Don’t Try To Hit Home Runs, With Marty Cullen

Jack talks with Perfect Plumbing, Heating & Air owner Marty Cullen, who purchased the company knowing pretty much nothing about plumbing, just before the start of The Great Recession. Cullen talks about how he pushed through to success. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Hi, this Jack Test, you're welcome to another episode edition of Leadership Lounge. I am in lovely South Dakota today in the center part of the state by Redfield, South Dakota. And I'm on a legacy foundation, pheasant hunt too. We do a little charity event here to raise money for the foundation. We have 24 members of Nexstar out here with me and one of them is Marty Collin, how are you doing Marty? I am doing an absolutely fantastic chat. Thank you. Just a truth be told. We talked for about two minutes and I had forgot to hit the record button. You know on this, I used to all my best material on that two minutes and now so fall if this thing doesn't work well, sorry man, I couldn't believe I did that. Anyway. Um, so what I want to do, you have an interesting story because you're, you're kind of an atypical owner of a business and I wanted you to tell your story and you've had some interesting things that have occurred in your journey as a independent contractor. So let's when talk about that and see what we can glean and learn from your experiences. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's kind of a compliment when you tell me I'm an atypical owner cause I think most of the time you're telling me just I'm an atypical person here. Well you can read between the lines but uh, but yeah, my journey, we'd go back to my corporate world. I worked for a family business out in Boise, Idaho, Simplot company, they moved me a very small family. That's a big, that's a big AG company. It's a pretty good sized company. I think they do about 10 or 12 billion in revenue. Yeah. And, and when I left there, I had a p and l statement and the division I was running if about wow. I never hit 500 million, 498 when I tapped out. All right. Any, what did you sell? Fertilizer and crop protection products? So we, uh, we had 80 facilities across the, um, the plane, Jerry and we called it in the Midwest and we sold farmers the product or keep their crops growing. And did consulting with them. They got on that. Got It. What was your last role there? My last role, I don't even know what the title was at this point in time. I was the director of sales and operations for that department. Um, and so I reported in to the president of the company. Okay. And I pretty much traveled around those stores figuring out, well no, I don't know that I figured out anything, but, um, we, we were, it was a challenge, you know, ag world is very cyclical ups and downs and all that and I'm kind of boom bust on the road 180 nights a year. Okay. And like I said earlier, when we were chatting, I turned into a pretty bad employee. I mean, they didn't fire me, but, but uh, for all intensive purposes, when you go to the president and you say, it's probably time, do you have a package? And six months later he brings you a package. It's pretty good. Not having fun at work. Why is that? Um, you know, I sit in a role that at that time was, I guess you'd call it political and I'm white because you were reporting to the president and you know, I haven't had had peers around that were jockeying for position at that point in my career. There was nothing about the customer, it was 100% about what's your next opportunity. And there was only one opportunity left and that was his job when he left. And you're right, it was a, it was jockeying for position. So I mean to you with your peers or with my, with my peers around the country, there's really, there was three of us at that point in time. All right. So people wanting your job, you wanting that kind of stuff. Yeah. And you know, um, I'm, I'm kinda driven sometimes to get some stuff done and that was an interesting business. They paid us for net income in my department. Right. So that's where I got my bonus, which was worse, most of my money. But we are fully vertically integrated. So that organization, mind rock up in the mountains outside of Idaho, they made nitrogen. We ship stuff in. And so we sold it to my division and I sold it to farmers, but they also sold it to all my competitors and we all tried to hit each other up for more sales, you know? Well they give you a growth figure of 10, 15% and they say, go do it. So you darn it, I'm going to do it, do it. And then you get a phone call and you say, come on in, we need to talk. You can't do that because you just took away business from one of our largest customers and

Speaker 2: 4:18

yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:19

Can't probably wasn't a good word for me and a couple of those situations, I just turned right back around and did it anyway. Okay. Okay. Now it's time for you to leave. Yeah. So anyway, they, they offered me an opportunity to leave and um, it was, I'll never forget the day. It was a Friday afternoon, one o'clock. I knew I was meeting with HR, which is never a good idea, but I kind of knew what was coming and um, I had hired the HR lady. How's that for fun? Okay. And went in downstairs and they offered me a package. I was loaded up, packed up and out of there by one 30 with no plan what to do. Snow, no plan B at this point. You know, it's nice you got a year salary and we'd done, we'd been fairly successful, my wife and I. So it wasn't an emergency. But, um, so what did you decide to do? I know he didn't have a plan that, that Friday afternoon at one 30, but, but what, what, what did you decide for yourself? Well, you know, I'm an, I'm a plant science major and I'm, the ag world was my thing. So I decided that I was either going to do an international stamp with one of the other companies. There just weren't many six figure jobs in Boise for an ag person. And so I looked at that, but, uh, my, my wife Shannon kind of pretty much said this is home. I don't want to go over see boys. He wasn't home when we went, got there, but it was home by that time. And, uh, so I started looking around and thought, I think I'll buy a business. So he decided by a company now, not in the plumbing world, I can tell you that. So I actually was looking for landscape maintenance business got really lucky, too long of a story for this, but hooked up with a couple guys trying to buy their business from, from uh, people that owned it. They wanted some cashflow coming in and we thought if we did the maintenance side along with, they did design bill, we could do that. And the guy that, uh, was one of the guys trying to buy it and knew a guy down in Florida who started a company called us lawns,$100 billion worth of[inaudible] and he called that guy and that guy said I could come out and spend three days with them. So I jumped in a plane, flew out to Florida to understand his business before he got into the business. Yeah. You know, when a guy picks you up at the dock and takes you over to his private island, you kind of want to listen a little bit. Okay. He got your attention. Huh? So I listened. And the only thing I heard from him really after three days was short term renewable income stream. Okay. If it grows or it breaks, it's a business you want to be in. Don't, don't try and make home runs. And so I came back, that was, that was my idea. So in his case, he didn't want to do the, the design build, do the big subdivisions, it was most, so we tried to buy the business, we couldn't get the business bought. So I thought, what am I going to do? I'm running out of my years Chevron's package. And I hired a business broker attorney and said, this is what I want. And I used those term short term renewable income stream and he brought me two or three things, took a run at a business, a phone supplier, uh, business phones and they'll get a lot of service work and couldn't get that one down. And one day he called up and he said, I got up plumbing business for you and I'm going to tell you my first word started with an f. Okay. And the second one started with a u. There was no way in my mind was I going to get into a plumbing business. He said, well, time out, time out. Talk to me here. This is a business that does mostly service work and it's, it's going in and go out. And I said, okay, well I'll go, I'll go meet the owner. And that's, that's kind of started it. I went and met the owner and he, he told me what we want, what he wanted for it. And he knew what my first plan was. He wanted a couple of million, which is really stupid when you think about it. I've never been in the plumbing business and I agree to pay a couple million dollars for a business. Um, and I had nothing. I met, I had had to mortgage my wife's House, borrow 300 grand from my dad. I had not a penny to my name when I started opening, when I took over that day. And really, and, and it was purely a matter. I collected cash every day and then this boy watch those pennies, every single one of them. But, um, when we got going in that darn thing, I thought, well, I can make this, this work pretty quick. This guy spent$180,000 a year on a damn telephone book. Ah, also I had to do was cut those telephone book ads out and underneath thousand falls in your pocket, cash flow. That's, that's how much I knew of the business and about three weeks into it and went down there and I'm gonna have to figure out how to pay that phone company phone book, company. So just by the way, what year is this? 2008 not right timing baby. Right, right before the recession, we agreed to the purchase it uh, January of 2008 I closed on April 8th of 2008 and I think April 9th that started going down. It was like, it was a oh no moment going on really quickly. Yeah. You had a really terrible 12 months in front of you there from an economy side. Hey, you know what? And the bad thing was I could kind of see it coming. I was, I was in doing some consultant for him at that point in time and the phones weren't ringing quite the same, but by this point I was committed, you know, they say don't get emotionally attached. And I tell you, that's really easy to say, but I was pretty well bought in at that point in time and right. Um, I would never go, never regret the deal, but there's days I thought, man, I could have just turned around and walked that first year. Yeah. When I saw that happen. And so, well, it's interesting. So you were here, you are, uh, uh, accomplished corporate executive. I'm going to say in the AG business, you know, you had a great career. I'm sure you'll climb that ladder pretty good. Made a fair amount of money. Um, got burnt out a little toasty left. And now you're a plumbing company. And uh, tell us about how you ended up joining Nexstar. Well, so you know, nothing like buying a business in April, 2008[inaudible] and having, having an opportunity to go, oh darn, right off the get go. And I'm dead serious. We mortgaged our house, I borrowed every penny I could on that to buy it. And so it was probably about mid May when I was thinking I'm in trouble. I had may of 2008. Yeah. It didn't take me too long to figure. I haven't any idea what to do it at this point there was no, there was no getting out of it. You are, you'd bankrupt the whole thing. A little off subject. Right. Your first question. But I think the advantage I had over where a lot of people were was I was so committed, I had to make decisions. They might not have been the smartest decisions every day, but there wasn't time to think about, oh, that's my friend. Oh, I'm going to do this. I had to make decisions. I was so leveraged. It was so, um, but anyway, back to the subject, I knew our website was not very good. And so I started looking around and I found a guy that did websites and talk to him. He said, yeah, he could help me out. And I said, well, send me over some pictures of some of the websites that you've done. And, and at that time, I had no idea what a website was, but I just didn't like ours. And he sent me over some screenshots and you know, I didn't necessarily care about this websites, but I found the names and numbers of these people that were on these. And I called a company down in Los Angeles and I said, what's this guy like? Does he build some good websites? And, and these guys, they said, well, tell me your story. And I said, well, I bought a business a few months ago. I don't know what I'm doing. I've got to get some phone calls coming in and, and one of those guys should, will, you know what you need to join next door? Why? And I said, well, what's that? And he said, well, it's this organization that, uh, can help you do a lot of things. But he said, you don't know anything and you're in trouble, dude. And I said, yeah, I know I'm in trouble. I can run a business, but I don't know what to measure. And he goes, why you don't even know how to fix anything. Yeah, you're right. Farm Kid. I could probably get it done, but it wouldn't be the code. She, you need the bulletin board. Remember the old bullet temperature? I said, you could go there every morning and ask those guys what to do and they'd all help you figure out what to do. And I said, well, that's not what I really need. I need to figure out what to measure. Anyway, uh, it was Dave[inaudible]. Sure. And, and so I called Lisa out of the blue, at least it was sells memberships for the next day. And he said, well, it's selling memberships. And, and it was at this point in time, we were probably late June. Yeah. I said, Lisa, can you tell me what to measure? And she's like, who are, you kind of told her my story. And I said, can you tell me what to measure her shit? Well, that's what we do. I said, good. I man central her and she laughed like that too. I think I'm a real quick a sale ever. Right. And she said, well, it doesn't work that way, Marty, you got to go to money master and you know we're going to check you out and we're going to do all this money master. She said, well, and I want to think it was the beginning of July, but at that time I was headed out on vacation family cabin with my kids, which are really important. So I said, I don't have time. Send over your papers and your numbers. And I sent everything over and she called back and she said, yeah, we can, we can make it work. I don't know why she let it work, but I guess I was just barely on the edge with numbers. How big is your business at this point? At that point it was a four and a half million dollars. Unfortunately a little more remodeled them what I knew and I bought the whole thing with the economy going black, pure service replacement. It was some other stuff too. The, I still don't know what some of that stuff was, but yeah, so I joined. I'd never met a member of next door. He just talked to one of the show keys down and in Los Angeles actually Lisa gave me the name of three, three companies and I talked to him. I really don't remember who those folks were. And uh, they told me a little bit about it. I should really also, I wanted to know was what to measure. So when you buy train loads of fertilizer and you're betting on spring planning and North Dakota and you've done that for 20 years, you Kinda know early on whether you made a good decision or not. And you can come up with a plan when, when things don't work out the way you want. I wish I had the measurements, I was looking at things I just didn't understand and how it was going to be like I was going to be broke before I realized I was in bad shape and, and I wanted to know, can you tell me day to day what I need to be looking at? And when she said, you guys could do that. I said, I man, now I know it sounds expensive to join nextdoor. I think at the time it was 7,000 and 7,000 um, initiation fee. And she's like, well you don't even know what a costs. And and I said, well it's a hell of a lot cheaper than the divorce is going to be if I lose my wife's house. Very cool. So I joined, I joined the joint and let's, let's just this forward a little bit cause I want to get to some of your, the recent stuff going on because you know, you, you were four and a half million, but it was all, it wasn't all within the service replacement field. There's remodeling. He had a recession that went on, um, up to two years ago. What, what, where did you grow the business too? We, uh, we dropped down to a low of 3.2 and we ended, I think my highest has been nine, two, nine two c of grew it from a, so he went from basically 2008 recession, shrinking the business to 3.2 then growing it up to 9.2. Yup. And for a non trade guy just coming out of the AG business with, with everything on the line. And you grew a very profitable business right there. Do you think? Told me once, there was never a month where he didn't make money for awhile. There was never a month until this year that I um, I have always every month made money. Always positive cashflow positive people you borrowed money from. Yeah. You know, all that was going good and unfortunately in a really good spot right now from a financial perspective. Um, but yeah, so listen, watch him the details. That's awesome. That's he learned what to measure. You got and I got to tell you, you jumped right in Marty, like when you join next door of some Marty Collins, Aaron, you're asking questions. You're not sitting in the back of the class. You're making friends, you're talking to, to us, you're getting engaged, you're bringing your people in. I mean you, you are not a, hey, let me slowly ease into this that you did a back flip into next door when your back's up against the wall you got, he got two options. You can throw in the towel or you can go all in, you all in right and you grew it and he did great, right? Yeah, you didn't and you met enough people and then you are asked to join the next star board and you did that shortly thereafter and you've been a great board member of next year. But what's happened is that you shared that that things got a little tougher in the last what, 18 months? Yeah, last couple of years if a, I have not been nearly as fun. What happened now? Let me, let me put this in context. Marty, you were cashflow positive through the great recession. You know, and I will say that the business environment nationwide in the last 12 months is as good as I've seen. The media Nexstar members growing, almost 20% net profitability is increasing. Not, I'm setting all this up for context because you guys haven't had the same success recently. Right? So what happened already? Well, I'd love to blame it on you, but um, I don't, um, I hope I didn't make it feel bad by saying all that. No, no, it's, it's very true. It's very true. At the end of the day, I took my eye off the ball, I kinda lost my focus on what was going on. And you get too confident. Did you get bored? Bored? You know, you've seen me. I know you're, uh, yeah. Um, things were going pretty good. I think, you know, we were, we were running 17, 18% and that grow in 25, 30% a year. And I, I had some good managers and I was kind of having more fun than I should. Not, not keeping my eye on everything and not watch an offer every little detail and not that I needed to, to over manage, but then I got lax. So can everybody else got lax along with me? And um, that's fascinating when we talk about, that's awesome. You know, when you have no money and I'm dead serious. Like when I say I mortgaged the house, I'm totally serious. And so now all of a sudden I've got a million and a half dollars in checking accounts for the business and pulling out quite a bit of money in the business. The large man having fun, like, like, this is easy. This is, um, and I know what the heck I'm doing. And it wasn't like I was, I'm thinking like Cocky, I know what the heck I'm doing. It was just, well, just to enjoy this. So what, so this is interesting. So, um, and I remember when things started to slide a little bit. Did you, what are you slow to react? Did you just think, well, this is going to come back. This is not, this is just one of those little don't overreact. What happened. Yeah, yeah. Slow to react. Probably[inaudible] slow to react guy. I mean you are a action guy and, and I have a team of, of some action people and maybe, maybe, maybe it's not slow to react. Um, I think maybe if we looked at it this way, if you were to take medicine and on doctor you had, uh, something going wrong and you went to the doctor and he gave you some, some medication and you came back three days later it wasn't working. And they said you've had a, a reaction to the medicine that's not nearly as good as responding to the medicine. And so, so Marty probably react, not necessarily responds with enough thought sometimes. Okay. And so by not having my eye on the ball and not helping the team of managers, I'm not being super clear with, with where we're going and how we're getting there. Yeah. And just letting things happen. I would come back in and I know it's not like I came back in, I was there all the time, but I just wouldn't watch stuff. I was like, letting it happen, letting a ha and then I would react. And when I reacted, other people reacted. And, and my ops manager, general manager, it's somewhat same personality as I am. And so we could make things happen, but it was at the expense of people sometimes and at the expense of, of team. And so it was a more of a, so when you say racked is more of an erupt, is that what it was? I don't think most people would say I'm like, you know, screaming, yelling eruption. But I, I'm gonna come in and, and when I see something and I think something has to happen, as you well know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make something happen. And those were short term decisions that, that are now costing us kind of longterm lost some really good. Right? Um, they're working for competitors, doing a really good job. I did a hell of a job training some folks to, to, uh, to compete out there. You know, the other thing we did and where I lost my, my focus is I had a company, I bought a company for a couple of million dollars with a name, uh,[inaudible] plumbing. And the biggest competition in town was a one heating. When I added heating and air, everything was really cool. But when I grew that up to four and a half,$5 million, they didn't like me quite so much. And so we changed our name, changed our brand in this. Yeah. Yeah. You just lose a lot of focus. It's a one to perfect. Yeah. And so the next thing I know, I'm more worried about what color my new logo is going to be and how my van wraps are going to be instead of conversion rate, you know, average ticket, some of those things. So then when it doesn't show up, you know, you're this year, this year alone, my average plumbing tickets down$200 from loss of focus on, you know, looking at a finding and observation and helping people come up with four and five options because we're worried about what happened to our paper. Click with our new company name and you take 7,000 plumbing calls at a couple of hundred bucks. That's a lot of good sentence. Yeah. And then, you know, the uh, the expense cups full, cause I've paid all those bills already. You know, I'm, I'm a little better than break even, but I'm in that two and a half, 3% range this year. Well[inaudible] another seven,$800,000 on the bottom line on a$9 million business. We put me back up there. Yeah. So, well that's fascinating. I didn't know that. So let's do this. So I know you're, you're doing better, right? You can kind of, you kind of do the other side of it. You go back 18 months today. What do you tell Marty to do different? Listen to his business coach. And when I say that, put together the plan and keep the focus on the things that are important and keep the focus on what it is you're trying to accomplish as an organization. I'm a, I can be a shiny object guy, you know, I can be, let's try this. Let's try that. Let's go in here. And, and the reality is, is yeah, I get bored easy. And so when I get bored and I change something just for the sake of changing it and cause 50 other people to lose their focus, yeah. It's a loose loose. So I need the right people around me. And since then I should have hired someone different sooner. I want to shave the person that I had in there. She's awesome in as my ops manager, but, but the reality is she and I were an awful lot of light. Okay. Um, and I let her down. Um, you need some more balance there. Yeah. So she's on my team, a great woman, by the way. He would dearly love her. And, um, she, she's helping us do a lot of things, but we, we brought in a different person. So more similar to a team of three versus two of us that are an awful lot of like, and how we do it might have a different answer to a problem, but both of us were going to get something done. We'd have done that. And then I've got to be clear with the message where we go in. And so, you know, my passion right now is not about money. And I think that's, that's where it was when I started. So I had something focused on like, I got to figure out how to pay back my debt and have some money so I can pay for my kids to go to college. And I had a clear vision. It might not have been a long term one, but I knew what I needed to do every day. And then once that happened, I was like, now what? So maybe it's the vision, you know, rightly so. I mean you had, you had to create cash for yourself, but maybe having a vision that's, that's more expansive to others. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. You know, I think part of that's a little age with me and I'm, I'm, I feel like it's time to give back and do a few things, but um, I'm actually enjoying it so, you know, I know everybody's heard it but, but our mission in that business now is let's raise the bar and the service traits in our market and um, I fell into the trap of, well we're probably better than most, which was a bad trap to be into. Okay. Cause today I'm looking at it as I want the Lexus dealership and I want the Mercedes dealership to be looking at, at us as to what's the best for customer service and the best for dealing with their people and helping their people on that. I'd gotten away from some of, I got it to some of that stuff. So I hear is that there was what I'm hearing about a variety of things here that if you go back to talk to Marty, one is focused on quality with your customers. Focus on being extraordinary, are focused on the craft and being great at it every day. Not Be not good and not being just good enough. Good enough was better than the, we've all heard it good enough. The what the enemy of great. I'm proof. That's awesome. Okay. And then you, then you'd, there was, there's some core KPIs that you focus on in the business conversion rate, average sale, things like that that you kind of get your eye away from is you're worried about what shade of purple should make truck wrap B. Now the new brand, we still argue about that some days. Yeah, yeah. No, know that one. Yeah. Right. But there was something, you took your eye off some of that stuff. Right. And then what it sounds like too is that, that there wasn't this effort on, on building a cohesive management team. You know, that you had kind of a, uh, uh, a good person and yourself, but it wasn't really a team. It sounded like you were two people. It's kind of aiming, not even aiming, shooting and then aiming and they're going around the business. There's no question. I think most people that know me have heard, I shoot first aim later. Yeah. I, I'm a guy that I know I got a lot of extra bullets in my pocket and I'll find one to shoot and I'll figure it out. But that's not necessarily repeatable, nor is that the way that everybody else likes to, to work. And so I've had to learn that. What is, what would get me today, you know, cause you've, you've, you know, when the business was going good, you were, you know, maybe doing a little few more trips and maybe you weren't, maybe you could rationalize I shouldn't be in the business early cause I'll just get in the way and all this stuff that I've heard, it's never been my game. I don't have any. Yeah. When I liked to work I just finished working on the wrong stuff. Okay. All right. So what do you do? What's the data like for Marty today? Well, you know, when you not pheasant hunting, pheasant hunting most days, great shot by the way. You're good. You get lucky once in a while. Um, yeah. You know, it's Huntington an awful lot like the business though when we're out there pheasant hunting and there's six, seven of those roosters get up. Yeah. Kind of lose my focus on which one to shoot at sometimes and they all keep flying and when there's only one that gets up, wow, I seem to hit him. Right. That's a good analogy for warning it. It has, I know you flocked student Miss Everything. Yeah. Well I've done a lot of, a lot of weird things out there trying to shoot those birds. They just keep flying. Um, so what, what would, what would be the day in the life that they analyze? Yeah. Well, you know, when you, when you do a lot of self inflicted damage to your vision, it's your life changes a lot. Right now I'm, I'm actually in between six, six 30 every morning and I'm working with the install crews to get'em out and lined up and get them going because we ran off our install manager and then I have to, to, to jump in and help with service because we didn't have a service manager on the Hvac side. Lost your whole management team. You know what? You did laugh. I did. We did. W I'm going to say we did this together, a couple of us, but um, we did some work with Patrick Lencioni's group, um, two years ago, a table group table group, and we had a great author. Yeah. And a gray car session. He was, in fact, there's the leadership lounge with Pat Lencioni into it. He's awesome. And he and we learned a lot. Yeah. I don't know that we did anything, but we learned a lot. And the, the team that was there, there were seven of us in that meeting. I think it might've been six, seven of us for two and a half days. Work Together, put together a plan a year later. Two of us now. Okay. One I might be able to rationalize the last, yeah. Two, I'm starting to push the limit, you know, on, on why it's their fault and not my fault. There's a point where even I can't come up with why it's someone else's fault, you know? That's so awesome. And so we're just, cause you know, Marty, the, the, the great thing that I'm picking up from this, can I, I'm going to jump in and editorialize for a minute, is that, you know, the, the biggest disappointment if you want is when somebody is facing some challenges and they look out the window defined the reasons why it's the economy. It's the politicians, it's my employees. It's a bad competitors. It's, it's whatever. They always looking for excuses and uh, it is so brave and, and I think good to look at the mirror when things are bad. And so, yeah, there's probably some headwinds I was facing. Yeah. There probably wasn't a bad employer to that I had just, no one could have fixed. Even Pat Lencioni couldn't affect. Right. I get that. Right. But you know, there's, there's a common denominator in all your success and all your failures. Martinez, you, it'd be me, right? They, me, hey, I was the one involved with hiring them. So even if I wanted to blame every person out there, right. It, it really does, comes back and it's, it's on, on each of our shoulders as individuals and as leaders in our businesses. Uh, and it's hard to move forward until you can he shipped back and spend a little time and say, you know what, I got on this. Yeah. I got on the and until I did, and I'm going to tell you, I probably have way more than one time. Blamed it on something. Yup. All over the last few years. Right now. Fortunately, I got a great, great group of peers that have helped me through some of this too. Well, congratulations. Yeah. And you helped a lot of other people. Marty, you've done a great job on next Nexstar board and, and uh, you know, you're always visiting people and people come to see you and, and I think you're a great story that you can come. You don't, so many people think you have to come from the trade to run a trade business and, and you didn't, you couldn't have been further away from the trade selling fertilizer, right. In the world. You know, and, and you've, you've overpaid for a business. I don't know about that. You know, or you think of, you've told me that, you know, but it doesn't matter. Right? You made it work, right. It doesn't matter. Right. You figured this thing out and, and, uh, it, at least to me, Marty, it feels that that because you started this business knowing nothing and you had to make it work, that that must give you confidence that you can work through the challenges that come later. You know, I've had a life of, of those ups and downs. Yeah. And at the end of the day we just listened to my problems. Here are the things I'm talking about. Yeah. Maybe I'll take a little, a little credit for creating those problems. But everything I've talked about at the end of the day, so first world problem here is too, it is to eat. I'm my worst day. I'm living a pretty darn good life. So what am I to tell you is I know I'm going to figure out how to come out the other side and, and I don't have to lose a lot of sleep over where am I going to find another meal or, right. How am I going to get by tomorrow? So even on those days, I just want to, I just want to be done or I'm irritated. Something shut me off. It's my own fault. It's the way I tend to react to things. And you, if I spend a little time to think about it, it's like I got tomorrow, I can come back. I'm, I'm living here in the U S I've got great family. I've got oil. You see, I'll figure it out and we're figuring it out. You know, at the end of the day we're going to end up having a pretty good year this year. Um, yeah, the whole nother podcast. But we had some really interesting challenges in July and August this year right there and my heating season that I would never wish on anybody and know we're pulling it out. We're making progress. We had a good October, we're going to have a really good November, and now it's just a matter of making December fly. That's awesome. And so you, this is what, when we get her to do it, despite it all, you know, you've had some challenges, but you're really grateful for what you have anyway. Oh, you start with a point of gratitude that the, the challenges you have, you know our it because they are things that, that we caused you caused we can then fix them too, right? Yeah, we did have, we had that discussion, didn't we? It's, it's a lot easier once you come to grips with, this is a problem that I've caused and I'm not at the mercy of everybody else or circumstances allows a person to be able to sit down. So, okay, well I caused it now. Now let me just figure out how to fix it. Right. It's a much better problem then you're in control. Right. Blame the economy or blame. I can't find good help or whatever the, Oh, I've used them all. I've used all, have, we all have probably used a couple of this week. Why we've been wandering around a why I don't have something I haven't heard this week, but I know what you're saying though. Yeah. So that's, that's great counsel. So Marty, I want to thank you for, you know what I asked you to do this podcast and because I knew your story, knew your journey and uh, you know, there's, why don't you to share what you've experienced along the way and especially this last year and a half here, because I think it's, uh, there's some people listening to this. This is going to I think really resonate with who you know, the real killer when you think about it, it's like you started with been pretty good time in the last year and a half. That's been fantastic. And so when you think about how you can mess something up in the last year and a half in that I get to compare myself to some of the other folks and I'm hearing the stories here about who's doing what and how they're doing that. And, and until I came to grips with, I just got to worry about me and fix this thing. That was probably another one of those challenges, you know? Um, but yeah, what's that life person that you're comparing yourself to others and you know, pretty competitive. You've heard me say that for you. I know that's where I get on a shelf in trouble. Like, like check, I won't even play a board game unless I can figure out how to get ahead in that thing. Right, right. Because why take a chance? Yeah. I want to, I want to have a step up, meet the MIP, them loose, losing go board game. I'm so stupid, but that's okay. That's all that's me. But uh, but, but I'm blessed, blessed to be a, in a, in a world where I got a lot of people helping me figure out how to, when you do well, you've earned that. You've ate a lot of good here and a lot of people on it. What I want to help you out and you're doing great. So, well thank you Marnie. I appreciate your time. We've got to get out in the field in chasing pheasants around South Dakota today, but I'm glad we were able to do this and thank you again for, for pulling away from the coffee and the conversation over in the lodge coming in here and having a conversation. So thank you. I appreciate it. And even though it's not politically correct, I want to do more than chase those pheasants around that field today. You want to shoot more than anyone? It was like to shoot one. I know you two. Yeah. And we will bluebell. Well. Thank you Marty, and thank you all for listening to this very special episode here, Leadership Lounge as Jack test with Marty Collins on the high plains of South Dakota, and we'll catch you next time. Thanks so much.