So in those early days, I mean, everything's hard, right? You're trying to get this business up and running, keep it running. What was more difficult, winning customers or delivering on the jobs? I'd say in the beginning, it's getting customers because so when you have a plasma table, you couldn't even get any RFQs because people knew that you couldn't hold any tolerances. I mean, if, if these buyers have any kind of volume at all, they know what they're doing and they know what plasma parts look like. And so they're like, if you can't hold plus or minus five, you know, then sorry, we can't, we can't, we don't have anything for you. So, so that's where, you know, I'll, I'll have to say that, you know, not all salespeople are, are out to get you or annoying. So we had a guy come in the shop cause I was. So first I wanted a press break. So I was like, I'm going to get a press break. So I started looking at these press breaks, and I look at some economy ones, some foreign press breaks, thinking that's all I could afford. But I also knew from my past CapEx experience I need to do my due diligence. I need to see what else is out there, see what it's all about. So I just found out who the top players were. I called him in just like I was somebody else, which was nuts because I was not. And then Amada shows up, an Amada sales guy, and his name is Dustin Campbell. Super nice man. And he looked at me and he said, you're going to bend these parts on a press break and you're not going to laser cut them? And I was like, yeah, I think that's what I'm going to do for now so I can grow up. And he was like, oh, man, you need a laser and a press break. And, of course, the sales guy, right? The sales guy is like, let me tell you what you need. But, you know, he had to stick his neck out for me. Yeah. Because now we had to convince Amada that we could do this, right? And, you know, they took a risk, you know. You know, we had to obviously invest quite a bit, but we were able to get a laser and a press break. Oh, wow. And then bang, now we're opened up to opportunities. And it was a huge investment. I mean, myself, my family, I mean, we were just like, are we sure? Yeah. Like, can we do this? A little bit of stress there. Oh, it was crazy. In fact, like the clock is ticking. It's fixing to get real. I still don't have enough work for it because the other thing that as a small business starting out that's hard to grasp and understand is that even if you get this miracle huge project, it's not going to happen immediately. And you have to figure out the cash flow of the whole thing. How's that going to work? What does it look like? And the development side of it. So there's a lot more to, and even really big corporations, I get this proven to me over and over again, When they send you part files and drawings, it's not ready to go. Like there's engineering that has to happen. There's questions that have to be asked and answered before you can actually deliver good parts. And so you get this opportunity and it looks great and it is great, but you're still six months away from any real money. And so we got down to the wire, and one night I was in my bedroom, and I was literally praying. I was like, God, if you don't step in, this is fixing to go bad right out of the gate. I kid you not, my phone dinged on the nightstand. I finished praying. I looked at it, and this woman had accepted my LinkedIn invite. You know, somebody had given me this lead and I tried to, you know, sometimes it's really hard to get to a buyer. Sure. And it's like 10 o'clock at night. I was like, do I say anything? So I messaged her and I said, this is who I am. I'd love the opportunity to just quote some of your parts. She responded right away. Well, that's not my commodity. I'm in plastics or something, but you need to talk to this woman. And she gave me her contact information. I kid you not, within a week, I had a lot of POs. Really? Yes. So much, in fact, that now the new struggle was, how do I get all this raw material with no material credit? Because I've got no history. And we're talking semi-trailer loads a week. So, like, I mean, at one time, I think, just one project, it only lasts several months, but. I mean, we're in the 28,000 pounds at least a week, something like that. And it wasn't a long-term job, but it got us through until some of those other jobs got to be self-sustaining. And it is a miracle. I mean, it really was. So there's just stuff like that. You need a little bit of luck and timing along the way. Yeah, some help. Yeah, for sure. We've talked about some of these, but what would you say are some of the biggest struggles, bottlenecks, kind of specifically in a fabrication business that maybe a lot of people don't realize and understand? Yeah, I think this is Ð I don't know if this is like the cop-out answer or whatever, but it's always going to be money in my opinion. And I know that covers so many different things, and it sounds really generic, but Ð it's obviously cash flow. I mean, you've got to have good customers. You can be the best supplier in the world, but if your customers, and they can be a great customer, but if their accounts payable department is crabby or covered up, if they're overworked, I mean, they literally like, and I know from experience, a lot of times buyers are in a very stressful situation. Um, I felt like at certain places I've worked, the buyers were treated so bad. I was like, why do you still work? Like everybody's beating you up because you're not getting parts and it's not your fault. Yeah. Right. So it's a, it's a different world and kind of got to be able to see it from both sides. Um, but, but just being able to have the, the backing and the cash to put yourself out there because The thing that I really didn't realize was in the metal fab businesses, I don't know. It's not like this in all instances. I don't want to lump it all together. But a lot of times your customers will feel like, and they have to be in this situation. Everybody's playing this game. You're kind of like somebody's the bank for a certain amount of time. And so you've got to figure out how to play that without and manage the risk. Sure. Because you really have to look at the job. I want this work. but I have to pay my suppliers. Yeah, I can't let it put me under either. I've got to pay my suppliers. I've got to pay for my building. I've got to pay insurance. And then this new thing creeps out of the back that you didn't even think of, county property tax. And you're like, what just happened? This other guy that's had a business in town for 40 years, he's still not taxed. I'm not telling you who he is because I don't want to do that to him. You see me put a building up in there, and now this guy comes out just grinning from ear to ear like, holy cow, what just happened? The county tax assessor. And I'm going, ooh. Oh, wow. And, yeah, so there goes like 30 grand to the school so that, you know, they can hire fishing coaches or whatever they're going to do with it. I don't get to vote on it. But anyway, sorry. A little tax soapbox. Right, right. But no, that's a good point that you make about customers. You know, not all customers are good customers. And it's not always their fault. Right. But, you know, early in a business, learning and kind of going through some of those experiences of learning, you know, the shortcomings of a potential PO. Right. And maybe some that you just should walk away from. Yeah. You really learn to look for situations where you can collaborate with people. And I've heard other people on podcasts talk about this, but you come up with ways. It's like, okay, you're a global company. You've got all this leverage. Is there a way that we can use your leverage to help get a better material price so that then our value add is all that we can be completely transparent and you don't have to worry that I'm trying to. Sure. Screw you over because I'm not. I just want to make a living. My people that work for me want to make a living. And so if you can get that kind of relationship with buyers and and and that's another thing that I've seen in the industry that that's kind of concerning. There's not just there's not a whole lot of like apprenticeships like that just doesn't happen anymore or even the opportunity for much mentorship. And I think it's both sides. A lot of people don't want to be mentored and other people don't have time to mentor, right? And so you've got these new buyers coming in or commodity people and they've got bosses that are just putting their thumb on them saying, you've got to get this cheaper. Well, the whole time the price is going up. And then they'll be watching like the HRC price and they'll say, well, the HRC did this. And I have to say, well, If I want to get your metal tomorrow in Little Rock, I have to pay this. And it's been processed. It's been stretcher leveled. It's been transported with diesel over $5 a gallon. Like, you know, these prices are going up. So, you know, some, I know this is a big corporation. You've got targets that you've got to meet so you can keep your job or get a raise. But at the end of the day, like it, you know, it's just to be able to. Try to manage that situation. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah. Absolutely. What are you seeing on the labor side of things, like just skilled labor? So we've been really blessed. I mean, we don't do everything right. Like I've made mistakes. I still make mistakes all the time. But, you know, we really want to treat people right. And I think, you know. we've had some bit of draw just because we, we try to treat people well. Right. I mean, and so we've, we've had some, you know, good opportunities. We also use some tools online that help us get applicants. It ends up pushing stuff out through like zip recruiter and indeed and things like that. And it sort of automates that process and helps us get a lot of applicants, but you know, you still just, you have to screen, you know, and it's, and that's, That's the sad part because, you know, we get a lot of people that come in and they're like, and welders are my favorite. They're just, I've welded in space. I've welded in the ocean. You know, and it's like, okay, well, I'm going to show you how to TIG weld this. And then you do it. And then you're like, uh-oh, I don't think you've welded everybody. And so. And they're not all like that. It's just a funny thing I like to bring up because that's an exact scenario. But you get that in every position in a fab shop. People, they think they have some experience and they don't. And maybe they just haven't had the opportunity. We've had a lot of people, and even like that co -op instance, we'll give people a chance. And for a while, we're thinking, man, these people aren't motivated. And then someday. something just clicks. Yeah. You can see it. They're just like, Hmm, I'm going to care about what I do. And I want to, you know, have the opportunity to, you know, get promoted and, and have more responsibility and things like that. And that's, that's kind of rare, but it happens for sure. Yeah. How many employees do you guys have? So right now, I think around 30 at the moment we're, we're trying to, to bring back on a second shift right at the moment. So we've, um, Over the past three years or four years in total, we've gone through a major expansion of our original building. So now we're like 46,000 plus square feet under the same building. And we've added a lot of automated equipment. And so that's enabled us to try to keep the headcount down. But we are still bringing people in because there's a lot of manual processes and handling. So, yeah, we're around 30 right now, looking to bring on a pretty solid second shift. And in the past, we've had second shift and weekend shift. Before, we had some of this equipment. We just had to throw all hands on that. But that gives us room, too, for future growth. So that's another thing when you're looking at projects. You've got to look like. what is it actually going to take to do this? Because I had a friend that does like handyman work and he told me one time, he said, I've learned the rule. I think he said the rule of three. If I think it's going to take 30 minutes, it's going to take three times longer than that, which for me, it's more than that. It just always goes longer. But no, we've had a pretty good group of people and we've got great employees. A lot of people have been with us a long time. We've got some really skilled people with us right now. We've really focused lately on upper management to help us just with the business side of things. Like improve processes and things like that. One of my biggest flaws is I like to say I'm like a little pink Swiss army knife. I can do a lot of things, and it's really cute. But when it comes to actually getting a whole lot done now, Yeah, I've become a bottleneck. I probably would have been diagnosed like ADHD plus or something, even now as an adult. It's good that you recognize it, though. Yeah, yeah. That's the first step. I know I've got a problem. I admit it. I've got a problem. But no, I mean, I've been blessed to be able to do things. My dad, from a young age, he's teaching me how to do things, like he would get me to mow the yard. I'd weed around the house and then, then he's reweeding the house. I'm like, dad, what are you doing? He's like, well, you didn't do it right. See, you didn't, you left these gaps and, and it just, you know, things, that's a silly example, but it teaches you like to be very particular, you know, and look for the things that people aren't looking for. And so they, the, some of my employees at work really joke because I've got this really good knack for walking out on the floor, just completely cold and going. why, why'd you do that? What's going on there? And I'm just, cause I'm just, I tell him I'm like a four year old in the backseat. All I got is questions. I'm just going to ask a bunch of questions and immediately they go, Oh man. Yeah. Yeah. We should have done, should have done this. I'm glad you caught that. And I'm like, yeah, new process. All right. There you go. Get my new quality. guy come out here let's fix this yeah so we got a great team great team what are you uh i mean when we first started talking we were talking about fab tech yeah and you go to these shows and i mean just the like the robotics and just the massive amount of equipment that you see in these new advances in technology what sort of things have you incorporated, brought on in the last, you know, however many years or what do you see yourself doing in the future? So the, the, I think the biggest thing, and, and again, you get a good salesman that's actually kind of looking out for you. So they'll, it's going to be hard to, you know, trust somebody in that position a lot of times, but they'll, they'll sort of point you in the right direction. Just be honest with them. And so like when we got our flat laser, So we were manually loading and unloading these sheets. And we had a night shift at one time where we had people just throwing sheets. I'd set the machine up to pull on the operator because it was literally changing shuttles faster than the cycle time because of the geometry of these parts. And then there was times that even my mother, she's got her master's in nursing, and she's working crazy hours. She's a home health administrator for Baptist Home Health, and she's down there at 10 o'clock helping us shake parts on the laser. So we finally got to a point to where a bank came to us, and they were like, One of the U.S. bank at the time, we were working with them, they go, y'all are doing pretty good. Y'all need any equipment? I was like, well, now that you say something, yeah, I do. And so we had the opportunity, we invested in automation for our sheet laser. And that is a game changer. Really? You've got to have that thing cut. And that's the only way. People, I don't care if you have four people on it, they can't keep up. You've got to get those sheets on and off that machine. And so we did that. That was great. And then, so at that point I'm hooked. I'm like, if there's a machine, we've got to tend that thing. So, so same sales guy, but now he, now he works for himself. He's got a company called Cimarron, I think. Hope I got that right. Dustin Campbell, super nice guy. And he's very knowledgeable about this stuff. So he, he's now he's selling Mitsubishi and, and don't get a model wrong. They're, they're super great. He'll say the same thing there. Great people to work with. Their service is amazing. Super awesome people. But so what I really liked about the MITS was the automation side was just a lot more robust because you become really aware of how tough an automation system has to be because in anything, especially metal fabrication, when you're relying on a machine, ladder logic, a program to do things, That's assuming everything happened perfectly. And that never happens. One sheet of metal is not exactly the same. from its chemical makeup to its thickness from one end of the sheet to the other. I mean, you name it, something's going to happen. That automation is going to come in, and it's coming into what it thinks should be there. And so stuff is going to break, and then that's the worst-case scenario. Now you've got this expensive piece of automation, and it's crashed itself bad. And you've got to work on it now, and now you're behind. So anyways, the mitts had a really good, what I thought, you know, robust automation system. So, so when we bought that laser in our new building, we got the 20 shelf automation tower. So we're putting 180,000 pounds of raw material in this thing. The, you know, it's got two unload tables. So now we can lots out unload, you know, 22,000 pounds a night, you know, and feed this beast. And so it's, it's a great, that's a great machine. So we just kind of went further in that direction and then, then keep keep going in the automated direction. So we make, you know, structural components and things like that. And I would try, I'd get a lot of RFQs for parts that you just need to be cut on a two blazer. Well, every time I went out to a supplier, I'd send an RFQ out. It'd take weeks, months, or they just know, they wouldn't know, there's no response. And then if they did, it'd be like, I needed two parts. And they're like, that's $5,000. And I'm thinking. I just wasted all of our time, you know, and I get it though. It's a huge investment. You've got to pay for that machine. So we, um, that was one of my big leaps with the new expansion was to purchase a tube laser. Oh, nice. So we ended up partnering with, uh, with, with BLM to do that. Great guys there to, uh, to work with. And, um, So we've got a, now we've got a five axis tube laser. We can process from half inch up to six inch diameter material really quickly and efficiently. It's just a different animal. And that's what I would, would caution people on, on that side of the business. It's, there are so many axes. And then when you think about the flat laser side of things, you've got inconsistency in sheet metal, but it's. you've really got inconsistency in a lot of structural profiles. Like in my experience, it seems like the tolerances are a little looser. You get sticks that are bent and different things. And you've got these massive servo motors that are just following a command. And you talk about crashing some stuff. Holy cow. That's where AI needs to go, honestly. They need to put cameras in these tube lasers to say, hold up, stop. You've got two pieces of rectangular tube in there that aren't supposed to be there, and your sensor did not catch it before it explodes the steady rest chuck and tens of thousands of dollars out the other end. Right. And so those are things you don't think about and you don't even want to think about in business, right? But anyway, so that's what I think of as a form of automation. And then we also at Fabtech and... went to several demos. We got a couple of co-bot robotic welders. So the collaborative, I think that's cool. One, because they're a lot easier for a welder or even a non-welder to learn how to set up programs and put them into use right away. So we've got two of those cells. I waited until they came out with, these are actually the FANUC Lincoln packages. I designed and built my own stands, carts. everything. In fact, we sell those to other people to mouth those robots. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like ours is better, more robust and more affordable, but anyway, and, uh, but so we, um, we did that. And so we've got this massive envelope. We've got multiple tables that we can put in a double or like a Delta configuration around this arm, uh, interchangeable pallets so we can set up fixtures and then shelve them, put them back online. different things like that to help us with our higher volume weldments and things like that. There's a lot of projects that we have, though, that are just they don't make sense to try to automate. So we've got to have several manual welders, and we do. We've got some great, talented guys. We've also gotten a laser welder. I tried to early adopt that five years ago, maybe, and it was just too many bugs. I had to send it back. The fourth unit burned up on me and we couldn't get a day's production out of it. I was like, $28 ,000 is too much to spend to have this kind of risk. I can't do it. And I'm sure, and I knew, and I even. I was like, I'll try it again in a few years, but I'm spooked. So now we've got another laser welder, and it works really good. We use it on several production projects. And there's uses for that that other things just can't really do. But as far as automation, I'd say that's most of it. The other side on the automation, what I would say that's been really helpful to us is software. So on the software side, you know, we... When I was starting out, you don't have any money. And all these platforms are really expensive, especially for a starting company. So you start with spreadsheets, right? And you're trying to calculate your costs, and you're trying to make sure that you've got some margin and that you're not overcharging so that you can actually win some jobs. And it is so difficult. I can remember going on a vacation once down in the Gulf with my family, and I'm sitting out on the balcony just... hammering away at this spreadsheet because I've got to have this business. And it was just hours, you know, and fortunately in that situation, it did turn into something, but that could have been all for naught. Right, right. So we ended up investing in what I thought was a really good mainstream ERP platform. And it was okay, but then I quickly figured out it was pay to play on top of being, for us, very expensive. So when we had questions, they were like, well, we'll send a consultant. Okay, how much is that going to be? Well, we'll get you a quote. So we get the quote. It's five grand for one day. And I'm like, where's this guy staying at? What's he eating? I want to eat with him. I like expensive food. And so anyway, so. We did that for several years, just no support, no help without just feeling like we were getting fleeced. The one time we did pay the consultant, he came and he said, I'll get back with you. And he never got back with us. It was, oh my gosh, the biggest joke. So the final nail in the coffin was probably a couple years ago. I started seeing things about paperless parts. I got to talk to them at Fabtech and some of the other shows, probably about the same time we met you guys. And I was like, man, we need this in our engineering department because it takes so much time to enter this stuff because I was never just checking the wind on anything because I didn't want to do that to myself. I didn't want to do that to my customer. And that's what I think should be really important when a customer is looking for a supplier is, And I think a lot of the smart ones, they know, they're not going to necessarily pick the lowest bid. Because you've got to really ask yourself, do they know what they're doing? Because I could very easily, and I have, I've done this, and I've had to explain it. Even years later, a customer issues another PO, and now that my systems are so strong, I look at it again, I go, man, I did that wrong. I was actually losing money on those parts. I'm sorry, I can't do that. And you don't want to do that to your customer because then they're put in that same situation for their customers. So the more diligence that you can put up front, even if you're higher, hopefully they're going to have a conversation with you and you can help educate each other. Or a lot of times, you know, what we really try to do, I think that one thing that sets us apart. We really try to work with the customer. I love asking questions. I love trying to learn. When somebody sends me a part, I might even ask, what are you doing with this part? What is it connecting to? Why are you doing that? Well, because they'll make it out of 6061 T6, and I'm like, you realize that's really expensive raw material. What does this part do? Oh, you just put a sticker on it. man, let's get you in a different alloy and I'll save you like half. Let's do it. And they're like, thank you so much, you know? And so I love that part, you know, helping people design the cost and, you know, helping educate people on different things that can help them save money. That's fun. Yeah, nice. So where do you see Dark Threat in the next, I don't know, three years, five years? I mean, we've got such an amazing team. It's, you know, For a long time now, it's not been about me. I've been really blessed, and I can do a lot of things really well, and I'm a perfectionist and make it perfect. But it's not about me at all. It's about the people that work with us and about our suppliers. I feel like it's going to get a lot better. I'm curious and interested in the AI aspect of things. web hooks and different APIs and ways to connect. I think when the communication gets better, it's going to help a lot. We've got to have a way to communicate, especially with newer customers, a way to help educate them so that what they're getting helps them. Because I want my customer to be successful, right? If they send me a batch of parts and they say, I need you to make 50,000 of these last week, I can do that. But are you sure? Because the proper way to go about this is to do a PPAP. Let's make some samples, bring them up there. I'll come look at it with you. Let's make sure this works. And then how about a pilot run? So not only are you getting good parts, but... Are you making sure they fit together right now? You've got a lot of downstream things you've got to think about. And it's annoying to people who are in that crunch. And so finding a creative way to get around that. But back to the original question, I think leveraging AI, one of the things I like about paperless parts is it's sort of, I won't say it's open source, But they allow us as a user to be able to kind of come up with some of our own code. I think it's like a micro Python or something. And so with AI, I don't have any, I mean, I did C++ or something in college forever ago. I can't remember any of that. But I do understand a little bit about logic. And so I can communicate with the AI platforms. And now all of a sudden, I've got a new calculator. That helps myself and my other engineers and estimators decide how much value add goes into powder coating this part because I need to know how many fit on the rack, how long does it take to wash them, how long does it take to powder them, how long does it take to cure them. And it can help me do all those calculations. I can simplify that up so it's cleaner going through the process. So I think that's the tip of the iceberg. We've got to be able to... And the other part of that is I think we've got to be convinced that we can trust what AI outputs or have a way to check. There's always going to have to be that human, I think, check for quite a while. Because we've all put something in and got something that looked really good, but something's wonky. Something's off in the background. You have to kind of few more prompts and you finally get to what you want, which is still cool. So my son, he's fixing to be 14. Super smart kid. This last summer he's been welding for us. He's certified and this kid is he's phenomenal dude he he's been probably welding since he was like eight in production yeah like running press break like super smart kid so the last part of the summer you know it was just brutally hot and so for like the last week or so before he started school back i said come in my office and talk to ai and here's all this breadboards and stuff and i don't have You know, very little experience in electronics. But I said, I want you to make some circuits. Knew nothing about it. And within two days, he's making lights light up to some song or, you know, programming these microcontrollers, Arduino boards and stuff like that. And I just, I think that's cool to, you know, and I hope they do a lot more of that in schools. And I think they are STEM programs just to get people kind of on that mindset because it's. It's not going to be quite that simple, I don't think, in the future. But when we can go in that direction with our thought process and start combining systems, that's where it's going to help. Yeah, I think the efficiency gains that are, for a lot of companies, already happening, but for a lot, they haven't even started, like you said, tip of the iceberg. They haven't implemented anything yet. I think there's so much. efficiency gains that are there to be had. Well, and just visibility. Yeah. So, so our, one of our biggest challenges right now, so we're also for our ERP system, I think I didn't get to finish what I said earlier. So when I, when I upgraded to paperless parts and I went to integrate it with my existing ERP, the existing, there was no cost from paperless to do this. I was like, sweet. Well, then I get a phone call from my ERP system. Oh, that's going to be another so many thousand dollars a month. And I'm like, Are you serious? And you already don't give me support? I was like, I'm out of here. And so I immediately started looking what works well with paperless, I'm sorry, and ran onto a platform called Fulcrum, Fulcrum Pro. Okay. And it's really good. It's pretty solid. But even it, you know, there's, I think it's going to get to where. We can truly tie these things together. There's still gaps. There's communication. So like it has communication, but if I put in this chat to my team, they won't see it unless they pull up the program and go click on the icon. It's not hitting them on their phone like it should. And so I'm not trying to dog it. I'm just saying there's still room to grow. And I feel like the other part is in having a metal fab business is understanding your overhead. And I feel like there should be like built-in calculation within those platforms to help you determine that, right? It shouldn't be black magic, right? Like how much is my hover? I don't know. Well, my machine costs this much and this much in nitrogen. And you should be able to just put that in and be able to trust, you know, what you're actually doing. But anyways, and that kind of leads me to a different. sort of topic. Um, a lot of times when you're quoting a part that a customer has done internally and then they give you a target price and they'll say, well, we're doing it internally for two bucks. And I'm like, I bet you are 30 years ago when you costed it. And, uh, and then you said it would take 20 seconds and it takes three minutes, you know, they just, so like the tools are evolving. We're knowing we're able to, to, actually complete that feedback loop and see, well, I quoted it at 30 seconds, but it's actually taking three minutes to do this. So anyways, I think, I think just that communication overall in the next few years, you know, that's what I'm looking forward to. Yeah. Yep. Well, Andrew, it's been a great conversation. Really appreciate you coming in. Where can people find you online, any social media, anything like that? Yeah, so obviously our website, darkthreatfab.com, and then we're on Instagram, Facebook, you name it. Just search for Dark Threat. You guys do a lot of YouTube videos? I'm thinking about getting into some of that platform. Mostly it's been social media, and it's kind of... difficult even to hit our customer the right way in this market. So back when we were doing truck accessories, it kind of made more sense, right? Because you've got a broader market. But with Metal Fab, yeah, we're just looking that way. Nice. All right. Well, thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. You've been very hospitable. All right. Thank you.