A Conversation with Jim Howard and Andrew Silsby

It's unique.

The home vision thing.

I mean, timing's everything, right? You look at it now, home vision video, it shifted probably 10 years from then.

So, I mean, a little off script, but after that happens, they, uh, end up being sold.

You stay on a little longer.

Were you living in Maine at that time or did you come back to Maine? And then that's when priority started, I guess.

No, I lived in Maine.

I never left Maine.

Never left Maine.

No, I've lived in my neighborhood in Topsom for 40 years.

So I haven't, uh, I haven't gone anywhere.

Um,

How much time would you say, like, so home vision sells, then priority real estate begins.

That's probably the next chapter, right? Or was there a gap in there that some other stuff opened? Well,

home vision sells.

Everybody's looking to us to go to work for them for some of the skills that we had.

And I started Priority Group in 1998.

We sold in 1996.

So I had two years in between.

And I had a company hire me to do real estate called West Coast Video.

They were on the East Coast, but they were called West Coast Video, based out of Philly.

And they had 400 stores.

They wanted to get to 800 stores.

So they had hired me to manage the real estate for the 400 stores they had and to help them find new sites up and down the East Coast for another 400 stores.

And I went to Philly just briefly, thinking that I would be able to work out of Philly.