WEBVTT
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To start off, I'd love for you guys to introduce yourself and give us a 30-second like what is flagpole buddy.
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Let's introduce ourselves first.
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I'm Dave Jans.
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This is my wife, Christine.
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I'm Christine Jans.
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I'm the president.
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She's president.
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And then outside the window over here, we have uh Sasha.
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There she is right there hanging out.
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She's uh like Sasha and I'm the problem.
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Yeah, pretty much she's a problem.
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Problem child.
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She's an office manager, manufacturing, not manufacturing uh just marketing and operations.
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So I run like the day-to-day and run our social media, and I wear the hat that's given to me for the day.
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She does almost everything.
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It's very hard though, because her head's really big, so we have to get some really big hats.
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You know, flagpole buddy suggests that all you do is flags, but it's gonna be so much more than that.
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So the idea behind Beyond the Brand is getting to know you, the company a little bit, and telling the story behind the story.
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Beyond the brand is kind of getting beyond just the products, although those are absolutely important and there's some great products out there, but I think so many people don't know what's out there.
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So the podcast is very dedicated to like talking about you guys, what made you start it, what made you get involved, but then you know, kind of an overview, and then we're gonna deep dive into like what your product line is and that sort of thing.
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Does that make sense?
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Oh, yeah, perfect.
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Yeah.
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Awesome.
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So let's take us back to the beginning.
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When you guys started, where were you?
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Did you already were you in the RV space?
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Well, I was born in a small town, Laporte, Indiana.
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Had no idea about RVs.
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This is we're talking 66 years ago.
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And I ended up in aerospace after after uh working in a foundry for a long time, and I ended up going to Purdue, Purdue University, yeah, go Boilermakers.
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Yeah, they're in the basketball suite 16.
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And so after college, I ended up in Tucson, Arizona as an aerospace engineer for Hughes Aircraft.
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That company went down.
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I ended up here in California at a company that made turbine engines for uh aircraft, right?
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And I think within two years I met you, maybe three years of that.
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And Christine was uh in um accounting and all over the place.
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And at one time you were like even my secretary, remember that?
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That was kind of cool.
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She was right over the wall for me.
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So I could hear her flirting with guys on the phone on the phone, you know.
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And I was on the other side.
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I would never flirt with anybody.
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Yeah, it was a great.
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So we got married 35 years ago, and uh it's been bliss ever since.
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So that's awesome.
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I thought I heard Sasha back there mouthing off.
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Um not a word for me.
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I hear you back there, see?
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Okay.
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In um 2004, I kind of got tired of the corporate life.
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You know, you you you go up the ladder and do all that, you have to kind of climb over people and things, and it's not very fun.
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I was just like, this this sucks.
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It was just awful.
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So in 2004, I came up with this idea of how to hold a flagpole on an RV because we would go out to the desert.
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She she taught me all about the desert.
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I knew nothing.
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From Indiana, all there is is cornfields, right?
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Forever.
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So I knew a lot about corn and cows and things like that.
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So we went out to the desert and I just loved it.
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And we'd race out every weekend and we'd put our bungee our flagpole up to our RV, and then people would find our RV because of the flag we put up, right?
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And so at the end of the day, uh taking it down, you're cutting and doing all this stuff, and it's like, oh, it's a pain in the butt.
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So I'm sitting there thinking, okay, so I'm sitting there drinking and thinking, right, having some cocktails.
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Hey, some of the best ideas come from that.
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I'm just saying.
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It gets better.
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So I'm drinking, I'm thinking there's gotta be a way to do this, right?
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Hold this thing in two spots without having to climb up the ladder and put the pole down into something and hang on to the ladder and zip tie and do all that stuff.
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So I'm thinking back to my my childhood days, right?
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And there's this saying, GI Joe.
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I don't know if you remember G.I.
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Joe or not.
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G.I.
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Joe could hold just about anything, could grip things.
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It was like, how does this G.I.
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Joe grip things?
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And I can't.
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So I'm sitting there messing around, and I came up with this idea right here of actually taking taking a pole and angling it in and putting it in like that.
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So it's kind of like what G.I.
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Joe was doing.
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And so it's like, oh, okay, cool.
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So I made some and and I gave them to my friends, and then I said, and she said, uh, we should do something with that.
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And so I got a patent on it, and we started our little business out of the garage.
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And within a few years, uh it started going a little somewhere.
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And then Christine quit her aerospace job 2008 and went into the garage.
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Yes.
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So here's my wife at the garage working.
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So we had cameras all up and everything because people would come to the house and buy the product.
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And it was like, this is I don't really like that.
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So in like 2011, she was at a show with her friend selling, and it was uh Pennsylvania, it was the Hershey show.
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And she calls me, I'm in a meeting in corporate room.
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She calls me up, she says, Hey, this guy just came by.
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I'm like, Yeah, okay.
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Was he hitting on you?
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No, no, no.
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He says he's the owner of Camping World and he wants to get our product into his store.
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You know, not very trusting.
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I wasn't.
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And so I looked him up and I said, Well, what did he look like?
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And she says, Oh, he looks like this, and like, okay, that's pretty cool.
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It looks like them.
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And she said his name, and and it's just like this guy, Marcus Lamonis, owns Camping World.
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So I he asked me to call him.
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So I called him and talked to him about it, and he says, I want your product in the store.
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But wait, before he goes on, um, Marcus Lamoni, I asked for a business card, and he actually is like, Well, I don't carry a business card.
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He's like, Can you give me a piece of paper and I'll just write my name and my phone number down?
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So right there, I'm like, hmm, okay.
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I didn't really trust him.
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That's why I called David and asked him.
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Yeah.
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And I was that makes sense.
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I mean, I was just an event last week where you know, a lot of the senior executives don't carry business cards, or if they have them, they have less than 10 in their wallet.
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And so, yeah.
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I must be a senior executive because I only carry one.
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I don't carry any.
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So you're more senior than so you'd be writing your name down on a piece of paper now, too.
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I would.
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I would.
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So the funny so the funny thing is uh he he said, I'll take uh uh I want to put you in the store.
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Okay, call the call the buyer up.
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And we've been trying to get in the camping world for years, right?
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So we knew which buyer to call.
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So we call the buyer up, and a day later she says, she says, I'm sorry, we can't do that.
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We're downsizing, we're getting rid of small vendors and things like that.
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And like, okay, well, thank you.
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And I sent a nice email to Marcus, thank you very much.
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You know, the RV industry is great, and blah, blah, blah.
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And the next day I get a call from the buyer, and she says, Well, I'll take two of everything and put them in our stores.
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Like, okay, so that's cool.
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So, so we're doing pretty good there, and then the garage got too big, full of stuff.
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We had inventory in the house, in the bedroom, and it was just crazy.
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So the camping world started carrying our products.
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So then it's like, Christine found this place out in Elkone, California.
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So then I moved in here, and and we've got some good employees.
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Sasha's, she's out there.
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Sasha, turn your ears off.
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Turn your ears off, Sasha.
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I don't want to hear this.
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She's really, a really, really good employee.
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She's got great personality, she's great with customer.
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God, you're gonna make me cry.
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Stop it.
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We have two out in the shop here.
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They're they're fantastic also.
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And then when we when we make uh bigger pallets to go into Amazon, our ejection mold shop, which is not ours, it's next door, they manage to pallet everything for us.
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So we don't have as many employees because we outsource a lot of the work from that standpoint that we don't have to.
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You know, employees are are some of the harder things to deal with, right?
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For sure.
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So, what would you say the problem that you ran into that nobody was solving when you created Flagpull Buddy was?
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I mean, because it's a pretty unique item, you know, it it holds not just a flagpole now, and we're gonna hop into what else it holds, but it's it's one of those things that you know is a pretty unique item, but there weren't a lot of other competitors out there doing what you're doing.
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No, there wasn't.
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And that's the k that's the problem.
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Uh it was the zip ties.
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So if you didn't, if you just put it in a tube down low, the pole would actually bang on the ladder.
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So at night, it was just crazy.
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A lot of sound people would go up there and take them down.
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But what I solved is is having an upper support without having to climb the ladder to get to it.
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Yeah, to keep keep you off the ladder, because ladders are they're very unsafe.
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More people get hurt on ladders than any of us really realize, because it's very common.
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At our extended age, once you fall off a ladder, you're gonna be able to do it.
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These youngins that work here, they're 30 years old.
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Yeah, they know nothing.
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They know nothing about getting hurt.
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If you fall off a ladder three or four feet high, it it hurts.
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It can be a life-changing event if you get too high.
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And then, you know, a lot of these guys are getting stubborn and they say, I'm gonna climb that ladder anyway, and the wife's down there, don't climb the ladder.
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So that is the problem that we solved.
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We help people uh basically be safe, uh safer with their RV system, uh, with our flagpole system.
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For sure.
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Started selling.
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All right, so would would you was there ever a moment where you were like, This is it, I'm done?
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That was yesterday.
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Yeah, that's true.
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Sasha was mouthing off too much, and I said, That's it, I'm done.
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You gotta keep it light and fun in the workplace.
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Yeah.
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Goodness, don't have an HR department.
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Yeah.
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I am the HR department.
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So well, you know, I mean, being a small business, there's days that you just, you know, it it can feel insurmountable.
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Like some things just feel like they're against you, you know, show booth increases, all those things.
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And I mean, we've seen your teams all over the country.
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And so, you know, getting out there and getting your name out there is one of those things that as a small business owner myself, it's it's got its own set of challenges.
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When was the first sign you felt like you had something very real on your hands?
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Like, was it that moment with camping world or was it something else?
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I think it's when we actually got to move out of the garage and into this facility.
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That was huge.
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And that was all based on camping.
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Yeah, and that was yeah, it was.
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That that's when things changed.
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We did uh, I don't know if you're familiar with Courseite Arizona and the big RV event there.
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Yep.
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I remember, you know, before Kimmy took care of it, you know, I remember we we've been out there for years.
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Um, we haven't been out there since, well, it's been a bunch of years.
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So Yeah, we've been going to that probably 30 some years before we actually got into this business.
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We'd all go out with there with our friends and and put up flags and circle the wagons, right?
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And we could shop and shop and come back and yeah, show everybody what you got and that kind of stuff.
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But once we did our first show out there, which was pretty awful, it was main event, and we were in a canopy, a 10 by 10.
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Yeah.
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So we like went, then we went over to Tyson Wells, and we had our RV, and we sold off of it, and then we actually moved to the big tent.
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And the reason we moved to the big tent, because it was one of those days I'm thinking, I'm done with this, because we're outside and a storm came up, and all the all the the tents, the canopies, they just took off.
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Everything took off, and we're sitting inside R R V watching the canopies go and it's raining, we're not selling, we're miserable, it's cold, and I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore.
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But we said, okay, let's just try inside the big tent and see how that goes.
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And that went really well.
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So we do the big tent every year.
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We get you know three spots, and uh it's that's turned out really good.
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Yeah.
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So we that's fun.
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To think you started in a 10 by 10 outside, and now you're in three spots.
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Yeah, three whole spots, and you're in like the middle area of the big tent.
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That's awesome.
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Yeah, prime location in the big tent.
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When did you realize that flagpole buddy could be more than just four flags?
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I mean, because okay, so maybe you don't know.
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My background is in RV roofing.
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We own an RV roofing company, and so I can't tell you how many people mount their Starlink to the top of their roof, and I cringe every time.
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And so I tell everybody about flagpole buddy because you don't have to do it that way.
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Exactly.
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That's a good point.
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I think satellite dishes.
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Remember the the the um tailgators?
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Yep.
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I made I made a mount that attached onto our poles, and that was kind of uh like, hey, it's not just for that, for flags.
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And then when Starlink came out, I mean, as soon as I saw Starlink, I'm like, this is fantastic.
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So I bought the big first dish and and put that up on a pole, and it's heavy.
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I'm like, this is I don't like it, but I I knew that being a camper for all these years in RVR, the worst problem is these cell boosters.
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None of them work.
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I tried every one of them and I couldn't get them, maybe a little bit of work, but you know, if you don't have a cell signal for coming your direction from somewhere, you're never gonna pick it up anyway.
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So when I Starlink, I'm like, you can go anywhere.
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Wow, this is gonna sell.
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This was that a customer-driven idea, or was that something that you were like, no, this is what we have to do next?
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No, that's all that's me.
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Yeah, I was just just like this this has to do this.
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We've we've got the system.
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We this this is a natural for that.
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And I've tried to put other things up there.
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I put lights and things like that up there, and uh those are okay, but it's not a big it's not the seller that the Starlink is.
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Right.