Pivoting Houses->Hauling

When real estate deals dried up, we didn’t panic—we pivoted. This episode breaks down the gutsy acquisition of a hotshot trucking company, from the 26,000-pound loophole that makes it CDL-friendly to the seller financing play that made the deal work.

📌 Key Topics:

✅ Why buying an existing trucking company beats starting from scratch (hint: brokers blacklist newbies)
✅ How military skills translate to scaling a blue-collar business
✅ The 55-gallon fuel tank hack that added $400/week to the bottom line
✅ "Fire yourself in 6 months"—the scaling framework we’re using to go from 1 truck to 100
✅ When to pivot vs. when you’re just chasing shiny objects
We also get raw about:

• Why we’d rather work at Walmart than grind a dying real estate niche
• How a men’s ministry group called out our ambition blind spots
• The real cost of waiting for the "perfect" deal

"Opportunity cost isn’t just money—it’s the life you could’ve built."
Listen now, then ask yourself: What’s your pivot waiting in the wings?

Chapters: 

00:00 Tanner's First Business Acquisition

02:56 Understanding Hotshot Trucking

05:59 Navigating the Deal Process

08:49 Due Diligence and Valuation

11:46 Operational Insights and Efficiency

15:04 Insurance and Risk Management

18:14 Finalizing the Deal

21:03 Ethics in Negotiation

24:27 Understanding Due Diligence in Real Estate

25:53 Scaling Business Operations Effectively

30:08 Financing Strategies for Business Acquisition

32:34 Embracing Failure as a Learning Tool

34:29 The Importance of Starting Small

37:50 Navigating the Balance Between Ambition and Reality

40:46 Leveraging Existing Skills for New Opportunities

46:00 Finding the Right Balance in Income Streams

Transcript

Ryan Miller (00:00)

Well Tanner, congratulations. You recently closed on your first business, if you will, true first acquisition. Yeah. First, you know, true, ⁓ purchase. we'll, we'll see my interviewing skills, but, so I fly solo basically interviewing you what's, ⁓ I guess we'll just kind of kick it off. Tell us about the deal. What, ⁓ what you bought and, ⁓ what's your plan for it? Yeah. So, closed on a hotshot trucking company and

What's hot shot? So, so hot shot is basically like direct loads. So, you know, you think of transportation trucking. Typically you think of, you know, the big, uh, big dry bands, which are, you know, normal 53 foot trailers with semi, um, hot shots are smaller trailers, usually a pickup truck. Um, they, they stay under typically the 26,000 mark, um, 26,000 pounds, 26,000 pounds. Yeah. So

Anything under dumb it down for us. Anything under 26,000 pounds, you don't need a CDL to carry. And so if you see a pickup truck on the, the highway with a DOT numbers on the side of the window, that's a requirement that they are commercial truck and there's, you know, specific, you have to have medical certificates and you know, all that stuff. And ⁓ when you get to 26,001 pound and above, you have to have a CDL commercial driver's license to operate. And so, you know, I've been in real estate for,

We're four or five years now. And as we came out of an uncertain market and deals stopped flowing as frivolously as they were before, my wife and I realized that we had to put in four times the amount of effort to do the same amount of deal flow. And we just weren't willing to do that. don't, we, you know, we're good at what we do in real estate, but we have much more enjoyment out of the asset management and fund management than we do brokerage. And so coming to terms with

Brokers being buying and selling. Representing others to buy and sell, yeah. And so still do it. We still have a good client pool and luckily my wife being here if I'm on the road, we're able to balance it. And so coming out of a really hot market where the wind's at your back and deals are closing left and right and we're making really good income, the nationwide deal flow is cut by 50%. That's literally 50 % of the deals transacting with the same amount of agents or brokers.

So, I mean, that's a much shorter supply and four times the demand. So you gotta work much more. ⁓ we just weren't willing to put the time in to make the same amount of money. They're put four times the amount of time. So we started looking at what our other skills are and what fills our cup. I drove for the military for 10 years and it's always been easy for me. My business mindset, I figured would be a good...

leverage piece in this industry where it's typically blue collar. A lot of the drivers are owner operators. That's what they've done. They're not the technical experts of business ownership. so when I got my CDL last year, while still focusing on real estate, drove for a company for about six months. as life happened, Nicole got in a bad car accident and pulled me off the road. so took back control of

what we wanted to be doing and basically just put it out there in the world that I want to buy a trucking company. And so I started talking to people about it and just, I think that's the best advice is if you want to be doing something, don't wait until you're doing it to start talking about it, talk about it ahead of time. And so I started telling people that this is what I'm looking for. If anyone knows of a trucking company for sale and turns out that a business partner of mine said, Oh, I have a friend who's moving to Hawaii and they're looking to sell their trucking company. And I wasn't thinking hotshot at all.

I was thinking semis, I want to buy ⁓ big companies. And the opportunity was a hotshot company, so I just dove in, did all the research. It's been probably...

four or five months of due diligence, just learning everything there is to know about it. And I, and I came to really like this side of the industry, ⁓ because it's a lot more manageable from the start. And so we were working on this purchase or I sent the initial LOI, I think back in March and now here we are July 1st and we just closed on it. So back up one thing you said easier from the start. do you mean by that? So the

Where semi trucks bring in a lot more revenue, it's very typical that a semi trucking company is operating at a 10 to 15 % profit margin. Whereas with a hotshot company, it's bringing in less revenue, but it's a higher profit margin, which gives me a much bigger margin of error. And so with that, basically we found that if I'm, I don't have to drive every week.

had employee come with the company and with it being a smaller company size, my profit margin with just him driving 52 weeks a year, 50 weeks a year, it'll cover the debt service. And so with me driving, that's where I started to build in profits and scalability. How does it work for both of you driving at the same time? So in team driving situations, which is common at Hotshot and in semi-trucking businesses, ⁓

CDL drivers have an 11 hour ⁓ clock. You can only drive for 11 hours, work for 14. And so after 11 hours, you have to stop driving your parked. With a team driver, we can switch off and the opposite person. Now there's sleeper requirements. If you are doing team driving, technically the person not driving has to be in a certified sleeper, which is meets specific requirements. It's all governed by, you know, the FMCSA, which is the

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration that says that your sleeper where you're getting your rest has to be a certain width, certain height, has to be certain material on the bedding and all that stuff. And so there's some caveats and workarounds, but typically that's how it works is with us alternating 11 hours on, 11 hours off, we can keep the truck moving pretty much 24 hours a day. How long do you have to rest in between 11 hours? 10 hours. 10 hours. So that's where the...

The 11 hours comes into play. So you're not working off of work off of 22 hour clock. Exactly. Yep. Gotcha. So, so you found the deal, put it on the ether, said, I'm looking for this buddy found it or brought it to you negotiated it. Can you kind of break down the terms as much as possible? Uh, yeah. High level, you know, what, you know, start off with the top and kind of break it down if you will.

Yeah, so we started the conversation. The seller had multiple trucks and ⁓ multiple trailers. And so we agreed to a purchase price. ⁓ During that process, one of the trailers was decommissioned. He decided to sell the trailer. ⁓ with that, you know, having more trucks than trailers, he decided to keep one of the trucks and take it with him on his move. Decommissioned why? Just when they go out of service. So because

When you're going down the highway, you see those way stations on the side of the road, even though it's a pickup truck with a trailer, it's still commercial load. We're still required to stop at those. And when you go through those, uh, you have to make sure that your weight per axle is accurate or is, is within limits. And there's a checklist of 710, I think it's roughly 710 items that they will check on your vehicle. And if they find any violations, you're fine for it. Now those things can be a crack in the windshield.

It can be your tread depth. can be ⁓ a light bulb that's out and any other plethora of things. lot of safety stuff. All of it is safety stuff. So, ⁓ so on any of those items, if they find anything like a, if there's a gash in the tire on a trailer tire, you're technically out of service. Now there's certain violations that are just infractions. They'll send you a fine. It might be 200, it might be 600. Then there's the bigger ones where like you're overweight or you're

heavy for your axles. So each axle has an assigned weight to it and if you're over that weight that could be a $5,000 fine. But when you have, so one of the trailers had some dings and dens, had some gashes in the tires and stuff, so it's not serviceable. not, it's going to lead to issues and so it makes more sense to sell it. And so with that, during our due diligence process he decided to take one of the trucks with him and I agreed to it and so we just agreed to a different price.

With a percentage down payment and and seller financing so two questions based off from that Who do you sell the trailer to a non-commercial person or someone that's willing to put in the work? ⁓ Fix it up and get it back serviceable. I'm typically just on Facebook marketplace just Joe's mode that can things that can still use it just not from commercial aspect Yeah, so that that particular trailer was a dump trailer. So it's pretty common. It's not one of the long ones the other trailer We have is a 35 foot flatbed. That's it's

much more limited target that you're going to sell that to. It's mostly going to be hotshot drivers or lawn care, you know, trucking or construction companies, stuff like that. So, I don't remember the second question. So, well, let's get back to the deal. Yeah. So I we, worked that out and, ⁓ I evaluated the numbers or underwrote, underwrote the deal, ⁓ did a cost analysis of the equipment. So the, ⁓ what is, what is it called?

the assets that you're buying. FF &E. Yeah, FF &E. so coming to a realistic number with that, taking away depreciation and not a lot of goodwill. The big thing with trucking companies is everything operates on a load board. And so it's basically like a Craigslist. You go on and people post, people being brokers, post loads saying that it's going from this place to this place. We're willing to pay this much. This is how heavy it is, this is how long it is. And then you go in, call and negotiate all that stuff.

Well, when you're a new carrier, which is carrier's company, when you're a new carrier, it's impossible to get loans. They don't want to touch you because you're too risky for them. And the insurance companies have been holding the brokers accountable. So the same as we think in real estate, you you're help, you're representing a buyer and seller. There's not a ton of liability on you. We still have, you know, insurance, but imagine if you were completely liable for what the seller was selling any, anything that went wrong.

The broker. Because you're basically, you're subbing out. In theory. Yeah. So how it works is a shipper contacts a broker or a broker gets an intake form. They agree to a load and say, shipper says, I have ⁓ three steel beams that need to go from Cleveland, Ohio to Wichita, Kansas. And, you know, can you me a rate on that? The broker say, yep, I can get it done for X amount. I don't know how many miles that is offhand, but let's say it's

a thousand miles. Well, I can, I can get that load book for a dollar 50, you know, and broker then goes a dollar 50 a mile. Yeah. So a dollar 50 a mile, um, 1500 bucks. So they go post that load on the load board for 1200 and which is a dollar 20 a mile. And then, you know, there's dispatchers, which in terms, think of the broker as the seller's agent, dispatcher as buyer's agent who, you know, will find me loads.

they go in and look and see $1.20 a mile. They call on it, negotiate, maybe they get up to $1.30 a mile. And then they come to me and we pay the dispatcher 8%. And that's negotiable, like what you pay your dispatcher. Does dispatcher work for you? is it just... They're independent. They might have 10 drivers. 10 people, but they're working for you. Right. Like they're calling you saying, got this low, you might be interested in. Yeah. And so one of the ways that I, when I came on during my due diligence, I...

worked out with a seller for me to drive for him. So was his employee for X number of days until I was comfortable with the business. And through that I learned a lot of things in the business, adjusted my underwriting. Every time I'd come back from a load, I'd come back and ⁓ redo my underwriting and found ways, know, the dispatchers are great. It's passive. If I want to be very hands off, I would know that he's just, you know, ⁓ booking loads and making sure my driver's out driving.

But what they don't do is fill your trailer. And so if we think of this table as a flatbed, he might find a load that's 2,000 pounds and takes up this much space. Well, I'm going across the country, and if I'm doing this much, it's maybe only paying a dollar a mile. And that's barely covering my fuel expenses, my fixed expenses. So I need to fill the rest of this trailer. So what I've found is that by me being more involved with the dispatching process,

creating systems around it so that I can eventually hire someone on to take me out of that part. I can fill this trailer and maybe bring three, $4 per mile on average. So just finding different ways to add value. And I really like looking at constraints. And there was a book I recently recently listened to is called the goal. Um, was it Eliyahu? that the one? So Microsoft executives have to read that or something.

It might be. It's basically about the system and process. Exactly. I haven't read it, but I've been recommended. It's funny enough. Last two weeks, I've heard the recommendation like three times. It's a great book. And I like the perspective. It's a first person, realistic fiction about being a factory worker and factory manager and finding constraints and bottlenecks and efficiencies. And we've talked before on this podcast, I like the idle minor games.

Cause it forces you to start thinking about finding bottlenecks. And with, with me being an employee to this business during my due diligence process, I was able to find some bottlenecks that aren't incompetence or, or, fees. Exactly. It's not, it's just natural constraints that happen in the business. And what can I do to implement, to make sure that doesn't happen? For example, one of them that I noticed was that the, the employee driver,

was just fueling up wherever was convenient. He would just go along his route, whatever's right off the highway, he'll go fuel up. Whether it's $3.20 a gallon or it's $4.80 a gallon, was just whatever was convenient. also the pickup trucks only have like a 25 gallon fuel tank. So that meant he was fueling up every two and a half, three hours. And so that adds in another 15 minutes every time. Sometimes those truck stops are packed.

So sometimes we don't get through the fuel pump for 25, 30 minutes. So that adds a lot more time and more stops. So what I did is I found an external fuel tank that you can put in the bed of the truck that has a toolbox and a fuel tank combo that'll add 55 gallons. That means he can drive almost 10 hours straight without stopping, which that driver can do. I cannot, I drink too much water, so I gotta stop every 20 minutes. And you get a bladder or whatever you call those little things. ⁓

Just PM, catheter. That's what I'm looking for. And so by doing that, that takes away one constraint. Then there is adding in incentives. And so I'm trying to build an employee incentive program where if they stay below a certain average dollar amount for fuel across the country, which I mean, we made trips out to Idaho, Washington, California, where fuel is 4.80 a gallon.

and we've been in the Midwest where it's much cheaper. So incentivizing them to fill both tanks, both the external and the internal fuel tank where the fuel is 350 gallon. And then they don't need to fuel up as much when they're in California and whatnot and can get back to the places where it's cheap. And if they maintain an average, then I'm going to put a bonus incentive in there. So I haven't quite worked out exactly how that'll work, but it's just other ways that I can add value to this company that

Like I said, it's not negligence and it's not, um, any, anything irresponsible. It's just subtle ways to make a slight difference. Might be $400 a week difference, but over, you know, eight, 10 trucks and of course every year that's a lot of so what was the top line that they were bringing in? If you can say, yeah, so I mean a lot of, um, how he was operating was as an owner operator. And so he was bringing in

money based on his own efforts. And then when you transition into hiring someone out, the top line isn't as great. I we basically worked out a contract where... who says this another way? How do you underwrite something like that? Yeah, so the cleanest way is take the EBITDA and add a multiple to it. And the multiple in trucking companies is much lower than some other types of companies. So with...

Why do you even come up with the bottom line though to, well not even bottom line, but the EBITDA if you will, if he's owner operator, if he's driving. Right, and that's where it's hard. So basically what I did is I, ⁓

Exit or I removed any owner operator income. So he gave me a profit and loss statement. I did it based on what the employee brings in on his ⁓ percentage because they're the drivers aren't paid in. Some companies are paid per mile. Some companies are paid percentage. I mean, it's set up currently for a percentage model. And so subtracting out that, ⁓ and the multiple based on just the one driver operating.

we found a number that makes sense. And he was agreeable to that. Exactly. so, ⁓ and it wasn't far off from his original asking price. He wasn't overzealous. It was just, he, he wanted to take care of the driver. He wanted to see someone else take over the company. And so, ⁓ with the, the multiple on the income that this one driver can produce on his own was darn close. It was within a thousand dollars of

the percentage above equipment costs. So adding in that goodwill. And the goodwill, so what I was getting to before is the new carriers, they don't get loads. So on these load boards, you can call a broker and they'll look up your MC number, your authority number, and say, ah, I see you've only been in business for two months. call me back in six months. They don't, I mean, it's pretty across the board, like, they just won't work with you.

Part of that is because their insurance holds them so accountable. And that's what we're talking about there. So part of me wanting to buy an existing company on, ⁓ at a price that is above equipment cost was there's multiple years of, of history. And so basically I'm buying an existing operation where there's no trouble getting loads. And so when I'm underwriting it, I'm looking at what the solo driver can bring in, adding, assigning a multiple to that.

And then I also valued it as what percentage above equipment cost is the purchase price. And I had a number that I was comfortable with going above equipment replacement cost, minus depreciation, and the multiple was very close to that, like I said, within $1,000. And so what that's telling me is that I'm basically buying, if I was to just go out and buy this equipment off of Facebook Mark place, from a dealer, whatever,

this is how much I would pay for it. And I'm also buying that historical ⁓ experience for the ability to get loads. And I assign a dollar amount to that. And that's how we got to our purchase price. I remember when you first called me about this handful of months ago, whatever you're trying to structure it. My first initial reaction was sounds like it'd be cheaper just to go buy a vehicle and a trailer and hire out a driver.

Not knowing that with the historical numbers and all that that you're talking about, MC or whatever you called it, ⁓ not knowing that aspect. And so that's why it's important to know the ins and outs somewhat of a company or not a company, but an industry that's ⁓ before you start buying it. So not.

not ever researching that industry. didn't know that. I'm like, did you better join the street by truck and a trailer, but yeah, that's something that I didn't understand until I got into the due diligence. Cause my, my plan, didn't even know that ahead of time. Exactly. And so my plan was to do an asset purchase by, know, basically by the employee, by the equipment and all the, everything's already set up and transferred into a new name. Just through my due diligence, I learned that it's probably more beneficial to do a stock sale.

where I'm basically buying his ownership of the LLC with all the existing infrastructure. And so that that's where it immediately creates an income stream. If I was to just go buy the equipment, up an MC number, I have monthly payments already. You know, you have insurance payment, insurance and trucking industry is insanely expensive. Insurance today is expensive. So for, for your pickup truck, for example, you probably, you know, might pay $200 a month, you know, um, with a clean driving record.

for a brand new truck, maybe $300, $400. For transportation over the road, it's like $1,700 a month. Wow. Is that just more time on the road, more time for accidents to happen? That and you have higher liability. you're required by working with these brokers to have certain... So you have to have certain property damage limits and it's like a million dollar policy. And so there's a lot more liability, especially when...

on your truck you might put in 10, 12,000 miles a year, whereas we're putting in 80, 100,000 miles a year. So. Yeah, makes sense. mean, just their risk goes up, the premiums go up or your premiums go up. Absolutely. Okay. So you agree you're unpacking the due diligence, everything clean and the due diligence, no issues, no nothing or what, what's kind of story there? Yeah. So I mean, I don't like to retrade. So I, when I go into a real estate deal,

So retrade is where you agree to a price and then you get through your due diligence and then you say, yeah, I don't like this. We're going to have to come to a different price. To me, it's slimy tactics. If my initial underwriting is accurate, basically my due diligence is just verifying that all my underwriting was accurate. As long as nothing has been not disclosed to you. Exactly. There's no material changes. Right. And that's, I guess, kind of retrading with

you give a price of a hundred thousand dollars based on the information you have. There's information withheld and that can either positively or negatively affect the drug. And that's the one caveat is if there's any, any, dishonesty or anything, then that's where it's justified. think. But if my initial underwriting said X dollar amount, I give an L Y for that amount and then they provide due diligence materials. I go through all the underwriting and it all checks out to be within

tolerance of my initial underwriting, I don't think there's any need to nickel and dime and say, you know, let's take 10 % off or whatever. That's just not good business. Yeah, I mean, I can't say I haven't retraded, I guess, but I've given an example of, I'll give two examples. One of just a simple kind of understanding of what I mean initially by material difference. You're buying a building and you pay $100,000 for the building and they're like, oh, the roof has just changed last year.

You're not roof expert, you don't know. And so you get a roof expert out there and they're like, this roof hasn't been changed in 20 years. Obviously that's, that's a difference because your underwriting was assuming a brand new roof when now you got to replace the roof. So just a simple example there. But I know the Sixplex that I bought, like, from the crack sewer line, obviously that's underground. They have no way of knowing. I had no way of knowing that. So retrade it, if you will, based on that.

six grand difference or something. I think a perfect example in real estate is like, if you're going to buy a property and, um, you give them an offer and then you go through your due diligence and everything checks out and you go back to the seller and say, I'm going to need to paint the exterior. So can we take, you know, 10,000 off the purchase price? You, you, you saw the exterior before you put the offer and there's no reason for that. But a cracked sewer line is a perfect example of something that some people would say that's still retraining, uh, retraining though. What is like the crack sewer line.

you should make that into your due diligence based on say one out of 10. I'll have a crack sewer line. So you bake in a tall as a due diligence and they kind of evens itself out over time. one perspective. My personal opinion is no, just, I'm willing to pay X price if everything, you know, underground literally checks out. So, ⁓ yeah, I can understand that perspective, but anyways, the, all, all my due diligence checked out, all the numbers made sense. And I got it to a point where,

Granted we had to adjust where my plan was only to team drive once a month and we figured in order to build a little bit more cushion because we can cover double the miles when we team drive I should drive every other week and so It's a good balance in our schedule and made sure obviously I'm talking my wife the whole time team drive team drive is where you have to I guess team drive every other week or So he's gonna drive 50 weeks out of the year, right? Okay, and then I will team drive 26 weeks 25 whatever that winds up being

So, ⁓ and then my plan is in the first six months to add an additional truck with a higher capacity, bigger trailer, we can do heavier loads and hire on a second driver for that first truck. So my agreement with my wife was when buying any business, we need to be able to fire ourselves in the first six months. And if that means I fire myself, I drive for six months, fire myself into a managerial role or into a dispatcher role.

then six months of that, fire myself from that role and scale this business, that's the agreement. I'm pegged at some more. So I'm buying this business more as an owner operator. It does have another driver, so it offers a little bit of So you're starting out as an operator. Right. And so you're saying you need to fire yourself up the ladder to CEO. Right. Say there's 10 rungs on that ladder. six months of each.

So, and whatever, it's a 10 rung. So, five years, you should be basically just CEO. Yeah, so, that's the agreement that we had is, you every time that six month period, then I should get more home time. I should get more or less responsibility and be able to delegate more. so, building that infrastructure from the start and finding, you know, hiring incentives and, you know, the whole nine.

I basically built all the framework for it before I even bought the company. Yeah, it's interesting because I went kind of the opposite route. I went into an industry that I couldn't be an operator. ⁓ I fired myself immediately from being a plumber. And that's just one strategy. And I think my strategy was cash flow tightened on the real estate front. What's another skill that I have that

worse comes to worse, can still generate enough income. You have inherently less ⁓ risk there because you can always drive versus me. Like I can never be a plumber. Well, I mean not never, but it would take me five years to get there. And that was part of the plan was that if this driver walks out, then I can just take over and drive and I can still generate income until I can hire another one on. ⁓

And part of the due diligence process was me vetting him too, making sure that he's someone that I want to keep around and that he wants to stay around. And you get to know someone real well when you seven days straight in a truck with them. And just me bouncing some of my ideas off of him just for how to scale the business and seeing the type of mindset that he has, it lessens my risk significantly. But that is always a fallback is that

if I have a fleet of 10 drivers and I have a couple of drivers walk out, I can still jump in and operate. Yeah, you would think, I obviously, I guess the risk is different. But the larger you scale a company, the less one employee is detrimental to your company. Same as real estate. Yeah. If I have 10 plumbers, like I'm losing 10 % of my workforce, so there's one quits. If I have 100 plumbers and one quits, it's like...

Yeah, like we'll just move this around real quick, right? So it makes Obviously you have the Now you feed in hundred families versus ten families, know, gotta make sure revenue and all that stuff There's other other things to stressors or worries, but you lose the person about personability too It's like when you have a hundred employees. It's hard to know every one of their names You have ten you should know their families their kids names, you know, so yeah, so

You bought it and you closed yesterday. You pay cash for it or what's kind of the, how'd you structure this? No, so because of the purchase price and the, like I said, that percentage above the asset price that I was willing to pay, we worked on a seller financing deal. And so we worked it out where the, I made sure that before my initial offer that

the price that I was willing to offer him was one within relatively close to the price he was asking. ⁓ Because if someone's asking a million dollars for a company and you offer them $600,000 with seller financing, probably not gonna happen. But you offer them really good terms, and we've talked about this before, is if I pay you million dollars but I give you a dollar a day,

The terms matter more than the dollar. Yeah. And also you and I had this conversation. I don't remember if it this company in particular, but what is your opportunity costs loss by not buying it? You could sit here and be like, ah, it's $50,000 more than I want to and wait a whole nother year. And you just lost half a million dollars in opportunity costs. Right. So you just 10 X your loss. Yeah, that's so that's kind of my, my philosophy on it.

If you're going to get into real estate, if you're going to get into business, if you're going to get into investments, get into it now. Like yes, next year there could be a crash between now and 12 months from now and things will be cheaper, but you're already in the game. You're going to find another excuse later. So just get in the game now. If that's your plan, just bite the bullet. Don't let fear dictate what you're doing. And that's part of our new year's resolution.

We didn't sit down and say, you know, I'm going to go to the gym, you know, and all the normal stuff. I probably did sit up, but, uh, it was, we want to fail faster this year. Our goal is just to fail faster because last year we failed, you know, it's constant in business. We failed multiple times, but it was very slow failures and they take up a lot of time. Whereas if we fail faster, I, Cody Sanchez had this and I know we've talked about on the podcast before, but one of the most successful billionaires that, that

she was talking to said that, what separates you from all the people who didn't make it? And he said, you know, when an opportunity presents itself, ⁓ people will look at it, they'll evaluate it. They'll take it back to their, their board or their committee or whoever their sounding board is. And then they'll eventually decide to take action on it. By the time they decide to act on it, I've already bought it, made three mistakes and found a better way to do it. And so that was the

point of buying it this way. Granted, we added the protections. It doesn't mean be foolish and purchase things that are just gonna wanna belly up and set ourselves up for failure. But we bought something that is a size that we're comfortable with where we have adequate protections in place. We took enough time to make sure that it made sense while still generating income in the meantime. And if this doesn't come to fruition, we have the assets to be able to cover the difference. So I think that...

not biting off more than we can chew. And this is part of my men's ministry is I brought this problem, you know, a year ago to my men's ministry and just, which is basically 12 guys sitting in a room being your personal board of directors and making sure that you're looking at everything from a Christ, you know, lens, Christ driven lens. And one of the guys in my group, he said, you know, it's great that you have ambition to go after all these big deals, you know, these 10 figure deals or whatever. And

Ten figure that's pretty big deal ⁓ Ten million ten million dollar deals not ten figure ten million dollar deals. I'm like Kurt commas. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm trying to buy Apple. Yeah Ten million dollar deals, but You know what you were losing out on time you could have done ten smaller deals You could have done ten one million dollar deals in the time you tried to do this one ten million dollar deal and so I've been focusing on

staying small enough, long enough. Yeah. So we'll go off on a little tangent on this one. You have been on this pond. You'd have people like grant condom that preaches go buy a $400 plus a your first deal, you know, type thing. And you got other people that say start off with a single family home and work your way up. That's I'm more in the by single family home and work your way up type person because to this regard, like

Buy as large as you can where you feel comfortable. My first deal was a duplex and a four black bottom both the same day in a package. But I had a single family home under contract before that, that I got basically scared. So I was like my training will. So, you know, I got 90 % through that and backed out. Um, so you can count that as my, my first deal, if you will. Uh,

But then it gave me the confidence to go on the next deal. And so now like I'll go buy 50 unit money, you know, for me, I, don't know by raising money. That's one thing I haven't done, but not saying that I can or won't, but if I had the capital, like a 50 unit, whatever that come out to $5 million, roughly wouldn't in Omaha, $5 million wouldn't necessarily scare me. ⁓ but.

I would have never thought of doing that three years ago when I got into this. And I went the opposite route. I've raised money for every single deal I've ever done. But you did it with others that had already, like you had, like for me I needed training wheels. You had bumpers. Yeah, that's a good way putting it. And I chose the bumpers by, and,

it's a different form of leverage. Like your, your leverage was staying in that size that you were comfortable with and being able to take down deals on your own. I leverage the experience of other people to be able to take down bigger deals. You know, we went from buying a single family to a duplex to a 31 unit apartment building and in two years and through those bigger deals, like, yeah, they pay off really well when things are going right. But when things aren't going right, they go South really quickly. And so,

you know, and we've sold off a lot of our properties just to get back to a level of comfortability. And so us focusing on not just in the real estate sense, but in business in general, keeping more of the pie. And I've, you know, constantly heard, I'd rather have, you know, a ⁓ piece of the watermelon than, you know, a whole grape. I'm leaning towards the whole grape right now. Yeah. I mean, that's a totally different,

It's a tangent on a tangent, but yeah, would, ⁓ yeah. think there's some truth to that. I think, you know, bringing it back to the, to the company is finding something that's small enough to where it can have an impact for my family based on the time that I'm putting into it. Cause there is a time, time value of money, right? There's, there's a money value of my time. And so we've come to terms with the amount of sacrifice that's going to need to go into this and the protection that's going to provide our family.

And so while I'm still doing real estate deals, I'm still brokering, I'm still involved, the conversation is, is this a pivot or is it shiny object syndrome? And ⁓ actually part of this process was while we were working on closing this company, we hired a business coach and had a meeting with my business coach this morning. And I asked him that question. said, what can I use to discern whether I'm pivoting intentionally or chasing shiny object syndrome?

And the guidance that he gave back was, you know, along the lines of shiny object syndrome is the grass is greener, where pivoting is taking things that you already have your 10,000 hours in your expertise and finding ways to continue providing. he brought up, I had a post on LinkedIn that he mentioned, actually, we started the conversation, a little bit of a tangent. He's giving me a hard time because he's like, you know, I saw you had this really negative comment on that.

You just gotta take those and maybe do a whole post about someone commenting negatively and just saying something about my post was my priorities are God, wife, family, or God, wife, kids. It's like you had this comment on there that was saying, yeah, what about you? so yeah, I don't know who that jackass is, but you know. Is that what you said? No, I said that we're It was me for reference. Yes, yes. So, and I told him. The one time I got on LinkedIn last month. Yeah, yeah, and left a comment.

But it's funny cause he took it in a teaching moment and he's like, ⁓ you know, your priorities are God, wife, kids. And I, I've, that's what I've been preaching constantly to myself this year is, I'm looking at every opportunity. it serve those three areas? And if not, then it's not worth doing. And real estate yes, does serve those purposes, but it's not serving it fast enough. And so

looking at the skill sets that I already have. Like if I was to go open a bakery, that's shiny object because I have no skill set in that area. I can't cook for crap and it would just be a distraction that looks good on the outside. By leveraging what I already know and understand and accepting that there are things that I don't yet understand that I need to discover and uncover, I can take those 10,000 hours that I've already put into this industry and leverage it to serve Godwife kids.

And so he gave, it was a much more in depth conversation, but basically the guidance is it's a pivot. If you already have experience in that area and you can leverage it towards your ultimate values. And that's where we just came to terms is can the time that I need to put into this industry serve my values more than the industry that I'm currently in? Because the real estate market comes in waves. It'll come back. real properties will go back up in value that I mean,

they really dropped, but, um, the time that I'm weathering that storm and waiting for things to correct, is there a better use of my time? And sometimes that might be going to work at Walmart. There are definitely times when I've been, you know, out walking properties and putting 70, 80 hours a weekend to not make a commission and, know, go back and do it the next week. And then you would do the math when you finally get that commission. It's like, I, worked for less than minimum wage. I could have worked at Walmart and better serve my family. so.

⁓ granted, don't have any experience shelf stocking, so that would be a shiny object, not a pivot. And I just think that there's been multiple times over the course of my real estate career where I've, know, the, get $50,000 in commissions one month and then six months without it. During that six months, I've had to pivot and go plow snow or go, you know, do. Yeah, exactly. And just things that I already understand because those, the time spent on those are better serving my family than real estate. No. So.

Before we close this, July 4th, 2030, where's this company at? What are you doing top line? are how many employees unpack at all? Pull out the crystal ball, something we can go back and unpack. I am trying to actively fight my ambition. You're not trying. I am. What are you doing? I want to know what you're doing. I don't care what you're trying to do. What are you doing? So

Breaking down where I see this in five years is getting into semi loads brokerage brokerage on the trucking side is having a an oiled machine where I have people that are out getting loads and I have them selling those loads to other drivers, providing those to our drivers and I'm hands off. I have a CEO in place in five years that is taking care of everything. I'm chairman of the company or president, whatever you want to call it.

But I'm not involved in the day to day. I take the major business decisions. My full time job is M and A and that's what I can. I truly love the deal making of that and I see this as an assembly line. So if I've created all the infrastructure and I've also got the bumps and bruises where I'm not just some new guy buying into an industry trying to figure it out, I've done all the things that I'm asking my drivers to do.

That's where I see it in five years is I've scaled it. line? I don't know. In five years, I hope to have a hundred trucks. I hope. I want to know what you have. not asking you for hopes. This is a good exercise. I appreciate it. So in five years, I have a hundred trucks and they're bringing in $4,000 a week. So, and that's in gross revenue. So 4,000 a week is 220 per vehicle.

So that's 22 million. Let's see. said a hundred trucks. So yeah. So if each truck's bringing in 4,000, 4,000 a week, is public math, it's actually, it's actually two 16 times 52, 208 times a hundred. That's 20, 20 million. So about 21 million top line. So more importantly than that, my, my goal is not the top line revenue. want to employ a hundred. Well, that's a hundred drivers.

plus back office, plus all that stuff, by five years from now, I will have 500 employees. So it's funny kind of poking at you on this, but that's, I mean, not that I'm a coach or anything like that, but that's what coaches do. It's just a slight reframe, I hope to have. You're challenging the internal conversation. Correct, like you're, I mean, we're getting off on another tangent here, but by saying I hope to have ⁓ versus I will have, like you're just.

reframing things slightly. And it's, it's goes back to what are you telling yourself? Right. Like I hope to have gives you an out. I will have there's no like, just built the door and you framed it all in and it's like, you put yourself in the room and now you got to fight that bear. I think it was episode five or something like that, that we talked in depth about reticular activating system versus manifesting. And I really

do believe in that and I appreciate you calling that out because it's easier for you to call someone else out on it. Cause you don't realize that you're saying it. Like I've had people do the same thing to me. I remember first guy I ever did to me, name was Vadim. ⁓ name is Vadim and ⁓ call with him and he just called me out of the blue by calling out, like, you said this, this and this. was like, Whoa, like I didn't even realize I did it. Like it's just, it's just your binoculars. How we, how we talk.

But on the reticular activating system, if I, if I am conscious about saying things as more definite, then I'm going to look for opportunities that serve that. Yeah. I definitely appreciate that. So any last minute ⁓ things we left out of this? You know, I think that it's important to talk about it again with the shiny object and the pivoting that I feel like we just released one. Yeah. A couple episodes ago, I think.

people are constantly right now looking for the side hustle and I want the side hustle and when does the side hustle become the main hustle? And you know, when it's obviously we look at it as people going from the W-2 into real estate. When does real estate become the main hustle? Well, when it's providing more income than the main, potentially. I think that having multiple income streams can protect you from certain things, but being intentional with the time that you're putting into all of

Because if I have seven income streams that are bringing in a thousand dollars a month, can I just focus on one of those to bring in $7,000 a month and then build something that's self-sufficient, you know, or balance the time? There's, there's constant levers pulling there. is. And I the levers is perfect analogy because if you can focus on the 7,000 from one, you kind of let the other six fall off. There's more risk there versus, you know,

And that's where we found the risk is that we put all our eggs in that one basket, hoping for that, I said 7,000 a month, but hoping for those big payoffs. And when they don't pay off, then you're left in the dust. And it's not to say that you have to choose, should I put all seven into lever one or one into seven different levers? It could be two and five. It could be three, you know.

It just comes back to time at the Exactly. And everyone has their own scenario and listening to anyone, any idiots on YouTube saying that you should do it one way or another, it's a range. And we talk about this all the time, it's work life balancing. Is the balancing for me might be more of one than the other for you? might be more. It's even changing on that. It's funny. Like, I don't know how many episodes we're in, 45 roughly.

just my philosophy of doing this and like my thought on goals, how much it changed my thought on work life balance. Like as we have these conversations and I read more books and stuff like that, like my, my, stance changes on that. So like I can, I think we did an episode on work life balance. Like since we did that, like I think my viewpoints have started changing. Well, think this is a good reason to tune into the, to the next episode and we can go.

depth on how our perspectives have shifted, especially through the conversations that we've been having with people. We've talked to a lot of really great entrepreneurs. Both on and off camera. Absolutely. And that shifts my perspective on things. And other podcasts you watch, books you read. Absolutely. So yeah. We're growing up. We're growing up. becoming real boys and girls. ⁓ Thank you, Tanner, and best of luck. All right.