Speaker 1: 0:11

All right guys, welcome to episode 12 of it's Personal and Entrepreneur's Podcast. We've got a super special guest today Gunther Van Winkle Fuel Mule. I already messed up a word, andrew. Thanks for pointing that out. We're really happy to have you here today. Thank you for coming on, of course no-transcript here me and my family.

Speaker 2: 0:54

They moved here in 2015, 16. I moved down a couple of years later, got tired of the small town. Not a lot to do, not a lot of opportunities. So, you know, thought I'd move down, try it out, see see how it ended up have you realized that this isn't much off of a small town, except we have a beach well, you know the county's pretty big when you look at it. I mean county level. We had a walmart within an hour, so we got that's fair.

Speaker 2: 1:20

Three or four of those. Yeah, I can go to eight grocery stores in 10 minutes of the house, so it's a little bit different, yeah, but um, you know, always grew up in business world. I think probably third or fourth generation entrepreneur now.

Speaker 1: 1:33

So yeah, it just kind of seemed like the right path you mentioned that, that your um, your, your family had some restaurants in illinois, um, and, and you grew up working in those. I'm assuming, yeah, and you were talking a little bit about I think it was your stepdad and how he got to do that. Let's talk a little bit about that. I think that was an interesting story.

Speaker 2: 1:54

Sure, sure. So to start, I think, when I was a kid, I was just a kid. Yeah, I don't think they expected me to go to the restaurant all the time, but I did. It wasn't expected. It was just kind of like let's go hang out with mom and dad, Right.

Speaker 1: 2:07

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:07

Absolutely yeah, Growing up in the restaurant, Um, I remember going in before school, five, six years old, sitting in the back, you know, waiting with my mom for her to take me to school, Um, and you know, just kind of doing that my whole life. You know, never really seemed like work, it was just kind of this is what you do right, you know so always spent time there.

Speaker 2: 2:29

I started working full-time when I was 15 and ended up running the store One of the stores when I was 18, for a few years before I moved down here, and it's just you know kind of what I've always known and done. And when you first moved here, what were you doing? Real estate, okay, well, for six months I worked at a restaurant.

Speaker 1: 2:46

Okay.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Yeah, and then I got my real estate license and what kind of made you want to do that? So up north I actually own properties. Okay, I've been doing that since I was 18, just kind of buying and selling and seeing what we could turn over and rent out. And when I moved down here I had 19 units. Wow, I was running out. Um, so it familiar, you know yeah something I knew. Um, I didn't think it'd be too hard to get into, just from the knowledge I had and just kind of.

Speaker 1: 3:16

Let's go back to that, because that's actually like, uh, that's not a small thing having 19 properties at that, even even if it wasn't right at 18, if it was a you know a little bit older than that. So how did you get into that up north? Who got you into?

Speaker 2: 3:29

that. What did that look like? My dad he always had a few rentals and I kind of saw the opportunity. Two months after I graduated high school, I'd been saving from 15 to 18. Right, working in a restaurant. Right, I bought a small, probably 600 square foot one bedroom house, fix it up, rent it out for a couple of years. In the meantime it saved up money to buy a little bit more. And then I sold that. One used that money to put down on an apartment of 11 units. So just kind of turn them around.

Speaker 1: 4:01

You can't undervalue, starting small and and over time, what that can do.

Speaker 2: 4:06

Real estate, yeah yeah, I mean, I think you just got to keep building and building and building. A lot of people think they see these people with 100 units and it just happened right. Yeah, like overnight I went out and bought.

Speaker 1: 4:16

Everybody started with one.

Speaker 2: 4:17

Yeah, everybody started with the one bedroom, 600 square foot yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, and you know it was pretty cheap, yeah, for what it was, but we put money into it and when it was, pretty cheap for what it was, but we put money into it and when it was a good situation for the person living in it, right, whatever that was Right. Right, and then a couple of years later I sold it and turned that into more yeah, um, just off equity. So Absolutely, I think that's a game in real estate.

Speaker 1: 4:38

Yeah, it is. Yep, that's a pretty old story.

Speaker 2: 4:41

And yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:41

So what about the apartment building? What kind of what kind of things did you encounter with that Cause? I'm sure that was a pretty different situation than than owning a single unit. It was crazy, yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:53

The first, the first multi unit property I bought. It was two duplexes and a triplex and that was a little bit more manageable, cause everybody's kind of separate and yeah, you know it's.

Speaker 1: 5:05

It's not as like on top of each other. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:08

And the hardest thing there was just fixing it up. You know, always turning the money back into it and you're never pulling money out. You're always putting it back in Until you exit. Yeah Right, and you're turning it. So that was the hardest thing, probably for me to get through. My head right was I have all these units, making all this money every month, bringing in all this money. There's nothing in my pocket but I'm not taking anything away.

Speaker 1: 5:30

I think that's the fallacy of like a lot of cashflow properties too, like even short-term rentals, because people see, like it advertised, okay, it does 70, 80 grand a year or something, but people do not sit down and calculate the true cost of what is being put back into some of those things. It's the exit you're working toward, right, and if you get one that cash flows a little bit, that's like. That's like icing on the cake, sure I still have those seven.

Speaker 2: 5:50

Those are the only ones I still have. Okay, wow, it's because they are to the point now where they're.

Speaker 1: 5:54

Yeah, now they and it took what? How many? You know? Five, six, seven years to get to that point. Oh, yeah, for sure because it was always.

Speaker 2: 6:00

Well, this unit needs a new carpet or needs a new fridge or a new toilet. The AC goes out, yeah, the water backed up in the tub or something dumb, but it has to be taken care of, yeah, actually. And then the money that's being generated has to just go back into it. Go into it, yeah. So finally, we're at a point now, but I would like to sell them if anybody's looking.

Speaker 1: 6:24

Everything's for sale.

Speaker 3: 6:26

Yeah, everything's for sale at a certain price yeah, these are all back home.

Speaker 2: 6:29

Yeah, they're all in illinois, the the price to entry here is just it's way different. Yeah, my thing on real estate is anybody could do it, you just gotta have the money. Yeah, yeah, so true, if I can get in something there for a third the cost and the rents and turn the sign bar, do you still dabble in real estate there, even from a distance? Not really, it just yeah, it's too hard. Yeah, it takes too much thought and effort to to without being able to be there yeah, I mean I can't go look at properties.

Speaker 2: 6:54

I mean, yeah, small town, I know where everything is, but you still gotta go see.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Yeah, yeah hands on something different about being on site with a property, opposed to looking at pictures or someone telling you about it. Yeah, a video tour only does so much. Yeah, I agree that's interesting. I didn't realize that, so that's kind of new to me. But that's a cool story and I think a lot of those principles you were talking about, though, like the having to put money back in it, get over it mentally. Doing real estate early, like that kind of prepares you for just business life cycles, I think, in general kind of gives you that grid or that mindset to be able to see something through, even if it's not, uh, cash flowing right away. Um, so that's, that's kind of interesting. Yeah, not everybody's cut out for no.

Speaker 2: 7:36

No, it's a mental state. I think you have to put yourself in that, like you have to manage your expectations really early on.

Speaker 1: 7:43

I think we flipped houses, probably for four years, and, granted, you know the first couple we put a lot of money into and then, after that, we were able to prove ourselves and get some equity partners. So it didn't have to be all our money, sure, but we probably flipped houses for four years at a personal net loss, I would say, because you make a lot at once. But what people don't realize is you're you're paying yourself in arrears and you're incurring expense the whole time. So we were really doing it to learn the business, like the development business, and then by the time I got paid a chunk in arrears, I was just paying all the shit that I paid for the last six months, paying off your credit card or whatever yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:21

And that's just, and you know, it took us years of doing that to get to a point where, like, we actually make money now and we have a good book of real estate clients built up. It's not, definitely not something that happens overnight.

Speaker 2: 8:32

I think that's entrepreneurship In general by definition. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Everybody sees it from the outside. They always see the end result. Nobody sees the process, the 10-year, 15, 20-year process Nobody on social media.

Speaker 3: 8:44

I mean we talk about it all the time, talks about it a bunch. That's the message that's portrayed. I mean that's kind of what led us even to get into these nitty-gritty conversations with this podcast and people that we converse with is because if you just get on Facebook or TikTok or social media, you only see that the pretty. Look at my stacks of cash. It looks easy here, buy. Look at my stacks of cash.

Speaker 2: 9:03

It looks easy. It's here by my course. Let me show you how to do it.

Speaker 1: 9:11

It's easy to be enticed by the end result, even yourself. Once you get there. It's easy to kind of be like, oh, that wasn't so bad. But sometimes you got to sit back and kind of humble yourself and really realize how blessed you were to even be able to go through that process, live in a place where you can take risks and go through that process and have that opportunity to do that, because a lot of people don't even have that option, right? But let's say, let's transition a little bit, because I really want to talk about what you're doing right now. Fuel Mule. Yeah, tell us a little bit about, like at its granular basis, what that business is, what gave you the idea where you started, where you are now, that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 9:47

So I'll tell you how it started first, where the idea came from. It actually started because of my sister. 2020, COVID just turned 16. And, as 16 year olds do they drive around Just to drive. All the time they're burning through gas.

Speaker 2: 10:03

They don't realize it costs money. So she's driving around all the time and late one night she goes to the Busy Bee out by our neighborhood to get gas Brand new gas station at the time you know, nicest gas station in the county, arguably, yeah. And there's no one there. She pulls up, she's getting her gas and in the middle of getting her gas the stereotypical white van pulls up, pulls up and five guys get out and they're all trying to talk to her and approach her. And so the thought there is like this has to be done in a safer way. There has to be a better way.

Speaker 2: 10:38

Yeah, and at the same time I was living in illinois part-time, still then going back and forth, and there's a, there's a business there. It's like a drive-through convenience store, yeah. So I'm like man, that's awesome, that's a convenient version of the gas station. I mean, a convenient store isn't really that convenient when you think about it, not nowadays. No. So at the same time, this is all kind of happening and I'm like we could do this better. We can make it more convenient. They've made this side of it more convenient. How do we, how do we sell gas more convenient and safer?

Speaker 1: 11:08

yeah, and I hear stories like that more and more often these days, even with people that that I know. It's like not an uncommon occurrence to hear something like that happening.

Speaker 3: 11:16

I mean the physical threats the safety threats, the card threat.

Speaker 2: 11:19

Yeah, everybody gets their card skimmed. I've had my card skimmed at gas stations four or five times in the past, so you know the the goal was to make it safer. That was, that was the initial thought, and it's it's become more about convenience. Yeah, yeah, um.

Speaker 1: 11:34

And then when we started, and we live in a society where people put a high value on convenience oh, 100.

Speaker 2: 11:39

Look at all the new businesses. Yeah, doordash shipped. Yeah, you can have anything delivered to your house. Yeah, taxi, yeah, right, so that's true, it kind of it kind of fit in. It worked well. I've been working a long time saving money, you know, just waiting for my, my thing to happen, right, and when it happened it was.

Speaker 1: 11:59

It's kind of like you knew you had the light bulb yeah, I, I've always said this because, um, I can't really take credit for saying I've always known this in the back of my mind, because my grandpa was an entrepreneur and owned a company, but his idea or his patent and the thing he worked on as a, as an engineer, came from him. Just saying, I was always in the frame of mind that I knew when a problem came along I was going to solve it, sure, and figured out whether I was the best you know engineer, because he wasn't, whether I had the best grades in school. He didn't, he's like. I knew I had that mindset that when I came along I would figure it out and if I just drove with that problem, I I would get it done.

Speaker 1: 12:36

So my whole life I've just been and we've found some things that we're very good at. I wouldn't say I've found that one thing I love solving, absolutely yet. But I've always gone through life with that mindset of just looking at problems and being like how can I fix that? Yeah, I think when you find that thing, man, you're unstoppable.

Speaker 2: 12:54

It was like as soon as it happened. You know, it's just, my mind is racing 24 seven. So that was April of 2020, middle of COVID, right, and it's like, how do we figure this thing out? Yeah, and then we didn't even open until the end of 22. So it was two and a half years of business planning figuring out the trucks, getting our insurance and building the app Logistically. Yeah, I mean mean there's a hundred things that nobody sees, yeah, but it all had to be done before I mean getting licensed by the state.

Speaker 1: 13:21

I was just gonna say I can't even imagine like the paperwork that goes into starting something like that has to be.

Speaker 2: 13:27

I mean, the hardest thing was insurance. Yeah, honestly, I spent a whole month just on the phone. Yeah, I believe that. Yeah, I mean because hazmat, nobody wants to do it. I'm a new business nobody wants to do it.

Speaker 1: 13:38

Yeah, you're a cdl driver, you've been in the fuel business a long time.

Speaker 2: 13:41

Nope, never done it right, I never drove a fuel truck. Yeah, it was, I had every negative mark than an insurance company. Yeah, that makes sense, and I had every single one. So so the trucks do you like?

Speaker 1: 13:55

are those hard to find? Did you have someone fabricate them? Did you buy them from someone who does that?

Speaker 2: 14:02

Yeah, I have a company they build tank trucks.

Speaker 1: 14:05

Okay, that's a good thing.

Speaker 2: 14:06

They typically do bigger trucks but they had a product that was similar to what I wanted. I had to find the chassis. I got them out of Pennsylvania, had them shipped to them, okay, and it was all kind of custom. It's pretty much what do you want? Yeah, yeah, and that was tough, because I don't know what you don't know I don't know what works, yeah so it was piecing that together.

Speaker 1: 14:26

Do you think there's things on them now like you would have done differently now? We were just work with them.

Speaker 2: 14:31

We were just talking this morning in the last couple days, because we're trying to get another truck, like, okay, okay, we want to do this differently. We want to add this this is how this should be.

Speaker 1: 14:39

Yeah, that makes sense we're going to have an evolution over time.

Speaker 2: 14:41

Yeah, we're going to have a whole book of once yeah yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:44

Sop now of how you want the truck, yeah, yeah, and so business model wise, you know it started out of safety. Just coming to the house, what did it transition to now? At this point, like, what other kinds of services have stemmed off of it that at the beginning you didn't think, yeah, it would be the boats doing boats filling boats.

Speaker 2: 15:02

It's 50 of our business.

Speaker 2: 15:04

I mean that makes a ton of sense, yeah so coming from up north, we don't have big boats, you know everybody's on a lake, they probably have 50, 60 gallon. You can stop by the gas station, yeah, and coming down here, obviously I don't know that. Yeah, yeah, atmosphere, that market at all, yeah, and it just we had a guy who would not leave me alone. Yeah about it, come fill my boat, come fill my boat. And I'm like I don't know, we can't. And then finally one day he's like I need 400 gallons of gas. That's a lot of money, right, and I'm like that's a lot of gallons of gas. At that time that's probably what we were selling in a day, yeah, yeah, on one trip.

Speaker 1: 15:38

Driving around.

Speaker 2: 15:39

So I was like all right, we'll go check it out and see. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work At least we tried. Yeah. And while we're there, we had a whole crowd of people walk up. Yeah, we had four or five guys like, hey, can you come film my boat?

Speaker 1: 16:00

And and then one guy's like I need a thousand gallons, like that's hard to say no, yeah. So from then on, it makes a lot of sense though, because my dad is very big into boating and it's that's like the biggest pain in the ass is planning out where you can get fuel. Yeah, before you can go every, you can waste half your day getting yes, literally.

Speaker 3: 16:12

Well, even with your cost, you can probably still be relatively competitive with the cost on the water. Oh, we're way less than the marina charters. Yeah, exactly, I mean that's the other part of it is you're getting the convenience of the service, and at a good cost too. Plus, you're still competitive to Treasure Island and whatever these other fuel stops are Getting in line with these people doing circles while you're waiting on your turn. True, I mean.

Speaker 2: 16:38

Do you guys have diesel yet? Not yet. The next truck is going to be, hopefully, boat specific and then the truck number two is going to turn into diesel okay um it's kind of sure boats have a bigger demand for diesel yeah, I, I don't even want to do diesel boats, to be honest with you. Really, it's a lot of headache with the state and licensing and okay inspections and they want you to put a barrier around the entire boat.

Speaker 3: 17:00

Wow, really, what about the diesel cars? I mean, are you-? Yeah, we're looking to do that.

Speaker 2: 17:04

We're looking to do small fleets and diesel trucks. You're getting demand for the business side. Yeah, we have a lot of customers already lined up that if we had the product we could sell it.

Speaker 3: 17:13

That's my father-in-law. That's why I asked that, because his business is. Most of those trucks are diesel, yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:19

So basically businesses that have fleet vehicles. Instead of them having to have people plan around driving to gas stations, they can come back at the night and you guys come refuel.

Speaker 2: 17:27

Yeah, and getting tanks on site doesn't make sense for a lot of business economically. Yeah, no.

Speaker 3: 17:31

You're taking that gas card away from all of those unresponsible employees too. That's the other part.

Speaker 2: 17:37

Yeah, card away from all of those unresponsible employees too. That's the other part. Yeah, the time. And the gas cars is the big thing on the fleets. I mean from our research and what we found out talking to our customers the average fleet vehicle spending four to six hours a month wasted at the gas station at a gas, yeah right and twenty dollars an hour.

Speaker 1: 17:50

You're talking if they don't have a reason to even have to stop at the gas station. Now, how long are they going to sit there and do whatever?

Speaker 2: 17:55

yeah, that's true right, and how much? How much more productive is their day going to be if, instead of in the morning, yeah, they're not stopping the gas station for 30 minutes? You're behind your whole day now, yeah, so if we, if we can fill them overnight and they're just ready to go.

Speaker 1: 18:08

So how frequently would a business like that typically have like a couple times a week.

Speaker 2: 18:13

Yeah, we go twice a week to every every business we do. We do a couple vehicles three times, but Twice is good for most businesses, I would think. Yeah, the ones we do three times a week. They're like transportation and buses Heavy okay, so they're running 24-7. But two times a week is good for 98% of our customers. How?

Speaker 1: 18:31

much from launch to today, would you say the business has grown, if you had to put an idea on your head in it.

Speaker 2: 18:40

Well, I was looking at the numbers yesterday actually, and January 1 to May 15, year over year, we're up like 382%. Okay so it's exponential, yeah, and we're on track to do that again.

Speaker 1: 18:54

Next year.

Speaker 2: 18:54

Yeah, because I mean we've already doubled In May we're on track to double what we sold in january. Okay, wow, so it's, it's, it's along the same path. Yeah, and your year over year will probably be close to doubling too. Yeah, and that that's our goal is double every year.

Speaker 3: 19:11

So anything above that, you know so, like long term, you'll franchise this thing or what I hope, or or or take one of the big companies off and off.

Speaker 2: 19:20

They're like we need to get rid of you.

Speaker 1: 19:22

How much do you want? Yeah, like an acquisition type of deal. Yeah, I guess that was my question too. Would you like? Is franchising or just really big expansion, more along the line of?

Speaker 2: 19:33

Initially, my goal is just to run the Gulf Coast. Yeah, we want to do Pensacola to Tallahassee and then after that really see where we can go with it, whether that's franchising out multiple states or selling out, selling the whole concept.

Speaker 1: 19:50

It seems like a very franchisable model. Oh, it's easily Because you can predict the startup cost. You can tell someone how to get started, where the points of business are, that, that type of thing yeah, I mean, that's that's kind of the back end.

Speaker 2: 20:04

you figure all this stuff out. Yeah, and franchising that's a lot of the value to a franchisee is you already did all of it, you've worked through most of the problems and you can kind of guide them and educate them on they they should do. They can avoid the pain points by franchising, instead of Avoid the two and a half years Of what you did. Five, 6,000, 7,000 hours of time on the phone. Is there other?

Speaker 1: 20:27

applications of it that you could see it working. For that you're not doing right now that you would want to get into.

Speaker 2: 20:35

I don't know. To be honest with you, people ask me all the time to fill their plane. Yeah, I don't want to.

Speaker 1: 20:40

I was just going to ask about airports, but that's a whole other animal. It's a lot of liability.

Speaker 2: 20:45

I mean, if you have a fuel problem on something that flies, you fall. If you have a fuel problem on a boat or a car, you just sit there, yeah, and then it's your fuel. Yeah, they. Then it's your fuel. Yeah, they drive back to where that fuel came from. The first thing they look at if an airplane or helicopter crashes is their fuel.

Speaker 1: 20:59

Yeah, do they have fuel issues Right. Getting on to the facilities probably is not an easy process.

Speaker 2: 21:05

Yeah, it's kind of like a marina. They have their own fuel. They don't necessarily want you out there.

Speaker 1: 21:09

Yeah, that's true, but yeah, just the liability alone kind of turns me away from it, yeah, and it's a very specialized type of fuel, I would imagine too, in most instances.

Speaker 2: 21:18

Yeah, the unique thing actually with jet fuel was once you put it in a tank you can't ever haul anything in it again. So if you do a jet fuel truck it has the same it's jet fuel for the rest of its life.

Speaker 1: 21:29

You can never put anything else in it. Nope, why is that?

Speaker 2: 21:40

Because the chance of something diluting it. I'm not 100 sure. I believe it's because of the way it affects the structure of the tank, okay. And then if it mixes with interesting corrosion, right. If anything else gets in is introduced, deterioration maybe it can. A chemical reaction, yeah, something like that. Yeah, that's above my pay grade. I really don't know, but that's just.

Speaker 3: 21:54

They say that is interesting. That's one of those things that you don't know until you've just put jet fuel in a truck. Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 2: 22:01

Yeah, if we didn't know that and we put jet fuel in it and then you go back and put none of that back in it the next week.

Speaker 1: 22:07

That's one of the things. I just didn't want to find out the hard way, yeah. So, moving on from that a little bit, I guess you know what kind of we always like to ask people to. Like what kind of advice. If you've done a lot of different type of entrepreneurial things, different industries, you've been able to apply them probably to everything you've gone to. If there's somebody that's like listening to this, that wants to get started doing something, or has that same like kind of burning desire that we all have to find problems, solve them, yeah, but they're maybe not confident to do that, maybe maybe haven't done it yet like, what kind of advice and things can you give to someone in those in that situation?

Speaker 2: 22:47

first, I don't think everybody's cut out for it. I, I agree. I think the tiktoks and everything like we were talking about leads. Everybody believe that anyone can. Anyone can do it, but some people just it's not meant for them and that's okay. But if it is just take action, do it, just go do it. I Do your research, you know. Make a plan and if it makes sense, just do it act on. I mean, what's holding you back at?

Speaker 1: 23:11

you yourself. That's it's it's mostly fear, I think, but the only way to get through that is to try something. I think Some things don't work out. I've done plenty of things that don't work out. Take it as a learning experience. Yeah, some things do, but we were just talking about this yesterday. All the things that we've done that haven't worked out individually or together as partners have taught us something that we use every day in the businesses that we run now.

Speaker 2: 23:34

Definitely, yeah. I mean, you're solving problems every single day. Yeah, that's, that's owning a business. Yeah, yeah, like life, you can, you can apply that to other things. So, if, if nothing else, take it as a learning experience. I mean, you can always make more money, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:49

True, I have that same thought. I mean, I would rather go through life trying things and going back to zero than than not trying anything and not knowing. That's me personally. And again, it's like you said, that's not for everyone and that's okay, because I actually feel like I have a disease sometimes the way my brain works.

Speaker 2: 24:08

I wish that I would be more okay being complacent with things sometimes, right, but that's just not how I'm wired like if you're not okay with getting no sleep and obsessing over it all day, every day, then it's not for you. Yeah, yeah, you eat, sleep and breathe your business whatever you have to if you want it to be successful, and that's what it takes.

Speaker 1: 24:28

If you don't want to do that, yeah, and the market is in anything. Even something new is extremely competitive. We were talking about this earlier, like you've probably been doing this now for what? Two, three years? Basically 18 months, 18 months, and you probably already have people trying to do the same thing, right? Yeah, it doesn't matter how cutting edge you are or different, it's going to become competitive very quickly in the world we live in. Yeah, that's just how it is.

Speaker 2: 24:53

Right, that's our thing too. We have to grow quick enough to where it doesn't matter. To us it doesn't matter. Yeah, that's a challenge in itself To stay first and be first. Right, we have people I've seen them on Facebook. Whatever, they try to copy what we're doing. I look at their advertiser states and stuff.

Speaker 3: 25:09

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:10

Nobody here, yet it's coming. That's exactly what we were doing two months ago. Like we don't have the same timeline for 18 months. That would be a very strange coincidence. Yeah, yeah, I don't think anybody can do what we do. Yeah, because I guess the way we do it.

Speaker 3: 25:26

I mean you've obviously solved a problem, You've given a solution for a pain point for a lot of consumers. You don't have any proprietary patent or anything that stops the next person. No, it's a service-based business. Yeah, I mean you don't have any special equipment on your truck. That I mean obviously you went through developing it. But there's not one particular part that only you have access to yeah, no, you can buy everything.

Speaker 2: 25:55

we've done the app. You can get your own app. You just got to figure out how to do it or pay somebody to do it and have the knowledge on process.

Speaker 1: 26:02

It's how they do what they do, not what they do Right.

Speaker 3: 26:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:05

Right, and that's the service you provide at the end of it. Yeah, I mean, listen, confidence and fuel meal. We could have worked in a more diluted industry. Let's be honest.

Speaker 3: 26:13

No 100%, you know.

Speaker 1: 26:14

Yeah, so you got to. In real estate, when you have a client or a customer, it's how you handle them and treat them and what we do that's extra that's going to get them to refer us to the next person. It's a million other people could do what we do. That's the truth.

Speaker 2: 26:30

Well, look at any successful business Walmart, amazon. Yeah, there's tons of businesses that do exactly what they do, but they do it better, they do different.

Speaker 3: 26:37

Yeah, better, yeah, yeah, exactly different, yeah, better yeah, yeah, exactly I.

Speaker 2: 26:40

I think we do it better and different than what anybody else will be able to, and yeah, yeah, we got a head start, so that helps, but when you're the standard now right.

Speaker 3: 26:48

I mean no matter who does it after you, they're trying to be funeral at this point. I mean you have that advantage. I mean you took action to the point that you said earlier. I mean just go do it, take action you did it so like?

Speaker 1: 27:00

was there when did your research? Was there like anyone out there doing anything remotely like?

Speaker 2: 27:05

this at the time. There's a couple of companies that do similar things. They're mostly on demand. You know ours is a membership. It's like you call, I need fuel and then you schedule it. But on the backend, right, how convenient is that if I have to do one tank of gas over here but then I'm driving 20 miles?

Speaker 1: 27:20

Well, it's not good for the logistics of your business, no being able to plan on the subscription works for everyone.

Speaker 2: 27:25

That was kind of the initial thought too. It was like, oh, we could do this on demand. And then I looked up oh yeah, all these people are doing it. But then I got to working through the logistics of everything. I'm like that just doesn't work. You know, we're fighting traffic miles, the route is not efficient. So, yeah, how can we make it so we have repeat customers every week? Yeah, and make it efficient for us and doing the membership and given they can, plan on the cost and the service.

Speaker 1: 27:49

You can plan on routing it right. It's a lot. It makes it easier for everybody.

Speaker 3: 27:52

Yeah, it's less work for everyone how many nights a week. Is that truck out six nights, there you go so, yeah, what, what is?

Speaker 1: 27:59

what is your like daily, like when you sleep, I guess, when I can.

Speaker 2: 28:04

Yeah, I'm getting really good at napping. Yeah, power down. Power power, like last night. I got home at 15, quarter after three. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:16

And I got up this morning at 830 and back to it following up and Because the days I mean you're dealing with the business during the day and operating the business at night.

Speaker 2: 28:24

Yeah Well, like after this, I'm going to go get more fuel and I'm going to go fill some boats.

Speaker 3: 28:28

Yeah, I'm going to go home and nap, so you're doing the boats during the day.

Speaker 1: 28:30

Yeah, Mostly yeah. So when does your?

Speaker 2: 28:36

I guess let's call it night shift when it depends on the day, usually between seven and eight, yeah, and then we go between two and four.

Speaker 1: 28:46

Because starting any earlier than that, there's a lot of businesses and people and things whose stuff won't be back at that house yet and then it's not convenient.

Speaker 2: 28:49

What's the point of the service if you're delivering? If I'm still at soccer practice? Yeah, so we have to start late enough and end soon enough for people at home. That's creating the logistics.

Speaker 1: 29:02

It was sense people are home and that's, you know, creating it, the logistics it was. When are people at one spot? When can we catch them? And everybody sleeps.

Speaker 2: 29:06

Yeah, the convenient time for everyone else isn't necessarily the convenient time for the business, but that's where the money is right I mean in that time frame you're as a business owner, you have to do what makes sense, and your gut makes money. Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

Speaker 1: 29:18

It may not be beneficial for my sleep schedule, but it's beneficial for the service we're selling. You do what you can.

Speaker 3: 29:23

You'll get a sleep schedule later, don't?

Speaker 1: 29:25

worry. I hope yeah, and so okay, we've talked a lot about like the business application side of it. What about like where it originally started? How many clients do you think you have that use it just as like a come, come, fill up my car type deal at their house? Is that a pretty large?

Speaker 2: 29:42

segment of business too. Yeah, I mean right now we're probably split 50-50 between both and then our residential fleets. Overnight we probably have 150 overnight customers, what I call them. Between fleets and residential, I mean we do 400 some probably vehicles a week that we fill up overnight.

Speaker 1: 30:01

And like so walk me through the logistics of that. If you park in a garage or you know all these different anomalies, how do you guys work through that stuff?

Speaker 2: 30:09

Well, we're always kind of learning yeah, we have a lot of garage codes, we have a lot of gate codes, some people, yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:15

So like on the app. Can you like give that information when you, yeah, when you, when you sign up.

Speaker 2: 30:20

Yeah, and the app. That's always an interesting point because it's it's always improving, it can always be better, it's. It's sure it's an animal in itself, but yeah, when, when you sign up on the app, you you know you put in your information, vehicle information, access information and, um, when you accept your delivery for your nights, it kind of exports a sheet to us and fills in a route and gives us all that info. So we know. So do you have like a?

Speaker 1: 30:45

software that you utilize that kind of routes for you.

Speaker 2: 30:48

Yeah, that's the only third party software we use Is the routing software.

Speaker 2: 30:52

Yeah, so our software exports an Excel sheet is what it does With all addresses. Yeah, addresses, names, cars, vehicles or fuel, yeah, all that. And then you just upload that to this software and it kind of here's your circle. Yeah, it makes you an efficient route because it's like the on-demand. If we're going all over the it never makes sense. You never make money. The whole business is about how efficient can we be? How many gallons per hour can we sell? That's Versus be how many gallons per hour can we sell?

Speaker 3: 31:21

that's versus how much am I burning to?

Speaker 1: 31:22

sell it. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So that's I think that, like just listening you talk about it, so far, the biggest uh optimization or spin that you put on it that no one else caught on to was taking something that's very popular in the world right now, which is a subscription system, but you used it in in your favor, not only to get people on consistent revenue, but now you can actually route and track the business officially, which the on-demand fuel business could have never been. That, no, it would have been very hard to scale too. It was just uh, it would have been stagnant at a certain size.

Speaker 2: 31:55

I modeled that after a trash company. Okay, you know we're depending on where you live, you get your trash nights because they could never, you could never do on-demand trash.

Speaker 1: 32:03

That never makes sense.

Speaker 3: 32:04

So I subscribe, send you my form, you get my information, you've got to go, spit it out into the route, and then you follow up with me and say, hey, it looks like your best night's going to be Tuesday night, or how does that?

Speaker 2: 32:17

Well, kind of, but it's shifted sort of a different way when you kind of.

Speaker 3: 32:25

but it's shifted so sort of a different way when you sign up, depending on your area.

Speaker 1: 32:27

You get the.

Speaker 2: 32:28

It only gives you options, yeah it's off of the I put you on it be in that area this day and time and then on on those days after you sign up, you get a notification in the morning that basically says do you need gas, yes or no? If you click yes, then it puts it on, so they have, so you're.

Speaker 1: 32:41

Then you're not wasting your time going to places where they. You're not going to put a gallon in or something. That's smart too, right?

Speaker 2: 32:47

yeah, I wouldn't even thought yeah, we do the fleets automatically because we don't want them to have any extra work.

Speaker 1: 32:52

But the residential I mean your typical I don't want to sell a gallon yeah, you're not going to need a full tank of gas twice a week yeah so, and I don't want to show up and sell, you know, a couple gallons or whatever.

Speaker 2: 33:02

Right, like I said, it's a total waste. How many gallons per hour? Right?

Speaker 1: 33:05

Yeah, that makes sense If I'm doing two gallons in every car, so did you have that built in at the beginning, or was that something that?

Speaker 2: 33:10

later you were that was like probably three months in. I figured out like you were like yeah, we don't need to show doing this, it doesn't work yeah, that makes a lot of sense, interesting.

Speaker 1: 33:23

So, um, how many people do you have running the business right now? Is it just you, and who else I might make my dad work okay yeah, I work for him for a long time.

Speaker 2: 33:34

He's repaying that debt, yeah, yeah, you pay him good, but y'all are the business, yeah, every day, all day, all night yep, and do you so?

Speaker 1: 33:41

do you have any plans to like kind of hire some people, or, right now, do you just really want to be out there having a touch on what needs to change and what's working? I?

Speaker 2: 33:51

need people. Yeah, right, right now I'm actually looking to hire a salesperson. I was going to say I feel like I saw one that you had To go out and do business development Right and sell it, go to the fleets during the day and and talk to the fleet managers and, like an account manager, almost yeah, I don't have time to do it anymore. I mean, I'm doing, we're doing the boats all day, every day, and then we do cars a night. So got to grow, yeah, yeah, and I'd rather drive right now.

Speaker 1: 34:19

Yeah, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta stick with what, what you enjoy doing it. Otherwise it's going to become something you don't want to do, yeah, and the driving too.

Speaker 2: 34:26

That's where the most problems arise, so we have to figure out the most solutions and processes.

Speaker 1: 34:32

And for why why?

Speaker 2: 34:32

why is that? Uh well, you got computers. All of our stuff runs off computers, okay, Um, so that talks to the truck and then that talks to the cloud, got it? We got a device that we put a barcode on every vehicle and that's kind of how it does automated billing everything. Okay, so just figuring out that we have that process down pretty well. You know it well, but it would be hard to get someone up to speed, right, it would take months, yeah, and that's kind of the. We have to write a manual, yeah, okay, it's a lot easier for me to say this is what we do. Go sell it. Yeah, that makes sense, and it's cheaper too to pay a salesperson than a CDL driver.

Speaker 1: 35:08

Yeah, that makes sense. So you had to get your CDL license, I'm assuming. What was that like?

Speaker 2: 35:12

That wasn't too bad really, compared to getting all the background checks for the licenses and to haul gas. Um, it's pretty much an online course and you go take a test. Isn't that kind of crazy? Yeah, you had to drive, I mean just like. Yeah, like a driver's test. Yeah, you had to do a online course so many hours. I don't remember what did they make you drive for the?

Speaker 1: 35:32

driving test.

Speaker 2: 35:33

I just drove a pickup truck really, because our trucks aren't any longer than a pickup truck. Okay, got it, they weigh a lot more, but yeah, but not, not size wise, no, no. So I just drove a pickup truck and I've drove trucks with trailers, yeah, yeah, my whole life. So weird yeah the truck's no problem, for me it's. It's small enough we can get in and out of pretty much anywhere how many gallons of gas does each one of those trucks hold?

Speaker 1: 35:58

each one can hold 1400 wow, that's a lot of gas, yeah holy moly.

Speaker 2: 36:02

So it's a big bomb driving around. It's kind of scary to drive sometimes and I I believe everybody likes to cut you off in traffic. You can't really stop and not not great break. If you do the wrong thing, we're both going, you know I haven't really thought about that, but that's true.

Speaker 1: 36:17

It's not necessarily a nerve-calming thing to drive around necessarily.

Speaker 2: 36:22

I mean it can be intimidating, especially starting off. That that's the other thing. Going overnight we don't have traffic that's for as many people, so we don't deal with it as much. It's just you get that person every once in a while 2 am thinks you know there's a mile of empty road behind you, but turning out in front of you is going to save them five seconds yeah, especially in florida.

Speaker 1: 36:42

We're not known for our driving skills, no, so so then, like I guess the other component of it too is, obviously you have to get the fuel somewhere. So is that kind of like a? That's got to be kind of a managed process too, I would imagine, because it's kind of like, uh, open marketplace, you're constantly bidding to get the you know the best price yeah, well, we kind of just have to buy it when we need it.

Speaker 2: 37:07

We don't. You can't have 40 000 gallons of storage and yeah, the business wouldn't make sense if we had to buy a three, four acre lot and a 250 000 tank every location. Then you're adding overhead. Yeah, what we're doing right now we're getting ready to add a pretty large expansion into freeport okay, 331 area, so we can hit the terminal in the middle of the night and continue going, because yeah, it's refuel and keep going, yeah it is logistical headache right now because you always have to plan okay, I have this much fuel, getting the fuel before you can start the route.

Speaker 2: 37:40

I'm probably going to sell this much on the route. Can I make it through the morning doing the boats with what I have? Do we have to go get more, then go do the boats and fill up again.

Speaker 1: 37:50

The whole business is based off of time efficiency.

Speaker 3: 37:53

essentially, there's only so many places to go get that fuel. So you end up all the way on the other side of the county or whatever.

Speaker 2: 38:03

That other side of the county and whatever that part, so that those will. That's the logistical headache is of. The whole business is figuring out when we can get fuel and where and when it makes, because it's not always at the same place. No, and I can't go through the gas station and yeah, no, who's in the top? I'd be there for eight hours and I don't think the state would like that too much if I did that would work my desk to go so gas?

Speaker 1: 38:22

Yeah, because when you fill it, how fast? How many gallons can they pump into the?

Speaker 2: 38:26

truck at a time, 100 gallons a minute or more, really, yeah, a lot yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:31

So like in 14 minutes they can or less. Yeah, Holy moly, that's crazy. They're like dumping gas in there.

Speaker 2: 38:37

Oh yeah, yeah, if you go through the terminal, I have it set up both. I can have somebody load it or I can load it in the bottom and in the terminal. You got to hook it up, you got to collect all the vapors because it's pushing so much You'll expand the tank out if you're not careful.

Speaker 1: 38:51

So you got to hook it up and do all the right things and yeah, Because I guess that can be a dangerous process too if you don't do it correctly.

Speaker 2: 39:03

Yeah, if you do it wrong, you're blowing gas fumes. Yeah, yeah, I mean 100 gallons a minute coming out of the top would look like old, old, faithful.

Speaker 3: 39:09

You know you definitely want to 98 of people don't even think about the logistical stuff yeah, no, well, with most businesses, most people yeah that's most businesses yeah, you see.

Speaker 1: 39:21

You see that it's like iceberg.

Speaker 3: 39:22

Yeah, you see the tip and none of the other stuff. You get the non-business minded person and it's like, yeah, he's delivering. Yeah, that's the company. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:29

I mean I'll admit like Go do it. When I first saw it I was like that's true. I mean, if I owned a business with a lot full of trucks, I would much rather have you come do that than have my people stopping at a gas station and not being able to track it, or kind of. I mean, just makes a ton of sense. Yeah, but it's to your point. It's the person who has that idea and sees the problem that can solve it. You have, you saw it before other people.

Speaker 3: 40:01

I would have seen that yeah, and it's, it's a certain kind of consumer because, like for me, I guess, like for my wife, her car she drives round trip a day, like a mile and a half, right, her gas is good for like, literally, like yeah, it doesn't make sense. So it's it's. You know, it's um, for my truck it would make a lot of sense. You know I'm. Yeah, we drive once much. Yeah, I'm filling up once a week and unfortunately, I like the tornadoes at the Sefco and the Schlauss biscuits, it always costs me an extra seven or eight bucks.

Speaker 2: 40:29

All right, we can save you some money. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 40:32

You know, because I'm always going in.

Speaker 1: 40:34

Yeah when David Jones was on here, one of his big pieces of advice was was don't eat lunch every day at a gas station, which is probably good advice.

Speaker 3: 40:41

Oh yeah, I mean, you add that up every day and years and years and years Add it up how much you're spending or just the food you're eating. Yeah, the other side of that digestive system Over 10 years.

Speaker 2: 40:52

you buy a new car often, which is buying food at a gas station.

Speaker 3: 40:56

It's true, it's like the whole don't smoke cigarettes. You get on a Lamborghini and it's like where the fuck's your Lamborghini at.

Speaker 1: 41:04

That's funny. So we like to wrap up with one major question. It's a little bit more philosophical in nature and I've kind of alluded to it a little bit already, but we call it our legacy question, which is kind of like you know, at this moment in time, with everything that you know could be personal, could be professional, could be a mixture of the two. What is that? One piece of advice, just a piece of advice you would want to give everyone Entrepreneur, not entrepreneur that you think holds true to you every day, off the top of your head.

Speaker 2: 41:34

Well, I struggle with this too, but you need to set some time apart for yourself. Yeah, I try to take sundays off. It doesn't always happen, but you need to. You need to take a step back a little bit and just relax and hang out for a couple. You know, mentally, physically, just let yourself step away for just a little bit, even if it's a few hours here and there.

Speaker 3: 41:55

You need that time off and yeah, you know, it gives you time to reflect on it anyways, yeah, which, when you get back into it, provides value, I think.

Speaker 1: 42:03

We have a friend of ours that's like a human performance coach and he works with Green Berets and one of the main things he told us when we had our first Zoom call with him was that when they study human performance, it's the pause that makes people really take off. Sure, and it's hard because, as doers, and especially military people, it's going, going, going. You don't want to hit that, but they found that the pause and the rest in between is actually what makes people go to the next level, including some of the best athletes we know and things like that. So it's good advice. I'm not good at taking it myself, but we were just talking about this morning actually is I always go till I get myself to a point of burnout and then the time I do have to take is more than as much more. Yeah, if I had just incrementally taken some breaks.

Speaker 2: 42:48

yeah, I'm still working on it myself. Yeah, it's a hard thing to do. Yeah, that's that's kind of why I built in the sunday originally, where we don't work, because it's like I know I'm gonna be working a lot of hours and I don't. One day is fair, yeah, you know I don't want to get to that burnout point. I'd rather be efficient through the week.

Speaker 1: 43:03

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Well, listen, I really appreciate coming on. This was a very cool episode because you know we talk a lot with the other realtors and business owners and coaches and things, but this is a really cool business concept. We appreciate you taking the time to come on. No, definitely, thank you.