Managing and Stewarding a 4th Generation Small Business – Rick Stuart from Listo Corp – Small Business Show 101

The Small business show episode 101 for January 11, 2017. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co the show by, for and about small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton and in Concord, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, Dave?

I'm doing okay. I was at CES last week out in Las Vegas and I wore my throat raw. But I think it actually was a little bit of, I don't know, trade show SARS or whatever that turns into. But I think I'm okay. Very mild.

It's your back and your throat are always. That would pay the price after that show.

The bottoms of my feet too. But you know, it was good. I got to actually meet a lot of interesting people and that's sort of the point. So yeah, it all worked out.

I love that. Yeah, that's cool.

Good show.

Yeah, yeah, cool.

Which it's episode 101. It's like a start to the new year. Good time to do that. And today we're joined by a good friend of mine, Rick Stewart from Listo.

How are you, Rick?

Good, Shannon. Dave, how are you?

Good, we're good. Very good.

Thanks for coming on the show, man.

Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's cool. I've wanted to have Rick on for a while. You know, Rick brings a really interesting outlook on small business as a multi generational business owner. And we want to talk about that today. And so give us a little bit of background on your business. Is it still Listo Pencil Corporation?

Yeah. Lysto Pencil Company is really the main, the core business and that's the 96 year old, four generation business that we are.

That's awesome.

And started by my great grandfather in Alameda, California and we're still there to this day. He was an inventor, entrepreneurial guy and he was one of the early developers of a mechanical marking pencil. Just a quick story is the pencils, you know, back in the day were all wood. They still are, but you know, they were wood originally. And he saw a street corner vendor displaying this new comb that was made out of this new fancy material, which was an early plastic and kind of thought, you know, we could make a mechanical writing instrument out of this that wouldn't break, wouldn't have to sharpen it, blah, blah, blah. And that's kind of how the, how the company started back in those days. And it, and it grew and evolved many different products over the years, but that was the, that was the Origin.

That's cool. So what's the main products that you sell now?

So we're still doing mainly writing instruments.

Okay.

The, we don't do any mechanical pencils like you'd find in schools or Staples or Office Depot. We do a line of marking pencils, we call them. They're really markers and it's kind of like a crayon based, like a wax based writing material, but mechanical and refillable.

Okay.

And we sell that into a number of different industries. But that was a product that was launched in the mid-40s that we still make basically the same way.

That's awesome.

And at that time it was built, I mean, it was designed to. For heavy industry shipbuilding. During World War II, we got into grocery business. A bunch of different stuff that kind of really launched the firm.

And so when you say like heavy industry, it's like writing on steel.

So our tagline with this thing is it'll write on anything. Okay. So we can write on glass, we can write on metal. We can write on, you know, foil paper, of course, whiteboard, all those kinds of things. And so yeah, our, you know, the company has evolved to go into so many different little niche industries over the years. It really gets pretty wild and pretty fun.

Yeah, that's cool. That's a great story. You know, the longevity, I love it.

What I like is what kind of hit me at first blush is we talk to a lot of business owners, and so many of them at Shannon and I included have businesses that are rooted or at least dependent upon modern tech. And our products are often just modern tech. And so here we're talking to you. You've got this business that creates something that everybody still needs, or at least a lot of people still need. And it thrives and all of that. But it's just fascinating that you have this product that was created in the 40s.

Yeah. And we're the opposite of modern tech. Right. We're about as low tech as it can get. That's it. And that's been a quandary for us for years. I remember hearing stories of my dad talking to his dad saying, oh my gosh, grows your business. You know, there's this new thing called a price tag coming out. What are we gonna do? It's gonna kill us, you know, and.

Awesome.

Yeah. And so well, we need to figure this out. And so well, we still kept the grocery ties and we did a lot of work like in the, in the butcher area. Right. Because they're still working on, on butcher paper or something like that. But, yeah, we, you know, we. Price tags and barcodes and all that stuff took over for the consumables. But, you know, then we venture out and we, you know, start talking to restaurants. And now we're into, you know, food service, which was kind of related to grocery. I mean, you. Of the same distribution channels. And so, you know, then we got into marking on, like, food packaging, you know, either during preparation or for fast food chains. And so that's, that's, you know, you kind of. It kind of had to evolve. I mean, you know what the headwinds are going to be, but if you don't kind of keep moving somewhere, you're going to eventually disappear.

Well, so you have. You have the benefit of having a business where the culture, or at least the model is you must pivot all the time, Right?

Absolutely.

And that's something that's probably true of every business out there. But most business owners have to learn that. Whereas with this business, I assume by the time you got involved, pivots were just a natural part of what you do.

They were for sure. But I will add that we've been very, very lucky to have a very loyal and stable customer base for a lot of years.

Sure.

You know, the pivot thing really happens kind of industry specific. And then from there you just kind of, you know, we rely a lot on our distributors to help us kind of get product out to people that they think they could use it.

Yeah.

And so luckily, those are the relationships that have helped us kind of make that pivot. Even though, you know, we internally, maybe we kind of steer the ship and then let it kind of go where it goes.

Of course. Yeah, you follow. Follow the world.

And what I love about it is, yes, it's a pivot in this and this, but it's the same or similar product that you're pushing out there into new areas.

Exact same product. You know, there's. There's a few different tweaks. We do it. Of course, you know, you can. You can take one product. Shannon know you this that or, you know, this that. You know, you can take one thing. Okay, we got seven colors. We can pack it three different ways. Well, there's 21 skus. A. We got refills. Then we got, you know, three packs of that seven. So next thing you know, you have a 50 sku line on one thing. So, yeah, sure, it's kind of cheating, but, you know, it's a way to kind of make it look a little bit. A little more full.

Yeah, yeah.

And, hey, we do all, you know, kinds of stuff and then, you know, we have packaging that goes specific to some areas and then we just use our general packaging for kind of the rest.

But it's really cool.

Yeah, it's.

And, and I think we, I don't want to sidetrack on this yet, but I want to come back that. Let's. So when you were younger, as a kid, did, were you working in the business? Like my kids work in my business now. I mean, are they.

No, not really. Not really. I mean, it's, you know, there was no pressure from my family at all, at all to get involved. You know, I went through school and was a finance guy coming out of college and I was going to be the hotshot, you know, stockbroker. You know, Wall street was a recent movie and you know, you know, minus the illegal stuff, we all wanted, you know, that was going to be my life. Right. And I went out and sold mutual funds and insurance products for not even a year. And I was, I was done. I was like, forget, forget it. You know, this is early 90s job market was awful and there's an opportunity down there. My dad's, one of the family members, was leaving the company, retiring, and he kind of said, why don't you come down, you know, for a little bit. You can buy some time, you know, interview, continue to look for things you may want to do, but, you know, it would also help, you know, me.

Yeah.

And so that's kind of where it started. But, you know, I'd always grown up with it. You know, I kind of, you know, learned to dig into financials probably in like my high school years just to kind of learn a little bit more about kind of what's, what's at stake. And they started to venture out into other, other processes. They, they, you know, we did injection molding and metal stamping and all these kind of in house operations and we started to sell machine time to run other people's jobs just to diversify the product line a little bit.

Sure.

And so we had a lot of things kind of going on around that time when I got down there. And it was a little bit of a, a little bit of a cluster in a way. I mean, we, we had kind of lost some focus on our own flagship line. And we're spending a lot of time trying to build a business that was very competitive and moving offshore. And so we kind of had to, you know, there was, there was a crossroads coming and we were kind of trying to figure out what, what's what does that look like? And, and who's going to do it?

Yeah, I think I'm looking at the guy.

Well, I think, I think you are.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That wound up doing it.

So.

Yeah. And so you came on in. Was that, was that back in like 94?

Yeah, I started in 94 and a lot of the employees had been there since I was born. So that's another dynamic, you know, and it's anywhere from production worker to skilled tool and die engineer.

Okay.

To, you know, executive type stuff, you know, accountant, whatever. And, and so, you know, that was, you know, so I knew all these people kind of my whole life. Not really well, but, you know, some more than others. But yeah, I got there in 94 and I kind of said, well, you know, I'll spend this year and, you know, help out and learn a little business and interview on the side. And you know, that was, you know, 22 years ago.

Yeah.

But, you know, I kind of, once I kind of felt that there's an opportunity here for me in the long term, you know, rather than making changes too quickly, which may ruffle some feathers, you know, I'll give myself, you know, some time and I kind of put this five year kind of thing in my mind and maybe that's too long, I don't know. But that was a number that kind of worked for me. And I kind of thought, well, maybe I'll spend those years to really learn as much as I can and then kind of open my mouth.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

No, that's great.

Well then I commend your, your dad for not pressuring you and just, hey, I need some help. Come on down and see. See what happens.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was, it was an open door thing. There was no pressure to do it. And I kind of said, well, I kind of need to be working to.

Yeah.

And he wanted me to be not on the family payroll, so I needed to do something. And so it was an opportunity for me to jump in. And so that's how it started.

That's great.

That's awesome.

Yeah, that's really cool. So we've talked to a little bit about the culture and once you got in there and everything, and I think that you made a comment that I was really impressed with when we were talking before about doing the show, was that you would argue that changing the culture of a business was perhaps even. Even harder than starting up a new. A new company.

That's right.

And that really stuck with me because, you know, everybody always says how 1 in 10 businesses makes it. It's so hard. Yada, yada, yada. But rarely do people talk about that.

That's right.

Speak to that a little bit.

Well, and everybody. Oh, your dad gave you your job.

Yes.

Cool. Right, yeah. Great. Yeah. So there was, there's that stigma that goes with it. Sure. I would say on the culture thing, when I first got down there, the culture was not great. And I think that things were kind of in the, maybe in the 60s and 70s again, before my time. The company went union. So we had, in fact, two different unions for different classifications of workers. And when you kind of do that, and I'm not anti union, but when you do that, you just kind of. There's a little bit of wedge between management and ownership and. Oh, well, you got to communicate through the representative and the shop steward. And it was never really a great thing. We had a strike in the early 70s, you know, during mass wage, you know, change and inflation. It was time for everybody. Okay. So, you know, all the, the ramifications and employees that were there when I got there were, you know, still remember those days and you know, okay, here comes the owner's kid.

Yeah.

You know, of course. And I'm going like, okay, so that's again, that maybe that stem. That five year, you know, time to kind of really learn.

In hindsight, that seems like a really smart thing to do.

Yeah, it was just, you know, it was a trust building.

Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Prove yourself to them maybe a little bit.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, you know, and I. It would have been better maybe if I went in and kind of started on the production line or in some sort of, you know, back shop kind of capacity. But, you know, I didn't have a big interest in doing that, to be honest. And my dad kind of wanted to spend more of this time when he didn't know I was. How long I was going to be there to kind of learn. Management role.

Sure.

Just for the sake of learning.

It makes sense.

So, you know, that would have been maybe one thing to do differently, but at the same time, you know, the culture was there and, and so, yeah, I, I would have, you know, friends tell me all the time, what do you do? Or, you know, ask what I do and I tell them and no family business. Oh, okay. And they kind of just talk it up too. That's nice. You got the working family. It's already established.

Yeah.

Just kind of coasted in. Right?

Yes.

You know, good for you. Why'd you go to college? You know, that whole thing.

Yeah.

And you know I would say, well, that's not really the case, you know, and here's what we're doing. And, you know, I got defensive about it a lot of times, but I did have one friend who told me that, you know, and who's a startup guy, and he kind of said, wow, that must have. Real challenge.

Yeah.

And my eyes just lit up.

Right, sure.

Yes.

It was a cocktail party thing.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's like, finally this guy, you know, he gets it. He'd be a great, you know, guest on your show some.

Sure, sure.

Yeah. And that was, you know, finally some recognition for me that, you know, this is, you know, making the changes that I kind of wanted to make. We're going to be a challenge. And so how do we. How do we do it?

Yeah, yeah.

What?

So was there. No. You know, as I'm. As I'm processing this, I'm curious. I'm sure some of the employees had a fear that some of them might have even expressed that you were going to come in and kill this business. How much of that fear did you have? I mean, here's this thing that's been run successfully by your family for generations, and now here you go, it's yours.

Right. Don't screw it up.

Don't screw it up. Yeah, exactly.

I expressed that fear to my family, both my mom and my dad. My mom had no involvement in the business whatsoever. She had her own career. But she would just kind of be your thought partner on the side.

Sure.

Or my dad's as well, of course. But where was I going with that? The. Help me out.

Were you gonna kill it?

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, you know, I kind of said, you know, I. I hope the ship doesn't go down on my watch. Right, right.

Yeah.

Both my parents were very supportive and said, no, absolutely not. You know, that we're, you know, this is something that. That whatever we can keep maintaining is kind of the goal. I mean, the. The life of the brand and longevity of the brand is. It's kind of a legacy thing more than anything else. Of course you want it to be profitable and support the family and so forth, but, I mean, if you can keep it going and make it make sense and have fun with it, go. Go do it. You know, they were not ever.

That's great.

That's great.

Worried that, you know, that the operation would sink. But I would also say that, you know, over the years that the company was growing, you know, we also acquired a bunch of real estate, and those were manufacturing buildings, three of them. That we developed in Alameda and also 12 residential apartments.

But no, it's just all around the.

Same area, all around the plant. In fact, the apartments were corporate. You know, they were employee housing originally.

Wow.

Yeah, I mean, we were like our own little, you know, coal mining.

How many employees? How many employees?

At the peak, we probably had about 50.

Okay.

And. And then, you know, through automation and streamlining of, of processes, we have dwindled down. When I got there was maybe in the high teens, 17, 18, somewhere in there. And. But yeah, so, you know, we had, we had the hedge of the, of the real estate stuff that we were kind of. As we vacated a few buildings, we'd redevelop it and repurpose it and lease it.

Yeah.

You know, we didn't have always have employees living in the apartments, but we had market rate housing and so we rent those out. Yeah, of course, you know, the real estate started to grow in value and it actually became a large shareholder dispute.

Oh.

At one time again, when I was kind of a kid, you know, it's. This is maybe generation number three. So you end up with a lot of cousins of cousins and friends, whatever. And some people are kind of saying, you know, well, the value of this company is not this pen thing anymore, it's these buildings. You know, let's just liquidate this sucker and split it up.

Yeah.

And so my dad's going like, are you kidding me? No, I, I work here.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Yeah. So, you know, anyway, another side story on that one. But that was the nice part about my parents position is they had kind of the real estate kind of holdings in the backing there for me to give me some autonomy with the operation.

That's great.

That was helpful.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

I mean it sounds like you have kind of. You had developed this foundation. We always talk about side revenue and income and stuff too on the show. And so that sounds like they worked out well. Now you mentioned, did you wind up splitting off parts of the business?

We did. You know, moving into the early 2000s, it was clear that, you know, the control of the, of the operations kind of was being handed over to me.

Yeah.

And my dad kind of designated me president kind of at one board meeting one day. Here you go. Right. And I kind of said, well, great. I mean, I've been kind of doing it for years anyway. But that's fine. It's a title. No, it's. But yeah, it's important.

I mean, from the, from the visibility of the employees There needs to be that official.

Here we go.

This is gonna, this is actually happening.

Yeah, that's true. It's a good point.

Yeah.

Clear leadership. And then also, you know, that defines that, you know, hey, we're continuing here. So it's not like there's an end game that, you know, it's gonna retire and that's it. But yeah, so we started to talk about. It was more estate planning, I think something else. My parents and started talking about the real estate versus the, the operations. So we did split off the real estate and that was a challenge. We figured. Or we talked to a lot of attorneys and they said, well, you can't move the real estate out of the C Corporation because you're going to have this big step up. Gained report.

Yeah.

And then, you know, we don't want to get to CPA here, but sure. Then you end up with all this cash that's still stuck in a CPA corp. How are you going to get it out? Well, you got to pay another tax, a dividend thing. That's right. So, you know, we met with a couple attorneys. We're getting ideas. And this one attorney said, well, don't move the real estate out of the corporation. Move the manufacturing out of the corporation.

Oh.

And I went like, duh.

Yeah, yeah.

So what a great lesson. I know, I know. So in 2008, I started a new company and purchased from the old company, Listo Pencil. And the name, the brand, all the packaging, the inventory, the receivables, the payables, the whole nine yards.

Got it.

And that's brilliant. And put in. And we got evaluation done. And you know, the, the valuation people said, okay, well it's, you know, we think it's worth this. And of course, you know, we tried to get it as low as possible. My parents kind of wanted to give me a, of course. Fairly good deal.

Sure.

And you know, so I exchanged a note. I owe the company, the old company, this.

Yes.

And give me these things. And I went out and started operations on April 1st of 2008.

A great example of really looking at things, you know, backwards or real different, you know, Exactly. From a different perspective of, hey, we're missing.

I mean, that saved you a ton of. Of tax liability.

Well, the worst part is we never would have done anything.

Yes, of course.

And just defer, defer, defer. Until. Until that would have been a nightmare.

Yeah.

Until what? Like what'? End game. And that was, that was the fear here.

So you kick that can down the road too much. I mean, it yeah. You got to deal with it at some point.

Yeah.

And as you guys know that, you know, business property you can depreciate. Right, of course. So, you know, it costs so much to buy the land and build the buildings, but you depreciate the buildings, not the land.

Yep.

You know, so there's, you know, the cost bases on this stuff and the potential gain exposure was ridiculous.

Yeah, that's right.

The tax ramifications are insane.

Plus we were, you know, it was a time when, you know, we were ready to make some changes to the manufacturing and start, you know, we had some key people retiring and, and to kind of face the, the writing on the wall of, you know, should we be operating in this building and should we be in molding, stamping at all?

Yeah.

And so we decided around 2006, seven, well, five and six, that no, we shouldn't be and that we could, you know, the companies that can supply you with the components you need these days didn't exist 50 years ago.

Sure.

You know, you had to be vertically integrated 50 years ago.

Yeah.

Every self control to be dependent on nobody.

Right.

I mean, now you can have a vendor. I mean, I have a vendor back in Massachusetts that does metal stamping for the pocket clip pen industry only. That's all they do.

Wow.

And they specify only in that and all the plating and everything else that goes with it. But I mean, their catalog of available products is a thousand times more than we could ever do in house.

Sure.

And so why not? Is it more efficient? Right. Yeah, more efficient. So why not use them? And, and the same goes for molders. You know, we, we knew all the injection molding people in California because we had, you know, come across them or competed with them and we kind of picked our few favorites and we said, bid this stuff for us. You know, bid our stuff. And, and we, you know, picked up with one of them and they started running our stuff.

So it's great because it's really kind of, you know, an early example of just kind of virtual companies outsourcing things. And you know, we've had a lot of people on the show that are running these. You know, we had a guy skyping in from a beach in Spain, you know, that, that was running a business and all these kinds of things. So it's, it's a, you know, an early example of how you're setting that up.

It absolutely is. And I mean, obviously, you know, sales and marketing is kind of another area that, you know, but the way our business is built with all the distribution channels, we really didn't even have that in house. So, you know, back in the heyday, you know, Dave, like you asked about 50 employees, you know, now we're back to two. Here we are.

That's awesome. You know, you. You look at the. At the. The revenue that really hits your bottom line. And I'm sure at different times, I just. I can only speak to my experience, but at many times when I've had companies with many, many, many people and then you've had this big growth run. Well, if you really know as the owner how much is really coming into your pocket, it often can be less or not much more.

And it's an opportunity cost.

Absolutely.

Right.

Absolutely.

And we had a tough time really identifying any costs. I mean, it was the type of thing where, you know, what life we know what payroll going out the door is, what materials to buy is going out the door, and you have to kind of have to track a transfer of goods to figure out the cost of your per.

Good. Yeah.

Well, I found it a lot easier if you buy everything, of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it just so happened that it turned out to be cheaper that way, too. But that's, you know, for me, it was a little bit of a selfish thing. It's like, well, you know, I can buy this lead stick and I can buy the pocket clip and whatever. You know, when a vendor's supplying it for you, you roll up some freight and you're done. That's.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah.

No, that's fantastic.

Wow.

So growing. Shrinking to grow, I guess.

Yeah.

Shrinking to grow. Yeah. You know, I mean, I don't know how many businesses have been around 96 years that have two people in them, but we're one.

That's awesome.

For better or worse. And. And the. And the time between has. Has been up and down while. Sure. Left, right. You know, in and out, everything.

Well, that's what people. I think on outside of business. And I would also, you know, include some bankers in that thing where they always think business is just a vertical, you know, a diagonal vertical march up the chart.

Of course, they're looking at an internal rate of return. Right. Yeah.

How come you had a bad year a couple of years ago was like.

Well, this is why, you know, exactly like this. Last year was a good year. We were up on sales, but we were up on costs because we into some tooling issues. And a lot of our tools are dated. Right. Yeah, sure. It's a maintenance thing. And, you know, with our molding partner, we have Them do repair and modifications. And we, and there was a dimension, a key dimension on a part that we're, that we were missing and we're getting a lot of rejects and, and it took us longer than normal to kind of identify it and find it and we've addressed it. But, you know, so we had a lot of write downs this year, and so that was a bummer. But you know what? It's, it's, it happens. And you can point to it on this, on the financials and say, well, there it is. There's our write downs. And it was, you know, whatever. But yeah, you do that in your.

Executive summary that you do at the end of the year.

Absolutely, absolutely.

No, that's good. That's cool. So this, it's a fascinating journey and I know we could talk many hours, especially if we had a few beers going back and forth.

Absolutely.

But, you know, one of the things that we really like to talk about on the show because we learn so much from them is mistakes. So along the way, you know, you talk about a lot of different things you did and changing the culture, employee, you know, real estate. What do you think the, the best mistake you ever made?

The best mistake?

Yeah.

At the time that may have been like, oh, no, you know, this is devastating. But you look back and go, wow, I really learned a lot. That was really an important thing for me to stumble over.

Well, I think trying to deal with the in house manufacturing that we're still doing. You know, so at the time we were doing the in house molding and the stamping and we hung on too long.

We held onto that.

We hung on too long.

Yeah.

And my dad and I was always just, okay. We love to hear machines run in the back. In the back shop. And you know, when the machines were gone, you didn't hear the machines run.

Yeah.

And it was a little, you know, it was a little bit of a change. It was a big change.

Yeah, sure.

Probably more for him than me.

Right.

Because it was my call. But you know, he would, he, you know, he loved having the, the tool shop in the back, talking to the guys and the engineers to say, say nothing of having something break at the house and, oh, I'll take it down. Frank will fix it. You know, a wonder with whatever.

Yeah.

There are those ancillary benefits too.

Oh, my gosh.

Yes.

You know, and just in, in great.

Yeah.

Friendships and camaraderie and team building that you've built over the years.

Yeah. It's like a family. Right.

I mean, it's Absolutely. Family. It's absolutely a family. But, you know, people move on. People retire. The tool and die craftsman trade in the US As a whole is, is, is really dying.

Yeah.

A lot of stuff, as you guys know, went offshore in the 80s and 90s, and a lot of the tooling kind of engineer types went with it. And, and the skill. There's just not a lot of people kind of coming up in those fields. And so that was the other part is how are we gonna replace these guys? Yeah, and we're a small six machine, three tool and die maker, three bench, we called it, shop, you know, doing mainly our stuff, but other people's stuff too. And, you know, how are we gonna, how are we gonna compete with these large scale molders that are in Texas? Right. You know, or whatever, and, and replace these guys? You know, Frank, our lead, the tooling guy, die guy, when he left the company, he was 82.

Wow.

He worked for us for over 50 years with the gap in between.

Sure, sure.

But I mean, you're, you're just not going to replace that guy, you know, and we had two other very qualified guys too, but, you know, again, you know, somebody in their 30s, different times, not around. Yeah, they're not around.

Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. So, you know, and we've talked a lot about you up and down, different things. And, you know, one of the things that we talk about on the show a lot is kind of this sense of how do you measure your success? Is it always just revenue? And I mean, every business guy we've talked to or person is like, it's not just the cash that's coming the door. It's all these kind of things. How do you really measure the success of Listo?

Well, thankfully, I think that was kind of instilled in me early when my parents kind of didn't put the pressure on. So for me, it's been more about just keeping the brand going. You know, I mean, here's this legacy brand that's been out there forever and, you know, the, the, you know, kind of let it live its own life. You know, we'll, like I said, steer the ship and find new places for. To use, you know, marking pencils.

Yeah.

But as long as I can kind of keep the brand going, I feel that's, I've been, you know, I'm almost like a steward of the brand. Yeah, the steward of the brand.

I love that.

It's not, it's not anything more than that. And I, you know, and I, I probably feel that way more so. Because I didn't start it. Right. I mean, it existed, but, you know, who knows what happens to the brain after me? You know, do any of my kids have an interest? We'll see. They're still young, but yeah, you know, I wouldn't be opposed to one of them kind of taking it and run with it or if none of them had an interest, then, you know, passing it off to, you know, somebody in the industry that I know. There's a few of those that I think could do wonders with it, too.

That's really cool. That's very commendable.

I think so. You know, you have to, you have to kind of let it, it. Let it live its own life in a way.

What a wonderful, you know, sort of overreaching corporate value to have that. Just let the brand live and preserve the brand. That gives you so much freedom not only to go to pivot the way you would need to pivot, but also, you know, if you're the one steering the ship and you don't need it to be a, whatever, you know, a hundred million dollar company, you're okay with it being a fraction of that size and that works for you. You know, you're still honoring this legacy of the brand still exists, you know, and keeping it alive.

Business can be a small business.

And of course. Yeah, you don't have this really good.

This baggage of no empire building.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. And no stakeholders that are pushing you. Well, that's the freedom of that big. Right. Because there's a lot of pressure in businesses that are owned by multiple people to pull it. We got to get bigger and we got to do it fast.

Right, right.

And you know, to get out there and compete. But, you know, the writing instrument industry is, you know, billions of dollars and there's some very, very heavy hitters in it. I'm friends with all of them through our industry groups, but, you know, they all kind of look back at me and say, you know, how you guys doing? And what, you know, what are you up to? And, and, and, and, you know, we don't, we don't really dabble in retail. You know, we don't sell the Staples and Depot and. Right. And, and because it's just too expensive. And they're like, oh, my God, you're so lucky.

Yeah.

How do you do it? So we chose not to do it, you know.

Yeah.

We decided.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's cool. That's great. So let me ask you, you know, usually at the end of the show, we ask people, hey, you know, if you could look back, what advice would you give to a new, you know, business owner when you're getting started? And we talked about this and I, I thought it would be good. Really, you know, what, what would be one of the best tips that you could give somebody that's taking over a multi generational family business based on, you know, your experience? Run it down.

Well, like I said that the time, that five year thing, you know, and giving, giving myself time to not, like, push too many, you know, ideas around and learn, I think was probably the biggest takeaway for me and, and allow the time, you know, for employees to trust me.

Yeah, that's right.

You know, that I'm working with them, not, you know, above them.

Yeah.

But at the same time, I think, you know, getting them, you know, once you earn the trust, it's, it's, you know, get them involved in decision making. You know, you could have a problem on the quality issue or, or employee issue or something like that and, you know, get your, you know, production manager. Well, how, you know, I don't know how to handle. Oh, maybe I do know exactly how to handle it, but I want to hear from you how you're going to handle it. So then you kind of throw it back and say, how would you handle it? I'm not sure what to do. And. Yeah, well, maybe we could do this. That's a great idea. Let's do that. You know, you just kind of help, you know, them take some ownership of the decisions even though they don't have an ownership stake in the company.

Sure.

But it's their job. Yeah, it is their job and you have to let them do their job. Yeah, so that's right.

Yeah.

And that's always, you know, it's. And I, I'm not perfect by any means. Nobody is. Well, I always.

That's not what I heard.

What are you talking about?

Shannon and I are.

We're perfect. We're perfect. We're perfect 101 times on the show.

That's right.

But there was, you know, there's a time me, you know, you have to, you know, you have to let these people kind of do their jobs and might not micromanage them. And I struggle with all of those things, you know, kind of being younger and as I'm a little older now, you kind of, you let it go. Just let people do their work, you know, coach them up and, and let it roll.

As my brother likes to say. You just got to let that stuff roll off the edge of your knife.

Yeah, no, that's great. That's some really great advice, and it's a fascinating story, and we really appreciate you coming on the show today.

Thanks for having me.

It's great. Dave, you have any other questions for Rick?

No, I am, as you can probably tell, very inspired and enlightened. Yeah. And I guess that's really the takeaway from a business that has lasted so long, is there. There are lessons ingrained in any business that's got decades, and I mean almost a century right of existence. And, and you've, you've done a really good job of, of kind of mining the business for those lessons that, that exist there. It's, it's obvious that, you know, your, your earn and learn philosophy of earning trust and learning the business. You really dug in and, and spent that time to sort of. Of figure out, wait, what is this thing that I'm gaining here? Where. What are its true assets and what's the wisdom baked into this?

I think it's great, man. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, thanks for saying that. Appreciate it.

Yeah, of course. Thanks for being on the show. We'll have you back sometime, see how it's going.

Sounds good.

Let's go.

That's right. Well, you know what? Another 96 years or something.

94 years, my great grandson will be on the show.

Yeah, that's it. So it'll be our great grandsons, too, Shannon.

Yeah, that's for sure.

Yeah.

All right, folks, thanks so much for listening. If you want to find out more about Rick Stewart and Listo Pencil Company, that's Listo L I S T o dot com. Correct.

That's it. You got it.

That's a perfect URL. And if you want to find out more about us, you can Visit us, visit BusinessShow Co Facebook, and that'll bring you to our small business support group where those of us that haven't learned the 96 years of lessons still help each other out. And actually, it's welcome to everybody, including you, Rick. So it'd be great to see you there, folks. We will see you all next week.

Take care, everybody.

Take care. Keep living that charmed life.