Eric Benavides Founder of Backyard Workroom

Greetings, folks, and welcome to episode 337 here of the Small Business show at BusinessShow. Co Shannon I am looking forward to today's interview. There's. This is a cool product. This is something that. Well, this is something that would serve lots of us and would have served lots of us for a long time. Now. It's something that serves way more people out there, too.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And for some reason, I'm really fascinated with this con, the concept of the company that we're going to talk to their founder. And it just speaks to me somehow, and I'm really intrigued. So getting a chance to speak to Eric Benavides and learn about backyard workroom, I'm really looking forward to it.

Yeah, no, this is great stuff. I'm ready to go, man. I know I always say that, but I'm going to prove it. I'm ready to go. You ready to go?

I'm ready to small business. Let's do it.

Well, I'm ready to small business, too. He is Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Hamilton, and this is the Small Business Show.

You know, Dave and I always talk about the importance of having a separate space, either for your work with exercise or just to get away and how important that is to kind of keep our sanity, especially working from home this.

Last year or so or the last 20 years.

Yeah, there you go.

For me, it's only been a few.

Yeah, for me, it's only been a few years, but I really have come. I was just talking to our guests before we got started how important it is for me to be able to leave the house and, you know, walk up the stairs, climb the back of the hill behind my house and have this, this space to do it. And I know you have.

I've had both. I've had an office in my, in my house proper. And then. And then the separate space, which is what I have now. And it's important to have a separate. A space that is for work. But having that, that, that physical distance from the place where I live, even if it's only, you know, 100ft, it makes all the difference in the world because I can truly leave, well, sort of leave work behind. I still bring my phone with me, sort of fail all the time at that. But, you know, having that separate space, it allows me to be in a. To change mindsets very quickly, which is good.

Yeah, that's. That's a good point. Change of mindset. So today on the show, we're, we're getting to talk with Eric Benavidez Founder and CEO of Backyard Work this company builds and they install structures. Only takes a few weeks and you can get the space you need in your backyard, side yard, wherever it is. Eric, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Gentlemen, my pleasure. Thanks for the invitation. I'm glad to be here.

Yeah, I'm really excited to learn about this stuff. Like I said, I'm kind of a nerd about it. So let's talk about your background. First you were a contractor, I think, in the oil and gas industry, and then a home builder before starting Backyard Work. Talk about how your skills brought you to this space and how you made the shift from what you're doing before into building these prefabricated small spaces.

Well, actually, it was a flip. I've been a home builder in the construction business in Dallas, Fort Worth since 83 and about 22 years ago started my own business and was doing custom homes throughout DFW and you know, high density type custom homes in downtown Dallas. And then in 2008, I was a victim like everybody else and in the home crash and happened to go to North Dakota, look at some apartments and got interested in some oil and gas products up there. So I started doing that in around 2011 and did that until about a year ago. And we were doing industrial water treatment plants for the oil and gas business.

Interesting.

Yeah. And then you saw. Did you just have this kind of epiphany or did somebody come and, you know, convince you that, look, this is, there's a great opportunity, were in the midst of this, you know, was it the pandemic that drove it? How did you get into this, this business?

Well, about. Well, it's hard because it seemed like last year was just an empty vacant year. So I have to count back, but we were doing. About three years ago, we were doing about 80 million in construction in the oil and gas industry, industrial portion of it. But last year was a very rough year. We wound up closing several offices and laying off about 75 employees. One of the companies that I owned out of the six different companies which were, you know, such as a software company and the general contracting company. But the one I had was the shop in Richardson, which is where we're at now. It's about 13,000ft where I had welders and electricians. So when things started, you know, coming to a halt last summer, I put my welders to work doing shipping containers and we started with those doing little offices and, you know, that was the goal. Anyway, I saw the backyard being an opportunity. We were doing greenhouses and offices and workout rooms, but it was very difficult. The shipping container market was a little harder to get into backyards and obviously very heavy. But we had had welders here. That's what we had done before. So it all really started from converting shipping containers and then from there I started combining my manufacturing and home building experience into creat the backyard workrooms. And that's when that was born in the fall. And then I saw some opportunities and that's when I applied for some patents and started really, you know, developing the branding and franchising and things like that. And we've, we've steadily grown from that. But I would say we really started in January of this year selling.

Yeah, what I love about that story is it's just such a typical, you know, business owner, entrepreneur mentality. It's like, okay, how can I keep all my people working, right? What skills do they have? How can we apply them in doing something else if one thing slows down and it's so commendable that that's just a natural thing to start thinking about.

Thank you. And that was exactly the case. I, you know, had laid off a lot of people, but I had my roughly 15 guys in the shop who'd been with me and was welders and electricians and construction guys. And it was really important for me to, you know, keep them going through the pandemic. And, you know, that's what we did. We all, you know, hunkered down and did what we needed to do and, and here we are today. But that was the main cause is to keep everybody employed and, you know, kids fed. I've had thousands of employees in my career and that's very important to me and always has been.

You know, I've said on this show, and I'm still trying to figure out the right way to say this is that being an entrepreneur is a blue collar job. And by that I mean you got to be willing to do whatever it takes, no matter what in your company to bring things forward. Right. And, and what you just said really perhaps says it better than, than I can that, you know, you had this business and you, you wanted to keep it moving forward, you needed to keep it moving forward, you owed it to your people to keep it moving forward. And you figured out a way and it was a little different than what you were doing, but it leveraged what you had and, and forward you went. You created a cool thing too, by the way. But you know, the interesting that the catalyst wasn't hey, here's a cool thing we can create. It's out of necessity. What can we create to serve this market that we know we need to serve so that we can stay in business? And I like that. I like that drive.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, that's great. So I want to talk about this design. Is your background. Did that allow you to kind of figure out how to put this thing together so this modular thing and then, you know, eventually take it to, you know, getting this patent pending. Talk us through that process, if you will, especially the patent part. You know, I've looked at a lot of these companies selling, you know, different kinds of structures. Like shipping container thing you mentioned. Right up my alley. I love that concept, but it is its own animal. How did you get to the point where you built this and then went out and, you know, filed the patent stuff for it?

Well, it really became a process of elimination or, you know, necessity of what is it? Necessity is the mother of invention, if you will. One of the challenges we saw with the shipping containers is how do you get this into somebody's backyard? And we had a lot of people had interest in it and they were just really cool and upcycling and all the neat terms out there that, if you will. And we're very sustainable minded people here and want to, want to do our part, if you will. But one of the things I ran into was more and more, how do we get this into somebody's backyard and make it functional? I saw the need of. I'm right down the street from one of the big corporate offices that State Farm had put in, for example, and a lot of people went home. So where do those 4,000 people go and how many are going to go back? And I felt there would be in the long run a large portion, excuse me, a large portion of people that would stay home irrelevant. When the pandemic finally calmed down, which is what we're seeing here, especially in Texas. So I decided that I'd have some rules. I wanted to be able to get it into somebody's backyard with a four man crew. And everything that we design, from the steel foundation to the roof to the wall panels, everything has to be carried by a four man crew and had to be assembled by a four man crew by hand. And if it didn't, we redesigned it and changed the weights and, and changed. And we were fortunate to be able to fit that requirement well during that process. I didn't want to bring in a lot of wheelbarrows and take a lot of time. And, and I thought, well, you know, why, if I can carry this with a four man crew, I think I can build an entire wall or a half roof system or a foundation system. Well, that also created some needs for, you know, not being able to use concrete. So we use the steel foundation and we have some adjustable footings that go on there. And the way we band the pieces together with some steel, combination of steel and, you know, the pieces that we use to hold it together to give it some structure. Well, during that process and having experience in some patents in the past, which I have some issued patents which are hard to get, took several years to get some filtration patents that I have in the oil and gas business and, you know, tens of thousands of dollars and a couple of trips to D.C. i called my attorneys up that I'd worked with for years and said, hey, what do you think? And we came in and that was really how we took it to that next level of being something that was special that I could really put some effort into to protect ourselves. As an entrepreneur, that's what you want to do. I wasn't copying anybody, and I don't want anybody to copy me. And. And so we just had those certain requirements get into people's backyards, certain sizes, being able to assemble quickly, and it all just kind of evolved from there. I can tell you there's many prototypes out there. There's people, you know, using the prototypes in their backyards today, even all the way from wood studs and sheetrock to steel studs and plywood, to the product that we use today, which is called a structural insulated panel.

Very cool, man. That's crazy. I have a question I want to ask you about the patenting process in general. It sounds like you've been through it a few times here. The next thing that I want to do, though, is I want to talk about our sponsor here, and that is LinkedIn jobs. Look, today, we small business owners, we are busier, more productive than ever. And because we're focused on managing, growing our businesses, we can't always spend the time that we want on recruiting. And that's why LinkedIn jobs has made it easier to find and hire the best candidates for free. Truly. Like, you know, we talked all about this. I just went through the process of hiring a podcast promotion publicist person here at Backbeat Media. It's how we found Sadie, who's been doing all this great work here for the show. I found Sadie through LinkedIn jobs. It was amazing and I paid for it. Right. You get to do it for free. I paid for it, and it was totally worth it because I think I paid, like, $121 or something. We got 71 candidates. Of those, I think about 50 of them were, you know, extra. They were all qualified candidates. 50, maybe 40 of them were candidates that we felt we wanted to interview. We did. Obviously, we found Sadie through that process. It was amazing. And LinkedIn jobs let us do it so quickly and so efficiently. And you can get started by posting your job for free. And you'll be able to reach LinkedIn's network of 740 million professionals. And you can fill out targeted screening questions to get your role in front of the most qualified candidates with the experience, skills, and motivation that you need. And then it's super easy to filter and prioritize the top candidates that you'd like to interview. LinkedIn jobs will help you hire the right person for your role. And did you know that every week nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? You can post your first job for free at LinkedIn.com SBS. You have to go to LinkedIn.com SBS in order to post your first job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Our thanks to LinkedIn jobs for sponsoring this episode. All right, Eric, so you've been through this patenting process a few times before. You talked about it earlier as though it were fairly easy, at least as compared to what I know the patenting process to be like. And you talked about it like you had a. An assumption of getting the patent approved, which I've also learned the hard way is not always the case. Can you talk a little bit about perhaps some of your prior patents? Obviously this one's pending, and, you know, there's not a whole lot to talk about with the approvals of it, but can you talk about the process so people know what they're getting themselves into when they decide that they do have something that's worth taking down this path?

Well, sure. And I'll speak frankly as a. As a business owner in the real world, if you will, the patents have. Basically, there's two stages of a patent. Once you go after a patent, of course you want to get the patent, but there's lots of modifications, there's lots of art and other. What other people have done. One of the things in one of my patents they were comparing me to, this is a water filtration device, was a laundry machine that actually washed clothes. It has to do with filtration, you know, in the 60s. So you have to come in and argue why this is different than that. And over time, that happened to be. I removed all of the questions that the patent processor at the United States Post Patent Office, uspto, I think, is how you say it, and addressed all of his issues and eventually got the patent. There's another part of the patent which is called the provisional patent.

What I want to, I want to, I want to come to the provisional patent, but I want to talk about this process here because this is an interesting thing and your patent attorneys, folks will take you through this. But what you just described, where you start with something and then the patent inspector, it's amazing how they can dig and find things that are similar to what you've put in there. Like, they are masters at this, right? But they, you know, they find all the little things that other people have patented. And so you start big and then you get very specific by, like you said, removing all of those things so that what you are left with is unique, at least in their eyes to you. And then they'll grant you that patent, hopefully in the end. But that's, it's, that's an interesting part of the process to think, oh, I've got this one little thing. No, maybe not, but keep going. Bullheaded persistence can win the day.

That's exactly right. We work. And I commend those guys. Imagine, you know, I wasn't, you know, I hate to use the term expert. I think a doctor or an attorney is somebody who studied as long as they have. But there's a certain amount of expertise when you're creating a patent. But it's amazing that those guys up there can actually, you know, understand. They're dealing with all different kinds of patents. To understand and have the same language about pressures and vacuums and levels and monitoring devices was, was. I was very impressed with their overall ability. Ability to see things, not only what I'm doing.

Your way. Yeah, they see things your way. I never, I felt I have this. I had the same experience when we went through a failed patent process, but it was, you know, it was like, wow, you really understand what we're doing here. I've had a hard time explaining this to my business partners. Fascinating, Fascinating. So talk about this provisional patent that. Yeah, that's interesting.

So the provisional patent is, is another step in the patents where when you file a patent, you're given a. And this is true for everybody, not just me. When you're given a patent, the patent is good for 20 years from the day that you apply. And there's, there's Little caveats in there, but this is general information. But the, the provisional patent is where none of the information that you put in the patent is available for anybody else to see. And so what, what it does is it protects you for roughly 18 months before anybody can see it, whether you get the patent approved or not. So what it does is, protects you with what may or may not be in the patent to keep other people from copying you. Because if they did copy something that you did and it does wind up being in your patent, then you, that they risk being infringing or, you know, losing that technology or, you know, that would be something that wouldn't be good for them. So we have a certain window to keep things quiet, if you will. We're only into month six out of the 18 months, so it's still a protection of some of the things that we do. So again, it's not a pure patent. That's why people say patent pending. But what it does is try to keep copycats, if you will, to come in and really start to just, you know, change one letter or change one way you do something and say, this is theirs, this is theirs. They don't know what's in our shit. So it is a protection device that is great. And hopefully in the next 18 months we will be able to get actually some patent pending or some patents issued on lots of different processes. This is just not one patent is some processes, some trade secrets. There's, you know, trademarks, a lot of different things that go along with just the patent that's not, not tied to it, but the overall preservation of your product. Hopefully that answered your question.

It did, yeah. No, I just think it's valuable for people to hear what that's like. Yeah. Because it can be a big asset to your business both while you're, you know, running it yourself. And then, you know, if you wind up selling the business or that portion of your business, that can be an attractive thing to a buyer as well.

So it's, you know, we spent a lot of money on the prototypes, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in man hours just to develop some of these. So of course we want to protect the, protect that investment as long as possible. And you know, maybe later on in 20 years, people copy us and we'll look back or I'll look back and say, you know, I was proud to put that together, that other people, you know, were, that was a good product that solved a lot of problems for a lot of other people. But today I need to recoup my Investment.

Yeah. That's great. So looking at your website, it looks like you're fortunate enough to be able to work with, you know, several family members, extended family. I know many of our listeners work with spouses, siblings, or, you know, their kids. How has working with family helped your business? And the sensitive question, you know, any unique challenges or systems you have to put in place when, you know, you're, you're working with family members?

Yeah, it's got some, some challenges to it. You know, all my sons are millennials, so they were born with computers and Google for all the information. But, no, it's been, it's been great. My wife was staying at home for the first raising the boys. We homeschooled our sons. So that was, you know, one of the commitments that we both made. She came on board about five years ago. And the, one of the benefits is, you know, it's exactly having someone you can trust, you know, knowing that, you know, somebody who's paying the bills and watching those things, that is there to watch your back. Especially when you get larger companies. You know, over 100 employees and in four states is a pretty substantial company for really anyone. But it was a unique education for myself and my kids. They got to learn what dad's really like after, you know, being away those years and seeing what I was doing and coming to being a part of it. And are there challenges? Absolutely. I think the one thing that we, you know, anybody that does this is, and it's tough for an entrepreneur, I can tell you that. My brain works differently than, than a lot of people and trying to shut it off, if you will.

Welcome to the club.

It's hard. It's just difficult. So, you know, it's the. At five o', clock, you just got to stop. And that's really the thing that we strive for, is just, you know, I can become dad again, not boss. And, you know, my kids, they worked hard when they were young. They didn't get allowance. They had to mow the grass and rent houses and, and worked at the pizza place. And, you know, they, they pulled their, they pulled their weight. So I definitely taught them how to fish. I did. I didn't give them fish.

Yeah, that's good. Great experience for them, I'm sure. And so if I'm correct, you're primarily in the Dallas Fort Worth area, Is.

That correct, the new business? Yes, we are based in Dallas, Fort Worth. We just sold a distributorship for Austin. It was getting way too many leads and products down there for us to manage. But, yes, we're in the Dallas Fort Worth market.

Are you planning on, like you talk about expanding a little bit. You know, I noticed on one of your questions on your FAQ page there was a mention of franchise or anything like that. Is your ultimate plan to kind of keep spreading out and based on demand?

That's. That's exactly right. In fact, we. The reason you don't see it anymore is we had such a demand for franchising that I needed to test tap the brakes a little bit and get my infrastructure in the construction process and some of the techniques and the staff to be able to handle the additional work that the franchises were bringing. The west coast is. It was. We were getting a lot of interest there, but our franchises were only being marketed in Texas and Oklahoma. But we were getting all the way from North Carolina to Jacksonville to Seattle. And we had to tap the brakes on a little bit from there. We got our 13,000 square foot shop. We're just signed a lease for our next shop, which would be 20,000 square feet and hopefully will be moved into the next two weeks, which will give us some breathing room on being able to take care of what we have. And then from there we'll start to, you know, go back to franchising again. But I didn't want to get in here and number one, work myself to death trying to keep up with everything and then do a bad job for a lot of people. We stopped and paused a little bit, but we're almost there, ready to get back into it again.

That's great. Yeah, I can imagine. And that's a really important concept is when to kind of put, like you mentioned, you know, tap the brakes a bit to get control of things. And did you have you had such demand that you've had to do that with actually selling the product as well and you know, keep the systems and the quality up and especially I'm sure based on demand during the, you know, pandemic and things. Have you had to do that too?

Well, yes, we were. Everybody buys everything, you know, this is not a plug for them, it's just life. It's Google search, you know. So we spent most of our effort and time making sure that's correct. So yes, we've, you know, expanded different markets. West Texas, Lubbock, Austin, obviously Houston and Oklahoma City at one time. And we're doing Google, you know, the pay per clicks in those markets. And now at this point in time, just to keep up with, with the factory, to keep up with demand, we just shrunk down to Dallas Fort Worth, and then found somebody to do the Austin market for us as well. Because it's the word, you know, we try to be just the construction manufacturing facility, but there's that, you know, meeting with people, the scheduling of the installation, that one on one, and that we wanted to make sure that everybody got, you know, through and the franchises was the best way for us to do that so we could concentrate on doing the buildings correctly.

Yeah. Like Dave always tells us, you know, we're all in the customer service business. So that second part you mentioned, you know, working with customers, getting everything, it's just so critically important that you have enough infrastructure to manage that, Right?

Absolutely. I mean, without. Especially these days, you know, you get a couple of bad reviews and you don't address the issues. It's very, you know, and rightfully so. A company should strive to be the best they could or communicate with the. In our particular case, a homeowner to make sure that, you know, hey, we may make a mistake, but we're going to get out there and we're going to fix it for you. And that's what it really matters to people. And that's what matters to us as well.

Yeah, we're big fans of mistakes here. We.

We are.

I mean, we. So much so that we wrote a book last year called We Love Mistakes. But. But it's. It's how you learn. Right. We call them tuition so that we can justify paying for them. But. But it's, you know, learn and, and like you said, make your customers aware that no, like, we're here, we're not going anywhere, and we're going to help you. So. Yeah, it's great.

Any Eric, any, you know, mistake you feel maybe you made early on in this process that taught you an important lesson that you can share with our listeners.

In my career or in this particular.

You pick. You pick. I'm sure it'll be great advice.

Whichever one that you feel the most, that's.

Yeah.

Or the best story.

You know, you want to classify this in hundreds of thousands of dollars or just.

You're not. You're not alone. That's a good thing. You're among friends here. We just have a conversation. Yeah.

We've got jackets. Yeah. Yeah. The.

The biggest mistake, I believe, for an entrepreneur is. And myself, and I'm sure you guys could concur and probably wrote about it, is the you can't do it all yourself. And especially when you're the entrepreneur, the owner. We're fortunate we have no investors or partners. It's Just my wife and I. The best way is to grow a company is with your employees. Well, the only way is through your employees, your staff, your team, and to allow them to make mistakes and to know the right time when to turn things over to them to where they can run with the ball and a certain amount of trust. So sometimes my mistakes have been, been as being the designer and the inventor especially, is to, you know, hopefully have the right person in place, which we've worked very hard to create that culture and environment, to have those people here. But the biggest mistake is probably holding on to some of that my baby a little too long and let those guys run with it and having faith in, you know, not only my family members that are there, which is kind of inherent, but other people that work for you. And I think that, you know, waiting and holding that stuff a little close to my chest was probably one of the bigger mistakes that, that I make on a daily basis. And, you know, you learn from it, but it's. It's hard to do it when it's yours.

Yeah, for sure. We've all been there.

We had, trust me, we had one guy on the show, Shannon, maybe you remember who it was, who said, you know, his way of, of approaching that was, you know, his problem was, well, it's my baby. I am the best at this. Right. Which is. Which of course isn't true. But you know that there's days when you have to convince yourself of that, especially the days at the beginning when you are the only person there. You must therefore be the best. It's certainly the best within the company. And he said, the way he reconciles that is he says, all I need is somebody that can be 80% as good as me. And at that point, I'm willing to turn it over to them and let go. And, and of course, what's often proven is that they're about 120% as good as him. Right. But. But you need to, like, you don't know that until you, like you said, you offer some trust into it. You offer some faith into it.

That was Gary Von Meer from Tech Defenders.

There it is. Gary Van Meer. Yeah. And so that 80% rule really stuck with me because I suffer the same, the same fate as you there, Eric, where, you know, I don't want to give it up. It's like, okay, wait, if they can do it 80% as well, then that frees me up to do some other things and then, you know, and grow the business, because that's the Whole point of having employees, like you said. So I like that 80%.

That's great.

I hang my hat on that often.

Yeah, yeah. So I have one final question I want to ask you. One of the things I noticed because again, I'm kind of this small space shed geek and I've looked at tons of different methods to use and I've got a project that I'm trying to, you know, use them on. One of the things I really was impressed with. Backyard workroom on your website. Just the whole concept, it just seems so simple and like you've, you've really simplified it down to just some basic things. Especially like for example, the configurator on your website where you can select design this kind of thing. Definitely the most streamlined and simplified concept that I've, I've used. Has that been part of your process? Just trying to really keep things simple to help you manage the growth and keep the cost down?

That's been the basis really of everything that we've done as a company in this particular product. How we get it into the backyard, how do we, you know, as of today, we've, we've trained our second fireman crew. These guys typically have small little, you know, roofing crews or handyman crews. So we use firemen subcontractors to do the installation. They're used to ladders and carrying things on their shoulders. So yeah, that simplicity is the, has been the basis of everything that we've done and our relationship with Horton World Solutions. These structural insulated panels, which is, you know, we're a sustainable product. The only wood we have is the subfloor and trim around the windows. This is a foam structural product that they cut on a water jet and send to us. And it's all just pieces. So it's a big Lego kit. So our buildings can go from 10 by 10 and we can keep adding and go to 100ft long and do 10, 10 by tens in a parking lot, which is one of the products we'll be rolling out for homeless. And then all the wiring in the back is all tied together with one big channel for all the wires to go together. And it's just a big giant kit. The simplicity has been the video that you see on side of us putting that building together, that 8 by 15 or excuse me, 10 by 15 building. That was 33 minutes from the time that the guys walk into the screen until they put the roof on. Now we haven't put the wood floors down or the window, excuse me, the lights in and tied in the electric. But 33 minutes is. And we've beaten that since. So, yes, simplicity has been. Everything that we've done has been based off of that.

That's great. Yeah, that's great. We're going to do a show about simplicity coming up here pretty soon. And I just, I just keep getting hit with that, especially when I was up on your site. So, you know, Eric, thank you for coming on and spending some time with today talking about your business, your, your business experience. What's the best way for people to connect with your company and learn more.

About backyard work or just backyardworkroom.com that's got everything on it. We got our connection, our contact pages on there and videos and pictures and lots of. We've got a lot of new product that came up. Our configurators, builders actually be updated with some new colors and. But backyardworkroom.com is the best way to get a hold of us here and our team will be glad to help out in any way we can.

That's great. It's fascinating business and I really wish you much success. Come back sometime and, you know, update us on how things are going. Especially that your comment there at the end on the homeless solution thing. It's just a huge issue, especially in my state that they're facing. I think that's such a great opportunity to solve a problem and build. To build a great business. So thank you again, Eric.

Thanks, Shannon. I sure appreciate it. Gentlemen, and thanks for the opportunity. I look forward to seeing you guys again in the future.

Man, I love this business concept. I can't get enough of it. I don't know what it is, but these little structures, somehow they speak to me.

Me.

And to talk with Eric and you know, he's years of business experience in this building industries and everything. That's fantastic.

Yeah. I'm curious to see how his patent process with this goes because there's a couple other companies that have been doing this same kind of thing for a while. And so I, I, you know, everybody brings their own angle to it and so I'm hoping that I'm rooting for them that, you know, the way they're doing it is unique enough.

Yeah, it, it's different. I mean.

Yeah.

Yeah. With these panels they use and the foam and the, the way the roof system works and how exactly it goes together, it's, it's pretty unique.

Pretty and pretty amazing. Yeah.

And, and I go back to the beginning where he talked about the impetus for this and, and I've had this happen to me too, is you have all this talent around you, and then one of your business, you know, units starts to slow down for whatever reason, and you think, okay, how can I. I put these people to work doing something else, which is just awesome.

Yeah, that's. Well, that's the key, right, Is figuring out how to keep everybody working. Yeah, yeah. And. And keep. Keep them, like, keep the business profitable enough or solvent enough that it pays them. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah.

You finding, you know, and surrounding yourself with a great team like that, it's hard and it takes years, and that is, you know, your assets are those people. So you just have to protect them at all costs.

That's right. And they will remember that for sure.

You know, we've had a number of. Of business owners on the show that, that have told the same message in one form or another, and I always really respect that. So awesome. Love it.

Yeah. Good stuff, folks. Thanks so much for listening. Let us know your thoughts. Feedbackus show co. Of course. Make sure you check out LinkedIn.com SBS our sponsor, Shannon. Anything you want to share before we get out of here?

No. Go check out backyardworkroom.com and let us know what you think.

FeedbackusinessShow Co FeedbackusinessShow Co we'll see you next week, folks. Keep. Keep living that charmed life. Will.