Elevating Sportswear ft. TravisMathew CEO Ryan Ellis | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby Ep. 48

26:27And then, you know, we have a lot of leverage because of our brand. And so we can utilize that leverage to say, no, obviously, you know, employee costs, all that goes up, but it's, it's all part of the planning process. Nothing, nothing's happened other than, you know, that, that big shift in 22 that, that we haven't been able to manage. Like I'll use the heater as an example one of the signature shirts It's like hasn't really went up too much in the last couple years It's been like it's always been like 60 bucks and one of the big things with heaters That's been really cool as we changed the fabrication To an eco-friendly fabric and that's been a big initiative of ours.

26:58What's tough about eco is You know every garment that you do eco for the most part It's gonna cost you another 50 cents to a dollar So heater was a huge win for the company where we're able to take a sustainable fabric in one of our core pieces which is hard to do to up that cost, and yet keep the price the same and still, and everyone's making good margin on it. So just one of those fortunate things where we found an incredible fabric at the right price, and obviously we hit a volume and have a great partner overseas that's given us the pricing we need to make that volume. Hopefully, what about acquiring those facilities yourself?

27:31Do you guys have any fabric distributors that you guys own, or you guys are all in the properties? No, you know, I think that gets really tricky. I think sometimes you got to look there was a time at Travis Matthew where we try to own everything like we had our own warehouse We did everything ourselves and I think as you get bigger. It's like You're better off specializing like it's a distraction What would happen was and I was actually talking to another apparel company who's thinking about buying theirs I just warned them because they're like the 40 million range in revenue And I said what I'd warn you of it all sounds good But is it really cheaper than 3p L-ing and if you 3p L how much headache does it you're talking about warehousing?

28:08do you want to take on 80 employees, 80 more employees? And that's not a job where the employee is like the most satisfied employee. Like they're trying to work into other jobs most of the time. And so, yeah, to me, it's like keep the eye on the prize. We have so much here to go grab. Let's just keep going for it. Now, what do you think when you became CEO, what do you think the biggest sacrifices that you made to become CEO of Travis Matthew? That's a good question.

28:41probably my personal life, to be honest with you. I think, um, you know, you, you really have time for family and you have time for work and there's just not much other time. Like it was, it's really interesting. My wife and my family were out of town a couple of weeks ago and it was the first time they've been out of town. I feel like ever. And I was like, what am I going to do with myself? Like, I don't, I never think about like, Hey, let's have a guy's night or let's, let's go, but let me call my buddy and go do this or do that. It's like, you just, you have to sacrifice that piece. To me, it's like family comes first always, work comes second, and then whatever the rest of it is, is what it is.

29:17You just, in this job to be successful, I'm sure some people do that well. It's not for me. I wouldn't feel right about not dedicating the appropriate time to both the other places, but it's not really a sacrifice for me because I get to hang with my family. I get to do a lot of fun stuff with work. I have great people and friends here at work, and it's like, you know, it's a sacrifice, but it's not one that I sit back and go, oh, I wish I didn't have to do that. I love it. Yeah, it's like, you know, you're living like a dream. Getting to travel, getting to make the coolest apparel, getting to meet amazing people.

29:49Who are some of the most amazing people you've met? I mean, Chris Pratt is like on speed dial for you. I'd say the coolest one we've ever met is Mark Wahlberg. We went to Mark's house and got to spend half a day with him. and one of the coolest dudes ever. And just, I won't repeat anything he said because he just went straight from the cuff and he was like totally real and just didn't, he wasn't a guy that you went, oh, he's holding back on us because like he might get in trouble or he might do this. Not that he said anything bad, but it was just more like he's sharing old stories of him and Leo hanging out and this and that.

30:22And then we walk up in the back, his backyard, just giant. And he's got this, you know, he's got like a three golf holes back there and you walk up these steps and he's got this target mat and he hits off it into the, and then he hit driver into the mountain. It's just the most insane thing. So Mark is definitely, I wasn't, I don't get starstruck, so I'm not like nervous around him, but I was definitely like driving home like with a big smile on face. That was freaking awesome. That's awesome. You went to his house in Vegas? No, in LA. Okay, yeah, he's in Vegas now. Is he still in Vegas? Yeah.

30:52I thought he's still in LA. I think he's in LA because he plays golf like every morning and maybe he's moved, but this was probably, I probably met with him like maybe four years ago, three, four years ago. Oh, okay. Yeah. And he's since started his own brand. So that was some of the conversation we were having about giving him some insights on apparel. A brand or an apparel brand? Apparel brand. Just to tie it to F40. He's got so many companies. The only thing I'll tell you, I follow him on Instagram, man. He is a plugger. He plugs everything. Every Instagram post is like, check out my underwear.

31:22Check out my shoes. It's pretty funny. My new gym. Well, give the guy credit. He's got tons of followers and they're interacting with the content and he's plugging his stuff. He's one of the best in the world at it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he can't act forever. And, you know, when you became CEO, like, what do you think the best piece of advice is that you received? Hmm. That should be an easy question for me. I'm trying to think there's, I don't think there's like one piece of advice because I've kind of like, you've heard most of my career I kind of blaze my trail I never that's why I kind of laugh when people are like well my boss doesn't this right it's like go get it right and that's kind of always been my approach is go get it so I've been more like I'm gonna go seek feedback but also like I can do this and I've been I've always been on I'll figure it out right I'll ask I have a tight circle, you know, six, eight people I trust.

32:23I go to those people with, with all of those things. I get all the right responses and I form my own opinion, which doesn't match any of them. It just matches kind of my line of thinking. And so that served me so well that, you know, I've thought about having, you know, having a coach and all that, but you know, this is serving so well and we're thriving. So that I kind of, I like blazing the trail my own way. So it's, I don't think there was one piece of advice anyone gave me. I think it was more like, you know, six to eight people during, especially I took over in 2020. Pandemic hits were shut down.

32:55No one can come to the office. I mean, it was a nightmare from that perspective of like, I don't know if the company's going out of business tomorrow or, and we're going to be shut down for a year. I don't know if I'm going to have to let a hundred employees go tomorrow. So it was like, you had to have a good circle of people going and no one had experienced that. So it was like, who do I go to? I mean, you go to Callaway and they're like every big company, they have a big company playbook. Here's what you do during pandemic, but that's not me. I'm not going to take that playbook and go, okay, we just do this, this, this, this.

33:23There's some of that we have to do, but like, so what I did was I started like over communicating. So I started every week I would send a video, um, uh, you know, either of me talking through what's happening in the business so everyone could stay informed or we would have our videographers like professionally shoot a video that was funny. I got one of the videos was great. We, um, it was like, remember when no one could get toilet paper, that was like a thing and I had found a stash I was the only one coming in here and I found a stash of toilet paper like I don't know how many rolls and so we actually sent every employee toilet paper and did a video on it like just being funny and we sent them like our designer design like a coloring book just for their kids because you're at home you can't do anything so it's a super super cool deal so we totally took our own approach and you know did we do it perfectly no but like because of that approach.

34:13It was so authentic to us. Like our people, that's our culture. It really resonates in our people of like, we're not going to be robots. Like when I do something like this, we're going to be off the cuff, but we're going to be off the cuff within some parameters to stay professional. But at the end of the day, like this is what people expect from us. Like our culture is going to be, we're going to go get it. Now, one thing I admire about you, Ryan, is that you became CEO of this company. Is there any characteristics that one must have right now to really climb the corporate ladder and dominate?

34:44Yeah, I mean, the number one characteristic is adaptability, right? Like, that got me functionally through and navigated. And if I, you know, were to go to another company to become CEO, that would be the number one trait. It would be, okay, who is the team? What is the company? Okay, now I need to start adapting my behaviors to match what the company needs. So what I do for executive onboarding is I tell them, you're not making any decisions the first 120 days because the biggest mistake you can make, and I've made it, is you hire someone and you've needed that position for so long and then you start running.

35:17They're going to screw everything up because they don't know your people, they don't know your culture, they don't know your brand. And so number one trait is adaptability to say, when you come into a situation that you're unfamiliar with or you're not an expert, because you're not an expert, even if you're, I'm the CEO of Travis Matthew, if I jump to another company that's 400 million, I'm still, there's still a lot of expertise I don't have in who their brand is. So I need to listen, I need to learn, formulate a plan with the team. And then I would say be decisive, right? If you're adaptable, you've got your group, you're comfortable with your decision making.

35:50When you make it, people want you to be decisive. They don't want you to make it and go, oh, but what do you think about it? You should have already asked what I thought about it. You've already come to a conclusion. So ask the people, come to the conclusion and go, here's where we're going and be confident in it, knowing that not every decision is perfect. But as long as you follow that process, you're going to be really happy with the results. Now, I'm a CEO as well. And, you know, to your point, decisiveness is like imperative, especially in my organization. How fast do you have to decide being the CEO?

36:19Like, is it on the spot? So I'm like extreme extrovert. So I think out loud. I talk out loud. I can come to a conclusion on most things extremely fast. I'll come to the conclusion before you wake up. Put it that way. Right. I'm up at my four. I'm in the office. I've, I've probably asked the people that I know are up at that time. And it's like, I've already sent the email. Here's what we're doing. And you're just waking up. So that's how, that's how quick I move. Now, you know, we have a pretty robust executive team now. And so what you have to be careful of is you need to get inputs, right? As much as just because I'm decisive, decisive doesn't mean I'm right.

36:57And so, you know, you do need to bring the team along for the ride but when you do bring the team along for that we i did this with our company goals and it was just dragging dragging dragging and i just said hey guys i'm gonna do these we're all having a lot of conversation they need to get done they should have got done yesterday i'm gonna do them i appreciate all the inputs i'll put them down and i think there's a respect level to that because it's like i'm sure in their heads like yeah we couldn't get this to the finish line as a team rarely happens but when it does happen you step up and go i'll finish it and i guarantee those goals were done in like an hour and it probably took four weeks leading up to that to get there and it's like okay we can't figure out as a team someone's got to do it let's go now um you're coming from humble roots right you you grinded to become ceo and still grinding and still grinding i love it and what um one thing you and i both have are kids and one thing i always focus on with my kids is like i wasn't handed anything yeah i had to grind like crazy like I was grinding since I was like eight years old.

38:00How are you instilling that same level of grit and mindset that you have in your kids? It's hard. It's really hard because my dad was really tough on me. So then my tendency is like I start going down that road and I'm like, ooh, ease up, dude. You know how that felt on you, so chill out a little bit. So I think that part of it's hard. I think the biggest way that I've seen, and my kids are old enough now, is athletics. I think athletics are so important. Not necessarily you have to play college or whatever, but that really teaches you that discipline. And so my son, he plays travel basketball, so he's got practice Thursdays and Fridays, and then I have him training on Wednesdays and Saturdays for basketball.

38:43How old is he? 11. Man, he's grinding. That's how he learns. Yeah, he's grinding. Well, he's also in jujitsu Monday, Wednesdays. So we've got him booked, and he enjoys it. Like what we've done, this isn't like Ryan put him in basketball. No, no. We played baseball. We played football. We did it all. And then he says, well, I don't, baseball's too boring. I want to play. And he was a great baseball player. And I said, okay. So we're not going to play. What do you want to play? I want to play basketball. Okay. But if we're going to, if we're going to play basketball, you and I, we're going to have a handshake commitment here.

39:15We're going after it. So that means the days you were playing baseball, we're playing basketball. So now we're going to go from two days a week to four, potentially five. Is that what you want to do? Yes. Good. We signed up for it, and I'll remind him of that, and I do remind him of that, when he's having an off day with basketball. Hey, I get it, buddy, but we signed up for this. We're going to practice. This is the commitment we need to make. You made the commitment. We're going to live up to the commitment. My daughter's easy. She plays travel volleyball. She went from swimming, amazing. She's super tall.

39:43She's 5 '9 1⁄2 at 13. She's played travel softball, was an incredible swimmer, like backstroke with the long arms, but it was an individual sport, So like baseball for my son, she just didn't want to do it. So we made the commitment we're going to do volleyball, which we kind of knew we wanted to get to with her anyway. My wife played college volleyball. And she's got, you know, four days a week practices, tournaments that have like eight games. And she's already, she's more like me. My son is happy-go-lucky. And he just, he's like master, you know, jack of all trades, maybe not master of none.

40:17Like he just graded everything, but he doesn't like, he wants to jump. She's like locked in on volleyball. It's all she talks about. She gets done with her season. And she's like, I want to talk to you about what I'm going to do next year. And here's what I'm thinking. And she's locked in. So I don't have to worry about her. I don't have to worry about my son either. He's an incredible kid. But a little bit on the discipline piece to say, hey, we're sticking with this. We committed to it. At what age did you make him commit to basketball? Just a year ago. So, yeah, he had. Ten years old. Ten years old.

40:45We made the commitment. Yeah, it's a little. Again, you see, you know, he's been playing baseball since he was three. So you see all the crazies. And it's like, and I also, I've seen kids from three to 10 and I've seen the five-year-olds that are dominant that at 10, they're just caught up to. And it's like, give the kids a life. I mean, this is, you know, they only get one chance to be five. Like, let's not, let's not have them, you know, but they're at, at 10, 11, they're, the lights are on. You know, they know what's going on. And it is, it is time now to start teaching them like real discipline.

41:14And, and look, we're going to have our times to be a kid, but we're also going to like have some times that we start learning what serious things are. Yeah. And you're right. athletics do teach that to kids really young and it is of paramount importance for parents to make sure that their kids are locked in on sports and he's going in on 12 in october so not to scare anybody out there that's like 10 really it's i mean really for me it was almost 11 and now he'll be he'll be 12 in october awesome now as ceo of travis matthew do you have any big fears Oh, a million. Yeah. I mean. What's the biggest?

41:49Failure. That's not a possibility with Travis Matthew.

41:55Yeah. I mean, I think the fears with Travis Matthew are staying relevant as we age, right? So like I came into the business at 26. So pretty good perspective on like young people, you know, what's cool, all that. and then you know 43 now and you know luckily I've got kids that are keeping me young but at the end of the day like I don't want our customer aging with me right like if our target's 30 to 55 I don't want it tomorrow to be 31 or in a year to be 31 to 56 and then 32 I mean you saw that with Tommy Bahama how they kind of just had a great deal but then they just kept aging out and pretty soon like it's not appealing for a 25 year old guy for the most part to wear what a seven-year-old guy wants to wear because the seven-year-old guy is not thinking about style.

42:46He's like, I just want to wear something comfortable. I don't really care how it looks. Just give me something comfortable. I think that's probably the biggest fear that I think we overcome pretty well because we have it in the forefront of our minds all the time. We're always thinking about that when we're building product and building marketing and all that, but that would probably be the biggest fear is that we age out because we're in such a sweet spot for that guy right now. If we can stay in that lane, a billion's coming. And how are you like overcoming that fear? Like how are you staying so relevant to the youth?

43:19Well, I think one, bringing in more creative people that, you know, have a better perspective in both marketing, in product, on youth, right? So it's bringing the right people in. I think it's... Reggie Bush, that line was like, you know, hit the youth. Killed it, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, in bringing in doing that, like finding the right ambassadors that really represent the brand the right way. We've got, you know, if you think about retail, 56 retail stores, we've got an extremely youthful staff there. And just in general, the Travis Matthew team is very young. So, you know, we do a lot of company surveys and things like that.

43:58We do a lot of market research. So it's just a topic that's forever on mind. And we're the one thing we do obsessively, too, is we shop. We shop like crazy and we're always looking for what's in the market. And again, it's not Ryan shopping. I shop a lot. We've got a team of now we've got 25 designers and between PLM and merch, 15 merchandisers. So we've got a really robust team that all are out there bringing and presenting new ideas. So that's the key is like as much as we have a formula on what works is allowing the ideas to flow free and then the team collectively agreeing which ideas work.

44:38Now, having been running the company since, what, 26, now you're 43. That's 17 years. Yep. What do you think the biggest hurdle is that you've overcome in that time frame? The biggest hurdle was for sure the start. You know, we were, it's an interesting story, we were probably like a year in, and it was just Joey, our designer, and myself. And, you know, what was tricky is we had Travis Brasher, who was working at Seacliff Country Club as a pro because we couldn't afford him yet. He was kind of running financials. But it was a ship without a captain because I wasn't the captain. I was busy trying to get orders.

45:13I was getting orders, putting them in the system, shipping them. There was no one-year, two-year planning. What are we going to do? Where are we going to go? I'm just like, I got to sell more stuff. We got to make more product. Our investor was very wishy-washy on the brand at the time, as he should be. He's investing his money and we were doing, I think, half a million halfway through our second year. And Travis was a little unsure about me and about where this is going. He didn't work inside with me, so we didn't have a relationship at the time. We ended up developing an incredible relationship.

45:47And so I think our investor was very close to saying, this was fun. Got to make golf clothing for a year. I don't want to put any more money in this. And I was getting that sentiment because I could feel it through Travis of like, this is not going well. And I kept telling Travis, you've got one salesperson, me. We had a wholesale business. We didn't have e-commerce at the time. To go do half a million, the average order is like$2 ,500. You know how many doors I've had to kick down to do? That's great success. And I'm showing them sell-through stories. It's actually selling too. It's not just me.

46:18You guys made a product that I've cut up and chopped and sold to a customer that's actually, we've got something here. It's not perfect. Our neighbors, or excuse me, our investors next door neighbor comes to his house, head to toe Travis Matthew, has no idea he's the founder of Travis Matthew. Knocks on his door. Yeah, whatever, whatever's name. What's going on? I wanted to tell you, I just got this outfit from Travis Matthew. This is the best golf brand ever. Again, we were pretty much golf at the time. I love and just rants and raves and it's just the stroke of luck in life that that happens and then he comes in I don't know if it's a day the story's better if it's a day but a day or a month or you know two months later and his and sits Joey and I down is like gave us some additional ownership said he appreciate what we're doing he's like we're going cut a million dollar check and that was it but I promise you that it was teetering it could have easily the neighbor comes over and says this stuff sucks.

47:18I don't know what happens, but it is funny little things like that where probably the outside person's thinking really one guy, but that's kind of what it takes. Like how random is that, that your neighbor comes over and tells you how great something is, has no idea you're involved. Like you're onto something, dude. Like it's, this is, this is a real thing. Like we just got to invest more in it. And then I immediately, you know, with that money, hired a sales team and then it, you know, started going. So that would be, we've been lucky. I mean, that and the pandemic, if you take those out, you know, I wouldn't have said at year two, there's going to be a billion dollar company or even a hundred million dollar company.

47:50But like we've, we've had slow and steady success and we haven't pushed too hard. And so we've just, we had, I think we had an eight or nine year streak. We grew between 30 and 50 % every year. So just a model of consistency and not pushing too hard. I give Travis all the credit for that. He was a little bit more of a stop sign guy, and I'm like, green light, let's go. Like, I want to grow, grow, grow, grow, and he did a great job of slowing us down in times we could have done a lot more to grow at the appropriate speed. When were those times you could have grown a lot more?

48:25You know, probably 14 to 19, you know, somewhere in that range, 2014, 2019, the brand was super hot. And we could have gone harder on retail, and we should have, but when it's your money, retail is so scary. It could be up to a million dollars for a build-out. You hope for a three-year payback. That's just pay back. In a single investor company that doesn't have all the money in the world, it's a scary proposition. So it probably should have looked for outside funding to grow retail. We could have grown a lot faster and could have got probably a lot bigger valuation when we sold. And then, yeah, I just, you know, opportunity to hire quicker.

49:08We had an independent rep model that Travis and I, like, had a really good three-day session, and we realized we need to hire company reps. The independent rep model isn't working for us. Well, they're expensive, and you have to pay for their sample lines. You have to pay for their travel. So we did it very slowly. Like, we started one in SoCal, and it worked really well. So, like, a year later, we hired three more, and then And eventually, we got to, you know, now we have 35 company reps. But you can imagine that process was meticulous versus, hey, let's go do 10. Everything was built on ROI in the company, you know, up until, really, until probably I took over.

49:44And we still, for the most part, do that. But it's like, if we can't showcase getting our money back and getting it back quickly, we're not going to do it. So that was, so it wasn't just Travis put stop signs. I think he was speaking for the investor of like, you know, and I think it was appropriate. Again, even Travis, I don't think in 2017 would be like, this is going to be a$400 million brand. I think we all had sites on could we get it to 100 million, right? That was what our site was on. So I'm not a look back guy and go, man, I wish we could have done this different. Here we are today, right?

50:17Now you're on track to do a billion. But now the brand has more global recognition. Obviously, it's a huge national brand. And if you surveyed people and just you walk down the street, have you heard of Travis Matthews? One out of every two does. I've been doing it. That's great. That's great. You know how much opportunity is out there? If we have 50 % of people, we still got a hit? Know the brand. Well, 50 % don't, though. Yeah, exactly. A lot of growth there. But the fact that that many do, I feel like now is your opportunity to really, like, grow. Because now you can really dominate the market, you know?

50:49It's like if you were doing that kind of trajectory for the last couple years, like it's it's go mode now more than ever Yeah, I mean I would argue the Northeast is still a little bit of a challenging spot in terms of brand awareness You know a little less there. There's no golf Nowhere to golf there in the Northeast. They've got every private club you can ever imagine But they're private but it's not like as big as the weather. It's not like it. Oh, it's seasonal Yeah, for sure, but no, but it's it's golf is big out there and there's a lot of opportunity naturally being a west coast brand that doesn't make it to the northeast much like it's coming and it's slowly getting there but i 100 agree with you the the analogy i always use or not an analogy but i always say if i knocked on 100 doors of our guy's house of of a and there's a mint man in our range right which is i call it 18 to 80 um he would look good in travis matthew yeah like there's very few houses that you'd say no i think we hit them all so what does that mean that means like there's beyond i mean you look at what lululemon does in men's and no disrespect to lulu i think they do a fantastic job but our men's line is far superior to lululemon's men's they have the reach of her and so that's propelling our men's business because guess what's happening she's buying for him she's going home and then he's because i see him he comes to my office and he goes oh my wife bought me these lululemon pants look they have stretch and i'm like you've known about our brand for 17 years, we invented making pants with stretch.

52:15And you just learn this right now, but there's a lot of guys that aren't savvy out there. That's why women's is equally exciting. I think we've put such a good foot forward with the women's line, and it's her line, and it's her own, but I do believe she's going to shop for him in interest to a lot of customers that just, that man is maybe not going to a retail store, and he's not getting served in an ad and going to shop it on your website. That's where you guys need ambassadors is women's lines. And it should be like, I'm seeing it for me as a creator now, you should get a famous TikToker, a female.

52:53Yeah, well we have Molly Sims. Like Charli D 'Amelio or something to rock it. Yeah, well the one thing you learn about women's is because they move the needle, they are expensive. so the the and and honestly some of the in with us on the men's side with ambassadors a lot of the men we get like chris pratt they love to golf and so they're so into golf and they think our brand is the coolest brand in golf and then they see it translates out and it's like how do we just i'm already wearing it every day how do we just make something official here because i'm going to promote it whether you give me something or not and we've had really cool organic relationships little different on the women's side right so we're figuring that nuance out and again thinking Some women golf.

53:33They do. No, they do. And we went pretty hard after a female golfer who won five times, I think, at least five times this year, who's fantastic. And we were close, but, you know, unfortunately, we didn't get that done. But we're going to continue to look. And absolutely, I think, you know, we're doing the micro-influencer strategy. We have a heavy influencer strategy. That's absolutely, you know, women are following that. And we're listening. I mean, that's the big thing with women's is I have a whole entire women's team. And it's 95 % women. And so that's the exciting thing about women's too.

54:03It's me letting go a little bit. Like I'm letting them create and be creative and really listen to her and not have me jump in and go, I think we know what we should do with her, right? Like I have, you know, some impact on that team, but in general that team's running it and it's a female driven team. So they understand that customer really well. That's awesome. Now, I got a couple last questions for you. The first one is a personal question, but it's a three-prong question. Whoa. Okay, it's about goals. What's a personal goal that you have for yourself, a business goal that you have for Travis Matthew, and a family goal that you have for the family?

54:38And the personal goal can't be family. I mean, my personal goal is to try to make, it's funny because I'm contradicting myself, but my personal goal is definitely to try to make more time for more people outside of my family and outside of work. I think it's even my greater family I would put in that mix, like not my immediate family, my wife and kids. They see plenty of me. They're sick of me. But, yeah, I think a goal for me is to really like probably sit back at some point in the next few months and really write down like who are the people I want to make sure I get those consistent touch bases with, who are the people I want to make sure we're having a dinner here or there and that I keep close contact rather than just if I get a text from them, I reply back to them, right?

55:21What are the important relationships in my life that I really want to keep? So that would be the personal goal. The business goal, we already said a billion, so I'm not going to say a billion. I think the business goal would be, you know, I'd like to grow, you know, four or five directors at our company to VP. I think that's a huge jump. It really takes you from a really strong position to, like, write your ticket position wherever you want to go. And so I don't think we've done a good enough job doing that. we've we've hired externally most of our VPs and we've had you know there's there's I think three or four of us that have been promoted internally but that's happened you know three four years ago so yeah I'd really like to elevate and and really support three or four of our current directors at some point to get to VP level because it's just such a meaningful position but you know we've got a million business goals so that's one of many and then what was the last on family goal?

56:19Yeah, family goal. I haven't thought about that one. Again, probably like businesses, I probably got like 50. To narrow it down to one family goal would be tricky.

56:36I think, you know, it's not really a goal, but just consistency, I think is critical with family is just as my kids are getting older now they have friends right and it's a different world of like I think we're letting them kind of go where they want when they want and I think we need to create a little more consistency as a family of like hey like here's I hate the like family time because like my dad did that and it was always annoying and I didn't like it because it's like if you say hey on Sunday we're all hanging out as a family but I do think there's a little bit of that that has validity to say, hey, we're going to be busy all summer, but here's the things we want to do together and make sure that we get that appropriate time together.

57:18Because I think as the kids get older, it gets a little trickier. Two years ago, they just wanted to hang on my side and we did everything together. And now it's like, I'm trying to give them their space to do their things, but we need that time to bond together. These are really important years from 11 years old to 17 years old. This is kind of molds them and who they're going to be. Awesome. My last question, and I ask everybody this question. When you're in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's going to tell you? Settle down. You can relax now. It's okay. Everything's going to be fine.

57:53You can slow it down two notches up here. We're not moving at that pace. That's awesome. I love high performers. They're just like, go mode. God bless you, man. It was awesome to have you on the show. I appreciate what you're doing with Travis Matthew. I appreciate the relationship we have. It's been awesome. I love coming here and getting the Travis Matthew discounts at headquarters. Don't tell everyone. That's only for exclusive people. VVIPs only. Yeah, that know the CEO of Travis Matthew directly, so it's not open to the public. Thank you. All right, thanks, bro. All right, thank you. That was great.

58:28Appreciate it. Travis Matthew, CEO, Ryan Allison. and if anyone wants to get in touch with you for any reason, is there a way to get in touch with you on social? No, there's not. I'm private. You know, you're a CEO of a company. You keep it private. All right, cool. I don't want to get in trouble. All right, thank you so much. All right, thank you.