This is the full transcript for Episode #245 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Joe Altieri – Mousetrap Builder, Founder of FlexScreen. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Joe Altieri 0:00
This life – we only get to go around this big freaking ball in the sky so many times. Why waste another day?
Max Branstetter 0:20
Well, hello to you, too. Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer of MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is Episode 45 past 2. And today’s guest is Joe Altieri. Joe is the Founder and President of FlexScreen, the world’s first and only flexible window screen, and say that 25 times fast. But Joe has an incredible business. And in this episode, we talk taking the rollercoaster of entrepreneurship by the horns, which combines several metaphors, partnering with the right people, how to manage funding, and dealing with a pretty high pressure environment of entrepreneurship, as well as making sure that you have time for your hobbies, making sure you have time for your family, for your friends, for things outside of work, and how to keep powering through when times are tough. It is A, Joe. Enjoooooooy the shoooooow!
Aaaaaaalrightyyyyy we are here with Joe Altieri, Founder and President of FlexScreen, one of the coolest and most flexible and I guess, well-screened companies, you’ll come across. Joe, thank you so much for joining super excited to chat with you today. How you doing?
Joe Altieri 1:57
Good, man. Um, I’m having fun today. It’s, we’re recording this on a Friday and it’s been a long weekend. You know, gonna go have some fun this weekend. So
Max Branstetter 2:06
yeah, yeah, say I am super excited to just, you know, burst your bubble for the weekend, because I think you’re gonna hate this interview, we’re gonna have an awful time. And really, you’re gonna want to, you know, jump off right away. So we’re gonna, sorry about that.
Joe Altieri 2:20
We’re gonna have a blast. You look out, man, it’s gonna be amazing.
Max Branstetter 2:23
No, I’m really excited. And of course, we’re gonna get to your flex screen story. But before that, I mean, you have an amazing background in serial entrepreneurship, in inventing. And I saw from your background that for a while you were on a quest for a better mousetrap. So what what was that story?
Joe Altieri 2:43
Well, you know, the better mousetrap is kind of just the symbol for, you know, something that’s been out there for a long time that you’re trying to improve. You know what I mean? mouse traps have been around for forever and ever and ever. And you know, that the little spring loaded mouse trap is, it’s still what a lot of people use. But there’s a lot of different options out there, you know, a lot of new things that do the same job. You know, that’s really what FlexScreen is when two screens have been around for a long time. Over 100 years, you know, the screens that are probably on the window right behind you have been around for over 100 years, invented in 1907. That is a really long tradition of a product staying exactly the same. And so when our screen came out, it was like, What the heck, something changed on something that’s really a basic product. That’s the better mousetrap that we’ve created.
Max Branstetter 3:31
I love the analogy there. Now, did you ever have any interest in actual mousetraps? Are you just like a metaphor? They’re
Joe Altieri 3:38
just a metaphor.
Max Branstetter 3:41
Alright, so clearly well versed from the metaphor standpoint, but taking it back to like, you know, your early years. What is it that initially got you excited, and potentially inventing something or some things one day,
Joe Altieri 3:53
I have been trying to not work for people for my entire life. So from that, from the time I was, I was very young. You know, I used to cut grass. You know, I, I remember, back in the day, I asked my grandfather, I was probably middle school, young middle school, I asked my grandfather, you know, for something only remember what it was something that costs money. And instead of buying me that thing, he bought me an old like, 1960s lawnmower, you know, like the red one with the little white top, you know what I mean? That, you know, you had to pull it for half an hour to get it started. And he said, you know, hey, if you want that I was pointed at a bike or something, if you want it, go out and get it for yourself, why would you want to rely on somebody, and I started cutting lawns. And that just started a journey of, of entrepreneurship in my life. And I’ve come from a family of entrepreneurs. My wife comes from a family of entrepreneurs. And so it’s just in our DNA. You know, you have that side of it, you know, the entrepreneur side of it, but then you also have, you know, I’ve always been a curious person, you know, I remember taking my little race track cars and stuff like that and tearing them apart and seeing how they were work and stuff like that. So, I’ve always wanted to see how things work and experiment a little bit. And so in my industry, you know, the Windows screen industry, nothing has changed in a very, very long time. And so it was just me thinking, Man, there has to be a better way, there has to be something else. There’s a lot of problems with this product. Why? Why have we dealt with this for so long. And what I found out is, people just don’t think about like, things become the status quo. And then people stop thinking about them, they stop innovating, it’s good enough, and it’s it might suck a little bit, but it’s, it’s close enough. And not a lot of people see opportunity in that there’s a small portion of the population that sees opportunity in that. And luckily, I happen to be one of them stumbled across my little portion of that world.
Max Branstetter 5:49
And your little portion of the world involves, as you said, families of entrepreneurs on both sides of the family, so what kind of businesses were your parents, grandparents, etc. In
Joe Altieri 5:59
my, my family owned a construction company that did like racking and conveyor systems and warehouses, you know, so like big warehouses that, you know, Amazon, stuff like that, had my grandfather owned a, an equipment supply or equipment repair company, I grew up, you know, having grease all over me, you know, being in his shop, stuff like that. My, my wife’s family, they owned a contracting business. And then my father in law who passed away a couple years ago, he owned a service station, there’s people that are just used to that, you know, used to the risk used to the unknown used to the, you know, hey, I’ll take this responsibility on my shoulders. It’s not better or worse. It’s just there’s people that are that are just accustomed to it. And luckily, you know, luckily for me, I was one of them.
Max Branstetter 6:49
Growing up with grease all over you that well, first I thought of Grease the movie. Grease lightning. But, I think that’s a different kind of grease.
Joe Altieri 6:53
Definitely a different categories.
Max Branstetter 6:58
Well, what is your advice for the best way to get grease off of you?
Joe Altieri 7:03
i You know, it’s funny. There’s a product called GOJO soap.
Max Branstetter 7:07
Yeah, the big, like huge orange containers, right? Yeah, there’s
Joe Altieri 7:11
orange. And then there’s like white ones, too. And it has like this distinct smell. And I remember growing up, that was how we would have to clean off all the grease and stuff. You know, then you go like years and years and years without smelling it. You know what I mean? And then as an adult, I remember buying something. I was like, Oh, this is like grandma’s cookies. Like it was just like it was such a familiar smell. But yeah, so GOJO or Lava, Lava soaps, always good, you know, rips off that top layer of skin.
Max Branstetter 7:38
you’ve tapped into a very obscure point of nostalgia for me because my my first job ever was in high school at work over the summer at shadow Lou DeMarco, he had a t shirt printing company. So it’s called the ABL Screen Printing. So I was like a t-shirt screen printer. And you know, it was like the screen printing and the squeegee and the ink and all that stuff. But as you can imagine that ink gets everywhere. So you know, I’m wearing like old shorts and old t shirt while I’m doing it and you know, rocking out to stuff on my iPod with wired headphones at the time. And they had like giant vats of GOJO that was like your way and it probably took still like you know, 1015 minutes to like, wash your hands and clean everything off by the end of the day. But yeah, that’s some serious industrial stuff. So I’m glad to hear that helps with the grease as well. So let’s get to FlexScreen. So from screen printing to FlexScreen, which I didn’t anticipate, but you know, made it perfect screen segue for this interview, you, as you alluded to, are disrupting an industry that, you know, hasn’t made many improvements to the mousetrap in a long, long, long time. So this idea got started in a garage, can you take us into that garage.
Joe Altieri 8:55
So again, in the window screen industry, you know, the window screen is made out of painted aluminum. That’s what traditional screens like most people have in their houses are. And so there’s a lot of damage that happens with those. As a matter of fact, for a window manufacturer, who that’s most of our customers, we sell directly to the people that are making windows and they put our screens on and then they go out to the homeowners. But for them, window screen damage is the number one complaint in our entire industry in that entire window indoor industry. And that was a sales rep for I would sell pieces and parts to window manufacturers I was sell things like silicone and, and glass and hardware. And one of the things I sold were were window screens. The semi customers had a lot of complaints about window screens. I mean, it’s like three to 5% of the window screens that get produced have to be repaired or replaced before a homeowner is happy. And that’s what brand spanking new windows. So it’s a huge number. So this was just me going man, there has to be something else. There has to be a better with something that’s not going to get damaged as easy as regular old time, you know, Windows screens. And so I just are walking around Lowe’s and Home Depot going, can I make a screen out of that? Can I make a screen out of that? Can I make a screen out of that, and I just started buying stuff. And again, this is just kind of a hobby, you know, I set up a little workshop and house garage, told my wife like, Hey, I’m gonna pull your your, you know, your Yukon out for maybe like a week or two. I’m just gonna do some, you know, little hobby thing. Two years later, you know, I finally had this, this prototype of what is now flex screen. And it was just nights and weekends. It was, like you said, it’s kind of a passion project. I didn’t have really high expectations of coming up with something. But I did was never discouraged either. You know, it wasn’t like, it was fun. I liked I liked doing it. As I got closer, it got a little bit more intense. You know what I mean? As I was like, Oh, hold on a second here, I have something there. There’s like, the last six months, it was, you know, I didn’t eat dinner with my family anymore. They would bring a plate out to me. You know, that kind of stuff. But it was, it was a labor of love. In a lot of ways. You know, it was just it was fun. And then I had this, I had this what I call my bubble gum and duct tape prototype. Literally, it was ugly. And but since I was in the window industry, I had connections. And so I showed it off to some people. And they’re like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. If you build it, we will come. That was kind of how it started, you know, and he said it was just an idea and a garage, and I had no idea that it was going to be what it is today. It was just, you know, maybe something slightly better. I had no idea that it was going to be the disrupter. That is it’s actually become the two year
Max Branstetter 11:41
prototype, which sounds like a a book by Tim Ferriss. How many ups and downs were there in that prototyping phase?
Joe Altieri 11:48
Oh, my God, it was so many. Yeah, I definitely cleaned up the garage probably a dozen times where I was like, threw a bunch of stuff away. I mean, it was I failed 1000 times. I mean, it was over and over and over again, ways that it just didn’t work. I don’t want to say it was all like fun. There was a lot of frustrating times, I learned a lot, you know, our product is made out of spring steel. So I had to learn how to form spring steel and how to kneel it and you know how to make it, make it do the things that I wanted to do. So I got a little education and metallurgy. And, you know, I was trying to go back to my high school science days, you know, trying to think through things. But, man, I failed a lot. An awful awful lot.
Max Branstetter 12:36
Was it the fact you’re based in Pittsburgh, you’re like we need to incorporate steel in the summer.
Joe Altieri 12:41
No, I desperately tried not to incorporate. I tried everything else. And the reason that we came up with or I came up with steel, as the prototype was just I had gotten into this experimental mindset. So I was just trying a bunch of different things. And I had an office in my house. And I needed an outlet run with you know, it was like cat five cable or something like that. And so we had an electric electrician came in, and he used a electricians fish tape. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that it’s kind of it comes on a big reel. And then he fishes it down through the wall and he grabs onto the wires and he pulls the wires up through the hole that he made. And as he was doing that, I was watching him, like what is that? And he’s like, Oh, it’s a fish tape. It’s like what is it made out of? He’s like, Yeah, it’s it’s like spring steel. You know, it’s essentially like a big tape measure for lack of better way of describing it. And so we’re like, we’re gonna buy that he’s like our Lowe’s has them. So that’s where I bought mine. So I went up to I went up to Lowe’s, and bought six of them. Because that’s what they had on the shelf and I bought them all and I brought them home. Fun fact, when you open one of those up, they’re under pressure and the in the spring steel, when you open them up, they explode all over the place. Like there’s like 100 feet of steel and these things and yes go just like this big tangled mess. That was what my first real prototype the first working prototype came from electricians fish tape, because a guy ran a wire through my through my wall. So that’s a kind of the the experimentation that I was going through, like like literally I was like, I’ll make a screen out of anything. And that’s that was how it started
Max Branstetter 14:18
in what part of the actual screen uses that material. It’s the
Joe Altieri 14:21
the frame part the outside that holds that that mesh that blocks a bug so it’s the outside part
Max Branstetter 14:26
so one of the trickiest parts of your product and it looks awesome it works awesome about when I first came across it I’m like how in the world do you get it to like be flexible and not break you know it’s like the bend but not break defense. It’s like the bend but not break you know Windows screen how would you come up with the flexibility aspects of it?
Joe Altieri 14:48
That was actually an accident. That wasn’t the intent. Once I had this okay, I can make this out of steel. You know, I started looking at man again, this is just like super silly stuff. I’m like thinking back I You know, the Barbie pop up tents, you know, they’re like, that was my daughter, my daughter’s you know, I have three daughters, younger daughters, they have one of those pop up tents it starts off as like this little circle and you open up and it just pops into this, you know, but they have them for like hunting blinds or you know, like the blind for the sunblock or for your car, you know, where you put it in your windshield, same all the same concept. They’re spring steel on the outside of those. And so I kind of took this electricians fish tape that was made out of spring steel, and then this concept of the Barbie pop up tent, I went to some spring companies and said, How do I do something like this with something, you know, like one of these things, they kind of guided me through, you know, again, the physics and the, the metallurgy of springs and came up with the right material to, to make our framework the way that we want. So it has to be strong enough to hold the hold it hold a shape, but weak enough that it’s still flexible.
Max Branstetter 15:58
So once you refine those, you know, the Barbie and tape measure-infused design and everything in that explosive space. Once you got the product in a good place, what were those first steps to actually like getting it out there and you know, starting to make money and like turning this into a business.
Joe Altieri 16:15
One of the things and again, this, this goes back to just the mindset I was in where, you know, I have no pride when it comes to any of this stuff. Like I asked for help all the time. Why not? You know, there’s people out there that want to help. And so, as I was showing off this ugly prototype, really, really ugly prototype, a company came in and said, Hey, and at that time, I had non disclosures, you know, signed with a bunch of companies that were looking at it,
Max Branstetter 16:42
you can’t I don’t think you can mention that legally, right, now we’re gonna have to cancel this episode. That’s just gonna,
Joe Altieri 16:48
you know, I had also filed some preliminary patents. So our first patent application had gone in. So you know, I was starting to get protected from the IP side. And I had a company in our industry and equipment company came and said, hey, we’d like to buy the concept off of you. And, you know, and your patent application. And, and it was, it was a really nice offer. It wasn’t a Joe retires, you know, to his private island offer, you know, but it was like, hey, for two years of my time in my garage, this would be a really cool thing. You know, what I mean? Like this is it would start a nice retirement fund, you know, that kind of thing. And I had a friend of a family, who I had known for a long time who dealt with in his primary business, he owned a bunch of IP, and his own company owned and owned a bunch of IP. And I just went to him and said, Can I have a couple of minutes of your time I have this offer, I’d like to talk through this. He was very gracious, gave me about three hours, you know, he kind of walked through, and he just spent time with me talking about the opportunity talking about the market talking about the product and and what the potential was. And he said, you know, hey, can you give me a couple days? Let me digest this, and I’ll get back to you. I remember was it was on a Thursday. And on Monday, he he called and said, Hey, I have some time today, and I have some ideas, can you come in and sit down with me. And I went in and sat down with him and and as soon as I sat down, he said, Look, if I were you, I wouldn’t sell this. I think that that there’s a lot of opportunity here, I think that you’ve you have something potentially special. And I have some people that have invested with me in the past that if you’re interested, I would introduce you to them. And as a matter of fact, I’m interested in investing with you. And so, about two, three days later, I met with what became my initial partners, you know, kind of showed them what I was doing. And they’re like, I want that on my house. And they’re like, look, if I want this on my house, that means everybody else is gonna want it on their house. So that was it. And I was, like I said, I was an independent sales reps, you know, as part of the creation of the company. They, you know, we got funded, you know, those guys funded our initial startup. And but I had to make the commitment to do this full time. I had a quit what I was doing, and I was making really nice living, and I had to quit what I was doing and make flex screen my life. That was a big decision. You know, it’s one thing to mess around in the garage. Even it’s a it’s one thing to spend some money on patent attorneys and stuff like that. But when it’s like, oh, I have four kids, you know, they went from at that point. It was like young high school down through elementary age, and had a really comfortable life and have that conversation with my wife like, hey, you know, that thing I’ve been messing around with for two years and the garage is kind of ugly. And you know, I think I’m gonna bet our whole future on that. You call it that? Yeah.
Max Branstetter 19:37
Why not? Yeah, just the typical Thursday. Yeah, typical
Joe Altieri 19:40
Thursday. Exactly.
Max Branstetter 19:41
How did you first yourself how did you get yourself to like, fully go all in on this and say, you know, we’re doing this, you know that let’s prepare to tell my family and friends what’s going on here.
Joe Altieri 19:55
There’s a lot of internal dialogue happening for sure. You know, again, growing up with an entrepreneurial family and having an entrepreneurial background helped, I don’t need the security of a nine to five, I’m confident enough that and again, we, my wife, and I, this was kind of the thing that came out of our discussion. You know, as we were talking about it, she’s like, you can always go sell cars or something like, I’m not worried about surviving, it might not be the best job, but there’s enough opportunity out there to make money. Let’s, let’s take that off the table. And I think some, even if that means, us, taking our lifestyle down, you know, a couple pegs. So again, there’s that side of it, you have to really be introspective, when you’re thinking about something like that, like, how poorly Am I willing to live, to have a big dream out there. Because again, when you’re, when you’re starting a company, especially a company that we were starting, because this was, none of us were going to say, Oh, this is gonna be like a little mom and pop type of thing like this, like, we were investing millions of dollars. So this was like a big move, you know, you’re not paying yourself half a million dollars a year. You know, starting starting up a company, you’re essentially drawing as little as you possibly can to survive, so that you can pour that money back into the business and use it to grow that this little seed that you’ve planted. So that was a that was a big thing. You know, we had to we had to talk about that and think about it. But yeah, I mean, I’ve always been a, I’ve always been a, you know, hey, let’s put it on my shoulders, I’m willing to, I’m willing to carry that load and give it a try. But man, there were a lot of sleepless nights leading, leading up to both that conversation and then making actually making that move, you got to be prepared for that. It does take an emotional toll.
Max Branstetter 21:43
So you didn’t pay yourself half a million dollars. But that is the exact amount that you paid me to be on this podcast. So thank you for for that this was really nice. Yeah,
Joe Altieri 21:52
I’m glad I’m at the point now where I can do that.
Max Branstetter 21:56
But speaking of the point, how long from the point that you like officially started the business? Did it take, you know, for you, your wife, your family to feel like, okay, you know, what we’re, you know, we’ve taken this risk, but you know, we feel pretty stable right now. Like, we’re not too concerned right now, in the financial end, like things are going well.
Joe Altieri 22:15
I’m hoping that happens like next week, that’d be
Max Branstetter 22:18
a trick question.
Joe Altieri 22:20
There was a point. And it happened right around the same time that we were on Shark Tank. And again, they’re not they’re not related. It just happened to be about that same time, where we got to the we got the company to the point where we were no longer burning cash anymore. I mean, that’s a big thing. For any startup, when you get to a cashflow, positive situation, that’s the critical thing, you know, we had to refund twice. And it’s not fun. You don’t I mean, going back and diluting your your own equity in the company that you’re doing, you know, just to keep the cash going. But like I said, I have great partners who have been extremely patient, I get another big key. If anybody takes on investors, make sure that you know who you’re getting into business with, because they can make your life miserable. But yeah, I mean, it was, my goodness, it was probably three, four years into the thing where I’m like, oh, okay, we’re good. Now. Like, yeah, can we take a deep breath? That’s a big, big step in any company.
Max Branstetter 23:21
Oh, it is. I mean, you hear cashflow positive all the time. And Shark Tank is, of course, a huge, huge can be a huge, huge spark for any entrepreneur who gets featured out there and has any sort of success on there. But when you look back kind of the lifetime of the company, what else has been like a major inflection point of like, Alright, now we’re really cooking with FlexScreen.
Joe Altieri 23:42
There’s a couple things again, when you get into a mature market, which is we were entering a mature market again, something has been around for very,
Max Branstetter 23:50
the most mature mousetraps in the land. Yes, yes.
Joe Altieri 23:54
There’s a ton of resistance. You know, there just is, you know, when we started, we haven’t I had letters of, of from window manufacturer saying, This is the greatest thing in the world. We can’t wait to start building these, you know, and all that stuff. And we opened up our doors, we’re thinking that orders are gonna fly in like there’s gonna be, and we did our entire first year, we did $400,000 worth of business. I mean, we lost a million bucks the first year is crazy to produce $400,000 worth of I mean, it just it was nothing. It was absolutely nothing.
Max Branstetter 24:24
You mean, compared to the cost that you put into it?
Joe Altieri 24:27
Exactly. Yeah, it was just, you know, we’d lost every, every unit that we shipped out, we lost tons of money. But again, wasn’t unexpected. The scope of it was unexpected. We thought, you know, maybe 4 million not 400,000 with others, like man are some zeros missing here. Yeah, I mean, so there’s a there’s an acceptance point that we hit. And so we’re still a relatively small portion of our market share, but we’ve doubled every single year, which is huge. And we’re getting to the point now where this coming year is going to be tough just because of the this So we’ve grown to double again, I keep telling my people like, Hey, we got to keep this up. They’re like, yeah, that’s not happened. And dude, big difference you go from 400,000 to 800,000 go from 20 or 30 million to 40 to 60 million. That’s, that’s those are big jumps.
Max Branstetter 25:14
That’s easy as pie. You got it. I mean, it’s close.
Joe Altieri 25:18
But yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s really the biggest hurdle was for us was just acceptance in the marketplace. And of course, you know, we were kind of on a, on a track for that. And then Shark Tank propelled that, that’s the Shark Tank effect that you hear about is, you know, you have that many people seeing seeing your product on national TV. And then you also have the reputation of Shark Tank. You know, there’s some great products that have come out of out of Shark Tank. You know, everything from scrub daddy to ring doorbell, you know, squatty potty, you know, these, these things all came out of Shark Tank, and now they’re, they’re household names. And we got kind of lucky with COVID as well, I we first aired right before COVID had January, you know, just when people would like COVID was a discussion, right? And then as COVID hit and 2020 I love the live things, you know, NBA games, you know, hockey, and all of these types of things. All went away, they needed programming. So we ended up getting four prime time slots, and just in the first year, which typically you get one, you get that first Primetime one. And then two years later, it starts doing reruns on CNBC and stuff like that. We got a ton. I mean, I think our viewership was like 30 million people just in the first year, something like that. It was incredible, just with our episode. So there was there was a lot of benefit from that to make us more of a household name as well.
Max Branstetter 26:40
Yeah, literally household. Appreciate the pun there. Yeah, that’s incredible. Like, it’s obviously there’s a dark reason behind it. But that’s incredible timing that you were able to get that you know the primetime spots there. Could you tell based on you know, sales upticks? Like when the episode was being shown again? Yeah,
Joe Altieri 26:58
so the retail side of our business, so the director, homeowner, you know, if you want to screen for your house replacement screens is actually a small portion of our volume most of our volume goes to except window manufacturers. But we could see both from just the website traffic. I mean, every time it airs, even with the reruns on CNBC and stuff like that, like the website traffic just shoots up. And then the online orders. Yeah, I mean, it goes up hundreds of percent every time every time it airs, especially on primetime that first year. Yeah, retail sales were through the roof. So that’s the key there,
Max Branstetter 27:31
that’s how you easily double your business from, you know, multiple millions to multiple, multiple millions is just, you know, write to the producers and say, Hey, can you just share this episode every week?
Joe Altieri 27:40
Yeah, just all the time. And then we got we had a, we did have a speaking of the producers, we had an update episode, because we’re growing so fast. So literally the next year, so we were in season 11. And then in season 12, they featured us in an update episode, which is really cool. Other than the fact that, you know, we partnered with Lori Greiner, and usually those update episodes, you know, the shark comes in towards your facility, you know, all that stuff. And we’re in the middle of COVID. They didn’t allow that. So we had to do everything virtually, still really cool to be featured. But you know, it’d be great to have have Laurie at our plant and have that on primetime. So we’re working on another one. So we’ll see if we can get that to work out.
Max Branstetter 28:20
Well, Joe’s working on that one, I am working on the next greatest pun/worst joke that you’ve ever heard to include in next week’s newsletter. And the only way to see it is to sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That’s at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. In addition to that brilliant humor that is sure to like literally elicit no reaction out of you, when you read it. You will also get podcasting tips and entrepreneur tips, entrepreneurship tips, both actually all three, to help you become a better podcaster and better entrepreneur. And yeah, did I mentioned terrible, terrible jokes, you could sign up at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Now let’s learn a bit more about GOJoe. Couldn’t resist. So let’s switch gears a little bit. Let’s get to you more on the inspiration on the creativity side, kind of more you personally, and you mentioned something that I think is super crucial for entrepreneurs, and that is the ability to ask for help all the time. And that is something that I think is also one of the most difficult thing for entrepreneurs. I mean, I’ve seen it myself on my podcast production business where especially at the start, like if you’re getting into the entrepreneur space, there’s a tendency to like want to do everything yourself or just, you know, knock out the next task after the next task. But you can only grow so much if that’s the case, you can’t do everything yourself. So how would you get yourself to be so willing to ask for help and you know, to team with so many, you know, awesome team members.
Joe Altieri 29:49
I don’t know how I did it myself, but it’s just always been something that I was willing to do. I think that there’s two types of entrepreneurs, you know, there’s the people that to go out there and say, I know more than everybody else, and they’re just so confident in what they’re doing, that it never seems that they, they ask for help. And if somebody offers to help them, then you know what I mean, it’s they come at them, you know what I mean? That’s not me, I have a goal in mind, and I don’t care how I get to that goal. I don’t care if credit goes to someone else, you know, I don’t care. You know, who who I pull up along alongside of me, this isn’t about my pride. It’s not about my name being out there. You know, we use me as a spokesperson of our company simply because I’m the inventor, not because I want to be the face of our company.
Max Branstetter 30:37
But you do have a beautiful face and a beautiful voice. So I can’t blame the team.
Joe Altieri 30:42
Thank you.
Max Branstetter 30:44
My pleasure. This is the point of this interview is just compliment you.
Joe Altieri 30:47
Yeah, I appreciate that. It’s great for Friday, like hell. But to me, like you said, what is important is where we’re going, not necessarily how we get there, or who gets us there. I’m, I’m one of those guys that I’m smart enough to know that I don’t know very much. If that makes sense. You know, that’s the thing, man, my team is so awesome. That people that I have, so that that gentleman that I spoke about earlier that I went to for advice. You know, he is one of my business mentors. I mean, I come to him, I talk to him a lot. He’s willing to help me. He’s he, you know, bumps me in different directions like, Hey, have you thought about? Even my, my partners? They don’t they’re not involved in any of the day to day, but man, are they fantastic advisors, they’re people that have done big things, they might not be the same things that I’m doing. But they just have great advice. And they have great insight. And so I don’t know, man, I I look at the people around me and the advice that they can give and the direction that they can can help me with as tools. And why wouldn’t I use tools that are at my disposal to make my life and my business better? That’s really what it comes down to my pride is worth nothing. At the end of the day, it is worth absolutely nothing. But men, the advice that somebody can give could be the difference between your your business being a success and a failure. So why would you possibly put your pride above you know, something that can help you out?
Max Branstetter 32:15
That’s a really, really important point. And I think another thing entrepreneurs struggle with is, especially when you’re like, early on building the business is like keeping that free time in your life and like finding ways to unwind and unplug and things like that. So what is your absolute favorite thing to do outside of work?
Joe Altieri 32:34
I like to travel. My wife and I travel quite a bit. We’re warm weather travelers, so we make it a point,
Max Branstetter 32:41
how dare you want to enjoy the warm, that’s
Joe Altieri 32:46
quite a few years ago, we started making a making a goal to travel somewhere together at least once a quarter. So once once every three months, we have a trip and it could be a long weekend, or something, you know, something better we use a lot of I travel a lot for my business. So we have a lot of airline and hotel points. And so we’ll go places, you know, just using those types of things. I love that I really do. I’m, I work a lot. You know, just again, it’s just the nature of being part of a growing business. And so changing the environment that I’m in so even though I might be working from somewhere that’s warm, you know what I mean, for at least a couple of hours, you know, a day, you know, it’s just rejuvenates me. I’m also an outdoors person, I love being out outside. You know, I love mountain biking, you know, being out in the woods, you know, doing stuff like that. So, those things are important. But I again, I’m making a point to try new things. I just bought a guitar never played the guitar before. It’s just one of those challenging things.
Max Branstetter 33:48
That’s a wonderful can of worms you’re opening. Yeah.
Joe Altieri 33:51
Yeah, like my fingers are sore, you know, I mean, like, like, they’re all they have that numb feeling, you know, but yeah, I mean, I just like doing new stuff, and especially things that don’t allow me to think about work mountain biking, I have to be lost in what I’m doing. I can’t be thinking about work, or he ended up you know, facedown in the mud, playing the guitar. I cannot think about anything else other than where to put my fingers when I’m trying to hit a G chord. I can’t think about Windows screens or you know, how many of my team members you know, or what they’re doing, where they’re at all those types of things. I have to be lost in what I’m doing for that to be successful. And I like those types of activities.
Max Branstetter 34:30
So let’s wrap up with some Rapid-Fire Q&A, which is just going to be asking you at every different chord that you’ve learned so far, but no, not really. But Rapid-Fire Q&A. You ready for it?
Joe Altieri 34:42
Sure. Let’s go. Alright, let’s
Max Branstetter 34:44
get Wild. And let’s get Flexy. Who is your favorite guitarist of all time?
Joe Altieri 34:49
Jimi Hendrix. Absolutely.
Max Branstetter 34:51
I was so close to making a “Hey Joe” joke at the start of this and I didn’t know he should have
Joe Altieri 34:56
you should have it was there.
Max Branstetter 34:59
I didn’t know you had the Jimi background, you have some pretty cool tattoos. What’s your favorite tattoo?
Joe Altieri 35:05
On your favorite tattoo? I have I have one, it’s kind of hard to see. But it says this will not last. It’s on my wrist. And it was something that my grandfather used to tell me. My grandfather’s you could I’ve mentioned him a couple times was a big influence in my life. He was just that calming influence. And he used to tell me all the time, good or bad. Remember that this will not last. If you’re going through bad times, remember that this will not last. Tomorrow’s another day. If you’re going through good times, make sure that you’re holding on to them because they’re not going to last either. And it’s just it’s one of those grounded pieces of advice that I thought it was so pertinent that I actually got a tattoo that says it.
Max Branstetter 35:41
Yeah, that’s that’s amazing advice. I think back. This interview is now sponsored by Tim Ferriss, because this is a second mention of him, but but I think that I think it was in The 4-Hour Workweek that he said that, no matter if you feel like you have the worst work day in the world, in the grand scheme of things, when you look back, like many, many years later, like those little things that you were, like really stressed about or upset about the time like really aren’t gonna matter that much in the long term. So that’s a good kind of have the same mindset that it’s really comforting to think that way. How about being a window sales rep, so before he started the business, you were your sales? Rep, you know, all sorts of sales advice out there. But like, what, what was the one thing that worked really well, for you from the sales standpoint?
Joe Altieri 36:22
Man? That’s a great question. I am, you know, really more than anything, it’s the consistency. And I know, it’s so cliche to say you don’t take no for an answer. But we we literally have that as part of our DNA, where it’s, it’s no just means not yet. And so that’s really the thing. Like it’s, you know, you net, you never know what circumstances will change, and to have somebody, you know, say, hey, not right now, or no, or whatever the case may be, you got to keep going back. If there’s blood in the water, you got to you got to be out there. You know, trying to do whatever you have to do to keep that moving, especially for big opportunities. If I gave up when people told me no, we would have still been in $400,000. And we would have wrapped this thing up, you know, seven years ago. So go out there, be consistent, keep pounding away. That’s what sales is.
Max Branstetter 37:13
And then last one, I really want to end this on a sweet note. You’ve been married to your high school sweetheart, for for how many years now?
Joe Altieri 37:21
Oh my gosh. 27 years. 28 years. 27.
Max Branstetter 37:25
Alright, so your spring chicken seed. You guys just graduated couple years ago, couple years ago. But that’s awesome. I think everybody loves hearing high school, high school sweethearts stories. What do you think has worked really well in you know you to you know, finding love in high school and you know, having like a beautiful marriage for so long,
Joe Altieri 37:42
apologizing quickly. I don’t know how long it’s a great answer. Man, we learned that early on. Again, it comes back to the same thing I said about pride. My pride is not worth hurting my wife. Now again, don’t get me wrong, we have arguments you know all that stuff. But when you’re wrong, and you know you’re wrong, which all of us do, like we know when something at work ticked us off and we went home and took it out on the person that we love the most man get humble, apologize quickly and get past it and you also have to be the bigger person when it comes to that you can’t expect the other person to do the same thing you have to go and make it right you know, that’s just respecting and loving that that other person so but apologize, apologize quickly. As soon as you realize that you were wrong. Don’t drag it out. Just go get it over with apologize, you know, and call it a day.
Max Branstetter 38:37
I apologize for How corny this interview has been but Joe thank you so much. This has been an absolute blast. I just love what you do with FlexScreen and I love learning about your personal life as well. Thank you so much for coming on. And where is the best place for people to learn more about FlexScreen and try it out themselves as well as connect with you online? Yeah, so
Joe Altieri 38:56
a couple things. If people want to see see FlexScreen in action, they can go on Hulu or anywhere else and watch our episode on Shark Tank. It was Season 11 Episode 12 And then the then Season 12 Episode 12 was when when they did the you know the Where have you been type of type of episode. But FlexScreen.com. You can order screens you go to HomeDepot.com/FlexScreen if you want to order them through Home Depot. You know I do some podcasts and write some blogs and stuff just about my journey. So there’s some other Shark Tank entrepreneurs on there. And you can check that out at JoeAltieri.com
Max Branstetter 39:36
Perfect and you nailed the spelling bee I didn’t even have to ask you any spelling questions you brought it. And then last thing, Final Thoughts. It could be a quote another tattoo, whatever you want just kind of words to live by. Send us home here.
Joe Altieri 39:48
If you have an idea if you have something that you want to do, stop thinking about it and just get started. You got to take that first step there’s just absolutely this life. We only get to go around this big freaking ball in the sky so many times, why waste another day? Get started, do what you want to do. Get started on that journey.
Max Branstetter 40:09
As Jimi Hendrix once said, many, many many times said, “Hey Joe.” Joe, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, sharing your FlexScreen story, and all your tips, business, life, beyond. And thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the Wild Business Growth Podcast on your favorite app and tell a friend about the podcast. And then, try out FlexScreen with them and you know compare sizes of your FlexScreen. You can also find us on Goodpods where there are good good podcasts and podcast recommendations. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That’s at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
