Jim Schneller

TH: In checking the company background, I read that AVISTA specializes in "embedded computer software." What is that?
JS: Think of it as software for the black boxes that go into aircraft. That's kind of the embedded nature of it. Or the software that might be in your car, things like that, versus traditional applications that you'd run on a PC.

TH: In terms of products that are generated from this facility, you are involved in the software for those black boxes?
JS: Yeah, what we are is a service company, so we provide software services to our customers. Some of them are sister companies, but the vast majority are other companies, like Rockwell Collins, Goodrich, Smith's Industries, Honeywell, Hamilton Sundstrand and so forth. Boeing, actually, we're working for directly as well. They will be doing software for any number of different functions in the aircraft. They'll come to us and say, "We'd like you to write software for this particular item," or, "We'd like you to write a piece of the software for this particular box," or, "We'd like you to do the verification of that software to get it certified so they can actually fly it." So it could be anything from displays to different functions, engine monitoring, navigation systems, flight management systems, displays, smart sensors, entertainment systems - any number of different items in the aircraft, different computing functions. So we'll do some piece of the software lifecycle or, in some instances, we'll take on for a box and do the entire software lifecycle for it. Approximately 80 percent of our business is in the aerospace and avionics arena, 15 percent or so in the medical electronics arena, and the remaining 5 percent in other areas We've done large web applications for different customers or GPS-related software for tracking buses en route or emergency vehicles, for example. Or precision farming software.

TH: Did you know anything about aviation when you first got into this?
JS: I had actually taken ground school many, many years ago, but that was about the extent of it. For me, it was a learn-on-the job thing. I started out in November of '87 as the third employee, third engineer employed by the company (then known as Insight Industries, Inc.) and worked on some test equipment for a box called ACARS. That was my first foray into the business.

TH: Have you acquired more of an interest in aviation, or is it ones and zeroes?
JS: No, no, no. A lot of interest. In fact, through the years, I've learned about the operation of the aircraft, the operation of the fight management side of it, just in general, what it takes to do software just so you can fly it. The software has to be written to certain standards and there has to be certain processes followed, certain artifacts generated so the FAA will grant the certification to let the software be airborne. Learned a lot. We also try to incent our employees to do that as well. In fact, we've got in place a flight training program so if they want to take flight classes, we will reimburse them for so much instructor time and so much flight time and so forth. There have been individuals that have gone through it and got their private pilot's license (and beyond).

TH: But you're not among those?
JS: No, I'm not a pilot. It's something that I may do when I slow up and go off and do it, but, no, I'm not.

TH: I was very interested to learn that out of high school you went to college and that was a washout.
JS: Yeah, "went to college" might be a little bit of a misnomer. To my father's disappointment, I'm quite sure. I lasted maybe all of a week or two. By the time I got a month or six weeks into it, I might have still been staying at the dorm, but I was working in a foundry in East Dubuque. Then I moved back home.

TH: Obviously you weren't ready for college at that time. Looking back, how to do assess that period of your life?
JS: Well, you certainly don't regret it. During that timeframe, I got married to my lovely bride and had two wonderful children. Had I packed up and moved away after getting a job someplace else, who knows what would have happened. There's certainly something to be said of learning things through the School of Hard Knocks a little bit. Certainly, through the years, I've had a number of different professions, from welding to factory work, to foundry work to whatever. I was fortunate enough to get on at John Deere in the factory. Moved from one end of the factory to the other; I did welding and assembly work and hobs and gearing.. While there, I started thinking that it would be easier to use my brain to make some money instead of just my back, so I went back to school and continued working and ended up with a computer science degree. Then I got over in the manufacturing engineering department at John Deere.

TH: Was there a particular time or incident that had you thinking, "OK, I really need to get back to school"?
JS: I don't know if there was a kind of this watershed thing. My father kept trying to push me, or urge me along, to go back and take a class here and there. And I did and I enjoyed it. I had fun with it. A very close friend of mine attempted to get me to go down to school with him in Florida. I guess I was too chicken, maybe not mature enough or not ready, so I didn't. But when he would come back for the summers or visit during holidays or whatever, he would come back and we'd always get together, as we still do, and he said, "You ought to look at this computer stuff." He was excited about it, having fun with it. He got my interest. I took a class up at the college. It was interesting. I enjoyed it. One thing led to another. In fact, Dr. Joe Clifton was the gentleman that I took the class under. At that time, I was working multiple jobs and trying to take this class at the same time, in addition to working full-time at John Deere. He took me aside shortly after we started and he said, "You know, Jim, I think you ought to really consider dropping. I don't know how you're going to be able to do all this." He was showing concern. That was kind of - "Blankety-blank, I'll show you." So certain things just incent you to do it, so I ended up getting an A in the class. And Joe and I have become very good friends. In fact, when I did go back to school, I'd taken many classes from him. He was my advisor and I'm extremely fortunate enough that we employ Joe part-time here. So, it's been a wonderful relationship.

TH: You mentioned you father. What line of work was your father in?
JS: My father was in education. In fact, he was an educator in many of the elementary schools in the area. Potosi. Cuba City. Ended up in Cassville at the end before he retired. He was principal in all of those, I believe. He would teach and he was also principal. Then on the side, he was an antique dealer. In addition to many, many other things that I learned from my father, both my mother and my father, I think work ethic is one of those things that gets instilled in you from the environment from which you've grown up in. My dad was a very hard worker. He was very dedicated to his job and the teaching and the running of the different elementary schools. He would get done with that and then go off and make antique calls and pick things up and sell them. I believe it was in '74, he retired from teaching and has been doing the antique business ever since. Which is neat. We kind of have a passion for antique things as well.

TH: It's not necessarily unusual for someone who has worked in a factory to go back and get their degree, but it is unusual for someone to end up acquiring a business or becoming president of a company. Is that the work ethic that we're seeing, or do you attribute that to...?
JS: Certainly the work ethic is a part of that. Enjoying what you do. The dedication to the job. And maybe being nave enough not to think, "What are you trying to do?" I'd like to say that there was some huge grand plan, but there wasn't. You give people the opportunity to take on more responsibility and many, many people will step right up and do that. I was offered that and I must have shown something to somebody who said, "Well, let's see what he can do."

TH: Not long ago, the Junior Achievement of Dubuque Area had its Hall of Fame induction. Each of the honorees spoke of not only having some luck involved, but also some difficult times or turning point times where, well, is this going to make it or is it not going to make it? In this particular operation, in this business, were there moments when it was questionable whether it was going to succeed?
JS: Oh, sure. Well, right off the bat, when we purchased it, it was depressed time for the business. Actually, the aerospace portion of the business had shrunk. It was a difficult time.

TH: Was it post 9-11?
JS: No, when we purchased the business back in '96, there was a concern on our side. We put literally everything on the line, Karen and I did, to move ahead with it. So there was a concern. The transition from one company to the next company was a little bumpy as well, because the customers wondered what was going on. At that time, we were pretty much a one-horse operation. We were doing a good business, but it was all with Rockwell Collins. So, right off the bat, there was some worry sometimes. There was, certainly, 9-11 - something that we wondered about as well. It wasn't too long after that occurred, you could see the commercial aerospace, airline industry in general, nosedive. We were fortunate - sounds like an unfortunate use of terms - but we were fortunate enough that we only laid off about 16 percent of our workforce when that hit. Other companies in our same business playground, we saw some of them lay off as many at 80 percent of their staff. There were certainly some times there that we were worried about. And with any service business, you always wonder: Do we have enough people to do all the work? Do we have enough work to keep everybody busy? There are all these times we were wondering one or the other. Our first focus is the customer. Make sure we take care of them no matter what. Then the second focus is always on the staff.

TH: What's your employment number currently?
JS: We're in the mid-150s right now. We stay pretty steady. It's bounced around probably plus or minus 10.

TH: That's full-time and part-time?
JS: Mm, hmm.

TH: How would you describe your management style? If I were to go out and talk to some of your staff and ask, "OK, what's the skinny on Jim? What kind of boss is he?" How would you describe how you manage people?
JS: I'm not going to dazzle you with any tremendous management style, theory or anything. The management structure here is actually very flat. We try to be extremely open. They use the term open-door policy but that certainly is. Anybody is welcome to come in and see me if they have questions. I've got a small executive management team; we do the majority of the high-level decisions within the company. Each individual out here has helped make this company what it is and that's recognized and we also have a commitment to them, just as they have a commitment to us. We try to keep it a close-knit, family-type atmosphere. Obviously, as you grow larger, that becomes a little less easy to do, but we still try to do things that bring the company together and that also recognizes the families that sacrifice as well. Certainly there is a lot of discussion that goes on between me and my staff and the program management staff here. We get input as to suggestions as to how things are done or maybe avenues that we ap proach. It's very participatory. That said, I mean, when a decision is made, a decision is made and we move forward. But it's always made in the best interest of the business, which is also in the best interest of the staff, as well. Certainly the best interest of our customers and for our staff. I'm not sure if that gets what you're asking for.

TH: I think you're dancing with me a little bit. Are you an easy guy to work for? Demanding? How would you describe your ...
JS: I think everybody is demanding here. But not only are we demanding of the company and others; we're very demanding of ourselves. That isn't just me; that's every individual here I think is very demanding. By the same token, I try to be very easy going. Treat people with respect and dignity because those are the people that really have made the company. It's really easy for you to come and talk to me because I'm the one that sits at the top of the hill here, but in reality, it isn't me who makes the company. I'm just extremely fortunate to have some extremely talented people working for me. That's what I'll say my success has been - to surround myself with just extremely good talent. We demand a lot of ourselves because if we don't, we don't perform for our customer and pretty soon they go away.

TH: At the office just today, we were speaking with one of the candidates for governor in Iowa. He's traveling all over. In some of the small communities, they hear concerns from some employers who say, "We can't get the people to move to our community. We've got some jobs, but it's hard to get folks here." Now, Platteville is bigger than most - but we're not talking Madison or Milwaukee, either. Do you encounter challenges in recruiting the type of people you need here to come to Platteville?
JS: We have in the past, but we've been very fortunate. We've got a number of different sources where we're able to get extremely talented people. No. 1, we have a close relationship with the university. We employ many of the students in the computer science, software engineering and other engineering disciplines on a part-time basis here, which works out really well. I mean, it provides them with some income; it provide us with some help; they get to test drive us; we get to test drive them. We've actually hired many of those very talented individuals straight out of college. Another source where we've been able to pick up people is we've had a number of people who have grown up in the Midwest and then they would get jobs and move to the more metropolitan areas or the coast. As they're growing up through their careers and get married and start having families, quality of living starts, in many instances, changes focus in their lives, where the focus is more on that than just pure what does my job bring me or what do the dollars bring me. So, we've had a number of people who have left those areas looking for something that they can use their talents in the higher tech arena and watch those people migrate this way as well. Then a third and probably smaller group that we've had is similar nature where people are looking at maybe the last job move in their career and Midwestern folks and Midwestern values and we offer some opportunities for them as well. Certainly, we have challenges, as do others, but we seem to have done very well at being able to pick up the necessary talent. We're not afraid to take younger people that we recognize as having a tremendous amount of capability but maybe not a lot of experience and throw them into situations that challenge them.

TH: You're also involved in economic development in the greater Platteville area. Among the other businesses that you interact with, are they satisfied that there's a big enough labor pool that they will have room to grow in the future here?
JS: Well, there certainly are always concerns about that in the different areas. We have quite a number of very fine machine shops, local machine shops in the area. I know at times, there has been a desire for more talent, talented individuals or experienced individuals in that arena, but Southwest Tech and others have done things, as well as some of the companies to implement to train those workers. There's always some of those things. But I think a number of the companies that have moved here either are familiar with or want that Midwest work ethic. When the economy picks up and is going strong, as is the case in many areas now, you know things can get a little bit tighter on the engineering side of it, as I mentioned before. We've seen a tightening of that here in the last year or so, but not to the detriment of us doing what we need to do.

TH: You're also involved in a private development project. In fact, across the highway here, there's some earth being moved. Keystone Development. Talk about what's going on and what you're involved with from a personal development.
JS: Actually, I started looking at expansion on this side of town, which would be the northeast side, back in 2000. Originally we were looking at potential areas where we thought things might change or increase. Came close to doing something in 2001, but then we had 9-11 and kind of shelved that. In 2003, we revived that and brought on some additional investors and folks in town that we've done business with. John Streich is an investor and a commodities broker in town. When John moved to town, he and I became close friends and associates, as well as started doing a few odds and ends business-wise.

TH: You two are the partners?
JS: Let me get the other two investors: John's brother, Joel Streich, and then Tim Budden, who I've known for many years through this business. Tim is actually second in command here, vice president of engineering. So we decided to take a shot and we picked up about 120 acres here on the northeast side of town, right along old 151. Shortly thereafter, we picked up another 50 acres, so we had 170 acres. We were fortunate enough that when Wal-Mart decided to put one of their supercenters here in town, they came to us and we sold them 32 acres to do that. That kind of started the ball moving and we came up with an entire plan for it, which is what we call Keystone Development. Wal-Mart is certainly the anchor business, and it's generated a lot of interest. So we have an entire development that has quite a bit of commercial, some residential in it as well. We currently have an agreement signed with Menard's. We haven't closed with them, but we have a sales agreement with Menard's. So we're in the midst of ge tting the area ready so Menard's can start later this year. We've got a number of other properties, businesses that are looking to move out here. First National Bank of Platteville has announced their intent to move out here, as has Pizza Hut, putting in one of their new Italian bistro facilities.

TH: Let's go back to AVISTA and the relationship with Esterline. With the change in ownership, do you enjoy as much autonomy as you used to have, or just a little bit less, or a lot less?
JS: You never enjoy the same. It always does change because you end up having to report to a higher power. But with that said, when they were doing the due diligence on us, we were doing due diligence on them. Our due diligence didn't necessarily look at the price or the dollars or that; we were most interested in how it was going to affect our customers and then how it was going to affect our staff. And then how it was going to affect our culture. Of course, if it affected the culture or the staff, that was going to reverberate back and affect our customers. After working with them, talking with them, etc., we came to the conclusion that these guys would be a good group of people to work with. And in reality, it's turned out very, very well. The culture of Esterline - you're talking close to a billion-dollar company - sits with us very, very well. We do have quite a bit of autonomy. Obviously, we have responsibilities and we're expected to perform, but Esterline has grown a lot, not only through organic growth, but acquisitions as well, and they focused in the aerospace and defense areas and some tangential areas. Companies that they look for for acquisition, they look for companies that are very high players in whatever niche it is and they like to get into their No. 1 or No. 2 in a specific niche and bring on companies that are well managed, well run, profitable companies. They don't buy a company to rebuild it or to mesh it in with someone else necessarily; they buy companies that are pretty much stand-alone entities. So the company will come under the Esterline umbrella, but in almost all cases, there's still a great deal of autonomy in how they operate. It has been a very, very good relationship. The simple fact that I'm still here probably, we're working on the third year with them after selling the company and certainly I was in the very, very fortunate position where I didn't have to do that. I enjoy what I do. I enjoy working and doing the job that I do and working with the people that I do and I enjoy working with the Esterline folks. So, it's been pretty good.

TH: In many acquisition scenarios, the person who sells the company, or who is the president, either wants out or gets swept out pretty quickly. The fact that you're still doing this three years later would seem to speak well to your leadership and management. They must be happy with you.
JS: That's true. You're absolutely right. I'm assuming, even though they're extremely nice guys, and gals - guys is non-gender specific with me - but even though they're extremely nice folks, business is business and I feel quite confident that if they didn't feel I was performing or running the business in the way they saw it should be run, they would have, No. 1, let me know and worked with me to make sure that I did that; and, No. 2, I wouldn't be here. I told them, "If I decide to leave, I'll give you a very, very long lead time because I'm very concerned about the stability of this company." I said I'd do that. I also said if I come to work someday and I find the door locked and the key doesn't work, I'll understand that as well.

TH: But do you find it harder to have the same fire when you are working for someone else as opposed to when you were the owner?
JS: Surprisingly enough, yes. I mean there are certain instances where that's the case. Those things creep in during tough times or tough decisions of whatever. You think, "Boy I don't have to do this." But in reality, I do, because I enjoy what I do and I enjoy the people I work with. The goals have really not changed. My goal still is to grow the company, to make sure we provide a very good service and maintain our integrity for our customers, and to protect the staff here. Like anybody, if you've got the ability to walk away from the job, that thought creeps in once in a while. I'm truthful here, but it's a transient thought.

TH: What do you like to do in your spare time? Do you have hobbies?
JS: Not enough. I probably don't spend enough time doing some of those things. My grandchildren, I don't know if they're a hobby, but they're sure a lot of fun. I just love spending time with them. Karen and I ride motorcycles. Not as much as we'd probably like, but we find it relaxing to take the motorcycles out and just putz around the backroads of the tri-state area. It's a gorgeous area and it's relaxing and seeing nature from that land. We enjoy that.

TH: What do you own?
JS: We've got three Harley Davidsons. Karen has one and I've got a Road Glide, kind of a cruising machine. And then I've got a noisy bad-boy motorcycle with the ape-hanger handle bars and people think I've lost my mind.

TH: You wear all the black leather stuff?
JS: The headband and all that? Actually, no, I don't. I used to weigh a lot more and I couldn't get it in that size. But, no, I'm not necessarily the prototypical Harley Davidson rider. No tattoos. But I still enjoy riding with all those folks. I mean, we'll go down to New Diggings to the little bars down there with the bikers or wherever, the different runs. They're a fun group. It's tapered off, but what I'd like to get back into a little bit again is the antiques. Then I've got a boat down at the marina in Dubuque, so we like to get out on the river. The water is very, very relaxing. You get out on the water and 10 minutes later, the stress melts away, it seems like. So we enjoy those types of things.

TH: Craig (Reber, TH reporter) had clued me on your weight loss. Tell me about that.
JS: That was one of the harder things for me to do. I've had weight problems all my life. I've battled it and it was one of those things when I was very, very physical and working, kept it under control though I was still heavy. When I started driving the desk and spending a lot of time in front of the computer and so forth, it kind of unwound on me. I got to be just literally huge, to the point where walking 50 or 100 yards was extremely exhausting. It was just crazy. I tried lots of things. Obviously, I didn't have the willpower. There was something in my makeup, as there are with many people who had problems with it, and I had gotten to the point where it took other people to help me realize it. I got to the point where I couldn't do anything. Walking from the car into the office here was about the maximum exertion that I could do. Literally, if I didn't do something, I probably wouldn't be around. So I started looking at a number of different things, including bariatric surgery. Did a lot of research on it. Probably the hardest thing for me was getting over the feeling that I had failed at it, that I couldn't do something as stupid as losing weight or that I'd let myself get that far where I couldn't get on top of it. I've been very fortunate and the good Lord has helped me besuccessful in many areas. Unfortunately, that was an area I couldn't overcome.

TH: What was your weight up to?
JS: Well, the highest I had ever weighed myself was 549 pounds. I stopped weighing myself, and I'm certain I got higher than that.

TH: What happened next?
JS: Once I got over the idea of it being a failure, it became kind of a clinical approach. So the biggest thing for me was getting over that I'd failed at doing this in normal terms. So I did quite a bit of research and went up and visited with a doctor up in UW Hospitals in Madison. Had a consultation with him. He was extremely impressed with my knowledge. I had already had in my mind the particular type of surgery that I felt was probably best for me and the reasons why. Understood the history of bariatric surgery and understood a lot of the technical issues of the different surgeries. When I left there, he agreed and he even went as far to say when you're ready to do it, he says, give me a call and get it scheduled. Normally, that isn't the procedure. Normally, they expect you to have multiple consultations and do psychiatric reviews and so forth. I was prepared for it in all respects. In fact, was knowledgeable enough, I took up one of my books, he actually asked if he could have one of the books tha t I had. He was a teaching doctor. I gave him the book and he was going to use that as reading for his students. When I did schedule it, I guess I had a business trip out east, flying, getting through the airports, trying to sit in a seat in an airplane was so uncomfortable and sometimes not even being able to do it that I drove out. I drove out east. My wife accompanied me. We talked about it on the way out and when we got back, I called and made the date. The day of the surgery, I weighed 535 pounds, I think. By some miracle, I'd loss 14 pounds.

TH: Excuse my ignorance, but I'm sure people reading this article probably have the same question. How did you manage to squeeze into an airplane seat?
JS: It got to the point where if I was going to do that, I had to fly first class, so it started costing the company a lot more. And it was hard for me to walk through the airport. It was almost debilitating. In reality, what I had done was stop traveling. I hadn't gone out to see customers. I didn't do that. It's a testament to the other members of the management team that they were taking care of those issues. So you trick yourself into not addressing the problem, but you compensate for it.

TH: We hear people with weight problems or obesity problems say that there is discrimination against overweight people or big people. Did you feel you experienced that?
JS: Oh, certainly. Yeah, you do. You grow a little bit of a thick skin on it. I had grown up in town so I knew many, many people here, so that makes it a little easier. Oh, yeah, there's no doubt it's tough. It doesn't matter how tough you think you are. You like to think it's like water off a duck's back. Those things hurt. There's absolutely no doubt about it.

TH: When did you have the surgery done?
JS: It was April 29 of '03.

TH: So in layman's terms, what did you have done?
JS: Well, there's two things, basically two things that I had done. There's kind of a couple of major things that you can do. One is restrictive, so you do something internally so you can't eat as much. The other is malabsorbative, so your body doesn't absorb it. I had those two things done. The stomach is still in place, I still have a stomach, but about 75 percent or 80 percent of it was removed. So my stomach had literally become the size of about a bratwurst when I was done. It has grown in size, so I can eat a pretty normal meal, but certainly I can't eat like I used to and I don't. The second part of it is the malabsorbative. What they did there is right outside, just after the food leaves the stomach, there's a couple of things that are introduced into the small intestines. The pancreatic fluids and the bile. Those things are the things that really help break down the fats in the small intestine. So what they did is they rerouted my intestine. They took a chunk of it and literally cut it out, abou t three feet off of it, and attached then to my stomach and they rerouted that leg of the intestine down to the last three feet or some of my small intestine. The bile and the pancreatic fluids, those things which really are what break down the fat so the body can absorb it, that isn't introduced into my intestinal tract where the food flows until about the last 100 cm or so. So what happens is, there's a restrictive side of it, the stomach is that much smaller; and then the malabsorbative side is that the food will actually travel through my small intestine but for two-thirds or better of it, the absorption isn't occurring, it occurs in the last three feet. So those are the two things.

TH: What do you weigh now?
JS: I'm bouncing around in the mid-270s. So I'm still heavy. I've held there for quite a while. It slowed up and kind of plateaued, my weight did, when my hip got bad, so I became sedentary once again, so that's another issue. I had hip replacement earlier this year.

TH: Is that attributed to your extreme weight previously?
JS: It was certainly a big factor in it. Part of it was genetic, I think the arthritis, a large part of it, was just the extreme weight. So now I'm starting to get more active, so I'm hoping that I'll see some gradual downturn. If I could lose another 30 to 40 pounds, then what would take me the rest of the way would be to cut all the excess stuff off. The doctors have stated I could easily lose another 20 pounds just by cutting the excess off.

TH: How has this made a difference, besides you still being with us?
JS: Well, that's certainly one thing. Life's a lot more fun. I tell you what really drove it home for me was seeing pictures of me holding my grandson and the simple fact that I couldn't walk around the park or take my grandson for a walk around my house, in our yard. We're fortunate enough, we have a couple-acre yard, and I couldn't do that. I couldn't do it. The ability to go do that. My grandsons holding, one of them on each finger and two of grandsons running around, down to the creek, down to the river. That was a big thing. Being able to get out and walk. Get into a little sports car. To ride the motorcycles for any distance. Flying again. Going on the customer trips. It's definitely been, life is a lot more fun. It had gotten where I couldn't go do anything with my wife. In fact, it had gotten where I was so heavy at the very end that I didn't even go out on our boat. There were two years that I didn't step on the boat and we were actually going to get rid of it. It had gotten so bad for me it was a huge chore to walk down the dock to get on the boat.

TH: I asked earlier about turning points from your academic and professional career. Was there a turning point specifically that you recall in terms of your battle against your weight problem?
JS: Well, it was probably the realization that my lifestyle was a detriment to my spouse. It was a detriment to the company and I wasn't going to be around to enjoy the fruits of my labor with my wife and my grandchildren and my kids. All of that kind of came together and that was probably the threshold, the point, the watershed event which, when all of those things kind of combined and that I wouldn't be able to enjoy or do any of that, even if I hadn't passed away, that I got over the worry about the failure part.

TH: Thanks for sharing that.
JS: There's a lot of wonderful people that I know who are in similar situations that I was in. I don't advocate doing that for a lot of people because I don't think it's a good idea to have surgeries purely for the cosmetic stuff or for ease of it, but there are individuals that it's gotten so bad or that can't for one reason or another do it. It definitely saved my life, no doubt. I think there's a better than a 50-50 chance that you and I wouldn't be talking today if I hadn't done it.

TH: Going back as we wrap up here according to the outline I have, the 20th anniversary of when Insight Industries was created will be coming up next year.
JS: Yeah. Insight Industries was '87, yeah.

TH: Is that an anniversary that you see this organization celebrating is there some other date along the tram line that....
JS: Oh, I think it is. Even though I wasn't there, actually it wasn't November, even though I wasn't at the start of Insight Industries, I was only a few months afterwards. I tell you, for an organization of this caliber to be doing business with the customer that we're doing and the number of people that we're doing and we're still here 20 years later, to me is a testament to the individuals that work here and the services we provide to our customer and that our whole focus on the product that we provide or the services that we provide and the integrity with which we do business, it kind of affirms that we're doing the right thing. I don't think of it that often, but people tell me and in reality it is, we're a fairly big fish in a small pond here. The number of families that depend on this place for their well being or their income and the impact it has on the community I think is a very positive thing. So, yeah. I don't know what we'll do, but I plan on being here to help make those decisions.