Don’t Get Stranded! How Glue Tread Fixes Torn Sidewalls

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🎙️ **Glue Tread Returns: The Ultimate Off-Road Tire Repair Solution!** | Jeep Talk Show Interview with Andy Back by popular demand! Andy from Glue Tread joins us again to dive deep into their game-changing tire repair kits. From sidewall damage fixes that get you off the trail without replacing expensive tires, to tread plugs, upgraded Colby Valve stems, and heavy-duty T-handles — this is the closest thing to a spare tire in a bag. In this episode: – Andy’s journey from Northeast Ohio rubber factories to guiding in Yellowstone & building the business with his dad – How Glue Tread’s tool-less sidewall repair patches work (and the off-road only disclaimer) – Common mistakes (too much glue, bad prep, overheating rubber with grinders) and pro tips – Real stories from Easter Jeep Safari, King of the Hammers, and trail rescues – US-made quality, patents, fighting copycats, and why customer service matters – New snowmobile paddle repair kit + upcoming off-road products – Family business insights, manufacturing in America, and what it’s really like running a growing off-road company Whether you’re running 37s, 40s, or bigger, this kit could save your trip (and your wallet)! Buy GlueTread Kit Here: https://amzn.to/4fwphiR **🔗 Links:** – Glue Tread: https://glutread.com – Instagram / TikTok / Facebook / YouTube: @glutread (search Glue Tread) – Jeep Talk Show website: https://jeeptalkshow.com If you’ve ever had a sidewall tear off-road, you NEED this in your recovery bag. Drop a comment with your worst tire damage story! 👍 Like | 🔔 Subscribe | Share with your Jeep group #JeepTalkShow #GlueTread #OffRoad #JeepLife #TireRepair #SidewallRepair #Overlanding #JeepMods #TrailRepair #4×4 Visit our website: https://jeeptalkshow.com/ Watch/Listen on Spotify https://jeeptalkshow.com/spotify Join our Discord Server: https://jeeptalkshow.com/discord Subscribe to our newsletter: https://jeeptalkshow.com/newsletter Help Support the show via Patreon: https://jeeptalkshow.com/patreon

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00:00 – 00:00:02:29]
(Music)

[00:00:02:29 – 00:00:22:19]
D.O. boys and girls, it’s time for another Jeep Talk Show interview. We’re gonna be talking with Andy again. Andy is back with us. Andy grew up in Northeast Ohio and moved out West after college where he drove, I’m sorry, dove, yeah, I guess you could’ve drove into it, dove into a product development. He eventually founded

[00:00:22:19 – 00:01:26:12]
solutions for off-road tires. It permanently repairs sidewall damage on any tubeless tire, plus provides fixes for tread area damage and valve stem replacement. On the valve stem replacement, you guys partnered with somebody, right? Or do you have your own thing? Yeah, we partnered with Colby Valve on that one. So yeah, we made some slight adjustments to the product. The biggest thing that we did is we tried to make all our stuff tool-less repair. So what we did is we actually, they had a plastic wing nut that they were using to seat the new valve stem. And we kind of changed the engineering on that a little bit and then actually manufacture ourselves an aluminum one, CNC machine. So it’s lower profile. I mean, some of these new beadlock tires, or excuse me, the beadlock wheels, they really protect the valve stem. So it’s hard to get some of the bulkier Colby valves in there. So this one’s lower profile and it’s metal, so it won’t break. All that’s still all made in the US, but yeah, it’s been working well.

[00:01:26:12 – 00:02:01:27]
So something I didn’t notice the last time, at least I don’t think I noticed last time, you moved from Ohio out west after college and you and your dad developed this product. I remember your dad being involved in this. Yeah. So was he still in Ohio and you were out west whenever you guys developed this product? Yeah, so after college I moved to Salt Lake and I worked for a product development company there. And then we took product from concept to shelf into Lowe’s and Michael’s, some stores. So that’s kind of where I got the product background.

[00:02:03:10 – 00:02:13:27]
After that, I actually moved home for a short time. So moved back to Ohio for about six months. During that time, I actually worked at a rubber factory, ironically enough.

[00:02:14:28 – 00:02:40:01]
Worked at a rubber factory, which is just a lot of those in Northeast Ohio. And it was like kind of during that time, my dad and I started like really diving into the glue tread stuff. And then, I think we talked about before, we actually originally came out with a product that you would add to the outside of tires. He would like almost like individual lugs to retread an agricultural tire. Right. So that’s kind of what started the whole thing. And then from there,

[00:02:41:03 – 00:02:45:16]
we kind of pivoted into the sidewall thing. So my dad spent a lot of time,

[00:02:46:28 – 00:02:58:02]
in the basement of the house in Ohio, he has an engineering background, but figuring out things about the adhesive and the rubber and the process and all that, to figure out how to make all this work.

[00:02:59:20 – 00:03:24:15]
Yeah, so while he was doing that, I was back and forth between Ohio a lot. I was in the time that we started the glue tread, I was guiding, so that’s actually how I ended up, I’m in Bozeman now, but I was guiding backpacking in Yellowstone, in the National Park during summer. Yeah, it was great, it was great. And then I was doing that in summer, and then during the fall, I was guiding elk hunting in Northeast Nevada.

[00:03:25:16 – 00:03:49:05]
So that all worked really well. I mean, Glue Tread wasn’t making any money at the time. My dad was really focused a lot on R&D stuff. I was working on something like the external business stuff. And then, but again, it wasn’t making any money. So I had to find a way to make money where I could work like a week or two on, and then have a week or two off to focus on, on the other stuff. So yeah, so I did that during a lot of that, I was actually living in my Ford Ranger full-time,

[00:03:50:08 – 00:04:09:06]
which, you know, I’m six one in the bed of a Ford Ranger, it’s like five, 10, you know, so it was kind of tight, but it’s kind of the only option at the time. So yeah, I was doing that. And then eventually we got the sidewall stuff to work, and you know, it’s just kind of been on an upward trend since

[00:04:09:06 – 00:04:18:17]
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[00:04:18:17 – 00:05:18:19]
then. So when you say you got it to work, I mean, sidewall damage is something that everybody has been told. You get sidewall, it’s done. You have to replace your tire. And on a four-wheel drive, that means you’re replacing four tires usually. So it had to been very difficult to, from the liability standpoint, like you can repair sidewall. And it’s only, it’s for off-road use only. We joked around about that last time, because you’ve had people that, that would contrary to what you guys say, have used it on the road for a long period of time. But it’s off-road only to help protect you liable wise. But it really is good stuff. But I would have been very nervous. I’m just the nervous type. I hear about these wonderful, wonderful inventions. And I think to myself, my God, that would be hard to put out. I mean, I often make Tesla references. Can you imagine making a self-driving car unsupervised, no steering wheel or pedals? Just hop in.

[00:05:20:00 – 00:05:48:23]
(Bell Dings) Yeah, yeah. No, you’re right. I mean, I think originally, and even I noticed in the entry or in the intro, it said, permanent fix. And we don’t ever market it as a permanent fix, to be clear. It’s always like temporary fix, get you off the trail and so on. But like you said, especially for guys that, are trailering their vehicle places or stuff like that. I mean, there are obviously a lot of vehicles that are like off-road only too, right? The vehicles themselves are,

[00:05:49:29 – 00:06:06:16]
people use them for a really long time. That’s one of the cool things about the trade shows that I’ve been liking and really enjoying recently. People come up and tell you stuff. Oh man. Easter Jeep Safari this year was a blast. I mean, first of all, our booth is just packed the whole time, which is really fun.

[00:06:07:19 – 00:06:51:23]
But it’s just people walking up and telling you all these crazy stories about how they used it. And what I mean, radiator hoses, a gas tank. We had one guy like actually fix a wheel. He like glued a patch to like the metal wheel. We had, I mean, really, really cool stuff just to see all of that. But yeah, back to your original question. I mean, we initially, released this as like a temporary fix. And frankly, my background is more in like power sports than it is in like full-size vehicles, Jeeps and Toos and so on. So like my dad, my dad is, he’s what 63 now, I think, 62. Yeah, 63. And he still races ATVs like in- Sure, why the hell not? All across the country, awesome.

[00:06:53:07 – 00:09:11:11]
But for us, it was like a power sports focused thing where it’s like, all right, well, you get stuck way out here, like, what are you gonna do? And same thing with the Jeep, right? In some cases, even worse, you can go even further away from civilization. So, it was like, well, yes, it is like, man, you don’t want somebody to drive some highway and wreck or all this other stuff. It’s like, well, off-road use only. And all of our packaging says this now too. It’s like, we have limits on the size of the damage and how fast you want to drive and all this stuff. But like the remainder, I mean, the reality of it is that like people use it in ways that we do not intend and we advise against, but are still like pretty wild. You know, so- Right. Well, I mean, just finding the right glue that will set in a reasonable amount of time and will hold in a harsh environment. Yeah. So I think that fire extinguishers, for example, and I think the Colby valves also too, I think that they are generally, especially the fire extinguisher, generally speaking, the fire extinguisher is going to be used for somebody else that’s on the trail. And I can see the Colby valve having the same thing. Do you hear about the glue tread that you’re really helping out buddies more than you’re helping out yourself? Yeah, all the time. I think we, I mean, it’s part of the funny thing is we’ll often have somebody like walk up and be like, this happened just to DJS recently. They walk up and they’re like, yeah, I just used my kit last week for this other guy. You know what I mean? It’s like, you hear that all the time. Or the other one we get is like, oh, I don’t carry it, but there’s a lot of people in my group that do. Right? So it’s just, you know, kind of like a communal, like, you know, maybe one guy’s got a car and- Oh, somebody needs this thing. I mean, I’m not kidding you. This thing is really important. It’s just a small bag. And I mean, how many patches can you do? I mean, you can do a fair number of patches with a bag. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we have kits that range in price from $10 up to $200, right? And you know, the $10 kit will do, it’s one patch and it’ll, you know, it’ll fix one piece of damage. Kind of our sweet spot is like, we have the $50 kit. They’ll do like four to six patches. And then like a $100 kit that’ll do four to six patches, but also has plugs and valve stem, the Colby valves and all that stuff. So yeah, it’s, I don’t know.

[00:09:12:13 – 00:09:20:26]
You know, it’s the closest thing you can get to a spare tire in a bag, right? So you have a kit that not only does the sidewall but also does the tread?

[00:09:22:01 – 00:09:34:07]
Yeah. With the plugs? Yeah. So we came out with our own plugs too. They’re still, they’re self-vulcanizing plugs. Everything we do is all made in the United States. So it’s really important to us. So the plugs are made in the US. We came out with our own T handles too.

[00:09:35:21 – 00:10:05:08]
You know, you see these T handles at advanced auto or whatever they’re plastic. And if you’ve used one, you know how hard you have to crank on them. Oh yeah. You know, and you see stories all the time when people break in the plastic handle off and putting that rod through their hand, you know and then all of a sudden you got a hole in your tire and your hand and like, you know that’s not a good way to hang out. So we got, The intro of the Glutri-Med pack. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, we, you know, we actually designed our own T handle

[00:10:06:08 – 00:10:46:24]
that it’s all CNC machined aluminum. I mean, it’s like way overbuilt. Wow. Fancy. But they have, they have set screws in them as well. So if you carry power tools with you you can actually loosen the set screw and instead of like sitting there and reaming it you can, you know, fix that into a Milwaukee or whatever, whatever you have. And then you can drill it out, which goes a lot faster too. So it’s like faster and safer. So just another thing it’s like what we’re really trying to do is like genuinely make it the best kit that we can and make it all domestically because if you have to use the kit it’s already a bad day, right? Like things aren’t going well. So it’s like when you pull that out you want to feel like, oh this is something I can rely on and something that’s going to work.

[00:10:47:25 – 00:11:08:00]
And another thing on that topic something that comes up frequently is our adhesive, right? And this is something that we try to get out to people all the time, but we have, we occasionally have people be like, oh, I had damage on my tire, I opened the kit and the adhesive was dried out, right? So, and that, that happened. So it’s, the adhesive is a Sinoacrylate by definition. Just, it will eventually dry out.

[00:11:09:05 – 00:11:11:18]
When we initially started, we were packaging in

[00:11:13:02 – 00:11:14:12]
in plastic bottles.

[00:11:15:14 – 00:12:13:03]
We’ve since transitioned into like a metal bottle with a metal barrier and doing everything we can to extend the shelf life of that adhesive. We’re somewhere now between two and four years. We actually haven’t had any dry out of the new stuff, but. That’s really frustrating. Oh, I mean, some people are going to be excited. Like I spent the 50 bucks on this thing and I finally get to use it. What the hell? This thing’s, it’s like that 50 year old tube of caulk. That you’ve been saving. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And we do, you know, when people reach out to us like, hey, this happened, it’s like, I know it says it, it says it in the kit. We send out emails about it. We post about it. We talk about it on the show. Exactly. So it’s like, whatever someone reaches out with that problem, it’s like, all right, here’s a whole new kit for free. Just, just check this. As long as it’s liquid, it’s fine, you know, and whatever. So we do the best we can to like, you know, serve the customer on that, but it is just something, you know, not that you need another thing to add to your checklist before you go out on a trail, but it’s something that you just need to make sure is there, you know.

[00:12:14:13 – 00:12:39:04]
So I probably cursed you with this on the last interview. The Jeep talk showed me another idea. Have you guys, if you’re not currently doing it, have you guys considered putting the Glutread logo on your patches? So whenever they patch their tire, you know, it’s theglutreadglutread.com. I thought that, I think that’d be really cool, especially if it was embossed. Yeah, we’ve put actually a lot of effort into that.

[00:12:40:08 – 00:12:42:16]
We have figured out a way to do it.

[00:12:44:06 – 00:13:18:21]
It’s really expensive. And it’s like, you know, yeah, it’s, it’d be, well, I guess there’s two ways to do it. You can either print it or you can emboss it, like I said. Our worry with embossing it is if you emboss it, it compromises the structural integrity of the patch, which is like, that’s the most important thing. And emboss it out, outwards. And also too, that means they’re going to, well, not everybody, but that also means they’re likely to put the logo on the outside and not try to lose it, which is what you want. All those bastards advertising, I don’t want to advertise. Oh, why didn’t the tire, why is the tire hissing at me?

[00:13:20:20 – 00:14:06:12]
Yeah, yeah, I mean, with it, yes, we’ve looked at it. And that would be really hard to emboss it even externally, just the manufacturing process itself, you know, we’d have to change the entire process. I bet it would, at least three X, maybe four or five X, the cost of the patch to emboss. At that point, you’re paying for advertising. So, I don’t know how much advertising you guys do, but we’ll get to that in a second. But yeah, I mean, obviously there’s crazy ideas and that’s the difference between people with ideas and people actually making things. Yeah, another one we worked on that I actually have prototypes for is like a sticker that you can put over the top of it. Like I made it look like a Band-Aid.

[00:14:07:13 – 00:15:17:27]
So you can put the Band-Aid on the patch. And I’ve had one of those on my dirt bike now for, gosh, like three years, we never released them publicly. But they actually look pretty cool. That’s a good idea, I like that, the Band-Aid idea. I’ve seen that on damaged vehicles too, you know, whether you have a band-aid on it, it’s pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, so, but, and we looked at printing them, we could print it, the problem is it would just rub off pretty easily. So it’s like, it would look good. And then the other thing is if you stack them back to back, some of the ink would get off on the backside of the other patch, and then that could interfere with the adhesion or something like that. Yeah, who knows what it’s gonna do to the glue. So let me ask you, I don’t wanna advertise somebody else’s stuff. Maybe you guys are already looking into it, but have you seen the little plastic rubber screws that they’re– Get that to me. That they’re screwing into the thing? And I thought that would be kind of rough to do, depending on where the damage is on a maximum traction tire, you know, how long does it screw and so on and so forth. But what do you think about those things? I thought it was a cool idea, but it looked like it would be problematic, but a lot simpler than reaming things out. Totally, totally. I haven’t personally used one.

[00:15:19:05 – 00:16:21:26]
My initial impression of that is that it is a somewhat gimmicky Chinese product, which I feel like we see everywhere, and I am just so, I’m so avoided of anything that even vaguely resembles that. But so I haven’t used one myself. I mean, instead of the plugs, maybe, yeah, I don’t know. I think, again, having not used one, the plugs are, to me, plugs in the tread area of the tire are just like so tested and tried and true and not that hard to do. Oh yeah, no, yeah. You know, so it’s like, I know it’s more work. Yeah, yeah, totally. And then the biggest difference, you know, the sidewall is like, you’re gonna have the same problem, you know, screwing into the sidewall as you would plugging a sidewall, right? You’re just gonna make damage bigger. Yeah, I don’t think they use them on sidewall. I don’t think anybody else does a sidewall repair other than you guys. Right, right. Yeah, so I don’t know. I haven’t used it myself. I’ve seen that, you know, for a while, they were kind of going viral there. I’ve seen the ads for them. I’ve had people bring them up. I haven’t used them myself, but to me, it’s like,

[00:16:23:00 – 00:16:53:17]
I don’t know. You still have to have an additional tool. You have to at least have a screwdriver with you. Right. And I don’t know, sometimes you can only, I don’t know if you can put two inside my side. Like what happens if you have what you normally would put two. I don’t know. Yeah, I just haven’t used it. So not anything you guys are looking at or working on. And also too, it kind of looked like it might be a bad idea to me. So I figured with your expertise, you could clarify that that isn’t something that you think would be great, which is basically what you’ve said.

[00:16:54:17 – 00:18:24:05]
Yeah, yes. So on the, so you’ve got a kit that has plugs, has patches for the sidewall and nobody’s watching you. You can do whatever you want, but it’s really not designed to put plugs and patches. Although I’ve seen people just patch the hell out of a sidewall damage so they can get off the trail. And that’s the great thing about this one. And I don’t know if that we’ve actually explained I forgot to do the website, glutred.com, glutred.com. Go over there and visit and you can look at some of this stuff. But basically the product allows you to patch a sidewall damage usually on the trail. And that’s the place that you guys only recommend using it is off-road, not on the streets, correct? Correct, yeah. Yeah, so all off-road use. And I think one of the biggest advantages to the product is you can do the whole thing without removing the tire wheel from the vehicle. Yeah, so you just, you can put the patch on and reinflate and then continue moving. And so it’s like something that’s meant to be done on the trail like that. We have had people that like for really serious damage, like they’ll get home and then they’ll patch from the inside. So they’ll patch from the inside and the outside, deviate the tire and all that. But like the whole idea of the product initially was that, you know, you wouldn’t have to do anything like that. Right. And you guys have had a lot of success with this. Any failures that weren’t due to improper placement of patches, I would assume that it’s pretty simple.

[00:18:25:22 – 00:19:11:29]
You got to make sure you get enough glue on there. And then there’s a certain amount of patch that has to go around the damaged area, like eighth inch or quarter inch, whatever it is. And have you seen anything? Have you learned from anybody that maybe you need to make them sign a waiver that they’ve read the instructions for? Yeah, totally. I think we have a couple really common mistakes. The first one, the one that we dealt with early on was people using way too much adhesive. Oh, that makes sense. So they would use like, yeah, just, oh, more is better. Put more adhesive on there. Well, you don’t want to put too little and then they have to go through the whole thing again. Right. And we, in all of our kits, we have cards. It shows exactly how much to scale and everything, but you know, that’s no one reads instructions. So that’s the first one.

[00:19:13:23 – 00:20:15:29]
The next one is just not enough prep to the tire, right? So it’s kind of a pain, but like if you have damage over lettering or something like that, like you have to get the lettering down. It has to be flat, right? You need a rubber to rubber contact is what we say, but so it has to be sand down flat. So sometimes we’d be like, oh, it didn’t work. And I’m like, all right, great. Send me a picture. Send me a picture. And they just like glued a patch on top of the word good year, you know, and then I’m like, well, yeah, of course. Like look at all the, I can physically see where that air is going to come out. So that’s, and then the one we’ve been having most recently, and this is a new one, I think that happens because people have heard all this stuff. Oh, these guys didn’t prep enough. I’m going to prep more. They use an angle grinder, right? Which is great. Honestly, it works if you do it right. But like often what happens is people just rip the angle grinder and then, you know, grind the heck out of it. And then what happens is the tire smokes, the rubber gets too hot and that rubber compound actually reverts and gets tacky, right? And then at that point, nothing’s going to stick to it. The rubber is like,

[00:20:17:08 – 00:20:43:22]
rubber is like a really interesting part of this entire process. But what happens is rubber cures. And if it gets too hot again, it like un-cures pretty much. That’s like the reversion. And that’s what happens. So then the adhesive doesn’t work. So you’re like, oh, the kit didn’t work. It’s like, well, no, you, this is also on the instructions that weren’t read, but you’re like angle grinding the heck out of it. The whole thing smokes and then it’s like sticky, you know? So that’s the one we’ve been- Sticky’s gotta be good. You’re helping the glue.

[00:20:45:04 – 00:20:49:29]
(Laughing) Yeah. If you were like, you know, old school when they did the,

[00:20:51:05 – 00:20:54:08]
Johnna Blank on the turn, when you like popped the whole thing on fire,

[00:20:55:18 – 00:21:05:15]
that might help, but in this case, you don’t need it to be hot. Yeah, that’s interesting. I’m glad you pointed that out. That actually changes the structure of the rubber and makes it where it doesn’t stick.

[00:21:06:15 – 00:22:08:17]
So it sounds like it’s really simple to use. And in common sense, you need a nice flat area or flat-ish as flat as you can be. And so in the kit, do you guys have anything like sandpaper? Do you have anything like, I mean, and the other thing is, how do you know it’s sealed? I mean, you can drive a little bit and then, or listen, you can drive a little bit and see if the air is holding on the tire. But do you guys recommend like a water bottle, maybe soapy water in the bottle to check the patch? Yeah, great question. So we, first of all, we offer two different kinds of prep solutions in the kits. Every kit has sandpaper, it’s 80-grit paper. It’s cut to size so that you can put it, use the patch to backing and sand it down by hand. It sucks in some cases, but that’s always an option. Our Expedition kit, our highest dollar kit also comes with a flat disc. So an 80-grit flat disc that you can chuck into a drill again and then do that all with power tools, which of course goes a lot faster.

[00:22:10:10 – 00:22:23:06]
Yeah, so that’s really, those are the kind of the two, the two ways we suggest prepping. After you have the patch done, like you said, you can look at it, you can listen to it. Something I do is I’ll use just water.

[00:22:24:10 – 00:23:24:25]
We have, this is another issue we have sometimes, but when you introduce more chemicals into the process, it just complicates things. So a lot of times people will be like, this is another good one. Oh, I used brake cleaner all over the whole tire so that it would be clean and then use it. It’s like, no, don’t do that. Like it doesn’t say do that anywhere in the instructions. But like, my concern is always, well, if I use soap and then soapy water and then I have to go back and re-patch or something like that, it will be residue of soap that’s absorbed into the rubber and then that, depending on the soap or whatever, whatever chemical will interact differently with the adhesive and will likely hurt. So I always just use just normal water myself because you can see, I mean, if it’s leaking, if you drip water on there, water bottle or something, you can see where it’s spraying it out. It’s not as obvious if you have the bubbles. Well, this is good too because everybody’s got water with them. You may not have soapy water on the trail and I didn’t think about the chemical composition of the soap causing an issue. Yeah, why risk it? Absolutely. Yeah, totally, totally. All right, so now we have a patch.

[00:23:25:25 – 00:23:31:16]
I guess it’s not always on the outside of the tire. It could be on the inside of the tire, can it?

[00:23:32:16 – 00:26:04:07]
Yeah, initially that was not our intent, but we’ve had people use it that way. I mean, the inside being where it’s mounted so that you have the stuff, the side of the tire that’s on the outside, then you have the other stuff that’s towards the inside, which is, I mean, it’s also nice. I mean, it’s a little more difficult working there, but it’s also nice. You don’t have to take the wheel and tire off to get into it. Yeah, I mean, we see that all the time on the inside of the tires. Definitely, I think more common on the outside, but we see it frequently. And yeah, like I said, you can still do it. You just have to be, I guess, obviously, always be careful if you’re crawling under your vehicle, but then making sure that the damage is oriented in such a way you can get to it. Right, but I mean, I’m just thinking it doesn’t really matter if it’s on the inside or the outside. You did mention about people taking the tire off and patching the inside of the tire, which I would think that would be a great way of handling it. I mean, if you really want to make sure that tire is gonna be not leaking on you when you’re off-road, the only potential issue, I don’t know how thick these patches are, but I would think the only potential issues are changing the balance of the wheel, depending on how much patch you’re putting on. Totally, I mean, I think we recommend in all the instructions, keeping it at a very low rate of speed, right? After you patch the sidewall. So, I feel like generally you’re running those balance issues when you’re running higher speed or on the road. Oh yeah. But yeah, I mean, we’ve definitely had people patch from the inside. The biggest thing on the inside is that the prep work is even more important. When they’re manufacturing those tires, there’s a release agent on the mold that’s often left, residue is left on the inside of the tire afterwards. So you just have to make sure you prep enough and I suggest you now have an 80-grit flap wheel. You can buy it from us. You can also get them from whatever, Home Depot or Lowe’s or A’s. Well, you already got the drill with a big battery on it and now getting the little attachment for the drill, you’re probably carrying it anyway. You may even have one of those impacts so that you can work on your stuff or other people’s stuff when you’re out on the trail. So yeah, it just makes sense to do it. You just have to be careful not to overheat the rubber, which I think is a great thing to remember whenever you’re trying to do this. So do you guys have any King of the Hammer stories? I mean, I can well see the glue tread. I don’t know if they just changed the tire. I mean, changed the tire and wheel when they have problems. I would think that patching it, it would be the way to go.

[00:26:04:07 – 00:26:13:07]
Welcome to the Jeep Talk Show Round Table. Join our live community discussions and share your builds. Find out how and when to join at our website. See you on the trail.

[00:26:13:07 – 00:26:40:11]
Yeah, there’s definitely, I mean, obviously it depends on the case. We’ve heard stories of just various ultra four cars using it for that. I think one of our really early stories, there was an ultra four car. It wasn’t at King of the Hammers. I forget which race it was at. Maybe the men or something, I forget. But he got second in his class. I think he was a 4,500 class with a patch. And there’s a picture of him holding the trophy and you can see the patch behind him on the tire, which is cool.

[00:26:41:16 – 00:26:46:16]
But yeah, I’m trying to think. We were down there this year at King of the Hammers.

[00:26:47:27 – 00:26:53:23]
And we ran into a boatload of people that had used it. I’m trying to think if we talked to anyone that had used it during the race.

[00:26:56:03 – 00:28:08:05]
I know we had some people use it on their pre-runners at Baja this year. Oh, this just seems like the thing you got to have. It’s inexpensive. And I mean, from the pros to just the everyday, the weekend warriors. Because nobody wants to have to stop and do a lot of stuff or limp back to base. I mean, this thing, you patch it and more than likely you’re done for the rest of your trip. I mean, all you do is just drive it. And if you get the kit that has multiple patches, you really don’t have to worry about fixing any other issues that you have. I think that, I mean, you can run hard enough where you can get more sidewall damage, but I think the vast majority of people, it’s gonna be rare. And just to have the ability to change it quickly is great. Oh, and also it’s great if it’s not your Jeep because you get to practice on somebody else. That’s right. We had a guy this year at EJS, trailer his Jeep, I think from Pennsylvania, maybe New York. I mean, trailer it all the way out to EJS, pulled it off the trailer and caught it on the trailer, on the inside, as you were talking about, on the inside tire, caught it, ripped it.

[00:28:09:07 – 00:28:14:13]
And then he actually brought the tire to our booth. We patched the booth, then he was able to run the rest of his week at EJS.

[00:28:15:18 – 00:28:23:23]
With- Did he at least have a kit? Or was he getting the free kit and having somebody do the work?

[00:28:25:01 – 00:28:55:08]
I think he got a free kit too, if I remember correctly. I was like, but we gotta take a video of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s it. This is another great thing. If you use a Glutred kit, there’s a card in every one of our kits that says this. If you use a kit, take a video of yourself using it and send it to us and you’ll get a free replacement kit. So, if you do it right, you can buy one kit and it’s good forever, right? Because as long as you take a video of you using the kit and doing the repair, we’ll literally trade you a replacement kit for that video.

[00:28:57:05 – 00:31:03:12]
Yeah, that’s a lot better idea if you get anybody to do it. That’s a lot better idea than putting the logo on the patches. Yeah, it’s easier to keep track of it, if nothing else, but- So, I don’t wanna make this a sexist or the border on mansplaining, but this is something that, I mean, it doesn’t require a lot of physical force to do any of these things. It’s just a step-by-step procedure and most women will read instructions, so they’ll probably be more successful at it. But this is something that men or women can use. Yeah, I mean, especially, I mean, when you’re handling a 40-inch tire, 37, 42, all these tires are getting so big now. I’m a physically active, physically fit 32-year-old, and it’s like, I have trouble moving a 40-inch tire. Sure. Yeah, and it’s like, especially if you’re on the trail, and if it’s mounted somewhere or whatever, it’s difficult to move these big spares. So, it’s really easy to put a patch on it, or you’re in a place where you don’t want to jack up the vehicle, but you’re on an angle or whatever, it’s like, and that’s risk in itself. So, it’s like, I think if you’re spending any time off-road, there’s just inherently risk, and everyone’s like, oh, it’s too risky to patch your sidewall. It’s like, yeah, it’s also risky to use a high-lift jack on an incline. You know what I mean? Oh, man. Like, just pick your battle, decide which risk you want, but that’s the nature of spending time off of your couch. So, it’s just kind of what it is. Adventures, you have to pay for your adventures one way or another. And sometimes it’s just paying with discomfort, concern. It’s like the high-lift. We all make fun of the high-lift jacks. They’re very good jacks. And if you read the instructions and just think it through, they do well. But I mean, it’s scary. I haven’t used one that much, but they’re scary. And especially when they start slipping or sliding off of the vehicle. But they’re great tools. Yeah, yeah, no, I think you have to have one. Absolutely, you gotta have one. And make sure it’s a high-lift and not something that,

[00:31:04:14 – 00:31:11:03]
high-lifts are dangerous enough. Don’t get something that’s a third party, non-high-lift jack, a farm jack.

[00:31:12:19 – 00:31:27:12]
But yeah, that’s really cool. So men, women, you don’t have to take the tire wheel off. You can patch it most times right where it is. There’s prep work that you have to do, but my God, you got that power screwdriver, or I’m sorry, power drill or whatever.

[00:31:28:18 – 00:31:31:09]
The 80 grit sandpaper, don’t set it on fire.

[00:31:32:16 – 00:31:53:28]
I mean, I think we all go back to the time that we were burning tire rubber in our vehicles or even in our jeeps. It’s like, you love that smell. I don’t know if you can hear that way. I love that smell. So if you start reminiscing and enjoying the smell of the tire, you’ve gone too far. Yeah, that’s right. I remember that burnout I did. Yeah.

[00:31:56:08 – 00:32:45:00]
All right, oh, so I was gonna ask you, you have to have a way of airing the tire back up. So, I mean, there’s all kinds of things out there, onboard air, there’s power tanks, there’s all kinds of ways of re-airing up the tire. Are you guys partnering with anyone or working with anyone to be the blue tread air source? Yeah, I think, I guess the short answer is nothing official. Long answer is I think it depends on what you’re doing with your vehicle, right? If you’re airing up and down frequently, we love the guys at Morflate, they’re great. Tyler’s an awesome guy. I think they run a pretty stand up company. They guarantee their products, have great customer service, and they’re always doing some innovative stuff. So we love the Morflate crew.

[00:32:46:21 – 00:33:04:00]
We have some inflation options for power sports. So like US Border Patrol, they carry kits with us that are smaller the size of a tissue box, and they come with CO2 cartridges. And just a 16 gram cartridge is not a full power tank so that you can have it under the seat of an ATV.

[00:33:05:09 – 00:34:28:06]
And then we have chucks that we are actually now manufacturing here in the US. That’s something that’s been kind of a long-term endeavor for us. But so yeah, the small CO2 works well for an ATV. Works well for some side-by-sides too. I mean, some of these side-by-sides now are running 35 plus inch tires, and you don’t wanna be blowing that up with a 16 gram cartridge. But, you know, and then for like more like a daily user, you know, I don’t know, there’s a ton of options out there. Oh yeah. Yeah, I just thought you guys might be recommending someone, but it’s neat that you guys have a side-by-side or ATV kit. So I’m glad you brought up Tyler. We recently did a third interview, I think, with Tyler. And not this one, but the one before, I just randomly asked him about, because he has a good company and it’s a neat idea. And I asked him, has anybody purchased or wanted to purchase your company? And we went down a rabbit hole about, yeah. And he actually had a company, a well-known company, tell him that he didn’t have patents on his products. And he could sell it to them, he could sell them the company, or they would just make a copy of his and run him out of business. And I’m very naive about this stuff. I had, oh my God, that’s just so distasteful. Why would anybody do that? And then I thought about it and went, hey, this is just how business is done.

[00:34:29:19 – 00:35:15:07]
And so most recently had him on and we identified the company that, I had identified the company based on clues that Tyler gave me and he smiled and laughed. He didn’t do it himself. Legal implications, obviously. So with all that explanation, this you’ll be up to speed on where we are with that. Have you had any situations? I mean, I think you have a very unique product and I can see very well how even a tire company would want to have your product. Maybe they want your product so they can squash it because you’re not selling as many tires. If you don’t have an old standby of the side wall damage, the tire is done. Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, we have people reach out very frequently

[00:35:16:13 – 00:35:51:01]
wanting to acquire the company, but I don’t know. I think there’s two main things I think about here. First of all, we do have utility patents on this product. So, you know, just, I don’t know if you’re familiar with intellectual property law, but essentially you can have a design patent or you can have a utility patent. Design patent would be me like designing a three by three inch patch that was all black and like no one else could make, but you could make one that was three and a half by three and a half or whatever. So like, but so there’s the design patent. We have actually utility patent on the way the whole system works. So that helps us a lot.

[00:35:52:04 – 00:36:01:19]
We have had people, we’ve had a couple of Chinese companies try to copy it. Most recently we had a company, a Chinese company

[00:36:02:23 – 00:36:15:11]
come out with a product that was, it’s like they were selling the exact, like, you know the internal patches that they still use at times on the, on inside of patch in the tread area. They had those exact patches in their kit.

[00:36:16:20 – 00:36:32:23]
They used pictures of our patches on tires. My hand was in their packaging. They had all the instructions that were copyrighted. They use, they violated the patent, all this stuff we took into Amazon, got them shut down immediately, stuff like that. So you just have to keep an eye on it.

[00:36:34:13 – 00:38:59:11]
But we have had some people try to copycat. The other thing is it’s so funny when you look at it, it’s like, oh, it’s just rubber and glue. It’s like super simple and it’s not like the rubber is so much more complicated than what people give it credit for. I mean, the amount of R&D that we’ve done on rubber, I mean, I’ve thrown away an embarrassing amount of rubber that just didn’t work because you can’t do things in small batches. I mean, you know, it’s like, and it’s really hard to reverse engineer as well, because it’s like baking a cake. It’s like, if I hand you a cake and be like, you have to tell me how to make this. It’s like, well, you know, how did you mix stuff? How long did you bake it? What kind of oven, all this other stuff. So it’s really complicated thing. Plus the utility patent, you know, makes us like, you know, go back to your initial question, like definitely a target for someone who wants to. Oh yeah, any success at all, I would imagine makes you a target. Yeah, the other thing that we do is we don’t cut any corners. We manufacture everything here in the US. So like when you manufacture things overseas, you have this problem where your manufacturer is selling you a kit, but then they’re also selling to your competitors out the back door and not telling you it’s the exact same product. It’s often, you know, it depends on your quality, all this other stuff, but we manufacture everything here. So we don’t have that international like question mark. And we’ve also done everything right. You know, it’s like, we’ve made it actually the best we can. We build the brand in a way that like, I mean, a perfect example is we came out with better rubber about a year ago. You wouldn’t know looking at it. Looks the exact same. Everyone who bought a kit on our website in the year preceding that, we sent them free rubber. Just like they didn’t, if you bought a kit, you received it, you know what happened. Not if you bought an Amazon cause we don’t have your customer data, but if you buy it on our website, we just gave, sent everybody free rubber. It’s like, hey, this is the best stuff we have. Don’t worry about sending us any more money. This is just yours. It’s like, I think the real value, and I think Tyler’s done a really good job of this, but the real value in your company is the brand as much as the product, right? People know it’s like, if you have a more- That trust, that relationship that you have. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. If you have a more-flate product, they’ll take care of you. Same way, you can call our 800 number, and my dad will literally pick up the phone, and he will be like, what do you need? And we’ll take care of you. I mean, that’s the brand that we’re building, and I think really, in a lot of ways, more value than the intellectual property associated. So have you had to defend your patent?

[00:39:00:20 – 00:39:02:17]
Or have you just used it as a pry tool?

[00:39:03:18 – 00:39:11:01]
Yeah, we haven’t had any lawsuits yet, but it works for Amazon.

[00:39:12:19 – 00:39:26:12]
Oh, I’m sure Amazon’s huge, getting them to take down that seller, which is great, because I remember asking Tyler, or Tyler offering the information, it’s 50 grand just to start the defense of the patent.

[00:39:27:13 – 00:40:44:09]
It’s crazy. Yeah, yeah. So that’s why, I mean, it was neat talking to him about it because it taught me how naive I was, because I’m thinking, people shouldn’t do that, and if they do, it’s very few. And I mean, China, we understand how China works. So yeah, I know that they just do things. But other people, other US companies, they would just be silly, and it would get around, and they would be bad for the company, that they’re just copying something. This well-known company that I found in the interview and put on the show, they’re a nice company. And not only did they copy the Moreflate product, they copied the color. It’s the same damn color. You can’t even come up with a different color. It’s crazy, yeah. Yeah, and if you look on Amazon, there’s a bunch of companies selling the same type of setup for the Moreflate system. So yeah, like I said, it was very eye-opening. And I guess that you have to distinguish yourself with the quality of products, like what you’re saying, the customer service being available, so on and so forth. So I think a lot of people think it would be so cool to own a company, but there’s so many things to it

[00:40:45:16 – 00:40:49:21]
that you have to deal with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a lot.

[00:40:51:03 – 00:41:38:05]
Part of it’s, parts of it are really fun and awesome, really rewarding, and parts of it are like, you know, everyone’s like, “Oh, I’ll be self-employed, “then I can just work my own hours.” It’s like, yeah, congratulations, your hours are now 24-7. I literally dream about work. It’s like, there are times it’s like, I’ll go to bed, and then I finally get a break, you know, it was a long day, and go back, and I just like, thinking about work in my dreams while I’m sleeping, I’m like, “God, you can’t get a second off.” Which is better though, running your own company with all the headaches and stuff, or working for somebody else? I think it just depends on the individual. You know, for me, I’m a bad employee. I just, I’ve always kind of been there. I want to work, I work really hard for myself, I have trouble working hard for other people. Oh, I’m exactly the same way. Because they’re idiots. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

[00:41:39:11 – 00:44:08:02]
Right, right, but you know, there’s stress that comes with that, right? And I think, I think a lot of times, I think about people I went to high school and college with that were frankly like way smarter than me. And, but my risk tolerance and ability to like manage the stress was, I guess, superior to theirs. And then, and I think, but that’s not necessarily a good thing either. You can work for someone else and live a life that you absolutely love. You know what I mean? I think it’s just dependent on your risk tolerance. But you personally, I think you personally, you’re doing this business and you wouldn’t be doing it if you weren’t enjoying all the things that you’re doing. I think just having a product that people appreciate and enjoy and helps them is a big deal. I mean, and you mentioned the people coming up to you at the booth. That’s wonderful. It’s like whenever people talk about, I listened to the show, I’ve listened to it for many, many years. Yeah. And you hear that stuff and you go, I made, or the show has made a difference in somebody’s life. And your product has as well. I think that’s the most, there’s two things that are most rewarding for me. The first is like you said, somebody coming up and telling me, we had another one recently with the guys like, I was with my family and we were snow wheeling, you know, and we were in the middle of nowhere and had this problem when user product got out. Like, so stuff like that is like, it’s what drives you to do as good jobs as you can. It’s also the most rewarding part. There’s that. And then the other part for me is like, is providing jobs and lifestyles for people that I care about that they enjoy, right? So like, I want to pay my employees well. I want to be flexible with their scheduling and I want them to like genuinely enjoy the place that they are. Because I think I’ve definitely had jobs where it’s like, it makes me hate everything about everything the rest of my life. Oh yeah. It’s like, it’s so mad. But I think being able to provide quality jobs and good experiences for people you care about is the other really rewarding part. Yeah. And I could also imagine that it makes you really nervous from the standpoint of making the right decisions so that they can continue to be employed. Yeah. That’s the most stressful part. Yeah. Oh, let me ask you this. So we’ve noticed a decline in advertising here on the show. How is business? How is the off-road business for you? Have you seen something? I mean, it was like September last year that we saw a dive and it hasn’t come back yet. How’s the industry doing, at least from your standpoint? Yeah.

[00:44:09:02 – 00:44:35:09]
We’re continuing to grow at a really steady rate. I mean, I think a lot of that is because, I think there’s a couple factors. So for, you know, business for us in general, I think is going well because we, our biggest hurdle is awareness. So as soon as someone learns about the product, they buy it, right? So I think we’re definitely in that growth curve. I think generally speaking,

[00:44:36:10 – 00:46:53:03]
I’ve talked to a lot of other business owners in the off-road space, but also outside of the off-road space, just in the outdoor space in general and otherwise within product. And they’ve all been slower. I think that’s just the effects of like economy stuff. I mean, yeah, you have gas prices and stuff like that. It’s been over just like maybe the last couple of months, but like life’s really expensive, you know? And I mean, there’s all kinds of ratios that you can look at that say exactly that. But, you know, I think about people my age, like I said, I’m in my early thirties and I have a lot of like responsible friends that work hard and have, you know, that work well and are responsible spenders. And they like still can’t afford houses and stuff. And it’s like, you know, and I think, so I think generally life is more expensive and you have to give up somewhere. And I think the reality of it is, you know, we in the off-road space, that is recreational. It’s like, you don’t have to drive, you know, go on a road trip or something like that to get by, but you gotta buy groceries, you know? So I think that, you know, and then that trickles down, you know, to your advertising spend, right? It’s like, if people are buying less product and the company’s less profitable, they can’t put as much into marketing, even though in some ways that’s what they need to do, but the money’s just not there for it. So, I think– Yeah. Well, I think it’s an important thing, what you said, it was important that the way life is harder, you can’t buy a house, so on and so forth. So some people might go, well, you certainly shouldn’t have a Jeep, you certainly shouldn’t be going off-road and maybe damaging your vehicle or you need stuff. Screw that, you need to enjoy your life. I mean, ultimately, that’s why we’re here. So I’ll just point out that you can take your Jeep off-road and if you get sidewall damage, you have a cheap way of fixing the problem very quickly. I would think under 30 minutes, depending on your level of expertise, and then getting back to the fun. I mean, literally getting back to having a good time with your life. Right, I think that’s the other part of our business that’s really helpful is it’s, I don’t know if anything is totally recession-proof, but generally speaking, adhesives do well in a recession because you’re going to fix something instead of buying new. So it’s like, while at the same time, it’s like, yeah, this is not a permanent fix, I think people try to stretch things like that when times are more financially trying.

[00:46:53:03 – 00:47:02:09]
Welcome to the Jeep Talk Show. Got a story or question? Send us a video voicemail. Just use your phone. We’ll play it on the show. Link is below. Keep jeeping and talk soon.

[00:47:02:09 – 00:47:18:24]
Yeah, and also too, we’ll just mention, if you don’t already know, tires are kind of expensive. Yeah, and they’re getting crazy expensive. I mean, even just in the last couple of years, you know, I mean, it makes sense, it’s oil-based and there’s a lot of travel. I mean, I guess some of them are made here,

[00:47:20:00 – 00:47:29:21]
and then, yeah, everything’s just, We need to start making them out of corn and then the price will go down. Yeah, that’s right.

[00:47:30:25 – 00:47:52:05]
All right, well, really cool. Oh, and I’m not saying that you need to, but do you have any products that you’re, new products that you’re coming out with or changes? Yeah, yeah. The change is a bit. Couple things, yeah, a couple things. We released a snowmobile kit that fixes the paddle of the snowmobile. Oh, interesting. Not necessarily relevant in the Jeep world, but a lot of people maybe who drive Jeep also snowmobile.

[00:47:53:09 – 00:48:46:25]
And that kit just absolutely blew up. That’s been doing really well. We released it in February, in the month it released, it was our best-selling kit, which is just wild. So in the off-road space we have, we’re working on some other stuff, nothing publicly yet. I think the coolest thing right now, we, so one of my good friends here, his name’s Brian, he comes to the trade shows with us and we actually worked with him to put together a Glutread rock crawler, which is built on a Mighty Max frame and it has 40-inch tires and just, he did a great job with it. But if you ever see that out on the trail, he’ll have kits with them, then you can go up and get a kit. It’ll be one with a kit that you can only get if you find them on the trail. So he’ll actually be down in San Hollow, I think next week. I’m not sure when this will air, but yeah. Poor bastard. Yeah, I know, right? It’s tough life.

[00:48:48:11 – 00:49:44:04]
So I don’t know, I mean, yeah, nothing like, nothing that we’re ready to release yet, but we’re always working on more stuff. And that’s a good way to proof the product from people that are stealing it, making copies of it. I mean, patents are fine, but like I said, they’re expensive to go after people. Oh, real quick, Amazon doesn’t give you customer data? How do you know whenever they have a warranty concern that they actually bought it? We will get their name, but not like any other shipping information. They’ll get like a name and a confirmation of their order, but not an address or anything like that. So you can’t use it for advertising, or if you want to do point advertising, that’s interesting. That’s right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, they just protect customer data. I mean, in some ways as a customer of Amazon, I’m glad they’re not giving my data to everyone else, but on the backside of it, it’s, in our specific case, it’s great.

[00:49:45:13 – 00:52:30:24]
Most recently, like I said, we just ship free stuff to people, we’ll improve it, but you have to buy on our website. If you buy on Amazon, you’re kind of like, well. Good luck. Oh, did you, just a side story here that might affect you on shipping things. Did you hear about Amazon has opened up their shipping business, their shipping planes and 18 wheelers and to your door. They’ve opened up the shipping to compete with UPS and FedEx? Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that. Let me actually see how that does. I mean, we almost exclusively use UPS now. Sure. Our office is like 10 yards from a post office, a USPS, but they lost, they were losing such a high percentage of our shipments that it was more expensive. Missed all over here. Yeah, so we just went to UPS entirely because we had so many people that were like, “Hey, my stuff never showed up.” And it’s like, well, the tracking number says it didn’t. Like, I don’t know, it didn’t. It was like, well, they probably lost it. Oh God, USPS lies. They say dropped it off of the resident’s address and I’m looking, I got cameras set up. You’ll see me glance over your face because of the security cameras. And I know if they delivered anything to my house or not. And I think they have to meet certain quotas and I think they’ve been instructed just to market as delivery, they’ll get there tomorrow. So, Congress doesn’t bitch at them or something. But I think it’s really cool. My wife, I wanna tell my wife about that. She goes, “Does that mean Amazon, the delivery, Amazon delivery thing is gonna pull up and you may be getting stuff from something, somebody that’s not Amazon?” And I looked it up and yeah. I mean, they’re out running around anyway. They might as well deliver for everybody. So, anyway, hopefully that’ll be good for you guys and shipping where you can get a more inexpensive shipping deal. Yeah, yeah, it’d be great. It’d be great. Generally, Amazon is the worst to work with, but hopefully they are better in the shipping side. I was, UPS is the best. Yeah, who knows? I mean, I’ve always enjoyed UPS. I think that their delivery is a little higher. Certainly whenever I buy something from Amazon and shipping is included, it makes it nice that I, I mean, even if they add to the price of the part, there’s something psychological about getting free shipping, even though you know it’s not free. Yeah, that’s right. All right, something that is free is social media. I know you guys are all over social media. I remember seeing, I haven’t seen one recently, but where you take a knife and you stab a tire and then repair it and doing various other things. There’s fun things to look at. Working the kids who love looking at the pictures, working, they find you guys on social media. Yeah, just Glutrid, G-L-U-E-T-R-E-A-D. That’s Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, you name it. All of them, so. And you guys are on Facebook?

[00:52:32:07 – 00:53:06:06]
How about YouTube? Yep, yep, we have some YouTube stuff as well. A lot of YouTube shorts. We’re gonna start doing some longer form YouTube stuff, but yeah. So if somebody would like to just see how the Glutrid is used in practical environments, I think any of those places you can look, but certainly YouTube is usually a longer form. So you can go over there and see how easy it is to apply your product. Yep, totally. And you can watch me do it or you can watch, I mean, any more. There’s hundreds of videos of other people doing it too. So nice. I’m glad you guys are having success, especially if you’re young of an age.

[00:53:07:12 – 00:54:48:20]
Had your dad done anything business-wise prior to this? Yeah, so my dad was an engineer. This is part of where my root of American manufacturing comes. My grandpa was forced into early retirement because all the steel mill production went overseas. And then my dad was a mechanical engineer working factory automation in those steel mills all went overseas. He lost his job. So my dad actually, he’s like, I was young. I think I was in second grade when that happened. And he’s like, I have to do something. He actually started selling health insurance. So he started a health insurance brokerage after his engineering career and then built that up just in our hometown and grew it and turned into a really nice company with his business partner. And then he eventually retired. And then that’s when he and I started this. So he had, it was a really fun pairing of, you know, he had his background in engineering and in business and I was in business and we were able to just kind of, yeah, go and do it together. So it’d be awesome to have him on at some point actually. It’d be kind of fun. Oh yeah, absolutely. So on Thanksgiving day, do you guys actually not talk about business, about glue? Oh, I was gonna ask earlier, does your dad get really happy when he’s working with the glue and then when he gets out of that glue environment as a crash? (Laughing) Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he likes sniffing it. No, he definitely does not. But we do talk about work all the time. I mean, my sister runs all of our social media and, you know, and then, you know, my dad’s still very involved. And then my mom is actually the one that like holds the whole thing together and makes it all possible. So it’s like, yeah, family dinners are often consumed by business. Is there a lot of eye rolling and face palming? Would you guys shut up?

[00:54:50:25 – 00:55:18:02]
Yeah, there are times my dad loves taking, like I said, if you call 800 number, he’ll pick up the phone. It’s, we always joke. He’ll take a call no matter what. It’d be like Christmas dinner and had 800 number on the glue tray and he’ll pick it up. It’s hilarious. All right, well, let’s, I’ll get Chris to send over some stuff and we’ll get your dad on. I think that’d be fun to, especially if I get him to tell off on you about some of the bad things you did in high school when junior high. (Laughing) There’s plenty. Yeah, yeah.

[00:55:19:03 – 00:55:26:15]
All right, man, thanks so much for being here and glad to get you on again. I’m sorry it’s been so long, but we’ll reach out to you again here in the near

[00:55:26:15 – 00:55:29:23]
(Music)

[00:55:29:23 – 00:55:43:29]
you want to share with us. Yeah, we really appreciate it. And thanks for having us on again. It’s always fun. Oh, we need to get your sister on too. That’d be fun to get all three of you guys. We have a whole family event. Yeah, a family fight.

[00:55:45:18 – 00:55:46:08]
(Laughing)

[00:55:47:23 – 00:55:48:04]
Yeah,

[00:55:49:26 – 00:55:51:23]
You’re my friend, you’re my new friend.

[00:55:51:23 – 00:56:02:12]
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