Building a Legacy in High-Stakes Industries with Len Page

Finally made that call, got the appointment, went out there, and it was an hour. All it was was one hour. That's all we could get. And I'll tell you, one of the scariest meetings I've ever had in my life. The financial system wasn't built to work for you. It was built to extract from people who can't see it. Most businesses are losing money they'll never notice in their processing. fraud exposure, and capital strategy. Above the Edge is where founders and operators come to change that. Hosted by Colton Page, a CEO running billions in transactions. No theory, just real operators, real infrastructure, real numbers. This is Above the Edge. All right. Okay. Welcome back to Above the Edge. And I'm super excited right now because I have Len with me here. And Len is also my dad. But growing up, I was able to watch him start and build and scale multiple businesses. So I'm super stoked to have him on. I think one thing I want to preface is Len and his business partner have done an incredible job. They're the OGs of high ticket sales, making the gurus, even before guru was a word. They are the people that everyone would go to, to figure out how to become that guru before there was even social media. So dad, thanks for being here. Hey, appreciate it. Thanks for having me. First podcast. It is my first podcast. There you go. Okay. Well, let's, I mean, I kind of preface this, like you guys are the OGs in this space and we're, so we're going to talk about a lot of different things. But before we go into like PMI, we go into everything that you kind of, you guys built and you have done. I mean, you guys have done real estate, you've done high ticket sales, you've done coaching seminars, like before all of that, like, let's, let's dial it back. Like, obviously you didn't just walk into PMI. You didn't just build PMI. Like there was, they were going to call it the before time, whatever you want to call it. Like, let's go, let's go back to that. So tell me about going either into PMI or what was before PMI. Oh, wow. That takes us back. So I had no idea about this industry right and so back in 89 i was actually dating your mom and we were both working up in park west and well she was working at deer valley i was working at park west yeah season got over and uh she's like i gotta get a job so your mom actually got a job and i was of rebuilding motorcycles in the garage. Grandpa Dick had every tool known to mankind. And anyways, um, as your mom and I were dating, she really enjoyed this company and she's telling me how exciting it was and all of the guys and how much money they were making. And, you know, I'm asking her more about it and she's telling, you know, it's primarily phone sales. And I'm like oh man there's this i never envisioned myself being able to do phone sales because you never did that before right never never so anyways uh she was the executive assistant she was in charge of payroll you know pretty much everything and she started bringing some of that stuff home just to show me like the payroll yeah to see what and i'm looking at these numbers i'm like man is this real and so like okay really quick what what were you looking at that you're like is this real like back then right in 89 like what what what numbers like what checks were you seeing the average guy so what i was looking at is because i mean i knew enough about sales that you know 20 of your sales guys are your top producers 60 are your middle guys and then 20 of your guys the lower guys pretty much are just there they're fillers right they make a few sales here and there So I started looking at the average, and we're talking 89, right? I'm 20, what, 2, 23 years old, and these guys are making 60, 70, 80 grand. To me, that's like back then, it's mind-blowing, right? Yeah. So I kept an eye on the payroll for a couple months, went in for an interview, got hired pretty quickly because it was Lori, your mom's boss. Yeah. And that's kind of how it started. Do you feel like he hired you just because you were moms? 100%. 100%. So he didn't see any sales in you? I don't know about that, but I did make a sale on my first day. Okay, so yeah, we'll go on to that really quick. So you literally, you go into the interview, he hired you that day, and he gave you the option, right? Like, do you want to start now? Yeah, he pretty much says, hey, when can you start? And I was like, any time. He's like, let's start now. were you like oh walk me out onto the floor so it's a big pit walk me on the floor you know you got like probably 50 people out there they're all pitching they've got headsets on energy's just energy's like crazy i'm looking at these people nobody's got like any paperwork in their hands they're not like reading from a script this is all from memory yeah and i'm telling you dude i He's like, yeah, go ahead. Why don't you have this chair? That guy right there is going to be your boss. It was Bob Sanchez. And anyways, legend, in my opinion. But very forceful presenter. Very charismatic. Because this was still high ticket, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, what was the ticket on this? Well, back then, $399. Yeah. So anyways, very intimidating. mentally if I could have got it if the I mean if I could have got out of there after sitting there for about 30 minutes waiting for Bob get done with these with his pitch yeah I if I could have got out of there I would have it was that's how intimidating it was that's pretty crazy because I mean from my perspective if I think about that now like if you would have left I don't know like what do you think would you ever have done sales again I don't know I'm glad I didn't yeah to be honest with you so okay walk us through really quick just to end that part like so you get on the phone after bob's done how did like how many people did you call before you got your first sale oh it's probably on the phone well back then leads were plentiful it's not like nowadays yeah you got to work hard to get leads now right yeah back in the day there's just you had more leads on your desk and you could call so you just start go through them and probably went through I don't know, 20, 25 calls. Not everybody answered, but, you know, I was probably on the phone for three hours before I got my first sale. That's crazy. Well, and then to have that go, like, was it, did Bob come and help you, or did you just go, like, kind of wing it and just get it done? Just wing it. Couldn't even write. You're so nervous when, I mean, the adrenaline that, Would you do a presentation? And the people on the other end are like, yeah, this sounds good. Yeah, I want to do this, right? The rush is crazy. You know, my writing was horrible, right? I was shaking so bad when I wrote my first ticket. Yeah. You know, so anyways, pretty fun, though. That's crazy. Well, I'm glad you stayed there and you didn't because I think we would have had a very different life. Probably. Yeah. and then so but then i guess that kind of segues into my next question is like you obviously built pmi you and your partners i mean you built this monster of a company um over a couple billion dollars in sales over that those 20 years so like how just okay first walk me through the transition from tsi to owning pmi you went from just a normal sales guy yeah to owning a telemarketing company that i mean and we'll talk about it but like i mean at one point you had like 300 sales guys. And so then you're obviously not on the phone at that point. And so on top of that, and I mean, your sales probably changed. I mean, to finding like the Dean Graziosi's and the Anthony Morrison's, like it was probably a different sales process. So like first walk us through like TSI to PMI and sales guy to owning a company. Yeah. Well, going back to TSI. So my partner, Steve and I, we became friends at TSI. Actually we ranked up pretty quickly. So you didn't know Steve before that? No, no. I met Steve at TSI. So anyways, we kind of went up the ranks together, became team leaders. And, you know, the one thing that we realized pretty early on is that the ownership at TSI, really good people, great guys, loved them to death, but they didn't grow up on the phone. They had never been on the phone. So some of the decisions they were making, you know, we as sales guys would sit there and look and say, why, why are you guys doing that? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. It does, just doesn't. Yeah. And so as we were kind of going through, obviously we had an entrepreneur spirit and we're thinking to ourselves, Hey, why can't we do this on our own? Yeah. And so tough decision we were both making great money and uh had an opportunity with the lead source and decided to take the leap and pmi was started in july of 1996. were did you have like i mean non-competes or did you take guys with you or is it just you and steve and you're like we'll start this and go hire a bunch of new sales guys no it was more um had a couple of sales guys took the opportunity with the lead source and actually like the first tables these guys had were card tables people were bringing chairs from their house yeah card tables had just some makeshift phone system and that's that's kind of how you start right that's crazy that's how you kind of get the appreciation for looking back at like wow and these guys were just kind of on board like this i mean like oh yeah because he kind of gives that spirit of like hey we're gonna kind of rough it it almost makes it fun because you're like you know it's like so apparent that we're gonna rough it but we're gonna if we can do this right we can make some good money absolutely that's crazy so then okay then walk me through like that's how it started and how did you go from there card tables and like just walk us through getting to 300 sales guys like that floor the building that you built like i mean it's just i mean i remember all the buildings you were in and then you finally built yours and yeah yeah it it was it was a tough haul right those well and also how long um let's let's say this how long from starting pmi to the 300 sales like at your peak like let's say that was so we built the building in 2006 got completed in 2007 and seven. So between that time you know we went from ten sales guys to 300 plus sales guys 37 team leaders We had 80 coaches We had I mean it just, we had, we had probably close to 600 employees. That's crazy. Yeah. So then, okay. Yeah. So, so you build that up and then like, obviously what was your transition? Cause like, that's the whole point of this podcast is like for business owners, owner operators entrepreneurs like what was that that like and then how did your role change because obviously you went and got different types of sales yeah uh it you know it's it's unique because every partner in a partnership i've been part of right everybody has their unique skills yeah and so we we all kind of realized pretty quickly we're different people with different skill sets my skill set is sales uh phil's was uh admin right so um steve ceo type deal yeah um you know and so the transition it it it went through its own elevations because you've got family you've got finances you've got ups and downs you lose lead sources you gain lead sources everybody's after your sales guys right so everybody's trying to steal your guys um so you know it ebb and flows and you figure it out as you go yeah so then how did you okay so here's a question because i feel like this is what i deal with and i feel like this is what like a lot of people might deal with is like i'm also over sales at plape right so i i run but i also run the operations i run the sales i run our finances or I mean I have team members that help me but I I kind of oversee those decisions so it's like for people like that like how did you and I guess maybe you had more of a structure like at the very beginning you were probably doing sales and helping fill with admin or vice versa so like how did you not have people like still your sales guys for example how did you how are you able to worry about that and create the lead sources and take care of all the other stuff like Or did you just say, hey, no, I'm just going to dial in. You guys take care of the rest. Like, was that the trick for you is just saying, no, I can't. Mental capacity wise, I can't do that. I'm only going to do this. I'm just going to trust you and you handle it. We got to that point where Phil was taking care of all the, you know, day-to-day operations. And I just kind of let him do that. He did the same with me on sales. You know, we met all the time. Our offices were right by each other. We talked a hundred times a day. Yeah. So we kind of knew what each other was doing. Right. So it's like the left hand knew what the right hand was doing, but we kind of did our own thing. Okay. No, that makes sense. And I, and I think every, every owner operator wants to get to that point where they can have that trust. Yeah. So they can say, no, I'm not going to worry about it. So, um, maybe one more follow-up question, just cause I'm thinking about it. Like, did you guys have, how do I word this? hold on let me think about it really quick i'm trying to ask like how'd you create that trust like yeah i don't know how to answer that to be honest with you or it took time it just yeah you you say well let me ask okay okay so my last question as i'm thinking about it then we can move on it's like how do you create that trust like how do you create the trust where you can trust phil or steve and you're like i don't even need to know like if i didn't talk to you for three days like i just know we're good like how do you is it just over time is it like certain things yeah it does take time but i will tell you in a business relationship um you see all parts of your partners because there's great times and you see their characteristics and great times there's tough times there's financially tough times and you get to see the characteristics and you understand truly what type of partner you have. And I was lucky enough to see that, learn from that. And, uh, quite honestly, the, some of the best partners I've ever had. I will say, I've, I think that's one thing I've learned from you. and I've got to be on both sides of good partnership, bad partnership in different areas. And yeah, I look at you and Steve and I'm like, okay, because like at Plat Pay, obviously that's what we have. And I feel every time we have meetings or we go through stuff like super motivated, even if we're not agreeing on the same stuff, like I still feel like, wow, we're just, we're in sync. There's a lot of maturity, but then yeah, There's other partnerships I've been a part of, and it's quite the opposite. And yeah. Yeah, it's unique. When you get a good partnership, you cherish it. Yeah. You make sure you take care of it. You nurture it. It'll be 30 years this summer. Steve and I have been together 30 years in a partnership. This is the honest truth. A lot of people don't know this, but Steve and I, we have disagreed in a respectful way. Yeah. But we've never had one argument. Never, never one. We've never raised our voice to each other. That's crazy. Yeah. That is definitely something that you want to model after. Yeah. The last question I want to ask on that is the growth as like sales. So sales guy at TSI, you end up partnering with Steve. You grow 300 sales guys. Obviously, you're going to step out of the team lead. Now you're headhunting for different things. So like, talk to me about like the Dean Graziosi, the Anthony Morrisons, like those, those sales, those people, their relationships too. But like at the, at the moment you were like, Hey, we need to go get these, these gurus. Right. Or we need to go find someone and make them a guru. It's like, walk me through first the transition and then also just like what, what it was that you were doing. Yeah. Well, there's a little bit of luck involved in everything. Right. You can be really, really good at something, but if you don't have any luck. Right. So I was lucky to meet some really influential people. And we grew up with seminar leads, right? Yeah. But seminars were changing. A lot of things were changing. Infomercials started coming into the world, right? I was lucky enough to make friends with a guy named Don LaPree. And Don was very successful with infomercials. And we became friends. And he had brought a couple lead sources our way. And how I met Dean is that Dean was living in upstate New York. He was into cars. And he had filmed his own infomercial called Motor Millions. And he had moved to Arizona. Yeah. And his only goal going to Arizona was to meet Don LaPree. And he successfully did it. Don gave me a call. He's like, hey, I've got this new infomercial I want you to take a look at. Yeah. And so he sent it to us. We looked at it. I'm like, man, this is a different spin on car buying. And he's like, yeah. He goes, I didn't do the infomercial, but I'm going to run the infomercial. I just want you to handle all the leads. We said, OK, cool. So at that point, you didn't even know who Dean was or who this kid was. I'd never even met Dean. Yeah. Never even met him yet. And I say kid because at that time, he was maybe to you, right? Well, kind of. Yeah. And so Don runs the infomercial. We take the leads. I pick a couple of guys to start working the leads. We figure it out. Took a couple of weeks. We started making sales. It was going OK. Wasn't blockbuster or anything. Right. At that time, Don got into a little bit of a financial crunch. He called me up and said, hey, unfortunately, I can't afford to run the infomercial any longer. If you guys want to run it yourselves, take it over. Fine by me. And so we did that. Actually got a hold of Dean, talked to him. And Dean and I flew to Kansas City, where my other partner Steve is, and sat down for a day or two, put together a business plan, put together a model, signed the contracts, and we went to the moon. Not on Motor Millions, but we switched over into real estate with Dean. All right, so Dean was kind of the first one, and then there's Anthony. And we don't need to go into that, but Dean was kind of the first one that you guys successfully— Dean was the first one that we partnered with and started producing infomercials with. Okay. So we built our own studio in Arizona where Dean was. Yeah. And we started making our own infomercials. So as the new talent would come on from different areas of the country, we'd take them all to Arizona. Dean would sit down with them and they'd go ahead and shoot the show. That's crazy. That's cool. Wow. I mean, look at him now. like you like you guys him like just that boardroom meeting making that business plan and then it helped you both go in your your different ways yeah that's crazy with above the edge like the whole purpose again is to deliver to to talk about the edge that you had right and not asking you to give away the sauce but just saying like this is how we got there and along the way we've kind of figured some things out we developed it but i think one thing the edge that you guys had back in the day, which is crazy to me, is that you guys built a CRM and spent, I don't know how much, but like you guys, you guys built a CRM before CRMs was even a thing, right? The second one we built on our own. That's the one that cost multi-million dollars. Okay. So let's go through this. Cause like, let's go through the tech at that time. What year would you say? What's the first one? Well, you got to go back to, because when we started PMI, I mean, we didn't even have computers. I didn't get my first computer until two years after PMI was started. Yeah. And I remember, like, you know, I'd come back to my desk after being out on the floor, and I'd look, and I'd be like, did I get any emails? And I'd go two, three days without an email coming. That's crazy. And the email was nothing. Yeah. It's not like today. So, you know, at first, like when we're doing all the seminars, the company that we get the leads from, I get a manila envelope in the mail and it's all the reg cards from the seminar. Yeah. Right? Quite literally all the cards they filled out, put them in there and all they did is just package it up and ship it to you. Yeah. So what I do is I had a you know my own little crazy spreadsheet that I by hand And I you know if there was a hundred of these leads and I had 10 guys they all got 10 leads each Right So I put down how many leads they got but I had no idea who who I gave them. Don't know if they're qualified. Don't know anything. Right. And so you'd go give out leads to the guys and you'd sit around watching the boards and you either had a lot of really good sales or you had no sales. You're going to the guys like, dude, what's going on with the leads. Yeah. You know, so there, there's no way to quantify it. There's no way to judge what was going on. And we're, we're like, something's got to change here. Right. And then when we finally started getting leads to us via email, right. I just print them up, cut them up and hand them to the guys. Quite literally cut them up. Oh my gosh. Then when we got to multiple different lead sources, I couldn't keep everything straight. so what I thought is like okay I'm going to print these leads on different color so I'd have a green I'd have a yellow I'd have a blue whatever it may be so that's how I knew what the lead source was and who to give out the leads to because I started separating the floor out your labels for your CRM in your that that was my CRM colored paper that's crazy so okay so then you've been doing that how long did you do that for a couple years three years until the first CRM the first CRM it was okay so the word was kind of getting out telemarketing became a very big thing in the state of Utah right so there's just little shops popping up everywhere right and had a company out of Alpine Utah come in and meet with us and I didn't really know what motivation was at the time but i get it now yeah so he's like hey i'd like to create a basic crm for you so you can keep track of the leads you can keep track of who had the leads you can keep track of just the basic stuff nothing like now yeah the analyzation now is just bonkers compared to what it was yeah so he came in for six months he met with every single employee of what they do right and basically created a blueprint of how PMI ran, right? Yeah. And then he created the database. Well, being naive, young, you know, I think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I didn't really understand the contractor well, right? So the contract was to say he owned the proprietary rights on it, even though I gave him the secret sauce to build that CRM. Well, he had the licensing for it. So next thing I knew, that CRM that we helped design and build, he was leasing it out to all these other little teeny companies. That's crazy. So, okay, let me ask you this. So that one he did for free? Because he owned the – He did it for free, yep. Okay, so that's why you're like, dude, this is freaking steel. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so then tell me about the second one then. The second one, once we got used to, and quite honestly, we still have that basic one today for certain purposes. Yeah. So it's still in use, right? Right. Yeah. The next one we built, we called it Links. And it was way more in-depth, a lot of tracking, a lot of information. We actually hired a couple of coders from a very successful insurance medical business called Cerner. And they had some really good coders back then. Hired a couple of those full time. Took us about a year, year and a half. But they're the ones that came in and architected our next evolution of a CRM. So how much do you think you spent on that? Oh, at the end of the day, everything's said and done. At least a couple million. That's crazy. Yeah. This is back in, what was it, probably 2004. Because, I mean, I know HubSpot, like, for example, everyone uses different CRMs, but it's just crazy. It's a couple million. I mean, you can go get GoHighLevel for $300 a month. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I know HubSpot, you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, But, I mean, millions and millions and millions of dollars. I mean, back then. Back then, the technology wasn't there, right? Like when we moved into the new building, we had to get a whole new phone system, right? We had a server room three times as big as this, right? Yeah. And our phone system alone, it was a Cisco system, so we had to have it for everybody. It was over $800,000 just for the phone system. So not counting the servers. not counting the computers nope just the phone system yeah i mean now you can just put we all have phones but you can just put the phone inside the crm now just dial it out yeah we used to have our phone bill was well over a hundred thousand dollars a month in long distance fees back in the day really nobody even thinks about that now no i would never i'm honestly never thought about it yeah geez so i mean when you look at things now like because that's the tech and i guess going back to the main question is like that tech gave you the edge at the time obviously tech now is way different but like that was kind of your edge right with with just building out a crm i mean unfortunately that guy had proprietary property on it yeah but i mean it probably i mean do you feel like your sales revenue anything just totally just increased oh yeah yeah once we once we started to getting a few things because we had the sales floor was a well-oiled machine these guys knew how to sell they knew how to train um we had that down yeah now i could focus because i had a really great sales manager at the time and he was taking care of that i knew that he'd make nine times out of ten he'd make the same decision that i would yeah so that gives you a lot of confidence to take your focus and come over here and say, okay, what can I do from, you know, at this point, I've got the well-oiled machine. All I need to do is just keep feeding it, right? How can I build this to just make this just bigger and bigger? Okay. Yeah. That's so different from now. Yeah. Okay. Another thing I think of is as, as people want to have the edge, be above the edge, is like creating the systems. Like we all know, I mean, and I watched you like create all these systems, but like in your head, like from your point of view, not mine, what systems helped you kind of weather the storms and or scale to like, I think it's both ways, right? Like you, you scale, you go through storms. Like what did you guys build? Well, uh, the first thing you need to do in my opinion is you've got to be secure financially because storms are going to happen. You are going to lose lead sources. You're going to have a, you know, you're going to lose really good sales guys. It's just, it's part of the game, right? So if you can set yourself up to the point where it's like, okay, when a storm comes in, you can weather it. It makes all the difference in the world. Yeah. So then like what, with that, what system did you guys build to kind of keep sales guys and, or maybe that was just in the CRM. Maybe it was the tech that we just talked about, right? So then going into that, like, I mean, obviously I know telemarketing is a hot, hot thing in Utah, right? Very much so. FTC doesn't like that. So talk about how the systems that you built helped you kind of weather those bigger, not even a financial storm. It's a different type of storm. Yeah. You know, and that's a storm. The FTC is for real. And you want to do everything you can to avoid being in the crosshairs, right? Yeah. So, and you got to remember back in the day, it was the wild, wild west, right? Yeah. There was really no parameters. I mean, it was very vague, the outline that the FTC, the guidelines that would give you and say, oh, you can't do this, you can't do that. There was really no lines, right? And people started taking it way too far, doing things they shouldn't be doing, saying things they shouldn't be saying. On the phone. Promising things that weren't real. Yeah. Right? Complaints started coming in. Well, I'm lucky to have an incredible legal counsel, Greg. He's been with us forever, right? And as some of these guys started getting popped by the FTC, Greg did a really good job of reading the FTC complaint and the indictment. Yeah. And Greg started noticing that, you know, the rules started out about here, but every indictment, the fences started coming in a little bit more. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, we were sticklers on compliance. I bet your sales guys love that. Oh, they did not like that. I know. So, you know, just you got to stay ahead of it as much as you possibly can, because that's a real danger. Yeah. So then tell me, like, obviously growing up, I already know this story, but kind of tell the story. I mean, I think it highlights the system you built protected you from this. Like, just, I mean, if you want, share the story about how you guys, like, you guys proactively flew out there. You guys proactively met with the Mike. Against a lot of counsel. Yeah. So kind of just run through that story really quick. Well, a company in Las Vegas got popped. Yeah. With the FTC. And it was too close to home because those guys that got popped used to work for us. And when they got popped, they're like, well, we learned everything from PMI. Yeah. We run it the same way that Len and those guys are running it. The answer is no, they weren't. Yes and no. Yes, hey, from our point of view, from a sales guy, we are. Correct. But not legally in what you're saying on the phone and all the complaints. Right. Correct. So, and, you know, we looked at the indictment. We looked at the FTC complaint, read it, and we're just like, they're going to go after everybody. That's just the way it is, right? Yeah. And if we don't know what the rules are, how can we play this game? If the rules are constantly changing, how can you play a game? Right. Yeah. And so we started thinking hard about it. We're like, they already know who we are. Let's just go talk to them. Yeah. Let's find out. And a lot of people told me not to. We talked to probably about 10 legal counsels. Apart from Greg. Apart from Greg. Okay. We talked to the ex-FDC lawyer in Denver. He's like, hey, I know all of those people. I think you should do it And we went back and forth a lot yeah finally made that call got the appointment went out there and it was an hour all it was was one hour that all we could get and i tell you one of the scariest meetings i've ever had in my life really yeah it was no joke well i mean they They obviously did their research, so they probably tried to pigeonhole you a bunch of times. They knew everything about us. We were not a foreign entity to them. Yeah. And so opened our eyes. We all walked out of that building. Yeah. And we were at the Marriott about a mile away. None of us looked at each other, and none of us said a word to one another. Yeah. The whole way back. went to lunch barely a couple words came out and then everybody started sharing their feelings yeah and it was like okay this is this is big boy territory yeah we either get our shit together or we need to do something different but you feel yeah and you feel like that was the right move like if you do you feel like if you didn't go i think it turned out way different in a bad way 100 yeah yeah i think so too i think yeah i think it's just a crazy story in general because i think it's crazy that you out of your way and they're like yeah you have one hour you're gonna fly all the way out here we'll give you one hour and we already know everything so we're basically gonna try to pigeonhole you the whole time and try to get you to mess up oh every question was a setup call or setup question yeah but you you guys felt you handled everything just here are the cards We were honest, right? Yeah. We were just honest, right? Greg was with you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How did Greg feel? Like, was he just like, yeah? You know what? Hold on. No, Greg was not there. Why didn't Greg go? I do not remember why. I don't know. I thought Greg would for sure go with you. No, Greg wasn't there. It was just us. Well, that would make it way scarier if Greg wasn't with me. For Greg to just look over and say, hey, stop talking. Yeah, that didn't happen. Jeez. Okay, let's move on. I mean, yeah, that's crazy. And I guess that kind of goes into my last thing, and we can kind of wrap up. Like, you guys have made really good decisions. Yeah, I think luck plays a part of it. I think, obviously, hard work. The harder you work, the luckier you get, right? I think you guys put good systems in place. You had good legal counsel. You had good partnerships. I think a lot of things you did right, which led you to, and moving on from the FTC thing, It's like you did the right thing. It sucked. It was scary. But ultimately, you were still able to continue prospering. And I guess the last thing is just finances in general. I feel like you guys individually and as a group are super disciplined. I mean, and that is actually my last question. Well, two questions. I want to know about how the discipline and what you guys agreed upon to get to that point because I feel like you've weathered the storm from an FTC standpoint, but also from like a financial standpoint, individually, together. I mean, you guys had jets. You had a company jet. I mean, you were on Richard Branson's island, you know, feeding the shark. Like, I want to hear about that. That's the last thing I want to end on. But, like, talk about the finances just super quick, and then I want to hear about Richard Branson. Yeah. You know, we decided as a group that we needed to, if we're going to be in this industry, we've got to be able to rely on each other financially because you never know when you're going to be putting money back into the company, right? So if you got a couple of partners that are really frugal and don't want to live this expanded lifestyle, kind of living over their means because times are really good right now, right? We all agreed that we would have X amount of money into the bank. And if a storm came in, we all had to chip in the same, right? So luckily I had partners that thought the way I did, kind of were raised the way I did. None of us came from money. Yeah. None of us came from money. So I had a pretty frugal background. We all made sure we had an X amount in the bank at any given time. We agreed early on that we would take a lower salary, right? And the rest is distributions based on profit, right? So we didn't get crazy. We made a lot of money, and none of us got bigger than our britches, right? I think that's important because, yeah, there are storms, and I think it's important to be on the same page. I think it goes back to the good partnership in general. Yeah. And I think it stems into financial and stress and just good. Peace of mind, being able to sleep at night. Yeah, 100%. All right. So, I mean, well, touch on this really quick. Like, you didn't come from money. I mean, just like where, I mean, just talk about what Grandpa Dick did and like where you, I mean, like building trailers. Like that's where you came from. Yeah. I mean, if you look back on it now, if someone's watching, they're like, you know, Len built PMI. We haven't even talked about real estate or any of the other, you know, hedge funds and all the stuff that you're in. It's like you literally came from just Provo, Utah, building some trailers and trying to make some money well yeah so my dad was a firefighter and if you understand how fighter for the back then i think it's still the same they work 24 on and they have 48 off right and so i got to spend a lot of time with my dad we didn't have a ton of money but what my dad was good at is fixing things taking something that's broken and discarded and turning it into what it once was. Yeah. Right? So I learned that art really quickly from my dad, and that's kind of how I started. When I was a kid, I was buying and selling motorcycles in KSL classifieds. Harold, Provo Harold classifieds. Yeah. You know, when I got into high school, my dad had a connection with trailer parts, and that's how I started making trailers. Yeah. And then after high school, while I was going to college, I started rebuilding wrecked sport bikes. I had a connection in California. I was picking these $4,000, $5,000 bikes. I was picking them up for like $500 a piece. It was all cosmetic mostly. Luckily, my dad had a garage that had every tool known to mankind. So it was good. He definitely did. Yeah. So, okay, last thing then, yeah, to my last question. I mean, you go from that kid growing up, just fixing stuff to make a buck. I mean, even last night we went and bought a, you know, the amount of money that you've made over your time. We went and bought a lawnmower, riding lawnmower last night, out of the classifieds, like 400 bucks. I mean, it was, but yeah, he wants to fix it. So it's actually a good one, though. So they're going from that kid, last thing, to being on Richard Branson's island. Just tell me about that before we go. Because that's a crazy thing. Hey, I'm just a kid in Provo, no money. My dad's a firefighter, and I'm fixing up bikes and trailers just to make extra money. I don't know how to sell. At that point, that was not in your cards. No. To then sitting on Richard Branson's island, dinner, feeding the sharks, just crazy stuff. Yeah. It was, yeah. I don't know how to explain it, but when we got invited to go to that, it was just mind-blowing. Yeah. Just mind-blowing. Got to spend four full days with Richard Branson, just like you said, dinners, lunches. We did breakout meetings, some of the stories that he told. So basically what he did is he wanted the 25 top marketing companies in the United States to actually fly to his island so he could pick our brains. That's crazy. What's that on the shark, though? The swimming and all that. It was kind of crazy. And so the first day I got to know Richard pretty well. Yeah. And basically every morning and every night he swims around his island. Yeah. And he was telling us about that. We had a group. It was me and Dean and Steve and a couple other guys. And we'd had dinner that evening and pretty much everybody had left and we're all sitting out there talking. and we're at the table and all the food that's being cooked is right over here by the ocean. Yeah. And Richard Branson started telling us about how when he swims around the ocean, over in the current side, there's always a shark that swims around him. So when he gets to the south side and swims north, until he gets to the north end of the island, there's a shark out there that swims around him. Just knows him. Yeah. And we're just like, are you kidding me? He's like, it's happened for years. I'm like, come on. He's like, he's right out there right now. I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, you want to see something? Steve and I are looking at each other. Like, yes, we walk over to the grill and there's big chunks of lobster still left over. Right. And there was a light up here right by the by the shines on the grill. But it also shines out into the ocean a little bit. Right. And he literally picked up a piece of lobster and tossed it out into the water. And it was almost instantaneously. This shark absolutely was right there. and just went after this piece of meat rolling. It was – we all looked at each other like if we had not been here and seen this, we would have never believed that story, but it's true. That's great. I wonder if he still does that. I don't know. I'm going to have to ask him. Dang. Well, that's cool. I love that story, and I think it highlights go from where you're at to where you've been and everything in between and the systems that you built, the scaling, having that edge in different areas and in different time period because a lot of people now, obviously things have changed drastically. So it's like, I think it's nice seeing the principles that you followed to have the edge as you've made it to where you've made it. Yeah, I appreciate that. Appreciate being on. Thanks for inviting me. You got it. Okay, buddy. The operators who win aren't the ones working harder. They're the ones who see earlier. That's the one principle this whole show is built on. From payments infrastructure to capital strategy, this is the inside view you won't get anywhere else. Subscribe to Above the Edge and make sure you're one of the people who sees it first. New episodes, real infrastructure, no theory. Colton Page, Above the Edge.