Entrepreneurship By Acquisition: Trans-Tech Truck Driving School

[00:00:02] What you want when you want it, where you want it. This is The Mesh.

[00:01:03] Jeff, I'm doing great. I've had a great spring season for our baseball teams and our golf teams at WakeForce. One one a national championship. Baseball team came one run short. One run short but you had a fabulous season at WakeForce.

[00:01:21] This was like rank number one throughout the year so congratulations on that. We're excited about it. And last week you did your skills USA dance down in Atlanta? Yes and it was fantastic.

[00:01:31] And I guess as much as I love WakeForce, I was happier for our CVCC skills students to do really well. We won four gold medals, two silver and three bronze. The most of anybody in the country. How did you do in the dance competition?

[00:01:45] I did well because I didn't. Okay, well good for you. I know my wife doesn't let me dance or sing in public. I would think that you two would make a very handsome dance couple. She's great. She didn't say anything better.

[00:02:00] That's me that can't do it in public. Okay, well I we're going to push you on that. We would like to see some dancing for you at some point in time. Okay, we'll work on that. No singing now. No singing. Okay.

[00:02:11] Well we were very fortunate today to have two guests with us. Bob Boniface and Tyrell Sultzard. Guys how you doing? Doing great. Thanks for having us. We appreciate you guys joining us. Thanks for having us. So you're relatively young entrepreneurs.

[00:02:27] I say that because Gary and I are pretty old. But you seem to be relatively young entrepreneurs and tell us a little bit about your backgrounds and how you met and truck driving school, why truck driving school? And how they got here. Yeah.

[00:02:44] And you're well let you guys talk. We're talking too much. Go ahead. Yeah, sounds good. I can kick it off. So I grew up for any British Columbia, a little small town in mountains of Canada, Western Canada.

[00:02:55] Kind of three things to do in Western Canada and that's forestry mining or oil and gas. And so my dad was in the mining industry and said, don't go into mining. So I went to oil gas.

[00:03:05] I went and became a geological engineer out of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and went to work for an exon mobile subsidiary called Imperial Oil. They actually operate oil sands mines. So it ended up being a blend of the two.

[00:03:18] So I spent four years commuting from Calgary, Alberta up to just north of Fort McMurray as a geotechnical engineer. So job role was organizing operations crews, working with trucks. I'll be at a lot bigger trucks than what you see on the highway and then I went to business

[00:03:33] school. And that's where I met Bob. It's also where I met my wife. So it worked out. Good combination. Great combination. It's also where I learned about entrepreneurship through acquisition or the asset class called search funds. We can get more into that later as well.

[00:03:49] But Bob and I decided to pair up. We could talk about that too and pursue buying a blue collar business. Really why we got into truck driver training as I mentioned in our preamble was, in blue collar businesses we kept running this problem. Not enough CDL drivers.

[00:04:05] Staffing was an issue. So we said, OK, how do we go upstream of that? How do we correct some of that issue? Perhaps there's a business proposition there. What are the existing businesses working doing that? Then we came across TransTech.

[00:04:18] Who is part of a sale process and we've parted to spade in that process. We closed the deal in January 20th. So we're coming up, I guess, as like five and a half six months, six months, six months. No, no. Finally to wheel. And Bob, what's your background?

[00:04:31] So I'm from Detroit originally. I come from an automotive family, my dad's a car designer at General Motors and his dad collected old cars. So I went to Vanderbilt for college, moved back up to Detroit and they were working the auto industry.

[00:04:44] I found my way to General Motors as well. I was working in manufacturing finance there. So it was overseen the plants that make pickup trucks and suburbans and Tahos across the US. I got one of them. You got one of those?

[00:04:56] Yeah, so yeah, that's the advantage of that plant from a financial standpoint. But the auto industry loved operational finance. I thought it was really cool. Get into the plants and work them with the line staff there to figure out how to make the business better.

[00:05:10] They're going to have pieces around and people around to make it more efficient. So when I went to business school, I was coming out thinking that I was going to go into back in the auto industry. But like Tyrell came across this search fund idea.

[00:05:26] Really resonated with me because I had already always had this entrepreneurial itch but I'm feeling like I had a good enough idea or they'd say the four to two to encourage and maybe to pursue something from the ground up.

[00:05:38] And so what we saw was it's still entrepreneurship because you're taking something that is working idea has customers, has cash flow. But there's still so much that you can do to improve the business through the take-through to the top. Change is taken to the next level. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:05:54] And so that's what really intoxicated us with it. And I think it resonated with me because in the auto industry, into Troy, as many cities around the US, you've got a network of small business owners that have the ability to really

[00:06:09] kind of affect change in their small companies and with it, you've done only half in a big company. So you guys both seem to have that entrepreneurial itch. And usually when people think about entrepreneurship, they're thinking about scalable businesses

[00:06:27] and what that's so, how did you guys arrive at truck driving? Yeah, search funds really, it's based on a bio model. So the idea is evaluate the cash flows and the stability, the cash flows of that model. Oftentimes put some leverage on it in order to buy it.

[00:06:45] Search funds kind of address this problem where some businesses are subscale where institutional money, the private equity funds, the other buy-out firms they can't really reach down into that side of the market. Of which there are tens of thousands of those businesses in the United States.

[00:07:00] Also we're in a demographic shift where a lot of the founders of those original businesses are retiring. They may not have a successor completely lined up. So if the market of sellers, you've got good businesses with recurring revenue cash flows and various other properties that are attractive.

[00:07:17] So our goal when we set it was we said, hey, we know there's a ton of businesses that are blue-collar specific, then there may be missing some of the technology. Software still, when we're talking about growing business, obviously they have some of the best trajectories from evaluation standpoint.

[00:07:33] But a lot of them have been picked over by growth equity. Reaching down kind of paying multiples on based on annual recurring revenue versus even a multiples like in people who call our world.

[00:07:43] It means that a lot of smaller firms have already been seen, they brought a lot of the technology to them being technology firms. So why we chose kind of blue-collars we said, hey, look, we've got a guy from Exxon Mobile. We got a guy from General Motors.

[00:07:55] Why don't we put those two together and go buy a business that's still as high quality cash flow. But maybe is a little bit behind on this tech piece or was overlooked by some of those institutional players. So like I mentioned, we looked at freight early on.

[00:08:08] There's plenty of freight small freight companies out there. Plenty of Port of John companies, waste management, dirty businesses. We didn't discriminate on business. It would be very tempting, you know? You can get in those right now.

[00:08:22] Yeah, what we talked about a couple hundred business owners over the course of a couple months there, like you said, scrap yards, you know, a lot of oil-filled services. Yeah, we came back to kind of the truck driving thing because this demographic shift

[00:08:38] on the trucker side as well. And he's talked about scalable, you know, we had with trans tech when we found that it was a eight branch, now we're at a 10 branch operation with the biggest trainer in the state North Carolina where we already have a winning model.

[00:08:52] We've got a curriculum that is really successful with preparing people for becoming safe, professional truck drivers. We've got a great, great instructor staff, a great recruiting staff. And so we think we have a model here now that has allowed us kind of break out of that

[00:09:08] trap that you see with a lot of small businesses where you are sub-skilling, you know, you're spending so much time working in the business that you can't work on the business. We've kind of escaped that, you know, that escaped velocity.

[00:09:21] And so now we can kind of, you know, plug and play and then we can kind of pick our targets in terms of markets in which to expand. Yeah. All right, good. The last maybe comment I'll have on that is I think we started looking at blue color

[00:09:34] businesses and from the outside, CDL training seems like that but it's actually an education business. And I think that's a lot more palatable because one of the things that we look at in biodes is well, are the sellers just selling at a high?

[00:09:46] And so we saw a ton of freight companies last summer trying to sell because they do spot rates were through the roof, you know, their cash flows are the best and probably ever going to look. And now we have a freight procession.

[00:09:56] By education gave us a little bit more confidence that we weren't buying some cyclical business. It was really, you know, it's bolstered by two two ends. One is the freight companies that need drivers but also the students that need jobs.

[00:10:10] So we were confident even heading into a recession as people re-tool and re-skilled to put food on the table. We would still have business coming in. So we weren't kind of, you know, one to one tied with the freight market.

[00:10:19] I think it's really important to say education businesses as well as the trucking business because it really is. That's what you're selling. So like something a person working for the community college would say, Gary. I'm sorry.

[00:10:30] I'm assuming, you know, I don't know what sort of salary truck driver can make but I assume that they can do pretty well once they graduate from a program like this. It is in our minds and maybe a little bit biased but it's the highest return on investment

[00:10:47] you can have an education. So for example, our program, if from end to end for a motivated student is about four weeks long. You know, the average truck driver salary in North Carolina according to the Bureau of Labor statistics is about $79,000.

[00:11:01] And so like Tyrell mentioned, we're in a freight recession right now after this hangover from the last couple years of the supply chain crisis. We're still being beat over the head from employers that are desperate for drivers.

[00:11:17] So not only is it a quick program with a stable job on the other side that pays really well. You know, you can go work for these big name companies and you have a lot of options. I think that you don't have in other trades potentially.

[00:11:33] So I get one of the things that Gary now talked about before with people is when you're partnering with somebody, there's got to be a nice level of trust there and sometimes your goals might diverge somewhat.

[00:11:47] I mean, how did you guys come together, decide to be business partners and have a degree of comfort that you are rowing in the same direction? We did them methodically and it might be the engineer of me, but so between my first

[00:12:01] second year of business school I went trying the investment banking route. And I kind of didn't want 80 and was like, this is way too corporate. I miss the mine. I miss the blue collar.

[00:12:09] So, you know, I was left with like, oh crap, what am I going to do with my career? And then took the first class of entrepreneurship through acquisition at Harvard Business School and that's where I met Bob. He was in the same section.

[00:12:21] You know, you would make comments on the cases and things like that. We didn't know each other super well. Our friend group is kind of, I guess, overlapped a little bit. But, you know, as you're considering that, you'd be reaching out to other people that have

[00:12:33] walked the path saying hey, what business did you buy? You talked to other investors, hey, when do you give me money if I started looking? And so we started kind of swapping notes on who have you talked to, who else,

[00:12:43] you know, because that's another way to get in touch with another investor or another searcher and get more information. So it started kind of swapping notes with that. And then kind of the blue call with these as developed as, okay, well, you know,

[00:12:55] this software thing doesn't feel like it fits my background. I think we both kind of came to that conclusion at the same time. There's also a financial incentive. They've returns in the asset class would prove over time that partnered searchers do better together.

[00:13:08] And so kind of the wisdom that's passed on from the professors is hey, if you can get a business partner and you can align well on your skill sets, like seriously consider that.

[00:13:17] So I made a spreadsheet and I ranked myself on qualities that I thought I could do well in operations and areas that maybe I lacked that strength. And then I posed the same kind of survey to Bob.

[00:13:31] And then I also downloaded a list of sounds like a tender type thing. Yeah, that's for a step. Forst ranking and what was good about that is I think we had very couple of minor risk skillsets being finance background versus operations crew background and an engineer side.

[00:13:50] So the other thing I did is I downloaded a list of every city in the United States over, I think it was 250,000 people and I rank them from yes, I want to live there. One maybe I would do it for the right business and three absolutely not.

[00:14:04] I had my wife do the same thing. That's important. Yeah trust me. Trust yeah and then I had Bob do the same thing. And so we I think we had like an 80% overlap between the three of us.

[00:14:16] Because we didn't want to get stuck in a situation where we're looking for a business and Bob's like, you know, I want to live in Detroit. It's such a great business but I don't know what I'm going to live there. We're gonna come heck or high water.

[00:14:26] Now I would think that some people Bob was like, I have that alluded to give me spreadsheets with all these questions. Apparently that resonated with you in some way? Yeah I was looking for someone a little bit crazy. Okay. We should have tried that. But did we? Hi.

[00:14:40] I think we were we came together in different ways. That's right. So yeah. We're a little bit more formal than we were. I think it was a good way to level set it at least, you know,

[00:14:48] I, I, you know, you're coming on kind of make sure you're rolling the right direction. I think that was a good way to at least table stakes where we're thinking the same thing. You know, we like the same types of businesses here what our base skills are.

[00:15:02] I have mentioned we also went on a ski trip. We went up to Stowe just for a week and just make sure, hey, can we tolerate each other and hang out and have fun outside of kind of business? You did do diligent on each other. Yes.

[00:15:15] A little bit of do diligent. Yeah. So we guess I worked out. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nobody broke anything. And it was easy, it was easy. We can't stop there. But that was more fun than the survey. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:26] Well, so so you mentioned that the, you search funds and usually when, some sort of private equities involved, yeah, in, in, I guess, our experience. Yeah, you, you probably have some short-term goals. You might have some longer-term goals.

[00:15:41] You know, are is, talk a little bit about your goals and, you know, is there some sort of endgame where you get to a certain point where you might sell and move on to the next thing?

[00:15:51] Yeah, I think short-term goals and what we focused on the last six months or so, because we're at that six month mark now is a lot of cultural stuff. So, you know, buying a family business, buying any small business, you know,

[00:16:03] you're going to have to attend with, it doesn't feel like you're working at, you know, young motors or X-on mobile. So you got to put in some policies, some rules, you know, how you can kind of interact with one another,

[00:16:13] because I think that really sets the building blocks for, you know, being able to make it out into that, kind of small to me and size business. So that's a lot will be even focusing on, I think short-term goals from here.

[00:16:28] You know, we want to continue to invest in the state and North Carolina. I think we have a really dominant position here. And I think with the work that we've done on the people side, you know, we're actively bringing in new people.

[00:16:40] Talking to people that are already within TransTech, which is great because, you know, what we had there was a lot of great ideas that were easy for us to say, yes, stay. So that was the easiest part in terms of long-term goals, yeah.

[00:16:52] Yeah, and I'm touched on short-term. I think it, you know, top line sales always something you want to evaluate. And we're kind of reconsidering the marketing strategy like how do we interact with technology

[00:17:00] to target new customers and new students and those that are, how do we interact with them? Because I think, you know, one of the magic parts about buying a, you know, family business for retiring couple is they've done things the same way for a long time.

[00:17:12] So the cash flow as you have are protected, but the cash flow is for growth, you know, may require some new marketing tools, you know, maybe hard to spend on that stuff. So short-term, I think we've done a good job of reworking those as well.

[00:17:24] Long-term, the magic of search funds, I think, as opposed to private equity. This is the value prop to a seller is we don't have a whole period the same way that a private equity fund would.

[00:17:34] And, you know, if they're closing up their fund, got to liquidate the asset, close it out. For us, we can, you know, have the flexibility to be more of an evergreen, you know, holder, which I think a lot of small business owners value, particularly if it's family business.

[00:17:48] So for us, I think long-term growth strategy for us is really provide high quality CDL training across North Carolina first and then kind of spread out into the southeast. As part of the investment, we had to research both the CDL training market but also the region.

[00:18:03] And the Southeast punches above its weight as far as a logistics provider for America. So we see a huge ocean of students in front of us as well and we're just trying to navigate that small boat on the waves today.

[00:18:15] Do you see growth coming from buying more businesses similar or diversifying? I think the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the new branch strategy. Yeah, probably it makes

[00:18:25] a boat. I think one of the things that in state we notice is you've kind of already got a lot of the compliance infrastructure set up. You know, there, you've got a relationship with the regulator.

[00:18:33] So in that case, organic growth might make more sense. You've already got the relationships with, you know, your land guy, you know, you're in person, social trucks, etc. You know, out of state acquisition might be the way to go because they've kind of already set up

[00:18:45] the compliance infrastructure for that state. So it's kind of how we think about it. Is it dramatically different from state to state? I would say it's probably 85% overlap that there are a couple things that you have to do in a state by state basis to comply.

[00:18:58] I think typically the states that were each other usually look a lot alike. South Carolina is South Carolina similar. Virginia is very, very similar to North Carolina. You know, I would mention also that there's a lot that we can do kind of maybe from a vertical

[00:19:12] integration standpoint. You think about the way that we train students kind of online. We have a service providers on that side. We'd love to own that type of business as well because I think that I would just be an additional competitive advantage for a business like trans stuff.

[00:19:25] Makes sense? Yeah. You guys mentioned that you took classes on entrepreneurship through acquisition, you know, when we think about starting businesses, I mean somebody might have an idea start from the ground up to its own thing. You know, somebody might license, you know,

[00:19:42] an existing franchise or something like that or acquisition. I mean, do you guys just go down the road of acquisition as the way to go? Do you contemplate starting your own thing or... Yeah, I contemplated start-man with things. I think I always had a vision

[00:20:00] of wanting to start something and I think the route desire that was kind of the autonomy. Obviously there's a financial piece of it, but you know, I think when you look at the other,

[00:20:11] it was very data driven by this like, and I knew from a past experience, you know, they the fact that it's worth 90% of small businesses eventually, you know, fail or something. Yeah, there's something crazy. I mean, not saying it's impossible because obviously there's a

[00:20:28] lot of very successful small businesses, but I thought it would be a much faster way to get to the core goal that I was kind of solving for which is that autonomy, you know, getting to work with

[00:20:40] people from a kind of management perspective. So kind of taking some of its already an existence that that was a much cleaner path. And you know, Tyrell mentioned this hand over demographically, baby rumors owned businesses the tune of a couple million in the United States.

[00:20:58] Or you can see the grace walls transfer in history in the United States of the next decade, decade or so. And if you think about this psychology, if you're the kids of those boomers,

[00:21:09] doesn't always make sense, you don't want to run, moan dads, scrapyard, you know, but for people that want that entrepreneurial, you know, control and the ability to run your own business, there's a real match to be made there. And then one of the attractive parts of the acquisition

[00:21:26] model is you're not having to re-conemplate the product or pivot in the same way. You know, these big existential crises where if you don't get commercial traction, you know like, oh my god, I've got to change things around. We know CDL training is attractive. We know the

[00:21:39] business has been in business for 30 years. So the value-propping exists, it's about being creative around the you know off the shelf technology we can bring the tools we've learned and kind of

[00:21:49] business school. So it feels like it's like a good fit for an MBA, you know, to kind of step into as well. But it's also a ton of learning as well because we were not trucking experts,

[00:21:59] we were certainly not truck training experts. And certainly I'm in business experts, but we were you know engaged enough to say, okay we can learn this business, plug in some technology and we don't have to pivot. We don't have to radically change truck driver training tomorrow to

[00:22:13] anywhere. And you work hard. We do work hard. Yeah, it is- I say it's easier to get to the stage where you're running a business. It doesn't make it any easier than running a business. You know,

[00:22:23] I think it's just as hard as if if you were to have started something because you still have to keep the ship afloat. And you still got people depending on you to make the right decision.

[00:22:31] This podcast is sponsored by Jackson Creative, a custom communication agency located in downtown Hickory, North Carolina specializing in online content creation to learn more. Visit thejacksandcreative.com. Jackson Creative, we tell your story. It is a very difficult thing to run a business

[00:22:54] size. So, you know, talk a little bit about some of the challenges. I'm assuming this is the first time you guys have meant the top of the company as as cozy as I think it is your title and

[00:23:08] and you know, particularly coming into a family business with I'm sure a culture that was established some good maybe some not so good. That creates challenges for you guys. So, you know, starting

[00:23:20] is first time CEOs, what sort of challenges have you run into and obstacles have you run into? I would also imagine that we're also the young employees in the next episode. So, that's always a challenge. That presents on, I mean, what are you guys now?

[00:23:34] Yeah, it's so important. I think, you know, it's one of the first times you have to deal with kind of disciplinary issues. You have to deal with kind of setting the tone in the culture and like

[00:23:43] how you carry yourself. I think, you know, the biggest change is going from ExxonMol, 60,000 employees or something like that. You're a cog. You're not changing the bottom line really any day of the week. And so how you carry yourself in matters, but really only for your own career,

[00:24:00] not really for the company as a whole. And your actions matter to you and maybe kind of your immediate surroundings, but they don't, they don't challenge the profitability or anything like that. So, I think, you know, we've definitely spent more time thinking about it. Okay, we'll

[00:24:13] and compare it back to, like, because we know, you know, the gee with great about we're going to jam or the ExxonMol was they've gone through all the, you know, HR policy creation.

[00:24:22] They've already gone through a lot of the, how do we hire people effectively? So, a lot of times you're just pulling some of those processes in, I think a lot of people roll their eyes when they hear

[00:24:30] HR policy and hiring process and those sorts of things. But I think it's actually a really good thing because it creates a fair playing field. And that's what people crave. And it doesn't matter if you're a white-collar employee or a blue-collar employee, people want to be treated fairly.

[00:24:44] And I think that's something, particularly in family business. I think we got lucky. The culture was really good. We saw that, you know, our instructors really cared about, you know, training students. But I think in family business, you know, accountability is tough.

[00:24:56] It's tough when you're dealing with family members. By having an outside party come in, set some of those grand roles. I think both the employees and even the interfamily dynamics felt more fair. Yeah, I think from a policy standpoint too and also the message that

[00:25:11] actually had a couple of disciplinary conversations with people. People kind of understand, okay, this is the bar. The bar is now, it's a higher, you know, we got to carry us a little bit more professionally. And I think, you know, like Tyrell mentioned, our employees are great,

[00:25:25] but a lot of them have been there for a long time. And so they might only know kind of one way of kind of come to work. So getting through some of that messaging was, you know, it takes

[00:25:36] a little bit of time, some conversations. But I think, you know, we are starting to see the benefit of that and it helps with like Tyrell set, you know, love a set of everyone's expectations.

[00:25:46] Hey, when you first come, you know, you're talking about a business that was owned by family for for some time. And all of a sudden, we got these young guys coming in that don't know anything about the trucking business and anything like that. I mean, how do you

[00:26:01] authorities in the right way? But how do you sort of establish credibility, so right word of how do you, how did you guys go about doing that? Well, it, it helped because the the old owners,

[00:26:11] the messages they chose not to see us. So the business wasn't a very, it was a very competitive process. It wasn't like a hostile take. It was a good one. But but it wasn't important to say, we

[00:26:21] know, we were able to use, you sealed owners and they were able to communicate as well. Like, hey, this is why we went with them. And you know, we've had them in a couple of times for going away

[00:26:29] celebrations and things like that and fight them in. They're able to talk about, okay, this is how we wrote it, you know, arrived at this decision to go with these two guys. So

[00:26:39] then it adds some credibility. But also I think, you know, it's like, it goes back to kind of how you carry yourself. You know, I think if we went in and acted like a couple of guys who were 28 years old

[00:26:51] with these guys over in their 50s and been, you know, transduits for 30 years, you know, like that would kind of blow a hole in our credibility. But, you know, speaking confidently, materially, you know, trying to be fair with everyone and not not pick favorites. Don't be

[00:27:05] over-emotional. Those are the types of things that seem simple and kind of, you know, self-explanatory, but you know, it really does matter when he gets that position. And I think,

[00:27:16] you know, we spent a really days, well, the time kind of front line. And this was the benefit of the partnership. And so I recommend to any entrepreneur if you find a partner that works, do it

[00:27:24] because, you know, early days, you're kind of first getting more look at, in depth, look at the books, you need the financials. You got to do all those reporting things. So Bob spent a lot of time

[00:27:33] on winding kind of, where are the accounting processes? How's payroll going out? Like, you know, cash management is the number one thing in the first 30 days of a business. So he was able to tackle

[00:27:42] that, whereas I was able on the operations side to go up to those 10 branches, drive across the state on a listing to, hey, what's working? What's not, you know, we heard, hey, we need more communication

[00:27:51] from the top. Great. I can work on, you know, billing kind of a weekly cadence of which, you know, here's the changes we're making that you guys have asked for. Listening to some of that early

[00:27:59] feedback on, hey, why can't we do it like this? And if it makes sense, implement it, show that you've implemented it. That builds a lot of credibility. Finally, someone's listening, you know, or if they felt like they could speak at that time. It was interesting, especially in those

[00:28:12] early days where you kind of, it was funny because I hadn't moved North Carolina yet. So we were, I was squatting with him in his wife at their apartment and so we actually commute up

[00:28:22] to the office together from from Charlotte and, you know, use that hour to kind of talk about what we want to work on for that day. And then we kind of break at the office, go work on her things,

[00:28:32] get back to the village, house a gallon, then go back after they all, or if they afternoon, and then re-regroup at the end of the day to drive home. And so being able to focus on two separate

[00:28:41] things, really dividing and conquering. I think that's the benefit of having a partner and, you know, emotionally also kind of, you know, smoothing out some of those ups and downs like having

[00:28:51] so into that. Having that time going back and forth. Yeah. I was going to ask the question and you just answered it. Obviously, having a partnership, you were able to do things in

[00:29:00] quicker. Yes. And then you also had a sounding board to make it work. And so that sounds like a one plus question. You guys got to get along. Yes. So in peace of paper, it sounds great. And obviously

[00:29:12] you guys vetted yourselves to some extent and so it really works because if you're trying to do it by yourself, it might have been a little bit longer process. Well, compared to, so peers

[00:29:23] that have kind of walked this path, you know, in a solo fashion is the friendly stuff doesn't stop. You still have to, you know, work the credibility. But you also have to understand the book. So

[00:29:31] the lifestyle that you know, it equates to is okay from my, you know, eight to five. I'm doing the front line stuff. But now from five to midnight, I've got to work through the book. So I think

[00:29:40] there's also just a, you know, time component of that where it's a lot more sustainable when you can divide and conquer. But, you know, one plus one can equal three in this world but it can also

[00:29:49] equals zero. And I think, you know, what I think, because I respect my Bob is like, I think we need, and I hope he feels the same way. But, you know, we can kind of divide the line of like,

[00:29:57] or what's our house versus your house and then kind of final decision on your side of the house, but still together. Together it's your house. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably all captured on one spreadsheet.

[00:30:10] At some point. Yeah. Okay. So as you guys look out into the future, do you see certain challenges and opportunities out there? I mean, every now and then we hear, hey, the trucks are going to be

[00:30:23] going to be autonomous and we're not going to need truck drivers, which cares a lot of many of us. But, you know, what do you guys foresee out there? On the self-driving thing, you know, we had

[00:30:34] to deal with that a lot of when we were thinking about buying the business. Most of the estimates say would be in the late 2030s at the soonest to give you an example of how long it takes the

[00:30:44] technology to adopt in the truck industry. It took them 20 years from when they decided automatic transmissions were better for fuel economy and per se to then transition over fleets. And that we're just now seeing the fleets are fully automatic from a transmission standpoint.

[00:31:01] And that's just the transmission that's not removing the driver, but that's not putting three and a half million people out of work. So we also see the fact that truck drivers are not just driving the truck, they're also doing maintenance, they're inspecting the loads, they're loading and unloading

[00:31:16] and unloading cases, fueling, fueling the trucks. So we're not too worried about the self-driving thing, at least at this point. It's out there and you know, we could be proven wrong, but I think

[00:31:28] also come from the auto industry. I've seen a little bit of kind of people promising on self-driving thing just to kind of Peter out after a couple years. Well, I went to soon there was lots of infrastructure

[00:31:37] issues there as well and that thinking about replacing all the assets that are out there at this point in time has got to be an incredibly expensive proposition. It's like electric vehicles.

[00:31:49] They sound great, but until we have more stations for recharging it's going to be hard to get it adopted by the masses. Well, we think electrification and kind of these technology aids that are coming

[00:32:02] into the cab actually make the career more desirable. You know, somewhat taking the metal load off of truck driving and having a shift and do these sorts of things. I think that makes it a more

[00:32:12] attractive career, along with the salaries also growing. So we saw it from that perspective long way out. Don't worry about it and the market will change around it later, that probably also requires more training to operate those things. The biggest challenge that we're trying to

[00:32:26] solve really, and I think the biggest thing for the country that we're trying to solve is kind of reshifting and Gary Talkless for reshifting the mentality around kind of trades as a career. I think

[00:32:38] there's been a really myopic focus on college as the one only path. Maybe it sounds like a critical come from a couple of college crads, but you know, you do have a college cost. The payoff isn't

[00:32:49] there for a lot of students. A lot of students are dropping out midway or it's just not a path that works for them and I think in this country there is a huge alternative path that we've kind of

[00:33:02] are rediscovering the HVAC plumbing, all that's all about the community college. Absolutely. And we talked about nursing assistance. And you started talking about the return on investment for someone going through your program to what they can make. It's almost this,

[00:33:17] you know, that can't be true. It is. I mean it's a different lifestyle, but they can make really good money almost immediately. 10 years out from the CDL school versus college in St. North Carolina,

[00:33:31] your salary is higher if you're truck driver. It sounds almost too crazy to be true, but it is. As we sort of wind down a bit, are there any advice that you guys have for aspiring entrepreneurs out

[00:33:47] there that you can share? Yeah, I think one is capital is trying to figure out how to solve this big generational problem of the turn of these small businesses. And so you know, we're obviously

[00:33:58] biased having walked the path, but I think there is some kind of nobility in it and it's part of the capitalist system to be actually able to hand over some of these businesses because frankly

[00:34:06] if there isn't a successor, if there isn't new technology injected into them, those businesses will die. And their employees will be played off or and that'll create a huge challenge. So I think

[00:34:15] there is a call to action among millennials, Gen Z, to actually go find capital, develop the skills and buy a small business. I think it's totally viable. Yeah, the same thing I first I would say

[00:34:27] do it. I think Jeff Bezos has said his psychology when he's starting Amazon was trying to minimize or direct when he was on his death bed. And so, you know, if you feel like you want to

[00:34:37] start something that is entrepreneurial-ish, you're trying to minimize the pain and regret in the future, just do it. You'll be kicking yourself otherwise. And then, I tire all said, you know, entrepreneurship doesn't have to be changing the world by starting the next Uber or starting something

[00:34:53] complete brand new. It can be taking some of that's in your local town, you know, a restaurant, a gas station and oil change place and making it better, making it your own. So I think you'll

[00:35:03] get the same satisfaction out of that. You can make it financially successful yourself as well. Well, Tom Relle, we really appreciate you guys doing this today. We like to do a little lightning

[00:35:15] round with our guests if you guys are up for. Okay. This month, the lightning round is sponsored by Prestige Worldwide. It's a global entertainment conglomerate and smother of the Catalina One mixer.

[00:35:27] Check them out on the internet. So I got a few quick questions, you know, we'll let you both answer them. You can take turns. You go a lot harder than ones they've been answering so far. All right. So

[00:35:37] first question, what is your biggest pet peeve? Now you know what I was saying. Biggest pet peeve. You know, I think as a manager, it certainly intercompety like gossip and things

[00:35:50] like that. I think that's really tough and so we try to, you know, create a culture of hey, let's be professional. It's coming. So that's a pepivism manager at home. I mean, I've got a puppy at home.

[00:36:01] And so I literally have a pet peeve at home right now. So training a puppy? That's my biggest pet peeve right now. My big pet peeve at home. I think specialner in the summer is early morning

[00:36:14] leafflowers. For some reason, I feel like it's a bigger issue down here in North Carolina. Because the summer just feels like it extends for 10 months. I think at the office, you know,

[00:36:25] we do have an open door policy at our office but this is there's pep peeve people keep using it? Yeah, people that think of me. So yeah. What is what recommendations do you have for

[00:36:39] pizza toppings? What are you prefer? Italian sausage. Italian sausage. I like I like mushrooms and green vegetables on there. Where do we stand on pineapple? I'm for it. Leave it on the trees. I'm with you. Okay, that's good. What is your go-to adult beverage?

[00:36:58] Coke. I just thought you'd be right. I like a mogger. Yeah. Just a logger. Yeah, that's some preferences or like a cold logger. Yeah, yeah, simple man, simple taste. I'm being from Canada. I miss Moles and you guys don't see much of that down here.

[00:37:17] Yeah, I'm familiar with Moles. I know. Beetles, rolling stones or Taylor Swift. I go to Taylor Swift. Okay. I don't know. No, no, it's a Judge Free Jones own here. Okay. I mean,

[00:37:31] I've got a daughter of your age. You would agree with you. My daughter is definitely going there. She's a great business woman. I believe that's exactly right. All right. Last question, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?

[00:37:49] Protect the stock market. Let's see the future. Yes. Okay. No, just stocks. Yeah. It's not a top rotation. Okay. Good put you out of business. It's true. You're going to put the derelons on. All right. Well, look at it. We really appreciate

[00:38:05] you joining us. If people want to find out more about TransTech, where should they be looking? Our website TransDashTech.net. You can also hear us on the radio around Charlotte. Now, but or any of our branches where we have branches in Newton, Charlotte,

[00:38:19] Gastonia, Asheville, Roxboro, Greensboro and Greenville. And Winston-Sailman. And our phone number is 855 CDL today. All right. Cool. Okay. Well, very good. So if you want to find out more about TransTech, you can do that. If you want to find out more about becoming a truck driver,

[00:38:37] I guess you can go there as well. And you've got a lot of opportunities to rest at state. Absolutely. And if I can plug one more resource on how to buy a small business as a book called

[00:38:46] Harvest Reviews Guide to buying a small business. And by two of our professors, like 200 pages, a good read tells you everything you need to know. I don't think that's interesting. Well, we always like to wind up the podcast by giving a shout out to small businesses

[00:39:01] that we might have come across. I don't know if Bob Torrell, whether you got any small businesses, you want to give a shout out to? All right. Two of my favorite restaurants here in Newton,

[00:39:11] actually, Diane's dairy counter and four peas in a pod over on US said, I know him well. Great spots, love them. Sure. I don't know the name of one by love the business model, the fuel polishing business. So backup generators, et cetera, diesel generators,

[00:39:25] required in certain hospitals, medical facilities, you have to turn the fuel over every now and again, and they contract that work out. Great business model, small out of the way of recurring revenue,

[00:39:35] love it. Okay. Very good. Gary, what are you going to talk about this month? Mine's going to be like it. Always is a theme of food. And I learned about it at the last chamber of commerce

[00:39:47] board meeting. Taste buds popcorn just opened up in Hickory. There's what's popcorn? Yes. And brought back memories to me when I was in a specially snack food franchise business many years ago where we had peanut checks, cookie stores, coffee, anything and tin can alleys.

[00:40:04] And that's when I got my first taste of owning a small business. Which turned out to owning part owning ten of those. Wow. And so that was interesting. That was about your guy's age.

[00:40:14] So that was about 10 years ago. Not, et cetera. Okay. Yeah. Don't go. And tin can now, which I mentioned was a popcorn franchise. And what I learned is you need to sell a lot of popcorn.

[00:40:27] It's my fucking better revenue model. But they had a candy and sweets to this store. So they're going to do well because it was a combination of all the ones I was involved in.

[00:40:36] So just brought back good memories. Kind of like my baseball team. Okay. Well, good deal. I was going to give a shout out to a company called The Wall Printer, which is a well-meaning to North Carolina Best Company founded by founding Paul Behrin at one that

[00:40:50] 2023 Coastal Entrepreneur of the Year Award recently. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with vertical printers, but there are printers that can digitally take information and print these 20 foot murals on walls and whatnot. And Mr. Barrons created this business.

[00:41:08] He's partnered with the company in Chinese and China that actually manufactures these vertical printers. But basically he's created a franchise business where he's working with other people to sell the equipment where they're going into certain territories and offering this as a service

[00:41:23] to businesses and towns and whatnot. So I haven't ever seen a wallpanner before, but it looked pretty cool. And if you go to their website, which is wallpanner.com, you can learn more about them.

[00:41:38] I just want to say to be a pretty interesting person. Anyway, we, you should check that one out. And if you've got a suggestion for the entrepreneurs change small businesses in the month,

[00:41:49] you can email them to us and e-exchange at the mesh.tv. And if we use your suggestion, we'll give you a shout out and a prize pack. We want to thank Bob and Tyrell for joining us today.

[00:42:03] We really appreciate you guys taking the time. Thank you. We want to thank the mesh podcast network for hosting us as well. You can check out all the shows at the mesh.tv.

[00:42:16] And see all the stable shows that they've got going on. And we'll look forward to talking with you next month. Take care. You've been listening to the mesh and online media network of shows and programs ranging from

[00:42:37] business to arts, sports to entertainment, music to community. I'll program our available on the website as well as through iTunes and YouTube. Check us out online at the mesh.tv. Just go to our other network shows and give us feedback on what you just heard.