From Flipping Houses to 20,000+ SKUs: How Lighthouse Co Built a Multi-Brand Empire

[00:00:00] Jason: prior to working with CTC, we were working with a few different ad companies, and I think the, the struggle that I always had was around data the way like we run the lighthouse business, like everything's very like spreadsheet.

[00:00:11] Oriented and you put certain num like variables in and you have a certain expected outcome. And that was a frustration that I had. It was like, okay, we, I can see how we did, but like, how are we gonna do in the future? Do do we have a plan for that? And it's I wasn't getting the answers that I needed.

[00:00:26] And like I started going to podcasts trying to, to learn more myself and. Just got as, as involved as I possibly could. And then I started to hear about CTC through some of these podcasts which led to, to the meeting. And then I started seeing oh, like these guys have got the same way we're set up, they've got all of everything down for the past 12 months and then now they're forecasting into the future.

[00:00:50] Brian: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the E-Commerce Playbook. I'm Brian Skanky and I'll be hosting today's episode with these two lovely humans visiting us from Lindsay Ontario. Sarah, Jason, welcome. So glad to have you guys.

[00:01:05] Sarah 1: Thanks for having us.

[00:01:05] Brian: Yeah, thank you here. Yeah. Yeah. Our pleasure.

[00:01:07] Always a, a treat to see you guys in person, especially after, you know, always seeing each other on zoom, windows and virtually and whatnot. It's great to get you guys visiting.

[00:01:15] Jason 1: Yes, it's lovely to be out to sunny California here.

[00:01:18] Brian: Yeah, no doubt.

[00:01:19] Jason 1: Yeah,

[00:01:19] Brian: no doubt. Well, I'm excited to, to dive into just everything today with you guys.

[00:01:23] 'cause. What you guys have built is, is so impressive. And in addition to Lighthouse, right, which I know we're gonna be predominantly talking about today, there's other things that you guys do and other things that you guys have built. So what I'd love to start off with, just to kind of get rolling here, is just to hear like the founding story, right?

[00:01:43] Like where you guys came from, how the idea of Lighthouse co kind of came to life. I know there was some, you know, business before that and other ventures that kind of proceeded that and, you know, some, some twists and turns. So would love to start there. And Sarah or Jason, whoever wants to take the lead would love to kind of start there.

[00:02:00] Jason 1: I can Sure, I can kick that off. Yeah, so Lighthouse really started in 2017. When I graduated from school, I was flipping homes and I would just buy homes, renovate them and, you know, put them back on the market for some more money. And we got this one property that we decided not to sell.

[00:02:19] And it kind of like. Ca us out as far as being able to continue that business. And my favorite part of it was doing all the like, high-end renovations, like the the kitchen custom pantries and things like that. So, but one of the frustrations that I had when we were trying to flip these homes is there was nobody in our area that was really doing that at the caliber or the level that.

[00:02:40] That I wanted to do it at. So I decided to to start a cabinetry company. And I, I'd never built a cabinet before. I had no experience doing kitchens, but I was pretty confident that, that I could do it. So I found a, I drove around town and I found a building that had a showroom in the front with the shop in the back.

[00:03:00] And there was a, it was a, a plumbing supply place and I just kind of convinced the guy to sell it to me. And, i, he, he took it back on a, on a vendor Takeback Mortgage. And we were able to get the, the deal together. And that's really where Lighthouse first started. We renovated all the, the inside.

[00:03:17] I hired a couple of cabinet makers. And that, that was, that was the beginning in, in 2017. So, from there we, we kind of grew quickly. It was, it was interesting trying to convince people to like, let me build them a custom kitchen. Having never done it before myself was, was definitely an uphill battle.

[00:03:35] And it was like a lot of like inspiration pictures of what it could look like. And really in the beginning I had this idea that if I just hired like. All of the best like woodworkers that I would just have the best company. And I realized very quickly that that wasn't the case. It was more about like really building processes and building a team of good people, like regardless of their skillset.

[00:03:56] And I think a lot of what we do now is we hire people that with little to no skill and we try and teach them, you know, proper processes of, of how we approach everything in all of our businesses now. And that's been been a key metric of our success thus far.

[00:04:09] Brian: The one thing that really stands out when you tell that story is how there wasn't you didn't go to school for this, like you didn't study this.

[00:04:15] It was just purely school of hard knocks. Learn by doing, put yourself out there, go sell the product and the service, and then kind of build and iterate from there.

[00:04:25] Jason 1: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like there, our first, you know, our first kitchen didn't go great. It had a lot of things that, you know, we could have done better.

[00:04:33] And it took us a little while. Like I stumbled across lean, like probably a year. A year and a half in, I, I'd read about it, but I didn't really understand like how to apply it to my business. And once we, we got that under our feet, we were really able to like, take off because now we had a way where it's okay, we're gonna run this.

[00:04:50] We're gonna see how it goes, and then we're gonna write down all the things that didn't work. We're gonna make it a little bit better. And we just do that like rinse and repeat every day in all of our businesses. And that's really been a, a key factor to ironing out all of the problems that we had in the beginning.

[00:05:04] Brian: Nice.

[00:05:06] Jason 1: Yeah.

[00:05:06] Brian: And then Sarah, like what would you add to that story? Obviously you've been. You know, you guys have been co-creating this together. Mm-hmm. So, would love to hear how you've, you've kind of fit into Yeah. The creation of Lighthouse. Obviously I know you're really involved with, you know, working with the designers and curating the products and the collection.

[00:05:22] So take us through sort of how you got. That part of the business? 'cause you have a pretty unique story of how you got involved with this too.

[00:05:30] Sarah 1: Yes. So Lighthouse Co was born in 2020 during the pandemic. And as Jason described, we'd had the cabinetry business. We started that and then we built our first home.

[00:05:42] And so during the process of building our home, there's just so many decisions to make, so many things to do. And so Jason had just said, just pick the lights. Pick the likes. So I was tasked with that. And again, it was during the pandemic, all the showrooms were closed. So I went down this rabbit hole trying to find lighting for our own house, and I noticed them.

[00:06:01] Some problems there where, you know, a lot of the websites were maybe a little bit antiquated. I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for easily. There was just some problem points. And I was at sort of this turning point in my life. I spent my whole life thinking I was gonna be a doctor and failed many times to get into medical school.

[00:06:18] And just kept applying and applying and applying. And I was also teaching singing at the time. But again, we were in the middle of a pandemic and. Singing was a no-no. Breathing on people was a no no. So, I'd been helping on the cabinetry side and yeah, Jason and I were driving one day and I'd been looking for lights for our house and I just said this throwaway comment to him and I was like, you know, we're already called Lighthouse.

[00:06:40] What did we just start selling lights? And Jason just held me to that and it was. Kind of funny, like five minutes later, one of our friends had called and he asked, you know, how's Sarah doing? And Jason was like, she's great. She's about to take on, on the lighting department for our business.

[00:06:56] And I was so mad, like I glared at him, right? And but I was so glad that he did that because it held me to it. And then the next day, just start it. Yeah, we, it just kind of took off from there. But it was, again, it was born at the time when showrooms were already closed. We were lucky we, we had a showroom.

[00:07:12] 'cause really you can't even get your foot in the door in this industry without that. But from day one, we really targeted it online to help solve some of those, you know, problem points of just, you know, the showroom's being closed and you need to find the lights for your home. Right.

[00:07:27] Brian: Would you view that as kind of like.

[00:07:30] Your entering of the market. And what I mean by that is, you know, selling furniture lights, like Home Goods has been around for quite some time, right? It's a very established market, a lot of key retailers and players. Was that sort of the, the opportunity that you saw was sort of this online curation or was there something different that you guys noticed was, hey, this is like really our opportunity to get in here and, and do something special?

[00:07:54] Sarah 1: I definitely, I think we did start with the curation approach for sure, and part of it was, again, solving my own pain points of finding things for our house. And what I mean by that is. You go to some websites and it's like analysis paralysis, you can't decide because there's so many options and it's just pages and pages and you're like, well, which pendant should I choose?

[00:08:11] There's 1000 pages of pendants, right? And why is this one better than that one? So we did wanna have a curated approach, and I think our site does reflect that it's really our own unique style and, and taste and aesthetic that's shown there

[00:08:25] Brian: for sure.

[00:08:25] Jason 1: Yeah. And I think that in our area, our view is that a lot of the.

[00:08:29] The showrooms were, were pretty antiquated. And they didn't serve well to the B2B market.

[00:08:36] Brian: Hmm.

[00:08:36] Jason 1: And because naturally on the cabinetry front, we had a lot of different interior designers that we were already servicing. It was a natural extension to bring the lighting on. Mm-hmm. With the same level of like customer, customer service and hospitality that we had been been offering in the other division.

[00:08:52] Brian: Mm-hmm. So it's, yeah, I mean, we. We've gone to showrooms together. You walk in and it's so overwhelming. There's lights everywhere. There's all these different kind of room settings, and so yeah, being able to select like here's the right thing for me is, is completely overwhelming. When you guys were you, you mentioned how there was a lot of these preexisting relationships.

[00:09:12] Before you started Lighthouse, that you were able to leverage, was it mostly on kind of the B2B kind of designer side, or was there a fair amount of kind of customers that you had already serviced, just kind of ins installing, you know, custom kitchens, et cetera, prior to that? Or how did it sort of take off from that perspective?

[00:09:31] Jason 1: For Lighthouse Co.

[00:09:32] Sarah 1: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Through the B2B, I would say for sure. And the reality is, is that it's a very small community and everybody talks, right? Mm-hmm. So if you, if you give somebody a good experience, they'll, they'll help spread the word and yeah, we've relied on that for sure.

[00:09:44] Brian: For sure. And, and, yeah.

[00:09:46] You guys are in, obviously Lindsay, so like how many, I guess, designers are in that general area?

[00:09:53] Jason 1: Well, not many. There's, there's not, I don't even know that there are any, but. We service, you know, right across Canada. And I think in the beginning, like right, right from day one, we were serving, you know, the Toronto area.

[00:10:07] Mm-hmm. Designers outta that area. And then up into like all of the, the lake house country in and around our place that that seems to, I would say, attract a lot of interior design jobs.

[00:10:19] Brian: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:19] Jason 1: Yeah.

[00:10:20] Brian: Yep. So take me through like the, the early days of the business. So start a website, you know, cooks.

[00:10:28] Yeah.

[00:10:29] Sarah 1: It was

[00:10:29] Brian: a start on Wix, so pre Shopify. Okay. I,

[00:10:31] Sarah 1: and. Okay. Again, I have a lot of formal education, but like nothing to do with design, by the way. And definitely not lighting or website design.

[00:10:41] Brian: Sure.

[00:10:41] Sarah 1: So yeah, it was Wix. I manually uploaded every product I was not good at. Jason used to just shake his head at me, watching me up and I, what was my excuse?

[00:10:49] I said I had to do it 'cause I had to know about the product. I was the only person doing customer service, so only person answering the phone and answering all the emails. So my logic was, if somebody calls in, I need to know what I'm talking about. So I need to know every product, so I have to upload every product.

[00:11:02] Mm-hmm. And he would just shake his head and was like, this is insane. And yeah. So I uploaded all the, the products and then I even remember it was Jason kept every day he was like, is the site live? Is the site live? No, it's not yet. I, I have more product stuff and my, my fear was that people would come to the site, they'd see it once and be like, oh, there's only, there's not very many products, and they would never come back again.

[00:11:25] So anyways, I think finally you said, you know, like you just, you gotta put it live. And we, we did get live at that point, I think it had 400 products, and from then, I, I let it go. Delegated the product, upload. We we found somebody to help us with that, just like a subcontractor. It was through oh, it was a fiver.

[00:11:42] Fiver. Mm-hmm. We, it was the site we used to help find somebody who actually ended up becoming part of our team. Funny story there. Oh, cool. A little later. But anyways so yeah, I really didn't know what I was doing, but it was a really exciting time because. Everything was new and exciting. Everything was just like a nugget of information.

[00:11:59] Google and I were best friends. I Googled everything 'cause I obviously had no background. And I remember when a customer would first call in my heart would race, right? Because I didn't know what they were gonna ask. I didn't know how I was gonna answer. But you, you just learn. You learn really, really, really quickly.

[00:12:13] And like Jason said, I'm so grateful that he had gone through the lean process with cabinetry because. That became part of Lighthouse Co from day one. And it was all about, as he said, creating processes and standards right from the beginning. And that also helps, you know, we're not a huge team, but as we did start to hire, it helped with the hiring process as well, because it was easier to transfer information and then build on those processes.

[00:12:38] Brian: For sure. Yeah. That's you're kind of poking at something I, I wanted to ask you guys about is. You're building this business, you're already running lighthouse cabinetry at this time, right? So there's, there's shared time there. You're kind of getting things going, starting to hire people. What were some of those things that you guys learned early on or just over the course of the business to this day that's these are like the principles that matter the most.

[00:13:01] You've mentioned like lean is kind of one of those philosophies, but I'm curious like what else? I know customer service is so, you know, important to you.

[00:13:08] Sarah 1: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:08] Brian: You know, what are those other nuggets that you're like, hey, like as long as we get these five things right, like it's gonna be okay.

[00:13:14] Sarah 1: I'm sure, Jason, you can speak on this more, but the biggest thing is continuous improvement for our business in general, and we start every single day.

[00:13:22] It's paid time. Every employee, they get 30 minutes of. Start of every day to make an improvement. And the goal is to be looking at a process that you're doing. If you're doing something every single day, just save even two seconds. Can you cut the process down by two seconds, make it more efficient. And the, it's just the aggregation of marginal gains if you're doing that day after day after day after day.

[00:13:42] It's very, very powerful.

[00:13:45] Jason 1: Yeah, I totally agree. I think if you can write out a process in your business it could be terrible. But just write it out. You apply it when you, when you do whatever you're doing, whether it's, you know, paid media, whether it's cabinetry or selling lights online.

[00:13:59] And then run, run the process. See how you did, write down what went wrong, make that better, and then just keep doing that again and again. You will get better over time.

[00:14:08] Brian: Yeah. I'm just curious for some examples that come to mind, especially ones from some of your staff, right? Like you're empowering your staff to think critically about how to make moves in the business.

[00:14:18] What are some things that folks have come up with, or examples that you guys have come up with in those 30 minute slots that have led to substantial changes in the business?

[00:14:28] Jason 1: Sure. I, well, I can kick it off for, for cabinetry, like we're a manufacturing business and our bottleneck or our constraint is actually our, our ability to sand parts.

[00:14:37] So the amount of parts that we're able to sand in a day is directly impacts our profitability at the, the week and the month. So if we can just say, okay. If we can cut the sanding of this one door from 12 minutes down to 10 minutes, this is how much we're gonna make, you know, at the end of the month. And so we start running experiments like, okay, well what if we like, instead of running this pass six times, can we get the same quality when we run it five times?

[00:15:04] And if the answer to that is yes, then we can eliminate that process. If it is, no, we have to find a different way. But if you can keep doing that, you know, and your whole focus on the month is to. You know, be able to sand that door better and you can get it from 12 minutes down to eight minutes. Now you're making a whole lot more money at the end of the month.

[00:15:22] Brian: Hmm

[00:15:22] Sarah 1: mm-hmm. Loss for Lighthouse Co. I mean, just a great example is ordering, right? We sell 60 some odd brands or something. So if an order comes in your average order could up. Maybe five different separate orders that you need to then go place with vendors. So just looking at that and saying, how do we speed up that whole process?

[00:15:41] 'cause once upon a time, especially back in the days when I was ordering the very, very, very beginning, you know, you're copying and pasting each thing, then putting it in an email, you think of all the overprocessing and the chance for errors. Mm-hmm. It's gonna happen while you're doing that. So you gotta step back and say, how can I speed this up?

[00:15:56] Can I automate it? Right. Other little things too, in customer service, I mean. Customer service. There's so many things that you say over and over and over again. My pleasure. You know, little things like that, or just standard phrases. If people are asking if something's in stock, you're probably using a pretty standard verbiage for that.

[00:16:14] So it's just even creating text shortcuts instead of manually typing something out and taking whatever it is, 15 seconds, 30 seconds. Can you do tech shortcuts? Can you use templates? Things like that. Save so much time, and like Jason said, it comes back to the company in the form of, you know, money because the, you're getting more emails out per hour mm-hmm.

[00:16:32] For customer service, right?

[00:16:33] Brian: Yep. Yeah. And I imagine now with ai, right, which is impacting all of us, right? Like the amount of use cases that that 30 minute session goes to Hey, how do we use this new technology to now do substantial improvement in our business?

[00:16:47] Jason 1: Absolutely.

[00:16:48] Sarah 1: I so wish we had it in the very beginning

[00:16:49] Brian: of, I'm just imagining you manually putting everything in.

[00:16:54] That is wild. 'cause now the Lighthouse Co has what, 20,000 plus skews at this point. It's, it's a massive, massive catalog. Yeah. So that's just years and years of, of compounding that. Yeah. And one thing that's interesting about lighthouse Co in particular is. You're curating and you're working with all these, these brands and retailers, right?

[00:17:15] So for a lot of people who are running e-commerce businesses, they're sourcing the product. They're maybe bringing it in house, right? They're producing it. But for you guys, you're working with a lot of these external partners to curate it, like talk, talk me through like how that sort of relational. Kind of partnership works and you know how you guys have found kind of strides working with all these different brands to, to bring 'em to life and bring 'em to customers via lighthouse.

[00:17:38] Go.

[00:17:41] Sarah 1: Hmm.

[00:17:42] Jason 1: Well, I can say like in the beginning we were definitely like, we just want to take whatever brands that we can get so that we can build out our catalog. Mm-hmm. And then very quickly, like we, we built a reputation for good customer service and then we started to actually dial the brands back that didn't meet our standards.

[00:17:59] Absolutely. Because, you know, if you're known for being able to. Feature deliverables, and then you have a brand that's sending out faulty product and won't stand behind it. Then it tarnishes our brand, and so we've had to pull back on some of those over time. But that's pretty much the, the way it went, I think from, from the beginning.

[00:18:17] Sarah 1: Yeah, absolutely. You just hit the nail on the head there. That's exactly it. Or if, you know, you never, in our business, we, we say you never wanna be a victim, and so at the end of the day, we had to look at certain brands, like Jason said, if, if they're taking forever to respond to an email to me, and I need that information so I can respond to the customer.

[00:18:35] It's just tarnishing our name a little bit, right? So instead of being a victim, being like, well, we're waiting on a response. We're waiting on a response. You just have to make the hard decision and say, even though I really like these products, if, if the service isn't there, we just can't have 'em on our site.

[00:18:47] It's just, we're not in alignment on our core principles. It's just not gonna work.

[00:18:51] Brian: Sure, yeah. One, one theme that you guys keep coming back to is the importance of customer service. I know that's something that you guys take a lot of pride in for your business, so yeah. What does that look like in terms of, you're talking about like principles around how you run a business, and I know customer service and exceptional customer service is a key to that.

[00:19:08] But from your guys' perspective, like what is good customer service?

[00:19:13] Sarah 1: For me, again, I, I was shopping for lights online. I had lots of questions in the, in the early days, right when we were building our home. And for me. The biggest thing I wanted was to be able to pick up the phone and just speak to a human and have them answer my questions in 30 seconds or less.

[00:19:28] I didn't wanna pick up the phone and have to listen to a menu of five different things and then hit that button. It was like, oh no. And then you get redirected to another person and you gotta explain the whole story again. It just wanted to speak to, especially in this day and age with ai, like people wanna speak to a real human.

[00:19:43] So that was really important to me, that human connection. And. Again, within emails, I think it's important to, to have efficiency and, and have these templates and shortcuts and things. But I think another one of our principles really is, you know, the most important word in any language is, is to a person is their own name.

[00:20:02] Mm. Right? Mm-hmm. So really making sure that every response isn't perfectly identical, that you really are adding in those, those personal touches.

[00:20:10] Brian: Hmm.

[00:20:10] Jason 1: Yeah. And I think that once you've got that part covered, like the icing on the cake is all the special stuff that you can do for some of your core customers over and above that, whether that's recognizing people's birthdays when we, you know, finish up a big job leaving something that's not just you know, like a, like a gift basket that you found at, at your local store, but something that's a little bit more curated that you might have been like.

[00:20:32] Thinking about over the course of the time. And it does, it's not always about money. It could be, you know, remembering that they, they've got a dog named Milo and leaving something out for their dog. People really appreciate that and I think it sets the business apart from our competitors.

[00:20:46] Sarah 1: Yes. And to add one more thing,

[00:20:47] Brian: please.

[00:20:48] Sarah 1: So again, back in the early days of me doing the phone and the emails and one thing, that I've sort of passed onto our amazing customer service team now is, you know, sometimes people are keyboard warriors a little bit, you know, they, they feel frustrated, which I get, and they'll, they'll, you know, write maybe an angry email, pick up the phone and call them.

[00:21:05] Don't get in a, a back and forth or anything over email. The, you know, the customer is frustrated, just pick up the phone and talk to them. And it just, it goes such a long way just connecting with the person. So that's something we still do to this day

[00:21:18] Brian: for sure. Yeah, I just think of picking up the phone to call you guys if there's ever anything we need to jump into, like just having that quick connection just kind of expedites everything.

[00:21:26] And I'm curious how you guys like now that Lighthouse Co has, you know, grown so much over the years. How do you think about that at scale? Right? Because I think one of the concerns, especially for an early operator is my gosh, it's great that I can engage with my core customers. Like early on, maybe when you get your first a hundred thousand orders, but once you start cranking and and scaling, that becomes really unachievable.

[00:21:48] So I'm curious how you guys still maintain that personal touch as you've scaled up the business.

[00:21:54] Jason 1: I think it's sort of like I, for most founders, it's sort of like an ego problem. Because you know, you, you grow at least like you grow, you start by yourself for most people, and then you grow that into something and you've obviously done a good job, which is why it's grown, right?

[00:22:09] Brian: Sure.

[00:22:10] Jason 1: And then now you have to kind of like hand that off to somebody else. And part of the problems, like as you get busier and busier, you have less of a window to. Handle that specific area of the business. So for example, if it's customer service, like you might be really good at answering that one phone call with the one customer, but you don't have as much time to answer all of the customers.

[00:22:32] And if you can, if you have a process of like how you handle that and you can find somebody that can focus on that like on a full-time basis, the likelihood is like they're gonna be able to do that better than you. Mm-hmm. And once you realize that, then your business can like scale to infinity.

[00:22:47] Sarah 1: Yeah. Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that.

[00:22:49] Jason 1: Yeah,

[00:22:49] Sarah 1: absolutely.

[00:22:50] Brian: Yeah. Speaking of scaling, you guys have just recently launched like your official US site. I know that we've been selling across US and Canada for a number of years, so congratulations. That's a, that's a huge win that just happened this week. But I did want to talk about, before getting into the US kind of expansion, more about Canada.

[00:23:09] 'cause the last couple years have been turbulent least to say. So I'm wondering how you guys have, you know, thought about as business owners, right? Like the Canadian economy, how the tariffs have it made impacts to not just Lighthouse Co, but you know, all the different businesses that you work on. You know, just take me through sort of.

[00:23:26] Yeah, this, this news breaks. You have of course economic uncertainty. How are you guys navigating that and started to navigate it when it all kicked off?

[00:23:35] Sarah 1: I think the biggest thing is that you just have to be able to take action and take action quickly. Right. Especially, what was it the beginning of last year when things were literally changing?

[00:23:44] Day-to-day prices were changing. So all of a sudden your cogs and everything are drastically changing, right? One day to the next. Shipping rates, everything else. And I think you have to keep a really, really close eye. Especially with all these tariffs on your bottom line. Because again if you're not looking at those customs invoices and whatnot, you may think your cogs are one thing, but you know, at the end of the month when you actually look at your bank account, it's a, it's a very thing.

[00:24:08] Jason 1: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:08] Sarah 1: So, yeah, that, that's what I would have to say. Jason, I don't know if you have anything to add, but

[00:24:13] Jason 1: Yeah, no, I, I totally agree. I think also on the more like macro level, like we've seen over the last two years, there's definitely been like an economic pullback in Canada. I think for our industry specifically is it's been a little more turbulent for two reasons.

[00:24:27] One we had a, like a, a large housing bubble in Canada, so we've seen a lot of pullback on residential construction, which has directly impacted our business. And the other reason is that actually a lot of our pro products come in from the us and so even though, there's been a lot of tariffs that have been like, that may not have been applied in Canada because those products have come from the us.

[00:24:53] They do get the, the tariff applied to them there as well before they come to Canada. So it's sort of a double whammy as it were. And, and Sarah said, like just to, to mitigate that, it's just acting as quickly as possible so that we don't end up two months down the road where we're like, oh geez, you know, wish we had, have done something sooner.

[00:25:10] Mm-hmm.

[00:25:10] Brian: Sure.

[00:25:11] Sarah 1: And pivoting, like one great thing is that we do carry so many. Different brands. So pivoting, you know, in the Canadian market, we need to push these Canadian brands and changing price points too. As Jason said, people are starting to hold their pennies a lot closer. Right. It's a tough economic standpoint that we're in right now.

[00:25:27] So just changing the products that we're highlighting on the site too, just. Maybe a bit more economical.

[00:25:33] Brian: Yeah. And I know one thing we were talking a lot about when all this kind of uncertainty kicked off was there was this almost at least this is my experience from America, was that there was this surgence of Canadian pride for Canadian owned businesses.

[00:25:47] Mm-hmm. Really speaking about that to your Canadian customers, how, you know, we're based in Canada, we carry these Canadian brands, and how that sort of allowed for a resonance that were, you're able to push into your marketing and talking about the brand, et cetera. Mm-hmm. Which is unique for you guys 'cause you play in these two different markets.

[00:26:05] So I'm, I'm wondering, you know, how do you guys think about running in US and Canada, right? Like, how do you think strategically about each market? You know, wherever you wanna start on that, because I know that's a whole. Topic in itself, but what's it like for running a business that kind of goes cross borders?

[00:26:21] Jason 1: Yeah, that, that's a, that's a great point. I think I think you're absolutely right with that. There's, there's a huge for whatever reason, Canada's news is mostly made up of what's going on in the us Oh, interesting. Yeah. It, it really gets kicked up. And I, I think it gets a lot of views especially with this trade war that's going on right now.

[00:26:37] So we see we've seen a huge uptick in. Customers looking for those sorts of things. Like, where's this coming from? Is it local? And I think, I think that that's not unique to Canada. I think especially over the last 20 years, it's become a lot more important to people that they're purchasing from a good business that is supporting local employment and taking care of their people.

[00:26:58] Mm-hmm. Because if. If you don't, then things start to fade away and you see jobs float overseas and at the end of the day, people wanna prop up their own local communities, I think, regardless of which country it's in. Which is one of the reasons why we're, we're, I think, branching out to having, you know, the US market, with the US company shipping from the US with US employees, and then also having the Canadian market do the same.

[00:27:22] Brian: Hmm.

[00:27:22] Jason 1: Yeah.

[00:27:23] Sarah 1: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:24] Brian: Sure. Sarah, if you wanted to add anything to that?

[00:27:26] Sarah 1: No, I think Jason covered a lot of that. I think again, it's, you can't treat them, obviously. They're two totally different places and we just launched the US site, so it's hard to speak too, too much on it. We were, you know, selling in both markets, but I think the advantage of now having this totally separate US site is that.

[00:27:44] We can look at what's actually performing well and how the audience is interacting and just to optimize both of them because they are so different.

[00:27:52] Brian: For sure. Yeah. It'll be fun to continue to expand in the US market, see how the dynamics are, you know, they're so clearly different, different retailers, different brands, different auction dynamics.

[00:28:03] So certainly more to come there, but an exciting time nonetheless.

[00:28:05] Brian 1: So, we're you guys just launched the US site? Yeah. So congratulations on that. You, you? So yeah, talk us through right. The decision. The thought process that went into, you know, going from we are Lighthouse Co. We sell in Canada and in us right? To having two standalone Shopify stores, two standalone marketing programs and everything that's entailed to essentially run the business as if two separate units.

[00:28:33] Jason: Yeah. So I think really what, what drove it in the beginning was just the, the need for clarity around. Data. We were had sort of everything under one umbrella and they're really two totally different markets that need totally different consideration. So just, you know, like conversations with CTC, around sorting out status, our ad campaigns. That's really what drove us towards saying like, why don't we just separate these and then we can treat them with the level of attention that they really deserve in order to scale them to full capacity.

[00:29:05] Brian 1: Hmm.

[00:29:06] Jason: Yeah.

[00:29:06] Sarah: Mm-hmm. And on the customer service side, there were a few things, like Shopify markets is great, but there are limitations and the store always had one main currency, so we had some.

[00:29:16] Some issues with credits and, and other things like that and, and refunds and whatnot. So this this helps for sure.

[00:29:22] Brian 1: Yeah. And one of the things we were talking about too, as we were working through this decision together was around, you know, we're, we're trying to spend more and expand more in the us. We know that there's unique characteristics about each market, and so we wanna make sure of, hey, knowing that different brands perform differently, different types of customers resonate, different brands and retailers compete in those ad auctions are just totally separate.

[00:29:51] Having unique setups, separate pixels, separate sites, separate ad accounts, was the way forward for us to really give the US market, which is a massive market. Compared to, compared to the Canadian market in order for us to be, be most successful.

[00:30:07] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I totally agree with that. And we're, we're still early seeing how this is all going to play out for us, but I think it's gonna really give us that lever that we need in order to, to be successful in the US

[00:30:18] Brian 1: one one thing you said too was you used the word clarity, and we use the word clarity all the time at CTC.

[00:30:24] I'm curious, like if, if you wouldn't mind sharing like. How has CTC provided you guys clarity into your business, how to make decisions about Lighthouse Co, what your growth opportunities are, et cetera? I'm just curious. You know, we've been working together now since October 20, 23 or September, right around that time.

[00:30:41] Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's been a quite, you know, quite a few good years together. And so, yeah, wondering how, you know us and the things we do and, and working with me and the team has really impacted you guys in the way you think about your business.

[00:30:54] Jason: Sure. Yeah. Well, I, I can answer that one. Like prior to working with CTC, we were working with a few different ad companies, and I think the, the struggle that I always had was around data the way like we run the lighthouse business, like everything's very like spreadsheet.

[00:31:07] Oriented and you put certain num like variables in and you have a certain expected outcome. And that was a frustration that I had. It was like, okay, we, I can see how we did, but like, how are we gonna do in the future? Do do we have a plan for that? And it's I wasn't getting the answers that I needed.

[00:31:23] And like I started going to podcasts trying to, to learn more myself and. Just got as, as involved as I possibly could. And then I started to hear about CTC through some of these podcasts which led to, to the meeting. And then I started seeing oh, like these guys have got the same way we're set up, they've got all of everything down for the past 12 months and then now they're forecasting into the future.

[00:31:46] And I was like, well, this sounds great. Let's sign on. We'll see how it goes. And I'm sure you remember in, in the beginning days, like I was, I was like very, like I was drilling everything. 'cause I just had no trust really. Mm-hmm. And it took a while and it was like they're hitting all the numbers that they said they were gonna hit or exceeding them like month over month.

[00:32:03] And then eventually it just became the case where it's this isn't really a, a good use of my time because a, you know, you know way more about what you're talking about than I do, and you guys are doing a good job at it. So it was, it's, it's, that's why we've been here so long. It's working really well for us and we know that we're in good hands.

[00:32:20] So that's, that's how it all came together.

[00:32:22] Brian 1: Yeah.

[00:32:22] Jason: I

[00:32:22] Brian 1: appreciate that.

[00:32:23] Jason: Yeah.

[00:32:23] Sarah: Yeah. And I think we're totally in alignment with a lot of principles too. Like one of our principles is where performance is measured, performance improves. Mm-hmm. And you guys are so metric based, which again, we love, I remember, I think it was one of the first meetings I think you'd had with him.

[00:32:35] 'cause we'd just had a baby. Maybe when we started conversations with you guys, you were like, you've gotta see the spreadsheet. Like you were just amazed with how the level of detail

[00:32:44] Brian 1: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:44] Sarah: That the spreadsheet went into it was, yeah.

[00:32:46] Jason: Which has now, of course, evolved into a much better system, the new Establ system, which is you know, better than anything we could hope.

[00:32:53] So yeah, we're, we're super happy with everything so far.

[00:32:55] Brian 1: It's so funny you'd say that 'cause that actually reassure or reaffirms how long we've been working together. 'cause that's true when we worked out of the growth map. Right. Built outta spreadsheets, you know, the amount of tabs in there was, was pretty immense.

[00:33:09] And then yes, bringing in Atlas and essentially just kind of continuing to, to operate there. Yeah, it's, it's a lot of fun. And especially for your guys' business, what I appreciate about it, and the challenge of it is in addition to two different markets, all of these different retailers, right, and all these different brands have such unique, you know, unit economics, they, they fit with very different types of customers.

[00:33:33] The selection of all of them is immense and overwhelming. Which is why I hit you up occasionally for, for some design recommendations just to kind of, you know, peer through it. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely been helpful to have tools like stats to kind of look under the hood, really analyze everything, and then get to, Hey, here's the most important thing we need to focus on.

[00:33:52] Yeah, I've, I've always appreciated working directly with you two. 'cause similar to what you guys were saying around, hey, like there's different skills that we have. I learned so much by working with you guys as well. So the compliments go both ways is, is what I'm trying to say.

[00:34:05] Jason: Well, yeah, and there's, especially on like key moments you know, like Black Friday is a, is a huge day for us and like you guys are.

[00:34:12] Take it super seriously. And like there's a, there's a full plan, plan in place, I think. It's sort of like taking a plane off the runway. You can't, no sudden movements on, on the day of mm-hmm. And like you guys three years in a row have just executed. Every single time. And it's a lot of assurance for, from, for us, like watching from the distance, making sure that everything goes off that hitch

[00:34:32] Brian 1: For sure.

[00:34:32] You're just getting the Shopify notification. Yes, I know. It's the chaching, chaching chaching sound. Yeah.

[00:34:39] Jason: Yeah, exactly.

[00:34:40] Brian 1: That's a lot of fun.

[00:34:41] Jason: Yeah.

[00:34:41] Brian 1: Cool.

[00:34:42] Brian: So in addition to, yeah, US and Canada, right? For, for Lighthouse Co. Jason, you're also building a few different things simultaneously, and I'm not sure, Sarah, how much you're, you're working on those two things as well. But yeah, take us through just how you think about the balance or maybe the, the lack thereof of balance when it comes to.

[00:35:04] Running multiple businesses. Right. And there's, there's obviously a lot of crossover in some cases with the skills and, and the people. But yeah. As like a multi-business owner, you know, building kind of your own kingdom, so to speak, like, how do you think about that? And Sarah, you too. I'm just wondering how that that all comes together.

[00:35:21] Jason 1: Yeah. I think what we essentially try and do is like we build a formula of what's working in lighthouse cabinetry business. Very much the same formula that's in Lighthouse Co. And then just keep applying that to other businesses. And I'm not sure if having so many businesses necessarily is the best approach as opposed to just focusing on one, but it's more just comes from passion.

[00:35:43] I've, I've, we just started or we're just launching, I should say a, a new company. It's a ERP software called Manu Link. And really. What that is doing is it's, it's creating a software environment that can apply some of the formulas that we were talking about earlier to, to many different businesses.

[00:36:00] And I had built it out and had it running in cabinetry and now we're, we're running it on, on Lighthouse Co. And it was just like more like desire, like there's, there's really no offerings for us to just like pay for something. Otherwise, I, I never would've built it. Mm-hmm. But that's, that's where it came from, and it's been, it's been a fun ride and just like cranking it all day around the clock, trying to get it done.

[00:36:22] I, I don't know that balance is the right word but that's you kind of sign up for that when, when you wanna be a business owner and oh I'm certainly not complaining. We're, we're very fortunate to be where we're at and have the ability to to do it because it's not, not everybody that, that gets to wake up and do that every day,

[00:36:38] Brian: for sure.

[00:36:39] Sarah 1: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I agree, and I think you really hit the nail on the head. It's also just having those processes that you had in the other businesses, that foundation, it makes it easier to start, you know, a new business if you have that, that foundation there to build off, right? Those principles of, you know, the continuous improvement and, yeah.

[00:36:57] Brian: And you got, oh, go ahead, Jason.

[00:36:59] Jason 1: Well, I was just gonna say, so the, the other company that we're we're just starting is a Western apparel company. Drum, Heller, Western. And it's Sarah's exactly right. All of the, basically just change the letterhead on a lot of these things. Like you're, you're hiring new people, you have to go through all of your policies.

[00:37:14] And then when it comes time to actually like doing deliverables on work, it's it's the same system. Just with a different company letter head on. And that saves a lot of time. And you know, it works 'cause you've done it for years.

[00:37:26] Brian: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:26] Jason 1: Right. So that's a big bonus

[00:37:28] Brian: for sure. And you guys have, if I'm not mistaken, like you structure in such a way that.

[00:37:33] There are people who you work with or, and I've worked with for, for a number of years who participate in kind of the expansion, right? Absolutely. So some of the folks who are working on like the Shopify side of things and the marketing side of things, like they can step in and help kind of diversify this portfolio and lean in and you already have relational equity with those people.

[00:37:51] There's trust built, they know how to execute. So it also kind of parlays nicely into launching. A new brand.

[00:37:59] Absolutely.

[00:37:59] Jason 1: You're absolutely right about that. And not only internally, it's also like external subcontractors as well. Right. And the perfect example is CTC. Like we've, we've grown our business tremendously with CTC and we're also bringing our new businesses online into the portfolio as well.

[00:38:15] Which has been a, a huge help because we know. We don't have to worry about that. You guys got that handled and we can just focus on what we're good at doing on our side,

[00:38:24] Brian: for sure.

[00:38:24] Jason 1: Yeah.

[00:38:25] Brian: Yeah. And one thing too that I, I loved kind of talking offline about, you know, man Inc. In particular is, the way you described it is the only way I could have come up with this idea was by doing the thing.

[00:38:37] Right? Right. It wasn't as if, hey, I'm coming in, you know, as a software engineer. I'm gonna look at this market and I'm gonna apply my engineering mind to go figure out an industry problem instead. It was, no, I am literally, I have a, I forgot what it's called, but like I have a line that produces custom cabinetry.

[00:38:56] Jason 1: Yeah.

[00:38:57] Brian: I run a business that sells lighting and furniture online. I know. And feel the pain of the problems.

[00:39:04] Jason 1: Yeah.

[00:39:05] Brian: Now I see an opportunity to create this solution. Yeah. Right. It's kind of like, you know, I think of like the story of, of Slack, which was like, it was an internal tool to communicate and share across the internal organization.

[00:39:17] Jason 1: Yeah.

[00:39:18] Brian: And then it became the product, right? Absolutely. It's just, it's birthed out of doing and using and then all of a sudden, ta-da. Right. It's another, it's another business.

[00:39:24] Sarah 1: Absolutely. We're trying to fix, you know, a problem within our own business and then realizing, hey, this could be used for everybody.

[00:39:30] Yeah, for sure. Across, across the board.

[00:39:33] Jason 1: I think, I think you hit the nail on the head. So yeah, it's, it's been super exciting. Which. Software's from going from cabinet making, doing software, exactly my forte. But luckily we have a, a bunch of tech guys on our team that have really been able to, to help us along the way.

[00:39:48] And the coolest thing is it's working and there was a really like nervous point where we like pulled all our internal systems and moved over to Manu, Inc. And was like, oh God. What happens if this doesn't pan out? But it's, it's been really good and it's been a lot of fun. So we're, we're grateful.

[00:40:03] Brian: Yeah. I'm just curious if you can name an example or two of things that, for your guys' business, lighthouse Co in particular, that it like really helps solve, you know, what's an example or two?

[00:40:13] Jason 1: Oh easy order placement. Mm-hmm. So, traditionally, like if we were to have an order if come in say six different vendors on the order even.

[00:40:22] Yeah. Let's, let's go with that example. We have somebody currently that is in charge of placing all those orders. And with Man Inc. We can a check our own inventory, check the vendor's inventory, we can. Automatically place all these orders without somebody needing to click a button. Mm-hmm. There's really nothing for our industry that, that's currently doing that.

[00:40:41] So that was, that's the most obvious one. The other thing too is a centralized database for all these apps. One of the biggest things that we struggle with in cabinetry business is we have i'd say seven or eight different softwares that are quite expensive. You know, like accounting software.

[00:40:57] There's the messaging software. There's our like our DocuSign, panoc software, CRMs, and they're all dumb data, you know? So like for example, like if you, if I send you a DocuSign for my business, I have a PDF with your signature on it, but your name is not connected to the database that is like our central database.

[00:41:17] Mm-hmm. Manually solves all those problems by pushing everything back to one central area of information and it, it really speeds up new features and connects everything so that different things are talking to each other. Like the the order example I just gave. Mm-hmm.

[00:41:30] Brian: Nice. Are you, are you in Manual Link yourself or just Jason's over here?

[00:41:34] Coding. Yeah.

[00:41:35] Sarah 1: Yeah, like it's been his project for sure. But I mean it, like you just mentioned, it's gonna be game like such a game changer for Lighthouse Co. And to add to what you were saying about the orders, not only can all the orders be placed, but there's some sort of acknowledgement to make sure is the vendor actually responding to the order?

[00:41:51] 'cause it's happened before where, you know, we go and submit the orders and we're thinking. Did our job, we're gonna process it. But sometimes they miss an email or something, and then what happens? The customer's reaching out saying, where's my stuff? Right? And then it's well, why didn't you process the order?

[00:42:04] So to have that acknowledgement back, and if it doesn't happen, have an automated email saying, confirming you processed. Said order. Sure. Again, it'll be full circle and really just the ultimate goal is to have better customer service too. Right. So making sure that the order was processed properly and every, every t has been, you know, crossed and every I dotted.

[00:42:23] Brian: Totally. I like how you bring it back to that core value. Right. You mentioned like what are the most important things to you guys in business? Customer service being at the forefront, and I think it's so easy too, in like a digital world to lose sight of that it's a human. On the other side of it.

[00:42:36] Right. Even in for us in the ad platforms, right? There's a human that's seeing this ad mm-hmm. And experiencing this ad and landing on this website versus just impression numbers. Yeah. Or roas, right? Yeah. It's just a whole different kind of mindset to have that. Speaking of like principles for a business, want to go a little bit personal.

[00:42:54] How is it co-running a business as. A married couple. I'm curious you know, you guys clearly have have been building these really incredible organizations, you know, how do you separate family from work and really you know, thrive in this sort of you know, 'cause running a business is stressful.

[00:43:13] But as much as you wanna share, I'd just love to hear how like you guys find that separation and clearly find opportunities to come to Southern California, have some, have some play and come see us, which we love seeing you guys. So yeah, I'm curious like what you'd be willing to share on that front.

[00:43:26] Sarah 1: I don't think there is so much of a separation, and I know people, you know ask that, does it get turned off at home and whatnot?

[00:43:32] But really it gets continued at home and I think that's important. Like the principles that we live by at work. The principles we live by at home, right? And like our, you know, we involve our daughter in that sort of mindset as well. And, you know, we love the business, so we're always talking about it constantly.

[00:43:49] And I think for me, I, I truthfully can't imagine, you know. Not, I, I can't imagine running a business with somebody I'm not married to. I guess in that, I mean, I think it, it's it makes your relationship so much better because, you know, on a much deeper level what's going on in that person's life.

[00:44:05] Right. And what I mean by that is, you know, if I know that Jason needs to, to code all night on manually or this and that, I'm not gonna be, you know, harping on him to do X, Y, or Z around the house. Right? It is I know that this is the priority. There's a deadline this needs to get done. Like we're totally on the same wave wavelength, right.

[00:44:22] Brian: Hmm.

[00:44:23] Jason 1: Yeah, I think, I think that's, that's true. And we, we really don't work together that much. We did in the beginning like when Lighthouse Co was started they came to all of the cabinetry morning meetings and it was just, it was really an extension of the cabinetry business.

[00:44:38] Brian: Hmm.

[00:44:39] Jason 1: But then it, there, it grew to a point where it was like.

[00:44:42] They really need to have their own morning meetings to just focus on that business on its own. And we have people from all over the world working with the company. So a lot of it's remote and it just kind of worked better to, to take that one online.

[00:44:55] Sarah 1: Hmm.

[00:44:56] Jason 1: But it's usually like we're solving each other's problems is the, the only time that that phone calls go out.

[00:45:02] So we, we link up on our, on our, our meetings and then if Sarah has an issue with some light that we have to, I have to send the cabinetry guys down to go fix

[00:45:10] Brian: Hmm.

[00:45:11] Jason 1: Or vice versa. You know, they're constantly helping us with all sort of like administrative stuff, tech stuff with our website. Just sort of like using strengths and weaknesses and blending it all together at deliveries.

[00:45:23] We, we have one shipping and delivering area for both companies and like some days they're doing lights, some days they're doing cabinetry, some days they're doing both. And that works really well. We save a lot of money. Being able to, to put those two things together.

[00:45:36] Sarah 1: And speaking of like strengths and weaknesses, I think the reason we've always been able to work really well together is.

[00:45:41] All of Jason's strengths are literally my weaknesses and vice versa.

[00:45:44] Jason 1: Yeah.

[00:45:44] Sarah 1: So as a team, we've always been able to fill in gaps and I mean, I think we're both very good. Not really telling each other what to do. What I mean by that is I'm not gonna march over and tell 'em how to, how to build a cabinet.

[00:45:54] However, I think we're also good since, you know, we can look at a, a problem and kind of say oh, have you thought about doing it this way? You, you look at things so differently than I do, and that's been so valuable at times. And I think vice versa, right? We just see things.

[00:46:08] Brian: One thing I've noticed just working with you guys, we were reflecting last night, like almost two and a half, three years of working together.

[00:46:14] Like one thing I've noticed is like you guys inject a lot of fun, right? Yeah. Into, into running businesses, right? And we know, like in direct to consumer e-commerce, it's like it's around the clock. Customers are always shopping, et cetera, but you have to find moments to pause and, and have some fun, right?

[00:46:29] You guys go on trips and you know, you guys put together ad creatives that has personality, right? Yeah. And that just seems to speak to like even more of who. Just Lighthouse Co. As one example, but I'm sure that shines through in, in the other businesses too.

[00:46:43] Jason 1: A hundred percent. I think like you wanna come to work every day in a place that's fun.

[00:46:47] Mm-hmm. Like you want people that are like really good at their job and that are sharp, but also have a sense of humor and are like able to crack jokes and do that with customers as well. I find that that's like when I walk into somebody's house and there's a little bit of unease on you know, it's, we're spending a lot of money and I don't know what's going on here.

[00:47:03] If you could bring a little bit of humor into the situation. Brings everything, makes everything feel calm again. And people appreciate that. And they're like, all right, well we're, we're in good hands here.

[00:47:11] Brian: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:12] Jason 1: And same thing with with us we're always joking around too, for sure. We're taking things seriously, but at the same time putting a little bit of room in there for, for the odd joke.

[00:47:19] Sure.

[00:47:20] Brian: Yeah. The amount of times I've had a call out, you gimme a hard time, Jason on phone calls, you know? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I love that. It just, yeah. 'cause again, like we're so immersed right in. Building and launching campaigns or doing this thing for the site. But yeah, just to take a pause is, is really a nice repeat reprieve.

[00:47:39] So as we kind of like bring, bring this home, like the, I think the thing that I wanted to sort of cap us off with is Yeah, like when, when you guys think about, you know, what's next for Lighthouse Co. Even for Manu Inc. And, and drum Heller yeah. What, what does the rest of 2026 look like? What does even going into 2027 look like?

[00:48:02] I just love your Yeah, your kind of, whether it's industry specific or direct to consumer, wherever you want to take it. But just would love to hear how you guys are thinking about the future for, for all the businesses you're working on.

[00:48:15] Sarah 1: You wanna take it off

[00:48:15] Jason 1: first? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the big thing that we've been working on right now, we have this, this, big new warehouse showroom that we're, we've been working on building. Mm-hmm. And just going through all the permitting processes. We started when was it, Sarah, back in 24, or? I think so. I think we started conversations back in 2023. We purchased a property in Lindsey in 2024. And that's like right now we have two buildings on either side of the road, one we own, one we lease.

[00:48:42] And we've kind of outgrown both of them. And they don't match our brand exactly the way that we would like. So, we purchased new property and we've been working hard to get it built, but it's, it's been a long, arduous. Process and there's, there's still not a hundred percent clarity of whether or not we're gonna be able to proceed with it with all the zoning changes, but it's looking really promising right now.

[00:49:03] And, and that's with any luck I would say early 2027, we will have shovels in the ground. And be erecting walls over there, so right

[00:49:10] Brian: on.

[00:49:10] Jason 1: Yeah.

[00:49:11] Sarah 1: Yeah. I almost, as you mentioned, we just launched the official US site, so I'm really excited for the next year to be doing more testing in the us. C was really working in there and, and growing a lot more in the US in the next year we have some new product categories coming to the site as well.

[00:49:28] So I'm excited for that and maybe explore some new, some new partnerships.

[00:49:32] Brian: Love it. Yeah. One thing I really enjoyed yesterday was seeing you walking through these stores clearly like shopping for what could live in the store. Yeah. And I just love seeing that like in person. 'cause really like we talk about being online all the time, but being able to go to the showrooms.

[00:49:47] I know you guys go to a number of events. See what's out there, see what's the latest, see what's coming, and then to think about it for the future of the businesses that you guys work on. But yeah. Anything, anything else before we wrap here? You wanna leave with our listeners?

[00:50:04] Jason 1: No, I would just say thank you so much for having us down and, and having us on the pod.

[00:50:08] It's always awesome to be in sunny California. Mm-hmm. And seeing the coastline and yeah, just appreciate being here.

[00:50:14] Sarah 1: Very grateful.

[00:50:15] Brian: Yeah. We'll have to get you guys on here again.

[00:50:17] Sarah 1: Sounds good.

[00:50:18] Brian: Cool.