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Ready to turn your house into the home you've always dreamed of without the headaches or huge bills.

You're tuned to around the House, the nation's number one home improvement radio show and podcast with expert advice that's helped millions tackle everything from remodels to repairs.

Host Serig G and John Dudley have got you covered with the best advice and information about your home.

Now let's get this hour started.

Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

John Dudley is out on assignment doing some cool stuff and we have my buddy Brent with byot.

You've probably seen him on your social media feed.

He's everywhere out there.

He's been on the show before, brother.

Thanks for coming back to around the House, my friend.

Thank you for always having me, Eric.

Much appreciated, dude.

This is always a great time.

I love hanging out with you.

We're coming up here to design and construction week in Las Vegas.

So I know we will either cross paths.

That's always one of those things where you and I are running like chicken with our heads cut off.

But we always run into each other in front of some of the coolest places out there and you get to do what I can't do because I just don't have the time with everything that I've got going on to see what's neat, cool and trick and show everybody everything about it.

Yeah, I've loved this position that content creation has provided me where I literally travel the entire country now on a monthly basis trying to find the next cool tool, cool product in the construction or home improvement realm.

And I've already been to Vegas twice this year.

I'm going to be in Orlando twice this month and then back to Vegas next month.

So plenty to see and plenty to share.

Dude, you are like me in that.

In the Pacific Northwest.

So Orlando is a trek for us.

That is not like shooting down to Vegas.

I look at that, it's easy.

It's like cool.

I can be down there and get up in the morning, be down there at nine for the show.

If I wanted to even come back that night, it's absolutely attainable.

Not Orlando.

I love it down there.

But holy smokes, that's a haul.

It's a full day just to get over there from the Pacific Northwest.

But that's to be expected since we're three hour time difference plus five and a half hour flight.

Exactly.

Well, luckily, you know, I love flying Alaska, so there is that flight that comes out of Portland, which is nice.

It's a direct one.

So for me, it's, like, awesome.

I don't have to make a complete day of it, but time is money in that situation.

So what have you seen so far this year, man?

Were you down at, like, World of Concrete in some of those places down in Vegas?

So I was at CES for a day.

That was a perfect little day right there.

And then I was at World of Concrete for all three days.

And I.

Because World of Concrete was also connected with ife, which is the roofing expo.

I was also at IFE for a day, which was really fun.

That's cool.

Wow.

You get both of those, and that really takes up a lot of Las Vegas.

When you boo World of Concrete, which is its own pretty decent show, then you put in IFE in there, that keeps everybody busy.

Yeah, it was incredible.

Both shows were amazing to see.

There's so much fun activities at World of Concrete.

But then ife, I had never been to that show before, but there were so many just unique little products that I never thought about in the roofing realm, but is so handy to have.

Dude, it's funny.

World of Concrete is not just about concrete.

It seems like the tool companies over the last couple of years have decided, okay, that's our power tool convention now, because it seems that's where they're coming out with their stuff.

The.

The Milwaukee, the Bosches, all those guys seem to show up there and show off kind of the new wares for 2026.

Yeah.

If, as an individual, if anyone wants to know what show to go to that loves tools, it has to be World of Concrete.

Every single big brand is there.

And the best thing about it is that you're actually able to really put those products to the test yourself, which is unlike the vast majority of all the trade shows I go to.

There might be a small little booth here or there for those big brands, but we're talking Milwaukee, DeWalt Bosch.

All the big brands are there.

Makita, Diablo.

They all have these huge exterior booths where you can put their products to the test yourself, which is really fun and a great show to be at just to see, but also to actually visually and physically feel.

Yeah.

And these are not.

Let's.

I. I don't want to make this sound smaller than what it is, because this isn't your average home show booth.

Some of these things are like the size of your Safeway Albertsons or Kroger store, square footage wise, and they've got that dialed in right there.

I mean, it is a massive event for these guys, and even some of them will do two stories where they start stacking shipping containers up and building decks.

They get kind of wild down there.

Well, especially with me being the position I'm in, I'm getting to talk to the people that are really culminating their booth.

And yes, they're massive, but also because it's world of concrete, they are pouring fresh concrete, yards and yards of concrete just for this show.

So they have to then put that to the test with their own tools, but also they have to jackhammer it out completely with by the end of that week.

So I can only imagine the amount of effort it takes for those individuals that put on these shows.

Yeah, you think about it, because that's down a parking lot, so you got to bring it back to parking lot standard.

So the next week, somebody else can come in there, and it's wild.

And then you go over to where the trades are and they're building.

You know, they've got the brick racing where they're.

How fast can you build a.

A beautiful brick wall?

I mean, it's just.

It's a circus of events down there for that.

Yeah, I. I know an individual that has been in one of those competitions, and there is some nice prizes for the people that can lay bricks the fastest.

It's quite amazing.

But also they have these really unique art artistry setups where people can come in and they can create their own extremely extravagant, unique pieces of artwork that involves the masonry trades, which is absolutely gorgeous unto itself.

That is cool.

What products did you see down there?

I'm going to put you on the spot.

What did you see that you went, holy smokes.

Finally somebody came out with this.

Or was there any trends that you saw down there?

If you don't want to talk anything specific that you saw, it looked like the tool companies hit it hard this year.

No, my favorite stuff is, in all honesty, it's those small, little finds those companies that you would never know about unless you were at that show and you saw it firsthand.

And these guys are, like, just trying to get out of the gate.

Like, we could talk about tools all day long from these big boxes, but I always loved those small, little unique finds.

And I found this guy who had been in concrete for decades and decades, and he created the Mesh Puller 3000.

And it is literally just a pry bar.

So when they're pouring a massive concrete slab, you know those individuals that are trying to heave up the mesh that's being poured upon so it doesn't lay too low.

So trying to bring that mesh up the rebar itself.

And he had created this leverage point for that specific scenario.

So you're not trying to jack your back while trying to pour concrete at the same time.

And it made it so much easier to pry up that rebar while pouring concrete.

And it saves your back.

It was something that I was like, how was this not invented years and years ago?

But luckily someone did invent it.

That was amazing to see.

That's awesome.

And I'm sure you ran into these guys.

I'm sure you've covered it on your channel a lot because you cover so much.

But it's like the first time I ran into the guys from Australia with lockjaw ladder grip and I went, holy smokes, who finally made that?

You know?

Yep, exactly.

No, I remember that, remember that product vividly for sure.

And I was like, wow.

And it saved, you know.

And again, I saw it on trade show, went wow.

Met with the guy, had him on my TV show.

It was fun.

And I used it to rescue my neighbor off his slimy, slippery January roof a few years ago because he went up there to clean the roof off and realized that if he started heading down the roof surface backwards, he was going to slide off the end.

Of course, no fall protection.

So his 10 year old kid comes knocking on my door, goes, hey Eric, can you come help my dad get off the roof?

And I'm like, oh my gosh, I got to help his dad because this is an embarrassing dad moment for him.

And popped it on up there.

But again, one of those products that you see that you never would see out there if you didn't hit some of these shows or follow your channel and see what's going on out there.

Well, speaking of that, this does coincide perfectly with the IFE show, which is the roofing expo show.

And one of the coolest products I saw there was a small booth that was unique, different, but they had a solution to the nail industry that I never thought was really a thing until I saw it.

I was like, oh, this is perfect.

And they put this coil nailer for roofing, they put this coating on, on the nails themselves and they glow.

It glows in the dark.

At the end of the day, if all of a sudden you're in the Pacific Northwest and you'll.

And it gets dark at 4pm and they want to scour the yard to make sure that they didn't leave any nails in the grass, all of a sudden those nails are now Glow in the dark with a UV light and you're able to see those nails much, much easier.

And they're bright orange too.

So when you're installing them, they're really easy to see as well.

So is this something that was so unique, that's different, that all of a sudden made a fix to a solution or provided a solution to a problem that was existing that I never thought was going to be easily attainable to fix?

That's incredible.

Yeah.

Because otherwise you're down there with a magnet, hoping you got them all.

You didn't.

But now you can be going around there, you got a black light and it's dark outside and all of a sudden you're just looking.

It's boom.

There they are.

So smart and safety wise.

It makes sense too, because you can see exactly what you're doing.

Makes a lot of sense.

Exactly.

And that's the beauty of these inventors, and that's why I love the trade show realm, is because you're getting firsthand experience of what is truly new and innovative in the space.

And some of these guys are really just trying to get off the ground from the very jump.

And it's hard at that stage.

But hopefully my simple little 30 second, one minute long video will help help them succeed in some fashion.

That's awesome.

And I feel bad for these inventors.

We've had them on the show.

I really like to support them here on my channels and you do as well.

But I feel bad for these guys because they end up spending half their life doing this stuff.

They do it, they go, oh my gosh, I got to quit my job so I can do this.

You know, they get it out to the marketplace and then all of a sudden, three weeks later, somebody else is selling it on Amazon because they sent it over and somebody's copying it.

And so I was just talking to somebody this morning, had this cool product and I'm like, awesome.

Make sure you go get your stuff done on far as your intellectual property and your patents and stuff.

Spend your time on that.

You'll need it.

Because that's so cool.

Someone's gonna rip it off.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Especially on the stuff that is like a no brainer, that is easily copyable.

Yeah, yeah, those are.

That's very valuable information.

Ah, it's so bad.

It's so bad.

And then, man, we'll get back to trade shows in a little bit.

But you've been working on your projects too as well.

You know, you have done some amazing stuff.

If you get into your back Catalog of some of the projects you've been tackling around your house.

That's been fun to watch.

And.

And I know the challenges in the Pacific Northwest where we are here, I mean, everybody has their challenges, but from the ground here to the tree roots to the weather, it likes to fight us most of the time.

Yeah.

Well, especially if you're in my area.

We've had these massive floods and.

And luckily my house wasn't affected, but I know a lot of houses were.

And there has been so much in terms of that construction DIY space that I'm always gravitating towards.

It's amazing to think that literally in March of this year, I'll be having my 10 year on YouTube.

So I started my YouTube channel back in March of 2016, and now 250 videos later, I'm still cooking and I'm still producing content in that DIY space.

And I have some major projects to tell people about in the very near future.

Nice.

We don't want to.

We want to expend that.

You know those secrets yet.

But I know you've got some big stuff coming, which is going to be super fun.

And you get to that point and I'll just tease it like this.

You get to that point where it's like, how many more projects do I want to do around my house?

Now it's time to start working on other stuff because I did that this last year when I went through and sold my place.

Now I'm like, all right.

Working on the next project, which I am now with my buddy Cam, you know, you know Cam Anderson very well from Blacktail Studios, of course.

And that's one of the things to circle back on the trade shows.

Dude.

It's always like.

It's like summer camp for us when we all get together because we're always so busy.

Heads down year round.

There's three, two, maybe four times a year at best.

We all get to run into each other.

And it's always fun to do that because that's that moment that we go, okay, we got to work.

But hey, did you hear about this?

And these are always the fun times when we can get the band back together.

Yeah, it's always a joy to actually see those familiar faces.

And I just basically tell people that you're my co workers that I see once or twice a year.

Exactly.

All these zoom meeting people that you do.

And it's like all of a sudden it's like, hey, let's go out.

And like, you and I, I mean, it's in some of these shows, for us, it always seems we're winging it.

We've got our plan, but it never really goes out.

What was that?

One night we got done at the Sphere and I was like, let's just go get dinner.

And, you know, we're in an Italian restaurant, 11 o' clock at night, grabbing dinner.

But that's just kind of how these things go.

The bootlegger, baby.

Yes.

There's.

Yep.

Bootlegger Bistro in Las Vegas that.

Like my buddy over there at Blaze Grills, he's in there.

He goes down to Vegas for stuff because he used to live in LA and he lives out in Louisiana, but I got him and I will always take pictures of places and when we're in there, we'll send it to each other.

So I know the carpet really well, you know, but I think it's the only world's 247 always open Italian restaurant, but best food you'll have.

I tell you what, that place is rocking.

Yeah.

So good.

And.

Yeah, I know we have a common friend.

Catherine Emery and I literally, we've known each other for years and we've never actually got a moment to sit down with each other and have a meal.

And I told her before the International Builder Show, I was like, we need to sit.

Actually plan this ahead of time to sit down and have a meal together.

Because we've known each other way too long, we've worked with each other way too long to not have a quality conversation that's just the two of us.

Nice.

And she.

I love Kat.

She is the hardest to kneel down.

Oh, yeah.

It's like.

It's like bathing a cat.

You're just.

It's just always moving.

It's exactly it.

Because we're.

We're that same mentality because when we're working, we're working.

And I'm literally walking the show from 9am to 5pm I'm not taking a lunch break.

I'm trying to see as much as I possibly can so I can provide that to my audience to say, hey, these.

I really did spend as much time as possible finding as many cool tools and products for my audience.

And what's fun, too, is these shows are almost impossible now.

Like the Builder show when it's in Las Vegas.

It is hard to see everything in three days if you don't have any meetings.

Yep.

I mean, nine to five, three days is tough to see everything if you're always walking.

Yeah, I always.

I'm looking through my feed and looking through people that do somewhat the similar aspects of what I do.

And I'm like, oh, I totally missed that.

And I'm sure they say the same thing about my channel too, because there's always those hidden gems that people can easily walk by without acknowledging them.

Oh, yeah.

I think last year you and I ran into each other in front of like system 3e and those guys, which are.

I love Peter.

Those guys over there, they make that.

Those building blocks for homes, which I think one of these days is going to be the number one way to build here.

And they're fighting the lumber lobby, if I was going to say.

Just trying to get into building code and stuff like that, but love the product.

Green way to build.

Fireproof, super solid.

I still want to use that product one of these days.

But they're on that up and coming list of new ways to build that I think are going to really change the.

Change the industry out there.

But they just have to fight in the lumber lobby out there and get into that.

Yeah, one day.

I love those unique building materials that just make sense again.

It just, it's one of those things where you never thought it would be of interest, but that's the true innovation of human nature.

We always are trying to create something better and new.

And it's always fun to see those new products even in the construction materials side of things.

Not even the tool side, the construction materials.

There's so much innovation and I saw a ton of 3D printed houses machine, machine work at the world of concrete and just it's that element of who knows what's next?

What's going to be that next big thing in the construction realm.

Yeah, I'm going to guess on the 3D printed houses.

To me, I look at that and go, that's kind of cool.

But really it's just a kind of a printer with a concrete hose and, you know, a pump.

And do I think that's gonna be the next way of construction?

I don't know.

I think it'd be hard to be building code with that, but you know, and it'd be tough to do work on.

But I like the ideas that they're pushing with that stuff and it could lead to other things, but I think that's gonna be one of the things we look back on and go, oh, that was neat and cute, but wow, we're really doing it this way now.

Oh, Exactly.

No, I'm 100% with you.

And that kind of coincides with CES, because CES is this massive electronic consumer show.

And there's so much innovation, so many cool things there, it's hard to wrap your head around what's truly going to rise to the top and be functionally useful for the job site or even your own home.

And I just put, I've been doing my top five top ten favorite finds at shows over the last year from some of these shows on YouTube.

And it's amazing to see some of these products.

But a lot of people are just saying, like, is this actually going to happen?

Is this actually going to come to fruition where you're going to see it on shelves or you're going to be able to have that in your own home?

Who knows?

But it is fun to see where that next ingenuity and creativity mindset is going to take us.

I tell you what, I've been following those guys over at Boston Dynamics for about a decade now with the robots and that stuff.

To me, I'm watching that going, wow, those remind me of so many 90s movies where they go bad at the end, but I sure like them.

It's cool.

I'm pretty sure we've already seen movies about this.

Exactly.

You know, it's like, oh, that was iRobot.

Then they came out with the vacuum cleaner under the same name.

But you know what I mean?

It's one of those things that you start to see it and people get really nervous with it.

But I also look at it and go, wow, we could also be efficient.

There are plenty of jobs out there for people that are super dangerous that you could never put a person in easily.

That maybe that's a great, you know.

You know, like we saw, we see natural disasters and stuff where, boy, we sure can't send the firefighter in that building.

It'd be nice to have a robot to send in that could still go in there without losing the life of a firefighter or something like that.

I think there's a lot of case study stuff that we can do that that isn't taken over as many people's jobs, but boy, you know, we can risk the robot versus hurting somebody else.

Well, I got a great product for you that you could check out on.

My top 10 finds on that video is, especially with our backgrounds, our backgrounds are construction.

So we know what kind of the ebbs and flows of a job site and the strains of a job site.

And if you've been on large high rise jobs, which I have in downtown Seattle, you know, that elevator is a strain on a job site because everything is fixated on who's using that elevator, that freight elevator, or even the internal elevator.

And how do you manage getting all this material into position while people are still trying to go up and down a small number of elevators?

Yeah, there was this company that I saw at CES that was out of South Korea, and they've created these machines that can pick up pallets of material.

So that's a finite size, but they pick up pallets of material.

They can go onto elevators and they have another element robot attached to the numbers on the elevator machine buttons so it can dictate where materials are going.

So they say that while the job site is happening during the day, at night, these machines can filter all the materials for you on the correct levels.

So it's not taking up job site space and you're not having to worry about getting those materials up to the right floor while people are trying to use the lifts.

That makes sense.

That was a challenge.

I mean, I. I worked on Bellevue, Washington, not too far from your place.

I. I built Lincoln Square out up there.

I did all the cabinetry for the residences above the hotel.

So I did all those.

I walked that building five days a week.

I took the freight elevator that was bolted to the outside of the building, which, if you're scared of heights, there's a way to do that that'll break.

You jump in that thing five days a week, you'll figure it out.

But yeah, that would have been a huge game changer for that because there were guys with muck buckets, carts, trying to get rid of sheetrock debris to everything else.

And that would be a game changer.

And you think about that.

Technology is so already existing.

My son, four or five years ago, was in his early 20s.

He was driving semi truck over in eastern Washington for Lamb Weston.

And he was hauling french fries back between a manufacturing and a freezer facility.

The robots loaded the trucks.

He didn't get out of his truck.

He backed it up.

They opened it up, the robots came in, loaded the entire semi truck, and then he'd drive over there, they'd unload it, and he was just driving back and forth.

Didn't really even have to get out of his truck, but the loaders were doing it, which were the robots that were doing that within the machine and the system, which to me is fascinating.

Yeah, again, it's the, the mentality of where we are going to be in the technology realm in such a short amount of time is going to make things very interesting for a lot of people.

But I'm looking, I'm Always that positive individual.

I think, of the positives when these things happen.

And back in the day, there was people that thought that the typewriter was going to ruin humanity.

So the amen.

There's an ebbs and flows of technology.

Darn.

And it's going to ruin the world.

And maybe they weren't wrong, but we've lived with it.

Exactly.

But, yeah, I mean, and then you get into the home stuff at ces, too, and that's always fascinating because, you know, I think we've come out with enough smart devices out there, but really, you start to see now, or you get into the interoperability where all of a sudden the H VAC system is grabbing the temperature from the television in the living room, saying, wow, it's cooler over there.

We should turn the fan on, and all these different things.

I mean, before I sold my house, I had to get rid of so many light switches in there because I literally had a test bed.

I probably had 10 different brands of smart switches around the house, because I would go, hey, let's test these out.

They'd send me a couple.

I'd use it and see how they work.

Some were amazing.

Some were absolute garbage and disappeared off the marketplace.

But you kind of got to know which ones were cool, which ones needed work, and it was fun to be part of that test bed.

But now we've got enough switch companies out there.

But I tell you what, there's neat new stuff out there that's controlling, stuff that's going to make our lives so much easier and safer.

Yeah.

I don't know if this was something that was actually going to come to fruition, but there was a company that I saw at CES that had this ability to take a blender, a toaster, or any other, like, small appliance and place it on your stove, and that will actually power your.

Your blender or toaster just so, like, you could be fully cordless in your kitchen.

And, like, again, who knows if this is ever going to come to fruition, but just unique elements that are in that home remodeling or just home space in general that I find so intriguing, even though it might not come to pass or.

So you never know what's going to happen, what you're going to find on the shelves eventually.

Well, you think about it how we're doing induction cooking through porcelain countertops now, where you can mount those things underneath the porcelain.

It goes through there.

It passes right through it.

And, you know, think of our phone charging system now, the wireless ones where you throw it on our car charger as we're going, and it snaps and does that.

It's probably not too hard to do a blender.

Yeah, it's exactly that.

Incorporating that induction stovetop to actually power things where you don't have to worry about, where's my next plug?

I like that.

And as a designer, too, that makes it kind of fun.

As long as they can change building codes, I don't have to put plugs in every couple feet and take it out of underneath the cabinets or.

Or even worse, in the backsplash.

That's something that could be pretty cool.

But, yeah, CES is always the crazy.

I wish it was a better time of year, because it's like, to me, it's like the worst time of the year for a trade show.

The week after the holidays, it's like, hey, I want to get back in the office, but now I got to travel to Vegas.

Yeah, exactly.

It's literally the.

The first or second week of the new year, and so everyone's, like, coming out a holiday haze, and all of a sudden, you're getting thrown into one of the biggest trade shows of the entire year.

Yeah.

And I.

And I know that.

That I think, if I remember right, speaking of big trade shows, that that's why we're in Orlando this year for the design and construction week.

I think they've been working on the convention center in Las Vegas, which.

It needed some love.

Don't get me wrong.

It wasn't.

That was bad.

It was just quirky in there, and I'm kind of looking forward to getting back there next year because it's really nice to be back in Vegas.

Yeah, I think it's going to be nice to be back in Vegas, especially with the new digs.

They've done an amazing job on remodeling that convention center, and it's absolutely gorgeous now.

And I'm hoping that the flow of traffic between building to building to building to building is going to be easier now.

Dude, I tell you what, that is one of the trade shows.

And anybody listening that's been to this, that go.

You mean I have to go to the south hall was always just like a. Oh, my gosh.

You know, it was.

There was no easy way to get there other than taking my secret, which was to take the Tesla loop.

That Tesla cyber loop definitely helps from getting from south to west, that's for sure.

Oh, my gosh.

I was using that.

I just, you know, for the first couple days, my hotel gave me a pass, and Then I paid the whatever, five or six bucks, whatever it was at the time, for the pass.

And that is one of those things that I think is going to renovate Las Vegas as a whole.

On getting around, you won't be standing out there in front of the Uber lines for an hour and a half trying to leave the show.

Yeah.

They now have driverless cars zooming around in Vegas right now.

And I forget the brand that is they're being pitched by, but there is a driverless taxi service in Las Vegas right now.

I've seen them running around on video.

I haven't seen them in person just because I haven't been down there yet this year.

But that's interesting.

I can trust it.

I know my girlfriend would go not getting in that for anything, but she's also the person that her computer is her phone and she has a computer at work and literally is not a technology person.

And I get that teacher own.

But for me, I'm like, let's jump in and check this out.

Let's see how this goes.

Yeah, I know, right?

I can only imagine what it's going to be like on the roads in another five, 10 years.

Well, I don't know.

It's pretty crazy out driving now.

So maybe if we have some more driverless cars that are making more sense out of it.

I mean, you get used to technology and we're going to dive off the subject a little bit here, but it's just like having a newer vehicle with that, with cruise control that's got the automatic cruise control that's going to slow the car down in front of you.

You slow down and it's almost like driverless cruise control in that it's watching the gas and brake for and keeping that distance the same.

And so many of us have gotten used to that.

And between that and the drive by Braille, when you get over on the side a little bit and the car corrects and gives you that little warning sign of, hey, dummy, get in the lane.

We're not that far in many vehicles these days.

Yeah.

I mean, we're so distracted as individuals that drive very heavy pieces of machinery that could hurt somebody.

So hopefully the technology actually saves lives in the.

In the long run.

That would be nice.

That would be nice.

Other shows that you've been to, man, what else have you been to been doing this year?

Because you're always seeing the new crazy, cool stuff.

So it's always like, all right, what's Brent been seeing?

I'm going to be in Orlando this week.

For the Orgil show.

And Orgill is basically, you know, an Ace hardware show, that sort of thing.

Nice.

And it's a dealer show, so it's not open to the public, but it's really nice because a lot of these stores, they come in, they want to see what those cool products are to feed into their physical stores.

And it's a really nice way for those products or those vendors to be in front of store owners.

So it's, it's a great show because you're always finding some cool, unique innovations too in the tool and home space.

There's a lot of other things, anything you'd find at an Ace Hardware or Orgill or do it best those, you'll find it at the show.

But I, me being me, I'm always looking for the new cool tool in the construction space or the home improvement space.

Yeah.

Well, that's fun.

So that seems like kind of a more curated and elevated version of what used to be called the National Hardware Show.

So you'll have stuff that's really a little bit more dialed in, ready for consumer, where sometimes the hardware show, you'd get off into a corner and you're like, all right, if I want to make bearings in overseas in Southeast Asia, this is my land.

But I don't relate to this.

Yes, there's definitely much less of that because yeah, you certainly see that at the International Builder show or the K by S show or the National Hardware Show.

You see those, those people that are from overseas coming into the United States and trying to find individuals and companies that would actually sell their product in the United States.

And in all honesty, that was my.

That's how I originally got into the trade show realm is because in my last position I was finding products overseas at these trade shows and then bringing them into the United States for large stores scale apartment complexes and condominiums.

Nice.

Yeah, there's the OG story.

So.

Yeah, and that makes sense.

I mean, when you need to buy for a project 400 faucets and you need it to be durable, you're not walking down to the home center grabbing those off the shelf.

You need to be dealing with a company direct and, and sometimes you can get some really great buys like there especially because little secret to you consumers out there, yeah, there could be a company that's having overseas their products made, but those guys white label stuff are the same stuff out the back door using the technology that they were making for company X.

But many times they'll throw in a different box, use the same tooling and send it out there.

And you're paying pennies on the dollar.

Cause you're not paying the brand markup.

So there's a lot of little stuff that goes on out there.

When you get kind of into the deep, dark secrets of the construction world, sometimes that gets a little interesting.

Let's just say that I've been in some very precarious and unique spaces.

And.

Malaysia and Singapore and I have been in facilities that have had brand names in them, but other brand names right next to them.

So they.

There is definitely a plethora of different types of products that are literally being manufactured in the same facility.

And this starts to.

If you really dive down this rabbit hole, it starts to look like a James Bond movie with the people and the.

And the characters and everything going on and the stuff that don't see over here, don't see over here.

I mean, it's.

It's wild.

And.

And you see that in trade shows.

I mean, it used to be, Sheesh.

I was doing smart home technology a number of years ago for one of the shows, and I'm not gonna.

I don't want to throw names out there, but this was.

Put the two brand names together.

I wanted to get two people on stage, and it was Samsung and lg.

And the head of security at the trade show said, we never put them on the same stage.

We actually keep them separated on the show floor because we've had an issue where people would start to brawl.

And this was like corporate execs.

And they went, no, no, no, no, no.

We could never do that.

And I got shot down so fast of trying to do this seminar.

They're like, oh, bringing those entourages together.

It was like your best tmz.

You never put these two entourages together thing.

And I went, yeah, who'd have known?

You know, oh, my gosh.

I would have.

Way better now.

But that was five to 10 years ago.

It was way different.

So there was a lot of that where they're just blood there.

Yeah.

It was like trying to put Ford and Chevy guys in the same room and tell them to duke it out.

You know, it's just like, not going to go well, but way fun.

And that's the other thing, too, is you start to see commercial vehicles.

At the builder show, for instance, you'll walk in and go, wow, check out that F450 with the work box on it.

And.

Yeah.

Version and Toyotas and everything else.

It gets pretty wild.

Yeah.

At these shows, you just see so much, and everyone's Trying to show their latest and greatest best stuff.

And with some of these massive brands, they're going to be doing out as much as they possibly can.

Oh, I mean, one, I think one of the finest booths in trade show history every year.

And I don't know these guys, and they haven't been on the show for stuff here.

So this isn't any kind of a commercial by any means, but you always got to walk the Kohler booth.

I was.

I knew exactly where you were going.

I could literally have written that out for you right here and shown you.

I could have literally done that.

And I knew exactly who you're talking about.

And yes, if you don't, if you've never been to a trade, but you go to one, and it is the IBS KBS show.

That Kohler booth is the most magnificent booth I've ever seen in probably the vast majority of any of the trade shows I've gone to.

And we're talking 100ft by 120ft booth.

And the amount of stuff they pack into that space is insane.

I can only imagine the millions of dollars they spend just on their booth is astronomical.

Yeah, think.

I mean, and this is an over exaggeration, but think of a football field out there that they built into a $400 million mansion that has ponds with water.

That's all the shower systems are running into.

A pond that has fish in it with beautiful rocks that looks.

It's like it's just out of nature.

And it's on a convention center floor that they had four days to set up and they have three days to break down.

Yep.

It's absolutely insane.

And yeah, you're right.

I mean, I've heard 4, 5, 6 million dollars have gone in on some of their anniversary years.

Just into the booth to get it set up.

No.

Completely believable.

Based upon what I've seen at that.

At that booth and at that show for the last 10 years.

I mean, it used to be they would sit there and they would have the showers up there.

And this was probably 10 or 15 years ago.

I'd walk in there.

They've been doing this for as.

For 20 years that I've been going to that show.

But you'll walk in there and they would have people dressed up in swimsuits dancing in the showers to music while they're.

I can only imagine how that show has changed over the last few decades.

I can only imagine what it was like in the 1960s and 70s.

I tell you what, the 90s was crazy.

The 90s was crazy.

I mean, they were.

And we'll talk about this real quick because this is something that's good.

You would sit there and you'd go to somebody's booth.

And I was in the cabinet world at that point.

You know, I was a cabinet dealer for one of these companies.

And like, oh, we were in Orlando that year and he's like, all right, hey, we, we rented out Disney's Animal Kingdom for our dinner party tonight.

And we were out there with the, with the lions and the tigers and doing everything.

And then we'd go back to the hotel and be out in the pool till 4 o' clock in the morning, 5 o' clock in the morning and all night parties.

And you know, you would show up and there were bands playing in Vegas all the time.

You know, you'd show up for the whatever, whatever party and you're like, holy smokes, that's one of my favorite bands that's playing tonight.

And that kind of stuff.

It was absolutely incredible.

There was a boy.

This was probably maybe 15 years ago.

I popped in and it was a party of Caesars for like Bosch appliances and Mila and those guys.

Pretty, pretty high end, but pretty.

Not exciting either.

And they had the best of Broadway and they had all these Tony Award winning stars up there.

And I'm like, oh, that's the original Phantom the Opera.

And I was sitting in a front row just going, oh my gosh, I'd have paid 500 to see this.

And here I am, totally cool.

So, yeah, that's how I felt at that Sphere party.

It was just like, I don't think I would have spent money to go this.

But this is one of the most amazing visual elements I've ever seen in my entire life.

Yeah.

And one word to the wise there, if you're ever for a party at the Sphere, have two cocktails max before you go to get down those stairs.

Because if you're three or four deep, that maybe someone like me would have been at that when they were handing you cocktails.

And you go to get down those steps that are like the steepest staircase you've walked down.

You gotta be, you gotta pay attention to that.

It feels somewhat like a cliff.

Like if you all of a sudden misstep, but you're just gonna roll all the way down.

Yeah.

And then of course, you know, you and I are sitting there.

We got Kevin o' Connor from this old house.

We're not name, but it's all of us friends get hanging out together and it's just a lot of fun when we do that stuff.

Of course, we got to actually enjoy ourselves.

We can't just be impacted by work the whole time while we're.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So what do you, what do you think the trends are for, for tools coming out?

Is it just kind of that more of the little stuff where hey, now we have a better this, better that, or hey, we just came up with a new tool for this one unique situation.

Did you see any trends this year of what you see?

I mean, everyone's doing something new.

The big trend that I saw, especially in the tool space was, you know, everything's going battery powered.

You know, all the big brands are going battery power, even plate compactors and all this other heavy duty material for the job site, battery power.

And I think that's still the realm that everyone's trying to still navigate through and seeing how they can incorporate better battery storage and stronger lifespans for those all day run tools.

And that's, you know, that's the ebbs and flows of gas versus electric and I think that's what they're really trying to navigate.

I'm not saying that that's the right decision, but it certainly seems like that is the way of the world when it comes to a lot of these large tool brands.

Yeah, it's interesting and we're going to run out of time pretty soon, but you know, my son just moved about four or five years ago out to North Dakota and he's like, yeah, great battery powered tools for seven months of the year.

But he says, he goes, don't send me a battery powered snowblower because it won't work out here.

Yeah, you know, and that's some of the problems that you see these companies that are outdoor power equipment makers going, hey, we're going all battery.

We're the gasoline engine, the no more of the Briggs and Stratton kind of stuff.

And it's like, that's also adorable.

But either for the winter power tool people, that's not going to work because so many times and you know, we in the Pacific Northwest this year have never had winter.

You know, we have had fall and early spring the entire time.

We haven't gotten hit like we normally do this time of year.

And the south has gotten it so far.

And I hope I'm not jinxing us for what I'm trying to fly out here in a week and a half for, for Orlando.

But we just haven't, we just haven't gotten hit.

And I'm knocking on what are they.

Doing snowstorm in Orlando this week.

I'm blaming you exactly.

Like, darn.

But seriously, you know, it's one of those things that, that we need to think a little bit about everyone on that.

Because what could work for the guy doing the lawn care in Palm Springs might not work for the lawn care guy in Grand Forks.

Yeah, no, especially, especially when it comes to battery technology because we all know the batteries just do not perform well in extreme cold.

And there are plenty of places in the United States that deal with extreme cold months of the year.

This year it's been place like Charleston, South Carolina and that have been getting that, that cold, cold.

And I'm like, wow, okay.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Utah, Washington, a number of states in our neck of the woods have had one of the worst snowfalls they've.

They've had in a very long time.

But then you see the east coast just getting pounded with snow like crazy and I'm just like, okay, this is interesting.

Yeah.

I mean, they're still using the lawnmowers, the ski resorts, and in many places here in the Pacific Northwest and could.

And you and I are going to be talking about best ways for fire July and August because if we don't get any snow up there, if we don't play a little catch up, we're in a world of hurt because that snow is our, our summer fire prevention around here.

So that could be super sketch.

But again, that's some of the challenges we have.

But little message to the power tool guys out there.

Let's, let's keep it balanced.

I love my battery powered tools, but let's just make sure that we're servicing everybody with that because there's so many northern state people that go, man, I don't want to have to go out there and mess with the battery not performing.

Yep.

Yeah, we got to think of all the trades out there.

Exactly.

Well, Brent, we are running out of time, brother.

How do people find you?

I mean, you already got your millions of followers and all your channels, but you could use another million more.

So how do people find you?

Because I tell you what, guys, this is the channel to watch out there for all the new stuff.

And I always see his stuff and go, oh, where do you find that?

Or even more so when I get back from the show.

And just like you said, it's, oh, I missed that.

Where did he find that at?

Yep.

So you can find all on all platforms, you can find me at BYO Tools.

But if you want to see my top 10 finds, especially since we spoke about a lot of the trade show stuff today.

If you want to find my top ten fine YouTube videos and long form YouTube videos on that platform, it's BYOTrade.

Nice.

There we go.

The BYOT branding everywhere.

Keep it going on today.

It's always so fun to do this and I'm looking forward.

We will, I'm sure in about a week and a half or so.

Catch catch each other here in Orlando.

We always seem to find each other even when we don't set something up.

But always fun, my friend.

Thank you for having me, as always.

Oh, good times, brother.

I'm Eric G. And you've been listening to two around the house.

We're all over the radio.

Take my.

Radio with you?

We're all over the place.