S2E6. Are You Leading By The Whip? w/ Matt Warner
Episode Write-Up
Nathan sits down with one of the biggest cheerleaders of all the things that RADIUS is doing these days – Matt Warner from Mysalesman, Empire Fence & Netting, Unlimited Sports Solutions, and many other companies. As a serial entrepreneur, Matt is one of those guys that leads his organizations with a vision and passion.
Nathan and Matt spent some time together for a handful of days with some of the biggest fence company leaders in the entire United States and they sat down as they unpacked their nuggets together to share some key insight they both found while participating in the FENCE MAFIA event.
What do you do to take your organization to the next level? do you challenge yourself and your thoughts daily? Ever? If we want to be a better version of ourselves we need to push and stretch our minds – hope this episode gives you some great food for thought!
Our entire production is hosted at the Luxecore Studios by FenceTrac. LuxeCore is building to become THE standard for high-end composite fencing. The FenceTrac system has proven itself time and again – the advent of the LuxeCore product is just the next step in the journey for FenceTrac to provide a complete, near maintenance-free, steel/composite fence solution. Visit them at fencetrac.com for more details and to connect for pricing.
All of our promos and additional resources are stored at our website : www.protectingyourradius.com
Our Executive partners are from Southwest Automated Security. Established over 30 years ago in Dallas, TX, Southwest Automated Security, Inc. has a history of maintaining excellent relationships with vendors and dealers alike. From exceptional levels of product knowledge and customer service- to partnering with leading manufacturers of wholesale electronic security, we are firmly committed to developing all-inclusive security solutions that aid dealers in achieving their project goals.
Taking Dealers to the Next Level, visit www.southwestautomated.com today or call your nearest branch for up-to-date promotions and offerings.
Our entire production is hosted at the Luxecore Studios by FenceTrac. LuxeCore is building to become THE standard for high-end composite fencing. The FenceTrac system has proven itself time and again – the advent of the LuxeCore product is just the next step in the journey for FenceTrac to provide a complete, near maintenance-free, steel/composite fence solution. Visit them at fencetrac.com for more details and to connect for pricing.
The duo of Staintrac and WoodDefender make your post-stain spraying challenges something of the past! Staintrac (staintrac.com) is the world’s premier machine-driven solution for applying stain in your shop. See more videos and gather more info on their website. Wooddefender is offered by Standard Paints and was the forebears for oil-based stain solutions to the fence market. With classes running for years to help contractors setup their rigs and teach them the fundamentals of staining. No back brushing required – visit www.wooddefender.com – for your next round of staining.
Needing a website, SEO help or other online branding guidance – holler at the team of CleverFox.Online. With over 50 fence companies signing on board with them in 2022, the team at CleverFox.Online is continuing to grow and can take you along with them!
@therobnoble handles all production outlines; DM him for pricing and availability.
Episode Transcript
Hey, what’s up everybody.
Welcome to another episode of the Protecting Your Radius podcast. I’m your host, Nathan Downs. And on today’s episode, we have. Matt Warner, Matt, what’s going on, buddy? Oh, just hanging out here in Michigan with you. Absolutely. Matt Warner is the owner of My Salesman, Empire Fence and Netting. Um, Unlimited Sports Solutions and ESC, which is our fab shop that we make a lot of our foul poles and stuff like that.
dugouts for USS. And then, uh, we have the wave, which is in, uh, indoor, uh, baseball softball facility. And, oh, and then we have an access control division that we recently started. Oh, cool. I didn’t know that. Yeah. Very awesome. The wave. So when are we doing Operation Epic 2? Oh my goodness. We should. We need to.
You know what, I’ve had a few people. If enough people harass me about it, I’ll probably do it eventually. That’s awesome. I loved it. It was, that was a good time. That’s awesome. Especially when that storm rolled in. Oh. Because that’s business, right? Yes. One day you’re sweating and going crazy. The next day a cold front comes through and a big old storm.
Yeah. I mean, that’s just unbelievable. Business 101. That was, that was crazy. That was awesome. There’s a video floating around of that somewhere. We’ll need to find it and edit it in while we’re talking about it. Yeah, the microburst tornado that hit us while we’re all there. It was funny. Um, so I wanted to talk to Matt today, specifically, Matt wanted to bring you on.
We’ve been having a couple conversations over the past few days and there’s some. Key things that we were both learning together. Yes. And, um, there was a quote that someone said yesterday. Yeah, it was amazing. I’ve never heard it before and it really hit home with me. I, you know, I, I’m passionate about culture and by all means, I don’t have it figured out at all, but I’m working really hard on it and we’re constantly tweaking everything.
Um, this, this, uh, business owner, fence owner, he had said, um, that their philosophy is to get the horse to run for the rider and not the whip. Um, so, and that’s, that’s culture today. And I, that hit home with me, you know, does the horse run for the rider or the whip? Meaning do your people really? Care about you and the company, or are you just brow beating them and scaring them to death and trying to get them to run for the whip.
So that one, that hit home with me yesterday. And then, then they were talking about that. They do a one on one, uh, where their leaders, um, once a week, we’ll meet with somebody in the company. And then they have a, like five things that they try to meet. He’s going to email me those five things. One of them that hit home with me is they do, uh, what they call dream building.
And apparently there’s a book out there called dream builders, uh, and, uh, I think Justin Bennett was going to get us the name of the title of that, that he just read, but it’s talks about how, if you can help your people meet some of their goals or dreams in life, that’s, that’s the way to help your turnover.
Yeah. And that’s one thing that we noticed. I’ve been reading a lot about this recently was with. Millennials, like you’re talking to like generationally, you know, when we mentioned the thing about the whip and the, you know, or the rider, like, you know, every generation is different. Right. I think they mentioned that, that there were so many, well, we’re all motivated by different things.
Right. Right. And you know, my grandfather, he was motivated because he went to the Korean war and he said, he saw things that he never wanted to happen in America and that he Uh, with the food lines and all that. And he said, I never wanted my kids to go through that. Well, then what happens then is they spoil their kids a little bit, right?
Right. So then my dad becomes a little bit spoiled, but then he was motivated, um, differently than my grandfather, but, but in the same sense, and then I was mom motivated to give my kids what, what we can and make sure they can have a college education and think weird things like that. But. But, uh, we’re all motivated by a little bit of something different, but we keep spoiling that next generation.
And that’s a little bit of where we’re at now, but I will tell you that these, this generation of workers, I really think that they’re passionate about doing good work. Yeah. And riding for the brand. Yeah. Differently than, than my generation. My generation. I feel like, well, how old are you? I’m 40, so I’m the, I’m in between the right at the end of it.
Yeah. I’m the xal, you know? Yes. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, we are and and it is true. We are a pocket of time in between the Gen X. And the millennials that know how to flow both ways. So it’s really unique. Like if you’re 39 to 44, that’s what they say. Like our, our group is a microcosm between the two generations, but.
As you were saying that that’s true. Like I’ve found millennials. So the under forties right now are super passionate about like, what, like, what am I doing that is part of the greater good? Like what I do has to matter. Right. And what’s funny is I have that in me too, but I’m also the Gen X. I’m like, don’t care how you feel.
You know, like, yeah, we got, we got to get stuff done. So it’s really weird because I can feel like I can literally empathize both ways. And that’s not normal, but the, but it’s true the under forties right now, you know, you guys are out there looking for, you want to be part of a bigger thing. That’s one of the reasons Matt, that all this stuff is taken off like it is, you know, the podcasting, the social media things and all these things, because there want that connection.
They want that, that field to be part of something bigger than themselves. And I like that. I mean, I like writing for the brand, you know, being a farm kid, uh, on the ranch, I like the, the whole culture of we’re one unit, we’re a team, we’re a gang, we’re, we’re all together. We’re going to do this together.
And I believe at Empire, that’s, that’s the feeling that we’ve got going through it. And I’ve had a lot of people that have walked through our halls and say, holy cow, this, you guys are really a tight niche group. You’re, you’re a family. Which can also backfire a little bit because somebody new comes into that.
Now they got to try to break into that group. And, uh, so that gets to be a little bit tough, but how do you find that balance? Or if somebody doesn’t quite fit in, but you need them because they bring a talent that nobody else brings, that’s, that’s a tough, but yeah, I, I agree. My generation was motivated by money, right?
If, if you, if you dangle the carrot of a promotion in front of anybody in my generation, they’re going to, they’re going to try to chase that, right. That’s just a thing of the past. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Um, I heard Jim Rohn, uh, one time say, uh, money isn’t everything, but it’s near to oxygen. I mean, you have to have it and we need to make it to survive.
And sure. Uh, you know, the last three days we’ve been, we’ve been hanging out with, uh, some guys that, uh, have, Really scaled their companies. They’re very, very large entrepreneurs. Um, I call them entrepreneurs because almost everyone that we’ve met with in the last three days has more than just fence. I mean, yeah.
Yeah. Portage Jones or a different kind of division or the one, uh, the one fence company also does striping, um, uh, century, uh, they do striping also. So. Uh, there’s a, there’s a lot going on and we are literally in the hallway where I’m like, I know it’s like, I was like, wow, there’s a crowd of people coming through, but so sounds going to be really interesting here.
We made our own makeshift studio. We move some stuff around. Yeah. I’ve made a studio out in the middle of the hallway, so that’s fun. That’s fun. Well, um, as we were going through Matt, as we were going through and talking about some of the, especially with people that have scaled their businesses to that degree and stuff.
Um. There was a couple nuances that I noticed with watching how people reacted to things in real time, thinking back to what, what, how did they get to that scale? Cause In this group here where we’re at right now, like I, like, especially for me, so I’ll put myself, like, let everybody in my shoes, I’m the smallest fish in the big pond, right?
Like, um, which is cool because I can see the future and be like, well, I know I belong with these cats, but I’m not anywhere close to that. But you said something to us yesterday, um, as we were going through and thinking about the growth, like how do you really grow and how do you go on? And you said, always say yes for over 30 years, Southwest automated security has been the premier provider of gate operators, access controls, CCTV, and so much more visit Southwest automated.
com today, taking dealers to the next level. And so I wanted to like wrap this conversation back around that because I think there’s so many people out there right now, especially in the social media. That are talking about, you know, when we say no and stuff and I, I understand that and sure, and it’s easy to watch.
Like Mark Olson had that video the other day. I don’t think you’ve seen it yet. The bucket video. I have not, but I’ve heard really poor people tell them and it’s really powerful and really good because especially as a young entrepreneur or a young fence company owner, like I understood, like I’m like a hundred percent on board with what Mark’s saying, but.
You then challenged me after we were talking about that, um, with this other concept. So I wanted you to share that with everyone. Well, a little bit of it is, and you know, uh, Ken Mills of Mills fence. Um, I’ve heard him say it multiple times and he’s been a, um, a guy that I’ve listened to for the last 12 years, uh, that I’ve been a part of this group.
And. We, I heard him say a long time ago that we can figure it out. He, he just has the philosophy. We can figure it out. Now, he always did have the caveat that you have to bid it so you have a little bit of room in there and, and, and, and do things. But he, he just never said no to a job. Mm-Hmm. Um, now he didn’t win all of them
Uh, and he started out as a baker. In his twenties. And now he has a very, very, the mills fence is an extremely successful company. And I really admire what he’s done and how he’s grown his family and how his family’s worked for it. And kind of been a role model for, for me in the last 10 to 12 years. But he said that we, we, we just say, yes, we say we’ll figure it out.
Saying yes does not mean it’s going to be easy. Saying yes does not mean you’re going to make a ton of money. Saying yes is probably going to stretch you a little bit.
It could give you an opportunity at something that you had no idea you were really good at. Saying yes has been wonderful for us. And. I get it. A lot of people out there are teaching fence companies saying, Hey, just do what you’re good at. Do what you’re fast, repeatable, do what you’re good at. But if you don’t get out of your comfort zone once in a while, you’re not going to scale.
You’re going to be that size of company forever. I was telling you, we’re doing a job right now that it’s literally footings for a solar farm. When my team came to me, they’re like, Hey, do you want to look at this? And it’s like, well, what is it? Well, we’re going to dig a hole. We’re going to drop in a rebar cage and we’re going to put concrete in there and strike it off.
Why wouldn’t we look at that? And there’s no other fence companies looking at it. Matter of fact, nobody wants to look at it. Cause all the footing guys want to go just do footings. We were the only person looking at it. Now that’s fun when you get to go find a job like that. So say yes. Yeah. Let’s figure it out.
Let’s go do it. And we’ve had a lot of success at that. You know, doing the netting, doing the sports stuff, just trying to figure out how to find our niche and what we’re good at. And that goes all the way down to your team too, because you were telling me, um, earlier story about Scott, that there’s even verticals that you’re getting into that you didn’t even know.
So, okay. So I was visiting with a friend at the grocery store and they came up to me and right there in Waverly, they said, Hey, that’s awesome. That you guys are doing decks now. And I’m like, Oh, and I thought I misheard him, but I said, Oh, you’re doing decks. He’s like, no, you’re doing decks. So I was like, I don’t think we’re doing decks.
Then I found out that Scott, one of our guys that we have was a home builder. Loves building decks. Yeah. We put some young people with him. He’s an old skilled tradesman has built homes most of his life. Now Scott implemented building decks and we, I think we just finished our first one and, and, um, apparently it went good, but, but a little bit of that is we had the right guy, we had the right attitude and we have the resources to do it.
So it was, it was good for us. That doesn’t mean we’re going to go, Oh, take over the deck one by right, right. But you know, I was, I was mentioned that, um, about a month or two ago on the podcast was, I think so often as I’m meeting more and more entrepreneurs, especially in construction that have scared, have scaled.
I feels like very often to me that the, the real success in some of those spots. It’s because you have that person that can take you to the next level, that can move the ball in a different direction, that brings something unique to the table. Like it’s the people resource part of it that We would not have an access control division if it wasn’t for Sean Owsley.
Yeah. It would not happen. We’ve done them, and Scott did them for a while. Scott’s very good at it, but he runs our travel commercial division, so, and that’s a very successful division. Um, a couple of things I have learned in business, business 101. Is you don’t ever take one of your key guys and pull them out of a successful division, have them go work on something new.
And that just doesn’t work. What’ll happen is, is, is your success rate over here will more likely fall. And it does. Uh, we’ve done it. I, I, I made the mistake one time. Scott Kleinbeck is our utility guy. He’s, he’s extremely talented, extremely smart, extremely patient. And he’s incredible at what he does. So I took him out and I said, Hey, you need to go fix this problem.
Go over here and fix this, this fab shop. Well, what happened was his division suffered and he struggled getting this. So he got aggravated and he wanted to, he wanted to win at both. I had to pull him out, put him back over here and say, okay, we got to, we got you. You’re rocking it over here. You got to rock it over here.
And plus Scott’s better at the overall operations of our company. And he’s good at just looking him. And I’ve been together for so long that we’ve been doing this so long. He’s good at, so don’t pull your key guy off of something successful and go try to start something new. It just, it might work.
There’s, there’s one offs, but it’s risky, very risky. How do you know, like, how do you measure that with your team? Like when you find a spot where you think they’re going to fit, Or you know that they’re working better, but they don’t want to be in that space. Like, I’ve seen that happen before where, you know, someone wants to do something different, maybe because they think the opportunity is better, but they’re really yoked for this task and this.
Manage this part of the business. Like, what do you, what do you think? That, that is extremely difficult because the one thing you can’t have is you can’t have a manager or somebody running a division for you that is unhappy. It just doesn’t work because people will read off of that. They’ll feed off of that.
They’ll read it. They’ll, they’ll, all of a sudden now you’ll have an entire team that is trying to be positive, but yet they’re unhappy. Right. So you really got to find the niche, you know, and that’s why I was saying with Sean Owsley with the, with the access control. He wanted it. He came to us and said, I want to go get trained on that.
I find that interesting. I want to do it. He went down to Dallas. He took the training. We, we paid for it. He came back all jazzed up, excited. Now we have an access control and he’s got a couple of guys working underneath him and they’re traveling all over Nebraska doing. Access control. So great. But he was passionate about it.
So then just let the horse run and hopefully he’s not running for the whip. He’s running for the rider. Right. For the rider. That’s right. That’s right. Wrap that background. So, um, let’s wrap this thing up. Put a bell on it. What closing thought do you want to leave everybody with buddy? I mean, you got a lot of thoughts.
Yeah. Lately, lately I’ve been. I’ve been doing a lot of research, uh, on the culture aspect of mentors and, um, having somebody, there was a study done that I can’t remember the number, like 80 percent of the companies fail in the first five years. Yeah. And of those that make it 80 percent of them fail before 10 years.
Um, but there was a study done that said an incredible amount, like 97 percent of all the companies that did make it had a mentor or somebody to call whenever they needed help. And I think that’s, that’s that, that boost of energy that you have, that’s that friend that you text, you know, um, I’ll be honest with you, I’ve got probably seven or eight people, um, I get texts from this morning.
I got a text from Dan Blanc that said, Hey, I miss you. Um, I’m down. So many pounds, he’s, you know, he’s, he’s trying to get, uh, back in shape. And, uh, he’s telling me, you know, to have that person that you can text to tell something personal or private, or just bounce an idea off to is so important. And I think you have to find that person in life and you have to find that group.
And sometimes, for instance, Randy Ward, incredible human. I don’t talk to him a lot, probably every third or fourth month. He’ll give me a call. I’ll give him a call. But when we do, it’s so valuable, you know, it’s so incredibly powerful and it just, he can make you feel like a rock star, you know, he just is such a positive energy guy and a strong faith based human that he’ll, He’ll give me words of encouragement that I’m ready to just take over the world, you know, man.
You’re such a stud. Yeah Yeah, I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud of you, bud. Yeah, when Randy says that, you’re like, oh my goodness, it’s like your dad calling you, giving you a pat on the, so, but, but you know I’ve got those people, uh, you know, Sean King and I, once in a while, three or four in the morning I’ll get a text from him Hey, let’s, let’s get after it today.
It’s going to be a great, um, you know, Canon Johnson, all those, all my friends in the industry, we, we bounce stuff off and what they don’t even understand is that I need their feedback just as much as they need mine. So that’s kind of been my thing lately is find a mentor, find a friend, um, that you can share intimate things with.
And you can, when you’re hurting, you know, that’s us men, we hide so much. We don’t want anybody to know when we’re hurting inside. You got to find that one person that says, man, I’m, I’m having a rough day and you know, I need, I need, I need a, a kick in the pants if you got that guy and you can surround yourself with good.
And that’s this week we’ve, we’ve been doing that. These are my friends I’ve been friends with for 12, 13 years and, and I’ve gotten to know them really well. And they’re my mentors. They’re the ones helping me do what I do. So I don’t know if that’s a final thought or not or fantastic. I love it. I, you know, as you were saying that I was thinking.
You know, construction’s so funny because I feel like we have, you can have the highest highs and the lowest lows. You know, like it’s such a broad spectrum of feelings and like the day to day grind in what we do. But I’ll tell you this, here’s a word of encouragement, um, the construction industry is losing people left and right and they’re not getting back in it because it is tough right now.
True. And I believe that we are in one of the tougher eras of construction. It’s going to get better. And the fruits of our labor is going to pay off because less and less people are doing it. We, we, more and more people are retiring and more new people are not getting into construction. And I hate to tell you this, but construction is one of those things that we all need, right?
We all need. Things built. Um, that’s how we keep moving as a society. So I believe for, if there’s a word of encouragement for all the young people out there that are, that you just feel like you’re beating your head against the wall and you’re like, I don’t want to do this anymore, this is hard work. I’m telling you, it will pay off.
Keep grinding. That’s what Matt Warner says. Just keep on grinding. So Matt, appreciate you having on today again, and we will see you guys on the next episode.
