All right, we're live. All right. All right. Tint Wiz, 136, after a few minutes of adjustments. How are you doing today, Chris? I'm good, thank you. How are you? Very well. Thanks for What are you drinking? Oh, I'm drinking water, actually. Okay. Um- That's all I drink. Say what? Yeah. I was drinking coffee and like, all the time. Like, all the time. Really? For, I don't know, maybe 10 years, I heard my wife tell me that I was probably dehydrated and I was definitely dehydrated. Yeah ... very dehydrated, and, I feel a lot better when I drink a lot of water now, so. Yeah. It's so much better. Yeah, I haven't drank caffeine. Look, don't get me wrong, First of all, I love the taste of espresso. Mm-hmm. I love Coca-Cola. Like, I love the taste of Coca-Cola. Cherry Coke or regular Coke for me is like the epitome of, like, heaven on earth perfection. I only drink one maybe, I don't know, once every six months. If I have Chinese food, buddy, I need to have a Coca-Cola. They go hand in hand. It's a good timing. Chinese food, pizza, you know, special events. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in for all of that. Today. First of all, thanks for, you know, last week. Manny, what a guy, and I appreciate you introducing him to me and having him come on here and everything. It was kind of ringing in my head today. I was just thinking about how we were talking about the IWFA last week, and I was like, "What a perfect guy to be on the IWFA." Like, I don't think he is, but I would, you know, nominate him to the highest level because that is somebody with, I feel like, the years of experience, like, the decades of experience, but he still sees all of what's in the future, and he's well connected with the present and, like, that's what you need, you know. You need that total package to be able to really be effective, in my opinion. He is, you know, an example. Yeah, he is there. I agree with you. Like, when I first met him in person, I was so incredibly impressed by him. I mean, you know, fact of the matter is he's got a wealth of knowledge. He's very comfortable in sharing it. You know, he can speak to the largest corporate crowd just as easily he can speak to like, you know, at a normal level like mine or yours, like an installer level, if you wanna call it that. Like, I think he's a jack of all trades, and I really think that he did an amazing job last week. I called him afterwards and said, "Bro, like, you killed it. Like, you made me look bad. I can't go on with you again. Well, I appreciate you coming on this week and specifically to talk about PermaPlate and, you know, as always, if there's questions about anything in the world, they're always welcome. You know, being able to talk about that subject, which is a big subject because it was a very large acquisition in dollar amounts and I think in just, like, value and it's very awesome to be able to get to speak to you about it and you to be open to people's questions and to have that open communication because that's really what it's about. Usually, like, when there's great communication, everyone wins, and when there's no communication, everyone loses. it's really admirable that you came on here today to talk about this stuff, 'cause usually I feel like stuff like that is, like, behind closed doors, hush-hush stuff that nobody really talks about outside of the company from, you know. Yeah. I think that for a lot of companies, that exactly is how they carry something like that off, and I understand. Like, look, I'm not trying to say that other companies and the way that they do things is wrong and ours is right. I just prefer our model to be very open about things, and I think we've got some good reasons behind it. I think that that speaks true to our clientele versus being hush-hush about it because unfortunately, you sit there and you hypothesize what is the reason for the acquisition or what is the reason for the big change? What are they up to? If you don't get answers, you start developing your own answers in your own mind or and/or they pop up online and, like, I saw a lot of stuff being sent to me that was being talked about online, you know, afterwards, and some people found it really contentious, especially the PermaPlate acquisition. I was laughing in my head because I'm like, "Wow, like you guys all thought that when we, you know, merged with Veloce and Harry Rahman, you guys thought that was, like, unbelievable and what a great acquisition it was." Yet when we did the PermaPlate deal, there was a number of people who were like, "Oh, you see? Look at what XPEL's really up to and, you know, this is what they're planning on doing against you." Look, I know that a lot of those posts were done by some of my competitors. I have a couple of competitors that I'm quite familiar with that purposely ask or load the lips of some of their clientele to get online and to post some negative stuff and to try and, you know, swing that idea in people's minds. I laugh at it. You know, if you want me to address it, I can address it full on or if you have questions in mind first, whatever you think is more appropriate. Well, yeah. I guess why don't we start with first of all, I know there's a little delay on the software, but I think it'll catch up, so we'll just keep going. I'm just saying in case anybody notices. I'm kind of aware on my end. I think we're good to go. Why don't we start off just kind of by if you could talk about a little bit like what is PermaPlate as a company? Like, what do they do? Who are they prior to the acquisition? PermaPlate was a company that had been started some time ago by a gentleman with the name of David Jorgenson. I know that there were some other key players with David at that time. I'm not saying he did it solely on his own. But what their main focus was was to go after dealership business specifically, and not only just sell to dealerships, but sell both the labor and the material. You know, they were approaching dealerships and saying, "Hey, look, we think that you've got a situation where it's very difficult to keep installers in-house. It's very difficult to keep them satisfied, and you're constantly going through this battle of training a new person or bringing another person on. What we could do for you instead is we could provide the labor component of that. in turn, you know, we could really satisfy or maybe fill the holes that you've been experiencing. So they grew this to quite a large business. You know, they were in many different states. A lot of employees. I think the number is over 250 employees. Obviously, a lot of those installers. Obviously, a lot of that's sales, management, fixed ops, just a massive powerhouse. You know, one of the things that I love about XPEL is that they don't call them acquisitions, right? They don't look at it as in, "Hey, we bought somebody." Because first of all, it seems really pompous, and second of all, it makes you sound superior, and the other person's not at that level, and that's not true. You know, PermaPlate was doing something that XPEL had not been able to accomplish. I don't know that we had ever approached it in the same direction as they had, but we saw their success, and we called it a merger. You know, just like Veloce. Like, when Harry Rahman came on board, we did not call Veloce an acquisition. We called it a merger. Whether we forked over some bucks for it or not, it's still to us internally thought of as a merge between two great companies that together will be even better than we were beforehand. Going back to the PermaPlate acquisition, yeah, I mean, or sorry, I shouldn't use that word, acquisition, merger. You know, we just saw an opportunity to join two companies up where they were doing a much better job in an area that we weren't doing a very good job in at all. In comparison, they figured out this labor component part of it. In turn, through speaking with those people, it was above my pay grade, to be very candid with you. I didn't even know about it until after it was already done. You know, the like-minded individuals came together, figured out the deal that made sense for everybody and put it together. You know, PermaPlate is no longer PermaPlate, right? PermaPlate is now a part of XPEL. Or XPEL is a part of PermaPlate, but renamed underneath XPEL, whatever you wanna call it. Just like Veloce. You know, that's another thing that I love about XPEL, and this is a personal thing. Our company doesn't believe in the idea of mergers and then trying to market and advertise another brand name against our own. There are other companies out there and some great companies out there where when they do an acquisition, they keep that brand name separate, and they continue to work on that brand name maybe or maybe they just continue to use the brand name. I don't know. The reality is that a lot of the brands that they're acquiring don't have the budget for marketing, you know, don't spend millions of dollars a year on marketing like XPEL and 3M does. In turn, now they've got this new company that they've put into their fold, and if they are gonna market anything for it, where's that marketing dollars coming from? Well, it's obviously coming from their existing brands because that have the marketing dollars to begin with. Again, going back to the PermaPlate thing, we don't call it PermaPlate anymore. We just. Everything is just called XPEL. As always, just like Veloce. You know, a lot of people are asking me, "Hey, is Veloce sticking around?" I'm like: Look, I seriously doubt it because we don't want to use XPEL VISION to compete against your XPEL Veloce. It's not good for anybody in our personal opinion. We have another manufacturer out there or, you know, who obviously thinks the opposite. Great for them. If that's working for them, I'm super happy for them. On our end, it's not what we're after. It gets very confusing for the customer because you can have a brand that could be a high-end brand, but if they haven't heard of it, you know, and if you're marketing obviously six brands instead of one brand, it's division of a pie any way you slice it because, like you said, your marketing budget goes somewhere. Dealer installation, how does that, if in any way, does that affect, let's say, you know, a installation company now, a, you know, company that does obviously XPEL window tint, maybe paint protection as well. How does this acquisition affect them if it does? Yeah. I mean, we would call that an independent, right? Oh, merger. We have a focus strictly on retail. Mm-hmm. We have a focus on wholesale. Mm-hmm. It's the independents, both of those independents benefit greatly from it, and I'll explain both avenues. Let's first deal with the independent that doesn't do wholesale work and just does strictly retail. We're gonna refer to PermaPlate obviously in terms of history versus now being XPEL. Historically speaking, yes, they did purchase a little bit from XPEL, but the vast majority of their purchases were going through another top brand, another manufacturer. The reality is that those dealerships that they were servicing were using another brand, and they were not advertising a brand at all. They were actually staying away from that. Where again, going back to XPEL's model, with the merger of the two coming together, our intention is to have everything that was being looked after by PermaPlate, obviously first and foremost being using XPEL now. You know, there's some legacy accounts that we have to obviously deal with in terms of contractual agreements and stuff like that, where maybe it's not fully XPEL yet, but it certainly will be at some point soon. Our biggest thing, of course, is making sure that all those firms that are having film put on their vehicles at this point are having addendums with the XPEL name on it, having branding put up inside the dealerships and things of that nature, and telling everybody and anybody, "Hey, this is XPEL that's going on this car." I think that was very logical. The brand that they were using before, while it's a phenomenal manufacturer, does not have much in terms of consumer awareness. They have a lot of awareness from the installer standpoint and the store standpoint, but their consumer awareness is quite low in comparison, I feel to XPEL or 3M. Maybe that's one of the reasons why they didn't feel it would be valuable to capitalize on that using a brand name. I don't know. All I know is that for us, it is very valuable to capitalize on the brand name. We are thought of as the high-end brand, and we don't wanna lose that image. The more that word is getting out there, the better for the independents, because it's just ultimately a lot of free advertising. I think that it's no secret that not every customer believes that the price they're paying at a dealership is the appropriate price. Not only that, maybe the workmanship at the dealership level is not the same as it is at an independent installer level. I think that for that reason as well, you can imagine that if the name that's being used is XPEL on the addendum and in the dealership showrooms and in the dealership drive-throughs and stuff like that, and the consumer's going, "Yeah, I know that I can get my XPEL here, but I know I got an XPEL shop that my buddies used or I've used in the past or whatever, I'm gonna reach out to them directly." I think that that's going to see a very positive effect. As a matter of fact, I think it's got zero negative effect whatsoever for the independents that don't do wholesale at all. The bigger question, of course, was the ones that do wholesale. Mm-hmm. You know, with the ones that do wholesale, their worry, which of course is logical, is, "Hey, wait a second. Is XPEL going to be competing against me for my customer? Sure. They're very, very emphatic in the idea that we've always stated quite clearly that is never our intention. We do not want to compete against our independents. We know, we as XPEL know that it's because of our independents that help us get to where we are. You know, in just five years we go from a $150 million company to a, I don't know, I think it's around $2 billion market valuation right now, which is, I mean, unfathomably extreme, you know, amazing. But it's our independents that helped us get there. It's our marketing that helped us get there. It's our DAP that helped us get there. It's of course our product lines that helped us get there. I get it, but the independents have played a massive role in that. Massive. Mm-hmm. The last thing we wanna do is hurt those independents. We wanna help them, always. So again, this is another part that made me laugh because I saw some of the stuff that was being sent to me in terms of some of these people are posting this negative stuff, and I'm like, "Man, you have it so backwards." When it was the PermaPlate, and they were using predominantly, I think, well over 90% of this other company's product, you can bet that they were going in and trying to get any single client they could that was an XPEL customer. If they walked into a dealership and it said XPEL, they were like, "Yee-haw, this is what I'm at, I'm attacking, and I'm going after, and I'm gonna try and land this account." But as you know already from previous conversations, we don't want even our independents hurting each other if we can avoid that in any way, shape, or form. Now that we bring the PermaPlate and the XPEL together underneath one umbrella, we literally had a very straightforward conversation with everybody that was PermaPlate that's now XPEL, that hey, we need you to be aware of how we do business and how it's a little different. We like to go with the idea of exclusivity. B, we like to go with the exclusivity into the idea of being somewhat understanding of territorial or regional agreements or you know key metrics. C, if you walk into a dealership, your very first question, other than "Hello, how are you?" is "Are you currently, you know, doing an in-house program? Okay. If you're not, are you currently offering it? If you're currently offering it, is it being offered third party then?" If the answer is yes, you must find out what brand they're using. And if they're using XPEL, it's at that point that you're expected to say, "Hey, you know what? You're being used by one of our sister operations already. We're thanking you so much for your business. We already have it, so we'll see you later." I can tell you if Joel Valencia is on this call right now from Charleston Window Film, you know, that was a really big conversion for us recently that happened as a huge thanks to Jason Carr from Guardian Security Window Films, my good buddy. Sorry, Joel was using another brand from that same company that we're talking about that has multiple brand names, brands underneath their one lineup or, I mean, their one umbrella. He was working to try and secure a couple of local dealerships for some in-house work and some preload work. You know, he's got, I think, three shops now, or it's three shops, I believe, now at this point. He had shops in different locations, and here's an opportunity. Well, lo and behold, those dealerships reached out to the PermaPlate rep, this awesome, amazing rep named Regina, who I've come to know now for a little while, and man, like out of this world amazing representative for them and of course now for XPEL. Regina went into the dealership, had a very straightforward conversation with them and said, "Look, thank you so much for contacting me. I really appreciate it. However, I'm also under the impression that you're already doing work with Joel at Charleston Window Film, which you guys have been for about a month now. And so because of that, I will not interfere with something that's within our own realm already. She actually told the GM, "I'm sorry, but I won't even bid on this. Like, this is not something that we do. This is the way XPEL runs things, and we hope that you can appreciate it. Now, if Joel gets to a position where he doesn't want it anymore, if Joel gets to a position where he feels he can't handle anymore, if Joel gets to a position where, you know, things are unfortunately falling out of his control, then Joel knows to reach out to me and reach out to Regina, who by the way, Regina went and had a face-to-face with Joel to let him know what's going on and brought him fully up to speed and just said to Joel, "Look, if it's getting to be too much or whatever the case may be, then obviously reach out to us, and we as XPEL will gladly step in and, you know, we'll do what we can to take over." Going back to that independent that does dealership services, we have a number of accounts that do nothing but dealer services. Nothing but. You know, a couple of them had reached out to me right away when they heard about the acquisition. They're like, "Hey, so how does this affect me?" I go, "Man, like, in a way that's so beneficial, it's incredible because now you know that we will be dictating to them, they can't go after your accounts. But at the same time, please be mindful that now XPEL has got some accounts through the merger, and that we're asking to respect that in as well." It's already like, I don't know, in just the last three months, I've been involved in no less than a half a dozen of these situations where either we were looking after them or somebody else was like. It's like, "Hey, guys, we're on the same team now, and let's make sure that we're getting that message across." That's what's happened. I know for a fact that I could get six, seven people on this call right now with us to say, "Yeah, this is what Chris is describing is exactly what's happened to a T. This acquisition was incredibly beneficial for us because before we were losing a customer or two here and there to the PermaPlate guys using that other brand. Now that it's with XPEL, that won't happen anymore. That's a beautiful thing. I mean, you, like you said, you took probably the biggest target off of somebody who's servicing a dealer's back because they're no longer potentially being targeted by PermaPlate, which is now XPEL, which just means, you know, you're more protected as a dealer if you're servicing those wholesale accounts. Also it kind of adds value I would say, in essence, to being an XPEL dealer, because, you know, that, the ecosystem, that demand only has increased and you're part of that, like, locked into, you know, your location. Look, I won't say the name of the account because I'd have to ask him permission first, but you know, he reached out to me today, a very large dealership services account. They really don't do much of any retail. I mean, maybe it's a couple cars here and there, but trust me when I say at least 99% of their business is dealership services. He's got four dealerships that he's thinking about bringing on the hook in a specific area. He reached out to me, and he said, "Look, like, I might need your help with installers because I don't have a presence there yet." Right away I'm like, "Oh, I think I'm gonna have you covered because I've got 200+ installers through the PermaPlate merger that are now all XPEL. If we feel that we can free one of them up or two of them up to help you out while you find installers for yourself or whatever the case may be, or maybe we provide the labor component while you're providing parts. There's so many different ways of skinning this cat now that we would not have had available to us before. There's been a number of shops that have reached out to us where they knew that there was the previous PermaPlate individuals, now, of course, XPEL, saying, 'Hey, I'm down a guy or two because of COVID,' or, 'I'm down a guy or two because of holidays. Is there any chance that you can...' We're like, 'Hey, let's look into it.' We've been able to make that happen. That's something we couldn't do before. So again, I know for a fact that that's amazing. Now of course there's also the business side, right, of the merger. Mm-hmm. You know, it was a large merger. It was a $30 million merger, and that's a lot of money. But the fact of the matter was an all-cash merger. People wonder, well, why is that beneficial to them? Well, it's immensely beneficial to you because one of the things that the shareholders especially don't like is seeing cash sitting in the bank. If the cash is sitting in the bank, it means it's not being used to develop or further the business. Shareholders wanna see, obviously, some cash reserves in the bank, yes, but they really wanna see profits being utilized to invest back into the company. That is the most important thing. You know, when I talk to so many newer business operators, right? Yourself included when you first started. You poured all your, you know, all your profits back into the industry and now back into your business to make it bigger and better and to deliver more content, to deliver a better experience, but also because ultimately you wanna grow that company. Well, XPEL has a necessity to do that. It's not an option. Not that we would change it anyways, but the acquisition was cash burning a hole in the pocket not being used for anything beneficial. The merger was very sensible. It really helped out, obviously, with valuation. Stock goes up, profits go up, value goes up. Well, guess what? That means more and more money poured into more money poured into more marketing, more money poured into more DAP. I mean, DAP 11 is already, you know, insanely better than it ever was before, but the stuff that's coming down the pipeline that I wish I could tell you about, and obviously I can't, there's some things I do have to keep secret, will blow everybody's mind. The stuff that's already in there, I mean, most people don't know all the details that are within DAP right now. They think it's this, the best design app on the planet, but it's so much more than that, and it's going to be so much more. It's gonna be within a year or so, I would say it'll be ten times more operationally beneficial to a shop than it is right now. But again, that money has to come from somewhere, right? Mm-hmm. I think there's a lag. I apologize. It's not your fault. It's... Well, I don't know where it's from, but I'm gonna take responsibility. There is a lag. That's, you know, that's a very, very good point because, you know, we're like, we're as an industry, we're aligned. You know, like dealers who buy film from XPEL, you know, in essence, like, of course, you know, you want the best price as a dealer and so on for your film. But, you know, you do want XPEL to make money. You want them to grow, you want them to make mergers, you want them to be the healthiest company that they can be because that ultimately, like, is the company you do business with. So, like, what you're saying as far as, you know, how this just benefits, like you said, it goes into DAP, it goes into marketing. I'm sure it's gonna go into distribution and more economies of scale when it comes to product, and you said more development. Like, that's all, you know, comes down to you as a dealer, like the dealers out there that are an XPEL dealer. Even if you're not an XPEL dealer, you know, it might be a little bit tougher to stomach, but it still benefits you because you're part of the industry and it leads to innovation, you know, one company doing something innovative does push another forward to do something innovative, and one of those might even do something and take a leapfrog in front of the first innovative one, and they wouldn't have if it wasn't innovation, and that's the whole point of a healthy industry. I don't know that we've ever been in a healthier industry, and I'm glad, you know, you're able to come on here and make this stuff clear. There are a couple funny comments, Marco being one of them, and he had said how, not funny, but I think accurate. He said, "People need to think and read out loud what they are going to post on social media before they send the message to the universe." I think, like, that's true, and I think it should be especially true when you're talking amongst your peers and you're talking amongst, like, your industry and where you do business and you're affecting other people's businesses potentially and perceptions. You know, like, everybody has a responsibility to not necessarily just shout off at the mouth if they don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. You know? I mean, look, that online thing, as we've talked about a few times, can be quite contentious, right? You know, there's been times where I've seen people posting about another brand, and they're like, "This is the greatest brand I've ever used. I've used everything under the sun. I'm so glad that I went this way. This is the best thing ever, everything else, and, like, this brand, and, like, XPEL sucks." I'm like, "Man," like, I wish that I could be as aggressive as I'd like to be, but what I could do is I could go into NetSuite, I could pull out the conversation that you and I had yesterday with you begging me to let you into XPEL and saying that, "I know XPEL's the greatest. I don't wanna go with any other brand. This is the only brand I wanna go with, which is XPEL. I want the access to the patterns. I want the access to the marketing. I want access to the film. Because we couldn't bring you on board, and it was not because we didn't want to, it's just because we had some agreement, if you will, with another shop maybe that's too close, or because you didn't wanna go exclusive with us, which was, I can completely understand. Mm-hmm. We chose not to do business with each other. You know, like you're sitting there saying something negative, and I don't care if it's about XPEL, SunTek, LLumar, STEK, you know, 3M. It doesn't matter who it is. You know, you're burning bridges. It's getting noticed. There may be a time, like you said, where somebody leapfrogs heavily above somebody else, and now you're like, "Wow, what's best for my business is to switch to that brand instead." If you've pissed them off, you've been blacklisted by them. In essence, what have you gained, right? You make yourself look petty. You know, I definitely agree with Marco on that point. It's well taken. You gotta, you know, you always should say what it is and speak your mind and be honest and transparent, but not say things that are not real or you don't know about and, you know, 'cause those are the things that, like you said, can make you look petty. Look, I think it's a wise business move. It's just a wise, like, social move to not go around burning bridges for no reason, just for fun that day on Facebook. Because even somebody you burn a bridge with could end up working for a different company in the future, and you come across them that way or through somebody or a friend of a friend. Like, you don't know, and the point is not again, it's not to be fake just in case. It's just, don't be a schmuck just for no reason, you know. Yeah. I mean, you know, going, you know, again, like there's always reasons for a company to do the things that they're doing, and I'm talking about from the manufacturer's level, right? Mm-hmm. At the end of the day, you've got to respect that multiple people were almost always involved in every decision, and they came to a decision, and whatever that decision is should be just understood and respected that that made the most sense for them along with their clientele. Nobody, not Eastman, not 3M, not XPEL, makes a decision thinking, "This is only gonna be good for us and it's gonna suck for our clients," right? Right. It's all we got from those top three brands as how can this benefit everybody involved as much as humanly possible. Look, going back to the investment money, right? I'll let the cat out of the bag on something. There's a few people that know. Mike Burk, of course, definitely knows this, along with a few others. But most people don't know that we've invested a heavy amount of money into putting an East Coast distribution center together. We are actually opening up a Charlotte distribution center shortly. We were supposed to be open, actually, to be candid with you, by this summer, but unfortunately, Duke Energy couldn't get the power transformers in. They were on backorder or whatever you wanna call it for a long time due to all the other, you know, situations that are happening worldwide with COVID and what have you. We, you know, we got that up and going, the shelving's up and going. We've already hired the manager to run the whole operation. He's already been hired. He's already been relocated from where he was living to Charlotte. He's living there now. The only thing we're waiting on is the fire marshal of all people to sign off. The fire marshal seems to be feeling that maybe we need a more, you know, a more adequate sprinkler system than what we have. Although what we have is better than what we have even in San Antonio, which of course is a lot hotter year-round, historically speaking, in a much larger operation. Anyways, like, there's an example, right? This is something that people don't know, you know. You know, this acquisition that I keep using the word acquisition, I'm just not supposed to. I'm so sorry, guys. We keep referring to it as a merger as it's properly called. Obviously, it would contribute to that, you know. We're not the only ones that are doing it, you know. It's no secret that Eastman made an acquisition just about a week ago that they announced it. I don't know that it's finished yet. From the article I read, it hasn't completed yet, but you know, PremiumShield, right? I mean, hey, good on them. Like, that was a great company. The Domenicos are awesome people. I've never met Jamie Warner in person, but I know he's an amazing sales manager. I've heard nothing but great things about him. I know he's only spoken positively of me in the past with other individuals who've said, "Hey, you know, Jamie was in here, and he was talking about you in a very positive way." I mean, that was a very smart acquisition on Eastman's part. I commend them on that one. It was good. It was good. Good on them. Have you seen any acquisitions change hands like amongst, or mergers rather, acquisitions in this case, between dealers, dealer to dealer? Not to speak on anyone specific, but I'm just saying, do you, Yeah. You see them change hands. Is there anything that stands out? There's a little delay on the video, so that's why playing blindly on the audio. Is there anything that you would recommend that you've seen that if a dealer's out there and they're saying, you know, "Hey, I might wanna sell my company in the next two, five, maybe even 10 years," that could point them in the right direction of anything they should start doing now? Anything that makes an attractive film-like acquisition over an unattractive one? Anything you've seen? Yeah. Yeah, I can come up with a few. First and foremost is, look, it's no secret that a lot of people do cash deals, right? I'm not saying that they're not reporting their cash to the government, okay? Like, I don't even wanna get into, like. They're not. If they're not Are they going to go in and going? They're not. If they're doing cash deals, they're not reporting anything. Sorry, keep going. Well, you take cash and still report it. It doesn't mean. You could. You can't take cash and put it on the books. You wouldn't give them a deal. What I am saying is that those individuals that are out there that are doing cash deals and not putting them on the books, that I would strongly recommend getting away from right away. Yes, it might look beneficial in the beginning because you're feeling like I've somehow avoided some taxation on this money, and I can put that money in the pocket, and I can use it. The reality is it definitely diminishes the value of your company should you ever wish to sell it immensely. You cannot prove that cash money. As a matter of fact, if anything, it says a lot to your character to some people. Some people think of individuals who are trying to cheat the government, obviously, in a negative light. Mm-hmm. They may not even wanna continue the conversation about acquisition if that's how they feel that you've been operating and who have you been operating with. Who's your clientele? You know, are these guys just a bunch of drug dealers that are trying to stay off the, you know, the beaten path and not get noticed, and that's why they're coming to you? Like, again, it can have negative implications. I'm not saying that I'm not trying to point out how a person earns a living or doesn't earn their living is of consequence to me personally. I'm just saying it's all about how it can look. Number two is to make sure that you've done a great job in co-branding. People go, "What do you mean by that?" I go, "Look, you have your brand, but you also have the brand that's behind you or with you as a partner, which is that manufacturer, right?" Manny talked really well to that subject last week. XPEL, I feel, has always done a good job with that as well. If you've got a major brand, you really need to make sure that you capitalize on that in all of your marketing. I feel that the companies that sit there and only talk about themselves are only resting on their own laurels when it comes to acquisition, and that's what I'm talking about, just acquisition. It's not as attractive. Whereas if I can see that a company is co-branded with a ABC shop and they've got great reviews and everything like that, but they're co-branded with 3M, or they're co-branded with an Eastman, or they're co-branded with an XPEL, I feel like there's a lot more clout and there's a lot more that I wanna grab a hold of. There's a lot more meat on the bone, right? In that I feel like, hey, they're with a top brand and there's a reason why that top brand is with them, right? It is a dual situation. That's number two. Number three is to make sure that you've invested wisely in the operation itself. If you've got a shabby-looking operation where the walls aren't finished and the floors aren't finished properly, or you know, you haven't changed or removed your transfer glass and painted behind the walls and stuff like that for a while and updated the look, you know, from everything from your customer waiting area to your reception, to the floors, to the lifts, to everything, like, to. It's again, like, if I walked into a dirty home, even if the home was amazing, I'm gonna notice the dirt, and I might not be so impressed and have a desire to go ahead with the purchase. The last and of course, the last part is to determine ahead of time, what do you wanna do afterwards? I know that sounds funny, but a lot of people, they think that they wanna get bought out, but they don't have a plan for after the buyout. If you don't have a plan for after the buyout, what happens is when the buyout actually finally comes to fruition and it's getting closer, you get a lot of anxiety, and then these questions start popping in your head way too late. Then you might even be wishy-washy on the acquisition, and you might give that impression to the buyer, and then things can go south real quick. Look, you know, our good friend Mike Burke, who we talk about obviously on many of our podcasts, you know, he recently did an acquisition of a really successful operation in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. You know, he's already done an insane amount of change on it. Like, the place was good-looking before, I thought. I actually went and saw it before he changed it over, but now it's stunning, you know. The numbers it was doing before were impressive, but the numbers it's doing now already in just, I don't know, I think Mike's only owned it for about three months now or so. It's for sure at least doubled its wholesale purchases in just that three-month operational time. You think about what is the value today already with just, say, three months of Mike Burke taking it over versus what it was three months ago when he acquired it? Well, I can tell you it's gone up an incredible sum. Could that sum have been accomplished by those previous people? Yeah, it could have been, and it should have been. They, you know, had left out some of those important details that I highlighted earlier or maybe thought that it was already at a good enough level without really diving into it a little harder, if that makes sense. It's always hard to do that, right? I think every one of us, when we've had our own shop, looks at our own shop with a lot of you know, admiration, if you will, and pride because we put our blood, sweat, and tears into this, and we took it from nothing to what it is. Yeah. Could it be better? Could it be something more than it is? It probably always can be. To just sit there and assume that it's good enough is not the right attitude, especially if you're thinking about selling out later on. That's where I think social media helps, and obviously, like, the dealer network you're a part of helps because, you know, you're able to see what you thought was fast is not fast to somebody else, or you thought was busy is not busy to somebody else, or you thought you know, you're able to kinda see, and I feel like as you realize, like, what could be done, it's, you know, it boosts you to be able to do it yourself, you know? Like- Yeah. Mike Burke can go into that shop and say, "Hey, we can do X, Y, Z," and three months later, double it. Whereas, you know, like you said, if you were in that shop for the last 15 years, you might think, "Well, we've kind of, you know, we've captured our area. Yeah. Again, like, I went to that shop. I went down to Dallas. I can't even remember what the reason was. He had said, "Hey, do me a favor. While you're there, why don't you just slide by and stop in and see the shop?" I'm like, "Yeah, great." I went to the shop, and I was genuinely impressed. I was genuinely impressed by the person who was managing it at the time. Obviously the installers, the reception area, the customer waiting area. They had this really cool, like, bench out front that's like a pickup truck, like the tailgate of a pickup truck, where the tailgate pulls down from the wall, and that's what becomes the seat. Lights in it and everything. I was like, "Wow, this is really cool. Like, yeah, let's..." The person who was managing the shop at the time had said, "Listen, would you mind if I went through my sales process with you?" I said, "No, not at all. Like, you know, that's my forte, that's my background. Fly at it." They did. I straight up told them, like, "There's only maybe a couple little things that I would maybe wanna add or change," and I went through them, and I said why. They felt the feedback was very valuable. I called Mike afterwards, and I said, "Mike, like, the shop's awesome. Like, I think you've done a great job in your acquisition, and I think that you're gonna get your money back out of it within a reasonable period of time. He's like, "No, I'm gonna get it out, like, much faster than that." He was like, "This is my goal. This is what I'm gonna do with it." I'm like, "Wow, like, you're gonna rip apart what looks like it's already solid now?" He's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Yeah, I shouldn't be expecting anything less than that from you." He did it. Boom, like, I've seen the numbers myself personally, and I'm just like, obviously in marvel of the man and what he managed to accomplish in that period of time. There's a, you know, a really good example of a way that that's happened. There's been other acquisitions that I've seen too, and a lot of them very, very impressive. What do you think the main draw is, you know, if you were speculating, if somebody has a shop, they have two shops, they've obviously done it, they're successful, that's why they have the money to be able to purchase another shop, what do you think that draw is typically? What's the attraction versus taking that money and building it? Is it just a matter of, hey, I can save the time, this will take years and some unknown, I can purchase it right now with this money? Is that just basically a time saver? I think it's a combination of things. I mean, number one, we all know that the vast majority, if not every single shop owner, you know, are typically a type A personality, right? You have obviously those extreme artists as well, and they've sort of become like a hybrid personality. That type A personality is always wanting to conquer more, and it's never gonna change. Yes, you can conquer more by sometimes being bigger than you already are, but I think that by diversifying and acquiring more operations is probably gonna be a better way of doing it. If you have all the other pieces of the puzzle in place, and that's not easy, right? Because you have to be able to step away from the existing shop first. 100% step away from the existing shop first before you can even consider the idea of grabbing a second operation or a third operation. Sometimes what happens is you move into a second operation by promoting somebody within to run the existing operation, and you have these high hopes that they can do it. They've given you this clear indication they feel they can do it. Yet the operation is not nearly as successful as it was when you were there yourself, right? Mm-hmm. That's a hard thing to admit to both individuals that made that decision. Maybe they need to step back and think about that. I always recommend that, A, make sure that, you know, go away for a month or two. I know it's crazy, but literally do it. Like, literally step out of the shop for a month or two, those people running it, do not be interacting with them on a daily level, and confirm that they were accurate and correct and that they can in fact do that job with you and for you, right? Now, if that's the case, now let's go look at acquisition. I can tell you from personal experience that trying to build something from scratch, even when you have a good name behind it and a successful co-branding isn't easy. As a matter of fact, it's much more difficult than to go out and acquire something that already is operational. Again, it's kinda like going back to that question, like when an installer comes to you that no longer works for somebody and now is available. When a person's looking to sell their shop, what is the reason, right? I think 99 out of 100 times they're gonna tell you that they're burnt out. If you can confirm that they're burnt out, and that's hard to confirm, but if you can confirm that that's the reason, great, then that is an acquisition that makes a lot of sense. If the spider sense is going off, going, "Ah, they're not telling me everything. They're young. They haven't been in the business that long." You know, whatever, you know. I'm watching them. They're not working 80-hour weeks and, you know, burning the midnight candle on both ends." You know, you might wanna wonder if it's really because they're burned out or because there's some other negative underlying factor that you cannot get a hold of and confirm. You know, be careful. I like the idea of acquisition more than the idea of simple expansion. If I can't find that right person to take over the existing operation, then expansion is another awesome thing still to consider. Look, I went out to... Oh, I think he's been on the show, right? Kyle at Clearview Indy. Mm-hmm. I went out to his shop a couple times and, you know, I see what his shop has become versus what it was originally. It's a massive operation. I know Donnie at Hero Tech, right? I mean, like, again, insanely huge operation. You know, I look at Brett and Tiffany at All American Paint Protection, massive operation. You know, I don't know that they really want to move into having another shop, either of those three operators. Obviously in Brett's case, it's Brett and Tiffany. I wanna be clear about that, not leave Tiffany out of this. You know, I think that their idea of just expansion is better, you know, because they like being hands-on operators to really be interacting with the clients, to really be interacting with the staff, and to always be, you know, with their finger directly on the pulse, right? Kyle, again, same kind of individual. You know, would I recommend Kyle to go out and grab a second and third shop, even though of course he's got the funds to do it or Donnie or Brett and Tiffany? All of those guys have the funds to do it, no problem. But would it be smart? Like, look at Eddie from Detailing Dynamics, right? Arguably the most famous shop maybe in the world, along with Protective Film Solutions. You know, they have no desire to acquire another operation. You know, they love what they've got going on. They went from one small building to a large building to two large buildings to now they've got three large buildings. But they're all, you know, clustered with each other and I can see them continuing to do the same thing where moving on to a second operation, I don't think would be beneficial for those guys. If you had a dealer or you know, maybe you're visiting and they said, "Hey, Chris, I'm thinking about selling my shop. How much do you think it's worth?" What do you say back? Yeah. I always tell them, "Look, that's, there's two answers to that question," right? There's what it's worth to an investor, right? Whether it's a fellow shop owner or somebody that's a, you know, a fund of some kind that's doing an acquisition. That value is almost always gonna be lower than what you're going to want for the business. Part of it, of course, is because you are so personally invested into your own business. The second reason is because you need to be considerate of something, and that is what I talked about earlier, and that is, what are you gonna do afterwards? If the idea is that I'm gonna take a chunk of money out of it and I'm going to go back into another industry. Fine. The value of that business doesn't need to be as high. However, what if the intention was to take the money and retire? Well, then obviously the business needs to have this, the value behind it to provide that retirement operation or opportunity, right? Yeah, maybe you've squirreled away $2 million bucks, but what if you've decided you need $10 million in the bank, liquid cash, in order to truly retire and feel like for the rest of my life I will be fine along with my wife and children, right? Well, that means that automatically your business needs to have a valuation of $8 million. It doesn't mean it's legitimately worth it, but that's what it needs to be worth in order for you to sell it. It's a hard answer because again, I think that the only correct way to look at it is first and foremost, what am I doing after, right? I've got clients that came out of other industries. I've got clients that were bankers. I've got clients that were in medical field. I got clients that are amazing programmers, and there were. I've got lots of clients that were making well over $250,000 a year at the job that they had before. If their idea is, "Man, I got into this, I did my run at it. I liked it. I liked it a lot. Now I don't like it so much anymore. I don't wanna deal with the clients anymore. I don't wanna deal with the COVID situation anymore. I don't wanna deal with the whatever, the unknowns. Maybe I wanna sell it." Okay. Are you gonna go back in the industry? "Yeah, as a matter of fact, I already talked to the, you know, the people I used to work with before, and they've said, 'Hey, you can come back anytime you want. Your job's available again. We'll pay you this much money.'" Great. You have an exit strategy right now that's viable for you, and you don't need to recover as much funds out of it. They're like, "Well, then what is the value?" I'm like, "Well, it comes down to like my business mentor would say to me, 'Look, obviously number of years in business plays a major effect in value. Growth plays a major effect in value.' Obviously, total income that the business plays is a. And of course, sales. Some guys will try and go, "Well, it's a multiple of sales." Well, for the investor, it's usually a multiple of earnings. I know that we wanna be a multiple of sales, but quite often the investor's looking at a multiple of earnings. If so, the most careful investor is gonna value you at, you know, anywhere between one and three times earnings, right? Well, most shop owners will go, "Screw you. Like, there's no way I'm selling it for that little amount of money then- Right. Because I'm making that much a year off of it. I'm like, "You're right. Don't sell it. It's ludicrous." But, you know, if you can get with a single shop operation, if you can get between 5x and 7x earnings, and I mean real earnings, right? We're not talking I mean, all money on the books. Then, and you're seeing constant growth, a 30% growth year-over-year, you know, and again, that good co-branding, yeah, you might get a 7x earnings situation happening, and that would be a great value. Now, if you have two and three and five and 10 and 15 stores Right. that valuation changes dramatically. Right. The video is still talking, but you've paused. I'm just making sure. Yeah. Um, any- All right. I'll I'll start saying end of sentence. End of sentence. Over and out. Yeah, I mean, part of- Yeah. I would imagine why the value goes up significantly when you have more than one location is, you know, the ability to show that your business operates without you in it, and it's able to be replicated. If you can have five, you could have 10. If you can have 10, you can have 100. But when there's just one, and especially I was surprised that you said you found it like, okay, or even like a benefit if somebody says, "I'm burnt out." I see why after you explained it, like, you know, if they're burnt out, it means it's a healthy business. They're just tired, but it's a great business. You just have to put the right people in there. My first thought was, if they're so burnt out, the whole business probably is like they're doing, they're touching everything probably. They might have a couple extra staff, but probably nothing happens without them, in my mind, which is not necessarily the case. It sounded like, to me, I think like you pull the owner out, what do you have left as a business? To me, that's probably, at the end of the day, what people are gonna be looking at regardless if they're buying a business is, "Hey, if I pull the owner out because I'm, he's the one selling it, unless I keep the owner with the acquisition or merger, what's left over?" Like you said, years of being there, your staff, if you have multiple locations, those play a role. I'm curious, I just wanna verify, when you said the years in business, that I would imagine you're saying the longer in business, the more value there is. But there could be- Yeah. If there was enough growth, kind of the reverse effect, yeah. Like, almost like you don't wanna be in the middle. You don't wanna be average. But if you're new and you're having a lot of growth, you could be valuable if you're existing. But if you're kind of in the middle, is that a fair statement? Or is it just really as long as there's growth? There's just gotta be growth. Yeah. Look, growth is obviously incredibly important, but I mean, Again, dealing from an investor standpoint, right? To see a business that's been operational for 15 or 20 years and has weathered obviously some very different financial environments, you know, with economies and stuff like that, you know, it shows that there's some legs behind it that you can feel comfortable that if the owner did step away, there's still that the business isn't gonna fail. Sometimes when you're seeing such insane growth like you had, and I know you had that in such a short period of time, you know, the worry from an investor standpoint might be that all that growth is completely tied into the people that are there, and they're not gonna be there any longer, right? That's why sometimes with acquisition you have this like deal with the person that they're gonna stay on board for a certain time, and quite often it's a 12-month period. It's so that you can, A, be trained by them in depth, and B, so that the people will start to become familiar with two faces rather than one, and it makes that acquisition more palatable. You know, when you see companies that skyrocket from 0 to $1 million in a year or two, you have to wonder if it's sustainable and you have to wonder what made that happen. Now, if I saw a company that had been around, like you said, in the middle, maybe five, six years, but they've had very little growth in that timeframe, yeah, I'm probably not that interested in it unless I can really determine that they have a really good infrastructure, really good staff, but that they were the wrong people to run it. That happens, right? You know, we do meet those people where they were great installers, and they thought, wow, the owner of this operation is making crazy money, which of course is never the truth. But they think that they're making gobs and gobs of money and that they should be able to go out and do the same thing. You know, being a great installer or even just an okay installer to being an owner-operator is... They don't correlate. Now, I'm not saying you can't become a great owner or operator. I'm just saying that I can tell you that I've seen, unfortunately, a lot of individuals that, in my personal opinion, perhaps shouldn't have stepped into that role and taken that on, and in turn, you know, should have probably stayed as a lead tech or something like that, making phenomenal income without all the headaches that they're currently dealing with. Over. Yeah, that's something that I think, like you said, you touched on. It's very important 'cause when you're stepping into that realm. You know, you go from, let's say, working somewhere, you're used to a certain amount of money. Now you open your own business, you start growing. The revenue number is impressive, you know. Like, you start doing more revenue, and you're focused on revenue. But really, like, I feel like the equal focus has to be on profit as well. Now, even if you're gonna reinvest that profit, it's still profit that wasn't necessary to operate your business potentially, and you chose to reinvest it. You know, if your revenue's going up, your business is getting bigger, but you're bringing in less money for yourself, and there's no money being saved for the company. You know, I feel like it can be a little bit of a trap to focus on revenue. Like you said earlier, as far as your value goes, I mean, if you have a company that does $1 million in sales and profits $350,000 of that, or you have $1 million in sales and profits $50,000 of that. You have the same sales, but you couldn't expect somebody purchasing it to pay the same amount. A multiple off of revenue just couldn't be a determining factor, unfortunately. I don't think with anybody who's gonna put up any real money, frankly, in window tint to just go off of revenue. Yeah. It's got to be about profit. Yeah. I mean, again, I know that I have seen acquisition based off of revenue, but again, it was because the companies were able to determine that there was excess expenditures in areas where they didn't need it. They would be able to amalgamate some staff, obviously let some staff go. Right. You know. Hidden profit. things like that, where maybe I could see $1 million in revenue, but I see $200,000... and sorry and $50,000 in profit, but I could see where I could get $200,000 more in profit out of it with just a few changes that the other operation doesn't have available to them. That's where it would make sense, but ultimately, most investors are looking to work off of off of the bottom line revenue, yeah. Very interesting. It's great that there's action in the window film industry that, you know, everybody's still doing well. We're a year and a half into COVID and, you know, companies are moving, supplies are moving down the chain. People are selling more than ever. The interest in automobiles and protecting like cars is just like. You know, people are spending. I feel like people are probably spending double on a new car purchase than they were five years ago. Like, between. Not saying cars went up in price double, but I just mean, like, it seems like everything's going well. All cars are going up. People like. You know, like Ram TRXs, that's a $100,000 truck, and like, you just fly off the shelves and then what do you want when you spend $100,000 or $80,000 on a vehicle? You wanna protect it, you wanna be comfortable in it, and it's a great time, great time to be in this industry. Yeah, it's, you know, like everybody, when COVID first started happening, you know, there was, you know, all of us internally were wondering how this is gonna affect us, you know. That's why, you know, our CEO, Ryan Pape, at that time was like, "Look, all acquisition is off right now. There's gonna be no mergers for a while. We're gonna, you know, stockpile the money and make sure that we can keep everybody gainfully employed at 100% of their working hours." It was an amazing move that he did. You know, then, of course, you know, a couple of months later, things really started to show us that that wasn't the case and that sky wasn't falling, and wow, sales took off, and we had a record year, and we're having an absolute record year again this year. We had a record second quarter. I think we're on pace to have a record third quarter. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure we are. What's interesting to me is that, you know, I of course travel a lot, and I see a lot of dealerships, showrooms and lots, and the lots look fairly empty in comparison to normal. As a matter of fact, a lot of the vehicles they do have are just strictly used cars. You know, I talk to clients all day, every day from all around the country, and everybody is still moving upwards in their sales and in their, you know, year-over-year compared to what they were doing last year, same month. They're still moving drastically upwards. Like you said, I know for a fact that the average car price just in the last 12 months has gone up. It's predominantly because the stores are, first of all, not discounting because they don't need to. Second of all, the manufacturers do not have any incentives because, again, they don't need to. Mm-hmm. Third, the dealerships are, and they're preloading the vehicles with extras that the customer can genuinely benefit from. I get it. Again, if the client wants the car, they're gonna do it. Look, you just saw Ida, right? That just blew through the Northeast. I was reading that there might be upwards of 1.25 million vehicles that are being written off from the floods. Well, that's another million-plus cars are gonna be needed for the environment that don't exist as far as I know, you know, collectively speaking around the U.S. I think that when you're spending top dollar for your car, whether it's a base car that's only $20,000 or it's a luxury exotic car that's $200,000, whatever, I think that your intention at this point is, "Hey, I'm gonna hold on to this car longer than I'm used to. I'm spending more money than I'm used to, and I'm not getting a discount like I'm used to." Maybe all of that is playing a part of let me do more to this vehicle, let me personalize it more with regards to window films, let me be more protective with the paint protection film and ceramic coatings and things of that nature. I can only hypothesize that all of that is playing a part of it. All I know is that if, you know, once in like one in 100 stores I'll talk to is like, "Well, you know, Chris, my numbers are down right now because of COVID." No. No, it's not. It's not because of COVID, because the other 99 are telling me the exact opposite right now, and they're all around you in some capacity. It's not that. It's 100% you or it's you lying to me. It's one or the other. It's that you've cheated on me and you've gone with another brand and you don't feel manly enough to come out and tell me about it, or, and that's usually what my suspicion is to begin with you. Or it's that, or it's that you're doing something really wrong with your business because everybody else has gone way up. Way up. Dealer meetings coming up this year. There'll be a XPEL dealer conference in March. Yeah? San Antonio? Actually in February. Yeah. February. The early special is on right now. Do keep in mind, some people have asked me this question, privately. They ask if they can attend if they're not XPEL. The answer is no. I'm sorry, guys, but we reserve the dealer conference for the XPEL clientele. It's an unbelievable time. Everybody that attends conference will tell you that they will never miss another conference after that. There is a lot that they gain from conference. One of the things that I'm always proud about is the fact that it's not two days of Ryan Pape standing up on a stage talking about how awesome XPEL is. Instead, what he might do is he might stand up on stage for an hour, an hour and a half, and tell you about, hey, this is how well the company's done in the past, but this is the things that he feels are important to us coming up with the future. He sort of lets the cat out of the bag with a few obviously important details. Then we always bring up marketing, which is amazing because, of course, marketing will talk about what they have in mind for the company as a whole, which of course is beneficial because we're all co-branding, like I talked about earlier. They always bring in a guest speaker. You know, the guest speaker is not XPEL. They don't work for XPEL. They have something of their own in some way or capacity. What they'll do is they will talk to you about how to improve your business. I'm really excited for this year's guest speaker. This year's guest speaker has his own television show called Gas Monkey. His name is Richard Rawlings. Mm-hmm. I'm outrageously excited to meet him. I've been watching his show since it first came on, and I know that he's gonna be amazing. I got to listen to a five-minute cut-down version of some guest speaking he'd done at another event, and I was blown away by it. I know that our clients are going to really resonate with him, right? A guy that went from, you know, running a little shop of his own with just him and one other person to now obviously running quite an empire. I think that, you know, a lot of his story is gonna correlate with a lot of our own owner-operators. It goes beyond that. We have competitions. We have breakout sessions. This year's competitions, man, our grand prize cash, and I'm talking hundred dollar bills, is $10,000 to the paint protection film, to the auto window tint, and to the flat glass division. Second place, if I remember correctly, I think is $2,500 cash, and I think third place is $1,000 cash. If I'm not mistaken, and please forgive me, because we didn't have conference last year, unfortunately due to COVID, but if I'm not mistaken, not only is it $10,000 cash to the winner, but there's also $2,500 in free product to the winning operation as well. Maybe the winning operation, let's say it's Sun Stoppers as well. Let's say Mike Burke's got one of his installers there, and his installer happens to win the flat glass division or window tint or paint, whatever it is, the Sun Stoppers would also get $2,500 in free product to go along with it. We also have breakout sessions, right? I don't know if this is done yet, so I'm hoping it is because otherwise I'm gonna get in trouble from Mr. Robert Bezner, who's our Vice President and in charge of marketing. I believe we're bringing back Jared Guynes again, and I hope I didn't butcher Jared's last name, so Jared, my apologies. Jared is the guy that motivated myself and more importantly, motivated Mike Burke to come up with the idea of doing the Guinness World Records event. A few years ago, we were at a dealer conference and Jared Guynes was one of the guest speakers. He had talked about how he'd done this world record. He actually did it twice, event but his specialty is social media. The guy is unbelievable. When people reach out to me and they say, "Hey, look, like, do you guys have an in-house social media specialist that I can lock onto?" Well, we can give you some guidance, yes, but we cannot run your individual pages for you. We don't have a paid for program like that, but I always recommend Jared for that. I'm fairly confident that he's back again this year, but we will have advanced PPF. We'll have advanced tint. We'll probably have security attachment like we have in the past or a security film. We'll have things like, hey, you know how to keep your staff motivated, how to manage your bottom line. How to, you know, how to invest wisely within yourself, things like that. These breakout sessions are awesome. You know, usually there'll be a rep from XPEL like myself, moderating the room, but it's usually us drawing upon our clients that have had immense success within those fields, that we ask them to sort of spearhead the topic for us. You know, we did, dealership development was a big one and, Willis Auto Campus, which is a really cool operation up in Des Moines, Iowa, we had one of their top level individuals come in and they ran the whole dealership development thing. Here was a dealership telling you how to get into dealerships as independent if you wanted to, and give you some guidance. I was just like, "Wow, that's so cool." Like, it's a dealership that doesn't ever wanna use third party that's actually helping you understand how to get in as a third party into it. You know what I mean? Of course, you already know that the XPEL brotherhood is very cliché but very real and accurate. You have all these guys that are normally competitors that would normally, you know, and I think in a lot of other industries, maybe even with other brands, not get along so well with each other. They get along famously with each other, and they're breaking bread with each other, and they're having a good time. You know, COVID really messed that up for us last year. Ryan was really adamant that he wanted to have dealer conference come hell or high water, but the hotel turned around with like, I don't know, a couple months left to go and said, "We will only allow you to run 50% occupancy." Not only that, but you can't do the you know, the welcome night where we normally would sit down at the bar and have a drink or 20 on each other. You guys would have to have all your meals seated at the position that you're in in the conference room, and you'd have to be socially distanced from anybody else within the groups. I mean, it was just like, wow. Like, there's no way we could carry that off. Unfortunately, we had to cancel that. I think the one that everybody's wondering right now is SEMA, right? Like Yeah. We're hearing that SEMA is a go, but there's a lot of people that are hypothesizing that SEMA is gonna get canceled, and if it doesn't get canceled, are they gonna require a mask? Are they gonna require vaccination? I don't know. I'm hoping of course that SEMA happens 'cause I think that SEMA is incredibly valuable to especially speak to our clients. We'll see. Dealer conference, yeah. Early bird is already up and live, guys, so if you guys are looking to save money, which I always say is a smart thing to do within any business, yes, go ahead and click on. Do keep in mind that we will verify that you are in fact an authorized XPEL client. I feel there's tremendous value. You know, if you're an XPEL dealer and you have the means to make it there, I think like tremendous value. Tremendous. Like, that goes for anybody. Like, if you're a manufacturer who has a meeting, I think you should go every single time if you possibly can. And I think it says something that you have people reaching out that are not XPEL dealers who wanna come to the meeting. I feel like you're gonna have to have some sort of like extra long meeting in the future that includes a day or two for non-XPEL dealers, which doesn't quite even make sense in a sense that other dealers wanna come to it. I mean, it does make sense, but it really says something. Yeah. I don't know. Are you getting crackly with the microphone on your end? 'Cause I am on mine for some reason. I'm getting crackly. The video's off, but I can still hear you well. I think we're okay. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I know why some of the. Like, I don't wanna be rude or anything like that, but we've had competitors that have asked some of their. Oh, like to go to like spy? To get an idea of like why is ours so unique? Why do we have the turnout we do? Why do people come back from it as jazzed as they are? You know, again, we're really good friends with most of our competitors. We have a lot of admiration and respect, especially for 3M and Eastman. Those two specifically are the ones that we really feel that, you know, they're the top three brands with us included. You know, but at the same point, you know, they've got their own secret sauce and so do we, and we wanna keep some of it to ourselves. I'm not saying that they are the companies that have asked some of their clients to attend. I apologize if I even suggested that. That's definitely not what I'm suggesting. I just know for a fact 'cause I've had some people reach out to me and tell me that straight to my face, if you will. Yeah. I mean, of course like dealers are. Some guys wanna attend 'cause they wanna try and win the competition and win the money. Say that again, 'cause I wanna rip off. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, no. You're good. They wanna attend because of course they wanna try and of course win the competitions and win the money. We would obviously want that to go to an XPEL client, especially if we're gonna give away free product to go with it. Yeah. Yeah. I think it just says to, you know, like the, again, like enthusiasm in the industry that exists right now, and even if it's like an XPEL event, you're not an XPEL dealer, there's a certain draw to just going there, if you could, hypothetically wanting to go there, see your peers and learn what you can learn and so on. I just, you know, obviously it doesn't make sense when it's an XPEL meeting to have non-XPEL dealers there, but it just, it's a nod to the enthusiasm and, you know, that exists right now in the industry, which again, just points to such a healthy industry to be a part of. Agreed. You know, as you said, every manufacturer or top-level manufacturer tends to have some kind of get-together, some kind of meeting. Look, I mean, it's public record. You guys can go in and look at our, you know, fiscal reports. We spent way over half a million dollars on our dealer conference. Way over. I printed out some numbers ahead of this just in case. What's that? Oh, I'm sorry. I said I printed out some numbers ahead of time. The videos, you'll see it in 30 seconds from now, but I have like a handful of papers of like the quarterly reports, just so I could be up to date with any numbers in case you went in there. It is interesting, and like you're saying, it is public information, and you can see how much revenue and you know, expenses and so on. Like it's a good exercise in business, even if you're not gonna do anything with the information. I find it interesting and you know. Yeah. People are always shocked because the dealer conference isn't free, right? There's an early bird special which obviously saves you a lot of money. Mm-hmm. You know, but at the end of the day, what people are always surprised by is how much, and again, those that pore over our financials realize how much we spend over and above what our clients spend. It's crazy. I mean, dealer conference is unreal. Like, I can't express it enough. Like, it's the first dealer conference I went to. I was shocked because I honestly anticipated coming from corporate America before and a long while ago, of course, you know, the conferences were very different. It was all about us, us, us, us, and this is how great we are, and this is what we do. You know, and some of it wasn't even relevant, you know. To go to the first dealer conference with XPEL and hear a very different approach was mind-boggling and rewarding at the same time. Of course, getting to hang out with a lot of my friends in one spot is obviously something that comes with a lot of enjoyment. Well, that's February, and it'll be right around the corner 'cause time flies, and we're basically in October. Like you said, if you haven't bought your tickets and you're an XPEL dealer, buy them now because it'll be cheaper now than if you buy them last minute. Yep. And- Oh, go ahead, Erik. No, no, you go ahead. Go ahead. You go ahead. Well, you know, I wanted to point something out. When we do these podcasts, there's a lot of people that are making comments and stuff and saying things like, "Hey, Chris," and like saying hello and stuff. Just so you guys know, again, I'm not on social media. I do have my profile. What I can do sometimes is I can sometimes click on it and like something. But if I even try and comment on it, because I deleted the app, it just doesn't work properly. I get about halfway through the sentence and then it stalls, and it won't let me continue. I did wanna point out that I hope people weren't thinking that I was being rude and not responding to the remarks that sometimes coming on that you can see that I can't. No worries. I'm glad you said that, but I've been reading the comments, but they haven't been on screen and usually, like, it does go better, even if you could see the comments to not be distracted, frankly. I'll ask any questions that are important. Yeah, good pointing that out so nobody thinks that. They do go fast. Sometimes just putting it out there, they don't even show on my screen, and I'll go back after and see comments that I didn't see. I'll take that moment to put the disclaimer out there that sometimes I miss them as well. It's just how it goes. Anything that you wanted to discuss that we didn't touch on yet? No. I mean, this is just really exciting times for all of us, you know. You know, XPEL, if we're just gonna touch on just XPEL specifically, our stock is amazing. Our product quantity on hand is unbelievable. I was down in Texas five weeks ago. three years ago, 2018, yeah, I was with Mike Burke, and I took him on a tour of our new facility, right? It had our clean room in it and everything. If I remember correctly, it was something like 50,000 sq ft, you know, facility, and this is now separate from where we used to be because we used to have our warehouse and our head office and everything located together. Then we went and built out this massive warehouse facility that Carlos Alvarenga is in charge of. It was very impressive, like genuinely really impressive. We knew we were really starting to get, you know, into tint and stuff like that. At that point, we'd already been selling it for quite, you know, a few years now, but I mean, it. Paint protection film occupied, I don't know, in terms of film product, at least 90% of the shelf space. My boss, Mike Merrill, was there, and he said, "Mark my words, within two years, we're gonna outgrow this space, and it's gonna be because of window films. Our window film sales are going to surpass our paint protection film sales by square footage, and we're gonna need more shelf space for that. Well, I was just down in Texas five, six weeks ago for a sales meeting, and we did go look at this new facility. This new facility is 120,000 sq ft. Wow! It is so state-of-the-art. I mean, man, it's incredible. Like, even to the point where they thought of like, for instance, like the table in the like lunch area for like when people are doing training and stuff like that, the table has like the chargers where you just put your phone on the table, and it charges up your phone and stuff like that. That's like part of the technology. The other cool part is that they have this like little like cubicle where it's soundproof, so that you could go into this room and have a private conversation with either a client or somebody from back at your shop and not have that worry about everybody else overhearing you. Because normally what you would do is you would like leave and go outside and go walk around the parking lot to try and avoid, you know, somebody overhearing that. Like the new training centers, there are now six rooms of training centers instead of three, I guess what we currently have. We doubled the number, but also like way larger. The reception, I mean everything. The craziest part is that original facility that was around 50,000 sq ft, and it had been bumped up by another 20,000, was busting at the seams with window film and paint protection film. Right. The window film. What I'm really proud about is that if you look at those reports, you're gonna see something interesting, and that is that XPEL now sells more square footage of window film than it sells of paint protection films. I don't know. I just thought that that's maybe even part of closing, something that we hadn't talked about is that, you know, the Charlotte facility coming together, but the San Antonio facility is ultra-modern. I mean, you're gonna think of like a Tesla factory or an Apple factory or something like that in terms of when you see it. The clean room and everything like that that's being done, and the equipment that's being designed specifically for it is marvelous. To consider the fact that right now, that facility that I went into three years ago was like, "Wow, like, we'll never use all this." That every single inch of square footage of shelving space was utilized, but so was the centers in between the shelves stacked with, you know- Yeah. Pallets of film. Just exciting times, you know. I'm just super excited for where XPEL is and where it's going and I feel like you said, like the industry as a whole is doing that. Yeah, that's it. Well, congratulations on the success and keep killing it. You're doing amazing things for XPEL and XPEL for the industry in general. You know, the saying that's been thrown around is, you know, all ships rise with the tide, something along those lines. Yep. I believe that is definitely the case. Really, it's exciting. It's fun to watch and keep killing it. I can't wait to hear in a year or two, "Hey, remember that Tint Wiz where I was telling you about the new location, and now that's busting at the seams, and we're expanding to it. My boss, Mike Merrill, said, "Give it two years." He's convinced two years is all it's gonna take. Like, you know what? When we put it in Fullerton, we put it in Vegas, we put in two in Canada, we put this one in Charlotte. He's like, "Yep, mark my words, two years." I'm like, "Okay, you were right last time. You're probably right again this time." Listen, without any further ado, thank you as well, Erik. I love doing these podcasts, as you know, and I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate what you're doing for the industry and of course, Tint Wiz itself as the program I think is unbelievable. I highly recommend it, as you know, to clients. Keep doing what you're doing, buddy. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you saying that. I appreciate you doing this. The video today obviously completely sucked, but the audio is crisp and clear, and that's what's important. Again, thanks, Chris, and I look forward to the next one. Sounds good.