Chat #1: John Sloan, VP @ Legacy Platform

John Sloan discusses his background and career path, including his experience at Cubic Design and the founding of Legacy Platform. He shares insights on hiring and building a team, as well as the growth of Legacy Steel. John emphasizes the importance of training and empowering employees, and the value of learning from mistakes. He also discusses how he maintains company culture and builds relationships in the industry. John expresses gratitude for the people who have helped him along the way. The conversation covers topics such as competition, integrity, scarcity mindset, customer relationships, growth, starting a business during COVID, travel, personal preferences, and creating a platform for personal stories.

[Thank you to our sponsors for this episode]

Two3 Solutions
Warehouse Guard
Brew City Install
Evans Transportation

Transcript

Jake Thomas (00:00)
had in the past. So no, I guess getting right into it, I mean, you're LinkedIn, just from looking at LinkedIn, it says you went from Park City High to Cubic Design for 13, 14 years. So I just wanted you to, I mean, kind of talk through that and kind of how you got in the industry, and just give us a little background.

John Sloan (00:25)
Yeah, so I grew up out west in a ski town and ended up moving towards the east. Just as, as I got married and started a family with my wife from Ohio, which is where we currently live, um, didn't really get into the material handling or industrial market until we moved out this direction. And when we lived in Kentucky, I actually worked for a company that at the time was the HVLS fan company and now everybody knows them as big ass fans. Um, and was there as they kind of made that migration over.

So that was back in 2003. Worked there for a couple of years and got connected with Cubic Designs in late 2004 and eventually went to work for them in the middle of 2005. And then stayed with them until 2018 and was largely just due to, at that time, the way that my position was working out, I was remote and it was really hard. I was tasked with leading the sales team at that time. It was just hard to do remote.

guys remote but I also wasn't in the office to go help kind of push things through or help or advocate on their behalf and so I left and spent about 14 months at Space Guard doing woven and welded wire mesh guarding things of that nature and was enjoying that and then ultimately got approached by my business partner Bill Jones with an idea and an opportunity to get back into platforms which is something

I've enjoyed, I think I've done pretty well with. And so now four years ago, Legacy was born and we're continuing to kind of find ways to grow and hopefully make an impact.

Jake Thomas (02:03)
Yeah, no, it's I called Bill the other day and told him that you and I were jumping on and just to have a few talking points, you know, and he didn't give me anything. He didn't. He gave me nothing. He said, you guys just need to talk and have it be normal. And I'm like, well, that's that was the plan. But I just I wanted something. I wanted. Yeah, something. So no, that was that was all good. I was kind of the answer I was expecting from him. But I was I was just hoping maybe there was there was something there. I remember the

John Sloan (02:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Something of substance.

A little negative.

Jake Thomas (02:31)
The last time you and I talked, it was how, how did you find your way to cubic? Wasn't it like something had to do with the trade show. You're at a trade show.

John Sloan (02:37)
It was. So back when I was working for big ass fans, they were invited to exhibit at a customer trade show. It's a company that is now Western Storage and Handling. And at the time, I think it was Mahico. They had a bunch of their vendors coming in. And so I went out because the regional managers that covered that part of the country were just they were newer to the company, not really comfortable yet.

sort of in that setting. And so I went out there. Our booth happened to be right next door to Cubic Designs booth. And so Bob Dettloff, who was with Cubic for years, he and I got to talking and then about a month later, he reached out and said, okay, we've got an open territory. We really don't go out and promote or we kind of try and find people from within. And I thought you might be a good fit. And a guy that you and I both know pretty well might get for him.

got my resume in November and got around to calling me in April of 2005. And he said, oh, it's been on my desk. I'm meaning to call you. It's, you know, all that stuff. It's a big desk. And at the time.

Jake Thomas (03:45)
That's a big desk.

John Sloan (03:49)
Mike covered the Western US for cubic designs along with being president of the company and all those things so a few things slipped through the crack but yeah it was by sure habit of stance that some regional managers I worked with just weren't quite up to, didn't have the confidence yet and the fact that Bob and I hit it off pretty well so I feel pretty glad.

Jake Thomas (04:11)
Yeah, no, it is a small world. It is a small world for sure. And this industry is, there's so many people in it, but it's still yet so, everybody knows everybody.

John Sloan (04:22)
And it's tough to get out of. You very rarely hear of people that got into industrial sales, material handling, and left. They may move around. They may find a different product or niche. But it seems like once you get in, you find out it's a pretty cool industry, pretty cool things to be a part of, and it gets its arms around you.

Jake Thomas (04:40)
Yeah. Yeah, that was the first, when I first got into the industry, it was selling for Clifson. It was kind of the same deal. One of the guys that was there for, I mean, he originally started the company. So he was there for 30 plus years. And he said the same thing. He's like, once you're in the industry for two to two, about two years, you're like, you're never gonna leave. And I kinda, I didn't laugh at him, but I kind of laughed not thinking there's no chance. Like there's no, and here we are, like not leaving.

John Sloan (05:07)
A lot of years later. No, no you can't now.

Jake Thomas (05:10)
So no, I can't now, I'm committed. I'm committed, that's for sure. Is that a space guard little sample piece behind you? Yeah, yeah.

John Sloan (05:19)
Actually, it is a little motion back there. Yeah. So when I worked for Space Guard, still lived in Ohio and was setting up this home office. And so I reached out to, as I was doing it, like it'd be really cool to do kind of a vision board but have it be like that. So yeah, I painted it bright orange because that was the color they were doing for the beast wire and just sort of stuck. So yeah, haven't been able to get rid of it. It's been a useful tool.

Jake Thomas (05:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's cool. That's a cool background.

John Sloan (05:50)
And still full. We've got a really nice couple of projects going on with those guys.

Jake Thomas (05:54)
Yeah, no, that's what I figured. And that's kind of thing too. It's like the industry is small, and it's one of those where it's like reputations everything. I know you have a great reputation just for everyone that I talk to. And it's like not burning the bridge, you know, when you leave a place, you know, there's ways that you can work together, you know, and obviously you're doing that. I mean, you were there for 14 months and you created a, obviously a very strong relationship with the people there. So it was pretty cool.

John Sloan (06:04)
Thank you.

Yep, it's for as big as the industry is, it's.

As we've talked about, a lot of people, they don't necessarily leave. They may go to a different company, different product, different number of things, but I'll tell you that one of the, from legacy's perspective in our early days, we had a much different offering. The way the company started out, we were more on the consulting side, and companies that had been my competitors, Bill's competitors for years, suddenly became potential suppliers to us. And through having, I think, dealt respectfully

competitors not out disparaging them. If they were certainly projects we won there were projects that we lost but we didn't win them because we drug them through the mud and vice versa. There was a compelling reason the customer chose it and that allowed us when we started Legacy

to have some suppliers that have been competitors in the past that they trusted we were going to do the right things. They trusted that we wouldn't be doing anything to undermine their business and have all said, hey, if you guys ever go take the next step, you just need to be honest with us and let us know where you're at. And then if we're competitors, we're competitors, if we're not. And that's huge. And I think that's my hat off to a lot of our suppliers for taking that leap with us.

Jake Thomas (07:40)
Yeah, yeah, it's such a simple thing when you say it like that, but obviously it's a lot harder than it sounds.

John Sloan (07:47)
It is. It is. And it means the world when somebody bestows that level of faith in you to say, yeah, you've treated me well over the years, I will support you in your new endeavor. That means a lot. Yeah.

Jake Thomas (07:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's awesome. You touched on, you know, legacy in 2000, late 2019, right? Versus where it is now. And it's, I mean, we could go a million different ways on that, but you know, you guys have grown like crazy and you know, now you have legacy steel as well. But I guess, can you just like talk through what legacy was versus what it is now, like what's turned into?

John Sloan (08:05)
Yeah.

Sure. Yeah, so, you know, it's interesting. We started the five-year plan that Bill and I originally came up with. We checked a lot of those boxes by year two, and a lot of that was revenue, and what was the customer base, and a number of different things we were offering, which has been hugely exciting. We had planned to build a plant by year five. We had it in year three. And it's a risk. There's a lot of things going on, a lot of good people in the...

in the space, but we felt like we had a good reason to do it. When we started, as I mentioned, we were mainly intending to be just a consulting group, and more specifically, in the general contractor space, because they were going out with, in the e-commerce world, they were going out and looking for these, what they call delegated design, what we know as platforms, pre-engineered, prefabricated platforms. But it's something that is...

somewhat foreign to them. They work with big steel, it's a lot of welding and built on site type of stuff. So these lighter weight structures, it's not that they couldn't handle it, it's just something they didn't totally understand and how do you compare one to the other. So the whole goal was, hey, we're going to tell you which is the best value or best offering for you. That could be price, lead time, ability to deliver, all of those things. We're going to be that kind of independent eyes for you.

and that lasted for exactly one project. And the second project that we were awarded, or that we were consulting on.

we recommended two different platform suppliers for the same building. There were four platforms, four large platforms in the building and neither supplier could do all four and still meet the schedule. So we said, hey, split them up, go to company A and company B. Company A wouldn't sign the contract, wouldn't accept the general contractor's comments or contract, because it had liquidated damages and payment terms and all that stuff, they just didn't want. So they said, well, you take the contract.

I didn't even call Bill, I was on the phone with him, and I'm like, yeah, we'll do it. Overnight, we went from a five-figure consulting to a seven-figure contract, and it was like, okay, I guess now we're gonna ride this train, and that has turned into a pretty good reputation within the general contractor world, where we have certainly stumbled along the way, we've had some misses, but we've also come in with some recovery plans to say.

Jake Thomas (10:28)
Hehehehe

John Sloan (10:55)
Yep, we missed here and here's how we're going to make it up. And that's been a huge part of that faith.

Jake Thomas (10:59)
Yeah, it's been cool to have kind of a seat over to the side and just being able to, obviously we know a lot of the same people. So just hearing the stories and just seeing the growth has been, I mean, I know all of us over here at 23 are rooting you guys on and we love hearing the stories and seeing you guys succeed and seeing the plant being built. I felt like, I don't know, it was just cool for me and I'm just in front of my computer looking on LinkedIn. So I can't imagine what you guys are feeling.

John Sloan (11:28)
No, we're feeling an immense sense of pride. It's a great team that I'm gonna say Bill has assembled. I'm the one thing he should have told you is I'm not allowed to hire people at legacy, largely because I'm really bad at it. I've got a history of poor hires, but we have assembled just a really cool team of people. I said to my wife today actually that

There's nobody in this company, including spouses or significant others, that I would say I wouldn't be willing to go have dinner with them one on one or sit down. They are all people that bring some really unique perspectives, different personalities on it, but every one of them is a person I really enjoy. And part of what we've embarked on.

is getting a what you know we still do platforms but we're also jumping into things like the miscellaneous metals that uh jam up a lot of a lot of the platform suppliers not because they can't do them it's just it's harder for them to work through it's not something that they

excel at and so we've looked for a space to maybe make it a little better and that's why legacy steel was built. It's not a quarter of a million square feet, it's a smaller footprint, not a ton of robotics and automation that sort of stuff but it really is designed to fill in a gap where some other people just don't

want to play.

Jake Thomas (12:52)
Yeah, no, and I think, you know, talking just about how you guys hire and I guess what, I mean, how do you guys go about that? I mean, I know, I mean, I've heard just some stories, some good stories, some kind of unique stories from Bill just on hiring, but I guess what kind of goes through your mind when you're looking to add people? Like, what are you looking for?

John Sloan (13:12)
It's as cliche as this sounds, it is really about the person. You know, we go out to the same channels that many people do. There's, you know, with the, with the ability to get out in front of people, both on things like LinkedIn and various posting boards and stuff like that, job fairs.

We reach out to a number of people, but a lot of it's a personality fit. Can you come in and do you have the right, just the right mindset of get it done, have fun? You know, we wanna take it seriously, but we don't want it to be your life. This should never be anything that's that crazy. The other part is, you'll see a lot of the people within the four walls of legacy that are long-time friends or past coworkers. You know, our...

our controller is somebody who Bill and I both worked with for close to a decade. She was in the process of largely losing a large portion of what she did.

at her previous job and kind of saw a chance of, there may be some writing on the wall. So, she was an easy ad because she knew kind of how the business worked, how Bill and I worked. And we knew that the personality, the other part is that we knew that she would keep us in check. If we wanted to go buy something, she would sit down and say, nope, the money's not there, or you're gonna have to find a way to do that.

There's a number of people that work for us that are friends of Bill's for many, many years and bring a very diverse background. One of my favorite stories is the guy that does a lot of our model work in-house, our 3D models in-house. It was a guy that developed and was doing website work for Kohl's. Bill says, hey, I think we should hire this guy. I'm like, great. Tell him about us. He works for Kohl's. He does this, does that. Really good guy.

What does he know about BAM and Models? Doesn't even know what it stands for. Well, then let's hire him. But it was, if you knew his entire background and how he got into the website design, it was an easy one. And within a month, he was doing models for us that we were sending to customers. And so it was just kind of Bill's knowledge of this guy's ability to learn was huge.

Jake Thomas (15:09)
Yeah

Yeah. And I've been, I mean, I've been just again, aside, you know, looking from, from the outside in, it's like your training, you know, the training process, like you guys, obviously you're bringing people in that may have no experience like what you just talked about. And it's just being able to get people up to speed so quickly without overwhelming, you know, them and, you know, making sure you simplify things. I know Bill talked about, you guys recorded a lot of conversations that you had, which I think was just an awesome idea.

but just kind of, you guys are obviously intentionally doing that and I think maybe some of it is on, it happens on accident and you realize like, we were doing something good and we didn't even realize it. So kind of a mix of both, but I just always been curious too, like from a training standpoint, bringing in someone who has no idea what BIM stands for to now being almost, I would say probably an expert, right? I mean, he's an expert at this point. I've

John Sloan (16:06)
Thank you.

Right.

Jake Thomas (16:25)
seen the, I've seen,

John Sloan (16:26)
Yeah. Pretty good stuff. Um, it's, I will tell you, like in any business, it's different for different people. So, so Jack is a very motivated, stealth starter. Um, and he wants to, you know, he's one of those that probably as a kid took his.

Jake Thomas (16:27)
what he's done. So yeah.

John Sloan (16:46)
you know, a remote controlled car apart just to see how it worked and then put it back together to play with it type thing. Just he really wants to understand all the interworking. We've got others that just are, hey, I'm gonna ask a lot of questions that they wanna have a pretty lengthy back and forth. And they may ask you the same question three, four, five times just to sort of get it drilled in. A lot of people that are that visual learner, just take me out to a job site or give me some drawings or whatever.

So we really, the one thing I would tell you is we've worked hard to meet people where they are. We've also created, at least it feels like we've created a space where people are not afraid to ask questions and they're also not afraid to, especially for Bill and I, to call us out on, you guys have been doing this for 12, 15, 18 years, dumb it down for me.

you're running through it because it's second nature to you. You just said stringer, I don't even know what you're talking about. And so they have that confidence to say, I don't know this, don't assume I know it, take me back to the basics. And that's huge to us because I don't know what somebody knows and I don't wanna assume that you don't know it and talk down to you. And that's been fun.

The other part is kind of empowering people within the company. And everybody talks about doing it. Um, we haven't done it perfectly yet, but we really, uh, we really want people to make mistakes, hopefully not. A hundred thousand dollar mistakes, but go make a $5,000 mistake and realize that we didn't fire you over it. The world didn't end. Uh, people weren't, you know, people didn't have to take, take pay cuts or doing anything like that. It's, Hey, what did we learn from it?

we not do it again? So I famously tell the story that our very first project, before we had any money coming in, Bill made a $38,000 mistake on a project. It caused me to have a bad time. I still give him a bad time about every day. He turns it around because I took a bad project that cost us a lot of money as well. It almost cost us one of our project managers at the time. So we've been able to give and take on that.

Jake Thomas (18:36)
Yep.

Shout out to Bill Jones.

John Sloan (19:05)
ways we've tried to ruin the company over the past 40 years.

Jake Thomas (19:07)
Yeah, yeah, no, that was kind of the same for me is the president of the company that I started at. I mean, he didn't encourage people to make mistakes, but it was one of those where it's like, if it happens, it's a learning opportunity. And if you don't learn from it and you're making the same one over and over and over again, then at some point we can't help anymore.

John Sloan (19:28)
Right, we don't want to do this over and over again. But the other part, Jake, and it's probably the same in your organization at two, three, I want to give people the ability to make that decision without feeling like they have to come to me. You know, hey, there's a thousand dollar change order coming or at a goodwill for the customer, I'd like to give them this, do it. You know, in the amount of time that you wasted to stew over and come up with the solution and.

and then call me, we could have gone and made $1,000 somewhere else. We want to give them that area to sort of make those autonomous decisions within reason. And it sounds like you've had that same background and brought that same thing to two three.

Jake Thomas (20:07)
Yeah.

John Sloan (20:28)
Yeah.

Jake Thomas (20:30)
Yeah, no,

John Sloan (20:35)
That's right. That's scary the first time.

Jake Thomas (20:37)
Yeah. What's, uh, is there, you know, staying on that? And is there, are there a few, or is there anything specific, you know, to a mistake you made that other people in the industry can learn from? I mean, that's a question that, yes, it's always great to learn from your own mistakes, but it's better, it's better to probably learn from someone else's mistakes. So you don't even have to do it.

John Sloan (20:59)
Um, I would say you one of the best lessons that I got, and I don't know that I fully learned from it, but, uh, early in the platform world, I, I was kind of willing to go take on anything. If I felt like conceptually.

I could design the platform and I'm not an engineer. I wouldn't pick out the framing size or that but if in my mind Conceptually it could be done I'd be willing to go take it on and There was a phrase I know that this You know, I both know Mike Gifforn. He's the one that said it to me I know he didn't coin it but he did use it a lot a lot of times with me Which is sometimes you make more money on the jobs you don't take or you don't win And there were a couple of those where

The company still made money, but well below target growth profit and more importantly, created a lot of churn. You know, one of those where you just...

engineering went through all kinds of work that if you built per hour, the company lost money on it. And it was a hard one. And even I would tell you, like I said, in the early days, Katie Harvey, who was a project manager for us early on, now is in sales. I took on a project that for actually, it was an adding on to something I had done years ago.

And it almost cost us her leaving us just because at the time she was the project manager, she was running this project. And between the customer, the end user and our customer, it just, it was going off the rails. And it's not to put the blame on the end user or the dealer. There's certainly enough to go around, but it was one that should have walked away from. But early on, there's some money in it and it would help.

you know, put some of this stuff to rest. So it's a lesson I'm slowly learning.

Jake Thomas (23:01)
I'm still I'm still learning it too. Because even when starting two, three, it's like, I mean, when you're starting the company, like you have to take on stuff that you, you know, you'll look back on maybe three, four, five, six years down, you know, and be like, why did I, but you don't question it, because you needed to do it at the time, you know, and it's, I mean, I got a picture in my office of it's, it's not 2000 pallets, but there is a deal when I first started, like I literally convinced the company to sell me their pallets, so I could resell them. Like, like I had a

I had things to pay for. So I knew that wasn't gonna be the core of the business, but at some point.

John Sloan (23:32)
Yeah.

know but you have to do it right you have to how do I get that the old quote to cash like how do I get this cash coming in because I got built I've got real bills that have to be paid yeah

Jake Thomas (23:48)
Yep. And especially as you add more people to the team, it becomes very real. So, I mean, even going back to that too, it's you, you and Bill and then Paul joins. Right. I mean, bringing on, I mean, now you're up to with the plant. I mean, aren't you guys up to 30 plus right now?

John Sloan (24:06)
We're at 36 people right now. 36 people.

Jake Thomas (24:08)
Yeah. So it's just, it's real. I mean, it was real at that two and at three, but it's like, now you got families involved. And it's just, I imagine you're feeling every day, you know, when you were a sales director at another company versus now being, you know, you and Bill and Paul, like you guys are, you're the guys, people are relying on you.

John Sloan (24:30)
They are, and it's interesting. I've always been, to use the term, ownership minded. So in previous jobs, I never wanted to squander the company money. And not that I tried to save every dime, but tried to be a good steward of the money and balance customer service and doing what's right by the customer, but by also not giving everything, giving away the farm. But when you start to look at...

having more than 35 families that are depending on you. And that includes Paul's family, Bill's family, my family. We don't take those folks out. It becomes very real. And the other part is, as I said earlier, because there isn't a single one of them that I...

I don't deeply care for, that I don't enjoy time with, it's that much more important to say, I don't wanna let you down. If somebody chooses to leave legacy, while it might hurt, we don't necessarily want it to happen, same time if it's better for them, that's great. We wanna support you, help you move on, what do we do to make it successful? We don't wanna be the situation where it's like, we have to let you go because we can't make payroll or we're gonna have these problems.

Jake Thomas (25:40)
Yep. Yeah.

John Sloan (25:41)
And those are very real concerns that happen every day. That gets back to where having a good controller, a good CFO who says, you guys can't spend that money. We need to, just gotta stay in reserves for payroll.

Jake Thomas (25:54)
Yep. No, that makes sense. You know, for the longest time, I didn't even know you were in Ohio. Like, you from a from a maintaining the culture that you guys have, I mean, obviously, bills there every day, but and I know you're coming up coming over here often. I mean, how do you? How do you do that? Because I mean, you guys are doing an awesome job at creating a place where people want to work, obviously, you know, four years it's you guys are up to

you know, the amount of people that you have now, like, how do you, how do you do that from being a few states over?

John Sloan (26:31)
So a lot of it is things like Teams, different video chatting options are great. The other part is being readily available. If somebody has a question, knowing that they can call you, that if they're confused, concerned, in a rush, that they can pick up the phone and call you, send you a text. And then being very intentional. When I go to town,

I very rarely get work done once I walk in the door because some of it is just being a social guy. I want to go around and see everybody, talk to them, interrupt their day, get pulled into meetings that help me understand what's going on. And it also gets back a little bit to that discussion of sort of empowering the group.

I think we stay so connected through emails, through teams, through our meetings. The other thing that we do, we call it coffee talk. We now have it every other week. The entire company comes together, whether you're remote, even if you're living in Milwaukee, but you're working from home that day, or for whatever reason you're on the road, everybody calls in. Sometimes it's only five or 10 minutes. It was born out of...

In the early days when it was just Bill and I, 630 Milwaukee time, he and I both have a cup of coffee and we'd get on Teams and just talk, what do you got coming on today? What are the challenges? Just, we're starting this business and it was every day. And when we added Paul and then Katie, we still were doing it every day. Then it split out, we were doing it a couple of times a week, once a week. We don't wanna inundate people with meetings, but we want to stay very close to them. We wanna make sure that everybody understands.

you are an integral part of this. And so even being a few states away, just having that regular face-to-face contact is huge. It's a huge honor. Yes.

Jake Thomas (28:21)
Yeah, it's easy to get caught up, you know, especially when you have a project that's gone sideways and it's taken more time. It's just being, you know, disciplined to be intentional to meet with everybody and like you said, be available against something that's so simple. But you and I probably have both seen the exact opposite of that when you're when you have someone that you're trying to get a hold of for help. And you know, it's you know, I'll give you a call tomorrow. It's like

You can only do that so many times before it's, you know, before like yourself, you start your own company.

John Sloan (28:57)
Yeah, well and far becomes too late, right? It's and it's not necessarily too late for the customer But you know in so many people's eyes people that are part of legacy may look at it and say but now I've got to live for the next 12 hours with this angst or Concern or whatever it is. I'm taking this more seriously than you are and we don't want people everybody goes home at some point with

work on their mind, the more you can take those worries away or at least let them know, hey, we're in this together, drop it for tonight, we'll get together on a call with the group at nine o'clock tomorrow, whatever that is. You've at least given them that sort of that pass to say, hey, relax for a little bit.

Jake Thomas (29:37)
Yep. Yeah. No, it makes sense. What the, you know, when we started this up this podcast, it was really, I thought it'd be cool to give a shout out to someone that's helped you along the way. I'm sure you've had multiple. Because you don't really see that often. It's like, yeah, you can send a text to someone every once in a while, but it is cool to share, you know, I mean, obviously you've had people that have helped you along the way. And I'm, I know you're helping, you're kind of in the spot now where you're helping others. So I guess who first comes to mind?

John Sloan (29:49)
Yeah.

Jake Thomas (30:08)
If it's one person, if it's a few people.

John Sloan (30:11)
There's probably two that stand out the most. So the first would be Bob Detlaff and that's simply because he linked me up with Cubic. And that was a, there'd be, we can do a whole nother podcast on big ass fans, great product, but at the time it was, it was,

just a much different work environment than I wanted or that I was used to. But also having just started a family, had just moved from Utah to Kentucky, didn't really feel like I had a way out. And so, you know.

Bob kind of giving me that confidence, calling me up and saying, would you be interested, was a huge shot in the arm. And he's since gotten out of, he's still in industrial sales, but he's more on the ergonomic side of things versus platforms. Oh, you do? With Boston Tech? Oh, good. And one of the great guys, but in great sense of humor, doesn't take as serious as life gets, and he can't take things seriously. He also knows how to...

Jake Thomas (31:00)
Yep, we work with them. We were, yeah, yeah.

John Sloan (31:17)
cut through it with a pretty good dry joke just to make sure that everybody knows I'm not living and dying this yet. But that meant a lot that he would make the recommendation. And probably one of the most valuable relationships that I've had in this industry is Mike Giffhorn. And Mike gave me a lot of latitude.

in working at Cubic and the ability to go out and just, here's your job, go figure out how to do it. And didn't micromanage, and didn't really have the ability to micromanage, quite honestly, because he was running a company, he was running a territory. But we've remained to this day, we have remained close friends, go, I visit him when I'm in town. The running joke at the whole time that I worked for him was that,

I was the biggest suck up, but when we'd come in for a sales meeting, I very rarely stayed in a hotel. I had been invited to stay at his house. And that means a lot. That gives you, you know, he's been a great sounding board for probably in your same boat for your company, for legacy. But those are probably the two, you know, notwithstanding Bill and.

Jake Thomas (32:33)
Yep.

John Sloan (32:41)
Bill and I worked closely together. I was loosely his boss at one point, if you will, but that group really didn't need anybody other than just somebody to help shepherd things through. But probably the two longest running would be Bob and Mike. Yeah.

Jake Thomas (32:57)
Yeah, that's what I figured. I knew Mike would probably be one. And I think he's probably gonna be a common theme, which I'm sure he's gonna love to listen to. No, I mean, he's been a huge reason why we're at where we're at and even starting our install company. I mean, it's just without that conversation, it probably would never have happened. So he seems to...

John Sloan (33:08)
Oh, sure.

Well, he has a good way of, you know, as we actually, even before legacy started, I had an opportunity, I was approached about buying a business and knew the previous owner that had since been sold, but knew the owner at the time and somebody who I have not only a ton of respect for in business, the way he ran the company, the product, everything about it. But as I started working it out with Mike.

He had a way of kind of cutting it down and taking that feeling part of it out of it, taking the heart out of it and saying, okay, but go to the vine. Does what make sense for you on all these fronts? And really making, this needs to be a business decision, not a passion decision, right? You can be passionate about what you do, but you also have to make sure does it make sense for what you're trying to do in life.

And he's been huge and super supportive in that way. And he's certainly done that as we've grown at legacy. We continue to reach out to him just for some of that continued input. And I think there's a part of him that really loves saying what's happening. He loves saying what's happening with.

with two, three, you know, there's a lot of these that he loves the fact that he's been able to touch and he hasn't left, you know, he's retired, but as we talked about earlier, he still hasn't left the industry. He just lives it vicariously through the rest of us, which is amazing.

Jake Thomas (34:47)
Yeah, he knows he has a standing job offer here. We haven't discussed money, but he just know, and it's, I'm sure you guys have the same thing with him. Yeah.

John Sloan (34:54)
Absolutely. We'll put him on a non-paying board member. Yeah. We have a picture. Our first meeting was in the living room of Hiscano because we didn't have any office space at the time. It was in COVID, so good luck finding a public place that you could go hang out. Those kids were at home getting educated. They had school during the day, so you could really interrupt all of that.

Jake Thomas (34:58)
Yeah, that's what we're doing. Yeah. So.

John Sloan (35:24)
So he was, this place was our first conference room.

Jake Thomas (35:28)
Yeah, no, it's funny. Kind of the one thing I wanted to ask you too, cause I've heard the story to even talking with Bill when you guys were down at ProMat. I mean, you can't walk anywhere cause you know so many people and you've obviously have a very good reputation and people wanna talk with you. Were you intentional about building that over time or did it kind of just, you know, good people are good at, you know, just being good people, right? Like if you do right by others, people wanna...

talk with you and word travels or, you know, I just was curious if you had anything specific or advice for people that are just getting into the industry or fresh out of college where it's like, you don't need to ping a thousand people on LinkedIn every day to try to get your name out there. You can build it organically.

John Sloan (36:17)
Well, I'll tell you where it all started to give a quick nod to my uncle. My dad's older brother, up until I met Mike, I would have said he was the best salesman I'd ever met. And I think they could probably go neck and neck.

But something that has stuck with me long before I had gotten into industrial sales, I was actually selling real estate out west. And through a much larger discussion, what it boiled down to is that my uncle lived by this rule that he had a core that these were his values. These were his non-starters. These are all the things, you know, his honesty, his integrity, it's all those things. Every decision he made was centered around that.

And then, you know, kind of the stuff on the periphery took care of itself. And it always had stuck with me of, okay, if I play the game honestly, I'm not going to win every time I get an opportunity, but I'm going to be able to hold my head high and say, okay, I tried. And I did a lot of that by, as we talked about earlier, by not...

bad-mouthing my competitors. It's really easy to go out and sell something and say, well, yeah, but you know, their product is garbage or, you know, they, they painted a different color white or their handrail is round, not square. But the one thing that, uh, you know, in this industry, if you just take what I've done for so many years, if you take the platform world, you can name all of the big manufacturers. None of their platforms have, to my knowledge, have ever fallen down.

They look different, they have different methods of designing and material, or not materials, but shapes and all that stuff. But from a functional perspective, once the customer puts it up, it kind of disappears, right? You're gonna put racking or shelving or modular offices or storage or whatever, it blends into it. They all stand up. So why disparage somebody and make it look like you don't have anything to sell on your merits? And I think as such,

I've been able to sell on what I firmly believe in, what I knew the product that I was selling, what it could do. It was up to the customer to figure out if that was the right one for them.

And when it's led to, as much as anything Jake is, a lot of referrals of people saying, hey, if you're looking to do this, go talk to these guys. Go talk to him and he'll do right by you. And that's been huge. That was drilled into me just if you look in this industry. That was something that kind of Mike drilled into all of us is we're not gonna be the lowest priced guys out there and we're not gonna beat up our competition. Go out.

sell the product, know what you're doing, solve the problem and move on. And I would tell you that the other part is I'm a pretty social guy. Like I like to talk with people. I also like to know, I've spent a lot of time trying to understand the products that go on and around and through the platforms that I've sold. So developed relationships with modular office companies and racking and shelving suppliers and all those. And that has led to...

some really good opportunities. And so there's, you know, it can't be understated that no, you don't have to just know the product you sell, know the stuff that goes around it. Even if you don't make money on it, I've got, as an example, I've got a project going on right now. They wanted a vertical lift. The project is price sensitive, and I know that. Well.

Jake Thomas (39:38)
Mm-hmm.

John Sloan (39:53)
I tried to get a feel for what the guy needed to know maybe who the better of the suppliers would be. I put him in direct contact and he's buying it direct. Probably left, whatever, with a markup, five or eight or $10,000 maybe on the table. But the customer got what they needed and legacy still got a sale out of it. It was, when you do right by the customers and these other suppliers, right?

Jake Thomas (39:57)
Mm-hmm.

John Sloan (40:19)
I could have just said, yeah, go to the, you can find them on the web, type in VRC, and it'll come up. So, some of it is doing right by everybody.

Jake Thomas (40:28)
Isn't it, it's kind of funny when you, when you are in front of a group of, you know, end users or clients or whoever the, you know, whoever your customer is, when, when they're kind of waiting for you to bad mouth your, your competition. And then you say exactly what you just said. Kind of seeing, seeing them, you know, kind of look at it as like a, like a fresh, uh, you know, like they're not used to seeing that because so many, surprisingly people do that. Like P and it's, uh, it's never made sense. It's never made sense. Like what we do overall is a pretty.

I mean, we all do the same thing. It's, you know, it's how we do it. So it's like, how can you, like you said, everyone makes platforms. So it is, yeah. Yep. Yeah.

John Sloan (41:04)
Right, and they're all good quality. They're all good quality. What do you need out of them? You know, what do you need out of them? Yeah, that is one of the frustrating things. And I know that people have, without a doubt, dispairs at some point or another a product that I sold or potentially me. If that's how you gotta do it, that's fine. You know, hopefully anybody that...

has worked with me would at least, I mean, I certainly haven't made everybody happy. There's people out there that don't like what I do or don't like it and I get that and they have good relationships with other people. That's awesome. I'm gonna be honest with you. Legacy doesn't want every sale that's out there. We couldn't handle it.

And by the way, none of our competitors, none of the other manufacturers out there, none of them have enough capacity to do it all. So go out there with integrity, win your fair share, do it right.

Jake Thomas (42:08)
Yep. Yeah. Having the scarcity mindset is, it doesn't work. And it's very obvious. You can see the people that are doing that. And it's just, there's enough in it for all of us. And I think once, if you have a scarcity mindset, then you have so much pressure on you when you're sitting across the table from a customer where you can like, you're okay if you don't, we all want to win, but it's okay. It's okay if we don't. And

John Sloan (42:30)
Without a doubt.

Jake Thomas (42:34)
the customer, they can feel that. They can feel the energy if you're sending them a message every day following up asking for the order. So it just, right. Yeah, if I can get to that point, are we gonna have a deal? Or are you gonna try to ping me for like eight points and I have to go back to all my manufacturers and then you just go with someone else. Yeah, but no, I think.

John Sloan (42:45)
Just tell me what number I have to be and I'll be there.

Jake Thomas (43:04)
It is interesting. I mean, you just see so many different types of people, so many different types of ways that people sell. And obviously, the way you're doing it works. And we're trying to emulate the same thing over here. So I'm glad you decided to come on. And I

just wanted an excuse to talk to you, honestly. That was it.

John Sloan (43:24)
Thank you. This is the, as my wife told me, all this does is feed my ego. No, I love, listen, I love talking about the industry and what we do.

Jake Thomas (43:32)
Yeah.

John Sloan (43:40)
And similar to what you've what you said about us, I would echo back is, it's been fun to watch two, three grow, you know, all the time I'm saying, now adding to the to the roster and, and that's huge. And you haven't done it at the expense of others. And we want to be the same way. There's a huge market for both our companies out there. Go find a way to grow and serve the right people. And it's been a lot of fun to, to watch you grow. And of course, we all decided

to do it during COVID, to start during COVID. So really good move on our part.

Jake Thomas (44:11)
Right, yeah. Hey, it's worked, right? I mean, it's better. Starting a business during COVID was this, we knew that would be a smart decision, right? Like we...

John Sloan (44:22)
Yep. That's exactly what my wife thought. I said, yeah, you left a good job that out of 401k and health insurance. Yeah, that's brilliant.

Jake Thomas (44:28)
Yep. It's expensive, isn't it? Health and doing that on your own. And when I was going to go give my two weeks, like the moment I thought about starting 2-3 to the moment I gave my two weeks was four weeks. It was a four week time, which like looking back on it, that was silly. But like at that second week, third week of thinking about it, my wife lets me know that she's pregnant with our third. So.

John Sloan (44:54)
No pressure.

Jake Thomas (44:54)
I'm like, yeah, this is a great time. COVID and another baby, let's do it. So, yeah. Yeah, no, exactly.

John Sloan (45:00)
Yeah, is that it? We should buy a bigger house while we're at it. A couple new cars. I had a real estate broker that when I proposed to my wife, I still lived in Utah at the time and I proposed. He said, man, I love that. He says, now go buy a house and get really in debt. That is the most motivating thing that you can do is just do that and you'll be out selling all you can.

Jake Thomas (45:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's what we had at one of the old timers at the company I used to work for. He would always try to convince the sales guys to go buy ATVs and boats and like a nice car for that exact reason. So I'm not telling anyone here to do that. I think we can be smart about our money and still make money as well.

John Sloan (45:44)
Well, I kind of laughed. So my father-in-law used to buy all my company cars when they would rotate out because I take pretty good care of my car. So he bought, well, yeah, he bought two from me and then actually a friend of mine bought a third one from the company. And...

I still drive one of the cars that, I don't know if you know Tom Sergis, but he's a sales guy. So Tom drove this for a couple of years and he sent me, maybe six, eight months ago, sent me a picture of, hey, I just got my new company car and it's a Dodge Charger or something like that. And I sent him a picture of this 2011 Camry and he's like, seriously? Like, yeah, it still runs.

Jake Thomas (46:24)
Hey, it's still runs. Yeah. Hey. Yeah.

John Sloan (46:27)
I can go spend the money on something else. I don't need a fancy car to drive five miles to work.

Jake Thomas (46:33)
Yeah, or to, you know, occasionally come to Milwaukee. Not occasionally, but bring that to Milwaukee. Do you fly? You flyin'. You gotta fly in though.

John Sloan (46:38)
This, I do, because it's so easy, date into Chicago and then grab a car and drive an hour and I'm there. I don't fly into Milwaukee anymore. I got that flight from Chicago to Milwaukee or Milwaukee to Chicago, depending on which direction, canceled too many times. It's a couple hundred bucks to do that. It's an hour flight. Actually, it's not even that. It's a 41 minute flight.

Jake Thomas (46:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome.

John Sloan (47:00)
So, and I love Milwaukee. It's a fun town. My wife won't let me get a place up there because she's afraid to be too comfortable.

Jake Thomas (47:08)
Probably, she'd probably have to come up here more often than she wants to, yeah.

John Sloan (47:10)
Yep. That's true. And this time of year, it's tough to convince her to come up further north.

Jake Thomas (47:17)
Yeah, yep, no, all good. I appreciate you. I appreciate you coming on.

John Sloan (47:20)
Thanks for the time and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about it. I mean, it's always good talking to you, but thanks for letting me tell more about the

story. That means a ton.

Jake Thomas (47:29)
Yeah, no, for sure. We'll do it again.