Interview with Garry VonMyhr Co-Founder of Tech Defenders

It's interview day, Shannon.

It is. You know, I always have. I respect a ton of respect for business owners that have started multiple businesses and especially when they're running them all at the same time. And I know how difficult that is. So today.

Yeah, I feel that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's always a big battle. And so we're really fortunate to have Gary Von Meyer on the show today, and he's got some great expertise in starting multiple businesses and running them.

And, you know, 80% rule of time management is perhaps one of the most important things I think has ever been mentioned on this show. And you get to hear about it.

In a little bit here.

So.

Yeah, you don't want to miss that.

No, you don't.

Great.

You don't, you don't. All right, man, let's do it, shall we?

Let's do it. Yep.

Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small business show, episode 236 for Wednesday, August 14, 2019. We already told you, we've got this great interview coming up. We've got three great sponsors, Linode, Go.co and Blip Billboards, that we're going to tell you about in a little bit here. And. And we're just happy to be here. It's, you know, we are Wednesday. It's a good thing.

Best part of the week.

I know it is. It really is the best part of the week. It's good. It's good.

I agree.

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I, I actively look at my time management almost daily. I mean, really, I'm looking at it pretty often, probably more really, you know, more weekly than anything of, hey, where am I allocating my time? How can I move my, my time around to somebody else? How can I duplicate myself and pass that task down to somebody else who's at least. My rule of thumb is 80% capable. If they're 80% capable, I'd love to be able to move that task off and move on to the next item. I get this quite a bit.

So we all know that mobile devices, phones, laptops, tablets, they're critically important in our lives, in the business world, educational markets. And when this stuff stops, business stops, people panic. And so I'm really excited to have a guest on our show today, Gary Von Meyer. Gary has spent the last decade creating and building companies to keep these devices up and running, as well as managing the reverse cycle when we upgrade or those products become obsolete. Gary's the co founder of Genius Phone Repair, Mobile Defenders and Tech Defenders. And Gary, we're really glad to have you and thanks for joining us today.

Yeah, thank you so much, Shannon. Really, really happy to be on as well.

Yeah, we appreciate it. We always reach out, try to find interesting, you know, business owners to tell their story. And you certainly have had an interesting decade or so. So let's start at the start, talk a little about why, how you got into the mobile Repair market back in 2009 with Genius Phone repair and then, you know, seemed to quickly transition a few years later, co founding, you know, Mobile Defenders. So I'd love to hear the introd how you got started and then what led to starting a second company.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. First off, it's, yeah, it's interesting to hear you say decade because, yeah, it's been quick and it is almost actually going on 10 years at this point. So I don't know if anybody's ever said that I have a decade of experience yet in this space. But it's, it is 10 years now, so it's interesting.

I think it's a great accomplishment.

Wait until you like, it's going to feel like tomorrow when you realize, oh, I have two decades of experience.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got, got three kids at home. So it seems like life is going twice as fast these days. Totally. But yeah, so we got started in business. I've got two business partners, Jordan Notenbaum and Steve Barnes. We went to high school together. So we actually got started in business. Jordan started the company in 2009 and I joined on board shortly after he had started the business. Actually he, it was his really idea. Everybody always thinks I'm a tech guy because I've got a few different tech businesses, but not really. Actually when we first started the business, I still had a texting phone for probably the, the first year, year and a half until I felt pretty obligated to get a smartphone. But Jordan started the business, he was, he just loved tinkering with electronics. And you know, when the first iPhone came out, I remember he did a repair for a friend actually. It's ironic that it was an unsuccessful repair. The first iPhone was very difficult to work on, but he just loved tinkering with things and he saw a really big opportunity. Smartphone adoption, you know, was just kind of initiating and it was, everybody was talking about how, you know, in the future, everybody loves smartphones. Really was a lot of business really at first that, that had blackberries and Palm Pilots, even a little bit before that. But yeah, so. And he told me a little bit about the idea. We went to high school together and he brought the business to me and I, I said, yeah, sounds like a, sounds like a great idea. I love being able to capture some of that smartphone like trend that seems like it's definitely going to be a big, big growing market. Love to be able to, you know, service that industry and kind of live on the back end. So yeah, Jordan really came up with the idea, and then I joined on board. Really short.

Let me ask you right there. Were you doing something different? Were you working for someone else at that time before you made the leap to come on with Jordan?

Yeah, yeah. Everybody always asks me, hey, what was your background before doing these businesses? And I always tell everybody, well, it's funny. I was a server at Applebee's. I was a teller at a credit union here in town. I was the financial advisor for about a year. So I studied finance at a local university here, Grand Valley State University. And then I was a financial advisor for about a year when we were starting Genius Phone Repair. But a lot of this, a lot of my experience was learned the hard way on the fly through some mentorship, a lot of audio books, and, you know, surround myself with a good leadership team.

But, yeah, very cool. So then after a few years, you guys branched out and you started Mobile Defenders. So having gone down this path, this kind of path before, and started similar businesses, I'm intrigued in the reasoning behind coming out with a different brand in a similar space, I believe.

Right? Yeah, very similar. Yeah. We opened our first retail location, actually, in 2011 called Genius Phone Repair. And we quickly, you know, I left my job as a financial advisor about six months after that, and we opened up a second store in the area here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Once we got to four stores, we were buying enough parts from other, like, wholesalers here in the US and we realized that they really weren't that great at what they were doing, and they were all just buying the same, like, commoditized, aftermarket parts from overseas and not really providing any value. Didn't really understand the market all that much. They were just really brokering parts, it felt like. And we had. We were buying, I think, probably around $100,000 in parts a month or so at that point. So we saw a pretty big opportunity to supply ourselves. So we launched this other business, really, to start supplying a little bit of the industry. But it wasn't like this, like, grand idea that we were gonna, you know, attack the market initially. It was really just to supply ourselves and to help reduce our costs. So we just start. We actually went overseas over to China and met with several vendors and kind of started that process of supplying ourselves. And then before we knew it, we started listing some parts on ebay and some other channels, and it just. It took off pretty quickly for us of supplying others. They came to us because we knew the industry, and we would help give them some technical advice or even advice on growing Their, their business because we, we lived in it, we were immersed in it every day. We always told them that we tested the quality right in our own. Right in our own stores. So we, we knew the cell phone market was going to be. Cell phone repair industry was going to be a really big market that we wanted to go out and get and really to get market share in the market, you had to open up a lot of doors or we wanted to look at other options to really capture more of that market. So we looked at the distribution side. So that's really when we started buying parts ourselves and then selling them and creating this whole brand mobile defenders and really supplying other retail cell phone repair stores that allowed us to help go out and grab a larger portion of the market than we would ever be able to get by opening up our own stores. And we looked at franchising at one point and that was a little bit of a mistake for us, I think. We just really didn't know that market all that well. It's a different business than just growing own our own business. So, so distribution was the next best option. And yeah, we just looked at the market and just didn't really, you know, really thought that it was a good growing market and the competition wasn't there. You know, we really thought we could beat the competition in that market and it was a new growing industry. So it wasn't, you know, well developed at the time either.

Yeah. So that there's a lesson here. Right. Because you know, as business owners, we often start our businesses because we, we see a need. Right. Generally it often it's scratch our own itch and, and somebody else probably has the same itch. While you're in business, you will find other itches you need to scratch to get your business running. Not just, you know, something in your personal life. Don't forget to stop and think about maybe there's other business owners that need that same itch scratched. And now you can expand and broaden and, and, or pivot or you know, whatever. There's all kinds of things that can be done. And then you're, I mean that what you, that's exactly what you did. It's awesome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. Often I'm the one that scratches too many itches, unfortunately. So.

Two experts, professionals. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's like, there's a club. We've got jackets.

Yeah, yeah.

And I, I imagine you look at that and like, well, hey, we have this problem. Certainly other companies are having this problem. You know, therein lies the opportunity. Right? And, yeah, but yeah, that's awesome. So, okay, so then about. Let's move on down the timeline here. A year and a half or so later, you know, another itch comes up and you. You guys decide to go out and launch Tech Defenders, which is branching out, I believe, into a. Another area. So, you know, looking at a trend here, what was the move into launching Tech Defenders about?

Yeah, so we, we started working with schools actually at, you know, with Genius Phone repair probably in 2012 or 13i. IPads going into the classrooms started to gain quite a bit of traction. And there was just a lot of talk about technology going in into K12. Really, you know, educators and parents, everybody wanted their kids, you know, using technology early on. So there's a big trend there that started to gain a lot of momentum. And then we were a natural choice for some local schools to get those iPads and their devices fixed. So we started doing some repair with schools in 2012, like I said. And, you know, come 2014, there was just enough technology in schools where we thought there was enough of a market there to really go out and create a separate, like, spin off of Genius Home Repair. Basically, instead of doing repairs out of our stores, we created a depot location to service these school districts and really as just a branch off of Genius owner repair. In 2012, there was, I think, around 5 million devices sold into the US K12 market. And then fast forward all the way to last year. I think it was up to like 14 to 15 million. So the market has gone up astronomically. And so we. We saw that starting to happen. And so we really looked at, well, how do we. How do we repair those devices? Because unfortunately, the students don't take care of them like their. Their own devices most of the time. What? Are you sure? I know, yeah. Hard to believe, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's why we. We. We were using the name Genius Phone Repair. And it just wasn't right because we're fixing a lot of laptops and tablets and we wanted to have a, you know, more of a B2B business, you know, different, different acquisition of customers, a whole different market than the B2C channel. So spun that off, created. Created an own business or a depot, created a little bit of inside sales team to call on schools and start going down that. It's a whole entirely different, you know, education technology market than the retail cell phone repair market that we were really in before.

Oh, that's great. That's awesome. Well, I have some questions about this, but before I jump into That I think we have a message from one of our awesome sponsors, right Dave?

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Awesome. So, okay, so you get the tech Defenders now, along the way here, I would imagine you're sharing lots of these resources with the three different entities. Is that correct? I mean, your back office, all that kind of stuff.

Yep, absolutely.

Okay, that's great. And then when are you shifting? One of the things that I'm always intrigued with is, is managing time, you know, and especially with. Because I always struggle with it and I have multiple businesses and have always had them, and it's like, where's the most important place to focus?

What do you.

What techniques do you use? Any within you, yourself or your team to manage your time and, you know, where you spread yourself around because you can get spread pretty thin. Yeah.

Yeah. This is a constant challenge for me about. And in fact, I just. It's like almost a daily, daily challenge that I think of time management. Yeah. The one nice thing that, you know, everybody always looks at, you know, the three businesses that I have and think that I have to spend spread. I'm spread pretty thin across them, which I am to some degree. But the nice part about having two other business partners is we kind of have more of a divide and conquer sort of approach. So really, I was running genius phone repair all the way from 2011 till 2016. And during that time when, you know, the overlap of having mobile defenders, my partner partners, Jordan and Steve, really helped run and grow mobile defenders. And so I wasn't very active in that business. I was an advisor. And, you know, my partners and I meet every, every week and discuss, you know, what's going on in the company and strategies and issues and all that jazz. But I really always had one primary focus where I Spend the majority of my time, which was genius before, and then tech defenders after that. I was spread thin across different businesses at different times. I had a really hard time really moving the needle like I wanted to on any one of the businesses. And so I really had to set up the right leaders and put the right people in place so I could remove myself. Actually, in like 2016, I transitioned genius over to separate leadership and we ended up later on selling that business in January of 2018. But I. I could not spread my time out across both businesses and really move the needle like I wanted to. So I. I actively look at my time management almost daily. I mean, really, I'm looking at it pretty often. Probably more really, you know, more weekly than anything of, hey, where am I allocating my time? How can I move my time around to somebody else? How can I duplicate myself and pass that task down to somebody else who's. At least my rule of thumb is 80% capable. If they're 80% capable, I'd love to be able to move that task off and move on to the next item. I get this quite a bit too, with time management. I always go back to this one audiobook that I listened to early on. It was called E. Myth by Michael Gerber.

I don't know if you guys have.

Ever read or heard of it.

Yeah, we talk about it on the show a lot.

Do you? Yeah. Fantastic book. I oftentimes, like, anytime I have an issue, I. I'll. Time management or systems, I'll go back and reread that book or I'll prescribe it to others who ask me the question about time management and. And that sort of thing. So it's a constant battle, I'll tell you definitely. But I try to stay focused on one business with 80% of my time at. At a time. So, yeah, no, that's.

What a great rule, that 80 rule of time management, man. Like if. Yeah, right. Like, you know that if you wait until someone can do a job that you're already doing 100 as well or better than you. I mean, certainly if it's a job that you can hire someone that has some experience with it, maybe that's possible. But if you're trying to, you know, hand it off to someone internal, how could they possibly do it 100% as well as you like, it's not going to happen. You have to accept that 80% rule, man. That's freeing. That's great.

Yeah, that's a challenge too. I think in my head, I have to go with 80% because I have to be okay with them not doing it quite as well as me. Of course, that's a general rule of thumb. Right. There's definitely times like I just, we were, we just hired a new CFO and he, you know, he better be able to be better than 80% of me as a CFO. We're gonna have a problem there. But, but in general, you know, early on and as you're, you're growing and, you know, growing throughout the business, that's. That's been my role. I thought I got it from E. Myth. I can't remember what book I. I got that from, but I definitely stole it from somewhere.

Yeah, it sounds familiar, but I don't know that I ever heard it explained quite as. As succinctly as you just did. Like that. That painted a picture of, of. Oh, wait, there's freedom on the other side of this. I'll take it. I'm sold.

Right? Yep.

Yeah. I mean, especially the this, the concept and the E. Myth that, that stuck with me forever was, you know, getting time to work on your business, you know, not being stuck in it every single day. And I always struggle with that. And so that book is critically important and highly recommend it. So let me ask you, let's jump back into the genius phone repair. And I asked this question because I have a lot of personal experience with it. Used to drive me crazy on a micro level on the repair business and this kind of thing and parts. I was in the Apple space for years when it was this high margin, beautiful thing where people really were happy. Didn't complain about price points as much. But over time with the phone market and tablets, that changed and a lot of the products kind of got commoditized and I mean, what did you guys do or how did you manage? And maybe this is one of the reasons you're not focused on that repair market as much anymore is the continual falling of prices that impact your ability to provide a quality service to your customer. You know, here they have this thousand dollar device and they, they just have this. I just found myself beat my head against the wall because they didn't think it was worth spending a lot of money to repair. Did you find that? Or maybe I was just. Maybe it's totally different experience for you.

No, yeah, the market. Yeah, market definitely commoditized for us on the, on the repair side. Even really in the parts distribution side. I think it, you know, happens with a lot of industries where you're not really in this business. We don't make any, you know, anything unique, you know, even really in the ITAD side here on Tech Defenders, where we're really recycling electronics, I mean, there's not like it's a huge secret what we do. And so then it just becomes a challenge of, well, how can you find a way to differentiate yourself? What are some value add services out there that the market needs that other competitors aren't supplying? And so that's where the challenge of continuously thinking forward and looking for, looking at ways to reinvent yourself and just never being complacent with where you're at. And that's really what we've kind of instilled in our culture of our different businesses, of this growth and constant change, because if you're not growing, you're dying type of mentality. And so for us on the genius side, as the market got more commoditized, we looked at other services that we could add in and we looked at other ways we could differentiate ourselves, especially areas where we thought our competitors were weakened. I'll give you one example for us really was on the customer service side. When you're in a retail business, customer service is huge. So all of our employees wrote a book called Fans, Not Customers. And right when they first started, they were given that book. It was instilled in our core values. It was instilled in our training programs and throughout the entire process on, hey, look, in the future, there's going to be a few different repair shops that anybody can go to, and customer service will likely be a big differentiator. We need to take care of, we need to take care of our customers. And quite honestly, we relied on great customer service for our marketing. We, you know, it's really the best.

Sure.

You know, best marketing that you can invest in is, is, is great customer service. And so I, and I remember my partner Steve was so good at it. He would, he would spend such a, you know, even with, you know, we would have older ladies come in with like flip phones and asking, how do I text on this? And even though they probably weren't going to be a customer for us, Steve would spend time with them and sure enough, they'd have three of their friends coming back in the next week. And then all of a sudden they've got their nieces and nephews coming in for ipod and iPad repairs. But really we tried to go the extra mile to take care of customers. And other places were more fly by night. Hey, give me your 100 bucks and I'll fix your screen real quick for you. And so we really focused on that. We've tried to focus on that in our other businesses. At Mobile Defenders, an example there, everybody was selling parts. We were really selling, we call it more of parts as a service. So we were trying to provide technical and additional expertise for these repair shops on how to run their business. Hey, this is a good trick that we use in our retail stores on how to bring in additional customers, and I think it'll work for you. And so we really try to educate our reps on being more than just part salespeople. We're more of consultants. And so we went with that approach. We've tried to do that throughout our businesses. Just really doing the right thing and taking care of our customers, our partners that we work with now at this point, to differentiate ourselves.

So, no, it's great. I love that. Fans, not customers. That really makes a big difference, especially as the market starts to get crowded. You know, you gotta.

That's your differentiator, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Being able to do the work is table stakes. You gotta go beyond that.

Yep, yep, absolutely.

So you mentioned your culture, you know, and instilling this, you know, customer service and this embracing change. I know that surrounding yourself with a great team of people is a critical part of your success. And with each of these businesses, have you found that you have to kind of have a different mindset on how you teach your team and your employees, or is it just like, hey, this is what we do, this is how we do it, the micro level, this is the different products we deal with, but we're all kind of sharing the same culture. Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, it does make sense. There's. There's definitely a lot of similarities in our cultures, for sure, around that, that type of mindset. They're all. The cultures can be a little bit different at the different companies. If you have different leadership, you're going to have a little bit different culture. But we definitely share a lot of the same. A lot of the same values and, and mentality overall. But each of the different markets are a little bit different, a little bit different leadership. Right on the different businesses. But we all do share the mindset of, hey, we can't be just stable. We need to keep looking for the next evolution, the next market to go after. Because in this market, especially the way that the world works these days, but even in technology, in this market, it changes very fast. So you have to be looking for the next thing, otherwise you're going to get left in the dust. So really that, that mentality And a lot of the values are definitely shared between the companies. They have their own little bit different culture to them, though, overall.

Yeah, sure, that makes sense. That's great. So on. On this show, you know, we're big fans of mistakes. I mean, probably because Dave and I have made so many. Now, that may not be the case with you making mistakes, but we, we learn so much, especially when we get to look back on them. And so if, if there was a quote, best mistake that you could recall where you really learned something important, what. What would that mistake be?

Yeah, yeah, well, I've definitely made. Made a few mistakes chasing, Chasing some of those itches that I shouldn't have. Certainly, yeah, there's a, there's one in particular touched on a little bit earlier. But when we at Genius, we, We really wanted to go out and, like I said, capture more of the cell phone repair industry. And so we looked at, we looked at franchising pretty closely, and I remember thinking about, hey, you know, we're really not great at franchising. But I think I can, I think I can figure it out. But I really, the really. When we got into it, we had one franchisee who did fairly well, but we quickly realized that it wasn't a market we knew much about. We really didn't know much about franchising. The legal side, the how to, you know, getting additional franchisees in that market. We were really good at the cell phone repair at retail, cell phone repair, but franchising was a whole different business. I, I think I, and I, I walk back through that decision of, hey, why did we really get into this? And it just, it felt like the right thing and the next step. But I, in, in hindsight, I really wish I would have taken a step back, thought through the decision more and really had the right mentorship at the time to, to say, hey, you know, let's look at the players in the market right now who are in that space, and let's see how well they're doing. And do you really have the knowledge or the resources to go out and attack that? And I think if I would have stepped back and thought about at the time, the answer would have been no. I just, I thought it was like the next thing that we kind of needed to do. So, like, I often have, I kind of pushed into it instead of thinking about it and strategically attacking it or not attacking it. And so I've definitely, definitely learned quite a bit from that. I still want to look at opportunities, but I look at them a little bit differently. I Try to let them settle a little bit more. And I tend to try to now get different advisors that I kind of validate the idea through. And so that's been a big. I think it's helped a lot. I mean, I still make. Continue to make some mistakes, but I think it's helped filter them out, certainly by, by stepping back a little bit and letting them, letting them settle to, to make sure. Marinate. I guess I should.

That's good advice.

Yeah.

Especially for the restless business owner, which it sounds right. You might be. And I possibly.

Yeah.

I mean, you, you want to, you don't want to make the mistake of not ever taking action, which doesn't seem like you at all. Right. But I mean, just for everybody listening, you can get into that, you know, analysis paralysis scenario where you convince yourself you're doing work, but really what you're doing is delaying making a decision that. So you got to be, you know, you got to balance that. But, but yeah, absolutely. The shoot first, ask questions later thing, it works sometimes. Yeah, right. I mean, you know, sometimes.

Right. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

No, no, certainly after you.

Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I agree. It all depends on. Yeah. Your personality type. I'm. Yeah, let's do it first and figure, figure the rest out later type of mentality. I, I obviously most, most others tend to think through things too much, certainly. But yeah, I, I found that with my personality type, I need to surround myself with people that slow me down a little at times, but they, you know, slow me down in the right way and I trust them and you know, we've. They understand my strengths and weaknesses. So it's all about surrounding yourself with the right people. So, yeah, absolutely.

Very cool. Now I'm on LinkedIn all the time. I see you up there as well, and I see your. A couple different things. I see your sales folks promoting your products and services, what's available. Let's connect this kind of thing. But then I also see you promoting your company culture, which is awesome, and posting events that you're doing at your facility, all that kind of stuff. I really think LinkedIn is a overlooked resource for a lot of businesses. And so my question is, have you found success with LinkedIn on the sales aspect of it as well? And would you encourage other companies to promote their products and services on the platform?

Yeah, it's been, yeah, very successful for us. I would highly encourage it. I'm surprised as well that it's underutilized by other businesses. I, I think that especially just with the amount of organic reach that you don't, you know, that you don't really have to pay nothing for at this point. I think that'll change dramatically in the next few years, you know, but the value is, is very much there. I mean, it all depends on, on your business. But if you're in a B2B business, I, I think it's very, very underutilized. You know, you know, whether it's just general posting to promote your culture, whether it's promoting certain products or whether it's direct messaging or connecting with certain individuals, I think the, I think it's going to get very expensive. So we should, all businesses should jump on it and take advantage of it while it's free. Right now I remember when we first started at Genius Facebook, Facebook was free back in 2010. And we throw up a post and it would get, I don't know, a couple thousand views for nothing. And I'm like, gosh, this is unbelievable. And then quickly, over time, the cost went up for every view. And I think it's like now you have to pay for almost any view, basically. But LinkedIn will be there in the future, obviously. So I, I think, I think it's very underutilized. So that's great.

Yeah, you're totally right. Yep.

Yeah. And I love the culture, you know, posting about your business as well, because, I mean, especially for future talent that you're trying to attract, they're going to be able to look on and see that, wow, they do value this stuff. They're not, you know, they've been doing this for years. And it's, whether it's the guys playing ping pong or the reaper float thing, I mean, I, I, as a, as a fellow business owner, it really, I get it. I think it's fantastic.

Absolutely. Yeah. You'd be surprised. I, it was funny. I was on a call with a, one of a really good vendors yesterday and he's watching our, you know, he watches our LinkedIn as well and sees a lot of the posts. But it's not just for attracting talent. I think it's a really, it's a really subtle way to show, you know, the company culture to outside vendors as well, that kind of latch onto that and say, hey, you guys are doing something. You're doing something right there with your people as well. And so that's a good look in the business. And I think it really does help retain and attract vendors as well. Just by, you know, you would think it's mainly for employee retention or acquisition, but it's it's not as much that as it is. I mean, it is that, but it definitely helps as well externally, too. You'd be very surprised.

Yeah, that's. That's some great.

I mean, it's your. It's your business's highlight reel. Just like Facebook is your personal highlight reel. Right? I mean, like, Facebook is charging businesses to get in front of people, but they're not charging people to get in front of people. LinkedIn is not yet charging businesses to get in front of businesses. So it's. Yeah, it's where you can do that. Yeah.

Right.

That's great. Gary. There's a ton of great advice and what we've been talking about here for about the last half hour. And again, I really appreciate you coming on to share your story. I know your time is really valuable. So there's thousands of small business owners listening to this episode. If there was one tip that you could leave them with, what would it be for maybe somebody who's just getting started or struggling or following me on LinkedIn, going, God, these guys all have it all together. What tip would you leave them with?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me has really been surrounding myself with the right content. And that content, I guess, comes from the people in my network, my leadership team, and then I listen to audiobooks to work and then on the way home from work as well. So I really try to. That content is. I try to make it as positive as possible and I try to put things in front of me that I, that I, you know, whether it's a topic that I'm trying to better myself in, short term struggle that I'm dealing with. I try to put the right content in front of myself at the right time. And, and I think a lot of that is it just really comes down to when do you have, when do you have time? And then what's. What is the content really going to get you closer to where you want to be in the future? I think too often people get in the car and they put on the radio or their favorite song and they don't really think, think, hey, this is some time here that I could really better utilize to get me closer to where I want to be. So I, I would say, honestly, my one piece of advice would be to surround yourself with the right content and look at opportunities where you have a little bit of time to put some positive, positive content in your life in particular.

So, yeah, that is great advice, man. I always tell people, Dave and I talk about it, you know, they say, oh, I Don't have any time. I was like, well, do you watch tv? Don'. You know, there's your time. I can carve out, you know, two or three hours a day, I imagine at a minimum for, for folks so that listening in the car and the audiobooks and that content advice, that, that's great and I think it's, it's often missed. So I, I thank you for that and, and you know, thank you again for coming on the show today to share your knowledge. I really am jazzed to follow you guys on LinkedIn and see your success and how you're. You bring a different level of, I think professionalism and to, to that market that I've been very familiar with. There's a lot of fly by nights and looking at your success is great. It inspires me. What's the best way for people to learn more about your businesses and to connect with you?

Yeah, LinkedIn I think. Right? Yeah, LinkedIn is really where it's at for us. I mean, can I feel free to connect with me personally on, on LinkedIn as well as Tech Defenders or other businesses? I can sign up for email newsletter on, on our website, Tech Defenders website, techdefenders.com as well. We have a sign up there. But yeah, I really think the social side and we put everything out on social media on LinkedIn and so I would say that's probably, that would be where I would start. Perfect for anybody. And then feel free to connect with me personally as well. That's.

Yeah, that's great. And you know, again, it's a great story. Seen it over this, you know, past decade and we look forward to reaching out to you again, you know, in the coming years and checking in with you from time to time.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thanks a lot for having me on, guys. I appreciate it.

Thanks for being on the show. This has been great, man.

Thank you.

Well, that was pretty awesome, man.

Dude, there's so many great tidbits on this thing. And like I said, I always say I always learn the most. It's a huge motivator for me because I get to, you know, glean all this knowledge from these awesome.

When he was saying surround yourself with the right content, I'm thinking, wait a minute, I'm at my job and I'm surrounding myself with the right content. Listening to this guy like, this is it. This is what he's talking about. Listen to this kind of stuff, man. Yeah, yeah, very good.

I can't wait to talk to Gary again in a few years.

Absolutely, absolutely.

See what he's doing.

Yeah.

So, hey, folks, if you listened and you really enjoyed it, one of the things you can do to help out the small business show is leave us a review. Go to businessshow co review and get over to the Apple Podcast directory. Literally take you 30 seconds. Give us some feedback, and it really helps us. And we really appreciate your support.

Absolutely.

And thanks to Gary for everything that he's done and sharing his story with us. Thanks to all of you for listening. Thanks to our great sponsors. Linode.com SBS go.co SBS blipbillboards.com SBS and thanks to you, Shannon.

Hey, I'm glad to be here.

Yeah, man. See you next week.