Katalina Dawson (00:10)
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Career Path. Today I have a very special guest actually coming back to the podcast, the incredible Jack Gordon of Web Recon. And last time when he was on, we had this incredible episode where Jack shared his entire story and it was called The Entrepreneurial Journey. Now there is so much to Jack's story that we absolutely did not have time to fit it all in one episode, which is why This is The Entrepreneurial Journey Part 2. So I am super excited to hear more from you, Jack, about your story and to hear more just about being an entrepreneur in general because I know you are a wealth of knowledge in that respect. So thank you so much for coming back on and for anybody who either missed that first episode or needs like a little Spark Notes refresher, can you share a little bit about what you talked about in your first time on the podcast?

Jack Gordon (01:09)
Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me back. I love talking about this stuff, I think more than just about anything. The way I got to where I've wound up here and a lot of those lessons that I did learn along the way. I think there's a ton of things that just inspire me about that story. A lot of times I just kind of sit in disbelief about...

Katalina Dawson (01:12)
My pleasure!

Jack Gordon (01:33)
you know, all of the things that I sort of have been through to get here. But I just love it. I love it when people ask me, you know, to talk about that. I love it when people ask for advice because they're going on a journey. So the last time we talked, I brought you sort of through the journey from the very beginning, my first job when I was 11 working in a comic book store.

Katalina Dawson (01:38)
Absolutely.

Jack Gordon (01:59)
all the way up through WebRecon sort of maturing into the company it is now. And then some of those major steps along the way. My first data business, which was in a totally different industry, ⁓ acquiring a collection agency, selling that and then getting into the collection business. All of the big, big lessons.

Jack Gordon (02:21)
I learned along the way doing that. And then evolving from running a collection agency to being able to jump the fence and run, become a vendor to the collection industry, which has been just the most rewarding in every way, emotional, financial, certainly, but spiritual, right? Just the finding who I am.

Katalina Dawson (02:31)
Thank you.

Jack Gordon (02:42)
and what I do best over doing this. really sort of becoming one of those marquee name vendors to this industry has just been tremendous. It's been a tremendous journey. And we stopped shortly before I got to talk about sort of the next phase in WebRecon's system. But before we start there, do you want to go back?

Katalina Dawson (02:59)
Yes.

Jack Gordon (03:03)
and for all people.

Katalina Dawson (03:03)
Yeah, I want to go back a little bit because you had started to mention some trips, falls and misfortunes that happened when you first entered the industry. So you said even in the last episode, for the sake of time, we'll have to skip that. And I said, you know what? We should probably bring you back on so you could share those experiences. So let's dive a little bit into that.

Jack Gordon (03:25)
Sure, let me get my therapist on the other line here. ⁓

Katalina Dawson (03:31)
Fair,

call him up.

Jack Gordon (03:32)
So, you know, It was a stressful period, I had my first real business that I had started and sold. It a great little business. I loved it dearly. I should not have sold it, but I did. And there were lessons learned along the way on that. it ended kind of badly.

Katalina Dawson (03:35)
Yeah.

you

Jack Gordon (03:53)
just in the sense of I should have known how to do better due diligence and the company that was buying it and you know there wound up being some problems.

Katalina Dawson (04:02)
And this was the one where you had built technology for theaters, correct? And the one company purchased it and they had no idea what to do with it. They ended up failing and selling it to a company that was actually able to run with it. Is that correct? That's what you're referring to?

Jack Gordon (04:17)
Right. So yeah,

so was, had developed software technology, working with movie theater data, movie, like showtime data, movie information. And I sold it to a company that didn't really, they had developed newsletter sending technology, but they weren't really content people. And, you know, what I did was all content.

I mean, you know, technology and all of that as well, but it was very content heavy. And they just, they bought my company as sort of a, I think a way to save their company because they were floundering and doing badly. And it was a deal that, which, you know, there's nothing inherently wrong with looking at that, I guess, as a strategy.

Jack Gordon (05:01)
If they felt like, you know, what I had could really compliment what they were doing and help them stabilize themselves. My mistake was not understanding that they were in the brink of falling apart anyway. And for all of you people who are thinking of selling the company, you might want to make sure that the company that wants to buy you has the assets to back it up because it was mostly a stock transition, a transaction, and the stock became worthless when when they just couldn't hold on any longer.

Katalina Dawson (05:26)
Yeah, that was one of my biggest takeaways that you shared is okay, don't take stock as your only form of payment.

Jack Gordon (05:32)
I mean, you know, listen, if you're selling to TransUnion, next time. I mean, if you're inclined to, if you're selling to somebody who's out there and, and, know, fighting to survive, that might not be the safest bet. And, you know, this is all, this is not the kind of stuff I've spent my time thinking about and learning about. don't have an MBA. don't, you know, I, I have a, you know, communications bachelor's degree. You know, it's just not the kind of.

Katalina Dawson (05:36)
Okay, fair, good point, good point. It's different.

Jack Gordon (06:01)
Not the kind of thing that I was really prepared for adequately to be handling that. you know, good, good. I'll throw a shout out to my friend, Michael Lamm, you know, when I, when I did sell, ended up selling Web Recon, which we'll talk about soon. You know, he was there and, and, you know, handled everything for me, right? He, was, he was our representative and knew how to ask all those right questions and knew how to organize everything so that it wasn't a disaster. Yeah, he's great, he's great. And Drew and his team in particular, he was our guy for this. And such a big difference working with somebody who actually knows what they're doing. Probably in anything, but particularly in something as important as that.

Katalina Dawson (06:29)
Good. Love Michael. He's fantastic.

Absolutely.

So when you made that transition, you sold that company and you decided to purchase a collection company. Tell me a little bit more about that and those kind of trips and falls you had along the way of entering this industry.

Jack Gordon (06:59)
Yeah, so I don't remember if we discussed this the last time. I was trying, I think we did. I was trying to find something interesting to do next. Right? I stuck around with the theater marketing thing, trying to help them transition twice to the company that bought it for me and then to the company that bought it from them. And I was really kind of ready to get back to doing something for me, right?

Jack Gordon (07:29)
Something that I could build and develop. And there just wasn't anything that I could find. And interesting anyway.

You know, one of the things I've learned over all my years of doing things is keeping it real, right? People are looking for real solutions to real problems and, you know, something like multi-level marketing, that's great if it works for some people, but it really doesn't work for most people because it's not really solving a real problem.

Katalina Dawson (07:56)
Yeah.

Jack Gordon (07:59)
I wanted to get back into something that was, you know, that was doing something productive, right? So I thought there's this one opportunity that did intrigue me. It was the collection agency. And I got into this, my wife called me crazy. I took all of her money basically and threw it into this thing and you know, spoiler alert, it was a disaster, right? it didn't go well. So many, I mean, just so many problems along the way. The first and foremost being, and we really went into this last time was I didn't know what I was doing, right? didn't know anything about the collections, you know, collection business. when I got there, one of the people there, shared, during due diligence which again was wholly inadequate because I was doing it myself. One of the people there shared the FDCPA with me, a copy of the FDCPA. And I'm like, this is interesting, right? Anybody who does not know what FDCPA is in great detail should not be in the business of buying collection agencies. That seems like a basic, a bare minimum.

Katalina Dawson (08:59)
Yeah.

Jack Gordon (09:00)
I had faith in myself from that previous experience, even though the sale didn't go well. The company that I built was, you know, just an amazing little company and I was very, very proud of it. And so I get into this collection agency, we wind up buying it. And, it took me about, it took me a few weeks to really understand the depth of the of the challenges that we had gotten into. And by the way, that message was delivered to me by the IT guy. The IT guy, it was the one who knew all the collection system. We were on the DAX platform. And he was the one that ran all the reports at the end of the month. He was the one that kept it maintained and running smoothly. Three weeks in to

Jack Gordon (09:44)
taking over this agency, he comes into my office, he says, I quit. And then he says, you really don't know how screwed you are, you?

Katalina Dawson (09:54)
Not a great thing to hear. my gosh.

Jack Gordon (09:56)
It wasn't a great thing to hear. And he starts telling me all the stuff that he could have told me sooner, Everything that I was sold and that the vision was just all built on lies, right? And he wasn't involved in the sale of it. He was just able to tell me like, know, all the...

Jack Gordon (10:15)
that the previous guy was making things look better than they actually were. What I should have done at that moment was gotten an attorney and started looking into seeing if I could back out of this thing. I didn't do that. I was stubborn. I thought, okay, this is a challenge. This is a problem. This is what I'm here to do, right? I'm here to take something that. You know, it was a small agency. wasn't really profitable. so, you know, I have some extra challenges, but I can do this. Everything is sales, right? Get, get more customers in the door, get more clients in the door, grow the company. And then, you know, and then you can throw money at the problems and I'll work my way out of this. I'll work my way through it, which is I think, incredibly admirable generally speaking, but in my case, also tremendously foolish and naive. That problem was way bigger than, know, than me, right? That problem was way bigger than, than I had the capacity to really solve. So, but you know, I was there, I was kind of stuck, so I had the mantra in my head. the only way out of this is through it and, got to work every day.

Katalina Dawson (11:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jack Gordon (11:24)
Those are back in the days when, you know, everybody came into an office and, just started working on, solving the, trying to solve the bigger problems, the systemic problems while also working on the marketing and, going out and getting more customers, getting more clients in the door. I started going to marketing conferences, even though had a degree in marketing.

I started doing some, just development by going to conferences, learning more about things like copywriting and, you being a compelling marketer. And these are skills that I brought back and tried to use to grow the company. you know, again, the company, the problems in the company were so deep that

Katalina Dawson (12:03)
Yeah.

Jack Gordon (12:04)
it was hard to, you know, to really get any good traction.

Katalina Dawson (12:08)
Yeah, you're on the Titanic with a a pale just trying with one bucket just trying to bail yourself out. Yeah, just just with a bucket and it's just not it's not enough. Yeah.

Jack Gordon (12:11)
Exactly. It was way too small. You know, I had a decent core staff. know, my collectors weren't really the high performing type, but they were, you know, but they were consistent. you know, I had a, brought in, one of the first things I did was I brought in a new collection manager and she was really good. She was competent.

And we just kind of went to work every day and tried to make things a little bit better than they were the day before. And everything was just kind of going along. Again, we talked in the last episode about, it was basically charity work for me.

Katalina Dawson (12:51)
What did you say? You took like two paychecks in one year? It was something like that.

Jack Gordon (12:53)
to pay out with paychecks in four and a half years. ⁓ Yeah, it was supposed to be this great success story, right? This great turnaround that I believed in and put the elbow grease into. It didn't work out that way. So this was mid 2004.

Katalina Dawson (12:58)
my gosh.

Jack Gordon (13:17)
Early 2008 was when I started getting FDCPA suits, right? And that coincided with the great explosion in FDCPA litigation nationwide. And that first lawsuit, I brought my attorney, he wasn't an industry attorney, but he was a good attorney, small business attorney. I basically educated him on FDCPA. He didn't have any real background in that, but he threw himself into it and he wrote a masterpiece a motion to dismiss the case.

The night before it was due, and by the way, he threatened, for those of you who know what this is, rule 11, right? Because it was a completely baseless suit. Rule 11 being, if we put you on notice that we're gonna utilize rule 11, and you refuse to stop the lawsuit, then you can be liable for expenses that are incurred by the defendant because we're putting the court on alert that this lawsuit is completely baseless. And it was, it was a total boilerplate complaint that just didn't, in fact, great story. My attorney calls me up after having a chance to review this lawsuit and he says, I hope you don't think less of me, but I have no idea what you're being sued for.

I'm like, I don't either. I don't either. We're being sued under the entire FDCPA. So anyway, so like I said, he writes this masterpiece, a motion to dismiss, pairs it with a Rule 11 demand. And the opposing counsel dismisses the suit. They're like, that was $18,000 of legal work to get to that point.

Katalina Dawson (14:51)
Yeah.

18,000 not 1800. Holy moly.

Jack Gordon (15:14)
18,000. I'll add that I definitely did not have. We're not even knowing what we were getting sued for. This is the problem that agency owners are still dealing with. The cost of defending is exorbitant and getting worse.

Katalina Dawson (15:19)
for nothing, that you didn't even know what you were getting sued for.

Jack Gordon (15:39)
And the cost of settling is, in addition to several thousand dollars, a little piece of your soul. And, you know, there's just no, there's no good escape other than not getting sued. So the thing is, so he dismisses this one. He comes back a few weeks later with another one, identical boilerplate complaint.

Katalina Dawson (15:40)
Yes.

The same defendant? ⁓ same attorney, okay.

Jack Gordon (16:00)
Same attorney, same attorney, with a different client. Comes back with another, and by the way, these are like $75 health club charges that these accounts are based on, right? This isn't a $15,000.

Katalina Dawson (16:13)
Really? $75 and they're taking it to court.

Jack Gordon (16:17)
and, and so same thing, this time, this time it was only an $1,800 bill because now my attorney and his attorney, the opposing attorney had some experience with each other. ⁓ so we played the same playbook and, and, you know, he, he didn't pursue it. A day after that one was ended, was over. We get served with a third lawsuit and now we're talking, now we're like in August of 2008.

my gosh.

Jack Gordon (16:41)
The third lawsuit was by a different attorney, a very notorious one based here in Grand Rapids, but with a national profile. And that one was a little different. That was one where he had set up his client with a script and a call recorder and they baited us. You he called and tried to bait us into some kind of violation that they could then turn into a lawsuit, which is incredibly common, right?

Katalina Dawson (17:04)
Yeah.

Jack Gordon (17:04)
lot of attorneys do that. my gosh, that's a huge business, right? And there are lots of plaintiffs and lots of plaintiff attorneys that use these tactics to lure people into some kind of an FDCPA violation.

Katalina Dawson (17:05)
I was actually unaware of that, but good to know, yikes.

Now forgive my naivety here, but is there some sort of like entrapment or something that you could argue in those sort of cases? No, interesting.

Jack Gordon (17:28)
Really? The only, and I'm not a lawyer, but you the only real potential defense against something like that is again, this rule 11 thing where, if it is really baseless, you know, then you could end up transferring some of that risk to the plaintiff's side.

Jack Gordon (17:47)
There is, in some cases you can use bona fide error defense, which, wouldn't really work in a situation like this. but they, what they had was a conversation with one of my people, on tape, where they were, they were bobbing and weaving and pushing until they finally got something, that was not a blatant violation, but, certainly less than ideal.

Katalina Dawson (17:55)
Yeah.

Jack Gordon (18:10)
It's complicated, it was along the lines of, know, suit had been filed against the debtor for this debt, and they wanted to settle, the debtor wanted to settle, but wanted to go through the creditor and not the collection agency.

My person said, no, this account is with us. You need to, you need to deal with us. And believe it or not, that was a violation of FDCPA because we didn't own the account, right? We were working on it, but ⁓ it wasn't ours. And we couldn't tell them that they couldn't talk to the creditor. And that was enough. And this one cost me $7,000 in settlement because it wasn't a bona fide error. And it wasn't,

Katalina Dawson (18:36)
own.

Yeah.

Jack Gordon (18:53)
You know, it wasn't baseless, right? They, even though it was totally entrapment, they, you know, they got us on tape saying something wrong. Anyway, the day I got served with that one was the day I said, I'm out, I'm done. ⁓ And I don't, you know, I just didn't have, I didn't have the resources to keep on fighting these battles. And, you know, it certainly wasn't doing anything for my mental health or the, or my marriage or anything.

Yeah.

Yeah. Done. No more.

Jack Gordon (19:18)
Not to mention financially. So I started again, this process. actually, put it on the market, the agency. And I got a few bites and I went with one of them that turned out to be, again, another disaster. Somebody who owned an agency a little south of us, now we're south of us. They, you know, was an older man who wanted to bring his grandson into the business.

Katalina Dawson (19:39)
yes,

I remember you talking about this on the last episode. He wanted to bring his grandson in. His grandson had no interest in doing it, correct? And then when he passed away, there was a whole issue with the sale.

Jack Gordon (19:50)
Yeah, well, first of all, they paid me about a quarter, not even maybe a fifth of what I paid for that agency. Right. So I was already being taken to the cleaners and they structured it as three payments over two years. And I got my first payment on closing. did get my second payment after one year. And then in that second year, the owner died.

Katalina Dawson (19:57)
Ooh. Yeah.

Jack Gordon (20:12)
And the grandson had no interest in dealing with this agency. And the family was like, that's not our problem, that's your problem. And I know. They refused to pay the final payment. And so here I was after I had sold this company, now in another situation that was just exactly not what I needed in my life.

Katalina Dawson (20:24)
Gosh. Yeah, two sales, one with stocks that didn't pull through another only two thirds of a payment and way less than what you bought for my goodness.

Jack Gordon (20:43)
You know, listen, I feel like I should point out here that my stories may be unique, but they're definitely not unique.

Everybody has their horror stories about buying and selling, you know, their companies and even just operating them, right? But, was, you know, this was sort of my experience. So, we had to go back and we had to fight for that last payment. And, we ended up getting a settlement that made nobody happy, which is, you know, it's something.

Katalina Dawson (21:13)
You got something better than nothing, I guess.

Jack Gordon (21:16)
It was something not worth all the stress, but, but you know, here, here I was. And that leads into starting WebRecon which I think we talked about plenty in that last episode. I'll summarize it quickly here by just saying, you know, it was a, it was a journey for sure. was a, it was a bit of a struggle to get it up and running and off the ground. But once I did. It really just sort of, it became this well-oiled machine and, I was able to bring in good people that stuck it out with me for a long time, to keep this thing improving and growing and running smoothly and getting paid and all of that. that just turned, that was something I was able to really focus my marketing skills on. And, you know, start going to all the conferences and start taking a paycheck. And, you know, and be creative and have a little bit of fun with it. Right. I didn't want to be a stodgy old legacy brand, right. Out there fighting for attention. So, you know, I've always, I've always made it little more whimsical, right. The original mascot for WebRecon was a shark, a cartoon shark.

Katalina Dawson (22:01)
Thankfully.

Jack Gordon (22:23)
I kept him for about five years and then transitioned to, for any of you who ever seen me at a conference, the big monster ⁓ says lawsuits suck, right? You know, and I always like to have a little bit of fun with that. I always like to stand out, you know, because that does some of the work for you. right? It's about getting attention and then doing something important with that attention.

Katalina Dawson (22:31)
Yeah, he's got the little...

Jack Gordon (22:43)
But getting attention is the first part. And I vowed that I would never have a booth at a conference that somebody could just easily walk by. Right. You got to make them stop. You got to make them look. And a lot of times they'll laugh. Still to this day, it's been over 10 years that I've been using effectively that same design.

Katalina Dawson (23:03)
Didn't

you, one year when we were in Vegas, have like poker chips with the little monster on it? I feel like, I remember grabbing some of those and I gave them, I had some neighbor kids that I gave them to and they thought it was the funniest thing ever. They were like, look at the little monster. So yeah.

Jack Gordon (23:08)
Yeah. my gosh. Those are collector's items now. That was a long time ago. But yeah, I've done poker chips. I've straws with the message lawsuits suck. I've got really nice popular pens, high-end pens and chip clips. Those are a little more boring. ⁓

Katalina Dawson (23:26)
I get it. That's great use them though. I use your

Jack Gordon (23:41)
Everybody uses them, right?

Katalina Dawson (23:41)
chip clips all the time.

Jack Gordon (23:43)
But yeah, gosh, I could probably, I'd have to go back and look, but you know, I'm always on the lookout. In fact, I'll tell you something that I haven't done yet, but that I plan to do, swag-wise. And that is, again, with the big monster on it, socks and the.

Katalina Dawson (23:54)
Ooh, what is? that's cute.

Jack Gordon (24:03)
instead of lawsuits suck, it will say lawsuit socks, which inside joke, right? You're only gonna, you're only gonna get it if you come to my booth and pick up a pair of the socks. But yeah, everybody in this industry will get it right. it'll be on inside joke.

Katalina Dawson (24:09)
I love it. That's hilarious. Yes, I need a parent. That sounds amazing. That's so funny. Yes.

I love that so much. So let's talk a little bit about the sale of WebRecon and how that was different. We touched on it a little bit before.

Jack Gordon (24:33)
yeah. So, after, 15 years of running this company, it kind of hit some of those big moments, some of those big threshold moments, right? Financially and, and, number of client wise and, and, just, overall kind of positioning in the industry,

it grew consistently over the years, and it did become this marquee brand. And we have competitors, but a lot fewer than people would actually think, because a lot of people out there who are selling litigation scrubs are actually reselling it from us, for us. Like, if you go to If you go to one of the bureaus and you get their litigation scrub, right? They're actually doing that through us. and you know, a number of other companies. and so, you know, we, we kind of reached this point where everything is running pretty well. but I was feeling like it was time to start thinking about something else. not because I didn't love the company, not because I wasn't
proud of it, not because I wasn't happy, just because I wasn't getting as much enjoyment out of, you it's a lot more fun to be a scrappy entrepreneur, right? Running lean and mean and being creative and doing a little marketing, right? Now, you know, when you have so many employees, mean, not that we had a lot of employees, but enough, right? And, you know, the days start becoming less guerrilla warfare and more HR.

Katalina Dawson (25:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jack Gordon (25:56)
and server meltdowns and stuff like that. That's not really, that's not the way my brain works, right? That wasn't what I wanted to be doing. And, know, briefly the concept of finding an operational, an operations manager to come in and kind of take over most of that work. I thought about that, but, there were other factors. I had a lot of my family was in various states of medical.

Katalina Dawson (25:57)
I know.

Jack Gordon (26:22)
problems and my marriage wasn't going so well. And I was thinking, I just, something needs to give in my life. And this is the one, this is the thing that I can do. So I thought this would be a good time to sell. And I have a couple of other small companies I could focus on. I could start thinking about the next big idea that I wanted to do. And so back to Michael Lamm.

I reached out, he and I had been talking for years about, when that moment should be. And I always told him, when I'm ready, I'll call you. And so I called him. And, the, the, process itself was really pretty straightforward, pretty painless. they did everything. We just had to provide them with, numbers and paperwork and, and, all the financials and everything so they could put it together into a nice package. And that took them two, three months to kind of put that all together. And then they put it out there and I got three offers from their work, three solid offers. And they all valued the company at about the same.

One of them really kind of stood out for the simplicity of it because it was basically a cash offer. But even more interesting, it was from a company that, and I'm talking about the Constellation Group, which is the company, the parent company of the company that bought us they gave us an offer that was, clean and, they are a company that does nothing but acquire technology companies. And so they have, acquired, 1300 - 1400 of them over the years. so they have this great, backend infrastructure for every company they take over or every company that they acquire.

They take over things like legal and accounting and HR. That all happens above the company level now. we're left to, a company is left to focus on marketing and sales and creative identity stuff. And then obviously at the local level, there's still accounting and people management and things like that to be done. that, they took...

We ended up going with them, right? Everybody got a raise, right? They took good care of my people. We had assurances that they were going to be good, focused on taking good care of our clients. And I is perfect. This is great. I like these guys. We were talking every week during the process. And I felt really good right, working with them. And my plan was to phase out over six months, right? To transition out, help them find somebody to replace me. And that was a good plan. Right? I was happy with that. And about two weeks after the sale, there was an ACA conference and my new boss came to it to kind of check out, you know check things out, right? This is their new property in the space, right? He wanted to go to one of the biggest conferences and just see what it's all about. And he had some experience in a related industry. So this is after the announcement has been made that WebRecon has been sold. And I'm there. And what my boss witnessed was person after person after person coming up to me, hugging me, Congratulating me, thanking me for everything that we've done for the, it was very emotional. Unsolicited testimonials from people in front of the new boss, how impactful we've been, not just for their business, but for the industry as a whole.

Yeah, and you so deserved it.

Jack Gordon (30:02)
Well, I suppose that's arguable. I didn't expect it. But it was just a really moving experience. And he came up to me at that conference after witnessing quite a bit of that. And he said, we need to talk. OK. Are you sure you want to go?

Katalina Dawson (30:07)
He's like, you can't leave.

Jack Gordon (30:26)
honestly, I hadn't even considered staying, right? And he's like, well, let's talk about what that would take because I just don't want to lose you, right? It seems like Jack Gordon is a really important component of this business. And maybe we didn't understand that to the extent that we should have. And so that started a conversation that lasted a couple of months, just kind of carving out what

Katalina Dawson (30:42)
Yeah.

Jack Gordon (30:53)
What would a post-acquisition role look like for Jack? And, um, you know, and here I am, right? A post-acquisition job for Jack looks like Jack going to conferences, is anybody who knows me, right? Knows that's like my favorite part of the job going, you know, being with my people, talking to clients, talking to prospects, talking to partners and friends in the industry. Um, you know,

Katalina Dawson (31:11)
Yeah.

Jack Gordon (31:20)
speaking occasionally at conferences, right? I still do that. And it, you know, we promoted somebody internally to kind of become the new general manager. She's really kind of the one who had been holding everything together anyway. And, you know, and now I really just focus on growth and marketing and, you know, we're in two different verticals, right? So, you know, we're getting ready to really kind of make a move into a third vertical, right? These are the kinds of things that I've been freed up to really focus more on.

Katalina Dawson (31:50)
That's excellent. Do you also have another new entrepreneurial pursuit on the horizon? Fair.

Jack Gordon (31:56)
no. My hands are full they're as full as I want them to be the moment. ⁓ like I I do have a couple of smaller companies that run on the side. One is a computer, training, I should say an online training system for collectors, called collection certifications. and then the other one is a trade show display business.

Katalina Dawson (32:15)
Yes! I remember talking to you about that before.

Jack Gordon (32:17)
Yeah we help people get some of those backdrops in place and table covers and stuff like that for when they exhibit at conferences. And those are both pretty rewarding. I enjoy being a part of both of them. Any new big ideas on the horizon, there's always ideas. Committing to one.

Katalina Dawson (32:25)
Absolutely.

Jack Gordon (32:38)
Like I said, my hands are about as full as I'd like them to be right now. I don't rule it out. know, and obviously my employer now, you know, they know I do these side gigs and they're cool with it. So I could, but, know, frankly, they compensate me fairly. know, it wouldn't, getting involved in something that would take a lot of my attention wouldn't.

Katalina Dawson (32:44)
Yeah that's awesome.

Jack Gordon (33:03)
without the move to make right now.

Katalina Dawson (33:06)
Fair, yeah. And Jack, believe it or not, we are actually out of time for today. I know, right? This went by so quickly. So I would like to ask you, will you come back again to share your tips and tricks another time? Because before we filmed this for anybody who's watching, Jack and I were talking and he said he has compiled a list actually of things that.

Jack Gordon (33:10)
What? You're just gonna say that?

Katalina Dawson (33:29)
he would recommend for people who are entrepreneurs or thinking about becoming entrepreneurs and all of these tips and tricks. And we wanted to dive into them today, but my gosh, Jack, your story is so rich and deep. We just ran out of time again. So would you come back on another time? ⁓ Thank you.

Jack Gordon (33:41)
or I would be honored to come back. And maybe we'll just, I mean, that will no longer be the entrepreneurial journey for Jack. But if Jack's to say the same thing, what's that? Yes. ⁓

Katalina Dawson (33:53)
Yes, it'll be the, what was it? 18? Was it 18 tips and tricks for your entrepreneur? So it could be called the 18 tips and tricks for your entrepreneurial journey, you the viewer.

Jack Gordon (34:06)
Yeah, I'd love to do that.

Katalina Dawson (34:09)
That would be excellent. You are such a wealth of knowledge and Jack, it is always such a pleasure to see you and to have you on. And I personally am so glad that they kept you on at WebRecon, because I love seeing you at every conference with your little monster. It is fantastic and iconic and we hope to keep you.

Jack Gordon (34:24)
I'm pretty happy with how that turned out and I'm always, always thrilled to be on with you.

Katalina Dawson (34:29)
Thank you. Well, to any of our listeners, if you have any questions or any topics you would like to see us cover, please leave that in the comments below. We will do our best to get to all of them. Otherwise, we will see you in the next episode. Bye.

Jack Gordon (34:43)
Bye.