Embracing Change and Balancing Risk with Mike DeGoey – DBA Small Business Show 22

Greetings folks, and welcome to DBA, the Small Business Podcast. Episode number 22 for Thursday, July 9, 2015 here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Concord, California, I'm Shannon Jean.

How goes it, Shannon?

It's good. Good. We're actually coming to you from my office today. Normally I record at home where there's a few less distractions and I can enjoy the view, but here we're at work. We're joined with one of my good friends, Mike De Goy from Mendocino Glove. Mike, thanks for joining us today.

Hi, Shannon. Hi, Dave. How are you?

We're well, man. Thanks for, thanks for coming. I'm curious to learn about Mendocino Glove and how you got there. So I'm glad you're here.

Great. So am I. It's nice. I want to share my story as well.

Yeah, that's great. That's. The whole thing is to, you know, help help each other out and lift each other up. So tell us a little bit about now what you do. I mean, you're in the glove business, but I think it's a little broader than that.

Yeah.

Give us some history in the business.

Well, that's exactly. You know, when I first started I thought it was just a glove. And as I as the company's developed, it's a little bit more from a professional standpoint. It's called PPE is professional protection equipment. And so it covers everything from head to toe, hard hats, ears, everything that you would wear on your body. In my case, it was exclusion of shoes that would protect industrial workers and commercial workers. As you know as well as I also have a retail group that sells to retailers and you know, do we furnish value added services to glover racks and whatnot. But when I first purchased a company about five years ago, it was simply just, just gloves. And we've expanded dramatically into other, other areas.

Yeah, and, and that's is that I noticed on your website you have it says Workman Mendocino Gloves. So is that related to this broadening of the, of the business?

Yes, exactly. I wanted. The branding is really. I decided that the branding was too specific. Mendocino Glove is known in Northern California. But if I really wanted to expand the company, they need to be a little bit more generic in name. So I'm going through an incorporation process right now of changing the name from Mendocino Glove and Safety to Workman Glove and Safety. The website will, you know, will match the physical entity now as well.

Nice.

So again, it's more of a Matter of just being broadened. A lot of times I would approach customers and say, are you actually in Mendocino? That's too far from us. We want somebody local. So becoming a little bit more generic has actually helped grow the business and get more interest. Interest in what we're doing.

Yeah, I think that's a great idea. And comes back to. We often talk about where you get started and having a good logo, having a good name and how it can help you as well as hurt you. You know, like where people think it's really local.

Yeah, I think, you know, coming from a. More of a. I used to be in electronics and sell some. I could sold semiconductors as a distributor and I was really well versed in branding and how branding can really help the company just establish an identity out there. And again, we were. I thought we were a little bit too nar. So I wanted to get as broad and also for the future, allow me to get into more products, change direction if I need to, depending on the economy and be a little bit more malleable, more flexible, depending on what came across my doorway.

Yeah, totally makes sense.

Mike, I'm curious. You made the decision obviously that you're going to do this rebrand. You're in the middle of it. How long ago did you start this and how much longer do you expect it to go on?

Great questions actually going on too long. I started last year with the website, but I found that there are very big discrepancy between web designers and like anything like mistakes that we make in business, you kind of discover, hey, this is something. I want to build a website, but do more B2B website versus a commercial website. B2B is still, in my opinion, a true B2B website. Still hard to come by from a developer standpoint. The website I have right now is still born with B2C. It doesn't give me a lot of tools, but that's when the branding started. To answer your question, Davis, we started out with Workman Glove and Safety, trying to separate it from Mendocino Glove, because a lot of my retailers, my retailers, my customers, if they went onto the website, the pricing is going to be different. So I didn't want them to get confused. Why am I paying this price? Your website has another price. Website's more geared towards industrial commercial versus retailers. As I mentioned before, I service retailers, whether it be a stores or other Lowe's do it yourself type of stores. So that's when it started. I started the incorporation process about 60 days ago. And so now we should be taking a little bit longer than we wanted, but by August 1st we should be fully incorporated as a corporation entity and the name change will have taken effect. Changing, you know, not only logos but accounting software and back end software as well to match that.

Sure. And so at that point, will you drop Mendocino from your name? I mean, I realize there's a procedural part that obviously you have to go through and you need to have the website and the business entity and all of that. But at what point, I mean you've, you've branded this name over what, you know, the last five years, right? Yeah. So you know, how much longer will you hold on to that or can you just let it go at any time at this point?

You know, I've, we've spoken individually to all of our customers about where we're going and we've actually done this over the last five or six months about him. We're changing names, we're changing names. We've, we've got new W9s going out, we've got letterhead, everything announcing the name. We'll be mailing on a weekly basis to all of our customers that the name change has taken place. And you know, so they should expect to see invoices and other documents from us with the new name. But we are going to put underneath formerly Mendocino Glove Company. Yeah. For a while and then we'll change that out, you know, over a course of time where people, you know, when they're calling us and you know, they're sending to correct checks instead of gloves and to work and glove and safety.

It totally makes sense. Thanks. Yeah, it, because that's it. You know, the whole rebranding thing is something that I think a lot of business owners wind up going through. You hit, you, you start with a name and then you realize, well, huh, we don't actually do just that or even any of that anymore. Right. You know, so.

Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. It's more of a box. We felt that we were really in a box and we wanted to be able to, you know, provide other products to our customers. And a more generic approach I think is going to allow us to do that.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I mean we find ourselves, Dave and I find ourselves doing this over and over and over again. I mean, when we started this, you know, the DBA podcast, like, okay, well what is it we really do? You know, and then explaining, oh, it's a small business show. And so trying to work on that branding is real important.

Well, you know, speaking to it because I'm speaking to new web designers. Because I'm going to basically scrap the old design and in September there will be a new website up that does have true B2C B2B capabilities where people can come and log into their account. They see their pricing invisible to, you know, everybody else. And I guess what they've brought to my attention and what's really critically important to really rebranding is considering the web and the searchability of your company. Forget what the nomenclature is, but website optimization, I guess it is, or search engine. Search engine optimization, that's critical. So the words work glove, workman, little words like that are going to allow people to search the site or search for the site and bring me up on web search. So that's really critically important to renaming the company as well.

Yeah, it's great to have that when you're taking that into account because you need those keywords and having it in your URL, the website address, the company name, all that stuff really will help a lot.

Yeah, yeah. So kind of, it's just to me, it's a little bit new because I didn't have to consider that in my previous, you know, career.

Sure.

Now it's something that, you know, you used to get away with Smith Co. Yeah, it was generic, but you can't do that now, so.

Yeah, that's great. So you say you've, you've been in the business or you've owned the business for about five years. So it now, from what I understand talking to you, you know, previously the business was around before that and you purchased the business. And it's kind of a unique story. And, you know, I know our listeners would like to hear about it. So tell us how you came to be the owner of the business.

Yeah, so, you know, I had. Was in semiconductors. I was a general manager of a fairly large semiconductor distribution company. Decided to get out of tech because everything was offshoring and went through a couple of iterations. You know, me for a while did the real estate thing and, you know, but I want to really own my own business. And that was really my passion. So I started thinking, okay, what product would I, you know, it was really about product or was it about what I wanted to do? And I really decided it was what I wanted to do, not so much what I sold, because I really believe I could sell anything, but with certain criteria, one of the things I wanted to get to, I love tangible goods. And so service, service opportunities were out the door. I really didn't want to get into the service industry anymore. And so I started looking around and I you know, part of my thought process was, you know, something that gets reused, you know. So as I'm searching around on the web, okay, I want something that's not a one time sale but something that gets used up and has they have to come back and, and buy it again. And I went on this website, you know, I should do some Google searches went on called bizben.com and it was basically a website that it's a clearinghouse for small business owners, usually sold props or small corporations and a venue for them to sell their business online through. And it's multiple brokers, not just one broker is having this but a real generic business site that people load their companies onto or brokers will load their companies that they're representing on. And as a great site, you do searches that want us to buy a gas station. Hundreds of gas stations in your local area come up. Northern California was looking for laundromats, cash flow type businesses as well. Well and then I started looking into goods, you know, hard goods and whatnot. And I saw this little glove company, I saw a pallet company which was, you know, they give you, it's great. They actually allow you to see some of the, the P Ls of the company. They're listed on. There's documents so you can see how these companies are doing. And I saw this little company with priced right, you know, it gave me, you know, wasn't too scary of an investment and gave the guy a call and it worked out fine. He real friendly and talked to a broker to connected us, connected me with the owner, went out, saw what he did and saw his P and L over the last few years. Saw his tax returns, real open platform type of opportunity. But what I found was nice was to be able to drill down and find specifically what you were looking for. You didn't have to go through a lot of noise if you wanted something specific you didn't see a lot of. Okay, you might like this tooth or whatever. So that, that, that was a really, a really good clean experience for me.

And the name of that site was.

It bizbend.com b I z b e n dot com. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And it's still in existence and I still get calls from a broker 1 if I want to sell my business.

Or you know, and so when you, when you made that connection, you initially connect the broker up there or were you talking directly with the owner?

No, you could go through the broker, then the broker acts as a liaison between you, you know, so. And they'll talk to you a little bit about they qualify you to how much money do you have? You know, because they don't want to clean you out because they know it's not a good working. Working relationship there. You don't want to make sure that you have reserves. And so they're being responsible. And then they. Then they connect you if. If. And they verify with the seller. Is this somebody you want to sell your business to?

I see.

You know, because they want to be a filter for the seller as well, not that you're bringing anybody. Yeah, right. So that's great. You know, he asked me about my background. I actually satisfied my resume and, you know, a little bit about my financing and things like that too. So it's good.

Yeah, it sounds like a great service, you know, and I think the comment that I really liked when you started talking about it, starting a business is that you identified that it was more important to you that you had a business than what it was that you actually were going to sell. And I think a lot of people come at it from a. The other angle is like, oh, I really love this thing and this thing, and I'm going to go in it. And I think it's great that you're able to say, well, you know, I'm not really too worried about what it is I sell or, you know, I love, you know, the consumable thing is brilliant, but the fact that you can identify. I just want to run my own business and how do I get in it?

Right. And I think it was also a matter of. I think as an entrepreneur, you have to keep that spirit all the time. Right. Say, you know, the business is a business, but what can it be? You know? So, you know, I've mentioned earlier expanding not just in. In, you know, protection type stuff, but into other products. I created my own product recently for an associated industry that I service. I serviced a vineyard industry here in Northern California. And that's gone really well. But there are tons of other products that they use. And then as you get to know those industries, you realize, wow, there's a. There's a. There's a gap here. There's a. No, there's an opportunity to provide something to them that they don't have currently, or something that's a little bit different that might be adjunct to what they're currently sell, you know, so, you know, that's what you have to kind of look into. It's just More of a channel, you know, that a business really, to me, is more of a channel to get to other channels. You know, it's an opportunity to meet and do other things as long as you have, you know, access to that, you know. So that's the way I see it.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. Now, you mentioned your own product, and I'd like to touch that on that for a minute. So give me some background on the impetus to design your, you know, come up with your own product and how to get out there. Because I know a lot of, you know, people always talk about, I wish I could make this thing. And, you know, so let's give us some.

Well, a couple of things happened about a year and a half ago. I started thinking, you know, like I said, I work with the vineyard industries, and they have a lot of paraphernalia and a lot of, you know, consumable type paraphernalia just kind of staying in that same vein. And low capital, right? Cost. I'm not talking about, you know, you know, lots of capital behind it or, you know, new inventions, simply, but innovative still. And so I actually have a business partner, he's not really partner, but an associate that I sell his products. He's a distributor as well, and he actually makes these himself. He found a manufacturer, and they service a whole other industry we can get into a little bit later. But, you know, he allows me to sell that to my customer base. But then, you know, I realized that, wow, he created this himself, and so why can't I do something like that, too? So the vineyard industry, like I said, has multiple products, and they have a harvest knife that they grape that they. That the vineyard workers use to harvest the grapes. And they sell thousands of these. And one little store will sell thousands of these a year because they. They run out. They wear them out, you know. And so each year, workers have to buy two or three of these to get them through the season.

And this is a knife that they used to cut grapes from the vine.

Correct. It's a hook knife. You know, a real simple dev. But I started asking my customers, you know, how many of these do you sell? Then they asked me, say, do you. Can you get this one particular knife from Germany's? And I did some research. They're out of business. They're actually now making ceramic knives. But I asked what was so special about this knife? This steel was a wonderful steel. So I got a sample of it, did a steel analysis of the knife to find out what kind of steel it was. Did some research on who manufactured these, these blades for me. Found a gentleman out in St. Louis, Missouri, again through the web that does scissors. And I said, can you do this? And he goes, absolutely. And it's going to be made in China. But you just, you know, to your specifications. Sure. And created this knife. I had my own unique handle design that was the whole key to it. With this high quality steel that, that the users liked and with a little bit of unique design. And so I, you know, went, you know, went for it actually a very low investment for the return. You talk about motivation. One of the, the motivations of it not just, you know, being, you know, trying to be an innovator, trying to service my customers, but was because my girl's college education, it was. I needed some auxiliary income fast and a lot of it in order to pay for that. And it worked out. So, you know, literally the sales coming from these, from these knives will go directly to her college education. So it's not really being disruptive in my current cash flow. The return on. It's 300%. It's a great return on my product. And you know, it's. And, and the customer's happy. Yeah.

So it's great. And you know, we were talking about kids before and I think our kids might even gone to preschool or something.

Yeah, they did go to preschool, you're right.

So we're at similar stage and I can remember starting a business with, with Dave, actually.

Yeah, that's, that's why we. Well, go ahead, tell the story.

Yeah, yeah. And we were, you know, okay, we're going to start this thing. My kids. I just always figured my kids would just go to the school down the street. Little did I know, and little did I know how that would never happen. And so we're like, well, we've got to go to this private school. It's great. No problem. It's wonderful. But, but man, how am I going to pay for this? And so that's when it led me to, you know, make the connection with Dave and say, look, I have this idea and we want to start this, this web business. And the whole impetus like yours was to pay for school. And it did that, you know.

Right.

It's amazing how it motivates you.

Yeah. Necessity can motivate you. Oh, yeah. No, it's. It's totally the right way. I think it's awesome that you, you know, you just fired it up. It actually gives me, gives me hope that college is within reach because. Because I'll do the Same thing. I just fire something up. Let's go.

Yeah. You know. Yeah. On that vein, it's crazy how when, when they're five, it's a whole other economy, but when they're 18, it's like, wow, that's got a lot more expensive. Yeah, it's.

Oh, it's crazy.

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So. But that's worked out great. I think, like I said, it's worked out great for me. I think the customer base enjoys it because it's something new. It's for a low tech product. It's. If I can talk about a little bit, the, the uniqueness not only in the steel that they gave them the steel they wanted, but the handle is shaped like a baseball bat. And so when you think about it, when, when the harvesters are out there, they're moving crazy and a lot of times the knives will slip out of their hand. Well, I thought, you know, a baseball bat doesn't slip out of baseball players hands and about, you know, that bat's moving 100 miles per hour. So I put a little knob on the end of the, the handle and it works like a dream. I mean it from an ergonomic standpoint, they, you know, they don't have to squeeze as hard. If they get hooked on a vine. It, the little butt on the, on the handle stops it from flying out, which creates, creates issues because it's lost. Yeah. You know, because they, they, they harvest at night now. Because it's, it's because it's, that's better for the grapes. Oh no. Yeah. So when you think about that, little things like that, OSHA loves it because they don't have to put a lanyard on it because of safety issues with lanyards. You know, so it works out from a, from a end customer standpoint for me to be able to sell, you know, selling points. It gives them, gives my customer something to talk about to their customer. Right. Because I'm selling to retailers and allows them to say, hey, look at this new little product in an ent for them to sell a whole basket of goods. And so it really is, there's a lot of synergy involved. Right. It's something for them that this may seem simple but allows them to say here's a, here's an item. But since you want to talk, let's talk about everything else around that item too.

Sure.

Right. Really, it really, it helps.

Yeah, it makes sense. And I love the concept of, you know, those small changes that have a big impact and how as you've I'm sure you didn't know much about that at all before you got involved in this.

Right.

And like I just, I didn't know that they harvest grapes at night.

Yeah.

So dropping something out there could be a total nightmare, you know. And having that knob on the end is. Seems very simple after the fact.

Right.

It's iterative design. Right. You learn this the hard way and then you fix it. That's right.

Right, exactly. Yeah. So it's actually, and it's fun because it's, it's my own. It's something I created. It's, you know, and it's, it's a. Like you said, it's iterative enough to call it my own, not just something else. That's a cop cat.

No, that's great.

But it's been fun. I think that's, you know, besides my core business, it's, it's a fun thing to do as well. You know, when I see. I want. I did this and you know, keeps you motivated. Right.

New things.

Yeah. I got another product coming online.

Nice.

So hopefully that will work too. So we'll have you have another kid.

That needs to go to college or something.

That's right. I think I want. I think it's a vacation one.

There you go.

That's great school.

Yeah.

So when you, when you bought the business, I imagine there was some built in customer base, right?

Yes.

Okay. And so now then we were talking about keywords and Internet marketing. What kind of marketing do you do now? Is it mainly word of mouth or is it other? I mean, what kind of stuff do you do?

Great question. So because I was only me for the longest time, the best source for additional income and additional sales is your current customer base. Biggest. I, I really saw that was under underused and that's why I wanted to expand my product line. Getting into much more diverse products, still within the same safety realm, but really opening, you know, again, making sure my customers knew what was available to me because they only thought me as the glove guy. Right. And so that's broadened and that's increased my business. I think we talk about it every time we meet. Right. So how's business? I'm growing like 20% clip. It's ridiculous. It's great every year and this year actually I'm probably more on 40% clip. Clip just because of the knife and other types of things that are brought on. But a lot of word of mouth. My customers are actually my best salespeople because they'll. Especially on industrial size. My Lumber mills and my vineyards and things like that. Tell each other, where'd you get that product? Because it's different, great price. And so I've gotten a lot of business just from, hey, you know, John at this, at Redwood Lumber says I should call you and I'll pick up business that way. It's really wonderful, a great customer relationship. I asked them if you know, anybody else, you know, please, you know, pass my, pass my name along. And they're sweet, wonderful customers and they do that a lot of it. Also do some mailers to local businesses here because I'm, you know, geographically I'm much more Northern California and coastal, so I want to do more industrial customers. So I do mailers and I get landscapers and roofing companies and some light industrial people giving business. And that's starting to build up too. And so those are, again, those are all winnable. High margin. I shouldn't say this for listening. High margin opportunities. And as they grow, obviously pricing will change. But good ones up and good repeat business. I find that people are very loyal. And that's the other thing about why I chose this. Because there's some brand loyalty, there's loyalty. It's not something you go on the web and you say a glove is a glove. If you have a glove, for some unknown reason, people stick with it to say, because it works, right? And I'm used to it. I don't, you know, there's so much variety out there that people get sick of shopping. So it works, it works. So that's how, you know, for the most part, that's how the business is going. But I'm getting much more into, like I said, more mailers. And I have an inside salesperson that does out calls and sends samples out. We're really good with samples. And that seems to really hook people. You give them something tangible where they can see and it works. They'll call you back.

Yeah, that's a great idea. So typical. Like you're, you know, looking for these new businesses. I mean, if they're needing safety things or glove things, the difference seems like they're going to go to some big box hardware store or they just walk in, buy whatever versus having a relationship with a company like yours that's going to take care of them and try to give servicer needs all around.

I think services, Sean, is the big, big word there. Because I take anything back. I, I say if you don't like it, I take it back. And I don't put up a fuss. If it's you know they've got six months, you know, they bought it six months ago and the guys just don't use it because I know how it is. They don't use it. They, if they don't like it, they won't use it and it will sit. So I'll take it back. And yeah, I have my, you know, my weird inventory in my warehouse. But what they, what the customer always allows me to do is find a replacement for it. So if you're really open with your service and your, in your value added or your value statement, I think customers like love that they, they're very loyal to that. If you make it easy for them to buy and to do business with you, I think that's key to my whole business. I want to make it as easy as possible to do business with me so you won't go away. In Internet terms make me sticky. And so for instance, with some of my industrial accounts, I've been real fortunate that I put consignment inventory. So it's my inventory on their site and they love that because that's my product is a, you have to have it. If you don't have it, your, your line shuts down. If you don't have a glove, but you don't have a safety mask, you don't have a helmet or hard hat, that guy can't work because OSHA won't allow him to work. Right. So if product on demand is really critical, so I've really kind of again focused, what can I do? It's not about the product, it's about how can I make it, what's, what's my customer's best interest. So I provide services, value added services at no cost that allow me just to get my product in there.

So you stock the product in there and they can just come as an employee needs it, they can come buy it.

And I'll give you a great example, one of my best customers. I'll put $3,000 worth of inventory, my inventory, the startup inventory, that doesn't cost them a cent. So but there's a min max, let's say there's seven dozen of max, two dozen minimum. So they never run out. I have somebody go into that store the day before and say, Mike, here's what you need to fill and I'll fill back up to max. And then that's what their bill is. Oh. So and to them it's, it's, you know, it's not a great variety. It's what they need. Right, right. But in the same Vein, they, they love the fact that, you know, it's. They're being serviced.

Yeah, sure.

And they don't have to worry about a man not being able to work, because if that person can't work, that means they can't produce. So that's their need. That's the approach I took. What, what did they need? They need manpower to keep up and they need to stay in compliance. So what can I do to help them do that?

So I'm curious, when you got involved in the business and started doing this, was this OSHA requirement thing something you were very much aware of when you were sort of vetting this particular business to purchase it, knowing that, okay, I've always got customers because there's these regulations. Was that something you looked for when you were looking for a business opportunity?

Not so much when I was looking at the business opportunity, because that came along after I was in and I realized, wow, these people really being under. Serviced by my competitors, not just by my, you know, my. But a previous owner, you know, where they, you know, he was waiting for a phone call or they, you know, waiting for an order to come over, but versus getting into what they really did to be part of the solution and be part of their company. You know, when I was, when I was in tech, the, you know, the best business relationship we had when we were a part of their company, their, you know, their product flow that we were part of, sort of supply chain. Well, I brought that whole supply chain concept to this industry, which really isn't a very. They're still kind of old school. And bringing in, you know, terms like supply chain to management level was something that they hadn't really. Nobody's really talked to them about that. Right. And so what do you want from your suppliers versus what I have to sell. Right. So when I, to get back to your question, when I bought the company, I assumed that. I said, okay, that's what everybody does. Right. But when I bought, I realized that nobody does it. So that was something to my, to my thought, okay, here's an opportunity for me to take advantage of these other. My competitors who are in it. And they're doing a great job, they've grown, they're bigger than me, but where I can just literally guerrilla warfare, take business from them. Because I have a, I approach it from a different standpoint. And I'm talking, I don't ever talk about gloves, talk about what do you need. And I think, you know, any entrepreneur is successful. You, you know, the stuff that you have will eventually come to the forefront. It's about what, what can I solve for you? Yeah. Whether it's insurance. Whether it's insurance or any bark, for heaven's sake. You know what? You know, sand. You know, what can I solve for you? Not just, hey, I have sand. But, you know, how do you need it? You know, do you need it in buckets? Do you need it? And truckloads, you know, that's the service solution that people buy. Well, that, that's right. You're.

You realize what you're actually in business doing.

You.

Gloves are, gloves are your way of getting there, but you're. And obviously now it's more than gloves.

Right?

Right.

So, you know, you've proved your own point. I, I was. Your story reminded me I went to see a concert at, I think it was Fenway Park. But it doesn't matter. It was somewhere in Boston and this was a number of years ago. And, you know, the show started at 7 o', clock, so it's, you know, whatever, 5, 30, 6 o' clock, as you're filing in and there's this great unwashed masses, right. All going to this thing and, and you're passing by all these people selling food. And the most of them were saying, hey, come get hot dogs here. Hey, come get hamburgers here. And then I walked past this sausage stand and all they sold there was sausage, Right. But the guy said nothing about sausage. His pitch was, get something for dinner. Get something to eat. And I thought, man, that's brilliant because he's not trying to sell you on the one thing he has. He's selling you to solve your problem. You want dinner? So, oh, we'll go over. What do you have? Well, I have sausage. All right, well, that solves my dinner problem. Right. It was interesting to see and it was clear this pitch worked for him. He had twice as many people at his booth. Booth than all the others, and he never said a word about what he sold.

So. Right. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's a great example from a standpoint of just. People read. People know what you sell. They see it. Right. They just don't know. There's no. How do I different. How is this guy different than the other guy?

Yeah. And you don't want to have every time you show up on site, you don't want to be like, oh, gosh, here comes this guy trying to sell me something again.

Right, Right.

Even though you do want to sell them something. You, you, you like you, you know, being part of their solution. It's like, oh, hey, I've been waiting for you to come by because I have this problem I need help with.

Right. I have a. If I can. One other example.

Sure.

I. With one of my larger industrial accounts, we're just going, we're going through a review. And so, you know, we're doing great there. But. And I'm working with the safety manager and the users, and, you know, they love it because they're. They're able to do their job well. Guess who comes walking into the equation. Purchase purchasing is going, hey, well, we spend a lot. Did you realize that? We went from X to X plus on this. And you're talking to the users and safety managers. So I go into. And so I get a call and say, we need to talk. And well, you know, to me it's like, okay, you're gonna price me out. You're gonna go on Google, you're gonna go to Amazon, whatever, blah, blah, blah, find my stuff for cheaper. But it's the service solution. I kept telling you, he's like, you can buy from them, go ahead, but you're gonna run out. Right? You're not gonna have it, and you're gonna shut down. So I put that, you know, it's not a fear thing, but it's true, right? So we go through review and I get out of the review. I have more business now. I shifted them from product that really wasn't as appropriate as I thought to allowing me to show them some other. Some other product that is more cost effective, that fits their needs more, and addresses purchasing. Because all purchasing wanted was, hey, we need a Delta. We need to show me something. So we can go to our boss, the general manager, say, hey, you know, we're able to reduce our cost. Everybody's happy. I still make the same amount of profit. Yeah, right. And, but again, more solidifying, it's not about, you know, you have to answer some questions, right? Whether it's, you know, profitable, their profitability, their cost. But you have to also realize, you know, it doesn't really work. Trying to stay true to what I'm trying to do here is like, I'm solving problems for you guys. I could have easily taken what I currently sell and reduced the price, but that would just make. Just take all the value away from me and make it a price.

It's a losing proposition. I mean, you just raced at the.

Bottom, and then next year you're gonna ask for more, you know, again. Right. I just lose it.

Yeah. I think that's a great example of, you know, using other resources at your disposal to, you know, shifting them maybe into a different product line still serves what they need, you know, but it may be a different, you know, different price point. And they feel like, oh, this guy really listened to me.

Right? Exactly. And again, it's, it's further benefit it, you know, and, and, and again, the value, it keeps stating the value. You know, I'm hungry, I'm hungry. What do you have? You have food for me. And for me it was, you know, I provide this service and you're not going to be able to get this from somebody else. Yeah, right. So that's awesome. That's good.

Yeah, that's great. So we, we always ask a couple questions, you know, one, we're, we're huge fans of, of making mistakes on this show, you know, because you, they're so powerful. You learn so much from them. Is, is there a mistake that you think you might have made in the last five years? Maybe you haven't made any.

You see me shake my head, no, I'm joking.

You know, mistake that you can recall? You know, they say, hey, this is. I really, you know, learned a valuable lesson.

You know, I think that there's, you know, they're all cumulative, right. You look back and these little things, gosh, I would have done this a little bit better. I think a lot of times it's picking my vendors. I think again, we talk about supply chain as a picking to correct vendors or vendors that can solve my problems. I found I wasn't even, I wasn't doing what I was, you know, proposing to my customers and solving my own issues. I was looking at price. I was looking at, you know, basically just price. How can I get. Make more margin? When I really realized I need, I need a, I need a vendor that will show me solutions to what I need, ask what my business is. So at the very beginning, I had a couple of vendors that, that were legacy vendors that came on that just, you know, hey, Mike. And this is the price on it. They reduce themselves to price too. And I stayed with them. But what happened is that I slowed my sales down because I wasn't able to provide solutions to my customers because I had product that really wasn't that attractive. I eventually switched to a couple of vendors that were brought to me by manufacturers reps saying, why don't you try this guy? They're a little bit more expensive, but you know, there's more variety. They have much more to offer you as you're growing. Right. So I'm looking in the future what are my needs? Well, I need a, I need a supply chain that can grow with me. Right. I don't need somebody that's so narrow and channel and narrow scope that, you know, so again, my own, my own words coming back at me. And sometimes you have to really, you know, think about that. It's like when you supervise a somebody, you know, it's not their fault, sometimes you're not supervising them correctly. Well, same same thing. As part of supply chain, I'm trying to be a good vendor. Well, gosh, I need to look at the back end. Are my vendors good for me? Yeah. And, but what am I, you know, what am I asking my vendors? Am I asking for value or just parts? And I need more value because that's actually in the long run much more valuable to me. Sure.

That they're going to help grow. Yeah, that's great insight. To be able to flip the equation and to be able to see that, wow, I'm just beating them up on price.

Right.

And I'm doing the same thing I'm telling my customers not to do.

Exactly, exactly.

That's great. So, you know, we always end the show with the question, you know, we always like to look back and if you could give yourself one piece of advice when you first started, looking back now and with basically all the information which you've learned, which sounds like a tremendous amount, which is I commend you for what piece of advice would you give yourself just getting started in the business?

I would say if I went back, I would change more rapidly. I stuck with the business model that was handed to me, so to speak, for much too long. If I would have cut that in half and was able to let go of the business a little bit more because, you know, I wanted to control, I wanted, I was learning, it was a learning process and I was a little, you know, things in personal life that wanted me to keep something really stable. Yeah. But the risk of that when I look back now was really minimal. For me to change would have been a minimal risk, but it would have added so much more to the business and if I would have, you know, again, just let go of the company a little bit more and trusted other people to, to do some of the functionality that I was doing is literally cutting boxes and you know, things like that and just, you know, do do more of that, you know, in some higher level functions too. More salesmen. If we're to, you know, invested in a salesperson earlier on, I think I've, I would have grown, I would have Been at a different level even now.

I see.

Sure. So again it's just more of a matter of just let go and try to innovate fast. Don't. Don't hold on to something just because it works. Look at, be self critical and try to try to of change and look around you. I mean take what you know like yourself. I was talking to you, great conversations with you about how you're growing your business and you know, different avenues, you know that you want to get involved in and just kind of take that more to heart.

No, that's great. That's really good advice for somebody. And it seems like that you know, embracing change and balancing the risk.

Right.

Which we always face as business, you know, people you know, every day.

Right.

So that's awesome.

Awesome.

Dave, you have any more questions for Mike?

Mike, I'm curious. I don't think you covered this but are you a sole proprietor there or do you have employees that work with you?

You know I have, I'm a sole prop and I haven't have a young lady who does basically everything. She's actually great and she's young. She's learning a lot of new skills and I plan to bring on an outside sick salesperson now because I'm definitely at that clip that again part of that letting go where I can bring in a who actually works for a competitor and he's going to come over which says a lot. That means that he looks at me as hey, this is a company that I can trust and come on over and he knows the business, he knows where the bones are buried so to speak. So that's he'll be coming online Q3 as well. So from that point I think that that things should start to actually go a little bit more exponential for me and plus one versus something and I can't wait to see where the company goes. But incorporations happening as we said earlier right now with the name change and everything like that. But with that I think I'm definitely adding more people.

That's great. What's the best way for people to find your company? People are listening.

Well, you can still go on the website. That website is going to go down in a little bit. But Workman glove and safety is to Google or just Workman Glove and my Telephone number is 925-370-7005. I'd be happy to talk to any of your listeners about my experience or just networking and be great.

That's great. Well, we really appreciate you hanging out with us for a little today. If anyone has questions, want to reach Mike or Dave or myself? Of course, you can always just send an email to feedbackbapodcast.com and you can find us on Facebook and Twitter and DBA podcast. And thanks again. We really enjoyed having you here.

Great. Thanks, guys. I think this is a great idea. Yeah, wonderful. Thanks.

Cool. Dave, enjoy the rest of your week.

You too, my friend. Thanks for coming, Mike and folks will see you next week for DBA 23.

Take care, everybody.