Ep. 43: From Homeless to Fortune 500 Lanyard King

Summary

🎙️ Interesting Humans Podcast - Episode 43: From Homeless to Fortune 500 Lanyard King
Host: Jeff Hopeck
Release Date: March 13, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 43 of the Interesting Humans Podcast, host Jeff Hopeck delves into the inspiring journey of an unnamed guest who transformed his life from homelessness to establishing a Fortune 500 company specializing in badge holders and lanyards. The conversation spans personal struggles, entrepreneurial grit, innovative pivots during crises, and the importance of family and balance.

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Early Life and Struggles

Origins and Childhood
The guest shares his roots, born in Missouri and moving to Oregon at a young age. He reflects on his childhood, highlighting his diverse interests and relentless drive to excel in various activities.

“I was chasing everything. I was one of those kids that just really wanted to be good at stuff... I played every sport.”
—Unnamed Guest [01:10]

Challenges at Home
Growing up as the eldest child in a family grappling with his father’s homelessness, he felt a profound responsibility not to burden his mother. This sense of duty fueled his entrepreneurial spirit from a young age.

“I didn’t want to be a burden to my mom. I want shoes, I want Reebok pumps... I figured out.”
—Unnamed Guest [22:12]

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Move to Miami and Initial Music Career

Relocating for a Fresh Start
Post-college, the guest made a significant life change by moving from Oregon to Miami to escape personal upheaval. This move marked the beginning of his journey into the music industry.

“I needed to get out of Oregon and drove as far away as I possibly could and drove down to Miami.”
—Unnamed Guest [02:39]

Early Music Endeavors
In Miami, he initially pursued a career in music, joining a band that even featured in Rolling Stone magazine. However, disillusionment with the fleeting nature of one-hit wonders led him to reassess his path.

“I saw the misery and like no one cared anymore. My hopes and dreams about being a rock star kind of fell apart.”
—Unnamed Guest [03:23]

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Building the Recording Studio and Father’s Redemption

Creating a Stability Base
With his brother's support and a financial boost from their father’s late-arriving Social Security benefits, they invested in a recording studio. This initiative became the cornerstone of their future entrepreneurial ventures.

“We decided to invest it in ourselves and so we started a recording studio... that changed our lives.”
—Unnamed Guest [07:34]

Reconnecting with Family
The guest recounts the emotional reunion with his father, who had previously been absent due to homelessness. This reconciliation strengthened their bond and inspired their business endeavors.

“We’re actually great friends to this day, my dad and I... he gave us about 20 or $30,000.”
—Unnamed Guest [08:12]

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Pivot to E-commerce: From Badge Holders to Mask Lanyards

Entering the E-commerce Space
Facing financial challenges with the recording studio, the guest and his brother explored selling products online. They initially focused on badge holders and lanyards, leveraging platforms like eBay.

“We started selling badge holders, lanyards... we realized we could be the best in the world at it.”
—Unnamed Guest [10:46]

Inspirational Readings
Influenced by Jim Collins’ Good to Great and Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the guest adopted a mindset of specialization and excellence, which became pivotal in their business strategy.

“What can you be the best in the world at?”
—Unnamed Guest [10:46]

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Impact of COVID-19 and Business Resilience

Navigating the Pandemic
The onset of COVID-19 posed significant threats to their business, primarily reliant on office environments. Instead of succumbing, they innovated by introducing mask lanyards, addressing the immediate needs of the pandemic.

“We invented mask lanyards... within a day we'd sold probably 50 packs of those things.”
—Unnamed Guest [16:14]

Rapid Growth and Challenges
The new product line skyrocketed their sales to nearly a million dollars, though logistical challenges persisted due to supply shortages.

“We hit a million in revenue... although probably close to a million.”
—Unnamed Guest [18:35]

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Relationship with His Brother and Business Growth

Collaborative Dynamics
The guest praises his younger brother's leadership and visionary capabilities, emphasizing their complementary skills that have been crucial for the company's growth and stability.

“He is this North Star leader who people follow... I credit our team and our culture.”
—Unnamed Guest [39:40]

Expansion and Diversification
Post-COVID, they expanded into higher-ticket items like ID card printers and access control systems, aiming for large-scale government contracts and corporate clients.

“We're going up to higher ticket items ... bidding on big government contracts.”
—Unnamed Guest [35:30]

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Personal Life and Family

A Talented Son
The guest shares heartfelt anecdotes about his 13-year-old son, an exceptional drummer, highlighting their bond and mutual inspiration in music.

“My son is the most incredible drummer I've ever known... he drives me to be better.”
—Unnamed Guest [27:55]

Family Collaborations
Together with his brother and sister, they continue to create and release music, fostering a supportive and creative family environment.

“We still make music together... that's one of the things we've been doing.”
—Unnamed Guest [44:23]

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Future Plans and Company Vision

Sustaining Growth
Facing an uncertain future for physical ID badges, the company remains agile, exploring advancements like AI integration and maintaining strong industry relationships to stay relevant.

“We're trying to keep our finger on the Pulse... exploring what's next.”
—Unnamed Guest [42:57]

Culture and Values
A strong emphasis on company culture and customer relationships underpins their strategy, ensuring the business remains passionate and customer-centric.

“Our number one highest value is we care the most.”
—Unnamed Guest [37:38]

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Personal Wellness and Balance

Maintaining Balance
Beyond business, the guest prioritizes wellness through regular exercise, meditation, and gratitude journaling, striving to balance entrepreneurial demands with personal well-being.

“I work out every morning... meditate a lot.”
—Unnamed Guest [49:38]

Balancing Work and Family
He advocates for maintaining a healthy work-life balance, ensuring that entrepreneurial success does not come at the expense of family and personal passions.

“Balance is so important. We have one life to live.”
—Unnamed Guest [52:35]

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Conclusion

The guest’s story is a testament to resilience, adaptability, and the enduring power of family and passion. From overcoming homelessness to pioneering a niche in the bustling e-commerce market, his journey underscores the importance of pivoting during crises, fostering strong familial bonds, and maintaining personal well-being amidst entrepreneurial pursuits. His relentless curiosity and dedication continue to drive both his personal growth and the evolution of his thriving business.

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Notable Quotes:

• “What can you be the best in the world at?”
  —Unnamed Guest [10:46]

• “We kept our business alive. We kept all of our staff, we kept all of our employees.”
  —Unnamed Guest [19:31]

• “Curious is the most perfect word because there's so much hubris in thinking I know everything.”
  —Unnamed Guest [50:13]

• “Balance is so important. We have one life to live.”
  —Unnamed Guest [52:35]

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This episode offers a profound look into the multifaceted life of an entrepreneur who not only built a successful business from the ground up but also nurtured meaningful relationships and maintained personal well-being throughout his journey.

Transcript

[Mike Barnhill]

All right, Mike Barnhill, folks. What a. What an episode. This is. So 2005, homeless and couch jumping today. Badge holder, kings of the Internet.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's what we say.

[Mike Barnhill]

This. This story is so incredible. I'll never forget our time at the Waffle House, where it's just so incredible where you. I mean, you gave me all the details, and you're saying your words to me were, sorry, man, I know this is the long way, but I'll wrap it up. And I'm going, oh, my gosh, make it longer. Can you make this longer? Because it's just so good. So to go from homeless and couch jumping to where you are today, many pivotal points. Many pivotal points throughout your life. Right. So let's go back to the beginning, because we got to go chronological. I need to. Are you from.

[Unnamed Guest]

Okay. I'm from Oregon originally. Well, actually born in Missouri and then moved to Oregon when I was about two or three.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay, awesome. Any interest in your childhood that stand out? Were you sports, academics?

[Unnamed Guest]

Man, I was chasing everything. I was one of those kids that just really wanted to be good at stuff. And so it would be whatever I could do to get recognition, whatever I could do to just try to, you know, get noticed, and it would be something new whenever possible. So I would be. I played every sport. I played soccer. I played football. I played baseball. I played water pole. Like, every. Wrestled. Everything. Yeah. Music. I got into music pretty young. Kind of got told I was pretty good at it, so I. I really dug hard into that.

[Mike Barnhill]

What instrument or all of them.

[Unnamed Guest]

Back then, I was mostly singing, but as I got older, I started figuring stuff out on piano, and people would be like, oh, how'd you figure that out? On piano? And so, you know, know, getting noticed for figuring stuff out. I just kind of leaned into that and got really into playing piano.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah. So pretty normal upbringing, it sounds like.

[Unnamed Guest]

For the most part, yeah. Would you say normal. Normal siblings, for sure. Yeah. Little brother, little sister, three years apart.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay.

[Unnamed Guest]

All the way down.

[Mike Barnhill]

And how long did you stay there before your next big move to Miami?

[Unnamed Guest]

So I stayed in Oregon until basically, like, college, and then I went to University of Oregon, got a little crazy. University of Oregon and just needed to get out of Dodge.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so, yeah, I had visited my brother in Miam a year prior to my move, and I had never seen how people lived. Like, wow. Like, cribs on MTV or something like that. I never seen anything like it. And broke up with a girl. We broke up with each other, I guess. And I said, I got to get out of Oregon and drove as far away as I possibly could and drove down to Miami.

[Mike Barnhill]

Literally. Like that's how you made your decision, to go as far away as you possibly could?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, yeah, I needed to get. Yeah, it was there. Or Alaska. And Alaska. Just something fell apart in Alaska, so it was Miami. And yeah, it was a good move.

[Mike Barnhill]

Moved in with your brother?

[Unnamed Guest]

Moved in with my brother, Yeah. I was, I was sleeping on his couch. Actually not even on his couch. There was a little mattress we put under the. Like the coffee table.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And I. And I slept there for a long time in Sweetwater, Florida.

[Mike Barnhill]

Sweetwater, Florida. And what did you work some jobs or what was life like to play music? What were you doing?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, so I had actually been in a band that was in Rolling Stone magazine back in Oregon too. Part of the move. Right. So we were in Rolling Stone magazine. I was working in the music industry kind of after college. Just realized like, the only thing that that band had going for it was we would maybe be a one hit wonder.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

So. And. And I was working with these other bands who I had seen go down that one hit wonder path.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And I just saw the misery and like, no one cared anymore. A year or two later.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so all my hopes and dreams about being a rock star kind of fell apart. And I said, this isn't going to work either. So I quit the band. I was part of it too. Left Oregon after being in Rolling Stone magazine and talking to record labels and things and decided to be a. Basically a folk singer in Miami. I thought, I know what I'll do. I live with my brother. I'll just, I'll become a monk. I'll. I'll. I'll play acoustic guitar and I'll write these songs. And, and, and what happened instead was I started working on south beach and got a job as a waiter and. Oh, you know, it just, it wasn't what I expected, but it was crazy. It was whole new life from Oregon to, you know, working on South Beach.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah. Okay. At that time in life, did you, did you have any other goals you were shooting for in any other areas? Or was it like once that dream was squashed, that was it I really wanted.

[Unnamed Guest]

So there was this like, reconnection with music around that time. Right. So I knew, like, I didn't want to be a rock star. I didn't want to do the one hit wonder thing. Like, I wanted to chase music that was like calling me, you know, So I had always written these kind of acoustic Sad folk songs and things like that. And so I actually went really hard and kind of doubled down on just writing and writing and writing. And I did. I still kind of wanted to be like this musician. That's why I really loved the, like, bartending and waiting tables jobs because I could always have the flexibility and the freedom to at least keep pursuing music. So I did. I really doubled down on kind of like music that spoke to my heart.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so I really worked hard at that for a while.

[Mike Barnhill]

And that was as for fun or were you playing like out and about?

[Unnamed Guest]

I was playing out and about. I got some. Some gigs and things like that.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. What, so what period then? Did you. Did you move to another house? Did you stay with your brother the whole time? How did that all work out?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, there was actually one night when I got let go from work a little early and I felt like there was some sort of divinity on my shoulder because we needed to move out our apartment. I was driving around, driving around, and I drove to Coral or Coconut Grove, which is a town I always liked.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And there was this little blue house.

[Mike Barnhill]

Wow.

[Unnamed Guest]

I just drove past it. Had a 4 sales or not a for sale sign, but a full rent sign.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And called him the next day. And we moved in. And it was like the perfect house.

[Mike Barnhill]

Wow.

[Unnamed Guest]

It was like the perfect little house. And we ended up moving in and. Yeah, we had had a front room, so we. In a back room. So we actually built a recording studio in the back room and had like a practice room in the front room. So my brother and I kind of started a band with some friends and.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay, so he was into music too.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a really good musician.

[Mike Barnhill]

Same style. Like you guys played the same kind of music genre.

[Unnamed Guest]

Same genre, yes. We had a plane in bands together, like rock and roll bands and things in Miami. Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

That's so cool. What was he into? Profess. What was his career like?

[Unnamed Guest]

So he actually studied international business. Florida International University.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

But he. He's just a really smart kid. And so he started his own, like, consulting company on the side for photo id, badge access control companies and things like that.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Or. And then he was bartending. He was bartending on south beach and making like a killing. Just stashing it all away. Stashing it all away. Just saving money.

[Mike Barnhill]

Were you stashing it?

[Unnamed Guest]

I was not all away.

[Mike Barnhill]

No, no. You were doing the opposite.

[Unnamed Guest]

I was doing the opposite. I was spending more than I had.

[Mike Barnhill]

Right.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Non stop.

[Mike Barnhill]

Always in debt.

[Unnamed Guest]

Always in debt. Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Wow.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay, so how many years did this go on for? Playing music, working in bars? Sort of.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, it went on for. For a few years, probably. Yeah, A couple of years. And then one day I decided to just stop drinking.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Which was a big part of my story. Okay. Stop drinking and. And had all this time to fill. Right. Like there was just so much time in the day that I didn't realize existed. So my brother and I actually. Okay. We had started a recording studio. So we had. Before I quit drinking, we'd actually found this little warehouse. My dad, who was homeless, ended up getting a bunch of back pay for Social Security and for his veteran, you know, for being a veteran, things like that. He'd befriended a lawyer. Lawyer helped him get off the street. Lawyer helped him get a bunch of money.

[Mike Barnhill]

Wow.

[Unnamed Guest]

And he gave it to his kids because he never paid us child support. Random story.

[Mike Barnhill]

That's incredible.

[Unnamed Guest]

So, yeah, we ended up getting about 20 or $30,000 from our dad.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And we decided to invest it in ourselves and so we started a recording studio, thinking we would, you know, I don't know, become recording engineers and.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, sure.

[Unnamed Guest]

Realize that you don't make any money doing that.

[Mike Barnhill]

And what's the goal there, like a recording studio? Is that to get other people to come in or is it for self use?

[Unnamed Guest]

It was for ourselves to use, but then also we wanted. We figured, you know, we were in the scene, we would just have clients.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

We didn't know what we were doing.

[Mike Barnhill]

Studio. Is that how it works?

[Unnamed Guest]

Paying to use the studio?

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

So cool.

[Mike Barnhill]

That's. That's incredible.

[Unnamed Guest]

It was pretty cool.

[Mike Barnhill]

What does that speak to your dad? It was amazing to pass that along.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, it was really, you know, it's really cool. We're actually great friends to this day, my dad and I. And he'd been kind of absent from our lives for 10, 15 years. I don't even know. But for a long time we didn't even know where he was.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

He had been living homeless on the streets of Nashville, Tennessee. But when he. When he finally did, you know, kind of start getting some things together. Yeah. He. The first thing he did was reach out to his kids and say, guys, I didn't pay you the child support that, you know, that you were owed. And so here's a big old lump sum of it all.

[Mike Barnhill]

Wow.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so my brother, like I said, my brother's a really smart guy. If it were up to me, I would have just taken it in savings or. Yeah. Who knows, right? But he's like, let's invest in ourselves. So we did, like, we built this recording studio and that was the beginning of like, something stable to start working towards. Wow. Even though we didn't end up succeeding as a recording studio.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Our business was born there. All of our other business ideas came from that one facility. And it changed our lives.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah. So something happened then, and that's what I want. So big pivotal. I'd say it's the second point. The first pivotal point in your life, in my opinion anyway, is your dad and getting that studio going. But then soon after, something big happens in the form of a book that you read.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

When did. When in the picture is that now you have the studio and now this book lands on your lap? That changes your perspective.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. The book you're referring to is one of the things that definitely changed my life. It was Good to Great by Jim Collins.

[Mike Barnhill]

Right.

[Unnamed Guest]

And what we were doing originally was the recording studio couldn't keep the lights on. Like, I'd pray every night. And I wasn't a man of faith at the time. Help us not lose the studio. And so what we actually started doing was we found a distributor nearby that sold music equipment and we could list it all on ebay. And so we started selling all this equipment from this other resource on ebay.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

When we'd sell it, we'd pick it up and we'd ship it. We'd sell it, pick it up, we'd ship it, and we did it every day. And as we were doing that, we started saying, what else can we sell? Like, what else might, you know, we want to sell on the Internet.

[Mike Barnhill]

Sure.

[Unnamed Guest]

It was new at the time. And so we tried a bunch of different things. We started selling badge holders, you know, lanyards, badge reels, things like that. From my brother's previous job. He had some connections was one of the things we tried. And at the time we realized we were just selling tons and tons of these badge reels on the Internet, on ebay. And yeah, I started deciding I needed to learn because I hadn't really paid attention in school. So I started doing like my self education, reading books. And the one that you were referring to is Good to Great by Jim Collins, where he says, you know, what can you be the best in the world at?

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, that's incredible. Just that statement right there.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. We'd spent years. We'd spent all this time trying to be, you know, compete with Sam Ash and compete with Guitar center and compete with like Gloria Estefan Studio, which was down the street, and we couldn't compete in those things. But we, as we saw all these badge holders starting to sell on the Internet, we realized, like, this is actually something we could be the best in the world at.

[Mike Barnhill]

Right.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so that was kind of born the, the, you know, the preeminent. The world's preeminent badge holder experts was kind of our, like, kind of catchphrase to say, well, we might not be passionate about, like, most people aren't passionate about, like a widget, but if we don't love this more than anybody else, then we're not going to succeed. And so we. We really tricked ourselves into loving badge holders more than anybody else in the world. I think to this day, we still do.

[Mike Barnhill]

Who gave you that book or who told you?

[Unnamed Guest]

You know what? I don't even remember at that time. I was. I just knew I was lacking so much, so I think I probably was just on the Internet. Like, what are the top five business books to read for somebody who's new. Yeah, yeah, I had just read. What was the other one by Steve Covey? What's the step? Steven Covey book?

[Mike Barnhill]

The. The Habits.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Of Highly Effective people.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

So I came around the same time, and it's just kind of like, what are the things that some dummy like me that doesn't know anything needs to. Needs to know first.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so I just went down that list. Yeah. Just went down a list.

[Mike Barnhill]

Incredible.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

And. And of the book, there's. There's a thousand great nuggets in good to great. But in the book, it's just so cool how a sentence reshaped and formed a new way of thinking for you to go, wait, I can't compete against the giants with giant budgets and all this. It's fascinating. So what can I go and be the best at? I think that's just remarkable.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

So, so cool. But what's so neat about this? It's not over. So there's another real cool part of this story. So you start doing this, you start doing these badges, but your company splits and like, let's. Let's move into that. Things are good. Okay, you're going badges, but it's not like. It's not what you ended up as. Right. So the company takes a turn around.

[Unnamed Guest]

Kobe time is that we're talking about?

[Mike Barnhill]

Oh, yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Okay.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

So we were doing the badges thing. We're doing the badges thing. We're doing it for years and years and years, and it's going really, really well. You know, and we were on the Inc5. Inc5000 fast or. Yeah, Inc5000. Fastest growing companies, like, seven years in a row. And we're just chugging along every year. A little growth, a little growth. We're having. We're having a blast. Then Covid comes, right?

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

The lockdowns come, and it. We do not know what we're going to do. I would assume you felt the same way. Yeah, a lot of us did.

[Mike Barnhill]

Too many questions unanswered. Unpredictable. Is this the new life? Is this. Do I need to close my business? What. What do I need to do?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

I think anybody out there who owns a business or works for a business felt pressure. So you either innovate or you die.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

And you chose not to die.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. It was definitely an innovate or die moment. And, you know, the first thing we did is we looked in. Well, first, it took us a while to figure out what the heck's going on. And we realized, like, all right, well, what are we going to do? Well, who's hiring hospitals? So we started going through Indeed and seeing who are they hiring. And then so we started. We make these things called badge buddies, which at a hospital, there's a little thing behind the badge that says RN or EMT or whatever your position is. Right. Just to help people identify it. So we started going through the Indeed hiring site and just created a new one for every single person they were hiring. And we just started promoting the heck out of them.

[Mike Barnhill]

So you used Indeed.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Interesting to find out what positions they were hiring for. And that was like the first kind of solution. And at the time I was training, I was just like, well, I don't know what to do. So I'm just gonna start training for like a half iron man. So I'm training, training, training, training, training. And then my knee goes out and I'm on the floor and I can't walk. And I ended up having to get surgery, but during that whole time, I can't walk. And so I have nothing to do but sit on this laptop and figure stuff out. Right. Where I would normally just be running for. And biking for hours.

[Mike Barnhill]

Still in Covid?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yes, still during COVID early. Covet early. This is the very beginning.

[Mike Barnhill]

Very beginning.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Just important to know. So just in case everybody didn't. Any people didn't pick this, your business was focused on selling badges to companies that had people coming to those buildings to work.

[Unnamed Guest]

Exactly.

[Mike Barnhill]

Covet hits. And nobody comes to buildings anymore. So I want to make sure that was a very Important piece that you should have died on the vine, but you innovated instead. So.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yes, I mean, that's cool. The knee surgery, the knee injury was one of the best things that could have happened because at that time I just had all this time to sit and think and work and plan and say, how are we going to solve these problems? I wasn't training anymore for the race. And so, you know, it kind of came up that there were these double ended lanyards that we have. Right. That people wear for conferences and stuff. And we've all seen a double ended lanyard that has two hooks and whatnot. Yeah. And it kind of came to our realization that like these things are exactly what people need to hold their masks. Right. Everyone had masks at the time. And you take it off and you stick it in your pocket and it's crumpled and you're dropping or whatever. And so, so, yeah, and so there was this like instant like flash. There's a solution for the mask problem and it's these lanyards that have two hooks and you hook it to your mask and then you wear it and it's a mask lanyard and.

[Mike Barnhill]

Wow.

[Unnamed Guest]

And nobody was doing it at the time. Like it was just so early. No, we just, nobody had discovered that idea yet. And so we started doing a little digging, looking on Etsy. So there were a few, you know, people selling them on Etsy and things like that. So we're like, okay, well let's, let's, let's take some pictures of some of these and we'll repurpose them, we'll do some keyword research, we'll see what people are searching for. Got really excited. And so we created this listing for double ended lanyards, you know, mask lanyards. And basically we're the first to market. Went to Amazon, went to Shopify, went to ebay, went to Etsy. Like we did them everywhere. Right. And I was, I was going out to dinner with, with the family, you know, with the first, like out to dinner with the family with masks on and stuff down there around perimeter and use. It took a bunch of pictures, took a ton of pictures and, and then, you know, posted that out, post that up on Amazon. Within a day we'd sold probably 50 packs of those things.

[Mike Barnhill]

Two packs, three packs, four.

[Unnamed Guest]

It was, they were the year we sold them in sets of two and five at the time.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay, two and five.

[Unnamed Guest]

Two and five.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay.

[Unnamed Guest]

And like we sold like 50 packs of those, like the first day we listed them.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, right.

[Unnamed Guest]

So there was search There were people looking for these, looking for. But they didn't exist on the marketplace yet. And when we realized that, we said, okay, let's buy every single double ended mask lanyard that we can buy from all of our suppliers in the U.S. like, every. So we basically ended up buying 50, 70, like we had 30,000, I think already in stock because we stock a lot of stuff. We ended up buying 50 to 70,000 and kind of wiped out all of our local distributors, all the look and so. And you know, but then, you know, we went from 50 sales a day to 100 sales a day to 200 sales a day. Not just 200 strings like lanyards, individual units, 200, like packs of these things. And then we started getting hospitals reaching out and schools reaching out, all this stuff. And we, for a while, we were the only people ever. We were the, like the only company that had them. And we always had these goals about, you know, these revenue goals for the month and things like that. And, you know, we just, we would always get close. We never hit them. That month, first month that we launched those things, like, we blew that goal out of the water. Yeah, it was amazing.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Never seen anything like. And it was. And we felt good about it because it was, you know, there was everyone selling hand sanitizer and all these other things which, which was good, but like, nobody was selling mask lanyards and people needed them.

[Mike Barnhill]

Did you sell a hundred thousand dollars in masks or more than that? 300.

[Unnamed Guest]

It was, it was probably close to a million. The first. Maybe it was like the second or third month. But we did, we did, we did hit on our Amazon sales hit. Hit a million in revenue. And we would usually sit around 6 to 7. So I guess, you know, you guys, how much was it? Was it all just mass lanyards? Every other sale, all of our other sales were going down.

[Mike Barnhill]

Right.

[Unnamed Guest]

Because people weren't buying badgers and stuff. But that. The mask lanyards.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Blew up. So we probably would have been doing about a month, a million a month in mass lanyards for about three months until everybody else kind of caught on. And there was a bunch.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

But at the time, like, there was no supply left in the US So we were flying them as fast as we could from Taiwan, from China. We had some US Manufacturers. I was making these things like I had just had surgery. I was making them in a chair with a little like a length adjuster thing. And I'm using a paperclip and I'm stringing them on and I'M going like. Like Michael's to try to find extra components because we're running out of components. Like, the whole thing was. It was a nightmare, was a mess. But it was a blessing, you know, it was.

[Mike Barnhill]

We.

[Unnamed Guest]

We kept our business alive. We kept all of our staff, we kept all of our employees. I think we ended up letting one person go who just wasn't a good fit for the team anyway.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And. But, yeah, I mean, we. We went. We're stronger than ever. Stronger now, stronger than ever.

[Mike Barnhill]

And at this time. So what year is this? This is Covid. Early Covid. So we're 2000. 20. 20. You're in Atlanta?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I'm here in Atlanta.

[Mike Barnhill]

When did the transition happen? You came from Miami to Atlanta, so.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I was living in Miami. I moved to Atlanta probably eight years ago. Yeah. For my wife's job.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay.

[Unnamed Guest]

Everything I did was on a laptop and. And there was no. No sense in me staying in Miami.

[Mike Barnhill]

Got it. So she got moved.

[Unnamed Guest]

She got moved, and I. We were looking for a place to move anyway. We were looking for something new.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

I'm glad you got moved here, man.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I like it, man. I'm glad I met you, bro.

[Mike Barnhill]

I know, right? That's so awesome. All right. When in life would you point to the first time you remember showing a sign of being an entrepreneur?

[Unnamed Guest]

First time. Oh. So I loved making money as a kid. Like, I just loved making money. I didn't like, I didn't like asking for money, but I liked working. So from the time I was a kid, I was, you know, weeding people's lawns and walking people's dogs and all that stuff. And I don't know if you've heard of Tom Bilyeux, but Tom Bilyeu is one of my favorite entrepreneurs. And he's kind of, you know, he's a billion dollar kind of entrepreneur. And he said something to me one time that really made me feel like an entrepreneur and that I was like, I always wanted to, like, deliver value for my neighbors. I wanted to. I wanted to walk their dogs. I wanted to weed their lawns, but I didn't want to ask him for money, you know? And so for a long time, I didn't think I was really an entrepreneur because, like, I didn't like the deal. I didn't like the. I just didn't like so much of it. But I like. I liked the work. I was like the work. And I would hope that people would just kind of see the work and then reward me for it and so that would. I would think that I was that kind of an entrepreneur who, like, maybe do a paper route but then be afraid to ask for people to pay you, you know?

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

So I always liked the work. And then when I was 16, I got my first job, like, and I always worked in service industry. And I've always felt like service industry. Service industry is kind of like running your own little business where you have no overhead. You just show up and your job is to, you know, make margin, you know, because you're getting tips and you're making people happy and you're adding as much value as you possibly can, but you have no overhead. You just show up. So, you know, working service industry for. For a long time, I always realized, like, some people just make more money because they treat everybody better because people come back and see them again and again.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And to me, that was kind of like running a small business. And so. Yeah. But I loved working from the time I was a kid and I even had to sneak up to get my first job. I wasn't allowed to work really, but I got, I just snuck up and got a job.

[Mike Barnhill]

And what was it?

[Unnamed Guest]

I worked at an all you can eat buffet called North Chuck Wagon in Oregon. It was great because we got free ice cream and free fried chicken and.

[Mike Barnhill]

You know, I love it.

[Unnamed Guest]

It was cool.

[Mike Barnhill]

I love it. Was, Was there a. Was there like an age, Was it because of your age that you weren't able to work?

[Unnamed Guest]

It was. My mom didn't really want me working.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay.

[Unnamed Guest]

Didn't want to want me.

[Mike Barnhill]

Where'd you learn that good work ethic?

[Unnamed Guest]

Let me see. I don't know. I will. You know, like I said, like, my parents got divorced and my dad. My dad struggled with, with employment for a lot of his life. Yeah. And I just always, as the oldest kid, I always felt like I didn't want my mom. I didn't want to be a burden to my mom. Right. I didn't want to be a burden. And if I wanted shoes, I wanted Reebok pumps. Like, nobody could afford to give me Reebok pumps. Yeah, I figured out.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, figure it out.

[Unnamed Guest]

And just, you know, we were kind of the poor kids in the neighborhood. And so there was always this, like, overcompensation of saying, well, I don't want people to see me as the poor kid who' who doesn't have shoes, you know, who has shoes with holes in them or has jeans with holes in them or doesn't have the cool toys for Christmas. So I would Just figure out how to buy myself things. And so it was mostly. It was mostly just deep insecurity about not having as much as the other kids. And so, yeah, what can I do to. To level the playing field for myself? You know, so when I show up at school, I'm not getting poked at and laughed at, you know, for. For being that kid. For being that kid.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, that was.

[Unnamed Guest]

That was a big drive for me, was just, you know, not one. Not one to feel less than.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, that's. That's an enormous drive.

[Unnamed Guest]

Wow.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, it's cool. Oh, I love it. I love it. All right, so covet happens. Three years. Crushing sales. How was your. How was your personal life during that time?

[Unnamed Guest]

At the time, my personal life was pretty good.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

It was.

[Mike Barnhill]

You. Were you healed from your injuries?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yep.

[Mike Barnhill]

Were you back out running?

[Unnamed Guest]

So I healed from my injury. I still wasn't running. But one of the. One of the other blessings I think that kind of came out was there was just so much uncertainty during COVID that, you know, a lot of us were just questioning our lives. Right.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

What are we doing with our lives? Are we really pursuing the things that mean the most to us? And myself and about a million other friends of mine from back in the day started playing their guitars again, started playing the piano again, started doing those kind of things, and I really leaned hard into saying. I. I've sort of leaned hard in this talk a lot, but I really got into just playing guitar again and writing songs again and recording songs again. And so I ended up building a little recording studio in my home.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Kind of like this little spot.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And just got back into music with all the guitars. Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

You put on Facebook.

[Unnamed Guest]

I love it. I love it. But it really took cover for me to. To say, what am I doing with my life? Like, what am I doing? And so I kind of revisited that whole piece of me that I. That I just had not made time for for years.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah. And how did you meet Chad? I asked you that yesterday on text.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

I saw he commented on a post, and he was so influential in my early days of getting started.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

How do you know? Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

So Chad. Chad is a friend of yours from way back.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah. Six, 2006. I think I met him.

[Unnamed Guest]

Really?

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah. He was so helpful to me in the beginning.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Graphics, that kind of thing. And I know he always loved music, but. And that's your connection with him, right?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. So Chad and I, our band ended up playing together back in January.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Just randomly got paired together to play A show, really, when. When we found each other. So we connected on social, and then, you know, the next thing you know, Chad and I started these conversations about promoting together because, you know, he's kind of the leader of his band. I'm kind of the guy in our band. And so we. What are you doing? Do you have any. Do you know how many art you've been. You know, so we started going back and forth and sharing ideas and sharing art and graphics and things, and just promoted the crap out of that show.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And got to meet him, and, man, we felt like kindred spirits right from the beginning, you know, just kind of dudes who love music and had not made time for it and started making time for it again and are just going all in.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

We're both working hard to both have careers.

[Mike Barnhill]

And you're playing. Yeah, as a. Okay. So does everybody who plays music have it in the back of their mind, like, wow, this could be the night where the right person's in the room and we shoot up? Or no. Or is it just. You play and it's like, please the audience. It's here. It's good. I got my career.

[Unnamed Guest]

God, that's such a great question. That's such a great question. You know, I. I think early on. Early on, we were all looking for a Prince Charming. You know, when I heard somebody say, like, stop looking for Prince Charming, I was like, like, oh, that makes so much sense. So, yeah, early on, that was the mentality we all had, you know, looking for that lottery ticket. Oh, we're gonna write that song, and it's gonna connect and all this. And. But. But no, you get older and you realize no, Prince Charming is coming to save you. You know, you make your own way. And what it is now, I will visualize connecting with the audience. Like, I love the connection that music provides because to me, it kind of relinquishes loneliness. So many songs are about people's suffering and their struggles and the things they're going through and heartbreaks and things that are. That are tough. But the music. What I love about music is I really feel it helps people feel a less alone through that connection, even in the loneliness that they've experienced.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so when I. When I perform now, my goal is literally before I perform, I will imagine myself, like, just connecting with a few people in the audience. It doesn't matter who, but just connecting.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And to me, that's the everything of music at this point in my life. Just the connection.

[Mike Barnhill]

And you got it. So I want to know more about your son, where did he learn to play at the level he plays at? First off, let's. Let's start there. Is he so 13? 12?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Yeah. So my son. Yeah, he's 13 years old. 13 years old, and he is the most incredible drummer I've ever known.

[Mike Barnhill]

I can't believe the videos on Facebook. I mean, unbelievable.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

So how do. Did he learn it? Did he pick it up? Is he getting lessons? How do you play at that level?

[Unnamed Guest]

I said that when he was really young, he was a better drummer than I had ever been. And I always wanted to be a drummer. Coming up. Like, I always thought, like, I'm gonna be a drummer. And when he was five years old, he could play, you know, rhythms on his hands that I. That I. I was never able to. To knock out. So when he was. I think it was in kindergarten or first grade, there was a Black History month, and he and a couple other kids were chosen to go up and, you know, perform this African song.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Like, on the congas.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And. And he gets up there with two other kids, and they're. They're performing it, and he gets this huge bunch of applause. Him and the other of the other kids.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And. And he just melts on stage, like, so happy. Like, the joy of these people clapping for him. He's looking around and his eyes are this big, and he just feels like something he'd never felt before, you know? And. And I asked him after the concert, like, do you like drums? Do you want to play drums? He says, yes. I said, would you want to take lessons? He says, yes. So we get him into lessons. We get him into lessons, and. And he takes to it so quickly. Yeah, he's always had this natural ability, but he just kind of kept with it for years and years. And then a few years back, we took him to see Blink 182, which Travis Barker is like, the most notorious punk rock drummer of all time. And we took him to see them twice. The second concert here in Atlanta, my son just decided, this is what I'm gonna do. And he became, you know, not just a talented kid, but a kid who's got talent and works his butt off. He drills and he drills and he drills, and he spends time watching videos.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And we actually took him to meet Travis Barker about 6 months ago up in New York. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We took him to one of Travis Barker. He's gotten really into wellness, and so he hosts these, like, 5K races now.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so we all flew up to go Race got my son VIP access so he could, you know, meet him, shake his hand and tell him thank you. Oh, my God. It was one of the best. It's probably the best day of my son's life. He still talks about it.

[Mike Barnhill]

Probably one of the best of your life.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, yeah. To watch my son. Yeah. It was really cool. It was really cool. Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Wow. Wasn't there a story about that flight? Do I remember?

[Unnamed Guest]

That was. Yeah, that was, that was when none of the flights were. None of the flights were working. Right. There was that couple days when Delta was completely shut down. Yeah, that was, that was our experience almost. We got there at like nine in the morning for our flight and we spent all day trying to book another flight because we kept getting pushed back. Pushed back, pushback, canceled. I got on the phone with my amex rep and they somehow, somehow found me tickets on a flight for 10 o'clock at night that didn't get canceled.

[Mike Barnhill]

Otherwise you would have missed this.

[Unnamed Guest]

We would have missed this. And we had. We'd spent 12 hours in the airport and somehow, you know, I felt like it was like in the whole. The miracle was the whole time my wife and I and my son were just like, well, it is what it is. We're just gonna have faith. We're gonna hope this works out. And somehow, by the grace of God, it worked out. We got there at one in the morning to our hotel. We fell asleep. We woke, we fell asleep probably at 2 or 2:30. We woke up at 4 in the morning and we went and ran 5K with Travis Parker. It was. We didn't sleep much, but. But it was crazy. And I just felt so grateful that we made it. But it was funny because I think we all knew that we would make it. You know, it's. It was easy to get mad. Everybody. There's a lot of people getting mad and rightfully so, you know, but the whole time we just kind of knew. We just kind of felt it was gonna work out, you know?

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And somehow it did. So. Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, yeah. What a story. Where can somebody that's interested find him playing? Playing? Because it's fascinating. Yeah. Type in your band name or.

[Unnamed Guest]

The best way to find him. It would be our Instagram is team, like a sports team. And Barn Hill, like a barn on a team.

[Mike Barnhill]

Barn Hill.

[Unnamed Guest]

Team Barn Hill.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay.

[Unnamed Guest]

He's asked me to start him his own Instagram channel, parent controlled. So I have a bunch of old videos that we're going to start doing. Probably go chronologically and start Posting them and. But it's, you know, I'm a musician and, and I have a band and I'm always trying to get noticed and get people to come to shows and I will post stuff of me playing in this great.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

But when I post my son playing every single time, it's like everybody wants to comment and talk and, and it's beautiful because what more could you want as a father.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

You know, than to see your, your child do what they love and be noticed for it, you know, and be better than you, like I am. Want him to be better than me.

[Mike Barnhill]

Sure.

[Unnamed Guest]

So. And. And he actually drives me to be better because I got to keep up now. You know, I play guitar and I'm playing rock and roll guitar and like, I better learn how to play this stuff so I can keep up with him. It's amazing. I love it.

[Mike Barnhill]

Right?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Oh, man. So what's the, what's the gap, in your opinion, between where he's at? Which to somebody like me who doesn't know music, I know how to find it on Amazon music and listen to it. I'm not sure what I'm looking at in the drumming, but when I listen to him and watch him take. Is it take Travis or somebody who's at that elite level, how far is that gap? Is like, is he almost there?

[Unnamed Guest]

I wouldn't say he's almost to that level yet, but I would say he's well on the path. You know, it's easy to fall into your comfort zone and be a really decent musician. And that's what I've done. I've fallen into a comfort zone. Very decent musician.

[Mike Barnhill]

Right.

[Unnamed Guest]

He's on a trajectory where, I mean, it'll take some. Like Travis Barker does not stop practicing even. Even in his. I think he's 40, 50 now, something, you know, but he still works hard. And so I think to be the kind of caliber musician that my son wants to be, it's a never ending pursuit. And even if he gets to where Travis Barker is, like, yeah, he'll get to where Travis Barker was, you know, and that's one of the things I love that Tony Robbins says is if you want to get to where I am, that's great because you'll get to where I used to be. And that mentality of like, just the quest never ends.

[Mike Barnhill]

Never ends.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so I'd say he's probably better than most of the drummers I've played with in my life. Like, my son isn't. He's a better drummer than Almost all the drummers I've played with my band in my history already.

[Mike Barnhill]

Who's the best ever, in your opinion?

[Unnamed Guest]

In my opinion, I was drummer ever. I love Travis Barker.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay.

[Unnamed Guest]

Him and I both.

[Mike Barnhill]

All genres and all categories of music, in my opinion.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. He's done. He's done for. He's done for rock and roll and for pop music. Music. What nobody has ever been able to do.

[Mike Barnhill]

Wow.

[Unnamed Guest]

You know, and that is to make constant dynamic and expression, like changes and like, comment like, like, like just part of the song, part of the music. It like melts into the music.

[Mike Barnhill]

I love it.

[Unnamed Guest]

I never heard anything like it. And. And. And he's never going to stop getting better.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

So we both love Travis. My son and I, we fanboy together.

[Mike Barnhill]

Love it. That's so cool. Let's come back to badges because we got. You got a lot lot. You got a lot ahead of you and aspirations for the company. So we're out of COVID Things are going good. You lost, I would guess, the division of the mask.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Mike Barnhill]

Because people don't need them anymore for sure. Now what. What happens now? The company.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, yeah. Still have a company.

[Mike Barnhill]

A great company. Let's just make sure that we're.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Because this could get confused out there with like. Like, oh, I'm selling some badge holders out of my garage. This is a legit. You guys are firing.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, we. Yeah, we still love it. We.

[Mike Barnhill]

What?

[Unnamed Guest]

We've been, you know, we. We still do everything to do with badge holders, but now we're. We're going up to higher ticket items and we brought in the sales team and things like that. So we have a really great sales guy.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Right. You know, with his team that he's kind of running. And so we going up. We're kind of going up to the higher ticket things, the printers, the access control systems and things like that. We're bidding on big government contracts. We're working with huge client clients. All the. All the years we spent doing this E commerce thing, my brother and I, with our team. Yeah, we were too scared to follow up with. We were. We weren't too scared, but we were never sales guys. We were never marketing guys. We had this email list, like hundreds of thousands of people that we'd never utilized. Right. And so what we've been doing is just kind of growing up. We've been growing up and realizing, okay, well, we had a fun run doing something no one's ever done in E Commerce in our space, but now we need to be A big boy commerce company. You know, we need to be a big kid company.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so we, you know, we started using Traction, which is eos.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

We built a leadership team. We're going to high ticket items, we're bidding on big contracts, we're building relationships with huge companies.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

You know, things that we'd kind of like stumbled ourselves into. We're being very intentional about growing into now.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so now you might, you know, you used to go to us to buy like your blue badge reel that was just your favorite color.

[Mike Barnhill]

Sure.

[Unnamed Guest]

But now, you know, but now you're your CEO's administrative assistant, is looking to, to build out a whole, you know, suite of, of items that we can supply. And so, you know, we're just kind of getting ourselves more and more integral into all the companies we work with.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah. What are, what are the printers? You said printers. Like, is that printer what I would.

[Unnamed Guest]

Imagine just a printer, like an ID card printer. So if you start a new job and they have, they print you your badge, your id. Yeah. So we do like the ID card printers and things like that too. Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay. So they can do it right there in the office. And then the employee has their, they have everything.

[Unnamed Guest]

Exactly.

[Mike Barnhill]

Car, the reader. They don't have to send it down the road.

[Unnamed Guest]

Exactly. Okay. So anything you needed, you need that has to do with an ID badge.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

We are now doing, and we're trying to be the best in the world at it. When it was, when we were new, it was just, you know, we could be the best in the world of badge holders, but now we really feel like we're the company to work with.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

For. To be the best in the world and to care the most, that's our core value. We care the most about everything to do with your, your company's identification system.

[Mike Barnhill]

Feel that. I could feel that sitting here having a conversation with you. Like, you love badges. This isn't just like, this is how we make money. No, you love this business, which I love that you do. It's like awesome. That's why you're here.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's fun to love something that nobody else loves. You know, it's. And it's, and it makes it so much easier, you know, and it really, it comes down to the relationship with the customer. Like, we want their life to be better because they know us. You know, we don't want to be like the private equity equity company where nobody really cares. They're just kind of there punching in, punching out our whole team. I credit our team and our culture.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

We have an amazing team, an amazing culture, and our. Our number one highest value is we care the most. You know, we care the most.

[Mike Barnhill]

I love it. So, so cool. And did this increase, Improve. Strengthen your relationship with your brother? I would think because you guys are in business together.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, I would think so. Right?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, it really does. I mean, we've each other's biggest advocates, and we've also been. We've always seen each other's blind spots. So when we were coming up, we used to consider ourselves like two ninjas with our backs against each other. He sees all these things over here, and I see all these things over here. Right. And so we kind of have the whole. The whole scope. What I think has happened recently is just, you know, recognizing just how wonderful the other one is, you know, and how different and totally unique. I think there used to be a lot of time where there'd be overlap at times where we're like, well, I want to do it this way. I want to think this way. I realized that my brother is one of the best leaders I've ever known. Like, if it weren't for him, our team would have fallen apart a million times. But he is this North Star leader who people follow and crowd around. And I. I got to give him so much love and credit for what he does, because if it weren't for him, him as a visionary, things would have fallen apart a bajillion times.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

You know, and he's older. He's younger. Oh, he's younger. He's my younger brother.

[Mike Barnhill]

So how. How old is he? How much younger?

[Unnamed Guest]

So, yeah. Yeah, he's three years younger than I am.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay. So three years and. Oh, my gosh, that's so cool.

[Unnamed Guest]

But he's. He's really built the leadership team around, like, the people he wants to work with. The. The warehouse we have now in Doral is like his vision of what a place. He always dreamed of walking into work. So his dream, like kind of his vision, his dream. He's really been bringing it into the world lately.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Over the last several years. Because when, you know, the COVID thing was a big wake up call for both of us, you know, we could either die on the vine like you said, or we could continue to grow. And. And he wants to grow. Like he's a. He's a growth minded individual.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And. And. And he just crushes it, man. I'm just proud of him for all that he's done.

[Mike Barnhill]

That's so cool, man. When next time he Travels. I want to get both you. I would love to hear it. It the same story, but through the two. Your eyes together. Like you said, you both see different things. It'd be so cool to hear this story told through his eyes as well. Like, what was he doing? I'm just curious. What, what did he see? During COVID you were at home on your couch and that was a blessing. Was he trying to innovate at the same time or was he. What was he doing?

[Unnamed Guest]

So he, he was in it. So he's. He was innovating in systems. Systems. I was innovating in products. So he was restructuring the warehouse so we would have all the proper cleaning, you know, spray that came in in the middle of the night and disinfectants and hire, you know, hiring the people that would come in and clean every single night and everything to do with like keeping us alive, keeping us keeping our business working. Yeah, keeping. He was doing all of that and that was so visionary, you know, and he's. We have a great network of people and he, he works with people that are systems experts, that are process experts.

[Mike Barnhill]

Got it. Okay.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so he was doing, you know, all the things about, like with PVP loans and all these things. How are we going to. I didn't think about that. I thought about masculine.

[Mike Barnhill]

That's right. Because your brain's the.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

You've got the other side. Wow.

[Unnamed Guest]

So, yeah, I mean, as you could sell all the mask lanyards in the world but still go out of business because you. Because everything else is falling apart. Right.

[Mike Barnhill]

So lose the profit.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Because of everything else happening. Okay. What's on the horizon now? So here we are, it's 20, 25. What. Where sort of are you? You talk like you have management team and you have all this great stuff internally and it sounds like you've built infrastructure that you're ready to springboard. What are you seeing out there? What does the future look like? What's this company going to do? Tell me about some of that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, man. It's one of those things that we talk about every quarter we get together and we, and we think about this because, you know, we're kind of in a dying industry. Right? Like the. Are we. Are we going to need more people going to workplaces in the next 10, 15, 20 years? I don't know. Is an ID card, like a physical plastic card going to be irrelevant techno irrelevant technology?

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Five, 10 years? I don't know. But what we're trying to do is just keep our finger on the Pulse. Because we've pivoted so many times already.

[Mike Barnhill]

We've.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's kind of something we're good at. So we're just, you know, we're messing around with the AI. We're. We're keeping our finger on the pulse. We're building relationships with big companies. That's kind of the goal. Keeping the culture solid, keeping everyone on our team. Asking questions.

[Mike Barnhill]

Hungry, hungry.

[Unnamed Guest]

Seeing what customers look and just looking for what's next. And sharing ideas. There's a lot of sharing ideas. One of the other, you know, one of the things that we have in our. In our culture code is, you know, we partner up and work as a team. So there's a lot of sharing of ideas. Yeah, that's a big part of it. But. So. Yeah, but we're in a, you know, we're in a kind of a falling industry, but we still think that we can. We can be the most relevant player.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

In the industry for a long time because there's still, you know, there will still be some sort of identification needs.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Going into the future, you got culture.

[Mike Barnhill]

Figured out, which is probably the hardest of all the things to figure out. The product, sometimes. Most times the product is the product.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

But you really differentiate. And that's what I love so much about this story is like you make a non attractive product. Right.

[Unnamed Guest]

You could say really attractive.

[Mike Barnhill]

But you. But you make it attractive.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

The way you run the business. And I love that. And I love that you came from nothing and you got to hear. And then you almost went out again and then you innovated in Covid and you chose. It was a decision to stay alive instead of dying. The vine. Right. There's just so many cool pivotal points in here. So. All right, so you and your. You and your brother now, do you. Are you thinking of other business ideas? What do y'all. What does that look like?

[Unnamed Guest]

One of the, One of the things that we do a lot of is actually still make music together. So we, we both have home studios now. And so we are trying, you know, we've always kind of made it our goal for one another is Michael. For him is I want him to spend as much time not having to work as possible. And he wants the same for me.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And the time that we do spend working, we want to be spending as much time in our. Our highest and. And best, you know, value use. We want to be doing what we're good at. But when we're not. My brother, he'll be an entrepreneur until the Day he dies. He loves building and growing businesses. Me, I'm more of an artist, and I will probably not do this forever, just to be honest, so. But yeah, so we do. We do still make music together. I record things in my studio. I send them to him. He mixes them. He's got a great music mixing city, so we make. We still make music together. We're releasing music together to this day. We actually have different songs coming out in the next couple months where we work together, you know, and he. He will send me videos of him mixing them in his home studio and his little kids dancing to the songs that I've written. And so, you know, so cool. That's in my. My sister's a musician, too, and so that's one of the things we've been doing, is just making music together.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

My dad's putting out songs still. He's in his 70s, and so we're working together as the Barn Hill kids to get my songs that out into the world. World.

[Mike Barnhill]

What's that vet song that you sent?

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, holes. Yeah. So my dad. My dad, like I said, he was homeless in Nashville for years, and we. He wrote. He wrote the song called Holes. We recorded it in our studio, hired a guy here to make a video for it and just send it out to as many veterans groups as we could. Started getting a lot of traction. And, yeah, my dad's an amazing individual. Yeah, he's had his share of demons, but he's. He's walked through a lot of hell.

[Mike Barnhill]

What a great story there, too. What a great story of redemption there.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Yeah. Redemption for sure. Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

What a turnaround. All right. Biggest. Biggest company that you've. Biggest brand that everybody would know that you've sold badges to.

[Unnamed Guest]

Some of them we have NDAs with.

[Mike Barnhill]

Okay.

[Unnamed Guest]

But probably most of them.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

If you look at the Fortune 500.

[Mike Barnhill]

I wish we could say one of them that I know because it's my favorite. Anybody that wouldn't mind if he said it, or. Is it all India? Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

I mean, is it all NDA? No, it's not all. No. I mean, like, every. So I still get excited. I look at all the addresses that we ship to.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Whenever it's a big order and it's everybody. You know, it's. It's everybody. We ship to everybody. To every school, to every university, to every sports team. Like, one of the coolest things was a big. The big check we got from the Miami Heat, you know, was one of our first things we wanted to do. Just. We wanted to deliver what they buy just a crapload of lanyards. Like, before COVID Yeah, this is before COVID but I mean, wow. We've worked with every sports team in the country. We've worked with, you know, there you go. University.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, we have a. And we have a lot of fun. And we, you know, even, you know, the federal government, like the FBI and, And. And. And things like that. Like, we do a lot of the, like, the logos for them and stuff like that. So, you know, we work with the Pentagon and work with everybody. We like to sell badge holders to anybody that needs bad.

[Mike Barnhill]

See, like, I think, oh, like, gosh, there's so many great stories in here, but passion and grit and curiosity. Oh, yeah, I think those are the words. So passion is clear grit you've evidenced. And you guys, I think what keeps it going? Like, the fuel in the tank or the electricity, if you have an electric car, whatever. But what. What's keeping that. That going? Y'all are. You guys are curious.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, I love that.

[Mike Barnhill]

You're. You're curious. And Chris and I always talk about that word. We love that. If you. If you had to pick from all the words out there, education, mba, grit, all of them. They're all temporary. They all fade without curiosity. If you're not dying to just find out how this works. Like. Like, I need to know why this is tall and thin. I never accepted that this is tall and thin. I never did. Yeah, I had to find out, like, so I. I'm just thankful for that because I don't even know how you create that in somebody. I'm thankful to be curious, and I can always recognize it when somebody's curious. Yeah, you're trying to figure out how this is all gonna fit with AI and if companies are gonna hire less people. And. And are they. Or those people just getting displaced because Bezos is going to stop. Start buying up shopping centers? I don't know. But you're curious to find it out, and I love that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Thank you, man.

[Mike Barnhill]

It's great just having that conversation.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Just having that talk back and forth. So. Okay, cool. Now, how about you? Personally, I want to end on this part. Like, what's the future look for Mike? Because all this stuff doesn't matter. Kids, drumming, music, passions, business. If you're not, well, what's. What's wellness look for you? What are you into? What's your. You run? Do you work out? Tell me about Mike.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, man, I. I love so many things. I could spend all day just doing things I love. And. And and just. And still want more hours in the day.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And for me, I had. I have a wellness routine. I work out every morning.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yep.

[Unnamed Guest]

You know, this morning I went for a run because I didn't have time to lift weights. But I usually will lift weights or run. And then I will try to meditate. I like to meditate a lot. I do transcendental meditation, and then I do just all kinds of meditations just because I love it. Yeah. Try to journal and write down what I'm grateful for. Three things I'm grateful for every morning. That's super important to me.

[Mike Barnhill]

Wow.

[Unnamed Guest]

And then. Yeah. Try to make music every day. Like, really? My brain.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

My soul was put on earth to make music. I just love it, whether I'm great at it or whether I'm not. Like, there's a part of my soul, my brain, that just needs it every day.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so trying to remind myself. But every day I should sit in the work. The workbench is what I call it, in my. My producer chair in my studio and crank something out, even if it's just for 30 minutes, you know? And then other than that, man, just. Being a dad is. Being a dad is a key. Being a family man. And then even when I'm resentful for working or I don't want to think about business, like, I just love business. I just. I'm attracted to it. I'm attracted to business books. I'm attracted to CEOs, I'm attracted to entrepreneurs. I could never really completely separate from it because it excites me. I love it so much. So that's. That's part of my wellness, too, is just reading and studying and learning and being. Being curious. Curious is the most perfect word because there's so much hubris in thinking I know everything, you know, and every time I thought I've known everything, it's bit me in the butt to be. Just to continue chasing curiosities as I think the way I want to live the rest of my life, to just keep chasing these curiosities because they keep unfolding and they unfold more the more you start looking. And I love that about life.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah. It's cool. I have one more word to add that goes into your story, and it's. And it is impressive. It's impressive to me based on the level of success that you do have in business is balance. Right. Because I. I always say, and you can take any human being and have them work 100 hours a week and then tell me they're making four, five, whatever the number is. Yeah. Figure out how to do it under 30 hours a week or under 40 hours a week at the top. Right. And you've, you've presented evidence that you've figured that part out. You're doing music, you're doing this, you're doing that family, man. That is impressive to me. So from one entrepreneur to another, because that's the number that's. I live my life that way. Like, I, It's Cap. We're not going over that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

I got four little ones upstairs. We're together. We're going here, we're going fishing, we're going to water park. Like, so I think that's really cool. So it's a compliment.

[Unnamed Guest]

Thank you.

[Mike Barnhill]

As much as, like that, like, those are the words that I think, you know, really define what you're doing out there.

[Unnamed Guest]

So thanks, man. Yeah, I think the balance is so important. We have one life, you know, we have one life to live.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah. We don't work it away.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. We spent our years working and working and working and working and working, working. Like, we put in the 60, 70 hours. Hour work weeks. We did that.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

You know.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah. To figure it out, how to not have to do that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Exactly.

[Mike Barnhill]

That's the reason why. Right.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

I worked. What is it? I worked. I'm an entrepreneur. I worked. I work 80 hours a week so I don't have to work 20 hours.

[Unnamed Guest]

Whatever, 48 for somebody else. Yeah.

[Mike Barnhill]

Right. Like, it's just so true. So. All right. So I want to thank you first for your time and then second, and more importantly is just for being like, just, just your willingness to share, man, it was awesome. The vulnerability, the transparency, the stuff with your dad. And I know there's more there, but thanks, because that helped present the real story of where you came from. Things weren't great. They weren't great with you. They weren't great in your family, and you shared that, and that means a lot. So. And it's helpful to people, to people to understand, like, you weren't given, you know, a free ride.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Thanks, man. I, I, I know that I. When I was younger, I, I always wished I could change, and I didn't think that was possible. You know, people say you can't change, and I just think that's the biggest load of bull crap in the world. You know, I met so many great people on the path that helped me find different ways to think and do things and learn and know and had mentors that made me change the way I think, thought about successful people.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

You know, I came from a poverty mindset. I thought everyone that had any success was. Was lucky, had hurt other people.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

I couldn't be further from the. It couldn't have been further from the truth, you know? And I met some of the most generous people I. I could have ever imagined meeting along the way and so grateful for it. And you're one of those people, man, so thank you so much.

[Mike Barnhill]

Yeah, you got a great story, man. So thanks for sharing, brother.

[Unnamed Guest]

My pleasure, brother.