The Exchanges

Q But a hundred, but, but was a hundred grand in 2009? Was that critical? Was that like life changing money at the time at that point?

A You know, it really wasn't. I had sold my house. I had some capital from that. I had sold my boat. I had a little bit of money from that. Um, I really, you know, financed this thing a hundred percent of myself. I had gotten owner financing on the farm itself. I really got the loan because I knew that what, what came along with that was even more support from Whole Foods. And I wanted them as a partner. And we signed, we never missed a payment, never laid on a payment. We paid it off exactly in time. And at the time, you know, they had 11 regions of Whole Foods. There's almost no national purchasing. Each region made their own decision. So you had five separate billion dollar company, I'm sorry, 11 separate one billion dollar companies in essence with their own presidents and their own buyers. So you had to do one region at a time.

AI assessment note: “You know, it really wasn't. I had sold my house.”

Q Alright, so let's say you are a Radio station and a doctor. I pay you 500 dollars, and then that enables me to shop at any of these other businesses, but why would I even need to be part of this network to use their services?

A I'll give you a simple example. Okay, let's say you have a restaurant, and your restaurant is operating at about 60% capacity. Every lunch, every day at lunch, you have 40% of your table is empty. Um, you have plenty more capacity. Your food cost in a restaurant, typically 25%, roughly. But your, your big cost in a restaurant is your fixed overhead. So you have this perishable commodity called that seat that's not worth anything if you can't fill it, right? You gotta, you gotta have to have a new driveway put in, a parking lot put in, and the asphalt company came to you and said it's gonna cost you 10,000 dollars. If you join barter exchange, We're going to fill up some of those empty tables with customers you wouldn't have had otherwise. We're going to send them in. They're going to use their trade dollars to eat in your restaurant. And basically you're going to buy that driveway with incremental business.

AI assessment note: “you're going to buy that driveway with incremental business.”

Q for a very specific market, which is airline employees, I guess, flight attendants and pilots, um, And the way I understand it, basically what you would like broker deals with hotels and resorts for like inexpensive hotel rooms, and then you would turn them around and sell them to airline employees who would fly somewhere cheap or, you know, if they had some time off. Is that, is that right?

A Yeah. There were dozens of these little companies that former airline employees would start, and they would, you know, they would place, or even existing airline employees, and they would place, they'd find, get a deal with a hotel and a resort somewhere, and say, airline employees will let you come for 50% off, because they wanted to, because the airline employees, the key is they fly at the last minute, standby, and hotels like to fill excess capacity, and I had really good contacts in the resort travel business, my previous business at Barter Exchange, you know, I had general managers and sales managers from all the major hotels and, and, and the resorts in Mexico and throughout the Caribbean. So we started growing the business and it was, it was easy to grow. Uh, there was a travel magazine that was out there at the time called airfare magazine, I believe it was called. I bought that magazine for cheap and we took that and turned it into a first class publication with a quarter of a million circulation called interline.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. There were dozens of these little companies that former airline employees would start”

Q Was it a good business? It was a small business. It's, it's you and Catherine, basically, and maybe some, I don't know, part-time employees, but was it a Was it, were you saving money?

A I wouldn't say I was saving a lot of money, but I was, um, we, you know, we, you know, we were getting, I think, 15,000 dollars a week, um, and after you cover all your expenses, you know, you got a little bit left over, and there were tips. Catherine kept all the tips. That was their deal, which was sizable. I think we had, you know, 40, 50,000 dollars a year in tips. But also, I saw an opportunity while I was doing this, because I'm an entrepreneur at heart, and I had a million ideas that I couldn't execute there, but one I could was become a charter broker. Who would, uh, book on other boats because we were oftentimes booked and I get inquiries from my client base and they say, we need you for new year's. I'm not available, but I can get you another boat. And that was 15% off the top. So I started booking charters. I started a company. It was called vital vacations and, uh, the first vital company.

AI assessment note: “I wouldn't say I was saving a lot of money, but I was”

Q So, he, you wanted him to come aboard To do what? I mean, he had a business degree, but you also had a lot of business experience. What was he going to bring to the business that you needed?

A Um, primarily he was going to do all the blocking and tackling. If our hiring was going to take place, he did it. He'd, you know, get on an airplane and fly somewhere if we had to. Um, he was, um, I was mainly doing, I was going to be focusing on capital formation if we needed, which I really didn't because we were, I wanted to make sure we were profitable right off the bat. So at the very beginning, we were profitable every year. I didn't want dilution. I had learned my lesson, you know, about dilution and watched my friends had got diluted in their business by having to operate at a loss and having to keep raising capital. But, um, yeah, he was instrumental in working with our new partners in Arkansas.

AI assessment note: “primarily he was going to do all the blocking and tackling. If our hiring”

Q suburb in 2008. I go, go by the eggs, and I see this one brand, Vital Farms, and it's not, it's just like, you know, there's Oh, there's a Whole Foods brand, and there's, and, and they are saying cage-free, and there's this, and why would I even pick this? I mean, I didn't know, knew nothing about it. How, how are people gonna even know about what this was?

A Whole Foods were amazing partners. They still are just an amazing partner, and they stepped up, because the thing that they do is that they really believe in what we're doing. It's not just about the money. It's, it's the stakeholder model. And, you know, they believe in what we're doing from an animal welfare standpoint. They believed in, in that Pasture-raised eggs were better for you. So, um, yeah, and so they did, had great signage in the stores, but I was only on the shelf for about three or four weeks, and all of a sudden I got a call from Bobby Turner, I believe his name, he's the vice president, and said, Matt, we've got a problem up here. I said, what? The, uh, health department in Indiana has taken all your eggs off the shelf. And why? I said, because your label's not correct. You didn't have the size of the egg in three-eighths inch type. You didn't have the grade, a grade on it.

AI assessment note: “and so they did, had great signage in the stores”