February 18, 2025 • 48 mins
From the Zoo to Wild is a book for entrepreneurs passionate about home services, looking to move away from corporate jobs. Chris Lalomia, a former executive, shares his path, discoveries, and tools to succeed as a small business owner in home improvement retail. The book provides the mindset, habits, leadership style, and customer-oriented processes necessary to succeed as a small business owner in home services.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Tell me how you were able to instill that in your
sales guys, because you actuallyscaled to a level to be able to
sell.
So are we able to take Chad andJim's commitment who did every
job in the company ever and thenturn it into saying all right,
here's what we're about.
And how do you do that?
How do you bring that down topeople?
Welcome to the Small BusinessSafari, where I help guide you
(00:20):
to avoid those traps, pitfallsand dangers that lurk when
navigating the wild world ofsmall business ownership.
I'll share those gold nuggetsof information and invite guests
to help accelerate your ascentto that mountaintop of success.
It's a jungle out there and Iwant to help you traverse
through the levels of owningyour own business that can get
you bogged down and distract youfrom hitting your own personal
and professional goals.
So strap in adventure team andlet's take a ride through the
(00:42):
safari and get you to themountaintop.
Here we go.
Alan, another big day, big time.
If you're in the trucklistening, man, if you're a
hunter, I'm throwing a shout outto you.
Big guy.
I was talking to you earliertoday before we were taping this
episode.
You guys were all thinkingabout what do we do when we
(01:04):
start a business and all thethings I got to think about and
I want to get all this greatwisdom from people.
And he asked me two things, man, like can you just give me two
things, because I know you'reshort of time, because I was
running late, maybe running alittle fast, like I always do.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Let me slow down a little bit.
What did he want to do?
Speaker 1 (01:25):
He wants to start a handyman business in Colorado.
He had just moved to this town.
He asked me do you think I'mdreaming?
I didn't have a chance to saywell, it's going to be a tough
fall, bro, cause you don't havea lot of friends to build off of
if you just move there.
But, um, he wants to build hisown handyman business, but he
doesn't want it to take his timeor away from his family.
I said two things.
One one thing you got to learnis you always sell to your
lowest level of belief and yougot to believe you're worth the
(01:45):
money you're about to charge andyou're going to need to charge
twice as much as you're thinkingright now.
Two you got to wake up everymorning and go you're going to
solve a fucking problem today,because you're going to be
solving problems every day.
And that's who we got on todaymy boy, chad Abel.
I went to college with him atMichigan Tech.
(02:06):
We went to school forengineering, did the whole
engineering thing, but westarted to get back together
here lately and he startstelling me.
He said, well, yeah, as a matterof fact, well, I kind of sold
my business.
I'm like, do what.
I kind of got invested inanother business.
Do what.
I kind of think I'm going tostart another one.
I'm like, do what I said.
Dude, I got to have you on mypodcast.
I can't wait to hear this story.
Now Chad Abel is on and he'sgoing to talk to us about how
(02:28):
you looked at a business thatyou were in and how you figured
out a way to start a business inthat same business, in that
same area, in that same industry.
And so, chad, welcome.
Man.
Can't wait to have the audiencehear a little bit more about
your story.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I want to hear if chris was really all that in
college.
Well, hey, it all started withmy left guard, chris, right?
No, so he, he was an animal andthat's where it all started,
and actually my our, where mybusiness partner for northwood's
paper converting, which wegreenfield started.
He was our water boy, ourtrainer, so it must come all the
way back to michigan techfootball that's it.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
No name you, baby, that's what gottlieb called us.
No name you, that's right.
Well, frankly, we are, becausenobody at atlanta I come across
my son was waiting tables guysays comes up and, uh, he said
something about being frommichigan and my, my son goes hey
, go green.
He goes.
Oh, yeah, go white, he goes.
Well, actually I didn't go tostate.
I went to another school calledmichigan tech and he goes no
(03:25):
way.
That's where my dad went andthe guy's like, go huskies, tell
your dad go.
Yeah, I'm like, oh, that'sawesome.
So but chad, your story is, Ithink, really cool because you,
you took off, you got in theindustry and I want you to tell
that, the story about you got inthe in the business that you
did, and explain that a littlebit, but when that opportunity
came, so you can just give usthat background.
(03:47):
First, on the business and theindustry you're in.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, so, like Chris, my background was engineering
out of college and I worked fora company called Marquip which
manufactured corrugated andsheeting equipment, and I was a
field engineer sheetingequipment and I was a field
engineer and so I worked a loton irrigators and sheeters and I
(04:14):
was up in Toronto working on acheater that was having issues,
had issues for like six months.
I didn't install it but Iinstalled another machine that
they had earlier on, a couple ofyears earlier, and so, anyway,
this nagging issue was going onand um, so I ended up getting
there within an hour, fix theissue.
The guys are super happy.
The two owners took me out forlunch and we were talking and
they're like, hey, we're lookingat expanding, uh, maybe opening
(04:35):
up a plan in Chicago.
You know, do you, would youhave any interest in running
that for us?
And I think at the time I wasprobably I don't know 25, 26.
And I'm like, what the hell doI know about running a company?
And no, you know, I appreciatethe offer, you know.
No, thank you.
And then, I don't know, maybe amonth later I was back home.
I was just having some fish frywith my parents on like a
(04:57):
Friday night at a bar inNorthern Wisconsin and then we
were.
I was kind of laughing aboutwhat, what had happened.
And then so my mom, who's beenin the paper industry forever,
she was like hey, why why notyou?
You know, if they're asking youto do it and you know the
equipment why not you?
Why not?
Why not go and research, createa business plan and figure out
(05:17):
if, if you're you know, if youcan do it on your own, just
Greenfield started and put moneyyou've saved over the last
whatever five, six years andfigure out if it makes any sense
.
So I talked to one of two of theoriginal owners of Marquip who
I worked with.
The minority owner was boughtout in the mid nineties and then
(05:41):
he became a consultant.
So I went and talked to him andhe liked the idea.
Basically, I went from being anemployee of Marquip to being
one of the largest customers ofMarquip by buying sheeting
equipment for them as we startedthe Northwoods paper converting
business and then grown in over20 years prior to selling it.
(06:01):
So yeah, it was a cool story.
I talked to Richard Thomas.
He was the minority owner ofMarquip and then consultant.
A great guy, super talented.
He's got a PhD, phd degree inelectrical engineering, did some
really cool designs on the youknow, with drives and power
(06:24):
supplies and four phase motorsand all this stuff from Mark
Webb.
Really they had advancements intechnologies that most in the
paper industry didn't have.
But so I met with Richard and hewas like hey, yeah, you gotta,
you know, like the idea.
First thing I recommend isfinding a business, you know, a
business partner, somebody youcould trust if something ever
happened to you, where he or sheyou know can run with the
(06:47):
business and continue to grow it.
And you know, somebody maybeyour future wife and kids could
trust if something ever happenedto you.
So I called Jim, who also wentto Michigan Tech, jim Morrow,
and, like I said, he was atrainer for a couple of years
while Chris and I playedfootball up there, and convinced
(07:07):
Jimmy, who was in theautomobile industry, to resign
from where he was working andtry to make a go of this
contract sheeting opportunity oridea.
So, yeah, so we started off.
We um that's the time we were 28years old and um talked to many
(07:29):
different people within thepaper industry, got advice from
different uh people and advisorsum come across a really good
advisor from us in theMinneapolis area told us that,
hey, if you ever really decideto get into this, you guys
should add large format sheetingto the normal sheeting business
that everybody else is in,which is more of a commodity.
(07:52):
And we kind of followed hisdirection and interviewed paper
mills and printers and merchantsand so on and so forth and we
got some people to commit to usand gave us basically a letter
of credit that we could take toa bank and allow us to buy our
first sheeter.
And the first sheeter we boughtwas obviously a Marquip, who I
(08:14):
previously worked for, and weworked with them on the design
of it, since Marquip had neverbuilt a fine paper sheeter.
They were mostly sheeters thatran solid fiber, which is like a
, a cereal box material, so, um,so it was interesting and you
know, so we, you know we got, wegot a building in, uh, central
(08:34):
Wisconsin, which we thought wasa great place to locate, between
Chicago and Minneapolis, whichwere both big print markets.
And, um, you know, we startedup, we had a couple of employees
, we worked crazy hours from Allright.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
You got to stop there Cause we, we got to go back on
a couple.
There's so many things Ellen'sjust dying to ask, so we're
going to pick it back up afteryou started, but go ahead.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah.
So here you, you, you decide totake the deal.
You, you know the equipment,but do you know sales?
Do you know how to hire people?
Do you know how to get the realestate?
And oh, by the way, now you'reactually working with a machine
that you essentially had toinvent that then you went and
got the money from the bank.
I mean, there's a lot of movingparts.
How did you manage all that?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Well one, it was nice being 28, where you're full of
piss and vinegar right and uh,in some ways, you don't know how
dumb you are yeah.
So I mean, now I look at it, I'mlike holy cripes, would I do
that again, you know, if I hadfour kids and married and it's
now and there's no way.
So for me, when I worked as afield engineer, mar Marquip was
(09:43):
really good in allowing peopleto develop on their own.
They put you in the fire andyou had to figure stuff out.
You became a man real quick.
And so when we first started,you know, as a field engineer,
I'd be on the road for months ata time, working seven days a
week, 12, 14 hours a day, so it.
You know I grew a lot from that.
(10:05):
And so when we started thebusiness, you know it was the
same thing, except I didn't haveto travel anymore.
It was 14, 16 hours a day,seven days a week.
And you know, and then Jimmy, Ijust needed him to adapt
because he came out of aenvironment where he was more
office work and, you know,working whatever 50 hours a week
versus 80 hours a week.
And so, yeah, it was neat, it's, there was no doubt it was.
(10:29):
You know, we kind of walked.
I mean, we had advisors whichwere, which were huge, which
included my mother, and I toldyou about Richard Thomas and
then this gentleman out ofMinneapolis, and they kind of
you know, so we were kind ofsporadic and then, like Richard,
we talked to Richard.
He's like no, this is the wayyou got to go.
You know, you got to zone inhere, this is where you got to
go.
And so we were great atlistening.
(10:50):
And then we were kind of theguys that put in all the work,
blood, sweat and tears.
Um, so, yeah, it was.
Yeah it was.
Either.
You got to get lucky, right,you got to be in the game to get
lucky, and along the way yougot to get a little bit lucky.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Well, but you got to be good, and the fact that there
are a lot of people that getinto business who don't want the
advice because they can do itby themselves.
And I was going to.
I was thinking, when you weretalking about your advisors, are
they the kind of advisors thatyou consulted with before you
made a decision, or was it afteryou made a mistake?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Right, no, no, this was all before.
You know this.
You know we did as much as wecould up front, so we had, you
know.
So we kind of made an educateddecision on moving forward.
So, yeah, and you know, withoutthem we wouldn't be anywhere
near where we were, you know,because we used all three of the
advisors for heavily the firstfive years of our growth of the
(11:44):
business.
Advisors for heavily the firstfive years of our growth of the
business.
And, as you had asked, like youknow, did we have any HR
experience?
No, you know, I was a fieldengineer, basically working on
my own in the field.
From time to time I'd haveother engineers with me and then
, of course, I was at customers'plants.
So you're dealing with peoplethat were janitors to presidents
of the company, you know, andeverything in between, with
operators, presidents of thecompany, you know, and
(12:05):
everything in between withoperators, maintenance guys,
engineers, so on and so forth.
So so, yeah, it was good.
We, you know, we got kicked outof a couple of banks when we
were first looking to borrowmoney, just because they're like
you guys are what.
You're 28 years old, you thinkyou're going to start a business
from scratch and you don't haveany customers right like yep,
that's exactly where we're at.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
There's one thing you kind of slipped in there really
quick that I think is reallylost on a lot of people.
At 28, you had actually savedmoney and your mom said you
should save At 28, saving money.
The only money I saved by 28was the stuff that my dad told
me I had to put away in a 401k,because that way he says, if you
don't see it, you won't touchit.
And thank God he did thatbecause that's still my
(12:51):
retirement money.
But a lot of people don't saveand don't realize you have to
have that money.
The bank ain't just going togive you the money and the bank
ain't going to do this.
And the bank and the SBAthey're going to do it.
They'll give you some money butthey're going to do it to you.
Man, that number right now forthe SBA loan, I mean it's a
pretty penny.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I mean you're it's a big number right now.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, so how much did you have to raise and how much
did you have to get we had about250,000 that we started with.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
So it wasn't I mean, that was significant to us at
the time but we borrowed amillion from the bank to buy the
first machine.
The advantage we also had withthe machine was if our business
plan or our idea didn't work out, as a contract paper converter
I knew the equipment so I coulduninstall the equipment and
(13:39):
reinstall it and sell it becauseit was somewhat of a prototype
and it was the first fine papersheeter for Markweb that I
didn't think that I was going tolose any money out of the
million because it was aprototype.
So I got it at a discount.
We worked out a deal like amarketing deal with Markweb so
that they could bring customersin and see the machine run even
(14:00):
though it was our plant.
So that helped us and reducedthe cost.
So net, net, I figured like,okay, worst case, you know, jim
and I lose the 250,000 and yes,that's significant, but we're 30
, 31, 32 years old and we canrebound and and move on.
So that was a big part of ourdecision-making too, was you
(14:24):
know, we just figured, hey,we're young, but people believed
in us.
They believed in ourbackgrounds being engineers,
knowing the equipment, cominginto an industry was kind of
dominated by salespeople thatowned the converting companies
that were our competition.
(14:45):
That really helped us when wewould go and talk to whoever
printers, paper mills, whatever,you know.
We come in with engineeringbackground, knowing the
equipment inside and out, sothat really helped us.
And then the biggest thing waswe had a niche that nobody else
had.
We could precision sheet, largeformat sheeting.
That was kind of like, I said,the gentleman that was our
(15:06):
advisor in Minneapolis that gotour foot in the door in a lot of
different mills and stuff whereothers, where the paper mills,
had to take these big, largeformat sheets that were going to
eventually into printingpresses, they'd have to put them
on a guillotine and it wouldtake time.
There was long, long lead timesthat add a lot of waste, there
(15:27):
was injuries, so on and so forth, and we could actually
precision sheet it.
So that was kind of our if youwant to call it your why, right,
you know every business.
I don't know if you've everread the book by Simon Sinek.
Yeah, start with why.
I mean that that book is reallygood and that's kind of how
(15:48):
almost every business you know.
The why is what's your niche?
You know why are they going touse you, you know is somebody
going to buy from you, or youknow whatever rent from you, buy
your services, so on and soforth.
So I think that's a key in anyand all businesses is how do you
differentiate yourself fromeverybody else?
And the more you candifferentiate yourself from
(16:10):
everybody else, obviously, themore you can charge because of
the more unique you are.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I mean you can't talk about a more commodity thing.
There are probably what I mean,10 of the most basic
commodities, but paper has gotto be one of those things.
Right, it's just such acommodity and obviously he's
talking about a really nichewithin the paper world.
But go in large format.
But Chad, going back to itagain, if you can't, guys, if
you guys can't figure this out,man, he's an engineer, but he's
(16:35):
not on the engineering spectrum.
He can actually talk to people.
He's a good sales guy.
But I want to go back to whatAlan was bringing up.
But I want to go back to whatAlan was bringing up.
I mean, you're starting it.
Who were your customers and howthe hell were?
you going to sell this shit, sothere was a lot a lot of funny
full stories early on.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
You know we, we weren't automated at the
beginning.
You know we, we had.
We have recycling.
So when you, when you cheat,take paper, we take rolls of
paper and convert them intosheets, and to do that you have
to take trim along the side.
(17:12):
You're going to get diverted,rejected sheets, and so we were
bailing all this stuff, if youwant to call it bailing.
But we were putting it into bigGaylords and we would take
rejected rolls that a paper millwould feel bad because we were
just starting up, and they wouldsend us rejected rolls that we
would use as like a compactor tocompact paper inside of
Gaylord's.
We could send it off to arecycler.
But uh, you know it's, uh, itwas just uh it was.
(17:35):
It was just a neat, a neat storyof how we started and um you
know how manual we were to whatwe became, and again to have
four people that initiallybelieved in us.
That allowed us to hire them.
You know, to come on board witha brand new company to what we
(17:56):
became was pretty incredible.
And then you know, a big partof it is Jim.
Like Jim was an amazingbusiness partner, you've got to
have a business partner thatbelieves in you and you believe
in him or her.
If you don't have that, youknow.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
We've got to talk about that one, because I can
tell you I know that's a big onefor you, alan, and we've talked
about this a lot there's areason I'm not a partner.
That's why I haven't taken on apartner.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Chris doesn't play well with others.
You may not know that.
He does know that.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You see that in person.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Well, here let me go back to the sales.
And so you know we were.
We were scraping for anythingand everything and again we got
to look, we got lucky.
You got to be in the game toget lucky.
When I say we got lucky is sowe, we would start off in the in
the job lot side of sales.
So it's the bottom of thebottom, like nobody wants to do
that type of stuff.
But we had to start somewhere.
(18:49):
And then we had a paper millit's called Temboard, they're
out of Canada, and they werehaving some coding issues in a
certain span of time and so someof the converters weren't happy
with them and they weren'thappy with the converters and it
was just perfect timing wherethey were looking for a new
converter.
(19:09):
And then, but you know, wefound them, they found us, and
then they moved their businessand we were about nine months in
, I think it was October of 2000.
And we were getting tighterwith cash.
You know spent.
We spent a lot of the $250,000of working capital.
And I remember calling Ginny,my mother, and I'm like hey, mom
(19:31):
, I said you know, we've gotthese three big projects coming
on.
One was a printer which cameour way because another
converter messed up.
They may have a quality issue.
So obviously again you getlucky because you're in the game
.
But I said Jenny, I said hey,you know, if these guys don't
come on, we're not going to makepayroll next month.
I said what's your advice?
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Now my mother is a.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
CPA and she, you know , and so she was a controller of
different paper mills, asenator, vp of finance, blah,
blah, blah blah and she comesback and she's like well, you
better start applying for creditcards.
And I'm like great advice,thanks.
Like what the hell does that dofor me?
Basically what she's saying islike she's basically saying hey,
you better get your ass out onthe road and get the sales,
(20:13):
because nobody's going to bethere to help.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
road and get, get the sales because nobody's going to
be there to help.
So it was great advice, it wasfunny, but that is funny.
So you probably went theregoing, hey, ma, can I get a loan
?
And she's like, hey, chad, um,how about you go get some credit
cards or get your ass in thecar like tommy boy and go sell
some shit out there?
Hey, let's make it happen.
So is that what happened, is it?
Pretty much?
Jim took care of the, uh, the,the warehouse, and making the
operations work.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Yeah, so you know, jim and I uh, yeah, so early on,
uh, I had to train jimmy justto learn how to run a sheeter
and this and that, whatever.
But we would do anything andeverything, from taking calls,
sales hunting, you know, huntingfor sales, building skids,
running the sheeters, packaging,so on, so forth.
I mean, I mean we, we got, we,uh, so we're both from niagara.
(20:58):
Niagara had a paper mill backin the day and they had, I don't
know like two truckloads ofcaper that they were just gonna
job lot.
And uh, jim's parents bothworked for niagara my mother
worked for niagara for a certainamount of time and um, so they,
you know, again I think theyjust felt bad.
So they're like, hey, you guyswant two truckloads of paper for
(21:19):
free.
And we're like, oh yeah, whatare we going to do with it?
So we figured out that we couldtake this paper and we wrapped
it into small, like 50 poundbundles and then I would be in
the plant running the product,because I mean, this was we're
trying to find cash in any, anyway possible and trying to find
you know what's our niche.
And um, and so jimmy's out, hewould rent a u-haul and then he
(21:43):
had, he would haul, he woulddrive down to like milwaukee,
chicago madison, selling tomoving companies these 50 pound
uh bundles of packaging paperthat you use for for moving and
stuff like that oh, that'shilarious.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
It is like tommy boy it is like jimmy, get in the
truck, get down there, startselling shit.
It doesn't hurt so much here,so much here, but right here
yeah.
So I mean it's.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
I mean I wish we would have, uh, had an iphone
back in those days.
You know, just to kind of, andthat was only in 2000.
Right, but I don't know it was.
It was really.
Again, you have to be in thegame to get lucky, I, I say that
all the time.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
I love that you got to be in the game to be lucky
Cause you're.
I mean, that's just so right.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
You obviously have to do your homework.
You got to put the blood, sweatand tears in you Obviously to
get lucky.
That means you did somethingpotentially right to get in the
game.
You know you did your researchand so on and so forth.
But you know, we, again we.
So we went from you knowcalling Jenny saying like hey,
what are we going to do nextmonth to the paper mill 10 board
(22:53):
I talked about.
They came on, they came onboard with us and then the
printer came on board and we hadthis job ladder.
That all came on board within amonth's time and we went from
Jimmy in a U-Haul sellingbundles of packaging paper to
basically running 24-5 within amonth or two.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
You know you talk about that, though, and I think
that's the that's the biggestthing.
You said a couple of things.
I think they're just killer.
That people don't realize isthat you know you got to wake up
every day and solve a problemas an entrepreneur.
We talked about that.
I said that in the beginning,but you guys did.
You called, you, called Jennyand said hey, here's what I got,
and she's like if you couldn'tlight a fire under somebody
who's already working 12 to 14hours a day.
(23:33):
She lit a fire, or she at leastbrought focus down to what you
had to do right now, in thesenext 30 days, and that's how you
make your luck, right?
We talked about that.
Yeah, I love your phrase in thegame to be lucky, but you've
also got to make your own luck,and you guys did that by buying
a little bit of time to see ifthose guys would actually hit,
and that you landed them.
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
yeah, after that, you know, our competition was
mostly a lot of them weresimilar to paper mills in that
the industry really changed alot, the print industry going
from standard size sheets to,like I said, large format sheets
.
And then the industry movedinto digital printing and
(24:14):
digital tiny small sheets.
And then the industry movedinto digital printing and
digital tiny small sheets and wetried to, or we worked with
Markup again on building adifferent style knife that
allowed, basically added anotherknife to their dual rotary
(24:40):
cylinders to allow them to runsuper fast in short sheets, or
the digital sheet market, whichagain was so?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
uh, hey, alan, what was your major?
Again?
Uh, to teach art.
So you just blew alan's mind.
You.
Just, you just laid down somany engineering.
I'm not lying, you blew my mind, you just laid out so many
engineering terms.
So you guys.
So you landed the first threeand now you guys are perfecting
and figuring out other ways, butyou're using your engineering
mind to solve those problems.
Like, hey, there's a newproblem going on because
probably in 2000, let's see,starting in 2000.
(25:05):
So 2003,.
Four, the internet reallystarts booming again.
Age yourself, just talktechnology.
And you probably heard death ofprinting.
Right, no papers ever going tohappen, ever again.
I just heard a stat and I wantto know if that's true there's
more print going on now thanthere was in 2000.
Is that true?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Honestly, I'd have to actually look that up.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
But I mean yeah, don't fact check me, let's just
go with it.
Call me Trump.
Baby, sounds good.
Call me Trump.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
A lot of people are printing stuff at your house now
, right, instead of wherever youknow.
You're printing out your ownbank statements or so on and so
forth.
So it's probably changed.
You know, from printing out atthe manufacturer there's
magazines or this and thatwhatever newspapers used to have
, and now people are printingmore things at home or at the
office or so on and so forth.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
No, that is amazing.
So you guys are in there,you're looking at it.
But you went back and said, hey, we got to come up with
something else that's going tokeep us on the forefront, keep
us not to be a paper commodity.
So you went back to Marquipbecause you had a great
relationship and again you'redownplaying it.
But, man, I just know for afact that you worked those
networks, you worked Markquip,you worked your customers.
(26:17):
I know you did a good thing.
You do the right thing bypeople.
I just know that about you.
But tell me how you were ableto instill that in your sales
guys, because you actuallyscaled to a level to be able to
sell.
So how were you able to takeChad and Jim's commitment who
did every job in the companyever and then turn it into
saying, all right, here's whatwe're about.
And how do you do that?
(26:37):
How do you bring that down topeople?
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Well, the nice thing is that maybe it's the
engineering background that weall have that we were very
hands-on.
So Jim and I were the salesguys.
So we, we were till the veryend, till we sold the business.
But one thing that was uniqueis everybody that was all our
teammates that worked with us.
(27:01):
They all seen that Jim and Iwould work just as hard as them.
We were on the floor, we wererunning sheeters, we were
packaging, we were buildingskids, we were loading and
unloading semis, we were bailing, so on and so forth.
We did all the stuff in theoffice.
Now, obviously, that changed aswe grew, because we went from
(27:22):
four employees to we bought ourown building or built our own
building, and then we expandedinto Pennsylvania.
We ended up with like 240employees, 15 years in employees
, 15 years in.
So we couldn't be, you know, onthe floor all the time running.
You know cheaters every singleday because we just couldn't.
(27:44):
So then it was a change, right.
So you start off, it was alearn.
You know, we learned a lot.
Again, our advisors werefantastic the whole time because
they guided us the whole way,like okay, so hey, all right, we
filled up one cheater.
What do we do next?
Well, maybe you guys got tolook at buying a building or
renting a building or finding adifferent facility.
So then we did, and we you knowBeaver Dam we moved to Beaver
Dam.
They borrowed us money to builda building.
(28:06):
We started a second company thereal estate, the commercial
property side of the company.
We paid ourself instead ofpaying somebody else to rent.
That allowed us to buy thebuilding after three years.
And so then we were buildingtwo businesses, right?
I mean, obviously, the easy onewas commercial properties.
But as we continued to evolveand gain momentum and informing
(28:31):
people who we were and how wewere different versus all the
other contract converters thatwere in the paper industry and
that we could, you know that weknew the equipment that we can
run large format plus all thecommodity sizes and and a lot of
it was just belief.
And then having peopleoutperforming everybody else.
You know you're outworkingeverybody else.
You're, you know you'reinstantaneously getting back to
(28:56):
people.
You know if other competitorstook them a day or three to get
back to them, and we were, youknow we were responding
immediately.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
It all played a big part and um, and then you have
to find the right teammates,right um so, yes, it sounds like
did you find the right teammateevery single time, all the time
, because, let me tell you theanti.
let me tell you the anti side ofthat.
Yeah, so in the handymanbusiness, alan and Chad I chose
the wrong business anddefinitely didn't scale.
(29:25):
And no, I did.
I'm just joking, but I have tokiss a lot of frogs to find that
prince and man.
Dude, it was tough.
I mean I've got, I have.
Now.
You know, my average tenure nowis seven years, but when I
first started it was sevenmonths.
I mean, I mean and I mean forthe first four years if I kept
somebody for seven months, I'mlike you who I got a long term
(29:46):
employee.
So how did you guys find them?
What was?
Did you guys have a secretsauce that we should all be
looking for?
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Oh, you're in a small community when we started and
we probably hired 20 employeesthere.
So I think being in thatsmaller community helped.
And as we moved to Beaver Dam,which was only 15 miles away,
but a bigger community, you know, I think it had a lot to do, a
lot of different things.
One, we were new to thecommunity, right, so there was a
lot of news about it.
(30:14):
Hey, northwood's paperconverting just moved into town,
building a 60,000 square footfacility.
Then Jim and I were activewithin the community.
We were on certain boards.
We were on the YMCA board andwe would become a part of a lot
of nonprofit organizations,organizations.
(30:37):
We, you know, we had our own 5krace that we eventually started
and donated all the money.
So we were involved in thecommunity, so that you know our
name stayed out in the community.
And then here again, I think,since we were on the floor a lot
when we were growing early on,employees or teammates really
like to see that they they'relike hey, this is a little bit
(30:59):
different, right, we weren'tbigger, where they never seen
the boss as much or this, that,whatever.
And don't get me wrong, when wewere at 240 employees, like I
said, Jim and I couldn't be onthe floor all the time anymore,
but early on it really helped usgrow and a lot of those initial
employees, original teammatesthey're still with Beaver Dam to
(31:22):
this day, even after we soldthe business six years ago.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Really, you created a culture by being on the floor
though, yeah, and they passed onto the new people 100%.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
I think the thing that a lot of people might miss
on this is that the culture thathe showed was there is nothing
beneath me.
I've done every job in thiscompany I have cleaned a toilet,
I have taken out the garbageand I have talked to our biggest
account that we have today, andI'm willing to put in the hours
.
If you're willing to go with me, I'm going to invite you on
this journey and let's go do it.
So the culture.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Yeah, that's.
The key is a culture right.
A hundred percent Yep.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, that's awesome Developing that culture.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
But why, you know, as as we grew you we had to find,
we had to find teammates thatcould allow us to grow right
Like Jim and I had to free upwith some of the momentum that
we had, you know, and interestand continual growth.
So we were fortunate to hire,like we hired, jim's brother, um
, who worked, uh, in the officewith us and um, the anna on the
(32:24):
floor.
He had it up like safety anddid a lot of customer service
work for us and other.
My sister came on and she washead of accounting and h, so we
had a couple of friends fromhigh school that worked with us
in production as operators andmanagers, and so you had people
(32:45):
that you trusted or that we werefortunate enough to work with
as teammates, that we couldtrust and hand off stuff,
because Jim and I we didn'tmicromanage.
It was just like hey, here,this is what we got to do, you
got to do this, we got to go dothat, so on and so forth and um.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
so yeah, we found so how did you and jim as engineers
?
Uh, because here again,engineers on the spectrum, it's
hard.
I mean, you can't have.
You can't be an engineer andhave a personality.
In fact, chad is proving thatyou can.
But when I meet people they'relike I've actually literally.
I told someone I'm like yeah, Igot an engineering degree.
The guy looked at me and goesno way, I was a little bit
(33:24):
different than everybody else, Ihave to admit.
I didn't know it at the time,but I was, and so was Chad, and
that's why we got along so well.
So, as you're doing that andyou're handing off things, how
hard was that?
And did you ever get burned indoing it?
And where you went?
Oh, shouldn't have done it,jimmy, we got to get back on the
floor, or you know what?
I'm not going to let them dothis anymore.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
No, I think you know we, we kind of knew what our
goal was Right and the only waywe were going to get to that
goal with continual growth,whatever that meant, you know
there wasn't.
We didn't have anything in thetop.
You know, we weren't sales guys, if you want to call it that,
and we didn't have a number outthere to say, hey, we got to get
to 10 million in sales by thisyear, next year, five years from
(34:04):
now.
We just kind of took things dayby day and, um, yeah, we, just,
you know, we, we were fortunateto find great teammates and um,
teammates who believed in usand then find customers who
believed in us and yeah, theyloved our story.
Right Again, we came in with alittle bit different background
(34:26):
than most people for thecontract paper converting
industry, being engineers and Ithink for me it's always been
and, and Jim, um, we were veryopen, right, we were honest
people, we're open, we were openbook.
Um, what you saw was what yougot you know, our offices
(34:47):
probably weren't as clean asmost other people's offices, but
it didn't matter.
It's like you know.
So you know, we didn't come inin suit and tie.
We came in with a polo shirtand jeans, and that's who we
were.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Dungarees, my friends dungarees so you obviously had
to have a business plan to getthe loan from the bank.
Yes, my first question is didyou continually reference that?
Because then I hear, okay, wewere just scrambling trying to
sell paper to moving companies.
Reference that because then Ihear, okay, we were just
scrambling trying to sell paperto moving companies and then all
of a sudden, boom, a couple ofthings happen and you're 24 five
(35:21):
and at that point did you guyssit back and start planning Like
we may need a safety person,because now, all of a sudden,
we've got all these people, wemay need an HR person, we may.
You know, at what point did youactually start trying to
strategic plan?
Cause it seems like that's moreof a backfill than a proactive.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
I would say it was like the so in our toward the
second to third year as we werelooking to grow and add a second
sheeter.
You know we were running 24seven and we knew that.
You know we had more businessto grow with and we were
fortunate that you know, likeJim's brother had some you know,
(36:03):
knowledge and in the paperindustry and and and would take
on, you know, safety and otherthings for us.
And then Kim kind of beingdeveloped by Jenny, my mother.
She's a CPA.
Kim didn't have a four-yearaccounting degree but had like a
two-year HR degree and then HRroles in the past, you know.
(36:26):
So Kim was of interest to usbecause Jenny could train Kim in
accounting.
So we kind of got our HRaccounting fill and teammates
accounting.
So we kind of got our HRaccounting fill and teammates.
And yeah, and to me, like Isaid to me some of that's luck
that you know you had peoplearound you that could help your
weaknesses, because Jim and Iaren't experts in I mean we we
(36:48):
became to figure out sales butreally the sales to us was just
selling the people that workedwith us and the equipment that
we purchased and what it coulddo.
I mean there wasn't reallyanything special about being a
sales guy and just being honestand talking open.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
All right, we got to.
Uh, we're coming to the end.
I just, I love the journey andI knew this was gonna happen and
I gotta I gotta tell everybody.
So Chad is one of the mosthumble guys I've I have actually
ever met.
I mean, he's just, he won't saywhat I'm about to say.
Man, he fucking killed it.
And what he doesn't say is yeah, I use my engineering expertise
(37:26):
and my sales expertise and myability to network and use and
leverage my people to help meget to where I wanted to go.
And that's how by the way, Ithink that's how he got his wife
, because he definitelyoutkicked his coverage.
Hey, now, come on, now I'mkidding, and, uh, his kids are
killing it too.
You're doing a great job.
But now we got to talk aboutnirvana.
So when chad, there's more, ohwait.
So when chad and I reconnected,he kind of was, oh shucks, yeah
(37:49):
, I sold my company.
Oh shucks, yeah, it was forlike that number.
You're like and I'm like I, I,so I, I I'd like, uh, he's
texting.
I was like oh, I'm so happy foryou.
No, you're not.
Nobody is you're like, take mewith you.
How'd you do it?
Speaker 2 (38:03):
so I'm surprised you didn't change his number and
that you didn't have the new one.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
No, I was I'm super happy for me.
I can't even tell you this, butwe uh, we got like 10 minutes
left, but I just could, realquick, you tell people you were
you looking for the exit, didyou plan for the exit or did it
just happen?
Speaker 3 (38:22):
so we had a customer, a paper mill, that was talking
with us about trying to growinto Minnesota and California
and we were already in the Eastand the Midwest.
Our biggest competitor,progressive Converting, who
ended up buying us, was national.
They had a facility out Eastand the Midwest.
(38:44):
They had one in Minnesota andCalifornia and Virginia and they
tried to buy us out in 2006 and2010 or 11, something like that
or not buy us out.
I think maybe the first timewas looking to buy us out or
partial merge, and then thesecond one was merge, and so I
approached them.
The market didn't needadditional converting, it just
(39:06):
needed to.
You know, it needed to makeitself healthier, right, and
somebody needed to buy a coupleof guys out, and so I went back.
So Jim and I went back toProcon and said, hey, we've got
an opportunity with the mill.
Whether you like it or not,it's up to you.
You've talked about buying usin the past.
(39:30):
Here's who we are.
This is our PA plant.
This is our Wisconsin plant.
They were close to us in PA.
Their plant from our plant waslike I don't know, a half hour
away from each other.
So the only way they would beinterested in our East plan is,
if we were to close it down,they'd buy a lot of the
equipment.
They would offer theopportunity for our employees or
teammates out East to work withthem.
(39:52):
So that's what we did.
And then Wisconsin still runsas it is today.
They couldn't absorb Wisconsinbecause it was too big at the
time and maybe still is.
It's still a very profitableplant for progressive converting
.
But yeah, it was a greatmarriage for them.
Jim and I stayed on for twoyears it's kind of a handoff and
(40:21):
then they exercised theearn-out clause that allowed
them to let me go.
They already had theircorporate team, so I would have
done the same thing.
And then Jimmy was releasedabout a year after I left.
A great opportunity for thepeople that were within
Beaverdam because a lot of themgot to move up.
Our head of engineering andmaintenance he's now the plant
(40:41):
manager, so it was a great bumpfor him.
A lot of the other peoplewithin the organization withim
and I gone and and they let someof our csrs go and and kim go
from hr and accounting becausethat was at a corporate level.
So, um, so yeah, and you know,to get to the point of selling,
it was we just kind of day today, you know we would.
We didn't really have like, hey, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta
(41:03):
retire by a certain, we gottasell by a certain point.
It was just a feel thing.
It was just like, okay, it kindof feels right right now.
And, and you know, fortunately,we had, uh, you know, some
conversations with progressiveconverting in the past, uh,
stating that they had interestand we had some interest in them
, cause we almost merged withthem in 2010.
(41:24):
So it just worked out, thetiming was right and for Procon
it's been fabulous.
They bought out.
You know, another convertershut down in the east, so
they're super healthy in theeast and in the Midwest they
bought another one of theirlargest competitors.
So and you know they're kind ofthe go-to guys.
Now you know they've got allthe different paper mills,
(41:45):
they've got all the flexibilitythat the paper mills would need
when they outsource converting.
So, yeah, it's a great successstory in many ways and hopefully
, you know, a lot of people asklike, hey, you regret?
No, I don't regret anything.
I think it was the right thingto do.
I think it was the right thingfor the industry.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
I think it needed to consolidate some and then since
paper mills have consolidated,so so you are one of the and
this is a stat you are one ofthe 3% of the no regret sale
clause.
There are only 3% of people whosell their businesses that have
no regrets.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Did you pull?
Speaker 1 (42:22):
that out of your ass?
No, chris Hanks.
Sell their businesses.
They have no regrets.
Did you pull that out of yourass?
no, uh, chris hanks oh okay, ohyeah, chris hanks, who runs my
ceo group, has mentioned thatand it's.
It comes from books and itcomes from studies.
So, chad man, that that part isawesome and that's why I, uh, I
love hearing the story you cantell, even if it's not your
business, right?
I'm not talking about paper.
I'm talking about what chad didis he took a paper market,
(42:44):
which I mean literally, thatthat's a commodity.
A paper is a, I mean you can'tget more commodities.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Love this.
It's such an american midwest.
Yeah, I might do it.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
I freaking love it and I did say humble I, I
actually was biting my tongue asother than the freaking packers
, jesus, lord, I mean I wastrying to find, like a Packer
helmet to wear for thisinterview.
So no, but uh, it just again agreat story, because I mean it's
from beginning to end.
And taking that chance, and Iyou know, I go talk to high
(43:16):
school kids I'm like I don'tcare, when you start a business
there's, you're never too young,but you can always be
unprepared and don't beunprepared.
I don't care how old you are.
And Chad alluded to it, but hereally was prepared because he
had saved, he had mentors, hewas in the business, he saw an
opportunity and he also knew therebound.
The rebound plan was hey, if itdoesn't work, at least I can
(43:38):
uninstall and reinstall andmaybe at least get neutral.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
He didn't have the experience, but he had a plan
Right.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
I think so yeah, again.
I mean looking back on it, Imean it's just yeah, amazing
story.
When he told me the deal andthen I'm thinking, oh awesome,
he's out.
Okay, good, chad, I'm coming up, I'm going to stay at your lake
house, we're going to toolaround the lake and then we're
going to the Packers and I go upthere and we do all that and he
goes, yeah, so I'm back in Likedude what?
(44:08):
Because you knew he can't.
I mean you could tell from theguy already he's got too much
energy, he just can't do.
It Sounds like another podcastcoming, or the wife picked him
up and said, hey, we can't livetogether.
If you're going to stay home.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
It's interesting.
So I met another gentleman from, or not.
I knew another gentleman fromNiagara, which is where I'm from
, we're gyms from.
Also, my other business partnerand TJ knew about this
opportunity within the packagingindustry and so, yeah, we
looked at it and then we co-ownAll About Packaging and it's
(44:42):
different.
So it's the same thing, like wedidn't greenfield started.
So you're kind of you'reinheriting, uh, what was there?
Their, their culture, theirbackground, this now, whatever,
and then you're trying to tweakit to growth in the future and
find your why, and again, you'retrying to, um, bring maybe your
past and culture into it.
(45:04):
Um, so it it's and it's unique.
Every opportunity is unique toanother no, it's been.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
It's awesome what he did.
He got back involved what'sfunny.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I would love to talk to him about that on another
episode, because that's acompletely different animal.
But before you go, I mean, ischris welcome back at lambo?
Oh, oh, yeah, for sure, awesomeman, you wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
So we got these tickets right behind the Lions
bench and we were all pumped upright away.
I think they threw first dryand Lions threw a pick, and
we're going nuts, we go and wescore.
It's 7-0.
And I don't think we scoredagain.
I think it had to be like 48-7.
So we were all over all theLions fans there's a bunch of
(45:47):
Lions fans around us and then wedidn't say another word the
whole time.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
But Chris.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
We're getting hammered.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Oh yeah, actually, he hasn't seen the video.
Jerry videoed me and you cansee the entire crowd started
moving away and there's thesefour women with they wear the
packer overalls, right, and sothey had the green stripes and
the yellow stripes and there'sjust me and them and they're
moving away and he swears.
In his video he sees a guncoming out getting ready to take
(46:16):
me down and uh, that's whatthey.
It's so fun, but no, it was.
I mean lambo is uh, it that,that, that and that's on my
bucket list.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Oh, I'm telling you what.
You know that Chris was prettyquiet the whole day.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah, yeah, I've been to a couple events with him, oh
my.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
God as soon as the Lions got up 10-7, 14-7, he
didn't stop talking no, there'sno way.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
No, I did not stop talking, not until we got back
to the truck and then youstarted driving.
Then, bam, I passed out again.
That's my job, chad.
This is awesome.
Thanks, buddy for coming on.
Uh, I know you helped ouraudience.
Hey, if you guys didn't learnsomething today, man, you got to
learn this right.
You can be a commodity.
You got to differentiateyourself and Chad, he laid it
down for you right.
If you think you're a introvert, if you think you're an
(47:01):
analytical guy, you got to gothe other way.
If you want to solve problemsevery day, you got to solve
problems every single day.
If you're not a solving problemguy and analytical guy and
you're really outgoingintroverted guy or extroverted
guy, you got to get back in andget that and find that partner.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
And you got to surround yourself with really
good people and good advisorsand take their advice.
And take that advice.
I love that.
Look for it before you've madethe mistake.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Love that Awesome.
Hey, Chad, this is awesome.
Hey guys, go out there, Make ithappen.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
We've got to get out of here because we've got to
roll to the next one.
Thanks, Cheers everybody.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
See you later, guys.
Tell me how you were able to instill that in your
sales guys, because you actuallyscaled to a level to be able to
sell.
So are we able to take Chad andJim's commitment who did every
job in the company ever and thenturn it into saying all right,
here's what we're about.
And how do you do that?
How do you bring that down topeople?
Welcome to the Small BusinessSafari, where I help guide you
(00:20):
to avoid those traps, pitfallsand dangers that lurk when
navigating the wild world ofsmall business ownership.
I'll share those gold nuggetsof information and invite guests
to help accelerate your ascentto that mountaintop of success.
It's a jungle out there and Iwant to help you traverse
through the levels of owningyour own business that can get
you bogged down and distract youfrom hitting your own personal
and professional goals.
So strap in adventure team andlet's take a ride through the
(00:42):
safari and get you to themountaintop.
Here we go.
Alan, another big day, big time.
If you're in the trucklistening, man, if you're a
hunter, I'm throwing a shout outto you.
Big guy.
I was talking to you earliertoday before we were taping this
episode.
You guys were all thinkingabout what do we do when we
(01:04):
start a business and all thethings I got to think about and
I want to get all this greatwisdom from people.
And he asked me two things, man, like can you just give me two
things, because I know you'reshort of time, because I was
running late, maybe running alittle fast, like I always do.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Let me slow down a little bit.
What did he want to do?
Speaker 1 (01:25):
He wants to start a handyman business in Colorado.
He had just moved to this town.
He asked me do you think I'mdreaming?
I didn't have a chance to saywell, it's going to be a tough
fall, bro, cause you don't havea lot of friends to build off of
if you just move there.
But, um, he wants to build hisown handyman business, but he
doesn't want it to take his timeor away from his family.
I said two things.
One one thing you got to learnis you always sell to your
lowest level of belief and yougot to believe you're worth the
(01:45):
money you're about to charge andyou're going to need to charge
twice as much as you're thinkingright now.
Two you got to wake up everymorning and go you're going to
solve a fucking problem today,because you're going to be
solving problems every day.
And that's who we got on todaymy boy, chad Abel.
I went to college with him atMichigan Tech.
(02:06):
We went to school forengineering, did the whole
engineering thing, but westarted to get back together
here lately and he startstelling me.
He said, well, yeah, as a matterof fact, well, I kind of sold
my business.
I'm like, do what.
I kind of got invested inanother business.
Do what.
I kind of think I'm going tostart another one.
I'm like, do what I said.
Dude, I got to have you on mypodcast.
I can't wait to hear this story.
Now Chad Abel is on and he'sgoing to talk to us about how
(02:28):
you looked at a business thatyou were in and how you figured
out a way to start a business inthat same business, in that
same area, in that same industry.
And so, chad, welcome.
Man.
Can't wait to have the audiencehear a little bit more about
your story.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I want to hear if chris was really all that in
college.
Well, hey, it all started withmy left guard, chris, right?
No, so he, he was an animal andthat's where it all started,
and actually my our, where mybusiness partner for northwood's
paper converting, which wegreenfield started.
He was our water boy, ourtrainer, so it must come all the
way back to michigan techfootball that's it.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
No name you, baby, that's what gottlieb called us.
No name you, that's right.
Well, frankly, we are, becausenobody at atlanta I come across
my son was waiting tables guysays comes up and, uh, he said
something about being frommichigan and my, my son goes hey
, go green.
He goes.
Oh, yeah, go white, he goes.
Well, actually I didn't go tostate.
I went to another school calledmichigan tech and he goes no
(03:25):
way.
That's where my dad went andthe guy's like, go huskies, tell
your dad go.
Yeah, I'm like, oh, that'sawesome.
So but chad, your story is, Ithink, really cool because you,
you took off, you got in theindustry and I want you to tell
that, the story about you got inthe in the business that you
did, and explain that a littlebit, but when that opportunity
came, so you can just give usthat background.
(03:47):
First, on the business and theindustry you're in.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, so, like Chris, my background was engineering
out of college and I worked fora company called Marquip which
manufactured corrugated andsheeting equipment, and I was a
field engineer sheetingequipment and I was a field
engineer and so I worked a loton irrigators and sheeters and I
(04:14):
was up in Toronto working on acheater that was having issues,
had issues for like six months.
I didn't install it but Iinstalled another machine that
they had earlier on, a couple ofyears earlier, and so, anyway,
this nagging issue was going onand um, so I ended up getting
there within an hour, fix theissue.
The guys are super happy.
The two owners took me out forlunch and we were talking and
they're like, hey, we're lookingat expanding, uh, maybe opening
(04:35):
up a plan in Chicago.
You know, do you, would youhave any interest in running
that for us?
And I think at the time I wasprobably I don't know 25, 26.
And I'm like, what the hell doI know about running a company?
And no, you know, I appreciatethe offer, you know.
No, thank you.
And then, I don't know, maybe amonth later I was back home.
I was just having some fish frywith my parents on like a
(04:57):
Friday night at a bar inNorthern Wisconsin and then we
were.
I was kind of laughing aboutwhat, what had happened.
And then so my mom, who's beenin the paper industry forever,
she was like hey, why why notyou?
You know, if they're asking youto do it and you know the
equipment why not you?
Why not?
Why not go and research, createa business plan and figure out
(05:17):
if, if you're you know, if youcan do it on your own, just
Greenfield started and put moneyyou've saved over the last
whatever five, six years andfigure out if it makes any sense
.
So I talked to one of two of theoriginal owners of Marquip who
I worked with.
The minority owner was boughtout in the mid nineties and then
(05:41):
he became a consultant.
So I went and talked to him andhe liked the idea.
Basically, I went from being anemployee of Marquip to being
one of the largest customers ofMarquip by buying sheeting
equipment for them as we startedthe Northwoods paper converting
business and then grown in over20 years prior to selling it.
(06:01):
So yeah, it was a cool story.
I talked to Richard Thomas.
He was the minority owner ofMarquip and then consultant.
A great guy, super talented.
He's got a PhD, phd degree inelectrical engineering, did some
really cool designs on the youknow, with drives and power
(06:24):
supplies and four phase motorsand all this stuff from Mark
Webb.
Really they had advancements intechnologies that most in the
paper industry didn't have.
But so I met with Richard and hewas like hey, yeah, you gotta,
you know, like the idea.
First thing I recommend isfinding a business, you know, a
business partner, somebody youcould trust if something ever
happened to you, where he or sheyou know can run with the
(06:47):
business and continue to grow it.
And you know, somebody maybeyour future wife and kids could
trust if something ever happenedto you.
So I called Jim, who also wentto Michigan Tech, jim Morrow,
and, like I said, he was atrainer for a couple of years
while Chris and I playedfootball up there, and convinced
(07:07):
Jimmy, who was in theautomobile industry, to resign
from where he was working andtry to make a go of this
contract sheeting opportunity oridea.
So, yeah, so we started off.
We um that's the time we were 28years old and um talked to many
(07:29):
different people within thepaper industry, got advice from
different uh people and advisorsum come across a really good
advisor from us in theMinneapolis area told us that,
hey, if you ever really decideto get into this, you guys
should add large format sheetingto the normal sheeting business
that everybody else is in,which is more of a commodity.
(07:52):
And we kind of followed hisdirection and interviewed paper
mills and printers and merchantsand so on and so forth and we
got some people to commit to usand gave us basically a letter
of credit that we could take toa bank and allow us to buy our
first sheeter.
And the first sheeter we boughtwas obviously a Marquip, who I
(08:14):
previously worked for, and weworked with them on the design
of it, since Marquip had neverbuilt a fine paper sheeter.
They were mostly sheeters thatran solid fiber, which is like a
, a cereal box material, so, um,so it was interesting and you
know, so we, you know we got, wegot a building in, uh, central
(08:34):
Wisconsin, which we thought wasa great place to locate, between
Chicago and Minneapolis, whichwere both big print markets.
And, um, you know, we startedup, we had a couple of employees
, we worked crazy hours from Allright.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
You got to stop there Cause we, we got to go back on
a couple.
There's so many things Ellen'sjust dying to ask, so we're
going to pick it back up afteryou started, but go ahead.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah.
So here you, you, you decide totake the deal.
You, you know the equipment,but do you know sales?
Do you know how to hire people?
Do you know how to get the realestate?
And oh, by the way, now you'reactually working with a machine
that you essentially had toinvent that then you went and
got the money from the bank.
I mean, there's a lot of movingparts.
How did you manage all that?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Well one, it was nice being 28, where you're full of
piss and vinegar right and uh,in some ways, you don't know how
dumb you are yeah.
So I mean, now I look at it, I'mlike holy cripes, would I do
that again, you know, if I hadfour kids and married and it's
now and there's no way.
So for me, when I worked as afield engineer, mar Marquip was
(09:43):
really good in allowing peopleto develop on their own.
They put you in the fire andyou had to figure stuff out.
You became a man real quick.
And so when we first started,you know, as a field engineer,
I'd be on the road for months ata time, working seven days a
week, 12, 14 hours a day, so it.
You know I grew a lot from that.
(10:05):
And so when we started thebusiness, you know it was the
same thing, except I didn't haveto travel anymore.
It was 14, 16 hours a day,seven days a week.
And you know, and then Jimmy, Ijust needed him to adapt
because he came out of aenvironment where he was more
office work and, you know,working whatever 50 hours a week
versus 80 hours a week.
And so, yeah, it was neat, it's, there was no doubt it was.
(10:29):
You know, we kind of walked.
I mean, we had advisors whichwere, which were huge, which
included my mother, and I toldyou about Richard Thomas and
then this gentleman out ofMinneapolis, and they kind of
you know, so we were kind ofsporadic and then, like Richard,
we talked to Richard.
He's like no, this is the wayyou got to go.
You know, you got to zone inhere, this is where you got to
go.
And so we were great atlistening.
(10:50):
And then we were kind of theguys that put in all the work,
blood, sweat and tears.
Um, so, yeah, it was.
Yeah it was.
Either.
You got to get lucky, right,you got to be in the game to get
lucky, and along the way yougot to get a little bit lucky.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Well, but you got to be good, and the fact that there
are a lot of people that getinto business who don't want the
advice because they can do itby themselves.
And I was going to.
I was thinking, when you weretalking about your advisors, are
they the kind of advisors thatyou consulted with before you
made a decision, or was it afteryou made a mistake?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Right, no, no, this was all before.
You know this.
You know we did as much as wecould up front, so we had, you
know.
So we kind of made an educateddecision on moving forward.
So, yeah, and you know, withoutthem we wouldn't be anywhere
near where we were, you know,because we used all three of the
advisors for heavily the firstfive years of our growth of the
(11:44):
business.
Advisors for heavily the firstfive years of our growth of the
business.
And, as you had asked, like youknow, did we have any HR
experience?
No, you know, I was a fieldengineer, basically working on
my own in the field.
From time to time I'd haveother engineers with me and then
, of course, I was at customers'plants.
So you're dealing with peoplethat were janitors to presidents
of the company, you know, andeverything in between, with
operators, presidents of thecompany, you know, and
(12:05):
everything in between withoperators, maintenance guys,
engineers, so on and so forth.
So so, yeah, it was good.
We, you know, we got kicked outof a couple of banks when we
were first looking to borrowmoney, just because they're like
you guys are what.
You're 28 years old, you thinkyou're going to start a business
from scratch and you don't haveany customers right like yep,
that's exactly where we're at.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
There's one thing you kind of slipped in there really
quick that I think is reallylost on a lot of people.
At 28, you had actually savedmoney and your mom said you
should save At 28, saving money.
The only money I saved by 28was the stuff that my dad told
me I had to put away in a 401k,because that way he says, if you
don't see it, you won't touchit.
And thank God he did thatbecause that's still my
(12:51):
retirement money.
But a lot of people don't saveand don't realize you have to
have that money.
The bank ain't just going togive you the money and the bank
ain't going to do this.
And the bank and the SBAthey're going to do it.
They'll give you some money butthey're going to do it to you.
Man, that number right now forthe SBA loan, I mean it's a
pretty penny.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I mean you're it's a big number right now.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, so how much did you have to raise and how much
did you have to get we had about250,000 that we started with.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
So it wasn't I mean, that was significant to us at
the time but we borrowed amillion from the bank to buy the
first machine.
The advantage we also had withthe machine was if our business
plan or our idea didn't work out, as a contract paper converter
I knew the equipment so I coulduninstall the equipment and
(13:39):
reinstall it and sell it becauseit was somewhat of a prototype
and it was the first fine papersheeter for Markweb that I
didn't think that I was going tolose any money out of the
million because it was aprototype.
So I got it at a discount.
We worked out a deal like amarketing deal with Markweb so
that they could bring customersin and see the machine run even
(14:00):
though it was our plant.
So that helped us and reducedthe cost.
So net, net, I figured like,okay, worst case, you know, jim
and I lose the 250,000 and yes,that's significant, but we're 30
, 31, 32 years old and we canrebound and and move on.
So that was a big part of ourdecision-making too, was you
(14:24):
know, we just figured, hey,we're young, but people believed
in us.
They believed in ourbackgrounds being engineers,
knowing the equipment, cominginto an industry was kind of
dominated by salespeople thatowned the converting companies
that were our competition.
(14:45):
That really helped us when wewould go and talk to whoever
printers, paper mills, whatever,you know.
We come in with engineeringbackground, knowing the
equipment inside and out, sothat really helped us.
And then the biggest thing waswe had a niche that nobody else
had.
We could precision sheet, largeformat sheeting.
That was kind of like, I said,the gentleman that was our
(15:06):
advisor in Minneapolis that gotour foot in the door in a lot of
different mills and stuff whereothers, where the paper mills,
had to take these big, largeformat sheets that were going to
eventually into printingpresses, they'd have to put them
on a guillotine and it wouldtake time.
There was long, long lead timesthat add a lot of waste, there
(15:27):
was injuries, so on and so forth, and we could actually
precision sheet it.
So that was kind of our if youwant to call it your why, right,
you know every business.
I don't know if you've everread the book by Simon Sinek.
Yeah, start with why.
I mean that that book is reallygood and that's kind of how
(15:48):
almost every business you know.
The why is what's your niche?
You know why are they going touse you, you know is somebody
going to buy from you, or youknow whatever rent from you, buy
your services, so on and soforth.
So I think that's a key in anyand all businesses is how do you
differentiate yourself fromeverybody else?
And the more you candifferentiate yourself from
(16:10):
everybody else, obviously, themore you can charge because of
the more unique you are.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I mean you can't talk about a more commodity thing.
There are probably what I mean,10 of the most basic
commodities, but paper has gotto be one of those things.
Right, it's just such acommodity and obviously he's
talking about a really nichewithin the paper world.
But go in large format.
But Chad, going back to itagain, if you can't, guys, if
you guys can't figure this out,man, he's an engineer, but he's
(16:35):
not on the engineering spectrum.
He can actually talk to people.
He's a good sales guy.
But I want to go back to whatAlan was bringing up.
But I want to go back to whatAlan was bringing up.
I mean, you're starting it.
Who were your customers and howthe hell were?
you going to sell this shit, sothere was a lot a lot of funny
full stories early on.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
You know we, we weren't automated at the
beginning.
You know we, we had.
We have recycling.
So when you, when you cheat,take paper, we take rolls of
paper and convert them intosheets, and to do that you have
to take trim along the side.
(17:12):
You're going to get diverted,rejected sheets, and so we were
bailing all this stuff, if youwant to call it bailing.
But we were putting it into bigGaylords and we would take
rejected rolls that a paper millwould feel bad because we were
just starting up, and they wouldsend us rejected rolls that we
would use as like a compactor tocompact paper inside of
Gaylord's.
We could send it off to arecycler.
But uh, you know it's, uh, itwas just uh it was.
(17:35):
It was just a neat, a neat storyof how we started and um you
know how manual we were to whatwe became, and again to have
four people that initiallybelieved in us.
That allowed us to hire them.
You know, to come on board witha brand new company to what we
(17:56):
became was pretty incredible.
And then you know, a big partof it is Jim.
Like Jim was an amazingbusiness partner, you've got to
have a business partner thatbelieves in you and you believe
in him or her.
If you don't have that, youknow.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
We've got to talk about that one, because I can
tell you I know that's a big onefor you, alan, and we've talked
about this a lot there's areason I'm not a partner.
That's why I haven't taken on apartner.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Chris doesn't play well with others.
You may not know that.
He does know that.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You see that in person.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Well, here let me go back to the sales.
And so you know we were.
We were scraping for anythingand everything and again we got
to look, we got lucky.
You got to be in the game toget lucky.
When I say we got lucky is sowe, we would start off in the in
the job lot side of sales.
So it's the bottom of thebottom, like nobody wants to do
that type of stuff.
But we had to start somewhere.
(18:49):
And then we had a paper millit's called Temboard, they're
out of Canada, and they werehaving some coding issues in a
certain span of time and so someof the converters weren't happy
with them and they weren'thappy with the converters and it
was just perfect timing wherethey were looking for a new
converter.
(19:09):
And then, but you know, wefound them, they found us, and
then they moved their businessand we were about nine months in
, I think it was October of 2000.
And we were getting tighterwith cash.
You know spent.
We spent a lot of the $250,000of working capital.
And I remember calling Ginny,my mother, and I'm like hey, mom
(19:31):
, I said you know, we've gotthese three big projects coming
on.
One was a printer which cameour way because another
converter messed up.
They may have a quality issue.
So obviously again you getlucky because you're in the game
.
But I said Jenny, I said hey,you know, if these guys don't
come on, we're not going to makepayroll next month.
I said what's your advice?
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Now my mother is a.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
CPA and she, you know , and so she was a controller of
different paper mills, asenator, vp of finance, blah,
blah, blah blah and she comesback and she's like well, you
better start applying for creditcards.
And I'm like great advice,thanks.
Like what the hell does that dofor me?
Basically what she's saying islike she's basically saying hey,
you better get your ass out onthe road and get the sales,
(20:13):
because nobody's going to bethere to help.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
road and get, get the sales because nobody's going to
be there to help.
So it was great advice, it wasfunny, but that is funny.
So you probably went theregoing, hey, ma, can I get a loan
?
And she's like, hey, chad, um,how about you go get some credit
cards or get your ass in thecar like tommy boy and go sell
some shit out there?
Hey, let's make it happen.
So is that what happened, is it?
Pretty much?
Jim took care of the, uh, the,the warehouse, and making the
operations work.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Yeah, so you know, jim and I uh, yeah, so early on,
uh, I had to train jimmy justto learn how to run a sheeter
and this and that, whatever.
But we would do anything andeverything, from taking calls,
sales hunting, you know, huntingfor sales, building skids,
running the sheeters, packaging,so on, so forth.
I mean, I mean we, we got, we,uh, so we're both from niagara.
(20:58):
Niagara had a paper mill backin the day and they had, I don't
know like two truckloads ofcaper that they were just gonna
job lot.
And uh, jim's parents bothworked for niagara my mother
worked for niagara for a certainamount of time and um, so they,
you know, again I think theyjust felt bad.
So they're like, hey, you guyswant two truckloads of paper for
(21:19):
free.
And we're like, oh yeah, whatare we going to do with it?
So we figured out that we couldtake this paper and we wrapped
it into small, like 50 poundbundles and then I would be in
the plant running the product,because I mean, this was we're
trying to find cash in any, anyway possible and trying to find
you know what's our niche.
And um, and so jimmy's out, hewould rent a u-haul and then he
(21:43):
had, he would haul, he woulddrive down to like milwaukee,
chicago madison, selling tomoving companies these 50 pound
uh bundles of packaging paperthat you use for for moving and
stuff like that oh, that'shilarious.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
It is like tommy boy it is like jimmy, get in the
truck, get down there, startselling shit.
It doesn't hurt so much here,so much here, but right here
yeah.
So I mean it's.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
I mean I wish we would have, uh, had an iphone
back in those days.
You know, just to kind of, andthat was only in 2000.
Right, but I don't know it was.
It was really.
Again, you have to be in thegame to get lucky, I, I say that
all the time.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
I love that you got to be in the game to be lucky
Cause you're.
I mean, that's just so right.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
You obviously have to do your homework.
You got to put the blood, sweatand tears in you Obviously to
get lucky.
That means you did somethingpotentially right to get in the
game.
You know you did your researchand so on and so forth.
But you know, we, again we.
So we went from you knowcalling Jenny saying like hey,
what are we going to do nextmonth to the paper mill 10 board
(22:53):
I talked about.
They came on, they came onboard with us and then the
printer came on board and we hadthis job ladder.
That all came on board within amonth's time and we went from
Jimmy in a U-Haul sellingbundles of packaging paper to
basically running 24-5 within amonth or two.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
You know you talk about that, though, and I think
that's the that's the biggestthing.
You said a couple of things.
I think they're just killer.
That people don't realize isthat you know you got to wake up
every day and solve a problemas an entrepreneur.
We talked about that.
I said that in the beginning,but you guys did.
You called, you, called Jennyand said hey, here's what I got,
and she's like if you couldn'tlight a fire under somebody
who's already working 12 to 14hours a day.
(23:33):
She lit a fire, or she at leastbrought focus down to what you
had to do right now, in thesenext 30 days, and that's how you
make your luck, right?
We talked about that.
Yeah, I love your phrase in thegame to be lucky, but you've
also got to make your own luck,and you guys did that by buying
a little bit of time to see ifthose guys would actually hit,
and that you landed them.
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
yeah, after that, you know, our competition was
mostly a lot of them weresimilar to paper mills in that
the industry really changed alot, the print industry going
from standard size sheets to,like I said, large format sheets
.
And then the industry movedinto digital printing and
(24:14):
digital tiny small sheets.
And then the industry movedinto digital printing and
digital tiny small sheets and wetried to, or we worked with
Markup again on building adifferent style knife that
allowed, basically added anotherknife to their dual rotary
(24:40):
cylinders to allow them to runsuper fast in short sheets, or
the digital sheet market, whichagain was so?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
uh, hey, alan, what was your major?
Again?
Uh, to teach art.
So you just blew alan's mind.
You.
Just, you just laid down somany engineering.
I'm not lying, you blew my mind, you just laid out so many
engineering terms.
So you guys.
So you landed the first threeand now you guys are perfecting
and figuring out other ways, butyou're using your engineering
mind to solve those problems.
Like, hey, there's a newproblem going on because
probably in 2000, let's see,starting in 2000.
(25:05):
So 2003,.
Four, the internet reallystarts booming again.
Age yourself, just talktechnology.
And you probably heard death ofprinting.
Right, no papers ever going tohappen, ever again.
I just heard a stat and I wantto know if that's true there's
more print going on now thanthere was in 2000.
Is that true?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Honestly, I'd have to actually look that up.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
But I mean yeah, don't fact check me, let's just
go with it.
Call me Trump.
Baby, sounds good.
Call me Trump.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
A lot of people are printing stuff at your house now
, right, instead of wherever youknow.
You're printing out your ownbank statements or so on and so
forth.
So it's probably changed.
You know, from printing out atthe manufacturer there's
magazines or this and thatwhatever newspapers used to have
, and now people are printingmore things at home or at the
office or so on and so forth.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
No, that is amazing.
So you guys are in there,you're looking at it.
But you went back and said, hey, we got to come up with
something else that's going tokeep us on the forefront, keep
us not to be a paper commodity.
So you went back to Marquipbecause you had a great
relationship and again you'redownplaying it.
But, man, I just know for afact that you worked those
networks, you worked Markquip,you worked your customers.
(26:17):
I know you did a good thing.
You do the right thing bypeople.
I just know that about you.
But tell me how you were ableto instill that in your sales
guys, because you actuallyscaled to a level to be able to
sell.
So how were you able to takeChad and Jim's commitment who
did every job in the companyever and then turn it into
saying, all right, here's whatwe're about.
And how do you do that?
(26:37):
How do you bring that down topeople?
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Well, the nice thing is that maybe it's the
engineering background that weall have that we were very
hands-on.
So Jim and I were the salesguys.
So we, we were till the veryend, till we sold the business.
But one thing that was uniqueis everybody that was all our
teammates that worked with us.
(27:01):
They all seen that Jim and Iwould work just as hard as them.
We were on the floor, we wererunning sheeters, we were
packaging, we were buildingskids, we were loading and
unloading semis, we were bailing, so on and so forth.
We did all the stuff in theoffice.
Now, obviously, that changed aswe grew, because we went from
(27:22):
four employees to we bought ourown building or built our own
building, and then we expandedinto Pennsylvania.
We ended up with like 240employees, 15 years in employees
, 15 years in.
So we couldn't be, you know, onthe floor all the time running.
You know cheaters every singleday because we just couldn't.
(27:44):
So then it was a change, right.
So you start off, it was alearn.
You know, we learned a lot.
Again, our advisors werefantastic the whole time because
they guided us the whole way,like okay, so hey, all right, we
filled up one cheater.
What do we do next?
Well, maybe you guys got tolook at buying a building or
renting a building or finding adifferent facility.
So then we did, and we you knowBeaver Dam we moved to Beaver
Dam.
They borrowed us money to builda building.
(28:06):
We started a second company thereal estate, the commercial
property side of the company.
We paid ourself instead ofpaying somebody else to rent.
That allowed us to buy thebuilding after three years.
And so then we were buildingtwo businesses, right?
I mean, obviously, the easy onewas commercial properties.
But as we continued to evolveand gain momentum and informing
(28:31):
people who we were and how wewere different versus all the
other contract converters thatwere in the paper industry and
that we could, you know that weknew the equipment that we can
run large format plus all thecommodity sizes and and a lot of
it was just belief.
And then having peopleoutperforming everybody else.
You know you're outworkingeverybody else.
You're, you know you'reinstantaneously getting back to
(28:56):
people.
You know if other competitorstook them a day or three to get
back to them, and we were, youknow we were responding
immediately.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
It all played a big part and um, and then you have
to find the right teammates,right um so, yes, it sounds like
did you find the right teammateevery single time, all the time
, because, let me tell you theanti.
let me tell you the anti side ofthat.
Yeah, so in the handymanbusiness, alan and Chad I chose
the wrong business anddefinitely didn't scale.
(29:25):
And no, I did.
I'm just joking, but I have tokiss a lot of frogs to find that
prince and man.
Dude, it was tough.
I mean I've got, I have.
Now.
You know, my average tenure nowis seven years, but when I
first started it was sevenmonths.
I mean, I mean and I mean forthe first four years if I kept
somebody for seven months, I'mlike you who I got a long term
(29:46):
employee.
So how did you guys find them?
What was?
Did you guys have a secretsauce that we should all be
looking for?
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Oh, you're in a small community when we started and
we probably hired 20 employeesthere.
So I think being in thatsmaller community helped.
And as we moved to Beaver Dam,which was only 15 miles away,
but a bigger community, you know, I think it had a lot to do, a
lot of different things.
One, we were new to thecommunity, right, so there was a
lot of news about it.
(30:14):
Hey, northwood's paperconverting just moved into town,
building a 60,000 square footfacility.
Then Jim and I were activewithin the community.
We were on certain boards.
We were on the YMCA board andwe would become a part of a lot
of nonprofit organizations,organizations.
(30:37):
We, you know, we had our own 5krace that we eventually started
and donated all the money.
So we were involved in thecommunity, so that you know our
name stayed out in the community.
And then here again, I think,since we were on the floor a lot
when we were growing early on,employees or teammates really
like to see that they they'relike hey, this is a little bit
(30:59):
different, right, we weren'tbigger, where they never seen
the boss as much or this, that,whatever.
And don't get me wrong, when wewere at 240 employees, like I
said, Jim and I couldn't be onthe floor all the time anymore,
but early on it really helped usgrow and a lot of those initial
employees, original teammatesthey're still with Beaver Dam to
(31:22):
this day, even after we soldthe business six years ago.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Really, you created a culture by being on the floor
though, yeah, and they passed onto the new people 100%.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
I think the thing that a lot of people might miss
on this is that the culture thathe showed was there is nothing
beneath me.
I've done every job in thiscompany I have cleaned a toilet,
I have taken out the garbageand I have talked to our biggest
account that we have today, andI'm willing to put in the hours
.
If you're willing to go with me, I'm going to invite you on
this journey and let's go do it.
So the culture.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Yeah, that's.
The key is a culture right.
A hundred percent Yep.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, that's awesome Developing that culture.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
But why, you know, as as we grew you we had to find,
we had to find teammates thatcould allow us to grow right
Like Jim and I had to free upwith some of the momentum that
we had, you know, and interestand continual growth.
So we were fortunate to hire,like we hired, jim's brother, um
, who worked, uh, in the officewith us and um, the anna on the
(32:24):
floor.
He had it up like safety anddid a lot of customer service
work for us and other.
My sister came on and she washead of accounting and h, so we
had a couple of friends fromhigh school that worked with us
in production as operators andmanagers, and so you had people
(32:45):
that you trusted or that we werefortunate enough to work with
as teammates, that we couldtrust and hand off stuff,
because Jim and I we didn'tmicromanage.
It was just like hey, here,this is what we got to do, you
got to do this, we got to go dothat, so on and so forth and um.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
so yeah, we found so how did you and jim as engineers
?
Uh, because here again,engineers on the spectrum, it's
hard.
I mean, you can't have.
You can't be an engineer andhave a personality.
In fact, chad is proving thatyou can.
But when I meet people they'relike I've actually literally.
I told someone I'm like yeah, Igot an engineering degree.
The guy looked at me and goesno way, I was a little bit
(33:24):
different than everybody else, Ihave to admit.
I didn't know it at the time,but I was, and so was Chad, and
that's why we got along so well.
So, as you're doing that andyou're handing off things, how
hard was that?
And did you ever get burned indoing it?
And where you went?
Oh, shouldn't have done it,jimmy, we got to get back on the
floor, or you know what?
I'm not going to let them dothis anymore.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
No, I think you know we, we kind of knew what our
goal was Right and the only waywe were going to get to that
goal with continual growth,whatever that meant, you know
there wasn't.
We didn't have anything in thetop.
You know, we weren't sales guys, if you want to call it that,
and we didn't have a number outthere to say, hey, we got to get
to 10 million in sales by thisyear, next year, five years from
(34:04):
now.
We just kind of took things dayby day and, um, yeah, we, just,
you know, we, we were fortunateto find great teammates and um,
teammates who believed in usand then find customers who
believed in us and yeah, theyloved our story.
Right Again, we came in with alittle bit different background
(34:26):
than most people for thecontract paper converting
industry, being engineers and Ithink for me it's always been
and, and Jim, um, we were veryopen, right, we were honest
people, we're open, we were openbook.
Um, what you saw was what yougot you know, our offices
(34:47):
probably weren't as clean asmost other people's offices, but
it didn't matter.
It's like you know.
So you know, we didn't come inin suit and tie.
We came in with a polo shirtand jeans, and that's who we
were.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Dungarees, my friends dungarees so you obviously had
to have a business plan to getthe loan from the bank.
Yes, my first question is didyou continually reference that?
Because then I hear, okay, wewere just scrambling trying to
sell paper to moving companies.
Reference that because then Ihear, okay, we were just
scrambling trying to sell paperto moving companies and then all
of a sudden, boom, a couple ofthings happen and you're 24 five
(35:21):
and at that point did you guyssit back and start planning Like
we may need a safety person,because now, all of a sudden,
we've got all these people, wemay need an HR person, we may.
You know, at what point did youactually start trying to
strategic plan?
Cause it seems like that's moreof a backfill than a proactive.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
I would say it was like the so in our toward the
second to third year as we werelooking to grow and add a second
sheeter.
You know we were running 24seven and we knew that.
You know we had more businessto grow with and we were
fortunate that you know, likeJim's brother had some you know,
(36:03):
knowledge and in the paperindustry and and and would take
on, you know, safety and otherthings for us.
And then Kim kind of beingdeveloped by Jenny, my mother.
She's a CPA.
Kim didn't have a four-yearaccounting degree but had like a
two-year HR degree and then HRroles in the past, you know.
(36:26):
So Kim was of interest to usbecause Jenny could train Kim in
accounting.
So we kind of got our HRaccounting fill and teammates
accounting.
So we kind of got our HRaccounting fill and teammates.
And yeah, and to me, like Isaid to me some of that's luck
that you know you had peoplearound you that could help your
weaknesses, because Jim and Iaren't experts in I mean we we
(36:48):
became to figure out sales butreally the sales to us was just
selling the people that workedwith us and the equipment that
we purchased and what it coulddo.
I mean there wasn't reallyanything special about being a
sales guy and just being honestand talking open.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
All right, we got to.
Uh, we're coming to the end.
I just, I love the journey andI knew this was gonna happen and
I gotta I gotta tell everybody.
So Chad is one of the mosthumble guys I've I have actually
ever met.
I mean, he's just, he won't saywhat I'm about to say.
Man, he fucking killed it.
And what he doesn't say is yeah, I use my engineering expertise
(37:26):
and my sales expertise and myability to network and use and
leverage my people to help meget to where I wanted to go.
And that's how by the way, Ithink that's how he got his wife
, because he definitelyoutkicked his coverage.
Hey, now, come on, now I'mkidding, and, uh, his kids are
killing it too.
You're doing a great job.
But now we got to talk aboutnirvana.
So when chad, there's more, ohwait.
So when chad and I reconnected,he kind of was, oh shucks, yeah
(37:49):
, I sold my company.
Oh shucks, yeah, it was forlike that number.
You're like and I'm like I, I,so I, I I'd like, uh, he's
texting.
I was like oh, I'm so happy foryou.
No, you're not.
Nobody is you're like, take mewith you.
How'd you do it?
Speaker 2 (38:03):
so I'm surprised you didn't change his number and
that you didn't have the new one.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
No, I was I'm super happy for me.
I can't even tell you this, butwe uh, we got like 10 minutes
left, but I just could, realquick, you tell people you were
you looking for the exit, didyou plan for the exit or did it
just happen?
Speaker 3 (38:22):
so we had a customer, a paper mill, that was talking
with us about trying to growinto Minnesota and California
and we were already in the Eastand the Midwest.
Our biggest competitor,progressive Converting, who
ended up buying us, was national.
They had a facility out Eastand the Midwest.
(38:44):
They had one in Minnesota andCalifornia and Virginia and they
tried to buy us out in 2006 and2010 or 11, something like that
or not buy us out.
I think maybe the first timewas looking to buy us out or
partial merge, and then thesecond one was merge, and so I
approached them.
The market didn't needadditional converting, it just
(39:06):
needed to.
You know, it needed to makeitself healthier, right, and
somebody needed to buy a coupleof guys out, and so I went back.
So Jim and I went back toProcon and said, hey, we've got
an opportunity with the mill.
Whether you like it or not,it's up to you.
You've talked about buying usin the past.
(39:30):
Here's who we are.
This is our PA plant.
This is our Wisconsin plant.
They were close to us in PA.
Their plant from our plant waslike I don't know, a half hour
away from each other.
So the only way they would beinterested in our East plan is,
if we were to close it down,they'd buy a lot of the
equipment.
They would offer theopportunity for our employees or
teammates out East to work withthem.
(39:52):
So that's what we did.
And then Wisconsin still runsas it is today.
They couldn't absorb Wisconsinbecause it was too big at the
time and maybe still is.
It's still a very profitableplant for progressive converting
.
But yeah, it was a greatmarriage for them.
Jim and I stayed on for twoyears it's kind of a handoff and
(40:21):
then they exercised theearn-out clause that allowed
them to let me go.
They already had theircorporate team, so I would have
done the same thing.
And then Jimmy was releasedabout a year after I left.
A great opportunity for thepeople that were within
Beaverdam because a lot of themgot to move up.
Our head of engineering andmaintenance he's now the plant
(40:41):
manager, so it was a great bumpfor him.
A lot of the other peoplewithin the organization withim
and I gone and and they let someof our csrs go and and kim go
from hr and accounting becausethat was at a corporate level.
So, um, so yeah, and you know,to get to the point of selling,
it was we just kind of day today, you know we would.
We didn't really have like, hey, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta
(41:03):
retire by a certain, we gottasell by a certain point.
It was just a feel thing.
It was just like, okay, it kindof feels right right now.
And, and you know, fortunately,we had, uh, you know, some
conversations with progressiveconverting in the past, uh,
stating that they had interestand we had some interest in them
, cause we almost merged withthem in 2010.
(41:24):
So it just worked out, thetiming was right and for Procon
it's been fabulous.
They bought out.
You know, another convertershut down in the east, so
they're super healthy in theeast and in the Midwest they
bought another one of theirlargest competitors.
So and you know they're kind ofthe go-to guys.
Now you know they've got allthe different paper mills,
(41:45):
they've got all the flexibilitythat the paper mills would need
when they outsource converting.
So, yeah, it's a great successstory in many ways and hopefully
, you know, a lot of people asklike, hey, you regret?
No, I don't regret anything.
I think it was the right thingto do.
I think it was the right thingfor the industry.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
I think it needed to consolidate some and then since
paper mills have consolidated,so so you are one of the and
this is a stat you are one ofthe 3% of the no regret sale
clause.
There are only 3% of people whosell their businesses that have
no regrets.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Did you pull?
Speaker 1 (42:22):
that out of your ass?
No, chris Hanks.
Sell their businesses.
They have no regrets.
Did you pull that out of yourass?
no, uh, chris hanks oh okay, ohyeah, chris hanks, who runs my
ceo group, has mentioned thatand it's.
It comes from books and itcomes from studies.
So, chad man, that that part isawesome and that's why I, uh, I
love hearing the story you cantell, even if it's not your
business, right?
I'm not talking about paper.
I'm talking about what chad didis he took a paper market,
(42:44):
which I mean literally, thatthat's a commodity.
A paper is a, I mean you can'tget more commodities.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Love this.
It's such an american midwest.
Yeah, I might do it.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
I freaking love it and I did say humble I, I
actually was biting my tongue asother than the freaking packers
, jesus, lord, I mean I wastrying to find, like a Packer
helmet to wear for thisinterview.
So no, but uh, it just again agreat story, because I mean it's
from beginning to end.
And taking that chance, and Iyou know, I go talk to high
(43:16):
school kids I'm like I don'tcare, when you start a business
there's, you're never too young,but you can always be
unprepared and don't beunprepared.
I don't care how old you are.
And Chad alluded to it, but hereally was prepared because he
had saved, he had mentors, hewas in the business, he saw an
opportunity and he also knew therebound.
The rebound plan was hey, if itdoesn't work, at least I can
(43:38):
uninstall and reinstall andmaybe at least get neutral.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
He didn't have the experience, but he had a plan
Right.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
I think so yeah, again.
I mean looking back on it, Imean it's just yeah, amazing
story.
When he told me the deal andthen I'm thinking, oh awesome,
he's out.
Okay, good, chad, I'm coming up, I'm going to stay at your lake
house, we're going to toolaround the lake and then we're
going to the Packers and I go upthere and we do all that and he
goes, yeah, so I'm back in Likedude what?
(44:08):
Because you knew he can't.
I mean you could tell from theguy already he's got too much
energy, he just can't do.
It Sounds like another podcastcoming, or the wife picked him
up and said, hey, we can't livetogether.
If you're going to stay home.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
It's interesting.
So I met another gentleman from, or not.
I knew another gentleman fromNiagara, which is where I'm from
, we're gyms from.
Also, my other business partnerand TJ knew about this
opportunity within the packagingindustry and so, yeah, we
looked at it and then we co-ownAll About Packaging and it's
(44:42):
different.
So it's the same thing, like wedidn't greenfield started.
So you're kind of you'reinheriting, uh, what was there?
Their, their culture, theirbackground, this now, whatever,
and then you're trying to tweakit to growth in the future and
find your why, and again, you'retrying to, um, bring maybe your
past and culture into it.
(45:04):
Um, so it it's and it's unique.
Every opportunity is unique toanother no, it's been.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
It's awesome what he did.
He got back involved what'sfunny.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I would love to talk to him about that on another
episode, because that's acompletely different animal.
But before you go, I mean, ischris welcome back at lambo?
Oh, oh, yeah, for sure, awesomeman, you wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
So we got these tickets right behind the Lions
bench and we were all pumped upright away.
I think they threw first dryand Lions threw a pick, and
we're going nuts, we go and wescore.
It's 7-0.
And I don't think we scoredagain.
I think it had to be like 48-7.
So we were all over all theLions fans there's a bunch of
(45:47):
Lions fans around us and then wedidn't say another word the
whole time.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
But Chris.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
We're getting hammered.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Oh yeah, actually, he hasn't seen the video.
Jerry videoed me and you cansee the entire crowd started
moving away and there's thesefour women with they wear the
packer overalls, right, and sothey had the green stripes and
the yellow stripes and there'sjust me and them and they're
moving away and he swears.
In his video he sees a guncoming out getting ready to take
(46:16):
me down and uh, that's whatthey.
It's so fun, but no, it was.
I mean lambo is uh, it that,that, that and that's on my
bucket list.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Oh, I'm telling you what.
You know that Chris was prettyquiet the whole day.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah, yeah, I've been to a couple events with him, oh
my.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
God as soon as the Lions got up 10-7, 14-7, he
didn't stop talking no, there'sno way.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
No, I did not stop talking, not until we got back
to the truck and then youstarted driving.
Then, bam, I passed out again.
That's my job, chad.
This is awesome.
Thanks, buddy for coming on.
Uh, I know you helped ouraudience.
Hey, if you guys didn't learnsomething today, man, you got to
learn this right.
You can be a commodity.
You got to differentiateyourself and Chad, he laid it
down for you right.
If you think you're a introvert, if you think you're an
(47:01):
analytical guy, you got to gothe other way.
If you want to solve problemsevery day, you got to solve
problems every single day.
If you're not a solving problemguy and analytical guy and
you're really outgoingintroverted guy or extroverted
guy, you got to get back in andget that and find that partner.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
And you got to surround yourself with really
good people and good advisorsand take their advice.
And take that advice.
I love that.
Look for it before you've madethe mistake.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Love that Awesome.
Hey, Chad, this is awesome.
Hey guys, go out there, Make ithappen.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
We've got to get out of here because we've got to
roll to the next one.
Thanks, Cheers everybody.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
See you later, guys.
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