the closet industry. And so he lives in Florida and I'm here in Jersey. So we keep our bikes on the road and we park in either out of dealership to get some service or we'll put it in self storage unit. But when we're in some, you know, far away place and people stop to talk to us, cause they see the motorcycles and they see them with the camping gear on and everything. And then all of a sudden at some point they glance at the license plates. Right.
00:13:27
Speaker
Florida, New Jersey, like tell me the story on that, you know? And it's like, yeah, we're, we're just touring the country one week at a time. There you go. You know, we're working, we're busy. We got, you know, active lives. We can't take off for four months. Like we wish we could, but we could chip away at it one week at a time. For the most part in the winter, we stay down South, you know, and then in the summer we'll go up North and I'm looking forward to going to, you know, blazer national park. This is the summer of Montana.
00:13:55
Speaker
Would you say your vacations are destination based?
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, so what we do is, you know, we've been looking at, you know, the national parks. We really want to try to hit a lot of the national parks. And so in the very, very beginning, when I got my motorcycle license, I was talking to my buddy, Bill, then in Florida, and he told me that, you know, he got this motorcycle, it's an adventure bike, and he goes camping often, and I should try it. I said, that sounds great. So what he did was I flew out to Washington State, out to Seattle, and we did a quick ride in the Pacific Northwest, and I rented a motorcycle.
00:14:28
Speaker
And then I came back and I said, you know, it's not just a motorcycle trip. It's a camping trip because the camping gear and how you pack and load on the bike and explore that is just as important. And then so since then, you know, I got my own, you know, adventure motorcycle and, you know, we're going. And then I realized it's not just the motorcycle trip. It's not just a camping trip. It's an adventure.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah. So you taking the whole experience. So if we get a chance to break off and, and go hiking through death Valley or, or, you know, do a little, you know, whitewater raft that are just to visit, you know, walk through some abandoned town, whatever that whole time away is, it's really some kind of unique experience, some kind of adventure. And I, and I really think meeting people along the way or just one of the cool parts about it as well. That's cool.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah. I know when I rode cross country, one of the things I did map wise was avoid all the biggest roads I could. Like I didn't take any interstates and you're looking for the single lane twistiest
00:15:32
Speaker
So there's a company that produces maps called Butler, Butler maps. And I literally have a map of all the states. It's a big pack. And on there, they'll show the different recommended trails and they kind of like rate them. So you could really sit there
00:15:47
Speaker
and kind of figure out where you want to go. And one of the things I'll do is I'll take some masking tape and I'll just write on it and put it on my sleeve. So that's what I'm writing. I know what routes I got to take. Otherwise I forget that I'm not that good with, you know, for some reason, my cell phone, when I try to put the routes in, it doesn't really stick or carry over. It always wants to reroute it a different way. So I'll just write it on masking tape and put it on my, on my sleeve. So I was like, okay, I know what's going on now. Yeah.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah. And then you're not, you don't feel like you're tied to your phone the whole time. You know, you're out there trying to experience everything that's gone by. And then, and then my buddy Bill, he doesn't like to have too much of a set plan, right? So kind of the adventure part is, you know, if we feel like going left, we're going left. We feel like going right. We're going right. We feel like stopping or going or whatever, you know, Hey, this is like a good place to camp tonight. Let's camp and, or let's, let's go on, you know?
00:16:37
Speaker
Yeah. Sometimes you got to go with your feelings, especially if you're in the seat or in the saddle, you know, for a certain number of hours, sometimes there's things you just can't predict. Like sometimes, you know, we're, we're out in Colorado in this huge valley and the wind is blowing so hard and you're fighting this wind. You don't have to fight the wind, you know, leaning for an hour. You're like, that's pretty exhausting, you know? And then, so there's some, some things you can't
00:17:03
Speaker
you know, consider taking pre-plan it and other things you just go. You just want to ride, you know, stays late, light up. So laid out there. You just want to just keep on going. And all of a sudden you realize, man, it's close to eight o'clock. Oh yeah.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, the spontaneity is not something that, you know, is a huge part of most people's day-to-day life. You know, it's very, you know, you deal with a ton of people, I'm sure. It's like, you're always putting out fires. There's always, it's the, I read this book, they call it the tyranny of the urgent. There's always something that you have to address. It's like, there's no time to do anything spontaneous. It's like, our plates are all full, you know?
00:17:44
Speaker
Right? No, we always talk about it, you know, even in our day, you know, because there's so much going on. There's so many balls to juggle. And there's one thing that we can't change. There's one thing that's a fact. It's 24 hours in a day. There's seven days in a week. There's 365 days in a year. So what we choose to decide in that day or that particular moment is really important. So we always sit there and say, what's the most important thing I need to do at this particular moment? It's not the busy stuff. It's the important stuff. And then you look at it from the next year. If I don't do it now,
00:18:14
Speaker
It may not be missed, but it's gonna be missed soon. So I better do it as soon as possible because if it's not urgent now, it will be urgent later. And maybe as we approach tax season, some of us might be saying, hey, it's time to get our taxes in.
00:18:30
Speaker
Yeah. So what kind of bike is your ride? Yeah. So it's great. I ride two bikes. So at home, which I call it my East coast bike, but it's my smaller bike. I ride a Triumph tiger 800. It's just this older, cool little bike. It just fits me like a, you know, an old pair of jeans. And I just really like it, you know, and, um, um, you know, I get a chance to take it out for a few days at a time.
00:18:54
Speaker
And then the new bike is a BMW GS 1250. So it's a bigger bike. It's a heavier bike, but it's certainly an adventure bike. And then what's cool is so my buddy Bill has the same exact bike in Florida. And then I have four friends from Minnesota and they all have GS 1200 or 1250. It's pretty much all the same bikes, you know? And I took a picture. We're in this town in Wyoming. I mean, a nothing town. It wasn't even a gas station, but they had a gas pump. It only worked on one side.
00:19:23
Speaker
So we had to line up, right? So I took this picture of these five, you know, kind of expensive BMW motorcycles just waiting in a town that let's just say had better days. Yeah. What color is your beam? Yeah. So it's black. It's a triple black. They call it a triple black. So it's, it's, it's, it's kind of cool.
00:19:42
Speaker
I had a sort of, I don't remember what they called it. It was that golden yellow color. Yeah. Well that's right. Now they have that's back. They have their, their anniversary edition, which is black and they have like, you know, gold, you know, I guess bark busters or, you know, and they also have some gold, gold trim on it. You know, and it's pretty cool as my, my buddy has. Yeah. I had hard, you have hard bags on the beam. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gives me support when I fall, you know, they kind of
00:20:08
Speaker
you know, lay down, lay down the hearts. I got some gap between my feet and legs in the bike, you know, you know, I've been hitting some soft gravel and it's, it's always a little fishy over there, you know? Yeah. You forget. It's like a 500 pound plus motorcycle. I mean, if you go too slow, you're going to fall. If you go too fast, you're going to fall and you know, so you kind of just get a feel for it. And then just as you're feeling good and you drift off for a second, that front wheel wants to take off on you. Yeah.
00:20:34
Speaker
We did this great little ride. There was six of us and we're going down a two lane highway, right? One lane in each direction. We peeled off that one lane and we rode 26 miles on a dirt gravel road to get to our campsite. And out there, what do you call it? When, when the cattle are free range, they're not, you know, they're just like wandering around, you know, we're crossing this road and there's guys, cattles, you know, running around and there's all these different obstacles and you know, there's no guards on the roads. You know, you're just, it doesn't go it, you know?
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah. Um, now this is, I had a bike 20 years ago now and I think, um, unless I'm misremembering, it had ABS. Yeah. So this was a long time ago and I was a bike with ABS. Yeah. Yeah. They have all the bells and whistles. Let's just say, yeah. So now on my BMW, I have six different riding modes. Yeah.
00:21:26
Speaker
I have six different riding modes. So it can be in Doro. It can be, you know, a rain, right? It can be road, you know, it could be, you know, performance and, and Doro notes, which we'll put in, but not only that, but my, my heated hand grips and my heated seat have five different temperatures set. It's five different. So all of a sudden you're like, man, I'm cooking. I got to turn this down. But it's not necessarily evenly heated, you know,
00:21:53
Speaker
you know, the heated grips were a big thing. And then just having the outlet on there for, you know, plugging in a vest or something like that. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And that, that is the big thing, which I haven't invested in yet is the, um, I guess it's like the airbag vests. You know, so, you know, if you fall off the bike, you'll kind of, you know,
00:22:11
Speaker
You know, I've seen, um, little, uh, not videos, but I don't know. It's a stuff on social media. I've seen it where somebody, you know, falls and then it's kind of like a life jacket, you know, exactly. So, so I was just, I was riding, you know, the past couple of days in Pennsylvania, I had the opportunity to work.
00:22:30
Speaker
and ride my bike, which is like, you know, my two passions, right? And in Pennsylvania, you don't have to wear your helmet, you know, and I don't need to get to if that's the right thing or wrong thing. But I'm like, it's just from my own personal belief, I like to protect myself. Yeah. Right. You know, I think, you know, I got a brain that's worth protecting someone to wear a helmet. And then, you know, I'm thinking about getting a vest.
00:22:50
Speaker
I'm in Pennsylvania. Guys, they're wearing like tank top T-shirts. There's no helmet. And in one sense, it's beautiful. They got the wind in their face and they're enjoying the moment, right? But I'm always afraid of that moment when you're least expecting it. Listen, I never went out without my proper gear. I have full face helmet, glasses, gloves, boots, a riding jacket and weather permitting.
00:23:20
Speaker
Um, these, uh, leather overalls, uh, you know, sort of like a one piece kind of suit. Yeah. Um, I agree. I mean, I joke around, you know, when I was whatever eight or nine years old and I'm, and I'm riding my cool bicycle with the banana seat, you know, and the, and the sissy bar or whatever. And then all of a sudden you hit your brakes and you, and you fall on the pavement and you scrape your knee and your elbow and you're all bleeding. You're kind of banged up, you know, wow, that's an ouch. And I can still remember
00:23:48
Speaker
you know, 50 years later, right? Could you just imagine going 50 miles an hour on a 600 pound bike? Yeah, I have a score still from I was a kid and you know, like when I skidded out down a hill and like scrape my arm and it was like,
00:24:02
Speaker
You know, you get that the gravel in there. Yeah. It's like a green like film on top of it after a couple of days. So just imagine your, your, your, your face kissing the street. Yeah. I mean, if you have kids or, you know, if you have, if you have anybody that cares about you, you should probably be wearing a helmet. Yeah.
00:24:22
Speaker
At the very least, it's pretty irresponsible. I mean, that's my take on it. When I was 13, I was in a motorcycle accident. Helmet saved my life. So maybe that color is my judgment. Freedom of choice and everything. I'm a big proponent of it, but I don't trust the other drivers on the road. That's the problem. I mean, I'm perfectly comfortable with my own abilities, but it's
00:24:50
Speaker
I'm not thinking I'm going to be in a one cycle accident. You know, that's not what's going to do me in. And people are more distracted today than ever. Oh, you know, they talk about their cell phones and everything else. And it's just a low, you know, you want to just know what they're just simply distracted, you know, and it's just.
00:25:10
Speaker
You know, I'm always afraid of, you know, when I'm at a red light, I'm always looking in my rear view mirror, whoever's approaching me, you know, always have it in first gear at my foot, ready to go if I need to, the exit plan, you know. And then when I'm riding on the highway, I'm always thinking that person swears, what's my exit plan? How do I handle it? That's the thing about riding a bike. You're always got to be like three steps ahead. You got to know everybody. Jeff kind of drives like that, too, even in the vehicle. He's really good, but got no choice.
00:25:36
Speaker
That's, that's the way a biker thinks, you know, you're looking at everybody on the road and what they could possibly do. But your mom was just, yeah, she was driving like 40 on 33 and got rear ended by some old man. He was doing like 80 miles an hour while she was doing 40. She was moving totals her car. And the guy just plowed in from behind her. That's crazy.
00:26:01
Speaker
33 is not exactly the interstate. I mean, it's a busy road, but it's, but it's, yeah, it's like, uh, it's not even as busy as like 35. You know, there's no, there's no median or anything. Two lanes. Yeah. I guess he was distracted or I guess he was in a rush. He was like all discombobulated afterwards. No, no insurance documents in the car. You know, imagine being on a bike.
00:26:24
Speaker
Yeah, you're dead. Yeah, I've seen a couple videos lately of You know people just like changing lanes into a biker or I saw one it looked like it was out west
00:26:36
Speaker
These two guys are our motors. It's one guy riding a motorcycle and then the camera is the guy behind him. He's got a guest on his helmet or something. And they go around a bend and a car just comes screaming around the corner like some sports car or something and just hits the guy. The guy does a flip, lands on the roof. It was like, man.
00:26:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And it's every day, every day there's a close call every day to the situation. Even today I came up with the parkway to merge onto route 36 and there's another lane that comes in there and the lady just didn't merge at all. She goes right into my lane and I looked at her and she looks at me like I'm crazy. Like I'm the bad guy. I should have like moved out of her way. You know, you know, yeah. So people are distracted and that's certainly an aggressive and aggressive.
00:27:24
Speaker
At least living out in California, I don't know if it's just the attitude or the more number of bikes on the road, but people had more of a courtesy for bikes.
00:27:38
Speaker
It was more of a bike culture. Maybe, you know, maybe, but I think generally speaking, um, people in New Jersey are pretty aggressive with their driving. You know, I have, you know, you know, friends and colleagues that come in from out of state. They're like, man, you guys are like pretty intense out here. You know, there's nobody, you know, guys, like I was trying to exit and I had my blinker up, but nobody's giving me a chance to come in. They're like speed it up. So, so they can't cut, I can't cut them off, you know? And it's like, please, I just want to get over.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah. The other thing I noticed right off when I got here too, was the bikers here. It's a lot of like, you know, stop like to stop like racing kind of thing, you know. There's not, I mean, where I came from, there's a lot of riding, you know, you're looking for twisties. And when you're in traffic and everything like that, you're showing a certain amount of judgment and
00:28:35
Speaker
you know, even if your lane splitting or whatever, there's a certain amount of courtesy where here, there, I feel like people trying to be obnoxious. I'm not going to let this guy get in front of me. I'm not going to like let them split the lane in front of me. And, and it just like what you're saying, even just today, I had a Tesla who wanted to race me off the red light, you know, as it turned green. And I'm like, I'm hitting the gas because the bike will normally just accelerate much faster. And this guy had to make a point that, you know, he could keep up with me. I'm like, you win.
00:29:04
Speaker
You know, I'm not in this race, you know, I have nothing to prove. I just want to have fun. That happened to me yesterday. I don't know if, I don't know if, were you behind me yesterday? We were like a forerunner or something. He gets into like the turn lane at a light to like race me.
00:29:23
Speaker
I'm like, what the hell's going on? I noticed that's another big trend. You're all in that right lane, which is, which is really, it's an exit for like a jug handle or a jug handle. And they go through the, and they speed through it. It's like, where are you going? The next flight's only quarter mile down a road and it's going to turn red all time. Regardless of what you're doing, you're just racing to hit your brakes. I guess I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting older. I'm just getting chilled, you know? Yeah. It's not a bad thing.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah, I guess, you know, but it's funny because coming to work in the morning, you know, where the old shop was. That's where I live. I get out onto 35, 36 and there's two lights and they're timed, you know, so I know exactly. And the same people that are, you know,
00:30:12
Speaker
on the road with me. They're commuters every day. So they know, but from one light to the next, probably 10 people pass me. I ride in the right hand lane. I time the light, go straight through, never have to touch my break. 10 people will pass me on the left side and I have to stop. And I passed.
00:30:31
Speaker
You always want to just wave to him, you know, nobody here in the right lane where we're going. No stress. No stress over here. So I get on the 36 at main street Belford. I go down Leonardville. I bang a right onto main street and then I make a left onto 36. I know that if I don't go 65 or faster, I'm going to hit the line. You know, six o'clock, the more here's the way on the road anyway.
00:30:58
Speaker
Yeah. Cause you're taking the left. So I'll get through and then I look at my rear view mirror and it like just turns yellow. Yeah. Let's that commuter bus pulls out in front of that Academy computer bus. They're, they're the worst. They're the most aggressive. Yeah. They're, they're a big turn lane cause they get into that lane to pick people up and drop people off. And then they just, they just go for it.
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah. I guess, you know, they, they get disgusted, you know, having to drive all day every day. And that's one thing when you're driving professionally too. I'll give you a little bit of leeway. No, you're. Yeah. But I think some of those guys from at least in the old days, some of those guys would have a gig where they would have a regular job in the city. Let's say they were building superintendent. They did get a ride where they could drive the bus in.
00:31:39
Speaker
like to fill it up, work and it drive the bus out. Um, so they're only just doing one loop and that's just like a part-time job in addition to the regular. That's a gig. Yeah. It's a gig and you know, pays for their commute and they make a few extra dollars and I guess it was pretty good for them. Yeah. It's like, man, I was going to drive anyway. Yeah. I had to go into the city anyway. I might as well get paid for it and my days a little bit longer, but everybody seems like needs a side hustle these days. Got free parking. Yeah.
00:32:06
Speaker
maybe benefits. I don't know. Yeah. The side that's, that's a good way to put it. Side hustle. We call that a second job where I come from.
00:32:16
Speaker
Second job seems like a lot of work. I got a side hustle. I got this thing going on. You know, I know a guy who knows a guy and he's helped me out. That's hip, man. I had a side hustle. Yeah. Now the big side hustle thing is like, you know, like woodworking or whatever. But typically on those kinds of side hustles, nobody's making any money. They're undercutting the real world. It's just supplementing a hobby. It takes the fun out of doing a job that does it. Yeah. Not making any money.
00:32:47
Speaker
I don't know. It might be the opposite. There's a lot of people who like, you know, they're like, Oh man, you guys live in the life. You get to do woodworking as a job. It's like try doing it as a job. You'll see how much you really don't like woodworking.
00:33:00
Speaker
Because it's a job. I mean, all jobs are a job. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got deadlines and you have budgets, right? And then you have all these other outside factors. And then, you know, as you were talking about before, there's the unknown. Yeah. And you don't really know all the facts until you get deep into the job. And then it's like,
00:33:19
Speaker
Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you get unlucky. You know, sometimes your supplier goes down for a month and a half. Are you able to talk about that at all? Yeah, I mean, sure. I mean, we mentioned, you know, sort of. That's interesting, really. I mean, it's and it's very topical to any industry, really. It's it's still pretty emotional, tell you the truth, because
00:33:41
Speaker
You know, and I kind of joked around, I was at the kitchen and bath show in Las Vegas, which is a very, very ended January, maybe February 1st.
Ransomware Attack Experience
00:33:50
Speaker
And I'm on really like an all time high, right? You know, we came off the pandemic and we're like, you know, we're breaking through this and business is going great. And I had some really good projects fall in place. And it just seems like everything was going right. And I just know from experience that when everything is going right,
00:34:06
Speaker
hit the back of the head with a two by four. You don't know when you don't know where you don't know what it looks like. And all of a sudden somebody says, man, we got, you know, ransomware, you know, they, they, they hijacked this, you know, I'm like, really? And then sure enough they did. And you know, we were, we were prepared for it as best as we could. You know, we had all of our, our, our data backed up, you know, came through Germany and so they were all backed up and we lost a few hours only in the U S
00:34:33
Speaker
But we weren't going to pay the ransom where we just went and we rebuilt our servers. So we put three servers in one in Germany, one in the US and one in Australia. But we really had to kind of build it up from the beginning up. And so now we're shipping, we're about 80% there, 85%.
00:34:51
Speaker
Today, a customer told me placed an order on Monday around lunchtime and it showed up yesterday afternoon. So, you know, kind of in that 24 hour window, which is pretty good. But it's an emotional toll. And the reason is, is that I couldn't give answers.
00:35:08
Speaker
You know, I, you know, my customers, you know, they went hateful for over 31 years. I have customers who I've been selling for over 31 years. They just become your friends and you become a part of their business. You all kind of grew together and they rely on you. And then, you know, if they're routing out a channel for your lighting or some kind of specialty hardware, they can't just buy it somewhere else. You know, if it's a hinge or a draw, so I'm sorry, you know, I can't say an edge, but you know, there's five other people who can do it. Just get one of them there, you know.
00:35:33
Speaker
But if it's something special, then I really hold up their job and I can feel them since they're stressed. So I'm disappointed in my customers who are my friends and then our suppliers, right? Their business is based on our volume and our consumption. And there's also the people that kind of call vendors, you know, the person who supplies you with cardboard.
00:35:51
Speaker
or other kinds of material, or even the person that comes in and, you know, replenishes your, you know, your coffee machines. If you don't have people coming in, it's this domino effect that affects so many people negatively that it's really frustrating.
00:36:07
Speaker
Right. It's, it's, it's this, this things that you don't even really calculate until you really start thinking about it. And then you start getting frustrated. The only thing that I'm really optimistic about or excited about is when you rebuild something, you rebuild it better. And I already see some of the changes that have taken place and I'm really excited about it. I know the next few months will still be a little challenging, but I'm so excited about the future and the improved processes and software and all. So, uh,
00:36:33
Speaker
Yeah. The future is excited. I'm looking forward to it, but it's been, um, uh, an emotional, physical challenge in, in dealing with it, you know, and some other people in our industry have gotten hit. Um, customers have gotten hit. You know, I know one particular one in Pennsylvania got hit and a machinery company got hit. And, um, yeah, I'm happy to hear you guys didn't pay. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, the, the, the, the company, the customer, um, that got hit.
00:37:01
Speaker
The FBI comes in and says, don't pay because that's just what motivates them to do it. And two weeks into it, they're like, sorry, we got to pay. We got to, you know, we got, we got to get a machinery up and running. Right. And I believe, honestly, we could afford it to pay, but it was just against our, our, our moral beliefs that we're not given into these criminals. And we're just going to just start it from scratch and we're going to build it. And we're going to have a couple of rough weeks and turned into maybe a couple of months.
00:37:28
Speaker
But, but yeah, so, you know, I, I believe, you know, the quality company we are, we did it the right way. We handled it the right way. And like I said, we're building it better and stronger and, and, and made some changes and we're going to be here for the long run for our customer.
00:37:42
Speaker
And what was the response from most of your customers? It was all over the board, right? I mean, I've had guys who literally said to me in an emotional time that I'm awful, right? Like, I can't just pick up the phone and call one of my buddies and say, hey, can you go over to the shelf and get this and just ship it out to me? And I'm trying to explain how it's...
00:38:05
Speaker
not even a needle in a haystack, how big our distribution center is and that everything's down. So I don't know what shelf or what rack that item is. And, you know, it's like a hundred feet high and it's hundreds of feet deep, you know, and there's 20 or 30 different aisles. I just can't do it, you know? And so they can't understand why I can't help them. I had other people said they're going to sue me because, because of their jobs, you know? And then I had other people said, Hey, I'm really sorry to hear you going through this. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to buy three times more than I need to.
00:38:33
Speaker
So this way you just make one big shipment to me and this will have plenty of stock. There won't be any urgency. I just know that if my lead time is 12 or 16 weeks out there, I just need to buy it earlier in the cycle. So this way I'm not calling you up today and saying you need it tomorrow. And that was really the bulk. And even the people who
00:38:50
Speaker
who came down on me a little bit, I know is an emotional pressure that they're having that they're dealing with and that we'll all work through it. It's just, they got to get through the moment and that's what's so frustrating. You just feel that they got this job, they got a payroll to make, they got commitments to make. And I just noticed a lot of factors and we all blow a gasket once in a while.
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's the new war though, right? It is the new crime. I can't even imagine how much money these guys were making and how many companies that they hit. I don't know. Somebody said that in the summertime, the ransomware declines. They all go on vacation.
00:39:38
Speaker
They leave like, you know, Russia or someplace and then they all go on vacation for a couple months and it picks back up in the fall. I don't know. Maybe that's just maybe a joke that somebody was saying, you know, I'm sure it's not.
00:39:50
Speaker
I don't know where they go on vacation though. I mean, is it Miami Beach? I don't know. South of France or something. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. They're in those big yachts. Yeah. The Mediterranean. During seaside heights in one of those crappy motels. Like flying mini golf. Yeah.
00:40:11
Speaker
Yeah. The online scam stuff is insane. Oh, you're afraid to click on anything. Regardless what you do as a company, as much, you know, um, um, the preventive policies you have in place and all the programs you put in place, you have one employee kick, click on the wrong link and you just let them in. Yeah. Oh geez. You know, all that work, you know, how many thousands of employees that we have are just down.
00:40:38
Speaker
We got an email from, who was it? It must've been QuickBooks or something where, you know, we had to like activate some sort of whatever anti ransomware thing, just because like, you know, we receive ACH payments and credit card payments and stuff. So it's like we need to legally, according to QuickBooks, need to protect all of our client's information and everything.
00:41:00
Speaker
Right. Right. So they're, they're getting smarter, right? They're taking that extra step, that T step, you know, provocation and, and, you know, but when you get an email, you always want to really dive into who that sender is because they have a pretty good way of camouflaging it. You know, it looks very clever.
00:41:16
Speaker
Yeah, it looks like your bank, but really it's, you know. Right. Like the name will say like PNC bank, but if you click on it, it's like, you know, right. Right. And I remember my wife got a call or a charge. I think she had a charge at a credit card and they had a phone number there, you know, on your statement. She called it.
00:41:34
Speaker
And she goes, I never made this, this, this charge. And the guys are, well, no problem. We'll be more than happy to refund it. She was all great. He goes, well, you need to do is you need to go to the store to one of our authorized vendors and buy a gift card. And then we'll download the money. We'll, we'll credit the money onto the gift card. Is that okay? And then she's like, what do you think? I go,
00:41:54
Speaker
It's crazy. Don't tell me, please don't tell me you're going to do that. Yeah. This is the IRS. You owe us $500 in back taxes. I'm going to need you to go to Walmart or Walmart or we're going to arrest you this afternoon. Sounds legit. I'll tell you this, you know, Maureen at the post office.
00:42:12
Speaker
So we know this lady who works at the post office and she's a real character. And one time an old timer, who was also like a regular customer there comes to the post office and he's in line. He's buying like five target gift cards. And she's like,
00:42:33
Speaker
Wait a minute. Yeah. I'm not selling you these. She stopped it. She saw that scam before. Yeah. She says this is a scam, but
00:42:43
Speaker
Uh, I forgot what I was going to say. Yeah. I was hit with that. Um, the, the IRS, you know, I said, yeah, hang on for a second. I'll be right back. I'm going to get my credit card. Listen, the IRS doesn't make phone calls. You know, just, just hold for me, right? Yeah. That's one thing I like about American express. I have a thing where unless I'm present
00:43:09
Speaker
they send me an email every time there's a charge on the card. Wow. That I have to okay. Yeah. So like, um, yeah, I get like a notification anytime I use my Amex. Yes. They're really good. Like that. I get like an app notification. So it's like, if I'm at work and I, all of a sudden I get a thing and it's not like a
00:43:29
Speaker
whatever if I have like a subscription to whatever iCloud, pay my $2.99 to iCloud. It's like, what the hell is this? You know, so you can call real quick and catch it. Right. I got hit. I was on a rest stop in the middle of who knows where out in the Midwest and I stopped and I used my debit card for the vending machine where I can just get a bottle of Gatorade or something.
00:43:49
Speaker
And it didn't take it. I'm like, you know, what's the matter? My card's good, you know? And then eventually I'd sell signals. I was looking at my phone. They sent me, you know, so that they froze my account for a certain time. And when you're traveling, the last thing you need is your credit card frozen. Oh yeah. We had one time, uh, when my wife was open in the yoga studio, we were doing some work and I ordered a bunch of stuff from Home Depot. We needed like stuff. We don't typically buy installations, two by fours or something. And, uh,
00:44:18
Speaker
Set it up for delivery, was expecting it to show up and it never showed up. So I call Home Depot. They're like, they're like, yeah, no, your bank canceled that. I'm like, what the hell? So I call PNC. They're like, yeah, it seems fishy week to week. I'm like, we're cabinet makers. Like a Home Depot, an order from Home Depot seemed fishy. I'm like, didn't you guys think to like call us?
00:44:43
Speaker
I'm like, now I lost, you know, like three days. Right. Yeah. Just a call, an email, a text, something. They're like, Oh, you had, you know, an attempted fraud of like a thousand dollars. You know? Yeah. Doesn't that warrant a phone call? The best is because the, I'm the, I guess like the
00:45:01
Speaker
The card holder, my wife has an Amex card too, but every time she uses it, I get notified. She's like, you mean, you know, every time I'm like, yeah, I know. You really need that $300 worth of makeup.
00:45:20
Speaker
She's like, I don't know if I liked that. I'm like, hey, yeah, that's the way it goes. You know what I get is like the Amazon Prime stuff. So like, all this stuff on our TVs is linked to my Amazon account. So I'd be like, oh, my wife just rented another movie for $5.99 while I'm at work. Like, you're at work. Take 30 in the morning, you're into that movie. Yeah, well, my son's probably crying like, I want to watch the Paw Patrol movie. You know the laundry's not done. There's no dinner on the table. She tells you how busy she was, right?
00:45:50
Speaker
In the old days, he had soap operas. I don't love soap operas anymore. I remember what soap opera was. It was not general hospital. It was days of our lives. It was one of the all my children. It was all my children. So I was in college and
00:46:17
Speaker
One of the girls I was dating watched all my children and she had a class this one term at the time that all my children was on. So she goes, can you watch all my children? Now you got to go back in time, time machine before you can record stuff. And even if you had a VCR, you didn't have one when you were in college back then. Wait, so she wanted you to watch it so you could tell her what happened. Yes. Yes. And did you do it? Well, yeah.
00:46:49
Speaker
about us. So, so I started watching this and unbeknownst to myself, I got hooked on it. It was like being a caffeine junkie or something. You pulled into the story. Right. So then on the days where she, you know, the other days of the week when she didn't have class, so then she was over and we were watching on my little 13 inch TV.
00:47:13
Speaker
And this went on for years that like after I left school, I know like afterwards. So then I live with my cousins and they both watched it. All right. And so this went on for years and years and I watched this so far for
00:47:30
Speaker
My little soap opera story is, um, I was going up, I was selling to the Auburn state prison. It's a maximum state prison in New York state. Oh, I think that's where Brian just was. They have a big wood shop. Absolutely. So we're out there looking at the wood shop, you know, and I remember walking through there and his, this guy's like, like, I feel like this little stinging in my leg, just nothing, just a little stinging and the, and the, and the guard, the guy goes to me, he goes, I'm going to catch him. I go, what are you talking about? Cause a guy shooting you with staples.
00:48:00
Speaker
It was like nothing. Well, not even a mosquito bite, right? And then we had to go from where the shop is back to the main gate and you're going through the yard and it's these different groups. They're all looking at these like houses. They're like eight, like dog houses, like eight feet in the air. And they're all over. Some got big crowds. Some got small crowds groups, you know, and they're all broken up and they're just like staring up, look at these dog houses. And they're, what's up with that? They're all watching TV. They're all watching their show poppers.
00:48:28
Speaker
just these big burly guys that are just in the courtyard at, you know, maximum state prison and you're sitting outside just watching. So there's something about those shows. I mean, they, they have it. It's like a science, you know, of psychology, you know, where they create this need to see what's going to happen. Yeah.
00:48:49
Speaker
It's like how people watch like wrestling. It's the same kind of thing. Yeah. Well, I think even now we start to binge watch TV shows, you know, of course, you can kind of catch up before you know it. You know, you're watching like a whole season's worth of the day. You know, you just sit in front of a TV for eight hours or, you know, watching four or five episodes at a time. And you know, like for me, it was like Yellowstone. I got like caught into Yellowstone. I thought that was a pretty good show. Corey likes that.
00:49:14
Speaker
I haven't watched that yet. I've been watching this show called Night Agent on Netflix, which is like, there's like a secret line in the White House. If there's like a spy in trouble, they call this Night Agent guy. And then he, so he gets a phone call, which is, you know, the phone never rings, but it gets a call and then it gets wrapped up in this whole conspiracy. It's like a, you know, like a 24 kind of show like that. It's pretty good.
00:49:38
Speaker
Yeah, sounds great. But yeah, you watch and then, you know, it ends, you look over, I look over my wife, like, you want to watch it all? Or for me, it seems like the next episode just got to go and hit the play, you know, that two minute break that we all kind of need and you're watching the next episode. And it's like, wow, we just watched five episodes.
00:49:58
Speaker
The last show I watched like that, that I really wanted to watch episode after episode was the show called Life on Mars.
British TV Shows Discussion
00:50:07
Speaker
Did you ever hear of it? Never heard of it. It's a British show. I watch a lot of British TV. Why? What's that? Why? Cause of the humor? No, I don't really like British humor. I like their like, like their police dramas and their mysteries.
00:50:25
Speaker
And this show, the premise sounds crazy, but it's so well-acted, so well done. It takes place in current day. And this guy who's a DCI, which is like a top guy, top policeman in the department, he gets hit by a car.
00:50:50
Speaker
and he wakes up and he's in 1973. Wow. But it originally he was present time. Yes. And he's dressed in 1973 and like he's in the same city, which is Manchester and all this stuff. And so he can't tell if he's in a coma.
00:51:13
Speaker
and he's, you know, like imagining these things or if he's really traveled in time. Yeah. Or if he's crazy. Right. So
00:51:25
Speaker
There's this, there's the police drama part of it going on. And simultaneously, there's this story going on about what is happening with the 1973 thing. So he just picks up where he left off and he's just, now he's just a cop in 1973. Yeah, he's a cop, but
00:51:43
Speaker
you know, there's this, he's trying to figure out like, you know, and the way he goes to the station and they're like, yeah, you just transferred here from this other station. You requested a transfer. And he's like, what? And are all the people the same around him or they're not completely different. They're all 1973 people. And he thinks
00:52:04
Speaker
You know, part of it is he thinks that maybe each character is like a part of his subconscious. He's like, why am I here? Am I here to like, write some wrong? Or is this person like part of my, now does this resolve at the end of the show? It kind of does. It kind of does.
00:52:24
Speaker
I mean, it's two seasons. Yeah, it sounds interesting. That's like the perfect, you know, they're taking these shows like, I was like, you want to watch the new stranger things? I'm like, no, I'm like, it's like season four. It's like, it's gone on too long. There's only so much great material. Yeah. They're just, they're clutching on to the idea that this was a hit show and, you know,
00:52:43
Speaker
When you have to fabricate too much about the story, it just it goes to yeah, that's an excellent point because there were eight shows in each season. And I told my wife, it's like, man, that was great. And we want more, but.
00:52:58
Speaker
if they would have done more, it would have just been rehashing. It's like, it's like, this was perfect. Yeah. There's only so much, you know, like you can't squeeze that lemon, you know, like the show's like sons of anarchy. Like 12 seasons.
00:53:15
Speaker
You know, at some points, like the storylines dried up, you know, how many crazy things can happen to this group of people? Give me the Sopranos. Right. How many fingers can they break? You know, like a show like Seinfeld that can get away with it because it's not this, uh,
00:53:31
Speaker
long story arc. Like they, they, they touch back on past episodes, but it's not this, um, it's not linear. It's based on nothing. So it's easy to write about nothing. You know, I mean, it's classic, right? When you get everybody, you know, they say humor and truth that, you know, it's all the same, right? You know, as you look at Seinfeld, you know, you're looking out the window, look at that perfect parking spot. When do you ever get a parking spot right in front of your building? I never want to move my car. The perfect parking spot. It's look at it, you know? And it's like, yeah, you can, everybody can relate to it. Well, you work in New York.
00:54:00
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm from New York and I also lived in San Francisco for a long time, another talking hell place where I've actually come upon parking spaces and thought, this can't be a spot. Right. There's no way. There's some sign that I don't see. You're walking up and down the block. It's like, should I leave my car here? I mean, this can't be a spot.
00:54:25
Speaker
Yeah. We were talking before about how, you know, when everything goes right, you expect our buddy Tim, who he's coming on the show in the next couple of weeks. He's up North Jersey, but he does a lot of work in Brooklyn. He does build a lot of these art stores. Yeah. He's crazy. Phenomenal.
00:54:41
Speaker
So he shows up to the job, they unload, and then a spot opens up right in front of this brownstone. So he parks there. And then it was like the whole day was gone. And then he hit this like huge snag, like where the trims of that with the trim. Everything unraveled. I'm like, you should have seen it coming. I'm like, you got a parking spot right in front. And like, you know, you only get so many good things before some of that happens.
00:55:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean we just work all day and you hit this traffic right the guys in Jersey and he does this great work in Brooklyn or you guys are out in the Hamptons and it's just like really it's taking me four hours to drive home, you know, that was the Was it the first time that we went out? Yeah. Yeah It was like we got we stopped off and patch hog. So our buddy Corey and Rob had some lunch we left there about 1 o'clock and then I think we got back here at like
00:55:32
Speaker
It was dark. Eight o'clock or something. And it messes with you. Cause sometimes you're driving 70 miles an hour and for no reason, all of a sudden you're slamming on the brakes and it's like, what's going on? It's just, you're just on the brakes. There's just nowhere to go. And then you're almost hitting two different traffic patterns.
00:55:50
Speaker
You know, like usually, you know, it's traffic leaving the city, you know, at the end of the day or traffic going into the city in the morning. But when you're driving from New Jersey to Long Island, you're hitting like more than one traffic pattern. So you hit it and then you get going and it hits you again. Yeah. Then you're annoyed. You want to know why there's traffic. Yeah. That was like when we went to maker camp.
00:56:10
Speaker
We still don't know what happened. We're up, we're on the through, was it the Thruway? New York State Thruway. Yeah. And all of a sudden dead stop. And like, as far as you can see, just brake lights. There's like a truck next to us with a Moffat on the back. And the guy actually put the Moffat down and drove down the shoulder to see what was happening. He couldn't see it. He went pretty far. But all of a sudden a bunch of cops went the opposite way. And then it just opened up and
00:56:40
Speaker
We have no idea. Yeah, but we were sitting there for an hour. Yeah, sometimes you know that whatever they're filling potholes So you just got to stop the traffic, you know, they usually see something, you know Yeah, it's it's there's unpredictability. I think that's what we deal with all the time. Yeah
00:56:57
Speaker
That's a good thing about being on a bike. Of course, having hard bags, you're a little bit wider. Yeah. But lanes are a little, you're a little bit wider, you know, you know, but I'm going to just get off the next exit or I'm just going to ride this shoulder and I'll just get off somewhere because I just want to be moving. It's not my destination so much, but I just want to be moving, having that wind in my face, you know?
00:57:17
Speaker
Sometimes even here, I'll, I'll just get on the bike for 45 minutes and just ride down a Sandy hook and just get some, uh, you know, I kind of call it my, my, my break, you know, you know, it's, you know, instead of having a therapy dog or something, I got my bike. I just got to get on it.
00:57:33
Speaker
Let me ask you this. Do you have an easy pass on? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So I have, I have an easy pass on my East coast bike. I don't have one on the West coast. You don't really need it. And then when you do hit it, they'll, they'll, they'll hit you. You don't buy mail, but you know, on the East coast, you know, and you know, the whole New York Metro, you got to have an easy pass.
00:57:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's funny because again, I'm going back like, and this is on the west coast. It was no easy pass thing back then. And so because I lived in the Bay area, I was constantly crossing the Bay bridge and the golden gate. So you used to have to have like little, you know, pockets
00:58:14
Speaker
with the exact chains to throw into the thing you had to go through and it's the whole thing. We went from having to have quarters on the guard to say Parkway to them selling tokens, right? So I used to buy a couple, you know, $10 rolls of tokens. And then when I moved here into town, I would take the train into Manhattan. And when I go to get my annual parking pass and like, yeah, it's a 10 year wait, you know, I'm like,
00:58:40
Speaker
do you want to still put your name on the list? I go, yo, I plan on living here for a long time. So I might as well just start. Right. And then across the streets of metered was metered parking. Oh yeah. Middletown, Middletown lot, you know, across from the community center is metered parking. So I literally have to go and buy, like, you know, go to the bank and buy like $50 worth of quarters and just have it in my ashtray, you know, just like, you know, fill it up before I left every day. And it was just, it was just brutal.
00:59:04
Speaker
Fortunately for me, six months into it, they redid the parking lot and opened up a lot of spots, but it was still... Yeah. I used to take that trace, take the 620 or 621 or whatever. Yeah. And all I heard were horror stories about getting the parking decal, whatever. Right. But when I went down there, it was available.
00:59:26
Speaker
I don't know what happened at some point. They reconfigured the parking lot and a lot of it opened up. Yeah. And you know, it's, it's a game changer. Yeah, it was, but, but still, I mean, those were, you know, I used to open the showroom for the company in 2001.
00:59:41
Speaker
And you know, I take the early morning train, you know, when it's dark out, you know, it's a long day and you get to train into the city and then you work all day. And it's a 13 hour day, no matter how you slice it. And that's not working like an extraordinarily long time at the job. I mean, if everything went right, it was really, it was an hour and 45 minute door to door from the time I left my house at the time I left my office. And then anybody who takes the train home at night, you know, it's a different track every night. So you get there early.
01:00:11
Speaker
And then you're running because you, you don't want to not have a seat and you don't want to have a center seat. So you're running like, you know, catalog. Yes. To get a decent, we're talking Penn station for those in New York, New York city. You know, it is just every track, every, every train is a different track. You kind of have an idea and it was pretty brutal. Doesn't matter who you were. You're throwing elbows. What train did you try to catch going home?
01:00:37
Speaker
It was a six 25. Oh, okay. So you lay eyes. I used to work on 27th and 26. Okay. That's right. So you saw her on 27th between six and seven. I was treated as fifth in Madison. Okay. So you had a little bit longer. Right, right, right on the, right on the North end of Madison square park.
01:00:58
Speaker
Yeah. I used to get in on time and I would not stay a minute past five o'clock. They used to, I don't care what they would say to me, at five o'clock that door hit me in the ass and I was almost running, walking as fast as I could so I could catch like the 530, 528, whatever the hell it was. Yeah, there's two trains, like almost like next to each other, like a 525 and a 531.
01:01:23
Speaker
one was more of an express and it's like, so some trains would stop at, you know, Mattawan and others, you know, so there's all these, this, and you kind of figure it out, you know? And we were, we were anxiety producing. Yeah. You know, you're walking down the street and you're like, you're not going to get that train.
01:01:41
Speaker
It is. I can remember one day, you know, I was just exhausted, you know, you catch the six 30, you know, you're getting into town a little bit after eight o'clock. I have to pick up a prescription at the drug store. And like, you know, it's like this 16 year old kid, like poorly singing on the Led Zeppelin song. He's trying to get my prescription, you know, and I'm just like, kid, I don't want to be a jerk. I'm not trying to be rude. I just want my prescription. I just. Yeah, it's like this mundane thing becomes a huge hassle because you
01:02:11
Speaker
No, you're just exhausted. You just, you know, and then you have to get the next day and do it again. And you kind of say, well, you know, you New Yorkers are rude. We just went through, you know, we caught a real close leave in the October. We like got to the station and looked up at the sign and we're like, all right. And we like, yeah. Yeah. Well, next time you come in, you got to take the ferry. That's what I do. Take the ferry from Belford and right to wall street. And then from wall street, I take a couple of subways, but
01:02:39
Speaker
the ferry's nice because in the morning they're serving coffee. You buy a newspaper, maybe get a big civilized, right? And it goes from point A to point B. There's no, there's no other stops. Everybody, you know, is, is, is, is pretty good. You know, and everybody's just chilled or get the TV screens on. They have wifi. And then at night they turn into a martini bar. So, you know, guys have a time pretty good. Where's three cocktails, you know?
01:03:02
Speaker
Even on the train out of time for three beers, I was able to drink one beer from New York to Newark, a beer from Newark to Woodbridge and a beer from Woodbridge to Middletown. I had my three beers down and you know, you do that every day. It's like, eh, maybe I should slow down. When you fly for a hay fool, do they put you in first class? I'd never.
01:03:20
Speaker
They don't care who you are. They didn't pay the ransom. If you have some status, you may get lucky, but where I do get lucky and they do support us is we get to join one airport club. Okay, so you get the miles. Yeah, so you get miles, but when you go into the airport club, you can sit down and you can
01:03:41
Speaker
you know, get a bite to eat. You know, they got like, you're like the, the, the bottom shelf is free. So if you want to get a beer or something at the end of the day, and they got some snacky food. And then if you're, you know, if you fly norque, like we all do, there's always delays. So you get a place, a comfortable place to hang out. And it truly smart to do that. Cause we could be productive in the club. Otherwise you just sit in, in, in chaos with the unwashed masses. Oh man.
01:04:07
Speaker
because flying is one of the things I hate to do the most. And it's not like a fear of crashing. It's just the hatred of the experience, the airport experience, the whole thing with the crowds and people shoving their stuff in those overheads. And the people who stand up as you're, you know, getting to the taxiing back to the gate after landing. It's so,
01:04:34
Speaker
Like the last time I flew on my own when I went out to Texas, see my friends out there because I graduated high school in Texas.
01:04:43
Speaker
I got my airline mind, my credit card miles, and I flew first class. I had to make like a fly through Charlotte to get to Texas, but I didn't care. And it's not like it's so fancy, but civilized is the word. You're bored. They treat you like you're a human being.
01:05:05
Speaker
You don't have to deal with any nonsense. It's just, it's like, Oh my God. Can we get you something to drink? Please don't make me go back there. That's the only problem with flying up front is that when you have to go back, I taste it the better way of life. Please. I don't want to go back. Don't make me do it.
01:05:26
Speaker
Last time I flew, we flew first class. So I went to a wedding in Dominican Republic just about a year ago. Actually, it was exactly a year ago. So we flew there, just regular whatever it is, the coach.
Airline Comfort and Luxury Travel
01:05:41
Speaker
And then on the way back, I'm like, we should upgrade. So I paid the 300 bucks or whatever it was. It was actually, it was a good, pretty good deal. 300 for the two of us.
01:05:50
Speaker
That is a good deal. I think that's the move. Fly down regular and fly back first class because you're shot, you're already pissed off, you got to go back to work, you're tired. I mean, the seats are about as big as this freaking chair. Oh, they got the long, the big planes down are like lounges. It's like the old days, we had the 747s. I used to fly to Italy a lot on business and back then it was Pan Am and they had the second level, which was like the first class up top.
01:06:17
Speaker
time when I was flying was really more like a business class, like a middle level class, you know, but you go up there and it was just a total. Yeah. It was just completely different. But today they have the bargain airlines, right? You know, and seats get closer and closer and closer.
01:06:33
Speaker
everything's an add-on. It's like, even like, right? Oh, you're bringing a bag. It's going to be $40. It's a carry on. It's good. It's going to sit. It's not going to take up any space. It's not going to take up. Oh, but it's the principle, you know? And if you want to check, it's a little bit cheaper. If you want to check in, like, I don't get that. Oh, you want to see, you got to, you got to, you got to pay for a assignment or, or we might just pick one for you. It's like,
01:07:02
Speaker
man, it's just like, tell me what it's going to cost. That's it. They're like, yeah, it's $99. But if you want to pick where you sit, it's another, you know, this much. I, uh, I went to this thing, work bench con in Atlanta must be three years ago now. Um, and I flew, I forget if it was spirit or frontier. I want to say it was frontier, but I both winners. Yeah. They're both practically the same. I think maybe spirit acquired frontier. Um,
01:07:31
Speaker
But I got like an emergency row seat and, you know, there's two rows. I was the only one in any of those four rows on the way back. Same thing. But they sold all this, you know, sold the upgrades. I sat next to some giant guy.
01:07:48
Speaker
Yeah. And one time or actually a couple of times I had an opportunity to fly, um, private, you know? Oh yeah. And that's the whole, that's a whole other game changer. You know, you're picking right onto the air, some, some small airport and you're landing in some small airport and then there's a car driving out to the runway and picking you up and you're like,
01:08:08
Speaker
Oh man. Yeah, I lived with this girl for quite a while and her dad owned a jet and we'd go places and they'd pick you up in the car and it's like so simple. It's like you want the lobster ravioli or the filet mignon?
01:08:28
Speaker
football game from, we flew out of Florida from Florida. We went to a football game in New Orleans and we literally landed, you know, you know, 45 minutes before the game, went to the game and then like late in the fourth quarter, we knew how it was going to end. So we wanted to get out of there before the end of the day, before traffic hit. And then we just got back in a jet and was back in Florida. Just, it was almost like us driving a met life. We flew to New Orleans, you know, it was just crazy.
01:08:55
Speaker
That's, that's one of the reasons why people that have all that money and power, they'll do anything not to give it up because it's just, I can't fly commercial. The privilege is insane. Right. And it's great when people like that show up at the DMV.
01:09:14
Speaker
They can't deal with it. Take a number. Your form isn't filled out right. Get in that line and they're just like, do you know who I am? I'm not. It's like, yeah, you're powerless here. Yeah, completely. It's like the helipad that's over here. Like people in the summertime, I think is really the only time they use it because it's people that don't, they have a house in Monmouth Beach or something or deal and they just drive to the helipad, then they hop in the helicopter, go to the city. I think it's 12 minutes.
01:09:42
Speaker
to go from lower Manhattan to the helipad here. It just goes up right across the Bay and down. I mean, and if you're like, you know, some CFO and you can just negotiate it where it's just company money, you know, and it's just like, you know, yeah, if you want me, you know, from moral day to labor day, I want to be have quality time with my family for those three months. I want you to pick it up, you know, and
01:10:03
Speaker
Yeah. This same family, they had a, they were building a place out and what's the outside of New Hope is a del where it was on the Pennsylvania side.
01:10:17
Speaker
I think it was, I think they, it was like a hundred acre place out in like upper black Eddie or something like that. And they had a heliport there, you know, so you go from Manhattan out there. And, um, that was a, that was an eye-opening, uh, experience spent in time with that fan, but like they had a box at giant stadium. It was called giant stadium back then. Yeah, right.
01:10:42
Speaker
And you know, it was the thrill of my life. Sure. You got, you got through a special entrance, you know, and you, and then you get the special seat and it's like, they got catering here, right? I don't have to leave. They're coming to me. I mean, it's not enough that you're sitting in there in your short sleeve shirt in the winter time, but people are like serving you and, and the other folks that are there, they're, it's, they're so blasé about, right? It's like, this is normal to them. And I'm like,
01:11:12
Speaker
Oh my God, I can't believe I'm here. That's why so many of those people, they belong to multiple country clubs because that's their comfortable environment, right? The country club is this protective place, you know, you got to be a member and they got their rules. And then when they go out and like, you know, can't go to the outback.
01:11:33
Speaker
You mean the waiter doesn't know my name? He doesn't know what age wine I want to serve me. It's just, it's entertaining. Yeah. We just bid the bars at Rumson Country Club, but the GC that we bid with, they didn't get the job.
01:11:53
Speaker
Yeah. So I have a few friends that have bartered with companies, right? You know, like sports arenas and some restaurants and stuff. And for example, it's a $400,000 job. We'll get paid 350 and put 350 on, on, on, on credit. You got concert tickets and really good dinner, you know, restaurants and, and other places. And it's like, wow, that's pretty cool.
Business Deals and Client Ownership
01:12:20
Speaker
Well, we don't normally get paid our last 10% anyway. I'm going to have to change that 15 to a 10 just to be safe. Yeah, that would hurt us.
01:12:37
Speaker
That's the gravy, right? We're a small outfit, you know? But we had a guy, a developer, hold us up for the last 15. I didn't even hold us up. We completed our scoreboard above and beyond. Yeah. You know, we're getting this story. I'm not going anywhere for, you know, 15 grand. Like, wow. How come we haven't got paid yet? I sent a check. Okay. Like right now, the check. Send me a picture of the check.
01:13:05
Speaker
Confirm the address where you sent the check. We had to, you know, he did all those things too. I'll swing by and pick it up because guess what? You know, I have kids and I have a mortgage and this isn't just, you know, pad in my checking account. These are things that I really can pay the bills. I got to pay my bills. I'm not looking to go on vacation with your money. There's not that much meat on the bone where 15% is, you know, like all profit.
01:13:29
Speaker
No, right. Ideally it is, but sometimes it's not. I mean, I've had, you know, customers and you ask them like, why would you do a job for an attorney? You know, we're not going to pay the last 15%, you know, and you want, you can sue me, you know, I know the judge, we play golf together on Wednesdays, you know, and we do this, we do that. It's not really going to cost me anything. So if you're a smart, you know, just probably eat it now. Yeah. So the idea is you charge 115% of the job. That's right. Or it's not worth it. Yeah.
01:13:58
Speaker
You know, they always say, you know, lawyers don't want to pay the final and doctors have an unrealistic, unrealistic expectation, the quality of work, you know, yeah. And they're frugal to begin with. This comes up again, you know, we did that kitchen, well, doctors and something must have gone, you know, we didn't do the install on the job. We did, we did a delivery to the GC. They painted, they installed and painted on site.
01:14:27
Speaker
And yes, someone sour with the client. Yeah. Um, we think the GC screwed something up and then blamed us because we weren't, we were absent on the job. You know, we, we just deliver it and then we were just a name. So we were easy to scapegoat because we dropped by as we dropped them off a Christmas gift and to say, thank you.
01:14:48
Speaker
And they were like, very cool. Yeah. Like didn't say like, Oh, you want to come in and see the kitchen that you guys built? How we're enjoying it. Right? And it was really, we were like, look at each other. What the hell just happened? And then one of the topics that we talk about is who owns the client?
01:15:06
Speaker
So you're working for a client, you know, who actually has the client? Is it the general contractor and you're just a sub? And then you're in that situation at some point, you know, somebody's kind of representing you and it's not, it's not in your best interest. And how do you like step up to the client? And we've actually had a seminar, um, an even event, um, based on that topic of who owns the client. That's interesting. Yes. We had a general contractor. We had an architect and we had a kitchen dealer.
01:15:33
Speaker
And the three of us, three of them were a panel and we did a lot of Q and A on it. And we kind of talked about who owns it. And a lot of times it's the person who actually brings in the client in the first place. But what do you do when things start to go sour? Because you don't want to upset the architect or the GC because you don't want to affect future business. Yet you don't want to affect your relationship with this one job at your reputation and everything else. It's this whole interesting topic of how to maneuver through that.
01:16:00
Speaker
Yeah, like when we work with designers, it's like, OK, you're you're marking up our work because you're the intermediary between the client and us. But it puts a roadblock for communication. So now anytime I need to get to you, I got to go through you.
01:16:17
Speaker
And that's fine because you're getting paid to be that intermediary. But now all of a sudden when I'm not getting answers, it's like, I'd rather just deal with the client directly. I don't, go mark it up. I don't care. Just let me deal with the client. Right. And there's a deadline. Yeah. And we got to get this nailed down right away. And then sometimes, you know, when you finally net, net, net out your job, you realize that the architect, the designer made more money than the job that you guys did who had 12 weeks of work in it. They just, you know, they just made a couple of phone calls, a couple of phone calls and maybe a couple of hours with them. And, and then
01:16:47
Speaker
It's on their best interest. I guess it's always that trusting. So you promise. Yeah. The best is when you work with a designer on a job and then the client contacts you for another job because you can automatically put like 25% on your number, right? They paid that number before. You guys, your number looks pretty good now. Yeah. On like retail furniture, I think like a typical markup for a designer is like a hundred percent. Wow. Yeah. Which is insane.
01:17:19
Speaker
I guess if you could sell it, you could sell that, you know, that image and that, you know, we're in the wrong business. Yeah. It was, it's like going back to the catering business, you know, uh, back in the early nineties, I worked as a caterer in San Francisco and they used to contact the owner of the company
01:17:39
Speaker
around the holidays they meaning like the wealthy individuals of San Francisco and ask if they could have one of you know the chefs come to their home and do like a individual party you know and they would so we could freelance we could make a little extra pocket money not going through the company and the company was very cool that way and the one thing they told me was
01:18:05
Speaker
When you work up the price, whatever you think it is, double it. Exactly. Just double it because this is not normal. If you think $500 is a lot of money, just make it a thousand. We're like, what? I did one of those parties with Dennis Foy in a house in Princeton. That was pretty cool.
01:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, that was, I remember doing a Thanksgiving for a family. It was a lot of pressure, but it was a lot of fun, you know, because you're charging so much money to us, you know, it's a lot of money. Who would pay a thousand dollars a person for dinner, right? That's how we look at it from a practical side. Right. I mean, I got unbearable pressure on myself. This turkey better be the juiciest, crispiest skinned bird ever made.
01:19:00
Speaker
It's all about the presentation. Yeah, exactly. I got the cheesecloth on there and I'm basting it. I read every secret thing you could... What's it, the brine? Like a day or two before you got it all? Oh yeah, of course. Brining the meat. So did you go to Costco for dessert? We have this cheesecake. There's two raspberry, two salted caramel.
01:19:29
Speaker
I've told Jeff this story, speaking of cheap dessert was when we cooked for Clinton with the company, when he was the president, our pastry chef made fancy desserts for the whole dinner party. But one of the, I don't know, attendance, secret service kind of people came back to the kitchen and requested that we go get the president of Mrs. Smith's apple pie.
01:19:58
Speaker
That's what he wanted for dessert. He didn't want the prepared. So we had to get somebody in, you know, it's a whole rigmarole. Like when you're- Probably got to go through security to go out, come back in. Yeah. It's not like you can just walk in now.
Catering High-Profile Events
01:20:12
Speaker
You can't send somebody down the street to get one. We literally had to get somebody to go to the store and buy one of these frozen pies. Yeah. Cause the whole thing was, you know, you have to submit your names and everything beforehand. Oh sure.
01:20:27
Speaker
They do the background check, and then we all traveled to the home together in this bus. And then when you get off the bus, they check you to make sure you... And that was in New York? That was in San Francisco. Oh, San Francisco, yeah. Was it like a party and he was just attending? He was, yeah, the guest of honor. It was like a fundraiser. Fundraiser, yeah. Oh, yeah. Where all the real decisions came in.
01:20:55
Speaker
We need a war in the Middle East. You could imagine the guest list at a place like this. Missile sales are really down. So then you're working in your little tent out there and then at some point they make you go away and they come in and the whole place is cordoned off with, you know, secret service and dogs and everything.
01:21:19
Speaker
They put you off in a little area and then they come in and they check what's going on before you serve the food out. I don't know what they did because we weren't able to see. Then you serve the food. The rookie tastes it.
01:21:38
Speaker
That was a lot of, that was interesting. A lot of interesting stories for working for that company. I wouldn't be surprised if they had like plants in with like the cooks. You never know. That could be something that even like started like weeks prior. You're like, all right, listen, Clinton's got this party coming up. You got to go get a job, you know, get a job at this place. You're one of the servers. Find out if there's any dissidents within the staff.
01:22:05
Speaker
Cause, you know, I mean, who knows how, how high up it goes. That's crazy. I do remember seeing like the little red lights, you know, like the night vision stuff. Cause you're out on in, in a like one of those white tents. You know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about. I did a thing like that couple with Nicholas. Um, and so you're out and they set up the, all the stuff outside people's homes.
01:22:33
Speaker
I mean, I'd like to see somebody that you see on TV that's famous, that's really distinguished and well-respected, and then all of a sudden you see them at a social event like that and they get hammered, you know? That was funny that you say that because, you know, Kelsey Grammer. Oh yeah, sure. He had a very famous drinking problem at one point. I remember sitting at the window seat of a bar in Manhattan
01:23:00
Speaker
And he was, he was on the street wanting to come in and the bar, the door was locked because, you know, it was the after hours after hours. And in New York, that'll close early. No, no. And he was throwing a tantrum banging on the glass and
Life Before Camera Phones
01:23:20
Speaker
everything. And we were just like, you know, quarter inch away from
01:23:24
Speaker
like here's Frasier, right? Like, like he's comfortable in the bar, right? His mind's free cell phone video. Yeah. It would have been all over the internet. Right. All these things are where I can imagine a world like that now. Yeah. I know you guys could get away with stuff back in the day. Oh yeah. No, your whole life is monitored. Yeah. I think, well, yeah, up until probably
01:23:50
Speaker
Must have been sophomore year of high school, maybe when like, camera phones became a thing. Yeah. I can't even imagine. Yeah. I mean, how old are you? I'm 60. Yeah. I turned 61 today. Yeah. Happy birthday. Thank you. So we grew up in a time where, I mean, I would be horrified to see the stupidity that I did.
01:24:16
Speaker
back then, you know, I had to go on Facebook at some point and like untag myself from all these pictures. I'm like, it's going to erase the, you know, from college and stuff like that. So yeah, I got to erase these. Well, on one hand, I like to kind of maybe see it again. Cause I think it was pretty good, but I don't really remember. I know I certainly went to a few concerts in Madison square garden that I added ticket stuff for, but absolutely don't remember the concert.
01:24:40
Speaker
Because people didn't have you know, you didn't take pictures back then, you know, you had to have a camera to take pictures So they were none of nothing was documented let alone spread across the world back in a day you'd take a few rolls of Pictures you forget to get it developed and then maybe you get it developed and they come back and they're really bad Quality pictures and you thought about which one you take because you don't want to take too many pictures You don't want to pay for it to be developed as a whole different culture
01:25:08
Speaker
And yeah, then it's in a shoebox somewhere. Right. Now it goes directly onto the, you know, online. And even if you don't post it, it goes to your Google photos or your, your Apple, whatever. And anybody could just like the ransomware. They could get in there and take it if they want to. Sure. Right. I went to Monique, a club med in the eighties with a bunch of people that I work with in the kitchens.
01:25:33
Speaker
And so I had a camera course because, you know, but I remember getting like the film and people had taken pictures on my camera of me and very unflattering. I just took those things and shredded them and burned them.
01:25:51
Speaker
I could not imagine that stuff being, you know, perpetually available. I got to believe that the crew from the back kitchen to party pretty hard. Oh God. Front kitchen was no slack.
01:26:06
Speaker
You know, that night crowd, you know, bartenders together and you get a bunch of, you know, servers together and just, it was cause you'd go out after you were right. No, they had their own subculture, right? They're all, they knew where to go and, and, and they had their whole separate setup. And you know, you know, the bartender at the place, so you're getting backed up and then you got clients was sitting over there. They're backing you up. Next thing you know, you got 10 shot glass upside down shot glasses in front of you.
01:26:33
Speaker
You're drinking for nothing. And you're going out like on Monday nights, right? Oh yeah. The days of the week didn't mean anything back then. I used to work in Seaside in the summertime and the one summer I calculated, I made like $20,000 or something. I didn't, there was not a stitch of it left.
01:26:53
Speaker
That was the other thing, you dealt in cash. You got paid in an envelope. Yeah, right. Everybody had cash, you know? You wake up in the morning, it's like, I got $10 left. It's like, I made 400 bucks last night, where'd it all go? And drinks were cheap, like... Right, JR's on the boardwalk or something, you know? JR's a good time.
01:27:12
Speaker
I remember they used to walk around and stir up your beer because it'd go flat or whatever to kind of serve it up, keep that on it. But Seaside, back in the day, I'll never forget it. I was still in high school and we'd go to Seaside and rent the house for a week. And we rented two family house.
01:27:27
Speaker
each level had three bedrooms and to pull out couch. So, so you get two guys for each bed, right? So you'd have eight guys on the second floor, eight guys on the first floor for a week. And then, you know, some girls from school, they'd get a house like around the corner. And it was just like, we're 16 years old. We're renting this house for a week. It was, and then back then, you know, drinking was 18, but we're 16. So you get cases of cheap beer, like Schlitz, you know, and Shafer, you know, and all this stuff. And, and it was just a crazy, crazy one week.
Seaside Heights Nostalgia
01:27:57
Speaker
And then when we went away to college, then we get a house for the whole summer, you know, you move in the week before Memorial day, you move out the week after labor day and you're just set up and you try to get some kind of part-time job down there and kind of supplement it, you know, and just, those are, those are some good, crazy days. Oh yeah. I had a great time working, living and working there.
01:28:18
Speaker
We used to, we used to be on Webster Avenue. And so they had the, whatever it was, the big lemon stand right on the boardwalk. There was a lemon stand had like steak houses. So you tell everybody just look for that in the boardwalk and go down two blocks and we're off to the left. You'll hear us. I haven't been in a while. Like I, I, um, I moved up here. I think it was 2010.
01:28:38
Speaker
So I haven't been back since like the fire and all that stuff happened, but it was a good time. We'd go to places like EJ's or riggers. Those are like the bottom of the barrel bars and they would sell shots in a shaker. So like a, you know, like a martini shaker full of shots for like five bucks. And then, you know, you might know the bartender and so you start out there, have a couple of shakers of shots with whoever you're with.
01:29:04
Speaker
And then, yeah, go to a place like JR's or Jack and Bill's, which is, it's not called Jack and Bill's anymore. Yeah, just, I mean, a good time. The salt, was it the sawmill and the one egg? They had those oversized slices of pizza for a dollar. They're paper thin, but they're like 12 inches wide and you got a free Kool-Aid or something. That was like the last, that's the last bar on the board. And the last side and the other side was the Aztec.
01:29:27
Speaker
Yeah. You had the pool and the hotel, but, but not talking about the bomb and a barrel, but they would have a nightclub. They're called Babios. I want to say it was right on the boardwalk. This is going back, you know, years ago. And so you go to seaside in the winter.
01:29:41
Speaker
Oh yeah. I, I would stay there in the winter. And, and you know, they kind of went towards a different crowd for filling those rentals, you know, a lot of section. Yeah. Section eight is all section eight was all, you know, welfare, you know, and then I remember going to baby O's and, and I put my winter Jackie kind of in a pile and it got stolen. And I remember it. I'm like, I was just thanking God. I didn't have my keys in my jacket. I wouldn't have been stuck down here, but somebody stole my bike. And listen, I was kind of a,
01:30:10
Speaker
poor, lower blue collar family, you know? So I didn't have a nice jacket. I didn't have anything desirable to steal. Wasn't some kind of, you know, cool brand. It wasn't Tommy Hilfinger or something. It was just some crappy jacket that somebody took. Like, well, I guess it needed it more than me. Yeah. You know, that place is rough, particularly in the winter. Yeah. Seaside in the winter is like, you know, it's like any short town. It's a whole different crowd. Yeah. You know, because we get like the Christmas parties and stuff like that at the restaurant I worked at. So I would, uh,
01:30:40
Speaker
stick around depending on the year. Yeah. Or sometimes I'll call you in for the big season, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I enjoyed growing up on the Jersey shore. There's just some, you know, something special about it, you know, just feels like home.
01:30:56
Speaker
You know, you rent that house, you get a hotel, you know, I know my wife and I enjoy going down to Cape May and it's just something, you know, in our stage in our life to walk around Cape May and see these beautiful Victorian homes and great restaurants and just a good chilt field, you know. Let me ask you, what is it with Cape May and only cash? Oh, I don't know. I guess it's just smaller businesses. I know I hit a few restaurants that are BYOBs, which I always enjoy.
01:31:22
Speaker
The two times I was there, it's really prevalent. They don't like taking credit cards. You gotta have cash. I don't like taking credit cards either, but what the hell can you do? So it's like, you gotta go to the cash machine. Everybody's got a cash machine. I think now the big thing is they're charging a surcharge, 3.5%. It's like, really? What about a cash discount? We're priced out as cash.
01:31:52
Speaker
And I get it all adds up, but I was looking at these businesses and I was thinking of really, you manage your money that well, that 3% is going to make a difference or not. But today they just pass it on, you know, and it's okay.
Cash vs. Card Payments
01:32:05
Speaker
I just liked my points.
01:32:08
Speaker
When we do ACH payments through QuickBooks, I think they charge us like 1%. But it's capped at us. It's like a maximum of $10 or something. It's like, we'll just eat that. But I can just imagine a business at the end of the day, when you look at all those transactions.
01:32:24
Speaker
And then you're like, wow, that really added up to something measurable. You know, it's kind of meaningful. So we can't just give it away. You know, we got to bring that back in. That's like my sister-in-law's salon. Like they don't accept tips on credit cards anymore. So like you could pay with a credit card, but when you tip the stylist, like it's either got to be cash, Venmo, whatever, because it's two separate transactions. So they're getting hit with 4% on the regular charge and then 4% on the tip.
01:32:52
Speaker
It's like, A, the stylist is losing money and B, the business is losing money because they are getting double charged. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. I get my hair cut in the city now. And same thing, you know, like, because before it was only a few dollars. I always paid cash, right? Now it's getting done in the city. And it's like,
01:33:12
Speaker
Can I put the tip on there? I'm like, no, you can't put the tip on there, but there's an ATM machine. It's like, all right, you know? Yeah. When I get my massage, I always have to bring money for the tip. Yeah. And they're normally find them on Craigslist when you get your masseuse. No, I got it. I got a steady. It has windows. She knows all my spots. And it's nothing better than a real good massage. I had a two hour massage on Monday.
01:33:41
Speaker
Really? Oh yeah. I got a 90 minute on Saturday. One girly to get two girls. The amazing part is like, so I see the same woman like once a month. I try to go once a month, but it probably was about two months, but you go to a business. Yeah. No, I go to, um, hand in stone. Yeah.
01:34:09
Speaker
So I, I like to see the same person. Like if she's, if I can get works, you know, then it's good. Yeah. Cause they, she, she literally knows your spots. Like, you know, after they've massaged you so many times, they know what you do for a living. They know where you're going to have knots and trouble spots. So you can imagine
01:34:28
Speaker
what we do standing on a bench or whatever on a hard concrete floor and and we were doing those boxes and like right between your shoulder blades it's like burning i mean yeah my hands were like in like a claw position like this stuck
01:34:46
Speaker
You know, they're just like getting in there. She gets like her elbow in my back. It's just unbelievable. I'm like in a Nirvana state. Right. It's such a calm. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I could do like a three hour, you know, and my wife barters. So she cuts the massage therapist hair and they trade equal time. So she's got like hours and hours and hours. Wow. Yeah. But I, you know, I can never get out there. You get to watch.
01:35:17
Speaker
Actually, I think she's supposed to have a massage too on Saturday. Nice. Nice. Yeah. So it's, so the back and you know what else is like a crazy spot, like the instep on your foot. Is that right? Oh man. It gets in there and like, it's just pressing on there. It's like,
01:35:38
Speaker
I don't want to have to meet a new person either. Yeah. That's the thing. I don't, I don't want to talk cause there's no talking. Yeah. Yeah. It's just sort of like how is everything? That's good. Any trouble spots? No, same as usual. Okay. That's it. That's the last word set. The only other thing she says is time to flip over. Right. Right. But you talk about the bottom of the foot. I've never been to China on business, but a lot of coworkers that gone to China business.
01:36:02
Speaker
and and socially you always see something after dinner if you don't say something if you don't want to go it's like rude you know it's unexpected so there's usually two choices one's either a karaoke bar or the other one's a foot massage oh man that's probably yeah like reflexology i guess you know i guess you go from from from i still do that that's a separate thing yeah like i see a reflexologist once a month
01:36:24
Speaker
Is that right? So every two weeks, somebody is working on your muscles. Yeah, they're working on me. Then the other two weeks, you go to a psychiatrist. That's once a week. Much more work upstairs. Yeah, the physical wounds are easier to... Nobody's still saying anything. They just tell you to flip over when you're at the psychiatrist.
01:36:49
Speaker
The mental injuries are much harder. It's
Therapy and Mental Health Stigma
01:36:57
Speaker
funny. I don't, I don't see a therapist, a regular basis anymore. But like when I was in my twenties, I was so screwed up. So, um, the first time I go to see a therapist, I'm like,
01:37:11
Speaker
You know, a psychologist or a psychiatrist, I guess it was, you know, yeah, a psychiatrist because they can prescribe medicine. So I'm like, you know, naive to the whole thing, but it's recommended to me that I should go see a psychiatrist, which is, I guess, a red flag to begin with. I don't need this. I'm fine.
01:37:28
Speaker
Somebody you know, yeah and after the first evaluation they say yeah, we think we think we could treat you That's the funny part of it, you know funny ha ha like I'm thinking this is because I don't know anything So you go one time you're like and you figure you're fixed like kind of thing After I go first time for like, you know an hour and a half or whatever they go. So what are you doing tomorrow?
01:37:58
Speaker
We just ran your insurance. You got pretty good insurance. I think you need to come back.
01:38:13
Speaker
Oh man, that's funny. I never went to a psychiatrist. I could probably use it just to kind of open up a little bit. I think everybody could. Yeah. It's one of those things that if you're honest with yourself, it's very helpful. I mean, we live in a very
01:38:30
Speaker
Uh, stressful society, you know, guarded, you know, you don't want to rely. You don't want to drop your guard. You don't want to admit that you're, you're weak in any way, you know, you want to, you know, make believe, you know, you got it all together, but sometimes we're, we don't really have it all together. Everyone around you too has got some skin in the game. So it's like, can you really be, you know, like, can you lay it all out online? And then it's like,
01:38:53
Speaker
you need a neutral party. It's quite an experience if you get somebody that you could trust and like to just unavail yourself of all your burdens and things and say, because there are times where you go, is it me?
01:39:11
Speaker
Or is it them? You know what I mean? Everybody's experienced that thought. It's possible that I am the bad actor in these experiences. I think everybody's nuts. I'm the only normal one in the group. And then you start saying, wait a minute, I can't be the only normal one. If it's everybody, then it's me. That's what they say. If everybody in the room is an asshole, turns out actually you're the asshole.
01:39:39
Speaker
So it's pretty good, you know, but you got to take that and do work. I mean, that's the thing. Nobody's no third party is going to fix you. You have to be honest. And then you have to say to yourself, do I really want to take these hard looks at myself and make these choices to correct these behaviors?
01:40:02
Speaker
Well, you know, because that's where it's at. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, otherwise it's just a waste of time.
Leadership and Event Management
01:40:08
Speaker
You're just spinning your wheels, right? I kind of look at that sometimes, you know, management, you know, I manage about 19 different people and everybody's different and how you approach everybody's different and how they
01:40:18
Speaker
receive you is different, right? And, and I think we've all had bad bosses as you know, we've grown up and it's like, yeah, you know, our one bad boss. It's just, I'd hate to be that bad boss. I'd hate to be that jerk. You know, you say you don't leave a company, you leave a bad boss and it's like, you know, sure you gotta have goals and expectations and you got to keep the house tight, but there's also a way of maybe making it fun. And I always try to
01:40:44
Speaker
bring an entrepreneurial spirit, you know, for my, um, my employees, my team members, if you will. And then sometimes you look back and it's like, man, did they think I'm a jerk, you know, or is that, you know, so as your man is hard. Yeah. You know, so I always try to sit there and say 85% of the time I try to be a cheerleader, a coach, that positive go to, you know, men did a great job and I go and 15% of the times I got to make
01:41:06
Speaker
a hard decision. I got to be somewhat of a jerk. I got to tell you something that you don't want to hear, but I hope it's 85 15 and you respect the 15% that I'm doing. And then I can explain why we're doing it. It's not just because of a personal goal. It's because you know, everybody can't have their own way. We all got to move in one direction. Yeah. Yeah. That's important. That like,
01:41:25
Speaker
I, you know, I succeeded in the catering industry, not because I was a great chef, but because I was a great boss on my events. Like people worked for me. They wanted to work for you. Yeah. Underneath me, so to speak at those events, because that's, that's how these things are structured. You know, you, you have, um, you know, in a van, it might be a sit down dinner for 400 people. You're given X number of
01:41:54
Speaker
people to execute the plan. You bring everything along and you've dispersed the responsibilities and then you just make sure everything's getting done. I mean, I can't imagine the time pressure of doing a large high end catered event. You can't sit there and say, I'm sorry, this burnt. We're going to bring it back tomorrow.
01:42:12
Speaker
right? I mean, you got one shot and it's now and it's, and it's, and it's a high expectation and you got to deliver. And if you have one person mess it up or, or if you're not prepared or organized, it just has domino effect on everything.
01:42:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Jeff knows because he did a lot of high-end stuff on front of house. Yeah. And I did some events like that to Two River Theater for their gala. Did this big Oktoberfest party for this German German gentleman who owns this company in Red Bank. Huge.
01:42:47
Speaker
set up a building basically in a field with like, you know, they had the portable bathrooms that walk in. It looks like a real bathroom. Right. Dance. Right. Running water in the port of John. Yeah. Yeah. It was crazy. Yeah. Their trailers. Yeah. For like, you know, a couple hundred people, people, you know, girls in later hoes and walking around with schnapps.
01:43:07
Speaker
Yeah, we need that next year at, yeah, what's the, the bindles, the, the, where the, it's been bindles, right? The guys were at leader hose and the women wear bindles. Oh yeah. Yeah. The dresses. And yeah, we got to get, you know, more of that. Some like St. Pauli girls. Yeah. You know, I can remember going to the real half bar house on October Fest and just watching them carry these leaders. And they put them down at the whole table and everything vibrates, you know, and it's like,
Cultural Experiences Abroad
01:43:34
Speaker
wow. I'd like to go to October Fest. It looks like a,
01:43:37
Speaker
I mean, maybe I'm not cut out for it now. I remember the first time. The first time I went, you know, in Munich to the real Oktoberfest and I came back and I spoke to one of the German ladies in her office in North Carolina and I said, yeah, you know, what's Oktoberfest? She goes, Oh, you had a chance to meet our German rednecks, huh? You know, it's like, yeah, you know, but.
01:44:01
Speaker
It's a once in a lifetime thing to do, right? You know, drinking beer is a sport, if you will. And you know, one of the cool things about it, I never sang more John Denver songs in my life. You know, they like our kind of folk rock music, you know, and you know, um, I heard David Hasselhoff is real big in Germany. Oh yeah. Yeah. He's huge. Like as a musician, I think. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. Didn't he sing like when the wall came down or something and something? I mean, he like a mega star, like here he's,
01:44:30
Speaker
I don't want to say a joke. That's unkind, but you know, he's sort of like a B level celebrity. Like he was, he's a one trick pony. He's a may watch. But yeah, big, big deal in Germany. Yeah.
01:44:48
Speaker
Yeah, but you know, October fest and some of these festivals, you know, and the one, the one thing that we do as a company, we have a big show in Cologne, which is called the inter zoom show and it's every other year. So it's coming up in a couple of weeks. It's every other May. And then we charter a yacht for 900 people.
01:45:05
Speaker
It's like a mini cruise ship, right? We get like real professional live entertainment and all these people. And then you just sell up and down the Rhine river for, for an evening, you know, it's a lot of fun. You know how many hinges you have to buy to get on that. You got a couple dozen.
01:45:25
Speaker
And the best part about it, when it docks, like when it docked, I thought we had, okay, it's docked, we gotta get up and get off, man. No, it stays, man, it stays open. So you're like hanging out on the boat, like a nightclub and then you expect to be at work the next morning, you know?
01:45:41
Speaker
That's the problem is, you know, these events, it's like, well, even when it's a KBIS, you know, you get on out into the casino and you're hanging out drinking. It's like, man, I got to wake up and you don't even have a, when we went, we didn't have any responsibilities. Right. When you're, when you're a vendor and you got, you have to be at the booth and you know, and you have a first morning appointment, you gotta have, you know, you worked all year to get this customer there. You can't say it was out last night with your competitor party. And now I don't know, even though what I'm saying.
01:46:10
Speaker
Yeah. All the time. I mean, you were out there for what? A, a, a good while before getting, I was out there five days before the show, you know, getting set up in some meetings and getting things together. For me, it was always the big I W F show in Atlanta every other year. And that's where I would go down. I remember when I first started the company, put me in the rich Carlton for 13 nights. Wow.
01:46:32
Speaker
I was like 29 years old, you know, checking into Ritz Carlton, which was never anything I've done before. And, and, and the bill hopster, uh, uh, so would you like a bucket of ice?
01:46:43
Speaker
Yeah, sure. I had nothing for the ice. I had no beverage. I had no nothing else. But sure, why not? Can I have a couple more robes? Yeah. We did a job for a gentleman who works for the NFL. And this was right around prior to the Super Bowl. And he was like, oh, yeah, he's like, I'm flying out. And it was like two weeks before. Yeah. He was out there for like three weeks or something.
01:47:07
Speaker
Yeah. I guess that's a big deal though, right? Yeah. Yeah. He did the halftime show. That was his, like, I think he was like the guy. Yeah.
Work-Life Balance Reflections
01:47:17
Speaker
You know, I always thought, I kind of thought about that, you know, like we were talking about seaside or something, man, like can I do a job like every day and just burn it from morning to night for like three months or four months and it takes the rest of the year off.
01:47:30
Speaker
and just, you know, play golf and just go fishing with my buddies and, and just, you know, snorkel and just whatever, you know, we just, but, but go really crazy hard for a few months. Um, we used to do that as caterers, but you know, that was 30 years ago. Yeah.
01:47:48
Speaker
That's not easy. No. I mean, I go to bed at like when the clock goes past eight PM now start thinking turn into a pumpkin. All right. Let me start. Let me set the coffee pot up. Let me brush my teeth. Let me do, you know, I got to get everything situated. So when it's bedtime, that was like I woke up this morning and I hadn't prepped my coffee and I was like,
01:48:19
Speaker
I guess I get up, you know, usually I get up at four, sometimes a little bit earlier. My wife says, what are you doing? I said, well, you know, I got to set up my lunch. I got to make the car. It's like, I got to have time when you're not awake. You know, for me, I go to bed at 10 o'clock, right? And I always have the 10 o'clock news on.
01:48:42
Speaker
And I never watch it. You know, like how some people since her head hits the pillow, they fall asleep. That's me. My wife says I fall asleep with my head on the way down. I hit the pillow. I'm out. She goes, it's amazing. I don't, I never seen anybody. How does somebody fall asleep so fast? I'm just exhausted. I'm just whooped man. And by 10 o'clock, I'm out.
01:49:01
Speaker
And I'm probably, you know, how many times she elbowed me on the couch saying it's time to, you know, go to bed, you know. Oh yeah. I used to fall asleep on the couch all the time. And then, you know, your neck, you get kink in your neck. I don't even, I don't even go to the couch anymore after we put my son to bed.
01:49:17
Speaker
But yeah, I like to watch YouTube, like on the TV, and I fall asleep between like picking videos. So like I'll watch something and it's like I gotta, you know, it ends to pick something else and all. I don't even see it happening. It's like I just, I don't even think about closing my eyes, but my eyes close, I just fall asleep. Yeah, yeah. So I watched some of these shows on YouTube. There's this one where it's called Itchy Boots.
01:49:40
Speaker
Itchy boots. Itchy boots. So this is, you know, younger lady from the Netherlands and she rides this motorcycle all through Europe. And then, you know, she started in South America and she's riding up to Alaska and she travels by herself. And, and some, sometimes, and she like,
01:49:57
Speaker
So she does it herself, right? You know, Tara, she's filming herself, you know, and she has a, you know, a droid and all this other stuff and, um, a drone to drone. And, um, if some episodes are only 20 minutes, 25 minutes, some are like, you know, maybe longer, 35, 40. And all of a sudden, like I wake up, it was like five episodes passed by.
01:50:16
Speaker
Did I see that or didn't I see it? That's like when you fall asleep on the train. Well, YouTube, it'll put that red bar at the bottom that shows you like how much you watched. Yeah. So like I watch a bunch of channels like that, too. Like this guy bald and bankrupt. He goes, he like travels around the world. He goes, he's like a British guy. So he'll be in like Venezuela or something. He goes to like a lot of places that are like might be considered seedy. Like he actually got kicked out of Russia. It broke into where they keep the
01:50:44
Speaker
The Russian space shuttle, like he literally broke into the building to get like, you know, it's from like the 80s or whatever. But yeah, I'll see episodes that I didn't don't remember watching, but the bar is like five, you know, like, I don't remember watching that. Yeah. And my wife will be like, you're putting this on again because she stayed up through it because it was playing in the background, but I was asleep.
01:51:11
Speaker
Yeah. Bedtime. I used to be a night person too. I bet you had to be in, in, in, in the cater business and I was, you know, in the music business. And so it's all nighttime stuff. Right. That's a, but, um, I'm adjusting. Really? Well, you have to, there's no, no choice. I mean, just in general, you got to adapt. But what do you miss?
01:51:40
Speaker
Well, you know, I don't I get it now in the early morning hours that get four o'clock I get that same kind of Solitude that I used to get at 2 a.m. Yeah only now I'm getting up. Yeah. Yeah, instead of staying I hear you a little bit clear, you know, it's funny is um, I
01:51:58
Speaker
My boss is a couple of years older than me, maybe two years older than me. And he goes to bed crazy early. He wakes up crazy early. So like the best time for us to communicate is like five o'clock in the morning or 5.15 in the morning. You know, we're going to like go into a quiet place in our house to have these conversations. And it's great because we're not interrupted from the, from the day. We don't have to feel the pressure of the day. We get a chance just to, just to talk and we kind of just laugh about it because everybody has their own little time to connect and that's our time to connect. Yeah.
01:52:25
Speaker
That's like, yeah, when I'll hit like my emails and stuff, four o'clock, I wake up by 4.15. I'm sitting there in my coffee. And, you know, like you said, your head is clear because you just woke up. I'm trying to do, you know, respond to an email at 5 p.m. I'm thinking about all the things that already went wrong. You know, you're stressed out.
01:52:44
Speaker
Yeah. Sometimes like I try and concentrate, I'll go home and try and like sort through a job. Like you'd say, take a look at this job, blah, blah, blah. Try and do it like after dinner, my head just, I can't, that's like, I'll count the number of like pieces of plywood five times before I go, what am I doing?
01:53:04
Speaker
And people don't understand because they send out this one designer that we work with specifically, they send it over and they're like, it's on Monday. It's Monday. They're like, we meet with them Wednesday at two. I'm like, yeah, two days. It's like, today's already shot. So now it's like, I have Tuesday morning to look at it. That's all I have. She's looking for a number. Yeah.
01:53:25
Speaker
and like a drawing. Something that she could deliver. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, if we want to sell this job, like I need time because I have to break it. First of all, it's being injected into everything else that's going on. And, you know, I've got, I got two hours in the morning before I got to be here. So it's, it's, it's one of the hardest parts about I know in the woodworking industry for, you know, for a smaller average cabinet shop, it's, it's,
01:53:51
Speaker
you're so busy that you don't have time to do the estimating and to bring in the new work that you have these highs and these lows and you're constantly going these ups and downs and to kind of back it up. You get burnt out. Sometimes I can't even bring myself to respond to an email. It could be something simple.
01:54:08
Speaker
It's like I'll just, I keep marking it as red. I'll read it and I'm like, I just can't. I'm like mark it on red and it'll just sit in my inbox for a week because sometimes you just can't, it's just too much. It's funny you say that because I used to at night watch TV and drove my wife crazy, but I had my laptop open. I'd be working on emails, you know, and today I can't do it. Same thing. I don't know if I'm just fried or I just want to sit there and say,
01:54:34
Speaker
kind of done. I just need to close this, just to hang out with her and watch TV. Nine times no good for me anymore. I need to recuperate as far as my mind goes. Funny thing, like
01:54:48
Speaker
that I notice about getting older is you start to feel things slipping away. It's a hard thing to admit. It's like, oh man, I don't remember stuff like I used to or I used to be able to do that. And now it's like, I got to really concentrate.
01:55:09
Speaker
or something mundane. Turning 60 also got to me a little bit, you know, going through the pandemic. I know a few people who, you know, bad things happen. They either got sick or they got ill and just, you know, life isn't fair. And then you're just like, man, I'm working so hard, but now I gotta start calling some me time.
01:55:30
Speaker
And that's why I do these motorcycle trips, because I can't do it in my 70s. In my 70s, I'm sitting there saying, boy, if only I would have done this, right? And that's the biggest thing I want to avoid. I want to avoid these if onlys. I want to live in the moment. And I agree, you got to be all in. So when you're working, you're working, you got to produce, but then you also got to be all in on a break and you need a vacation. And I can only imagine how difficult that is for a couple of guys who own their own business because
01:55:58
Speaker
you know, I still get paid on vacation, right? You know, and you guys aren't produced and I can just imagine like how tough that is, you know, and then you got a partner and you got a family, you got to keep everything going. It's just, it has to be challenging, you know? Yeah. So maybe you're like, that's why you got to call the time out at night because you got to refresh that battery at night. I mean, I'm, I feel lucky because I did a lot of stuff when I was younger. Like I don't, I don't have like a bucket list.
01:56:25
Speaker
Yeah, you did it all. You know, it's not like I did everything, but I did a lot of stuff that people who have the same kind of interest that I do didn't get to do. Right. You know, it's like I rode a motorcycle across the country by myself. I, you know, I played in a rock band and 20,000 cedarinas. I did stuff that's kind of cool and I'm ready to just
01:56:52
Speaker
You know, I don't mind getting up and coming to work and, you know, it's like, and going to bed early. That's okay with
Embracing Simplicity
01:57:01
Speaker
me. I, my wife thinks I'm a little boring now, but it's like, I did all that already. I don't need to do it now. Yeah. And you're still cool. So, you know,
01:57:13
Speaker
sometimes you have to remind her why, you know, we're still pretty cool, you know. Does Ali think you're boring? You know, I work in the same way. Like this is what I enjoy. I like waking up before a clock, sitting down, having my coffee, coming to work, working, coming home.
01:57:34
Speaker
I enjoy it. I mean, I'm totally content. The truth is the amount of work that you do from four to five in the morning, there's no interruptions. You have a clear head. It's probably, you know, five hours worth of work during a busy day in how productive you can be. And it's a really satisfying feeling about that quality of work, knowing that you already got that accomplished. Yeah. It's the only time of the day to do that stuff. Yeah.
01:57:58
Speaker
And like you're saying, you could bang something out in that hour that in the middle of the day would take you two, three, four hours. Because you're stopping and starting, you're stopping and starting. There's a couple of reports that I run in the morning, first thing, and my sales guys always tease me about it. Like, you know, hey, you're sending this to me at 5.30 in the morning. Do you expect me to read it? No, I don't expect you to read it. But what happens if I could get it to you, so you could start your day with the tools that you need. And then I know it's done. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to worry about it.
01:58:25
Speaker
I think the same thing for me is true is about exercise. If I can do a little bit of exercise in the morning, I know it's done because I'm not getting to it later. I'm physically mentally shocked. That ain't happening. Happy hour might happen, but the work at the Pilates class isn't happening. And then you have to juggle that too. It's like you only have so much time in the morning for yourself. That's like something I'm struggling with now. In the beginning of the year, I was really good every morning. I would get down, I have gym in my basement, workout a little bit, stretch, whatever.
01:58:54
Speaker
And then, um, I don't know what set it off. I think it was going to the Hamptons. It's like, that's all it takes one day where we had to leave at four o'clock. And then the next day I'm tired because it was a long day. And then that's two days. And you're like, well, I'll get to it next week. And then now it's been whatever two months. It's hard to start again. Right. Right. Right. So one of the things I bought a peloton.
01:59:16
Speaker
Oh yeah. I'm interested in that. And I fell in love with the Peloton because what happens to Peloton one, I don't have to leave the house, right? Like you get the home gym, you know, you go downstairs when nobody else is there and then, you know, ride it, you know, and listen to music and have a great little time. And then I started exploring the other classes. So they had like these boot camps and they have all these other different classes. And then I started yoga.
01:59:37
Speaker
I'm like, no yoga, but I'm, I'm, I'm tight. I'm just stiff. My wife's big on yoga. Well, your wife is like a yoga master. Yeah. She had a, yeah, had a yoga studio, right? It's just to be able to like breathe deep and stretch your spine and these different muscles. And it's like, wow, man, that's like really good. Yeah. Yeah. The type of strength that you can get from yoga too. It's like, I tried yoga a handful of times and
02:00:04
Speaker
I wouldn't say I'm like in shape, but I mean I've always played sports and you know, I'm relatively strong, I would say.
02:00:12
Speaker
try yoga, anybody. Yeah. You're going to feel like you can't do anything. You're shaking and you try standing on one foot for like 15 seconds. One foot, one arm out, turn to the side, look it up in the sky. And all of a sudden you fall right over. Yeah. Even something as simple as like child's pose. I got a gut. Like you can't breathe when you're in child's clothes. Are you supposed to be purple? Yeah. Yeah.
02:00:41
Speaker
I'm like, man, I'm out of breath. I'm literally just laying here on my, on my stomach. But I always had a hard time stretching, you know, stretching out those hamstrings. And then you start doing some yoga poses and it's like, wow, I can't believe I could get that kind of stretch out of here. This is just great. You know? Yeah.
02:00:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's good for you. Yeah. So, so that's the one thing with that, that Peloton program that I can do all these different things. So you ride the bike with the screen and everything. I ride the bike with the screen. And then what I do is I have a TV set in my, in the same room, my, in my home office and they have cast. So you could cast from, from the, from the, from the Peloton.
02:01:20
Speaker
onto the TV. So now when I'm doing other things like lifting classes or boot camps or yoga, I can look at the TV as well as the Peloton bikes. Now I got two screens I can look at it makes it that much easier. I see. Yeah. I have like a, like a spin bike and then I have an iPad that actually comes down from the ceiling. And yeah, that's pretty cool. So not that I don't want to go to the gym, but it's just so much easier to
02:01:48
Speaker
you know, so ideally try to hit the gym, like maybe two days a week and hit like, you know, heavier weights, if you will. And then do the Peloton bike a few days a week and, and then, you know, just makes room to, you know, keep some mind sharp. Yeah. You know, the, the gym's a weird place, right? That has his own subculture, you know, it's just,
02:02:07
Speaker
It's like, you never know like what's going on at the gym. You got to get in the car. You got to drive there. You got to get out. It's an extra half hour easy, right? Cause regardless how close it is, it's 15 minutes there. It's 15 minutes back. You got to get set up. You got to take your clothes with you. And then, and then you lose time. If cause of other people are on your equipment, you know, it's just
02:02:28
Speaker
It's just not ideal. You know, where if you could do it, you know, I don't have to brush my teeth. I just go downstairs on the Peloton bike and, you know, fire it up. And, and, you know, if I want to scream, I could scream. If I want to sing poorly, I could sing poorly. Yeah. You know, down there, lifting weights. They got no shoes on, you know, it's your own space. Yeah. Yeah. How our lives have changed, right? Oh yeah.
02:02:53
Speaker
getting up at four in the morning instead of going to bed at four in the morning. Exactly. Yeah. Our most productive times before the sun comes up, you know? Yeah. I mean, when I worked in Seaside, we watched the sun come up. Yeah. That was have breakfast before you go home. That was the, that was normal. Yeah.
02:03:09
Speaker
Yeah. That's almost like growing up. I remember the old neighborhood, neighborhood bars, right? And the guys that worked the night shift in the factory, they're walking into the bar like seven 30 in the morning and they're, they're drinking the beer in his shot and that pickled wieners, whatever they had in those, those jars of the counters, like, how can they do that? And it's like, well, for them, it's like lunchtime. They just worked all night. Their whole schedule is completely different. You know, we used to stop off at those bars in the morning, get beer to go down through the beach with,
Old Neighborhood Bars and Culture
02:03:36
Speaker
right?
02:03:36
Speaker
you know, to stop in there and it's just the bar's packed. And back in the old days, they'd cast their paycheck, right? You know, they ring up a bar tab all week, get paid, that they'd cash the check at the bar. They'd get, they'd pay off their bar tab and go home with a little bit more money, you know.
02:03:54
Speaker
Life was simple. Yeah. In Seaside when the bar would close, you know, like if, if we were drinking at the restaurant that I worked at was also a nightclub. It was, it was karma at the time. I think it was called rain, a rainbow room or something or the courtyard way back. I know that that was the babios. I think that I was referred to back in the late, late seventies, early eighties. It was up the block from bamboo.
02:04:18
Speaker
like two blocks north. But yeah, so we work in the restaurant, go out to the car after a shift, get changed, go into the nightclub, and then the nightclub will close, and then we would sit at the bar while the bartenders were closing out and sit there for another couple of hours and drink.
02:04:35
Speaker
Everything was $2, employee pricing, $2 for whatever you wanted. And this is like, you know, talking 2008. Right. So the owner is smart because if you charge a full price, he knows that you wouldn't, or you wouldn't pay anything. You know, there'd be some shenanigans going on. But if you make it fair enough, like, yeah, I'll pay $2, I'll drop $20 here tonight. No problem. You know? Yeah, that was pretty smart of them, you know? Oh, yeah.
02:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, and then the bartenders get good tips, it keeps them happy. Yeah. Because if I'm paying two bucks for a drink, whatever, I'm giving you five bucks. You take two for the house, three for you. Yeah. I think when my daughter used to live in Ohio, they had, I believe it was Wegmans supermarket. Wegmans, they have them here. And they had a barner.
02:05:20
Speaker
So like, whatever, one person's shopping, the other person's sitting at the bar having, you know, a few pints, you know? It's like, you know, honey, swing by when you hit this island, have a glass of wine with me or something. You know, it's just... Oh my God. Now you're day drinking a Wegmans. Yeah. That's like a nappy. It's always happy hour nappies. Speaking of drinking. Did they have, did they, did you try their restaurant?
02:05:46
Speaker
No, but we saw the sign and I'm like, resto bar. My wife keeps saying, we should try that. And I'm like, yeah. Liquor store bar, restaurant. But I understand Half Moon has happy hour now. Yeah. I thought I saw that lady walking down the street, but it was somebody else. I was gonna say, hey, come check out the shop. What was funny was when they had St. Patrick's Day here in town, I walked from my house to Half Moon.
02:06:14
Speaker
And as I'm getting closer, I see the lady, the owner walking the other way. I go, that's never good. We were in the parade. Yeah. I heard, I heard, I heard that you were to make today and not, you know, the, the, the grand tuba. They called us green street greenery. When we went back, it's green street greenery. And CBD. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, where'd he get greenery?
02:06:38
Speaker
And my wife was in as well. She marched, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is she a bagpiper or? She's not. I wish she was. I think that'd be kind of cool. But she works for a preschool, the preschool afterschool program here in town. So they kind of march and get involved in the community. And, you know, it was fun. You know, it's it's stressful driving in a parade with those kids.
Community Events and Local Growth
02:07:02
Speaker
All those kids in a super slow street collecting candy. Yeah.
02:07:07
Speaker
We had saved the whales behind us and good fellas, good fellows in front of us, which was just like a, like a landscaping trailer with wooden sides. And it was just packed full of like old men, just like with a keg and they're just like blast of music. Is that right? Yeah. So a couple of years ago I did a, um,
02:07:28
Speaker
a bike pub crawl. Oh, geez. So we're on our bikes and we're hitting these different pubs. And it was all, it was a fundraiser for somebody from town who passed, you know, so they... Bicycles. Bicycles. Yeah, okay. So bicycles and, you know, you start off at one bar and you sit there and you have a couple of beers and then together as a group, you get on your bike and then you finish up at the VFW or something. You know, it's like, man, I kind of just had a bunch of beers. I'm riding in town. It's just, you know,
02:07:57
Speaker
Yeah, but it's a cool town. They do a lot of good things here. They do the concerts on the beach, they do the movies on the beach, and they really try to do a lot for the kids in the community. There are a lot of people involved. Yeah, it definitely seems that way.
02:08:14
Speaker
And we've, I mean, we've only had positive experiences with all the people from the town that we've dealt with, you know, the mayor and the building department and everybody. Mayor's brother. Yeah. He's, yeah, he's what part of the building department? I think he's part of every department, I think. Recreation and building.
02:08:32
Speaker
You see all this new construction going on down by car Avenue and everything. So it's really exciting. You just picture this town is going to look like in three years from now. And I always looked at it. I said, man, it's so close to New York city. And then when you throw the water and the arcades and everything else in it, what a, what a cool, desirable place to live. You know, you just easily walk to a bus that goes right to Manhattan, you know? And then you're also so close to the training, the ferries and everything else. I mean,
02:08:58
Speaker
you know, location, location, location. They certainly have it. If they could get, you know, either a ferry stop here, which is probably pretty difficult, but to get like a, get it by one of those trolleys and have it run from Seastreak or from Belford and run it over here, you know, you get, it's like a little Coney Island, you know? Right. Yeah. So, you know, I know Seastreak has a bus that connects, there's three different
02:09:22
Speaker
Terminals, you know, but it doesn't go to your point doesn't go beyond only to their own self-serving terminals But if you went a little bit farther, you know, or if the city bus made a stop in there, you know Where yeah, just the town of Keensburg buys it buys one of those trolleys I mean, I guess a lot of money but and it just runs their own little shuttle, you know, even if it just runs twice a day Yeah, exactly you figure out what the the hot
02:09:48
Speaker
you know, times would be for people to come in and when they, so they pick them up and go get them at the end of the day. There used to be a ferry from Manhattan to Kingsburg and I'm going back a long time ago because my
02:10:03
Speaker
father-in-law used to take it. So when my father-in-law was in his twenties, you know, and, um, you know, they would take it from the East side of Manhattan, right into Kingsburg. And they're like the same thing. It was like the last boat, you know, so everybody's hanging out, having a good time down on a boardwalk and time for them. All them guys to go back to Manhattan. You know, I think that was a pretty festive boat ride. I bet. Oh yeah.
02:10:26
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, this was like going back like a hundred years, this whole Bay Shore was like hopping big time. I mean, down in Highlands, you had Connors, which was like a big like hotel resort. I mean, it was like a big deal. You had, you know, seven presidents park in Long Branch. Like this is where the Thomas, I mean, I don't know exactly Thomas Jefferson, like people like that. It's like, this is where they came. Yeah. I mean, I always joked around that, you know, because of, uh,
02:10:53
Speaker
Trump's, you know, daughters in-laws, you know, they're all from that area. They all built up that area. So if Trump ever visited seven presidents parks, you'd have to rename it eight presidents parks. Yeah. Oh, Kushner like owns Long Branch now. Everything is Kushner. Yeah. Right. And he developed the mall and everything else. And it's all, you know, my daughter lives in peer village and that's all, all that family, you know? So it's always kind of cool. I mean, didn't the Hindenburg, um,
02:11:19
Speaker
That was, uh, not Lakehurst. Yeah. At West. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah. Jack owned like Jackson area. Oh, okay. Oh yeah. But you know, you go down the Jersey shore. I mean, you look at like the Osprey and some of these old bars down in, um, uh, Madisquan, you know, these have Jimmy burns and trade wins trade wins. Sure.
02:11:37
Speaker
They had the boardwalk in Long Branch, right? That's where you used to go to Long Branch. Burned down, right? Yeah, burned down. They just have a haunted mansion and a pier, and that all burnt down and went away. But yeah, some big restaurants and Atlantic islands and stuff. Because transportation wasn't as good as it is today, right? The highways weren't as big. So to take a ride to Kingsburg or to Asbury Park was a big deal.
02:12:05
Speaker
And now everybody's just all over the place all the time. Yeah. But, but, but a lot of these old towns that had some rough, rough days, if you will, are really coming back stronger and better than ever. I mean, we're down in Asbury park all the time, looking at some great live music and enjoying some great bands and, and, and restaurants. And you know, I feel like I wouldn't, I don't need to go on vacation or leave the Jersey shore in the summertime. Cause there's so much here. Oh yeah. You know,
02:12:30
Speaker
I mean, I got friends that are coming in for labor day weekend. I got a couple of guys coming in from Ireland and some other guys coming in from North Carolina. We're going to go to a Springsteen concert on Friday night. We're going to see Southside Johnny to stone pony. All these guys, all these guys, I saw like Marshall Tucker, you know, their 50th anniversary party or something. I used to work at surf club in Orly beach. Marshall Tucker came every year. The whalers came every year. I mean,
02:12:59
Speaker
We were handing those tickets out like, you know, right? Like nobody's business. It was like, nobody paid to get into those shows. It was just like, then they packed the place.
02:13:08
Speaker
I can't believe Southside's playing. Oh yeah. No, he's still playing. He's still, he sounds good. I mean, it really sounds good. The one thing I always enjoyed about Southside was that he'd get to this great warmup bands like these big horn is like, you know, 18 people on stage and they're just playing. I never heard of them. I never saw them again. But man, while I'm watching this show, I'm like, this is just an incredible talented group.
02:13:30
Speaker
Yeah. I always thought his band was, uh, overshadowed by Springsteen. Yeah. So we like, right? Like, so sometimes like, especially at the pony, Bruce will show up, you know? And then it's like, like, if he's not showing up, like, like you'd almost sit there and say, relax, he's not coming. He's not coming, you know? And then, uh, John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown band tickets went on sale today for, I think he's still playing. I saw it that had ticket master, you know, and he kind of like it had that Springsteen sound, right? Yeah. Yeah.
02:14:00
Speaker
who did i play with i had never heard of southside johnny until i moved out here but yeah like he's like a legend oh yeah yeah like developed the whole sound right yes um was another oh john eddie was another guy from around here
02:14:17
Speaker
I can't remember. I remember the first time when I was back in the eighties play playing around New York, we played at the pony, right? And opened up for, I'm sorry. When was that in the eighties? Yeah.
02:14:31
Speaker
And it was really a dump. Yeah. And I was shocked at what a dump it was. Oh yeah. And it wasn't really, um, set up, right? It was kind of wider than deeper than it is now. Cause now it's nice. Yeah. Um, but I remember going in here and I was like, you know, like my heart was sank. It was like, Oh man, we're going to play the pony. Yeah. We get there. I was like, man, this place is a dump.
02:14:56
Speaker
Yeah. I think that's what I saw. John Cafford, the beaver Brown band was like in the early eighties when they had that one movie that was out. I forgot that Eddie and the cruise, Eddie, the cruisers. Yeah, that was it. Yeah. I liked that movie. Oh yeah.
02:15:12
Speaker
And that, not a pony has the outdoor state shows and it's, it's kind of cool. And you know, guys like us sometimes will not buy a ticket, but hanging out across the street, you know, just listen to it. You know, it's just, yeah. So I'm looking forward to my friends coming in from out of town and enjoying the Jersey shore experience, you know? Yeah. I saw co-heat at the summer stage at stone. Oh, nice. That was a good show.
02:15:37
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. We're going to see Springsteen Friday night. Where's he playing? It's playing at the Prudential center in Newark. Okay. I got four tickets. So me and my three kids. All right. So, you know, it's going to be cool. We're going to do dinner over by the train station over here in Middletown. And then we'll just walk over to the train station and be able to, you know, um, pregame on the train and then just walk right into, uh, uh, the arena where you guys go and eat.
02:16:03
Speaker
I always forget the name. It's right by the train station. Is it that place in that little, like, I don't want to call it a strip mall. Yeah. It's a couple of buildings. Yeah. Right there. It's a little company by the Calico cat. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know there was a restaurant over there. Yeah. It's a restaurant. It's really good. And it's a BYOB and they're super nice. They've been there for a while and, and, and we enjoy it. And he just want to sandwich you the sandwich. You want to get, you know, a nice seafood meal or a great pizza. Um, yeah, it's cool. And, and it's convenient. I had no idea there was a restaurant in there.
Logistical Challenges in Delivery
02:16:32
Speaker
Yeah.
02:16:36
Speaker
Now you make me hungry. Yeah. You know, it's kind of happened at that time of day too. You know, you work all day and get an appetite, especially when you wake up at four in the morning. Yeah. Pulling edge banners out of box trucks. That would have been a great video. Great YouTube. I was like, man,
02:16:56
Speaker
I thought it was going to fall. I did too. What would have happened? Would you have insurance? I don't, I mean, it is insured, but I don't know what, I don't know if it's only insured when it's inside the building. Yeah. We don't know.
02:17:09
Speaker
I mean, I don't know. I guess ultimately we should have refused delivery. You know, well, it went okay. So you can sit there and laugh about it, but you would have had, if something bad would have happened, you know, it would have been a disaster. You got to get a load it back up, pal. I don't want to know.
02:17:27
Speaker
I'm not signing him for it. He was getting ready to leave. He goes, Oh, I gotta have you sign that papers. I said, edge banner. I said, we didn't get it. You know, it was like, you know, the guy I ride my motorcycle with from Florida, he left his bike in my motorcycle, my garage. And then he had one of those motorcycle transportation companies come by to pick it up and they're pretty cool. They're like two levels. They got like this whole upper lower, lower level, you know, this big truck, like a North American van light truck, that kind of scale.
02:17:53
Speaker
And, and, and I'm waiting for him to come. I'm waiting for him to call me and I'm like, Hey, you don't have to come right to my house. I can ride it out to you and walk a little bit. Right. And he goes, okay. I'll call you when I get close and I'm watching TV. And also the TV goes, the power goes out.
02:18:06
Speaker
Like, hmm. Oh, he hit a pole. And then about five minutes later, he called, he goes, I'm in your neighborhood. I go, great. I go, where are you? And he goes, and I took that a power line. I go, yeah, I lost power. And he's trying to like, you know, you know, I'm saying to the cop, I go, is that his fault? Because the power line should be a certain height.
02:18:28
Speaker
And it's illegal for it to be low. So he can't be held negligent because no, he can't operate a vehicle unless he can safely operate a vehicle. So if he sees a line that's down, he should stop. He shouldn't drive right through it, you know, and then, and then the driver's like, you know, Hey, you know, like kind of like looking for me to help, you know, tip him out or, you know, and I'm like, it's not my bike. I'm just like the ball. I can't help you know, it was just one of those crazy things, you know, just, I couldn't even imagine the stress of a truck driver.
02:18:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I see these guys in Brooklyn, you know, you know, you know, I can deliver a product in a day and then, but if it goes to Brooklyn, there's like, it's days because they want to hand it off to another company. You know, like you guys know, there's no docs. You got to have a lift gate on the back, you know, and I guess stuff that gets delivered to job sites never shows up. You know, it's just Brooklyn's a whole nother world. Yeah. When I had
02:19:21
Speaker
I was running a restaurant in Brooklyn and... In Bedside? No, in Park Slope. Yeah, nice. So I wanted to bring in my own bakery guy. Yeah. It was a whole big deal. Yeah. You can't just change. Yeah. We had to have a literal sit down with the guy who delivered our rolls and Italian bread.
02:19:46
Speaker
and he had to give back something to the guy I wanted to bring. Let's just say I know some people in the linen business. Nothing's easy in Brooklyn. The linen business is territorial. That's the way the bakeries work too. It's territorial. You can't just change. In my block, man.
Trade Show Logistics
02:20:11
Speaker
Yeah, the linen business is a competitive business.
02:20:14
Speaker
It's funny the things that you learn when you, you know, in these other worlds. I mean, I only thought it happened with concrete. I didn't realize it happened. It's with everything. Right. Pizza boxes. Everything. Paper cups and napkins and just like, you know. We were lucky that we had a good, you know, that the driver was a good guy. I mean, he would have been stuck with that thing. Yeah.
02:20:39
Speaker
He would have had to go back to North Carolina or I don't know what they would have told him to do. Or, or, or the, the, the, the, the manufacturer could get charged twice. Yeah. Well, I told him, I said, you need to pay this guy extra because, but if he couldn't make the delivery and it's not his fault, somebody has to pay it. I think it had to be the factory.
02:20:58
Speaker
What they would have had to have done was him drive to a like a freight depot. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, they would offload it and then put it on to a proper trailer. What kind of freight? Like, is there independent freight depots, though? Yeah, they all know where in town. It's not like UPS or something. No, it's like for over the road trucks or stuff like that. I remember having to pick up a couple of things like once I got a couple of big thing, a lumber delivered.
02:21:28
Speaker
Yeah. So one of the things that we have done, we have like trade show crates, which are pretty big and have them shipped from North Carolina to almost like a moving company like over by Elizabeth and they would uncreated for us and it put it on a separate truck that had a tailgate and then bring it in for us, you know? But there's, I guess there's a specialist for, for every business, everything possible, you know?
02:21:53
Speaker
The rigging stuff for like moving big machines and stuff is insane. You know, they have these trucks and they put the big forklifts on the trucks and then they move these giant CNCs and stuff like that. I mean, it's crazy.
02:22:07
Speaker
right? You're delivering some, you know, $500,000 machine. And you know, at the end of the day, can we deliver it? And then they got to put it all back together, you know, once they get it to the place, right? I always tell the guys at the trade shows like in Atlanta, right? And these guys, they're not even like staying in the hotel. They're like literally staying on the floor. That's sending all this machinery into a convention center and they got to assemble it, you know, and it disassemble it. And it's just, wow, what an ordeal.
02:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, the infrastructure and planning that go into those shows, like getting all the power. I mean, you got these big three phase machines, 440 volts. You got to get power to all these things. Right. Oh, yeah. Right. I told you, I worked for, I used to work for my uncle. He was president of the Draper's Union. So when we were kids.
02:22:58
Speaker
What do you mean drapes like treatment? No, you know, when you go to the trade shows, how the tables have, yeah, sure. Velcro skirt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They have their own union. So this is back way back failing wage in the early eighties. Yeah.
Yacht Craftsmanship and Micro-Living
02:23:19
Speaker
Over the Jacob Javits center and work in the Javits center. You go in at night.
02:23:23
Speaker
He was getting so he, me and my cousins, we go in and we were getting $44 an hour. Wow.
02:23:32
Speaker
to put skirts around tables now to take them up and fold them and put them in those, you know, big canvas, uh, trolley bins. Yeah. And like, if there was an electrician's cable anywhere near the skirt, you had to sit there and wait because the electrician would come and roll it up and take it out of the way. It made me think of that over that cord. Exactly. It was like, don't take away his, right?
02:24:00
Speaker
you know, your brother's work. Right. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, so it was hard to go to work for like, you know, your $8 an hour after you spent the night working for 44. Right. You know, you work for $8 an hour. You're working eight hours. You get $64, you know, the taxes taking over $50.
02:24:23
Speaker
$44 and union protection. And you didn't really kill yourself either. No, the message you got all night long was slow down. Slow down could keep the expectation low. There's a reason there's six of us here.
02:24:42
Speaker
Oh my God. You know, that's why there's, you know, I mean, I guess there's more shows at the Java center now, but for awhile they, you know, people didn't want to go. He's just too expensive. We have a little 10 by 10 booth and you have, you know, like Tristan minimum two guys for two hours. Oh yeah. It's like everything's pre-wired or you don't do something to do.
02:25:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. The auto show there once. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I went to the boat show once at a customer show. I used to do that stuff all the time. Yeah. It's always impressive to see a boat out of the water, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. Some of them. Yeah. They look so much bigger. They sit so low in the water. I used to sell to a Silverton Marine and they'd have these big yachts, you know, and you go through, go through their plan at different stages. And I was so interested in, you know, I bet.
02:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, the yacht industry. Yeah. Yeah. Like the cabinet making in yachts is a big, you know, it's like a whole, it's another one of those niche sectors of this business, of this sector, whatever.
02:25:48
Speaker
That's so specialized. Sure. So, so today, you know, a big topic is micro living, you know, getting these really small units, but being very high quality and very functional, right? That's what the yacht industry has always done. They've always produced these really high quality, high functionality, but extremely small spaces. Yeah. Yeah. One of the big things I always sell them are these solid brass push button knobs so that the handle and knob would, wouldn't protrude and then you push it on it and it could pop out on a spring. So you can grab it.
02:26:17
Speaker
you push it back in. It was a great item for one of those in actually. You don't want to get caught on stuff when, you know, when the boat's moving, you're banged into it. Everything's got to have latches and seaworthy. Yeah. Yeah. I was doing this kitchen and the guy had remodeled the house and the contractor put the refrigerator right
02:26:40
Speaker
You couldn't open the door. Oops. Cause the knob was hitting. I said, Oh, I bet there's like something from a boat place. And then I wound up doing that for him. But that was, it's funny, you know, we'd run into shit like that all the time. As much as you try to plan and just try to figure something out. Yeah. Yeah.
02:27:05
Speaker
Well, what do you think? We've been at it for two and a half hours.
Closing Remarks
02:27:08
Speaker
Pretty quick. Yeah. Oh yeah. Let's wrap it up and get to stage two. Yeah. Nick's actually on his way. Let's go. We'll get to look at that thing. Um, so yeah, thanks for coming on. Hey, thanks for inviting me. It's great hanging out with you guys. You guys are really cool and interesting. I thought it was a lot of fun, you know?
02:27:25
Speaker
That'd be on again. It was a good episode. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. You're a good guest. Yeah. Oh yeah. For sure. Thanks. So we're off. You know, we're still rolling. You should make a couple of phone calls to your Hayfla reps to be prepared for the business. They're going to get, all right. So I'm going to, I'm going to send everybody two pens.
02:27:46
Speaker
So they can rate those orders. But this is really important. If you reference this show, you're going to get a 10% discount. All right. Here's a question we get a lot. Can non-business owners
02:28:02
Speaker
purchase? Yeah, they can. So what happens is we have a suggested retail price and they can certainly purchase from us at full suggested retail. But also if they Google it, a lot of our dealers distributors will discount off of suggested retail. So they could buy from us. And a lot of people think if you buy from the manufacturer, you're going to get the better price. But in actuality, if you
02:28:26
Speaker
Call or Google a distributor. Um, you can buy it directly from them. Probably had a savings, right? You've got like build.com. I think, yeah, we got those, you know, and then we have, you know, local distributors, even, you know, in, in, in a long branch, you go to bullet lock. Yeah. You know, we don't do that much business with them, but they're like, yeah, sure. Well, we'll process the hateful order for you.
02:28:46
Speaker
talk about a place stuck in time. Yeah. And I have some distributors in New York city, you know, you're like a Simon's hardware and elegance, you know, and hardware. And so people just assume if you buy directly from the manufacturer, you're going to get a better price because you're eliminating the middleman, but really we protect our dealers and they're just, they're set up to serve as a person better than we are.
02:29:10
Speaker
You know, even like with general contractors, we're not set up to serve as a general contractor, shift something to a job site where the local dealer, the local distributor, their business model is to handle that better.
02:29:22
Speaker
Yeah. So don't be afraid if, if you've thought that maybe you weren't a good fit for Hayflood, I'd say, you know, go to the website, check it out. Yeah. And, um, located distributor or dealer. Yeah. Located distributor. And, and, and also there's a lot of great, uh, YouTube videos from Hayflood. So I'll show you how to, how to install things or just to, you know, show you how it's used. And, um, really you just take, uh, um, your, your, your, your kitchen today that you've been living with. Maybe it's, it's, it's a nice kitchen and you want to make it like,
02:29:50
Speaker
an awesome kitchen. And just by adding a couple of little products, a couple of little trays or maybe a little bit of lighting or a little, you know, insert or some new decorative hardware, you can really take what you already have and make it special. And that's what a fun part of our product is. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. The hardware catalog, specifically decorative hardware with hateful is, is
02:30:10
Speaker
I mean, Hey, it's massive. The prices are, they're really, really good. Yeah. We have the Bible. Yeah. In the old days when everybody had a printed catalog, you know, and we hand out a few, there's always one in the bathroom, right? Yeah. You know, the guys are saying they're just flipping through the paces, you know, killing time.
02:30:29
Speaker
I still love the old paper catalog. Yeah. Well, you know, we, we always joke around. If you're a skier, you like the printed catalog, you know, if you're a snowboarder, you'd like things more online. It's that age differential, you know, I'm certainly a skier. I like to have my yellow stickies or, you know, dog tag, my pages. And then the younger guys are like, why? Like I can't get out of my phone.
02:30:53
Speaker
And it's funny. I can find stuff faster on paper too. And I don't know. I don't know why it's just, you know, that's, that's my, uh, well, there's set up a logic versus search words or something that put in a search word. You get something completely wacky native to it. You know, so it's not a tutor for you. All right. Well, thanks, Ed. Thank you. All right, man. Great. Thanks everybody for listening. Yeah. We'll see you next week.
02:31:20
Speaker
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.