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EP 4 Leaving his Legacy. Ramsey Duqum's Story
260 Plays2 months ago
Nate and Kyle Sit down with Ramsey Duqum to discuss his journey from installer to owner, to now software developer!
Recommended
Transcript
Tribute to Michael Fitzwater
00:00:00
Nate
All right, we are back with another episode of Under the Vinyl. Got a good special guest on today. um First off, just wanna start out by giving our heartfelt R.I.P. to Michael Fitzwater. um Great guy in the industry. Did a lot for a lot of people. Always happy, always excited to see you when you saw him.
New Podcast Schedule Announcement
00:00:23
Nate
So ahre we're sorry to hear of his passing, but ah we got Kyle on here today with me.
00:00:29
Kyle Richardson
Hey everyone, how you doing? I'm really looking forward to getting another episode recorded here today. I want to address some things cause I've been getting some texts. We are going to drop episodes every other Tuesday between four and 5 AM moving forward. It's hard for Nate and I to get these dropped every week once we get busy.
Introduction of Ramsey Dukam
00:00:50
Kyle Richardson
So we are going to go with an every other week schedule moving forward. I can schedule them to be dropped Tuesdays 4 AM. m So that's what you guys have to look forward to.
00:00:59
Kyle Richardson
If one isn't dropped, I want you to hold us accountable and start yelling at us.
00:01:05
Nate
Yeah, it'll it'll be a lot easier once we get into busy time here.
00:01:05
Kyle Richardson
But.
00:01:07
Nate
But ah but today we got a we got a great guest on who's who started in the industry a ah while back um and has done a couple different things in the industry and is kind of really progressing this industry in the way he thinks outside the box compared to a lot of people.
00:01:24
Nate
So it'd be good to have some
Ramsey's Background in the Industry
00:01:25
Nate
conversation with him. So with without further ado, we got Ramsey Dukam.
00:01:30
Ramsey Duqum
What's up, guys?
00:01:31
Nate
How you doing, buddy?
00:01:32
Ramsey Duqum
It's great to see you both and be here talking under the vinyl.
00:01:37
Nate
Absolutely, we're glad to have you today. So Ramsey give us a little ah give us a little background on yourself
00:01:45
Ramsey Duqum
I think like a lot of people in the industry, I was born into it. I'm third generation. My grandmother and grandfather worked at a store in San Francisco called Abby Rents. They were one of the first ones that went public.
00:01:59
Ramsey Duqum
In the 50s, I believe, they got moved here to start able rents or not able rents Abby Rents in Cleveland. And that's where our family took seven kids, and one of them being my mother.
00:02:15
Ramsey Duqum
And so I was born into it.
00:02:16
Nate
ah That's awesome.
00:02:19
Ramsey Duqum
About a month old, I was in the crib in the showroom. on South Green Road. The news people came. I was with my cousin, Ryan. we I mean, we grew up in that showroom. And then my grandmother bought, actually my mother's house behind Abel Rents. And I grew up with 24 of my first cousins and all seven of the kids worked at Abel. So we would walk across the street, go to the store, hang out there, beg for quarters to get some pop.
00:02:49
Nate
I was gonna say, did they even have to pay you at that point or was it just, ah love it.
00:02:49
Ramsey Duqum
and oh No, no, no, no, there was plenty of free labor. Up until 12 years old, which is where I first punched in to Abel in the vinyl department. And that's where it kind of started. And then I grew up with my grandmother. She's very close to me. And I'm very close to her. Thank God she's still alive. She just turned 89. And Yeah, so that's where I got my start in the industry at 12.
00:03:22
Kyle Richardson
So when you started at 12, what did the company look like?
00:03:27
Ramsey Duqum
um It was substantial at that time, but we were on the decline. We were it until a local competitor started taking market share. And you know, we're kids, so we didn't really know what was happening. And then we worked throughout the summer installing tents at 16.
00:03:47
Ramsey Duqum
They put me into a 24 foot box truck crew cab 932 with the driver training of my uncle who was dispatcher putting a pencil on my clipboard, putting his finger at the back of the pencil. And he said, that's your back ax. Everything that's in front of that pencil goes where you're turning and everything behind it goes the other way. So watch your watch your butt.
Ramsey's Rise to Operations Manager
00:04:09
Ramsey Duqum
And here's the keys and run your first route, which was to Pennsylvania.
00:04:13
Nate
Was it a manual back at that point?
00:04:14
Ramsey Duqum
No, no, I could drive manual, my first car, but thank God I didn't have to drive a manual truck.
00:04:15
Nate
OK. Right, right.
00:04:23
Kyle Richardson
Were you guys mainly tense, or were you doing everything at that point?
00:04:27
Ramsey Duqum
Well, we were doing everything but nothing really well.
00:04:30
Kyle Richardson
OK.
00:04:31
Nate
OK.
00:04:32
Ramsey Duqum
We started really failing in our quality. I remember going out on the road at 16, installing a wedding and we did very few weddings and the vinyl was just so bad. And I remember saying, I can't install this on my two-way Nextel radio back to my dispatcher, Beep Beep.
00:04:48
Ramsey Duqum
And he's like, we don't have anything else. And I'm like, then we're going to upgrade them. So I remember taking taking that out on a Saturday morning with some guys who volunteered.
00:04:58
Nate
And you were how old at that point, making those decisions?
00:05:00
Ramsey Duqum
16.
00:05:01
Nate
Okay.
00:05:02
Ramsey Duqum
I mean, you're you're on the ground with those people, and you see how much it meant to them.
00:05:06
Nate
Right. Absolutely.
00:05:06
Ramsey Duqum
A lot. I mean, you know what that feels like.
00:05:08
Nate
I just, I just wonder how, uh, looking back, how whoever the dispatch person was, if he's still around at that point, um, if when you, when the 16 year old rental brat calls back and says, I'm not doing this and I'm not putting it up and we're going to upgrade them, the look on his face and the anger from across the phone.
00:05:21
Ramsey Duqum
I ain't doing.
00:05:28
Nate
Is all I can think about.
00:05:30
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah, we we all three of us know what that face looked like, because we probably meant on the other one.
00:05:34
Kyle Richardson
Yeah, we we've all done it before.
00:05:34
Ramsey Duqum
It's not 100%.
00:05:34
Nate
Oh yeah. Absolutely. We've had that face. So, okay. So 16, you get put out on a truck. Um, and then from there moving on, what, when did you, when did you really come into the company as a, as like a decision maker?
Financial Challenges and Restructuring
00:05:51
Ramsey Duqum
twenty three I I was ops manager.
00:05:52
Nate
Okay. And what was that position?
00:05:56
Nate
Okay. So ops manager.
00:05:57
Ramsey Duqum
I had yeah i wasn't going to do this. I raised money to do indoor skydiving, which would have been the seventh in the country.
00:06:05
Nate
oh wow
00:06:06
Ramsey Duqum
So we were flying in the architect. There there was one guy that put a 747 Boeing engine in the floor. And so Mike, ah but I live with my grandmother at that time. And she heard me and my, and they called us the firm, all the cousins who would be installing.
00:06:24
Ramsey Duqum
And we would sit around our dinner table and talk. And she heard me talking about what I would change, what I didn't like, so on and so forth.
00:06:31
Nate
Oh wow.
00:06:32
Ramsey Duqum
and which But it progressed pretty quickly. I dropped out of college six credit hours short of graduation. because I just wanted to make a point that I didn't have to go to college and I didn't like it at all.
00:06:44
Kyle Richardson
What were you studying?
00:06:46
Ramsey Duqum
Business management with a minor in finance.
00:06:47
Kyle Richardson
okay
00:06:48
Ramsey Duqum
Funny story though, that college asked me to come back and speak. And I said, you do recognize that I didn't actually graduate. You guys put me on academic probation. And he goes, I don't care.
00:06:58
Nate
Oh my gosh.
00:07:00
Ramsey Duqum
So so yes, she heard progressing and then she said, can you come in? Long story short, um She's very, very special to me.
00:07:12
Ramsey Duqum
She's been there there through me with me through ups and downs.
00:07:13
Kyle Richardson
Okay.
00:07:15
Ramsey Duqum
And I said, yes, I'll give you three years. And I mean, when I came in, I was welcomed. It was November of 2006. I was welcomed with a accounting meeting at the end of November, beginning of December, that we were going to go bankrupt.
00:07:31
Ramsey Duqum
We were 60 days away from insolvency.
00:07:35
Nate
Oh man.
00:07:37
Ramsey Duqum
And my goodness, that was the first time I really realized I liked to challenge. So we I laid everybody off, including myself. This is welcome to Abel Rents. And therere were I worked for free. And with the president of the company, we installed while um my grandmother, who was working for free, even though she owned it, office manager and her daughter were working in the office taking calls. That was a tough conversation with everybody to have with them.
00:08:07
Kyle Richardson
And I can't imagine November, Cleveland, you had that much outlook in the next three, four months of income coming in.
00:08:15
Ramsey Duqum
six. Six. We didn't really at that time start picking up until May.
00:08:20
Nate
okay
00:08:21
Kyle Richardson
Yeah.
00:08:21
Ramsey Duqum
That's why it was like, there's no other option.
00:08:21
Nate
so And at that point, how many employees were on ah on the payroll?
00:08:29
Ramsey Duqum
More than what we should have had. But I remember when I had that, there was probably trying to think back to that meeting, probably 4035.
00:08:31
Nate
Okay, which is most rental companies?
00:08:41
Nate
And how many did you lay off?
00:08:43
Ramsey Duqum
Every single one of them, but three.
00:08:46
Kyle Richardson
I have to assume you're doing six or seven figure revenue at that point.
00:08:50
Ramsey Duqum
Oh, yeah.
00:08:51
Kyle Richardson
You don't have to give numbers, but.
00:08:52
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah.
00:08:53
Nate
and Okay.
00:08:53
Ramsey Duqum
Well, to be fair, I mean, it doesn't matter to me, we we were a monster, we were five, five million in the 80s.
00:09:00
Kyle Richardson
Oh, wow.
00:09:00
Ramsey Duqum
And then in through the 90s, it started going down when I came in, we were 1.89 million.
00:09:05
Nate
Oh,
00:09:09
Kyle Richardson
Which 40 employees for that number is yep.
00:09:10
Nate
wow.
00:09:13
Ramsey Duqum
it was just It wasn't managed well. My outlook on a lot of the stuff that I came from that second generation was based on my own personal experience. I was short sighted in this, lack of innovation, becoming dogmatic in where we are accepting because that's the way we always done it, which if you say that in our business, i mean you're literally indoctrinated.
00:09:35
Ramsey Duqum
Never go to anybody saying,
00:09:37
Nate
How many times we've had this conversation, Kyle?
00:09:39
Kyle Richardson
Oh, I think every episode that word has come up.
00:09:39
Nate
Oh my gosh. Yeah, because because that's what we always hear. That's all we all we hear. and
00:09:47
Ramsey Duqum
Well, I came in and I told them, I said, I i literally said, I don't trust any of you, including my grandmother who I loved. And I have this really weird ability. My brother tells me this. And it's very true. I can draw a line between business and family. I fired family and then I step outside and I give them a hug and I say, I love you.
00:10:08
Ramsey Duqum
And I mean it. But in business, we don't run family business. And that's what I said to my grandmother. I will not run a family business. Family businesses, from my limited experience, don't make money. But I will run it as a business. And I fundamentally don't trust you guys. So it's my way or the highway. And that's what I came in as. Because I was going to do indoor skydiving.
00:10:29
Kyle Richardson
It's that's funny.
00:10:29
Nate
yeah
00:10:30
Kyle Richardson
You say that Ramsey, because you can ask anyone here at work. I tell everyone, I don't have family. We are, this is a business. The word family doesn't exist here. It is, we all have a job to do.
00:10:41
Kyle Richardson
And that's what comes first. And when I leave, yeah, that's when family can start, but at work, I don't have family. We have.
00:10:48
Nate
when you start trying to When you start calling it family is when it goes downhill. um I mean, everybody calls it the family dynamic, and it's almost a toxic trait, a toxic word
00:10:51
Kyle Richardson
Yeah.
Strategic Shifts in Business Focus
00:10:57
Nate
to say.
00:10:57
Nate
and You can't run a business on your heart. And I think that's what you're saying, Ramsey, is you couldn't run the business on your heart and things had to change.
00:11:04
Ramsey Duqum
they had to change. And that was the beginning of this adaptation and accepting change and being comfortable in change and letting the friction of change heat up and forge whatever that new fire, that new bond was gonna be, whatever it was. Because what was was not successful, so what what it became out of that change is you know where we're at today.
00:11:28
Kyle Richardson
So when you took over, what kind of market segments were you guys focusing on at that point?
00:11:32
Ramsey Duqum
Oh my gosh, you know, they say that adage price quality and service you can only pick two.
00:11:38
Nate
Mmhmm.
00:11:38
Ramsey Duqum
Well, we had price and service. We were always a service oriented companies, but I hated Mondays, which, which we'll get to the Monday phone calls of the um refunds and the problems that literally branded my soul with the fact that I don't want these calls. I will not take these calls. Now what do I gotta do to not get these calls? And then at one point I would go out, I mean we focused on festivals, we focused on backyard stuff. I remember the first wedding, we only did one wedding in like 2007, one, and we screwed it up.
00:12:20
Ramsey Duqum
but guy The guy was guaranteed a new 60 wide David wine top who made tents for churches out of Florida. And I remember he was guaranteed it was a 60 by 90 quarter pole tent. This thing had tar all over it where they didn't drop it on a drop cloth.
00:12:40
Ramsey Duqum
And there this guy was crying and I'm like, screw this. So I called back to the office and I was like, how are we gonna do this? I had a stage, took it apart. We spread out like 10 guys and we spray painted the entire top with vinyl paint. we went I sent them all to home to you. I didn't care what it caused. I was so high at the end of the day.
00:13:03
Ramsey Duqum
I was puking in the woods and my nose was all white, but we painted that entire tent 60 by 90 and as the sun was setting.
00:13:12
Nate
And got it done. Because you you weren't going back to that place, right? So it was a fighter was a fight orf flight moment at that point.
00:13:17
Ramsey Duqum
No, I've got amygdala getting like crazy going ding, ding, ding. I'm not doing this anymore.
00:13:25
Nate
And so then,
00:13:25
Ramsey Duqum
So it was a fear. I was afraid of failure.
00:13:26
Nate
so So what happened when you went back then after you did that? I mean, you painted that top, did you go back to the warehouse and again have to have a conversation or how did that go?
00:13:36
Ramsey Duqum
No, that was one of those moments where I remember driving down. No, I was too high to go anywhere.
00:13:42
Kyle Richardson
but
00:13:45
Ramsey Duqum
So I got driven to the president of the company at the time. His name was Bernie. And I'll never forget what he said, because it was his client and he'd never had anybody.
00:13:55
Ramsey Duqum
he and They didn't actually want me here because I was a threat. Come to find out later. But that moment was when he looked at me in the in the parking lot of Lomond's Plaza, and he said to me something to the effect of, you know, physical fatigue is not as difficult as mental fatigue. And at that time, I was very physically out on the road installing stuff.
00:14:26
Ramsey Duqum
But at this point, I was mentally just shot from going through that. And that and always stuck with me. And it also gave me a perspective on ops hating sales, just as a general rule.
00:14:38
Nate
Mm-hmm.
00:14:39
Ramsey Duqum
like They go through some stuff too, but it's generally when we fail.
00:14:44
Nate
Absolutely. I mean, we still have that today, just in our business.
00:14:47
Kyle Richardson
Yeah.
00:14:47
Nate
The ops and the sales goes back and forth all day. And and I get stuck in the middle sometimes, because I do a little bit of both. And it is a nobody really understands till they do both jobs.
00:14:58
Kyle Richardson
Do you hate yourself sometimes, Nate? know Exactly.
00:15:01
Nate
Yes, I do, because of the commitments that I make. are Yeah, absolutely. But in this industry, it's got to get done. It's got to get done, right? We don't miss it.
Ownership Transition in 2012
00:15:10
Nate
All right. So Ramsey, at that point, um, you came off that you were, uh, now transitioning. What, at what point did you say, you know what, I'm going to buy this business and I'm going to turn it around and I'm really going to do it the way I want to do it.
00:15:25
Ramsey Duqum
Well, I was always gonna do it the way that I wanted to do it.
00:15:28
Nate
Right.
00:15:30
Ramsey Duqum
But there was a moment where you know the family dynamics, i wasn't gonna war I wasn't gonna own a business with people who I didn't trust, no matter what their last name was, period.
00:15:43
Ramsey Duqum
And I had an offer from a ah ah vendor that we all know, I won't name, but I had an offer to move with him and his company. And it was for a substantial amount of money. And my grandmother, I remember that moment where I go to her house, this was 2012.
00:15:59
Ramsey Duqum
And I presented her the offer and I said, I'm not sure that I can say no to this. Cause we had started to turn around. Remember I was greeted with the financial crisis then in 2008. So, I mean, we made some really tough decisions in there on the trajectory of the business and we held firm like Braveheart. Hold, hold, like we're not gonna, it was just this big thing and it was a very emotional four or five years. And then long and short of it, we made a deal with my brother and we said, all right, we're gonna own this 50-50. And that's where where when that happened in 2012.
00:16:38
Kyle Richardson
Had he been working with you side by side the whole time?
00:16:41
Ramsey Duqum
Oh, yeah. Well, he he came in one year later.
00:16:42
Nate
and
00:16:43
Kyle Richardson
Okay. Okay.
00:16:44
Ramsey Duqum
um And he graduated with an accounting degree. So he didn't even want to come in and do the CFO position. It was that broken. And I got flown out to Boise, Idaho.
00:16:56
Ramsey Duqum
This is how Brandon transitioned into his role.
00:16:59
Nate
This is Brandon Dukam for everybody that's wondering.
00:17:00
Ramsey Duqum
Brandon Duke.
00:17:01
Nate
That's ah Ramsey's brother and and and and he's still in the business.
00:17:05
Ramsey Duqum
And I brought back a consultant. I went out there to bid the Special Olympics through a a rental company and I came back with a consultant, the CEO of that company that I was bidding through.
00:17:20
Ramsey Duqum
And that's how we kind of got a game plan to get Brandon integrated and the old garb out. And once you expose the finances in the business, everything's on the table. You could see what's happening left and right. We had theft. We had a bunch of stuff that we found. And that's an insane story, but that's for another time.
00:17:43
Nate
So, okay, so at that at that point then you started firing people, weeding out the old and bringing in the new is kind of what you're saying then.
Partnerships with Anchor and Rotor
00:17:52
Nate
And that's and then then that's when you brought Brandon on, got him to come on.
00:17:56
Ramsey Duqum
Well, Brandon was on anyways, but he was more in a labor position out on the road because that's where we needed it.
00:18:01
Nate
But to come more on board as far as an impact role, right?
00:18:05
Ramsey Duqum
Oh yeah, yeah, that that's the moment where we just took out all the noise and said, you're here, you're here, you're here, you're out of here, you're out of here.
00:18:07
Nate
Okay.
00:18:13
Nate
And did you do this at busy time to get it done right away? Did you do it in the winter? How did that, how how long did this process really take?
00:18:24
Ramsey Duqum
That's a tough question to answer.
00:18:26
Nate
Yeah.
00:18:27
Ramsey Duqum
Looking back, it it took a it took longer than I'd want it to. i'm not I don't think things should take that long. If something needs to change, change it now.
00:18:38
Nate
Right.
00:18:39
Ramsey Duqum
Time is the thing that became very much more important to me as I grew up, but the foundation of it was back then I always realized we didn't have time. Time was not our friend.
00:18:49
Ramsey Duqum
So it happened. It still didn't happen fast enough, but it happened. I mean, they called me the bull in the China shop and I knew what was going on. I lost all my care about anything other than the goal.
00:19:03
Nate
Right.
00:19:04
Ramsey Duqum
Get out of the way. And that's what happened.
00:19:06
Nate
At this time, what what was the product that you guys were really working with? what what was What did they have before and what did you get them into at that point or what were you doing?
00:19:15
Ramsey Duqum
So that is, you know, I'm a God fairing man. And we had old David wine, twin, pool or not twin pole, we had quarter pole, 60s, 80s, David wine, 40 wives, 30 white garbage, just trash.
00:19:30
Ramsey Duqum
And I can't answer that.
00:19:30
Kyle Richardson
Is David Wine even in business today, 25?
00:19:34
Ramsey Duqum
I can't answer that. He was unreliable. I never met him. I never talked to him. This was old product being bought the old way. So long and short of it is between 2008 and 2012. When we we got to 2012, we had no products left in a 30 some year old rental company, tent wise, except for gable 10 and 20 wide.
00:19:58
Nate
Wow. Okay.
00:20:00
Ramsey Duqum
and I remember coming in to Bernie's office and I would say, I need you to be my Bernie, which is just sit there, listen, and I'll think it out loud and then we'll come back. So we had a ah wind come down and take down some 60 and 80 wides. It was $150,000 of stuff that came down. And it was at a church.
00:20:25
Ramsey Duqum
There's a theme to this. And I remember that was our our chance to take that insurance money and buy something new. And we went with the century line.
00:20:38
Ramsey Duqum
and
00:20:38
Kyle Richardson
Who was your salesman at that point?
00:20:38
Ramsey Duqum
And Neil Cobb.
00:20:41
Nate
oh Neil
00:20:43
Ramsey Duqum
Neil Cobb, yeah. So we turned over. And then in 2008, we got into rotor structure. um So we had rotor strut. We primarily went with hanker. We had a strong presence with us.
00:21:01
Nate
and what made you go with with anchor what out of all the places i mean starting as a new company i always wonder that if you're starting a new company How do you decide what product you're gonna go with? Do you go with the cheapest one?
00:21:11
Nate
Do you go with the the best connection? how did you How did that come about?
00:21:16
Ramsey Duqum
I went with the look.
00:21:17
Nate
Okay.
00:21:19
Ramsey Duqum
And then I knew Anchor was a longstanding ah entity in the market. I knew Bernie was ah comfortable with them. And at that time, I didn't really have a bunch of time and energy to just dive down and rethink it all. So it was like, go with the things that check the highest boxes, and then just go from there. And that's what we did. It worked out really well for us.
00:21:44
Nate
And you're still ah a loyal anchor customer then with everything?
00:21:48
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah.
00:21:48
Nate
Yeah.
00:21:49
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah. I mean, we we have Aztec as well. Aztec is a big supplier to us as well. We have a little bit of you know some things from other other companies, but those are primarily our two manufacturers.
00:22:03
Ramsey Duqum
Well, we would have gone with Losburger in structure in 2008 if they would have made us a modular beam. now they'll Now they'll do whatever they want. And I said to them, give me a 10, 12, 15, 20, and 25 all out of the same series of beam.
00:22:18
Ramsey Duqum
They're like, no. And I'm like, again, this turns into a theme.
00:22:21
Nate
This is the way of the future.
00:22:23
Ramsey Duqum
like If you don't do it for us, we're going to find somebody who's going to do it. We're going to build it ourselves. So I mean, I just thought it was easier if a guy had one set of tools. he learned a 10 meter that was not as intimidating as a 25 meter and it worked for us and no one else would do it except for Rotor.
00:22:42
Kyle Richardson
Was, okay, you guys can correct me if I'm wrong. Was Anchor repping Rotor at that time?
00:22:46
Ramsey Duqum
Just right there.
00:22:47
Nate
Yeah.
00:22:48
Kyle Richardson
Yeah.
00:22:49
Ramsey Duqum
They had just gotten in it so they were hungry, they were young in it and you know they weren't dogmatic in their stance.
Separating Family and Business Dynamics
00:22:56
Nate
They were willing to do whatever it took at that point.
00:22:58
Kyle Richardson
Yeah. Well, and that just that just goes to show you for if there's any new people listening.
00:22:59
Nate
um
00:23:04
Kyle Richardson
Ramsey got hooked with Anchor in 2008. It's 2025 now and he is still a loyal customer. So all of us, manufacturers listening. If you can get your foot in the door with a younger company, it pays to do whatever they want to an extent because you create loyalty. This industry, it's very hard to switch to a new brand tomorrow.
00:23:26
Ramsey Duqum
Yes.
00:23:27
Nate
We're kind of going through that now where, I mean, we have a couple of different brands. We're trying to streamline it. And it's not because one product is different than another or worse than another. It's just, I mean, Kyle, you know, how many different products do you have in your warehouse?
00:23:39
Kyle Richardson
It's unbelievable.
00:23:40
Nate
Yeah, it's insane.
00:23:40
Kyle Richardson
It's,
00:23:42
Nate
But yeah, once you find a product in, I mean, like Ramsey did, you know, stick with it. And if, especially if they're willing to pour into you the way that you did, especially starting out, what, what made you transition into structure though?
00:23:53
Nate
If you had, if you had all pole tents, what was like, okay, now it's time.
00:23:57
Ramsey Duqum
Well, our competition that just bought a local competitor brought up structure.
00:24:01
Nate
Okay.
00:24:01
Ramsey Duqum
And I remember sitting down at a restaurant and feeling this, like any competitor knows what it feels like in the middle of their chest. And you get that sinking feeling.
00:24:12
Ramsey Duqum
No, I'm talking about something.
00:24:12
Nate
See my face starts burning and getting red.
00:24:14
Ramsey Duqum
Oh, you're like, you are not and coming into my market. No. And full disclosure, that competitor who bought in, their GM said, if we wouldn't have known that you guys were coming like you were coming, we wouldn't have bought that company.
00:24:27
Nate
Hmm.
00:24:29
Ramsey Duqum
So that's that's why that happened. We got a contract, then we got a second contract. And they said, once we get a third contract, we're going all in. We got that third contract in long-term cafeteria, 12 meter.
00:24:42
Ramsey Duqum
And that was it. That's when we did it. But that, you know, we were sub renting a 25 by 55 meter from a company out of Columbus for an annual, an annual event at a chocolate company. That's a very famous chocolate company here. And I'll never forget when we bought that structure, I was installing it, learning it. Steve Lipking was out there helping us install it.
00:25:07
Ramsey Duqum
And then I see this commotion in the parking lot behind and there's this guy from that company making a ruckus in the parking lot. He drove all the way up to tell that client that that's not their tent, that's our tent. And that really as a 23, 24 year old guy really stuck with me to the point I'm bringing it up 20 some years later, 19 years later. And it made me really understand that it wasn't worth the money when you were unethical.
00:25:36
Ramsey Duqum
So we became the big brother to a lot of rental companies around here, supported them, brought them in for training, like on how to price in 2019, we brought in 11 companies. And that was all fundamentally from that guy coming up and getting kicked out by security, fighting for that 25 by 55 meter, when we brought him up for two years to install it.
00:25:57
Kyle Richardson
Wait, so this, okay. You basically subbed the 10 out to another company for two years.
00:26:03
Ramsey Duqum
Yes.
00:26:04
Kyle Richardson
You eventually buy your own.
00:26:05
Ramsey Duqum
Yes.
00:26:07
Kyle Richardson
And the guy you were cutting a check to for two years came up and started screaming and hollering.
00:26:10
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah. Yes.
00:26:15
Nate
Sounds like an older gentleman that couldn't let go.
00:26:19
Kyle Richardson
Yeah, that's all. He was working for you.
00:26:21
Ramsey Duqum
Yes.
00:26:22
Kyle Richardson
He wasn't even working for the client.
00:26:24
Ramsey Duqum
Not according to him.
00:26:26
Kyle Richardson
Oh, okay.
00:26:27
Nate
<unk>
00:26:27
Ramsey Duqum
No, I mean, he was like, that's mine. I'm like, no, that's not. That has an anchor all over. That has rotor all over it. See those boxes? Because we drop shipped it to that.
00:26:35
Kyle Richardson
Yeah.
00:26:35
Ramsey Duqum
have flat
00:26:35
Nate
So what what did the client say? Because I mean, I would have been, if I was you at that point, I would have been like, I am so sorry. but
00:26:43
Ramsey Duqum
Well, remember, I'm not, well, not remember, I wasn't the salesperson on this, money was.
00:26:47
Nate
right
00:26:49
Ramsey Duqum
Well, I'm just installing, learning how this whole thing works, base plates, flipping that bar, and I'm turning around in the parking lot, like, and then Bernie come in like, what is going on?
00:26:53
Nate
Right.
00:26:58
Ramsey Duqum
And he told me, and i it just really lit a fire in me. Like, I just wanted to go over and give that gentleman a piece of my mind, but he was already driving away.
00:27:10
Ramsey Duqum
Security had already kicked him out.
00:27:11
Kyle Richardson
That's wild.
00:27:12
Ramsey Duqum
That is why.
00:27:12
Nate
Is he still around in this industry?
00:27:15
Ramsey Duqum
that company is.
00:27:16
Nate
but He's not.
00:27:16
Ramsey Duqum
I don't know his name or who he was, but that just taught me how to treat people.
00:27:19
Nate
Wow.
00:27:22
Nate
housing
00:27:22
Ramsey Duqum
It didn't teach me how to treat people, it reinforced being the big brother, never go to the end client, never.
00:27:25
Nate
It doesn't
00:27:30
Kyle Richardson
but well
00:27:31
Nate
always pay off. It doesn't always pay off. And we had a conversation with Jeff and Darren about that is nowadays there's a lot of people that you could still give a handshake to and trust, but right now it feels like everybody is so cutthroat that's coming into this business.
00:27:47
Nate
And the big brother stuff that used to happen isn't really working anymore. I mean, people, people are making good connections and able to help out, but everybody is wanting to travel and put up tents. Everybody is wanting to sub rent bigger tents from somebody just to say they did the job. And, but it might be stealing it from somebody in their own market.
00:28:09
Ramsey Duqum
Maybe our experience has been like our first 4CC is a local competitor.
00:28:14
Kyle Richardson
That's awesome to hear. I like that.
00:28:16
Nate
That's fantastic.
00:28:19
Ramsey Duqum
That just tells you everything. And he, like the other seats, most of them asked for exclusivity. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like this is for the betterment of the industry. you're I'm not.
00:28:34
Ramsey Duqum
But you guys understand, it's it's for the betterment of the industry and it's indiscriminate. Again, that line between family and business, there's a line between rental and software and they don't cross.
00:28:44
Nate
Yeah. Well, before we cross that line into your software side, uh, let's jump back again real quick here.
00:28:46
Kyle Richardson
Yep.
00:28:51
Nate
So, uh, when you guys, you you brought Brandon to the business, did you, you guys then bought it out right then and there.
00:28:59
Ramsey Duqum
No, he came in in 2007 and then we bought him in 2012.
00:28:59
Nate
and Okay. Bought it in 2012 and your grandmother was all for it. Wanted you guys to buy it out. She saw the direction of how you were taking it and, and was good with it.
00:29:13
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah, she wanted to give it to us.
00:29:14
Nate
a while.
00:29:14
Ramsey Duqum
She wanted to gift it. And we said, no. So we paid her seven figures for it. So when our family, remember I started the story with all seven kids work there.
00:29:23
Kyle Richardson
Yeah.
00:29:23
Ramsey Duqum
It's indoctrinated into this family about this rental company. Like people don't talk anymore because of it. Like I grew up in that friction. Like a lot of family businesses, they still don't talk.
00:29:36
Kyle Richardson
So it's only you and your brother currently. So out of seven, it's down to two.
00:29:40
Ramsey Duqum
Well, we're not even part of that seven. were part of the next generation.
00:29:43
Kyle Richardson
Oh, yeah.
00:29:44
Ramsey Duqum
So that was seven kids. My mom was just one of them.
00:29:48
Nate
Oh wow.
00:29:49
Kyle Richardson
How many cousins were working there?
Current Operations and Service Focus
00:29:51
Ramsey Duqum
Pretty much every one of them. There's probably 20 over the time, but at one point the max was probably 12 to 14.
00:29:59
Kyle Richardson
and that no one else is there.
00:29:59
Nate
So was he, I was going to say and at at one point was it just all family that worked there and there was no other employees?
00:30:01
Ramsey Duqum
nobody
00:30:05
Ramsey Duqum
No, those were the good ones. Those were the ones the young ones where we you know we were all leading each other because nobody was worthy of being you know followed here at that point.
00:30:07
Nate
yeah
00:30:15
Ramsey Duqum
So we were making it up as we went.
00:30:16
Nate
Yeah. yeah That's fantastic. Okay, so you you took over, you got this got the business down. Now you bought the new product and everything. What then did you do to take it to the next level from there?
00:30:33
Ramsey Duqum
this this This industry is easy. You do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it with a product that you say you're going to do it with, and you'll win. You don't need to advertise. They'll advertise for you because they're so rare. like thats That's how you take it to the next level is always fulfill your promises.
00:30:52
Kyle Richardson
It's so funny Ramsey, because what you just said is so true. And I feel like there's so many people that don't understand that. Like your success in this business is literally just based on doing what you're saying you're going to do when you said you're going to do it and do a great job.
00:31:08
Kyle Richardson
So simple.
00:31:08
Nate
And where the only others we're the only only industry I feel like that does that. We don't give two-hour windows. We don't just show up in the afternoon or in the morning. We tell you when we're coming, and and we're coming at that time. And going back to your advertising thing, you know I was talking to somebody the other day, and they said, how do you guys get these jobs all over the country? And then and I said, we don't, because they said do you advertise. And I said, no, not necessarily. It's a lot of just word of mouth. One person tells 10 people, it's word of mouth.
00:31:36
Nate
now I think social media is great for us to bring our industry to light and show ah show what we do in our industry, but not necessarily, I mean Kyle your videos are fantastic on Instagram, but are you really trying to target every wedding planner out there? No, you're just showing what we do and you're you're you're letting everybody know what you what you've done.
00:31:55
Kyle Richardson
Honestly, I look at it as I'm trying to inspire the next generation. I hope some kid sees that and says, you know what? I want to do cool stuff like that. And that's my whole thought process. I need to find people to replace me.
00:31:55
Nate
i mean it's not
00:32:07
Nate
Yeah.
00:32:08
Kyle Richardson
So that's where kids are looking is they're on Instagram. They're in all those places. So that I'm advertising for a employment standpoint, not ah to get work.
00:32:17
Ramsey Duqum
Isn't that so funny you say that? Because we do the same thing. like we show how We show how we do. We let other people post for us. right If you look at our tagged photos on Able Rents, it's thick.
00:32:30
Ramsey Duqum
But the ones on the front side, up until my wife now manages the marketing side, up until this like, you could see the line on our Instagram feed, it was all like ha like frames of tents up and like, here's how we're gonna hit them in with the machines. And it was just like, cause that's what we like to do. And if you like it, awesome. You're gonna love the end product and this is how we build it.
00:32:53
Kyle Richardson
Yeah.
00:32:54
Nate
100%, it's hard to look at that. I was talking with Tommy Wilson about that. you know I think social media is huge in our industry, and just like anywhere else, but he was like, I have a hard time not seeing it as a line item. And it's like, I get it, and but what you can't really put a value on putting your stuff out there, you know just for it to be seen. um But anyways, sorry about that, Ramsey. So so on that note, I know you started another company within Able,
00:33:23
Nate
The able logistics side before you got to the forcey side too.
00:33:27
Ramsey Duqum
I want to give full credit to Brandon.
00:33:30
Ramsey Duqum
I went, like most rental guys, Midwest guys, come October, I was fried. November, I'm fried. Like I'll put my earbuds in, I go out on the ox and I work in the yard for a week.
00:33:30
Nate
Okay.
00:33:41
Ramsey Duqum
Like everybody knew, leave me alone. And at this time I had gone on like out of the country after out of the country because my, you know, I'm living for experiences. And so when I was out of the country, I came back in. I see all these Amazon things like plastered all over it my office, my summer office, which was the dispatch, because I was the dispatcher. And in the wintertime, I would come down to my sales office and sell. And he started. I'm like, what the heck is this? Here's your Amazon checklist. you're gonna do We were running for United States Postal Service.
00:34:17
Ramsey Duqum
routes for Amazon that anybody really can get in and we were moving our trucks over to a different insurance and we were running our underutilized assets more because we're a tenant foreign company we compete against some really major players here on under the tech stuff so we just want to be what we're the best at and he started able logistics and then we brought in a guy who worked at FedEx um Those two things were disconnected and he started getting us connected to all the DAT boards. And then we just started, which was very helpful during COVID because we just pivoted and started running medical equipment around the country.
00:34:53
Nate
And is that something now that is still a big thing or is that where is it? Where are you all at with that company?
00:35:00
Ramsey Duqum
It's literally we turn it on and off when we need it.
00:35:04
Kyle Richardson
That's awesome.
00:35:05
Nate
That's great, especially up there in the north in the snow. I'm sure just being able to have the ability to have some kind of income if you need to.
00:35:11
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah, and we're really passionate about like like the the structure and modularity. So all of our people within the business, I don't want to say all of them, but the majority of them are cross trained. And it's not some formal thing, like some corporate thing.
00:35:25
Ramsey Duqum
It's like, you just go and do that. You learn how to do it, because that's what's needed. And then you know our staff is really big on wanting to learn and grow.
00:35:29
Nate
Yeah.
00:35:33
Ramsey Duqum
So that's who we've surrounded ourselves with.
00:35:35
Nate
So give us a little, give us a little background on, on what you currently have product wise.
00:35:35
Kyle Richardson
so but so
00:35:40
Nate
Are you doing tables, chairs, dishes, linens? Are you doing tents? What what is your product that you got?
00:35:46
Ramsey Duqum
So we got rid of all our dish, linen, flatware, glassware during COVID. I'm like, get this out of here. The only reason why we were still open in that is because we had a an older gal who's gonna retire and we wanted to give her a job, um continue to give her a job.
00:35:59
Kyle Richardson
So oh.
00:36:02
Ramsey Duqum
And once she retired, we shut the whole thing down. So we're we're into structures up to 25 meters, um but we do bring in larger structures for larger projects that are needed.
00:36:14
Ramsey Duqum
80 wide, 60 wide, all the way down, tables, chairs. We have thousands of chairs, a couple of thousand tables, but it's, we say high-end 10-ing and 4-ing with traditional tables and chairs.
Views on Work-Life Balance
00:36:27
Nate
Oh, I like that. That's a good one.
00:36:27
Kyle Richardson
Who is your ideal client?
00:36:30
Ramsey Duqum
One that's willing to pay our bill.
00:36:34
Ramsey Duqum
And honestly, like I love them both, but if I had to pick one or the other, i would
00:36:34
Nate
Would you prefer a wedding or would you perform more of a um corporate event?
00:36:38
Kyle Richardson
Corporate.
00:36:43
Ramsey Duqum
say a sailcloth wedding.
00:36:45
Kyle Richardson
Okay.
00:36:46
Ramsey Duqum
um Weddings, they're more grateful, especially when you do what you say you're going to do. And they're all, always would.
00:36:52
Nate
would would Would sail cloth poles or metal sail cloth poles?
00:36:57
Ramsey Duqum
um ah and that And we, again, I'm not sure how many people know this, but we make them, we make the countries only true engineered with none of those long disclaimers, 13,000 pound compression loads.
00:36:59
Nate
o
00:37:11
Ramsey Duqum
Again, nobody would make them, so we did it ourselves.
00:37:15
Kyle Richardson
What does the company look like today in terms of staffing? How many guys are on the road, office, all that warehouse?
00:37:19
Nate
Ha
00:37:22
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah, so we're we out last,
00:37:22
Nate
ha ha ha!
00:37:26
Ramsey Duqum
year at 69 employees. It's about 50-50, inside-outside, maybe 55-45.
00:37:31
Kyle Richardson
Okay.
00:37:34
Ramsey Duqum
But our support staff on the inside is critical to what we do on the road. But the road guys are the wide receivers. They're the people on the playing field.
00:37:45
Ramsey Duqum
But we have a really good really good crew. We have very, very little turnover.
00:37:50
Nate
And Ramsey is also leading the front in remote work.
00:37:50
Kyle Richardson
net.
00:37:52
Nate
Now you have Jean that works for you, that that works for Abel, right? And is currently not actually in the office.
00:37:58
Ramsey Duqum
yeah
00:38:01
Nate
I asked Jean about this the other day, cause I was just curious about that on how that dynamic works. And and Jean work fairby gene worked Jean worked for Ramsey in Cleveland, am I right? And then moved down to Florida and is still leading the team and leading the numbers and everything else, if I'm correct.
00:38:12
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah.
00:38:19
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah. Well, he real quick, he's funny because he came to me probably eight years ago, nine years ago, And i'm I'm routing and he comes back to me and he and he knocks on the door and he goes, he had a fear in his eyes.
00:38:31
Ramsey Duqum
And he goes, my wife moving to Columbus, she got her dream job. And I turned around on my chair and I said, well, then we'll open an office in Columbus.
00:38:42
Ramsey Duqum
And he goes, seriously?
00:38:43
Nate
I love that.
00:38:44
Ramsey Duqum
And I said, yeah, is there anything else? I said, we'll talk about it later over the middle of the routes. And then we opened an office in Columbus.
00:38:52
Nate
Can you imagine how he walked out of that room? Like what the hell just happened?
00:38:56
Ramsey Duqum
Look, good people, these are, this ah I said this before, and I mean it, not in this podcast, but um your first name makes you family here, not your last. But this ain't a family where you're not accountable. Don't get me wrong. You are accountable for what you do, how you do it within lines. But as long as you're cooking between quality and service, you bake whatever you want.
00:39:20
Kyle Richardson
Are you still operating two locations?
00:39:23
Ramsey Duqum
No. Well, we never operated two. We had an off-satellite office.
00:39:27
Kyle Richardson
Okay.
00:39:28
Ramsey Duqum
And then we would just deliver down there.
00:39:31
Ramsey Duqum
I don't want to get into that, but that was funny.
00:39:34
Nate
It was a, it was a very interesting time, but then Jean, Jean moved to Columbus and then he moved back and then he now he's in Florida.
00:39:36
Ramsey Duqum
It was. But we crushed Columbus.
00:39:44
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah.
00:39:45
Kyle Richardson
So, oh, you can go Ramsey.
00:39:45
Ramsey Duqum
one
00:39:48
Ramsey Duqum
Well, we now we have weddings down in Florida. We just did our first hurricane run down there. um So we brought you five, six truckloads, 11 guys down there, and they just ran us up and down the coast.
00:40:01
Kyle Richardson
That's awesome. So I believe you're a proponent of work-life balance.
00:40:08
Ramsey Duqum
Oh, yeah.
00:40:09
Nate
the biggest.
00:40:10
Kyle Richardson
You want to talk about that a little bit? you know Maybe there's some old guys listening to this who could learn a thing or two about this.
00:40:18
Ramsey Duqum
Oh man, this is so rooted in me. The fundamental baseline for this was I was on a deathbed and in a cancer hospital that the gentleman and I opened together. He was the vice president of the largest caterer four years before he was there and he said he was going to die 72 hours later and he did, but he was completely lucid. It's on my Instagram page, a picture of him um with me next to the bed.
Implementing a 10-Hour Workday
00:40:45
Ramsey Duqum
and After his daughter left and the the nurse, you know he goes, can I have, he's from South Africa, can I get a burger on my way home? And the the nurse says, honey, you can eat whatever you want. Like, oh my gosh. They left, I had 10 minutes with him. I said, Charles, how does it feel? And he's like, well, it doesn't hurt. I said, no, how does it feel? And then I shut up and I listened. And what he put out of his mouth for those 10 minute monologue,
00:41:17
Ramsey Duqum
was very impactful in my life. And I don't know how the middle or how it exactly ended, but I remember how it started. I enjoyed what I did for a living. It afforded me the opportunity to, and then he went into all the things that are important to a man on his deathbed. And to me, I was in 2016.
00:41:36
Ramsey Duqum
And to me, I've been about experiences. And if I'm about experiences, then what's the most valuable commodity is time. And I gave that to our staff. And I said, again, I'm not the only one who gets this. And the reality was that 4C came from a mindset of a 10-hour work day. In 2017, if I could,
00:41:59
Ramsey Duqum
2017 we were up on the deck and we had just lost a guy put in his two weeks who loved us. My brother hunted with him. He was you know he just couldn't deal with the the ups and downs of the time.
00:42:12
Ramsey Duqum
My brother says to me, how long, it was a retention conversation. He goes, how long can you work a guy before um he is not efficient and he starts to lose that lose that balance. And he put his hands behind his back and I said, 10 hours. And he pulled his hand out and he put 10 hours. So I walked downstairs, long story short.
00:42:33
Ramsey Duqum
one more thing up on the deck. He goes, I know the answer, but I don't know how to do it. And he goes, you got to route everything for every day in advance. And it changes with absolutely everything that comes in relative to what's been on the books. He goes, I don't know how to do it.
00:42:48
Ramsey Duqum
But um that's the answer. And that was what we call the immersive seed that was planted, and that's where 4C came from. But we walked downstairs, and I had a meeting with the entire team, and I said, all right, we're going to have a 10-hour workday mindset, because everything starts with a mindset. Work-life balance, your goals, everything starts with a mindset.
00:43:09
Ramsey Duqum
And I said, our goal is to get every department in this company, no matter the season, to max at 10 hours. How many of you think this is possible? One person put their hand up. And I said, I hope to prove every one of you wrong. And then the next year we averaged 9.96 hours.
00:43:26
Kyle Richardson
Have it this week.
00:43:28
Ramsey Duqum
Well, we work five to six, so we do not work on Saturdays unless it's a company unless it's a company we have history with due to religious beliefs. That's why we shut down our booth at 4C on Saturday.
00:43:41
Ramsey Duqum
Um, God's blessed us tremendously with anything and everything we've ever put our minds to. Um, so it's, it's 10 hours a day. And if they work on Sundays or some Saturdays, that's, they're all about it because, I mean, you guys obviously understand they want the hours, but they're not burnt out from the time before.
00:44:02
Nate
and you're able to pay them a little bit more so they're not living off the overtime. I mean, this industry runs on overtime because people need to make a living because, frankly, we pay so little to guys, and that's starting to make a progressive push to go in the other direction, but when you can when you know how many hours you're gonna work a guy, and you you can balance that out, you can afford to pay them more.
00:44:25
Ramsey Duqum
Well, that was the whole thing. And and and and the our guys go, you told us that we would work less and make more. And that's what happened. So that was so when you asked about a good client, one that's willing to pay our billable rate,
00:44:40
Kyle Richardson
Yeah, it's so.
00:44:40
Nate
And what year is that?
00:44:40
Ramsey Duqum
Because we don't have, oh, go ahead, 17.
00:44:44
Nate
Okay.
00:44:45
Ramsey Duqum
But then mixed that with 17, we didn't make any money.
00:44:49
Nate
Because you we're transitioning.
00:44:49
Ramsey Duqum
That was when I lost, that's when I lost my care. I'm like, I'm not wasting my life back to time on something that I don't make money on. we just and My brother goes, we deserve to make more.
00:45:00
Ramsey Duqum
And this was on an inflection point with him and I. I said, as I'm walking out of the office, we deserve to make whatever we make. And then I lost my cares. I was like, I'll lose this entire company if we don't realize a reasonable profit and get to our 10 hours and have a non-chaotic environment. And literally back to bull in a China shop, we did that in one year.
00:45:24
Kyle Richardson
Well, it's kind of, at some point, it's not worth the money. I have this argument sometimes with my dad. like You start to look at it, is this really worth it? And it's funny, because I have the same mindset as you, Ramsey. I want my time. I want to enjoy, I'm married. I have a wife who wants me home at some point. you know She wasn't born in this industry, so she doesn't understand that I don't know when I'm going to be home some days. I don't know what time the phone's going to ring.
Personal Reflections on Legacy
00:45:55
Kyle Richardson
And trying to put some measures on that stuff and draw a hard line in the sand is really hard of, this is what I'm at work and this is what I'm home, but it takes time. It takes, you have to care. Like you just said, Ramsey, about your family. And not only that, you have to care about your employee's family. So if you can get them on board, it's a mindset shift. I can't imagine it was easy. You just said you did it in a year, but it had to have been a very challenging year.
00:46:22
Ramsey Duqum
I'm going to be honest, it wasn't because we went from this craziness of 15, which broke us. Broke us. We had a point where we just couldn't do it anymore. That's when the money went into the renovations, into 16.
00:46:37
Ramsey Duqum
I'm riding high in the 17 thinking we got this thing figured out, we got our docs in, we're running this, the numbers look good, but one ingredient changed an entire recipe with we miscalculated or missed assigned labor into the office and I wasn't looking at office, I was looking at cost of goods sold, which is our variable labor.
00:46:56
Ramsey Duqum
So he brandons like we're not having a good year i'm like like how we're not having a good year look at these numbers we're running twenty eight percent labor to volume. da- dadadadada because That's what you're in control of right. Well at the end of seventeen we made like twenty four thousand dollars on like four million bucks or something like that and i was like this screw this.
00:47:17
Ramsey Duqum
And then it was, remember we went from this crazy amount of hours and it got easier because we just started limiting what we were taking and increasing the hourly bill rate, which is where we came up with this calendar that turned into the foundation for.
00:47:34
Nate
And that was 2018 2019.
00:47:35
Ramsey Duqum
And Nate, you were a part of that in the bad group because I shared that with you guys.
00:47:39
Nate
Absolutely. Yeah.
00:47:40
Ramsey Duqum
This is how we're doing this.
00:47:41
Nate
Ramses. Yeah. And it was one of the, it was one of the first times where we sat down. I mean, we brought Ramsey and I for people that don't know. Also, we spent a, a week in the woods together.
00:47:53
Nate
Um, and just, I was in a burnout state. I think Ramsey was in a burnout state. I had gone through a divorce, uh, in 2018. Um, and.
00:48:04
Nate
or 2017 yeah 2018 and I called Ramsey one night I was laying on the couch and I was dating my now wife and we had actually just broke up because I was grinding so hard in the business that I couldn't figure out do I make the move and go down to Chattanooga with her or do I just keep do I stick this out because it's what I know and and grinding my life away and I finally had an aha moment laying on the couch one night and was by myself and I called Ramsey and I said Ramsey let's go on a trip and Ramsey and I took a five-day trip in the woods, no phones, no nothing, ah no no food. it was It was dry food. We were drinking the water out of the creek. I mean, it was it was a good, fun time. And I think that brought me a lot of perspective in my life to where I'm at. And Ramsey and I had some really good conversations on work-life balance and really how how we wanted to live our lives from here moving forward. And it changed my perspective, and I think that's what but you're getting at.
00:49:02
Ramsey Duqum
That was a heck of a trip around the on the around the fire, just talking about life, talking about business and that balance effort.
00:49:04
Nate
Yeah.
00:49:10
Ramsey Duqum
Because that's where I go when I need inspiration. That's where I go when I need recharges nature. That's like my ammo.
00:49:15
Nate
And by the way, it wasn't like we were in a cabin. It was, we were in a tent and it was raining and snowing and it was below zero in North Georgia by the river.
00:49:24
Ramsey Duqum
But but we made we made a heck of a heat shack out of some tarps, some sawdust.
00:49:27
Nate
We did. We had some solid dust. we We did bring a chainsaw. And we were yeah we stayed warm.
00:49:35
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah, we did. That was fun.
00:49:37
Nate
But that to me helped me with my work-life balance. And that was right around that time that I think you were kind of figuring that all out as well. um you know Figuring out everything with your now current wife even.
00:49:50
Nate
you know and And moving forward on how you wanted to in your relationships and everything else.
00:49:51
Ramsey Duqum
Well, I grew up in a business where everybody got divorced.
00:49:54
Nate
and
00:49:58
Nate
Correct.
00:49:58
Ramsey Duqum
Nobody was there for their kids.
00:50:00
Nate
ye
00:50:00
Ramsey Duqum
And I could not envision that for my life, because I was one of those kids that was left behind during work.
Development of 4C Software
00:50:08
Ramsey Duqum
And the whole concept was, you know this industry needs responsible people.
00:50:13
Ramsey Duqum
And if you're going to hire responsible people, they might innately have responsibilities, which are families. So you have to tool your organization towards families and those responsibilities, because that power is way greater than a manager's tongue.
00:50:25
Nate
Yep. And do you think, still have it burned in your brain. You say that you were the kid that was left behind because of work and everything. You still have those moments burned in your brain of, Hey, yeah, mom and dad did this. And I think that's why today having three kids and now Ramsey, you know, you have your own kid and it's like,
00:50:44
Nate
you're a little you're a lot more intentional, not a little bit, you're a lot more intentional on, hey, ah when my son asked me, are you gonna pick me up from carpool or am I going to aftercare? Well, if I have a chance to pick you up from, if I if i can, if I'm in town and put stuff to the side and I can dive right in and and go pick you up from carpool, I'm gonna pick you up at carpool.
00:51:04
Nate
You know, because there's gonna be times where I will have to get you from aftercare, but I just think about those are the things that they remember, especially when they say, daddy, come on. You know, it's,
00:51:12
Ramsey Duqum
and And at the end of the life, I've been there. I've seen it on two death beds. Work isn't that important. What you did isn't that important. What's important is what you did or who you did it with.
00:51:25
Nate
How do you leave your legacy? We had that conversation just the other day.
00:51:28
Ramsey Duqum
Well, I mean, I'm gonna say it out loud, I'm a sound like a nerd, but this this quote really resonates with me by George Bernard Shaw. I wanna be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It's a sort of splendid torch, which I have to which i have got hold of for the moment and I wanna make it burn as bright as possible before handing it on to future generations.
00:51:57
Ramsey Duqum
that resonated with me. And that's what I want to do now is burn this torch, not a candle for this industry, for the advancement of it.
00:52:08
Ramsey Duqum
Because at the end, honestly, it won't matter to me. What will matter to me is what the people pick up because I'm going to be focused on my family.
00:52:12
Nate
Which,
00:52:16
Nate
right, and which is why now you built 4C and came up with this idea. So if you could give us a rundown on how you came up with that idea then. I mean, you kind of told us a little bit, but you then, did you then say, hey, and I'm a little bit close to this, so I kind of know, but for everybody else, you know, tell everybody one day, did you just wake up and say, you know what, I'm going to build this software and I'm going to just crush this.
00:52:41
Ramsey Duqum
That 17 meeting on that deck is what laid that seed. How do you route everything with the changes intelligently and logically? That was the answer. I mean, just no one had ever been able to solve it. Across blue collar, but not not just tenant event rental.
00:52:57
Ramsey Duqum
And in 2014, so we have history with software. I hired a software developer and consultant firm to build what became a muted version of what we were doing was with bemary.com, the visual. yeah We were doing that in 14.
00:53:15
Ramsey Duqum
And I got 80,000 dollars in and I fired him and I learned what not to do with software. And then this time around, I took those lessons, we took the immersive thoughts, we had the team, and I remember sitting upstairs in my logistics office and Nick, who was a main character in this story, he's the one who heard this narration of what we needed to build.
00:53:43
Ramsey Duqum
And all he did in his beautifully, beautiful brain, autistic brain, like just this amazing brain, he goes upstairs and he builds the first version of it, which you saw in me with the spreadsheet.
00:53:56
Nate
Yep.
00:53:56
Ramsey Duqum
Mine went upstairs and he goes, is this what you wanted? And I'm like looking at the screen and it this turned into a 55,000 formula spreadsheet.
00:54:06
Nate
Which when you first saw it, you never thought it would be like that. and Like getting to this point.
00:54:11
Ramsey Duqum
No. And then he goes to me, I said, maybe one day, one day we're going to turn this into a software and we vetted it through 19 skip 2021, 22. And then in 22, um, I'm like, we're doing this. We took our COVID money and we built software. Some other people bought inventory. They bought razors. They bought what houses. We took that money and we built software.
00:54:37
Nate
Hey now, was that a jab at me? Cause I bought a razor.
00:54:40
Ramsey Duqum
No, it was more of jab at Lee Hutchinson.
00:54:40
Kyle Richardson
wish
00:54:41
Nate
Uh-huh.
00:54:42
Kyle Richardson
ha ha
00:54:45
Nate
Okay.
00:54:45
Ramsey Duqum
It's not a jab because Lee just, I love Lee.
00:54:45
Nate
So, so you, uh, the governor, so you, uh, so you dove head first in, put the money up and just said, we're going to do this and hired a tire, hired a totally separate crew.
00:54:57
Ramsey Duqum
Yeah, totally separate crew. This has not been fun. I have, my wife, this goes back to the, the, the leader of anything is the last person to get on the ship or off the ship.
00:55:07
Kyle Richardson
Ha ha ha.
00:55:08
Ramsey Duqum
And I'm the last one to have fun at this. My wife goes, when is this going to end? We have two years of me not having fun diving down into the depths of UI and But the team we've surrounded o ourselves with are now our team.
00:55:22
Ramsey Duqum
We hired them with 4C.
00:55:24
Nate
Able guys and women.
00:55:25
Ramsey Duqum
No. No.
00:55:26
Nate
Okay, okay. Your team is in, your team is not contracted.
00:55:28
Ramsey Duqum
allison
00:55:31
Nate
It's in-house, you mean.
00:55:31
Ramsey Duqum
No, our team is in a house. And like anything else, when you hire somebody good, our CTO, he hires another guy, then we hire another guy, and then we just keep expanding because they're like, hey, we have a mission.
00:55:33
Nate
Okay.
00:55:44
Ramsey Duqum
And high level coders like savant level coders, ones that you see on TV shows or ones that are hacking in the basements of their parents house. Those are the guys that we have.
00:55:58
Ramsey Duqum
and they're different than rental guys they need manage different than rental guys and That team is completely separate, but the only way to get these guys To come to you is if you give them a mission that they're gonna change something Because their egos are bigger than what their care for money is that's just out to change everything No
00:56:16
Nate
So what is 4C's mission?
00:56:23
Nate
Not just in our industry.
00:56:26
Ramsey Duqum
the The people who are our first signups when they saw it on an architectural plan, they go, this is bigger than rental. And I said, the only reason why we're starting in rental, tent rental is because this is near and dear to our heart. And it has the most complexities with the lowest margin and profitability of any other verticals the software can get to. Who the heck would start in tent and event rental?
00:56:51
Kyle Richardson
That's true.
00:56:52
Nate
um truth and And so where did, where did the, uh, the mentality then to come out and go outside the rental industry come in?
00:56:54
Ramsey Duqum
And so,
00:57:01
Ramsey Duqum
Well, because all people have gotten bad blue collar service post COVID. We have a word gap shortage, all of us in daily lives, and they're not confident on the phone. Well, they're not confident on the phone because sales and ops are innately split. Sales deals with money, ops deals in time and effort.
00:57:24
Ramsey Duqum
And you can't go to your ops guys. You guys know this. Kyle, you know this. You go to your guys, you're like, you're making a ton of money. And they're like, I don't give up. um I'm tired. Or you can't be tired.
00:57:33
Kyle Richardson
Yeah.
00:57:34
Ramsey Duqum
You can't out buy tired. And who are the people that put all that effort on them? Sales, because they have no way to manage the daily schedule.
00:57:43
Nate
Man, that should be...
00:57:43
Ramsey Duqum
That's forcing. That's forcing. And what happened in our business is we created what we call one voice. You know, sales and software right now I find is fundamentally broken. Information comes into people who got to capture it and give it to other people who are disconnected from that information. They're not talking in the same terms. That visually is a linear line. That's unnatural. ForC has no straight lines in it unless you separate outside of your ecosystem.
00:58:12
Ramsey Duqum
we turn that linear line into a holistic circular flow of information that real-time updates everybody that needs to be updated about everything they need to be updated with. And that can only happen um some from the mindset of people who were born and bred in this, from failure just to success, to whatever thing in between, and and with the mindset that we're never gonna fail. Able Rents has never missed a delivery. We've never missed a time stop. We've never missed a schedule that we've been on, ever. Except, and you could see this on video,
00:58:49
Ramsey Duqum
If you go to the 2016 Cavs parade where we won the championship, that unmarked white box behind the stage is an able rents truck. It has an 80 by 120 on it that they promised us they would get us a horse escort out of the city and they failed and lied.
00:59:06
Kyle Richardson
Bye.
00:59:07
Ramsey Duqum
That is the only time we've missed. And that analog inks, because remember, I hated those Monday calls. The whole goal of this was to break rental. And on the rental side we have, we don't live in chaos. I don't get bad phone calls. I don't get failed anythings anymore. That's why I could leave and start a software business and only give 2% of my effort to able rents. We don't have another CEO. Everybody's responsible for what they're responsible for.
00:59:35
Nate
So that was kind of my point is what is your, what's your time split right now between Abel and 4C and are you, are you more heavily involved in 4C at this point just to try and get it to where it needs to be?
00:59:36
Ramsey Duqum
and
00:59:48
Nate
And then is it something that, you know, you'll kind of let it, let it grow on its own with still seeing over it or how does, what is the outlook between the two business?
00:59:59
Ramsey Duqum
yeah let's relate it to family
01:00:01
Nate
Mm-hmm.
01:00:02
Ramsey Duqum
Abel Renz is a college student. that You let go off to school and they touch point you. Forcism is like Axel and my son. It's an infant. It needs daily maintenance. It needs everything from its parents. um It needs, I mean, one mistake, right? It's out of that fragile state. But it's it's turning into adolescence right now as we talk.
01:00:28
Ramsey Duqum
um So it's 98.2 between ABLE and Foresi. And you know that's a testament to the group that we have at Rental.
01:00:40
Ramsey Duqum
According to them, they drunk the Kool-Aid they're in.
01:00:43
Kyle Richardson
Yeah. Well, that's kudos to you for building that team.
01:00:48
Ramsey Duqum
I think that's one thing that you have to be as a good entrepreneur is hire people for not just for their functional fit, but for their the emotional
Challenges in 4C Development
01:01:01
Ramsey Duqum
fit within a business.
01:01:02
Ramsey Duqum
And I'll give you our secrets away. like We hire for A minus human beings. If you're not an A minus human being, you do not get hired from chair washing to whatever level in the company. But you can have C minus talent.
01:01:15
Ramsey Duqum
But window when and the crap hits the small
01:01:16
Nate
Well, in what's ABLE's mission statement?
01:01:21
Ramsey Duqum
It's right on our website. And every word matters. um Between our product, our people, and our reputation, none is more difficult to restore than the reputation. but we and But we value our people. um And then our customers, we love our customers a ton, but we love our employees more.
01:01:42
Nate
Yeah, you have to.
01:01:43
Kyle Richardson
Well, you have to in this industry. While the customers are great because they're sending you a check, we can't do what we do without having the best people behind us.
01:01:55
Ramsey Duqum
They're the ones that fulfill the promises.
01:01:56
Nate
Absolutely. No, not at all. um So do you see a world that you live in that you're going to find a work-life balance where this 4C will now get to the point of a college student and you'll be able to step back from both of those?
01:02:09
Ramsey Duqum
A hundred percent. I mean, I'm the most, just like you two, I have a, you guys are the best version of yourself right now. And as long as you subscribe to learning, retaining and applying that knowledge, you will be a more every day, every experience more dangerous. i I live regretlessly driven. I have no regrets in my life because the space and a memory for regret can't exist when you fill it with a lesson learned. And we all stubbed our toes.
01:02:40
Ramsey Duqum
We've all done that. My experience with able rents from bankruptcy to where it's at now made me more dangerous to go in very much more purposeful and foresee. Again, we don't have the time to make mistakes. And that's kind of where God said, hey, here's your path. Go down this path. When I call you for the next thing, I'll call you for the next thing. But right now that calling is to on a meta level help.
01:03:06
Ramsey Duqum
not only tent and event, but then equipment rental and then the other blue collar verticals. But we really don't want the other softwares, specifically the publicly traded ones, knowing about us. So we'll just be in tent and event rental until we get there.
01:03:20
Kyle Richardson
So if you had to give a 30 second overview of 4C for someone who doesn't know, go.
01:03:30
Nate
The new, yeah, the new person coming in, whether it be new person in the industry or old person in the industry, why do we want 4C?
01:03:37
Ramsey Duqum
4C leverages AI, um leverages it to run the business, view it as the brain that manages your people, your inventory, your tools, your trailers, all the elements that every rental company at scale or beginning has, um just in different varieties of it. And we're infinitely scalable to handle a one store to a 10 store um the way that it's modeled. So 4C is that brain and then it also gives people certainties of what they're selling so that they sell more confidently and execute more reliably.
01:04:13
Kyle Richardson
Is it an all in one CRM inventory, fleet management, labor management, et cetera, accounting, everything?
01:04:22
Ramsey Duqum
Yes.
01:04:23
Kyle Richardson
Okay.
01:04:25
Ramsey Duqum
We didn't start that way. We started as a labor app and then Matt Mutton ah on a call with Nate and Mikey, with Chattanooga and Lee. I'll never forget, and I told him this. he like He's like, this is awesome, but I wish somebody would do it all in one. And again, that made so much sense to me that after that call, that really, that cost me and my group millions to say yes to this, true.
01:04:54
Ramsey Duqum
but honestly you live once so let's just go all in and that's what we did.
01:04:58
Nate
Well, because this industry is so old, it feels like it, you know, and I said this on the last podcast, but it feels so old when I got to look at, I got to have four different screens in my office, not because I really, I really need them to look at every, every different program I have to pull up just to do one order. I have to look at a calendar here. I have to do this here, this here, this here.
01:05:21
Nate
to bring it all into one, where 4C now gives you that ability to do it all in one, truly.
01:05:28
Ramsey Duqum
and in a way through the lens of people who've lived it. So it's like a music sheet. Like when we get these calls, even like your go back calls, go backs, hey, I'm short corners.
01:05:41
Ramsey Duqum
Well, let know so now we have an Uber like experience when you request that digitally.
01:05:41
Nate
Nobody ever has that, right?
01:05:42
Kyle Richardson
No, that never happens.
01:05:49
Ramsey Duqum
And then you can see the person driving it out and where they are and how long it takes. And all that is expensed automatically because it's associated with the job. it It's elicited amazing, and that's what's been very difficult is to ride the emotional roller coaster with these people who demo it and see it, and to watch some of them grown men cry. It is really special to see that.
01:06:16
Nate
I think it, once people dive into it and they really understand it, like, you know, people see, we've got a lot of software companies. I mean, and there's a couple that just came on and over the past five years, there's probably three or four that came out and there's a lot of software companies out there. and And one might not be the best for this person or that person. I can truly say I feel like 4C is. I think everybody just has to be willing to take the chance. And once they take the chance, they're gonna, they're gonna be so amazed at going back to the work-life balance on how things are gonna change.
Future of the Rental Industry
01:06:48
Nate
I mean, not having to pull different screens up and not have to work so hard. And and that's the that's the key.
01:06:57
Ramsey Duqum
Well, you said something to me, and I remember where I was when you told it to me. And I've been living away from all the other software companies. We never looked at anybody else. I never i wanted my inspiration to come from my experience, not from somebody else's UI, UX that says, hey, experience guy, you need to do it this way. No, no, no, no, no. Experience tells you how to build our software for us, not the other way around.
01:07:20
Ramsey Duqum
And I'll never forget this, Nate, and I ah give you full credit. We were talking about an individual, and you said, they've already been a part of promises by other software companies companies that they've already heard this before. And I'm like, but I've never heard that before. I'm not living in that cesspool of missed promises. Remember, the whole thing for able rents has always followed through on your promise, even if you have to say no.
01:07:48
Nate
Right.
01:07:48
Ramsey Duqum
um That was super important to me and Nick Denema with block and roll. At ARA, we walk outside and we intersect each other. And he and he said something to me that made me really, really smile. He goes, you know, you made some really big promises online. And it sounds like everybody who comes to our booth who talks about it, it sounds like you exceeded them.
01:08:09
Ramsey Duqum
And he goes, you know, I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted on software companies that didn't. And he goes, i won't you know, and I was like, oh deaf I'll show it to you, Nick. If you want to see it, you'll be a great advocate for us.
01:08:21
Ramsey Duqum
But yeah.
01:08:21
Kyle Richardson
Well, I've talked to Nick. That's like recent. He was just telling me.
01:08:24
Ramsey Duqum
That's great.
01:08:25
Kyle Richardson
Yeah, it was in the last year or two.
01:08:25
Ramsey Duqum
Who was he? Yeah.
01:08:26
Kyle Richardson
Yeah. He spent some money on software and they promised him the world. And I think they gave him maybe like a state the size of Maryland.
01:08:35
Ramsey Duqum
Don't make me laugh. I'm confident.
01:08:37
Nate
Oh, that's fantastic.
01:08:38
Ramsey Duqum
well
01:08:40
Nate
And they, I mean, especially with the way Nick runs his business and the things he has to do now. And I mean, Nick, Nick was an innovator in our industry. So much respect to you for doing something that he saw.
01:08:52
Nate
I mean, he took the chance and went out and did block and roll. And that is, that is the standard of our industry.
01:08:56
Ramsey Duqum
yeah
01:08:56
Nate
And I feel like that's where 4C can be. if I mean, it already is, so I don't mean it can be, but I mean, it can be for the people that take the chance. But this, you can't do it in the because we've always done it that way, mindset. It has to be willing to take a chance to feel like you're gonna make a difference and to feel like you're gonna get some relief from this day-to-day grind that is so daunting if you let it be.
01:09:21
Ramsey Duqum
And you will. um You will.
01:09:24
Nate
Well, Ramsey, is there anything different that you would do looking back on all of this in the rental industry and what you did and how you came about moving into 4C, I know that you are now gonna leave a legacy in this industry based on everything that you said here today, you know just on what you've done and people hearing this story in general and this this software and everything, but is there anything that you look back and you wish you would have done a little different?
01:09:47
Ramsey Duqum
I would have gone faster.
01:09:49
Nate
Faster, yeah.
01:09:51
Ramsey Duqum
I mean, I want to go on faster. if There's a ton of rental companies right now around the country that are transitioning from old to new. We're going through a generational shift that happens about every 80, 90 years. And the last time it happened, my grandmother was a child. And the generation before her were the settlers. And they were like, we're not doing that anymore. So we're in that generation. like remote work. <unk>re We're talking about baby boomers who have wrote the rules, and they golly, they grew this country, and they grew this GDP. But they're not they're there's not slowly, they're quickly becoming not decision makers. And you got millennials, and you got these other people coming up. And we're going through that shift if I don't trust that anymore. So it's like, if I would have gone back, I would have said, hey, I know what side's going to win out. um I would have just made decisions faster.
01:10:44
Nate
Maybe move the software back 10, 20 years to so that way when this shift happens, it's established and ready to go.
01:10:44
Ramsey Duqum
And it's not even about the software. It's about the mentality in the business, like accepting an answer, because that's the way we've always done it. That has got to go. That has to leave, and it's got to leave like two years ago, five years ago. And any of the OGs in this industry, God bless them, literally they made this industry.
01:11:10
Ramsey Duqum
without their hard work, their innovations, their their absolute determination to figure it out. Like I think we are one of the most neurally dynamic industries that doesn't get credit because we got scruffy faces and we wear our hats on, but damn it, you put us out, we will solve a problem.
Mentoring the Next Generation
01:11:28
Ramsey Duqum
We will figure it out. And those are those OGs. Now it's just easier and they need, and and our next generation, they're gonna win. So it's how fast does that next generation mindset permeate a business? Because right now, if you don't do it, you have a high propensity to lose.
01:11:45
Nate
Absolutely.
01:11:45
Kyle Richardson
we Where do you see the industry going, Ramsey?
01:11:49
Ramsey Duqum
This isn't that good of an answer. It's not it's not that optimistic of an answer.
01:11:56
Ramsey Duqum
I think we're maturing as an industry where it's sucking to the top. I said this, and I was quoted, I think a decade ago, saying that they're going to be the haves and have-nots, and that middle market's going to get wiped out.
01:12:13
Ramsey Duqum
now
01:12:17
Ramsey Duqum
We made a conscious decision to lower our price for 4C to make it accessible by smaller companies as to not give the bigger guys the tremendous advantage over the smaller guys. That was a conscious decision in the last two months. When we realized that it would inequitably affect winners and losers in market, I didn't want the responsibility. And again, our first seat is our local competitor.
01:12:43
Ramsey Duqum
And it's about mentoring people. And our industry, if we don't mentor and we don't help this next wave of people that come in, those 20s and 30 year old guys who are starting scratch, they're not scarred by the past. We need to grab around them and help foster their growth and and share with them like some of the older time did with me. Or frankly speaking, I think it's a dying breed.
01:13:13
Nate
Yeah.
01:13:13
Ramsey Duqum
I'm just going to say it, like it is very difficult to get people to come in and believe in this industry from the
Impact of AI on Job Security
01:13:20
Ramsey Duqum
beginning. It's easier to go do electrician, to be a plumber, to be some blue collar, and AI is turning white collar into a commodity now, and blue collar will be the most insulated if we view that next generation as like we're going to listen to them because they're not coming into an old mentality company.
01:13:42
Nate
Well, this, this is, this is perfect.
01:13:42
Ramsey Duqum
Without that, we would die.
01:13:43
Nate
This is perfect. Cause this leads us into our next question. We always ask our, uh, our people that we interview right before we sign off here. Uh, Kyle's got a good question to ask you.
01:13:52
Kyle Richardson
If you could give advice to the next generation or an up and comer, what would it be?
Bridging Industry Practices
01:14:01
Ramsey Duqum
Whatever you're going to stand for, stand for it in cement.
01:14:06
Nate
I love that.
01:14:06
Ramsey Duqum
There will be many things that try and blow you off course, but I recommend you stand for quality and service. You leave price to somebody else who will have a short flame. Focus on quality and service and building a team that when you go to war, they got your back. And you better have a plan before you go to war, you're going to lose your team.
01:14:29
Nate
facts, facts in this industry, you know, I feel like going back to your blue collar comment is we are not, we are a trade industry. We are, we have become a trade industry and it's, it's something that people don't understand and they, they don't really, and that's kind of the point of this podcast. You know, Ramsey, when I asked you to come on here and you said, what's the point of this podcast? The point of this podcast is to bring light possibly to our industry. I don't know if people are going to from outside the industry are going to listen to this.
01:14:56
Nate
But if we can put it out there and at least try and get some people to listen, or if we can bring the old and the new together to see what we're doing and create some kind of change or education on the industry to show them, hey, this isn't just, we're not just putting up tents, this isn't, we're not a bunch of carneys running around putting up pole tents all the time, like back in the day, you know what I mean? Like we are a true trade industry, no different than welders and carpenters and everything else.
Enhancing Education and Training
01:15:24
Nate
We just don't have the educational background and the licensing like the, like the trades, which I think is great that now, you know, we talked about how ARA and ATA are bringing in the classes and, and, and hopefully we can start using those types of things, but just bringing light to the industry to show them, Hey, we're for real and we're coming. And if you aren't going to get on board with that in the industry, it is the haves and have nots and you're right. And I'm with that.
01:15:51
Nate
But it was a this was great, Ramsey. I really appreciate you coming on today. um I know you had a lot of lot of other things you could be doing, and you're I know you're a little under the weather, so I appreciate you coming
Closing Remarks and Future Hopes
01:16:00
Nate
on. And I think we all look forward to seeing where not only Abel goes for the future, but 4C as well. and And I'd love to get you back on later on once once people get onboarded with 4C a little bit more, and see how those people in those seats are going, and and really feel out.
01:16:16
Nate
and i I can say this with confidence, I think that everybody's lives are gonna change once they do get it, but i just I would love to hear their stories and their background and how this goes.
01:16:21
Ramsey Duqum
Thank you.
01:16:24
Nate
So thank you for what you've done and what you're doing for the industry, and thank you for coming on today.
01:16:29
Ramsey Duqum
Appreciate you.
01:16:29
Kyle Richardson
Thanks Ramsey, we really appreciate it.
01:16:31
Ramsey Duqum
Thanks so much guys.