Before GOBA, there was a broken cooler

I run a roofing company in Jersey. My father started it in 1973. He used to call it blood money and told me he never wanted me in it.

Then the day after I graduated college he called and told me to get home and get on the roof. So I did. Started as the cleanup guy. Spent years in the truck learning it from the bottom.

I grew that company from three million in sales to over twenty. I am proud of that. But somewhere in there I knew roofing was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Fourteen hour days. Putting out other people's fires. Margins getting thinner every year. I felt more like an industrial babysitter than a builder.

So I started thinking about what else I could do.

Here is the part that actually lit the fuse. I had a cooler I used for everything. Fishing, hunting, job sites. It broke. I called the company figuring they would make it right. They told me my warranty ran out two weeks ago. Nothing they could do.

Two weeks. That was the whole answer.

So I went looking for something built tougher and I could not find it. Went to a dozen Home Depots. A bunch of Lowe's. Looked at every bottle and cooler on the shelf. They are all the same thing. Same shape, same insulation, same guts, different lid, different tag on the front. And none of it was built for the working person.

That is when it hit me. I could build the thing that does not exist. Gear for the people who actually run this place. The trades. First responders. Military. The people who never get built for.

That is GOBA. This newsletter is me telling you how it actually gets made, start to finish, nothing polished. Glad you are here for it.

- Tom