In this episode of the podcast, Tommy Wetjen, the general manager of the Mobile Flea Market, discusses his new role and the exciting changes planned to modernize and revitalize the market. Tommy recounts his transition from owning a wrestling company and gaming store to managing the flea market, driven by a passion for big projects and future potential. He shares insights into the diverse offerings at the market, from fresh produce and unique vendors to proposed additions like a free arcade and carnival-style food. Tommy emphasizes the importance of creating a vibrant, enjoyable experience for visitors and supporting micro-businesses. He also proposes innovative ideas like a podcast featuring vendor stories and 'Flea Tank' to cultivate new business opportunities. The discussion highlights the flea market's potential as a community hub and economic driver in Mobile, Alabama.

Transcript:

Tommy: I'm Tommy Wetjen and I am the general manager of the Mobile Flea Market.

Marcus: Awesome, man. You've been on the podcast before, but one of the things that I was excited about was that I think a, probably about a month or so ago, I listened to a podcast called My First Million.

And the founders of that started the Hustle and one other newsletter, I can't remember off the top of my head. And they were bought by HubSpot. And you and I haven't spoken about this, so you don't know this, right? Still doesn't know this if you're listening to this or watching it. Like he's what?

So I was listening to this podcast and actually this will be good news for you because these guys are basically, they basically look at businesses across the United States or around the globe and try to identify like different spots where things are going change, change that somebody's got a new vision for something.

And I was. I was being teased by a good friend of mine, Rick Perry. I know, because I had not been to the, I've lived here since 2004, so I've been here for 20 plus years, but I've not been to the flea market.

Tommy: Okay.

Marcus: And but at the same time that he was teasing me trying to get me to come to the flea market and because he just, he thinks that I'm not, a flea market guy or something.

Marcus: But whatever I've done this before and, I listen to this podcast and they say that one of the areas that they expect for things to change or that there's a momentum in some groups, and I think it's the group that we're, that you're working with, right? Where they have drastically changed flea markets and it's now something that's newer and, all these, they've made, changes, anything, goes in these things.

Marcus: Like they were talking about, they basically had a dance party and there was a DJ and Oh yeah. People, dressed in all kinds of, period clothing that they, that they could find Yeah. Renaissance type of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And anyway, I just, I was very excited about that and I knew that you were interviewing for this position, and so after having said all of that vomit, I'm, I was just wanted to hear you took this position.

Marcus: Yeah. So what's going on here? Because this is a cool opportunity. I think

Tommy: so. In November, I sold the wrestling company Yes. That I owned. And then in January I sold out of gamers and geeks and I thought I retired. I had, a bunch of rental properties. I was gonna remodel one of my rental properties and Yeah.

Tommy: Sail off into the sunset, just, I sat at home for about a month and a half. I couldn't do that. Yeah, no, you're way too

Marcus: young to be sitting at home. Yeah.

Tommy: Yeah. I, and I was like, I don't know what I want to do, and this popped up and. That looks like fun.

Tommy: I always a big project and I always like to see what the future's going to be or what I could do differently, and I put it in, I put in my resume and I don't put in many resumes, and they, I forgot about it. They called me back what? Felt like a month or so later.

Tommy: I wasn't even expecting a call. I was actually out working on my property and we had a long conversation. And then a couple weeks later I did an interview with the area manager, and that lasted probably an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and then didn't hear anything for a while, and then they said, Hey, what's your schedule like next week?

Tommy: We'd like to fly her to Denver. And I was like, huh. That was definitely an experience. I got elevation sickness. Oh wow. This was the first time ever.

Marcus: You know what, now that you mentioned it, I have had that experience before and that is weird because it did not feel weird. We come from a very wet Yep.

Marcus: Humid. See elevation. Yep. And then you go somewhere where it's very dry. It's a desert in Denver. Yeah. And then also at Elevation. Yeah. I can't imagine how, what you felt like

Tommy: That's

Marcus: what

Tommy: my

Marcus: interview

Tommy: was like. The next day goes, I was like, Ooh. Yeah. So I took some ibuprofen and just did the thing, but apparently I did good because they, they called me back.

Tommy: But this place, it just has so much potential, what they have up there is insane. I'm probably gonna get the acreage wrong, but it's. I think 80 acres. They have so many vendors. They have a farmer's market that's probably a mile long Oh wow. On each side. And like I got goosebumps thinking about it.

Tommy: Like it's just so huge. Like when you turn the corner, it's just, and at first I was talking to the, their CFO and he was like, at first they didn't want to put them all together. They wanted to be spread out the market. He said. But putting them together. It actually benefited all of them from the invest.

Tommy: Yeah. It creates kind of a synergy, right? Not only synergy, but also how they displayed their products, their, the type of products they had, the price, everything. And they sell so much like fruits and vegetables and stuff there that the. State reached out to them to see if they could accept food stamp because when they Oh, wow.

Tommy: Yeah. EBT. So whenever they poll people, like 80% of the people or some crazy number, purchased from there. Yeah. Like their fresh fruits and vegetables. And it was awesome. Oh, that's cool.

Marcus: So it's owned by a large corporation? Yes. Or yes. Okay. So tell us a little bit about that. 'cause I don't, one, I know that you've never worked for an organization like that.

Marcus: I've never

Tommy: worked for a corporation. I've always How are you finding

Marcus: that?

Tommy: It's fun. It's it's challenging for me only because. In, in a corporation setting, there's like some rules and guidelines and budgets and so on and so forth, right? Yeah. And then when I've always done my thing, I've always just made it work.

Tommy: Yeah. If there's just hurdle, then how do I get around it? But in this instance, this is the hurdle.

Tommy: So it's been really cool. Have you ever

Marcus: worked for a corporation? Yeah. Before moving down here I worked for about 10 years in DC and at the time it was like a big there was, that was the beginning of the tech boom, right?

Marcus: 95, 96, the internet, started to become more prevalent on campus. And then after that, a lot of the tech companies in DC were hiring college graduates and then training them, of just basically on the job training, if you had some level of skill and, could read and write.

Marcus: It was like they, they were looking for bodies and pain. Very well, and I'd agree with you. It's, there's some there are definitely some differences be between being an entrepreneur and knowing that, hey, things are just gonna ebb and flow and I'm just gonna make my way through it.

Marcus: But I'd also say that in order to really, the longer I do this the more I crave that structure around me. Yeah. Because then there's some safety that comes from that. A hundred percent. And having, a budget that's set up and knowing what your, goals are, per month and, having some, I don't need, I've got one other guy now, so I don't need any kind of like HR rules or anything like that, but like those kinds of things are very helpful in running an organization because it sets very clear guidelines. Yep. When you're the entrepreneur, sometimes you're willing to move and accept things as they are.

Marcus: But a corporation is gonna say, no, that's not okay.

Marcus: That goes against what we believe and then you have to act

Tommy: or it's, I guess you'd say

Tommy: you can't systemize you, right? Your business is you. So if you're not there anymore, blue Fish isn't really blue fish anymore. It might be yellow fish, or, yeah. Something to that extent. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to systemize No, they're trying

Marcus: to create a business.

Tommy: They're,

Marcus: what I have is I own a job. That's right. What you're trying to do is establish a business. Correct. You don't have to mince words like I, I, I 100% know that is, yeah. The situation. You can't do it any other way. And I

Tommy: always had that trouble with. In growing what was, whether I was trying to grow GG or TCW or any of the past things I've been with, it was always difficult because you're, to try to grow yourself.

Tommy: Because you were the

Marcus: limit.

Tommy: You may say, I don't stock this, or I don't do this, or I, but if the right opportunity comes along, you can break that rule for. The sake of profit and because, hey, I can make money with this or, this will progress my company.

Tommy: Whereas with a corporation, these are the guidelines and it's like that for a reason because they've likely already been through that. Or, it doesn't fall with their vision or so on and so forth. Do you feel working for a corporation sharpens you for what you do today?

Marcus: I do. In a, I I understand your situation in that you're.

Marcus: You were an entrepreneur and then worked for a corporation. I worked for a CA corporation and became an entrepreneur. So my lessons learned are carrying into. And I'm I won't be as arrogant to say that I did everything that way when I first got started, and I still, there's still a lot of things that I don't do that corporations, corporations do. But I, I'm shooting for that. Sometimes it's just a matter of, a limitation of time and money. Or resources. Yeah. And resources. Yeah. But,

Tommy: And with an entrepreneur, you get to choose, this is where I wanna put my time in. This is what I wanna put my money in.

Tommy: Yeah. And I'm noticing with this, you don't necessarily get to choose all the time. I may look at this as. This is a time sink and I don't necessarily want to do it because I'm, oh, I wanna be super efficient or, something like that. But there are benefits to that. So I'm learning a whole lot.

Tommy: It's a learning curve for me, only because I've never done that. Yeah. But I like it. It's teaching me a whole lot. Yeah.

Marcus: I, and I think the other thing too is there's some benefit to working with people. Outside of the area.

Marcus: There's, I did and I'm actually, we still do, we work with clients outside of our area, but I've not employed anybody outside of MO mobile for quite some time.

Marcus: But I did do a stint for about two years at a tech company that, was remote. So we didn't, none of us worked there and working for company and then also having to deal with, the remoteness of it. Yeah. So you're here, and I don't know what your management structure is, but. If corporate is in Denver then, having to like still create those relationships and those bonds and things like that, can be a little bit difficult with as much so honestly,

Tommy: because I got to go up there and meet everybody. That hasn't been an issue. Yeah. Good. In going up there, I, I maybe spent an hour or two with, the.

Tommy: The general manager of their facility. I may have spent an hour or two with their operations manager, an hour or two with their food and beverage manager. And theirs is huge. Like it's called Mile High Flea Market. Look it up. Yeah. And it is insane. Like on a Sunday, the Sunday that I was there was favorable weather.

Tommy: 'cause weather affects this business a lot. Which timeout,

Marcus: by the way, we're recording this outside, so if you see us doing this or Yeah. Doing one of these. We wanted this, we're in Alabama, but we're taking one on the chin for

Tommy: that. But Oh, so weather does affect the business, right?

Tommy: Yeah. Yeah. And that day was favorable weather. They had 14,681 people on a Sunday. Oh, wow. It was like three huge parking lots full, yeah. And they had 40 concession stands. They have a Ferris wheel. They had to stop the Ferris wheel because of the wind. Oh wow. Like it was turning on its own.

Tommy: Oh gosh. On the wind. I was like, oh man. They're, it's

Marcus: like something outta that what final final destination movie or something like that? Exactly. You're on it. And it's

Tommy: we, I can't get on. Did they have bumper cars? Bumper boats was down. 'cause it was cold at that time, right? Yeah. But it was just huge.

Tommy: And things that I noticed that are different there elements that I want to bring here is like there, it's it's a mixture between a carnival, a flea market, an outlet mall, and a yard sale, right? And a fresh market. So when you turn the corner, there's different colors and lights and sounds, and this one may be playing music.

Tommy: And then there's the visual of this huge farmer's market. That's what I want here. Yeah. It's, it almost made my A DHD happy and turned the corner. There's just something different every corner so you can go stay there all day and still not see everything that's there. Yeah. So I definitely want to replicate that feeling here.

Marcus: So go back because I'm not from mobile. So how long has the flea market been here?

Tommy: So I, I wrote a little thing, let me read it to you. There you go. Yeah. So the mobile flea market was built in 1988. It's almost as old as I am.

Wow.

Tommy: It's been around for almost 40 years. It's a staple in our community and it's an amazing location.

Tommy: Yeah right On Cylinder Road. My plan over the next few years is to basically modernize it. Anything that's 40 years old needs a little extra love. Just like my back every day. I personally envision the flea market as a modern day fair carnival mixed with a yard. Shell sale, a shopping mall, an outlet store, and a collection of artists and event venue all in one.

Marcus: Yeah.

Tommy: Seriously. Wills, can you go or walk around for hours and get fair food, like funnel cakes, some roasted corn, fresh squeezed lemonade, cotton candy. Buy a brand new waterproof Bluetooth speaker and iPhone case, have custom artwork created or even airbrushed. Yeah. And haggle someone on a price of a u Super Nintendo with crayon marks on it and enjoy live music or sing karaoke for the.

Tommy: Low price of just a dollar a person to enter. There you go. We're working on having some kind of event happening every weekend. So that was their initial plan when they got this. 'cause this was a mom and pop. And then they acquired it, but when they acquired it, covid happened and it just never really got.

Tommy: That really put like the, they were bringing in rides and they had all these plans and then Covid had, yeah, covid happened. Shut everything down. Yeah. So my goal is to make that happen is to modernize it. A crazy idea that I have is I want to take a booth and I wanna put a little split unit AC in there 'cause it's hot out here.

Tommy: I wanna put some soundproofing in. I wanna have a podcast, flea market podcast, right? Every one of these vendors. Have a crazy story. Some of 'em sell something that they make because maybe they got sick. This lady I talked to yesterday has beat cancer twice. Wow. And she swears it's because of this item that she sells, that she did a bunch of research and made, they have people that make organic stuff for dogs.

Tommy: You have, and then you just have like regular. Video game, retro gaming or something, but everyone has a, such a cool story and I just figured it'd be cool to do something like this, but with them, because a lot of times people don't just buy product, they buy into the person, why do I like, blue Fish?

Tommy: 'cause you so like, why would I do business with you because of you, so I know your background, I know what you do. So I feel like. By putting that on a bigger platform. 'cause I know, or I'm still learning, rather. That would be really cool to do. So that's like my, my, my future type goal is to do something like that on top of No, it's cool.

Marcus: I really, I, I did actually come and visit about a month ago I think it was. And it's really cool 'cause there's there are so many different types of vendors, here and as you would expect at a flea market, right? So you've got everybody from, like you mentioned, the roasted corn.

Marcus: I think everybody that comes has to have, the roast roasted corn and it was just funny to, chickens for sale on one corner and like you said, custom artwork or puppies, on another corner. So yeah, there's definitely something to it.

Marcus: It's what kind of, changes can we expect? Do you have anything in plan or concrete? Yeah. So you wanna talk about

Tommy: over the next month or so, we're gonna have a free arcade. That's here, so Oh, wow. When people come in, they can play for free. The only thing that won't be free is if there's redemption machines.

Tommy: If you put a bunch of stuffed animals in there and it's set to free play. One person's a everything throw out. Yeah. So if it's a redemption machine, it won't be on free play, but they'll be that, and then I plan to use that to have tournaments during our event. We're gonna have a DR tournament and we're gonna have a Mortal Kombat tournament.

Tommy: Just something fun to do with that. I'm definitely gonna modernize some things. Paint the podcast thing that we talked about. Just some sort of event. People have said they wanted us to bring back the petting zoo that we used to have petting zoo that we dealt with. We've been upping the concession stuff, so expect some menu changes Oh, good.

Tommy: And stuff like that here soon. I want more carnival type food. I don't wanna. We might sell a burger or, something like that.

Marcus: You Yeah. You can get a lot of that stuff other places, but yeah, you're, that's right.

Tommy: But

Marcus: Chicken

Tommy: on a Stick or, footlong Funnel Corn Dog Funnel Cake.

Tommy: Yeah. Said, yeah. Funnel Cakes. We brought funnel cakes back. Cool. We're bringing back cotton candy just stuff like that to where you come and it's fun, having like maybe some kind of, not just live music, but some kind of ambient music in the background. I've encouraged the sellers to.

Tommy: Yeah, play music like, at a reasonable level. 'cause you don't wanna like upset, people, or the other, the other sellers. But I want that turning the corner and, oh, here's this visual. So lemme tell you a vision I have. Okay. And the CFO of the company is the one who told me about it.

Tommy: And he said, he was talking about the farmer's market and he said the reason why he thinks that location does so well is because they have consumable. It's right. He said, so you may frequent the flea market once every couple months to go around and look and have a good time and leave. He said, but we get people on the weekly or on the, at least every two weeks because this is where they buy their f their food and stuff.

Tommy: And I was like, oh wow. And then of course while they're there, it's like a family fun day and stuff like that. And he was like, so I challenge you to come up with a consumable. That, would work for your area or something. Here it's this, so obviously farmer's market, right?

Tommy: Yeah, for sure. Like I, if I see somebody on the side of the road, I'm stopping by talking to 'em, handing 'em a card, right? Yeah. And stuff like that. But I started thinking, and maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. 'cause I get crazy ideas and some of them work and some of them don't. I want, when someone thinks, man, I want some fresh shrimp, or some fresh fish, or some crawfish.

Tommy: I need to go to the flea market this weekend.

Marcus: Yeah.

Tommy: So I want to see something like, with like display cases where people can come get that's next to the fresh fruit and vegetables and stuff. Yeah, no, it'd be cool on top of that.

Marcus: I was struck and if you're out there and if he doesn't steal this idea and run with it, then by all means steal this idea and run with it.

Marcus: But. I am struck by 'cause we went to Pensacola to see Monster Trucks this past weekend. Oh yeah. Grave Digger. Yeah. It was a grave digger and oh gosh. Megalodon and getter done and Okay. El Toro Loco. It was a good time. Alright. But anyway, afterwards I was with a group of people that had never been to Joe Pat's.

Marcus: Have you ever been to Joe Pat's seafood? Okay. So if you, oh wait.

Tommy: Is it right by the dock and they have a little winery place where you can buy like wine or atmosphere stuff. Have, yeah, they do have a side,

Marcus: A side shop that, but it is just like case after case. After case. Oh yeah. All these fresh and all that, they all bring fresh fish that they bring in from, all over.

Marcus: And I'm struck by this area because I will not pretend any longer than, I'm not from this area. I'm not from this area. I didn't grow up here. I have experiences, that are different than others when they grew up here. That's fine. I'm just surprised by the things that we lack.

Marcus: We live and produce some of the world's finest seafood in the whole world. And yet, we have some fish markets, but we don't have anything like that. And I don't know why, I don't know if it's just the sheer number of people in the demographics and how many people we have as far as the population goes and whether they would, yeah, they would fulfill that. But most of the same things are carried at all the places that we have. They're always gonna have shrimp, they're always gonna have scallops. They're always gonna have, maybe some snapper and some white, fish of some sort. And they're gonna all have crab crab and crawfish.

Marcus: And that's pretty much it. And if you go to Publix, maybe you can find some tuna. Or, and Catfish is the other one. And but you go over there and you can find Chilean sea bass. You can find, fresh tuna, but you can find like the side of a tuna halibut. I went in there. Yeah.

Marcus: Halibut, all kinds of stuff. I went in there one time and I remember I, I saw this lady and she was a small Asian woman. That's why I remember it so distinctly. She was carving like a 500 pound tuneup. Like it was nothing. Just, oh wow. And I just sat there and watched her because it was just such a cool experience.

Marcus: I don't know of anything else like that on the Gulf Coast. Yeah. And that would just be cool to, see somewhere as well. There's

Tommy: a restaurant in Pascagoula that you should check out called Bozos.

Marcus: Okay.

Tommy: And theirs is not to that size. Yeah. But they have people that come in and bring them. So they do sell seafood.

Tommy: It's not to that product, I guess you'd say. Variety. Variety, yeah. Variety. But. They have a fresh seafood that you can buy, and then they also have a restaurant. Yeah. And it's, no, that's cool. It's really good. But yeah.

Marcus: Yeah. I completely agree with something, something even on a smaller scale, here would, would be cool too.

Marcus: But I, it's funny because we have so many farmers that, produce so much in this area, whether it's, whether it's, fruit and vegetables, whether it's actual plants that you need for your yard and stuff like that. I remember when we came, we saw some people that were selling trees and bushes and things like that.

Marcus: And so that's

Tommy: where I've spent most of my money. I'm not gonna lie, landscaping

Marcus: in the house, are we?

Tommy: Oh, no, man. So I am addicted to plants, so I bought I've seen pictures of your place. Yeah. We have similar styles. It's a little crazy, like wood and black, and I like green, right? Yeah. And plants.

Tommy: So I have tons of like plants and stuff, so Love your place. Yeah. Whenever I've seen pictures of it, it's

Marcus: We do have, concrete and, some very cold, features, but we brought in the warmth with the wood, but then also very much, plants just make some place they feel, make a place, feel alive.

Marcus: To me, that's just amazing to me.

Tommy: So to me I a hundred percent agree with that. And water running, I like fountains as well. So to me, my, my work life or professional life, whatever you want to call it, is always so crazy and hectic, right? I am, get up and my brain's going, after about 30 minutes and four cups of coffee and I'm just all through the day, right?

Tommy: And then I just get home and crash and. I said that I wanted to live in a forest, and when I started like doing this house, I just kept that in mind with the colors that I chose and stuff. I initially wanted to go all black. Have you seen like pictures of those houses that are like black on black?

Tommy: We are. Our house is

Marcus: Black on black.

Tommy: Even like the floors and sands and everything, but mine is black on black, on black, like the. Doorknobs and the, yeah. AC vents and stuff, but the floor is wood. The roof is wood. Yeah. And, but I added some green.

Tommy: I was gonna do a little bit of blue for the kitchen or whatever, and a coworker was like, oh, you should really look at this green. It's in the same family. And the more I looked at it, 'cause I like g and g green and stuff like that, I like the color of money, but the more I looked at it and the more I fell in love with it.

Tommy: So mine's basically like black, green and wood and I have so many now. It's cool. So many plants I buy. I'm going home at least with a plant. I bought two cactuses and I drive a little car. Yeah. And I was just thinking if I got T-boned, I'll send you a picture. You can add it to this. Ooh, if I got T-boned.

Tommy: I would've been so bad 'cause I, one was on the floor and it was touching the roof and the other one was touching roof. Oh my gosh. With a sheet back. I drive a two, two-door car, but I make it work. Yeah. And I was driving, I was like, oh my God, if I get TI am destroyed. Yeah. I'm just in this side of me.

Tommy: I was,

Marcus: and we digress, but I'll I tell this story and, w we, I was watching Instagram last night and there was a lady, she was, it was an advertisement for a farm that sells succulents. Okay. Okay. And she was just like, she was making this beautiful glass bowl, putting the soil in it, sprinkling the sand around it.

Marcus: And then the next frame, she's grabbing cactuses with her hands. And placing them in the thing and like moving the dirt around 'em. She filled this whole bowl up with probably about 20 cactuses and didn't, no gloves, no nothing, and just picked them up like it was nothing. Yeah, but

Tommy: funny off topic story, but on the same, yeah.

Tommy: When I was in my twenties, I had a cactus and I went to water it and I was walking back in my room and. It was top heavy so it fell, right? Yeah. What do you do when something falls? Oh yeah. You try to grab it and so it doesn't fall. Oh my God. Yeah. And I've done that twice in my life. You think I'd have learned that for the first time, but,

Marcus: It's

Tommy: hard to change your natural reaction, your instincts.

Tommy: So Yeah, man, it was, I was covered in,

Marcus: To wrap up, I feel like, there's so much untapped potential here. Agree. And, like I also just wanted to put out, there that. The Chamber has done a study and it's a couple years old now, but I, the numbers have not changed that drastically.

Marcus: And the study was conducted by an outside group, and they found that there were over 27,000 micro businesses in Mobile.

Wow.

Marcus: 27,000. Yeah. That's a lot. I don't know how many boos you've got, but it's not 27,000.

Marcus: And so that's the, the. W mom who, makes cakes, in her spare time.

Marcus: That's the the guy like me who's maybe, building some woodworking projects in his garage. It's everybody, and then some, so

Tommy: would that be, the number of business license that have been applied for? No, it's not

Marcus: because there's not nearly that many businesses.

Marcus: There's, if I remember correctly, and please don't hold me to this, I think there's somewhere around 2000 businesses in the chamber. I don't know how many businesses there are in mobile, but of a factor of five. Say there's 10,000, right? That means there's more than another a hundred percent of businesses that are just side hustles, that somebody's doing that, they have some level of, capability in doing it.

Marcus: But, it's just not, it's just not a big,

Tommy: thing. And to make that one step further. That's where I see this comes in. Yeah. So this is a great location and we already get a ton of people here. Pre covid numbers was over a million a year. Oh, wow. Geez. So we're working on, and we're close, but we're working on building that back.

Tommy: Wow. This is where you start. I've known people that have started here and have went on to open their own stores. Yeah. I know of multiple businesses that I could name that started here. That are in town that started at the flea market. Yeah. So I think that this is the breeding ground for that kind of stuff.

Tommy: And I also feel that I have crazy ideas. So no.

Marcus: Says the man, I don't know. We haven't talked about this too much, but you own gamers and geeks. You also did a stint as the owner of the wrestling, local wrestling. Are you still involved in that all? No, I sold it in November. Do you still wrestle?

Tommy: No, but I got power bomb through off the top rope through a table. Oh gosh, man. A bunch of things happen, so Yeah,

Marcus: There's no shortage of crazy ideas coming from you. Shark Tank

Tommy: obviously, right? Yeah. Yeah. What about the flea tank? What if I start interviewing people in this podcast or so on and so forth, and we start this on social media for people that present ideas for a booth or so on and so forth, and then let the crowd vote on it and then give them a featured location for a period of time or whatnot.

Tommy: What I've noticed is a lot of people that come up here are who run booths are like maybe. Boomers or millennials or Gen X. Right. And there's not a whole bunch of younger people that they are, they're usually of a different descent. So I was like how could we get, 'cause we have a ton of like artists and people that do a lot of really cool things.

Tommy: I thought maybe we could do something like that because, and this really teaches people how to be an entrepreneur, how to, 'cause you're really competing with yourself. I'll give an example.

Marcus: Go ahead. Before I, but go quick 'cause I don't wanna lose this idea. Go

Tommy: ahead. No, you can go ahead.

Tommy: I'll remember. It's,

Marcus: No, I was just thinking, we've got an innovation portal downtown this is a business incubator of sorts. Absolutely. So why not start putting some programming together, for the people that work here. You've owned businesses before, just teaching them some of the small things about merchandising or, margins and, that kind of thing. Would be incredible and you have no idea what you might see out of this group. It's,

Tommy: that's actually on my list is to. I don't wanna say educate as in blah, blah, but to show them some different ways of thinking or so on and so forth, right? Yeah. And I've talked to a lot of them about just little random ideas that I did at g and g or something like that worked for us, that they could put into their platform.

Tommy: But I walked around and it was raining and weather affects the business, right? Sure. And there was people at the end of this row and the end of the other row. Looking at the parking lot and it's just pouring down. So got here with Sunny doesn't leave and it's just bottom fell out, right? Yeah. And they're just looking at their car.

Tommy: I walked up to those vendors and I said, Hey, is this your booth? And they're like, yeah, I guess they thought I was like the police. 'cause they were, yeah. Just, yeah, just joking. But I, they, they said, yeah, I said. Why don't you get a little bucket and put it out front and put umbrellas $10 a piece or two for 15 or something.

Tommy: Yeah. And they were just like, their eyes got this big. If you're on the end of these two booths where people will go to, you should be selling umbrellas. Why don't you sell umbrellas on in Mobile, Alabama, the rainiest city in the United States. Yeah. And, so that, those are the type of things that I think about that I'm trying to hand, yeah. Them, so

Marcus: give them some some low hanging fruit, if you will. Tommy, I really do appreciate you coming. Not coming down 'cause I came to, you came Yeah. But opening up the flea market so that we could do this and making yourself available on your day off. I really appreciate it.

Marcus: So

Tommy: I appreciate you. Yeah, I always have a good time talking

Marcus: to you. That I, likewise. And I just like to say if you're a business owner out there or if you have an idea, come talk to Tommy. Seek him out on social media. He's pretty active on Facebook. But there's all kinds of businesses. This is just one of the aisles. Yeah. One of four. Yeah. And there's tons of spaces available and I just think there's something here that if mobile kind of got behind it, this would be a pretty cool idea. But it's gonna require, I. It's gonna require people believing in a vision.

Marcus: So I'm glad we got a chance to talk.

Tommy: Absolutely. Thank you. Hey. Hey, appreciate you. Absolutely. Alright, we're out. So yeah, it's