David VS Goliath Podcast – S1 – Episode 17 – Adam Chipponeri

Adam DeGraide:
Coming up today on David versus Goliath.

Adam Chipponeri:
30 minutes in the office saves three hours on the job.

Adam DeGraide:
You are listening to probably the best business podcast ever made in the history of the world, if Adams say so themselves.

Speaker 3:
Welcome to today’s episode of David versus Goliath, a podcast dedicated to helping small businesses leverage technology to not only help them compete against their large competitors, but win. Your host is currently the CEO of Anthem business software, a three time Inc 500 recipient and a serial entrepreneur with a passion to help small businesses everywhere find, serve and keep more customers profitably. Please join me in welcoming your host, Adam DeGraide.

Adam DeGraide:
Hey everyone, it’s Adam DeGraide with another super [inaudible 00:00:52], fragilistic, expialidocious addition of the David versus Goliath podcast. Today we have Adam Chipponeri from Foster Pumps. That’s right, Adam Chipponeri, from Foster Pumps in Central Valley, California. It’s going to be awesome. Today’s podcast is brought to you by Anthem Software. Figured I’d pimp out the t-shirt today. Great to have you where you can find, serve and keep more customers profitably with their all in one system. Blend of software, marketing, consulting. Take 120 second tour at anthemsoftware.com.

Adam DeGraide:
You can also visit us online at davidvsgoliathpodcast.com. There you can apply and subscribe to get updates on the podcast and apply to be on the podcast. If you’re a visual watcher of DVG, we’re on YouTube, we’re on Spotify and we’re on Rumble now, all with the video versions of the podcast. Pick your favorite, go watch it. If you like to listen, listen anywhere. Apple, Google, iHeartRadio, Pandora, you name it, we’re on it. We’re grateful. This is the DVG; David versus Goliath, where the big guy takes on the small guy and the small guy wins here on David versus Goliath. With that being said, let’s get right to it with Adam Chipponeri from Foster Pumps. Adam, welcome to David versus Goliath podcast.

Adam Chipponeri:
I’m doing great Adam. Great name. Good to be here.

Adam DeGraide:
By the way, you know that it’s the very… I tell people this all the time and you’ll appreciate this Adam. It’s the very first name that God gave anybody, so it can’t be… Well, I shouldn’t say anybody, any human. So I’ll take it and [crosstalk 00:02:29]-

Adam Chipponeri:
Likewise.

Adam DeGraide:
Exactly right. Every time I’ve ever met an Adam, they’ve usually been pretty cool. Usually is the key phrase there though.

Adam Chipponeri:
Let’s keep that going.

Adam DeGraide:
Let’s keep it going. And I got to tell you, I love David versus Goliath because we talk to some very interesting companies. As you know, I’ve interviewed people that own cemeteries and mortuaries to independent music artists, I just released today. Interviewed my brother a couple weeks ago that was also just released today when you and I are recording this one, and I talked to business owners from like three employees to 500 employees. It’s all over the map.

Adam DeGraide:
And when I started looking at your site and really seeing your business, it’s a business that I don’t know a lot about. So I’m really excited to have you on the show today because I… Obviously everyone needs water pumps and I have water filtration in my house, but I know nothing about how it gets there. So why don’t you tell people a little bit about Foster Pumps, what you do. And I thought it was interesting how you told me that you bought the company from a gentleman that had one employee, and now you’re like at 24 employees. That’s an amazing success story. So give the listeners and the watchers a little overview on Foster Pumps, what exactly you do and how you got into the pump business.

Adam Chipponeri:
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so basically Foster’s Pumps, we sell and service water well pumps, domestic well pumps, ag well pumps. We do a lot of work in the industrial market and in the ag market as well, bringing water from the ground to the surface. And once it’s there, we have systems that pipe it to different facilities that treat it, that do whatever the customer’s needs are with it. We bought the business in 2013. And like you said, yes, one employee, and we’ve gone to 24, and it’s been a fun time, a crazy ride, and we love it. We love what we do. That’s for sure.

Adam DeGraide:
I got to tell you, man, if you get up every day and you love what you do and you’re psyched to do it, and I was also reading that you like to be around people that have energy and have positive vibes going forward. And that’s where I think we drive so well together is because I’m the same way. I can’t stand bad attitudes. Even when I have them. I’ve had them myself. You’ve probably had them yourself too. I can’t stand myself when I have a bad attitude. It’s just horrible. It’s like, we got to get over that, get out and kick some butt. And you’re definitely doing that. So, how did you take that business from where you were; you bought it one employee to 24. Give us a little bit of some of the moves that you’ve made over the years to get you to where you are today?

Adam Chipponeri:
Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, there’s been a lot of moves. There’s been a lot going on. And I think the biggest thing is, is I’m not a fan of being stagnant. I love to see change both in my personal life and in my business ventures, but just seeing a huge market potential. I grew up in this area and I was actually an electrician before I bought this business. I owned and still own an electrical business, but we were working alongside with pump companies and I just saw a huge potential. There was bad service, people that didn’t return their phone calls.

Adam Chipponeri:
There was just a lot of hacks out there, employers that employed people who didn’t have passion and the gentleman who had it kept pursuing me to buy it, because he saw that I cared about what I did and I had passion. And we took over and the rest is history. Returning phone calls, taking care of the customer’s needs, and passion, that drove it to where it is today, I believe.

Adam DeGraide:
Man, you said something so great; taking people’s phone calls. I am still amazed, Adam, at how many businesses have terrible phone processes and it just drives me crazy. I even call businesses that provide services and the person on the phone has recommended other businesses that provide those same services over the business that I called. Crazy, crazy phone processes that many small businesses fail to train their employees on the best way to answer the phone. So it’s a novel concept, right? You bought a great idea, a great company, great product, you figured, hey, I’d be there for the customers. We’d answer the phones. We’d actually get back to them. We provide great service. You have a lot of passion. I would imagine that that has helped you attract some good quality folks at Foster Pumps.

Adam Chipponeri:
Absolutely. When we started, we were just doing four inch domestic pumps in small wells. And when I first bought the business, it was me sitting around wondering if phone calls were going to come in and they did, but it needed more than that. The customer base was there. But like I said, through answering phones through, through being passionate, through seeing market niches in other pumps that we weren’t servicing, I took a chance and we just started… We went all in. We jumped in the fire and started servicing the dairy pumps and big ag Wells, and it just went from there. It was a little bit of gut instinct. You take your heart out of it a little bit and your mind and just use your gut sometimes, because sometimes your mind will tell you, go this way when really there’s big opportunity that way.

Adam DeGraide:
There was a guy that I talked to years ago, his name was [Eus Mita 00:08:24]. He was business partners with one of my early mentors, [Eustus Wolfington 00:08:27]. They both have the exact same first name; Eustus, Eustus, but he’s Eus Mita and he told me. When I was sitting there talking to him, I remember, at a club up on the Marriott somewhere. I said… He was thinking about investing in our business at the time. And I said, well, Eus, tell me why you wanted to invest in our business? He never ended up doing it by the way, but he said something interesting. He goes, well, my gut I’ve always said is God to me. So when my gut tells me something, I believe it’s actually God telling me something through me. And I thought that was fascinating. And then the deal never ended up working out.

Adam DeGraide:
But that his gut is God was very interesting to me, because it was a different way of looking at it. And that’s what you’re saying here. You’re basically saying that, you knew how to gut instinct. The mind would tell you, maybe, maybe not. The heart was like, yeah, I think so. So there’s fear involved, but you said, now I’m going to follow my gut and I’m going to go for it like the old triumph song said from years ago. I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember triumph.

Adam DeGraide:
Follow your heart. I can’t sing by the way, as you can tell clearly from [inaudible 00:09:28] that one thing right there, but [crosstalk 00:09:31] follow your gut because there’s a leading that happens to us; all of us. And the question is, will we listen to it? So now one of the things that I think is interesting for our listeners. When we talk to our listeners. Our listeners watching the show because they’re looking for specific ideas. Now, when you bought from it, did you sit down and plan out and map out? Or did you just say, I’m going to go and do this today.

Adam DeGraide:
We’re going to kick butt, we’re going to answer the phones. Was it like ducking, weaving, blocking and tackling, or did you sit down and say like Bill Belichick would do on a Sunday. We have a game plan, here’s our first offensive series. Here’s our first defensive series and map it out, or was it kind of like, yeah, we’re going to see what the defense does, we’re just going to go for it?

Adam Chipponeri:
Yeah. Yeah. Good question. I would say for the most part, it was just jump in the fire. Like I said, I knew there was market potential, but I just went all in. I didn’t have a clear plan when I started. If I could do it all over again, I’d have probably developed a plan because I think that could be a strategic part of growth and we made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I lost some customers I may never obtain again through my trials. But sometimes you just got to go with it. And if you sit around and plan your whole life, you’re never going to get anything accomplished.

Adam DeGraide:
No, action. Action is everything, as I’m sure you’ve known because I know you’re a fan of DVG. I tell people, action is the life of the entrepreneur. Hesitancy is the death of the entrepreneur. Initiatives, by the way; hesitancy on initiatives and plans and structures and marketing plans is also the death of businesses throughout the year. So you got to strike hard, strike fast, show no mercy, as the Cobra Kai dojo leader used to say. You got to do that. So, with plans and [goals 00:11:23], do you now plan more? So now that you got 24 employees, you’ve obviously grown. You’re having different segments of the business you’re trying to grow right now. Are you doing more planning now?

Adam Chipponeri:
Well, absolutely. Nowadays I’m not out in the field. I’m in the office. I’m devoting my time to strategically planning growth and expansion and obtaining new employees and teammates. So, yeah, there is a significant amount of my day that is devoted to just strategic planning, all the way from what we’re going to do with this job. I truly believe 30 minutes in the office saves three hours on the job. So, that’s a big deal. We like to plan our jobs out. We like to really think about them and just get to the heart of it before we send techs out to do them.

Adam Chipponeri:
And man, it tends to make everybody’s life better. Even the tech comes back thrilled. He did a great job, and thanks for that little bit of advice. Had we not thought about that, it could have fallen apart. So, absolutely. A lot of planning nowadays. And where we are now, I have the availability to plan. When we started, it was just get out there and get to it.

Adam DeGraide:
I think you just said your little trailer moment, because DVG opens up every show with a trailer and you said, 30 minutes of preparation saves three hours out on the field, and that is profound advice, Adam, that you’re giving our listeners. See, sometimes when we’re just doing and doing and doing and doing, we’re spending two or three times the amount of time that we have, that if we just sat down and prepared it, we can knock it out. Even when I come up with brands and I come up with websites and I come up with presentations and things. I just gave a presentation at the SBE; the Small Business Expo and on their national virtual show. Well, what did I do?

Adam DeGraide:
I mapped out every slide on like three or four or five pages. Made sure that there wasn’t too many, and then practiced it, because when the time came, I was able to be on the game, save the time and be effective for the listener. The same thing is true, even in your work job. You got to get out there, you got to plan for it, because 30 minutes in the office can save you three hours in the field. Now, for the viewers and the listeners, describe to us what you actually do. So a commercial account comes to you and says, what?

Adam Chipponeri:
Okay, so in the commercial field, we’ll have business complexes that are getting low pressure from the city; breweries, many applications. They get city water that’s distributed to them and they’ll have low pressure. So we’ll go in and we’ll look at their needs, their volume requirements, their pressure requirements, where they are. And then we will work with our vendors and our great team to design a system to give them the adequate pressure they need. On an ag well, we take a well that was just drilled by one of our great well drillers in the area. We’ll put a big old pump in it in an engine and we’ll test pump it, clean all the sand and dirt out of it, see where the well actually yields and what it does most effectively and efficiently. And then we size pumps and put them in and put them online.

Adam DeGraide:
Amazing.

Adam Chipponeri:
And then just a lot of service; a lot of service work. We’re in central California, so we’re in a heavy ag part of the world even, and these people are farming crops for their livelihood, and to feed our families across the globe and-

Adam DeGraide:
Keep them going. Keep the water flowing, Adam. Keep the water flowing.

Adam Chipponeri:
That’s it. That’s it. And we’re truly in a market that needs prompt service. And I think that was one of our biggest growth factors was, I’ll drop everything to go take care of a customer of mine. Man, that is awesome.

Adam DeGraide:
That is a very big deal. We’re going to take a break here from our corporate sponsor, Anthem, Adam, but when we come back, I want to talk about, what do you do with residences as well, too? Right, because I know you’re doing some residential things as well too. And then I’d love to talk about some of the tools you use; actually use on the job. Stay with me. We’ll be right back after this message from our sponsor; Anthem Software. Stay tuned.

Speaker 3:
Anthem business software system is designed to specifically help small businesses just like yours find, serve and keep more customers profitably. We do this by providing you with the most powerful software automations and marketing services to help your business compete and win in this ever-changing digital world. Take a short video tour at anthemsoftware.com.

Speaker 4:
(singing).

Adam DeGraide:
And we’re back with Adam Chipponeri. I had to practice that a little bit, Adam. Chipponeri. I said, oh, like a Canary, but with a chip in front of it. Chipponeri.

Adam Chipponeri:
You got it.

Adam DeGraide:
And that’s how I got it, man. See, I’m not the brightest cat on the planet, but I definitely tried to pronounce words properly. So you just told us a little bit about how you can… you deal with the ag world there in California; keep food growing for those of us around the country and around the world. Residential, I know is also something that you do. What’s a typical residential product or project that you’d be working on right now?

Adam Chipponeri:
Yeah, so in fact, when we started, that’s all we were doing was just small well pumps for residences. We’re in a rural part of California, a little south of Modesto. And there’s a lot of homeowners out here who aren’t on city water. So they have to have a licensed well driller come in and drill a well. And then from there, they need someone to install the pump and to service it. So we’ll, once more, go out there, we’ll communicate with the well drillers, hey, what’s this well yielding? These are low-yielding wells, so we’ll look at the build plans. Nowadays, you’ve got to do fire sprinklers in the houses here in California, so we have to meet those specs. Sometimes it’s higher volumes and pressures. So we’ll gather all that information.

Adam Chipponeri:
It’s the same process as an ag well. We’ll size it. We’ll present an estimate to the customer and present pictures of other jobs and what we do and sell ourselves. And then once we’re awarded the job, we go in, pour concrete around the well, set the pump in the well, put… We do VFDs, we do bladder tanks, a bunch of neat stuff. So, it’s all relatively the same, but just different; in different applications, but yeah, providing water from the ground to the residents. And then now we’re hitting the market of water treatment. So these wells, you get what you get. We don’t get to decide what kind of water comes out of that well. So when we get bad quality water, high hardness, nitrates, primary and secondary contaminants, we are now offering solutions to the customer to treat the water, so that they have the best quality drinking water that they can afford and that we can provide.

Adam DeGraide:
I would imagine, pure drinking water is kind of important. There’s no doubt about that.

Adam Chipponeri:
Amen.

Adam DeGraide:
No doubt about that. So, when I was reading your sheet before the show, it said that you basically bought the business and started a business and you get up because you’re trying to stave off boredom in your own life. Do you have a tendency to get bored easy, if you’re not… I’m the same way by the way, man. If I’m not doing something. I have two speeds, Adam. Only two. I’m on and I’m off. So when it’s time for me to go to bed, my wife will tell you, honey, I love you. I’ll see you in the morning. Instant. Boom! Out. That’s it. I wake up, boom. It’s going to be a great day. Are we ready to rock and roll?

Adam DeGraide:
My wife’s like, dear God, can’t I just rest in a little bit. So, you got to keep the energy up. There’s no doubt about it. So, tell the folks a little bit about that. So, that’s a little bit of a character trait for you, right? You don’t like to be bored and that’s kind one of the reasons why you started Foster Pumps.

Adam Chipponeri:
Yeah. Like I said, I own an electrical business and I started that with my dad and my brother, and my dad was the leader. He still is to me in many ways, he’s been a great mentor, but I couldn’t lead the business. So I was stuck doing what came. I couldn’t say, I want go out and I want to go after that big market. I couldn’t do those things. So I just really got, not depressed, I wasn’t super unhappy, but there was something in my soul that was saying, I want to do something more. I wanted to go into PLCs and big automation in the electrical side and my dad and brother didn’t want to go there. We were very lucrative, had a great business, but I can’t stay stagnant. And even in this business, change is very valid to me.

Adam Chipponeri:
We started with paperwork orders. Now we’re on a digital platform with iPads and phones, and working now with you and Anthem, we’re excited to get that whole software going and really market our brand more. We’re very, very blessed and have a great amount of clientele, but once more, I’m getting bored. I’m getting bored, Adam, I need something new. And that’s just the way we’re wired. I think you and I are probably similar. But God created us all and he created me the way he did. And that’s just the way I am.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah, you know what, man, I love what you said, and I want to stop for a second because there’s gems in moments in this podcast where people say things, and I feel like it connected with one or two of the listeners out there. Maybe somebody, maybe a man or a woman right now who’s thinking about, they are bored. Right? And they are working for somebody else and they do think bigger and they do wake up and they go to bed with a fire that’s inside of them. I want to encourage you, the two Adams or will call us right now, Adam squared. That’s what we’ll call ourselves. Adam squared, our advice to you is don’t ignore that. That’s a very real thing that you were born to do something besides what you’re doing. And it doesn’t mean that what you’re doing is invaluable and isn’t important.

Adam DeGraide:
It just means it’s not where you’re supposed to be in the future. [Instead 00:22:27] the question is, when is that future? And hesitancy is the death of an entrepreneur, action is the life of an entrepreneur. There’s no great time to start something magnificent. The time was like yesterday, let’s get to it. Anyway, I wanted to make sure that you guys hadn’t missed what he said there. He said that there was something burning inside of him that couldn’t stop him. So you mentioned that you’ve gotten a little more technological, right? You’ve gone from paper to technology. You’re starting to do a little bit more marketing now because you got a little bit more residential stuff that you’re trying to get out there and do. What have been some of the challenges in hiring, recruiting and keeping good people?

Adam Chipponeri:
Yeah. When I started, I’ve always valued people. I truly believe we’re all created by a creator and I truly value people, but I just didn’t understand that in order to obtain good techs and good people, you have to pay them like they’re good techs and good people. And so I started out and I would pay them, you know what the going rate was. And I got the going rate tech and it was just frustrating, a lot of callbacks, a lot of customers unhappy with our work. Reports of guys sleeping on the job, comp injuries, just a bunch of stuff that was just killing us, and killing me inside. I strive for excellence, I want to see the best product come of what we’re doing. And so once more my dad, great mentor, he said, Adam, if you want good techs, you got to pay a good tech. So I just-

Adam DeGraide:
Very profound advice. Very profound advice from your father. If you want a good tech, you got to pay for a good tech.

Adam Chipponeri:
Yes, sir. Yeah. So I kept the same hourly rate when I started the business and I started thinking and running some numbers. I’m like, I can’t pay these guys what I need to pay them, and keep my rate. So I just looked at it, so in business, we have to make a decision. Are we going to go on the side of price or quality? And I just took the side of quality and it was amazing. I always thought if I raise my rate and do a better job, I’m going to lose all these clients. And all it’s done is given us more. We have really expanded through raising our price and not just to put it in our pocket. I don’t put that money in my pocket.

Adam Chipponeri:
I’m giving it back. We give huge bonuses. I mean hundreds of thousands of dollars this year in just bonuses and we’re charging a significant rate, but we’re performing a quality job. And these customers are not worried about price when they see that red foster sticker on their tank, because it’s a beautiful job done by a professional tech, working out of a clean and well stocked truck. We don’t go back to the shop for material. We have almost $100,000 on each truck in material. So when we get the call to go out there, we’re there, we fix it. We come home. It’s not a three day project.

Adam DeGraide:
Man, you said something awesome. We always used to call like, what do you want a Ferrari or a Hyundai? Not that driving a Hyundai is bad. Don’t misunderstand my point. But if you could have the choice right now to get in a Ferrari or to get in a Hyundai, which one are you going to take? A Ferrari most likely, right? That’s because you get what you pay for, right? There’s definitely something to [inaudible 00:26:09]. And if you can’t afford a Ferrari, I understand that then you have to do with the Hyundai. But if you can afford both, although Warren Buffet lives in the same house, by the way, he’s always lived in his whole entire life. God bless the guy. I wonder if he has other ones though that he hangs out in more. I wonder about that.

Adam DeGraide:
I got to do a little research on that. It’s never bad being expensive if you’re awesome. It’s really bad if you’re expensive and you’re not awesome, but there’s nothing worse than being cheap and terrible, because it becomes more expensive. Because if you hire the cheap solution, the totally cheap solution, and they do a terrible job, now you’re in it for the cheap solution that did a terrible job. Then you go the opposite direction. Sometimes you hire the most expensive and they do a terrible job. Now, your cheap solution and you expensive solution has now, it cost you three times as much until you find the guy that’s somewhere in the middle, but has quality here, prices it at fair. And everyone wins. And I think that is where we’ve tried to price ourselves as a business.

Adam DeGraide:
You’ve clearly tried to price yourself like that as a business. And when we come back, I want to talk about some things you’d like to do for fun, because you got to like to have fun somewhere. Although you said you didn’t, there’s going to be something, I want you to think about it during the break. I’m Adam DeGraide. This is Adam Chipponeri am I saying that right? Chipponeri. I got it. And you’re listening to and watching the David versus Goliath podcast. We’ll be right back.

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Adam DeGraide:
And we’re back for our final segment with Adam. I’m also Adam, this is amazing. This is the Adam squared show. And we are just so glad to have Adam. This has been a lot of fun, because we’re getting a lot of practical advice. Now I know you love to work. You said that on your sheet, you have an electrical company you’re still involved in. You’ve grown this, you’re doing tremendous. Fantastic. You’d love to spend time with your kids and your wife. I know that. What do you like to do when you’re together? Is there anything fun that you guys do that you enjoy, that you say, this is something we do as a family, connects us as a family and we have a great time doing it.

Adam Chipponeri:
Yeah. Quality time. We love to go to the beach. My wife and daughters love that. I’m blessed by all means, but I didn’t have a boy. So we don’t do the sports things and the fun stuff like that. I teach softball with my girls. I coach. On a personal, like me type of thing though, I really enjoy fishing. So that’s probably my number one hobby, but running a business, you don’t always get the time like you would like to. But also on that same note, I can leave whenever I want. And I don’t typically, but if I’m craving a little drop in the Merced River down the road, I’ll just go home, grab my pole and do it one afternoon. But I do make sure my priorities are kept in check and that my customers and my daily things are taken care of. I don’t dodge on my staff or on my clients, but when I get a free moment and it’s the right weather and maybe a full moon out there, I’ll go get on that bank of that river and cast a couple in. So, fishing is-

Adam DeGraide:
Yah, you and I are exact opposites when it comes to fishing. I’ve been fishing maybe once or twice in my life. I am so bad at it. I’m so afraid to gut a fish, it’s not my cup of tea. Now, it’s so funny. Now you could tell what my cup of tea is. [crosstalk 00:31:01] bass guitar, drums. I always tell people, some people love to camp. My business partner loves to camp. He loves to go out camping. My idea of roughing it, Adam, has to come with a marble Jacuzzi, sauna type of setup. And if you are going to put a guillotine in my head and say, what does Adam Chipponeri like to do? Would’ve been fishing and you nailed it totally. Now your girls like to go to the beach. What beach do they like out there in California?

Adam Chipponeri:
We go to Monterey a lot. We go to Santa Cruz, sometimes Carmel.

Adam DeGraide:
Carmel’s awesome.

Adam Chipponeri:
[inaudible 00:31:37] Moss Landing sometimes, a lot of good places to eat. I enjoy eating. Thank God I have a metabolism that doesn’t show it. But yeah, we love to get out the spots and just spend a day on the beach. And we have a boat too, so we’ll go up to these reservoirs and spend a day out there. And I’ve played hooky a couple of days and called in and said, Hey, my wife needs me and we’re going to spend the day on the lake. So we do things like that. And it’s not all work, but I do prioritize it. I feel like this business and my team here and my clients have paved the way for anything I do. So how can I put them on the back burner?

Adam DeGraide:
Man, I love what he said here. So think about it, listeners and watchers. He has a lifestyle that he can choose because he owns his own business. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of courage to own your own business. He was with his father’s business before, it takes courage to say, I’m going to go do this other thing on my own. And there’s nothing wrong with it. It doesn’t mean one’s bad or one’s good. It’s not the point. The point is that Adam has built a business from one employee to 24, where if he wants to take an afternoon off, he can. He’s able to have a beautiful boat. He can take trips with his lovely family. He can eat good food and have his metabolism work. I eat good food. And if I don’t work out for an hour a day, man, I would look like a train wreck.

Adam DeGraide:
And I don’t know what [inaudible 00:33:12]. I don’t think there’s anything I’m ever going to be able to do. I told my wife, Adam. She said, I watched back in a video. She outlined everything she wanted in a husband. And I nailed it to a T except for the very last thing. She looks at the camera and she goes, oh, and by the way, he has to have abs. And I looked over and I said, you know Crystal, you weren’t specific. Because buried deep within this are abs. You needed to say abs you can see. See? You made that critical mistake. God took you too literally, and we just started to laugh. Because when you think about it, family is critical, life is about living, but work can be life. Having a great job that you love to do, a business that you love to work in, employees that you care about and come alongside.

Adam DeGraide:
I’ve never looked at employees as someone that they work for me. I’ve always tried to treat them as if they’re alongside of me. We’re on this team together, right? Even when we’re with a client, you don’t want an adversarial relationship with your client. If I had a water problem, you want to come alongside and you want to say, Hey, I’ve got this. Don’t you worry about a thing, we’re going to be good. And that’s how you do it. You come alongside of the person. Now with this final question, I get a lot of different answers, but this is important. Courage. As you know, if you watch the podcast, David went out with five smooth stones. It only took one to slay Goliath. And I believe that is courage. When you bought that business, that took courage. What was the intangible for you that just said, I’m going to do this and to never look back?

Adam Chipponeri:
Oh man. Good question. Real good question. I think it really had to do with that boredom aspect. I loved what I did, but I wanted to maybe prove to myself and to others that I could do this. And, it wasn’t about the money. I just wanted to do something on my own. And I wanted to build something and say, look, and not for a prideful way, but just to be able to basically prove to myself that I could do it. And gosh, it took courage. It took so much courage. And I want to let everybody, all of your viewers know and listeners that you won’t look back and regret trying. You will not look back and regret trying. We may fail. I’ve failed at many things. I’ve lost a lot of money throughout the nine years I’ve been in business on my own. But man, you’ll never regret trying. You will regret not trying. I can tell you that. Because there’s been some things.

Adam DeGraide:
That is totally true.

Adam Chipponeri:
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam DeGraide:
And I’ve been thinking about the same thing this year. I just turned 50, Adam and-

Adam Chipponeri:
Congratulations.

Adam DeGraide:
I made it, I can’t believe it. In turning 50, I started to say, okay, what are the things in life that I haven’t done for myself that I want to do? So, I’ve done a lot, built successful businesses, exit, successful businesses, exit. I’ve invested in a lot of other people’s art. So you know what I said? There’s a story I’ve been telling my kids for 26 years, my two oldest children, my two youngest children. So my wife said, Adam, you need to make that a book. Guess what’s coming out in two months? The Adventures of Jackson, The Young Field Mouse. I also have always invested in other people’s artistic careers musically. I had an independent record label I invested, but I’ve never done a solo project myself.

Adam DeGraide:
Well, I just got done recording an instrumental album. That’s going to be piano, acoustic guitar in a string quartet. And that’ll also be coming out next year. And it’s the exact opposite of what you would think of me personality wise, it’s called Adam DeGraide the com. And then next year, Adam, I’m releasing another album called Adam DeGraide, The Storm. And that’s going to be all my hard rock music, if you don’t like hard rock. So my brother said something funny, because he’s like, you’re going to build fans with the instrumental and then your second album’s going to come out. And everyone who likes that kind of music’s going to hate this one. I said exactly. Because in order to be truly loved, you must be equally hated. My brother said that to me years ago. And I think it’s so true, man. And so you will not regret trying is what Adam said. And I think that is so profound. Adam, if you had fun being on the DVG podcast.

Adam Chipponeri:
Heck yeah, it’s been a blast. Absolutely.

Adam DeGraide:
I got to tell you, when this comes out, make sure you share it with all your friends and your friends that own their businesses. Tell them to subscribe because this is a place for inspiration, education and activation. You are listening to probably the best business podcast ever made in the history of the world if Adams say so themselves. You’re listening to David versus Goliath. I’m your host, Adam DeGraide. Thank you so much for watching, tune in next week. Have a great day.