There is Opportunity Everywhere - with Special Guest Roger Johnson

Loyal listener since the inception of Cowboys Not Eggheads, Roger Johnson is the Founder and CEO of Badlands Tank Lines.  

We explore the career path that Roger took using the power of networking in his younger years.   Roger discusses identifying successful people as mentors and the power of observation and learning from successful business leaders.   Working for various employers as an ethanol and oil trader he identified a need for his employer's customers that wasn't being addressed.

He used all these lessons to start a fast growing transportation company. 

Roger talks about the challenges he faced and the personal risks he took to make sure his company and its employees are taken care of first.

Ultimately we learn that opportunity is everywhere if we take the time to find it. 

Transcript

Roger Johnson Podcast
Thu, 4/28 6:36PM • 1:05:26
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, business, called, roger, started, idaho, day, cowboys, flying j, work, simplot, trucking company, kid, big, absolutely, company, eggheads, sales, deals, fly
SPEAKERS
Roger Johnson, Intro, Sam Fischer

Intro  00:00
Welcome to cowboys, not a Get Home of the brave, not home of the fearful. The world needs more cowboys and fewer eggheads. We're everywhere podcasts are found. So tell your fellow cowboys, and let's keep the conversation alive on Facebook and Twitter. And now, cowboys, not eggheads. With Sam Fischer.

Sam Fischer  00:32
Today, I'm excited to welcome my friend Roger Johnson to the program we are going to Roger was are actually early fans, right …early listener of cowboys, not eggheads. And it's actually been a very good supporter of mine since the beginning. And I appreciate that. Roger. Thanks for being here.

Roger Johnson  00:50
I'm glad to be here.

Sam Fischer  00:51
So Roger, I think one of the reasons that Roger likes to show is because he probably identifies with some of the I don't know if ideology is the right word, but I did it probably identifies or agrees with some of our concepts that we talked about on cowboys night, not a kids. Roger is a he's younger than me by 10 years. He just told me his age. I can't believe he's 10 years younger than me. But he is a very, he's a self made guy. I mean, he has in the last eight years, eight or 10 years. Yeah, basically, we've developed a pretty successful company that's grown significantly and is growing as we speak. It's called. It's called Badlands tank lines. When I'll let him. Tell us about that. I guess my first question, Roger is Why do you like cowboys, not eggheads? Well, I'm assuming that you do.

Roger Johnson  01:46
I certainly do. I like the personalities. I always find people's stories intriguing. And whether they're, you know, whoever you have on here is is a cowboy or an agate Egghead or some combination of the two. I find it intriguing.

Sam Fischer  02:05
Where are you at on the spectrum? Roger, who's gonna lean on the line right now?

02:08
Definitely more cowboy, though. I've got some egghead tendencies.

Sam Fischer  02:13
Well, let's back up for a second. Tell us about yourself. You are a guy that went to college, right?

02:20
I am. So grew up in Southern California, surrounded by a kids. And you know, I wanted to grow up in a place

Sam Fischer  02:32
like there aren't cowboys in California. There was one by the name of Ronald Reagan. Oh, absolutely. There really are. And they're a dying breed out, correct.

02:39
Yes. They're all moving to Idaho and Texas right now. Right. So, you know, they just weren't my people. I mean, I grew up there born and raised. And I just knew it just wasn't for me. It's not where I wanted to live my life. So I decided to go to college, out of state somewhere. I didn't know where I kind of landed in Idaho. And it worked out nicely. So

Sam Fischer  03:07
where did you go to school?

03:08
So I went to BYU Idaho. At the time when I first started there was called Rick's college. It was a two year school. Okay. And then they actually transitioned over to a four year school. Is that in Boise, or was that? No, it's a it's a town called Rexburg, on the east side of the state. Okay. So today, it's actually it's the biggest university in Idaho. So Right. It's bigger than Idaho, Idaho State or Boise. So

Sam Fischer  03:31
I am a big fan. Just a short detour here. I am a big fan of Idaho. When I worked for my previous life, I worked in 23 states in my job, and that was my area. Idaho was one of my areas and there were two places that I thought that I would live if you know that if I wanted to move somewhere I would do it and one was in California, believe it or not in Palm Springs. I live in Palm Springs, okay. And the other was Boise, Idaho. It's just it's just, it's outstanding. It's a great place. A great place to go to school.

04:05
Boise is a lot bigger than it used to be. Yes. My in laws live there. Yeah.

Sam Fischer  04:09
And it's there's a bigger California. eggheads moving into an area but anyway. So you went to school at BYU? So are you a member of LDS then?

04:21
So? Yes, the long story or the short story is the Yes, I I was raised in the church come from a long line of, of LDS people, you know, pioneers that went across the prairie and, you know, my, my grandmother on my mother's side. Her dad had fled to Mexico in the 1880s when they were cracker 1890s When they're cracking down on Polygamy In the US, and so my grandmother was born in Mexico. You know, she was one of, I don't know, a dozen kids or something like that. And that's pretty interesting. She She emigrated back to the US just before World War Two. So she was born in I think 1919. Okay, I think she came over 37 Or something to that. I'm, I'm a little fuzzy on my genealogy sometimes. That's right.

Sam Fischer  05:17
But it goes back aways. It does a great job of it. Okay. And so you went to school and what did you study? Business or

05:29
No, actually, when I first got there, I might declared major was ecology. I thought when I I thought I wanted to be a game warden or a wildlife biologist. Okay. That was my you like to hunt and fish. I do. Always have why I don't really know, actually.

Sam Fischer  05:53
Like the outdoors. I did that. But I never

05:55
really had a mentor that like, got me into it. It was somebody took you home for the first time. Yeah. And that was, that was my stepdad. Okay. And but he was amateur at best, right? He wasn't very good at it. But you got because he took my grandfather. He enjoyed fishing. He was a casual fisherman, but he enjoyed it. And I took it to a different level than than anybody did, though. It was for whatever reason, I was just eat up with it as a child.

Sam Fischer  06:28
So, but you did not you want you thought about studying ecology, but you did not.

06:34
Well, I did I was, yeah. So the first two years. I I studied that. And then so funny story my freshman year. I, because I went to college in Idaho. And they're in eastern Idaho in Rexburg, that school is it's 15 miles away from two of the best trout rivers in the entire country, what's called the Henry's Fork of the Snake River that is called the South Fork of the Snake. And I just happen to meet the right people. I didn't have a car, I only had a bike. So I really couldn't reach those places on my bike, at least not very well. But I met this old guy who was retired Marine Corps officer, definitely a cowboy that was retired there. And he fished every day, literally every day. And he just took me under his wing, and he taught me how to fly fish. And so I'd go with him every day. And my freshman year, my GPA at school was 1.67. And,

Sam Fischer  07:37
well, mine was 2.3. And I was in trouble. I can only imagine what 1.6 said, Oh,

07:41
gotcha. So they called me into the guidance counselor's office and they're like, hey, Roger, what's wrong? What do you mean, what's wrong? Everything's great. And so he's like, Well, you know, are you depressed? Are you homesick? What's going on? I'm like, No, there's no problem at all. He's like, Well, why are your grades terrible? I said, oh, probably because I don't go to class. And he said, Well, you're on probation. And if you don't get your grades up, you don't get to go here next year. Right. So

Sam Fischer  08:13
you stopped ice fishing, or you stopped? Well, I

08:15
just got more serious I you know, it was my first time out of the concrete jungle, right. Like, you know, there's that transition when

Sam Fischer  08:24
you're grew up in Southern Cal, which is just all just urban, right? For All. Yep. And we're Riverside, okay. Yep. Orange County, right.

08:34
No, it's Riverside County, San Diego. Hey, no, it's it's, I don't know my California. Yeah. Okay. So from say, Anaheim, or Ontario, it's due east of Ontario. Okay, south of San Bernardino, nor it's northeast of Anaheim.

Sam Fischer  08:52
abhorrent? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

08:54
I was close. Yep. Okay. So it's actually inland and you can go straight across from there on the 10 to get to Palm Springs.

Sam Fischer  09:01
gotcha. I gotcha. Okay, so So you so you do end up saying in college, then you flunk out or

09:09
wait? No, I did. I so what happened though, was in that process, I got pretty good at that game. And I, I ended up getting a job as a fly fishing guide in the summers on those rivers up there. Very nice. And I thought, Man, this is great. Like, I could make 30 $35,000 in a summer. That was unimaginable money for a kid like me. Well,

Sam Fischer  09:39
listen, buddy at this point in my life, I take 35,000

09:44
It was like I couldn't believe that somebody would actually pay me to do this. And, and I loved I just I loved I thought this is what I'm going to do the rest of my life. And so I did that for two or three years.

Sam Fischer  09:58
And I can remember also school. Okay, that's right. And I

10:01
took I kind of, so what I did was actually, I didn't know what my plan was the rest of the year. So I actually changed my major, they had a head of major called recreational leadership there, which I think is for people who want to go run a YMCA camp and stuff like that. And so I ended up changing my major to that thinking, Well, I just want to be a guide the rest of my life anyway. And I could guide in Idaho in the summers. And I was thinking, in the wintertime, maybe I go down to the Florida Keys, or I go guide in South America, trout fishing down there, you know, something counter seasonal to Idaho. And so I did that for a little while. And the lodge that I worked for, was, was owned by Mark Rockefeller. And actually, so Mark has actually since sold that Jimmy Kimmel owns that Lodge. Now it's called Southfork Lodge, in Swan Valley, Idaho. And at the time, you know, so I'm hanging out with these, like these guys all day long, that are business people, right? And, you know, wealthy doctors, wealthy, like investment bankers, hedge fund managers, you know, all the all the big investment banks successful? Yes. It was a crowd of people that I was completely unfamiliar with, in my life. were you inspired by him? Are you intrigued by them? Did

Sam Fischer  11:30
you absolutely look up what they had to say?

11:33
It was, it was life changing. For me, it was I realized in that by being with those people all day long, how big the world really was, and what the opportunities really were. Because I didn't understand that before, like, my world was a very small price, right. And I had a very narrow vision of what I could become. And so being with all these, these very successful people and realizing that they're really not much more intelligent than I am, no, they just put themselves in a position to be able to be very successful. Well,

Sam Fischer  12:14
they have, did they have a different outlook on things as far as? Were they willing to take risks, for instance?

12:24
But were absolutely. But they were you willing to take a risk, but they they would take they understood how to take manage risks? Yes, you know, and they talked about things like LIBOR and interest rate swaps, and all these things that were Greek to me, right is a dumb fishing guide. But I kept thinking about this. And I started to, as I, I started to build up, you know, these return clients that would fish with me every year, you know, one of these guys came to me nice, and he was a very successful business person out of Chicago. And he said, you know, you should maybe think about changing your major and coming to work for me when you get out of school. And that was kind of like that first, like, oh, like, Wait a minute. And at the time, I was just starting to date, my, my now wife. And I knew enough to know that she didn't want to be with a fishing guide her whole life. Because I'd started to look around and like, I love that life. I love those, that culture, a lot of those people are good good friends of mine to this day. Some of my friends that guided when I was there are still there guiding. And but it's a different lifestyle. And the people who make successfully find a good winter gig, you know, either ski school or ski patrol, and then they're married to somebody who has health insurance. Because that's really, you know, their wife is a teacher or something to that right.

Sam Fischer  14:03
No benefit,

14:04
correct. You know, you're you eat what you kill in that world. Yeah. And we were had, you know, I started to see kind of the, the less the more ugly side of that world, you know, when there was a, an older guide in the valley, kind of a legend in the area. But as he got older, you know, he was starting to break down, he didn't have health insurance, and we'd have to have like spaghetti fundraisers to help pay his medical bills and things like that. And so, there was like this combination of things like, number one, I saw, hey, this is a big world. Number two, you know, my worlds not as rosy as it, you know, in the long term, right, as they might otherwise look,

Sam Fischer  14:48
broaden your horizons, and you're building a network, which is so important in life is to meet people to build a network. And so The gentleman from Chicago did you end up going to work for him?

15:02
So no, I didn't actually. He great guy, stainless Gary raddon. Dear, dear friend of mine and a great mentor, he passed away. Actually not too many years after that he had Jakob Crutchfield syndrome that basically the human version of mad cow. It just a great man, just a good, good person. And then but yeah, he was definitely a mentor of mine and then the guy that took me under his wing and taught me how to fly fish. His name was Al Bridwell. Then he was just a jarhead till the day he died. Just you know, career marine had done, you know, he was at Chosun reservoir in Korea. He had done a couple of voluntary tours in Vietnam.

Sam Fischer  15:47
What did you learn from him?

15:51
Hey, Dom, ask get your stuff together. Right, basically, because I was I was just as happy go lucky kid that just kind of floated through life. Right. You know, life as it came to you. Yeah. I mean, I was always a good kid. I never got in trouble. I mean, I never drank I never, you know, party, that just wasn't my thing. But I never really thought about the future. And, and I was like, Hey, kid, you know, you need to think about these things. You know, and when I was your age, I was in a foxhole in Korea, getting shot at by 300,000 Chinese soldiers, you know, that kind of. So it puts some perspective on things. I'm like, I'm just this kid trying to get you know, trying to catch fish every day. You know, like, there's a lot of other important things in life too. Besides that. And I still, that's still a huge part of who I am. But there's a whole lot more out there.

Sam Fischer  16:45
Right. So what was the next step? I mean, you got to so your, your, your, you know, you've met all these people in college. And you you know, you got to you got to be a guide you're making, you're making money in college and you graduate from college. So what's, what's the next step? Yeah, so really getting married or so,

17:03
so well, that I was Victoria and I started getting more and more serious. And then I guided a group, or I was one of the guides on a group trip for Flying J truckstops. The you see them or there's one right here in Gretna, right. And I had two of the guys in my boat were senior vice presidents over there. And one of them really liked me. And he hands me his card. At the end of the day. He says, Hey, come work for me. And I said, Well, hey, that's interesting. You know, because I didn't really want to go to Chicago and go work for Gary. He had a financial services business in Chicago, was the antithesis of where I wanted to go, right. I was trying to figure out how do I like maintain my, my Western lifestyle and still take advantage of this broader worldview that I now had. And these guys were based out of Ogden, Utah was their headquarters, which was only a four hour drive from where I was at and Idaho. So I thought, hey, you know, this is interesting. And so I called him up, like, I think it was six months later or something, because I got a little further down the road. And he put me in touch with one of his guys, and they had to come down and do an internship. And I really liked it. I liked the company. I liked the industry and where we're interning. There was a it was a headquarters. Yeah. So I at the time, they'd made two big acquisitions. One was a pipeline called the Longhorn, which is from MIT, basically Midland, Texas, down to Houston. And they bought a big refinery in Bakersfield, California. You know, and I was the scrub intern. I didn't know anything. But they were giving me different things to make reports about and I didn't have the context that I really needed to create a useful report in hindsight. Now knowing what I do now, right business. I was still very, very green. Well, good grief,

Sam Fischer  19:28
but you're an intern. That's all right. I

19:30
was right. I mean, yeah, but it was. Yeah, but it was fun.

Sam Fischer  19:35
It was like I remember my internship with the Nebraska State Patrol and it was with the undercover narcotics division. And so I remember answering the phone, you know, State Patrol narcotics. I got off the phone, one of the one of the investigators said, Boy, you might as well say, homicide intern I, but hey, that's where we started.

20:03
You've got to start somewhere, right? And that's really, you know, one of the messages I give to people, when they asked me about starting business, I'm like, you can only do with what you have right now. And you just build from there doesn't matter how, whether you're 16 or 60. It doesn't matter. Well,

Sam Fischer  20:24
part of it, though, is having your ears open. And you're I mean, your ears open and your heart open. And you're you know, you need to soak it in, like you said, you were scrub Well, yeah, but the newer sponge, I mean, you are spying, you're scrubbing everything. But you were soaking everything up. 100%? What? So what were some of the did you? Is there a lesson necessarily, that you can point to as an intern that, that carried you on or just just simply being in that environment? And, you know, he said something earlier, that really piqued my curiosity, and that is, he's guys are just as smart as I mean, it's not. It's about where you put yourself, you know, and so I don't want to put words in your mouth. But what is it what? You know, once you come out of that internship, yeah,

21:13
so yeah, that's basically it. You're there's, there's opportunity everywhere, if you know what to look for. And, yeah, coming out of that internship, I was excited. I said, Well, you know, this could be a great deal. And they told me, they're like, well, we'll put together an offer for you. Because I had another one more semester, I think, before I graduated. And so I kept in contact they sent me, they quickly figured out that. All right, Roger is not an administrative kind of a guy. Right? Like, I'm not a very good paper pusher.

Sam Fischer  21:51
pencil pushers, my granddad used to call him. You're not an egghead. In other words,

21:56
never right. I'm just I'm not organized enough in the way I think and the way I structure things in my life. So they offered me a job is a salesperson, in their fuel division, like basically selling being a sales rep to the different trucking companies to drive traffic into the truckstops. Most people don't realize that but you know, because in your car, you just show up and you put your credit card in and you you get gas, right. But trucking companies, they actually make deals with all the different truckstop chains. Absolutely. So because that will you just you and you tell those drivers, hey, you're gonna go to the Flying J or you're gonna go to the TA or, or whatever it is. So it, but turns out for whatever reason. That's what they offered me. And then they called me, like, three days before graduation. And nobody that this time I was already married, by the way. And so the three days before graduation, the guy I was supposed to work for calls me says, Well, you know, we don't have that job anymore. And I don't, I never did find out the story about what happened. But I think Richard Peterson, the guy who had initially given me his card said, Hey, come work for me. He wanted me a little closer. You know, because I was still in a division that was underneath him. Right? But he would never see me. I think he wanted me kind of in the office more to keep an eye on me, for better for worse. And I don't know, that's pure speculation. I should ask him one of these days. I've never really thought to ask Richard, if you're listening, let him know. I don't know if he's a podcast. Yeah. So. So but so they ended up offering me a job as an accountant in their trucking business, because they have, you know, anybody who runs the highway sees Flying J trucks, you know, with their fuel trucks, right? They go back and forth to their truck stops all the time. And that's, I'm not an accountant. Like, I'm just not, but at this point in time would because I'd already we'd already signed a, a rental agreement on a condo down there. My wife was, I think, four or five months pregnant at the time. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm kind of out of options here. So I guess I'll take it right. I guess it is what it is, right? Well,

Sam Fischer  24:31
sometimes in life, you do have to do some things that you don't want to

24:35
do. Yep. And I'm a miserable accountant. I really am. And my accountants today when they hear that sorry, they still laugh. They're like you you were an accountant. Like yeah, and they're like, You are not an accountant. I said, yeah, no, I'm not an accountant. So but that's what I did I you know, did you adapt to get did you have to become a CPA to do it or it was no no, no business This just business degree and right. Okay, so it was basically putting, I was actually doing journal entries and now some of the actual nuts and bolts accounting for the trucking business think that this

Sam Fischer  25:13
these these kind of experiences will help you later on. They absolutely did. Yes understand the ledger, right.

25:22
So, so I did that, you know, one of the interesting things I started looking into was, you know, we would sell certain companies like wholesale fuel as well. And, you know, generally in that world payment terms are net 10. Right, and, you know, a load of fuels valuable. I mean, you take a truckload of 8500 gallons of gasoline to somebody, you might have 2025 $30,000 of fuel, depending on what fuel prices are. And they're supposed to pay you within 10 days, net 10 of invoice. Well, a lot of our receivables in that world were coming in and 30 days, 40 days. And I started looking at what's going on here. And we had this really our volumes have been growing so much that the counting process we were using to invoice our customers was not keeping up with our ability to invoice accurately and timely. And so I started digging in that process and I fixed that whole thing. And I basically cut our receivables time in half on didn't pay 1010s of millions of dollars. Yeah, saveable real money, right? So, you know, it doesn't make any difference on net income to the business, but it absolutely impacts cash flow,

Sam Fischer  26:47
cash flow, right? Which cashloan business, right?

26:51
And these are those things that I learned little bits, zero, this whole process, right. But they kind of, I got a little bit of notice, and the company, if you will, when I kind of put that whole thing together. And so then they they're like, Well, I started doing deals with some of those customers. And they're like, well, who's this account? That's like getting deals done? Yeah, like what's going on over here? Yeah. And then they didn't really know what to do with me. So they gave me another title. They called it Special Projects Manager. It was basically a catch all for, we don't really know where to put Roger. So we're just going to give him this other title.

Sam Fischer  27:36
Were you were you at least rewarded financially for helping your company say or, you know, improve their cash flow and make a lot? So?

27:44
No. So flying Jays model, their mistake. Their model was they paid a very low base, and then they would typically, you know, in their minds, they paid a very high bonus. And so when they gave me that, that bump to Special Projects matter, I think I got like a $5,000 annual raise, you know, I mean, it was material to learn a poker to Roger at the time, but considering the impact I'd had on the business, it was not. It didn't add up No, right. And I ended up be doing more and more sales. And the beautiful thing about sales, is you can point directly to your impact on the business. Right? It's, it's more challenging, it's very tangible. If you're, you know, in marketing or accounting, or in some administrative role or operations, to you can do it depending on your role, you can say, here's what my impact on the business is. But in sales, it's very tangible. And so I saw that I was gonna need to do that to really prove myself. And I just started focusing on that. And so I built up, you know, a couple of million dollars of a month of revenue in my sales book. And of in business, it was kind of our freight only business meaning we would do third party trucking for other

Sam Fischer  29:17
now I've done sales. Well, I think anybody in business is on sales. It's what it is. Sales, but did you enjoy? Did you enjoy it? Was it work to you?

29:27
Loved it? No. That's what that's what I made for sales. Yeah. And I didn't know that. I didn't realize that but so is it comes very naturally to you. Yeah. Well, you know, looking back, it makes perfect sense. When when I was a kid, I was always hunting for money, because I was poor. Right? And, you know, I grew up in Southern California. We had a couple of orange trees in our backyard. I would go up. Have my own volition. Nobody ever told me to do this. I'd go pick a bunch of oranges because we always had extra. So I put them in my little red wagon. And I would go door to door with my little red wagon selling oranges. You know, I didn't know deal, right? It was just, that's what I did. And I wasn't worried to do it, it worked. And then later on as I got older, I said, you know, I need to start mowing people's lawns. And so my sales technique was I would ride around the neighborhood on my bike. And whenever I saw somebody had a had a grass that needs to be mowed, I'd go knock on their door, and say, Hey, can I mow your lawn? You know, and they said, Well, what do you charge? At first, I started charging $5. I didn't realize how under the market that I was, but they probably got what they paid for. I wasn't out there with the weed eater, and you know, making a nice clean edge. And yeah, I ran over a few sprinkler heads. Those kinds of things that, you know, but I mean, that was I was probably, I don't know, 10 or 11 at the time, doing that kind of stuff. So, you know, looking back, I've always been a salesperson, I just didn't realize it. Right, how much of a salesperson I really use. Is it fun? Do

Sam Fischer  31:08
you is it fun?

31:09
I love it. I love making deals. I love working with people to solve their problem. And that's really what it is.

Sam Fischer  31:17
Like, it really is. I mean, you're trying to find a good fit for you and for your customer. And it's about developing relationships.

31:28
It is I I tell people all the time, I've never sold a single thing in my life. Because I all I do is I provide a solution that I think works. And if it works, then it works and everybody's happy. But I've never tried to push something on somebody else that they didn't. Right.

Sam Fischer  31:47
Right. Right. Great stuff. So we'll see what happens after Flying J there's going to be an exit strategy here. Right? So

31:56
this is yeah, so I was at Flying J until 2010. And they got us

Sam Fischer  32:05
not that long ago to me, by the way. No, no, no young kids you think? No centuries. And

32:11
you gotta remember I didn't start my I didn't really start my career until I was 27. Because I'd been guiding. Right? I mean, that was so now

Sam Fischer  32:21
you're 37 or I'm sorry. She 10 years where

32:26
I'm I started a Flying J. When I was 27. I think I was 27 I'd have to do the math, but I think that's what it was right? Oh, 2010 is right. So and then I was 32. Is that right? Yeah. 32 Because I'm 43 now, so thanks for everybody my so Flying J was getting purchased by pilot travelcenters. The other major major truckstop chain, there's there's really four of them. But pilot was pilot and Flying J were always the kind of the two big dogs. And Pilate wanted me to stay on board, but they wanted me to move to Knoxville, Tennessee. And Tennessee was a long ways away and I was not really interested. And now you are on Ogden, Utah, right. And I'd actually I've had several people come to me and say, Hey, come work for us. And I looked at a couple of people in the fuel distribution world. I'd actually thought about starting my own trucking business at the time, because I'm like, I'm pretty good at that. I could figure this out. Yeah. And but then one of my customers call them and he says hey, he said, If I sent you an offer letter, would you look at it. And he was in Omaha? I'm like Omaha, really? And he's like, he's like, let me just send you. I'll put it in writing. But it didn't eat investment

Sam Fischer  33:54
from WK. RP loved Omaha.

Roger Johnson  33:59
I think I saw that show like twice.

Sam Fischer  34:02
You're way too young. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, interrupt, keep going.

34:06
So, we come to Omaha or I get this offer letter and I'm like, Oh, well, this is like double what I'm making that Flying J and, you know, then there's another bonus potential on top of that. So and my wife goes Where's Omaha

Sam Fischer  34:28
are moving to Omaha.

34:32
She was okay, well, I guess I like Omaha. So anyway, so I moved to Omaha and that so I came to work here and that job was as an ethanol trader. And I knew like I had been transporting a lot of ethanol I'm flying Jays trucks. That's kind of how I made my name at the business there. I built up and it was ADP was it? No. So it's company called Green plains renewable energy. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So And my boss was a great guy. And him coming here. I'm like, Look, I know. I told him I said, I don't know anything about trading. He said, I'll you'll figure it out. This is your you're wired for it, you'll figure it out. And so I just, I'm like, Okay, I'll figure it out. So, pretty soon I started kind of focusing more on there, like on the Rockies and the West Coast, some of the markets that they hadn't really focused on before. They've done a lot in the Midwest and the Gulf Coast markets. And so it actually came in timely, they had just bought the two plants in Central City in Oregon, Nebraska. And those are on the up rail, West Coast or westbound, right, focused. So with them, they kind of needed somebody to run the sales on that side of things. And that's where I was focused at. And it was very interesting to me, I liked it. I'm, I'm not really a fan of ethanol in general. I know that may not go over very well in Nebraska. But it's basically a boondoggle for corn farmers. Right? It's, you know, it's it's one of those

Sam Fischer  36:14
we're looking at one.

36:17
I know, right? That's no, that's fine. Right. I'm not generally a fan of government mandates of any kind, for the most part, and that's what it is, you know. So that's a whole nother podcast. Yes, it is. Right. Right, exactly. Yeah. They might run me out of town. So. So we come here and, and things are going great. And so you gotta remember 2010, that's when like, that's when fracking really was first starting to come to the forefront. Oil prices were pretty high. They were in the 110 $120 barrel neighborhood. And I knew a little something about that business was flying, Jay had owned an upstream exploration and production company. And they owned a couple of oil refineries. And so we're in a trading meeting one day, and the CEO says, Hey, what's going on with this Bakken thing, and crude by rail, and everybody in that meeting a bunch of really smart people, but they're mostly like former ADM and former ConAgra. And they knew a lot about corn and soybeans, but not so much about the energy space. And so I was like the one token guy who'd come from the energy back and energy background. So I told him what I knew I spoke up, I said, Well, this is what I see. And there's, there's a large differential between this market and that market. And here's why the people are making money doing it. And he says, Okay, well, you're now an oil trader. He said, You go figure that out. You said, I don't want you to do an ethanol anymore. And so that's what I did. I took some rail cars, I started making deals, I got a purchase on one end and a sale on the other and handle the logistics in between I was hiring

Sam Fischer  38:14
more than sales. I mean, it's was it you were trader, but I mean, you are putting together a deal.

38:19
Yeah, you have to make it's kind of end to end training, you know,

Sam Fischer  38:23
suppliers and rail cars, and right exportation and logistics, you're making deals, Scott, you're not. It's a little more sophisticated. And sales, it is sales. But you're, you're you're getting it done. Correct.

38:39
Yep. So, so I'm doing that. And it's fun. You know, I do that for two or three months. Some of the carriers that trucking companies I'm dealing with, that are delivering oil, for me, are terrible. And I'm trying to figure out like what to do. I'm like, guys, you know, work with me here, give me good reporting, give me all these different things, and they can't do it. They don't know how to do it. And their price is egregious. And I just thought, what, how much money these guys make? And you know, and I knew because I could see, you know, this truck number ran this many loads for me every day. And I knew what the rate was. And having an accounting background and trucking I thought, Oh, well. Let me put this together. So I built a model to see, you know, kind of a mock p&l. Yeah, how much money does a truck make doing this? And it was eye popping. I thought I was like, these guys are killing it. So I called I'm like, You guys are charging me way too much. Like, you know, you could be half what you're at and he's like, he's eight pounds and he's a look guy. You know, you're the 10th person who's called me today looking for help. So it's all supply and demand, right exactly like this is not a cost plus business. This is what will The market bear right now. So even though yet you had, you know, a crazy high demand market propping up carriers who weren't very good at what they did. And I just start, I just started kicking it around. I'm like, There's something here

Sam Fischer  40:14
opportunity, Roger. Yeah. And I felt an opportunity around the corner and I

40:18
just I scrubbed that model and scrubbed it, and I could not make it make sense to me. I'm like, how are they making this much money, and I increase all the inputs, and all the expenses, driver wages, insurance, fuel maintenance, and repairs, all these things. Like I just I'm like, maybe my assumptions are wrong. And they weren't, like they were spot on. They were just making a pile of money. And I thought this is crazy. Because trucking normally is very low margin. Steady Eddy, you know, you're gonna make up three to 7% net income, kind of a business, right? But you can scale it up, right? But you can, it never gets too good. Because once it gets to good, it's an easy entry business. Right? You know, there's somebody can just you Sam could file an application with the FMCSA. today. And you could be a trucking company tomorrow. Yeah, well, in a week or two, right? So. So I just looked at this model, I thought, This is stupid. Like, there's no reason these guys should be making this much money. And so I take that home, I showed my wife, I'm like, I need to start a trucking company. And she's like, Okay, go ahead. I'm, like, really, like, Oh,

Sam Fischer  41:39
careful what you wish for.

41:41
And you gotta remember this time. So, you know, I've got this great job. You know, everything's going really well. We have at the time, my kids were five, three, and six months old. Right?

Sam Fischer  41:57
Let's get 10 years ago, roughly, right?

42:00
Exactly. Because my oldest is now a sophomore. She's 15. Now, she'll be 16 in April. So I'm like, Oh, crap. Now, I gotta get serious than that. I got the green light from the boss, you know. And so I just start making some phone calls. And the one thing I had was a driver list. We heard 900 truck drivers have worked for us offline. Yeah. You know, you're networked in. Right? And I wasn't, I wasn't bound by any kind of noncompete or anything with those. They've been a couple years since I've worked there. And right. You know, I never took any money from the pilot buyouts, right.

Sam Fischer  42:38
And so he's just drivers, right? So

42:40
I knew trust. So I just called in some of these guys. Were still friends of mine, I'd kept in touch with them, right? Yeah. And I just was like, hey, you know, I'm thinking about starting something, would you want to come work for me, because that was really the key was to get somebody who wanted to go to North Dakota and drive a truck, alright. And I just kind of put this all together. And I, I got one guy, who was just a godsend, frankly, he's a dear friend of mine to this day, and he works for me. And he's our VP of the Rockies division. And, and I was able to lease a truck and a trailer, and line up a little bit of business. And that guy was actually working in Colorado, at the time as a dispatch manager for another trucking company. And when he said he was going to jump over with me, one of the guys who worked for him, as a driver said, Hey, where are you going, I want to go. And so he brought another driver with him. So I had one truck and two drivers. And that truck never turned off, like two months. It just kept running around the clock, and night and day. And, you know, I still like, I actually, like, kept my job. I was doing this on the side. And, you know, I couldn't just like I didn't have any capital, right? I didn't have any money. And so I will, but can't you. To me, where I see this thing lined up is that you had your current job in the in the trading business. And you were doing all these deals with these trucking companies. Now you got your own trucking company, at what point do you become a client? So that's, that's where this is, if you're going to have a site, is this where we end it? No. You can't cross that line. Right. And actually, so I didn't know I didn't, I never did. But I would hope eventually you would have. Well, hang on. All right, I'll get there. So I told my boss what I was doing. And I said, you know, and he goes, and he told me says look, he says, if it doesn't interfere with your work, and you don't haul your own oil, I don't care what you do. All right. I said, All right. So and I never did cross that line. That's an Hollier on oil. Like if you're the oil that I was buying for my jet for my day job, right, right. All right. You're hoping that one day you can rise up line. So as I talked about, so the company I worked for wasn't paying, right. You know my company. Right, right. Yeah, you can't cross that line. If you do, that's a good way to sometimes it can be fraudulent or illegal. Sure. You know, that's always very tempting to do those kinds of things. You know, I,

Sam Fischer  45:18
it's easier to err on the side of absolute efficacy. I mean, right. For me, it's always been that way. Yeah.

45:24
I'll give you a good example. So there's a guy in our industry that just a month ago, got fired from his job. So he was a crude oil marketer. And he started a side gig doing his own crude oil marketing. When that was actually his day job. It had been as if I was working in a crude oil trucking company and started a trucking company. Right? Well, that's a bad idea, right. And he got caught because one of the carriers who was working for him, didn't realize that the company they were doing the work for was his own company, as opposed to the company he actually was employed by. So they sent the an invoice for freight to the company, who was his employer. And they're like, Well, what's this? This isn't our oil, but it had the employees name on it, and, and they just started kind of piecing things together and figured it out. So so he lost his job, right. And you could potentially have, you know, either civil or criminal liability, depending on how you, you go about that. All right. No, you just can't cross that line that your reputation is all you have. Really, yes, sir. Yes, sir. You know, very much a cowboy

Sam Fischer  46:42
45th. It is a call cow. It takes 4050 years to build a reputation. It takes one second to flush it down the toilet. That's I mean, but Warren Buffett said that forever. It's absolutely true.

46:54
Yep. So, so that's kind of how it went. So I was able to build that little fledgling business up, I had borrowed $30,000 from two guys, they gave me $15,000 each. And that was my working capital for the business. Because I literally didn't have anything because Flying J. They had actually gone bankrupt in 2010. And that's why pilot bought them. So the bonuses, you know, this is coming and you give them are 2008. They actually went bankrupt in 2008. Yeah. And then the the acquisition took a couple of years to develop. Right. But the company had been in been controlled by the courts, because of, you know, in the bankruptcy process. So, bonuses were capped at like a very small number. And, you know, I had three kids and a young family. Yeah. And I made a decent living and was the first time in my life I'd ever made a decent living.

Sam Fischer  47:52
So the question is, where was the flip where, like you've, you've left the trading company and went out? So only did the flip? Was there? Was it a moment? Was it some kind of, well, magical opportunity? Or what were no,

48:07
I really wasn't, it was it got to the point where it got to them. I was I was too I was being very cautious about how I was growing that business.

Sam Fischer  48:16
And it was restricting your growth, but it was because you were being cautious. Correct.

48:19
It was restricting my growth. Plus, it got to the point where I couldn't do any more without it, without it impeding on my career, my day job, right? And so quit your day job. Yeah, it's like, I've got to make a choice here. I can't do both. And that's what I did. So I, I went to my boss, I said, Hey, I said, I gotta go.

Sam Fischer  48:42
And so my question is, I think I can ask this. Is this your date? Your former day job? No, one of your clients, because you did. I mean, you could save them a lot of money. Right? So no, they actually decided or you just charged when everybody else was charged? No, I

48:55
charged the market rate you charged margin. But in business get I wasn't as efficient necessarily. Because I was a startup and I didn't understand like I it takes awhile. I had a lot of things to learn. Yeah, right. Business is very complicated. And from the outside looking in, it's easy to be a critic and say, Oh, they do this poorly and this and this. But building an organization that works and is functional, is very challenging, challenging.

Sam Fischer  49:23
How many employees do you have right now? Where cluding drivers,

49:29
I guess you'd include 250 plus another probably 4050

Sam Fischer  49:33
breaks my rear and pucker a little bit, Roger, because it's a lot of people and unless you've managed Pete and I Oh, my biggest gig I ever had I managed 40 people, okay. It's a lot of work. It is. Because you've got to you're developing a culture and that doesn't happen overnight. And you you want your I assume you're looking for the right kind of person. You're looking for the right fit for your company. You have values, you have a mission statement you have, right all these things. And no, you're not going to learn this stuff. In the first year or two, heck, you're still learning, right?

50:13
100%. And I've made a lot of mistakes, I will, I will tell you that, like, you think you're gonna like, sometimes though perfection holds people back, they think that they have to get everything just right. And until all of the stars lining is perfection, there's not. And, you know, you see, like, really large companies, you know, Microsoft and Amazon or whatever. And they make mistakes. And, you know, the outside observers like, Well, why did they do it that way? Well, unless you've actually been sitting there on the inside, right. And, like,

Sam Fischer  50:52
it's so hard to understand, unless you're actually there. And people who this is one of the problems that academics have, they've never had to really make a decision, they can just slip back. And I'm gonna be criticized when it be blunt, there are employee and I'm not saying there are employees of the world. And there are employers, those are two different things. That it it just it just is. And some people are really good employees and you want I mean, they're fantastic. But the employers are the ones that are making it happen. And the employers are the ones that are taking the risk. It's it's the employers that you know, at the end of the day, it's the it's, they're the ones that are signing that check it,

51:39
yes. And when you when you put it all on the table, it's a it's an a unique experience. So early in our growth. There were several times when I was really struggling with with cash flow issues, and I didn't have, you know, we didn't have like a banking credit facility, because we were too young. I mean, I was just, I was bootstrapping everything. And, you know, I remember several times going to my wife and saying, Hey, how much money do we have in our checking account? And she says, Why? Because I need to make payroll. And, you know,

Sam Fischer  52:20
they were like, Can we do a reverse mortgage? Or whatever you got to do? You got to do

52:25
right. There were several times when we had $1 left in our bank account. Yeah. Because she gave me everything we had. But $1

Sam Fischer  52:33
And I do have friends out there that just think that, you know, the your, you know, they perceive you someone like you, who's you, my God, he's got 200 employees, how many trucks are you running? Now? I mean, you know, you're running 100 jobs on how many trucks Yeah, but you know, he's rich, he's rich. Wait a minute, just wait just a minute. This man just told me he had $1 in his bank account to keep those people that bitch and complain about how rich he quote unquote, rich he is. To keep them employed to keep the thing going. So it's not, not everything appear. You know, there's this misconception about business owners and successful people. You are, you have a lot of responsibility. And you'd have no other way. Right? I mean, you love what you do. Exactly.

53:23
It's what I do isn't work for me. Right. But some people would, would jump off of a building if they had to do what I did.

Sam Fischer  53:30
Yeah, they can't handle they're not built for that. I mean, that's just the way it is. Right? And that's okay. It's okay. I'm not belittling anybody. But that's just that's the

53:40
way the world needs all kinds we do and happiness how boys in a kid that's right. happiness in life, is understanding where you really belong, like with your skill set, and your demeanor and your work ethic. Absolutely. And if you can align your goals with your career or your vocation, whatever that may be. And your family value, it's

Sam Fischer  54:03
gold, and it's Harville. Rogers there's but there are a ton of people out there, I know him, I love them and they're friends but they they've never found that and boy, what a It's not easy to do all that I mean, you know, that's why a lot of people such as yourself and say, I'm lucky I'm lucky Well, why are you lucky because of that, because you found all those things. I have for a lot of people, they they they I don't know if there are two I'll use we use the word are too lazy to look or too ignorant to look or they just it's just the grind man and God bless them. I mean, I have nothing against those people either. But you're right. Happiness is defined by finding out what you're good at and is it a good fit? And you know, you just said you don't feel like you work. You don't you know? Right now I'm not at all I mean, I mean, yes, if you enjoy what you're not, you know, if you enjoy my guitar hero has said that it was never tough. I mean, it was never work. Enjoyed it. And you know, there might be times you get really tired. You enjoy the journey? Exactly. Yeah,

55:26
yeah, it's, you know, I've had people ask me, Hey, you know, I've been thinking about starting a business. Do you think it's the right thing for me? And I really can't answer that. You can't answer that. I have no idea. No. But what I tell them is, though, here's the thing you need to realize. You think that you are going to own a business, but the reality is the business owns you? Because you can't point to somebody else and say, Hey, talk to her. She's in charge. Right? You can't say, oh, sorry. You know, the sciences were closed. Right? Like, I'm going home. Yeah, it doesn't work. You know, when your name is on the door? Yeah, it does. I've taken I wore 2am phone calls. Roger, I

Sam Fischer  56:15
can I can I'm, you're much more successful business I ever had. But well, that's not necessarily true. That's not true. I had a very successful business in my in my in my field, but it's I got, I worked at three o'clock in the morning. If I had to get something done. Guess what, if I had to push for a client or get something done, because everything I did in my business was time sensitive. There's always deadlines. And there will be times where I had to be up at three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning, I throughout, I've worked every hour in my life, I can confidently say that I've worked every hour of the day at some time or another. This is you got to do what you got to do. Right? That's, that's exactly right. So you might get tired, but you're still having fun. Yeah.

56:59
And some people you know, and there's no shame in this at all. You know, they just want to say I'm going to go home at five o'clock, and go see my family. I'm going to go place on

Sam Fischer  57:10
my Two Day weekend. And I should have a three day weekend. And right there's a friend of mine I'm addressing right now he'll if he listens to me, he's pushing for, like, you know, it's just, you know, like, we, the whole the whole concept of, you know, we mericans work too hard. And we need to we need to have three or four day weekends and all this stuff. And I'm just like, I don't relate to that. I don't I don't relate to it.

57:36
I don't either. But what I do isn't work to me like I love

Sam Fischer  57:42
it. I love for the guy that is working the guy that dreads the alarm clock going off every morning and doesn't you know, has a physically ill he doesn't want to go to work, or work. So I understand why he doesn't want to work three, four days a week. I mean, if you feel like that you're probably in the wrong spot. Probably go find something else. Please. Like your life will be better. Yes. And everybody, every everybody's gonna benefit. Whoever you're working for whoever. Yep.

58:13
Good stuff. Yeah. But when you when you put together that right team, it's so invigorating, and just watching all the success. And it's hard, though. I've spent very, you know, the first seven or eight years, I cobbled together different parts of that team. But it took a while to get it all put together. And once you have all the pieces in place, it is unbelievable. The growth that happens. Yeah.

Sam Fischer  58:40
And you're in there right now. Right, buddy? I mean, you are you're not you don't you haven't capped out your company yet. Have you? Not even close? Not even close? No. Just getting started? Yes, I got I

Roger Johnson  58:54
would say we're absolutely in the first ending.

Sam Fischer  58:59
We it's I'm going to kind of conclude this by a story. One of my I'm looking at a picture of myself and Dick Cheney and one of my old I told the story to somebody the other day, I can't remember who someone was interviewing. But it was I don't think it's on the podcast. But my role when I worked for the Republican National Committee was basically to fly around when the Bush 43 and Cheney were in there. I'd fly around to these different places to help these these Oregon State party organizations, they pull off these big events because it's it's quite a circus when the President comes to town, you know, it's people aren't used to this. And so that so that was my my role is to fly around with the Vice President, the President and do all these events take us to come

59:51
fishing on the South Fork of the Snake. Oh, yeah. And it was he was it was a mess when when he would show up because the Secret Service would was always there. they'd fly the river with the helicopters to do all their scans. I

Sam Fischer  1:00:03
was one. Everything changed too. I saw that. I mean, I saw the protective measures and how they change and it was crazy but anyway so we were doing event with Dick Cheney and Boise, Idaho of all places. And there was a guy by the name of JR Simplot rest his soul if you heard of JR Simplot, Jr. Simplot for our listeners is a very successful was he did lots of things. But one of the things he did was he's a potato farmer,

1:00:27
an agribusiness. All of it actually worked in here. He has,

Sam Fischer  1:00:32
I believe, Oh, you did? Okay. So I believe maybe you can send me your trailers, but I believe he had the exclusive at one time. He was one of the major maybe not the exclusive, but one of the major suppliers to McDonald's for their French fries. Yes. That's pretty good account. Anyway, great guy, a phenomenal guy. I mean, just just and he never worked either. But he's sure he went to the office every day. And you know, he did work. But what I'm trying to say is, he never I don't think he ever considered it work either. And anyway, so Simplot, fast forward, the story so Simplot is, is he's no, he's, he's, he's 95. At the time. I mean, if he's passed away, since I'm pretty sure but yeah. And he's got kind of a two handed wheelchair kind of a thing. And it's clear that he's, well, he's 95 for heaven's sakes. I mean, you know, you could see the one of his eyes I don't think he was able to see but he was still I mean, he was with it, man. And he was a cowboy. He was a cowboy. And so anyway, I did a lot of these events with with with Vice President Cheney. And so I mean, he, you know, Cheney was he doesn't get excited about much. I mean, he just he B takes a picture and off they go. And so I was called a push pole in a photo op. And so I think I was think I was polling that day, whatever. But anyway, here's your incomes income Simplot. And it gets a picture of Cheney in it and the Vice President recognize simple obviously, he recognized the guy. He goes you know, it's very good to meet you, sir. You know, you've been very successful in business throughout the years and Jr. Sim block turns and points his finger right in the vice president united states face and says, and I'm just getting started. So good for

Roger Johnson  1:02:25
you. That's a that's an attitude to have. Right. There it is.

Sam Fischer  1:02:27
So God bless you for what you're doing, man. Keep don't ever stop. Keep moving. Now I

1:02:32
get to die with your boots on Right. Absolutely.

Sam Fischer  1:02:36
So Roger this year, I've done kind of a to conclude podcast just to keep the just something different. I have five rapid questions. So I'm gonna ask you five rapid questions. Oh, whatever comes to your head. You just tell me you're ready. Okay. All right. Which favorite ice cream?

Roger Johnson  1:02:53
Cookies and cream?

Sam Fischer  1:02:54
Excellent. Favorite cowboy. John Wayne. Favorite day head?

Roger Johnson  1:03:01
Peter Atea.

Sam Fischer  1:03:03
Okay, yeah, you mentioned him Okay. Favorite movie?

Roger Johnson  1:03:10
The Incredibles?

Sam Fischer  1:03:13
Do you have dogs? We do? What's your favorite dog ever had?

1:03:18
So honestly, so we have to be Shawn freeze as our little fluffy white dogs. And they're both just like they're living teddy bears. And the older one coconut is probably the best dog we've ever had. He's, he's only six. But he's with us. And he is. Yeah. And. But he's that dog that like, he is part of my kids childhood growing up. Whenever they get. They get hurt. He would jump in their lap. He would kiss their tears. Just I mean, really, truly a living teddy bear. I highly recommend Bishan to anybody. They're amazing. Awesome. They're definitely not like, you know, I would love to have bird dogs, you know, but you need it. But that's a lot. They're high energy. There are a lot of work. I love hunting behind gouffre that. Are they what? No

Sam Fischer  1:04:07
poop free? No. Oh, well, that's why I don't have one. That's yeah.

1:04:13
If you could figure that out. That would be the perfect dog. Oh, man. Hey, I

Sam Fischer  1:04:17
really appreciate it. Roger. If people want to get a hold of you, how do they get ahold of you on social media or your link? Yeah, generally so yeah. Anybody wants to be able to so what Roger does is he he's he ships. Oil around, right? Well, it's

1:04:33
crude oil, LPG. So like propane, butane. We do some diesel fuel, some gasoline, things like that. And I have a general trucking business. Yeah. So we have a company called Badlands logistics that does

Sam Fischer  1:04:48
flatbed drive you know. Exactly. All right. So I think it all your website. Oh, yeah.

1:04:53
So it's a our websites B L tank lines.com. I'm on LinkedIn rock or Johnson. I'm there Omaha, Nebraska. Roger Johnson,

Sam Fischer  1:05:03
sir. There's only a couple 100 of us the one that I'm LinkedIn into.

1:05:08
Right? Yeah, there's there's not that old because Roger is fairly rare Johnson is really common. Yeah. So

Sam Fischer  1:05:14
good. Well, hey, I appreciate your time and thanks for being a listener.