EP.28 - Winning Without a Net: Tony King on Independent Leadership in a Consolidated World

(upbeat music) Hello, I'm Roy Richardson, and this is the Dynamic Business Leaders Podcast. Welcome back to another episode of the Dynamic Business Leaders Podcast. I'm your host Roy Richardson, joined by my insightful co-host and trusted sounding board, Sean Murphy. Sean, great to have you here with us today brother. Well, I am ecstatic as usual to be here, and thank you for carrying the water the last couple of times. I know I was not on the last show, so I thank you for doing a heavy lift in the last couple of shows, and I'm looking forward to this one. Well, you were always there with us in spirit, and you're my wingman, so where I go, you go and vice versa. So we know you were there, man, I felt you, I felt you. But Sean, this one, I'm really excited about this conversation today because it's for leaders operating without a safety net. Our guest today is Tony King, president of Power Bolt and Tool, a Florida based construction supply company competing against national giants in an industry increasingly dominated by private equity. Tony's journey runs through consulting, software leadership, and ultimately ownership. He's built businesses from scratch, scale teams, and in 2022, stepped fully into ownership through an SBA back acquisition, discovering that even when you buy a flourishing company, it still feels like starting from zero. His leadership philosophy is grounded in discipline, margins, culture, and details, because in his world, the pennies actually matter. But before we jump through on this, today's episode, as always, is brought to you by Aurora Influetek, helping organizations grow with confidence by protecting the systems and data they depend on. So innovation never comes at the cost of trust. Tony, really glad to have you here with us. - Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it, Roy and Sean. What an intro. You guys made me sound glorious. (laughing) I mean, to me, when I look back, it's not that impressive, but thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. - Very, very good. Well, Tony, as Roy said, welcome to the show. A lot of folks in this community know me. I am very excited about life and about business. And your firm is a type of business that really excites me. So your story sits right at the intersection, man. I've got great numbers, sales, leadership, and reality. And I said, let's get into it and share what all people who you are and what you do. So you said, as we were preparing for this, that you've only had one formal job interview in your entire career. - I don't know how it happened. - Right, right, right, but it's like most of the jobs that I have, I knew somebody that's gotten me there. And when I left the bank a year ago, there are a lot of opportunities and deals that, they all come through this type of scenario here. But you describe yourself as a little risky, little ADHD, part sales guy, part numbers guy. When did you realize that that mix was actually a strength and not a liability? - Maybe it's still a liability. (laughing) - You know, I'm not sure. I mean, I've always felt that I was kind of the underdog and you know, always felt like I had to do better than the next guy. And oh, when did it not become a liability? I guess I just started harnessing it more and just trying to be the person I am. And you know, when I first, me and the other guys, we started Ziri on back in 2005. At that point in time, I just come out of Hughes, Hugh Supply. And you know, that was a corporate culture where you had to be the first to the office and you had to leave the latest and all that kind of stuff. And at some point in there, I realized I was like, "Man, why am I trying to impress everybody?" Like I got to figure out like, when is it best for me? Like, what do, how best do I work? So I just started to dissect it very early on to figure out when I was best and what I did best and just kind of just try to work harder than the next guy. I mean, like when I think back about only being like one formal interview, I also think about like my uncle, my uncle used to be the vice president of Orlando Utilities Commission. You may know him, actually, Doug Spencer. Anyways, he told me a long time ago, he's like, it's not who, it's like who you know that helps get you where you need to be, right? But it's how hard you work that keeps you there. And I just always worked harder than everybody else. And sometimes that risk and that sales guy, the ADHD, just helped me in that situation. I just worked really hard. - Got it. Well, listen, I got to throw a curve ball at you or at our segment. - Early for a curve ball, Sean. - Right. Hey, listen, so tell me, what made you think that you're the underdog? - I guess just all growing up, I just always, I just always felt that. I just always felt that. - Where'd you grew up at? - I grew up in Oklahoma. - Small town Oklahoma, Oklahoma City. - No, well, well town, 25,000 kids. I mean, 25,000 people, sorry, not kids. 25,000 people, you know, two golf courses, nowhere to eat out at night. You know, one high school, two junior highs. You rode your bike across town. - 25,000 and you all had two golf courses in Oklahoma. - Yeah, I only, that's what the policy that I'm Palm Beach County, would he talk about? - No, he'd only two and you just made him work. - That was it. - So, yeah, I just always grew up, you know, I'm the middle of three boys, right? So I'm the, I'm the forgotten one. I'm not the first born and I'm not the young one, right? I'm in between, so. I just always felt like I always had to do better and I always felt like I was not quite, I mean, it's not the right way to say it, but not quite good enough, you know? Like you just always felt like you had to do better. And at some point I figured out that that was also the chip on my shoulder too. And when I figured that out, then that was helpful. - See, see, I love America, right? Again, I love society. I love, if I tell people all the time, if I could go back to college, I wouldn't get a business degree. I would get a psychology degree, really understand people. And the beautiful thing about my career is I worked for the truest leadership institute, you know, when I started my career back in '95, as a stockbroker, I used to like go to sleep, listening to Tony Robbins, right, around mindset and all of that stuff, but this is not a fascinating, right? Jeff Gallo was on our podcast last year, and he was the youngest of like five, I think. And he got the chip on his shoulder because he was the youngest. And he's like, man, I used to have to scrap with my brothers and sisters to eat. And so it's amazing how people figure out what's that purpose, that why of getting ahead. It's so interesting. - Yeah, well, here's a funny story. So back in college, you know, I went to a small Baptist college in Oklahoma, and I was in a business policy class. Like, I only have an undergrad. I got an undergrad in just general business, and I had this business policy class, and I had two friends in the class with me. And it was like half your grade was on this little team. There's three of us on the team, right? And half your grade was with this project they had to do. And these two, friends of mine, they were on my little three person team. They decided that they were gonna try to get me off their team. And they went to the professor. I didn't even know it, but they went to the professor, and they said that they didn't want me on your team, on their team, and I get called into the professor's office. I have no idea what's about to happen. And I'm like, yeah, what's going on? And they're like, Jeff and Carrie, I think, as they said, they don't want you on their team. And I'm like, what do you mean? And they're like, well, we just think that you're just like, you're gonna kind of just coast through it. You're not gonna get, you're gonna try to get an A. And I was like, whoa. I was like, all right, so they literally threw me under the bus to the professor, right? And tried to pick it on a different team. And what was crazy about it is the professor's name was Dr. Craig and Dr. Craig and looked at both of them and said, okay. And he asked me if I had anything to say. And I said, I'm not sure what to think at this point. I just got blindsided. And then he looks at them both dead and dead straight and says, you know, he said, if you want to switch teams, you can't, but here's the deal. So he's gonna be your boss one day. That's it. And he was saying it figuratively, obviously. But he was basically saying like, look, you're probably making a mistake here. And he's gonna be important one day. And I couldn't believe it. It was like, it was like a moment. I was like, that's it. I'm going out and kicking everybody's butt. Because my own friends try to kick me off their team in school. And I was just average in school. So I don't blame them because I was like, just a basic B student, right? So anyway. - So I got to ask you on that. Did their resumes ever end up coming across your desk? - No, they didn't actually. (laughing) They did. - They probably interviewed a lot. I mean, I just, I didn't ever, I think I prepared my resume and maybe once, I didn't ever have to do it. I just got, I had a good, nice track. So. - Nice, nice. Well, you know, that's perfect setup here. Let's, I want to go into a quick lightning round here before. we rewind and start telling your story, you know, you mentioned before about thinking, what's the best hours of day for real thinking for you and where does your best business ideas tend to show up? Yeah, I mean, that was something I had to give myself grace for in the beginning too, because when I first started the entrepreneur journey, it was not a big thing to figure out, you know, the work hours and all that kind of stuff. It was still, you needed to be first and last kind of thing. And so I realized that I work really well in the afternoon, in the mid to late afternoon, and then later in life, you know, after when you really get into the entrepreneur journey, you realize that early mornings are pretty good too. So I function really, really well and get a lot of a lot of stuff done from, I'd say like, six to nine in the morning, and then I get a lot of stuff done really oddly like from three to six in the evening. So like I have this like six-hour window that I probably accomplish threefold what I get done in the other, like mid-morning or around lunchtime, I'm like, I'm barely even functioning. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, all of those YouTube videos and TikToks, I'll be seeing you doing that lunchtime and dancing and yeah, this is something very, what do you want to do the recording, right? And so like I always schedule stuff on purpose that like is less important for the business side. It's important, but not quite as like particular, I schedule that stuff in my kind of weak moments because that when I scheduled that kind of stuff in the weak moments, it forces me to double down in those times because other people are kicked me accountable, right? I have the video team shows up and they require a lot. So yeah, so anyway, if I do that on purpose to schedule that at the time when, you know, I'm just kind of relaxing. Got it, got it, got it. Well, not that we're warmed up and we took it back to Kyle's for a minute. You went to Oklahoma Baptist, right? True. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Let's go back to the business part of that. Probably go ahead. So Tony, tell us, you know, what pulled you into business in the first place and when did it stop feeling like a job and started feeling like a calling? Oh, when did it start feeling like a calling? Man, it was well, it was well into the Varian days when it really started to feel like, okay, this is, this is like a thing. I'd been in there for five years or so and it definitely started to kind of settle in. But up until that point, even when I was at Hughes, I always, I always envisioned myself being on the corporate ladder. You know, like I said, I wasn't an A student, I wasn't great in school, but I worked, I literally outworked everybody. I outworked people in, like I worked construction jobs in the summer. I worked the movie theater, I worked retail. Like I just outworked everybody all the time and everything that I did. And so I always envisioned the corporate ladder, but at some point, I started to realize that the entrepreneur journey, which is probably about five years in or so, I was like, oh, this has a lot of legs here. And this is very, very fitting to me because I, just personally, I need a little bit of chaos. Like I operate well with a little bit of like lack of logic and, you know, it doesn't quite make sense, but I'm willing to get my hand 30. So at that point, if I'm around maybe five years in, it started to kind of settle in that this is the thing, and this is going to be a good, good direction for me. That's amazing. And, you know, you said five years in and you actually started Zaryan Group just three years out of college and grew it to more than 550 customers at the time where you intentionally building a company or just solving that problem in front of you. Young and dumb. No. No. No. What happened with that? He was at one of the huge supply. I got hired, I had a couple internships with them, came down here with my uncle for a couple of summers and then I got, they offered me this guy, Jack Whitwam. He offered me a job. Basically, he walked by my desk and saw me as an intern. He's like, Hey, you want to come back and work for me? He didn't even ask me anything. He just said, You want to work for me? And he said that he would pay me to travel. And I was like, I'm in. So I literally took the job, unknowing what I was going to get into. And then after I graduated, I flew down and moved down and didn't go back to Oklahoma. But what was I saying, though? Anyway, so I, that's how I started, that's how that all happened. I started working at Hughes. So we were on this conversion team where we were shutting down, like Hughes bought up all these independent supply houses. And they were called the diversified supplier, right? Like they had a plumbing division and HVAC division, a fire fabrication division, electrical, all the stuff. So they had all these different companies and there was like 50 of them. And they all ran on a different ERP. And back in the day, the ERP was called an enterprise resource planning, right? And the ERP is like FAP, Oracle, a very small version of an ERP that all of us know what it is, is QuickBooks, right? It runs your sales, your purchase order, your inventory, all the stuff, right? So this program called Eclipse was the one that Hughes supply chose to convert everybody to. And so I was on that team, along with one of your guests before Alonzo Williams. He was, he was my boss. He was my boss. Nice. And so I worked for Alonzo, and we were on a team of people that travel the country, teaching people how to train end users, how to use the system. And doing so, we shut down 45 systems. So we shut down 45 systems, put on just, we installed just two. And that happened over three and a half years. So I get done to the three, at the end of the three and a half years. And I basically am not going to have a job. Because the job was done, right? So I could either go out to a branch and be a branch manager. I could go be a sales guy. I could, you know, I could join the corporate life and do all that thing. And me and Brad Riley at the time, which also worked for Alonzo, we, we were at this users group conference in Orlando. And these other users on that system, which were all from all across the country, they kept trying to hire us to take us away from Hughes. You know, at the time, what am I making, 35 grand a year? And so they're trying to offer us like 55 or 60 or whatever. And we're like our eyes are like saucers, right? We're like, this is amazing. We're like, well, at some point during that time, me and Brad were sitting there talking to each other and we're like, well, maybe we should just do this on our own. And so that's when we had this idea. And we went to Alonzo and to went to Jack because we had no idea what to do, right? How did we, we, there was no forward thinking that says, oh, we need to go start a business. That was not like, we had no, we had no realm for what that is. So all we said was, maybe we should do this on our own. And let's go talk to Jack and Alonzo. Well, fast forward through that, Jack had convinced at the time, a clips was owned by a company called Intuit, same people in QuickBooks. He can, Jack somehow convinced the HD supply guys, aka Hughes, right? And Intuit to fire our whole department, Branch 3802, which that was Alonzo was the manager of. And, and rehire us under this other name called Xerion, right? Xerion Group. And he convinced them to subcontract the whole deal. So we basically invoice Intuit and then to it and voiced HD. And so we started this company in August of '05 with 14, 15 people, right? They just got fired. And and I mean, we, we started a company with one, one account, which was HD supply. And no, I had no business didn't have any forward thinking for that. It was over a period of the next three, four, five years that I started to figure out some more things. And anyway, the runway really started to happen in 2010 is when it kind of started to take off. I would say, I mean, being a person in technology, you know, consolidating 40 something different business operating systems into two over, you know, the short span that you guys had. Wow. That's incredible. That's incredible. I mean, we were on the end user side. So it was like 3035 of us. But there was a whole project team that was behind us and programmers and stuff. The whole team that did all the conversions was probably 70 people. It was a big team. Yeah. And it was a lot of project management. A lot. It was a very, very significant deal. I mean, were they all here in Orlando or were they domestic or what's the? Everybody was domestic. Yeah. I mean, they just all came from divisions that he was at purchase. Most of it was, most of it was here in Orlando. But then there were other, you know, all the ones that were, the corporate corporate was here, right? Which I, the IT department was here. And that was where everybody was centrally located. But then a lot of people traveled throughout the country. I mean, I spent months and other states months. Yeah. Got it. So you later became president of a US division of focus software. Yeah. What did that experience teach you about scale? You know, that's the scale is the big thing that I hear in the business market today, scaling a business as quickly as possible. What did the ownership later force you to learn the hard way? Well, focus was so that kind of flourished when, let me see, in 2012 or so something like that in 2011. After I tried to bought out my other partners in 2010 and Zaria and I started changing the way we went to market. And so as a consulting company and I started doing a lot of these partnerships and integrations and different work for third parties and one of those was focus software in the owner, Miles Glacier, he was from Australia and he called me one day and just said, "Hey, can you help me do this integration with Eclipse, our software?" And I said, "Yeah, sure." So I did one and we worked on it and we kind of made a little set of programs for it and then we did a couple more and you know, we did probably, I don't know, 40 or 50 of them and then he just, he liked, he liked working with me and our team and stuff like that and so at some point he had asked me to run the sales division and then I ended up running their US division for a couple of years. But as far as scale, I mean, the software world versus where we're at is just so different. Like, certain, there's services and there's software and then there's like physical goods and they're all three in vastly different categories when it comes to scale. Like focus was a subscription model and you know, it's a software model so like, it's just a different way to go about it and build it. Like you, you need new clients and new additions, right? But it kind of gets, becomes an engine of itself after a while, even if you're doing like, licenses and then you know, annual recurrence and stuff. But in our space, the hard goods distribution is just so, so much different. It's, and it's way hard, to me, it's way harder to scale it. Like when you have software, you can scale it one way. When you have services, like a podcast service or something, it's just way different to scale that versus when you need to scale like, I'm selling a bit and a blade. How do you, what am I going to do? I can't like multiply that or put a subscription service on like a blade, right? That's why private equity is buying them all, right? Because that's the, that's the fast way of scale. Yeah, you can do it by, hear a lot of it, doing it because they need the people, right? They need the people or and the customers and the fastest way to do that is to gobble them up. Yeah. Yeah. There's not really a way to like do double and triple the growth without gobbling up other people. Well, you, you've touched on a couple of points that at something down the road, we're going to touch on one. We touched a little bit on it that I hope that the listeners take away from this one about that ship on your shoulder. On two, you've taken huge risk, right? The guy walks past your desk and you could have been like, ah, you know, your mind could have, nope, it could have been a scary moment. And then, you know, the other scary moment I would imagine is when you bought your partners out. It was probably a moment where it's now on you, not on Jack and Alonzo who were, were senior to you and you had this, this other person. So there's four of you all that came with the organization. So to me, man, those are, those are very pivotal moments, I think in your journey that I hope the listeners take, again, you had a chip on your shoulder and took some risk there. But anyway, you've said buying powerboat felt harder than starting from scratch. Why did ownership hit differently than entrepreneurship the first time around? Well, I didn't know what I was doing the first time around. And I had Jack, which was very, very experienced, right? And I also was young and had no kids. And later in life, you start to take a more calculated risk and you know what you kind of know what you're doing. But it's just, this one's way harder than the last one because there's so much more on the table. It's so much more, you just have so much more responsibility in life. I really admire the entrepreneurs that decide to do it and really get after it late in life because you didn't have an opportunity when you were young and less, really less risk. You have a lot of time to recover. But when you start doing it later in life, you have less time to recover. Like you don't really, you can't mess up as much. So now there's just so much more on the line that you just, you just don't have time to mess up. Let me ask you this. You mentioned it yourself and again, I know Roy believes in this and I am a huge believer. Again, you talked about not having a resume and I said that all of my jobs came through relationships and the resume was just a formality. That was the only reason I had it because it was a formality. But do you think that at this stage, if you have the proper team and really leverage your relationships that would make it easier? I don't know, I got a lot of team members and a lot of relationships and it doesn't seem to make it necessarily easier. It still, I mean, it does help. I mean, I think what's helpful for me right now is I've been doing the entrepreneur journey for, I guess, what is it? It's the 21 years now, right? Yeah, or almost 21 years. And you just have a better idea of what the menu is, right? You kind of have an idea of what you need to be doing, what you don't need to be doing, what it's like. And in the very beginning, you're just kind of ignorant. Don't really know. No, and you said something earlier. So my company today is my second technology company. Previous one was a telecom. And I often tell people that it was really successful with that. Having success with this company, but different levels of success, right? That first journey of mine was, I would say, ultra attractive to the buyers because we were bringing something new. I'm now in cybersecurity where I'm chasing behind people and telling them, hey, you've got a whole new pants. You know, and you need to plug it, right? So yeah, it doesn't always translate. And sometimes the second go around is harder than the first because you, and a lot of that's probably because we know, like you said, we know a lot more now, right? And we have things that we can sort of compare to and, you know, experiences that we've gone through. So interesting. So let's talk a little bit and let transition. I want to talk a little bit about the business you're leading today, power, bolt in tool. Give us the snapshot of who you serve, what you sell, and how a 25 person independent operation competes against national players with massive capital. Very carefully. Yeah. We are a brick and mortar hard goods supply house. We supply job site supplies, mostly, I would consume, consumables, right, things that they need, residual, right? And we deliver them on site to different jobs throughout the, throughout Florida, but mostly from I for South. I mean, we do go up to Jacksonville and stuff too. But we have four brick and mortar locations and we sell anything from hand tools and, and power tools to safety, to bits, blades, fasteners. And generally anything anybody wants delivered that is, you know, needed on a construction site, like we, we ship pallets of water daily to our job sites. And you would think there would be a more efficient way to deal with water on the job sites, but know everybody deals with bottled water. And so we, we ship that. I mean, we, we deliver zip ties. We deliver caution tape, deliver duct tape, power tools, name it. So, and we, we carry all the major brands that all are, our big competitors do. And then, you know, a lot of people, a lot of my friends and family, they're like, what's difference between you and Home Depot or lows? And yeah, I mean, they, they carry all this, a lot of the same material, not all of it, but they carry a lot of the same material. But, you know, when you have, let's say, Sam on the fourth floor of a building that's being built in, on the space coast or in Titusville or wherever, right? And he, he or she needs a roll of duct tape, ten, ten bundles, or a bundle of strut, some, nuts, some washers, and, oh, by the way, I need some water, right? He can't call, you can't call Uber. He can't call lows, you can't, he doesn't have a credit card to, it's not like he has a card, it's got to be purchased on account. And there's only, you know, there's a minimal number of companies that are in the space that will deliver to all those job sites like that. And so you're the Uber eats of the kind of, but there's a, there's many of us that do it, right? And there's some really big guys do it and you probably see them drive around town, but it's not like an endless number of them, right? Like you can't, we, we, every, in fact, a lot of us buy from each other, right? We buy from our competitors, they buy from us because it's like this big cohesive thing of just trying to service all these customers. So anyways, job site supplies with deliveries, kind of where we sit. What, what does excellent look like for you? What does excellent look like? Yeah. I mean, it's a hard business. We, the customers really need perfection, you know, when you have a concrete poor that's happening in the middle of the night or at 6 a.m. on a Monday, they need to stuff and they need it when they need it. And they might have five guys there, they might have 30. And if you don't have their, their, their sprouts there or their shovels there or anything like that, then you can hold up a job significantly. [BLANK_AUDIO] And in our world, we don't get the POs in the beginning when they first get awarded the job, right? We get POs as they need it. So the day before when their hair's on fire. - Yeah, right, right, God. - Yeah, sounds like my industry. - Right. - They're right. Sounds like mine as well. - Yeah. - So you just, so excellent. - They expect perfection. They expect what they asked for, when they asked for it with the right price and no back orders. Right? - It says a lot that your customers turn to you as the one-stop shop for all their, let's call it their field needs, right? And for construction, I mean, you're delivering water, zip ties, duct tape. I mean, you were going down that and I was kind of picturing the guyver. But then, you know, that says a lot for itself, their Tony. You know, when it comes to construction, supply, and the distribution business and that field, what's the biggest misconception that people have? - I think sometimes they just, maybe that it's easy or that there's a lot of money in it. It's just the margins, it's very difficult. You know, you have some very sophisticated customers out there, some very sophisticated vendors. And it is a product and pricing war at times, because you know, you have these really big vendors that sell into Home Depot and Lowe's and all that stuff and all of our competitors, right? And like, how are you going to differentiate yourself from the next guy when they have the exact same product? Like, there's some white label stuff that's going on in our business, yes, there's some of that and there's some proprietary stuff. But in general, you're really selling, you have to figure out on the daily like how you compete against the next guy, selling the same widget. And it's not straightforward, it's very, very difficult. - Got it. Well, I got another question. It sounds like a negative question, but it's not, it's about the business, just so we can get out all the answers and see more about how to run a business. It's not just about leadership and encouragement, but you've been very clear about margin leakage who will kill you. Where do most operators lose money without realizing it? - I mean, I think people, you lose, I have two businesses to think about, right? The Xerion days and then now the brick and mortar days with the products, right? And to me, you have the margin leakage the most in both cases because you forget about the details. And there are, in each business, there were a handful of things, like maybe two or three things that significantly impacted the overall margin that kind of got, you just kind of forget about it and you take your eye off the ball. So in Xerion, we had an issue with unbilled time. We had an issue with the consultants oftentimes wouldn't bill. They liked the guy, they liked the customer, right? So then they were, they worked for him for an hour and a half, but they only billed him an hour. And that kind of works for a little while and until you start to put it on a sheet that you start to add it up over a year or six months or two years, whatever. And you start to realize you're like, well, hold on a second. Let me kind of go back, look at this again and you realize that in a way, you have 15 people stealing from you, right? - And it's not- - How was that up? - They just add up, right? And so it's not their fault, right? It's just they're human and they're just trying to do what they think is fair. But that is the leakage, is that like when you are, when you're in a service business like that, your inventory and your product is your time. And you can't, it's not free. You have to, you have to be very, very, anything involving any of your people and their time is like it should be under a microscope. And in the beginning for the first several years, we didn't understand how much needed to be under microscope. We made some big changes a few years in. Well here in the brick and mortar space selling products, the microscope is to the individual products, right? So last year we had a huge influx of tariffs, right? And you're pricing model out to the customers. You know, everybody knows we're in it to make money, right? We're not in it to like pass through your perfect, your cost exactly what you get from the vendor to give it to your customer. You're not doing that and nobody expects that. But you are trying to make sure that what the cost is today is what you're charging it for. So as the price goes up, like you have to manage that perfectly. And if you don't manage it perfectly, it just kind of leaks out the door. And in both cases, the problem is the people, consultants that would give away time before. And in hard goods distribution, you have all these different people that are writing tickets. And they're right, you know, we have 5,000 different products we sell in a year. We stock, we sell 10 to 12,000 in a year. You know, there's a lot of things in flux. And I can't touch every ticket. I can't touch every item. We, you know, we key 1,200 tickets a month, let's say. And they just, it's kind of an engine. And that engine that's there for pricing and for what you're doing for certain customers, it has to balance with them. But it also has to translate and resonate with the individual people that are writing those orders. And so like last year, we had a huge influx of tariffs and a lot of stuff. And that was so hard to balance. Because every month, we have 50 to 75 vendors, let's say. And when you get a price increase for their entire line, every month or every 60 days because of some new tariff. Now what? It's like hard to keep up with. And it was so hard to keep up with last year with all of it. And everybody's like, oh, your price is going up to like, well, kind of like they're never going to go back down. I mean, I just have to manage what I have and to make sure that we don't lose. We lose as little as possible in the situation. Interesting. How do you see, or maybe I should change the question. And you head on a couple of points there that gets home here, by the way, in particularly in the service industry. And I'm probably one of those guilty parties that are picking away a couple of half an hours. And that's how we are. Yeah, exactly, right? But let's move forward a bit here. And the buzz word today and any industry is AI, right? And artificial intelligence. And in your seats, what do you see as actually being useful for independent operators like yourself and what's just noise? What's useful? I mean, we have a lot of data in our industry. And we also have in our industry, software has made our lives really great and also really complicated. And so I think that AI is going to help with a lot of that. It's going to streamline some things and make people better and faster. But I think a couple of the ways that it's going to help a lot is we're starting to see a lot of the AI with pricing, but also with inventory control. And being able to scrub through that data to figure out what makes sense to how much you need to stock, when you need to bring it in. And I think that there's going to be those engines, those things that help. But one of the biggest hurdles that we have in this industry with us is, again, the people is this industry, we have people that stay a long time. And they do not like their cheese to move. They do not like it. And why do they not like it? Because you see some very, very, very successful independent supplyhouses across the country that they do things the way they did for the longest time. And they do well, but they do well by counting every single penny and not spending anything. They do it that way. And they do not want to change. And that is, inherently, that is throughout the whole business, is you don't see people leave the businesses that are in hard goods distribution very often. They kind of stay in their spot and they don't like to change. So I think that that's going to be really disruptive. But the thing that's going to halt, like not halt, but it'll be difficult for AI in some cases, is you really have an industry, like it is a very personalized industry. We are a traditional brick and mortar, a traditional outside Salesforce. So my, Randy and Fort Myers, he shows up on site to a customer every morning at, I think, 4.30. And 4.35 in the morning to double check what they need and make sure all the trucks are covered and all that kind of stuff. So it's a super, super personalized service. And the moment that you take that out, that customer won't be OK with it. So they really, in fact, all the customers that I look at that we are really successful with, there is a very, very trusting, exceptional amount of personalized service. And a lot of our sales folks have become very good friends with these people. That AI is not necessarily going to take that over. It's going to be, it'll be difficult for that to happen. Those relations. - The relationship's still key, huh? - They're still key. They're still key. Now we have customers that push us for, they only want what they want, right? They don't want a relationship. They don't want us to sell them on service so that we're just as, we're better than the next guy. They want their price and that's what it is. And so Jeff and my VP of sales, actually, it's, hit and Randy both. They both say like there's three, it's a three-legged stool, right? There's, there's service, there's price, and there's availability. And you can only have two. You can't have three. If you want price, then you're gonna go, do you want price with availability or you want price of service, right? Which one you want? But you can't have it, like, you can't call me up and say, hey, I want to buy a wing nut delivered to the Space Coast tomorrow morning and I want the best price that beats out 10 other people. Like, sorry. That's not gonna work. So, yeah. - Got it, got it. Well listen, let's talk leadership. And we wanna talk to real kind here. So Roy, yeah. So, you know, you've been a founder and executive and now an owner. How are the CEO and CEO muscles different? And which ones did you have to build later than you would have liked to build? - Well, let's see, they're all hard. I'm a, again, a B student, right? I'm not great at any of them. But the thing that I think I'm good at is I'm good with people, right? I'm good at recognizing talent and getting people engaged as a group to build and grow. But, you know, when I first started the founder side of things, I just was a salesy kind of guy. And I just was good relationship. I was good selling and that's just what I did. So I took on that kind of directionally as a salesperson and then, well, I didn't really figure out the executive side of thing. It took me a long time. But when I bought out the other guys in Xerion in 2010, I learned that I needed to be able to do a little bit of everything. And so when I got rid of, so Jack was a CPA back in the day, right? He was the numbers guy and he kind of handled the number side of Xerion piece in the beginning. And then when he's gone and Brad's gone and Alonzo's gone, like all of a sudden, like, now I have to manage people, which I could do that. I could do the sales side. But now I need to know the numbers. And I realized that I needed to learn all of the CFO stuff and like the controller stuff. And now, thankfully, I've learned all that stuff, but I didn't go to school for it. But I guess you just kind of learn over time that you've got-- - On the job training. - You've got to be a little bit of everything in the entrepreneur role, whether you like it or not, you have to put on every hat. And some people say, oh, I've got to be the janitor when I need to be the janitor. It's like, well, just more practically, right? It's just like, no, I got to be able to converse intelligently with the CFO. And I got to be able to lead the VP of sales. And I got to be able to lead the VP of operations. And I think in my beginning of my journey, I only knew how to do maybe one of those. And you just kind of navigate to the rest of it. - Yeah, you also said that you wish you would would have fired faster and protected your culture sooner. What did waiting too long actually cost the business? - Well, I am not a huge proponent of conflict. You know, some people are very good at it. I'm not-- I've gotten to where I'm okay with it and can deal with it. But I, for a long time in my life who just, you know, decide not to deal with it, right? But I guess in the last, you just learn over time, right? And I realize when I'm looking back, is that many times my gut instinct about certain people that were working for me or with me could be vendor partners, customers, anybody, could be anybody. Is that my gut was probably pretty right. And it also, like, you get a certain amount of feedback from certain people that were engaged with those individuals, right? After it happens, after you let somebody go, all of a sudden you get this like feedback from people. And you just look at them and you say, why did you not tell me? And they say, like, why didn't you fire that person before? Because everybody knew. And so, like, what I've seen it happen several times where I let somebody go or we change course with somebody and there's like, it's like somebody pops a balloon kind of a thing. Like you just, it's just all of a sudden the pressure is relieved in situations. And those people start performing better. And in some cases, I thought I was going to lose a lot of business or whatever and maybe I did, maybe I didn't, but it all ends up working out all right. It just, I just wish, I didn't realize in the beginning how much I thought you had to hire, right? And just manage your master that. And it's like, it's almost like you need to fire faster. And then still it's put in the time to hire as best you can, but realize you're going to make some mistakes. But like when you realize, the moment that you realize that this is not going to work or it's not, this is not a long-term gig, whatever, with the person, customer, vendor, anything, you're just, you're better off just to cut it quick. It's fast as you can't do it fast enough. And I still, to this day, I can't seem to do it quick enough. [LAUGHS] Well, you know what they say, right? Higher, slow, fire fast, right? And I think every entrepreneur has sort of learned that on the flip side, meaning we tend to hire people. And a lot of times, we look to move them around in different positions. Or maybe they hired them for this. And they're not doing well here. Let me try and fit this round object in a square hole that's much smaller. And it's just not working. We end up really losing time, energy, and momentum, right? You've talked about learning to trust your gut. And I can relate on everything you've said there. And realizing it was usually right. So let's fast forward to today. How do you evaluate people now to make sure they're, you know, no bad seeds that quietly spread? And how do you retain your culture? Carefully. Carefully. So I went to a networking event like I do a lot. And most-- I try to like go to the ones that appear to be, like they'll have a good topic. And I can take something away. I went to this one in Jacksonville. And it was CEO roundtable. And there was a guy up there named Pete Martin. And Pete Martin had wrote a book. But I didn't know he wrote a book. So he's doing this roundtable conversation. He starts talking about things. And I was like, man, I really resonate with some of the things that this guy is saying. And I'll fast forward to your answer because I know you're going to come back to the book idea later. But what happened was when I started to engage with Pete, I fast forward, I did decide to start working with him. And one of the things that he taught me was about how important culture is. And it was not first on my list. When I came into power three and a half years ago, culture was not number one. In fact, I had all this laundry list of IT stuff that was number one. And then I was just going to rely on me-- - It's familiar, it's hard to work. - It's familiar, right? And I'm a person. And I know people. And I'm going to get them ra-ra-ra. And just, ra-ra-ra. I'm just going to conquer the world. And that worked for a little bit, right? And I got a lot of things accomplished. But when I hired Pete, like a year ago, the first thing on his agenda was culture. And we need to figure out who you want powerable to be, how you want it to be represented, how you want it to be portrayed in the industry. And then we need to dissect it and make sure that from now on, you hire people that way. And you get the right people coming in. So he really made us dissect the culture side of things. And so to go back to your question is, it wasn't on my agenda before. And now it's on my agenda. And so now what we have is we have it broken down by job role, all the way down to the job role. What we expect out of that person, what we should do. And then we've navigated it to like a specific process with different companies to be able to hire a certain type of person. So before when I came three and a half years ago, all of my direct reports, they would get indigestion about hiring anybody. They would hold on to everybody because they didn't want to have to replace them. And when Pete came in and helped us, he showed us that like, look, you've got to make this thing way easier than that. And so we put in a process that literally, like, I don't-- none of my direct reports have an indigestion about bringing in the right person anymore. It's not a big deal. They used to stress about it, get a referral, do this, do that. And it was such a big deal. Nobody wanted to do it. They would hold on to everybody. And now it's become a nice, easy process where we can bring in the right people. And so bringing in the right people is allowing us to keep the right culture. Nice. Nice. And so we've covered culture and how you think about people. But growth usually earns its cars. And so let's talk a little bit about yours. during the challenges turning points and lessons learned. Yeah, so you've been through COVID, you've been through the housing crisis. Very difficult. Very difficult. Right, right. And then a SBA finance acquisition. What may purchasing power both more difficult than people would assume? Well, you know, when you buy a business that has already been running, you feel like you're getting a turnkey situation. And now I realize that that's not at all the case. You're actually just starting over again because the business that it is today, the previous owner couldn't walk in here and know anything. He wouldn't know what to do with anything, right? It's a completely new business, completely changed. Even though it's the same name and the same EIN, right? It's not the same. It's totally different. And so I think when people bought, when you buy a new business that's already established, it's you're starting over, but you're starting over with a menu of people and things and customers and vendors that has already been put in place. You didn't pick any of them. And it's very, very difficult. And then when we started Zirion, we started it with $10,000. And that's it. It was a very little capital. All risk was just on your gut and whatever grit. You didn't have a lot at play. It's like, oh, if it fails, we'll just go find a job. And now when you do it and you do it with SBA financing, not only does the SBA hold everything over your head. But when you're paying off a note, you're sucking out of the cash account and it's not coming out of the PNL. And it's difficult because you got to make enough to cover that and your expenses. And it's just difficult. The way of debt and a business is extremely difficult. And on top of that, to be able to grow with that, to be able to grow a business at all, when you have some leverage, it's very difficult, very, very difficult. So anyway, so the summary on that is debt's difficult, but it's also walking into a business that you already have the menu set for you. You got to deal with the pieces that you have. Well, I mean, if you look at it, what you said there actually makes a ton of sense. And particularly when you're taking it from the standpoint of culture now, right? In order for you to establish the culture that you want in that business, you got to hit control out the lead. And many cases to really reset it so that you can build it the way that you want it. But yeah, I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. Yeah, because you have the pieces in play, right? Yeah. You can't just go get them and change them. You know, like for example, like let's say my number one customer, right? I can't just sub that guy. So I don't want to do that. But if I did, I wouldn't have that play. Like you just can't. It's a long term thing and a long term change. And that goes for the people that goes for the trucks. I mean, for the, the, the, our locations. I didn't pick any of them. You got to take it as it is. And so how did that whole concept of realizing that it was almost literally hitting reset? How did that change the way that you think about risk, preparedness and control today? Well, when it hit me that I'm starting over. The last year has been super hard. But you really, I don't have any choice. You just, every day, you know, you have family, you have employees. If all these mouths defeat and they depend on me. And at the end of the day, I just, you just get up and you just get after it and you do the best you can. And you try it. You can, I can only do each day what I think is the right move and the best way to do it. And I don't have a quit in me. So I just, you just make the best decisions you can today and go forward. Sounds like the chip is still on your shoulder. Oh, it's there. It's there in a big way now. Oh, yeah. So hey, look, what, what beliefs about leadership didn't survive all of these experiences that you've been through? And then what belief got stronger because of those? What, what beliefs didn't survive? I think I realized at some point that not every, that entrepreneurs are different. You're just a different dude than everybody else. And that the corporate mindset or the, you know, the expectations of a corporate ladder are just different. They don't really apply. And so that has really gone out the window for me. And just it's not because I feel like I don't get to do whatever I want. Like I actually, people ask me sometimes, you know, how much do you work? It's like, well, I don't know, I work seven days a week. And but it's not, I'm not, it's not from six to six. It's just, there's always something every day that I do, whether it's an hour or two or some getting caught up on the weekend or it's at the wee hours of the night. Like there's always something. And I had to throw away the idea of what a nine to five or five day work we look like. It's just, it's just all the time and like very, very rarely do I ever actually have a vacation where there's no work involved. Like it's just, it's just not. And I had to, I had to realize that that is just, that's me. I'm good with it. I actually, when I'm working, I love what I do. So when I put in a couple hours, like on a, if I'm on vacation and I get up before the family gets up and I go sit in the coffee shop and I have a coffee and I catch up on emails and I do, I feel good. It was relaxing for me. And I realize that some of the work that I have and that I do, I love it so much that it is in and of itself relaxing to me. So I just didn't, I had to throw away the subscription of what, what everybody thinks work is and it's just not really that much, it's just not work to me. I love it. Yeah, it's different. It hits differently when you're passionate about what you do and, and, and when it's yours, you know, in a sense and I've, I've had, I give an example, I had a meeting this morning and, and, and at 11, but I was up at 130 preparing and, and setting the stage for how that meeting was going to go and, and what points and topics and, and some other things. And I remember seeing that to somebody earlier today and I was like, man, I've been up since 130 and they're like, why? I'm like, well, when, when you love what you do, it's different, you know, it's, it's, it's, you, you can either, you can either, you can either wake up at 130 and, and look at junk aren't TV or feed your brain something that it can really make some money with. So, awesome. So I want to transition a little bit here and with, with, with that experience as context, let's talk about responsibility, a responsibility, I should say, every modern organization carries now, especially in this digital age. Every company is a data steward in your world, e-commerce vendors, customer systems, etc., how do you build discipline around data without slowing the business down? Oh, good question. It's difficult because you, the data gets in the way, right? But one of our, I just, I had a town hall meeting today. We're once a month I do a presentation of the whole company and I give them kind of the state of the union. And what's going on? What did we accomplish last month? What are we doing going forward? What are our goals for the year and all that kind of stuff? And one of the things that I reiterate often is just that look, we don't make decisions based on feeling or a hunch at parable. We make decisions based on data, based on information. And we make good quality sound decisions based on data with what's best for parable and its customers. Like we literally try to function like that. So data is very, very important, right? We put the right data in the right hands with the people that we trust. But then we also require that we get a lot of input back from everybody, whether it's in the CRM solution, whether it's in our application that everybody uses. But we give everybody the right tools to do their job and we require engagement from them. We require that they're all giving us feedback. And one of the best things that we've done is create an environment where people give us information back and we engage with them. And as that happens, then you can make better decisions. So for example, CRM, like it's only as good as the information you put into it, right? But the business intelligence application that we have, right, that does a lot of our reporting, it just spits it out. Like, oh, this is your report of the day, right? Which is great. BI is great. It's just right through your fingertips. However, it's only as good as people actually open it up and do something actionable with it, right? So again, you need engagement. So what I've realized over the last couple of years, but really probably the last year, it's just as the leader and the business, like it is an absolute requirement for me to force communication and force engagement. And I think it's incredibly important to not only force it, but to get them to want to do that. Right? And so it's almost like I spend half my day selling to my own people. Like, dude, look, as a sales guy, I want you to make a ton of money. Okay? So like, stop doing it that way and start doing it this way. But look at how far you've come from where you started to where you are now. And did you do that by coming up with that process yourself? And the person might, like you might say, no, it was like, well, maybe you should start listening a little bit. But it needs, it requires engagement. And what I find myself realizing is just how much they all need to be reminded and and encouraged because you want them to engage with it. And you can't get them to engage with it if they don't like it or they don't see it. Like they have to tangibly like recognize that it, this is a good thing to put food on my table and money in my pocket if I do this. And if you can't get them to figure that out, then you might as well just be not, not talking. Right. True. Right. True. Incredible insight, Tony. But from your perspective, what makes the biggest difference? The systems, the training or just everyday habits? Man, those are those are three really, really important things. Like how could I pick between those? Well, we know it's like trying to decide which one of it is your favorite kid, but you know, let's see, you can't do anything if you don't have the system. But if you don't teach them how to do it, I think I will probably go back to education. Whatever the systems are in place, like you have to teach them how to get to the next step. And then you have to teach them how to get the next step. And the system in a lot of ways is just somewhat irrelevant. Like it is very important, but you have to, you're dealt the people that you have. And your company culture is what it is. And it's like this moving thing, right? And you have to engage with them to get them to get better and to take the next step. And you can do that with any platform that you have. You just do with what you have and make them get better. So it sounds more to me that the process is the most important aspect of that of that try out there. Yeah. I think I think the process is incredibly important. Like you've got to, because the process can repeat, right? You can do that again and again and again. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Well, let's shift gears here. I always like to delve into the technology part a little bit over the roar and full tech, you know, of helping organizations grow and innovate without ever compromising trust. So we're going to go into the rapid fire section here. Sean, I'm going to kick it over to you. This is your ball game. Yeah. Tony, first thing that comes in mind, one book you gift the most and why? Well, probably Pete Martin's book scale up faster. His book is basically like the good to great, but it's for independent self funded entrepreneurs. And it is, it's an awesome, awesome read. What's the most overrated buzzword in business today? AI. All right. Have it. That makes tomorrow easier than today. Probably just taking notes just I routinely, I still write down. I do a lot of things on my computer, but I still have a notepad and I write down kind of my way short hit list of like the things that are most important and the things that I can't let go of and helps to make sure at the end of the day. Like I check them off and then I kind of get organized in my head for the next day. Cool. Now, now what calls your commitment outside of business keeps you grounded. Just chilling out. Pete, I at work, I am like, I work faster and harder than everybody else. And I just get after it and I'm relentless. Right. I just with the details and like with being successful and getting what I want and where I want to go. Right. I just don't I don't have a quit in me. I just keep going. But home, you would be allowed people to be surprised because I'm just very laid back. I'm just like, OK. No problem. I'll do that. Yeah. Cause I tell people what to do all day, every day, right? And people are always talking to me. So if I get to go home and people tell me what to do, then that's great. Whether it's a nine year old or my babe, whichever one tells me what to do. I'm like, sweet. I'm in. So as an Oklahoma and would have shipped on your shoulder from Oklahoma Baptist, what achievement are you most proud of that's not showing up on your balance sheet today? What achievement am I most proud of? Workwise or personal life? Whatever you feel like would be beneficial for reality as being a dad, right? It's such a big deal. But you know, I'm most proud of just being an entrepreneur. Like I'm just so proud of that. It's such a hard thing and with how easy it is for people to spin up a business now. And the and a lot of people become very successful very quickly. But really what you see in the data is that like most fail in the first year, a lot more and fail in the first three, a lot of them fail in the first five. And if you make it to 10 years, you're in the like the 1% category. And so that my very first company that we found it, right? It's still going. It's still going today. So it's got 21 years on it. And I'm running one that has been around for 22 years. So like very proud of being an entrepreneur true and true. They started one. I bought I've sold one, I bought one and it's just such a hard game. And it takes a very, very unique person to be able to do it. I'm proud of that. Cool. Yeah. We're going to slow it down just a little bit time. You mentioned your first business partner, Jack Whitman, trusting you early. You know, walking by your tube and saying that you're going to work with that, which is amazing, right? Again, that you even took him up on it. How did that relationship change how you see yourself as a leader? I mean, he just believed in me, right? He gave me a shot just thinking that I could be successful. And for all I know, he was thinking his head was like, we'll see if this works. Maybe he didn't do anything, but you take, you take, take risks on people. And at times, I've taken risks on people too. And it hasn't worked out. Sometimes it has, but you see what people can be and the potential that they have and, and you run with it. And so, yeah, forever grateful that he did that. He taught me a lot of things, but just by taking a risk on me, he allowed me to dip my toe in the water of being my own boss and being an entrepreneur and had no business doing it, by the way. But it really, really ended up fitting me very, very well as a person. Right. So you can't, you can't say you had no business doing it. He saw something in you that you didn't see in yourself. He's better suited to see it than me, I guess. Right. But sometimes that's important, right? Yeah. I mean, somebody needs to see it in you before you do, right? Because, you know, a lot of times your own perception about yourself isn't quite right either. And yeah, he apparently saw something that he wanted to give it a rip. So I'm glad that it was me. Right. Right. And so that relationship gave you a new lens on leadership. And along the way, themes like fate, perspective and servant leadership keep coming up. How do those show up for you when things get hard? Well, things do get hard. I went through the, the housing crisis. And that was really, really difficult. That was nobody saw that coming, right? Except for those that are really smart. And that was difficult. COVID was obviously really smart, lived on me and the family we lived on savings for like a year that way, but didn't let anybody go. So that was, that was very, very difficult just navigating that. You know, my faith keeps me grounded. It's, you know, it's always your true North. It's what you, you fall back on it at really hard times in my life. You know, I had my youngest son had cancer. And, you know, when you go through that, that's, that's obviously very difficult. So you kind of reset your, your North. And then I actually, Nolan actually passed away at three. And he, he, you know, that reset you even further, right? So like, reset, like whatever faith you had, you need to figure that out. And so just getting situated and, and where you're at with your faith is always very important. And then that, that sets up your morals and how you treat people and all that kind of stuff. And one of the things I realize as a, as a leader is not only do you, you need to be willing to do every job, but you're really there to serve all the people that you're trying to get to do things for you. Right? It's like you're on a constant sales pitch to try to get each person in each role to do certain things. But you also, you have a duty to try to help them be better, but also a duty to help them want to do better and want to do the job better. So you can get them on board very easily, not easily, but a lot easier if you prove to them that you're willing to get in there with them. And you're a servant to them as much as they are to you. You know, hearing that it's, it's clear that you value guidance as much as conviction. And if you could build a dream board of advisors from any point in time, who would you have surrounding you and why? But dream board of advisors from any from any particular point in time past or present. Hmm. Man. I think probably that I probably pick the people that that I know that I know and I believe in and I would the two people that had the most impact for me on a business side of things is definitely Jack. And then I would also probably have Pete Martin involved. Yeah, they both those two people taught me so much about business and about what to do and what not to do. And I feel like just having them as a sounding board would just be helpful. And I in a way I do I can always call them. But if I if I had them on the board then it would be it would be pretty good. Nice. Nice. So let's make this practical Sean. Yeah. I seem to have the questions we're asked in threes, right? I'm not going to start to answer all three of them. What are the three rules you operate by and where did each one get written into you the hard way? The three rules that I operate by always be selling ABS, right? You know, you're not getting no coffee over there, huh? Always be selling. What was the other one I was thinking of was communication will win wins all the time is I told my guys at Zerion and I still tell the team today here is that any answer any answer is better than no answer. And on top of that don't there's no reason to lie. Like just be truthful. It's not it's not always what they want to hear. And but being truthful and communicating is always better than zero. And you know, like if a sales guy has a bad update for a customer than or telling they totally forgot, then that's better than nothing. And it you are communicating. So communication is key. Those rules were written through experience. And they're clearly guide how you operate today. So for operators coming up behind you entrepreneurs, etc. What's one skill they should build this year and what's a real project where they can practice it? I think one of the skills that the skill that was like so important to me that I didn't have that I had to figure out was the accounting side of things. And when I look at the up and comers in entrepreneurial world, right? And AI and everything else, all the software, your inventive. Everybody has this misconception that they can about the things that they're not good at or they can hire this person to do that or they can hire this person that they can just figure it out. They can just do what they love their passion. And it couldn't be further from the truth. Like I would encourage everybody that is up and coming in the entrepreneur space. You have to be two things. You have to be a sales guy. Like you have to be able to sell whatever it is that you believe in. You have to. You may be very, very dull and have an amazing product and people just buy it because it's the product. That's fine. But you're still selling it. But you really, really, really have to know the accounting side of things. Like you just have to. Like you can't you can't entrust that totally to somebody else. Like even if it's as simple as QuickBooks. Like you just have to you have to be able to do it. And the last thing I would say is never let anybody like just couldn't make sure you control the bank account. Just whatever you do don't give don't give the admin the rights to the bank account. Make sure that you're signing all the checks. Just putting in very simple things like even to this day like this in this really big company that I have. And the last one that I had I literally was the only person that can send something out of the bank account. Like zero people are getting paid with anything without me saying I signed that. And you you have to know what is going in and out of your business. And the only way you can do that is you know the accounting side of things. Really, really great advice. And I will underscore that and bold it. Get your hands dirty. Looking ahead 10 years from now. What does success look like for power bolt and tools and for you personally? See at this, how am I 46? So like that's kind of like it starts to become a question is like what is it like am I would I move on from power bolt would I try to you know just run it for the next 20 years? I don't know. You know I want I want the business to be thriving. I personally think we're going to have a very difficult. I think the economy is going to be a very difficult economy and like 2030 and beyond for that just because of the baby boomers leaving the workforce. And just I mean just the numbers with that in that situation and the politics that we live in. I think it's going to be hard. And so I think that if you know if I still have power bolt come 2030 then like it's just going to be a hard stretch. But I think a successful business would be one that is not leveraged right not in debt but also is is thriving and it's one that's thriving for the families and the people that are here and it's it's recognized as the premier supplyhouse. I mean I tell my team members all the time it's like look I want to be not necessarily the number one on sales volume. I want to be the premier supplyhouse in the southeast. And so when people think about jobs I deliveries I want them to think parable and and until I get that that would be success is like when people are like you drive around town and you see a van it's like that's the guy. That's what I want. Nice. Nice. And and if that's the destination the terrain to get there matters. Where do you see consolidation and AI creating the biggest risks and I would say biggest risks and opportunities for for independent operators. You know AI is going to make AI is making everybody smarter right it's there's we hope. Don't need to check in balance in there but it is it has some great opportunity right but I actually think for our business is I think it's the private equity side that is the biggest risk is the venture capital folks and the private equity you know we call ourselves the the the small the medium size independent right the independent supplyhouse is becoming less and less and less and less and less and all the private equity guys and the venture capital guys are buying them up and rightfully so they need a way to move on for and retire or whatever but there's none of none of the VCs are going back to private right and the problem in our industry is they take the personal side out of it and they take it's just a it's just a numbers thing and it's sustainable well I mean it sure seems to be ever since it came around they keep getting bigger but I don't know but I mean the problem is that I see in our business is they make decisions that are just not they just make decisions differently than then we do like you're looking at a new skew or a new product line that you want to carry and why you want to do that right and you're looking at how you're going to get it into the customer base and you're making all these logical decisions on how to do it and then they come up and just buy somebody else and then they either like it or they don't they might even shut it off right and it's like there wasn't anything they're making it on a sheet of paper and because of that it's very disruptive it's very very disruptive with the competition because you don't really know what you're competing against or why they did that like why did you do that I mean we we compete against many VCs and there's times where we get into deals against another one and we're like like I literally have a vendor that we got picked up on a couple of years ago and they were a very very specialized screw manufacturer and they picked us up and we we started selling our stuff we were ecstatic to do it right but then we we were excited to pick up the line because they were exclusive with another with a competitor when we get in there and we figure out we're trying to sell this these screws realize that the margins are already like in the tank they're already tanked if they're already so low and we're like how did that happen you were literally the only company selling it how did you get how did you let it tank when you're the only one that has it and everybody loves it like how did that happen and it only happens because lack of education right but making decisions in a certain way that like they just you just make decisions that don't really make sense and you end up in that situation and so they they just crushed the market and it's sad but that those kind of things happen so I see it is like they start to buy other things people, it just is very, very disruptive. More disruptive, the VC and private equity guys are more disruptive to our space than the AI at this point. - Well, Tony, I'm gonna take a song here. Thank you, Tony, so much for your time. This one meant a lot to me. I've known you for a few years now and every time I see you, I've enjoyed our interaction, but from across different seasons, different roles and different pressures. And what really stood out today is how consistent you've been the whole way through the time that I've met you and even today. I mean, you've always shown up as someone who's honest about the numbers, clear about the trade-offs and what an adieu done comfortable work that real ownership requires. Like you said, you've found a window between six and nine and then three and eight. And then I think a lot of people talk about discipline and grit, but you really actually live it. Especially in a world where it would be a lot easier to blame the market, blame consolidation, blame the capital game. Instead, you take responsibility and focus on the details and lead with clarity. And you personally getting to hear you reflect on your faith, perspective and the people who shape your journey. It was very powerful to me. I know that their operator is listening to us right now who feel the weight you carry every day. And that's why we wanted to do this podcast. We really, you know, something like that when I first met you three years ago. And I promise you this conversation will land exactly where it needs to. And I'm grateful for the friendship that we formed over the years and for the trust. And I really am glad that finally got to have this conversation on record. (laughing) Thanks for being here, man. - No, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I would definitely flatter that you guys even asked me to be here. You know, I don't, not sure who wants to listen to me talk. I'm very flattered that I even got the invite. So I appreciate you, appreciate it so much. Thank you guys. - Yeah, and I'll tell you this has been great. And following up on what Sean said there, I mean, we started this podcast and this journey to really bring about change. But, you know, thank you for the honesty and discipline you brought into this conversation. What stood out to me the most is that your leadership isn't driven by theory, it's shaped by responsibility. And responsibility to your people, to your customers and to the reality of building something that has to hold up on the pressure. We talked today about margins, culture, decision making and the way that comes with ownership. But underneath all of that is something deeper, stewardship. You're stored in a business, a legacy, and trust and an environment that doesn't give independence a lot of room for error. And the way you've chosen to do that with discipline, clarity and humility matters. Your story is an important reminder that real leadership isn't loud, it doesn't chase shortcuts and it doesn't outsource responsibility. It shows up in the details and the hard calls and the willingness to keep going when it would be easier not to. We're grateful, Sean and I that you shared that journey with us today. Thank you for being here and thank you for leading the way you do. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. I want to say to our audience, thank you for tuning in to the Dynamic Business Leaders podcast. And until next time, stay curious, stay driven and continue to lead with Purpose Man. Hi, I'm Roy Richardson, host of the Dynamic Business Leaders podcast. Are you a business owner or a leader of a successful business? If yes, we'd love to have you as a guest in our program. Our goal is simple, we provide a platform for leaders to share their experiences to benefit others. We want to hear your story, how you got started, the challenges you faced along the way and your passion today. If this sounds like you or you know someone who fits these criteria, then be sure to get in touch with us by visiting our website linked in the episode description below. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and click the notification bell to be notified when our next episode goes live. Or if you'd rather listen to us during your car rides, you can also follow us on your favorite audio channel using your pod catcher. Thanks again and remember, keep crushing it. [BLANK_AUDIO]