The Vehicle Armoring Business - Mark Burton - CEO of ArmorMax - e15

Hey, Michael here. You will now hear some episodes of the Michael Girdley Show that we had branded differently, called Unusual Profits or some such like that. Same show, same person, just me interviewing people and producing content that could be helpful on your journey and mine as well. So with no further ado, here's the episode. Hey, Michael here. Sponsor for today's show is actually a product that I'm a part of called DM Bridge. And what DMBridge is, uh, is a service that we built, uh, to solve the problem that Twitter's direct messaging functionality is a total mess. So we built DMBridge to help you fix that. Um, a lot of the other solutions, uh, do things like requiring you to install a whole nother inbox. We didn't want another inbox, so we created DMBridge. And what it does is it takes all of your Twitter DMs and has them appear inside of your email inbox. So you can reply to them just like it's a regular email. You see them just like it's a regular email. You can search them later like it's one of your regular emails, all just by using DMBridge. So, uh, we're currently live with the product. Uh, would love for you to sign up and become a customer, uh, and check it out. So you can find that at dmbridge.app, uh, and go on there, put in your name, uh, and be either part of the beta or join us as part of the live use of the product. And again, check it out, dmbridge.app. All right. Welcome to the Unusual Profits Podcast. I am your host, Michael Girdley. I am super excited to be back for another week. And today we have something that I'm really excited to talk about, which is the vehicle armoring business. You know, this is one that when I talk to folks that are listeners, they were like, hey, go, go talk about this business because it's just so unique and so interesting. And today we have Mark Burton, who's the CEO of a company out of Utah called ArmorMax, which is, Mark, the number one, the market leader for, for this, for this stuff.

Yeah, that would be correct. As far as number of facilities around the world, as far as I believe, unless I'm mistaken, as far as longevity. In the business and in the industry and definitely the number one innovators.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, cool. Well, love to start with, how did you get into this business? You've been doing it for over 30 years now. Love to hear your story of how you got into it and have continued on.

Well, quickly, I was a— I graduated in accounting. I went to work for, at the time, one of the Big Eight, KPMG. It was actually Pete Marwick at the time. I was working with them, Pete Marwick, when they merged with KPMG and And as happens many times, I was approached by a headhunter and I had 5 offers in, in one week. And one of them was to go be the controller of a company that, that did— worked a lot on ballistic materials and things like that. And within a very short period of time, I, I was able to begin running day-to-day operations. And then the market was shifting, the private sector was starting to need personal security, especially in Latin America. And so it shifted more to passenger vehicles as I was overseeing the operations and the day-to-day operations of the company. And so I was there for about 4 or 5 years. It had a change of ownership, and I made the decision not to stay with the new owners.

That was in Utah also, or—

no, that was over in— that was in another part of the country. Okay. And then at that point I had a small family and so I just decided it was time to, to look to something else. You know, I'd been there about 5 years. I was still young. The circumstances where we were at with regards to schooling and things for our family was not necessarily ideal from the standpoint of education and things. And so my wife was originally from Utah, and so we decided to move back without a job. But the previous owners had treated me very well. I had started a number of other businesses at the time as well. I bought a business or two and really, I really enjoyed the entrepreneurial side. I felt like accounting was great for me. It gave me a great background. It gave me a lot of great skills. I was very marketable, but yet the entrepreneur side was just incredible. I enjoyed it a tremendous amount, the freedom, the you know, the stress at the time. And anyway, so I moved to Utah and then I was contacted by one of our customers. The armored car business, the armored passenger vehicle business is a very relationship-oriented business.

Okay.

You're dealing with people's lives and you're dealing with some of the wealthiest people, if not the wealthiest people in the world. You can say there's something about boys and their toys. You know, they take a very personal interest This happened to be a governor in a Latin American country, and he had been attacked in one of the cars that I had previously done for him. But the, the technology back then was, was basically what everybody thinks of, you know, steel, heavy things like that, that— and they were, to be honest, as you look back at it, they were really ugly and, and not very user-friendly, if I can use that phrase. And so I would get a little bit, as I would meet with these customers, I'd get a little bit beat up. You know, they said, "We need these cars lighter. We need them better. We need them to be, you know, more user-friendly, basically." And so this individual contacted me and I said, "Well, I'm no longer with the company." He says, "I realize that." But he says, "You and I have a great relationship and I want you to build me and my family 3 cars." Because he had survived an attack. Very serious attack in his car. He probably shouldn't have survived it because these are, you know, these are defensive vehicles. They're not made to— they're not like tanks, okay? They are protected, but eventually, like a tank, they can be defeated. And so anyway, I told him I didn't have a company. I really wasn't interested at the time. Well, he called me 3 days in a row, and again, we had built that trust. And so he convinced me after the third day telling me how much he was going to pay me to come down and meet with him and, and to take these cars. And at the point, that point, I didn't have a company. I didn't have any, any employees. I didn't have, you know, I didn't have a corporation formed or anything like that. In fact, when I met with him at a restaurant, he's the one that named the company. The original company, actually the parent company, is called International Armoring Corporation. Armormax is the subsidiary which we use to open up all our foreign facilities, and it's the name of the technology that we developed. And he basically said, I want that technology that you, you talked about. And I— it was only a theory at that time, the lightweight technology. And it's something that I knew I could do, but yet the owners did not. They were making, they're making incredible money. And, you know, and again, they were, they were treating me very well. I'm not complaining. But they were just kind of, the wheel's not broke, so let's not fix it. And so, and that was part of my decision to leave at that time too, not necessarily to start a new business, but because, you know, they weren't progressive, they just wanted to, you know, status quo. But anyway, after 3 days I met him, he gave me a deposit, 50% deposit on 3 vehicles, delivered the vehicles to the United States. I formed a company and that's how we got started. Wow.

And so this is early '80s when this happened? 30—

no, early '90s. Early '90s. But I had already been involved in the business, uh, for 5 years at that point. So International Armory and ArmorMax has been around since 1993.

Okay, so you've, you've got your first customer and he has basically forced you into the business, it sounds like. Well, I think a lot of people—

I mean, money, money does interesting things, doesn't it?

Yeah, I think a lot of people would love to have customers that call them 3 days in a row trying to give them money. Like, that's— that sounds pretty great.

Yeah.

So then how do you— you go from then to starting to expand the business to more than one? Well, you have one client now, and it's then, okay, how do I turn this from a consulting gig to a business at that point?

Yeah, well, to a certain degree, you know, when you— when you start a business, you prepare for your— your success, but you also prepare to be take advantage of opportunities and you get lucky sometimes. I spent 6 months doing R&D. I hired, I hired 6 guys that had never armored cars before here in Utah, and they would work at night. I was just— I didn't want them to quit their day jobs. There was a company here called Volvo White, which you may be familiar with. They built the big trucks and they had just closed down and moved their operation to Tennessee. And there's a whole bunch of individuals that didn't want to move to Tennessee with them. And so they had accepted other jobs and they'd been kind of through a traumatic employment situation. And some of them were school bus drivers, some of them were mowing lawns at golf courses and things like that, but yet they were highly skilled in what they did. And so, but I hired them at night. And so during the day I would do the R&D, I set up the facility. It was just a simple facility, 5,000 square feet, nothing too, Fabulous. But I had the idea. I developed the, the ArmorMax material, which is, you know, I believe that all businesses need to differentiate themselves. That was our secret sauce. I mean, talking about the armoring industry, ballistic steel weighs 13 pounds a square foot.

Okay.

Um, at the time I developed a synthetic fiber laminate. I went out to the company that, on each one of the companies that developed the fiber, and fortunately my client was patient. He knew that I, where I was at. I was very upfront with him. And so he was giving me the time, but he knew I could do it and he trusted me. And that was, that was huge in our early success. And so anyway, I developed this, this fiber and it, at the time it weighed 7.98 pounds per square foot. Well, to let you know today that that same material that has that same ballistic resistance, it weighs 2.5 pounds a square foot. Wow. So over the last 28 years, we've been able to continue to refine it. But anyway, we did those first 3 cars, took us about 6 months, to be honest. Yeah.

How big were those contracts in total? The first one?

Oh, the first one, it was about, let's see, $225,000. Okay. Okay. They provided the vehicles. Okay. And they had given us a deposit. Right. And again, this is— I haven't told many people this, but I only ended up putting $2,000 of my own money into it. Wow. To start it. And because I had the deposits from these guys, I didn't need to— I designed the glass, I did all that and I contracted with people to do that. And so we were really profitable and this is unusual, we were profitable from almost day one. In that case, when we delivered those first 3 vehicles, the country where we delivered them was in chaos, kidnapping, the disparity between the haves and the have-nots was tremendous. There really wasn't a middle class. There was extreme violence. The future president had been assassinated at a rally. So, you know, like I said, the kidnappings were huge. And so when we delivered those first 3 cars, nobody had ever seen anything like that before. Vehicles that were designed like that. For— I'll use an example. We used all curved glass in the vehicle where prior to it, everybody was putting flat glass in behind curve. Or removing the curved glass and putting the flat glass. So you could see those cars a mile away. I mean, it was like a pig in a blanket. I mean, they were just— they were ugly. And they hadn't seen that. And plus the lightweight nature. We're talking between 50% and 60% weight savings on the vehicle, which is significant to a car that was never intended to have that kind of weight or to be armored. Okay, so we took a couple of simple concepts at the very beginning. And a lot of these were developed on the plane ride home from that first meeting eating in the restaurant with that client that convinced me. I mean, we— I just— it was, it was almost— it was incredible. I still have that little black binder. It's in my, it's in my, my vault. I just was— it was like a flood of, of ideas, you know. Once, once I got decided I was going to do it, it was so exciting at that time. I mean, I drew schematics. I, you know, and probably only about, um, 50 to 60% of them made them made them to reality, you know, and there was a lot of business principles. I read business books like the ones that were available at the time, you know, I was just— I read and I read Inc. magazine and all those things and it was exciting to me. And so, you know, a simple principle there was we designed the armor to the car versus the car to the armor, okay? Which was significant in our production process. So anyway, we delivered those first 3 cars and the country was in chaos. And we're only talking one country at the time, okay? It wasn't the US, okay? It was a foreign country. And then the other thing I did, and this is— people laugh at this, but I'm kind of a cheap, cheap guy. I'm tight, right? And so I knew who the customers were in this country, okay? They were the CEOs of the of the multinational companies. And there was only really about 1,000 of them in that country, less than 1,000. And so I decided this industry had really kind of was a mom-and-pop industry before. It really was. I mean, it's still a niche business, but the, the evolution has been tremendous as far as the change today versus back then. And so I decided to do a marketing campaign which had never been done, a direct marketing campaign. And so I found all these addresses and names, and I knew some of them, but, you know, a fraction, just a fraction of who they were. But I found them in, in the reference section of our library. But they wouldn't let us— they wouldn't let us check those books out. And so what I did was, you know, one thing about starting a business back then is you get a whole bunch of salesmen coming to your door offering you services. And one of those things was we had like 3 or 4 printers in our— I mean, not printers, but copying machines in our office, because everybody wanted us to try their, to try their copying machines. And so I asked the one guy, I said, well, what's your, what's your smallest copying machine you got? And he said, well, we got this one. And then I said, oh great, can I borrow it? Can I use it for a little while? He said, oh yeah, great, this is a great machine. And I ended up leasing that machine, by the way, so it's not— I wasn't using this guy, but Anyway, so I took it and I carried it into the reference library and they had a copy machine, but they wanted 10 cents a copy. And I said, I don't wanna spend 10 cents a copy. That's just, that's crazy. And so I used this borrowed, at the time, the borrowed copying machine and I copied the entire reference section of all those 1,000 names. And then I took it, took it to my home and I had the old Apple Macintosh. And my wife would input all the names and stuff the envelopes and everything, and we sent it out. So it was just kind of one of those things that just everything kind of just came together. And so I started getting calls when all these things were happening and they saw the cars and I started getting these calls. And so I was down in this country twice a month. And at the time I was feeling, I was living the dream because I mean, I would go into a meeting and they'd pull out of their drawer, this envelope. With my letter in it. In fact, the picture on the brochure there wasn't even an armored car at the time. I mean, I just took a regular car. You couldn't tell the difference, but I just said it was a sample because I didn't even have an armored car at the time that I could take a picture of.

Can you say what country it was?

Yeah, it was Mexico.

Mexico.

Okay.

Sorry. Keep going. This is great.

Well, and so anyway, we went after that 6-month R&D period and delivering those first 3 cars, The next 12 months were unbelievable. We went, we went from those 6 employees, we went to 90 employees in 120 days.

Wow.

Okay. And in the 12-month period of time, we ended up building over 225 vehicles. Okay. And that was— nobody had ever built over 100 before. And, and to put that in perspective, you know, you're looking at about 750 labor hours on these cars. And these are guys that you can't advertise that, you know, people that have armored car experience, you know, we're looking for builders of armored passenger vehicles. So there was a lot of training, there was a lot of mistakes made, and then the accolades started coming. Um, the next year, you know, the, the awards— we were one of the hottest companies in America by Ink Magazine and you know, things like that. And we weren't even applying for these things. These just came. So we got a lot of recognition. And at that point, and this was before the internet, okay? At that point, we started getting inquiries from other countries. We listed in the Thomas Registry. I don't know if you're familiar with that. That was a volume, like an encyclopedia volume of world suppliers, manufacturers. And they put them in the commerce departments in embassies around the world. And so, you know, talking about a niche market, I mean, a country in South America had 4 armored cars in their whole country. How do you market to that? I mean, you don't even know who those— and a lot of them are very discreet. Okay. And so that was over 10,000 cars ago. You know, since then we've done vehicles for 47 different heads of state. We've done the Pope Mobiles. We're now a designing, engineering, and manufacturing company. Anything to do with lightweight armoring solutions, You know, we were involved in that a lot of times. I mean, we did 7 of the radomes in the DMZ between North Korea and South Korea. We've done trains, we've done helicopters, we've done snowcats along the Turkey-Iraq border. And that's what I like. They're not always the most profitable, okay, projects. I mean, they're good, but they're not the most profitable. But that's what keeps you— that, me, it keeps me interested in the business.

Yeah, super cool. Super cool. Well, and then so all the, all the work is being done in Utah at this point, or— and has it been that way?

No, we have, we have 11 facilities now. Okay. We have actually 3 facilities here in Utah now and one in Atlanta in the United States, and the rest of them are out of the country. We no longer have any facilities in Latin America.

Okay.

And so a lot of that happened. I mean, I sold the business at one point very shortly after I started it and they defaulted. And there's a lot of lessons to go involved in that. And I've been involved in— I'm an angel investor, and so I've been in angel partnerships. And so I've been— I did that for, you know, for a while as well before. And then I just keep coming back to the armoring business. I mean, it's always been going. It just— whether it's been through a management team or through my what it is now with my, with my sons involved in that. And that's been a good thing.

That's great. Well, so something you said, you don't have any facilities in Latin America anymore. Could you tell us about that journey? I assume you, you put them to have those closer to your customers. But then, you know, how did that go down in terms of making a decision to be there? And then I guess not doing that anymore?

Well, what the challenge became, it became a race to the bottom. I mean, you know, once you got established, when we, when we started in Mexico, there was one, maybe two competitors in the country, and the quality was very poor. But over time, as the market grew, and this is just a natural progression of business, locals came in, became involved. They don't necessarily do the lightweight, and we still do a lot of cars for Mexico because of our technology and because of the, the quality and things like that of the product. But there's a lot of people that will say, well, I can save $20,000 and, you know, I'm still protected. Whether they're protected or not, you know, I can't guarantee that. And so when I say a race to the bottom, you know, you get a mom-and-pop and he's happy doing 2 or 3 cars a year at $20,000 apiece. You know, for him, that's a great business. For us, we don't make any money. And, you know, it's a totally different product. You know, some products coming out of Asia versus some, you know, out of Europe or out of the United States, you know, the quality is just different. They have triple the weight added. You know, anybody can slap steel in these things. You know, there's not a lot of brain cells involved in that. For example, we have, we have a process where we do 5 different things to the door to prepare it so it doesn't, even though it's, you know, it's only 30 to 40% of the weight, We do 5 different things to the door to make sure that it closes well and always will close well. And I mean, they don't have any of that. And some, in some cases, they don't even use ballistic steel. They just use regular steel and the client never knows until he's attacked.

Wow.

And so that's why we left. It just wasn't, it wasn't profitable. It was a bigger headache than it needed to be to do that. I mean, I would love to be back in Mexico right now. I mean, in fact, I was looking at partnerships and things like that, but international partnerships are very, very difficult, right? Especially in a niche business like this, because I call it my shoe tying principle. You know, before you know how to tie your shoes, it's hard. But once you teach somebody how to tie their shoes, it's easy. And then they forget when they didn't know how to tie their shoes, and suddenly they forget you. And then they're bringing in cars on the side and they're not putting them on the book. And I can go into patents, I can go into all of that if, you know, if, you know, international, from an international aspect and things I've learned that I wish I knew before.

Yeah, definitely am interested in that. One thing I'm curious about also, going back to kind of that, that flood of customers that you had early on, like, it, it sounds like this was a lightning bolt kind of, you know, year for you in terms of seeing, you know, this customer just basically beating down your door and giving you deposits to fund the business off the ground, and then this whirlwind of demand. What do you think caused that? What made you see that whirlwind? Was it timing? Was it better product? Was it a combination of those things? How do you think about that?

It was definitely a combination. We can say luck. I mean, for, for the country of Mexico, it wasn't lucky because they were in turmoil. Okay, but for my business, we, we were opportunistic at the time, but we were lucky. Things came together. I'm not necessarily, you know, it would have been nice if it was more of a controlled growth. Okay. Like, for example, in 3 years, we did 750 Jeep Grand Cherokees. That was unbelievable. And that, that became the car of choice. And we kind of focused on that car. But It was the turmoil, it was the product, and it was our efforts to market that whole thing with 1,000. Well, let me just give you an example. You wanted stories. I mean, there's a gentleman that I was in his outer office waiting to meet. He was on his way to the office that day to meet me. He was one of the wealthiest. He was a bank owner. He was kidnapped on his way to work. Okay, I mean, I just happened to be in Mexico. He was on his way to see me, and on his way to see me, he was kidnapped. He was held for 4 months. He was ransomed for $30 million after 4 months. But the following week, following his kidnapping, his family came to me and ordered 12 Jeep Grand Cherokees, paid me 100% cash up front. I bought the vehicles, I did the armoring, and everything. Okay, now for the next 3 or 4 years, this gentleman, after he was released, he and every one of the members of his board of directors, who were the who's who in the country, would buy cars. So I was getting about 40 cars a year off of just this one contact and one individual that I had had— call it luck— but they love their cars. And so they're saying— and I'll use a fictitious name, but I'll say, you know, Well, who does, who does Jose Martinez get his cars? Well, it's International Armoring, ArmorMax. Oh, we'll get them from there. And so there was no question at the time. And so, you know, 40 cars a year, that's, you know, around $75,000 for the armoring and, you know, $40,000 for the car. That's, that's pretty good. You know, that's $4+ million a year just off of one customer. You know, we got to the point in In about a year, let's see, it was about 27 months, 20, well, it's about 20 months, 2 years, we were at, you know, $50 million in revenue. And in this industry, in a custom-made industry, even though we tried to standardize everything, but it's basically still a customized industry. We can't, we don't have robots building these cars. This is very labor-intensive. And even though we have materials already you know, pre-cut and designed to the car and things like that, the bottom line is these cars are still— you have to have humans to put them in. And so that was significant. And to do $50 million, there was a year that back in 2004, I tried to get us to $100 million. I said, "I want us to get to $100 million." And it almost killed me. I did 350,000, almost 400,000 miles, you know, going all over the world. It was during the Iraq conflict. I was— we were doing all the subcontractors. I was in and out of Kuwait. We had a facility in Kuwait. I was in, in London every, every month, you know, and, and meeting with government officials over there. And that's where the multiples come from, is government officials. The private sector is onesies and twosies, right? Even corporations are onesies and twosies. And it takes just as much effort to work with a client with, you know, with 140 cars as it does a client with 2 cars. I mean, they talk just as much, to be honest. I mean, right now, for example, I have 200 active customers, right? And so I get up very early because, uh, time zones— they don't know time zones. I'm, um, you know, I get up at 3 o'clock every morning, and I have for 30-plus years. And then I travel to these. And now the last year and a half, it's been obviously a little bit a little bit more challenging, but our sales have actually increased in certain areas, especially in the United States, and we can talk about that. But our sales in the last 18 months have increased by 80% in the United States.

Why do you think that is?

Uncertainty. Uncertainty. They're not necessarily a, you know, a high-powered rifle fire protection type of package. It's more like random acts of violence, wrong place, wrong time, handgun type of protection, because there's various degrees of protection. I mean, everybody doesn't need what a president of a country needs. Okay, so we start at handgun protection—.44 Magnum,.357 Magnum, 9mm. We go up to a high-powered rifle, and then we go up to a high-powered rifle with armor-piercing capabilities, which is what we do for heads of state and a few other individuals that have a perceived threat or, or an actual threat. Um, and that's— those are crazy cars. I mean, your glass is 3 inches thick. They'll stop, you know, just about what a tank will, but yet they look like a regular passenger vehicle. Yeah, fascinating.

So curious to probe into something you just talked through. It sounds like you're an incredibly driven, hard-working person, waking up at 3 AM every day, on the road all the time. So are you, are you the rainmaker for the company still? Are you doing— are, are there other people selling as well, or is it just you?

Oh no, no, no, we have, we have numerous people that sell. I mean, we have, we have operations all over Africa. We still have our Philippine facility that's closed. We haven't opened that. We have 40, 50 employees there that we're just trying to get to move to our other facilities. We have a couple of them here in the United States right now, but as far as employees, and then we have the, the Middle East operations. We don't have the Kuwait facility anymore, but we do have one in, in the UAE. We do a lot of the US government out of the UAE because they remain in that region. And so, you know, we have individuals that are responsible for sales. What I do is we get about 100 sales inquiries a day, and that's a whole nother discussion about web presence and things like that. We focus a lot on that. We were the first to put, you know, back in the '90s, a web page up and And now we have 100,000 organic, I guess that's what you call it, visits a month. Mm-hmm. You know, and for a niche business, it's pretty good. It leads the— we lead the industry in that as well. But what I do is I take about 4 or 5 a day as far as some of those leads, and then I work with those. And then once they buy, we have a team that takes care of them at that point. But I'm an initial contact. You know, this business is about educating the customer. It's a, you know, it's a little bit technical. There's a lot of misconceptions. People have seen too many James Bond movies, right? And so it's about educating them and getting them confident or comfortable in what they get, because this is all inside the cavities of the car. They've got to kind of trust you because they, when it really matters, You know, it's got to be right. You know, we have one chance, right? I mean, it's got— the armor has to be right. And fortunately, we've had— we've been very successful and we've had over 300 attacks in our cars. And we calculate that that's over 500 lives that have been saved or protected. We don't know the outcome because there wasn't a situation that occurred.

So, you know, one thing I'm curious about is if you think about typical businesses that have tried to scale custom work, so custom auto, you know, auto improvement people, or custom, you know, plane interiors, any of that kind of stuff. Like, I'm curious why when I look at most of those, almost all of them have failed to scale at the level you have. And I'm curious how you think that you've been able to, you know, build up a bigger defense, you know, a defensible business of one of this size where you know, all the little onesie-twosie people in their garages aren't, you know, aren't taking business from you, you know, en masse. How have you been able to build, I think, a really sizable company given kind of this dynamic I'm talking about with scaling? Custom work just tends to not happen.

Well, I think a lot of it is just hard work, but I mean, it's innovation and it's hard work. I mean, like I said, we, we hate to lose one deal. I don't like anybody saying, well, we'll get the next guy. Where else? You know, or the other, the other comment that I hear sometimes is, where else are they going to go? Well, I hate that attitude. I mean, I dislike it very much. Is, is that we don't want to lose a single person as long as the, as long as it makes sense. I mean, our average ticket sale is $140,000. Okay. So sometimes when, you know, somebody doesn't buy, I kind of go, "Man, Daddy really thought they were good. Why didn't they buy?" Well, it comes down to the fact that they're not going to buy because of the cost. In these foreign countries, they might go to somebody that's cheaper. For example, in the UAE, in Dubai, you can get some real garbage over there for a lot cheaper. You have some accountant in some office in Switzerland for one of the NGOs that, "Oh yeah, I can buy 3 cars for what it costs me for 2 cars from International Army and Armor Max." and they make a poor decision. Those cars last 6 months, and of the 6 months, they spend 4 and a half months in the shop. Okay. They've got rust worn out the bottom of their doors, but they made a financial decision there. They made, you know, instead of the logical decision. And I can make a business just off of repairing other people's armored cars. Yeah, super cool.

Well, so switching gears a little bit to kind of the customer journey. So it sounds like you You've got an average ticket price that's— and do you typically supply the vehicle also, or do people— is it bring your own vehicle modification?

How's the split work there? It depends on the country, but it's about 50/50. Okay. Yeah, I would rather they supply the vehicle because that saves us a lot of time. I mean, in the supply chain, dealing with dealers is the hardest thing just about. I mean, armoring the car is easy. Getting a dealer to, you know, sell us the right car is very difficult. I hear you. I don't know where they've gotten— what gave them permission to become so arrogant, to be honest. I mean, it's, it's unbelievable.

I personally keep cars forever, and it's just because I want to avoid the 2-day nightmare experience of having to deal with the dealership and just feeling like no matter what happened, I got ripped off. Like, that's— yeah, so that's what—

well, you know, everybody's really on, on the same ground now with the internet. And things like that. I mean, everybody can get the same prices and everything. It's just, it's the sales experience that is so horrid. And I don't buy, I don't ever go into a dealership either. We don't. I mean, we do everything over the phone. But even then, you know, and I guess that's a general statement of the workforce. And I'm sorry if I show my prejudices, but we have big challenges here in the United States with regards to that. My son is in, is at the Atlanta facility right now, and we're gearing up because we're having a tremendous influx from the East Coast. When we open that operation, we got a huge demand. But he's just going, I don't, you know, I think we're in a crisis mode here in the country. I mean, we have individuals that don't know how to work, and maybe I shouldn't get into this, but go ahead. They have very poor work ethic, and they're addicted. They're addicted to their phones. I mean, you know, when you have a 22 or 24-year-old that goes to the bathroom 10, 12 times a day, you know, that's, that's safe for those guys that are over 60. I mean, that, you know, they're going there to use their phones, and then, and then they're sassy and they don't want to work. And, and it's, it's hard. I mean, I love— that's what I was telling you— I love bringing in these foreigners that are grateful for their job. And we pay them very well, but we also get a lot out of them because they realize if they don't perform, then there's 5, 6, 7 guys behind them that will. And they're grateful for the opportunity, and they have a work ethic. And so, I mean, that's— again, that's, that's a generalized statement, but it's my experience over the last 28 years here in the United States. I mean, from those first guys that I had at Volvo White that were hardworking, and they were grateful for the opportunity to make it, you know, a decent living. And I'm talking guys that you now were paying between $16 an hour and $30 an hour, guys that haven't— a lot of guys haven't finished high school. And so once you start putting overtime in, you know, they're making $70,000, $80,000 a year, which maybe I'm too old school, but that's a, that's a pretty good salary. For those type of skilled jobs. And here's the other thing I didn't even mention is everybody's my competitor now. If you can't tell, I'm on a little bit of a soapbox, but everybody's my competitor. I got, you know, I've got other manufacturing companies that are coming in and they're taking my top employees. They're paying them $3, $4, $5. They're poaching $3, $4, $5 an hour more. And then they pay them $500 to $1,000 to bring guys for every guy they bring with them. You know, that's not just in the armoring business. That's just they find who the best employees are, and that's, that's what it's, it's come down to. And so my solution is, is to go get my foreign employees that are already trained. And that was another thing I was going to mention. The other guys, they're not willing to, to listen and be trained, and that's, that's hard. But anyway, I didn't mean to get off on that, but it— they— these are challenges that we're facing in the country with regards to productivity and things like that. And I'm not going to say it's because everybody's getting stimulus checks and things like that. I'm not going to make that judgment. I mean, I think there's plenty of other people that are much more qualified than I am. I'm just telling you the experience we're having. I don't know exactly the source except the fact that I know what the results are with it. I know— Well, and you know— I feel like I generally work a lot harder and are, you know, are there on time and things like that. And then generally speaking, the body of workers in that segment of the marketplace—

it makes preaching to the choir here. So it's once you feel that pain for year after year where I think as a business owner, especially if you feel like you're treating people really well and giving them opportunity, yeah, it's a mutually productive relationship to see there really be kind of a lack of appreciation for that. It wears on you after a while, really does. So I feel your pain.

Well, I own a number of businesses in a number of different industries, and it used to be just limited to this manufacturing industry, but now it's across the board. And I think I can speak enough because of my experience to say that this is a problem across the board.

I hear you. I hear you. So switching gears a little bit. So the customer journey, I'd love to just get a profile of your typical customer. So it sounds like they're relatively well-off people that feel endangered. Is that kind of a high level or how do you, how do you describe who your customer base is?

Well, there's a couple of different segments. There's the governmental, there's the military. Governmental head of state type of official, senator, congressman, that type of thing. And I'm not just talking about the US. Most of it, you know, the US in that situation, we don't do that. The President of the United States car, that's done by the Secret Service. But in these foreign countries, that would be one segment. Then the military, a lot of times that special ops, that's things like that. Well, let me just say in the government, there's— we have a contract with one of the government agencies that we've done over 500 cars for in the last 10+ years. Okay. Okay. And right now we have, we have 36. But then in foreign governments, we were doing, for example, Middle Eastern government right now. We just got— not just, but within the last 3 months we got an order for 140 cars. Okay. So they're the ones that give us the multiples, multiple units that, you know, and those are good, those we make because we're able to do those in an assembly line type of production process. So that would be those clients. The onesies and twosies though are our bread and butter. Okay. Okay. They're, they're typically fairly well-to-do people in the United States. They're individuals that have an amount, usually a business owner or somebody like that, even a doctor, lawyer. Chicago is a big area. We do a lot of cars for doctors and lawyers in Chicago and real estate agents. But those are lower packages. Those are packages that start at $30,000, you know, the glass and the doors. Okay. So it's much more reasonable for them. They provide the vehicle, we go pick it up, we have the designs and patterns for them. Okay. And then there's the, the wealthy of the wealthy. I mean, in the past 6 months, we've done 7 of the top 20 wealthiest people in the world. We've done cars for them. Okay. And we currently have— and you'd recognize those names if I were to tell you. But again, we keep that confidential and they fly in, they fly out. I mean, and I have in the plant at any one time, I might have a dozen cars for those individuals and they're usually of a higher level. The demand is, you know, the minute they get the contract, we have— they have people that work for them that, you know, this is the hard part of the business is they call us and they visit us and then they push, push, push, push. And, and they, to be honest, they really— and, and this is fine— they don't understand the, the difficulty or the, the process itself. And in other words, and that's what a lot of people in the United States don't know. But, but that's usually— that's our customer base, not only here in the United States but around the world. And so sports figures, done a number of— we're doing a number of them, uh, that, you know, you would recognize the names. We have one sports figure that's— his wife is scared to death of the paparazzi, and rightfully so. And so, you know, they bought— over the years, they bought 5 or 6 cars from us. It's not one they buy every year, but every 2 or 3 years they buy one. Got it.

And so they're saying, okay, I want an armored G-Wagon, right? Mercedes, very, very expensive Mercedes.

So very good car to armor, by the way. Okay, why is that? Well, the structure of them, the way they look when they're finished and the way they handle. We're able to maintain the original performance of them with the lightweight armor. We're able to maintain the original appearance, and we're able to armor the entire passenger compartment. I mean, it's a— there's 5 or 6 cars that are more conducive to be armored than others, and that's one of them. Yeah, what are the other ones? You have the Cadillac Escalade, the Yukon Denali XL, Okay, you have the Jeep Grand Cherokee that I already mentioned, and you throw in a sedan there, you got the, you know, the S Series Mercedes type of sedans. Those are very, very popular when we go with sedans. We, we recommend a high-end, not necessarily European, the G-Wagon is an exception, uh, you know, uh, the Toyota Land Cruiser, it's not the best one to do, but it's the most popular one worldwide because of their parts distribution and their service network they have around the world. I mean, you can go to a sheepherder village in Afghanistan and build a whole entire Toyota Land Cruiser. I mean, it's just, it's, you know, they're so easy. And that, that's the one we do the most of for the NGOs, um, you know, like the World Bank and those kind of guys, uh, UNICEF and all those guys that are in those dangerous areas, Red Cross and people like that. You know, they, they choose those type of vehicles. But that's— I, I got sidetracked, but that's not necessarily one of the top 5 as far as vehicles that are best to armor. But those other higher-end Suburban, uh, Suburban, Denali, Tahoe, those type of cars, those are very, uh, very conducive. I mean, the US, the GM product, I mean, just look at the doors. I mean, they're wide, they're big. I mean, you can fit a small child inside those doors. And so from the armoring standpoint, you've got plenty of space. And whereas something like a Toyota Land Cruiser, which is a great car, or a Lexus LX 570 They're great cars, but they just weren't thinking of us when they built them. I mean, they, you know, they weren't taking us into consideration because the doors are very thin, and so there's not a lot of room to work with. I mean, just think what we do. We, we take 2 to 3 inch glass and we have to put it in a, in an opening that's 3/4 of an inch. How do you do that and still make the car look original and make it, uh, you know, make it perform? And that's, that's the secret. That's the difficulty.

So somebody has said, I want an armored G-Wagon. By now you've had to go through an educational process with them, it sounds like, to say, okay, do you want straight bullet protection? Do you want armor-piercing protection? Do you want the full deal? And they've agreed with you on what that's going to be. Then kind of what's the next step besides their— I guess if they're really rich, there are people calling you every day asking you why it isn't ready. What's the next step?

Well, the next step is, I mean, obviously we come to terms as far as what what they're getting and make sure they understand what they're getting and what they're not getting. Okay. And then we sign an agreement, a letter of understanding, LOI, you know, basic— not an LOA, but just a letter of understanding. Basically, they accept that these are the terms. They give us a 50% deposit, or in the case if we provide the vehicle, they give us the money for the vehicle. And then if they have the vehicle, we arrange to have it picked up. And then we began the process of manufacturing the components that go into the armor. It takes us about 6 weeks to do that. And in the meantime, if it's a fully armored project, we're doing the other areas, we're doing the cavity. So we take these vehicles, we strip them completely apart. I mean, you can't tell what model they are. In fact, it's a stage that we don't necessarily like the clients to come into the plant. Because, you know, some of them kind of freak out. They just kind of say, you know, what have you done to my, my $180,000 G-Wagon? To use that as an example. Now, those are fairly easy to recognize. Some people mix them up with a Jeep Wrangler when they're, when they're all stripped apart. But, you know, other than that, they're fairly easy to notice. But we do all our work inside the cavities of the car. Okay, and again, we designed the armor to the car, not the car to the armor. So that process there, that makes it a little bit easier from the standpoint of installation and reducing hours and things like that. So anyway, we put all the armor in. We've taken— we use every part on the car again, except the original glass and the motors and the doors. We have to make the windows operable, and we can make most cars' windows operable. It's not included in the main package, except the driver's window. But anyway, we use all those parts again. We just have to modify them because what we've done is we've, we've shrunken the interior area of the vehicle. We've done things like put overlaps around the doors so no bullets can get in at angles and things like that. And if you look at the website, you can see some of the, some of that work that we've done. And so anyway, and then we put it back together and the glass looks like the original, even including the dot matrix and the blackout. So that from the outside, you can't tell that it's an armored vehicle. And yes, you can tell when the windows go down because they're thicker. On a handgun, the glass is only— is less than an inch thick. So it's not too terribly bad. On a handgun protection, we've added less than 500 pounds to that car. So, you know, that's 2.5 men in the car, you know? And so you say, "Well, yeah." And that's distributed around, plus we upgrade the suspension. So you get— you really don't even know you're driving an armored vehicle. Even in our higher levels, we have customers. I just had a customer the other day. He was driving. He drives a G-Wagon, a G550. And he says, I love the drive more than I now, more than I did before. You know, I like that. I mean, it's just, you know, and other cars have more of a sound deadening type of, you know, they're not as loosey-goosey, especially the US models. They sound a little bit more Mercedes-ish, as it were, when you close the doors, or from the, the sound on the inside. That's the process. I mean, it takes what we call the presidential package, which is creating a cocoon on the inside without it looking like a cocoon. And the fuel tank, the run-flat tires, the battery, the ECM, the operable window, the suspension upgrade, you know, that, that takes time. So right now our production delivery is about 14 weeks for those type. But if it's just glass and doors, that's 2 to 3 weeks once we have the materials.

It's very interesting that, you know, you managed to take so much of the steel out of the body of the car and reduce that by 85% plus or minus in terms of weight with the ArmorMax material. What is the trajectory with glass getting better? And I mean, 3-inch glass is seriously thick glass to do some of this armor protection. Is that evolving as well, or are we still kind of stuck in the Stone age of big heavy glass being the only thing that's going to work?

Well, I think we're not really in the Stone Age from the standpoint of visibility and lack of distortion and things like that. But unfortunately, until somebody a lot smarter than me comes up with a harder glass— and I have tried, I've paid, uh, I paid some smart people to try to figure it out, and I'm not doing that currently, I'm not researching it, because they basically tell me that it's a trade-off. I mean, yes, we can do harder glass, but you can't see through it. You know, the old Coke bottle bottom syndrome. You know, it's already a leaded glass combination with acrylic and polycarbonate. Now, the way we've been able to reduce down the weight of the ArmorMax material is by, by layup methods. It's basically using the same, same synthetic fiber laminates, but the layup of them and, you know, the crossing of it, etc., and and how we layer the different components to it. You can't do that with glass. I paid an individual, he was actually, it was in Israel, he was a scientist, he was a Russian guy, a very nice guy, I couldn't understand a word he said, but I had a translator there. And I paid him, he said, "I can do this, I can do this." And he used a lot of ceramics in the glass. And he was so proud when, you know, when he showed it to me. And I held it up and I couldn't— I couldn't see through it. I mean, it was glass, but I couldn't see through it. And it was lost in translation, obviously. But I mean, I didn't pay him much, you know, as far as— it wasn't an extended project. But still, I mean, we're— I mean, until somebody comes up with a hardened glass like that that does not have that green look to it, does— you know, until we get that, you know, till bullets bounce off— and I, I know someday somebody's going to figure it out. I mean, I really do. And that will be ideal. I mean, I, you know, I dream of the day that you can just take a, you know, a spray gun and spray the inside of these cars or spray the paint on the outside of the car and they'd be ballistic. You know, that would make my life a lot easier. I'd probably be out of a job.

But you buy it at the Walmart in a spray can. So, so of the components that you are sourcing, for each, you know, that it sounds like they're almost all custom build, or are they— are there any that are off the shelf that you're able to buy from other suppliers in bulk and start to see cost efficiencies there?

Well, there's, there's a little bit of that, but as far as from the standpoint of our, you know, our secret sauce, I mean, that's, that's pretty much— we do buy it in bulk, but the raw materials to manufacture it The glass, I mean, there's becoming more different suppliers around the world. There's not a— there's not that monopoly any longer. We do all the design work ourselves, and then the layup method, we're kind of at their— at their mercy to a certain degree because of the autoclaves. And I've owned a glass manufacturing business, and, you know, the breakage rate was greater than 50% in the autoclave and things like that. And so just very difficult and challenging to— because you have different models. Every model, you know, it's like the custom armored car business. I mean, it's the same thing because you have— every model has a different look. And that's why the big companies like PPG and Gobain and guys like that, they don't even want to be in the passenger business because, you know, they don't want to do onesies and twosies. They want to do the, the big projects like aircraft windshields and the train engine glass and stuff like that. Because they get to build them in multiples of thousands. Okay. Whereas when you say, well, I need you to do a Ferrari, you know, Testarossa windshield, and they're going, you know, how am I going to amortize the tooling of that? Because I'm only going to do one in the, you know, in the lifetime. And I've done cars like that just basically for favors for good customers that, you know, buy multiple cars. But, wow, that's crazy. I mean, I did a Volkswagen Beetle for that same guy that was kidnapped. I did it for his 16-year-old son. In fact, when they first came out, this was about the time when those rounded. And, and if you look at the backlight of the Volkswagen Beetle and see, I'm making you look at cars a totally different way. But, you know, people get excited about those designs. I get a pit in my stomach. But what you have on the backlight of that car, for example, is you have a compound bend. It's going two different directions at the same time. Very difficult with ballistic glass because it's done with gravity. But he calls me up and he says— and this is the guy I was telling you about that I was in his outer office, and of course we developed a relationship over the years— and he said, my son's turning 16, will you do him a Volkswagen Beetle? Will you armor one? And I said, yes, yeah, you bet, you bet I will. And then I hung up and I go, how are we going to do that? And, and we ended up doing it But if you look at it sideways, you can see that it was not a compound bend. It was, it was only bending laterally and not horizontally at the same time. So you don't have quite the bubble look on it. But on that car, did I make money? Absolutely not. Yeah, but I was doing 40 cars a year for his— the people on his board of directors. So I thought, well, we'll just do it. And we've done Ferraris, we've done other Porsches, we've done Aston Martins. We've never done a Lamborghini. No matter what the videos say on, on YouTube, that was a YouTuber fabricating it. But anyway, can we do one? Yeah, we can do one. But, you know, and they're fun for everybody in the, in the plant. And, you know, we got a Lamborghini, we got a Ferrari and stuff like that. But from the accounting department, it's not very fun.

Yeah, I hear you. You mentioned owning other businesses and I guess you got into the glass business because that seemed like it was a way to vertically integrate. Are the other businesses that you own, are they related to this or to the ArmorMax business? Are they independent?

The only, the only way they're related is the real estate side. I mean, putting up facilities, owning the facilities and, and renting them, having the company rent them back from me, lease them back. Got it. We don't sell, we don't sell the ArmorMax material. We only use it for building the cars and the other specialty projects. If we start doing that, we lose our our competitive advantage. And this gets into the patents. I used— I patented everything for a while. A patent, in my opinion, internationally, is only right to sue somebody. Yeah, I've won a lot of judgments for people copying my processes that are patented and things, and I've spent a lot of money on attorneys, but I've never collected on these judgments. I mean, it's been crazy. And so I don't patent anymore because it just gives them a a little bit in my industry anyway. It just gives them a leg up. I mean, they, they're able to learn things that they wouldn't know anyway or wouldn't know by just buying the product, especially it has to do with the processes. And so right or wrong, that's my opinion. And I mean, I'm sticking to it, I guess. I mean, it's just, it's one of those things that you say, how's it, you know, and it's hard to innovate all the time, you know. You say, you know, where can you go from here from the standpoint of product development? And it's very, it's, it's very difficult now. I mean, I can't see us getting much below 2.5 pounds, yeah, a square foot on the OPEC material. It's got to be in a process somewhere, and, and it's got to be in the glass. And until somebody else, like I said, is smarter than me that can figure out how to make that glass harder and more ballistically sound, then, you know, and something's come up at every once in a while that we could probably apply that you ask about using outside sources to better the cost and the process, but it's usually so expensive like this nanotechnology. I've looked at that and incorporating that into the process and that's very difficult. Yeah.

So you have these global facilities. I'm curious about the level of insulation you have against the cyclical macroeconomic environment. Does having the multiple facilities help you with that, or is it just you're one of those businesses? It just doesn't really matter if the economy is good or bad, your business is good, or how does that, how does that go?

It tends to be, it tends to be kind of non-seasonal. Obviously, when there's a world conflict, our sales increase. The challenge we have at times is those, those spikes as it were, in demand. But we're, we're designed— and, and you ask how, how it is that we've been able to survive. A lot of it is the way we are structured. I mean, when we have an increase in demand, first step is to increase hours. You know, I know that sounds kind of elementary, right? But we start, we go to an overtime, okay? And to be honest, in the, in the United States, we've been on overtime for the last 18 months. The challenge we've had there, of course, is that we had to be shut down for a little period of time when we, we had some employees with COVID and they exposed everybody. So anyway, but that's kind of how we do it. And then we move people around, you know, for example, in the US right now, I have a couple of Nigerians and a couple of Filipinos, and I'd like to have a lot more Filipinos. Yeah, the Nigerians are really there for training. But the Filipinos are there for training and to cover the increase in demand. And like I said, I have 40 of them that aren't working right now and I feel bad. We're compensating some of them even though they're not working just because they can't, I mean, it's a terrible situation for them over there. They're gonna starve to death if they, you know, there's just no jobs. And so, but anyway, and that brings a lot of loyalty too. And they're generally very loyal. And that's when you get— when you've got those good loyal employees. And that's how we, how we kind of work through the bubbles. And I'm not saying that it goes, you know, we're 100 miles an hour with our hair on fire, you know, 24/7, but it feels like that in the last 18 months to 2 years. Right.

Well, plus working around the inability to operate when COVID just shows up one day and it's like, hey, somebody got sick, we need to shut down for 2 weeks. I hear you.

So yeah, well, and there's, there's times with the, with the polishing that I will show up in the morning, go, hey, Joe took another job. It's, it's not about 2-week notice. And then you, you kind of, you know, you prepare for the, you know, for the next wave where all the guys that worked around Joe, you know, go join this other company too. And that's that, you know, I will tell you that created a lot of new management, um challenges in the last little while. I mean, uh, it really has. And try to explain that to somebody that doesn't really care, that being the end user, you know, that works for a boss that you— is very demanding. I will tell you, there's, there's some really understanding and nice, very wealthy individuals, but there's some others that, you know, just make it happen, I don't care, you know. And that's the daily call things like that. And, you know, there's even some that make threats, and it's especially foreigners. I mean, it's just, that's the way, um, Eastern Europeans are very famous for that. And you have to be tough, you have to have thick skin on that, you know. You say, okay, come pick up your car, it's in 1,000 pieces, but it'll be out on the front, uh, front road. I mean, we don't, we don't do that kind of stuff here. Yeah, I mean, you know, that, that again, that's, you might say, well, those guys must be mafia or something, and maybe they are, I don't know. But I mean, we adhere to all the exporting laws. So I'm hoping that gets taken care of that way.

But yeah, no, I hear you. So I mean, as you're, you're thinking about the trends and, and where this business is going, obviously it's been 30 years of, of goodness. What, uh, you know, what do you see coming over the next couple of decades? It sounds like there's some extra— I mean, what external stuff is happening? It sounds like there's also internal stuff happening with your boys stepping into the business and becoming part of the leadership and that sort of thing.

Well, as I said, it's kind of, and I don't want to sound like we're bragging or anything, it just, it's a unique business. And like I said, and I can say that because I have exposure. I've been on boards of directors, I've been on advisory panels, and I've had to stop that just because I just, for one, I mean, been there, done that, I guess. And I've seen the uniqueness. I think all businesses, probably 60 to 70% that's common across industries, you know, as far as running a business and as far as dealing with the challenges. And I think that's true in this business, but to a certain degree, you know, there's the, uh, the custom aspect, there's the relationship aspect, there's the client aspect that's totally unique from anything else that I've ever seen. And so have the ability to design and innovate as well as to be able to manage a business. You have to have the whole package. And if a CEO comes in here and thinks— and we've had it, I've had them, as I mentioned, I've had a management team that came in here and, and I, you know, high level, I mean, they had great resumes and they failed miserably, to be honest. Yeah. Okay, because they didn't have the whole package. And that's what's unique about this. I had a young man that worked for me out of college. I hired him as an intern and then he worked for me and he went to Spain, ran our operations there, our production facility. Then he wanted to go to Harvard, so he went to Harvard Business School. And while he was there, he talked about it and they wanted to do a case study on us. And so they did all the interviewing and everything and we're talking exit strategy and everything. And so these are some pretty bright minds and they basically The conclusion was, "Well, good luck with that," because of the uniqueness of this business. I've had that comment from several very smart people. I'm involved— Well, I was involved with a startup of an investment capital company, and I was on the advisory panel, and I was the first investor in it. It involved companies like Skullcandy and Medic Connect and Stance Socks. you know, some really good companies and it continues to grow. I think right now they're on their fourth fund and $250 million. And the managing partner and I are very, very good friends. And, you know, we have a love for cars and anyway, and we've talked at great length and he's— I consider him one of the brightest minds I know, as far as being able to, you know, see the end from the beginning type of thing. You know, there's those guys that you, you talk to. And I'm not like that. I have to just work like a dog to do that. But there's guys that can say, you know, they see what the— okay, did you think about this? Did you think about that? And he's also said to me, I don't know what you're gonna do. I mean, I seriously don't know because they're, they're at this point— and I've tried, you know, and I've had the— I've had numerous offers to do it, but it all involves me, um, staying with the company And, you know, now I have my sons involved, and they each have their talents. But it's a very difficult— the environment right now in the world is very difficult. And I can go in, I've had a kidnapping attempt in my life. I've had on two occasions a gun put to my head. Because the countries I go to, there's a reason they need armored cars. Okay? And so, I mean, it was totally— the kidnapping occurred attempt. It didn't have— it was— they weren't successful. It was one of those where the hair on the back of your neck came up. They tried to push me in a car, and I was fortunate enough to roll out of it. It was right in front of the Marriott in Amsterdam. You know, they had been tracking us. My wife was with me. And so anyway, those type of experiences that kind of lead me to think, is this something that I want my kids involved in? So no, I don't have all the answers, and I don't know the direction exactly we're going. I You know, I'm really, you know, people say, well, what's your long-term forecast? Well, it's to keep innovating and selling armored cars, you know. No, no, no, what about your, you know, your exit strategy? You know, where, where's this going? And, and to be honest, and this is probably not the answer you want to hear, is I don't know. Yeah. And, and I've looked for people that have the answers, and to be honest, they don't have I mean, they give me the standard textbook, you know, or other company. And again, I'm not saying that I'm all-knowing and I'm not willing to open up to these other ideas, but because it is a custom business and you're familiar with the difficulties, you mentioned it before, of being able to maintain this business. I mean, how many limo businesses do you see out there? Yeah. I mean, you don't see any. And those are ma— boost. I mean, they're, they're very easy to make. I can go in the limo industry tomorrow, but do I want to? Absolutely not, right? I mean, I have good friends that had this because I, I mean, we've utilized them, but they struggle. I mean, they usually go off into custom-made rims or something like that. And again, you know, it's like building a fine home, finding the craftsmen to do things, very, very difficult. That's a dying it's a dying trade. Yeah, very interesting.

Well, I mean, if I— if my math is kind of right about your age, it sounds like you got some time to figure it out. So at least there's a positive, a positive there.

So no, and I'm not— I'm not discouraged by it at all. I mean, no matter what I do, I mean, I've built some great projects in real estate and I've had some other great successes in business, but I'm always known as the armored car guy and I'm fine with that. Yeah, you know, it's one of those things when you find something that you're good at, it's hard to— you know, that's why I said there's no retirement in me. I mean, it's, you know, I'm— I love working. I think, you know, I think there's a career in it. I mean, as far as longevity and life, your mind is always active. And that's part of the problem is because your mind is always active. You wake up at night, you can't go back to sleep. Right. And that's, I think that's a good thing to a certain degree. I mean, it's better than sitting in a rocking chair, right? I mean, I, I travel when I want, where I want. I have, you know, I've kind of simplified. I sold 4 properties this last year, a ranch and a couple of homes, and, you know, just to simplify a little bit. And, you know, I have a couple of properties that I can go to and I enjoy, and my kids, and we take our kids on a trip every year by themselves with their spouses and wherever they want to go around the world. And so we do those type of things that, I mean, I don't know how I— what I would do differently. Yeah, I, you know, I collect exotic cars and, you know, I, I do what I want to, you know, and I've been blessed and very fortunate to do. But I, you know, on the other flip side of that is we've worked very hard.

Yeah, but it sounds like you've enjoyed it. It's how you're wired. Yeah, it's what—

when you, when you started talking about you love talking about business, you love doing all those things, you know, I do too. I mean, I used to invest in a lot of startups. I don't do that. I do post-revenue stuff right now. And then, and that's just because I just don't have the time or really the desire to be a 24-hour consultant to these startups anymore. It's kind of one of those things, been there, done that. And so the post-revenue, you don't have to do nearly as much, but I just, whether they listen or not. I mean, now most of the stuff that comes to me, you know, to fund is high-tech stuff, and probably 3/4 of it I don't even understand what they're talking about, um, you know. So, so I say, I, I don't understand this, I'm sorry. I'm, um, I, you know, I, I just missed that, um, that age when they did all that. I mean, they came out with WordPerfect when I was in my last year of college, right? So You know, I missed all the coding and everything, software development and all that. I mean, I'm, I'm enough. I have enough to be dangerous, but that's it.

Well, I mean, I will tell you, having spent time with a lot of technologists who grow into CEOs and stuff, or even, you know, people coming from all different things, you know, one of the profiles I love the most working with are the people that washed out of the finance and accounting side of the house, because then, you know, like, like yourself, like you're not— I mean, just talking to you, I don't think you're wired at all to be an accountant. I think you'd be miserable. And I can see why you decided to go be entrepreneurial. But man, like all these folks that don't have that finance and accounting background, ability to read a financial statement and, and the focus to do it and really understand what the, what the numbers are telling you. Like, I think there's a huge gift, whether, you know, I know it sounds like you're you regret not having the coding part a little bit, but the finance stuff, I'll just tell you from experience, it is a huge benefit. And I wish I had taken more accounting classes instead of computer science classes as a young person.

Well, my dad was a physician and he recommended I don't go that route. He was on the board of the AMA and he said, "There's big changes here." He said, "But whatever you do, make sure you get a skill." going out of college. And I don't regret one bit having that experience with KPMG. I don't regret— I mean, that was a tremendous experience. And so it really was kind of a foundation as I look back and say, would I do it again? Absolutely, absolutely, because it gave me a perspective. And with regards to the computer, the programming and all that, I am not wired that way. I will just tell you, I've tried and it just— yeah. Can I work software? Absolutely. Can I work spreadsheets? Yeah, I, I can do spreadsheet. I just like the best of them. Copy paste. I mean, you know, and again, as you get older and doing this, you recognize that a lot of, a lot of the stuff that they generate is, is useless. You know, a lot of that, that, you know, you can talk to my My accountant can tell you, he say, well, you need all this, you need that. And I said, no, I don't, I'm good. They wanna do all these expensive cost accounting type of programs and things like that. And you get to the point where you say, I know this business well enough. And they say, well, you need to prep it for the next, whoever takes over if you're not here. I'm saying, no, I don't. They understand what, I can go out and I can look at a car depending on how long it's been, I mean, when we sold it, and I can tell you almost within 10 hours how many hours we have on it. Okay. And that just comes, that comes from experience. I recognize that. And, you know, I don't need any, all these fancy charts that said, well, we spent, you know, I can tell you, we've, you know, I can tell you Gonzalo has spent, you know, 14 hours more than he should on an operable window. Yeah. You know, and it's just one of those things. And again, that just comes from experience. I'm not saying But this isn't a standard business that I've chosen to focus on at these later stages of my career. It's really about having my sons, which are very good at what they do, understand the business and having a business for them to go forward with. And then I'm helping them now. It's not vice versa. They are helping me, but I don't need that. I don't need that. I want them to be able to— I, I want the company to be strong and have a, you know, a legacy after, because it, it is a harder— the second generation, third generation, I mean, you don't hear those being too successful for too long anymore. Yep. Um, and so that's, that's kind of what I do. I mean, yeah, you find something you do good and, and, or the best that everybody else does, and, you know, what else can you ask for? I mean, it's hard to walk away from that.

Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. Well, this has been awesome. Thanks for investing over an hour and a half with me, and I know the folks that are going to listen to this are going to really enjoy it. And your candor has been awesome, and your experience, just, just a cool story and cool perspective. So thank you very much, Mark. How can, how can people support you? I know you guys are always selling cars. I mean, that sounds like one, but what, what other things, anything that the listeners should know about, and that would be helpful to you?

Well, I'm in the process of writing a book. I have been for a while. I, you know, we do a lot of— we get a lot of interest from Discovery Channel and, you know, Travel Channel and places like that, and we've done a lot of stories. Now it seems to be more YouTubers than anybody else, now that our story's a little stale, I guess. That's what— but I've had several offers to write the book, and I just decided to because of the experiences and who we've met, you know, from— it definitely has led to a, to an interesting career in the fact that not every day that you, you know, you get to be with the top singer in the country or the top golfer or the top football players and, and politicians. I mean, I've met numerous presidents over the years, and, and they've all come with experiences, but I've met some very fascinating people around the world and And so those type of experiences as it relates to, you know, just some, I think some fun business applications there and how we ended up there where we weren't ever expecting to end up. And so that's coming out here in the future, but I don't know how people can support us. We are, we're doing fine. If they know somebody that is concerned about random acts of violence, around being at the wrong place at the wrong time. That type of peace of mind that you, that you desire when you're driving around or, you know, in those areas that you can't control, you know, they're not tanks that you're driving. These, these are passenger vehicles and, and the technology has come a long way. And so you can use that. And it's not really, you know, some people say, well, that's horribly expensive. Well, it's all your perspective. Yeah, I mean, it's like insurance, you know, it's one of those things. If, if you're petrified, I mean, and we get calls like that every day, and they, they apologize when they call. They say, you don't need to apologize, there's, there's thousands of other people that feel the exact same way. And that, that gets back to that uncertainty. And, and no, this is, this isn't the total solution, but it can help you feel a little bit more, a little bit more safe. Yeah, that's awesome.

Well, cool. Well, thanks again for being here, you know, and I'm excited to get this one up and in front of folks. And, um, you know, be excited to also watch the journey and buy the book when it comes out.

All right. Hey, well, thank you for your time.

Absolutely.