Okay, Jeff Matuszak, owner of Carolina Metalfab, right? There you go, yeah. So thanks for coming in today, Jeff. So tell me what is Carolina Metal Fab? So Carolina Metal Fabricator is industrial fabricator at Raleigh, North Carolina. Our motto is we don't build the building, we build everything inside the building. So we do carbon, we do stainless, and we do aluminum. On the carbon side, we do handrails, platform, mezzanine decks. On the aluminum side, we kind of do the same thing. And then on stainless, we actually will do higher -end stainless steel miscellaneous, but it's predominantly miscellaneous steel. And we don't do installs. We're a fabricator only. Okay, so you bring it there in a modular way? Correct, yeah, we throw it on a truck and hope the GC or the rector can find it all. Okay, so what projects are you guys currently involved in or recently been involved in? Yeah, so we do a lot of, we do a lot of generator platforms. We do a lot of mezzanine decks to hold equipment up. We've done furnaces, we've done a lot of hoppers, And that's kind of what we're doing right now. But every year, what we find is something different. So in 2022, we did a whole bunch of platforms for a major distributor that I can't name. 23, we worked a lot in the pharmaceuticals because a lot of pharmaceutical companies came back to North Carolina. So the larger pharmaceutical companies needed higher -end platforms. And then in 24 and 25, we found herself on this data center stream and we're just doing kind of whatever the data center group wants us to do. Okay. Yeah. Well, that seems like a good thing considering all the AI and all the need for, you know, servers and so forth. Yeah, it's always crazy how much data, the data centers are doing like, it's not just one data center. It's always like, we're going to build one and then they have plans for another six or seven. It's always it's interesting. What I find funny is like, how are they going to provide all the power for these data centers? Tell me what you would do. Well, I would figure out either fusion or nuclear. Just like, because you got to, somebody's got to come up with either a smaller nuclear reactor to power it because you just can't keep pulling all the power off the grids. Yeah, that seems to be a problem already. Yeah, it is. And so I saw that they're using the heat that's being thrown off all these servers actually pushing that back in to like turn to create electricity itself. That's crazy. Have you seen how, have you seen that? No, I haven't seen it yet. So, you know, if you think about these data centers, the amount of heat these, I mean, they have cooling systems in there in there to keep it all, the whole thing from basically melting Right. And so I guess somebody is like, you know what, that's probably enough heat to harness and turn into electricity. So there is, and of course there's going to be a loss. Sure. Just thermo, you know, laws of thermodynamics are going to state that you're not going to get equal what you put into the system. Right. You're going to get a little bit less. But that's something if it can, you know, if you can recoup maybe 50 percent of the energy loss that goes in yeah it's it's amazing I mean they are they are absolutely pouring off the heat so are they doing it through like a turbine through the heat to create that create the electricity back in or that's an assumption that I would make but yeah I think they've got to turn it probably into mechanical rotation somewhere sure to you know to create the the electricity but I don't know the the details of of how But I don't know, they're going to figure it out. Is somebody smarter than us, or at least smarter than me? Maybe we, maybe it is us. Maybe we're the ones. There's no accident. We've been brought together to solve this. Well, I was laughing. I bought into one of these smaller companies that obviously are talking about, hey, we're going to build these nuclear reactors. They haven't been built a nuclear reactor yet, and they already have over a billion dollar valuation. And they haven't even created the design yet. So it's insane, just the amount of money people are pouring into these groups. So had they built, like, who are these people like? It's a company called Aklo. And by no means, should anyone buy their stock that's listening to this? I don't know enough of it. This is not guidance. Right. I'm not a financial advisor. Right. Yeah, I bought them at 45. And just in the last three months, it went up to 180. And then it dropped back to 130 I mean it's a in they haven't done anything yet you know it's so it's it's interesting it's almost like we're on that bubble of like how everybody was in tech back in like the early 2000s and people are putting money into like pets .com or those type of deals where they would just have value perceived value when there was really no value yet yeah I think you have like this alignment right now of that doesn't happen very often, which is the investors and what society actually wants to have occur are sort of dovetailing, meaning that there is a need for society wants more data to occur. Whether they're explicitly thinking that way or not is a different story, but they want devices to be more powerful and faster. Right. I mean, every day that they wake up, there's almost an expectation of, like, what's new today? It's true. You know, and, oh, cool, like, update my app or all this stuff. So, and so you really have that strong drive that way. And there's also, you know, I think you'd say geopolitical need to make sure all this stuff is advancing. And vast dollars. So them just having somebody stand up and say, I'll try and do this. Right. And we don't really know how to do it, but I'm willing to dedicate ourselves, you know, fund us and we'll really get the people involved. That's right. They know how to make this happen. And so I could see how, you know, something that relevant could garner or attract cash that quickly. Sure. And then you just got to bet on the right horse, right? There's six horses, 10 horses, six or 10 companies out there. She's got to bet on the right one. Do you think that there's really a genuine desire to solve for energy? I think so. You do? I do. I think that because they have to, right? Somebody has to keep these data centers running. So they've got to figure out what, what's the play. So I do believe there is a general concern because, or genuine concern, excuse me, about that. Yeah. I think there's a genuine concern. Well, I feel I think there's a genuine concern. Well, I feel like that there's, we have a lot of opportunity with existing technology to put a lot of these discussions to bet. And I think there's a lot of like muscle memory about, about kind of you take nuclear, for instance. I mean, people of our generation have, you know, Chernobyl on the brain And have things like Nagasaki Hiroshima, like Hiroshima, like those sort of things. And there are others that just have labeled this technology as like not happening. Right. Meanwhile, there's been, you know, there's one in what, just down the road at 70 in Calaway County, there's a nuclear plant, you know, halfway to Columbia, Missouri. Okay. That's been cranking away since like 1975. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, nuclear has gotten labeled in a way that is, I think, just a bit of a lightning rod. Right. And there's going to be opposition to it. Now, I think the technology is not what it was. And it's just punitively maybe being tagged. Yeah, I could agree with that, absolutely. But not to be dismissive of its destructive capability. Right. You know, I mean, clearly that's a real thing, and it's a real shame that weapons of mass destruction are nukes. Right. And, you know, electrical grids are nukes, And the fact that those two can be confused for one another isn't helping. But I think that, you know, I don't know enough to know I'm not a molecular sinus. So I can't say exactly. I get the concepts. But, you know, but I think that there's an opportunity like geothermal, I think, has not been tapped. Think of it this way. We're like, the majority of the mass of the planet is fire yeah down and right and how far down is that you've got the crust the mantle like you get down through that and you have it basically an inexhaustible source of heat right how far do you think uh someone's ever actually drilled down i really don't know the answer that because i'm sure it's further there's got to be some sort of top secret and i'm I'm not conspiracy theorist, but I know that governments do things, they're testing limits. Right. And so how far can you drill? You know, someone said that, they're like, I don't know, let's go do it. Sure. So to answer your question, I don't know, is the Mariana trench the deepest point on the planet, you know, under the ocean? I don't know. I don't know. But I just know I read this article, fake news or whatever. And it was like they were talking about like the Russians actually we're trying to drill and you can only go so far it was literally like they had a stop because of just the amount of cave -ins that were happening on it so it's just interesting to see like and it wasn't even that far it was not even close to getting through the core well I guess you could take let's say we don't have to dig right or drill we have volcanoes on the surface you drop conducting rods right down those things Right. And, you know, and there's a lake right by it, and it's just constantly creating a closed -loop steam system. Sure. I mean, that would last forever. Yeah. And so I just think there are a lot of ways to do this, maybe a lot, meaning like three or four ways. But I think it's very complicated because it's clearly very complicated. But in a vacuum, you could say, let's just go do that. But I think when I say is there a genuine desire to solve this, I think there's the humanity side of it, which is there's so many jobs involved in the energy creation. And if you just presto, say, look, we're just going to use this volcano and we're good forever. That has, you know, problems associated with it, which is all those jobs. Right. And my idea may be a shitty one. So who knows? Not me. I mean, but anyway, I just wonder, is there really, you know, has this been solved? People smarter than us are out there. Back to your original point. So we got a little off target there, but, okay, so we got Carolina medal. So in talking before this, you own a few businesses. And you were passionate about the idea of entrepreneurism and both as a topic but also as a way to reach out into your community and help people kind of, you know, find their way as an entrepreneur or peer -to -peer group. So maybe talk me through how you got to the point of being an entrepreneur. Okay. Was it on purpose? No, no, I am not your typical entrepreneur. I'm not like how you guys are doing it here, a startup. I'm nothing like that. I actually worked for a private equity firm, started with them in 05. Prior to that, I worked for a company called International Paper. And through the years from 05 to 2019, I got to run companies. I got to run plywood mills in the south. I ran a company called Merchants Metals. It was a large galvanize factory that large galvanizer of chain link fence uh 37 distribution yards five manufacturing locations down in mississippi running a plywood mill in 2019 my uh dog unfortunately was dying my son was going to college shout out to university south carolina and my wife said you got to get off the road you've i flew 168 times in one year and uh i said okay what what am we going to do And she's like, I don't know, just figure it out. And I said, well, I don't think I'm smart enough. She wasn't worried about the details. No, she's like, I'm like, I don't think I can work for somebody because I've always run it. Like, I love manufacturing, love industries. And she's like, I don't know, just do something. Get off the road. And so I went, I called my finance guy, and I said, hey, J .D., what do I do? Like, I got to find a company. And J .D. was like, a good friend of mine is a broker, and he's selling a metal fabrication company. Would you be interested? And literally within three months, I'm sitting behind a desk at Carolina Metal Fabricators in July of 2019. I bought it. I did the SBA route. Put the house up, you know, as collateral. Put my net worth up as collateral. And I said, man, 2019, 2020, it's going to be great. So in 2019, What every entrepreneur does, they're not happy with just owning the business. I go to the Fab Tech show, and I'm like, you know what I'm going to buy? I'm going to buy a Fortman 807. You know, because why not? I'm already in debt. In for a penny. In for a pound. So when I bought the Vortman 807, it was just, they had just come out. It was a smaller version of the 808, very similar to like a Python or bean cut. And went in, I saw the Dragon, Bentek Dragon, So Pipe, I was like, this fits our shot perfectly. We're only 16 ,000 square feet. This is going to be the best thing because 2020 is going to be our year. 2020 is going to be the best year. God, dude. How you knew that? And so we all know what happened in 2020. We don't need to digress on that. But what I found is I'm sitting there wondering how am I going to pay the Vortman. I'm sitting there and going, what is this virus, and I'm sitting in my car going, I don't have anyone to talk to. Had you ever felt that level of stress before? Yes. Yes. Yeah, I have. Would you get mugged or robbed or something? No, that stress comes working with private equity and running some of those companies and sitting on board meetings. Yes, you feel the stress. But no, I'll say this. It was my own personal money, right? And I knew I had 20 people that counted on me at Carolina Metals. And it was, I just sat, I was telling Rachel in your group, I was like, just sat in my car. I just didn't know what to do. And I was like, who do I talk to? And I can't call the guys that I used to talk to because they wouldn't understand. It's not their money. You didn't feel like it was your wife at that moment. She's going to listen to this. So I just really appreciate her support and her backing. That's the truth that I couldn't. But her original comment was like, do something. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But she also was smart enough when I came back from Fab Tech because she went to Chicago with me. And I was like, I'm going to buy this and this. She goes, are you sure you just bought the company? Why don't you not buy anything? Give it like a year or two years until you start buying equipment. And I was like, no, no, no, just listen. We got this idea. One of us is the entrepreneur here. Okay. I know what I'm doing. I know I'm doing. I'm doing this for six months. Back off. It's like, we've married over 20 years, so yes, I love her. And she's far smarter than me. Understood. And I just sat in my truck. And I was like, I don't, I don't even know how to go inside. Like, it was that, like, just demoralizing. And like, we had, we were making, like, these mission polls and transformer boxes. They were going to California, California shuts down. You know, we were going to Texas. Luckily, Texas was still open for certain things. But it was just like, things were just shutting down. And the Vortman hadn't even shown up yet. Fortman shows up in April. And how much did you already given them? Had you already paid for it? Oh, so the greatest thing about manufacturing finance is I put $100 ,000 down to the bank and then all of a sudden they only charge you another 70 percent or so yeah i think it's 70 percent uh the rest of the way and then the they only then so you're in for like 90 percent and then after 90 percent once the machine runs then you pay the other 10 percent okay it's like install basically so it's like so i'm all in right so the banks the banks literally like hey this is your monthly payment wonderful and And the bank, obviously, for SBAs, like, this is your monthly payments. And it was, it was rough. Like I tell everybody, it's not easy being a small business owner. No, that's like this Star Wars trash compactor scene. We're like, it's all coming to get. It is. It was one of those deals. And I was, I was watching just cash flow out. You know, I wanted to keep my crew. We did keep our crew. We didn't lay off. But I had it, like, I just kept pivoting. Like, what can I do? What can I do? And it was obviously the roughest time. We got through it successfully. It made us a better shop. They finally were able to install the Hortman in July. We had it obviously up and running. Luckily for that, the Bentek Dragon was obviously running. And it put us in really good marketing. So then I got on the LinkedIn. I started doing this like cool pick Friday. Every day, every Friday to take pictures i started building this network right of other people i was like hey i don't know what i'm doing here uh you can if you went back to my old lincoln post one of them was like i don't even know why bought this business like it was it was i didn't care like i was like hey i'm real like here's here's what i'm facing like and i we we got july of 2020 i like this whole like kind of like what am i doing kind of uh post host and everything existential like what am i doing with my life it was it was one of those things but you know what it was great um about it is my son and i we got the summer together right because like so he came to work for me he was he was painting he was sandblasting and because i'd always been on the road i never had that right like every day we'd drive into work every afternoon we'd leave work. So it was such a, like, we really created a huge. And if I had worked for my current company, I would never have had that time. So I, even though, like, sitting in my truck, possibly crying, maybe. Maybe. You know, like, at the end of the day, those were the cool things, right? Like, so I got to spend more time with my parents. I got to see My nephews played ball. It was just so, so there were some really added benefits that I kept telling myself, obviously while the house is burning. But at the end of day, it was the right thing. But I digressed. So I started looking out for small business owners. And I'd have people call me or text me, be like, man, can we talk? And all of a sudden I'm like, yeah, like here's what I would do. And I never really gave advice. It'd be like, here's my experience. Here's what I'm facing. And we started this small business brewery group. It was like four of us. It's up to like 25 people now. And we all get together once a month at a brewery. And we all talk about kind of like, what are things going on? And that thing's now by I said, I think we're on our fifth year. And I said, well, you know what? I want more. And so I joined a group called EO. There you went again. Yeah. So I joined this group called our entrepreneurial organizations. And I sat in a group of seven other entrepreneurs that are all facing the same thing but not they're not manufacturers one's like a marketing guy one's a gc one owns commercial development one puts in surgical centers and you know what at the end of day they all have the same problems like yeah and then I looked around the room I go okay I'm not I'm not alone because that's the worst thing as a small business owner or as an entrepreneur you just feel you're alone you feel nobody gets it And then when you start meeting these people, you're like, oh, you guys all had these same issues. And I still remember this day, I was like, I was really feeling bad. And I was in this group and I was talking about like, man, I had to use the PPP money. You know, I had to pay my employees. I'm like, I thought I could turn this around. And one of the guys looks at me and goes, hey, we're in a fucking pandemic. Just give yourself some grace. After that, I was like, you kick his ass. No, I was like, I looked at him, and this weight lifted off my shoulders. Yeah, you heard him. Yeah, I was like, wow, you're right. And we are in a pandemic. You know, we are facing these issues. And it was after that, it was like, all right, what can I do to keep giving back? So I have a couple guys I mentor, two of the guys, or one of the guys, I mentor, we actually bought into a floor coding company. And he's running a very successful floor coding and called the United Floor Coatings of Raleigh. Another guys, we mentor two of the guys there, run a company called MSSW, and now they're my partners at Miscellaneous Stainless and Steelworks out of Durham. So we partnered up together. And K -Point Bate, another company of mine on the coast, we're the largest frozen bait distributor on the East Coast from Savannah, Georgia, up to Delaware, came from one of my partners that we used to do a lot of business with down in Mississippi. So I started creating more and more of these families of entrepreneurs. And it's just helped me grow. And I love that. I love, when you asked me, what was my passion? I obviously jumped into fishing because I love to fish. But at the end of the day, it's just watching these people grow, watching young people do what they want to do and not just get stuck into some corporate jobs. It sounds like total shit, but there is nothing better. It really, it's, it's really gratifying. And to circle back, you talked about frozen bait. How do we get to a frozen bait? Okay, so you've got, you've got stuff that the bait, I'm assuming, was originally sourced from the ocean, perhaps. Yeah, that's where all frozen baits source from. Well, it Depends on what we're doing. Some of it's farms, farm raised shrimp. So does this company harvest the bait and freezes it? So what we do is, so Cape Point Bate is at a Beaufort, North Carolina. And what we do is we bring in truckloads of frozen baits, shrimp, mullets, clams, Ballyhoo, just a number of different things. And so what we'll do is we take the shrimp and we cup it ourselves, we put a little bit more water, and we blast freeze it. And we go through a ton of shrimp. We go through a ton of molet. We actually, my first year when we bought it, I would fillet 100 to 300 pounds of molet, just me and a filet knife and four other guys. One person's cutting off the head and I'm out there for laying through it. Yeah, It was really it was a cool experience. We still have the company. It's doing great. So what's the freezing process? Is it as simple as it might sound or you guys have like some wizardry that like in? No, so it's all it's. We have a minus 14 degree freezer. So we call it a blast freezer. And literally we put everything in there. 12 hours later, it's solid as a rock. And then we move it to another freezer. That's just zero degrees. For the uninitiated, why have frozen bait? Oh, so if you go out to a pier, you go to an outfitter store, you decide, like, for example, my son, we would go to this pier every year, and we would buy a frozen cup of shrimp, and we'd go out on the pier and we spend the day fishing together. And that's literally what thousands of families do up and down the coast of the, up and down the east coast. So it's literally frozen. It's literally frozen. Then you obviously it thaw is while you're sitting on the pier and you just pull a shrimp, put it on the hook. But why is it frozen? Oh, so it stays fresh. Ah. Yeah. Yeah, you can't have smelly shrimp fishing. Got it. Yeah, it's got to be fresh. The fish won't. They'll know. They'll know. The fish will know. So you've got a group. A lot of squid, too. So you've got an entrepreneur group that's been going on for a bit, and you're seeing that it is creating business opportunity for you and for them it is along the way. So what do you view as kind of the future of that group? And where would you like to see that? So I actually turned the group back over. So the small business group is actually from a good friend of my name, Steve Rock. He owns a Rock grading company in Raleigh. So he's now in charge of that group. I think he's name's Rock. Yep, and owns a rock rating company that's amazing it's pretty cool like he's got his it's pretty badass is that why he does what he does no no he also came from a PE firm and said I want to do something different and bought rock rating so he's a great guy we they actually just had a meeting yesterday that I attended so no he's now in charge of it um so he's taking it the way he wants to take it probably very similar um now I just spend spend more time. We actually just are in the process of purchasing a building for Carolina Metals, a much larger building, so I'm in the process trying to get that up and going. So I'm spending more of my time there, and I don't have enough time to dedicate to the group. Stupid question, though, but why are you buying the building? What's going on there? So Carolina Metals is, we have our property's leased. And so what we want to do is we want to have our own property. And so Carolina Meadows, where we're at now, we actually share the acreage with one of our customers. And, you know, obviously, we can't just lay steel out. We can't tell the customer, hey, we can hold this handrail, or we can hold this steel, or we can hold this platform for two months because we don't have the room. Yeah. So now the new building, Knock on Wood, the PSA signed. We're just waiting for, we're actually what's crazy, we're waiting for the septic system to make sure the septic system can hold our people the number and so we're going to have five acres 18 ,000 it's a single bay it's 60 feet wide 300 feet long we're going to put a couple of cranes in there drop the vortman in there wow just have like a whole so now like we can actually open ourselves up to additional volume we're kind of just constrained a certain revenue number right that we just can't get past we open up into this we can have another shop we can have maybe a even a machine shop or another miscellaneous shop so that's kind of our thought process okay so you're putting the pieces in place for yeah for a bigger operation as well as just overall upgrading yeah okay so in you this is currently just a piece of land. It's got a building on it. It's got a building on it. I call it a building. So the building is missing some walls. Okay. So it's unique. I took my wife out there and I was like. And what did she think? I said, she was like, I was like, just visualize what I'm thinking. You're not imagining. I was laughing with your team out there. It was like, I kept saying, well, just kind of like think outside the box. You know, like, and she's great. She's like, I get it. Like, I understand what you're trying to do. But there's a lot of work that needs to be done. A lot of grading. It's currently owned by a, what they do is they make fabricated concrete walls. There's a lot of concrete runoff that needs to be graded out. There's a lot of aggregate everywhere. Well, you could view that as the ground's been sort of stabilized. Right. That's, I mean, that ground is no given to it whatsoever. Do you have to stabilize that ground, given the weight of the things that you guys are using? So because they're very similar because they run tractor trailers across there all the time, I feel pretty confident it's going to hold up. Yeah. Just because, again, the concrete runoff. But we're going to make it really nice. But if you looked at it today, you'd be like, Jeff, what are you thinking? In fact, I've had a friend, chef. I brought out a couple of my buddies, so I trust, complicitly. And I was like, I was like, look, and one of them is Steve Rock. One of them is Jeremy Taylor. He runs a concrete company in Raleigh. And I was like, guys, seriously, is this a mistake? And I'm like, no, this is great. I'm like, no, like, don't, don't just put smoke up my ass. Like, is this good? And they're like, no this is perfect for you I'm like are you sure because like hey we're putting a lot of money perfect for me or perfect no qualifiers and so they're like no Jeff this is going to be perfect for Carolina metals and and I know it will I brought my VP out there his name is JT Thomas he's great he was like Jeff we can do so much with this I brought my former VP of ops out there as well I'm like give me your opinion so and I'm like but you know how it is like you're the boss right if you're like you go to your team you're like hey i got this great idea they're going to be like chef that's a great idea and it may not be and so you have to have people that you trust and so i i had to bring all these guys out there be like all right does this make sense and everybody's like no this is perfect and i want to be the industrial fabricator choice on the east coast like i want people because i am an industrial guy i've run mills. I've run plywood mills. I've run obviously telephone pole. I've ran telephone poles down in Joplin, Missouri. I've run lumber. I've run merchants metals. Like, I know fabrication. I know industry. Like, I can talk to general manager. I can talk to plant managers. Like, I want to continue to grow the industrial side. I don't want to build banks. I don't want to do stuff like that. I want to be that guy that goes into a factor and says, I can do that for you. There's a lot I'm thinking about right now. And so part of it is we can talk about future state of fab shops, which is, you know, we're always positioning for future state, right? And what is AI, which perhaps people are tired of hearing about, but they need to be paying very close attention to because it's moving at such an extreme rate that, I mean, I just can't overstate how much people need to be paying attention to that. But the other thing I'm thinking about is more from just an entrepreneur perspective, which is, what do you think is hard about running a business? I think. do you think it's hard yes i just want to back up maybe you're like no it's it's just easy oh man everybody should do it yeah yeah that's the truth yeah no absolutely not it's it's it's it's hard um i think people are hard right like making sure you get the right people in the right seats and if if the person's not in the right seat how to get rid of that person or move them to the right seat that's hard it's hard going out and selling every day you're constantly selling you're constantly either selling yourself or selling for the business and all the fabricator guys know you could have a great project and not make any money on it because an estimator screwed up on the plate thickness or they so like we had a job we screwed up we thought it was quarter inch it was half inch it was during 2020 in 20 or excuse me it's 2021 and we lost money and it's so it's everything's hard but when it's good and you you beat that job you make money on that job your crews are happy you know you're doing some really cool stuff inside the community it's fun and then you wait a couple weeks and it's hard again you know it's just it's my wife will sit there and say it's a roller coaster because some days i'll come home up this is great we're crushing it in other days i'm like why are we doing this again the moment i feel like something's going well I mean, you've got a duck. Oh, yes. Something is about to hit you in the head. Yeah. It's like the moment you feel like, okay, smooth sailing, it's like you're about to get blindsided so fucking hard that you've got no idea. Like, it's so alarming to feel complacency. That's right. And if you don't feel that way, you just maybe you're not in the right seat because anytime you're like, oh, coast is clear, it's just about to all go dark. Absolutely. It's crazy. It's like, or you get that check, right? In the mail, you're like, man, this is really nice money. And it just buys a steal for the next job. You're like, where did it go? Yeah, it's kind of like, oh, great, we got a new furnace downstairs that I never see. You know, it's like, yeah. So you think You talked about kind of the people part is really difficult, and it seems unreal to me that all the work that goes into fabrication, creating projects and so forth, that barring major oversights and incompetency, that it's just, it's a horrible truth that people can come out losing money from that. Yeah. You know, and it happens all the time, and it's just the way that it goes and you have to know that that's part of the deal is that you could absolutely have six months of sleepless stress hell only just like you would have made more money simply just going to the casino that night oh absolutely and losing money and having probably more fun yeah the only possible thing that really comes out of that is like maybe team cohesion you know leadership and Also, now that buyer of whatever was sold knows that when you mess up, you fix it. That's right. And so you've built a further trust in road. So you're like, I can hang my hat on that. And hopefully they value that the way I hope I do. But it's it's always a hard reality when you're like, we lost money. And I just would have been better off sleeping that whole time. dark moment. Yeah, it is. And it's, and then, you know, as the owner, you can't get pissed. You know, you can, but what's that can even solve? Right? Like, it doesn't. You just got to grab the team, be like, all right, look, here's what we're failing at. We got to turn this around. And then it's like, we had a job that we lost money at. And you know what? When we were throwing, the customer's like, hey, we need this by July 2nd. I'm like, we'll do it. They're like, there's no way you're going to do it. I'm like, we're going to do it. And I looked at my VP. I'm like, we got to do. He's like, I don't think it's possible. I'm like, we got to do it. We put every resource into it. And you know what? We're literally throwing stuff in the back of pickup drugs to get it to that shop, to get to that plant site. But we did it. We lost more money on that job than any other job. You know what we did? We celebrated. We took all my employees to the brewery right down the the street. We had pizza. Nobody drank. Everybody drink soda like I brought everybody to a brewer in everybody's drinking soda and we celebrated because it was over right it's like all right everybody breathe now let's go on the next one like that's over like we can't talk about it we can do we can deep dive this we know what happened but at the end of the day what does it matter we got to move to the next job and that's just always constantly reinforcing our guys we're moving the next job we didn't make money okay that's fine let's move to the next job Let's learn from it. Let's move to the next job. Because if you dwell on it, because I do, right? Like, I'm a dweller. I'll dwell on it. But if my team just sees me dwelling on it, they'll dwell on it. And that'll impact them on their next estimate. That may impact them on their next project. So what would you advise an entrepreneur who tends to dwell on those things? I mean, what do you say to them? Because that shit happens. And, you know, and it has different manifestations is not just something as concrete as what you're describing which is like oh this is exactly what occurred but what do you say to people who dwell on things so i always obviously i throw my own experience i said look if if i'm going to dwell i'm not going to dwell on it dwell on it in the office i'll go home right i may take a bike ride i may take a run i may sit at a bar that's how i'm going to get get through it i'm not going to do in the office because if you do in the office it's going to impact everybody your attitude as a leader like if you go into the office pissed everyone's pissed you go in the office and you're like all right look we failed let's move on to the next one they get it right everybody fails you know you get into the hall of fame baseball hall of fame and all you got to do is hit three out of 10 balls so it's like you know like guys we can get through this now you can't run a business and only hit three out of ten balls. But it's like, it's like, it's one of those deals where it's just, you just got to get through it sometimes. So, and it's interesting. I have a good friend of mine, our mentor, and he's always up and down, right? And he'll calm me when he's down. And I always laugh. I'm like, why don't you call me when you're up? He's like, yeah, but I'm doing well. I don't need to talk to. I'm like, well, yeah, but I want to hear it. Like, I want to get some energy out when you're crushing it, you You know, I want to get some energy from you when you have positive energy. And a lot of people get in to these small businesses, too, and they think, you know, I can, I, I ran X. I know I can run a blue collar fabrication shop, or I know I can run a blue collar concrete company. I know I can run this. They can't. They don't understand either mindsets as well, or they don't just understand that you may go a month and barely squeak by just doing small piddly jobs just until the next big job and you have to keep your crew there you got to pay your guys 40 hours because if you don't pay them 40 hours they may not come back to work in two weeks that's a major rub isn't it right which is during leaner times right you finally got your team pulled together and you got your guys and if the hours aren't coming you're like oh that's right i I was laughing. So this was the latter part of 2019, early 2020. I was not taking a salary at Carolina Medals. I was like, you know, you read all these books, and they're like, you shouldn't take a salary, like, sacrifice. And I met a good friend of mine. You're like, more? I was laughing. And he was pouring the concrete for the Vortman. And he goes, hey, man, like, how's the business going? I'm like, that's going okay. Like, I haven't taken a salary yet. He goes, that's the best thing I've ever heard. And here's like, I don't know this guy. He's a friend now. I don't know him from Adam. And I said, what are you talking about? I goes, if you don't take a salary, it's a hobby, take a salary. Take just 500 bucks a week. Take something. And I recommend that to all small business owners. I recommend that entrepreneurs. You have to take something. And so I read a book called it. I read a book called Profit First. And profit first literally talks about you have to take something as an owner. And you got to pay your employee first. Why do owners tend to put themselves last? Because they think that's what it has to happen. Owners think I shouldn't pay myself. Now, obviously pay your employees, right? Every employee will get paid before I get paid. But you have to take some money. You got to pull some chips to yourself because if you don't, it's a hobby. It's a hobby, but I also think that when times are tough, it's like you have a team staying around you that's like, this guy's not helping himself. Right. Right, which is like they can see you just like dying. they're like pay yourself dude and like we need you well yeah and you you have to have a paycheck right like I can't call the bank and say hey guys I'm not paying myself out of my business because I'm sacrificing myself for the company so can I not pay this monthly mortgage on my house I mean that's just not how it works so I typically not sensitive to that they're not but it's but it's interesting but you meet so many people are like, why I haven't paid myself in two years? And now I go through that whole process when I haven't paid myself in two years. Like, well, then you're just running a hobby. Go find a W -2 job. Like, you have to pay yourself. If you're not making money at that company, why are you running a company? Profits not a bad word. It's not a bad word. And it's a great question. Why are you running the company otherwise? Right. I mean, you do it for a handful of reasons, but in the context of this isn't a hobby, I think that it's a fair question. So moving on, which is, let's talk about AI for as long as we can handle it. There's a lot going on. And I would say within the last three months, it's leaps and bounds. And tell me what you see, we'll kind of keep it from going global here. So tell me within the context of what you do, fabrication, what do you see as sort of the threats to be? What do you see as the opportunities to be? So we have, we use obviously chat GPT like everybody else. But now we throw all of our contracts into chat GPT. Because we want, and then we create a separate folder that says our non -negotiables and we throw our non -negotiables in there such as payment terms or retainage a couple other non -negotiables and literally chat GPT takes that contract takes our non -negotiables crosses out whatever doesn't impact or whatever obviously coincides with our non -negotiables puts in a document and sends it back I never read a contract anymore. Now, to be fair, I never read contracts prior to chat GPT. My VP of Ops is to Thomas. He loved to read contracts. He loved to read contracts so much. He would send me the contracts and think I would read them. What an idiot. And he just retired in July. He was awesome. But he would send them to me. And then I would look, he read receipts, you know, on his emails, and he would notice I never read a contract. Because I just don't have to, I don't have the aptitude to sit and just read a contract. They're just so boring. So now, everything gets thrown in chat GPT. That makes it so much easier. That's where chat GPT has made our life easier. I think chat GPT can make our life easier on estimating in the fact that give me the drawings and either There's a lot of groups out there. I know Sketch Deck and there's a couple other AI groups out there that are coming up where my estimator no longer has to take Blue Beam, go through it, put it into Tecla, all that stuff is done. And why couldn't it be? Why can't my estimator spend more time reviewing what ChatteePT or whatever this AI program does rather than having to do all that entire process? We could literally take drawings. Why are you so accepting of this? I think it's the right thing to do because it takes the onus off of him possibly missing. We'll go back to that quarter inch plate to half inch plate. If chat GPT saw that, it would have caught it. My guy didn't catch it, right? And that that obviously cost me quite a bit. If now my estimator's not going through and looking, okay, this is three A's, this is a half, it's, he's got it right there, right? He can kind of go through it. And then all of a sudden, we can do more estimates. All of a sudden, more estimates come available for us where we're not tied into X amount of estimates a week that all we can do. I do, I believe it. You know, you just showed me your product as well. Now we can take that upload that in the Brizos, and all of a sudden, now we have almost our complete estimate. So you take AI, you take what you guys are doing. I mean, we cut our estimates down considerably. So now when a customer, which typically happens on the industrial side, they don't give us six months. Our lead times are like six to eight weeks. So now we can do more of those industrial jobs and get them in before major shutdowns happen or our holidays happen and just make everything easier. Yeah, I think what it's going to do, I think what you're describing is the idea that taking all of the kind of friction out of putting a deal together is all going to be commoditized to, in a certain way. And it's going to come down to how well do companies perform. Right. Because all of this dealmaking, drawings, all of this stuff is being hammered out right now. Right. And everyone's going to have a level plain field there. And so it's going to come down to is what can this company as this core competency actually do? Correct. Right? Because now we've removed like all of the friction beneath that. And now you've got this equal opportunity contracts and who's just set up the best to perform. And it's going to make a lot of these businesses really just operating It's like, you're going to have, like, the PO just print out. Right, great, we've got to make this, and we go make it, and who can do it? Right. So it's going to commoditize a lot of those specialties and ways that people were getting deals and stuff like that. So the reason I ask why you're so accepting is because I think they're kind of, you know, it's the normal curve of adoption, but there are a lot of there was one just in here the other day that was really had his head in the sand about it okay and was like no you know not going that route and I think the genie's out of the bottle I don't I don't think you can say I'm not going that route right anymore I think that that's really at your own peril sure is to say we're not going that route anymore and they could say well, we're creating so much dependency upon this tool and that falls apart and da -da -da -da -da -da, you know, it's like, well, fair enough, I guess. But it's 10 more going to crop up in its place. But I always look at it as like, I look at a lot, I look at buying a lot of companies. And I buy a lot of companies or look at buying a lot of companies that are, you know, guys are about to retire. And they're still doing stuff. Like, they're doing their financial statements, not even in QuickBooks. You know, they're just, at the end of the year, they give everything to their account and say, did we make money? You know, so you look at a lot of these guys that you meet. There are a lot of people out there. They're not even adopting just regular Sage, QuickBooks, whatever else is out there. They don't even want to adopt that because they're afraid of knowing what their true numbers are month to month. So it's, I get that, Dude, I don't know, I don't, because you, truth aversion. Yeah, so it's, it's one of those deals where if they're not willing to do that, surely they're not willing to do AI. That's just how it works. Yeah, I think that it's, look, it's scary to have that put in your face like that and be like, oh, God, I don't get my sort of, you know, I like to coast one week out of four. Right, or I have cash in the bank. Yeah, oh, shit, I don't. So whatever that is. And then what are the threats? So those are your opportunities. What are the threats? I think the threats for AI, I don't really know of a lot of threats. I can't really think of one in particular, maybe loss of jobs. You know, like do we need this many estimators? Do we need this many project managers? The threats of AI, for example, I was at a deal exchange, and they talked about AI working with as a debt collector. So the debt collector would call, let's say you owed $1 ,000. The debt collector would send you a text and say, hey, Shep, you have $1 ,000. And you would say, well, I can't pay $1 ,000, and say, well, can you pay? And And you say, I can pay $250? And then it'd say, can you pay $500? And all of a sudden, you just knocked off half your debt. Not a single person was done in that transaction, except for the person that was holding the debt. Now the model goes, you have AI. And they're AI. So now that AIs are talking to each other. Yeah. And all of a sudden it just turns into like, where's the personal touch? I think AI too. I was actually talking my, the negative about AI is every email reads the same now. Have you noticed that? It's all like, have you noticed in your LinkedIn profile? Everything says, hey, Jeff Matusek, I just saw on your, because I own a holding company, all direct is where all these companies fall under. I just was on your website, and here's what I read. And it literally verbatim, and then all of a sudden, the next day I get the same email, different company, and it's the same typical chat GPTs you like they just spam it out and there's no more personal touch okay so that's an interesting thing you're talking about which is what does this do culturally right which is I think that their humans are strange and very highly variable but the human touch part I think I think is one of the good things that comes out of this, I think there's going to be a lot of medical discovery. I think there's going to be a lot of great stuff. I can just tragic amount of job loss. I think that there's going to be equal, good, and bad. Hopefully, best case scenario is equal, good and bad. Bell's wrong, but hopefully it's the result of something we can live with. But the idea being where I'm going is the personal touch, which is all of content and emails all have just sort of this really monochromatic. And as humans, our senses, we just sense, like, that's not human. I'm not human about that. Right. And so I think one of the good things is that I think there's going to be outside of the business world, people are going to be turning towards human touch. Meaning, like, I want to go see a live band. I want to know that that's not AI, you know, or I want to go do things that enrich my life. And I think ultimately, as much as people like the independence and the speed of all this technology, I think ultimately there's a desire to kind of be together. So I think that people are going to get burned out on how stale it is and find themselves together more. I don't think it's the tomorrow thing. No, I think it'll take a time. Yeah, I mean, it's, I think that's a great point. And you mentioned medical. A perfect example of medical. I had a buddy who's got some health issues, got a scan. And, you know, the scan came back and it with some verbiage. None of us understood the verbiage. Yeah, what's this mean? Right? Took a picture of it, said to chat GPT, what does this mean? Told me exactly what it meant. The nurse came in and said, well, you got to wait on the radiologist. And I said, but just had a curiosity, like, we did this in chat GPT, just, you know, can you look at this? She looks at it. She goes, yep, this is it. Like, and she, and then she started. That's the same answer he got. And it was incredible because I was like, I knew, I didn't know, like, different things, and I'm not going to get too far into it, but it was amazing. I could take that picture and get that same result, right? And it's like, that's where I think there, you mentioned the medical, I think that's where medical advance is going to be huge. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's boundless is what it is, because the IQ is going to be able to conceive of, and it's knowledge set, it's going to be able to conceive of theories that we can't even begin to conceive of. It's going to connect dots that no one human, even with the aid of the Internet, will be able to even pull together. So I think that, yeah, I think that, you know, it'd be interesting to see what happens on the legal front. Right. You know, as you said, you're using it to summarize or read through legal contracts, but also think about legislation at a high level with these turbo attorneys and lawyers that are writing briefs and cases on both sides, right? So legislations may come to a grinding halt because both cases are so well written. Right, that's true. And then the judge takes the and puts, he puts that in the chat, what should I do? And you're like, what's the answer? Like, you know, so it's, it becomes like this singularity that it is going to be very strange. Yeah. And I'm just really interested to see what falls out of all of that. Right. I agree. It's a little bit, it's hard to think about after, like, when you try and trace a thought into the future, what AI can do, it becomes a little bit like thinking about nothing this. I really don't know what I'm thinking about anymore. Your thought just sort of breaks into pieces after a while. You can't trace it down as far as as as far as you'd like. So anyway, so you've got you've got the companies, you've got the entrepreneur groups. And we were talking earlier in the extent you'd want to extent you were talking about your wife and what her interests are. And I thought that was unexpected. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's awesome. So after her son went to college, she was kind of looking around on what else she could do. And one of her best friends owns, it's Amy Ames photography. And she's, Amy Ames is a natural wildlife photographer. And so Susan started to go to Yellowstone with her in the winter. So she saw her first pack of wolves, chase a bison down, and fell in love with it. So she's now gone to Antarctica to see penguins. She's gone to South America. She's gone to the Arctic. So she got pictures of polar bears and walruses. Is that Walri? What is is that? Walroo? Yeah, like Waler -Rex? She's an amazing photographer, and so she retired. She's like, look, I want to retire. She got burned out. She was a nurse. She got burnout from COVID. And she's taken up, she's incredible. And she does her own calendars. And she's passionate about it. It's not her profession. It's not her job. She's just so passionate about it. It's really cool. We have this device, and it literally, wherever she goes, if she gets Wi -Fi, she throws the pictures. So at home, I'll be watching TV, and all of a sudden I'll see a picture of polar bear pop -up. Or see pictures of penguins. I'll be like, oh, that's where she is. She's on the ice today. Or she watched the whales, and it's amazing to see what she does. We went to Costa Rica, and she took beautiful pictures of, like, two cans, and just different snakes and lizards. And it was just, it's crazy, her eye for photography. Yeah, it's like, and I have no patience. I went on a Yellowstone trip with her in the summer, and they sit there for hours. And they just wait for like the baby bison and the mom bison to stare at them so they can get that picture. And I'm already done. You're like, all I know is I'm sitting on a rock in the woods. I'm literally like, Why is there no Wi -Fi in Yellowstone? What was her, what did she think about Antarctica? I mean... Oh, she loved it. I mean, it was an amazing trip for her. I mean, that's like, that's pretty far from here. Yeah, yeah. So Antarctica was great for her because she got to see the penguins, but I think she was more impressed with the North Pole where she got to see the polar bears. I thought you were going to say Santa Claus. No, no. She was 400 miles from the actual top of the earth or 600 miles but just to see polar bears she was on an icebreaker they were only like i think there were 14 18 uh photographers on this boat that's it so if you're standing on the top of the earth right at the top of the axis i don't know a flat earther okay perfect let's even better that makes sense good luck with that business so if you're standing on the axis? Are you just up there spinning? I don't know. You know, that'd be interesting. Yeah, she saw, it was all day. You know, like we fish in Alaska, so I got to experience that one time where it was just literally like you have dusk and then it's bright again. But it's a, it was really cool. She also did a polar plunge. So she got to jump in the water in Antarctica. She got to jump in the water in the Arctic. Is that your deal? No, I hate the cold. I'll be in the running car. There's absolutely that I mean now we went to Costa Rica together. She got great pictures. We went to Azores together. She got great pictures. But no, if it's cold, I don't want the cold. You're down in Costa Rica watching like Judge Judy and Matlock. I would be like I'm all about the warmth. So but she she's it's really cool to see how far she's taking it and just she does a great job that's cool so let me bring us kind of in wrapping this up you've got these various things going on where what's the website for carolina metal sure and the what's the other like you want people looking at the flooring company or whatever we can put it in when we release this episode but what can they find so we're just carolina metal fabricators com. That's the easiest way to find us. That's where contact information is. You'll see a picture of me and my dog in the background of contact us. And then the holding company that kind of contains all these companies, that's called Directus Holdings, LLC .com. And that kind of tells you a little bit more about myself, the other managing partner, his name is Vibla and a couple of our operating partners. And our operating partners are people that work inside the business and help run us, run the business day to day. It's the best way to reach it. Or LinkedIn. We have a really cool LinkedIn. I have a cool LinkedIn following. We used to do what we call Cool Pick Friday. Yeah. And every Friday would show pictures. And right now we're under so many different NDAs. I can't show a single. I haven't shown a single picture in like six months. Would you say the cool pick Friday's taking a hit? It is. other our other company called MSSW or miscellaneous stainless steel works we call it i know miscellaneous mondays and it's like get a finance degree out of south carolina you know who is he and so every every monday we show that and then if you go on the united floor coatings linked in you'll see pictures of and again we're not created we didn't come up with anything like for for United Floor Codings, but you'll see pictures of stuff we do. We do both commercial, residential, and industrial floors, polish, stain, epoxy. So we do it all. Well, great. Well, I want to say thank you for coming today. It's been really fun talking to you about the various topics. Yeah, absolutely enjoyed it. Look forward to the next time. All right. Thank you.