Lighting for Profits - Episode 143

This week on the show we welcome Matt Hyden, San Diego native and first-generation Christmas Light Installer. Started in 1998 alongside Ruth’s Chris day job. Ventured into mortgages before finding passion in marketing, achieving $6.5 Million in the second year. Embraced challenges in 2008, selling the company and returning to Christmas lights. Specializes in commercial installations across California, mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs. Journey marked by determination, adaptability, and seizing opportunities.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to lighting for profits. All Light. All Light All Light. Powered by Emery Allen. Get rid of your excuses. Your number one source for all things, landscape lighting. That's where the magic can scale a business. We really had to show up for each other from lighting design, install, sales and marketing. You're a scaredy cat salesman. We discuss everything you need to know to start and grow a successful landscape lighting business. What do you think a hippo has to do with your business? Right? Usually it's some weird childhood thing, some bully kicked your butt.

I think the key factor here is trust. Here is your host, Ryan Lee. All Light. All Light All Light. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. I'm so excited to be here guys. It's almost a miracle that we're here. But uh we are here. I'm excited for the show. It's the number one landscape lighting show in San Diego, California. That's where we're getting from today. So, uh guys, I'm super excited if you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business and today a holiday lighting business or any lighting business, you're definitely in the right place.

We're here to educate and motivate to help you dominate. And uh just excited to be here. I wanna give you a quick warning. We were having some internet issues. Literally, this uh about a few hours ago, I get a text from the company and they're like, hey, your internet's down. I'm like, yeah, I noticed and it'll be restored about an hour and 10 minutes before the show goes live and uh it has not been restored. So I'm connected to my phone hotspot. So who knows what's gonna happen?

This could be an amazing show or it could end abruptly at any second, find out next. Uh But uh assuming we're just gonna move forward like it's gonna work and it's gonna be awesome. So, uh I wanna thank you guys for your support. Thank you for being here. If you have not yet given us a five star review, uh review on Apple or Spotify, please do, uh I've been asking for those and we've been receiving, we've been getting those. So thank you guys so much if you've done that.

Thank you. Thank you. If not shame on you, go do it now you got time, go do it. Uh But I appreciate your support and, uh, you know, uh what you, what do they say? Uh You get what you, I don't know, just give me a five star review. Uh And of course, I want to, uh thank, uh, well, by the way, our guest today is gonna be Mr Matt Haydn with Clipper and I'm so excited because his events coming up in, uh less than a month now, just a few weeks and I'll be there, I'll have a, a booth.

I'll be speaking. Uh, it's gonna be awesome. So, stick around in just a few minutes. We're gonna have Matt Haydn with Clipper. We're gonna talk about his journey as an entrepreneur and uh the things that he's doing to help innovate and change the world. And uh I'm super excited to have him on in just a couple of minutes. And uh of course, I wanna thank uh Emery Allen. Do I? Yeah, let's thank him. You know, this performance matters. It's a true statement for a lot of things including the kind of lighting you use.

Don't sell yourself short with your customer by using budget level products. Emery Allen is at the top of their game when it comes to performance. Take their va rating, for example, it's the lowest in the industry. What does that mean? Well, efficiency. So that means you can put more fixtures or lamps on a run on a transformer, right? So you're gonna save money and it's gonna look awesome. They got the single source led lamps, they look amazing. So if you want to get the discounted contractor pricing, all you need to do is reach out and email Tom G at Emery allen.

com mention you heard about him here on lighting for profits and he'll hook you up with that discounted contractor pricing, just email Tom G at Emery allen. com and get your account set up today. All right, guys. Um, we do have a special guest. We have a special surprise for you, which we're gonna, we're just gonna like remote in right now. Let me see if I can even figure out how to do this. Um, because we have a surprise for you. Uh, if I can figure out the buttons, please help me, somebody, please.

Uh oh, what's that sound? That's not the tornado sirens. That's the landscape. Lighting sirens live from New Harmony, Indiana. It's Greg Matthews. What's up, Greg? I feel like a special reporter uh live on scene in action. You are what I mean, what else is happening? Right? So we're visiting the spot that Ryan Lee had his training to become the official uh Italy rover of the year. Yes, this is where the training all went down. This is the place man. I've got a special, it's got a special place in my heart for sure. Yeah.

So this is a project we did uh about a year ago. Exactly. Um As a IY mock up, you know, it looks just like everybody is house at home. Um It's actually a famous sculpture underneath a beautiful structure here in New Harmony Indiana at the roofless church. And uh we let this uh do the mock up during uh international Landscape Lighting Institute intensive course So this was the, the group next to Ryan Lee's group, you know, but we came back and we're actually gonna permanently like this.

So it took about a year for it to pass through the board of directors of Foundation and for me to get permission to drill into a national historic monument. But here we are. Well, I think it's so cool. Let's talk about why it's so special because I know this was the first my first ily experience and uh we were in the zone right next to the one that you were leading. But um how often do, do people go back and actually do a permanent install at an ily site where they do the mockups?

Let's just say, hopefully, this is the first of many. But um yeah, so hopefully this becomes more of a tradition so that we can improve the lighting, not only, you know, as independence, but as a culture and uh the organization as well, but this will be the first permanent installed uh after doing the mock up, um which is pretty cool to have on our resume. So, yeah, we were hired to do it. But um I also invited my team to come back and help. Uh that was on my team here doing the mockup.

So they are here helping, let's go uh check some of them out. That's awesome, man. So what, what prompted you to like take it to the next level because a lot of people just go do the mock up. They, you, you were the mentor, you led the team, you did the thing, you did awesome photography and then you just kind of move on. What prompted you to be like, no, this needs to be like a permanent installation. No, this is like resume work. So this is like lighting the White House, in my opinion, you know.

Um and then like I said, it took about a year to get approval because at first they just wanted to do up lighting and we're concerned about going in the structure and I kind of had to stick to my guns and say, hey, we're gonna light it properly or not gonna light it. Um And we were able to build the confidence over time and I find a donor to donate to the foundation to pay us for the parts. And one of the cool thing is we're actually using the uh brands that we used during the ili mock up.

We're also sponsors. So we have about six or seven manufacturers here um that we're installing. So that's true to keep to the sponsors for the organization and pay them back as well. Yeah, that's awesome, man. Um Hey, do me a, do me a favor and just move. I got a lot of my team here and then we have move to like the outside. I think the roofless church is blocking some signals. They are like the tin foil on the top of that thing. Yeah. A after the eclipse yesterday, who knows what's going on?

So, let's come over here. Are you, are you even a great structure? How cool it is? I know it's so unique. I remember, I remember talking to you actually, you were, you were there the year before at the new harmony at a different site and you were so excited to come back and mentor and lead you, you chose this specific area to light. So it's cool to see it come full circle for sure. Yeah. No, we lit a park um right nearby the previous session, but this is just such a special place.

Um Such a cool town full of ghosts as we all know and um lots of history and just crazy stories which should all be researched. Um And we got two other people here from Indiana that are part of Italy that weren't in the group, but we got Tim Ryan and Ed Smith, but they're local Indiana people that we invited to come and help as well. That's awesome. So they brought tools, they brought their expertise. Yeah, we got Jimmy Kidd and Ed Smith up here mounting some pin the lights while the infamous Bear black is supervising and making sure the ladder doesn't go anywhere.

What's up, bear is bear. Um Can we, can we figure out a reason for him to get back in the water? Uh Yeah. It's, it doesn't exist, dude, it's not even flooded. So, a plain is dry. That's awesome. Yeah. Otherwise I would have dropped a screwdriver out there or something. So, let's talk to some of these guys. You got Bear black. It seems is that Tim Ryan in the back? Let's talk to, uh, bear for a minute. Ok. Yeah. So we got, we got Tim here. Tim is documenting the whole process. Really?

I got the easy job today. Yeah, I mean, I guess he's OK at photography. So that's probably a good, good spot for him. So, Tim, what, what prompted you to want to be part of this and come join the team and, and help these guys finish it off. Well, you know, Ryan, this is such a unique and interesting site. Um You know, and, you know, I'm involved with the International Landscape Lighting Institute because this was, you know, one of the um the IC locations. It was just, you know, opportunity to come back and be able to work um the camaraderie with all the team members.

And that's the thing about, you know, I, I can say about the organization is when everybody comes here, everybody checks their ego at the door. And so you don't have, uh you know, a bunch of people pounding their chest that's same way, same way, come to uh something like this where we're all just working together trying to make a permanent installation and uh just have a good time. So uh to be, to be around the best in the business is always uh you know, always encouraging for me and it's always a good time.

So definitely want to be here for this one. That's awesome, man. Congrats for uh being there and uh looking forward to seeing the uh the the outcome of your photography and documentation. All right, sounds good. Thanks Brian. We know Tim can Photoshop it if we don't do a good job. So that's why we brought him. Actually. Um we actually are not going to install any lights. We're just going to draw it on there. You know, it's funny kid here if you want to talk to him. So Greg, like, you know, when you're, when you're at it, you can put lights anywhere but you don't care about like where the wires are.

Like, you don't really care about installation technique. So this is a true test because like, can you really get the wires to the lights that you want? Right. That's really cool. Yeah. So, and the other thing too is like this is not landscape lighting, this is um National Historic Monument, architectural lighting. So it is a little tricky where there's no ceilings or nothing to cover stuff. So we are running into uh a lot of issues on the way that we're just having to solve on the fly kind of thing.

That's cool. So Jimmy is Jimmy there and Jimmy's been helping us with that. What's up? How are you, sir? I'm well, how are you? So, it's good to see you. What prompted you to uh want to be part of this uh historic installation. This is just an amazing uh piece of work, you know, like it's uh the, the mock up when we were here previously was just amazing. And I learned a lot during that mockup just watching everybody uh adjust everything and test the different color temperatures and things like that.

Uh This is the kind of lighting you want to do things that have curves. I like, I like curviest lighting, learn something about you uh pretty much new every week. So that's awesome. That's good. Now, it's way cool. I mean, uh that was the first time I attended IE as an attendee. I learned a ton about uh color temperature and um I mean, it's like, you know, some of these things but just to experiment with different manufacturers and uh light levels and all this stuff and it's, it's just awesome that you guys are there actually doing a real install and not just a mock up.

So, congrats for being, I'm super excited to be here. Absolutely. That's awesome, man. And I gotta count the States. I don't know. We got a freaking, we got Nebraska here, we got Tennessee, we got Florida, we got uh Virginia Kentucky, man. We got a lot of States here. Kentucky. Yeah, we got we got Aden up here from the Nashville branch. Hayden. What's up Ayden? What's up, Brian? I didn't know Aden worked. Is this, is this actual, is he really working or is this just for the video or recording it?

That's why, you know? Yeah. Pretend to work, pretend to work. So, Matthew here got, came from Nebraska. What's up Matthew? Good to see you, man. You too, Ryan. It's been a long time. Hey, so Greg, what are you guys doing to get power into that, uh, into the center area there? So a water bore was run below the sidewalk all the way underneath the, uh, the actual wall to the outside. And then what's crazy is we decided it took a long time. We're gonna figure out running conduit up the plinths.

So the plants are what these, uh, base structures are called at the bottom of the foundation. And we're debating on using PV C originally that went to a brass piping and then we kind of thought outside of the box here and we ran aircraft cable that goes from the structure to the top of the wall and you never see it because it's on the backside of the structure. And now we don't have, I don't know if you can even see the brightness there. It is. I can see it right there. Yeah. Yeah.

But on the front of the structure, you're not gonna see any of that. And this one with the foundation, different options and all that and that hides all that kind of piping and stuff because there was always gonna be something visible if we went the other route. So that brings it up to the second story and then on the back side of the wall, we're able to come down and tie into our transformer. So we're using Q tran uh two Q tran direct burials. One's on the outside of the wall and the one is actually in the center point next to the, the lip ship sculpture, the Jacques lip ship sculpture.

So we have power in there and then power outside feeding the upper story. And then we actually made custom grates for bullet lights to illuminate the outside. Oh, nice. You guys made those. So that's gonna Yeah, it's gonna. Wow. Yeah, I made those. I had a machine uh water jetted and then powder coated. So that way we get the nice angle just to kind of scrape the outside of this because during the mock up, we use bullet lights and well, I didn't really have the right angle that I was looking for. Cool.

So some of those things you thought about in advance and then some of the technical installation stuff you're just solving on the fly. Yeah, it's a mix. You have an idea and then you get here and you're like, oh, that doesn't work nice. Yeah, because uh yeah, all the beams, everything is just curvy like Jimmy was saying he likes curves like big bottom girls talk about. But um, tm I, if you look up here what we're mounting to, yeah, everything curves left, right up, down to the side.

So we even had a, a type of wire we're gonna use up there that matched the color better, but it just was not bending the right way. So we had to switch our wire type and everything. the mounting options are different that we're using and so just make it work as you go. That's awesome, man. Well, I'm sure between yourself and Tim, there's, you're gonna get some awesome photos of the actual install and not just the mock up. So we look forward to those and uh that was awesome, man.

Thanks for uh taking a minute out of your time to uh kind of walk us through that. Congrats, by the way on securing that deal. I know for you. It's a, it's a, it's a big thing so well done. Yeah. No, it was great. And then uh so I timed it the day after the eclipse which we got to see the, the full totality in the same area, which was awesome yesterday. But now the, the newspaper headline is gonna say uh 22 lighting anomalies happened the same week in new harmony, you know, the eclipse and then the lighting of the, the, the rose bud.

Oh, that's way. Cool man. Well, again, congrats to you congrats to your team. Uh congrats to the, the, the IY team. It seems like what 80% of them showed up uh that were on the original, uh the mockup team it seems like. Right. Yeah, most people came, it's great to have on your resume and say you were there and have pictures of it. You know, it's definitely a wall hanger. I love it, man. Well, if you guys want to be part of that, uh you, you know, not part of this one but part of things like this, you can become a member of ie it's eedu.

org and if you don't know how to spell that, uh just email me or shoot me a message, I'll get you a link. Yeah. Come, come join the family. I'll be a mentor in fall. Uh this year. I'm gonna do it every session but fall. I will be a mentor in Oklahoma. So it'll be fun. Very cool. You say not every session, but it feels like it in that session. I'll do, I can't do them every time I'd be out of business. If I went to every uh charity donation that I do.

All right. That's awesome. All right. Well, thanks Greg. I appreciate you, man. Have a great rest of your day. Ok. All right. Have a good show. All right. See you there. He is Mr Greg Matthews. Well, that's pretty cool. It was just an idea that Greg had and I was like, yeah, let's do it. I like it. So um very cool. All right. So let's get on to our guest. Are you guys ready for our uh what I, I guess I was calling the real guest. I mean, the reason we had this show was for the Matt Haydn.

So let's get that music going on. Let me know if you're ready in the comments. Should have a couple million on there by now. Yup. Oh, look at this. See people. Wow, look at this. They're showing up from Honduras today. Welcome to the show. Mr Matt Haydn. Just uh oh, thanks. But I was just uh while I was sitting there, I was just playing with my Tinker and my toys. Yeah, you love tinkering with your toys. We know that always have a nice little plug for Emery Allen there.

Uh Got your little demo kit. So that's awesome, man. So that was, that was compliments of that. That was pretty cool. Yeah. Uh Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. No, that was all Emery Allen, you know, uh Emery Allen. So Matt uh came with Chelsea to uh one of our landscape lighting lives last year in Utah and uh secured himself a uh some Emery Allen swag. That's all Tom Barber. Yeah, I'm not that nice, you know that. Oh, and some and, and Garden Light did supply the American entrepreneur, Garden Light swag just giving you the plugs left and right I don't know.

I don't know if it helps you or whatever. Yeah, I didn't even care about going to the landscape, learning about landscape lighting. I just wanted to be there to pick up tips and uh how to train people with the proper way and just pick up, you know, tips from you, buddy. Well, thank you, man. I appreciate it. And you know, you, you, you get nervous when you got someone like your coming, coming in the audience. Um We've had Ryan Fox there, we've had all these people we've got um and it's intimidating, you know, J C's come, it's like, well, I don't know, can I teach these guys anything?

Like they've actually taught people, they know how to do events, they know how to do training. So it's intimidating. So glad we could not under deliver for you. No, it was, it was amazing. So I appreciate you having me and you know, looking forward to working with you in the future. Heck yeah, man. I'm excited. Uh You got Cli ACON coming up. Uh I guess before we kinda dive into it. Uh Congrats for making it this far. I was certain that the internet was gonna work right up until we introduced you and then it would just die off, but we did it, they made it do me a favor.

Just do a quick introduction of yourself. Who is the Matt Haydn from San Diego, California, uh originally from San Diego. I live in Orange County now, Matt Haydn, uh President of CLI A, uh CLI A is Christmas Light Installation Pros Association and it's directly associated with the Christmas Light Industry. So, uh we offer all sorts of different stuff. I've got a lot of moving parts within the, the business. Um, we've got the training side of it. We teach residential training, we teach uh commercial training for anybody that is interested in getting into the Christmas light industry.

We will teach you everything you need to know or almost everything you need to know. Um We also are distributors. We have another company. Um I have another company called, we sell Christmas lights .com. Can you guess what we do on that company? I'm, I don't know, I, I'm still thinking about it. We saw toilets. It's actually, it's kind of uh just to throw everybody off. But uh it's a website full of uh commodes and um, but they have lights. It's the one with the lights. Yes, that's correct that we sell.

It's all the name and then we also do commercial installation. So I'm a commercial in southern California. Uh Thanks Tim, appreciate that. Um We do commercial installations in southern California, hotels, cities, um theme parks, things like that. Um Yeah, that's it. So people ask me what you do the rest of the year. I say lighting Christmas lights. Yeah. Very cool. So the uh your, I didn't realize, I guess your local one is, uh, is, uh, commercial. Do you do any residential or is primarily commercial? I do one residential for, um, cystic fibrosis.

Um, it's a charity that we, uh, we do, we donate it every year. Uh, my sister in law has CF, so that's something that's kind of near and dear to our hearts. And, uh, we've been, we've been, uh, you know, supporting CF, probably for, gosh, almost 1.213 years now. And, uh it's pretty amazing to see um going to these events and donating these events. It's amazing to see the progression. I mean, when we first started going to it, I know just the CF kick here for a second, we start, first started going to it.

The average lifespan of CF patient was 18. Um She is in her mid forties now. So it's, it's pretty, it's pretty amazing to see if it's, you know, the, the, the growth, the technology and all that stuff over the years. It's been amazing. So, yeah, it's a pretty good uh charity. So that's awesome. Good for you. Um I wasn't aware of that one. You guys support that one, but then you also support the new one. You started a few a couple of years ago is the uh flag one. Yeah.

Folds of honor. So, Folds of honor is another one and that's near and dear to my heart. Um Folds of honor helps um, family members of deceased. It's actually expanded out now. It's uh, first responders. I used to be just military so, first responders that they lose their spouse or they lose this, you know, uh, father, mother, daughter, whatever, um, in combat, um, or in, you know, responding whatever and that, you know, as a fireman or something like that, um, it helps them, the Children, it gives them money to educate them, get them through college scholarships, um, all sorts of stuff.

So, yeah, it's real close. I lost my father when I was a month and a half old. Um, he was in a military, he was a, a military pilot down in Miramar, uh, down in San Diego. And, uh, they were just doing training missions and there was an accident and, uh, he didn't make it so never really had it. You know, my mom, I look back on her, you know, raising the three of us, not having the, um, the money, you know, working multiple jobs and basically allowing us to do whatever we wanted as far as, you know, sports didn't matter what we, you know, hey, I want to play this, I wanna play this.

We were able to do it and we got through it and, um, yeah, so looking back on it, I wish she had something like folds of war back then to help support her. That's awesome that you're, you're doing that. Um, because there's a good chance that maybe you didn't succeed in life, you know, and I don't know how you define success, but I, I feel like you're successful. So, um, I'm the only, I'm the only one that defines success by the way. And so if I say you're successful, you're successful.

But no, I think it's got my dad's flag up here on the wall. Is that his? Yeah, it's kind of hidden right there. Maybe it's a pan over there. Yeah. So that's his casket flag. I thought I would put that on my wall. Yeah. Very cool way to honor him. Well, and it's cool that you tie it into like, you know, um, you, you, you helped raise money for these charities, like when we were at your events and stuff like that. So, I don't know, it's very cool that you're in a position now where you have made it.

Like, I feel like a lot of people just if, if the average person in the world could have what you have, like, they would be like 10 X, you know, and now you're, you're giving back. So that's way cool. Um Yeah, I mean, we're a small blip on the radar when it comes to donating to folds but you know, anything, anything, it all, it all adds up. Um It helps me feel warm and fuzzy inside and, you know, we're, we're glad to do it, we have the opportunity to do it.

Um So that's why we like to donate to CF. That's why we like to do the Folds of Honor and looking forward to it. We have a speaker coming out that's gonna talk a little bit about Folds um, at Cli ACON. So excited for that. Very cool. Well, hey, by the way, guys, in, in a few minutes, we're gonna do a couple of giveaways. We're gonna do our standard gift card giveaway. Um, that I, I give away. Uh, Matt has come up with a really good question that you'll just win free money for being here.

Like, it's, it's not even that hard of a question. I mean, I, I knew the answer and so that, that tells you right? But also Matt decided to one up me like usual and he is gonna do a giveaway. That's, it's way bigger than what I was doing. So, uh just, you're gonna want to stick around before we dive into some of the clip and the clip of con and stuff because I've got a bunch of questions for you. Uh Can we talk about your local, like commercial business for a minute?

Yeah, of course. The reason is like, I, I don't know you as like associated with that, like I've heard and stuff like that, but like, I see you from a different lens but like, I think it's really cool that you have gone through these experiences that a lot of us haven't. And like you, you're teaching from experience, not from like theory or hypotheticals. Um When you get into commercial. Um, like, what, what is the, the hardest part of, of, of running that business? Uh, you know, I've always had the belief that, you know, in order to teach somebody, you've got to be in the trenches.

And I've always been, you know, I, I'll start in the trenches and work my way up. Um, Excel, because if I'm going to teach you how to do something, I should know how to do it myself. You know. So you're not, it's not coming from a book. It's actually coming from experience and I've experienced all this. I've done residential, I did residential my first year ever installing Christmas lights back in 1998. Um Some of you probably weren't even born back then. Yes, that's how old I am. Um Yeah.

Um So I, I think project management is probably, you know, besides getting the, you know, the clients and stuff like that. Um You've got to go through a lot of proposal processes and things like that so it can be a tedious process to get the clients themselves when you're out on the job site. I think project management is probably the II, I mean, it's easy for me. I, you know, I've been doing it for so long, but I think that's where people struggle is. How do you manage crews when you start getting up to 20 you know, 30 people on a job site.

How do you manage that? Many people and how do you make sure that they're all effectively working and getting things done, you know, in a man, you know, timely manner because when you're installing, you have time frames. I mean, you've got, you, we want it done by this time, you have to have it done by that time, the tree line ceremonies, you know, for instance, it's like you've got to make sure that tree is ready to go because you've got 3000, 4000 people there waiting for those lights to come on.

And if you're not ready, you know, it's, uh it's a little nerve wracking. But thank God, we've always been ready for it. And I, I think, you know, making sure that a project gets done in the time frame, you need to get it done on and just making sure everybody is, you know, 100% productive, you know, throughout that whole time. Yeah. You say project management, I don't know. A lot of people that were born just being good at project management and they're like, you know, what, you know, what I should do with this skill is start a holiday lighting business and I'll focus on commercial, you know, or any, any business like it is, it is.

Some people do have that natural gift but they don't know until they're in it. But 99 the rest of us suck at it, you know, and we just like putting on lights or like selling jobs or whatever. So, um it, it doesn't really matter what part is the hardest for somebody. Like, there's a lot of hard things with business and uh it's awesome that you guys exist to help give people the shortcut, you know, and I don't know about you guys, but I feel like everyone that I coach, they're freaking awesome.

Like they're already a version of successful, like they're already way better than they were a few years ago. Like, and to be honest, I'm like, I don't do, you need me? Like, you, you, you are gonna succeed without me, but we are a tremendous shortcut and we just help people get there faster and it's not that I'm better than them or anything like that. It's just like I just know because I've done what they're trying to do, right? And I feel like that's with you guys too.

It's like you guys have this all star internal team. You got your trainers, you got all these people with like tons of experience that can dramatically shortcut. People's learning experience. Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't know the show was about you. I mean, you kind of went off on a tangent on yourself, but that's cool. Well, normally I get 5973 minutes at the beginning to make it about me, but Greg took it so I'm trying to make up that, that was only two minutes. So I got 13 left. You can plug as much as you want, I'm just messing with that.

So, oh, we got Chelsea for Ned on there. Hey, Chelsea. Chelsea just had a baby. So, congrats Chelsea. I saw that online. I'm excited for her. She's my sales and marketing manager. Phenomenal. They're excited. Kelsea. Come back, Chelsea, come back, please. She'll be out of Cli ACON. She's actually going to be doing a commercial sales boot camp for anybody that is interested. So she handles all my sales and marketing for the commercial side of the business. She also oversees all the reps. Um But, you know, she's going to talk about how to go get that commercial business because everybody that's in this industry pretty much wants to aspire unless they're, you know, intimidated or scared of, you know, going, you know, to get, you know, cities and shopping centers, something like that.

They all want to aspire to get that next level, which we consider as the commercial side of things. Um You know, you're doing projects, you know, quarter million dollar projects that are taking you 34 days where it would take you weeks and weeks to do that many residential jobs, you know, and people are like, oh why resident, you know, why commercial? I thought I just explained it to you. That's why because you have that opportunity. Um You know, but it does take some time to get your foot in the door and it's a, it's a long process, you know, it's it's not a race, it's a marathon.

So, you know, with these cities and shopping centers, we've had some that, you know, start out at, you know, 25 $30,000 that have grown to, you know, 100 and $8200 over the years because we've had patients with them and we, we're there for the long term. We're not there for, you know, one season, we want to be there 1011, 12 years, which a lot of our clients have. You know, that's, um, because we work with them and we show them that we care and we do whatever we can. Customer service is one of our biggest things, taking care of the customer. Nice.

I know for me, we, we, we've really focused on landscape lighting because remember I'm gonna make the show about me real quick. Um, just start the timer but I didn't want to do commercial because it was hard. Like I'm not even kidding. I was like, yeah, but I could go make $503 today, you know, and it's just like you, you, you look back like you idiot. If you would have just learned how to do some rfps, you could have done these, you know, $200,000 jobs. So I think it's cool and, and those are, that's a, it's a process.

It really is. I mean, you're going, we're going up against our competitors. We have a lot of friendly competitors too that are actually at Cli ACON as, as, uh, exhibitors. Um, but, you know, we go out and we do these bids and stuff like that. We win some, we lose some. Um, but it's ok. It's a, it's a, you know, there's enough fish out there to catch. So we, uh, you know, we're fine with going up against anybody and rfpsrfqs, that's a tedious process presentation, making sure you have good referrals.

You know, that's, that's important and that's part of the aspect of getting into the commercial side of things. Very cool. I don't even know what RFQ is. So maybe that should be the question. Uh What, so I asked you what the worst part? No, the hardest part. What's the best part of owning that, that commercial installation business? You know, you don't really, until you really step back and take a, you know, and, and really soak it in because you're so busy. I mean, that's, you have a small window to get all this stuff up.

So you don't really have the opportunity to step back. It's the tree lighting ceremonies. It's the going to see your project and how many people are walking around and are smiling and happy and like we did a tree lighting ceremony, um one of our bigger customers and uh you know, we lit it up and I saw a problem. All of us saw like, you know, things in the tree because we're, you know, we're nerds like that. We see things that are not how they're supposed to be.

But everybody around us is like, oh, my God, it's the greatest. And we're like, oh, my gosh, the bulbs out. Oh, this is how, you know, you see those little things but they don't care. There's so many, so many smiles and so many, uh, you know, people that are just, you know, just happy to be there and be part of it and it's pretty amazing that we're bringing that to them. Um, and a lot of that you don't see, you know, you, you don't see them at the shopping center looking at the lights, you know, it's not like they're walking by every single light, like, oh my God, look at that tree so beautiful.

They are not the case, but the tree lighting ceremonies and things like that are pretty impressive. I mean, it's pretty cool to see. And, um, we do a big walk through, um, theme park down at the race track down in Del Mar in San Diego. So that's quite the experience that's, you know, a four or five day install. And, um, there's, there's hundreds of people that, you know, thousands of people that go through there each year. And, um, you know, I don't sit there and videotape their smiles or anything like that.

But to know that, uh, that's something we could bring to the table is pretty cool. Yeah, that is awesome. So, um, any, what, what advice would you give to someone who's, you know, fairly new in business? Uh, heck, it doesn't even matter because I, I still struggle with stuff that I should, I should have already overcome. Uh, what advice would you give to someone who's in business and struggling in, in any manner? I mean, well, training is the first thing, um, you know, anytime they get into whether it's landscape lighting, I don't care what business it is.

Me, if I decided I wanted like, like with landscape lighting, you know, I, I was thinking about getting into the industry and my first, it was, it was not a second thought to take a training. I'm gonna take it from the best. I'm gonna find the best, you know, type thing, any business. I, I don't care if it's window washing, I would go take a training, you know, right off the bat if I wanna, you know, get into that industry because I'm taking it serious and that shows that I'm serious about it because I don't want to sit there and trial and error in the field.

I wanna learn from Ryan or whoever may be training um to overcome those challenges that are so easy, you know, to, to overcome if you're taught the right way. Um So I, I think that is, and then, um, you know, if you, this industry is interesting because a lot of people do it because they have businesses that slowed down during the winter time and then, um, you know, they want to, you know, they don't want to lay their, you know, their employees off, they want to transition back and forth.

Um, so if you're already in a service related business and you just happen to slow down during the winter time, this is a perfect fit for you because you just transition them back and forth. And I've heard so many people over the years that have done this and like, oh my gosh, I'm making more in 34 months and they're doing the Christmas lights that I do in my power washing or my window washing or whatever the business is. Um So, you know, there's a lot of things that can help you.

You know, if you already have that stuff, you already have trucks, you already have trailers, you already have all that stuff. This is the perfect fit for you. If you slow down. Now, if you done a business that doesn't slow down there in the winter time, then maybe it's not for you. Um So, you know, there, there's the challenges getting into the industry. If you don't have all that stuff, you don't have the employees. Employees has always been the biggest challenge for anybody. I've talked to. I mean, you know, some people struggle with other things but employees is like the most dominant problems that people have.

Um And it's my daughter is calling me. Can I answer my call? My daughter? You need that. Yeah. Go ahead. Family first. I'm not, she's just gonna complain about having to go to school and things like that. Call your mom. What are you doing? Yeah. Even though I texted her, like, six times I'm on a podcast but whatever, it doesn't matter. Did you, you probably didn't use emojis? Yeah, you probably should. Um, what was it called? Emojis? Emojis, emojis. Oh OK. I'll let me Google that later on.

Um So anyway, I just a train of thought. I don't know what it was. Tt yo, yeah, I don't even know what those are called. Uh OK. But you mentioned a couple of good things. So training, dude, I mean, when I had my business, I, I thought training was stupid. I was one of those guys, you know, and honestly, I didn't even know about most of them. It's not like I was out there looking for it and I wasn't on Facebook and I wasn't on the stuff, but I'm just, I just know myself if you would have been like, hey, come to my training, I've been like, dude, I know more than you.

I just had a crappy attitude. Um And now I'm like on the other, the flip side of it and I have those people saying that and, and I should like, people are like, doesn't that make you mad? I'm like, no, I used to be me, like, I'm gonna get mad. I think it's funny, like, and, uh, but when I started this business, the first thing I did was hired a coach, like, I went and got training because I'm like, I don't know what the heck I'm doing, you know.

And so I think it's easier actually to get training in the beginning and, and then get used to, like being a part of a group and collaboration and all this stuff as opposed to like going and living on your own and building your business for five or 10 years, then it's a little bit harder to like, swallow that pride and be like, OK, can these guys actually teach me something? I've already, I'm already successful. I've already got revenue. I've already got team members, you know. So, um but I, I agree with you.

That's the first thing any, any business that I'm gonna start is the first thing is just go find who's the best and start, you know, get that shortcut. Yeah, I don't like to think our training is not just a, we train you and you're done. Good luck. Uh You know, we wish you the best, you know, type thing. We really encourage people, we support people, we have an online portal afterwards, we access to all, you know, all sorts of stuff. Um And we're here to help, we really want people to be successful.

I mean, the last thing I want is you know, I train 300 people a year and half of them fail. We don't want that. So that's why we're really, and that's one of our core values is, you know, continued education um to support everybody and people are like, what, you know, what do you want out of this, you know, type thing? You know, hopefully we'll sell you lights, you know, we offer a service where we help you bid projects, commercial projects. Um You know, we'll, we'll take you through the process.

How much hand holding do you need to go through this? Right. Oh, you want us to bid the project for you with you on the Zoom call. We've done it several times. I think we closed almost $3 million you know, helping people out. Um Last year, just closing commercial. We did, uh you know, Alice, she's one of our new uh clip of members. She just helped close a $450,000 job. Um And, you know, all we, of course, we've got product built in that. Um But she closed that last year, her first year working for us, close that project, you know, for somebody else, we helped another client close a half a million dollar job.

Um You know, and we just, we build the project into the products that we have that we can, you know, if it's a, you know, a slay or whatever the case is, we built that into the project. So we hope that, hey Ryan, if you win the job, we hope that you buy the products through us type thing. Um If you don't, you know, concrete shoes in the bay, we win some, we lose some, but we like to think that we have continued support to help people succeed.

That's cool. So, you guys have your like content portal, you have assistance with all sorts of stuff. I mean, it doesn't, doesn't even have to be at one of your trainings. But after the trainings you've got support on the phone and zooms and all that stuff, you have your in. How many trainings are you guys doing this year? The, the in person trainings. Uh I think we have like nine on the books. All the, all the same, pretty much the same ones. We've got 23 different uh commercial ones we're doing.

Um commercial is, you know, again, the, if you want to get the hotels and the shopping centers and things like that and then we have, I think, uh six or seven residential uh trainings all across the US. Very cool. So where can, if someone wants to get information on that, what's, what's the website? Where do they see those trainings? Clipa . com, c l i P a. com. Cool. Um And you got, um those are two day trainings. Yeah, the two day training. So we'll, we'll start out with just basics, you know, we'll talk about product knowledge.

Um, what is, you know, what is ac nine bulb, what are, you know, the best products to use and, you know, in our trainings, you know, I don't just tell you you should use, you know, 503 inch basing. Right. You know, I explain to you why. And then most people, I've had a lot of people in my training. I have been doing this for years, 10, you know, 15 years. And they're like, oh my gosh, I am switching to that because of what you said. You know, I'm just like, oh, ok.

I'm just telling you what is work, you know, help me become successful over the years. Um, but we will do product knowledge and just explain to people what you use this product for and stuff like that. We break away into, um, electrical, you know, we talk about electrical and stuff like that. Safety ladder, safety, um, sales and marketing, you know, the best avenues for going to market the business and going, you know, after clients and things like that. The second day we do some hands on, we go on in the field and we'll do some wrapping of trees, we'll do some, you know, outside wraps, inside wraps that we call them, um, just some stuff in the field.

We're not climbing our roofs or anything like that. Um, during our trainings, we're not. But, um, we really, you know, push people to go back to their house, you know, or, or, you know, find a neighbor or something they can practice on because practice makes perfect when you're ready for the season. The biggest thing with this is, this is not a 12 month gig. This is a three month window. You have as much money as you can. You know, you have a three month window to make as much money as possible.

So it's fast and furious. Anybody that's in this industry can probably attest to that like, oh yeah, it comes fast and it's, it's furious. Yeah, no doubt. So you mentioned the best people are those that do have a slowdown period, uh in the, you know, the, the holiday season, uh that can, that need more work but have team members, uh who let's say so, obviously those are like prime candidates. They, they should just register right now and go to a training. What about the people who've already got a couple of years under their belt?

What is that someone you want to come to one of your in-person trainings? What, what will they expect to get out of it if they're like, dude, I already know what AC nine and AC seven are. Yeah, for sure. They might be bored during that time. But again, I've had, I've had veterans in our, in our group that are just like, wow, I learned that, you know, one little nugget that's gonna save them that much money and, you know, we don't know all the answers. You know, we've learned a lot and I've learned a lot working with Ryan Fox and Brad and JC and Ramon over the years.

Um You know, what do you guys do in this situation? That's how our trainings work. You know, it's, you know, let me just tell you what we do. What do you do, Ramon? You know, Ramon, I'm like, oh man, I'm taking notes on Ramone, what he's doing type thing. Um Because things evolve over time and you have to evolve as a company, you know, things that you practice as you were doing five years ago, don't necessarily work, you know, these days. So it's about evolving and staying fresh with content and uh making sure that you're, you know, for me, I'm out on the field a lot, you know, and experience in this stuff.

I'm always in my wood shop, you know, Santa's workshop out in the warehouse, messing around with things, you know, that type of stuff. Um So yeah, I don't know where it's going with that, but it sounded cool. It sounded amazing. It's gonna be like one of those highlight clips, you know, it'll be like, so well, I think it's cool because I don't know, for you when I, when I get a veteran, when I get someone that's got experience and I'm supposed to train them, I'm like crap like, what am I going to teach them?

But they, they're always like, if especially if they paid money and they're spending their time, they're looking for angles and if you can give them that one tip that saves them an hour a day, 210 minutes a day, it doesn't matter that, that adds up to thousands, tens of thousands of dollars for them. And they, they find the value. It's the people who don't go to the trainings that are just like trying to hate and do all this stuff. But once they've paid and they've committed two days of their time there, they always find a way to get a good return.

Yeah, and that's, that's where I was going with that. You know, somebody that's, you know, that's been in this industry for a long time. I hope that they will walk away with something. Worst case they get access to our, you know, our video archives of all the videos, the training, they can go back and they can use that stuff to train their employees, everything's on there. Hey, I want you to watch map, wrap a tree inside, wrap. This is what you want to do. Keep the spacing vertical, you know, that type of stuff.

So they get access to the portal. Um There is a lot of benefits outside of just the training itself if maybe they walked away that I've never really had. Somebody just never told me that. Oh man, that was just worth, you know, worthless and waste of time. I never had that, uh, maybe they're just too scared to come up. But, um, I saw a lot of people that are better. And what's that? Yeah, you're pretty tall. I don't think I would say that to you. Yeah, thanks.

Um, but, yeah, II, I, you know, veteran or not, you know, I think it's a, it's a good avenue and hopefully we can teach you something. Well, let's talk about clip ACON real quick. Uh, That's coming up in how many days? It's like three weeks. It's coming up quick. Uh What, what is cli a con and who, who should, who should be there? Um Actually anybody, you know, it's not just Christmas Lights, it's any entrepreneur really can show up at this event. Uh You know, our speaker line is phenomenal.

Take a look at it, go to clip. com, check out the speakers that are, you know, speaking at this event and they're not all, I mean, I would say maybe like three or four of them own a Christmas light business. It's more business. Um I shouldn't even call it a Christmas show because it's not. Um, so it's a lot of speakers like yourself. You know, you're, you're in the lighting industry, I guess you've been, you've been speaking at clip A con for about three or four years now.

It's been awesome. I didn't even know about CLI A and then all of a sudden I'm a, I'm like a regular now. Yeah. Yeah, you are, I think we got you on the main stage this year, which is pretty cool. Snap. I didn't know this. Um So we're gonna have all sorts of stuff, business. Uh A I, we're gonna have somebody talking about um company culture, we're gonna have somebody talking about um va s different things. So really what you need to do is look at the lineup, we have 21.21 speakers.

So you need to look at the line up and what is best suit, you know, for your business is what you need to look at. Like, oh, this is important. This is important. Obviously, you can't see every speaker because we have people going at the same time and things like that. Um You know, it's unfortunate and I wish that that wasn't the case. Um But you really need to look at your own business whether it's pressure, washing, power, washing window while lawn care. I don't care what it is.

There is a benefit for you to be at the show. Now you walk around the exhibit hall, we do have lighting companies. We've got, you know, we've got your lighting company there too. Um But we've got different companies that offer, you know, Cr MS um things that could work for both businesses, uh you know, tensile CRM, you know, that's more of a lighting uh you know, CRM for Christmas lights, but it's a beautiful system. Zach's gonna be out there. Um Looking forward to having his booth out there.

Um, but we have a lot of different things. You have different companies that aren't associated directly with the Christmas Lights. Yeah, but, you know, it's gonna be, people aren't coming for the exhibitors. They're really coming for the speakers, the lineup that we have and I'm just floored. I'm floored by, you know, last year I thought we knocked out of the park this year is just like, holy crap. I didn't know we can top ourselves. So really looking forward to it and I'm excited for it. You guys, you guys put on an awesome event.

Um The, the, the, I don't know what you call it but like the, the mixer, you know, where everyone's just kind of chilling like it was around the pool at the last one. Like I got value that was like before it even started and like, I met people who I'm like, oh yeah, I wanted to meet this person, you know, and so I hate, I hate the word networking because that just like means no value to me. But like meeting these people and having discussions and getting inspired by people and like, you did a job that was $21.81,21.21.

Like what? I didn't even know that was possible. Like, just stuff like that even before you get to the speakers and the, the vendors and all that stuff. Tho those side discussions are, that's the one thing I love about events and you guys do a great job because the people that are coming to yours are like, there's some, there's some big time all stars in there, you know. And, uh, it's, it's worth it just for that. There's some powerhouse people. I mean, it is. And you do have that opportunity, you have an opportunity to talk to somebody that's doing a half million dollars, you know, on one project and things like that.

And they're there, there are some of my speakers, there are some of the, you know, people in the audience and that's what, you know, I know you don't like the networking, you know, aspect of it or call, you don't want to call. I don't know why I don't like the term, but it's fine. Go ahead. Use it, say it social event. So that social event that we have is, it's gonna be great this year. He was at the pool last year at the Sahara in Las Vegas.

This year we have, uh we're doing it on uh these ferry boats. So we have a ferry, ferry boat. It's right. We're gonna do it on the sand right there in the bay and then there's gonna be a ferry boat. You just walk on the dock and it's right there. It's gonna take people out. It's gonna two, probably two rounds, three rounds, whatever, just like, you know, 2597 250 minutes out on the bay, just cruising around, drinks cocktails out there too. That's cool. So, Ryan, we've got floaties for you just in case you fall over overboard again.

So, just be careful. Um, but yeah, we're looking forward to it and, uh, it's gonna be really neat. It's gonna be something special. So, if you can make it out there, you know, we'd love to have everybody out there. We've got some pre show classes as well. Um, we have a commercial sales booth camp that Chelsea is gonna be uh teaching and we'll have some uh, guest, you know, uh, guest appearances in there as well. Um So if you, if you want to get to the commercial aspect of, you know, Christmas science, we're going to teach you how and she's actually gonna put you on the phones and have you cold call.

So, uh, don't show up if you're not, you know, comfortable being on the phone. That's awesome. That's cool. Social on the sand. 303 man. That's gonna be fun. I saw the video you guys had and she's good, isn't she good? Social on the sand. 230. She makes me look good. Wait, I don't know. Christy pound pound at court. Hashtag at court. That's like short for court. I don't know. We're not, I'm too old. I don't know, but I'm, I'm excited. I saw the video. I'm like, wait, I didn't know I didn't look up the hotel.

I just knew that it was in San Diego. It's like right on the beach. I'm bringing my flip flops and swimsuit. I'm probably laying out. I may not even go to the club. You're, you're about a quarter mile from the beach itself. Mission Beach, you're on the bay. The hotel is on the bay, but you just walk across the street and you're essentially in the, uh, the bay. Yeah. So let me know what time I'm speaking because after that I'm probably just not going to the, the rest of the show.

That's my goal is I'm gonna get value the first night. Then I can speak and then I can go beach because I'm in Utah. Dude. We don't have beaches. It's like the cool thing. Look at these guys. Hashtag Boomer life. No, no, sorry. I just had to take a note. You're gonna disappear after you speak. So 2600 o'clock on the last day. Oh, perfect. Then that means I can tan for the whole two days. Good. I'm gonna be so tanned by my speech. Yeah. You don't look like somebody that tans very well. Ryan.

Come on, dude, you sound like my kids. Uh No, it's just I for a lighting guy, I should have better lighting but right now like the sun is anyway, let's, let's not get into this. Let's give away, let's give away some stuff. Um You're gonna, what are, what are you gonna give away? Let's go. Let's go with you first. I figured we'd give away a ticket to clip a con. I think that'd be pretty cool. That's a, uh, the $2597 value right there. I think that's pretty neat.

That's freaking awesome, man, we do. Yeah. So, you know, hopefully this works out, you know, we'd like if somebody's going to try to answer the question, um, we would like for them to, uh, possibly answer only if they're gonna go to clip ACON. I hate for somebody to win it and you know, they had no intention of doing it, right. Yeah, like if you better not answer this question, if you're not going to take the free ticket and come or bring someone, right? So maybe refrain from answering or we can ask, hey, are you, you got it right?

But are you gonna go and then if you're not, we'll let somebody else copy and paste. What you said? That sounds good. So what are we gonna do? You're gonna ask a question and then someone's gonna comment and ask a trivia question. This is movie related. So this is about the movie industry. And um I think it's pretty simple. But anyway, yes, I'm gonna ask a question and then the first person to respond in the chat, uh wins. Do you want music or do you want to just go straight up right now?

I would love music. You would. Yeah. Do you have any like hip hop or anything like that? It's hard because it's like on Facebook and youtube and you can't play real cool music because they copyright license. But let me, let me try this. All right, give me something. Beachy then. Oh, this is not Beachy shoot. Is that good or should we do? Like a beach one? Is that hip hop? Oh, that's great. That's great. All right, here's the, uh, $597 clip ACON ticket giveaway presented by clip on. Yeah.

So we do, we, we teach you electrical. And uh, so this is an electrical question. So, um, from the movie and I hopefully I say this correctly because I've screwed it up before in the movie. Back to the future. How much power does it take to get a DeLorean into the future? All right, we got some clip of girls trying to win this. You guys better not answer, win it. Courtney win it. Mhm. Katrina wants to win to take her coworker. Yeah. Uh cli uh uh they are excluded from winning this one.

So, all right guys. So you heard the question? How much power does it take to get a DeLorean into the future? The answer is simple and it's, it's actually a movie question, but it's uh definitely we, we use jigga watts and landscape lighting all the time and uh, you just gave away part of the answer there. Oh, I'm sorry. People, people had already answered. We don't know who was first but, oh, I don't, I'm looking at the chat. I don't see anything. Oh, I'm in private. No. No, I'm, I'm in, uh, I was in the private chat.

There was nothing in there. I'm like, jeez, nobody's listening. Are you, are you not wearing pants? What's going on? We, we got lots of answers. Um, I don't know who, uh, I don't know who Facebook user is. Yeah. Facebook user of. Yeah. Yeah, that's unfortunate. Let's see. Who's honest. I'm, I'm, I'm not gonna check it on my phone because I'm using my phone's internet and I could just end the show right now. OK? They're saying David won. David Holden has won the giveaway. OK? We're gonna, oh now someone else is saying Chris Voight, Facebook user, oh You know what the Facebook user is?

Probably Chris Hoyt. He put his name in there. Oh, this could get, yeah, because David Hoyt's name is showing because this was the first person. This is gonna be controversial. Uh This is probably gonna get us bolt to go viral. Get some more haters. Yes, I did. He says, oh yeah, David's mad. Look at this dude. What the heck lol are you guys both planning on going? Is David Holden going? And is, is it Chris Hoyt or Voight? I always thought it was void because it's V for you.

You acted like you knew that Voight was, you know what? Let's just be too much controversy. Let's just give them both a ticket. If, if they're both gonna go, let's just do it that way. Crash the both of you. Let's go. Let's go. So we think we can, we can, we jot those down. Can we have one of the Clipper girls? Write those names down? Somebody should be able to contact them. How do we get in contact with them or how do they, how do they get in contact with us?

So just email us just Yeah, you just talk. All right. All right, David Holden. You have a ticket. Chris Voight rhymes with Hoyt, but it's actually pronounced Voy. Uh Oh yeah, duke it out on the sand at the con on the uh hashtag social on the sand. Ok. Ryan has, please write down the winners, David Holden and, and, and you can also just like message me on Facebook and your info and I'll, and I'll get you in touch with these guys too, boys. That's awesome. Appreciate you tuning in.

That's so cool. We just did a $1200 giveaway. Thank you, Matt. That's awesome, man. Should we, should we not do my $50 giveaway? The thing is I thought, I thought you were gonna ask the question that you just asked for my gift card giveaway. So I'm I'm hoping you have another one which I think you do. I can pull up another one. Let's do one more. Um Maybe we should have started with mine because mine's only 50 bucks and then I'll throw another Chevy out there. Ok? Cool. Oh Dance battle dude.

This is gonna get sick. Hey, you gotta make sure you know if you're, if you're a Facebook user, make sure you put your name in there because some of you coming up with a Facebook user and we don't know who you are. So we don't have this controversy. God forbid Ryan's got to give away $100. I just gave away 1200. Your weak giveaway. Should we change it from gift card giveaway to just weak giveaway? Uh Matt, why don't you come up with a weak giveaway question for us. I've got it.

Let me know when you're ready. Ok. First person to answer this correctly wins and the, the only rule on this one is it has to be the answer that I think is correct, which I don't even know what the question is. So the answer that Matt thinks is correct. It doesn't matter if you think you're right. You could be wrong if Matt doesn't think you're right. That's the rule. 6003 bucks. Let's go. Can you, can you avoid not answering this one? Right? It's 50 bucks. 50 bucks is 50 bucks, man.

I know you answered the last 10, we use, we use Jigawa all the time. We use, we don't use 1.21. We use Jigawa all the time. Mhm. I suck at this. Let's go here. We go. We, we got it. All right. Just make sure you put your name in there. If you're a, uh, privacy one, that's fine. No problem. Ok. What, two NBA teams hold the most NBA titles. Championship titles? Yeah, it's funny because I used to be a, I'm not gonna say it. Matt, relax. Jeesh, relax, dude.

Oh, nobody, nobody knows this one. Nobody's googling it. Everyone, everyone knows the jigga wt thing. I almost said 1.81 gigawatts. But I did change my answer to 1.21. All right. So, ok. Ok. We got Facebook user again, man. He is coming in hot. I think his voice again. I'm pretty sure it's Chris. Yeah. All right. Here's his answer. Celts and Lakers. It's actually Celtics but I don't know. Are you gonna give it again? It's your, it's winner, winner, winner chicken dinner, man. He just won a $597 Cli ACON ticket and a $50 gift card.

So he's got $50 to spend at Cli ACON on whatever he wants. He could, he could buy me a meal. You know, I get a beer out of that. Maybe it's kind of, it looks like a nice resort which usually means money. So you ain't got anything to do today. But listen to you guys, sorry. We have to apologize for that one. Oh, thank you. No, I mean, when people give me compliments like that, I'm like, thank you, you know, he said he's gonna buy us a beer.

I like it. Yes, you Chris, you can drink mine. All right guys. Um, Matt, how do we do? Is there anything that you want the world to know about team cli uh, before we wrap up? No, I think, uh, you know, hopefully, you know, if anybody's on here or watches it later, um, you know, I think hopefully all three of you, um decide that you want to come out to Cli ACON. I think it's an experience. It's not just, you know, don't think Christmas Lights because it is a great um uh opportunity to further your business, a lot of good speakers and things like that.

So we're really excited about it and um just take a look at it, go to, you know, go to clip it. com, take a look at the speaker lineup and you'll just be like, wow, OK. Can't miss this one. Um So, yeah, I think it's gonna be fantastic and looking forward to seeing everybody. I love these events and I love, you know, networking and, oh, sorry, sorry, I love um talking to people um and building relationships and building relationships and doing that stuff. So, uh but yeah, it's, it's phenomenal and it's gonna be fun.

What is networking? Like working net, net, net networking? It's the act of, of, of building a, like a net of people in a sur surrounding that's enclosed, like a web Yeah. And you, and you, correct. Yeah. Kind of, but more like a net and you're working by moving around and building a web of different people you talk to. So, web working, I could, I could probably be sold on web working. But networking just sounds so maybe nets are better. We're in San Diego, we're by the ocean.

You need a net. It's just weird. Think about it. Like a net you fall in like uh when you're jumping, you know, somewhere and it's a net you fall into. It's, it's kind of like a web. It's kind of like a web, but it's a net. Yeah. Yeah. If you wanna change it, that's fine. Um That's, yeah, I don't even care. It's just, it's just to me it sounds like like a, a term that people use to justify being lazy. OK. I'm, I'm not, there'll be no networking at Clip ACON this year.

We will, we are nixing the networking. We are socializing. Are we doing it right now? We are socializing right now. I don't know if you know this, Ryan, I'm kind of a big deal. Hey, one thing we haven't mentioned by the way, guys, let me give my endorsement. I'm excited. I really am excited. Uh The clip of crew that mainly the clip of Girls Matt, it's kind of boring, but the clip of team does an awesome job. It's just, it's really, really good. Uh I'm excited um that I I was gonna just have a booth anyway because it's, it's a really cool event and it's good for us to be there, but I got the opportunity to speak.

So thank you for that opportunity. It's gonna be way cool. Um And while we're there, not networking. Oh, that's what I was gonna ask you. How are we gonna see? I mean, we're in San Diego. Like, is there a theme? Like what, what's, what's the theme if you're trying to get to, is Ron Burgundy going to make an appearance? Um, I don't know. You just have to wait and see. I guess that's, uh, you have to show up there and find out. I just want to make sure everyone's aware that you are.

Well, will Ferrell does impersonations of Matt Haydn, you know, like, and I didn't even, I didn't even know, like, when I first met you, I didn't, like, put it together and then after a while, like, once, you know, you know, you just can't get out of your head. And so even if it usually takes, it takes people a while to pick up on it and I always have to throw it out there because if I don't throw it out there, somebody else is gonna throw it out there.

And, um, yeah, that's, that's how it kind of turns out. I don't see it but, you know, maybe it's there. I don't know. Oh, yeah, it's, it's there. Trust me. But it's cool to see Will Ferrell out there doing like impersonations of you. I'm like, man, I knew Matt was a cool guy, but I didn't know he was a big deal. This is where I start getting into the character. You've got to do it leaning up to the event. At least I like to when I get into character of something, I do it about, uh 30 days in advance.

So this is where I'm gonna start getting that character. So today is where it starts so I can get myself into that character. I was uh telling people, hey, I hope you'll see, you know, I hope you'll come to, I put San Diego and then I watched the movie again and it's San Diego, but someone actually corrected me and they're like, you know, that could be confusing to people. Did you hear that at a networking event? Where did you hear that? It was perfect. I was like that.

This is exactly what I wanted to hear. So, anyway, man, I'm excited. Thanks for uh spending um longer than you probably wanted to with me today. Uh But I'm, I'm really looking forward to clip ACON. Uh I love what you guys are doing and uh thanks again for the opportunity again. If you guys want to come, it's not too late. Uh If you're Chris or David, you're coming for free. But the rest of you, it's dude, it's only 600 bucks. 597 whatever, that's a bargain. Uh go get a ticket at Clip a.

com or is it clip ACON? Like where do they get the tickets for the actual clip ACON? Just go to clipa . com. There will be a link at the top that says clip ACON. You click on that um all sorts of little buttons and, and widgets that you can click on and it'll capture all your information uh before you even know it and then you can click on it to buy a ticket. Cool. Love it guys. Go get your ticket now. There may be may, may be a surprise appearance from Ron Burgundy.

We don't know. Uh but even if not, it's gonna be worth it. So I hope I'll see you guys there. Thanks again, Matt. I appreciate you, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right guys have an awesome week. I'll see you in a few weeks in San Diego. San Diego. All right. Take it easy. You.