Al Doan: $100M+ Quilt Mogul Who Bought Two Towns

so bad at telling your own story alright what you just said to intro and this is in my story you want to tell well well i would say yeah i would say i started a quilt company called missouri quilt missouri star quilt company missouri star quote company that it's a behemoth of a quilt company can you say what the revenues are yeah it's the biggest let's first start that it is the biggest it's the biggest it's the biggest it's let's see we're we're four hundred some employees over a hundred million in revenue like it's it's a big this a big oval we're live by the way this is it this is the pie okay okay wait how did you meet we gotta keep the hub story yet at needs to be like one of our can you just get it personally say it again again say it again funny that not just exactly show the joke was when we started the hustle we would for some reason i picked who stan as the band that i liked like it we don't have to pick a band when you start a company i was like what there's no form you got what's band what white three what flower what band it was like our insiders joke and we in the email we would be like you know like this young kid who just raised a bunch of funding like he's gonna be of the greats like elon like steve jobs or or hub stan or you know like slim where people notice would you get replies like what the crappy done every once in a while so i put it on my linkedin i put that on the the web master of the hub stan fan club dot com and when you endorse the skill it's like good hub stan well and when i wanted to like make a joke with someone i would email them from sam at hub fan club dot com you own cash yeah yeah i still haven't it one still have keep renewing it just case that's nine dollars for a great joke that deal going wait so dude do you gotta give your intro who are you what do you what would you say you do oh yeah yeah i'm a what do i do i not not as much right now i just shut down a a software company i own our i'm the owning the executive chairman of a of creativity inc which is you know it's got a quilt company a big quilt company and a knit company and in our company lot of lot of stuff in that space see you're so bad at telling your own story alright what you just said to intro when this is in my story you wanted to tell well well i would say yeah i would say i started a quilt company called missouri quilt missouri star quilt company missouri star quote company that that's it's a behemoth of a quilt company is can you say what the revenues are yes it's the biggest let's first start with that it is the biggest it's the biggest it's the biggest it's let's see we're we're four hundred some employees over a hundred million in revenue like it's a it's a big it's a big you own the largest quilt company of the world it does over a hundred million dollars in revenue and you also have now bought two towns it was so so the quote company in hamilton right we we bought the entire downtown district so twenty seven buildings downtown because you had tour her because that's awesome no this was the so like when we started this quote company the the challenge is like there's thirty five hundred quote companies in in america right like there in every little city and you're saying that like we know that yeah like right you know i'm monday i'm with me right here five hundred and one doesn't really pull the eyeballs in and so i like there's no espn for quilt i can't just go advertise for this is so i'm like how are we gonna get this and so our like we were in this little town we we we grew big enough online that we had like like we couldn't fit all the the inventory in our space or in our in our store and because like we could either go open a warehouse which would have been the normal same thing to do or we're like they're like man it's awesome because when people come to our town there's normally no customers and so like the the impression you get if you walked in there it was just retail is like nobody's here and this is really sucky and so instead we had like twelve people cutting and fulfilling fabrics so you walk in and there's like this energy this buzz that was happening in the shop and so we split out and bought her and bought the the next building over and put fabric in there and then i was like man who has the most quilt shops of any town in the world right like that i was like it's the biggest wooden nickel minnesota this was gonna be my thing and i have some town in germany i think i had ford and i was like gonna we're gonna take you create a tourist destination yeah you you're quilt just just see a novelty right it was just supposed to be a novelty and so then we ended to up dolly or whatever it's like this is that's right i mean so they're like if you're driving by the highway you're like the most are you kidding me alright let's get yeah and so in in that process do we got like we people were coming to town we only have like subway in the gas station for food so we started restaurants so we've got sleep and so we're like it's a slumber party for ladies to come they you're saying it right now like it's like you know this is a natural thing to do but like the first part of the idea which is like let's create the town with the most it's create a tourist destination that's not what most companies do so you you have this idea from where and then aren't people saying yeah this is crazy we don't have to do and you know do you and your family own the whole thing yeah yeah so you're able to do crazy shit like that well well we're bootstrap but like dude fabric a fabric company is a hard thing to bootstrap because like like fabric you order your fabric six months before you get it we're growing two hundred percent a year we gotta hold the fabric for nine months cover your your initial cost in the first ninety days right so that you can cover terms and like it's like a really complicated we're betting the farm every three months and like if we're wrong we go under so if you do a hundred and fifty million in revenue how much eb can do it's so we're like a normal commerce or like e commerce business so our goal is about twenty percent we're not there yet really especially this year right but like well like that's where we that's where we'll end but then you take the profits out and buy yeah i've made like seven nickel a lot i pay myself a fine salary but like but like all the money goes back in right next purchase order next purchase order well because because we're growing by significant amounts every year and most that gets tied up in inventory in two years what do you think you could sell the business for well our goal right now man well i i i think we can get twenty percent growth for a couple of years right which should move our valuation like a five x revenue so like a billion dollars yeah that's the that's the idea how many is your like is it like your wife or your sister your mom who who owns is the shareholders so like your whole family's gonna get yeah so it's me and my sister my buddy dave or the are the are the main ones and then like all of our family just this year just this year we cut in like all of our employees have been there for any kind of time and that's a cool feeling but you started with your mom or your mom started and you know tell that little bit me so the idea like me and my sister been talking about starting a company for a while i was i was like a year out of college right so like i i was i don't know everybody's sort of an entrepreneur right out of college that's what i'm gonna do and and we were sort of that same way and my mom had taken a quilt into a to the quilt she you sew the top together and take it to a lady it's got a big forty thousand dollar machine and they're gonna stitch all the the the backing and the fluffy stuff in the middle and the top they're gonna stitch it all together and this lady was out a year and she's was like i made your sis circle quilt to i took it in get it back in you know two thousand eight and i'm like nothing takes a year to do like you can build a house in less time than it takes to get this quilt done and so either she's terrible or there's a lot of demand well well by the way that was literally my market research i was like there is gonna be a market here for this are there others she's like everybody's backed up and when you say quilt like literally just a blanket right shut up okay how to dare you yeah it's also watch blurb like but i mean like like because i know some people like hang shit on their walls yeah yeah so so some people i have like a decorative quilt and then some people like i had a quilt like comfort yeah yeah it's it's exactly that and like my mom stick is she's like she's like the mcdonald's of quilt right because not quilt like most of these hobbies are very like don't know like very defined you know there's there's a quote police that's gonna come and get you if the if the seams are off or whatever right and if your points don't match and every i feel like getting into any hobby there's that sentiment that you're like i can't go to the group yet i'm not good enough right and so mom's like is better and perfect look well and our big innovation do we made like the the lego blocks of quilt right so it's a pack of five inch squares and pack of ten inch squares and you sewn them together and cut them like this in whack it makes it this and so like really simple tricks and techniques technique she was a costume when we were you're saying mcdonald's because he like kind of made a process out of burger making process where it's like anybody can make this burger well no i'm saying mcdonald's because it's like it's like not fancy right it's not it it you're not spending a lot on it it's like it's you're trying to do it to get to the it's serving the purpose of filling you with food right i mean i mean it's funny because like quilt i never thought that you know cool my my business buddies and stuff they'll sort of laugh at like my whiteboard it's like layer cakes up seventeen percent turnover down on it you know jelly rolls we gotta get these back you know it's like it's it's all sort of you know goofy terms for people that aren't in the space so but like man it's it's a forty five to seventy year old demographic is the majority of my customers and there are so few people building awesome experiences formed that like i i feel i feel like a you know a lion among sheep being and they're just like we're gonna build amazing great experiences for these people and sam's for that is a a a dwarf amongst is is such a phrase yeah no everybody normally says that a dwarf amongst vengeance it's very clever it's not and that's it's not allowed anymore play at war we're both missouri so we probably grew up in somewhat similar environments and that was a phrase and i like that and like what's the same people right is neither that's why it's hilarious i no one you just dwarf among mitch it's like your joint is like a tall mid look like that's just afraid i didn't even realize it was like go cancel a our didn't realize it was bad no harm another one is tough tit said the kitty but the milk is still good have you heard of that one yeah yeah sure so anyway what what do what do think it's gonna be like in two or three years if you ever sell i mean are you guys like you're gonna be the richest per person in like by hundreds of miles we're gonna do just by thousands of acres no well i mean what do you what do you do makes crazy question what said think this feels very aggressive the way that you're phrasing this i'm just gonna say that right now the the well the idea is not like i don't know if i don't know if we'll sell it right but there's a big question in my head of like of like i don't what my my my mains say is like i don't want my kid to grow up and say i gotta be a quilt because pop was quilt right it's like oh it's a business you gotta get it your tale as as all this time it's tough cities with it yeah they'll get the goods but but like i so i'm trying to figure out how to navigate around that like how like is there how do you maximize value and create the most opportunity and all that kind of stuff i'm very attracted to a finish line right which a an ipo or a sale or something would be but also you know gets to the point where it's shed off eb done it's a very busy to just keep running twelve years yep you didn't know were you even like into quilt before that like were you in do it no my mom makes me she's she made me make one quilt she's like you can't run this company and not be a quilt so i i've made one i'm making another right now a nice spare pop on point what did you know how to do you didn't you you were at you're were a software guy these are such mean questions no i funny things at this event why you guys basically been having an intervention he's asking questions that you things are completely normal questions ever used be and women yeah way you that's so weird yeah he's hey people were like sam when you ask questions to take a full frontal attack he's what do you mean he's like completely oblivious to the fact that these questions are oh rape aggressive so like his mom is like the face of like their youtube and he was explaining to me what she was like and i i looked up the youtube like oh she looked exactly like i i expected yeah and he was like what he goes was what the hell i was like i somebody hair me good i was like that was a compliment that i was like very rarely is oh she looked exactly how i thought she wouldn't make couple lot of misunderstanding he's going on i was like i thought she sounded like a lovely nice woman yeah yeah and who's cool and and i like and she looks like it sweet dorothy man but well and but he also said that you own two hundred acres and you like i i do own i like like this a missouri when you become this i'm a hundred percent hill bill rich right like like give me a hundred million dollars tomorrow my life doesn't change at all right i've got i've got a a car that i like to drive i've got a house that i like to live in i got three beautiful boys and a wife and beautiful wife also i mean beautiful expense to all of them and and like i'm i'm done right and so it's sort of a weird spot where i don't need i don't need the finish line the the only value that a finish line would offer is like the past the mantle right like i no longer wake up and and have to stress about like what if we ruin it all tomorrow what if the person that we hired to do this like screws it all what were you good at the i oh yeah yeah what skill what what what attributes did you bring to the quilt table great question great questions yeah not a lot like like i mean i so i came out of i came out of college and and my first job was with s samantha like i i was a really good kinda network right and and not not network but like i i like people that i like and i hate people i hate i like some guys that like we're doing the most popular guy in the house right now the way i don't if you know real there's like twenty five people here there's famous people everybody's like everyone's got a different nickname for you it's a big out and then somebody like big city because he's buying cities yeah and other guy's like oh a city good and and so big city is a cool name right it's like it's like you know tom the big city yeah man is like it's like talk calling like a really tall guy short or something you know this is perfect it's better than big country i get big country lot but they city no it's not funny when you are oh you know you you'd have to be like tiny country or something some mob thing yeah no big cities okay thanks but he's you're super like well i was calling out there like what did you you go he's like he's rich he's smart and he's and he's funny i was like yeah you need to be the next bachelor dude and like this is a amazing meet him well i mean i don't patrick was on the i came on the pod that was the first time i thought about the word quilt in my twelve years well he was telling my story and all my buddies were like dude you were on this podcast dude you gotta check this out i'm like what the crap and they him to the idea dude i was oh man that's my story like give you wanna hear i have patrick i like there's this there's this niche market of quilt that's way bigger than people realized and i was what really we were remember were like blown away and then he we were like what's he's like yeah there's companies that are here huge then the conversation was greg you you're like oh that's rad man i love to hear it sometime du ball do you wanna come yeah i i think i ghost to you for like a mom yeah and i was like oh hey by the way yeah i do wanna talk about that but more importantly you wanna meet up in person it's like basketball you don't know anyone here no no no yeah this is this is great did you dream even know patrick no oh wow no i never met any of these guys took amazing show up and i've turned out to be like six foot seven in love playing basketball and yeah did great my ass on the court yeah here's a you dude you smoked as for the for the championship game train three threes in my face yeah i like the greatest one with my life today sorry no it says all so okay so you do the you do the quilt thing no way wait my skills before this just just buddies that like that like connect to me i was working in a software company lost that job in dramatic fashion i never been without a job at time what does that mean like i fired like me and twenty thousand people got laid off in two thousand eight right and and so i'm you know i'm like consulting and trying to like just told through i was twenty six in missouri yeah yeah but like but well i was like living in boston at the time and they moved me out there and i was visiting my buddy up in toronto and then i moved in with him and his wife and their new baby you me and d pre and i was like we'll start a company up here let's do it so we tried like three and when we tried to know cleaning technology that we'd sell real estate agents and i was like a terrible time to sell the real estate agents since two thousand eight and we tried to do a little wealth management thing because he wanted to be a wealth management adviser so we tried to start that and then and then this the company we had already and i wanted to do like a daily deal version because at the time it was hot right it was like wu dot com and steep and cheap and just talked all about woo and like chain love and all that stuff man i love those in college because they were they were great and i'd wait up till midnight which in in hawaii where i was going to school was like it was like seven o'clock right and i'd be like wait to see what it is still cool it's cool but like i but like it hooked me as a college kid and like every site was built for like for like are you a dude that loves riding bikes chain dot com and there's a new thing every night and but like nobody was building them for the forty five to seven year old demo and so when i did quilt daily deal i think it was literally the first time anybody had done a daily deal site for my demographic which is like discounted fabric i mean it was discounted items right okay and like due to the beginning it was so funny because like i was i was the guy doing it all we're just scrapping our way through so like i'm i'm i'm not a good writer for my mom right where like i'd write these stories and always say like hey ladies like well fellow women just no no joke so we started a forum and the the first six months of the forum because nobody wants to join an empty forum i was jeannie b and sara sue and my buddy dave was carmen and elizabeth and we just have these like half all day we yes yeah what kinda of called did you that's so cute that's a brother and eventually now it's like ninety thousand members and like it's a great old thing wow so that's really so you but your mom had us had some following or something is that how it started she had zero following no i i was started with the form we no no we launched so the the chronology we launched with the website that i like said but we launched with the store that we started she was doing quilt and then i i built this website on one in one dot com you remember that old shared hosting that i was a they lost my site a couple times was like i'll start over thanks guys and built this site and and it was a daily deal site that i would change at midnight i didn't have any automation and i was just like go in you know be on a date and be like hold on a second i gotta log in into like quilt website changed it up tens of women are waiting for this yeah and and we we do we launch did that i still have the facebook post like february two thousand nine and then it's like hey i made a quilt check for my mom check it out two likes right like zero orders the first three weeks and and like every day i'm going in there right in didn't give up didn't give up didn't give up personalized i just like well i mean it was it was a marketing challenge at that point right like we knew we knew that we had a product that was interesting like like we're selling fabric online and like the other sites were like we're like built on yahoo stores and crap and i'm like i can like there's a way better experience for this and we're just gonna we're gonna take better pictures this our novelty we're gonna we're gonna sell it better and and so we we kept working at it just thinking we had to figure out how to find people and our due to like i would write these deals every day to be like there always some version of the pin nightmare and i'm like and then he turned into a donkey and then he was in the wales belly and jumbo rick rack is it's three ninety nine it was like some weird things i like i was just trying to be creative i who did it too they're were pretty good fine well do the i was modeling after that just trying to like be humorous and and turns out like my mom like this isn't good you you didn't to stop it was this weird buddy dave and doing it for the next the next while and he was much better than i was but so we we went three weeks without a sale finally my cousin jennifer ordered something and so you know we're like oh that's alright thank jen that's very nice and and we'd get like an order to a day and one day one day we meant to price something at like two eighty eight it was the crazy eight's charm pack we meant price at like two eighty eight accidentally priced it at eighty eight cents we sold like eleven of them but but shipping was five dollars right and so like our cost on it was four or something and so we're like we still made money like the this works in the average order size was actually like twenty eight dollars like dude a lost leader we should lose this light this in a meaningful way and and we can build this and so it turned into like the deals are are great deals and people love them and but that's what end up building our business and then as we went like where were you getting the fabric in supplies for we buy them from vendors so like even even a day there's probably forty vendors that we buy from then to grow it we started making videos like the the education stuff youtube was only a year and a half old at that point and so like you know late two thousand eight early two thousand nine and there's like there's like this guy quilt buck on there and it's like a webcam that he'd show on his quilt that and he's it was cool people were trying to do stuff and nobody had like done it well and so i bought like a canon digital health that was like the best resolution at time and just like held it in my hands and and you know the manual zooming stuff but like got mom to start doing these tutorials and because i'm a thirty year old bearded guy i'm like don't say your lingo right i need to talk to me so i can understand i'm not a dummy i i've have no idea what what a wolf is right with right with the fabric and like i like because normally teachers when they try and start teaching they'll try and like like give himself some some validation by like look i know all the cool stuff and i'm i'm i'm nerdy like you guys and i just wouldn't let mom do that so she had to speak in a way that anybody could understand we became this very approachable if you never made a quilt you start with with missouri star and because we're were making this content every week we'd put it in our emails that we'd send out and it was so like we'd lead with that it was like we made this great new tutorial for you with all these cool tricks and tips and stuff and and we we'd ended up with like a seventy percent open rate on our promo emails which is just the magic that we built around and you you're twelve year you're in twelve years in your like a hundred hundred and fifty or something like that revenue what were the first five years do you think first year was a hundred grand then we did a million then we did four then we did eight and then we did fourteen and then did it we kept growing at that rate yeah yeah it would and but but again man like bootstrap through that was intense it was at what point were able to pay yourself and make money so we paid mom after three years right like it's crazy because i have i like seven siblings in my family and five of them work on the quote company and like we couldn't have done it if they couldn't have just like worked for free for the beginning and like i mean it's it's like volunteers right well what year was it making enough money like fuck let's buy town you this well so so four years in we we bought our second building right or three years been and we bought our second building and like we remodeled it all ourselves we did all the work and then we bought you know we we piece me the beginning one like it's we can look back at it and be like oh yeah well we got we got everything this is great we did a good job but like that was never the intent in the beginning my thought was that like people would see that we're were bringing more people to town and they'd start these other businesses and do stuff and and by the time like because we running so far ahead of our own curve we just ended up with like our whole downtown and now we have like like there's a few other businesses in town but and is there like because you what normally happens if you start to like buy everything in a town like there's always like one or two people i'm gonna hold out and we're like you know yeah negotiate like yeah because you need it you need to complete the set yep and then tiny comes knocking under their door we need to know you i cannot promise you for tech shit huge yeah why did you guys run into that oh yeah like like the average price for a building in a small missouri town like that was like about twenty grand and and by our last building is about eighty right so so we i just bought this other town down the road from us kingston right and so like seven missouri yeah so seven miles down the road it's our county like with a really nice like king like well they have a huge is that on the way to meet mi missouri from saint louis no i'm thinking of kingston yeah yeah yeah no kingston is by me and and the other side by kansas city it was seven miles from our town and and so we bought it's it's i think it's eight buildings and it's like it'll be like seventy thousand for all of them right wow and so they're just these old like condemned to sort of over on buildings we'll we'll put two million into them to get them fixed up right but like but like the the the real estate is cheap and the fact that it's already there and we're just kinda fixing what's there the you is great i mean i live in saint louis which is way bigger than where you're from but even though it's not a competition but even saint louis i felt like oh fuck no one gets me i feel like a free here because i've building this internet shit and so that's why i left and i moved us eventually san francisco and there's a reason why like a lot of companies are started in san francisco or new york or chicago or awesome like these like bigger cities because you you meet people and you like spread ideas and you're like are inspired by one another or whatever like rubs off on each other other than the internet which is i mean where were you learning how to do all this stuff did you ever feel like what the hell man i need to get out of here i can find this client in pull have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform so it shares its data across every application every team can stay aligned no out of sync spreadsheets are doing databases hubspot grow better so after call i actually left this part out this a cool part after college i when i when i lost my job this was let's see two thousand nine i i declared my year of the nba right i was looking at like going back to to harvard i'd i lived in boston and i was like i should i should really go and it was like two hundred grand to get us to get an nba there and i was like man that's that's too much money for this broke farmer and and so i declared the year of my mb i emailed all the guys were like successful in business and we're like what are the three books that you'd recommend i read and i got like a constrained list of of like thirty seven books right and so i bought them all on amazon for like two hundred dollars and then i i had a bunch of buddies that were like doing cool stuff that i wanted try like a guy was doing import export out in hawaii and and another dude was doing like venture capital in salt lake and and so i was just like let me come and work for free for you guys for like three months i just wanna i'll i'll shine your shoes and make your coffee i just wanna see how you'd run your business and and so i like i hopped around some of that and then i got into like like i got to be an an intern in techs stars in two thousand ten right so like which which one colorado boulder yeah so it it was only boulder it's a world boulder in seattle but like it was david in nicole gl two thousand ten and so like while i'm building this quote company on the side we've got these like world class mentors coming and and like they'd mentored these companies doing you know cool robots and you're list you're listening at all the other sour yeah dick sell is super interesting what would you be at a cool company man curious like would you how how would you like a deal daily you're deals right it doesn't do anything is it was like i was getting like this way you reached for your phone when i said that are you trying to tell somebody about this talk to be available what what's what are you feeling right now yeah no so i was getting this way outs outside like brain for for the internet i i always thought that i would do something like like i thought i was gonna work for microsoft or facebook or something right and and and in the end in the end like i just took all the learnings that i have from this my and my desire sort of be an internet tech entrepreneur and and shovel all that into into this quilt company which is you know again like it's it's very technology focused way way early adopters on a lot of stuff and like it's giving us a huge advantage we've as we build and stuff because there's no other like dude there's no kids coming out of their mba school trying to take my margins and that's that's the except for once patrick told all your list how do you feel for we have peers and how are you do you have like peers in the internet world or e com world till you're like you're chat with regular basis to be inspired by more learn from rochelle like i got buddies right like i'm a i'm an angel investor i'm in fifty companies doing stuff we i i have a early stage fund that i run with somebody buddies like like i'm still like these are still friends we still talk but but there's like from an e commerce standpoint honestly man like i i think i'm world class i think i i i think i'm one of the best brains at selling stuff on the internet and that's awesome yeah that's awesome also the the the nba the like give myself an nba thing the way you approach that that's like that is so smart but also once you hear that story like of course this person gonna be successful as a hustle right because you you basically do the math you're like okay what do i want what's the normal way to get there oh this like kind of long two year really expensive way can i just get that like that was my reasoning nine months for two hundred fifty dollars and you're like oh yeah what if i just emailed all the smart people ask them one of the best three books i read all those books and then i like go shadow you know the three smart free for a dude for like three months like like cohen and gl these guys they'll still go to bat to me for me to this day right because that three month investment that i made of like and dude i was the first one in the last one out like i knew i wasn't getting paid but but like i was trying to soak it all up and you i mean you do that and like they'll open every door you ever need to get through what was the most game changing book of all those that you're read well honestly did it's this book that's out of print like like i didn't i didn't read any business book to change my life right like once you get through like six or seven i quit really rico go because i'm like it's the exact same thing the the principles for business are the exact same just told in a different parable every time and whatever your parable is that's what you gl on to say man it's good to great that the best one this one i it's your bible but for me like the most impactful one was this one called coming out of the ice by victor herman which is this this dude that like went over to russia and like ended up being an amazing olympia athlete but like russia i wanted take credit for with it and he was like no i'm america's i throw him in jail for like fifty years and it's this the crazy story that i'm like this guy's is an america hero somebody should know this story but it's like dude reading that while i felt like my life was so hard it was like oh no i'll be fine you i read that i do the exact same thing i'll read a it's like better than therapy for sure i do you want the fast version of therapy it's like it's it's david go back in the day like i'll read like a like a book about navy seals or about like i just read about the cherokee native americans oh yeah it makes your problems are so small like i'm such a punk yeah you know what i mean i do the exact same thing it's way better than business books so it's so like my favorite one out of that whole list because because just buddy i was like oh this is the best book i've ever read read this and i was like alright i'm in man and that that one's still to the day is like great but but like do the books and this is my problem with college is like every marketing class i sat through or something i'm like oh this a great idea you you say sell it for more than i bought it you guys are clever right thanks i'm glad i'm paying for this right and it's all these professors that used to be in the industry that you wanna get into that no longer are that might have connections that could open the door for you so when i was looking at an mba i was like this this like what if i just go to the people that are in the industry right now and somehow network with them like that's gonna open way more doors for me how many they're great how many people do you you have four fifty employees but how many of them are doing like like white collar jobs like yeah or or like internet internet related things maybe a hundred of them a hundred of them how many of them live in the town oh gosh i i don't know i'd i think many of them are are are on i think missouri i think we have like forty remote like fully like our engineering team is remote like where the the the like all over from seattle to serbia right and then we have then we have like our design team is mostly remote like the a lot of one of the ones make sense to be remote remote but then like in town oh it's was probably two hundred and fifty of them they're like right there in town he's buying a town with good business besides like you had you have a business and this is kind of like yeah adjacent helpful if i didn't have that but if i was like oh there's this kind of like a band town really cheap real estate i could buy can rein figure is that a good idea or no well like i think i think every company should have a town well like they did well car take dude that's a i was like no take you know so we can list a few for henry ford tried doing this and fellow windows is up in iowa where they have their own like like there's well a lot bethlehem po did and when a lot of towns were built around like that big full mine or something like but but my thing is like is like every dumb internet brand should should have one right like like a a buddy of mind does this this is my thought pattern here is like is like if you're a ten year old girl and super into baking where in america do i have to take you nowhere right with somebody if they just take that opportunity grab and they're like and and we're gonna have dutch ovens in this store just going and cooking stuff the kitchen aid mixer you come and have the the experience you're could come and spend two weeks here try everything they've gotten and you're gonna learn how to make all this cool stuff and then go home and your mom's gonna be stoked to spend three grand to give you the experience because it's magic and the whole town is built right that and that's what you're doing for quilt that's we're doing for quilt that's exactly what people doing this for everything like if i wanted to go cooking people are like i need go to paris to get that experience by like if i'm willing to like cooking or sign like let's say cooking right and you go to paris you go to paris and you take class but it's like you have not gone to the cooking mecca yeah right the the the cooking mecca looks like we bought every building on the street and and walking in this one we have we have all the cake decorating stuff in here and then we've got all the baking stuff here and then we got all the get and so you'll give tours or i don't know what you wanna call you sell the stuff you're a retailer right yeah and and like tours tours are part of it like people people well because when i go there i'm all a sudden a part of the community right it it's if you go common green right it's like you go to a brewer you could buy the stuff or a winery or you would get it's like like napa it's a good example of sure like wine it's like napa what when if you're a consumer of it yeah right and it'd be cool to go and take the wine to and do the whole thing if you're a beer maker where in america do you have to go there's no somebody should do it right we i i forget who i talking to but they're like oh patrick right he's from wisconsin i was like it's crazy man if i wanna get into cheese making give me the town that like it'll teach me it as it has twenty stores and i buy the cloth and you have every kind of cloth and i'll buy the basket and every kind of basket like somebody's just gonna take that branding and go build their their town around it and like it's the biggest wooden nickel in wisconsin and now gotta go see it because it's not what example you're i we i don't minnesota i said that real so in iowa do driving down what what is i seventy iowa city has the biggest wooden nickel in iowa or in the world what is a wood and nickel what do you saying it's like a giant sixteen foot buffalo nickel that's like i even know what made out of nickel buffalo in the old and sorry i am i am i washington was on order talking about yeah it's buffalo nickel is just a nickel that was made before like i love i'm looking at you like like how do you not know buffalo like nineteen o five what it it was like know when they stopped making any any nickel made in the eighteen hundreds i think it had a picture of a buffalo that's right that's it what that nickel used to have a buffalo it's it's top is the biggest ball twine right like it's it's all the just the roadside novelty come see the biggest whatever the biggest pecan is in like minnesota i think or something right and you're like alright i'm just gonna get off this highway and go look at this stupid huge pecan take a picture by it and like then buy so what are the economics let's say somebody does this like what's a what's a vertical where you're like or like a a category where you're like somebody should definitely do it for a beer like we just had twins a couple years ago and i wanted like where do we have to fly to if you're gonna have a baby and they have the coolest experience you race the the the you know the stroller around the track and then you try different america yeah yeah it should be in like lehigh utah or something right we're right as a mormons maybe you've ever seen yeah yeah but but like but like the novelty of they have twenty stores and you're gonna go and spend a week there and come out with eight thousand dollars worth of baby stuff is is the draw right you're gonna all your shopping done there every baby products representing like that's that's the novelty of it and the economics the economics is gonna vary by like like interest to interest where money made is it in the retail to sales or is it in the land appreciation because you now made a destination it just just more is it just a retail business that has higher than normal i've i i'm worried that i'm doing a bad job explaining this and if i am like let's keep digging on it because it's great but like we're so so for for a an internet business right the like our company there's a bunch of no name warehouses on the internet that's self fabric right but we are a little quilt shop in hamilton missouri in fact we're we're a cool quilt shop with all this branding and all this cool stuff that we've done and we'll never be the nameless face list warehouse right so if you're starting if you're starting you know whatever whatever goofy company you're doing right like the second you open up a town so one of the guys here he's doing like fire brand tea right yeah david you and i'm like i'm like bro like go go open up a a retail store because the second you do that i'm not just buying from your crappy warehouse where you're important call lift because you're like we're a real place it's a break a real branding play yeah like people like this you'll never come here even if you'll never come here because yeah nine percent of your don't traffic never goes there you're saying that that stands you out against every other d brand and our split our like we ninety percent of our revenues online ten percent in store a little less than at like eight percent in store but but like our marketing is ninety eight percent the town let me tell you the story about what oh susie brat quilt oh look at this new display we did oh all this stuff right and that's that's the story that we tell wow most of our traffic or most of our revenue comes from online sales right so that's why i'm saying like dude if you're if you have a brand that's faster so so many of these guys are just trying to flip shopify by stores like we import and it ships out of ship bob and it's great and it's like yeah but like people know they're just getting like scammed by i mean you're just buying to resell and try and make a profit and the second you build a little bit of a of an experience around it right like do the work to to build the physical manifestation of your brand it's the the the company all of a sudden is much much more interesting in my mind let's say you you sell the company in two years your your you or your family collectively or maybe a billion worth a billion you're not working with quilt anymore what what do you wanna do what do you wanna start another the company and what type of company what do you wanna do with your time money i no idea i started a company i love called pretzel this like two years ago and it we it was the it was the the photo roll meets the credit card statement right we itemized all of your transactions and show you this very beautiful like oh here's all the stuff i bought it was i thought it was super cool and like the dude the sku level data or aggregated around the user was so interesting me and could couldn't finance it ended up shutting it down and so like that was that was my my big play at it and now i've i've got some major ptsd like i never wanna raise money again i felt dude once you take somebody else's money and like don't give them a return i'm like i'm an investor i know it's fine but i felt so bad yeah so bad what do you wanna do then once so now i'm just doing lemonade sand stuff right it's like look like my therapist says she's like i think you wanna be vinci you you wanna like design a bridge and then a helicopter and then go paint a chap and i'm like yeah i think that's what i wanna do i just like i'm gonna do little lemonade stand style businesses just like little things that can't scaled like what's an example do you mean by like i wanna do a barbecue place right like and i'm like oh yeah i'd be great and know like have a have the meat the pickle the and the sauce right like that'd be cool and i could do the branding amazing and as long as i was cool to like let it die in four months i think i'd really enjoy it as soon as it turned into like oh now i built this thing i got grind it out like i'd be miserable and and so i'll just try like little stuff like that i think i i mean at some point i'll get into another thing but like right now when you're in your early twenties and in late teens did you think you're gonna be wealthy and then it no no i i dude that's interesting no not at all right and it's kinda jacked jack's with your head a little bit and like i never i never dreamed in my wildest dreams so i would be where i am today right and so like i was stuck my wife couple days ago i was like i think i might need can we do a vision board i've never dreamt of like what else is out there what else i wanna i wanna do with my life here you're like overs shot what you had paid here yeah you never rep guys sometimes you go over plan i didn't expect this to work and so landing here landing here i mean it's a it's a big it's a big thing in my head of like trying and navigate get like like in a in a very serious way of like i don't i don't know what what when you remove the motivation of money what do you do with the rest of your life because so much of our of our world is built around like gotta get money in the same year dude i step back from my company so the day to day work i got married i bought a house and we got pregnant with our first kid and i was like every milestone i imagined i ever wanted to work for and like dude when you're dating it's very it's a great reason to go to the gym you're like i gotta look i was said i'm married and i'm like screw it you know don't care how many push ups i can do like i'm not going anyway and and it was like it was a full on funky depression like not not like a depression like a lot of like grown up people have was like a baby depression for me but but like just figuring out what i was supposed to reach for was a was a really hard walk for me and where'd you like what was the how'd did you get out of that yeah i i don't well so like doing like man i just buried it inside and move on i know you'll come back couple later i am heavy with the reboot guys i know if you know like jerry over a reboot he's like the like the big exec coach shit coach who do go do job some other who who's he coaching i i don't know he's a nice man though and i like him a lot he looks like he coach somebody famous like you know clever yeah it was these are like a retreat now for ceo yeah it was i like what when i was running the company dude well because i was running the quote company and i i ended grown to like four hundred employees and i was like was like thirty thirty two or something like i didn't know what i was doing and when you when you scale that fast and you don't you you don't scale your own capacity to to lead i found myself like you know i sit down in room and and i was immediately like trying to make these other people feel stupid so they wouldn't notice that i didn't know what i was doing right he's throwing bombs in your own business you're like day rick i can't believe he did this say and they're like after a bit i'm not a yell at rick baby i'm so sorry is it you know there's not me we're on the same team and and like like i came out and i was like man i'm hurting that people around me i gotta fix it so i went on a on a boot camp or treat that they do and like i came out of that and i was like i either i i need to fire my c cofounder which was one of three c cofounder and i came back i was like i gotta fire you guys they're like no that's not gonna happen and we're like oh what should we do so then were like oh i'll step back and like we could we can manage this transition but but like to get to that point where i could sort of say those words out loud like man i can't keep doing this yeah because it's a family business it's all that it's the town like i felt all that weight on me and i couldn't get out and so what did a lot of the therapy stuff and at this point psychedelics yeah no dude i'm so i'm so intrigued by psychedelics but like i i'm i'm mormon right and so like the idea of doing mormon yeah yeah oh yeah so you look just on thought you would is no you don't you're the coolest mormon of ever met and and you know mormons here so that's nice yeah thank you needed say that that was one like in the room no but the but but no like i like i think because the stance is very murky in my from the religious standpoint so i'm like i've got i've got it a bunch of mushrooms encapsulated in my medicine cabinet that i'm like dr my wife i'm like dr someday i'm gonna go walking on the land and i just don't know where i am yet but i'm over i've never done it i'm i'm completely sober but i'm i'm totally into i'm trying to convince my wife to do in my my fears is like i just don't wanna be the one guy like oh he took it and then his brain snapped and like no i don't think that will happen with you thank you i don't think it would either because i've got a good brain but if it did i do very through drink no i don't drink never touched it well fuck i always thought like if i'm i'm because i drink either but i'm like if i freak out i could just get super drunk and i'll be okay you know so you you don't have any this this playbook feels made up on this spot did you no that's is that science smack well what is sides yeah no i just felt like that like my and that's my parachute you know that's my my escape patch i was hannah i don't i don't know what point i'll feel okay with but like at some point i'm just like wait so you bought it or you have it yeah no a buddy in my a buddy mine is very he's like i'm good at onboarding people just like my god you like alright and so never rid of it no and i meet those people and they're like dude it'll be so great so controlled so safe he he's just like he's emotionally stable though yeah i don't need this i'm like you what like to get first the interesting part is just like is just like the the guys are like and my greatest ideas in there and i'm like can i just i just wanna see what some of those ideas would yeah i don't i don't think i need the whole like i don't need the trip like your only using twelve percent of your brand right like did he got like your barber that's like i saw jesus yeah he was there bro i'm like that can be cool too i mean alright i don't know well dude this is awesome you came here not knowing anyone we got you on the pod is this pretty sick and most popular guy here do you enjoy meat some these people oh this is a blast this is a blast