Concrete Insights: Expectations, Mix Mastery, and More

Hey there, folks. This week on The Concrete Podcast, we've got a treasure trove of knowledge just waiting for you. We're getting into the real deal of what concrete is and what it isn't. We'll chat about the difference between being a product supplier and a subcontractor. We'll break down why getting your batching mix and temperature control just right is so crucial. You'll hear about the latest mix designs and some bucket casting success stories that'll inspire you. Plus, don't miss out on our upcoming furniture design workshop. And, of course, we'll share a few things that we absolutely love. Come on and join us, it's gonna be a good one.

#ConcretePodcast #ConcreteExpectations #MixDesign #BatchingMastery #TemperatureControl #BucketCasting #FurnitureDesignWorkshop #ConcreteInspiration #Craftsmanship #ConstructionInsights

 TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, Jon Schuler.

Hello, Brandon Gore.

Well, here we are.

We did the, or I did the Fabric Forming and Concrete Sink Workshop over the weekend.

Yeah?

Yeah, it was a great success.

The sink they made was really, really, really nice.

It's for the studio.

Really nice sink, went off without a hitch.

Everything came out great.

There was one little hiccup I was worried about.

We did the ring drain, the ring drain.

It makes me sound like I got a speech impediment.

The ring drain, the ring drain, it's a hard thing to say.

I used to have a guy that worked for me that had a speech impediment, and he couldn't say his Rs, right?

James, I don't know if you remember James.

And, you know, whatever, I don't care if you have a speech impediment, doesn't bother me.

But one day he's like, he's like, man, people think I'm from Boston or something.

I'm like, why?

He's like, because of the way I speak, I'm like, no, nobody thinks you're from Boston.

They just think you can't say your Rs, bro.

Yeah.

Oh, God, I love that guy.

He still texts me all the time, like the most random things.

So yeah, he was a guy that would work in my shop without shoes.

I'm like, dude, I do metal work here.

There's like metal shavings and shards of metal everywhere.

He's like, yeah, I don't care.

So, or as he would say, I don't cayou.

So anyways, oh yeah, he's toughening up those soles, right?

Yeah.

Dude, he would, he was renting a house in Eureka Springs.

He would bring in entire tree slabs and like carve them in his kitchen.

And he would like show me pictures, like in his dining room, we had like chainsaws and grinders.

Of course it's a rental.

Like you wouldn't do that to your own house.

He's doing it to somebody else's house, but it was just such a wreck.

I mean, it was just sawdust and shavings everywhere in the house.

What, oil dripping all over the carpet?

You know the HVAC system is shot in that place.

Yeah, anyways, I got sidetracked.

So-

Yeah, I wanted to see more pictures of that drain, man.

Well, the problem with me teaching the class solo is I just, I don't have the opportunities to take photos.

No photos, yeah.

So anyways, Ring Drain.

It was a, oh man, I'm just going off memory, but like three and a quarter outside diameter for the rubber plug that creates the recess for the Ring Drain.

And I have a hole saw bit, that was like three and an eighth, that when I cut a piece of plywood, it's like three and an eighth.

I'm like, oh, it's perfect, because when I stretch fabric over it and we do the resin and the resin builds, it's gonna get to right there, because I want a perfect transition from sink into the drain.

I don't want to have any flat area around it, because I'd kill the whole illusion of what we're trying to do.

I want it just perfect.

And we were so close, but it was off, like a 16th.

When we put it on there, I was like, son of a bitch.

So I tried silicone, but silicone shrinks.

And it would still work if I did two layers, but we don't have time to do two layers, because we have to silicone in the morning and cast in the afternoon, and it takes at least three, four, five hours for the silicone to cure enough to cast.

So after it cured and it's like four in the afternoon, I feel it, I'm like, son of a bitch.

So really the only solution, well, there's two options.

One option is we apply another layer of silicone, which is the right option.

And that's what I would do any other time if we didn't have to cast that day.

And we're have to cast that day because this is a workshop for this purpose.

So we have to cast.

But that would be the right solution.

And if I was doing a client piece or even a piece for myself, I wouldn't rush it.

I would do another layer and I'd come back the next day and I'd cast.

That's the right way to do it.

But because we have to cast, I got clay and I have oil-based modeling clay, but that's not really optimal because it stains the concrete.

Anybody's ever done it.

I mean, this has been a debate that's gone on for over 20 years now is silicone or clay.

And there's clay camp and silicone camp.

And when they meet on the street, they pull their knives and they fight to the death.

You know, I've tried the clay.

It never worked for me.

I always had staining that never would come out.

I know Josh Bradshaw likes clay.

And there was a guy in the class, I want to say it was Eddy.

Eddy in the class knows Josh.

And he's like, man, he's like, let me text Josh real quick and ask him what he's doing with the clay.

Cause maybe he had a special trick or something.

So I reached out to Josh and Josh said it was the Polytek clay.

Polytek sells like a polymer clay.

He's like, if you use that, it doesn't stain at all.

Well, I don't have any Polytek clay and they don't sell it at Ace or Home Depot.

So I got to use the oil base.

I'm like, it is what it is.

So I use the oil base clay and put it in there, tool it, smooth it as best I can, get it as clean and perfect as I can get it and just hope for the best.

So we cast, the next day we come in and it's cooking.

We know how the thermal spikes in these are.

We cast like at five in the afternoon.

So you come in at eight in the morning, and that thing is just in the middle of its exotherm.

Yeah, it's cooking, yeah.

Yeah, so I told him, let's do some other things.

We cast some other stuff.

Let's demold those.

Let's go up in the meeting room and we can look at photos and answer questions for a while.

Let's demold this at the very end to give it as much time as possible.

Because again, the right thing to do is let it go through its entire exotherm and then demold it later today, or maybe even first thing tomorrow.

Let it do its thing.

Because chemically, this is where all the strength and density is being created.

We don't want to rush it.

So we demolded it around, I'd say 11 a.m.

And it was still, I bet when we popped it, it was 130 degrees, 140 degrees.

And for a good hour after, it was 110 to 115 for like an hour.

It was just still cooking.

But that being said, the clay, where I'm going with this whole story, the clay did not stain the concrete.

It got so hot.

It's oil-based clay, but it got so hot, it dried out the clay.

I took an air sprayer and I sprayed where the clay was and it all just blew away.

So it got so hot, it like cooked the clay, which probably saved us because had it stayed soft and liquidy, it probably would have, the oil would have done more to it.

I blew the clay off the sink and I took xylene on a paper towel and I wiped it.

Because I always remembered xylene helps remove any clay residue.

So I wiped where the clay was and then we cleaned it with simple green.

We acid etched it just like we talked about on our forum and on the website and on our instructions and whatnot.

But I did all that and dude, it's perfect.

It's perfect, perfect.

So we got lucky, it's luck.

If you wanna use clay, get the Polytek clay as Josh Bradshaw recommended.

And I'm gonna get some just so I have it on hand.

So if I ever have another instance where I need to do a quick fix, I have a product that I know won't stain the concrete.

Yeah, right on, I gotta look at that too then.

But the Ring Drain, dude, it is awesome.

It is awesome, it came out so good.

I'm so pleased with it.

This brings up a topic, I have a list.

Dude, I have quite the list today.

This is gonna be a good podcast.

I have a list, let me pull it up on my phone.

Yeah, see, I'm already picturing, I bet there was some major flaws in it that you're just not talking about.

Things that I would struggle with.

Okay, so, we have some really good people.

We had a lot of alumni in this workshop, and we have some really good people in the class that I love.

I think very highly of them, and they are really good people, super good people.

And on the first day, we were discussing Maker Mix and all this kind of stuff, and they made a comment in passing that on their very first cast, it came out perfect, but ever since then, they've been trying to achieve that level of perfection.

And I heard it, but I didn't address it at that moment.

I heard them say it, and I thought, hmm, okay.

So the next day, or I guess it was, they said on the second day, so on the third day, we de-mold the sink.

Let me back up just one second and just say, whenever we use silicone sealant, we use GE Type II, the advanced Type II, not supreme, supreme is horrible, the advanced Type II GE silicone, 100% silicone.

Whenever you use 100% silicone for your roundovers, it holds air.

It's just inevitable.

I've done this for 21 years, and for 21 years, every place I put silicone sealant to create a roundover will always have pinholes.

It's inevitable.

It is just the nature.

Well, that's why we don't recognize silicone-based, you know, whatever it releases, yeah, nothing.

Even rubber molds.

My rubber molds that are made of silicone, I always have pinners.

My urethane molds don't have pinners.

So, well, I mean, they do to an extent because you can't get it to resonate, like when you shake it, it doesn't release the air, like melamine or fiberglass or plastic, but that's a whole other subject.

But the point is, silicone holds air.

It's just the surface tension or something, the air pockets, the air bubbles just sit there.

They don't come off.

So I told the class, and I tell every class this, I'm just giving you a heads up.

So when we demold it and you're like, what about these pinholes here?

You know what caused it, and you know to expect it.

It's not a surprise.

I'm telling you, it's the nature of silicone.

So anyways, so I told the class the same thing, we demolded, and yeah, there's like, I don't know, three pinners on the roundovers where the silicone was.

Nowhere else, if you look at this sink, there's not a pinhole.

You couldn't find, if I took a pencil and I made the smallest dot I could with it, you couldn't find anything half that size or a quarter that size or a tenth that size anywhere on that sink.

It is flawless, flawless.

But there was three little pinholes on the roundover where the silicone was.

So when I de-molded it and we're looking at it, and to me, it's just mind-blowing where this material technology has come, even in the last three years, I asked them, I said, you mentioned something yesterday, I heard you say it, that your first cast came out perfect, but ever since then, you've been trying to achieve that level of perfection.

What are you referring to?

What issues are you struggling with?

And they said, this right here, these pinholes right here on the edge.

I'm like, where the silicone is?

Yeah, that's what you're struggling with.

And they're like, yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah, and I'm like, I mean, that's good and bad.

It's good that that's the level, the level of imperfection.

It's bad that that's considered an issue because that's just the nature of silicone when you use it for a round over.

You're gonna have air trap there.

It's just, it is what it is, but it's just incredible.

Because I've shown them photos over the course of three days of old work that I did.

Like again, 21 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago.

And if you zoom in, you can see where we had to fill air pockets.

And air pockets way back in the day were the size of quarters.

I mean, they literally, you could stick your whole thumb in them.

They were huge.

Whole edges would be missing when we de-molded stuff back then.

When we talk about SCC, self-consolidating concrete, there was a time when concrete did not self-consolidate.

There was a time where you had to use mechanical vibration to get it to consolidate.

And even then, it didn't fully consolidate.

There would still be big voids in it when you de-molded it.

So I showed them photos, the progression.

But if I think about even three to five years ago, when I was using the older generation of mixes, which would be considered the status quo GFRC bagged mix that's on the market today, the amount of imperfections that would come out when I de-molded with striations of air and color and where the polymer had run up and all the trapped air due to the polymer in the mix.

And just the particle compaction is something that we really kind of focus on with Maker Mix is particle compaction.

But without that level of density in the material itself, there's just an inherent amount of imperfection and air in the mix.

Well, and yeah, and as you know, and a lot of labor, how about reasons on set of excuses of why that was supposed to be normal and why that, you know, then we created this thing like, well, yeah, see that, I mean, this is what concrete is.

Is it?

You know, is it?

Or is this just what we convinced ourselves?

Well, let me, I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt in the sense of at that point in time, there was no other comparison.

You know, I talk about like before I got my eyes checked, the world was what it was.

I didn't know that you could see better than that.

That was my reality.

And before there was a better mix, that was the status of the world.

That was what it was.

And so I don't think you're making excuses at the point in time that there was nothing better.

It just was the nature of the concrete.

I mean, there was a time when you believe and I believe this is as good as it got.

I'm thinking like 10 years ago where you were developing products with Buddy Rhodes.

At that moment in time, that was the best because as far as you could see, that's as good as it got.

But now, there's better.

Now you can see the difference.

And so at this point in time, not three years ago, but today, manufacturers are being disingenuous when they say that this is the nature of concrete because it's not.

It's not the nature of concrete any longer because they're aware that something better exists.

So if you say to somebody, well, you know, concrete cracks, concrete's got air in it, concrete, you know, it's gonna have all this streaking on it on your verticals.

If you make these comments and you say this is what it is, well, that's not actually true.

That's not what concrete has to be.

But if you use a certain level of products, that's what it's gonna be.

And that's a choice.

Well, it just, see, this becomes more of, or let's say partially philosophical.

And we've brought this up back early is, you know, I mean, did you push it too far?

You know, did we take it, it meaning the materials in our quest for success, the years, you know, that we look back.

Are you saying that we made it too good and now we're gonna pay the price because the concrete's too good?

Well, I wonder that sometimes, because I don't know, I can go all kinds of places with this is, you know, so when it first came out, you know, oh my God, right?

We had everybody railing against it.

Meaning again, like, oh no, it's supposed to, you know, concrete, that's not concrete and you know, blah, you know, I mean, hell, right?

That's what brought the stay lazy, right?

Is, you know, a certain individual who doesn't even do this kind of stuff, you know, decided to like, thought was gonna be a put down to everybody that was making quality products.

Well, it was a put down everybody that wasn't spending days slurrying and polishing.

Right, right, right, right.

And, you know, and I still should, I don't, what are they even called on Facebook?

The Stories, the Dailies, whatever it is, right?

When you go on Facebook now and you get a bunch of the little whatever they are, 10 or 20, 30 second stuff.

So I still get quite a bit of those from artisans, you know, people that I know, and I totally enjoy their work.

And it blows my mind now to look at some of this work with some of those individuals and watch them still, I'm just gonna use the word struggle.

They probably don't think they're struggling, but I was watching this one yesterday, where this person was like, you know, literally the little short take was, you know, this is how I, you know, slurring the face and the whole face of the concrete was just riddled and mucked, and I was just like, wow, okay, but what's that doing for your business?

And again, that's why we can go so many ways with this.

But where I'm going with this, like, yeah, I mean, for those people, have we now set what really was an upper tier of the ladder?

Like, oh man, this is unattainable.

Like, how do we do, like, whoa, like, has that become the floor now?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, for some people it has, but the other part of it is, there's a very high attrition rate in this industry.

So there's a ton of people that have no frame of reference of what it used to be, so they don't know.

So they're walking into it now.

I had some people in this class that were totally new to concrete, totally new.

And the questions, and I have to remind myself that, because they don't understand where we were.

They don't understand where we were even a couple years ago, because their first experience with concrete is Maker Mix.

That's their first experience.

I can't imagine that.

You know, I can't imagine what that must be like for somebody.

So let me tell you a little story, because when we demold the sink, there's those three little pinholes, and there's a little bit of mottling of color where...

So there's two areas where we had mottling of color.

One, and we did white.

One was we poured in about an inch of concrete, then we placed the backer mold, which takes five minutes or so to secure everything, and we finished pouring.

And I told them, we're going to have a transition line, a lift line.

It's inevitable.

Whenever we...

I said we can do this two ways.

I could suspend the backer mold ahead of time, and we could just pour it, and we won't have that lift line.

Or we could pour an inch in, and I'm sure that we have good coverage.

There's not going to be any airlock anywhere, which I have had happen in the past.

We'll have good coverage, everything's covered, and then we can set the back mold, and then we can fill it, but I can pretty much guarantee we'll have a transition line, a lift line.

Some version of it, sure.

Yeah, because there's just that moment in time where everything sits.

So we had that.

Another thing is where we were pouring, there was like a little bit of mottling color where there's just disturbance, whether, I don't know what causes it, but it's just the nature of concrete.

Concrete's a chaotic material, it's a natural material.

So we de-molded.

The sink is beautiful, beautiful.

Not a pinner to be found, you know, besides the three on the roundover, but like on the surfaces, the verticals, and we got an 8-inch vertical edge around it.

It's beautiful.

But we have that like lift line, just as a color differentiation, and it's very minor, it's very subtle.

And we have like a very subtle mottling color on the edge from where we were pouring down into it.

And one of the people that was new to concrete, has never seen it before, said, well, what do you do about this?

Pointed to like the mottling of color, right?

And well, here's what I said, and I think it's an important thing to remember.

I told him, I said, listen, we as craftsmen, we strive for perfection, but we have to get out of our own way and understand that our customers are not stupid.

Our customers and most of the customers I deal with are designers and architects.

And designers and architects are highly aware of all the material options on the market.

If they wanted absolute perfection, they wanted pure white, they would go get white Corian, or white Silestone, or Caesarstone.

Those materials exist.

They chose concrete specifically because they wanted a natural material.

And what does that mean?

Well, that means there's going to be some level of natural mottling of color.

Some level.

Yeah, an expectation of it.

Yeah, because if there's zero, absolutely zero, then it's Corian at that point.

And they know that Corian exists.

So if you're striving for Corian, if you don't embrace the natural chaotic aspect of concrete in the sense of there will be some movement, there will be some color mottling, there will be some of this, if you don't embrace that, if you fight against that, you're in for a world of pain, and you're discounting the intelligence of your customer.

Your customer knows what they want.

They came to you for that.

They could have gotten perfection, but they chose not to.

So you need to remember that.

You need to remember that we're doing our best.

We make the mold as good as we can.

We batch as good as we can.

We mix as good as we can.

We cast as good as we can.

We cure.

We finish.

We seal.

But we let the concrete be concrete.

We never try to make it something that's not.

So we aim for absolute perfection in all aspects of the process, but we let it be a natural, real material.

And I likened it, Jon, before I let you jump in here.

I likened it to if you wanted a real wood table, and you went and you cut down a tree and you cut a slab out of the tree, but you have an expectation that there's not going to be a single knot in that slab.

Is that a realistic expectation?

No, that's a tree.

We all understand that trees are going to have imperfection, and it's a real thing.

So if you want a real wood table, and you go and chop down a tree, and you cut a slab out of the middle of it, but you have an expectation that there's not going to be any movement of the grain, there's not going to be a knot over there somewhere, then you have an unrealistic expectation.

And it's the same with concrete.

We should aim for absolute perfection in the process, but we should let the material be what it is.

It should be a real thing.

So let's do our best, but let's let it be a real thing.

Well, I agree with you.

It reminds me a lot of things over the last years that sometimes have created turmoil.

But in this situation, there's a reason we've chosen concrete as the material source.

And some of those imperfections, it's the imperfections that's not necessarily part of the materials.

That's what we've tried to avoid.

And it reminds me of the time not long ago, because I did bring up to stay lazy, where just while you were talking, it reminded me of, I think, my misinterpret of the time of Caleb Lawson during that specific moment where the other person was saying, you know, what are you, just a bunch of lazy idiots or whatever he said.

And like, hey, why did I become an artisan?

Well, you know, now talking to Caleb, you know, I understood now where he was coming from.

It's like exactly where we're coming from, is there's a nature to this material that causes us to embrace it.

And part of those is its ability to model and its ability to kind of think.

It's the imperfections that was not the materials creation per se, but let's say the garbage in, we didn't want the garbage out, right?

So we didn't want to be pumping, we didn't want to be creating voids, but if we have a naturalistic void based on the material, like when you go pick up a piece of stone, you go, wow, that's amazing.

And that's part of the stone, part of what it is, rather than when someone came along with a hammer and then banged out a big hole, and you go, well, that's not what...

You know what I mean?

That was literally created by you as an imperfection.

So I think that's where the story sometimes gets lost with, when people like, well, if you were looking for perfection, do this.

Well, no, but we are still looking for perfection.

It's the definition of that perfection.

So we want the material to be the material for the perfectness that concrete is.

What we don't want is to create these, I don't know, garbage made in perfection, and then somehow look back and go, oh yeah, yeah, see, that's what concrete was supposed to be.

No, man, that's this whatever raw material inside that concrete that's creating that junk.

We don't want that.

That's not what we wanted.

At the end of the day, the problem is we were using materials that we believe were yielding to better concrete and the materials were interjecting issues that had to be resolved before we could send it to a customer.

And so what we were doing as artisans, we're just putting a lot more work on ourselves.

And so what we've tried to do with this or what we have done with this is we've made a product that takes the problems out.

So as artisans, you're able to focus on the craft, you're able to focus on the process, you're able to focus on the design, but you don't have to spend an extra three days in your shop to get a presentable product to give to a client.

So it's really about the time savings.

I mean, you might be able to take a normal GFRC mix, and ultimately, after a lot of post-processing of slurring and polishing and slurring and polishing and getting all those little pinners filled, you might be able to get something that looks very similar to this.

But it took you 300% more time to do it.

And that's where the profitability of being a business and the work-life balance falls to the wayside.

So that's the other side of it is, we've always put out good products, but what did it take to achieve those products?

It took a lot of extra work, a lot of extra labor, a lot of extra man-hours to get to that level of quality.

And so now we're able to achieve that level of quality through the materials to the point where the most imperfection we get is three pinners on the round-over where the silicone was.

And then the nature, like you and I had this conversation, and then the nature of me is, and this is terrible, I admit it, is then to go, hmm, do we see this as a problem to solve?

I know you're telling me, you're like, what can we coat that?

I'm like, Jon, it's three pinners.

Where does we create this barrier?

Like, no.

It's so funny.

It's so funny.

It's like, I know for me, it's never ending.

You know, you get to this plateau and you're like, whoo.

Well, I feel like we've gotten, I think, I feel like we've gotten the materials 99.9% there.

I was still in the workshop attendees.

What I love about Jon, he's like a race car mechanic.

He's listening to the engine and turning a screw a quarter turn.

You know, he's like, oh, that's off just like that.

That's Jon.

He's tinkering on the most minute scale.

Yeah, absolutely.

And just trying to extract just a little more performance out of it, just a little bit more.

But we're 99.9% there.

At this point, what we're perfecting is the process.

And that brings me to the next topic, is the bucket casting method we discussed last week.

And it's great, Josh Bradshaw.

I'll post a video on the show notes of this podcast.

If you go to kodiakpro.com and scroll down, it won't show up on Spotify or SoundCloud or Apple or any of those.

But if you go to kodiakpro.com and scroll down to the podcast and you find this podcast, I'll post the video there.

But Josh Bradshaw, after listening to last week's podcast, went to Ace or Home Depot and got a bucket and got a gate valve and did it and posted a video of how great it was working.

These are the levels of perfection that now we're working towards.

The materials are dialed.

Now we're dialing the process.

We're dialing how do we cast?

How do we interject the concrete into form?

What can we do to take it to the next level of quality?

That's where we're at now.

So, for me, that's...

Yeah, Caleb, Caleb and Gabriel both sent, or at least to me, sent me videos...

Yeah, they don't text me...

.

of some of the techniques they were doing, yeah.

That's pretty cool.

I'm sitting alone by myself.

Well, you need to send some more T-shirts and stuff so that I get thank you.

Exactly.

Exactly.

More handwritten notes.

I know, dude.

That's my penmanship.

Here's the deal.

Here's my lot in life.

I do all the work.

I do the design work as far as all the merch we give away.

I order it.

It ships to my studio.

I fold it all.

I go down to UPS or USPS, I get the boxes, order the custom tape, order the note cards, order the stickers, design the stickers, do all the stuff.

Put it all together, handwrite all the notes, pack them all up, sit in my office for days, print out labels and label stuff, load up the back of my truck, several trips down to USPS, bang on the back door, they wheel out the big carts, and I load them up.

Jon gets all the thank yous.

Jon, thank you so much, we got your package.

Jon's like, oh, yeah, oh, oh.

They're layering the praise.

He's like, oh, thank you.

Always thinking about you.

Uh-huh.

If only that was true.

But yeah, it is actually.

Anyways, all right, so that was on my list.

Let's see here.

What's next on my list?

I've had several conversations this week.

Here's a good one.

I had a conversation with Dusty Baker yesterday, and he did a big project for a commercial client, and they're giving the runaround on payment after he installed the piece, right?

Mm-hmm.

And this is the thing with commercial.

And the problem is, you know, he signed their contract.

He had to submit all the paperwork and documentation and agree to retainage and all the different things that commercial projects do.

And he was texting me, you know, what are my thoughts about, you know, different ways to handle his current predicament with this one commercial client that he's dealing with.

And here's what I experienced in what I did to overcome it.

When I was in Phoenix, I don't do a lot of commercial anymore, but when I was in Phoenix, there was a time I did a ton of commercial.

I just somehow got in that sphere where all the big builders were specifying me for projects.

They wanted me to do the installation, but I didn't want to do installation because once you do the installation, you're a subcontractor.

Once you agree to be on the job site doing installation, you do have to submit the insurance requirements, the workman's comp requirements, all the stuff, name and name is co-insured.

You do have to sign the contract.

You do have to agree to 20% retainage.

You do have to agree to all the different terms of commercial contract.

But if you don't do installation, you're a material supplier, and that's a very, very important distinction.

And it's a very important difference in payment.

And so when some big builder orders the windows for their project, the window manufacturer doesn't sign the builder's contract.

The window manufacturer sells them a product.

That's it.

And the builder pays that window manufacturer in full before the product ships.

They don't ship them to the job site and then hope the window or the contractor will pay them six months down the road.

It just doesn't happen that way.

They're not going to do business.

They're a product manufacturer.

So when I was doing these big commercial projects, in the beginning they were like, hey, can you do installation?

No.

What do you mean you don't do installation?

I've never heard such a thing.

Well, you just heard it.

I'm a product manufacturer.

And I would like, and I'd say I'm like Anderson Windows or anybody else, a manufacturer product.

Anybody can install this.

You can hire a granite company.

You guys can install it.

There's a lot of people who can sell it, but I'm not a subcontractor.

I don't do installation.

And I had a couple of builders offer to pay for my contractor's license.

I said, I can pay for my contractor's license.

I don't want the liability.

It's not that I can't do it.

I can do it.

I don't want the liability.

I'm a product manufacturer.

That's as far as I go.

Now, once you make that clear and you draw that line in the sand, you're off the hook.

There's no sign in their contract.

They sign your contract.

That's the rules.

You know, and I tell them, I'm not signing your contract.

I'm a product manufacturer.

I have a simple contract, one page.

It outlines my terms.

And the terms outlined are 50% when they approve the order, 50% before delivery.

That's it.

And I will deliver to the job site.

In Phoenix, it was local.

I will deliver to the job site for a fee.

It's curbside delivery.

I'm not going to bring it in.

I'll bring it curbside.

But that's as far as I go.

Because again, I'm a product manufacturer.

So that's why I was telling Dusty is if you can distinguish yourself as a product manufacturer, get away from being a subcontractor, which means get away from doing installations.

All the problems that you're having right now with these projects go away 100%.

Yeah.

Any thoughts on that, Jon?

Any experiences you've had?

No, I've done the same thing.

I mean, we've talked about this quite a bit.

Now, I know these were two with him anyway.

They were big projects.

Like he like he took them all the way to Denver, right?

Yeah.

I mean, that was one of them.

And he's got, I think, if not one more with this company that what they're doing.

But yeah, you I mean, there was a time I did it all myself.

I totally understand.

But then, yeah, it's smart.

But it had per what you're saying.

It had a lot to do also with, you know, once I became a one man show, the insurances like, oh, then why am I carrying all this stuff?

This is ridiculous.

Right.

And then, you know, so forth and so on.

And to the point that like now, yeah, no, I mean, I don't have a problem doing a delivery and charging a delivery fee, but everything beyond that.

No, I just, I don't know.

And I know some people like, oh, well, I can't do that.

I used to think the same way.

I used to think the exact same way, like, you know, or as we've talked before, it was like an ownership thing, right?

Like, oh, you know, this is my proud creation, and someone else is just going to mess it up.

So I feel like I'm obligated to do it.

And I started, you know, again, separating myself from, first of all, that point of view and be like, hmm, I don't know, man, does the CEO of Anderson Windows, you know, feel this like obligation that when they come off the line, oh, you know, we have to be the people that do this because, you know, I'm Joe Anderson.

No, I don't think so.

So I separated myself from all that point of view, and I do my best to make something very nice, you know, put it all together, and, you know, at that point, if it's within a certain radius, I don't have a problem delivering it, but beyond that, yeah, no, I'm done with all that.

Carrying it in and, you know, they got crews for doing that kind of stuff, installation crews or, you know, whatever the contractor on the site might be doing, and I'm 100% okay with that today.

Yeah, I say that's their problem to figure out.

I have no interest in problem solving problems for them.

That's them.

You order the product, the product is yours.

Once I'm done and I put it in that crate, I wash my hands of it, I did my best on all levels, but at that point, I'm completely divorced myself from that piece, and I'm glad to see it go.

You know, I cash that check.

Adios, amigo.

Till the next project, I wish you the best.

And it's on them.

They're grown people, they're smart people.

They'll figure it out.

That's not a me problem.

But you know, you said they feel like they have to do it, and they'll feel that way until they feel like they have to stop doing it.

You know, there's gonna come a time when you feel like I can't do this anymore.

I had several instances at the very end of installations just go completely sideways, and everything that could go wrong went wrong.

You can never charge enough money to make it worth it.

Even if you're charging hourly.

You know, you talk to Joe Bates.

He charges by the hour.

Even then, it's not worth it.

You know, you can't charge enough hourly to make it worth it.

So unless you're charging like $5,000 an hour, which nobody would agree to, but that might be the way to get out of it.

Yeah, my installation rate is $5,000 an hour.

Well, that's crazy.

It is crazy, but that's what I need to be for me to be out there solving your problems for you, you know?

And so that might be the way to have them go a different route as far as installation.

But just make it very clear.

I'm a product manufacturer.

I'm an artisan.

I have a studio.

I craft custom products.

I'm not in the business of driving a truck to a job site and carrying pieces in and up an elevator and whatever.

That's for a different trait.

That's for a different person.

That's not me.

And again, every other product manufacturer out there, they don't, shingle guys don't deliver the shingles.

They ship them to a distributor.

The distributor takes care of it.

Right.

Just every other part of the building, it only seems like it's the finish, whatever it is, the countertop or the sink or whatever, that they expect the manufacturer to do the installation.

And I think it's only for the concrete guys, because again, if they order kohler, kohler's not going to install the sink.

If they order kohler toilet, kohler toilet doesn't come and install the kohler toilet.

A plumber does it.

So how do we get in this weird place to where it's put on our shoulders?

But I tell you how we got there.

The general contractor does everything they can to offload any of the responsibility and work to anybody they can.

It's to their benefit to offload it to whoever is, I wouldn't say naive, but unaware enough that there's another way.

Right?

So us, we feel like when the GC says, well, I've never heard of such a thing.

You kind of feel like, well, okay, I'll do it.

No, you say, well, you just heard it.

You just heard it.

I just told you, you know.

Welcome to the new day.

Welcome to 2024.

I'm a product manufacturer.

I don't do the installation.

I'll make it.

I won't install it.

You know, and they'll figure it out.

And at the end of the day, the general contractor is not the one who makes the decisions anyways.

The architect and the client make the decision.

The general contractor is hired to make sure that the vision is created.

It's their job to see it through.

Yeah, it stays on schedule the best as possible.

Yeah.

But they will do everything in their power to offload any work and responsibility to somebody else.

Because now liability, once you agree to that, now you go on a job site, you're carrying a sink down the hallway, you clip a drywall edge, hey, they're going to backcharge you to fix that.

You know, like any damage along the way, you're liable.

And God forbid somebody gets hurt on the job site, you know.

So I would say stay away from it 1000% if you can.

And at some point, you'll get sick and tired of being sick and tired.

It's like choose your heart, you know, the whole thing, choose your heart.

There's no easy.

So it's hard to say no.

It's uncomfortable to say no.

But it's also hard to say yes, because once you're in that position, it's a world of pain.

So choose your heart.

And it's hard to chase people for money.

That's the other thing is once the piece is in, your options for recouping the money are pretty slim.

You might be able to file a lien.

Maybe it depends on time frame, depends on the municipality, depends on the contract.

But once it's in, you don't have a lot of recourse to then get your money.

So that's the other part of it, too.

And I've been in that position.

I've had to chase people for money, and it's very uncomfortable to constantly hound people for money.

Nobody enjoys it.

So now it's just, you know, I have to be paid in full.

I've held projects here for months because the client was dragging our feet on payment, but I'll be damned.

We have to get this, our CFO.

As soon as I get a check, we'll release it.

Yeah.

That's a you problem.

You're not going to peer pressure me or pressure me into releasing a product when you signed a contract, and the contract clearly outlines that we require payment in full before we release for shipment.

And that is specifically for those situations where I know that the second this gets on a truck, my wife made this mistake once.

I was out of town, and we had a customer that had not paid, but they called and said, hey, we have to get this in, is the only way you can get this going.

And Erin scheduled freight, and it got picked up and shipped.

And she told me, and I said, Erin, they haven't paid yet.

She's like, no, but they're good for it.

I know they'll pay.

And I'm like, we're in a world for paying.

And she's like, well, I'll take care of it.

And for like the next three or four months, she had to constantly follow up.

Oh, yeah, let me check on that.

And let me get back to you.

Let me talk to accounting.

I think maybe a check was cut.

Let me see.

I'll get back to you.

This one on one.

And at the end of it, she's like, you're right.

I'll never do that again.

I will never, ever do that again, because this is what happens.

The second it's gone, they know that now you're the bank.

Now they're going to drag it out.

Now you're carrying the money, not them.

So yeah, I'm not a bank.

I'm not in the business of doing loans.

So pay me, and you'll eat your stuff.

I feel like a string.

My finances out far enough on my own.

I don't need other people doing it.

That's what I told Dusty when he was telling me about this client.

I said, listen, you're not a bank, dude.

You know, they want to pay payment plans.

He didn't agree to that up front.

And you know, if somebody said to me that after the fact, they want to do payment plans, well, it's going to be like 30% interest.

Compound interest.

Yeah, you're going to be paying out the nose.

I want to make it so painful on you that you want to pay it in full right now.

Because I'm not a bank.

I'm not in the business of finance.

And yeah, so anyways, so that was on my list of things to talk about.

All right.

A couple of small things before I get to the next thing.

On the website, there's something that we need to put on the website, but there's a glitch going on right now with Shopify.

We use Shopify as our e-commerce platform.

We have a plug-in for freight, which works great.

And then we have a plug-in for UPS for other items that ship from other warehouses.

So something shipped from California, something shipped from Georgia, and then the freight ships from Illinois.

And it was working fine.

It was working great, where if you ordered sealer from Jon, you ordered pigment from Georgia, and you ordered a pallet, it would calculate all the shipping correctly, and it would add it correctly in the cart.

But what it's doing right now, and it just started doing it, I don't know, a month ago, is it's only pulling one rate, which is usually the UPS rate.

So people order all the stuff, and they'll say, shipping's $22.

Well, of course, a pallet of Maker Mix isn't $22.

$30, yeah.

And so then we have to call people and say, hey, we have this glitch going on.

That was just for the sealer.

That's not even for the pigment or for the pallet.

So we have to get shipping quotes, and we'll send you an invoice.

Jon has reached out to Shopify.

It's a known issue.

They're working on it.

They're trying to figure out why this glitch is happening.

But in the interim, we'll put a note on the website, but in the interim, just know, if you ordered a mixed order, meaning you ordered a bunch of different products that are going to ship from different locations, we're going to have to send you a follow-up invoice for the additional freight because it's not showing up altogether in the shopping cart.

Or just due diligence, anybody listening.

I know you want to buy, if you want to buy the concrete materials, then just do an invoice or concrete materials.

Yeah, just place an order for concrete.

Sealer, sealer, pigment, pigment.

Yeah, and you're just going to separate your order out into three transactions instead of one invoice transaction.

Otherwise, yeah, we'll just, I'll give you a call, but who knows?

Maybe you want to hear my cheery voice or Brandon's, and we'll give you a call and let you know.

I need to set up an LTL, unless you want to set it up yourself, which is totally fine too.

But that's a smart way to do it.

Place the order on different orders, and that way it shows up accurately, and you're able to do it, and there's...

Yeah, and hopefully it doesn't go on.

I mean, but, you know, I just, I did get an email even from Shopify yesterday where they said, oh, well, hey, try this.

And I'm like, okay.

So I went in there and I tried it, and, you know, modified the settings.

Like, nope, that didn't do it.

In fact, it made it worse.

So I had to back it all out again, put everything back.

And so we'll see.

They say they're working on it.

We'll see how long it takes.

Yeah, I'm sure they have a whole team working around the clock right now.

They're working in shifts.

Yeah, massive team.

Yeah, yeah.

A task force.

You hear what's happening for Kodiak Pro?

They got a task force.

Get on it.

I need answers now.

Assemble the A team.

I'm sure that's what's happening.

Yeah.

The next little small update is we've updated, well, they'll be updated today, the mix designs on the website.

So there's some small tweaks to the mix designs on the Kodiak Pro website.

So when you go to download Maker Mix or RadMix mix recipes, they're going to be updated as of today.

So look for that.

And I'd recommend you go and download those just because there's some small little tweaks to it.

Nothing major, but some small tweaks.

Yeah, nothing major.

No, hopefully just over the years and talking to people, common language is one of the things.

We dealt with everything from glass fiber as a percentage, and everybody's used to that, and PVA was all based on grams, but we didn't understand that.

So I just tried to get everything more into a common language for everybody.

Because that's where the misconceptions or the mistakes happen, is we're not speaking the same language sometimes.

Exactly.

I'm like, well, why do you do that?

Well, that's a good question.

Why do we do it that way?

Screw that.

So if we all just deal with it the same way, that's like I said, with the fibers, is a percent based on materials and water, and we all agree to that, then yeah, then just do it for all of them.

And not, well, what about this fiber?

Oh, this fiber is based on specific volume.

Well, I don't know the specific volume.

Yeah, I know that.

So anyway, that was one of the things, trying to get more common language for everybody, more conducive to everybody, easier to understand for everybody, and create less problems.

I love it.

Next thing, I had a interesting email today from a customer, and it was a cascade of issues, but they're all good things to talk about, because I think they're important to address for somebody that might be new to concrete, that might make the same mistakes.

So I think it's a good idea that we talk about it.

So he reached out to me, and he mixed up three batches of Maker Mix, but said they were all inconsistent.

Hmm, okay.

Well, tell me what you did.

And so he said, well, I'm mixing outside in the sun.

He's using a barrel mixer.

And the first batch got way too hot because it was in the sun.

Problem number one, okay.

And he said, so the second and third batch, I added an extra pound of ice and water.

Extra pound per bag or total batch?

So I said, okay.

I said, so first things first, do not mix in the sun.

Do not put the materials in the sun.

Do not put the mixer in the sun.

If there's a reason you're mixing outside, which there's sometimes a reason, maybe you're doing a cast in place, and you have to mix outside.

Set up a pop-up tent, or find a shady area, and mix in the shade, and keep the materials in the shade, because it's amazing how the sun, being in direct sun, can heat the bags of mix, heat the mixer as he found out, and create this runaway cascade of temperature, which is what we're trying to overcome with mix.

Especially your barrel mixers, man.

All your barrel mixers, especially the bigger ones, they're metal.

Yeah, they're just cooking.

So they sit in the sun, and you got that whole mixer cooking into this radiant heat.

Yeah.

But I mean bag mix sitting out in the sun, can easily get up to...

Right now in Wichita, we're going to be 102 today, you put the bag mix out in the sun, it's cooking.

So now you're trying to overcome mix, it's in 100 plus degrees, just the materials itself, you're trying to cool it down.

It's crazy.

So keep it, keep them, keep them frozen.

Ambiance alone is 100, guarantee your materials are 100.

Now you get them sitting in the sun, it's going to pop them up another 25, maybe 35 degrees.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's hot.

It's insane.

So work in the shade if you're going to be outside.

So I told them that, so that's the first issue, which you learned, you know that.

Second thing, I said the water, you said you add an extra pound of ice water.

In addition to the 6 to 6.1 pounds per bag, he's like, yeah, in addition.

I said, okay, don't do that.

Don't ever add more water because now you're going to introduce a whole other host of problems.

Shrinkage, curling, you've jacked the water cement ratio.

Do not ever add more water.

Be precise with your water.

I said, so tell me what you're doing.

Explain to me your process.

And he said, well, I put the mix in and the water, and I let it mix until the clumps came out.

And then I let it flash, set, and then I turned it back on and I add the fibers.

And then, hold on.

And then I added the TBP.

What?

You added the TBP at the end?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Dude, I don't even know how you got it to mix.

How did you get it to mix?

A, never get enough time for the plasticizer to actually be effective.

B, if you did, you're shredding all your fiber.

C, adding it late in the thing like that, you know, just in the casting, it probably ended up separating and turning to soup, especially at seven pounds.

I'm just shocked that he was able to get it to mix without the TBP, but that explains why he needed an extra pound of water to get it.

Because if you put it in six pounds without any plasticizer and you tried to mix it, especially in a barrel mixer, good luck.

There's no way.

It would just be a big ball of dry mix in there.

Yeah, I remember we did that when we were, let's say, the first renditions when we were with RammCrete, right?

And we thought, well, how simple this is going to be.

We just mix it up.

We make these modifications, bring in rad mix, and we just don't add any plasticizer.

And then we mixed it up, and we're like, nope, still too wet.

But when I say too wet for RammCrete, it was still this very moldable, doughish consistency.

Yeah, I could see if you got to that without plasticizer, you definitely need more water if you think you're doing self-consolidating.

And then at that point, if you dump in the plasticizer, then it's just going to go, you know.

Yeah.

So anyways, I told them the right way to do it is plasticizer up front, water up front, ice up front.

How much ice can be dependent upon the air temperature of where you're at.

But if you're casting outdoors in the summertime, I would at minimum probably be 70% ice, maybe 100% ice.

There might be, if it's 100 degrees, you might need to be 100% ice.

Yeah, I think for the first batch, especially if he's doing multiple batches, and not, let's say, cleaning the mixer out in between, so multiple batches, the first batch, in my opinion, this time of year, it would be all ice.

Yeah, it's going to melt.

Allow that ice to cool the mixer.

You know, from that point on, yeah, you could probably back it down to maybe 80, 20, 70, 30, something like that.

Yeah, you just said a bunch of numbers there.

It doesn't make any sense, but it's okay.

Yeah.

So anyway, well, I guess it doesn't make sense, 80, 20, 70, 30.

It's just the way you said it.

It's a little weird.

So anyways, I said, do all your water, do all your water and ice, do your plasticizer.

I'm not going to tell them about the pigment thing.

I don't want to complicate it too much.

I said, do your pigment up front.

We talk about doing pigment later just to help reduce error, but screw it.

Do your pigment up front, and then add 80% of your mix, let it mix, add the remaining 20%, let it mix, let it flash, mix it again, and then add your fiber and cast.

And if you're doing that, you know, 70 grams of TBP, maybe 75, up to 75, and that should be, like, it'll be a milkshake.

In this class that we just did, I started at 67.

Here's something else I learned in the class, which is interesting, is this was the first time I ever mixed a small amount in the Iamer barrel mixer.

I have the biggest one they make, whatever that one is.

Oh, you mixed that little one in the barrel?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I figured you had done it by hand.

Well, I could have done it by hand.

So it was four bags.

Didn't it just end up just acting like a slicker and just...

Yeah, so that was the problem.

So here's the problem.

The problem was, I can mix four bags by hand, but I thought, well, let me put it in here.

So I did four bags in there.

That's the smallest I've ever mixed in there.

Normally, you know, the past five or so projects, I've mixed in that barrel mixer.

One of them was like 900 pounds, but I think the smallest other one was probably about, you know, three, 400 pounds.

And that's enough mix in there that it has the gravity, as it's turning, to like build up and just kind of like push it through the blades, right?

But when there's only four bags in there, yeah, it just sticks to it and just goes around and around.

It's not doing anything, right?

So I did 67 grams, which has been my go-to now for the last five projects, and 67 grams has been like perfect, perfect.

I do 67 grams, I'm looking at it, I'm like, dude, this isn't mixing, it's just spinning around.

So I shut off the mixer, and it did all consolidate down to the bottom, but it wasn't mixing through the blades.

So I added another three grams per bag.

So I added 12 more grams of TBP.

And, you know, 12 grams on the bottom of a quart container is just like dusting the bottom of the quart container.

But I'm like, yeah, let me put that in there.

And that made a huge difference, just that.

Just 12 grams, boom, it was like even more liquid.

And at that point, it did start going through the blades.

It was liquidy enough that it wasn't staying stuck to the sides the entire time.

So it was sliding down.

But I told the class, really, this size mixer, four bags, would be the bare minimum you could get away with.

You couldn't do three bags in here.

And four, I would probably not do four again in this mixer.

I would do four in a handheld mixing, because it's just not enough mix for it to properly shear the mix.

Why don't we still just get you that 120 plus?

Yeah, or just hand mix it.

That thing loves four bags.

It's not hard to hand mix.

You know, dude, for like 15, 20 years, I hand mixed everything, everything.

I would mix 200-pound batches three or four at a time, back to back to back.

We'd stage them.

So I'm mixing this, why it's flashing, we're getting the next one.

Then why that one's flashing, I'm putting fibers.

Then why that one's, we're pouring that one, I'm mixing the next one.

And then why that one's flashing, I'm putting fibers on the second one.

It was just boom, boom.

And we just had this routine.

And we could cast 800 or 1,000 pounds mixing by hand, you know, and it wasn't difficult.

It was just about timing.

It was about having everything staged and ready and having a system.

So I've done it a ton of times.

So mixing 200 pounds, you know, I could do it in my sleep.

But I thought, well, we have this mixer here.

And I didn't really consider that four bags wasn't going to be enough to have the kind of the weight of the mix to like push it down as it's trying, you know, as it's spinning.

Right.

So it's lesson learned.

That was a lesson I learned.

But there was a lot of lessons learned from the customer that emailed me of like, here's things.

And, you know, he's probably never used a mix like this before.

He's probably used just normal sackcrete or something of that nature.

And so all this is new to him.

So I get it.

This is new information.

It's a new process.

But we probably have listeners that are in the same boat that are coming to this type of mix.

And if you approach it from the way you used to do quickcrete or sakcrete, you're going to have problems.

So we control temperature, and we load everything up front, so we're not chasing.

That's the other thing I said to him is, if you do the plastizer at the end, you're chasing the mix.

There's no way to get it dialed.

Well, and timing.

Even though TBP is insanely fast, I would still say you need a minimum of a minute to two minutes for what I would consider good dispersion time.

So if you got it in there, and boy, you already have the fibers on board, so I'd be a little concerned with that.

You just don't want to chop them up.

But then at that point, if you pull it out, let's say 30, oh, yep, that's what I like, 30 seconds later, no, the plasticizer is now activating and still trying to disperse while you're casting it.

And that's a problem.

That's a big problem.

All right, Jon, next thing.

You ready?

I'm ready.

I'm always ready, buddy.

Hit me with it.

Get me a wild one.

Furniture Design Workshop, August 16th through 18th, Goddard, Kansas, concretedesignschool.com Furniture Design Workshop.

This workshop is for anybody interested in furniture design.

This is really, again, we had some new people in this class.

We've never used UHPC or even GFRC, and they were asking me about, you know, what's possible?

Like, how thin can I go with this?

What can be made?

And I showed them some photos of things I haven't released yet, but they're prototypes.

And, you know, what's possible?

And furniture is, in my opinion, is probably one of the things that is the most underutilized or underexplored product line with concrete.

You know, I mean, we think of concrete furniture like benches at a park or a state park or a national park or, you know, a picnic table.

But there's so much, especially with the UHPCs that we have today, there's so much that can be done that were completely, you know, unattainable, unachievable even a few years ago.

And there's a level of quality that was unachievable.

You know, if I look at my Muskoka chairs I was casting a few years ago, I'd have all these like crazy runs and streaks up the back and it looked like the, you know, surface of the moon and it was just, it was very unattractive because of the mix.

I don't have any of that anymore.

So it's opened up a whole world.

But furniture design is one of the most difficult things to do well.

And it takes a lot and takes a lot of insight and knowledge.

And I've made a lot of mistakes over the years and I've learned a lot.

And so this two and a half day class really gets people past that probably two to five year hump of mistakes and gets you going in a direction to where you can be successful a lot quicker.

concretedesignschool.com, check it out.

August 16th through 18th we have that coming up.

And then we also have a basics class, which I've had some people email me recently asking if we're going to have a basics class.

We do.

It's on the website, September 28th and 29th.

It's going to be in the fall.

And that's if you're completely new to Concrete and you want to come and you want to learn the basics.

And you can read all about that on concretedesignschool.com.

Last thing, Jon, to wrap this up.

Yes, we got to start putting our heads together for a hoedown or something.

Yeah, we should.

I just, yeah, there's just so much going on.

With you, with me, with everything.

It's just, I know, there's always so much.

There's always so much going on, but we should.

We should start thinking about it.

Last thing, Jon, is things that we like.

We were doing that.

We kind of got off of it for a few weeks, but let's get back on it.

Tell me something, Jon, that you like.

Let's end it with something that you like.

Does it have to be concrete related?

It has to be, not at all.

Not at all.

Oh, then check this out.

If anybody's interested, these bars called Off the Farm.

Remember, I sent you the links.

No, you didn't.

These things are amazing.

You didn't send me links.

Off the Farm.

I don't know what you're talking about.

What is Off the Farm?

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah.

So, no, they're like, I think like some of them are protein, like a protein bar or meal replacement bar.

And when we were in Napa, excuse me, when we were in Napa, we were introduced to them.

And dude, they're just delicious.

They're completely clean, clean food, clean bars.

You know, again, so I don't want to make it sound like, you know, something you buy at the health food store or something that's got all the crap in it.

But still, yeah, look, I got a protein bar.

No, man, these things are amazing.

They're delicious.

So, Off the Farm.

That's literally the name of the company if people want to check it out.

So that's something I'm into right now.

You know, with my son and I doing the workouts and him getting ready for Nationals, they've really come in nicely, like when him and I are traveling back and forth to practice or whatever, to have something nutritious rather than keep stopping at McDonald's.

That's awesome.

I need to get some of those.

Yeah, but check them out.

I will.

So my favorite thing this week, Jon, is a movie I saw yesterday, The Bike Riders.

I was telling you about it.

Yeah.

It's a movie.

It's in theaters right now.

A couple weeks ago, I went and saw Furiosa, which I thought was great, but it's already outside, out of theaters.

It's not even shown anymore.

At least not around here, but Furiosa was really good.

Yeah, it like bombed for some reason.

I can't wait for it.

Yeah, Furiosa.

I don't know why it would bomb.

It was really good.

Furiosa was, the cinematography, the music, everything was just tip top.

I thought Furiosa was great, but it's out of the theaters.

But what's in theaters right now is The Bike Riders with Tom Hardy, and it's about, you know, an outlaw motorcycle gang in the 1960s.

And it's based on kind of a true, true, true story.

A guy documented this biker gang, and the movie is based on that.

But it's really good.

So The Bike Riders, if you like playing hooky one day, which I do when I'm working, I like to just take a day midweek or early in the week when nobody's at the movie theater, and just go watch a movie.

Go watch The Bike Riders.

I think you'll like it.

So that's my thing of the week that I like.

So you want to end it on that?

Let's do it, man.

That's a good one.

All right, bro.

I think my off the farm was better though.

You're probably right, Jon.

You know, not even probably.

You are right.

You're 100% right.

I'm right.

I'm so much better.

Yes, you're way better.

Yeah, I got to go see that movie though.

You should.

Yeah.

Okay.

Until next week, Jon Schuler, adios, adios, amigo.