tom: [00:00:00] yeah, if you're 20% of my, of my monthly profit and 50% of my monthly headache, then I need to replace you.
Riley: have, gosh, long-term friend and colleague, Tom by Candy. Tom owns by Candy Electric, uh, worked together for, gosh, it's, it's been what, eight years, nine years.
tom: Yeah, probably we, I think we met at a coffee shop over in Garden City and you kind of, uh, you, you threw me the spiel about what you guys do and how you [00:01:00] do it, and. We jumped on board. I think it was relatively early,
Riley: It was.
tom: in you guys' start there. So yeah,
Riley: Yeah.
tom: a long time.
Riley: Well, it's been pretty awesome because we, the reason I had you on Tom, I, I, I wanted to talk to you about a couple things because when, I think when we started with you, you, you had maybe five or six vehicles, and that's grown substantially. You've grown your business quite a lot over that, that eight or nine years.
And I wanted to pick your brain on that, kind of see what you've done, how you did that, what, um, you know, what we can learn from that sort of a thing. Um, and then I wanna talk to you about your past, just kind of where you grew up, what you did, you know, I know you had some, some pretty high level baseball in your, in your past and
discuss all that stuff, if that's fair.
tom: Yeah, absolutely.
Riley: All right, man. Let's, let's start there. Let's start growing up. Where, where'd you grow up?
tom: So I'm, I'm a local, uh, born, raised right here in Idaho, fifth generation Idaho, and, you know, had great grandparents that moved [00:02:00] over to, uh, to the United States back in the early 19 hundreds. so that's kind of just, we're, we're from the bass country, which is in Spain. it's kind of where, uh, my family history originated, at least that I'm aware of.
That's where it's originated. We actually just got back from a trip to Spain here, oh, a month ago, something like that, and got a chance to see the old country
Riley: Oh, cool.
tom: the house that my
great grandparents were raised in. It's still there out in the countryside, the northern part of Spain. Absolutely gorgeous location.
Uh, but that's kind of where it all started. Uh, great grandparents moved over here, homesteaded in the Idaho area. I was born and raised in Homedale. My father graduated from Homedale, my, my grandfather from Marsing. so we've been around there for quite a while. you know, and then as far as wanting to get into the electrical side of it, it was, I, [00:03:00] I just decided I wanted to make a plan when I was in high school.
And I, I remember at some point somebody telling me, and this is really good information for anybody, you don't necessarily a plan, but you need to have a plan. So, put the plan in place. The plan can change as change, you know, life's gonna throw different things at you and, and you can't always stay on the same path that you started on, but the most important part is having a plan. And so I decided to take that to heart. And, and when I was, I think early in my senior year, probably, I decided, uh, I'm gonna get, after I get outta high school, I'm gonna go work as an electrician and I'm gonna get my, my tournament's license. I'm gonna open up my own company, I'm gonna take over the world.
Riley: So you, you had that plan from the beginning to open your own. Huh?
tom: Yeah, yeah, this happened, uh, in high school. I, it was actually at that point it, it was
me and, and my best friend in high school, his name's Alex. Uh, we were gonna do this together and some plans again, sometimes plans [00:04:00] change. And, um, he had other things that had happened in his life that caused him to change direction and wasn't able to kind of, through with that part of it.
And so it went from being me and Alex are gonna take over the world and as electrical contractors to, I just stayed the course,
Riley: Yeah.
tom: but, uh, that's kind
of how it all started.
Um, and like a lot of people, it just me by myself working a hundred hours a week,
200 hours a week, whatever it took, you know, working from sun up to sundown and then doing stuff in the office in the evenings, and just kind of grew organically from there, piece by piece.
Riley: Yeah. And what, what year did you graduate high school?
tom: 95.
Riley: Oh, same year as me.
tom: Yeah. 1995. Oh,
Riley: at that.
tom: It's a good
year.
Riley: Yeah. Yeah. That's where all the cool kids were
tom: Well, you look a lot younger than I do, so time must've been better on you, but,
Riley: I don't know, man.
tom: for sure you were 10 years younger than me.
Riley: No, that's pretty [00:05:00] cool. I, uh, so you lived in Homedale, and for people who don't know Homedale,
there's not much, it's it's not a very big little it's town out there. What, what's the population?
tom: Uh, about 2000, right? Right around 2000, 2,500 right in the neighborhood. Now, we didn't grow up in town. We grew up, uh, we had a farm.
Riley: Okay.
tom: uh, my family, we
went through a DA handful of different crops that we raised, a lot of alfalfa, beans, corn. we
had, uh, about 300 acres total that we farmed out there. My dad. Did that as well as worked, uh, as a, uh, financial officer, for a, a host of different banks. But, uh, no, growing up at Homedale was fantastic. It, uh, small town, uh, out in the country wouldn't have it any other way. Um, learned a lot, learned how to work hard. I think a big part of that was learning to work hard.
You know, from the time I was probably, [00:06:00] I don't wanna self incriminate myself here, but from the time I was 10, I was probably driving tractors and trucks, um, between, we had two separate farms, so I would drive back and forth between those farms, changing hand lines, gophers, uh, diskin fields and, and harrowing fields, and, uh, pulling a lot of weeds. uh, yeah, I, I think that's kind of where that work ethic originated from. My dad was, and my mom both really were, I don't want to say workaholics, but. They worked really, really hard and I think that rubbed off on me a little bit, uh, to where that's just kind of the way that life was. You, you, you know, you, you got up and you grind it all day long. Um, so I, I probably owe a lot to that little community of Homedale and that farm and the upbringing that I had, I think played a big influence. Um, and shout out to all my homedale people out there, if any of 'em are watching this. Uh, love all [00:07:00] those guys love that community. And even today, Homedale is an underrated community.
It's, it's really a great spot.
Riley: So
what, what originally triggered the interest in, uh, electrical?
tom: That would be that friend of mine named Alex.
Riley: I.
tom: father,
was really good friends with a gentleman who worked for Idaho Power this gentleman that worked at Idaho
Power, uh. They had mules for
Riley: Mm-hmm.
tom: and he
actually boarded them at an electrical
contractor who's a really good friend of his.
They boarded his mules there, and so they all kind of had their mules over there. And so my
friend Alex was, has worked summers for this guy, the, the past few summers. And then as we were getting closer to graduation, he's like, Hey, I think I can get you a job with this electrical contractor that I've been doing, you know, some summer work for. And I was like, Hey, that sounds, that sounds like a good idea. It sounds like a good plan. That'll be my plan. so that's where it all kind of got [00:08:00] started. Uh, Alex was the influence there, so I, I probably owe him a little bit as well for getting me going on the right path, or at least giving me an opportunity, opening up a door from somebody that, uh, could get me on the right path.
Riley: That's interesting 'cause you mentioned in there that you went into that job with the intent of one day starting your own and
talk about that. Has that, how was that as far as, uh, progression goes? Was it linear or did you have some bumps along the way? I
tom: It was relatively linear. Um, when I first started on with this electrical contractor, they actually, they did your standard electrical contracting that you, that everybody kind of knows about, you know, wiring houses, wiring, commercial building service calls. he also had a, another division to his company called the Under, he called it the Underground Division, which they were primarily idle power contracts, but they also did a host of oddball stuff.
They dig foundations for houses, they put in [00:09:00] septic systems. Uh, a lot of pad mount transformers, pull mount transformers, uh, pushing uh, I Idaho Power Box in like in subdivisions, pushing the wire from the boxes to the houses and doing the connections. So I actually was on with that department for about a year, uh, which looking back at the time, I was like, I wanna be on the electrical side.
I wanna be an electrician. I. the amount of stuff I learned is invaluable and I was able to take a lot of that, transfer that over to what we do now. Um, we've actually started our own underground division for, it's not for by Candy Electric. So our, our, our companies are set up a little bit and to kind of go back, like what you'd said earlier, like this is Tom Bi Candy, he owns Biking Electric.
I don't technically own BI Candy Electric. BI Candy Electric is owned by a holding company that I have control over. So we have us, we have our personal trusts, we have our, holding companies and our holding companies own our LLCs, [00:10:00] and then some of those LLCs contract with our other LLCs. So it's kind of a big system on how all that works.
Um, and that's primarily to, to create some tax benefits as well as, uh, shelter some liabilities some different areas.
Riley: no, I think that's, that's, intelligent, man. Sometimes you've gotta create some boundaries there so that for especially liability, right?
tom: Liability is the big one. So, and, and I should preface this by saying I'm not a legal attorney. I'm not an accountant. And so anybody who's taking any of this information that I'm giving you run it past, you know, your people first on how you do it. But yeah, we had set up that holding company and then it's like all of our vehicles for, like, you do stuff for BI Candy Electric, those vehicles aren't technically owned by Bi Candy Electric.
They're owned by LYB, um, leasing Company, which is another one of our companies that's held by the holding company. And then they lease those back to buy Candy Electric. And that's for if there was ever to be a, [00:11:00] uh, an issue with the vehicle. It doesn't tie back. They can't, if there was an issue with buy Candy Electric, let's say they couldn't come and take the vehicles 'cause they're not owned by buy Candy Electric.
They're owned through a separate
Riley: Sure.
tom: Uh, same thing
with our equipment. Um,
and the same thing with our underground division. all separate and, and all, all the real estate holdings as
well. Personal stuff is held through a trust, but anything that's a rental, a commercial rental or a residential rental that we own goes through LYB, um, as far as, uh, ownership of all those properties.
And they're separate LLCs for each individual?
Uh,
Riley: Yeah, that's a good call. I know, uh, I hear Dave Ramsey talk about that all the time. How, you know, you get one person slips and falls on the sidewalk and wants to sue you at that place. Well, they can sue that property that, that LLC, but not the,
the rest of them.
tom: Yep.
Riley: Yeah.
tom: And that's why we've
done that. Um,
uh, and, and then we lease that property back to like buy canned electric leases property from the holding company. [00:12:00] and, uh, so does our underground division and our leasing agency does as well. They, they also rent property from that, uh, to, to house their equipment.
Riley: Yeah,
your underground division,
maybe you already said that and maybe I just missed it, but it's pretty new, isn't it? Isn't it something that's a recent
tom: Yeah, it is. So we did that for a couple different reasons. So one of the things that we kind of branched out with on the electrical side was doing a lot of street lighting, uh, parking lot lighting, underground infrastructure for projects, commercial and residential projects, uh, running conduits for fiber optic lines and fire things, things of that nature.
And so that it essentially just blossomed into a different all in itself. Um, and, and that particular company that we have, it works hand in hand with bike and electric on all of our projects, but, uh, because of the scope of work that they were doing and the [00:13:00] liability, you know, we're using bucket trucks and there's a lot of safety. Concerns with a lot of the heavier equipment, excavation equipment, um, open trenches, things of that nature. We wanted to isolate that company so that it created a, a bit of a veil between liabilities.
Riley: Yeah. That's interesting stuff, man. Um, can we switch gears here a little bit?
tom: Sure.
Riley: So,
baseball, remind me, we talked about it years ago, and you,
you played minor league, didn't you?
tom: Well, so the baseball side of what, I guess I should preface this even earlier. Let's start like starting back where I was a young kid. You know, baseball's always been a huge love of mine. I, I, football, I mean, I love sports in general, you know, like a lot of young boys do. uh, baseball is probably my biggest passion.
Baseball and football. Um, had an opportunity to play baseball at, at a high level, uh, through high school and, uh, [00:14:00] Through Through Legion, the Legion Program was able to travel up to Canada and play up in Canada for a while. Um, and all those things were, were really great experiences. Um, as far as it, I, it would be considered double a ball, which would be minor league ball, but it, the money, you're not making any money. and so it was more, it was a lot of fun. It was a very high level. We were playing Taiwanese national teams in Canada and, and playing all the best teams in the country. Um, and I still love baseball. It's still my favorite sport. I love watching baseball. me, there's nothing better than going to a baseball game and having some peanuts.
And I love taking score when I'm there and just watching, all of it. But it played a big influence in my life, uh, sports in general, and baseball. And then, uh, I was super excited to be able to coach my own kids
Riley: Yeah.
tom: they became of age. And
so coaching became a
huge passion for me. [00:15:00] Baseball primarily, but a lot of football too was, had, had
opportunities to be able to coach kids, uh, at the junior high level, and then was asked to coach at the high school level too.
So I had opportunities to do that, and that was fantastic. Um, anytime you have an opportunity to, uh, influence young men or young women in positive ways, uh, is a vessel to be able to do that. And, uh, I think my, my passion for baseball itself was probably only eclipsed by my passion for coaching. That's the part that, uh, I really enjoyed the most.
Riley: And are you still coaching?
No.
tom: uh, I, I
just kind of
gave it up
here recently in the last year or two. Uh, I
coached I
think every year for probably
15 to 20
Riley: Mm.
tom: right in that neighborhood. And then this last year
was the last year I coached my, uh, I. Uh, my son is now, he's playing lacrosse. He's chose that over
baseball. My heart is broken, [00:16:00] but, I do, I do have a lot of fun watching him play lacrosse.
It's, it is cool. Um, but I have no expertise whatsoever in lacrosse and, and so I had to kind of bow out of that coaching part of it. My daughter, I was coaching her through softball, which translates pretty closely to
Riley: Mm-hmm.
tom: part. But, uh, she's put
all of her efforts into, um, basketball and into volleyball.
And those are
again, not areas that I specialize. I felt comfortable coaching and so I am officially retired from coaching, at least for right now. Who knows when grad can's come in 10 years or whatever, maybe I'll get back out there and help get him through
Riley: Refire that back up.
Well,
tom: Yeah.
Riley: me this, what's your thoughts on, we see athletes a lot of times, people who are involved in sports. Oftentimes that translates well into business and whether it be just learning the grind and the discipline and the,
you know, how to fight through some, some pretty hard stuff.
How [00:17:00] did that translate with you?
tom: You know, I think part of it is just com being competitive. I think a lot of times when you
take someone who, who's playing football or baseball or basketball or whatever, you know, whatever that sport may be, and they're serious about it and they love that, then it, it creates a level of competitiveness within themselves. And I think oftentimes that can translate into a business. Uh, for me it was, it was, um, just wanting to be the best that I could be wanting to create something the, the, the best of my ability. and I think a lot of that translated there. You learn a lot of really valuable lessons in, um, youth sports, how to work with other people, how to be a good teammate. I, I think you really learn that by lifting, you know, there's the old saying that high tides raise all boats. Um, I think a lot of that comes with sports when you can lift up the people [00:18:00] around you and, uh, it just makes the whole team better. And I think that translates very well business by lifting up all of your employees creates just a better environment in general and a better environment generally leads to, to better profit margins.
Riley: Yeah. Do you find that translates when, you know, business is competitive in general, right? But every once in a while you go through something where another company will take an account or they,
uh, you know, outperform you in some way and you have to,
it kind of conditions you for that, doesn't it?
tom: yes. You know, coming from an athletic background, you don't wanna lose, you hate to lose. Um, in, in running your own business, sometimes it's, sometimes you kind of find it's better to. To lose some contracts and to chase 'em down. 'cause you end up losing more money chasing some of this stuff than you would've if you just would've left it alone and found a contract that maybe fits better within the [00:19:00] ideology of what your company's trying to get accomplished. Or in my case, um, we do wire a lot of single family homes. We, we, we do a lot of everything. We wire a lot of houses, a lot of apartments, multi-family projects, commercial projects, street projects, uh, public works projects. we do of stuff. but what I have found is as we've gone into projects that have less competition, you're gonna be more profitable. Wiring single family houses is, it's difficult to make a lot of money there because the competition is super hard. It's just really thick. Um, and that's of the reason we started our underground division, was because the competition there is considerably less. Yes, we wanna be competitive, but it's, it is tough to compete in the single family market, as an electrical contractor for sure.
There's a lot of guys out there that are willing to do jobs to make, not to get their foot in the
Riley: Or wages, [00:20:00] right? Yeah, they're.
tom: low profit margins, literally. Um, the state of Idaho has not helped that situation. The,
um, builders Association set a lot of lobbying, through the legislature, and they've made, uh, my eyes, they've made some very poor choices in helping out our contractors. They're helping out the, the, they're, what they are helping out is the homeowners association and, and the, the builders. But they have not helped our subcontractors. They've made it a lot easier to get your contractor's license. They've made it a lot easier to pass your journeyman's tests. They've, they've done a lot of things to dumb it down to, to dilute it as much as possible, to create more competition, but more competition. Oftentimes means less profits.
Riley: yeah.
tom: um, yeah.
Riley: Do you find
tom: is is not necessarily our friend.
Riley: Yeah, I think, I think that's a subject.
Uh, we could do a whole show on that, but,
[00:21:00]
Riley: Do you find, you, you mentioned something earlier that's intriguing to me because I've, I've kind of made it a point in my business, both my businesses, about sometimes it's better to walk away from a, from an account than it is to try to chase that.
And I think what you're getting at there, I'm, I'm [00:22:00] hearing is that some, some fit better than others. Some, some people you're designed to serve them perfectly and other ones you're really not. And so it's better just to let that one go to somebody who can and, and get more of the
the same. Is that, is that what I'm hearing?
tom: yeah. And I would even expand on that. In several different ways. So one would be exactly what you're saying, maybe the, that particular, um, contractor, uh, that you're doing the work for just doesn't really fit within the wheelhouse of what you are set up to do. And so it's, you have a hard time making that work.
Uh, from a profitability standpoint, a particular contractor, um, everything for them is about just the dollar, and they're gonna bid you out on every single project, 10 different people, and they're only gonna take people who are gonna lose money on those projects. And so you're kind of wasting your time if you're chasing those all the time. And then third, I I, so I have a philosophy, and [00:23:00] if you are say 20% of my monthly revenue, but you're 50% of my monthly headaches, then it's time to let you go and find somebody else. Some contractors are that you do work for, whether it's residential or commercial or you know, public works projects. Pick the one that you want. Some contractors are clockwork and they're easy to work for. They do what they say they're gonna do. Jobs are always ready. Projects are, um, are organized. Um, and those are the ones that you want to pick and choose. You want to
Riley: Yeah.
tom: guys that you know that you
can show up. It's,
it's not necessarily you're
getting a, a, you know, more per square foot on those projects or, a lot of times the numbers originally look good, but they're not.
If you, if you're working, if you're working for companies that are poorly organized, even though you originally think you're have a big profit margin, you're not just the way it's gonna end up working. You're gonna spend too much time coming back and taking care of issues. And, uh, [00:24:00] so again, yeah, if you're 20% of my, of my monthly profit and 50% of my monthly headache, then I need to replace you.
Riley: Yeah, it's interesting 'cause in our mobile oil change company, we have, well, both my companies, but in the mobile oil change in particular, we have written criteria that, that customers have to meet. Right. Um, I'm curious if you, if you have that actually written in policy. I
tom: I, I have it written in policy. not that the, the policy is internal. It's not something we, we, it's not a contract that we have them sign
Riley: correct.
tom: need to perform at X, Y, or Z in order for us to be able to continue maintaining operations for you. Um, but internally we have processes in place that, you know, these are the expectations.
And,
Riley: Hmm.
tom: if we have individuals or companies that we're working for, if they can't meet these, whether that be, you know, a payment schedule or um, a project readiness schedule, whatever that is, then we just, we essentially just get [00:25:00] out of that situation and move on to other people.
Riley: It's interesting you mentioned, uh, payment and um, uh, project schedule. 'cause that's, that's actually two of ours, uh, two of our, and like I said, I have it written, but it's, uh, one of them is if they just don't, if they're slow to pay, man. 'cause I've seen, I've seen small businesses put themselves under because they've got such an accounts receivable built up, uh, that it, it really hurts them and they're not a bank, you know?
And so that's one of ours. And then you mentioned the production schedule, you know, the project schedule. And that's another one of ours where, you know, we're a mobile company, we drive a truck out there. If somebody doesn't show up to that appointment, it happens once in a while where we have to, we have to shift locations or they'll call us an hour ahead and say, Hey, can you move this?
And, and generally that's okay. But I mean, I can think of a couple people over the years that were just. Chronic. We'd go there five, six times before we finally caught them where they said they were gonna be. And yeah, man, those guys just had to go,
tom: Ri
Riley: you are not. That's why we're still homies.
tom: Okay.[00:26:00]
Riley: But
tom: Okay,
Riley: that is what you're saying, right?
tom: I get there, let me know.
Riley: But
tom: Yeah. Yeah. It, it, a lot of that is time is money. You know, everybody's heard that saying a thousand times, time's money. It doesn't do you any good. You know, if you're making, and I'm making up numbers here, but, you know, if your profit margin's a hundred bucks an oil change and you've had to track this vehicle down to the fourth place, well, by the time you get there, you're, you're not making any
Riley: that's right.
tom: know, you've, you've paid your, your guy window time, three different locations, and now you're lucky to break even on this particular vehicle, or you're losing money on this vehicle. And if you have a customer that's doing this on a repeated basis, again, there's, there's your, even if it's a good customer, it's, you know, 30% of, of your revenue, but he's now become 50, 60% of your problem, your headaches, then it, it doesn't, the math doesn't work out anymore.
Riley: I think that's, that's just huge insight, man. 'cause I, when we, when we built this company from the beginning, that was something that I had [00:27:00] learned when I was in the, in the construction trade. Um, you know, you're in the, you're, you work with new construction, you know, and you mentioned builders that want to bid you on every job and you know, they're not working with anybody who's not losing money.
Is, is how you put that. And I, I remember those, those things. So we just decidedly didn't work for builders when we did that. And unless they would follow the same rules as far as, you know, money down and pay on completion and all the criteria we had then too. So when this business came around, I put those same things in place and now what it's created is I've got 200 customers.
That I love every one of 'em. They pay me on time. We have great relationships. There's no strain there where somebody's backlogged and owes me money, and I'm, you know, hesitant to do work for them because I don't know if I'm gonna get paid. And I, I think that's what you said there just brings a lot of wisdom and makes business a lot more of a pleasant experience.
tom: Yes. Um, [00:28:00] it's very easy to get caught up in big accounts. Large accounts. You know, for instance, if you, if you're doing, if you get a, a, an account for a, B, c, transportation or whoever, and they've got 500 trucks, it's a lot of money. It's a lot of of maintenance. It's, but if. It doesn't matter how much money that is, if you're constantly chasing 'em down, if they, if they're paying at 60 or 90 days, and so now you know you've got $200,000 worth of inventory that you've used for them and they're taking 90 days to get paid.
You, you're, they're asking you to float a lot of capital.
Riley: Right.
tom: Um, and we, but we also use that a little bit to our advantage, I think. Um, some of our larger contractors, and I'm not gonna name names necessarily, but we have some larger contractors that we do work for that are hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, you know, three, $4 a month of, of stuff for, and they take 90 days to get paid.
So I very [00:29:00] well may have well in excess, excess of a million dollars in receivables for them. That is not necessarily past due, but it is 60 days or plus. it's a lot of capital that gets tied up. The good part about that is, is there's a massive amount of competition. That can't do that. And so they're not able to do these people's projects. Um, we've kind of over the years have been able to put ourselves in a position where we have the capital available to be able to do these with these projects. We know we're gonna get paid. They're really good companies. we're gonna get paid. It's just the way the pro work for them. We put in our draws.
Their draws have to go through development companies, through ownership companies. Those have to get approved. It's gotta go back to them. It's gotta go to us. And it, it's a 60 to 90 day process.
Riley: Yeah.
tom: and if you're a six or seven man shop and you've gotta float half a million dollars for 90 days, well good luck.
You know, you're gonna, you're, you're gonna go under. So I, what I would say to a lot [00:30:00] of these younger guys who are wanting to chase that kind of stuff, if you don't have the capital available, I would avoid those projects. 'cause you can get upside down really
Riley: Yeah.
tom: and, and just be done. Like you'll be, your doors will be closed before you even know it.
Riley: No, and that's, that's, that's exactly what I'm getting at, right? Is, is the wisdom involved in understanding percentages. You know, you can do a certain amount of that work and it's okay. But if you let it get too far, man, you're in trouble. Um,
tom: Yeah.
Riley: well, another question I have for you, now, this switch still on the subject of business, but you have family members working for you and you have ever since I've known you that, um, it seems like you guys do really well with that, but I, I know that with a lot of business owners, working with families, a source of contention, uh, how have you navigated that?
tom: That's a great question. Um, [00:31:00] we,
Riley: I.
tom: as far as staff members work for us, my, my brother is, is our field operations manager. Um, he kind of wears quite a few different hats and I think it's easier, from my perspective, I think it's easier sometimes as a business owner to be harder on family members because your expectations of them is higher. And so you have to be very careful not to, uh, show your disappointment or your anger and, and, and tone it down and be able to work through issues. 'cause you're, you're, I don't care who the employee is, you're gonna have issues at some point, somebody's gonna make mistakes. It's inevitable. Um, just taking the time to articulate what those mistakes are with the person and have them change course and, um. Uh, not taking it too much to heart I think is important, uh, because in the long run, I mean, family's family
Riley: Yeah.
tom: you don't wanna ruin those relationships. Uh, also my wife, she works [00:32:00] for our company. She's our CFO. Um, I, I, I, I definitely don't ever tell her if she's made a mistake because for two reasons.
One, that would be foolish on my part and two, because she's never made one, and so,
Riley: Oh,
tom: so,
I
don't have to.
Riley: that's, that's, that's pretty awesome, man. No, 'cause, uh, spouses working together, that that can also be a thing. Right?
tom: Yeah,
Um, you know, I think our particular jobs, uh, the job that she performs and the job that I perform, they work hand in hand, but, uh, I just trust her to do her job. She trusts me to do my job, and there's really no contention us. Um, I, I have a hundred percent faith that she's going to, uh, get everything done correctly. Um. And I think she has the same in me. I don't want her job and she doesn't want my job, and so I just trust her to do what she needs to do. And, and she does the same for me, I think.
Riley: No, I think that's cool. 'cause I, I was talking to a, a guy on a previous episode and he was talking about delegation and how [00:33:00] delegation cannot be done correctly. Unless you completely trust the competence of that person to, to do that job at least as well as you could or better. And that sounds like what you're saying, right?
She, she's better at that function than you, than you are. 'cause you don't, you don't even want it, you know, could you do it? Yeah.
tom: No, uh, at, at a point in time, I, I could. Right now we, with the amount of work that we do, I mean, I don't know if I would have enough time in the day to do. All of it, or if I'd even want to at this point. Um, but going back to what you said on the delegation, so we created a, uh, responsibilities, roles that are pretty well defined on what everybody's like.
I've, I, I'm an operations manager, I have, you know, XY these are the jobs that I have to perform X, Y, Z all the way down. Um, our front office staff, uh, she has her roles, um, that are clear to define. The finance officer has theirs, the operations manager has [00:34:00] his, um, our product, product acquisition manager. He has his, um, our foreman in the field.
They have theirs, our apprentices have theirs. Everybody kind of has, it's very well defined on what the responsibilities and roles are for everybody, and they have to perform within that vehicle that's been created for them. And I think that's really, really important too, is having everyone understand, uh, you know, which oar on the ship are they supposed to be operating.
Riley: Right.
tom: if everybody just jumps on ship and there's
50 yours and everybody doesn't know what order to grab. The ship goes wherever it goes. If you want the ship to go in the right direction, everybody needs to know, this is my order, this is my seat, and I gotta do my job. guy behind me, he's gotta do his job and the guy behind him has gotta do his job.
Riley: Where do you, where do you think companies get that wrong, man? Because, you know, a lot of companies have, you know, job descriptions, so sorta, uh, where do, where do they get it wrong?
tom: Well, I think first of all, they get it wrong by not really having a job description. You know, they, they, they're flying by the seat of their pants [00:35:00] and, you know, we've got, got 50 different things that need to get done. How much can you do today? Can you take on these five things? Okay. Can you take on these six things?
Can you take on those eight things, whatever that may be. Um, I think that needs to be established ahead of time. Uh. Everybody here knows what those, those things are to do. And, and you're not spending time on a, on a daily basis trying to reassign what those responsibilities are, depending on the manpower you have available and what those tasks are. That doesn't mean that you can't ask for help. Uh, you know, if you're overwhelmed. If I've got jobs that need to get bid and I can't get it all done, I might have to reach out and say, Hey, can you help me on my invoicing this month? Um, you have time at the front desk to kind of work through all these invoices and, and do some account accounts receivable stuff. Then they could take on those roles for me. But, uh, for the most part, having those, roles clearly defined and staying the course on those is pretty important. Um, I think a lot of companies just don't, there's a lot of people that don't really know what exactly their role is, and so they're constantly [00:36:00] just trying to fill a gap that they're not really sure what they're filling it with.
Riley: You know, it's, it's interesting you say that because the not understanding exactly where they stand, it makes pe it's, it becomes nebulous to people. They're like, I don't know if I'm performing well or not. 'cause I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. You know, I, I think in our company, we have, we have job descriptions, but one of the things that I found that really helps is I don't let those job descriptions overlap.
So there's never two people responsible for the same thing. It's one person. Um, you know, I,
tom: we do the same.
Riley: yeah, I've noticed that with trucks. You know, if, uh, because we service, uh, in our mobile loop company, we service fleet vehicles. The fleets who assign a truck to a driver, that truck is better taken care of than the truck that gets shared, because then whoever breaks it, blames that on the next guy.
Right? So job description is the same way.[00:37:00]
tom: Yeah. Yeah. I think a, a clear, a, a clear definition of what those descriptions are, and then that needs to be followed up with, uh, accountability to make sure those things are, are getting taken
Riley: Mm-hmm.
tom: 'cause you could describe, you can describe the responsibilities to the cows come home, but if you don't have some kind of accountability set up to where to ensure that those mechanisms are, are being followed through on, then uh, you're still gonna have chaos in the end.
Riley: What does that look like in your company? That, um, the accountability portion of that?
tom: It looks not good enough at this point, to be honest. Um, it's something that, that's an area that we're working on on a regular basis right now. I would say that accountability is, we look at it on a weekly basis to kind of determine where our short shortfalls were through the week, and then we just make a determination of how we could take corrective actions. But as far as, um, a [00:38:00] written, uh, some kind of written description of how that accountability like a failure and accountability needs to be handled. We don't have that. We just find whatever that, whatever that discrepancy was, and then we try to about it and get it fixed so that it doesn't become, uh, repeatable issue.
Riley: Yeah. Well that's great. Um, that correcting someone. So from a management ownership perspective, if you have a corrective action, do you have a, how to ask this question? Is there, I've always really subscribed to the belief that if you're. Correcting somebody, especially if it's a, if it's a failure, they've done something and you know, that's damaged.
Maybe something or someone, or a relationship in the company that I will correct my, my guys in private, you know, just one-on-one if they've screwed something up. Man, we're having that one-on-one talk. Um, [00:39:00] where if I'm, if I'm praising them for something they did, I like to do those publicly so that they, their cohorts hear that, you know, their, their teammates hear that.
So how, how do you handle that kind of thing?
tom: So, so in a position in our company where we've got a lot of layers. Um, as far as from the top down, you know, if I'm sitting on the top part of. where we're at as our operations manager, and then we kind of go through, down through middle management, our field operations managers, our project foreman, uh, our superintendents, and then our journeymen on site, and then our, the apprentices underneath them. of the tier in, in roundabout way. There's some other little parts and pieces that fit in there, but generally we start with having our journeymen. Like if it's an apprentice issue, then we have our journeymen go for that first. And a lot of times it doesn't even come to me. I don't even know about it. Uh, there, it gets handled internally. Usually if it gets to me, then there's, there, you know, there's a pretty big problem that it
Riley: [00:40:00] Right.
tom: Um, so I don't normally take on a lot, I don't take on any disciplinary actions where it's like, Hey, this guy's showing up late, or This guy's, you know, you know, taking too long of a lunch, whatever the, whatever those issues may be. Uh, I generally don't see it. It gets handled internally through our processes and procedures. Um. If it's a journeyman, he's gonna get, you know, the foreman, our project foreman or our superintendent will usually handle that. If it's a project superintendent, it'll, it'll handle about our field operations management. and then from there we'll go up to usually our office, uh, if we have to get there and, and our office. So a lot of that happens internally or externally in the field, but there is, uh, reports that get filled out that get sent into our office. It's all documented. Hey, you know, Bart was late for the third time in two months.
This, he's getting written up. This is the disciplinary actions. If it per, if it happens again, this is what's gonna happen. He's gotta sign that it goes into our documentation file. Um, it just not something that I normally see. If it [00:41:00] gets to like a third strike or fourth strike, then that's when it usually gets to me.
Riley: Yeah. Yeah.
tom: a determination if we need to do something.
Riley: Good man. Um, in your, as you've grown the business, what's been your, your, just your biggest challenge that you can think of over the years?
tom: Um, I think the biggest challenge me, I think this is a big challenge for a lot of people, and maybe it doesn't get, they don't talk about it a ton, is being two things. One is fighting off procrastination, and the other one is fighting off distraction. Um, those are two really tough things that I think a lot of people deal with that they just don't really talk about. Um, it's hard to get shit done all the time. It's hard to always be on in getting things accomplished. and so oftentimes just taking the time to be like, okay, I gotta, I, I gotta dial this in, I gotta focus, I gotta get things accomplished. Uh, I [00:42:00] and getting 'em done. Now, what if I was gonna give a piece of advice? someone who's starting off a company and wants to grow and, and be a, you know, a 50, 60, 70 man shop. Uh, whether that is in contractor role or that's, you know, mobile oil or that's, you know, starting up a roller skate factory. It doesn't really matter what it is. Um, that would be to write things down on a daily basis.
Make a list. What are the things I wanna get accomplished today? Write it down. all those things down, and then tackle 'em one thing at a time. lot of times I know for me, I've got in my head right now, 40 projects. I need to, I gotta get these bids done. I gotta go through this gear package for this project.
I wanna make sure the lighting package has been ordered for a street lighting project. I wanna make sure that my foreman has done this. I, you know, there's, there's a million things going on. Um, you can't remember 'em all. So writing those things down properly, delegating things off the list, if you can delegate it out.
If you can't, then make sure that you're doing it yourself and you're marking [00:43:00] it off. But making a list and going through that list and marking things off as you get them done is important. 'cause it's right there, it's in front of you, you see what you need to get tackled. Um, and you're not trying to remember everything.
Riley: Do you ever find that you'll make a list of, you know, say 10 things and maybe that day you really get three or four of them done, but I. Those three or four, and those are the ones that matter and, and they keep you propelled going forward.
tom: Yeah. Um, and what I'll do is I'll, I'll make a list. You know, if I, when I get in the office, I'll make a list. I'll, I'll look at my list. from the day before and if there are items from the day before, I'll transfer those over to the new list and then I'll add any other additional things I need to, and then I try to prioritize it. You know, what were, are, how many of these items are time sensitive? How many of these things have financial, um. Financial ties that need to get addressed. Um, and then try to knock 'em down. And a lot of times I'll, I'll knock off the easy ones first and that's not because I don't wanna do the hard ones.
It's just [00:44:00] because when you see lists get smaller, usually it creates a level of just positivity
Riley: right.
tom: that are getting done. And it kind of encour it. Yeah. Encourages you to keep moving. if you, if, if you just tackle the huge one off the bat and you see this list is just getting bigger and bigger, because the one thing that's on there, you can't get done, it can be a bit of a, know, a Debbie down on your whole day. So tackle the little ones, make your list smaller, transfer those things over the following, following day. Um,
know,
Riley: That's beautiful, man,
tom: phone.
Riley: because you're, you're basically, you're take you're taking sports psychology. Yeah. I so freaking scrolling. Man. That'll, that'll get you that, uh, but you're bringing some sports.
tom: videos or whatever.
Riley: Yeah. Yeah. The, the sports psychology part of that is kind of the same way, right? It's, uh, those visualizations and the, the things you go through and, uh, as an athlete, training schedules and, you know, I, I used to do that when I did triathlon as I'd have.
Months worth of training written out. This [00:45:00] is what I'm doing this day, and I won't do any more than that. I'll, I'll hit that list. I'll check that off. And that's that day's workout. And tomorrow I got another one. and and it's, you know, three, four months worth of training written out ahead of time. And I'm just checklisting it man.
Boom, boom, boom.
tom: Yeah. You know, with the exception of super athletes, that doesn't matter what they do, they're always gonna be the best. Those people are out there, but it's pretty rare. who's super successful in in athletics, they're putting in the work. You know, Michael Jordan didn't get to be Michael Jordan because he was, you know, just showed up one day.
He worked his tail off. Kobe Bryant worked his tail off. You know, all these guys that are the best of the best, I. They're working their tails off all the time to, to get there. And being a business owner is, it's really no different. You know, you can float through life as a, you know, a one man band or a two or three man band and not put a ton of effort in and not really get where you wanna be, but you're, you're eking it out. But I, if you wanna [00:46:00] be, you know, if you wanna be elite, then you're gonna have to take that same mentality that, know, the Babe Ruths and the Michael Jordans and the Kaitlyn Clarks of the world have taken and put in the work on, on a daily basis. And you're gonna have to grind
Riley: Yeah.
tom: hard. There's, there's no substitute for hard work. There's just not
Riley: Which circles us back around to the original thing. You know, there's gotta be a plan, right? You said that right at the beginning.
tom: plan.
Riley: Yeah,
tom: one of the
most important things is have a plan. I I, I, I preach this to people a regular basis, like from a mentorship. Perspective, whether that was when I was coaching or, or you know, even younger guys that are trying to get into traits and stuff right now is create a plan. The plan can change, that's fine.
Things are gonna happen in life. You're gonna have a kid when you didn't expect to have a kid. You're gonna go through a divorce that you weren't planning. You're gonna, there's gonna be things that happen along the way that are gonna alter that plan. And maybe the plan even goes from being, I wanna be an electrician to, I wanna be a doctor, or I want to, you know, be a sanitation worker.
It [00:47:00] doesn't really matter. a plan. Stick to the plan until something comes along that changes that plan. not having a plan is the worst place that you could be, in my opinion.
Riley: yeah, yeah. 'cause we have life outside of work too. Right? And, and I. I don't know, Tom, if you're comfortable talking about it, but you, you had a pretty hard punch here a couple years ago with your son. Uh, is that something you're comfortable talking about?
tom: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Yeah. And, and I mean, it's, it's difficult. It's a hard conversation, but to be honest, like if I have opportunities to talk about him, then. I'll take him because he deserves to be talked about and, uh, keep his name going. So our son Lucas, um, he got diagnosed with cancer when he was a junior in high school. Uh, this was back in 20 what, 2017? 2018, uh, is when he was diagnosed, um, 2018. And, uh, we, he, it was a three and a half year battle. [00:48:00] He, he made it through high school, um, that the first time he, his cancer came, um, it was a, it was a very difficult cancer, so he got cancer in his jaw and it was quite the process.
He actually had to have his jaw removed. Um, and then when they removed his jaw, they took a bone from one of the lower bones in your lower leg, the tibia fibia. Took one of those bones, created a new jaw, took the flap from his, uh, calf muscle and created a new gum. And then reinserted all of the. Reattached all of the, the vessels to make that system work.
Riley: wow.
tom: so it was a, a a huge surgery and he was able to come back from that surgery from happening in his junior year to being able to play baseball his senior year. so a huge recovery process. But he worked really hard. and I'll, I'll say this, Lucas, uh, he, he really in, [00:49:00] really took that role on of, um, hard work that there was nobody who worked harder. He's a kid who was up at five o'clock in the morning to hit the gym, to work out, to do everything he had to do. He, crazy hard worker. Um, he was, uh, you know, he played, played, uh, varsity baseball his freshman year. He played varsity, football. His sophomore year was one of the only kids that could ended up getting bring up to do that. Uh, he was a two-way starter. I mean, just, uh. An incredible, incredible kid. It was a, a youth leader for our church programs. Um, just a very gifted individual, athletically you name it, it's, it's, uh, he's the, the child that anybody would wanna have. Great kid, great student, uh, was able to attend one year of, um, of college at, um, university of Phoenix, which is a great school. Um, was made the dean's list, the, the [00:50:00] semester he was able to go there. Um, so overall, just an amazing, amazing kid. Um, a lot of, of lessons from him. Uh, he was a kid who was never gonna give up. Uh, fought the entire time, never had a negative thing to say, uh, never felt bad for himself about it. Never complained about anything. just a lot of, of incredible lessons. He touched a lot of people's lives and, and who he was as a person. When we lost him in October of 23. fact, we actually, it was a tough month, but my father died October 1st of 23, and then my wife's father died October 17th of 23. And then Lucas passed away on October 27th of 23.
So all of them passed away in the same month.
Riley: Oh my.
tom: was, uh, just an incredibly, difficult process for us. [00:51:00] Um, you know, I think, um, obviously you grieve whenever your father dies or a stepfather dies, or a father-in-law dies in this case, but that's a different level. There's comparison. You know, a lot of people ask, you know, how do you get through that?
Well, the, the truth of it's you don't, you, you never will. It's always gonna be there. It's always gonna be something in the back of your mind. It's always, there's not a day that goes by that you don't think about it. But, um, I know for our family we're, we've got a lot of faith so we were able to lean on the Lord quite a bit, uh, for comfort in that situation.
And Lucas was, um, he was, uh, very active. Like I said, he was a youth leader, uh, for our church program. Um, he went to the University of Phoenix as a private Christian school. Uh, he did a lot of, um, charity [00:52:00] work, uh, when he was down there. Uh, a lot of things like, you know, creating care packages for people in Ukraine and just, just a lot of really cool stuff. Um, he had a chance to go to Spain, uh, by himself and go visit family over there. Uh, just. Outgoing, charismatic kind of person. Um, yeah, so obviously we miss him a ton, but we're glad he was in our life at the time that we had him.
Riley: Man, I, I don't know if I ever told you this, but he did so much. Um, I remember you telling me of the things he was doing, and I remembered you when you first found out about have him having cancer and then, but then you were, would tell me about all the other stuff he was doing that I had the impression that he had beat it.
That it was, it was over with. And so when I got news, it was several months after it happened, after he passed
tom: Mm-hmm.
Riley: that I heard about that he had passed. And I [00:53:00] remember being so surprised. I was like, man, I, he had. He did so much while he was going through that treatment and those surgeries and that kinda stuff that me from a sort of a distant outsider, um, I thought, I thought it was over with.
And I, I'd actually told some people that Oh yeah, he, he had it for a while, but he's good now. And I, I did not know
tom: yeah,
Riley: the extent of what he was going through 'cause he just like a champ man, uh, pushed, pushed through so much stuff.
tom: yeah. He was able to get an incredible amount of stuff done. So I mean, he, he did beat it. He beat it the first time it came back, uh, he beat it a second time. It came back. it was really, uh, more, it was the fourth time is when it came back. It was in his lungs, and once it got into his lungs, it was. wasn't much we could do. We, we did everything we could. But, um, but in that time that he had that three and a [00:54:00] half years, like I said, he went to Spain, he went skydiving, he surfed, you know, in Hawaii, he surfed in, um, uh, San Diego. He went on all kinds of different ski trips and snowmobile. He went, uh, snowboarding in multiple locations.
We surfed, uh, lake surfing a ton at the cabin. I mean, he, he fit. There wasn't a day if, if, if there was a day that he was capable of doing something, he was doing something. There was no off days for him that every minute he filled with something.
Riley: It's incredible, man.
tom: But that was him. That was Lucas.
Riley: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, to circle back around to, to the, the business side of this. Um, I appreciate you talking about that on here, man. I, I know that brings up a lot of emotion, but those are the kind of things that we all deal with. I mean, life, hopefully we don't all deal with that level, but life hits us in the face sometimes and circling [00:55:00] back around to the, to the plan, right?
Is you've continued on, um,
walking with a limp. That's a, that's a hard thing to deal with, but you're still pushing, right? And there's that still that, that resilience that he had, you also have, and, and so watching you guys pull through this, man, it's just been, again, I'm kind of a distant outsider in seeing that, but I'm really impressed that your having a plan and your resiliency that you had as a young man is, is.
That's showing through, right? That's the stuff you've been saying is real.
tom: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, you know, and I, I do believe a lot of that. worked, it's worked for us the way that, you know, we followed the plan, it's worked. Um, one thing I, before we get too far off the Lucas topic, I wanted to mention was, um, and, and I need to get some more information. So I'd love an opportunity [00:56:00] to either come back and, and chat with you about this at some point. But, uh, we are in the process of setting up an endowment for Lucas. Um, then that endowment, all the, all the interests gained off that endowment will go to create scholarships for kids, uh, for different, a different variety of reasons. So I, uh, there will be opportunities for people to donate to that endowment if they want to.
Um, and at some point I'll have that information available, hopefully shortly. We're, we're, we're actually in the legal process right now of getting up the, the nonprofit organization for it set up. but we'd love to be able to share Lucas's story and whether people wanna donate to the endowment or to the scholarship fund, or they just wanna know more about Lucas.
I, I would love to be able to share that at some point so that people can have access to that.
Riley: That would be super cool, and we can, we can put any of that information in the podcast description here, so that'll be up there as long as this, uh, recording exists, so that'd be great. Tom.
tom: Perfect.
Riley: Yeah, man. Um,
tom: Awesome.
Riley: little lighter stuff here. What is, [00:57:00] uh, you know, this is called the Go Earn Your Salt podcast. What does that term mean to you?
Go earn your salt,
tom: Well, you know, that's, uh, that's a good question. I think, uh, and we talked about this a little bit before we started recording that, you know, I'd earned my salt, you know, right here, you can kind of see it
Riley: the, the salt rim on your hat. Yeah.
tom: Yeah. And, and that, that's earning your salt, you know? Um, no one's gonna save you. one's gonna come do all your stuff for you. I think if, if you want it, you're gonna have to go earn your salt yourself. You're gonna have to have that salt yourself. No one's gonna do it for you. Um. I think a lot of it is, you know, one of the things that's a great thing about this country, and I truly believe this, is you can literally be anything you wanna be here. It just is all dependent on [00:58:00] much work you're willing to put in. When I graduated high school, I had $300 and I didn't have a car, and I was able to get where I'm at today. So yes is it easier if you come from a family that's gonna start you off with a million dollars in your bank account? Sure. But I think earning your SALT yourself, yourself gives you a, a, a sense of, of gratitude for those things that you've earned.
And I think that can be compounding. there's, no better feeling than knowing that you've earned something yourself, uh, and you've done it yourself. Um. Yeah. I, I, I would say earning your salt is putting in the work and the effort to get where you need to be, um, without the expectations of someone coming to save you along the way.
Riley: Yeah. No one owes you anything, do they?
tom: no. no. Um, you know, one of the things I think about a lot is, uh, [00:59:00] you know, I think, I think everybody feels this way for the most part, but like now, know, Riley, you could look back 10 years and be like, I wish I would've done this. I wish I would've done that like 20 years ago. I wish I would've started working out.
I wish I would've started doing this. I wish I would've started doing that. Um, like right now, juujitsu is a pretty big influence in your life. Um, I'm assuming you're still doing quite a bit of that, uh, on a regular basis. I see you're a little, uh, I don't know if it's Twitter or whatever the. Your, your
Riley: Instagram. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:00:00]
tom: Um, Um, and so I see that on there. Once in a while. It'll be really easy as a a 45 or 50-year-old right now say, gosh, I wish I would've done Juujitsu back when I was in my thirties. You could still do it now.
Riley: Yeah.
tom: Don't, don't. There's no reason to wait if you wanna be successful. I mean, I look back at these ones like, Henry Ford didn't start the Ford Company till I think it was in his forties. I think sometimes we get so wrapped up in things that we wish we would've done, and we spend more time thinking about the
Riley: Mm.
tom: wish we would've done instead of working on the things that we can do today. Because in 10 years from now, you're gonna look back and be like, I wish I would've done this, but you could do it right now. Just go do it. You just have to put in the effort. Um, yeah, so don't, don't procrastinate. If you have something you wanna do, do it. Don't wait.
Riley: Dude, I, I hope [01:01:00] people are listening to that 'cause I, I, that, that is a big deal. You know, I,
well they say the best time to plant a cherry tree was 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, but the second best time is now.
tom: Mm-hmm.
Riley: That's it.
tom: Second best time is now. And that's a hundred percent right. Um, get out there and do the things. You know, I, I'm a believer of you create your own reality. the reality that you live in is a manifestation of your own thoughts and efforts and what you put in. and so if you want to live a certain life, you can do it. You just have to put in the effort and, and create that reality for yourself.
Riley: Yeah.
tom: Now, we can't all be, Tesla. We can't all be, you know, Joe Rogans, but we can create the own reality that we wanna live in through our efforts.
Riley: Yeah. No, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. Man. That's, you're just dropping some wisdom bombs here, my friends. Um, books. [01:02:00] What is a book you would recommend everyone read?
tom: Oh goodness. Um, know, one of the books that I, I liked quite a bit, and this is one that I'm, a lot of people have probably read. Um, I really liked, uh, the Art of War, I think as a really good read. I dunno if you've ever read that one or not. Uh, my wife got me a leather bound edition of that probably 20 years ago, and I. A lot. It translates so well into what we do as individuals today. Obviously the book is written about strategies for war purposes, but those same exact strategies that are utilized for war purposes are the same strategies that we should be implementing into our daily lives. The way that we communicate effectively with other people, the way that we should run our, our companies.
If [01:03:00] you're a company owner, those are the, it's the same. It's understanding your environments, understanding your strengths, understanding other people's weaknesses, um, and spending time on, on, on implementing all of those, all of that knowledge that you can gather to better yourself. So I, I, I did take a lot from that book.
I thought that was a really, really neat book.
Riley: It is amazing how principles of war, um, sun Sue was the author of that. Am I correct?
tom: Yeah.
Riley: Yeah. That's, um, those principles of war can translate right into the battles we face every day in business. And I, yeah, that's, that's a good one, man. That's a hard one to beat. 'cause I do hear a lot of people recommend it, but there's a reason a lot of people recommend it.
It's applies.
tom: yeah. I, um, I originally, I was interested in that book and I'm, I think it was kind of a fluke that my wife [01:04:00] had had gotten it for me. But, um, I remember, do you remember Chris Peterson, who was a coach for Boise
Riley: Yeah.
tom: you know, 10, 15 years ago? he was talking about that book and how he implements a lot of the lessons within that book on how he went about his day-to-day, uh, for his football team. and so that's kind of what piqued my interest. And then it happened to be a year later that my wife, I. Had actually gotten me that book. And it's, I don't wanna say it's, it's not a difficult read, it's just, you kind of have to be able to, uh, take the context within the book and, and apply it. but if you can do that, if you can take the lessons from that and, and, and understand how that can translate into different layers of, of your life, uh, than it can be a, an impactful book.
Riley: Yeah. That's awesome. Okay. Scariest moment of your life. You ever have any near death experiences or super scary [01:05:00] experience?
tom: Well, I mean, obviously when you find out your kid has got, you know, cancer, that's the most, that's the scariest thing that's ever happened, for sure. Going through that whole process. But barring that aside, scariest moment of my life, um, gosh, you know, I'm, I'm not sure, um, I. I'm not sure if I really have a scariest moment.
There's never, I've never been like in a near death, uh, accident type situation before. There's been a few times that, uh, there was, well, there, okay, so I probably, there was one time that, uh, we were at a, a hunting camp and this was a hunting camp that I was completely unfamiliar with. This is before we had GPS or any of that kind of stuff.
And I had gone out on a solo hunt and I had gone a long way and had gotten turned around and that was a scary moment that, you know, but at the same token, that was, it was a great lesson for me to understand, okay, don't panic in those [01:06:00] situations. Take a second, figure stuff out. Utilize the information within your environment to make some determinations on, on location.
And, and I think that I learned from that, that, uh, I. For the most part, any situation you're in, if you keep calm about it, you can work yourself through it. so that's what we had, I had to do there was overcome that fear in the moment in order to use logic. Because a lot of times when you come into a scary situation, your logic's out the
Riley: Right.
tom: You're just in panic mode. Um, so having to slow down, re reinvest the logic that you had available to yourself and make good choices. So that was a, an eye-opening moment for me. It was in the moment, I'll be honest, I was, I was scared to death. It's like, where the hell am I? This doesn't make any sense.
This is not where I should be. Um, but uh, yeah, that was a scary moment.
Riley: It's interesting if, if you've never been turned around, especially out in the the woods or the mountains, it scares a crap [01:07:00] outta you, man. 'cause you think you know where you're going. But unless you sit down and take the time to, to really figure it out, you can be going exactly the wrong way and not, it just doesn't register.
Man. And I, I did that one time on a motorcycle ride. We were, me and a buddy were out there and I was running outta gas and we, we kept taking roads, we thought were the right little trails, and, and it wa wasn't, and we ended up kind of in a pickle. And finally we ran into some guy who did know his way outta there.
And we weren't too far from home, but we were heading the wrong way, you know? And, uh, that's scary stuff. Um,
tom: it could turn into a bad situation for sure.
Riley: yeah, for, for real. Um, in school, did you ever get kicked outta school?
tom: Hmm. Let's see here. Um, like on a permanent basis. I, I'm sure that I, I had some suspensions here and there, so was not a great student by any search of the imagination. Um, [01:08:00] it wasn't that I. Lacked intelligence. It was this, I lacked interest. I think, I mean, for me, like school was a place to go and hang out with friends and, um, it was opportunities for sports.
A lot of, a lot of the school, you know, a lot of your sports were because of the school systems. Um, it was later on in life that I kind of figured out that I needed to apply myself. But yeah, um, I remember I'd gotten kicked off the bus. Uh, we, we called 'em pink slips. We got pink slips for fighting on the bus. So, which essentially you get pink slips, you get kicked off, you know, for x amount of days. Uh, so yes, I had received pink slips, um, on the bus for fighting. Um, I'd been kicked outta school a couple times for like a day here, day there. Honestly, can't even remember. I think it was mostly for fighting. Um,
Riley: Well, that
tom: I mean, I never did things like, know, drugs or, or bring, you know, liquor or something to school.
Nothing like that.
Riley: you were just a cra scrappy farm kid, man. Um, [01:09:00] that was, it's on my list of questions to ask you was, have you ever been in a fight? So, detail that one out for us.
tom: Um, you know, I think all boys at some point, you know, they get into some kind of scruffle, whether that's just you got each other in a, in, you know, some kind of a neck hole and you're ru you know, rolling around in the grass when you're in grade school or something. but yeah, there was, there was a handful of fights between junior high and high school. Um, I was never an instigator of fights, but I was also too proud to ever back down from one of the same token. So, um, uh, yeah, I, uh, I remember the first real fight I was in, well, probably the second, the, the worst real fight that I was in was pretty short-lived. the other kid was mostly a lot of talk and not a whole lot of action, but, um, that lasted all about 10 seconds.
And then, [01:10:00] then the next fight that I got in, I got my, I got the shit kicked out of me pretty good. So, but this was a kid who was considerably bigger than me. I didn't want anything to do with him. He was a big bully. but he got his later on. Uh, I had friends that had older brothers that took care of that problem for me.
So, it's good to have friends with older
Riley: Yeah.
tom: Um, but no, and not, not, a ton, um, you know, two or three. uh, for the most part I avoided that I was more interested in sports and girls than I was fighting, for sure.
Riley: Yeah. Both are way funner than, than fighting. Of course I say that, but I fight every day.
tom: I've thought really hard about, you know, I, I love the whole juujitsu. Not, not because I wanna fight, but just because it's a challenge.
Riley: is fun.
tom: yourself. Um, yeah. It, it's a fantastic workout. I just don't know if my body can hold up anymore. I, I'm I'm sure I could, you know, to at least a lesser extent, I need to make sure that I'm hanging around the white belts. But,
Riley: Actually. You, you wanna hang around black belts, those are guys that take [01:11:00] care of you. White belts will try to kill you.
tom: Oh, they're, they're the ones who are Yeah. They're trying to prove
Riley: Black belts just kick your butt with no effort. And so you're kind of just, they take care of you and everybody stays healthy. But the white belts man, they'll try to take your head off and it's, it's not always careful.
So sometimes you get hurt that way.
tom: Sure. They don't know where their limitations need to
Riley: that's exactly right. They don't, they don't have the feel for it yet. So that
tom: Yeah.
Riley: bucket list challenge, man. What's next? You got, you got something you wanna do?
tom: I. Um, yeah, we got a handful of things that we're kind of working on. Like I said earlier, you know, we're setting up that, um, endowment for our son. That's, that's a big one for us to, to get that money set aside and let that start accumulating interest so that it can go to help scholarship kids. It'll, the scholarship will end up being kids within the community, uh, that we're in that need it for different reasons.
It'll be the live like Lucas Scholarship. So it's kids who really, it's not necessarily [01:12:00] tied to a financial issue or a disability issue. It's tied to kids who just live their life the right way. Um,
Riley: am writing this down 'cause I wanna remind you to get me info on that. Okay.
tom: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I, I will do that and then let you link it however you need to Um. Um, and we're actually considering setting up two separate endowments. One, it goes through the school system, uh, to scholarship those kids. And then another one, uh, endowment that we're planning on establishing that will go to just the community in general.
And that one will be to help, uh, local children that are going through situations similar to Lucas. And it'll go to help things like hotel costs and travel costs, food costs, um, for kids who are needing to travel for medical expenses.
Riley: I, I love a couple things you said there.
tom: get all that information.
Riley: Yeah, that'd be awesome man. There was, uh, a couple things you said there. One is. To have it in the local community. I, I'm always much more eager to get on [01:13:00] board with, with things like this where you have a personal touch on what's happening in that, that individual situation.
Because I see some of these charities that are kind of disconnected and they're, they're wanting to raise funds for stuff outside of their own community. And sometimes that's kind of, uh, that's open for fraud a lot, right? You can get people who are applying for stuff that you just don't know their situation, but worse in your own community with people, you know.
It's really easy to have those funds go to the right places. I like that.
tom: Yeah, for sure. Um, and, and one of the things that we're planning on doing is, um, we'll have a board, and, and myself and, uh, Allison will sit on that board and we'll have, uh, probably a five person board and anybody who wants access to these funds, scholarship funds, they have to write a letter then we review those letters.
We determine if that person. Y for the same reason. We don't want [01:14:00] some, you know, somebody sitting in Russia who's just, you know, making a sob story on Facebook and sending it out, but they're, you know, that they're a 4-year-old girl going through cancer. Help us please. Um, and then we're sending money to the wrong people.
We wanna be able to
vet
Riley: Yes.
tom: and make sure it's going to the correct locations. Um, we're gonna, we're gonna be the doge, the Doge portion of the whole
Riley: Yeah, that's a lot easier to get on board with, man. I think that's really cool that you're doing that. We'll make sure we get that stuff. As soon as you get it all set up, we'll make sure we get it on here.
Okay.
tom: Yeah. That'd be awesome. Yeah. I appreciate the, the, uh, to put it on your platform. And even if it, if it reaches one person or a million people, it's, it's, every single one of those, uh, views helps for sure.
Riley: Yeah. Well, my pleasure man, there for sure. So, well, my friend, I, I, uh, appreciate you coming on, Tom. I, it's been insightful. It's, yeah, got me a little emotional there for a little bit too. I just appreciate you being willing to come on here [01:15:00] and talk to us. You've dropped a lot of wisdom, the, uh, business insight you have there.
It's, it's pretty cool to talk to, to a lot of business owners because there's some common threads there. And that question, have you ever been kicked outta school? Almost everybody so far has said yes to that. Uh, you know, all the business owners anyways, they, they just tend to have that personality, like, lock me down on a desk all day.
And that's not fun, but super smart, super intelligent.
tom: it sucks.
Riley: Yeah. It's one of the worst ways to learn.
tom: don't like it either.
I, I appreciate you having me on.
Riley: yeah, it's been a absolute pleasure but from here, Tom, go your salt, my friend.
tom: All right, buddy. Thank You so much. Appreciate
Riley: You got it.
tom: a good one.
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