Feb. 23, 2026

How He Timed His $230M Exit — Then Did It Again

How He Timed His $230M Exit — Then Did It Again

He sold his company for $230 million right before oil prices collapsed. It wasn't luck — it was a board meeting. Thomas Chance joins The Deal Podcast to share what 30+ years of building, selling, and starting over actually looks like from the inside. Thomas Chance is a serial entrepreneur, engineer, and Louisiana native who built CNC Technologies into the world's largest privately held offshore survey company — 600 employees, 10 offices worldwide, $25M EBITDA — then sold to Oceaneering in 201...

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He sold his company for $230 million right before oil prices collapsed. It wasn't luck — it was a board meeting. Thomas Chance joins The Deal Podcast to share what 30+ years of building, selling, and starting over actually looks like from the inside.

Thomas Chance is a serial entrepreneur, engineer, and Louisiana native who built CNC Technologies into the world's largest privately held offshore survey company — 600 employees, 10 offices worldwide, $25M EBITDA — then sold to Oceaneering in 2015 for $230 million. He then spun off and built ASV (Autonomous Surface Vehicles), a pioneering unmanned marine technology company, and sold that to L3 Technologies (now L3Harris) in 2018. His father before him built and sold a landmark survey company in 1991. Now his sons are doing the same.

Topics covered:

  • Following his father's entrepreneurial path from civil engineer to company founder
  • Building a pre-GPS satellite positioning system in the 1980s (before GPS existed)
  • The emotional reality of leaving a family business after a sale
  • Hiring the people a new acquirer just laid off — and why it worked
  • Growing CNC Technologies to 600 people and the world's largest private offshore survey firm
  • Why a board of advisors (not PE) told him to sell — and why he listened
  • Timing the $230M exit before the 2015 oil crash
  • Carving out the autonomous underwater vehicle division at close
  • Building ASV and selling driverless boat technology to L3 Harris
  • Startup advice: learn the industry first, then go start your company

🔗 Website: https://www.thedealpodcast.com/ 

Jude David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jude-david-jd-dcl-mba-172a6a76/ 

Joshua Wilson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuadwilson/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dealpodcast 

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WEBVTT

00:00:00.049 --> 00:00:01.219
Thomas, welcome to the show.

00:00:01.399 --> 00:00:01.939
Well, thank you.

00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:03.410
Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

00:00:03.500 --> 00:00:03.799
Yeah.

00:00:04.068 --> 00:00:05.780
All right, so let's start with this.

00:00:06.229 --> 00:00:07.339
How do you know Jude?

00:00:08.239 --> 00:00:32.945
Oh, I've, well, I met Jude when he was, uh, working with Hank Perez here in Lafayette, Louisiana as an attorney and a business attorney and helping me, he helped me with, uh, actually, uh, you know, work on the second company I had and helped, helped me put together, uh, all the legal paperwork and also look at it from estate planning standpoint as well.

00:00:33.204 --> 00:00:37.820
It all worked out really well, so I've, and, and Jude was a, a stellar.

00:00:39.170 --> 00:00:43.640
He was a stellar person for me to lean on at that time, and it worked out well.

00:00:43.820 --> 00:00:44.000
Yeah.

00:00:44.030 --> 00:00:48.469
Well, Hank handed Thomas over to me and Thomas said, what are you 10 years old?

00:00:49.130 --> 00:00:49.640
This is true.

00:00:50.450 --> 00:00:50.750
Yeah.

00:00:50.750 --> 00:00:54.109
It's like, I like this guy is like younger than all my kids.

00:00:54.109 --> 00:00:54.409
Right.

00:00:54.409 --> 00:00:58.189
I was like, but I think he was actually a little bit older.

00:00:59.539 --> 00:01:04.939
Maybe he was the same age as my kids, but he did a, a brilliant job, so whatever, you know?

00:01:05.390 --> 00:01:05.659
Yeah.

00:01:05.959 --> 00:01:07.040
Well, we're glad you're here.

00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:07.790
Thanks for coming in.

00:01:07.790 --> 00:01:11.510
We're in the, we're, we're in the studio here in Lafayette, Louisiana.

00:01:11.719 --> 00:01:13.459
And, uh, is this where you're originally from?

00:01:13.760 --> 00:01:15.170
I'm originally from here.

00:01:15.260 --> 00:01:15.590
Yeah.

00:01:15.799 --> 00:01:17.840
It's not, not, not too far from here.

00:01:17.840 --> 00:01:18.200
Actually.

00:01:18.200 --> 00:01:19.909
We're not too far from the studio.

00:01:20.569 --> 00:01:32.510
Uh, grew up here in Lafayette, Louisiana, and I went to school here and then, uh, went on to, to school at, in Baton Rouge at LSUI decided I wanted to go far away from home, so LS u's about an hour away.

00:01:32.540 --> 00:01:35.149
So that's about as far as I wanted to go.

00:01:35.659 --> 00:01:35.929
Yeah.

00:01:35.989 --> 00:01:37.219
But, uh, worked out good.

00:01:37.310 --> 00:01:39.260
What did you choose to study at LSU?

00:01:39.379 --> 00:01:41.810
Well, I, I, I studied electrical engineering.

00:01:42.079 --> 00:01:43.969
It was, uh, which is, uh.

00:01:44.870 --> 00:01:45.890
I was pretty scared.

00:01:45.920 --> 00:01:54.920
I mean, that's, you hear a bunch of horror stories about people going into things like that and, and, uh, I, I guess I'd have to say that I went through the catalog back then.

00:01:54.920 --> 00:01:57.890
You, you have a paper catalog of all the curriculums, right.

00:01:57.890 --> 00:02:03.469
And go through the catalog and, and let me find the curriculum that has the least number of English classes.

00:02:03.469 --> 00:02:06.049
And that's, and I said, oh, here's electrical engineer.

00:02:06.140 --> 00:02:07.129
No, I'm just teething.

00:02:07.129 --> 00:02:13.939
But, uh, yeah, I went into electrical engineering and, uh, finished in, in electrical engineering at LSU.

00:02:13.939 --> 00:02:20.719
And, uh, yeah, it was a, a great program and, uh, and, uh, went to grad school.

00:02:20.719 --> 00:02:29.269
After that, I actually, I got married and, uh, it took a girl I met there at LSU and then, uh, went to grad school at Purdue in engineering.

00:02:29.269 --> 00:02:31.250
Got a master's in engineering and, uh.

00:02:31.368 --> 00:02:34.338
I went, went to work for my dad after that.

00:02:34.609 --> 00:02:35.028
Okay.

00:02:35.508 --> 00:02:46.938
Now, um, tell us about your dad because, uh, you know, as in our research, we, we've, we've discovered some pretty cool things about your, your family legacy and, and then also some things that you've accomplished too.

00:02:47.118 --> 00:02:47.658
Sure.

00:02:47.658 --> 00:02:51.259
Well, he, he was certainly an entrepreneur.

00:02:51.974 --> 00:02:54.375
Of, of high caliber, who my dad was.

00:02:54.375 --> 00:03:02.655
And, and, uh, he had, uh, he had worked for, so oil company as a surveyor after finishing in civil engineering at the University of Texas.

00:03:02.655 --> 00:03:09.944
And, and, uh, and then, so oil, like a lot of these oil companies will do, they, they decided to lay off a bunch of people.

00:03:09.944 --> 00:03:13.335
They laid off of our whole survey crew and all their survey teams.

00:03:13.335 --> 00:03:31.305
And so he, it started his own company back in 1957 and, and, and went back to work for Sun Oil Company as a contract surveyor and then worked for other, and, and he ended up, uh, building that company up quite a bit over the years, uh, for oil fuel support in the survey industry.

00:03:31.305 --> 00:03:37.965
And, and, and started doing surveying offshore, uh, which was pretty unique at the time.

00:03:37.965 --> 00:03:38.235
Right.

00:03:38.235 --> 00:03:46.375
And, and, uh, establishing survey control and platforms and, and setting platforms and putting pipelines down and that thing and, and, um.

00:03:47.524 --> 00:04:04.503
That's kind of the, you know, barrier to entry for survey companies is having a lot of survey points, you know, and, and, and in other words, if you wanted to do a pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico, you need to know where all the other pipelines were in the Gulf of Mexico so you don't destroy something else while you're putting in your own pipeline.

00:04:04.503 --> 00:04:11.163
And, and so you had to call his company, uh, John Chanson Associates because he was the only one that had to all the survey control.

00:04:11.163 --> 00:04:15.514
And then, you know, so, uh, that's how survey companies get their railroad entry.

00:04:15.514 --> 00:04:18.483
And, and so he, uh, he developed that, uh.

00:04:19.168 --> 00:04:22.829
That business quite a bit, growing it up to like 300 people.

00:04:22.949 --> 00:04:45.418
And, and, uh, so after, which was one of the reasons I went to, to school in electrical engineering because the whole survey industry was morphing over from more like, uh, people pulling chains and, you know, walking along with level rods, whatever, two, the electronic distance measurement equipment and, and just the infancy of satellite navigation systems.

00:04:45.418 --> 00:04:52.079
So, uh, so you know, which kind of led me to electrical engineering and then a master's degree in geo genetic surveying at Purdue.

00:04:52.079 --> 00:04:55.559
And then I went to work for him, worked for him for about 12 years.

00:04:56.509 --> 00:05:10.759
And, um, and, and at one point we, we came across this, this, we had this idea that we could develop a, uh, satellite based positioning and navigation system a lot like what is today's GPS system?

00:05:10.759 --> 00:05:16.218
It basically, it was, uh, the same, a lot of the same, uh, mathematics.

00:05:16.218 --> 00:05:23.509
The theory was all kind of the same, except what we were gonna do is use these geo geosynchronous communication satellites.

00:05:23.509 --> 00:05:31.728
So you'd remember in a years ago, people would have a big satellite dish in their yard, and it'd be pointing up at the sky and, and it would not move, right?

00:05:31.728 --> 00:05:32.839
I mean, that dish would not.

00:05:33.119 --> 00:05:37.499
You wouldn't move around like GPS satellites are constantly moving, right?

00:05:37.499 --> 00:05:47.098
So, so we were gonna take, uh, three of these geosynchronous communication satellites, send the signal up to 'em and, and really make 'em look like GPS satellites.

00:05:47.098 --> 00:05:53.488
'cause this is all before G-P-S-G-P-S was understood in theory, but the satellites weren't up to do GPS.

00:05:53.728 --> 00:05:59.939
So we said, well, we gonna make a our own GPS system before GPS.

00:05:59.939 --> 00:06:04.829
And at some point we knew GPS was gonna come and probably, you know, kill our market.

00:06:05.098 --> 00:06:07.769
But the seismic companies in the Gulf of Mexico were.

00:06:08.375 --> 00:06:13.564
Desperately needing high quality, continuous 24 hour a day positioning.

00:06:13.654 --> 00:06:17.014
'cause before that they were using radio towers and things like that.

00:06:17.014 --> 00:06:27.725
And the problem is just like on your, like a am radio in your car, you could be listening to it in the evening and sometimes the station fades away and sometimes it comes back.

00:06:27.845 --> 00:06:33.964
So these seismic companies are trying to navigate off of those radio tower signals and it would never work good.

00:06:33.964 --> 00:06:42.394
So they were throwing their hands up and here we were coming out with this new satellite base system, which was at a higher frequency and wouldn't have these problems.

00:06:42.545 --> 00:06:47.285
And then they could double their, their efficient to double their, their production.

00:06:47.644 --> 00:06:48.004
Right?

00:06:48.095 --> 00:06:51.694
Which, you know, that that's a huge monetary incentive.

00:06:51.875 --> 00:07:01.175
So that means that the system that we were developing would be very valuable and, and we ended up building these, these state-of-the-art.

00:07:01.848 --> 00:07:10.968
Like GPS equivalent, but it was like 18 inches by 18 inches, by 18 inches, and you could cook an egg on a thing because it needed so much electricity.

00:07:10.968 --> 00:07:11.178
Right.

00:07:11.178 --> 00:07:13.339
So it was state of the art at the time.

00:07:13.428 --> 00:07:13.879
Right.

00:07:13.968 --> 00:07:14.238
Yeah.

00:07:14.269 --> 00:07:19.939
But, uh, it, it's not state of the art compared to what they're doing today where your watch will tell you your position.

00:07:19.939 --> 00:07:20.238
Right.

00:07:20.238 --> 00:07:28.488
And so, but that was a, a hugely successful, uh, shot in the arm for that company.

00:07:28.699 --> 00:07:33.829
And, uh, in 1990, he decided to sell the company.

00:07:33.858 --> 00:07:34.608
This was your father?

00:07:34.608 --> 00:07:35.149
My dad.

00:07:35.180 --> 00:07:35.209
Okay.

00:07:35.209 --> 00:07:36.889
Had decided to sell the company.

00:07:36.894 --> 00:07:36.973
Yeah.

00:07:37.310 --> 00:07:50.569
And so he went through a full process and, and I'll tell you about that in a second, but let me just say that in 1986, the price all dropped really hard in 1986, it was very painful for a lot of people, and the interest rates were high.

00:07:50.569 --> 00:07:52.369
So that was doubly painful.

00:07:52.728 --> 00:07:53.119
Right.

00:07:53.329 --> 00:08:00.680
So after we got outta 86 and a few years later, and we get this satellite navigation system called Star Fix.

00:08:01.595 --> 00:08:04.084
We get that going and business is going good.

00:08:04.324 --> 00:08:09.814
He remembered the pain of the agony of having, you know, a depressed market.

00:08:10.144 --> 00:08:16.295
You know, he ended up laying off half of his, half of his employees, uh, back in 86.

00:08:16.444 --> 00:08:18.725
It was very painful for everybody, right?

00:08:18.725 --> 00:08:20.975
So, got the business going again.

00:08:20.975 --> 00:08:23.944
It's like, gosh, let's go ahead and sell this thing.

00:08:24.035 --> 00:08:24.425
Right?

00:08:24.605 --> 00:08:26.230
And, and part of it too is that.

00:08:26.870 --> 00:08:35.450
How many companies can successfully go from generation to generation or generation one to generation two without having problems.

00:08:35.690 --> 00:08:35.779
Right.

00:08:35.779 --> 00:08:35.899
You know?

00:08:35.899 --> 00:08:42.139
But now the siblings are running the company that dad had started and they're in fighting and, and all of these kind of things.

00:08:42.139 --> 00:08:46.429
So he made a wise decision, I think, to, to sell his company.

00:08:46.700 --> 00:08:57.950
And so in 1991, he sold to a Dutch firm called Fugro, and, uh, Fugro went around the world and bought a bunch of survey companies and, and, uh, did real well.

00:08:58.370 --> 00:09:04.399
Uh, and, and I'd been working for my dad for about 12 years, uh, by that time.

00:09:04.730 --> 00:09:09.590
And I, I stayed a little while and, and, but things were different for me.

00:09:09.590 --> 00:09:11.000
And, you know, it was, it was different.

00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:14.929
It was used to be my dad's company, but now it was somebody else's company.

00:09:15.529 --> 00:09:15.860
And.

00:09:16.340 --> 00:09:20.929
As much as I wanted it to work, it was emotionally challenging.

00:09:21.259 --> 00:09:23.480
And a lot of the employees were frustrated too.

00:09:23.480 --> 00:09:29.269
I mean, the management style was changing and you know, it's easy to muddy up the water, right?

00:09:29.539 --> 00:09:29.899
Yeah.

00:09:29.899 --> 00:09:40.549
I know, Jude, I mentioned this to you on one dealers, you know, it's easy to muddy up the water when a, a new buyer comes in and they, you know, they say, oh no, we're not gonna change anything.

00:09:40.850 --> 00:09:45.830
But the reality is that they change this and they change that, and somebody in their staff says, oh, let's change this.

00:09:45.835 --> 00:09:52.220
And, and before long you got all kind of different things that you're dealing with, and then the morale can really decay.

00:09:52.610 --> 00:09:53.990
And that's kind of what happened.

00:09:53.990 --> 00:09:58.399
And, and so in 1991, I I, I couldn't handle it anymore.

00:09:58.399 --> 00:10:00.379
I left and started my own company.

00:10:00.830 --> 00:10:01.068
So,

00:10:01.235 --> 00:10:04.580
so before you, uh, this is so cool.

00:10:04.580 --> 00:10:05.389
Thank you for sharing.

00:10:05.419 --> 00:10:09.350
What a, what a cool story that your, your dad kind of envisioned these things.

00:10:09.350 --> 00:10:10.789
Your dad was a pioneer visionary.

00:10:10.850 --> 00:10:11.360
Oh, absolutely.

00:10:11.365 --> 00:10:11.654
Yeah.

00:10:11.659 --> 00:10:12.409
Yeah.

00:10:12.830 --> 00:10:15.169
So you worked for dad 12 years, right?

00:10:15.169 --> 00:10:19.100
You've blood, sweat, and tears, family, you know, all this stuff.

00:10:19.100 --> 00:10:19.120
Oh, yeah.

00:10:19.120 --> 00:10:19.315
Started from the bottom.

00:10:19.315 --> 00:10:21.379
Started from the bottom, and that came

00:10:21.384 --> 00:10:23.419
cutting, cutting grass, cleaning out ditches and

00:10:23.629 --> 00:10:23.809
That's

00:10:23.809 --> 00:10:24.049
right.

00:10:24.049 --> 00:10:33.019
A kid and, and worked in a bunch of the different departments as the lowest person on the, in, in the, you know, and, which was great.

00:10:33.049 --> 00:10:34.370
I mean, that was the thing to do.

00:10:34.370 --> 00:10:35.960
He, he, I think he did the right moves.

00:10:35.960 --> 00:10:36.019
Yeah.

00:10:36.049 --> 00:10:46.009
I mean, it would've been been a mistake to put a, a young and inexperienced person like myself at the time, in charge of people who were experienced incompetent, you

00:10:46.009 --> 00:10:46.100
know?

00:10:46.100 --> 00:10:46.370
Yeah.

00:10:47.629 --> 00:10:47.899
So,

00:10:48.590 --> 00:10:54.019
well, he, he, he created, he innovated because in, in the fifties he got laid off, right?

00:10:54.164 --> 00:10:54.894
Yeah, that's right.

00:10:55.039 --> 00:10:58.700
So a lot of times entrepreneurship gets thrusted upon one.

00:10:58.940 --> 00:11:05.120
Now here we're in 1991, the company sold, and the, the things started changing.

00:11:05.120 --> 00:11:09.409
And as you've been building this for 12 years, and you started seeing that you don't.

00:11:10.070 --> 00:11:11.600
You might not fit there long term.

00:11:11.600 --> 00:11:11.870
Right.

00:11:12.110 --> 00:11:14.570
So you decided to go start out your own thing.

00:11:14.570 --> 00:11:15.080
What was that?

00:11:15.195 --> 00:11:20.509
I, I started to do, do my, and, and look, I, it was the business that I understood.

00:11:20.634 --> 00:11:27.529
I, I mean, I worked my whole life, you know, towards my dad's company, and I understood that in industry.

00:11:27.529 --> 00:11:29.554
And after 12 years I really understood it.

00:11:29.600 --> 00:11:33.440
And, and, uh, and, and so, and I didn't have a non-compete.

00:11:33.470 --> 00:11:36.710
The people we sold to didn't require that I had a non-compete.

00:11:36.889 --> 00:11:39.919
And, and, and frankly, I had full intentions of staying with him.

00:11:39.919 --> 00:11:45.259
And, and I guess I was naive to think that it would be the same happy place.

00:11:45.259 --> 00:11:52.820
But, so, and, and, uh, you know, we sold, he, my dad sold in 91 and in 92, uh, uh, I left.

00:11:52.820 --> 00:11:53.600
And, uh.

00:11:54.664 --> 00:11:55.985
Cried my way out the door.

00:11:55.985 --> 00:11:58.174
I just, I, it's like I can't handle it anymore.

00:11:58.174 --> 00:12:09.365
And I, you know, I left and started my own company, uh, CNC Technologies, and I got my brother to join me, uh, my older brother who had been running the, the boat division of the company.

00:12:09.365 --> 00:12:12.424
So, and him, and along him and I got along real well.

00:12:12.725 --> 00:12:22.985
So, uh, I got him to join me and we started CNC Technologies for chance and chance, and, uh, started doing survey work, um, for the oil industry.

00:12:23.195 --> 00:12:28.414
Uh, and, um, just, uh, mainly in the land area as opposed to offshore.

00:12:28.414 --> 00:12:30.485
And that was our initial thrust.

00:12:30.485 --> 00:12:36.605
And, and, uh, and the new owners of my dad's company decided to do a layoff, and they laid off.

00:12:37.039 --> 00:12:41.419
Some of the managers of the different departments and I, and I'm like, this is crazy.

00:12:41.419 --> 00:12:43.009
I'm gonna immediately hire these people.

00:12:43.009 --> 00:12:48.200
'cause they have, they know all the technology, they know all the customers, they know all the project work areas.

00:12:48.259 --> 00:12:51.230
And, and, and, and I knew these people.

00:12:51.230 --> 00:12:55.610
They were rational, competent, 50-year-old people in their prime.

00:12:55.730 --> 00:13:03.110
And, uh, you know, I, you know, started picking up some of these guys and, and it, you know, it worked out really well.

00:13:03.110 --> 00:13:09.529
I mean, we developed that company for 23 years and got it big, you know,

00:13:10.399 --> 00:13:12.200
well the man.

00:13:13.174 --> 00:13:14.975
You said you cried your way out.

00:13:15.184 --> 00:13:15.544
Yeah.

00:13:15.605 --> 00:13:15.995
Right.

00:13:16.235 --> 00:13:27.365
And I, I want you to touch on that in a second, but also I wanna put my, my feet in the shoes of the 50 year olds who were working at the business with your father, and they, it got bought.

00:13:27.365 --> 00:13:33.154
So, you know, all these promises of, oh, we're buying you and we're gonna do whatever, and now they're getting laid off in their fifties.

00:13:33.514 --> 00:13:33.605
Yeah.

00:13:33.605 --> 00:13:43.565
You had a different approach, you said, in their prime, and you saw that they knew the technology, they had the experience, but they must have been terrified being laid off in, you know, in their fifties.

00:13:43.565 --> 00:13:43.654
Sure.

00:13:43.684 --> 00:13:44.465
With a lot of people.

00:13:44.465 --> 00:13:44.495
I

00:13:44.495 --> 00:13:55.835
mean, and look, I was 33 at the time, so, you know, I wasn't 50, but I, you know, we can all imagine somebody who's 50 years old is, is not like they're 25.

00:13:55.835 --> 00:13:56.134
Right.

00:13:56.134 --> 00:14:00.664
They, they have, uh, they have families, they have, you know, expenses.

00:14:00.664 --> 00:14:04.715
They, they're, they're not ready to start all over in the job market and, and.

00:14:05.360 --> 00:14:07.009
Look, it was an easy thing for me.

00:14:07.009 --> 00:14:10.970
These guys were, I mean, these were incredibly competent people.

00:14:11.210 --> 00:14:21.320
It is like, you know, and look, when you sell to a big company, big companies tend to sometimes make really bad decisions.

00:14:21.320 --> 00:14:29.419
I mean, it's like they, they wanna make decisions from really high in the corporation when they're, they're away from the front lines, right?

00:14:29.419 --> 00:14:39.200
So they don't really know all the facts, and they, they make decisions sometimes that are not in their best interest, and they, they tend to mess things up, you know?

00:14:39.470 --> 00:14:39.769
So, yeah.

00:14:40.759 --> 00:14:44.389
Why'd you, why'd you cry on your way out, and then why'd you decide to bring your brother with you?

00:14:45.259 --> 00:14:45.529
Well.

00:14:46.580 --> 00:14:47.870
He was probably crying too.

00:14:48.080 --> 00:14:48.409
Yeah.

00:14:48.799 --> 00:14:53.120
But, you know, I mean, my whole life was geared towards helping my dad's company.

00:14:53.389 --> 00:14:53.600
Yeah.

00:14:53.629 --> 00:15:00.500
And all of these people in his company who, you know, my whole life was dedicated to try to help them as well.

00:15:01.159 --> 00:15:10.549
Uh, we were all in it together and, and I knew I was leaving and I was gonna be competing with the same people that I've been trying to help.

00:15:10.549 --> 00:15:12.769
And it, so it was a, this mixed emotion.

00:15:12.950 --> 00:15:13.340
Right.

00:15:13.759 --> 00:15:14.029
Yeah.

00:15:14.059 --> 00:15:18.110
And, and you know, I mean, and it was, of course there was the terror of starting my own company.

00:15:18.110 --> 00:15:18.379
Right.

00:15:18.379 --> 00:15:22.909
As lot of people start that and, and, and, and it doesn't turn out well.

00:15:22.940 --> 00:15:23.299
Right.

00:15:23.299 --> 00:15:31.789
I mean, I, all I knew is that I had to run really hard and try really hard and, you know, and hope that I was not making some terrible mistake.

00:15:32.090 --> 00:15:32.539
Right.

00:15:32.629 --> 00:15:32.929
All right.

00:15:32.929 --> 00:15:39.679
So as you're, you're on your way out, what does your, what did your, you know, what did your life look like when you were pivoting careers?

00:15:39.710 --> 00:15:42.049
'cause you already, you know, spend a lot of time in school.

00:15:42.575 --> 00:15:45.274
You came out, you, you were working for your dad for 12 years.

00:15:45.274 --> 00:15:50.195
You, you know, you know, knew nothing different and you walked out the door.

00:15:50.315 --> 00:15:51.605
What was your life like?

00:15:51.995 --> 00:15:53.105
Do you have family or true?

00:15:53.164 --> 00:15:56.855
Yeah, I mean, I was married, we had four kids, you know, I mean, it is like that.

00:15:56.855 --> 00:16:05.105
We had, it was, uh, but it was interesting'cause on the, the, i, I went, uh, on the weekend to clear out my things.

00:16:05.284 --> 00:16:11.674
'cause I knew that the next mon that next day I was gonna, I was gonna go and turn into my resignation.

00:16:11.674 --> 00:16:24.725
And, and uh, and, and uh, as we were walking out, we were, uh, we saw this little para key in the, in the crepe myrtle tree outside the office.

00:16:24.815 --> 00:16:28.985
And it was just sitting there, it's like, what is this little parakeet, you know, a little bitty bird, right?

00:16:28.985 --> 00:16:32.254
And, and it was, you know, we walked right up to it and it didn't move.

00:16:33.304 --> 00:16:38.735
And, and so I said, well, I'm gonna think, I'm gonna try to grab this thing and we'll put it in a box and take it home.

00:16:39.575 --> 00:16:40.684
And it just might bite me.

00:16:40.684 --> 00:16:41.164
I don't know.

00:16:41.225 --> 00:16:42.980
I was like, so I reach out there and I just grab it.

00:16:44.634 --> 00:16:46.490
And, and I said, and it didn't bite me.

00:16:46.940 --> 00:16:50.629
And, and so I told my wife, I said, well, maybe I'm leaving with a bird in a hand.

00:16:51.049 --> 00:16:52.215
Yeah, there you go.

00:16:53.254 --> 00:16:54.409
I mean, it, it worked out.

00:16:54.409 --> 00:16:57.259
And it was, it was, uh, it was, it was a challenge.

00:16:57.649 --> 00:17:00.860
Difficult, uh, emotionally, but, um, it worked out.

00:17:00.860 --> 00:17:07.490
And I had a lot of the people from my dad's little company who had applied to work at, at the new company.

00:17:07.490 --> 00:17:09.559
And some of 'em, I, I just wasn't ready for.

00:17:09.559 --> 00:17:13.910
I mean, it's like, you know, super people and they, you know, I mean, I, heck, I'm just starting out.

00:17:13.910 --> 00:17:17.299
I, I can't, you know, I mean, one guy quit his job and he showed up.

00:17:17.299 --> 00:17:20.420
He said, Thomas, I just quit my job over there so I could come work for you.

00:17:20.420 --> 00:17:21.575
I was like, well, geez.

00:17:21.974 --> 00:17:24.349
I like, don't, to me birds.

00:17:24.349 --> 00:17:24.680
Right,

00:17:24.684 --> 00:17:25.015
right.

00:17:25.220 --> 00:17:26.894
So, uh, anyway, it was,

00:17:26.894 --> 00:17:27.015
yeah,

00:17:27.170 --> 00:17:27.710
it was, uh,

00:17:27.740 --> 00:17:29.359
did, did you really catch this bird?

00:17:29.750 --> 00:17:31.309
Or is this just a a, I'm sorry.

00:17:31.519 --> 00:17:36.769
Did you really catch that bird or was that just a, a joke or, no, you really caught the bird because the bird in the hand is worth two

00:17:37.009 --> 00:17:37.250
bush.

00:17:37.250 --> 00:17:37.545
It is, yeah.

00:17:37.579 --> 00:17:40.849
It must have like, got blown out of its cage or, I don't know.

00:17:40.849 --> 00:17:44.059
It got, got out somewhere from somebody's house and it was in a crate.

00:17:44.180 --> 00:17:47.119
We called it Myrtle 'cause it was in a crepe myrtle bush wow tree.

00:17:47.390 --> 00:17:48.170
And that's true story.

00:17:48.200 --> 00:17:48.349
Yeah.

00:17:48.349 --> 00:17:51.825
I guess if the CNC business didn't ever pan out, you could be a bird catcher, you know?

00:17:51.825 --> 00:17:51.835
Yeah.

00:17:51.835 --> 00:17:53.839
That, but it worked out for you.

00:17:53.900 --> 00:17:54.140
Yeah.

00:17:54.349 --> 00:17:54.680
All right.

00:17:54.680 --> 00:17:57.464
So you, you start this business, you and your brother, CNC.

00:17:57.940 --> 00:17:58.750
Chance and chance.

00:17:58.839 --> 00:17:59.230
Right.

00:17:59.234 --> 00:17:59.295
Right.

00:17:59.349 --> 00:17:59.559
Yep.

00:17:59.799 --> 00:18:04.720
And, uh, you had this opportunity to build for the world of, you know, deal makers in the audience.

00:18:04.720 --> 00:18:08.619
You know, kind of talk to us, what is surveying, how do you make money?

00:18:08.740 --> 00:18:08.829
Sure.

00:18:08.829 --> 00:18:13.960
And then what was your first product to the, the world that you could start collecting money on?

00:18:14.019 --> 00:18:14.289
Okay.

00:18:14.289 --> 00:18:22.509
So like a lot of people are familiar with surveying and they see that the guy standing on the side of the highway with a surveying instrument and whatever, that kind of stuff.

00:18:22.539 --> 00:18:22.628
Mm-hmm.

00:18:22.930 --> 00:18:25.359
And some of it is like that, but now we're, we're kind of.

00:18:25.829 --> 00:18:34.710
Closing in onto the, that market is not highways as much as it's the oil industry and the oil industry, uh, on land and oil industry offshore.

00:18:34.829 --> 00:18:38.640
And then you're talking oil industry domestic on oil industry, international.

00:18:38.880 --> 00:18:44.099
And, and so when you start to look at that, people are saying, Hey, look, I wanna drill a well.

00:18:44.099 --> 00:18:49.170
And the seismic guys are saying, this is, you know, my geologist are saying this is where we should try to drill.

00:18:49.349 --> 00:18:53.130
So I look out and over the horizon, I say, where, where the heck is at?

00:18:53.130 --> 00:18:54.630
Where do we put the drilling rig?

00:18:55.019 --> 00:19:05.220
You know, and, and, you know, and so we, we help by showing them how they're gonna, where they want to put the drilling rig and, and how they get to get the road in there.

00:19:05.220 --> 00:19:08.039
And if they have to, you know, go through, uh, around.

00:19:08.440 --> 00:19:12.190
Different, uh, right of ways or whatever and, and help 'em with that.

00:19:12.190 --> 00:19:16.029
And then when you get to the offshore portion, and, and it's the same thing for pipelines.

00:19:16.029 --> 00:19:23.049
It's like, we wanna run a pipeline from here to here, and now we gotta find the other pipelines and on land as well as offshore.

00:19:23.079 --> 00:19:31.599
And, and it's like, now I'm looking across the ocean and I'm supposed to drill on oil well, and I know the coordinates, but where the heck is that and what is gonna be in the way?

00:19:31.599 --> 00:19:38.529
And, and, and then what they'll do is now we got this drilling rig, we're gonna go and we're gonna plop it down right here at this co coordinate.

00:19:38.950 --> 00:19:47.440
But, and then it, let's say it's a jack up, which means there's these legs that go down in the mud and it holds itself up like it's a table in the middle of the ocean, right?

00:19:47.950 --> 00:20:00.099
But in some of these places, the ground is soft, or there might be shallow gas pockets underneath, and all of a sudden, boom, the leg goes through, the whole thing falls over and people die, which has happened before, right?

00:20:00.099 --> 00:20:16.039
So survey, and the oil industry, and particularly in offshore oil industry, is not just a, it's a. The terrain of the bottom, how soft or hard the bottom is, where all the other infrastructure is, uh, that you don't want to disturb.

00:20:16.039 --> 00:20:20.089
And it could be cables, it could be, you know, power cables or fiber optic cables.

00:20:20.089 --> 00:20:23.359
It could be pipelines or flow lines or all kind of different things.

00:20:23.450 --> 00:20:24.019
Wrecks.

00:20:24.049 --> 00:20:25.279
There's wrecks and things.

00:20:25.279 --> 00:20:27.650
So different things to deal with.

00:20:27.920 --> 00:20:29.329
But, uh, you know, we were lucky.

00:20:29.329 --> 00:20:37.730
Our, our company grew, uh, we grew clients, you know, we grew, we, we started doing some things overseas.

00:20:38.150 --> 00:20:45.200
We, we, we ended up with 10 offices worldwide, uh, 600 people.

00:20:46.190 --> 00:20:57.529
Uh, it, it was, it, it got, it got really, I mean, we ended up being the, the largest privately owned offshore survey company in, in the world.

00:20:58.144 --> 00:21:04.384
You know, uh, I mean, there was, there au who my dad had sold to was the largest, but they were a publicly traded company.

00:21:04.384 --> 00:21:15.494
So if you, if you scratch out the, the publicly traded company, we, we were the largest privately held serving, which when we ended up going to sell, made a, was a, a big card for us.

00:21:15.494 --> 00:21:15.650
Mm-hmm.

00:21:15.730 --> 00:21:24.724
Like, you know, we could put down a card down and say, Hey, we're the, for all you public companies, we're the largest privately held survey company in the world.

00:21:25.595 --> 00:21:28.894
So you buy us, you're getting a, you're getting a material chunk.

00:21:29.015 --> 00:21:29.494
Yeah.

00:21:29.494 --> 00:21:33.724
And, and it's, which helps as opposed to being a, a, a little bitty dot.

00:21:33.755 --> 00:21:34.085
Right.

00:21:34.265 --> 00:21:34.414
Yeah.

00:21:35.285 --> 00:21:38.309
Well, Thomas, um, fantastic.

00:21:38.799 --> 00:21:39.150
Right?

00:21:39.180 --> 00:21:42.785
Like, you guys have built something successful, but you, you said we got lucky.

00:21:43.595 --> 00:21:45.065
Where does luck come in?

00:21:45.484 --> 00:21:52.055
In that aspect, because it sounds like you, you put a lot of hard work in, you got some education, you hired the right people.

00:21:52.325 --> 00:21:55.924
So how do you, how do you measure luck versus preparation for

00:21:55.924 --> 00:21:58.085
Well, that's a good, that's a good question.

00:21:58.085 --> 00:21:58.503
You're asking

00:21:58.503 --> 00:21:59.224
an engineer.

00:22:00.484 --> 00:22:01.414
He plans out everything.

00:22:01.414 --> 00:22:02.404
I engineered my luck.

00:22:02.704 --> 00:22:06.634
But look, I mean, there's a lot of people who plan, right?

00:22:06.634 --> 00:22:08.404
They get a good education, they plan, right?

00:22:08.404 --> 00:22:11.075
They work really, really hard and they're not successful, right?

00:22:11.075 --> 00:22:22.355
I mean, but I, I don't, I, you know, I'm, I would have to say one of the thing, look, we had an outside board of advisors that we built up and that was hugely helpful.

00:22:23.105 --> 00:22:42.634
Um, and you know, and I think making probably the single biggest thing that you can do to impact your company, uh, over the long term is making consensus decisions on, on the big things, right?

00:22:42.845 --> 00:22:43.474
Do we.

00:22:44.015 --> 00:22:46.295
Do we start this other product?

00:22:46.505 --> 00:22:58.144
Do we start this other, do we start selling this other service or product or, you know, do, do we replace this division head with this person or that person on, on all your big decisions?

00:22:59.045 --> 00:23:06.005
Really what you want to try to do is get input from other people who earn a kind of a good place to know, right?

00:23:06.065 --> 00:23:16.894
And, and as you probably remember, like when you were in junior high, the first day of math class in junior high for like five years in a row, they're gonna tell you this is a Venn diagram.

00:23:17.105 --> 00:23:20.404
And they draw out this big rectangular thing and they say, this is a Venn diagram.

00:23:20.404 --> 00:23:23.404
This is a whole universe of, of whatever, right?

00:23:23.494 --> 00:23:25.954
And in this case, it's the universe of information.

00:23:25.954 --> 00:23:34.115
So if you're gonna make a decision about this, or you know, we're gonna move the office, we're gonna open an office over here, or whatever, all of these big decisions.

00:23:34.295 --> 00:23:42.335
So you as a CEO, you're gonna look at it and you're gonna, you know, the first thing you think, these are the things that are, that are gonna.

00:23:42.799 --> 00:23:45.980
Influenced my decision to make me go either left or right or whatever.

00:23:46.039 --> 00:23:46.339
Right?

00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:57.920
And, and, and if put that on a Venn diagram, although I think I'm looking at the entire Venn diagram, the information I know is actually like a third of the Venn diagram, right?

00:23:57.924 --> 00:23:58.115
Mm-hmm.

00:23:58.200 --> 00:24:13.519
And, and so if I ask the, you know, the vice president or somebody on my board or somebody else, or two or three other people, and, and then all of a sudden they start telling me stuff that I was unaware of, then I start filling in other places on this Venn diagram.

00:24:13.579 --> 00:24:15.259
And if I ask enough people.

00:24:15.679 --> 00:24:20.210
You know what, and these are, you know, obviously people who should have some idea, right?

00:24:20.240 --> 00:24:31.309
And, and then I start stacking this data and, and then it's gonna become much more clear that it's like, geez, I was thinking we're gonna go this, but with all this other information we're gonna tweak this decision.

00:24:31.369 --> 00:24:34.279
And, and, you know, and in high school I ran track.

00:24:34.369 --> 00:24:35.509
Now I wasn't ever great.

00:24:35.509 --> 00:24:41.029
I was okay right Now I run long distance and I kind, and, and there's this guy of Felton Baptist.

00:24:41.450 --> 00:24:49.460
And, and for anybody who grew up in you, you know, wearing track in the seventies, Felton Baptiste was the god of, of long distance running, right?

00:24:49.753 --> 00:24:55.730
And, and all of these races would start and everybody was the only one big pile.

00:24:56.119 --> 00:24:59.898
But Felton, Batis was just a little bit faster than everybody, right?

00:25:00.710 --> 00:25:06.230
And by the end of the race, if it was, uh, eight times around the track, he was a lap ahead of everybody.

00:25:06.259 --> 00:25:11.779
He went on to college, uh, and at to, to run track in college and.

00:25:12.875 --> 00:25:16.565
You know, these kind of decisions are the same thing, right?

00:25:16.565 --> 00:25:25.174
If you can make decisions a little bit better than the competition consistently, year in and year out, a decade later, you're gonna be way help.

00:25:25.174 --> 00:25:26.644
You're gonna be laughing, right?

00:25:26.644 --> 00:25:27.904
It's, it's just that simple.

00:25:27.964 --> 00:25:31.265
And, and, but you gotta listen to too, right?

00:25:31.265 --> 00:25:50.315
I mean, you got, you gotta, you know, and, and you know, you think about it, if the three of us here all know the same, if, if, you know, I tell my part of the how we should do and why, and then Jude, you say, and Josh, you say, and then together we, we fill up, we get all the, as much information as we can.

00:25:50.674 --> 00:25:53.704
Then we all should be all saying, Hey, yeah, we're gonna turn right.

00:25:54.095 --> 00:26:00.934
Because now we all see everybody's, we, we all have more information and you know, it becomes easier to make a consensus decision.

00:26:01.174 --> 00:26:02.944
And you don't wanna try to do that with two people.

00:26:02.974 --> 00:26:05.255
'cause one person's gonna say left and one person's go right.

00:26:05.255 --> 00:26:15.634
And you know, so for the small companies that have a, a president, a vice president and and a third operations person, you want that third wheel, the third leg of the stool to, to make decisions.

00:26:15.634 --> 00:26:19.085
You don't wanna try to be making decisions with two people all the time.

00:26:19.115 --> 00:26:20.674
'cause somebody's always gonna be upset.

00:26:21.065 --> 00:26:21.575
For sure.

00:26:23.525 --> 00:26:24.785
Man, this is so cool.

00:26:24.934 --> 00:26:34.595
So going from walking out the door crime to building it up to 600 people to be the largest privately held survey off shark survey offshore survey company in, in the world.

00:26:35.194 --> 00:26:40.174
You, you had the, you had a lot of impact on a lot of lives, right?

00:26:40.474 --> 00:26:44.045
And you had a, a board of advisors, which I think is, is extremely wise.

00:26:44.704 --> 00:26:56.615
Now that we, when it comes to having a board advisors, what did you look for as a board of advisors and then how, what kind of heart or um, temperament do you have to have towards your board of advisors?

00:26:56.615 --> 00:26:57.994
'cause you choose them, right?

00:26:58.000 --> 00:26:58.450
That's right.

00:26:58.595 --> 00:26:58.894
Right.

00:26:58.954 --> 00:26:59.255
Yeah.

00:26:59.434 --> 00:27:00.125
Walk us through that.

00:27:00.125 --> 00:27:00.424
Sure.

00:27:00.515 --> 00:27:00.845
Yeah.

00:27:00.845 --> 00:27:09.214
I would say that for anybody that has a company that's, you know, if your company's been around for, you know, five years, your reasonable size.

00:27:09.214 --> 00:27:11.375
I mean, if you have five people in your company, you probably.

00:27:12.200 --> 00:27:18.920
Don't need a board of advisors, but you know, if you got 50 or a hundred people, it's, you know, you should think about it, right?

00:27:18.924 --> 00:27:19.224
Mm-hmm.

00:27:19.309 --> 00:27:23.480
And, and, and look, this is, this is kind of what you should do, right?

00:27:23.480 --> 00:27:29.000
You get a board of advisors and you have like maybe five people on it, you know, and you meet quarterly, right?

00:27:29.029 --> 00:27:31.099
And you present to 'em just like you would.

00:27:31.289 --> 00:27:40.740
An outside board or just, you know, CEO gets up there with, you know, with CFO and you present you, this is where we are, this is where we were a year ago.

00:27:40.859 --> 00:27:42.690
This is where we think we're gonna be next year.

00:27:42.930 --> 00:27:50.730
This is, you know, we're, this is what we're doing in this department to fix this and this is what we're doing and we're, you know, lost this contract, got this kind of, whatever, whatever.

00:27:51.000 --> 00:27:54.299
Uh, and, and, and you get their feedback on stuff.

00:27:54.299 --> 00:28:00.269
But it, it, and, and you, so you get five people and, and, and so you say, well, who do I gonna get?

00:28:00.329 --> 00:28:04.589
Well, you don't want the same people that are in the office, right.

00:28:04.619 --> 00:28:06.569
That you get input from every day.

00:28:06.750 --> 00:28:07.049
Right.

00:28:07.049 --> 00:28:10.920
You wanna get some, maybe some recently retired entrepreneur.

00:28:11.099 --> 00:28:17.009
You get somebody who maybe was a CFO and is, you know, so you get a, a, an entrepreneurial kind of person.

00:28:17.099 --> 00:28:19.454
You get a financial kind of person, you get a.

00:28:20.275 --> 00:28:22.045
General management kind of person.

00:28:22.285 --> 00:28:31.585
You know, you get somebody who's in knows about transactions, you know,'cause at some point you'll probably wanna sell or maybe buy a company or, you know, bolt something on.

00:28:31.644 --> 00:28:38.785
And so you get these different people in there and, and you know, you gotta pay 'em, you know, I mean, what we did, we paid 'em when they showed up.

00:28:39.025 --> 00:28:43.795
They sit down at the table at nine o'clock every qua on, on a Friday, every once a quarter.

00:28:44.005 --> 00:28:46.375
And they sit down, they, the same people say at the same place.

00:28:46.375 --> 00:28:48.115
And then there's their check and there's their book.

00:28:48.115 --> 00:28:59.275
And we'd send 'em the information ahead of time and, and you know, but you wanna try to get your format of your material kind of standardize so you can add to it from meeting to meeting.

00:28:59.275 --> 00:29:01.224
It's like, we saw this graph last time.

00:29:01.375 --> 00:29:05.095
This is what it looks like this time, and this is what it looked like five years ago.

00:29:05.335 --> 00:29:16.075
Then, you know, so if you don't change your graphs and, you know, I mean, you can update 'em, but I mean, you won't try to get standardized forms, but you, and then because it's a board of advisors, it's not like they're gonna.

00:29:16.460 --> 00:29:19.220
Like this is, you know, you do this or you're gone.

00:29:19.549 --> 00:29:41.480
It's like they're giving you input and, and sometimes even if they don't give you input, you get up there and you present and you're saying, we're here and here and we're not quite sure what we're gonna do about this, then because you're kind of having to step back and see the forest for the trees, it kind of becomes clear to everybody in the room, including yourself that, you know, we should probably do this.

00:29:41.480 --> 00:29:41.809
Right?

00:29:41.809 --> 00:29:45.349
And, and so there's a, a huge amount of merit to it.

00:29:45.410 --> 00:29:59.480
And in fact, when I sold CNCI sold that because of a board meeting I had, one of my board members was, uh, uh, Amy Nelson, not a Houston consultant, and MBA brilliant lady.

00:29:59.480 --> 00:30:04.819
And, and 2014 she said, uh, Thomas, you know, you're, you're.

00:30:05.944 --> 00:30:07.023
Company's doing good.

00:30:07.085 --> 00:30:11.044
And you're, you're, uh, you know, even all keeps growing.

00:30:11.044 --> 00:30:21.304
Your revenues are growing and, you know, and, and price of oil is over a hundred dollars a barrel, and whenever it gets over a hundred dollars a barrel, nobody will think it will ever get below a hundred dollars a barrel.

00:30:21.605 --> 00:30:31.294
Of course, since then, it got negative 38 or whatever it, but, and, and, and, and, and it was just like, all of a sudden I'm like, oh my God, she's right.

00:30:31.414 --> 00:30:35.494
You know, it's like, it, we should really think about selling this company.

00:30:35.494 --> 00:30:35.794
Right.

00:30:35.794 --> 00:30:42.484
So based upon that Board of Advisors meeting, I sold my co and, and we got it.

00:30:42.605 --> 00:30:47.134
We got the deal closed in 2015, early 2015.

00:30:47.134 --> 00:30:50.134
Actually, we, we had signed the documents in 2014.

00:30:50.554 --> 00:30:51.994
When oil was $120.

00:30:52.054 --> 00:30:52.294
Yeah.

00:30:53.134 --> 00:30:59.314
And, and you know, after we signed the, the sales purchase agreement, price oil started dropping and

00:30:59.314 --> 00:31:00.064
it didn't stop

00:31:00.125 --> 00:31:01.054
and it didn't got to the teams.

00:31:01.325 --> 00:31:09.724
But, you know, the deal, the deal was done and we sold to, uh, a big public company, uh, Oceaneering and, and, uh, and it was, uh,

00:31:10.924 --> 00:31:12.634
sounds like Amy deserved a thank you note.

00:31:12.664 --> 00:31:13.234
Oh God, yeah.

00:31:13.234 --> 00:31:13.384
For that

00:31:13.384 --> 00:31:13.865
suggestion.

00:31:13.865 --> 00:31:14.375
Amy.

00:31:14.375 --> 00:31:16.115
Amy is eternally appreciative.

00:31:16.115 --> 00:31:20.944
She was, uh, she was spot on and, uh, and it, it'd been.

00:31:21.515 --> 00:31:24.154
It'd been tough for us if, if I'd hadn't sold.

00:31:24.154 --> 00:31:29.075
So, you know, when we tear, turn we, you know, you ask about luck and I mean, that was luck, right?

00:31:29.075 --> 00:31:30.035
I mean, it's like,

00:31:30.214 --> 00:31:31.565
yeah, nobody knew that was coming.

00:31:31.954 --> 00:31:39.755
You know, it, it's interesting what you're describing, uh, as odd as it sounds actually sounds a little bit like when companies get acquired by private equity.

00:31:40.444 --> 00:31:47.914
Uh, you know, it tends to be that, you know, businesses grow and they get into the mid-market and the business owner is, you know, buck stops with me.

00:31:47.914 --> 00:31:49.805
I make all the decisions, that sort of thing.

00:31:50.224 --> 00:31:56.795
And for the first time when they sell to private equity, you know, they'll sell 60% of the company or 70%, they keep running it.

00:31:56.795 --> 00:31:57.875
They're doing all the day-to-day.

00:31:57.875 --> 00:32:01.625
They're still doing the same thing they've always done before, but now they have somebody to report to.

00:32:01.930 --> 00:32:04.630
It's usually a board of people and they're, they're smart people.

00:32:04.630 --> 00:32:08.500
You know, private equity gets a bad rap, but usually private equity makes money.

00:32:08.500 --> 00:32:09.400
They know what they're doing.

00:32:09.880 --> 00:32:17.440
And finally they have to report to someone and they have to, you know, have financial metrics and they have to do graphs, and they have to show, here's what we've been doing over time.

00:32:17.440 --> 00:32:19.150
Here's what our plan is for the future.

00:32:19.690 --> 00:32:27.910
And if you ask what value private equity brings to deals, it's not that they're, you know, bringing new, new business to the table or anything like that.

00:32:27.910 --> 00:32:30.220
They're bringing that level of accountability.

00:32:30.309 --> 00:32:30.549
Right.

00:32:30.700 --> 00:32:32.589
Uh, you, you just did the cheat code.

00:32:32.740 --> 00:32:33.579
You can do it on your own.

00:32:33.579 --> 00:32:35.109
You can, you can grow without the private equity.

00:32:35.140 --> 00:32:44.589
Well, but, uh, you know, I mean, look, good private equity companies can really, you know, especially if they're building a, a family of like companies, right?

00:32:44.589 --> 00:32:45.490
And building it up.

00:32:45.490 --> 00:32:47.980
And I kind of tried to do that.

00:32:48.680 --> 00:32:55.460
And you know, because look, the value, we knew our value was a multiple of our ebitda, right?

00:32:55.460 --> 00:33:04.940
In our industry, it was like a six times multiple of, of, of, of your e of your annual EBITDA was, was your approximate value.

00:33:05.029 --> 00:33:05.480
Right?

00:33:06.049 --> 00:33:11.359
But, and, and, and that was running like 125 million in ebitda.

00:33:11.450 --> 00:33:11.809
Right.

00:33:12.019 --> 00:33:26.089
So, but we knew that if we could dramatically increase our, if we could double our, our EBITDA to say 50 million instead of six times, we might be seven or eight times.

00:33:26.480 --> 00:33:26.930
Right.

00:33:27.019 --> 00:33:32.809
We sold the Oceaneering, they were trying trading at nine and a half times, uh, trailing 12 months ebitda.

00:33:32.809 --> 00:33:32.869
Yeah.

00:33:33.019 --> 00:33:34.099
They thought they were stealing you

00:33:34.730 --> 00:33:35.690
well and Right.

00:33:35.720 --> 00:33:35.930
No.

00:33:35.930 --> 00:33:36.769
And they end up paying us.

00:33:37.625 --> 00:33:41.134
Nine and a half times our trail in 12 months ebitda, they, they paid the same, right?

00:33:41.164 --> 00:33:42.424
Oh, maybe you were the Steeler.

00:33:42.694 --> 00:33:45.065
Well, it was their offer.

00:33:45.065 --> 00:33:45.724
Not long, right?

00:33:45.724 --> 00:33:52.474
So, but, but so what I said, I, I went to some of our international competitors, I said, and explained this to 'em.

00:33:52.474 --> 00:33:56.525
I said, look guys, we're all worth six times our trail in 12 months ebitda.

00:33:56.884 --> 00:34:04.355
But if we join together, then all of a sudden we're all worth seven or eight times our 12 and 12 month ebitda.

00:34:04.684 --> 00:34:08.344
So if you guys, international competitors who I've gotten to know over the years, right?

00:34:08.494 --> 00:34:09.898
If y'all want to, you know.

00:34:10.608 --> 00:34:14.239
If y'all want, we can join these things together.

00:34:14.239 --> 00:34:22.248
Every, you know, we, we merge to these companies together into one bigger company with more ebitda, and we capitalize on our synergies that we have.

00:34:22.248 --> 00:34:33.858
'cause now we can go other parts of the world, offer complimentary services, all these kind of things, and then we can blast out of the can and at a, at a higher multiple, everybody does better.

00:34:34.309 --> 00:34:49.759
And, and we got a little bit of traction on that plan, uh, but not, I think a lot of people were concerned about, well, I'm not gonna, right now I'm, I'm a hundred percent in control and if I join up with Thomas's company, they're bigger and, and I'm not gonna have a hundred percent control.

00:34:49.759 --> 00:34:58.789
And so we got a little bit of progress with that, but at the end of the day, we ended up going through a full process and selling the co, which was by far the right thing to do.

00:34:59.268 --> 00:35:00.259
And, and, uh.

00:35:00.903 --> 00:35:01.983
Selling the whole company.

00:35:02.164 --> 00:35:03.813
Well, private equity has an advantage.

00:35:03.813 --> 00:35:07.744
They come in with a big pile of money and it incentivizes people to give up control.

00:35:07.744 --> 00:35:07.833
Right.

00:35:07.923 --> 00:35:09.423
It's a little harder to do it without that.

00:35:09.634 --> 00:35:09.903
Sure.

00:35:09.994 --> 00:35:10.293
No.

00:35:10.563 --> 00:35:22.114
Look, private equity is, is a, if, if you got some good private equity people to work with, that is a, and you still have the, you know, you know, the energy to keep.

00:35:22.144 --> 00:35:24.364
'cause some people are like, I, I gotta retire.

00:35:24.364 --> 00:35:25.384
I can't go on.

00:35:25.443 --> 00:35:31.625
You know, if you're gonna join up with private equity, you, you better have at least some years of, of running left.

00:35:31.983 --> 00:35:36.994
But, uh, no, private equity is certainly a, a, uh, a good alternative, right.

00:35:36.994 --> 00:35:38.824
To sell into a corporate or, you know.

00:35:39.545 --> 00:35:40.894
It depends on what your goals are.

00:35:40.894 --> 00:35:45.454
It's great for the guy that isn't ready to give it all up, but he wants to take the chips off the table.

00:35:45.500 --> 00:35:46.804
And, and we see that a lot.

00:35:46.835 --> 00:35:56.855
A lot of people come in and say, you know, I got five years left, I got some gas in the tank, and, and what a great opportunity to take most of the value out of the company, but, but maybe have that second bite.

00:35:56.914 --> 00:35:57.454
Yeah.

00:35:57.574 --> 00:36:00.034
And a lot of times the second bite is bigger than the first bite.

00:36:00.034 --> 00:36:02.644
So I mean, it's, it's like we've all seen that a bunch.

00:36:02.644 --> 00:36:10.653
You know, you can, you can sell the majority of your company and, and, and make more on the minority part of your company five or 10 years later.

00:36:10.744 --> 00:36:11.255
Yeah.

00:36:11.255 --> 00:36:14.134
And, you know, maybe two thirds of the time it works out like that and Yeah.

00:36:14.344 --> 00:36:17.644
You know, the, the one third of the time is the stories people wanna focus on.

00:36:17.644 --> 00:36:20.045
But, you know, that's, it's good to talk about.

00:36:20.110 --> 00:36:20.400
Yeah.

00:36:20.764 --> 00:36:20.974
Yeah.

00:36:21.423 --> 00:36:27.664
When you were, um, meeting with the board and they suggested you, you sell, you go home, you talk to your wife,

00:36:28.864 --> 00:36:29.795
she was, she was on board.

00:36:29.795 --> 00:36:35.134
She like, yeah, Thomas, I've seen you sweating and running and, you know, for years and decades here,

00:36:35.164 --> 00:36:36.364
she thought you were gonna retire.

00:36:37.219 --> 00:36:37.489
Yeah.

00:36:37.489 --> 00:36:37.878
Oh, yeah.

00:36:37.884 --> 00:36:38.088
But, but

00:36:38.088 --> 00:36:38.269
little

00:36:38.358 --> 00:36:38.750
did she know.

00:36:39.079 --> 00:36:39.409
Yeah,

00:36:39.684 --> 00:36:39.974
yeah.

00:36:40.099 --> 00:36:41.119
Well, I mean, yeah.

00:36:41.179 --> 00:36:43.188
She, she was like, oh, yes, this is good.

00:36:43.188 --> 00:36:49.789
We're gonna get Thomas to retire and, and then I can have him put out mulch and pull weeds for, you know, as I direct him.

00:36:50.208 --> 00:36:50.269
Yeah.

00:36:52.188 --> 00:36:52.639
Well, we'll

00:36:52.639 --> 00:36:52.938
get to

00:36:52.938 --> 00:36:53.148
what

00:36:53.148 --> 00:36:53.568
happens

00:36:53.568 --> 00:36:53.699
next, next.

00:36:53.699 --> 00:36:54.230
That's my new boss.

00:36:54.230 --> 00:36:54.545
Right, right,

00:36:54.889 --> 00:36:55.278
right.

00:36:55.278 --> 00:36:56.208
Everyone has a boss.

00:36:56.213 --> 00:36:56.253
Yeah.

00:36:56.333 --> 00:36:56.614
Everybody,

00:36:56.778 --> 00:36:57.949
everyone has a boss.

00:36:58.009 --> 00:36:58.548
Right.

00:36:58.730 --> 00:37:09.048
Uh, when you were deciding to, you know, in your own head sell, maybe, you know, what other options were you thinking through sell or maybe go public?

00:37:09.048 --> 00:37:10.398
Like, did that ever cross your mind?

00:37:11.329 --> 00:37:19.938
Um, I think I, you know, early on before the big Sarbanes Oxley thing, it was kind of easy to go public and do an IPO.

00:37:19.938 --> 00:37:23.269
You could have $2 million of EBITDA and, and do an IPO.

00:37:23.269 --> 00:37:35.059
And, and it really got to the point where you had to be, uh, dramatically bigger than what we were, and probably still that way today, uh, to, to do an IPO, which, and, uh.

00:37:36.125 --> 00:37:41.554
And, and then you gotta really think that, do you really want to be running a public company?

00:37:41.554 --> 00:37:44.284
Because that, that's a very, very different thing.

00:37:45.003 --> 00:37:50.704
Uh, you know, you, you have to really be making decisions on what's best for the quarter as opposed to what's best,

00:37:51.574 --> 00:37:51.815
you know?

00:37:52.713 --> 00:37:53.644
Yeah, I hear that.

00:37:54.394 --> 00:37:56.884
Uh, what was, when you did sell, what was your ebitda?

00:37:57.574 --> 00:37:58.835
About $25 million.

00:37:59.074 --> 00:37:59.733
Okay, fantastic.

00:37:59.733 --> 00:38:01.025
With 600 employees.

00:38:01.204 --> 00:38:01.594
Yeah.

00:38:02.164 --> 00:38:02.764
That's incredible.

00:38:02.764 --> 00:38:04.244
10 locations across the globe.

00:38:04.244 --> 00:38:04.739
Around the

00:38:04.744 --> 00:38:04.983
world.

00:38:05.105 --> 00:38:05.463
Yeah.

00:38:05.469 --> 00:38:05.539
Yeah.

00:38:06.815 --> 00:38:07.295
Good job.

00:38:07.653 --> 00:38:08.224
Well, thanks.

00:38:08.344 --> 00:38:08.463
Yeah.

00:38:08.494 --> 00:38:09.994
Well, hey, look, we had a great team.

00:38:10.204 --> 00:38:14.344
Uh, look, the people that were on the team were just phenomenal.

00:38:14.673 --> 00:38:15.094
Uh, like

00:38:15.693 --> 00:38:18.094
you can't imagine Josh watching this guy.

00:38:18.724 --> 00:38:27.784
You know, so many people wish they would've gotten the opportunity to sell at the end of 2014, early 2015, but, you know, nerves of steel.

00:38:28.278 --> 00:38:34.940
You know, he, he goes through this process, negotiates a deal with these people, and oil just starts plummeting and everybody's panicking.

00:38:34.940 --> 00:38:38.269
Not, not Thomas, you guys, you guys kept it together.

00:38:38.275 --> 00:38:39.318
I, I hit it good then.

00:38:40.184 --> 00:38:42.528
'cause I think we were, uh, we were all kind of panicking.

00:38:42.619 --> 00:38:45.170
Look, I mean, that, that deal had been signed.

00:38:45.170 --> 00:38:47.389
They couldn't really back out.

00:38:47.869 --> 00:38:53.179
And, uh, and I couldn't, you know, I'm willing to say, oh, well, let's never mine.

00:38:53.179 --> 00:39:01.369
I mean, it's like, uh, so, and I'll tell you this too, and that and that sale, I mean, it was, I mean, it was public knowledge.

00:39:01.369 --> 00:39:03.590
The $230 million is what we sold for.

00:39:03.590 --> 00:39:10.309
And, and we had, uh, I had about 70 people in the company with stock options.

00:39:10.759 --> 00:39:14.900
And some of those people got just huge amounts of money.

00:39:14.900 --> 00:39:22.369
I mean, it was just, it was hugely gratifying to me, you know, and people come up and say, you know, I paid off my house.

00:39:22.414 --> 00:39:25.264
You know, this is like frigging crazy.

00:39:26.105 --> 00:39:26.554
I'm sorry.

00:39:27.394 --> 00:39:39.065
But, um, yeah, you know, in there, in that sale there was a chunk of the company that we were doing, remember we, we were doing, we ended up doing autonomous underwater vehicle stuff, right?

00:39:39.153 --> 00:39:56.974
This is like, uh, and the CNC technology, this is a, a robotics thing where you're, you got this submarine looking thing about three feet in diameter, about 20 feet long, and it would go for about two, two and a half days underwater surveying along ocean bottom till it comes back to the surface, right?

00:39:57.514 --> 00:40:01.384
And, and so we were way ahead of everybody in that area.

00:40:01.384 --> 00:40:02.315
In fact, we had done.

00:40:02.974 --> 00:40:11.284
Enough autonomous underwater vehicle surveys to encircle the globe like 12 times, which was more than the US Navy or anybody in the world had done right at the time.

00:40:12.184 --> 00:40:15.903
And, and which was one of the big playing cards we had when we were selling the company.

00:40:15.903 --> 00:40:24.094
It's like, you know, we're world leader in this area, but what we did, we morphed that over from underwater vehicle technology.

00:40:24.123 --> 00:40:27.514
'cause that's what our software guys were developing on software to make this work.

00:40:27.514 --> 00:40:29.224
We said, let's do this on the surface.

00:40:29.824 --> 00:40:35.554
So while people were running out saying, let's do driverless cars, I'm thinking, this is freaking crazy guy.

00:40:35.884 --> 00:40:37.023
Why would you do driverless cars?

00:40:37.054 --> 00:40:38.494
Let's do a driverless boat.

00:40:38.974 --> 00:40:45.304
'cause now you're out in the middle of the ocean, you're going 10 knots and there's nobody to run into generally.

00:40:45.934 --> 00:40:57.784
As opposed to now I'm in a, in a car and I'm going 70 miles an hour and there's a dog on the side of the road or a, a brick or a log or you know, a tree or something, or people walking or somebody just fell.

00:40:57.784 --> 00:41:03.153
And, you know, I mean, the things that, so it's like we're not gonna try to do to driverless cars.

00:41:03.153 --> 00:41:06.125
I mean, how much money you're gonna save somebody to do a driverless car.

00:41:06.125 --> 00:41:08.403
So, you know, I mean, this is like crazy.

00:41:08.704 --> 00:41:22.114
Now, if you're gonna replace a boat that's normally $80,000 a day with an unmanned boat, which is a fraction of, you know, the cost, you can really charge a lot of money because this is a big technological step up.

00:41:22.144 --> 00:41:22.474
Right?

00:41:22.474 --> 00:41:32.139
And, and, and so we, uh, we sold the CNC except for the little division I had that was doing autonomous underwater vehicle stuff.

00:41:32.780 --> 00:41:34.219
Well, how did you peel that out?

00:41:34.309 --> 00:41:38.449
So you're, you're, you're selling this business, but you're like, Ooh, I want to keep this.

00:41:38.480 --> 00:41:40.730
No, I mean, that was all said from upfront.

00:41:40.880 --> 00:41:41.150
Sure.

00:41:41.150 --> 00:41:43.070
I mean, it was, it was all upfront.

00:41:43.219 --> 00:41:46.519
But what, and it was like, here are the employees that are in that department.

00:41:46.579 --> 00:41:46.849
Yep.

00:41:46.969 --> 00:41:49.940
And you're gonna keep a copy of the technology.

00:41:49.940 --> 00:41:52.489
I'm gonna keep a copy of the technology, but this is what we want to do.

00:41:52.489 --> 00:41:53.809
We're gonna run off and do this.

00:41:53.809 --> 00:41:55.519
But why would you want to keep that?

00:41:55.519 --> 00:41:59.300
Like your wife wanted to do mulching and gardening, but why?

00:41:59.300 --> 00:41:59.605
Yeah, that's right.

00:41:59.610 --> 00:41:59.869
Yeah.

00:41:59.960 --> 00:42:07.699
My wife wanted to do me walking, you know, and, and once again, I was disobeying her, you know, and, and trying to do my own thing.

00:42:07.730 --> 00:42:08.000
Right.

00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:16.699
So, but uh, yeah, we, we peeled it off and we called it autonomous surface vehicles, A SV, which is what the technical term is.

00:42:16.699 --> 00:42:20.565
And, and we started, uh, started a SV from, from there.

00:42:21.634 --> 00:42:23.043
This was 2015 ish.

00:42:23.583 --> 00:42:31.833
That was, um, well, I, we started it internal to CNC back in 2010, uhhuh, and then we closed the deal.

00:42:31.833 --> 00:42:37.744
So 2015, it was really separated from, uh, from CNC technologies.

00:42:38.164 --> 00:42:40.054
Then also really hard though, Josh.

00:42:40.083 --> 00:42:45.153
I mean, they create all kinds of new complexity in an already complex deal process.

00:42:45.634 --> 00:42:53.494
Um, and, you know, Thomas hand handled it masterfully where it really, you know, where the rubber really meets the road is when it comes to non-compete.

00:42:53.793 --> 00:42:59.284
You know, the buyer always wants to try to limit what you're doing and, and all that sort of stuff.

00:42:59.284 --> 00:43:01.864
So you have to have those nerves of steel to be able to do it.

00:43:02.523 --> 00:43:17.884
Well in, in this situation, for the, uh, when we, we pulled off that separate piece, the autonomous surface vehicle, the driverless boats, when we pulled that out of the deal of CNC sale, um.

00:43:18.844 --> 00:43:23.673
We, we went ahead and we, we said, look, Oceaneering, we're selling to you.

00:43:23.704 --> 00:43:25.534
We're gonna give you 20% of this deal.

00:43:25.563 --> 00:43:27.094
We just want, just leave us alone.

00:43:27.634 --> 00:43:28.954
And they're like, yeah, that's cool.

00:43:29.284 --> 00:43:32.193
And, and look, we're not gonna be competing with Oceaneering.

00:43:32.224 --> 00:43:39.514
I mean, it's like we, we be their supplier if anything, you know, be it providing boats, but, um,

00:43:40.833 --> 00:43:41.494
pretty smart.

00:43:41.583 --> 00:43:43.233
Made 'em your partner instead of your enemy.

00:43:43.923 --> 00:43:44.313
Oh, no.

00:43:44.554 --> 00:43:46.293
And look, they're, they're a good company.

00:43:46.353 --> 00:43:48.273
I mean, I just can't, you know.

00:43:49.309 --> 00:44:17.960
So anyway, we, we started a SV and, and, uh, the autonomous service vehicles and, and, uh, had us, uh, a team out in the UK of, uh, some naval architects that, uh, uh, I knew and we brought them on and, and, uh, started growing, uh, a SV to do, uh, unmanned boats and driver, you know, driverless boats and, and, uh, ended up growing that and, and doing more than a hundred unmanned boats, uh, selling leasing.

00:44:17.960 --> 00:44:19.369
I mean, it's a new industry, right?

00:44:19.460 --> 00:44:20.360
I mean, what are you gonna do?

00:44:20.360 --> 00:44:25.820
Well, we're gonna, whoever wants to give us money for any reason we're, we will say that's good, right?

00:44:25.820 --> 00:44:27.440
I mean, somebody wants to lease a boat.

00:44:27.440 --> 00:44:28.579
Yeah, we'll lease you boat.

00:44:28.610 --> 00:44:29.900
Or somebody wants to buy a boat.

00:44:29.900 --> 00:44:31.278
Yeah, we'll design a build and sell you.

00:44:31.369 --> 00:44:33.619
And so we were doing that in both commercial.

00:44:34.235 --> 00:44:36.514
As well as, uh, commercial and defense.

00:44:36.514 --> 00:44:46.505
I mean, defense for defense industry, you know, the whole unmanned boats like you, you know, you see aerial drones and I mean, the whole unmanned everything is, is very, uh, robust.

00:44:46.505 --> 00:45:03.275
And, and so we, we, we did, uh, boats up to 40 feet long and, and, uh, diesel powered and, and, uh, uh, you know, and, and before I sold the company, I mean, it, and after I sold that company, we were starting to do bigger.

00:45:03.275 --> 00:45:10.684
In fact, right before we left, we Right, right before I sold, we had gotten a contract for the Navy, by the Navy to do a 180 foot unmanned.

00:45:11.650 --> 00:45:14.945
But so, I mean, it is, um, and it's exciting.

00:45:15.005 --> 00:45:16.235
I mean, it, it is just.

00:45:16.804 --> 00:45:27.034
You know, you think about it for people that are running boats, it's, it's not easy to find a deckhand who can pass a drug test and, you know, shows up for work and whatever else.

00:45:27.275 --> 00:45:29.284
I mean, it's, it's hard to find people sometimes.

00:45:29.284 --> 00:45:38.344
And, and, and so if you can say, Hey, look, and, you know, tell the insurance companies, and, and, and you know that you're gonna go out there, you don't have anybody in the boat and they're actually happy, right?

00:45:38.344 --> 00:45:42.275
I mean, because on one hand they would say, well, oh my goodness, you're gonna wreck.

00:45:42.514 --> 00:45:46.804
And then on the other hand, they're gonna say, well, nobody's gonna fall and hurt their back and say they're gonna sue.

00:45:46.864 --> 00:45:47.224
Right?

00:45:47.554 --> 00:45:56.704
So, um, but you know, the insurance con, but, you know, most of these marine accidents are because people are, you know, it's, it's human error.

00:45:57.125 --> 00:46:14.224
So it, you know, if you, if the radar's watching, the cameras are watching the, the, the, um, you know, thermal cameras watching, all these sensors are watching, you're gonna have less accidents than if you got, you know, the guy who's been drinking too much is in the wheelhouse, and he fell asleep and they crashed.

00:46:14.284 --> 00:46:15.150
Oh, you know.

00:46:16.130 --> 00:46:17.570
Yeah, computer never gets sleepy.

00:46:17.659 --> 00:46:18.829
That's, uh, pretty smart.

00:46:18.860 --> 00:46:20.960
The applications are staggering.

00:46:20.960 --> 00:46:23.389
I mean, you got applications, oil, tankers, and

00:46:23.659 --> 00:46:23.780
all

00:46:23.780 --> 00:46:26.599
kinds of freighter boats and cargo ships and everything else.

00:46:26.960 --> 00:46:31.940
Oh, you know, and we did like 40 different, uh, sensor, I mean, different.

00:46:32.463 --> 00:46:33.333
Payloads, right?

00:46:33.333 --> 00:46:34.534
Because I mean, it's all about the public.

00:46:34.534 --> 00:46:36.273
You don't wanna be out there just to be out there.

00:46:36.273 --> 00:46:38.284
You're gonna be out there to do something, right?

00:46:38.284 --> 00:46:41.373
You're gonna run sonars, you're gonna look, look for fish.

00:46:41.673 --> 00:46:48.273
You're gonna, you know, for the scientists, you're gonna run a ROV to go check something, you know, the pipeline or whatever kind of thing.

00:46:48.423 --> 00:47:00.514
I mean, and the defense guys have a, a million in one reasons to, to, you know, they wanna put all kind of sensor payloads on and all, you know, look, listen for submarines and God knows what I mean.

00:47:00.514 --> 00:47:08.344
It's, it's just endless list of stuff to, you know, go look for mines that are in the water or on, on, in the buried in the sand along the, in shoreline.

00:47:08.583 --> 00:47:15.483
And it's all kind of stuff that, uh, we're, you know, I mean that's why the Navy's going after that hard, right?

00:47:15.483 --> 00:47:20.884
Because they it to build a big man boat, uh, you know, a ship for the Navy because.

00:47:21.409 --> 00:47:28.250
You know, $400 million and you can go build an unmanned boat that does 90% of the same for $4 million.

00:47:28.250 --> 00:47:32.420
I mean, it's like, and and that's where the, the US Navy's going out.

00:47:32.690 --> 00:47:34.159
Everybody's going that way now.

00:47:34.309 --> 00:47:34.639
So

00:47:34.880 --> 00:47:36.199
how cool is this guy, Josh?

00:47:36.230 --> 00:47:36.559
Yeah,

00:47:36.559 --> 00:47:41.090
I like him, you know, building unmanned navy boats for the uk.

00:47:41.119 --> 00:47:45.769
I mean, I'm pretty sure James Bond called at some point and wanted, uh, wanted his stealth boat.

00:47:46.579 --> 00:47:48.889
Oh, well, somebody, people think it's neat.

00:47:48.889 --> 00:47:54.559
And so, yeah, I just say, well, I was probably just, I'm just too naive to think that you can't do this stuff, right?

00:47:54.650 --> 00:47:55.099
Mm-hmm.

00:47:55.760 --> 00:47:58.130
Man, I like that too naive to,

00:47:59.059 --> 00:48:00.170
to think you can't do it.

00:48:00.170 --> 00:48:01.070
To think I can't do it.

00:48:01.550 --> 00:48:01.909
Well.

00:48:05.224 --> 00:48:08.673
Before we get to, and then I built another business or the, and then sold that.

00:48:08.704 --> 00:48:10.353
'cause you kind of like snuck that in there.

00:48:10.353 --> 00:48:12.273
Like you sold it, you sold another one.

00:48:12.634 --> 00:48:13.293
Yeah, I sold two.

00:48:13.474 --> 00:48:13.744
Yeah.

00:48:13.744 --> 00:48:20.643
I sold the CNC technologies, the, the, the Ocean Graphics Survey Company where we were doing autonomous underwater vehicles.

00:48:20.643 --> 00:48:28.594
And then we had the built it second company, which is, uh, autonomous surface vehicles, a SV doing unmanned boats.

00:48:28.773 --> 00:48:31.684
And we built that and sold that one in 2018.

00:48:31.684 --> 00:48:36.813
I sold that to L three Technologies, which became L three Harris, which is a big defense company.

00:48:37.143 --> 00:48:37.384
Right?

00:48:37.623 --> 00:48:38.463
Yeah, that's interesting.

00:48:38.764 --> 00:48:41.463
Ah, so I just built multiple companies and sold them.

00:48:41.764 --> 00:48:43.594
Uh, now are you doing mulching?

00:48:43.833 --> 00:48:44.344
Like what are you doing

00:48:44.344 --> 00:48:44.403
now?

00:48:44.403 --> 00:48:46.594
Yeah, I, I made full c full circle.

00:48:46.594 --> 00:48:52.353
I started my career pulling grass, you know, pulling weeds and cutting grass and now I'm back to pulling weeds and cutting.

00:48:52.534 --> 00:48:53.403
I'm doing more than that.

00:48:53.434 --> 00:48:53.764
Yeah.

00:48:53.764 --> 00:48:54.304
Just kidding.

00:48:54.364 --> 00:48:56.554
But uh, yeah, my wife certainly has me.

00:48:57.423 --> 00:48:59.853
Fixing all the broken stuff that she's accumulates

00:49:00.213 --> 00:49:01.264
and man, that's so cool.

00:49:01.264 --> 00:49:02.284
I'm, I'm honored.

00:49:02.284 --> 00:49:04.804
I mean, this is such a, such a great story.

00:49:05.554 --> 00:49:26.793
Now, I'd love to hear how your brain works because, you know, like you're, you're doing these business deals and, you know, but I think that there's something in there that you, you probably noticed, you know, maybe, or, or measured some unique things in, out in the ocean, maybe wave size or maybe depth or maybe, you know, seeing some unique discoveries.

00:49:26.793 --> 00:49:34.414
You know, like as you guys were looking through the data, like what are some things that you discovered about the ocean that maybe the listener may not have ever thought of?

00:49:34.474 --> 00:49:38.974
Well, one thing we found is, uh, we, we found a German ubo in the Gulf of Mexico.

00:49:39.394 --> 00:49:43.954
We were doing a pipeline, uh, that a pipeline route looking for a pipeline.

00:49:44.719 --> 00:49:47.418
Path for a new pipeline.

00:49:47.449 --> 00:49:50.269
Uh, and the pipeline was the Nikita Pipeline.

00:49:50.269 --> 00:49:54.048
It was gonna be co-owned by BP and Shell, right?

00:49:54.048 --> 00:50:04.219
So we're out there and we're surveying along with our autonomous owner water vehicle, looking at mapping the ocean bottom, taking a picture, and uh, doing a whole kind of a scan of the bottom.

00:50:04.519 --> 00:50:12.739
And we get a call back from the boat and, and the guys are saying, Hey, look, we think we found a, a submarine on, on the pipeline path.

00:50:12.769 --> 00:50:14.509
And they didn't know it was a German U-boat.

00:50:14.568 --> 00:50:15.889
They said It looks like a submarine.

00:50:16.759 --> 00:50:20.358
Uh, and I'm like, guys, this is probably a smudge on a sonar record.

00:50:20.358 --> 00:50:23.418
Just don't worry about it and go back, just keep, go, go back to work.

00:50:23.418 --> 00:50:23.719
Right?

00:50:24.019 --> 00:50:27.168
So, you know, and they, they, they look at it more.

00:50:27.168 --> 00:50:28.250
They call me Hannah Thomas.

00:50:28.250 --> 00:50:31.009
It's like this, you know, we measured off the zoo.

00:50:31.009 --> 00:50:34.594
We scaled often the size and dimensions that we think this is a German ubo.

00:50:34.728 --> 00:50:34.849
And.

00:50:35.735 --> 00:50:41.974
And so I called BP and I say, you know, I think we found a German U-boat on, on your, on your project.

00:50:41.974 --> 00:50:42.590
They said Uhuh.

00:50:42.755 --> 00:50:43.414
No, I'm sorry.

00:50:43.414 --> 00:50:45.903
Thomas BP found the German U-boat.

00:50:46.653 --> 00:50:47.389
Oh, I know.

00:50:47.500 --> 00:50:49.173
Okay, I'm sorry.

00:50:49.173 --> 00:50:49.864
That's what I meant.

00:50:50.284 --> 00:50:53.764
And then I called Shell and I told 'em, said, I think we found a German U-boat.

00:50:53.764 --> 00:50:55.670
And they said, no, shell found the Germany vote.

00:50:55.684 --> 00:51:03.514
And I said, okay, look, shell and bp, y'all get together and sort out who found it and, you know, give our, our, our guys some credit for.

00:51:03.918 --> 00:51:20.119
You know, but it turned out, look, and, and, uh, my, my guys continuous, you know, for years they, they raed me about it being the smudge in the Cial record, which it, it actually changed the history books of, because they had, you know, you can go buy history books about all the German U boats in World War ii.

00:51:20.568 --> 00:51:24.708
And it, you know, it talks about this one that it, you know, was never found or this one was here.

00:51:24.708 --> 00:51:35.929
What, and it actually, it, our guys did a marvelous job at digging up the research and, and history channel, ended up making a movie on it and all kind of stuff.

00:51:35.929 --> 00:51:40.728
And it was really a fascinating, fascinating, uh, discovery.

00:51:40.818 --> 00:51:41.809
Did they recover it?

00:51:42.259 --> 00:51:44.179
No, it was, you know, it's a mile down.

00:51:44.179 --> 00:51:48.793
It's a, it's a war relic and you're not supposed to disturb it and Oh.

00:51:48.813 --> 00:51:49.548
All this kind of stuff.

00:51:49.548 --> 00:51:49.789
So,

00:51:50.509 --> 00:51:52.398
but you uncovered something.

00:51:52.998 --> 00:51:54.434
Well, well, your guys did, right?

00:51:54.693 --> 00:51:54.914
Our

00:51:54.914 --> 00:51:55.125
guys did.

00:51:56.539 --> 00:51:58.278
I mean, actually Sheldon VP did, right?

00:51:58.278 --> 00:51:58.518
Yeah,

00:51:58.518 --> 00:51:59.028
of course.

00:51:59.028 --> 00:51:59.208
Yeah.

00:51:59.208 --> 00:51:59.509
Right.

00:51:59.628 --> 00:51:59.958
Wow.

00:51:59.958 --> 00:52:00.438
What a cool

00:52:00.438 --> 00:52:00.858
story.

00:52:00.864 --> 00:52:02.088
It, it was, and it is amazing.

00:52:02.179 --> 00:52:14.478
And, and really, uh, our, our Marine, uh, archeologist who discovered it, uh, and put all the thing together, he is, uh, and, and they, uh, they went around the country.

00:52:14.478 --> 00:52:18.139
I mean, they were invited to go here and go there and present this whole story.

00:52:18.168 --> 00:52:31.789
'cause it, it really is a, it's kind of a long and complicated story, but it was, it's just truly amazing, uh, you know, to hear them go through it and, and, and kind of 'cause, because it, it goes back into all kind of war stuff.

00:52:31.909 --> 00:52:33.708
They actually talked to some guy in Germany.

00:52:35.150 --> 00:52:38.539
Who was on one of the U-boats at the time in the Gulf of Mexico.

00:52:38.539 --> 00:52:51.440
And he said, yeah, you know, we saw this Coast Guard plane and we ran back inside, it was hot, we had our shirts off and you know, and it's just like the, the amount of, you know, investigation they did was, was tremendous.

00:52:51.440 --> 00:52:53.809
And they put together an, an incredible story.

00:52:54.110 --> 00:52:56.570
But anyway, we we're kind of getting off the deal.

00:52:56.570 --> 00:52:57.739
But what a, sorry,

00:52:57.949 --> 00:52:59.000
what a cool story though.

00:52:59.360 --> 00:53:00.079
Um, yeah.

00:53:00.079 --> 00:53:07.309
Back, back to back to deals you've accomplished, uh, much and, uh, now, you know, sold two companies.

00:53:07.789 --> 00:53:10.009
Now, where do you put your energy and focus in the world?

00:53:10.009 --> 00:53:10.639
The deal making,

00:53:10.969 --> 00:53:18.530
actually two of my sons had been working with me at, uh, uh, a unmanned boat company, a SV.

00:53:20.179 --> 00:53:31.969
Uh, they ended up, uh, you know, after I sold to the big defense company, you kind of see the whole thing happen again, is that those things start to change.

00:53:31.998 --> 00:53:32.088
Mm-hmm.

00:53:32.329 --> 00:53:39.199
Bureaucracy steps in, they get frustrated and leave and start another company.

00:53:39.259 --> 00:53:39.648
Right.

00:53:39.648 --> 00:53:45.978
So now, uh, my oldest son Stewart, started a company called Chance Maritime.

00:53:46.009 --> 00:53:58.849
My younger son, uh, Spencer joined him and, uh, several of their key guys ran over and he is got about 20 people and he's, uh, at Chance Maritime, and they're doing unmanned boats.

00:53:58.849 --> 00:54:00.978
I have inordinate.

00:54:01.309 --> 00:54:06.349
Knowledge and experience and, uh, excited about what they're doing.

00:54:06.349 --> 00:54:15.949
So I mean, I, I go and I visit with them from, you know, once a week or twice a week or whatever, and, or I, you know, he calls me and says, you know, what do you think I should do here or there?

00:54:15.949 --> 00:54:16.909
And, which is good.

00:54:16.909 --> 00:54:18.800
I mean, I just like, it was, it's great.

00:54:18.800 --> 00:54:24.860
I mean, I can tell him, you know, how to not step in the piles of poop, you know, it is like easy.

00:54:24.949 --> 00:54:28.130
So, and you know, especially if you know where they are ahead of time.

00:54:28.130 --> 00:54:35.750
And so, uh, you know, he's, he's growing like crazy and, and he is got a, a good, fun company, right?

00:54:35.929 --> 00:54:36.050
Yeah.

00:54:36.050 --> 00:54:46.909
It's, it's what it's all about for those, those guys, you know, he young people that, you know, very talented and smart and wanna do things to really move the needle in the world, and they can go there and do that.

00:54:47.480 --> 00:54:47.809
So,

00:54:49.369 --> 00:54:49.670
yeah.

00:54:50.150 --> 00:54:56.005
Um, think of, think of the final question you want to ask him, um, Jude, but.

00:54:56.764 --> 00:55:01.443
Before Jude asks you a question, we have a, a question from a previous guest.

00:55:01.684 --> 00:55:02.164
Oh, okay.

00:55:02.193 --> 00:55:02.554
Okay.

00:55:02.764 --> 00:55:07.324
And then you'll get to pass on a question to the next guest who will be tomorrow Oh, this question.

00:55:07.329 --> 00:55:24.813
And we don't, we don't know what he wrote, but Joe, uh, Joe wrote this question, tell us why, in what motivates you to produce your outstanding Halloween display for the kids every year?

00:55:24.903 --> 00:55:25.833
From Joe Junior.

00:55:26.943 --> 00:55:27.994
Oh, from Joe Gigo.

00:55:27.998 --> 00:55:28.199
Yeah,

00:55:28.228 --> 00:55:28.954
yeah, yeah.

00:55:28.954 --> 00:55:31.054
I gotta make sure I don't pronounce his last name wrong.

00:55:31.143 --> 00:55:31.384
Yeah.

00:55:31.384 --> 00:55:32.159
Joe Gigo, right?

00:55:32.159 --> 00:55:32.398
Yeah, yeah.

00:55:32.643 --> 00:55:32.884
Yeah.

00:55:32.884 --> 00:55:36.903
There, there's a Joe Gigo, senior and junior and don't know the grandpa and everybody.

00:55:37.204 --> 00:55:37.534
Yeah.

00:55:37.594 --> 00:55:41.943
So look, and yeah, when my kids were little years and years ago, right?

00:55:42.184 --> 00:55:50.134
Um, they were all 6, 7, 8, 9, and they, they were like, dad, can we do a, a haunted house for Halloween?

00:55:50.139 --> 00:55:51.934
And, and I said, yeah, we'll, we'll do something.

00:55:51.934 --> 00:55:52.623
So in front.

00:55:53.208 --> 00:55:58.519
Front of our house, you know, from our front door to the street, there's a little sidewalk goes from the front door to the street sidewalk.

00:55:58.789 --> 00:56:00.559
So over that sidewalk.

00:56:00.559 --> 00:56:02.989
I, I, I, I get some, you know.

00:56:03.710 --> 00:56:07.099
Black plastic sheeting, you know, vis Queen or whatever, two, two by fours.

00:56:07.099 --> 00:56:09.318
And I make this little tunnel, right?

00:56:09.318 --> 00:56:17.599
And you walk through the tunnel and you're looking at pictures of ghosts and pumpkins, and, and then you, you get to the other end and we hand them the candy and, and so they, you know, they're all excited about it.

00:56:17.599 --> 00:56:26.028
And so, you know, the next year we add a few things and then the next year we add a few things and, you know, and then I can do a little, little animatronic something here or there, right?

00:56:26.028 --> 00:56:30.980
And, and, uh, then as the years go by, it's like, you know, we can make this into a ride, right?

00:56:30.980 --> 00:56:35.929
So we can, you know, you get in a car and you get in a little, you know, and we are gonna put a little track down.

00:56:35.929 --> 00:56:40.969
And, and so we move it to the driveway and, and it gets bigger and more complicated.

00:56:40.969 --> 00:56:43.429
And I said, you know, this is too big and complicated.

00:56:43.818 --> 00:56:49.190
And so I, you know, I'm, I, I ended up buying a, uh, an 18 wheeler trailer.

00:56:49.190 --> 00:56:52.219
You see these big box trailers that come down the, the highway.

00:56:52.338 --> 00:56:53.509
It says 53 on the side.

00:56:53.509 --> 00:56:55.398
'cause it's 53 feet long, big.

00:56:55.759 --> 00:56:57.619
What they call a dry van, right?

00:56:57.648 --> 00:56:59.000
And a big box trailer.

00:56:59.059 --> 00:57:02.838
And so in there, I, I build it all up and then I end up getting a second one.

00:57:02.989 --> 00:57:05.688
So now on October the first or so.

00:57:06.485 --> 00:57:10.173
I get a buddy of mine to bring in these two trailers, park 'em on my driveway.

00:57:10.505 --> 00:57:13.414
I pull two 20, you know, 230 volts from my workshop.

00:57:13.414 --> 00:57:18.963
And I, I hook it into this thing, fire up eight air conditioners, and, and, and now everything is built in there.

00:57:19.025 --> 00:57:22.414
So I got 200 feet of track, eight room eight, uh, 16 rooms.

00:57:22.565 --> 00:57:27.244
Everything is computer controlled, you know, 150 servo motors doing stuff.

00:57:27.244 --> 00:57:29.824
Computers all over, microprocessors all over.

00:57:30.034 --> 00:57:34.775
It follows qr, the train, it got three trains every four minutes and 11 seconds a train comes.

00:57:34.775 --> 00:57:39.844
We put in the parent, the kids, the parents, the grandparents, off it goes through all these little rooms and everything.

00:57:39.844 --> 00:57:40.923
It's very kid friendly.

00:57:41.105 --> 00:57:45.065
You know, we don't want, I don't want somebody coming, you know, the little kid come out crying.

00:57:45.065 --> 00:57:47.045
I mean, it takes their picture halfway through.

00:57:47.074 --> 00:57:50.525
It gives 'em candy and, and, and stuff to, and we get thousands of people.

00:57:50.525 --> 00:57:53.644
I mean, this is the free thing we just opened up and we get thousands of people.

00:57:53.644 --> 00:57:58.204
So the last four nights of October every year for like 30 years we've been doing this.

00:57:58.204 --> 00:57:58.505
Right.

00:57:58.505 --> 00:57:59.344
And, and, uh.

00:57:59.943 --> 00:58:01.744
And now look, got a dozen grandkids.

00:58:01.744 --> 00:58:04.534
I got 13 grandkids now, and, and they're there.

00:58:04.623 --> 00:58:05.943
The oldest one is like 11.

00:58:05.943 --> 00:58:14.434
So he is pulling at me, you know, we're gonna do haunted house, we're gonna do, I guess so, you know, I mean, at the rate I'm going, I'm gonna have to do haunted house when I'm 88 years old.

00:58:14.463 --> 00:58:14.764
Right.

00:58:14.764 --> 00:58:15.034
I mean,

00:58:15.063 --> 00:58:15.244
yeah.

00:58:15.454 --> 00:58:29.614
So, uh, but I mean, we get thousands of people, we get second generation now, you know, people that used to be kids now coming with their kids and, and they all love it and they, you know, they say, yeah, we got our picture from last time and it's on the refrigerator along with the pictures from the year before and the year before and the year before.

00:58:29.884 --> 00:58:33.423
So, you know, they, it's, uh, it's a lot of fun for them.

00:58:33.963 --> 00:58:41.914
And so, um, I'm happy to do it and I, I get to tinker with electronics and little things and trying to keep all the stuff going.

00:58:42.003 --> 00:58:42.244
Right.

00:58:43.054 --> 00:58:44.434
That is so cool.

00:58:44.523 --> 00:58:47.673
Yeah, you gotta, you can go to, uh, uh, what is it?

00:58:47.704 --> 00:58:50.193
Uh, chance haunted ride.com.

00:58:50.373 --> 00:58:51.364
Not chance Haunted House.

00:58:51.364 --> 00:58:52.414
Chance Haunted ride.com.

00:58:52.503 --> 00:58:52.653
Yeah.

00:58:52.653 --> 00:58:54.543
Chance Haunted ride.com.

00:58:54.603 --> 00:58:54.934
Yeah.

00:58:55.023 --> 00:58:55.173
Yeah.

00:58:55.173 --> 00:58:55.264
We'll

00:58:55.264 --> 00:58:56.344
put that in the show notes.

00:58:56.344 --> 00:58:57.963
Yeah, you can watch the video of the.

00:58:58.518 --> 00:59:00.349
Uh, after you watch the podcast, of course,

00:59:00.528 --> 00:59:01.068
yeah.

00:59:01.068 --> 00:59:04.458
Uh, you can, uh, watch the video of, uh, of kids going through the.

00:59:06.125 --> 00:59:06.485
Rod,

00:59:07.324 --> 00:59:12.574
you can tell Thomas has fun doing it until the Daveed show up and he goes, oh gosh, you're are gonna need two train cars.

00:59:16.204 --> 00:59:27.605
Thomas, this has been a great journey, uh, you know, listening to your story, um, obviously very inspiring for people who wanna be entrepreneurs and, and think about doing business related things.

00:59:27.994 --> 00:59:34.534
I love the part of, you know, your father selling his company and you guys starting yours out of that, and then you selling your company.

00:59:34.534 --> 00:59:36.815
Now your sons are starting theirs out of that.

00:59:36.820 --> 00:59:37.250
It's right.

00:59:37.474 --> 00:59:40.894
It's such a, a beautiful family legacy of entrepreneurship.

00:59:41.554 --> 00:59:50.704
Uh, for all the listeners who are thinking about entrepreneurship, wanting to start something, wanting to, you know, execute on an idea, what advice do you have for them?

00:59:50.704 --> 00:59:51.965
You, you've done it multiple times.

00:59:52.204 --> 00:59:52.295
Sure,

00:59:52.445 --> 00:59:52.804
yeah.

00:59:52.864 --> 00:59:53.554
What, what should they be

00:59:53.554 --> 00:59:53.914
thinking?

00:59:53.914 --> 00:59:56.105
You know, a lot of these people, it's like, oh, I'm in college.

00:59:56.105 --> 01:00:01.235
I'm gonna do, like, you know, I'm gonna just drop out college like all these geeks do.

01:00:01.235 --> 01:00:03.094
I'm gonna drop outta college and go start my own thing.

01:00:03.125 --> 01:00:03.275
Well.

01:00:03.918 --> 01:00:06.438
Look that this is a half court shot, right?

01:00:06.588 --> 01:00:13.369
What you wanna do is if you wanna go into some industry, you go to work for somebody who you think is really doing it right?

01:00:13.759 --> 01:00:14.059
Right.

01:00:14.119 --> 01:00:22.608
And you work there for like five years and you get to know all the technology and all this stuff, all how, what to do, how to price it, who the customers are.

01:00:22.909 --> 01:00:27.798
You know how a good contract looks like a bad contract or, you know, whatever it is, right?

01:00:27.798 --> 01:00:34.128
You wanna learn from the best and then you bolt, you run off and start your, that's the open court layup, right?

01:00:34.248 --> 01:00:35.478
That's the way to do it.

01:00:35.688 --> 01:00:39.858
And, and that's, you know, your success rate is humongously better.

01:00:39.949 --> 01:00:46.789
And then when you go to start your company, then you're gonna say, oh, well I, I'm gonna have to give, uh, some stock to this guy and this guy and this guy.

01:00:46.789 --> 01:00:50.628
You gotta be careful about that because sometimes, um.

01:00:51.168 --> 01:00:57.588
You know, while you think that, you know, I, I've known this guy, I've worked with him for the last umpteen years, and it's gonna go and we're gonna break off.

01:00:57.588 --> 01:01:09.378
We're gonna do the, you know, and a lot of these things, they all start off good, but sometimes it kind of, it's like a marriage when you, you know, people get married and they think it's, they're gonna live happily ever after, but a lot of 'em get divorced, right?

01:01:09.378 --> 01:01:20.208
So you're better off, uh, you know, before you run off and give off equity to all these people is you give them, um, like a, a liquidity bonus, right?

01:01:20.208 --> 01:01:28.128
It's like, if we sell this company, or when we sell this company, then, then you're gonna get a bonus, uh, based upon the sale value.

01:01:28.219 --> 01:01:34.909
And, and that is a, and, and look, if they don't end up, if they end up not working for you, then that goes away, right?

01:01:35.088 --> 01:01:42.918
So, but, and of course you, you want to go into something that has a reasonable chance of, of de decent profitability, right?

01:01:42.918 --> 01:01:49.458
When you go into this restaurant, it's like, this restaurant has been five different restaurants over the last decade.

01:01:50.688 --> 01:01:58.728
Don't go buy the fricking restaurant that has gone outta business five times in a row and think that you're gonna be able to do something different.

01:01:59.268 --> 01:02:01.969
Find some industry that you can make a decent margin in.

01:02:01.969 --> 01:02:05.539
Be scared of competition and go place so where there's no competition.

01:02:05.748 --> 01:02:14.778
And, and then from a financial standpoint, you know, you're gonna start off, you're gonna make a pro forma financial and you're gonna think, oh, my revenue's gonna be this and my expenses are gonna be this.

01:02:14.778 --> 01:02:23.478
And, and well I can tell you your revenues will probably be half of what you think your expenses will probably be twice of what you think and your cash needs will be about four times what you think.

01:02:23.659 --> 01:02:28.534
So you gotta, you gotta prepare for that and um, 'cause that.

01:02:29.539 --> 01:02:30.769
Nine times outta 10.

01:02:30.949 --> 01:02:32.360
That's how it is, right?

01:02:32.659 --> 01:02:34.969
So I mean, that, that's what I would, that's what I tell you.

01:02:35.539 --> 01:02:36.079
Amen.

01:02:36.289 --> 01:02:38.869
Uh, to all of our listeners, don't buy a restaurant.

01:02:39.920 --> 01:02:40.789
Don't, don't do it.

01:02:40.969 --> 01:02:41.778
Don't do it.

01:02:42.110 --> 01:02:43.519
It'll never be what you think it's gonna be.

01:02:44.210 --> 01:02:44.480
Yeah.

01:02:44.480 --> 01:02:44.570
It's.

01:02:44.894 --> 01:02:45.554
Oh my gosh.

01:02:45.554 --> 01:02:48.315
So fun time flew, tempest fut.

01:02:48.405 --> 01:02:51.405
It, uh, really went fast and I'm grateful for your time.

01:02:51.405 --> 01:02:52.425
Thomas, thanks for coming in.

01:02:52.664 --> 01:02:54.195
Fellow deal makers in the audience.

01:02:54.195 --> 01:03:09.735
As always, reach out to our guests, say thank you for in investing their time in you, the future deal makers to inspire you, to educate you to, um, hopefully maybe help you not step in the pile of poo right, as Thomas said, but, uh, really grateful for you all listening in.

01:03:09.824 --> 01:03:16.574
Um, do me a favor, if you've enjoyed this, send this to someone who you think could use this kind of content.

01:03:16.905 --> 01:03:19.695
'cause we wanna share the message and inspire more people.

01:03:19.784 --> 01:03:27.405
And if you have someone who you think would be a good guest, head over to the deal podcast.com, fill out a quick form on the top and maybe get you on the show next.

01:03:27.405 --> 01:03:29.324
So then we'll talk to you all on the next episode.

01:03:29.505 --> 01:03:29.894
Cheers.