um my career path is it's probably, like a lot of career path is not exactly straight. Um, I would characterize Ah, my career path as early success, followed by poor decisions, bad timing and just bad luck. Um, until finally I got to where I could be successful where I could really have the opportunity to be successful. So, um, I started, uh I guess I would I would say it started my sales career, um, doing home loans with the G finance, and that worked really well. Um, And then about six months before the market crash, um, G decided to shut its doors for all of their home loans. They have a lot of money, and they could forecast the market. So about six months before everybody else, they shut their doors down. Now, the time I was doing really well, um, I was I was happy. I was making about $10,000 a month and, uh, you know, which was great because I was still in college and loving life. Um, And then they decided thio shut everything down. Labor went off, and it was really shocking. Um, then after that, I went to Ah you know, I went to a company doing finance leasing, and that didn't work out very well for me. They were That was one of the poor decisions. They were not what I call a very honest company. Lease financing has a very well deserved core reputation. So I went there for about a year. Then I went down to Phoenix, Arizona worked for Penske Truck Leasing. Um, and that was right after. Let's see, that was about 8 4009 after the crash of the market. And so that job didn't last year. Well, because they were the market was shrinking and and they started. They laid me off first because I was because I was the last one and first went out, as they say, um and then they started getting rid of people have been there for a very, very long time, you know, 10 15 20 years. So, um, I went up to Portland. Um, did, uh, some selling for a company called American N D. T. They dio, um, non destructive testing, which is basically quality. There's it's quality stuff and was there for about three years. Um and then that company went through bankruptcy eso. So they brought me back down to Salt Lake. Um, and pretty soon the company went out of business due to the bankruptcy. Um, that was a very interesting industry because it was very much controlled by the O. M s. Um, they were constantly trying to get closer and closer to the customer. And so we were kind of the middleman in between. And when they saw an opportunity to put us out of business, they didn't s so they could get close to the customer. So, um, then after that, as I started ah, working for a company that did change consulting, that's where I learned to start selling, uh, consulting services. And I learned that I could put a lot of people in a room. So that was a That was a skill that I was ableto to use. That's about when I finally finished my Education University, Utah, with my degree in information systems. And I found that the abilities that I learned there to deal with databases and queries and things like that and to look at data really helped out with that. So I worked there for a while and Then the owner came and laid everyone off. Um, apparently, even though we had just been making some big sales, he over committed on his financial obligations. Technically, I think he led us off three different times. Um, he lay and it lay us off, and then I would say, All right, well, good luck. And they say, Well, maybe not. Um, that was the first time. The second time he laid us off over the weekend. And then on Monday, he repented. And then the last time he said, Well, I don't have any more money. I can't afford to pay you And I said, Well, see you later. So I took some of the stuff, the skills that I learned, um, to do webinars under and thio email, marketing, working with databases and things like that. And I started doing some online marketing consulting. Um, I did that for a while until I was hired at Accion. The company worked for now, actual corporation. Basically, they said, come and figure out how to sell this stuff. Um, there were new owners and they knew how to consult, but they didn't know how to sell anything. Um, and frankly, I don't know how to sell the stuff either. So, uh, you know, I would I would say that they were probably The company was probably about six months from going out of business when I came up. Basically, all of the previous owner had decided that hey was traveling too much and consulting and training. You travel a lot, and he got sick of traveling. So he took a job with Hill Air Force Base. Um, they're sales people, basically, through natural attrition, just left the company. He never replace them. And they were left with a woman who wasn't much of a sales person. She was about it, and his wife would come in and do some of the counting. So I came in and had to figure how to sell this stuff. Eso I started in sales. Um, we hired people. Then I became the sales manager after we had people to manage, because we don't really have anybody to manage at that point. Um, that we continue to grow and became the vice president of sales and marketing. Um, and now I have been promoted a za president, part owner. So let's see, it's been about nine years since I've been here, So it Zbynek White a ride. But, um, you know, it's it's interesting things that have shaped my career. Early on, I I learned about the way I wanted to sell on the way I didn't want to sell. Um, some of the companies that I worked for were really honest, very honest in the way they approached selling. And so that wasn't really a good fit for May I? I wasn't very good at being a diss on a sales person so that that wasn't really good fit. Also, I learned that a lot of the stuff I learned in school, um, with my degree in information systems, you know, with information systems, you basically tie technology with business and and really linked that together. And so the work I had with at school learning, um, how to work with databases, access databases, see patterns and data, um, really influenced the way that we market and the way that we sell the way that we create our customer databases. And it's been a huge advantage over the competition. The competition doesn't know how we grow as quickly as we dio and one of the parts of our secret sauce is we didn't have better databases. We just know how to analyze the data a lot better than they dio eso. That's what I learned at the U. There you go. Hopefully that

So, first of all, I'm not working from home. I'm in the office. Right. So it's nice because I don't really wanna work from home. Um, with work hours, uh, work about 40 hours a week. I was working more than that. Um, 40 to 50 for quite a few years. Um, then I then I got quite ill and had to reduce that. Um well, I didn't I couldn't work about three months. Anyway, the point is, I'm now back up to about 40 and 40 is good. Um, one nice thing about this job is I have consultants, um, and trainers, and they travel 45 to 50 weeks a year. They're always traveling. I don't have to travel at all unless I want Thio. And so I send them out, and then I could just get in my car and drive home at night, and it works. It works really well, um, let's say thank you. Asked me about decisions and things that I do here. Correct? Yeah. So my responsibilities here, you know, really comes down to everything. Almost. You know, as the president, I have to oversee the company I have toe make sure we decide. Um, you know where we're going? Where who were going to sell to when we're going to sell? Um, I decide where, uh, where we're going. The jobs were going to dio, um you know, I really look at moving forward. What are the new classes were going to offer? What are the new products? Um, what are different opportunities and product lines so we can open up. What's nice about it is, uh, in this industry admission. Before that, when I worked for American nbt it was very much a closed industry with lots of rules. And, you know, if you wanted to sell outside your area, for example, that was a big problem. If you wanted to develop a new product line without permission, that was a problem. And so what's nice about this is, um, basically disguise the limit. If we can think about it, if we can think it, then we can do it. Um, and so anything that we want to do what we can dio and and, uh which is great. But it also is a big challenge, because when somebody says you can do anything you want, then you've got to figure out. All right, What is going to give you the most value for my time? What is it that I could work on today and tomorrow? What should we do this this next six months in the next year? That's really going Thio, um, you know, grow the company, um, make this place a better place to work and and really, you know, put money on the bottom line, and so, uh, that's basically my job is to guide that that and, uh, and the owner, I'm part owner now, but the majority owners, basically we've got to figure it. All right, what do we want to do with this? Because we could do anything we want, which is pretty fun.

So, um, some of the challenges when you are the president of the company, when you're the company that has to steer the ship, basically, everything is your fault. So anything that goes wrong I mean, the buck stops here, right? Eso I'm steering the ship. So if we hit a rock, that's that's a problem. And it's my problem. Um, if we But if we got smooth sailing once again that Z that's really you know, that's good, because that means it was it was a result of some of my decisions. Um, one of the biggest challenges is what to do with my time. I don't really have anybody telling me what to do with my time. And so people always like to do the 80 20 rule. Which is they? Of course. They say, um, you'll get 80% of result with 20% of the things you have to dio. And so, um, I find that to be mostly true, but I find something even more simple that I like to live by. That is, keep the main thing the main thing, and so what? I try and do as I say. All right, what is what we're here is a list of all the things I could do today. What is it that's going to bring the most value for a company? What is it that we really dio? What is it that I do? Well, what are things that I could have somebody else dio? Because either a, they're better at it than I am or be I could make the company a lot more money doing this other thing. And so really deciding, Um, what I do every day and, uh, and going forward, you know how to grow the company. That's those are some of the challenges. Working with people is always a challenge. Hiring people is is a challenge. Um, I think we'll talk about hiring a little bit later, but hiring new people is very, very challenging. They say good employees, they're hard to find, and that tends to be very true. So, yeah, I would say that's a challenge. Um, let me think Any other challenges, you know, back to what I was saying is if he hit a rock, you know, we have to recover. And so, uh, one of the big challenges is once something happens when something unexpected. Hence happens. What do we dio right now? We're living during the cove it 19 times, and that's been, um, a very big challenge for everyone. The nice part about it is some decisions I made several years ago, Um, doing a lot of online training and consulting, and things like that position does very, very well, you know, we started doing that and 2013 maybe 2012 something like that. And at the time it was trying to convince people that they could get the same training classes by doing them online. I don't think you get the same results by using some or technology, and so that always helped our bottom line. But when Cove it hit, it's been very interesting because most companies the revenues have been decimated. A lot of people can't even work with us. That's true in our industry as well, because people don't want you on site. And so a lot of our competitors are really struggling because they can't go to the company's site. They can't do the trainings they want to dio. They weren't really well positioned to do online trainings with us. It's been exactly the opposite. Our profit margins have gone way up, Um, our revenues down a bit, but we're actually making quite a bit more profit than we were making before because it's just a lot less expensive to do it this other way. And now all those people that now we had a lot of online trains and things before. But all those people that were resistant before are no longer resistant. And so I thinking forward and thinking ahead really paid off big time. Obviously, there were still some changes and challenges and things we had to dio, Um, but with with cove, it it was really a nice challenge and and we've come out really nice, so