Jan. 24, 2024

#219 - Jamie Mardis - CEO of Koffee Kult and former roadie / live events business owner

Show Notes
Transcript

Jamie cut his teeth in the automated lighting field, first as a touring lighting tech and programmer, later working directly for a couple of lighting manufacturers. He took a run on cruiseships, and finally decided he wanted to operate his own business. Jamie's business' including lighting, staging and generators but a new hobby and new passion, coffee, eventually became his business. Today, Koffee Kult is a growing brand and its loyal drinkers include our host, Marcel, who drinks our own Geezers Grind every day! This episode is brought to you by and .

0:02 Hi there and thanks for joining me today on Giza Gear Episode #219. Today's podcast is brought to you by Elation Professional. This year at LDI, Elation premiered the highly anticipated successor to the Proteus Hybrid called Proteus Hybrid Max. The Proteus Hybrid Max takes everything you've loved about the pioneering Proteus Hybrid and cranks it up to maximum power. This isn't just an update, however. Faster, brighter and tougher than its ground breaking predecessor. The IP66 Proteus Hybrid Max features all new technology like fast advanced features, Tri tier animation and spin sync tracking that makes it a breakthrough evolution in lighting excellence.

0:46 It boasts a category best 22,000 lumens of power, is capable of true linear zoom adjustments in any configuration and houses a massive toolbox of visual effects. The Proteus Hybrid Max uses the same highly efficient 500 flex lamp as Elation's Proteus Excalibur. For the perfect show partner check out Proteus Hybrid. max@elationlighting.com and today's podcast is also brought to you by Main Light, the partner you trust with the gear you want. Main Light is a dry hire rental provider excels in offering superior lighting and stage equipment without competing with its customers.

1:28 Everything from high intensity lights for high for large events to precision fixtures for theater and TV film. Main Light also offers for sale used equipment with a 60 day depot warranty. All equipment is meticulously maintained, tested and Main Light owned with no brokerage with four key locations, Main Light tri-state in Teterboro, NJ, Main Light East in Wilmington, DE, Main Light South in Nashville, TN and Main Light West in Las Vegas, NV. They combine the resources of a national company with the personal touch of a local provider. Main Light consistently updates its inventory with the latest in lighting technology, trust solutions and control consoles, including a wide selection of weather resistant IP65 rated fixtures. For outdoor venues, visit mainlight.com to explore their offerings and connect with representatives across all main light locations, ensuring your events lighting needs are met with expertise and efficiency.

2:37 A special mention to Coffee Cult is a partner to Gear Source in that they have created a special geezers of gear coffee called Geezer's Blend and I'm sorry, Geezer's Grind. Jeez, I can't even remember the name of my own coffee. So it's called Geezer's Grind and it's not only an excellent coffee, but Coffee Cult has been providing all of the proceeds of those sales of Geezers grind coffee to Robi backstage, which is a charity for our industry that helps out people in need, fallen soldiers in our industry, etcetera, and has been very critical in the lives of so many people.

3:21 So Robi Backstage is an excellent charity. I suggest you support it in other ways. But if all you do is buy this coffee, you're helping because Coffee Cult is committing their proceeds on the coffee to Roby Backstage for the benefit of our industry. So today is a special day to promote Coffee Cult because we do have the founder and CEO of Coffee Cult, a long time friend of mine and also an industry guy, Jamie Mardis, on the podcast today. So let's go ahead and say hi to Jamie. Well, hello Mr. Mardis, how are you today? I'm fine, Marcel. Thanks. How are you? I'm frigging. Unbelievably awesome.

4:02 I've had two cups of coffee cult coffee and I'm zooming, zoom zoom. I've run out of decaf, so now I'm on full high test geezers grind now. So it's a beautiful blend of dark roast. No, it's what's it called? Roadie. Something. Road dog. Road Dog Yeah it's Rd. dog and medium mixed and God damn it's good. But yeah I'm pretty zippy right now. Two cups is boom. Is that your? Is that your average near your normal in the morning? Well, two cups. Or so I've gotten to now, where because I've I've been paying a little bit of attention to this ticker thing that apparently as you get older, becomes problematic.

4:47 And so I've tried to knock it down to two cups of caffeinated coffee per day and then I'll do one or two cups of of decaf. And your decaf actually is the only decaf that I've ever tried that I actually like. So And I'm not blowing smoke, believe it or not, I I would say that even if you weren't on the podcast with me, your decaf is is excellent and and drinkable, whereas most taste like decaf. So. Yeah. Thanks. A lot of times we'll put on the cupping table here at the office and a lot of people can't tell that it that it is a decaf. So yeah. Yeah, I. And you know, once we get to the coffee segment of this podcast, maybe you can tell me why that is.

5:30 Like, what makes your decaf better than other decaf? Because for me, like, I won't drink decaf normally. It just tastes like shit, you know? I just don't like it. And this one, like, it's funny because I have it in a Lovazo decaf can or Lavazza Lavazza decaf can because I was using this Lavazza and there was like 1/4 of the can left forever because I just hated it and my girlfriend was drinking it more than I was. And so I'm using it in a Lavazza can. And I could tell when I got down to the bottom of the coffee called coffee and I was starting to dig into the Lavazza because it was mixed in there and I was like, jeez, this is shit, I don't like it. So yeah, I can definitely tell the difference. But but now I'm out.

6:18 So today I had I had high test coffee and that's good. Drink it all day, you'll then you'll crash about 3:00. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Like, you know, to me, honestly, coffee doesn't have an incredible impact on whether I'm tired or awake or whatever. Like, I can drink coffee right before I go to bed. I can have a double espresso and go to bed and go straight to sleep. Oh, wow. It's weird. It's weird. Like when I go to Italy, I'll have you know, I don't know, you and I went to Italy. I remember one time and like I'll have 10 espressos in a day, no problem and still sleep.

6:59 They're everywhere. You got those little machines you put your your quarters in and that gives you the little cup and and. It's actually pretty good. It's actually pretty good. Yeah. You know, it was funny. I remember when I got my first Nespresso machine and Fausto from Komar visited and stayed at my house. And I said when we got to the house I said you want an espresso And he said no, Marcel And I said, Fausto, come on, do you want it? And he goes, Marcel, I I don't want to be offensive, but your coffee is shit. And I said no, no, it's actually pretty good. Try one. And he had one and he was blown away. He was like, wow, this kind of tastes like real coffee.

7:39 This is pretty good. And he's right, though. I mean, you know, like, I'm sure you'll have an espresso after dinner sometimes or something. And it's always so disappointing. It's just like, it just tastes like shitty, strong coffee. It doesn't even taste like espresso. Like it's it's not creamy. Like, that's one of the things, you know. Again, sorry to stay on coffee here, but without being a sales pitch. This is just true. Like, one of the things that really my girlfriend and I instantly noticed when we switched to Coffee Cult was it's creamy. Like I use less cream and less sugar than I do with, you know, the pods or whatever the Keurig coffee and stuff. I use less cream and less sugar and like, it makes that frothy thing at the top with it's got to do with my machine that I use too.

8:32 But it's just, I don't know, it's a creamy coffee and it just has a whole different level of flavor and and enjoyment to it. So yeah, unfortunately though, you're forcing me to #1 spend 2 grand for another one of these amazing coffee machines in Canada, and secondly, to bring like a suitcase full of coffee cult with me when I go up there. Because you you don't ship to Canada. Damn. You first. There's some people that we could ship to Canada for that through a ship to Canada is the taxes for some reason you manufacture in in Canada, you can ship to the US with no problem.

9:13 But for us to ship to Canada, there's extra duties and fees and we don't know what they are until they go there. And then what happens is the customer gets charged for them and then the customer yells and it's we want to, we don't want a bad customer experience, so. Yeah, I can totally understand that. To ship there. But if you needed coffee in Canada and you have my cell. Phone. Isn't there like some sort of a Co roaster or something like where you could send the raw beans to somebody in Canada and it doesn't cost you all those duties and taxes and then they just they handle fulfillment for you? Kind of. So we were going to do Europe right before COVID, and we just, COVID came. So it just didn't happen.

9:56 But if they roast it on our, like our machine, yeah, our type of machine. We could give them our roast profile and send our coffee to them and they could do that, Yeah, but even every single machine isn't the same as Well, yeah, it's supposed to transfer, but it's not like a moving light where you can plug it in and take one moving light and put it in for another moving. Light. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just Exchange profiles or whatever. Yeah, I get what you're saying. No, I mean, it's, I want to learn more about it on this podcast, but I want to kind of go back into the Wayback Machine a little bit. And you know, when you and I met, you were you were a road dog and you were in our industry, you were living in California.

10:38 I don't even honestly remember how we met. Maybe you do, I don't know. But. I very strictly remember how we met. Well, I want to hear about that cuz I forget. But you know, it ultimately led to us working together for a number of years and had a great old time. And then you went off and became an entrepreneur and started some really impressive businesses. But how do we meet? We met. I was. I worked for, I guess it was LSD at the time, light and sound design. And we were here with Shoniah Twain for CBS Special in Bayfront Park. And I remember that special with Backstreet Boys, too.

11:19 Yeah, Backstreet Boys. So, and that's why I wanted to move to South Florida was we were here for that for like 4 weeks in February and the weather was awesome and we're going to Tobacco Rd. every night drinking until like 6 in the morning. Yeah, and you thought that was Florida, right? Beautiful weather, beautiful women, tobacco, Rd. All restaurants and bars are amazing. Yeah, there's no crime. And high end had a out back. You know back in the old days it was there was a lot of brand loyalty like I was a high end guy for the most part like studio color, cyber lights, that was my thing. And then you had just started at at high end and John Wiseman actually I think helped me or referred me to that job and then you were down here with him and that's where we that's where we met for the first.

12:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember I I brought my boat over or I was gonna, maybe I didn't bring it, but I I think I was going to bring it. And then I ended up not bringing it or something because I was going to dock it right there. And and I said, hey, John, let's go do some scuba diving. And he goes, yeah, you know, I would, but when I was doing drugs, I loaned out all of my scuba gear to somebody and I can't remember who. So he's, he's lost his scuba gear. He could never find it again because he couldn't remember who he loaned it to. He was high. Yeah, but yeah, that was a cool show. I remember that show. I remember didn't Elton? Elton John was there too, because I remember one of the guys in Backstreet Boys got in trouble because he was playing on Elton's piano and it was Elton's real piano that they fly around for him.

12:57 And I think that was the same gig, right? He might have been there, you know, They kind of blur together after a while, but. Yeah, yeah. That some of them stick out, but I was touring. That's actually when I met Shania and and couldn't believe how tiny she was. She was like 5 feet tall or something. I was like, whoa, you're Shania, Dwayne. Holy shite, she was. Yeah, that's my first experience with Morpheus Lights too, back in the day. Oh yeah. I could have it. I forgot you were on that gig. That's where we met. That's true. And. Then extra trailers of of lights to service the one trailer of lights on the stage back in the day. Yeah, what?

13:39 I understand. Well, that wasn't just Morpheus. I mean that was that was that era, you know, the VL small numbers were all pretty unreliable. You know, you had all these magical texts that had to follow them around. Obviously the the icon from LSD wasn't always that reliable. So that was all that early stuff, you know, It was meant to be handled by their own texts and they could keep it working. And it's kind of like a Harley-Davidson, you know, fun to ride, but you always had a tool bag in your back pocket. Always. Thank goodness. That's how I had a job back then, so. Yeah, fixing broken shit. Well, I mean, that's the thing. Like, I talk to people about that all the time now. All of this imported lighting and and wherever it's made, it doesn't even matter whether it's made in Italy or made in China or made in wherever.

14:29 It's all frigging good like and and I talked to Tex and and lighting guys all the time now and girls and I just say do you realize how lucky you are? Like I mean you know I remember when the the rig came down and there was a long list of stuff that needed to be ordered and we'd get the parts order for the next show the next day or whatever and it just doesn't happen anymore. Like a story I think I've told before. I went to the Airton headquarters in in Paris and I was talking to the engineer and and I was helping put together a deal for a company that was buying a bunch of their product. And so I had to ask some good questions and stuff and I said, so you know, if I'm buying a bunch of this stuff, what, what backup parts do I need?

15:18 What's the spare parts package that I need? And the engineer looks at me like, and he's got the unit ripped apart. I'm looking at the inside of it and it's just blowing me away. Like it's really, really, really impressive guts compared to what we remember, right. And so he's looking at me funny and he, he goes, what do you mean? And I said, well, like let's say I'm on a an island somewhere and I'm not going to have access to any UPS or FedEx and I need parts to keep these lights working. What do I need? And he goes, I don't know, like maybe you know one of these, maybe one of these. And I said, but what breaks? And he goes nothing. It just doesn't break, you know?

16:00 It's pretty reliable and that's really every light now, like whether it's Acme or American DJ or or Chauvet or or High End or any of it, It's all really good stuff now, so. Yeah, it's amazing how much the technology has changed and at the back and when I was young and when I was on the road it's it was amazing how where we thought we're like very advanced in technology then. But 2025 years later, we look back and we're like, man, that was just the beginning. Yeah, yeah. No, we were, I mean we were like, you know, I'm a little older than you.

16:40 So you know I remember the earliest moving lights and you know we were there at at sort of the the beginning of the industry and saw this stuff advance all the way up. And and you know, I worked for Martin. I I learned how to sell broken silly lights, you know, and knowing that they were going to break, but everything broke. So it was OK And then high end kept getting better and better and it didn't break as much as our stuff. And it was like, oh boy, we now we're in trouble. And so eventually Martin just had to get a lot better at what they were doing and at least be on par with high end as far as reliability was concerned. But again, none of that stuff compared to what we have today and some of that is just down to the LED light source, right? Sure.

17:29 A lot less heat. Yeah. This is a lot of problems. Yeah. Power supply. Wow. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, so obviously with heat comes all kinds of hazards where you're burning out motors and I remember motors where the lubricant was leaking out of them and then they would seize up and it was just because it was so hot that it was causing the motor to expand and then it was leaking the lubricant out of it. And I'm like, what? Like why are we dealing with so many weird problems, you know? But yeah, I mean that it's incredible how far it's gone and and it's not stopping like the the advancements that these companies are coming up with just blow me away every time one of these guys comes out with a new light.

18:15 It's like, wow, like I it used to be where it was just we've got one more gobo than the other guys or whatever, right? Or we've. Got. CM we've got CMY color mixing. They don't, you know, Yeah, our gobos turn. Exactly. Our gobos. Our gobos not only turn, but they're indexable, you know, like now the things that they're doing with this stuff is like unreal, you know? So yeah, it's it's all pretty cool. Do you remember our first trip to Italy to Comar? I remember being in like some backroom with Bruno and this optic table, and he was like this and this and this and this is the first I've ever been exposed to optics like that. And that was what I think. Really cool.

18:57 That was, that was some of my favorite moments. Was just watching a mad scientist with you know, just this optics table and just going, I know what I need. I need a the PC lens and one of these over here. And he'd just throw all these things together and he'd produce this crazy bright beam on the wall and you're like, whoa, But in his head he's like, Oh my God, this, this has got to be 25,000 lumens or whatever, right? Like he's he's just thinking at a different level than we are. And but the weird thing with him is he'd put together all of these lenses and stuff. Like we basically did this with the CF7 you and me, you know, you me, fausto him.

19:42 We just kind of went but can't we do this, can't we do this? And next thing you know you had the first light that had color mixing and zoom and all of these things and it was short lived from a standpoint of being you know exclusive. Like very soon after, there were a lot of other things that were as good or better than the CF 7, but it was the first, you know, that did what it did and had what it had and. But I mean the the guy from this crazy vision in this table that he had a light came out a couple of months later. It was incredible. And he used carbon fiber so that he could do like rapid prototyping basically, and didn't have to go out and do the, you know, the the molds and stuff. So yeah, that was fun.

20:26 That was fun. Now we just 3D print everything. Yeah, yeah. It's all different now. It's different today, for sure. Is Fausto? Is Fausto in charge of Komar still? No, no. Fausto hasn't been at Komar for a number of years. Fausto has a really cool business. You should reach out to him sometime. I had him on the podcast, actually listen to his podcast. It was pretty fun. But yeah, he's got a business where basically he's doing engineering for all kinds of different manufacturers, like dental companies, lighting companies, architectural lighting companies. Like he just basically somebody comes to him with an idea and says we need something to do this and he designs it and helps getting it get it into manufacturing wherever it's being manufactured, and then moves on to the next project. And he's doing really, really well. Also is good dude.

21:23 Yeah, he's smart, man. He's so smart. I saw him a couple of months ago. I had to go to Italy for for some racing business and I had dinner with Fausto one night and spend a bunch of time with him. It was great. I love that guy. Oh cool. He taught us both so much, didn't he? Yes. Likewise, so many spare. Parts, Jamie. Exactly, exactly. Was it you who was with me that time when after the original, like, Komar Trackman thing all merged under that Stanton Group stuff with Gerard, which you and I, I believe pretty much hated? And Nick, like, we were all going, why did we do this? Like, what's going on here?

22:06 We had this beautiful little company and now it's a mess. But was it you and I who were running through the warehouse with flashlights, trying to find parts to send to Steve Cohen on one of his tours? Because Stanton decided that the warehouse should be closed at whatever it was like 3 in the afternoon or something. And we're like, you know, these guys that we're supporting aren't even up by then. Like, you know, we need to be able to ship at 6:00 or 6:30, run something to the airport. And so we were literally running through the airport or through the warehouse with flashlights, finding parts to send to these guys so that they could have them the next morning and not kill us.

22:46 Yeah, because Steve Cohen, when he said it needs to be at my hotel tomorrow morning, if it wasn't there, he wasn't a happy guy. No. And he was super nice. So you you you wanted him get it there just. To cut he was nice until he wasn't I. Had a bad experience with him, He was always. Yeah, well, 'cause I took the brunt of it, 'cause, you know, I didn't want it getting down to poor little you, you know, I didn't want you to cry to go home in tears. You know, I I just took the brunt of it and got yelled at by him and Michael Brokaw and anybody else who felt like yelling at me. Sometimes it was Joel Young would call and say, did Steve call you? And I'd be like, yeah, yeah, I talked to Steve, OK, Cuz I want this stuff tomorrow, you know, get in line. I guess he's Jolly Yellen at.

23:31 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's it's incredible the stuff that I've had to do to make a living in this industry. But you know, on their defense, there's big shows and big money and there's a there has things have to be. A certain one. Yeah. Yeah, No. And and I mean talk about passionate individuals, those guys, right. So, no, I mean, we were proud and excited to be on the shows that we were on. Like we were little old Trackman working out of that upstairs building, you know, you, me, Cynthia, Nick, Adrian, yeah, Adrian and Betsy, right. Yeah. I mean, we were small but fierce. And you know, we had, I remember at one time we had like Madonna, the Eagles.

24:18 I don't even remember we had like four or five major shows out all at the same time. And I was just like. You know, this is crazy. Snails. Eagles. I remember being on Eagles and Madonna. We're in rehearsal at the same time in Lai. Was out there for that. Yeah, I was, I think a month in Los Angeles. Yeah, after there from I wanted to get out of here. I was back there for like a month. Babysitting the CF Sevens, I think because I know Cohen was a big fan of CF12 hundreds. He was one of the guys that made that light famous. But the CF 7 became so useful so quickly. Although, you know, the red flags kind of made its output disappear.

25:00 But I think we fixed that. Yeah, just just slide them in a little bit. Yeah. Well, I think what we did is we changed the color red. Like we we made them less red basically. But yeah, I mean it was a super popular light. It won loads of awards. Remember we won some some LDI awards and Plaza awards and all kinds of stuff. It was it was a fun period. I still have, I think I still have a Backstreet Boys CF7 jacket hanging up in my in my closet. Yeah, those raincoat things that we had made. I don't think it fits anymore, but I have one, yeah. I might have a larger size one that I could send to you. Or is it smaller that you need? Must be smaller. Yeah, no, no, no.

25:41 I think it's bigger. But the I remember when we won the award at LDI for the CF7 and I was, I remember being drunk and Bruno being there. We got the award and then I knocked the award off the pedestal onto the floor in front of Bruno. Yeah, not good. Not good. No, that was that was a really fun period of time. I, I I miss. I miss those guys. I miss Bruno. I miss that. Just the camaraderie of being sort of the little little engine that could, you know, I mean competing against some some behemoth companies and just doing a really great job. So yeah, that was fun. It was a fun period. So after all of that, I think right after that like you didn't go to another moving light company or anything, did you? You went and started your own business, right? I did track them.

26:29 I'd want to do web. Well, I wanted to have a web hosting company but I didn't have the funds or the resources or any of that, so. So by the way, sorry to interrupt, but I don't want it to not be said that you were the original web guy for Gearsource. You you helped build or you built basically the very first original version of gearsource.com, which at the time was gear hyphen source.com. And I'll never forget it. I mean, it was that shitty software that you got from England called Actinic and. Isn't that what it was? I don't even remember what it.

27:09 Was actinic and it was horrible, but it worked. I mean remember this was 2002, There was no Shopify, there was no nothing. There was no like, software that you could just go sign up for cloud software and build an e-commerce site or whatever. So, you know, I remember like you built it. I think you finished it in like maybe end of October, late October. And and we got our first order. I remember it was in December and it was a Martin Wizard and it was like, I don't know, 700 bucks or something. I don't remember how much it was, but I just remember the order coming in and saying you have an order on this actinic software and I was like, called you up and I'm like, Jimmy, what do I do?

27:55 What do I do with this software? I don't know what to do and and you know, you said I don't know either, you know, like let's figure it out. And so I figured out how to get the order from there into QuickBooks and to actually satisfy the order. It was, it was, it was crazy fun times. Again, it's, you know, those early stages in businesses that are so much fun. Right. Yeah, that was that was fun, creating something new. I mean, no one was really doing that then. No. No. And that's what I wanted to do after I left the lighting world. So yeah, worked out pretty good. But I found myself back in the lighting world somehow. Yeah. Know really anything.

28:36 That's how to start a web hosting business or any of that. So that's a lighting guy since I was younger, so. Yeah, I mean it lures you back. It's it's part lifestyle, part just what, you know, you know, like you've got a comfort level and confidence or whatever in in that world, whereas you go into this IT world and it's like whoa, there's all these nerdy people from different countries and stuff. Like, I don't know what I'm doing as much as they do. Maybe, I don't know, but. With degrees, they have degrees and college education and things like that, so it's. Freaking smart. Yeah, I mean, you were smart too. Like you were the only guy I knew who knew how to build a website.

29:18 So boom, I went to you and I think you charged me like $2000 or something. It wasn't a very large sum of money and and I remember we got in a fight over something because I I remember arguing with your dad. Your dad actually called me and said, you know, you RA RA and I got in trouble from your dad. I think a lot of that was my mistake because my dad found that, actually found that software and and then what happened was I was at Disney and then something happened and I couldn't deal with it. So then you called Akram the software company, and then they called my dad because my dad was involved with it. So. Oh, you sold me a dodgy license is what you did. No, I didn't even tell you a license. We were using it.

30:04 We were. Using it so. Piracy. Yeah, we were pirating. Software. Not really, no. It was our license. It was our license and we were using it. It was just that. It wasn't a piracy thing, but. It was. They thought it. Was well, it it was a well, we didn't know you. So they're like, well, who's that guy? And why is? He So I see. Saying. We don't. I just, I I don't know why I remember, but I remember getting yelled at by your dad and I was like, what the heck is going on here? My dad doesn't know either, so that's crazy. Yeah, he. Was pretty calm. He was passionate. Well, probably because they they probably accused him of doing something bad, you know, and and he probably didn't like it very much or whatever.

30:48 But anyways, what, what was that, that first business that you went back and started back in the lighting business? I went back to the cruise ships. Well, I'm so at Trackman since we're in South, we were in South Florida and met people from the cruise ships. So I need to make some money. Why my my web thing was was going so I started working for Lightspeed Pete who? Who is it? Pete. Peter Moore. Peter Moore, So. Forgot all about that. I forgot you worked with Peter. Moore and then so I met some other cruise ship people and I was working for them on another cruise line and they said if somebody had a business in South Florida that had that service cruise ships, we would use them all the time. And they I was like OK well then I should go start so I can have this person as a customer.

31:39 That company, that cruise line never hired me ever. But fortunately, Peter Moore Peter the company Peter Moore was contracting out hired me which which was he was pissed about I'm sure. But it wasn't on purpose. They. But I needed to work. So I was like OK I'll go work for you guys. Yeah. And that turned craziness. Yeah. Traveling the world and I think I have six sets of tools on six sets of tools somewhere in the world that all in motion to go to a cruise ship somewhere. For a try not what was that company called? Sidram. That was Sidram services. Yeah. And Sidram, of course, is your last name backwards. Last thing backwards, so a Sitaram services and then that was great for a while.

32:26 The cruise ship business was really good. They had a lot of high end and Martin equipment which I knew how to fix. So I did a lot of repairs. I tried, I trained, I did a training for them on whole hog on hog PC. They had a lot in their lounges at the time and then that was great till my son was born and I came home one day and my son was like, who are you? So I told my wife that I want to stay home, so I started a generator company. I figured I could be everyone's friend. The sound guys, the lighting guys I didn't have to worry about fighting with. Everyone except Ron. Everyone's friend except Ron. Ron. Friends with everyone but Ron.

33:07 Anyway, so I. Remember getting that phone call from Ron going, what the hell is this guy doing? You know, he's trying to take all my customers and my staff and what the hell is he doing? And I remember calling you up and saying, hey, you must be doing something right. Ron's pissed. So, yeah, you you took a lot of business quickly and I mean it was, I don't think it was from and hopefully Ron's listening to this, but I don't think it was from any deceptive practices or or you know, UN unruly practices or or you know unscrupulous things that you were doing. It was hustle. It was sheer hustle. You were just out working them. It was hustle and plus I was a technician. You know, I was a road to, I was a road guy. So I understood what the shows needed and I only did entertainment power.

33:56 And so I understood like I knew what they needed for their stages. I knew what they expected. I knew they expect someone called like with Steve Cohen one parts on his desk the next day. That's how it is. So background. So I bonded with those customers fairly easily because I knew what was expected. So that's how I gained, that's how we gained, that's how we gained a large customer base. Quick, I had 44 generators. Yeah. No, you grew that business so quickly and that again was called Sidram Power, right, that. Was Sidram power correct? And what did you end up selling that company or you just divested or what? How did that go away?

34:38 In that company, I still have a warehouse of gear, actually. Really. Yeah, I still have. Oh, I got tons of four hot cable ramps. Distro box, one of my butt texted me yesterday about. I kind of I miss it if I sell it. But I I talked to my wife the other day about it and I was like, I think I'm going to want to start doing that again. She's like, no, you don't. Yeah, yeah. She's like, I don't want doing that. It's it's just like, you know, growing your hair back again. You go, you go to your your Barber or hair stylist or whatever and go, I think I want to grow my hair long again. And they go, no, you don't. You know, you have this beautiful vision of the future with flowing, beautiful locks of hair like that. It's just not.

35:20 It's going to grow in Gray and nasty and Nah, you don't want to do that. Well, I thought. I also thought that I had this great idea of going and doing a gig with one of my buddies. I still have a lot of friends in the, yeah, in the Internet business. And I was like, I'll just see if somebody, if I can go be a tech for someone or move a light tech or something, go hang some lights. And then I started looking at their Facebook pages and their social media. I was like, all these events start after I'm in bed. I don't think I'm. That's so funny. It's so true though, too. You know, it's like I have to go to the the Panthers hockey game tonight because my buddy Randy, I don't know if you remember Randy, but he's constantly bugging me to go to the hockey games and he's got season tickets and he always gets these extra tickets and he's like, Marcel go, Marcel go. And it used to be really fun when I live 10 minutes away. Now I live an hour away and I'm like, oh God, the game doesn't end till like 10:00.

36:15 And by the time I get home it's like 1115 or something. It's just not worth it, You know? It's right parking. Parking used to be free of Panthers. It's. 40 bucks now to park at a game that you're paying all this money for tickets for which I'm not paying for the tickets, but 40 bucks to park and it used to be free. You're right. I hate that. Did you ever go to a game with me when I had the the the parking underneath the building? I did, yes. Because that was whoop ass where you just. Pull up. 50 parking spots down there or something you pull right under the building. They check you for bombs and stuff with their mirrors, and you pull under the building, straight to the elevators, up to your seats. Boom. It's like being a rock star. That was the good old days.

36:57 She had good. I had season tickets later on and yeah, a few years ago and mine were on the glass, but yours were up a little bit higher above the glass line and I think the I like those, those. Are. Yeah. On the glass. You can't really. I mean, you can see the look on their face as they're getting punched right in front of you, but you can't see the goal that's scored on the other end of the ice or whatever, right? Correct. Right. And we were on the we were on the rough side or the bad box side, the penalty side. Yeah, it was sometimes it was hard to see through the penalty box. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Time. I love hockey. Yeah, yeah it's. I mean I'm biased of course cuz I'm Canadian, but I still think it's the best live sport, Most sports, I prefer to watch on television. Hockey is not one of those.

37:43 No hockey. I don't like hockey on TV. I like it on TV, but I I love it live. It's it's an incredible live sport. So, so yeah, I I have to stay up past my bedtime tonight and go to a hockey game. So I get what you're saying. I remember my ex-wife Barb, one time she had a a show with it was either Crystal Method or Chemical Brothers and it was during, you know, Music Week or whatever it's called. And and she goes, do you want to go see them? And I go, yeah, that'd be fun. I'll, I'll go see them. You know, I probably know the designer or whatever. And I said, yeah, I'll go see him with you. And she goes, OK, they go on at, I think it was like 1230 or one or something. And I'm like, hell, no, they go on at 1:00 in the morning. No, I'm not going to that.

38:34 Yeah, I. Mean. Yeah, that's how it was. Yeah, yeah. Do you? Do you know Lawrence Upton? Yeah, of course, yeah, I worked. Him. I worked for him. Yeah, Crazy. Dude. Crazy dude, you're out there. Find me. Call me. Your Lawrence is crazy. I had a great with Lawrence. I've got his number if you need it. Yeah, I would love to talk to him well. If it's still the same, I haven't talked to him in a couple of years, but if it's still the same number, I've I've got it. I don't remember if he ended up coming on the podcast or not. We were talking about him coming on and then I don't remember if he actually did or not. I think he did. I think I've got a podcast with with Laz Upton. The best tour I ever did was with Lawrence. Really.

39:16 U.S. tour my life with the thrill. Kill Colt. They were that. Just a small industrial golf band and one bus and a trailer. Those are those are the most fun. Tours. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. He he's, he's a Wildman, I mean. And and some of the things that, like, you know, when we were talking about him coming on the podcast, we'd go off into the weeds on some really crazy stories and it's like whoa, you know, like he's he follows some some wild stuff. He's is it Laws, Who's a big, big guy like World War Two. Yes. Buff. Yeah, he's really, really into that stuff. He's English, so he's Yeah. I always thought every person from England was like, was lost because, yeah, it's something that he started telling me about World War Two.

40:03 Yeah. Yeah, that's that's him. Great. I'm really into that stuff. And he wanted to talk to me about it. And I don't have any knowledge. You know, I I know like the two or three movies I've seen or whatever, but that's about it, right? I'm out. I'm done. That's it. That's all I know. Super artistic. Super creative, yeah. Yeah, brilliant guy. That tour was a low budget tour and I think we had maybe six. What were they? Color studios. And in order to get more out of them, he put mirrors on the back of the stages, but like reflective, like and it just filled the whole. Stage. Like twice as many lights, Yeah. It's just very smart guy. Yeah, Well, and some of the stuff he did with Crystal Method was was fun as hell too. Like, you know, I love some of that stuff Like at the end of the day, they're DJs, right?

40:51 And yes, I think he was one of the early sort of EDM pioneers of, of lighting design, you know, because the DJs didn't really get a lot of lights back then. And and here's a guy touring as LD for a DJ or whatever. And it's like, whoa, that's weird. We had data flash wall. What? I mean that that data flash wall was like very cool. Yeah. Technology, Yeah. I think like a stack of four LCD controllers that were custom programmed for him for that. Yeah, that that was the Brad Chiller thing too. So. Yeah, I know. That was, that was really, really cool. High End did some cool stuff like that, like that was, you know, obviously Richard behind most of that stuff because Richard loved the music, loved the people behind the music, and that was his vibe, right?

41:40 And I I think that's what went missing sort of in the whole High End thing was the less and less Richard became involved, the more corporate and boring it became. Right, it was awesome. I remember my first trip to High End and I met Craig Burroughs and his his wife at the Lid. I think it was Liz at the time and I met them and they we had so much fun in Austin and the factory was so cool. I remember their Swag Room was like the size of my entire Coffee Colt. Yeah, the Swag Room was fun they had. So much swag. I've never seen so much swag anywhere and that was that was really cool. They really put out and tried to teach the technicians and the LDS and the board and the programmers and stuff like that. They were very good at getting their brand across. Yeah, yeah, No, They did an amazing job. High end, did an incredible job.

42:35 They were as a smaller and more eager competitor. I always looked up to them huge. And I remember when I went to work for them, it was so weird because I was the Hatfields joining the Mccoys. And so when they brought me into that swag room, take whatever you want, I was like, I can't wear high end stuff, you know? Like, it just didn't feel right, you know? It felt really weird, like putting on high end stuff after, you know, working so hard to to try and beat them for 10 years or whatever. But Teller to negotiate from John Wiseman when he was there. Yeah, that's a good person to learn to negotiate from.

43:15 He's one of the. Best. He's John Wiseman's pretty good. So it was him. And then I came out to work for you. So then I had to learn how to be nice. So I'm John used to know people. He's cutting them off. Like you're not getting any lights unless you do as I say. And then I come out to track them and everybody's. So totally. It was a totally different vibe. Yeah, we. Well, because that's the position that we were always in. You know, like starting with Martin, you know, we had to kiss a lot of ass to get things done. We couldn't, we couldn't demand anything. You know, I mean it just it it wasn't that that sort of a situation. We were in a distant number two or three or four position. We weren't.

43:57 We weren't, you know, the leaders who could threaten people and stuff. I think I got on John fast once when I was at Trackman about something and he got mad about it and I started laughing and telling him he didn't like his own medicine. But but I learned a lot from John and I didn't work for them. Their office was by my house, so I used to. If I wasn't working or broke on a gig, I would go over there and program or. Oh, the LA High End office, you mean? Yeah, office. Yeah, open that office. That was, where was that Burbank? Van Nuys. Area Van Nuys, right? Yeah, Yeah. Is that where you grew up? I lived in LA for a long time. Yeah, for the most part.

44:38 I grew up in LA, Where. Were you born? Illinois, Peoria. I'm on a Caterpillar tractor. I didn't even know that. Yeah. What else is in Peoria? Nothing. I was thinking, no, I was thinking the jail from Blues Brothers, but that's in Joliet. Yeah, that's a little bit. That's a little bit away from there, but. That's where World Music Theatre is too. Or whatever it's called today. But the The Shed. Is it? Yeah. In Juliet, yeah, yeah. I went to a bunch of shows there in like the early 90s. It's fun, yeah. And then, so that was good. Then we left. I left and did generators and power, and somehow I wound up in coffee. I did staging for a while.

45:24 So the casino, the Seminoles, the local casino here we're doing power for. And my daughter was dancing at the time, So I bought some staging from her or for her and they found out I had staging. And they're like, we want to rent your stage. I'm like, no I don't. I don't want to do staging because I went staging before and I didn't. Care for it? Yeah. I think I got another call from Ron right about then. By the way, what is this guy doing? He's just copying everything I do. And I said maybe he's just, yeah, maybe he's just doing business, buddy. That was it. People asked me for stuff. I didn't. I don't think he was in the staging business really then, but a lot of people, yeah, you know, our business is really competitive.

46:05 It's very, very competitive. It is, yeah. It's a very competitive industry. Everybody's friends until you're bidding against each other and then it's like, you know, lose my number. As long as you're helping them, giving them something for free, they're your. Body. Yeah. So as I understand it, the the the coffee story is basically that it started as a hobby where you just basically wanted better coffee and you learned a little bit about it. And I know how you operate like you, you're a little bit like me, but even worse, where you don't do anything halfway. Like if you decide you're going to do something, you're like, I'm going.

46:45 All the way in I was like, and I bought station because I thought I wasn't getting generator gigs. So Cena wanted to rent stages and then I bought a mobile stage because I didn't they I thought I wasn't getting these jobs, but kind of find out that wasn't the case. The jobs weren't happening or whatever. So I wound up in the staging business and then since I was doing so much, I needed better coffee because coughing is not sleeping. Yeah, I know there was. Yeah, all I did was work. So I started. I bought a coffee roaster. Like like everything that I do, I was like, I have. I didn't buy a small coffee roaster. I bought a 12K roaster. So I had to roast the minimum I could. Roasted.

47:26 That was 11 lbs. But but hang on a SEC. So were you like a big coffee drinker? Like you loved coffee and it was just a passion and. So you were reading? Like coffee magazines and stuff about where the best beans come from and all that kind of stuff. Is that sort of part of it? Well, when I when I was a kid in Los Angeles, my 1A guy that I knew had a coffee shop called Cafe Cafe Mocha on Melrose, which was down the street from my house. And he sold his half to his partners because he was doing some Internet thing. And we were like, oh, you're not cool. You're not doing coffee anymore. You're doing the Internet thing. And that that guy, that person, actually, his name's Skype Dayton. He was the founder of EarthLink.

48:10 So he actually took coffee shop to go start EarthLink. And we were like. Probably not a bad idea. Yeah, I should have. I should have gone with him. But so I've been to coffee for. I liked coffee for a long, long, long, long time. So I just had the means in a warehouse and I was like, I need better coffee. It sucks here. And I had. I bought a Jura at the time. Do you have a Jira yet? Espresso machine. No, the one I have is Delonghi. It's a Delonghi automatic thing that does it, grinds the beans and does all of the different stuff. Yeah, the JIRA is the very similar. So I had, I had a JIRA and I was drinking coffee out of a can that was beans. And I was like, oh, this is good. But I wonder if I can find something better. And that's how it started.

49:01 So I had a roast 11 lbs Of coffee. So all of my delivery trucks for Sidram either staging our generators had coffee and I were giving them out to our customers. Oh, that's cool is how it started. And that's cool. Very organic, very organic way to build a customer base. Yeah, just. To start handing it out for free. And it was called Center Stage Coffee because I was like, well, I don't know what to call it, this, whatever. It's going to be Center Stage Coffee. And so we were giving it out and then people started asking for it if it wasn't on the trucks. They said, can we have coffee? And we're like, well, we don't have any, but I'll bring you some next time, I promised. They're like, no, I'll buy it from you. I want the coffee. So that's how I wound up.

49:45 We wound up selling coffee. It was not for any other reason that people wouldn't leave us alone on how they wanted the coffee, which was cool because we were making something that was awesome. So you just left your office, went into the warehouse, started roasting coffee on your own and and probably bagging it on your own. Shipping it on your own, doing everything on your own because you couldn't afford an employee to do it yet. Well, not out of the coffee business anyways. No, we wasn't anywhere near anything like that. It was. I would roast it and put it in the bag, and basically I'd go roast what I wanted to drink myself. So I would roast it and then whatever extra would go in the pile for for the other customers. Yeah.

50:27 So by the time you were actually selling it and taking orders, was it still called Center Stage Coffee? So what my I started. My mother convinced me that I needed to sell coffee on Amazon. And I was like, I don't want to sell coffee because I want to go do stage and I want to go make $100,000 on the weekend. I don't want to go chase 2 to $3.00 for a bag of coffee. And are you kidding me? And go work like three days a week and go make a bunch of money? Or I could go chase a couple of bucks for a coffee like, oh, you have to do this. So she bugged me so much that I I was like, fine, whatever, I'll sell coffee. She's so. Interested in you doing coffee? She liked that I was doing coffee and she sold things on Amazon.

51:10 So she she knew where the she knew good items to sell on Amazon at the time. Things have changed a lot obviously that was that was like 12 years ago so so she can but she just pressured me to into it which you know OK that's good thank you mom. But so I shipped some coffee to Amazon and I was like I don't want anything to spoil my center stage coffee name because I got a good thing going. So we're, let's call it something else. And I'm like, well, when I give the people this coffee, they won't go away. Like even if I want them to go away, they keep asking me for it. So it's clearly our own cult. So, so then I was like, oh, we'll call it coffee cult. And then C, the CS were coffee coat with C domain was taken. So I was like, oh, well, German, it's in K so we'll make a coffee coat with KS and everyone's going to be like, what is that? So that's how I wound up being coffee coat with with KS. That's awesome.

52:12 Now we own the domain for both. We own. The C Oh, do you really? You own the C1 as well. Oh, that's cool. Have you ever thought about changing it? No. To CS No. No, because we it, it's it is, it's an established brand, so. Yeah, well, I mean, it's just every time I'm reading the promo for Coffee Cult on on the podcast, I always say Coffee called Coffee with AK, Cult with AK, you know? Yeah, but you can. Otherwise, I'm afraid they won't find your website. Yeah, they'll find it if you look up Coffee Colt. Anyway, in any which way you should find us. What happened to the other company? They just went away finally. See.

52:52 So it was someone sitting on their domain. It was like. Sort of bastards. Yeah, so whatever they tried to, actually. So the funny part is they tried to sell it to me for like $20,000. Yeah, I was like fuck off. So no, we're not doing that. And then for a while somehow it came out and bought it for 1000 bucks. Wow did I did I ever tell you the the Gearsource domain story gearsource.com Cuz remember it was gear hyphen source.com and it was Gearsource like if you went on you know who what is it?

53:33 Who, who is or whatever like that? Who owns the domain? If you went on that, it was owned by some Cisco reseller who was defunct. They were out of business and I had reached out to the guy and never got a response back. So I just said screw it, we'll go with the hyphen. Which knowing what I know now was the craziest, dumbest, stupidest idea ever. Like putting A-IN a in a domain name. But so we were probably a year in to Gearsource and I get a an e-mail from a guy saying, hey, I'm, I'm whatever, Bob and I own this domain. It's no longer a business anymore. Would you like to buy it from me? And I go, well, you know, me being a sales guy, well, you know, I don't know, like we've really got our customers used to the hyphen now.

54:24 So I don't think it really has any value to me. And he goes, well, look, I only want $10,000 for it. And I go, yeah, that's just not going to happen. And he goes, how about 5? And I said, look, you know, the domain is beautiful. Obviously I'd like to own it. But we're a startup company. I don't have 5 grand to throw around for a domain. And my customers are already used to the hyphen. And he goes, well, let me think about it. So he sends me an e-mail a few days later and he goes, do you sell those smoke machine things? And I said, yeah, we do. And he said, how much are they? And I said, well, you know, a good one's probably about 1000 bucks And he goes, will you trade me for one of those? And I said sure. So I traded him like some Martin smoke machine or something for I think it was a gym machine actually for the domain and I got the domain, so.

55:09 It would probably cost me. 4 or 500 bucks or something I think at the end of the day and I got the domain and. He sold him fluid for the next 10 years. No, actually, never heard from him again, but whatever. I have the domain and so, yeah, LED source though, when I started that, that was a similar thing where they wanted like 20 grand for it or something and I think I ended up paying three. So yeah, I mean, those are crazy businesses that make their money off collecting domains, I guess. I don't know, I own a bunch of domains. I I bought domains like real estate. In the early days, I'd probably have 200 domains or something, and every once in a while I'll get an e-mail or a call from somebody saying, hey, I'd really like that domain and I give them a reasonable price for it, 1000 bucks or something. And they usually go away, So someday I'll have to start letting them go. 1000 bucks for a domain? Yeah, yeah.

56:02 So a lot of domains. Yeah, back to the early days of coffee cult or or center stage. So the first beans that you bought, were you just buying them locally from like some bean wholesaler or how did how did that happen? I bought them for a bean wholesaler, but they were not local. They were in Rhode Island, I think something. And so did you research or did you just buy whatever they told you to buy? So I did a little research. They told me what was good. I actually hired someone to teach me how to roast coffee originally, which was cool. I learned from them. And then I learned I wanted better. So then I started. I spent a lot of time in Seattle and Portland learning from some roasters out there.

56:49 That's sort of like the American Mecca of coffee, right? That that Northwest area, Portland and Seattle. It used to be it's spread through the US now. But back then that was yeah, and I learned to roast coffee on the machine I bought. There's nothing like we have now. It's we still have it. I still have it. But it was all manual, no automation. So you'd be back in coffee, and if you forgot to do something on the machine when it was roasting, the coffee would totally turn out wrong. Oh wow. That was a pretty cool experience. But I wanted better coffee and I had you had to go out there. You couldn't go to YouTube and learn how to roast coffee. Yeah, but now I think you can go to YouTube and learn anything. Pretty much, yeah.

57:32 Yeah. No. And I've, I've always followed you on social media and stuff. So I know that, you know, you've made many, many trips to different regions of the world and you've gone to farms and or whatever they're called where you is it called a farm where they grow coffee. Yeah, you've gone to all these different farms and and so I would guess now you're kind of an expert in, in gene ology or whatever it's called, right? I would hope so. I know I've learned a lot and I know quite a bit. There's people that are way more than me. I've learned about roots of coffee plants, of what the roots need to look like when you plant them. Like, man, I just wonder if the coffee tastes good, but it gets pretty.

58:14 It gets it's crazy. The they'll grow, they'll start a seedling and then they'll take it out of the dirt and they'll inspect all the roots before they planted in the fields to make sure the roots are are are large enough and sustainable. Because they want to plant a tree for 20 years, they don't want to plant it for a couple of years. Pretty cool stuff. And the altitude and the micro climates of different regions. For. Coffees. I I read about which one was it that I read about Sumatra? I think it was. And 'cause I didn't know that that was actually a place. And so I went and read about why the coffee there it where is that? That's in Jakarta or something, isn't it? Indonesia.

58:57 Indonesia, yeah. Or near Jakarta in Indonesia. And you know, just like why it's good and and the just strange mix of weather components that make the coffee so good and you know, it's it's pretty wild, there's a lot to it. Yeah, they have their own processing that they do there as well. Nowhere else does as well, only so it's just. What's that mean? It's it's how they take the pulp off of the cherry, off of the the seed after it's after the coffee's picked from the plant. OK, they. Have their own special so coffee. Coffee's picked from a plant and then what? What is it?

59:38 What's that look like? It doesn't look like a bean, right? It looks. Like a cherry looks like a cherry looks like a fruit cherry. You can eat them, just don't eat the beans in the middle. The bean, the seed is actually the coffee part that we that we use as coffee. Interesting. But there's a whole cherry outside layer and a pulp inside. So is it actually called a cherry, a a coffee cherry or just a cherry? Cherries, coffee, cherry, coffee tree, coffee, cherry. Interesting and does. It taste like a cherry. There's sweet that well, the better you know, the better the coffee. The sweeter the coffee, the better, The The better it is, the sweeter it will be. They all taste different. There's different varieties of coffee. There's yellow, there's all, there's all a bazillion. So Geisha is like the original coffee bean. I just bought a geisha for a crazy amount of money in Columbia.

1:00:31 Yeah, I saw that on social on coffee called site or something like that. There's. Yellow babone. And then there's there's all kinds. There's all varieties of coffee, Yeah, which attribute to the taste. So what's What's your favorite? Probably depends what day it is right? Yeah. What, what time of the day it is and what we're roasting and what season it is. So there's lots of coffees. Yeah, well, I know you were really hyped on this Jamaican one and you sent me a bag of it and I didn't like it. Like it just had a funky flavor to it. That to me, I'm just so in love with my regular daily cup of coffee that I get right now. Where where are my beans from the the Road, Dog and medium? Colombian, Colombian and guat.

1:01:19 Colombian and Guat in Brazil is in that blend. Really. Huh. Interesting. When those are great coffees, those are very, very good coffees. Blends are very good. The single origins is where you get to see a lot of different things in coffee. Yeah, so we look for acidity and sweetness and complexity in in coffee. So that's not for everyone. There's some people don't like a fruity coffee, but yeah, that fruity. You don't necessarily want to drink with milk. Yeah. So yeah. Well, I'll tell you. Like, you know, I had tried a few of yours, Like I tried the dark roast. I think I tried the road dog.

1:02:00 I don't think I ever tried medium by oh, I did try medium by itself. And that's when I basically started mixing half a bag of medium with half a bag of Rd. dog and going, OK, now we're on to something because the road dog, I didn't mind, I liked it. But my girlfriend, it was just too strong. Like she was normally a pretty like a blonde coffee drinker you know, and well cuz she's British and she drinks tea, she wasn't even a coffee drinker before I really convinced her to be one and but when I did that mix it was really good and and I remember I think I was talking to you on the phone or something and I said hey I finally found the perfect coffee. I'm mixing your medium and your and your Rd. dog and you said well we could make a blend for you and that's when we came up with the whole geezers grind thing and and started to do that so.

1:02:52 If she likes, she'll like the geisha. The Geisha's more tea like. Is it really? Yeah, I'll send you some. Yeah, I'll have to check that out. I gotta make another order anyways cuz I gotta I gotta get some decaf. You know what? Decaf, right? Tell me. It's like a hooker that just wants to cuddle. That's good. That's really good. People are like, Oh my God, I can't believe that guy said that. I'm like, man, I used to see the other stuff that comes out of my mouth when I'm not a. Yeah, well, I've known you. I remember funny story, when we worked together, this was sort of pre social media and pre all of that stuff.

1:03:36 This was what, like 2000 or something? 1999 two thousand. I don't know. But but I remember you sent like a a really nasty dirty some kind of wicked porn thing or something to to Adrian in the office And it you accidentally sent it to Adrian Gurman who at the time worked for LDI or lighting lighting and Sound America or whatever it's called. And and she sends me a message going, this is Jamie who works for you. And I said, yeah, that's Jamie. And she goes, I wonder if he meant to send this to me. And I'm like, Nope, I'm pretty sure he didn't. Wrong.

1:04:21 Adrian. Yeah, wrong Adrian. For a little while. Back then we were young and wild, and I remember my our first trip to Italy, I was to Komar. The staff was back in the day and things have changed now. But it was, you know, let's go hang out at the let's go hang out at the gentlemen's club. So we went to Italy. I was like, hey, who wants to go to the gentlemen's club? And they all looked at me like, why would we go there, the brothels down the street? I was like, oh, it's. True. Yeah, it's true. It's true. It was wild back in those days. It was really like the. Did you you went over to the Rimini show, right? At some point did you? No, you never went to the Rimini show. Never went because there was a there was a famous, it wasn't even a gentlemen's club.

1:05:04 It was just some weird place where you went and and these beautiful women from Eastern Europe would sit next to you on the couch and talk to you and tell you how beautiful you are and how amazing you are and stuff. And then if you were brave enough, you wheeled them out of there and took them back to your hotel and you just paid whatever the fee was to the to the club. It was called Lady Godiva and you know I never partook, but I've, I've been there a bunch of times. But I I just, you know, wasn't interested in the end, the end game that they had going on there. But several people did, and I won't mention any names, but one guy in particular who who worked for me at the time was talking to this this girl and and he's like she went to the bathroom or something and he goes, Marcel, she's like the most beautiful girl ever.

1:05:55 I I've never seen an Italian woman as beautiful as her. And I go, cuz she's probably not Italian. And he goes, Oh no, no, no, she's Italian. Her name is like Victoria or something. And I go, no, you know what I she might be telling you a fib. And he goes, no, no, no, she's Italian. And she's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. And so he leaves with her and he goes, you know, I'm taking this beautiful Italian girl back to my hotel. And I'm like, hey, good for you, have fun. And so I call the manager over and I go, hey, that girl that just left with my buddy. And he goes, Victoria. And I go, yeah, is she Italian? And he goes, fuck, no, she's from Uzbekistan. I laughed my ass off.

1:06:37 I remember at breakfast in the morning, I was like, hey, how was that Uzbekistanian? No, no, she's Italian. And I'm like, no, buddy, no, she ain't Italian. Yeah, I've got stories. Some of those you can't tell though, or at least you can't attach them to people. Right now we had a good time though, and that was, that was, that was an amazing time. It was fun. It was fun. So what? What are some of the what are some of the biggest things you've learned being in the coffee business, like challenges or things that if you knew then what you know now, you might have gone a different direction or you know, I bumps on the head. Yeah, I want to for anything that the the one thing I like about coffee, and although I have to chase two or three dollars for a bag of coffee to for a profit and staging, I made generators.

1:07:33 I made a lot of money, but if one of my staff left a pen out of a stage, it would fall down and kill a bunch of people. I don't have to worry about that in coffee. So that's what really like like. About Well, unless you accidentally, you know, put poison into the into the bags or something and you're killing all your drinkers. What and the other thing about coffee that is really surprising and entertainment is I have a lot of well I have two robots arms here that we use in manufacturing and a lot of quite a bit of automation since I come from a automation back lighting automation background. And the technology in the staging world is so much more advanced than the rest of the industrial world that when you're in entertainment you don't understand entertainment is actually pushing the envelope all the time on technology. Our roasters have touch screen panels on them. They run to run our.

1:08:28 And it's they're little computers, but they're just so not responsive compared to a lighting console. Yeah, yeah. When I'm like, it sucks. When I was buying and they're big bucks too. So when I was buying, I was pushing the buttons. I was playing with it. I was like, is this your standard? They're like, that's the new latest and greatest panel that you can get. I'm like, no, it's not. I'm like, I'm like, I can't a lot. I'll tell you what that's where you connect with Fausto. That's where you connect with Fausto and and you go, hey Fausto, can you make a better panel and give it to him and and he'll come back to you two months later with, you know, a complete design for a better panel and the software and everything all done and and then you go out and sell the product, you know as a as a side hustle.

1:09:16 But no, I agree with you. Like when you take some of the things that you've learned and seen in our industry and you take it back to a different industry, it's like wow, you know, like just technology at a completely different level. And also urgency and timing and all kinds of other stuff that other industries like the urgency of the the entertainment business compared to like when I had LED source for example, and our customers were you know, architectural or commercial lighting opportunities, warehouses and buildings and things like that. There was no urgency like you know, when can you get it done March, OK, that's perfect. Yeah, As long as we can get it done by July, we're good.

1:09:57 You know, OK. You know, that's easy. Like I could take three vacations between now and then a. Lot of those things, urgency getting things right the first time and the technology is really from the entertainment business. Really helped me with coffee cold. Yeah, most companies don't have that. They're like, OK, we got an order that's nice. We'll get it out and we're like, as fast as we can get that order out, it's it's going to go out. And the type I remember I went to go, I wound up robot arms. They're they're on our YouTube channel. But I wound up the robot arm. I was looking for a nitrogen generator and I went to a trade show and they had all these robot arms over.

1:10:41 And I was like, what are these things? They're super cool and I need one. And I went home and I did all the online training for the class and the next day I went in and I said, can I, can I play with that? They're like, yeah, sure. I went and I had. I was. I programmed and had it running around. They're like, how did you know? How did you learn that? I said I did it a lot. I looked at it last night. That's hilarious. Super complicated. I'm like, no dude. This is like LCD controller style from. Yeah, yeah, This is 1980s. Yeah, so bringing over that technology really helped with coffee and coffee business is really cool too. It's it's a lot different entertainment, entertainment you take, you take 5 staging owners, 10 staging owners and you put them in a room to drink beer together and one walks out because he killed the rest of them and then coffee.

1:11:29 You put five people in a room to drink beer together and they recruit five other people to come and. Drink. That's awesome. Yeah. It's a totally different industry until you get to a certain level. Then when you get start getting a little bit bigger, it gets a little bit more competitive, but. Is there ever a like an internal fight or debate or discussion on the retail versus the the like the retail store? Because I know you have a coffee shop which is pictured in the background here on the on the podcast. But like is that something you're looking to expand and is there discussions of expanding that versus discussions of shutting it down and just being a brand and shipping out to your customers? So my son is and he'll graduate his undergrad this year and he does his master's next year and then he will get to decide what direction he'd like to go.

1:12:26 I already know what direction he's going to go. He I'm just going to let him decide it. But I have we it's I think he's going to probably head up more of a retail division possibly and then also run the, the wholesale, the branding as well. But yeah, you might see that from us in the in the near future. I know quite a bit about franchising. If you ever want to have a conversation just about growing the business via franchise, I can save you a whole bunch of money just by giving you a lot of stuff for free that somebody's going to charge you a couple hundred, a couple $100,000 for as a consultant. There's there's good and bad in franchising, you know, and there's good and bad in doing it yourself and having company owned stores.

1:13:14 And so if you're gonna expand, there's sort of kind of two paths that are entirely different but similar and both have benefits and both have some shitty stuff. I think based on who Coffee Cult is and what you do, franchising might actually be a good option for you. Yeah, we'll look coming up, cuz I want ready to retire and smoke cigars and drive my tractor. Well, that sounds fun. That's what old people do, is they buy tractors. I have a a very good friend in racing who's who's in England and he buys all these old John Deere tractors and then resells them every once in a while and stuff.

1:13:54 And he's just got this big farm full of tractors. Yeah, that's it. So farming is my new thing lately. So I got corn and potatoes and blueberries. Where and Bees and Hour North of Tampa in Florida. So is that where you live now or is that just where the farm is? No, I'm out in Davie. I'm out by the Camels in Davie. Yeah. Oh. OK, camels. Yeah, we have camels. I see them when I drive to work in the mornings. Oh. That's wild. Camels, of all things. Yes, that's crazy. When and they take them out on the weekends so the kids can come and feed them and donate. To their. Their nonprofit and stuff. So do you know if I tell someone I live by the camels, they'll be like, OK, I know where that is. That's I it's funny cuz I know somebody up here in Wellington who has camels.

1:14:42 Oh yeah. Yeah, so you know, weird, but I mean, in Wellington it's fairly normal cuz there's a lot of farms up here, you know, for polo and and all of these different horse sports that happen in Wellington. But I remember you were like a big Hollywood guy, Hollywood, FL guy, and getting involved in local politics and all kinds of stuff. I guess you've gotten over that illness. Trying to I still, man, my phone still rings. I just tried to stay out of it. But there's a lot of good, there's a lot of good things about Hollywood, FL. We have a lot of construction going on. Yeah, Down here now, behind coffee, cold. They're building 350 units. Wow, apartments and they're building 750 I think 2 blocks away, then across the street I think we're getting 1200 units.

1:15:28 So the property values are doing quite quite well. So does Coffee Cult do pretty well as a as a standalone business? The retail store. The the coffee shop. It does, OK. Yeah. I don't know if it would be open without the rest of our business, but I think that maybe we do have a different business mod do it a little differently if we if we were doing that. So we bought this build. Yeah. So this building we bought like 7 years ago, something like that, because it was the one I could find to buy. Yeah. Was big enough. They had because we need natural gas as a as a roaster. Yeah, I needed, I needed to buy a building that had a gas line to it.

1:16:11 So so is the back. Of House of that building, is that where all your roasting and packaging and everything is done And then the front is a coffee shop, that's correct. And so do you have like a glass wall or anything where people can see the roasting being done? Like can you? See through windows, glass door. Originally when we built it we were gonna have a huge glass wall, but then the roasters didn't fit right and it just it just didn't lay out correctly. So it took glass door. But. Yeah. And in Canada where I have my house, in the little town where I have my house, there's a a Brewer called Grizzly Paw and they built this big beautiful building for their their new brewery and they wrapped a restaurant around the top floor of it where you can see down to all of the the whatever the things are called where you make beer in them and and you can do tours of the of the brewery as well. They take people on tours five or six times a day. And so it's pretty cool.

1:17:08 I would think that you could probably run classes through there and all kinds of other things too. We do once in a while. We had a tour yesterday. That's cool. And then we do, we do like a cupping tasting experience. I'll kind of try to model it off of like the Bourbon Trail. Yeah, the just worries in Kentucky. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I think I told you I came back from I went to New York on business and and the guy that I was visiting there took me to this Starbucks and I forget what it was called, but it's some special Starbucks in New York. It was a yeah. Yeah, and they had this, this iced coffee drink that was like a bourbon barrel something or other.

1:17:54 It was like 20 bucks or something for a little thing of coffee. And I mean, it was one of the most amazing things I've ever tasted. I I was blown away. I I did not expect to even like it. I thought I was going to hate it because alcohol and coffee to me. Like, I've never really been into espresso, martinis or any of that kind of stuff. I like coffee. I don't even like iced coffee. I like coffee. Coffee right? I don't like flavored coffee. I just like coffee and but this was amazing. Really nice stuff. That's excellent. Yeah, the Starbucks reserves are Starbucks answered as small coffee companies like us. Yeah.

1:18:35 Live in 5000 Square Foot buildings and they've opened 100,000 square Foot building to show how they're a small artisan rooster that. Building blew me away. I mean, I was. I walked in and just went, Have you seen the one in in. I don't know what part of Manhattan it's in, but I just went. I'm just ching. Ching in my head is starting to do the business and go, how the hell can this place make money? I mean, this is so expensive. This is such an expensive piece of real estate and there had to be 50 people working in there. You. Know it was just crazy artwork. The the the wood underneath the bar. I don't know if you noticed all hand carved.

1:19:17 I mean oh wow, crazy money. I can't. Imagine The thing is, the guy who took us there was telling us the whole story. Like he probably told us the wood under the bar is hand carved and but you know that's the thing that a place when you go that crazy and weird on an idea that gets your customers telling your story for you, Now you know you've really done something right. You know, especially with such a watered down brand like like Starbucks, you know, I I think that's an interesting move on their part. I can't imagine it's profitable, but well, although a little cup of coffee for 20 something dollars or whatever it was has to be profitable so. When you have the volume that they have there, it was it was slammed I'm sure when you were there.

1:19:59 It actually wasn't like that's the thing. We walked straight up to the little fancy bar thing and ordered three of these these expensive coffee drinks. It wasn't that busy at all. Normally the reserve. Right away. Yeah. Yeah. No. It was a cool experience, though I I was fairly blown away by it. I think I sent you a picture. I text you a picture of the drink that I was having in the little card that said what it was. And you were like, yeah, whatever. Yeah, that's cool. You know, a lot of people and people tell me all the time they're like, oh, you must hate Starbucks. I'm like, no, I love Starbucks. Like you love Starbucks. Yeah, they taught people to drink, you know, $8. $7.00 coffee Exactly, You're right. Like without Starbucks. People would expect. Without Starbucks, people would expect 50 Cent cups of coffee. You know, like you get in a diner or whatever. They changed that.

1:20:47 It's expensive to produce quality coffee though. Just the shipping, just at the farms, the having the right trees. There's a lot to coffee, which is why when you brought up the decaf, how our decaf tastes different than other decafs. It's the IT really has to do with the quality of the coffee. A lot of decafs, a lot of people are just calling the decaf company, buying coffee and taking whatever they have. But we actually select our coffee before it's decaffeinated, and then we have it decaffeinated for us. And then it comes to us and we only what? Do they do to decaffeinate coffee? What's the process? So there's two main processes in the world.

1:21:30 There's and there's probably A5 plants total in the world that do decaf coffee. Like really do the. I'm sure there I'm sure there's others. But for the in the main market there's two different ways. There's adding chemicals to it and pressurizing the coffee. What they actually put water and pressure and chemicals with pressure to separate the coffee from from the from the the caffeine from the coffee. And actually that caffeine goes to like that caffeine goes to Coca-Cola or Pepsi. So it's used for other purposes. Oh, so you keep the caffeine and it it gets sold again or whatever? Oh, that's interesting. And then they and then the other ways water process same way as they basically they're removing everything out of the coffee bean and then they're do some chemical process with it that removes the caffeine and then they reinject everything back into the coffee bean.

1:22:27 So you either with chemicals or with water and we use the water process, so it means. Yours is damn good. Did did you guys have to test like 20 different beans or whatever to come up with the one that you loved or did? You just get lucky. I want to say we got lucky. I would say that from experience of knowing what we like and the processes and the supply chain is how, how it came about. There's probably a cost too. Like, you know, like if you want a shitty bean, a shitty decaf, it's it's going to cost X. And if you want a really good one, it's why. And most companies choose the shitty 1, correct.

1:23:07 I think most companies really negate the the decaf coffee drinker. As you know, you're not a real coffee drinker, you asshole. You know I'm going to give you garbage. Here you go. But it just it has a line to a place to make money, and there's decaf and there it is. Yeah, yeah, but I wouldn't drink it if I didn't like it, you know? And I didn't like I bought 4 cans of this Lovazo or whatever and and I think I still have three of them you know and and finally got through one but because it was kind of blended by the end it was blended with the with the coffee cult stuff so yeah. That's on par with their regular coffee as well. So there's different, there's different qualities of coffee. Yeah, some sell coffee for $40 or 10, you know, $20 a pound, basically.

1:23:55 Some people sell coffee for, you know, 9 bucks for 2 lbs of coffee. Yeah, yes, you're getting a good deal at 2 lbs of coffee, but it's not the best, it's. Not the same. Yeah. Yeah. I'm. I'm perfectly happy paying whatever your prices are and I think the prices are fair and and it's very, very good coffee and I dig it, I dig it, dig it, dig it. Yeah. When by the way, you know, I say it all the time on the podcast, but we appreciate very much what you did with the with the Geezer's grind thing through Robbie Backstage. I know we don't bring you a ton of customers through our audience, but we do bring you some. And the people who who buy the coffee keep drinking it, not because of the charity, but because of the quality of the coffee, which is good.

1:24:43 And that's why I drink it, by the way. I'd love to say I drink it because I'm feeding a charity. It's got nothing to do with that. It's it's honestly because I love the coffee. So. And it's I'm happy to do that. We also have a road dog blend as well that's kind of like what like when I came up with that I was like this is what I needed when I got up rolled off the tour back in the day. So yeah, that's what that. Yeah. Making coffee? Great. I miss the entertainment business a little bit. Not too much, but a little bit. Well, anytime you want, I'll just give you a phone number and you can just jump on with some of our customers and stuff. We'll make you an honorary, you know, business development person or something, and then you won't miss the business for much longer.

1:25:27 Again. You'll be like, to hell with that. Man, these people are nasty. What? What's like the hotline right now? I mean but when I? You know, there's It's weird. It's really weird right now because it used to be where Martin had this high end had this, Verilite had this. They were all very different. If you wanted this, you got this one, if you wanted this, you got this one. Now they basically all have these homogenized product lines where everybody's got a beam, everybody's got to wash, everybody's got a spot, everybody's got a framing profile. Like they all have all the same stuff. And so it comes down to sort of different levels of quality and you kind of have tiers of quality.

1:26:12 And so you know it's really like I love Airton not just because they sponsor my son, but because I think it's an amazing story and an amazing product line. They're sort of like top tier when it comes to all of the quality stuff, but they're also priced up there, right. Vera Light has some really nice products now and they're they're made in China by by Acme and Acme has some really great products under their own branding now. Chauvet is really good. Elation is excellent. Martin has a couple of really amazing lights. Martin just came out with a little tiny LED wash light called a Mac One which weighs like under 10 lbs and is I think it's like 15,000 lumens or something and it's under 10 lbs full RGB whatever color mixing and really, really nice. And they they it came out with this little 4 ball of four bar thing that you can either put four of them that you pull them right out of the case four of them on this bar and you can either hang that bar or you can wall mount the bar. You can do all kinds of different things with it. Yeah.

1:27:22 So I mean it's like all of the companies are good. Pick one and you can build a company around it very easily without missing anything. Like you might have a designer someday that comes to you and goes well, it's got to be the ABC light or else you know. And chances are, most designs now allow alternates because they're all good. Not like the old days, Not like the old days. You got a pile of cyber lights, you got a pile of Sharpies, you got studio colors and that was the spec. And if you wanted a tour, you were buying those lights. I mean you still go through a little bit of that like right now this this Mac one thing from Martin, it's going to ship bazillions of them. It's going to be the Sharpie of of 2024. I think it's cheap like it's I think it's like 2 grand retail, something like that And so it's really cheap. You can buy a hundred of them and and do anything with it. Like you couldn't do a stadium or anything, but you know any club gig any any theater, small venue kind of thing, certainly for industrials, for for corporate shows and and convention booths and stuff, amazing light. So that thing I think is going to probably be the the breakout success of 2024, but then LDI will come around again or Plaza later in the year and you'll have another two or three hot lights.

1:28:54 You know, as far as control, it's still MA Roby just bought Ava lights, which is kind of interesting. And AVO has this thing called the D9 which is trying to bump off the MA three and not really successfully yet. Like everybody says, yeah, it's a cool console, but then, you know they sell 1000 MA threes to every 10 Ava lights consoles or whatever, right? So, but I think with Robi owning them, they now have bigger budgets, bigger manufacturing, lower costs, etcetera. So I think they're going to become powerful. Elation has a line of control called Obsidian, which is tucked in underneath all of that.

1:29:40 They actually bought case. They bought the old Martin case console stuff and and so that became the foundation of the Obsidian control line and really nice stuff. You know, it doesn't currently go up to like the MA three or the the biggest consoles. It's sort of like that that Hog 2 range of stuff and then Camsys is the other one that that does really well. They're now owned by Chauvet. So yeah, I mean it it's it's the same but different. You know, Claypaki's still strong but not like they were like they they don't have a Sharpie right now.

1:30:23 They've got these laser fixtures. I don't know if you've seen any of that stuff. The the Stelos, which is spelled XI, think it's XTYLOS, which is a moving light fixture but with a laser lamp source in it. So you get like these like 7 or 8° beams that go for a mile, that are just sharp and bright and beautiful color and stuff, really, really nice. And then they've got a new one called Skylos, which is the same thing but even brighter. And it's meant to do skybeam kind of stuff or big stadium shows or whatever. But other than that, they have everything that everybody else does, a framing fixture, a beam fixture, whatever. And usually they'll have like a framing, a beam and a wash and a spot.

1:31:15 Most companies will have this at the sort of low level, which is like an LED, like a 300 Watt LED and then they'll have a midrange that's maybe a 500 or 600 Watt LED. And then they'll have a really high output range for stadium shows and stuff that's like 1000 Watt LED. And all the companies have that, you know. And now all the companies will have an LED strobe. All the companies will have an LED bar. You know that that does tilt. But no pan it it's it's wacky. It's a wacky business. And they're all successful. They're all kicking ass right now, selling as much shit as they can. Is there a SO could you find?

1:31:59 Do you know? I would love to have to hang on my wall at my office, the Status Queue console. I'm sure I could find one. Maybe somebody listening to this might have one that they want to get rid of, but I would. Guess Mokri? 'S Mokri's probably got one kicking around somewhere. Maybe Bruce Jordal, but I could certainly find you one. I'll make a little note here and I'll find you one. Yeah, it just says a piece of art. That and a working. Well, maybe a working. Are there any more working whole hog twos? Are they all? No, they're around. Are they work? Yeah. Yeah, you can get a working hog too. Did someone start manufacturing the boards for him again? Well, Mokri was getting them from somewhere, boards and screens, but I I don't know where that's at right now. But I see, I see hog twos for sale quite often. Couple grand kind of thing, MA ones you can get for like 12-15 hundred bucks, you know, which is crazy because they were 50 grand or whatever.

1:33:03 Right. Technology. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, you can get that stuff for sure. Cool, I think. Cool. Art for the office? Yeah, that'd be really cool. People would walk in and go, What the hell is that? Exactly, the status queue taught me how to save my files, control save. Yeah, status queue was such a didn't. I like that console. I ran that well. I learned that well. I learned the LCD controller and then the status queue and then the HOG 2. Well, I think the worst thing that happened to the status queue was the Hog 2, because if the Hog two didn't come out, maybe status queue might have had more of a run, but it just got crushed, you know, it was just like forget it, you.

1:33:51 Know it was so big. It was. Well, it wasn't even that. It just was. It was sort of nonsensical. The whole operating system was a little goofy and it it just it wasn't, yeah, I don't know, it wasn't a Hog 2. No, definitely not. The Hog Two Definitely kill was dead. Yeah. Sure. Well, Jamie, I I appreciate you taking the time. I know you said you have a meeting at 11 or something, so we're going to have to get off of this. But I appreciate you taking the time. I I love your coffee. I love your career. I think you've always been a a really smart entrepreneurial thinker by the way. Another Side Story is you're the one who and and shame on you for doing this.

1:34:33 You're the one who got my son into racing because your son was actually in racing before mine was. And my son saw your son and talked to him and he said oh, it's amazing, go karts are amazing And so Jeremy had to try it, tried it. We've been doing it for 13 years since then. It's the reason I'm poor and and yeah, so thank you for that. Appreciate that. You're welcome. I sold my Kart quickly after that. I was like, Oh no, but a lot of people don't know who your son Jeremy competes against. Some really, really well financed teams, like the Yeah. Yeah, no, it's it's crazy. I mean some of the kids we we grew up racing with are are half of them are in IndyCar now and and still very well funded. You know one of them, one of them went through Formula One and yeah I mean it's it's it's crazy the amount of money that gets thrown around.

1:35:26 Like I remember you might even know Kyle Kirkwood from back in the days when you guys were karting. He was karting at at Palm Beach and he's he's like 22 or 23 now probably but but I remember like probably the third or fourth time we were at Palm Beach, I met Kyle's dad and we met Kyle. And you know Kyle at the time was probably 10 or 11. Jeremy was was 7 and so Kyle kind of took Jeremy under his wing and taught him some stuff and showed him the lines a little better and helped him out a bit. And I was sitting on the on the picnic table behind the fence there talking to his dad. And I remember his dad, I I asked him, so what's this really cost?

1:36:11 Like if we really, if we want to go beyond practice and get into some racing, what's it cost? And he said, well, that's a good question. He said, you know it can cost a lot of different prices depending who you are, he said. We're on the low end of the of the spend and we're we're scheduled to spend about 60 grand this year and I almost fell off the picnic table right at that point I was like 60 grand. What? You know, because Ronnie, who ran the cart shop there, told me, oh, yeah, you'll only need to buy a set of tires every month or so. And you know, the car will last you a couple of years. No problem. And I'm thinking, wow, this isn't a very expensive sport at all, you know, now this guy's telling me 60 grand.

1:36:54 And then when you get into it, you start to realize 60 grand doesn't go very far, you know, especially if you're doing big national, big national series and stuff, you know, it's crazy, crazy sport. Yeah. That's good. That's. I'm glad Jeremy's still racing. That's awesome. Yeah, he is. You know, it's so ingrained in him. It's his passion and I can't get him away from it. Like I wish he liked soccer or basketball or football or something, you know, where it's a pair of shoes and a ball and you know, here I'll buy you 10 pairs of shoes. How's that? But he's he's doing it more on his own now like where he's negotiating the deals and he's, you know, I'm, I mean in open wheel a career is is, you know, a very hard thing to come by unless you have a billionaire father.

1:37:43 And so unfortunately, you know, he's looking at other things. He's looking at GT cars and all kinds of other stuff. But he's also doing some coaching and you know some real job kind of stuff as well because you got to, you got to survive too. You got to live. Is he in Wellington now? Is he local or? Yeah, he's he's local. Yeah. He he got back from England 6-8 weeks ago I guess and and he'll probably, we're not sure yet what he's going to do this year. He's working on it. Yeah. Cool. So anyways thanks a bunch for doing this thanks for what you're doing for for the industry with coffee cult. Anybody who's listening order this coffee they always offer discounts and all kinds of stuff. You got to get 2 bags to get the shipping free and try it. I mean you'll you'll love it.

1:38:34 I love it. It's amazing. Most of the people I know through our podcast who have gotten into it continue to rebuy it just like I do you know it's become part of their lives. So including Eric Loder from Elation who sent me a picture the other day of him re upping the coffee supply for the office and. He said. I knew Eric when I was like 17. Did he really? I knew. I know Eric. He was an American DJ at the time. Or was he already at Trackman? He was a no. He was an American DJ. Yeah, he's a good dude. One of my one of my favorite people. So yeah, really was. He was a good guy. Always very good to me, so. Thank you, Eric. Yeah, cool. Hi, Jamie. All right.

1:39:14 We'll see you later, yeah? Cheers.