#029: Cutting Edge Firewood: Turning a Commodity into a Luxury

Matt Willis of Wizard of Ads interviews Leroy Hite, who built Cutting Edge Firewood from nothing into a 25-person luxury brand trusted by celebrities and prominent leaders by obsessing over details, product quality, customer service, and branding. Hite shares how growing up poor shaped his independence, how he overcame imposter syndrome, and why understanding customer expectations matters more than “expert” opinions, including lessons from using yard signs to drive brand awareness. He recounts early risks—winning a massive Kroger reverse-bid contract, a bankruptcy, quitting corporate work, maxing credit cards, and near-cashless moments—plus a pivotal acquisition that accelerated revenue and later reinvesting home-sale proceeds to reinvent local delivery. The conversation covers faith and identity, calculated risk versus gambling, learning through hardship, avoiding comfort, improving customer service culture, and hiring practices focused on real examples and motivations.

00:00 Hard Times Payoff
00:36 Meet Leroy Hite
01:11 Raising Entrepreneurial Kids
03:02 Growing Up Independent
03:59 Gratitude Over Entitlement
05:23 What Is Luxury Firewood
05:54 Luxury Is Details
08:10 Three Legged Luxury
10:03 Imposter Syndrome Lessons
13:20 Experts vs Real Customers
16:21 Marketing and Being Hated
17:20 Origin Story and Kroger Bid
21:05 Corporate Exit Leap of Faith
22:22 Debt Snowpocalypse Breakthrough
26:09 Reinventing Deliveries and Brand
26:59 Risk Debt and Resilience
33:36 Bankruptcy Without Fear
34:58 Hard Lessons in Business
36:27 Do Hard Things
37:34 Conscience Over Fear
39:39 Identity and Failure
42:27 Grit and Growth
46:00 Risk and Innovation
47:24 Luxury Customer Service
52:59 Culture and Standards
55:32 Hiring for Fit
01:01:42 Why Keep Building
01:04:03 Closing Reflections

Who should we interview next?

Send nominations to MattWillis@WizardOfAds.com

Transcript

Leroy Hite 0:00

The money I made is by far the least important thing that I got out of it. The reason I'm set up for success for my next venture is because of my reputation. It's because of the creativity. I can go sit in front of the river and think for two hours and literally come up with more ideas than I did for the first four years after I started cutting edge, like easy every time because I've been through hard times and it allowed me to get more creative. It gave me resilience, it gave me grit, it gave me stories.

Matt Willis 0:39

welcome to To a Million and Beyond. This is Matt Willis, partner with Wizard of Ads. Today I'm interviewing Leroy Het in a highly commoditized industry. Leroy created a luxury brand, loved by celebrities, presidents, and those who care about experiences around a fire. He started cutting edge firewood and built it from nothing into a 25 person organization. In this episode, we discuss finding a niche, taking risks, and growing through the most difficult challenges in life. I hope you enjoy, so I am curious as we get started, Leroy, your kids are old enough now. Do, have you picked up on any kind of entrepreneurial bent within them?

Leroy Hite 1:25

I actually think everybody can have an entrepreneurial bent. They just go in different ways. Second enjoys doing things her own way, which I think is a pretty strong entrepreneur sign. Just that you don't feel like you have to fit in with everybody else.

Matt Willis 1:48

So do you feel like that's just

Leroy Hite 1:50

just

Matt Willis 1:51

kind of been the way that she was since she was, you know, two years old as a defiant toddler?

Leroy Hite 1:55

I think there's a bit of both, but definitely wasn't so much a defiant toddler. I just don't discourage when she thinks differently and does things differently than other people, a lot of it is, I celebrate it and encourage things that some other parents would be like, oh my gosh, don't do that. And, really, mean, I have four daughters. The fourth one is more of the rebel and I think she's gonna be smart. But the older three are all smart, very much in their own ways. Like they all love reading. Two have read lore, the Rings and the space celly. They've actually read lo the Rings twice, 12-year-old and a 10-year-old. 8-year-old had just started the Hobbit a few days ago and is halfway through it and in the next, probably next week will start lo the rings, which is wild. So I think if

Matt Willis 2:52

Kidding.

Leroy Hite 2:53

you can be an entrepreneur for sure.

Matt Willis 2:56

Yeah. I'm curious, did like, one of the things that kind of struck me there was you talking about you actually encourage what oftentimes parents stereotypically suppress, and I'm curious if you had the same thing growing up.

Leroy Hite 3:11

up. I think I have a bit of independence that was helped by nurture and I'm one of eight kids, grew up pretty poor and in the nineties, and I would just wander around the neighborhood and go and do my own thing, play with friends, build forts. We couldn't afford a paintball gun, so me and my buddy who had a paintball gun would just take turns shooting each other. And so I think there was, and then growing up I, if I wanted something, I had to get a job. And my parents never paid for my car insurance. They didn't buy me a car. I paid for my own gas. And. So I had to, they gave me essentially room and board when I needed it and everything else, if I wanted it, I had to get it myself. So I think that created a bit of independence, so I never felt like I was leaning on somebody else, if that makes sense. Other than God.

Matt Willis 4:11

Curious, and this is definitely more personal than it is professional though.

Leroy Hite 4:16

Is

Matt Willis 4:16

did you ever feel a sense of bitterness towards your parents that they didn't give you more, that they didn't help more financially, that, like, do you have an entitled bone in your body even if it's not predominant?

Leroy Hite 4:32

No, I definitely didn't struggle. If anything, I think I'm slightly more thankful that I was,

Matt Willis 4:38

Hmm.

Leroy Hite 4:39

raised that way because yeah I don't have to have uber nice things. And when I do get something nice, I feel like I can enjoy it even more. And we all know this used to drink cheap coffee. Now I drink fancy coffee that, that comes in about once a week and you can taste the different berry flavors in it. And I drink it black and it's funny, I have, I also have an Nespresso. If I ever need a coffee real fast, I'll drink the Nespresso. And Nespresso used to be like, delicious to me. And so I, what used to bring me like enjoyment and pleasure and the flavor now tastes like dirt it's just because I raised the bar and and on things that I didn't grow up on, having these uber nice things, I can enjoy them more. So I try and at least keep that in the back of my head for my daughters as well.

Matt Willis 5:38

Oh, that's neat. So you built a business in the luxury firewood space.

Leroy Hite 5:46

Yeah, that's right.

Matt Willis 5:47

What is luxury firewood? For those that are used to buying packs of firewood from Albertsons or Safeway, What is luxury firewood?

Leroy Hite 5:57

Yeah, it's all inclusive. It's all the details really. what's luxury? It's what most people don't realize is its attention to all the details. tell a slightly crude story that I like to that I've liked to share for a long time, and I always told employees this was, are going to for your 10 year anniversary. 20 year anniversary or whatever, you're taking your wife to a five star resort and you show up. They know your name, they're in incredibly kind. They grab your luggage without you asking. You bypass the front counter. The hotel is just stunningly beautiful. They take you to your room. They have hor d'oeuvres and champagne and rose petals and the inside of the room's beautiful. You walk out on the balcony and you have a panorama view of the beach and it's just beautiful and everything's perfect. And then your wife walks into the restroom and there's a turd in the toilet. Everything's ruined. detail. It's no longer luxury. And that's what you're gonna remember. And they can't just walk in there and flush it and be like, fixed. No. They would have to do something huge in order to make you happy after that. And that is one detail. And really anything luxury is nailing all the details. And the thing is it could be one rude employee, it could be a hair in the bed, it could be you eat at the restaurant and the hotel and the food's. There's a gazillion different things that, that could be wrong. And for firewood, it was the firewood industry. When I entered it, half of all firewood sold in the United States was bug infested and the rest was rotten and had mushrooms growing out of it. So that was the standard. And ultimately when I left, we would put wood into a kiln or a big giant oven and dry it out so that it was fresh. It would look, every single log would look picture perfect. It would come in beautiful packaging. We would brand one log with our logo in each package, whether it was a rack or a box. And our boxes were compared to apple packaging. The racks were airbrushed and they, came with a canvas cover. Our logo. People told me they thought it was a high-end country club until they looked closer and then the level of customer service was just over the top. We really were passionate about give them experience. And then the last thing most people don't realize, I like to say luxury. Or the customer experience was what drove us. And it was made up of three things. It's a three legged stool. It's the product quality and our product quality. We had an internal mantra that every single package that shipped had to look good enough for a photo shoot or video shoot, or we would treat it like it was going to a celebrity.'cause sometimes it was, and when we were doing a photo shoot or shipping to a celebrity, there was no internal. Note that said, Hey, this is going to Terry Bradshaw who is a customer, so this better be perfect. No, he got the same thing that everybody else got, which was perfect. so the product, customer service had to be phenomenal. And if we ever did make a mistake, we made it where the customers happy, we made a mistake. then the last thing is branding, which is backed up by product quality and customer service. But branding is, it's both. It's the logo, it's the website it's the packaging, but it's also your reputation, what people say about you when you're not in the room. and those things combined made it into, so it was a status symbol and it made people feel really special and it made people trust us. So that's and. I should say because of all those things. Of course, you want good customer service, of course you want good branding.'cause why do people carry designer bags?'cause they love the brand. But the last thing, the what itself is because of how we handled it, it burned hotter, it burned longer, it started easier. It was of course bug free. It was cleaner, it was, it looked beautiful and it smoke significantly less. The aroma is incredible and the flicker of the flame was bigger. So you could light a fire and walk away and have a F and it would burn and have a great experience.

Matt Willis 10:33

That's incredible. Now I'm curious,'cause you mentioned you grew up

Leroy Hite 10:37

up

Matt Willis 10:37

fairly poor and then you created a business in the luxury space. Did you wrestle in the beginning with a sense of imposter syndrome?

Leroy Hite 10:48

syndrome?

Matt Willis 10:48

Was it challenging to

Leroy Hite 10:50

challenging to,

Matt Willis 10:51

what

Leroy Hite 10:52

what

Matt Willis 10:52

expectations those that would buy luxury fill in the blank would have that you weren't accustomed to growing up? Poor.

Leroy Hite 10:59

I think I have a bit of a gift in that I'm able to think like other people. So even though I grew up poor, I understood my target market early on really well. Now I've got a lot more experience and I'm even much better at it now than I used to be. But I, that I was very. Good at understanding them and their expectations, and even in many ways that, that they didn't even understand themselves. There's a lot of quotes from famous entrepreneurs from Henry Ford to Steve Jobs about customers won't that I like. Henry Ford and I'll paraphrase, basically said that if he had asked customers what they wanted, they would've said faster horses. Like they wouldn't have said cars because they couldn't imagine. And so I lo I love that is essentially. And a phenomenal entrepreneur kind of knows what his customers want before they do. So there's a bit of leading there. And on the other thing, imposter syndrome, I absolutely had that. And I've learned that's a weakness that you have to get rid of. I think there's a certain confidence in your God-given abilities that can be very healthy. And there was, I feel like it's going away, but in our culture amongst Christians where there was like this fake humility where you would go around being really quiet and act like you didn't have an, a strong opinion about anything. And it was like this passive aggressive'cause you really did want things and you really did have an opinions, but you didn't want people to think you did. And it was thought of of as humility. And I like to say that humility doubting yourself constantly and not having, self-confidence. And by self-confidence, I mean in the abilities that you have. If Michael Jordan in the nineties told somebody I'm the best basketball player in the world, not necessarily that he's not being humble.'cause technically it was true. Now it's hard to say that and not start getting to you. But would definitely not be humble would be thinking because he can put a ball through a rim. Better than anybody else in the world that made him more valuable than anybody else. And those are two different things. Him going out in the court and letting players pass the ball to him because he would hit that three pointer when there was half a second left on the board. That's confidence. And he's going for it. And that's a great thing. the it get to his head that he's better than other people because of that. And it's good in life, including in business to be very confident in your ability. So anyways, how that kind of worked for me is when my business started exploding in a good way. And growing really fast. I thought I had to bring in the business experts and and out. They were not particularly humble. They were very confident in their abilities because they had been successful in other businesses, but they didn't have the humility to come in and learn the business from the ground up. And one of the reasons I think that I was very successful is I was never too good to do anything in the business. When it was cold, weather was coming in and we would be overloaded with calls. Weatherman would say snow. I would jump on the phones and take orders. I would go out and train every delivery artist in at least once. And if we were behind on deliveries, I would go out in a truck and do deliveries. And I, when the warehouse had a hard time packaging a new product, I would go into the warehouse and work with them to perfect the packaging. And and so I, because of that, I had contact with the customers and I would interact with'em and. An example is in metro Atlanta. We put up all these yard signs around and millions of people saw them. And in metro Atlanta, we became a household name because of those. And when I brought in the quote unquote experts, they hated the yard signs because every once in a while somebody would complain, oh, they're putting up this yard sign all over town and it's basically littering the city. But that was like one out of a hundred people, whereas like 99 people that saw it were like, oh, that's nice. And they enjoyed it. And they liked it, and they would focus on the loud and they'd say Microsoft and Google and Walmart, they don't put up a yard sign. So obviously it's not a good idea. But millions of people saw it and it brought on millions of dollars of revenue and it was a very cheap way to have. Vast brand awareness and it made the city at large like us. And so it was obviously a phenomenal idea, but they disliked it just'cause it was out of the box. And when, so they saw the complaints online and. but they didn't talk to customers on the phone and hear them say, oh yeah, I heard about you because of the yard signs. Y'all are everywhere. And they didn't go out and do deliveries where the people were saying, oh yeah, I see your yard signs all over the place. I love it. What a great idea. And so our delivery artisans and the people and our customer service reps answering the phones and taking the orders, loved the yard signs, but the quote unquote experts did not. And so my experience, my mistake, my lesson learned there was yeah, a lot of times those, the business experts unless they have the humility to come in and learn the business from the ground up, they don't really know what they're talking about. And I put myself in that position because I had some doubts in my abilities.

Matt Willis 17:09

Interesting. One of the things that oftentimes deters business owners is the fear of

Leroy Hite 17:15

of

Matt Willis 17:16

what will they say? What will, not only my potential customer say, but also what will the competitors think as if that is important And what we oftentimes will tell people.

Leroy Hite 17:27

because

Matt Willis 17:28

You want to be loved, but you should also expect to be hated. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of both is indifference. And the one thing that kills businesses faster than anything is indifference. And so if there aren't at least a few people out there that hate you and hate what you're doing, hate how you're doing it, you're probably not mattering to anyone.

Leroy Hite 17:51

right? Preach. Yeah. So much marketing is lame and boring and they're trying to make everybody happy. Where if you can use marketing to make some people hate you, it works much better.

Matt Willis 18:23

Yeah. We're not trying to make people hate you, but it inevitably comes if you are saying things that actually matter. Right.

Leroy Hite 18:30

Yes.

Matt Willis 18:31

So, so let's back up a little bit. I'm curious when you started the business. Did it start as like, so my first job, right, was mowing lawns for neighbors and then it was umpiring and all of that. Like was that how cutting edge started was? You were young and it started as a hobby and then eventually you realized it could make money, or when you started it,

Leroy Hite 18:57

it,

Matt Willis 18:58

you have in mind this is going to provide for my family?

Leroy Hite 19:02

I went to Berry College and they had an entrepreneurial program where I was there and I was able to start a few different businesses and one of them was a different firewood company

Matt Willis 19:15

Mm-hmm.

Leroy Hite 19:15

actually did it a year in school and then a year after school

Matt Willis 19:19

Hmm.

Leroy Hite 19:19

off just seasoning, firewood, splitting it up and going and delivering it with a suburban and a trailer. And then about a year in I had two business partners or two guys I was doing it with. And it, the firewood industry was so backwards at the time that we decided to bid for Kroger for all their accounts for the southeast, which I think was like 2000 stores. And to bid on it, all we had to do was. We got this URL and then at the right time log in with our username and password and whoever put in the lowest number. So it was reverse bid, won the account including three college students with no equipment, no money. And so we won the account and leverage that to get and investors and loans and bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment and, started producing firewood. And it was wild. We were working like 120, 130 hours on had this firewood processor that in 2008 was$150,000. And it would take a 50 foot tree and turn it into firewood and it would break every day. And I had to learn how to fix it. It had a circular saw that was, that was 72 inches. Would spin, had teeth that were like like an inch and a half big, and just, and then it would, a log would drop down and then this ram would push it into a wedge that would split it. And and we did that for a year and then realized we couldn't keep up with Kroger. And then I sat down at my dining room table and just like within an hour, came up with two, invented two new ways to deliver firewood. And that just ki that kind of was the spark that, hey, this industry is so backwards. Everybody thinks that firewood is a commodity, but in reality it's an experience. If you. Burn firewood in your fireplace or your fire pit. You want the flicker of the flame, the ambiance, the aroma the crackle, the warmth and that experience people will pay a premium for. And so that kind of started my obsession. And after we had to shut that down, that business went bankrupt. And then I worked in corporate America for four years and that was in the back of my mind and wouldn't go away. I would pray dear God, please get this outta my head. But finally God brought it back.

Matt Willis 21:58

So you, how did the thought come to you that people would be willing to pay a premium for something that historically was only seen as a commodity?

Leroy Hite 22:11

Because people will pay a premium for a good experience on anything. experiences is really what anything premium is built on.

Matt Willis 22:22

Mm-hmm.

Leroy Hite 22:23

Is experience slash status, which cutting

Matt Willis 22:26

Yep.

Leroy Hite 22:26

or achieved

Matt Willis 22:28

So you did a four year hiatus in corporate and then.

Leroy Hite 22:33

and then

Matt Willis 22:35

The idea wouldn't get outta your head.

Leroy Hite 22:37

I had just gotten a new corporate job at Georgia Pacific, downtown Atlanta. Nice respectable corporate job So the firewood had been in my head and wouldn't go away, and I would see like an F three 50 drive by and I'd be like, Ooh, I wonder how much firewood I could fit in the back of that truck. Oh wait, that's such a weird thought. And my wife and I would joke that when my 93 Geo Prism with 266,000 miles on it broke down that I would buy a truck start the firewood business on the side while two months in my georis breaks down and it was gonna be like five grand to fix a car that I just sold for scrap metal. And that Saturday wife went to a baby shower and I woke up and I'd never done this before. Spur of the moment. I fasted the entire day, prayed, and by the end of the day I was like, okay, I actually think God's calling me to start this business, and so I'm gonna start it on the side. Wife came home, we talked about it, then I went into work on Monday and. me on the spot and I was like, oh, apparently this is gonna be full time. So got a loan for piece of equipment that I needed do deliveries at the time, and, then got a personal loan, bought a truck and a trailer flatbed, and maxed out as many credit cards as I could get my hands on. Which for like the first four years was like my line of credit. During the winter when I was flush with cash, I would pay off all the credit cards and and my credit score would go from 300 to 800, and then I'd get more credit cards, increase the limit on all of'em, and then during the summer they would all get maxed out and my credit score would go back to 300. Before the end of the year, but and that's how I, and the first four years were just brutal. Snowpocalypse happened that first year, took me eight and a half hours to drive home if y'all remember snowpocalypse made national news for anybody listening. And if you're in Atlanta, you definitely remember, but it that summer I had$30,000 to get me through in my bank account to get me through the summer. And I was like, yeah, that's enough. That'll get me through the summer. And, then my truck broke down. That cost$10,000 and then hot water heater went out at my house. And so I had$17,000 to get me through the summer married, have a newborn baby daughter have, I don't know, 150,$200,000 in credit card debt, plus a couple of loans and. I remember in July, from a Thursday to a Monday, I had$12 in my bank account. And I was in the fetal position being like, why, God, why did you force me into this firewood company? Went up at church and prayed with an elder and he was like, please help leave Roy's business, and let us not put you to the test. And while and then I went home, read over a sermon about putting God to the test. It was Israel out in the desert, and they'd seen God do amazing things, but they were hours away from seeing some of their loved ones die from thirst. And they were days away from any source of water. but they were doubting God's goodness. And I realized that's what I was doing. And I broke down and I wept. And next day. restaurant called and wanted to decorate with firewood. And at the time it was by far the largest order that I'd ever delivered. It was about$2,000. And while I was doing that delivery, guy walked up to me and said, Hey, I wanna sell you my firewood business. I was like we're fancy firewood. I don't know if your customers would buy from me. And then he said the name of his cust of his company and that he had a customer list of about 600 customers. And if you, they had been around for a while, so if you Googled firewood in metro Atlanta, they came up first and he said, I'll sell it to you for 45,000. I was like, you know what? I think this is a God thing. I have about$2,012 in my bank account. Not sure that'll make, get me to the fall, but I was like, yeah, you know what, let's work something out. I got a loan from basically like an online loan shark and bought him for, talked him down to$19,000 on September 1st. And it's wild because I had made a hundred thousand in revenue. They had made a hundred thousand in revenue and then combined we made like 375,000 in revenue. And what's also really cool is just from the customer list, not even their website, I made a million dollars in revenue before I exited the business. And basically the first four years of the business, like story after story, like that was like where it was at. And I was working a hundred, 110 hours. The that year after I bought them, I was gone. I would wake up at four. and get back at 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night. And my wife was at home with her oldest pregnant with our second and working 50 to 60 hours a week in the business, scheduling, deliveries and paying bills. And then in 2017, saw an opportunity. We were in another tight spot. Went to my wife and said, Hey babe. I know we have a 2-year-old girl at home and a three-year-old girl at home and you're eight months pregnant with our third wanting now be the perfect time to take our house, sell it, and invest it in the business and move into a rental. because I have the best wife in the world, a couple of weeks later, at 11:30 PM she gave birth to our third daughter and at 8:00 AM the next morning, I was meeting with the lawyers, closing on her house and taking the money. And I took that, invested in the business and reinvented how they do local deliveries. Redid branding, took the average delivery time from two hours to about 15 minutes per delivery and really just recreated how to do local firewood company.

Matt Willis 28:38

That's incredible. So a number of times you've mentioned floating debt or taking risks, and while I understand that's part of entrepreneurism, have you developed frameworks behind what risk is worth taking? What's the difference between foolhardy and a calculated risk?

Leroy Hite 29:03

Yes and no. I think a really good framework is, are you, and most people don't have this framework, and I think most people have the framework wrong. Most people look at what I've done and they compare it to gambling. and it couldn't be further apart trying and losing how most people gamble. Now you can actually be really good at poker not the same thing as gambling, if that makes sense. Like a professional, you can be a professional poker player and make bank, and that's a completely different than just going to Vegas and betting it all. Or even worse playing the what's the yeah, exactly yeah, going and buying trying to win the the big one. There's no rationale. There's, it's just chance and that's a very different thing than betting it all and learning your lesson. I actually think that. More people should go out and file for bankruptcy. And it's a harsh truth. Some of it is, I think it would strengthen your faith. it would make you more resilient. I think it would make you more creative and you would learn a lot of lessons through those hardships and it would make it so when you go and try the next thing, really, when you go into a really hard thing, I, you have two outcomes. You quit and it makes you weaker or you overcome it you go and try the next thing and you take all your lessons into that next thing. So in all reality, I think we have a pretty backwards view of debt. I think going out and trying big crazy ideas and falling on your face if you can pick yourself up and and depend on God. And even, even in the Bible it talks about going through hardship and God using that to test your faith and that giving us hope,'cause it proves that our faith is true. And in the business world, I think it's good to put yourself in impossible situations that the most successful entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs that quote unquote burn the ships. There's in ancient days, generals would. Literally burned ships after they took their soldiers over the ocean and it was because you can be successful or you can die. Those are the two answers. There is no retreat. And that made them fight twice as hard. If you have a safety net, you're gonna go back to it. There were times that if somebody had offered to just pay off the debt, I would've given them my business because I was so desperate and that changed me. It both. my faith in God and made me depend on him more, and it also made me more resilient and it made me creative. Most people think creative is like something that, like some people are born with it and some people aren't. Creativity is actually going in and doing something that's really hard and it. forces you to think outside the box. And you think if you want to, if you wanna write songs, it's not like you're like, I'm not creative in, in that way. So I can't just go and write a song. If you wanna write a song, go and play a guitar, go and play a piano for thousands of hours. And then it allows you to get creative. And it's the same thing in painting, and it's the same thing in business. And so putting yourself in those hard spots it, it like opens up a door that you never knew existed. And because you have great stories, it gives you and coming outta cutting edge firewood. The money I made is by far the least important thing that I got out of it. The reason I'm set up for success for my next venture is because of my reputation. It's because of the creativity. I can go sit in front of the river and think for two hours and literally come up with more ideas than I did for the first four years after I started cutting edge, like easy every time because I've been through hard times and it allowed me to get more creative. It gave me resilience, it gave me grit, it gave me stories. I can go on LinkedIn and tell stories, and hundreds of thousands of people sometimes will see the post because it's a great story. If I hadn't have gone through those hard times, if I played it safe, then that would've never happened. An example of kind of what you I was in a, I was in bible studies and I remember one time coming in and when I would just be o honest and open people and I would say, yeah, I'm a quarter million in debt and I don't really know how I'm gonna pay my bills. And people would look at me. I like say that, like I'd said, I'm on crack and I'm having an affair and I'm okay with it. That's how they would look at me.

Matt Willis 34:31

Sure,

Leroy Hite 34:32

me da Dave Ramsey books and I.

Matt Willis 34:34

of course.

Leroy Hite 34:35

and, but the crazy thing is even if the business hadn't have been successful, I still would've gotten the grit. I still would've gotten the stories. I still would've had a reputation and I would've learned a ton of stuff, which sets you up for, success for the next thing. And so I actually think people need to go out and take bigger risks and I heard a sermon. If you are rich and a multi-millionaire, you could give all your money away and God is still going to accomplish in your life what he was going to accomplish in your life. Nothing that you do is going to stop that. And so much we want hold onto things when in reality like we need to open up our hands and go and take risks and and do wild, crazy things that the world thinks at first is stupid and unwise. But yeah, I don't think we need to play it safe with debt and we could do a whole podcast on that.

Matt Willis 35:34

That would be a very interesting topic. I am curious related to that, you mentioned a few minutes ago that you actually think more people should declare bankruptcy. By that, do you mean more people should throw in the towel? Because that seems kind of counter what you were saying, or is it more, more people are trying to make fetch happen on a

Leroy Hite 35:59

Uhhuh.

Matt Willis 36:00

business that's not going anywhere?

Leroy Hite 36:02

Yep.

Matt Willis 36:02

Help us understand what you mean by that.

Leroy Hite 36:05

I think it's more people should put themselves in impossible situations so that if they don't work out, you have to file for bankruptcy, if that makes sense.

Matt Willis 36:16

Okay. In other words, people shouldn't fear bankruptcy so much.

Leroy Hite 36:20

And I like to say this would be different in different times in, in different parts of the world. Like it would be in the United States, we are blessed to live here and, we have to file for bankruptcy here. It hurts your credit score and it's very inconvenient. But that doesn't mean that like you're homeless and you're out in the streets. If you live in Pakistan and you cannot pay your debts like they will sell you into slavery. And so if you fell at a business, you could be selling your family into indentured servitude for generations. That's a much higher stakes. Here in the United States, you try big, grand things and if you fail, learn a lot of lessons and you can go on and try it again in a different area. The key is, now that being said it's two sides. I want, I don't want to act like that's not hard. Business is hard and money is hard and you'll have people stab you in the back and you have scars that you'll carry for the rest of your life. I had a business mentor that attempted essentially like a hostile takeover of the business and we survived, but that was rough'cause I trusted the guy. And when my fourth daughter was born, he was like trying to take over and I came back and had to fight that off after coming out of the hospital. and, but because of that, I learned a lot of lessons and I apply them to the next thing. And so really does, people need to go out and take bigger risks and not play it safe. And it's, and yes, it's painful. But everything worth having in life is on the other side of hard. There is nothing easy in life that is worth it. if you do win the lottery, guess what? It ruins your life like essentially a hundred percent of the time. you ruin all your relationships is the worst part. But even like it's something like 90% of lottery winners file for bankruptcy. That's not the kind of bankruptcy you should file for it. It should be because you went out and tried to do something hard and you think of if you want six pack abs, you gotta diet, you gotta lift weights, and that's hard and it's uncomfortable and that's something pretty shallow. You want to have a healthy marriage. There's a lot of hardship in marriage, but you have a good, healthy marriage, and that's incredible. You want to have kids kids are hard. You lose sleep, you stress out, you gotta provide for them. They rebel, they talk back to you, and and they're expensive. But guess what? You have a phenomenal relationship with your kid and there's nothing else like it. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, it is hard. And if you're a Christian, take up your cross and die to yourself. Last time I checked, dying to yourself is not comfortable. It is very hard. And so go out and do hard things. And on the other side of that is, is the most fulfilling things in life. yes, that hardship could be bankruptcy. and no, you shouldn't aim for bankruptcy. It's you're trying to go out and do something crazy, something incredible. also from a Christian world view, something I think a lot of people need to know is we know if our conscience tells us not to do something, we shouldn't do it. what I think a lot of people don't realize is if your conscience is telling you to do something. You should do it. And I think holds people back from listening to their conscience. People tell me all the time, oh yeah, I got this business idea. Oh yeah, I got this business idea. But if you sit down and talk with them and spend and you follow up with them, what 90 whatever percent of them is fear holds them back. And is never a good reason not to do something. In fact, I like to say the you should fear nothing but God. And people are always like what about heights? You should fear heights, right? And I'm like, if you're standing on the edge of a cliff, the worst thing you can do is freak out. and I understand why you freak out. That's different. But if you can stand on the edge of a cliff and have zero fear like you're safe. If you swoon and lose your balance, you very easily could fall off and die. And the next thing like what if you're like in the wild and a lion comes up to you? Shouldn't you fear the lion? I'm like, no, you should respect the lion. never go near the lion because you respect it. But if you find yourself in a situation where you're near a wild animal, the worst thing you can do is freak out and run from it. And the same thing is true in bus and it holds us back from doing so many things. And then you go to the Bible and guess what the number one most often stated command is in scripture? Probably.

Matt Willis 41:29

Do not fear.

Leroy Hite 41:30

exactly. And you look at like the parable of the talent. The guys that did a good job in the story, they go out and they take risks and they accomplish great things. The one that was the evil servant that was cast out with the one talent, they went and buried it, the safe thing. They didn't go out and take risks for the

Matt Willis 41:54

Yeah, that's a great word. I'm very curious to hear your perspective on this.

Leroy Hite 42:00

Think

Matt Willis 42:00

one of the things that keeps business owners playing small or even whether or not to start a business is the fear of what their potential failure would mean, would say about their identity. They would, you know, take out a loan and then go bankrupt and be like, I thought God told me to do this. I felt like I heard his voice in my conscience. And now it's all fallen apart. And what does that say about God?

Leroy Hite 42:34

God?

Matt Willis 42:34

What does that say about me? I'm incompetent. I should have never done this. God, who are you? Where were you at? You should have fill in the blank. So my question for you is with how open to taking on risk you are, how do you control your perception of your identity and who God is to you?

Leroy Hite 43:03

Yeah. Much easier said than done, but my identity is in Christ.

Matt Willis 43:09

Mm-hmm.

Leroy Hite 43:10

is not in my money or what other people think about me. Like I said, much more easier said than done. And like I said, I spent time on the fetal position saying, why God, did you do this? And,

Matt Willis 43:22

What would you tell yourself? Looking back, you're in the fetal position. You're looking back. What would you tell yourself?

Leroy Hite 43:28

Would tell myself the same thing, that essentially God came in and told me always at the right time is fear. Not stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord. will fight for you. You have only to be still. And there's this dual and life we like things to be. We know things aren't easy, but we do expect them to be. Simple. Things aren't easy and things aren't simple. And one of those things are like, you're like, do I try my hardest or do I let God do it? And the answer is yes. Like we have to do, give it our all but know at the same time that ultimately it is God that makes it happen. And so it is going out and giving you your, all learning your lessons. I love telling my daughters like, if you can learn from your own mistakes, you're ahead of the vast majority of people now try and learn from other people's mistakes. But there are a lot of things in life that we have to learn ourselves.

Matt Willis 44:34

For sure.

Leroy Hite 44:34

lessons, experiences that we have to have before we can learn them. But, and it also it's incredible that like humans really once we're mature, like past 16, we really only learn from pain.

Matt Willis 44:49

Hm.

Leroy Hite 44:50

so I, the thing is. And this quote I should by you might know it by it Teddy Roosevelt about in the arena, and I'll paraphrase. It's basically saying it's not the guy in the stands that's calling you a loser. It's the guy that's down in the arena that's sweating, that's taking the risks. there is a bit of you can take pride in that, that you're not one of the guys up in the stands pointing at somebody else saying, what a loser. When you've accomplished nothing, you're in the arena. And even if you fail trying. there's a bit of you can take pride in that. If you try a business and everybody thought it was stupid and you tried and you put time and effort and you had to file for bankruptcy, you can take pride that you were the guy in the arena trying that What would be a failure is then you're like, okay, God doesn't want me to be an entrepreneur anymore.'cause I tried that and I've heard people say that, I'm like, what kind of bar is that? You tried something one time let's think about this for a second. Who in history tried something and achieved it on the first time? Like, how many different light bulbs did he

Matt Willis 46:08

Thousand.

Leroy Hite 46:09

out,

Matt Willis 46:09

yeah.

Leroy Hite 46:10

Not yeah, we never get something the first time. Like Michael Jordan didn't pop out being Michael Jordan in college. Yeah, he was a good player in high school. He didn't even make the the the the varsity team in high school and in college he was a good player, but he went in world renowned. It was when he got when he went pro. And you look at anybody, that's the case is grit and the ability to keep going is what separates the people that are successful from the ones that aren't. And yeah, it's risky and yeah, it's scary and yes, you spend time in the fetal position, but it toughens you up and it makes you better for the next time.

Matt Willis 46:54

That's incredible. Love that. Love the growth mindset. The don't be afraid of pain, but rather run to it and see what you can learn. Like so often people, I don't know, once they get outta school, or even frankly before I feel like they feel like I have learned what I need to know. My goal now is to remain comfortable or at least as comfortable as possible, which means like you, that was interesting you saying people tend to only learn through pain. I hadn't heard that before, but I think that you're probably onto something and kind of explains why we are so averse to learning new things in the present, at least experiential learning, the kind that sticks. We'll watch YouTube videos on how to fill in the blank, use AI or improve your golf swing all day. But how often are we actually going back to Michael Jordan? How often are we getting to the court and actually doing the reps iterating on those?

Leroy Hite 47:54

Yes. And I have another saying that I like that with comfort is if you're comfortable, you're not growing. not growing, you're dying. And and it, like you look at anything and it, it's just true. If you don't lift weights, if you're sitting on your couch. dying, your muscles are getting weaker. We know this. And by the way, safe is a, in this instance, is a synonym of comfortable. So if you're playing it safe, you're guaranteeing that you're becoming mediocre and it's tough. This is life. It ain't fair. You're either getting better or you're getting worse. You're getting stronger or you're getting weaker. And you look at any business is, and you can look at businesses, they're either growing and they're taking risks. Or they're getting weaker. And by the way, there is a, when you, the entrepreneurs out there, of there's risk management, of course. Like you have a million dollar budget, you don't bet the million dollars on something different every month. Yeah, okay, Google Ads, I spend it. I'm gonna spend$950,000 on Google Ads. Or maybe it's on Google Ads and Meta and maybe a couple of other things. But you should have a$20,000 a month budget or whatever it is where you're trying something new every month to find the next thing. And if that works, then you scale it up and you think outside the box. Like I did yard signs, or something else that actually keeps you alive. If you're just like holding on to Google ads or SEO We all know that eventually, now AI's coming and disrupting those things and now the people that we're playing it safer oh my gosh, what am I gonna do? And or somebody else comes in and disrupts them. That's why companies get disrupted is'cause they were playing it safe.

Matt Willis 49:58

I think right now is a very timely season amidst the AI disruption, catching more people off guard than those that feel ready for it. One of the things I'm curious about, last I checked every single business on their website claims to offer exceptional customer experience or exceptional customer service. And that's one of those unsubstantiated claims that everyone says, and therefore it doesn't actually mean anything to consumers.

Leroy Hite 50:28

Yep.

Matt Willis 50:29

when I look at your business, you're in the luxury space, which means you don't have the luxury of offering anything other than a quality customer experience. And so from your perspective, what do most businesses miss? Those that are saying, we offer exceptional customer service. Like what are the opportunities that they're forgetting about that they're not factoring in?

Leroy Hite 50:56

Since COVID, like almost all businesses are awful at customer service. There are exceptions, but they are rare and few and far between, which just makes the opportunity and I think ultimately it actually comes down to. you and the culture and our value we put on humans, at cutting edge. It was the customer experience that drove us. We would celebrate the wins and we would always take care of the anytime we messed up. Internally, we said if if we made a mistake, we didn't make it right. We made the customer happy, we made a mistake, which means it hurt us. And so we would learn our lesson. And I learned that at Chick-fil-A because when I was in high school, they had a timer on the screen when we were bagging the food. And if it was green, you were good. If it was yellow, you needed to speed up. If it hit red, we would start handing out coupons for free meals to everybody and. and I would hear customers be like, oh, I wish you would take longer all the time. I and that kind of lodged in my head that make them happy. We made a mistake. And it's wild. The opportunities, like Walker Hayes, who's a country music star our product without me knowing, and I didn't even, I'm not a country music fan and so I didn't even know who he was. But on Instagram, he did a post and said, y'all, this is the George Strait of Firewood. he had such a great experience, Terry Bradshaw did a Facebook and an Instagram post and sent us the video so we could use it in marketing in an unboxing video because he liked the experience so much. The co-founder of Kamado Joe reached out and congratulated me and he became a friend. The co-founder of the Ritz Carlton reached out'cause he liked our customer service so much. And a couple of months ago I was on stage with him the chairman of the board for the largest defense contractor. A few years back wrote a six paragraph email telling me how much he loved the product and how it changed his life. These are busy people. They don't do this. And every day we would have people write us a text message telling us how awesome our products was or how great our customer service was. And then we would celebrate those things. We would be like, oh yeah, Todd did a phenomenal job on customer service. Here's a customer that called us and told us, and we would put it in our Slack channel and we would all celebrate it and celebrate him. here's a five star review on Google. These people are incredible. They've changed the game and we would reward it and encourage it. And and then I go and my wife bought. I bought a hundred thousand dollars Yukon GMC, supposed to be more of a premium brand, a hundred thousand dollars product. And within 20,000 miles I've had to replace the brakes twice. And so it should be a warranty issue. And I go and take it and say, Hey, I need a vehicle that can hold my family, which is six people. I don't care if you gimme a minivan, but I need to carry six people. And they say, yeah, we don't offer that and this is gonna take us two weeks to fix. And I'm like, oh yeah. And the first thing the guy said is, I said, this is the second time I've had to replace the brake, so there's something wrong with it. And he says the first thing I wanna ask you is how are you driving it? So it's my

Matt Willis 54:35

Yeah. Blaming the customer.

Leroy Hite 54:37

Yes. And so I buy a hundred thousand dollars product that's a premium product and it's my fault. And. And they're like, what do you want me to do? I'm like, I want you to give me a car that'll hold my family. Yeah. We don't offer that. and I'm like, I very kindly, I can't wait for you guys to go outta business. I won't Tesla to take over so that I don't have to deal with a company like you anymore.

Matt Willis 55:02

Yep.

Leroy Hite 55:03

and Ford's the same way. It's not just gm. I,'cause I had a really nice truck and I will never buy a Ford vehicle again'cause I have terrible I had at and t we had to gig speed and I for two years. It never got faster than 170 megabits per second

Matt Willis 55:26

Yep.

Leroy Hite 55:27

different people out and they would always say, oh yeah, the signal's weak. I'll fix that. And each one of them said it. And finally I'm like, okay, starlink. Guess what? It's the same price and it's the same speed except it doesn't go down and they have better customer service. So I swap, I'll never go back to

Matt Willis 55:44

Yep.

Leroy Hite 55:45

it's only gonna get faster because they're gonna put more satellites up.

Matt Willis 55:48

Yep.

Leroy Hite 55:49

I think

Matt Willis 55:50

What?

Leroy Hite 55:50

don't care. And they think you're an inconvenience is ultimately

Matt Willis 55:55

Yep. Yeah. I mean, that's a reoccurring theme that we see with businesses that have aspir most, you know, these are our core values. They're aspirational. Most of the time it's, this is what we know that we should do, but they're not actually ingrained in our culture.'cause most leaders, I don't think, know how to embed things into culture. And so the most surefire way to have a value, in fact, I would argue it's not a value unless this one criteria is the case. And that is that you are willing to sacrifice for it. And so when, when you're saying we are a luxury firewood company, You're calling yourself luxury because you are being meticulous in every last detail. And so often people throw on their website, throw on their trucks. If they're like a service-based business, you know, we offer exceptional customer service, but there's no skin in the game. And it's saying that sort of thing is utterly and completely worthless until it costs you, whether it costs you an extra Chick-fil-A meal, or whether that looks like, as you put it so brilliantly, making them happy that you made a mistake. Like that's when you know it's an actual value for your business.

Leroy Hite 57:18

That's right. Yeah. And the standard, the standards are not what you put on the wall. The standards are what you actually enforce. And if someone can cuss out a customer and not be fired, then that's your standards. If somebody can ship out a product that's defunct and not and nothing happens, that's your standard. And we sometimes had employees that we had hired that would come in and they would be like, you care more about the customers than you dare do about us. Which was not true, but that was their rationalization for why they could have a lower standard than what our actual standards were now. They weren't the right people. We had to get them off the bus. But, and in reality, like we're not a daycare. This isn't a camp. You're not here to just have fun. We are a team and we win when we give the customer a good experience and that actually when it was the right people would unite us and made the team stronger. And yeah, you can't just come here and just take a salary. Like you have to buy into the business and help it be, you have to provide value because that's what businesses do. If we don't make money then and provide value, then we go out of business and we go away. Why

Matt Willis 58:38

I am curious about your learnings on the topic of hiring people that will be a good cultural fit and offer the kind of customer experience that you're looking for. One of the key challenges that,

Leroy Hite 58:52

that

Matt Willis 58:53

I mean, a lot of my clients, and therefore I assume broader a lot of business owners run into is they'll hire people and then there'll

Leroy Hite 59:01

then

Matt Willis 59:02

be things like,

Leroy Hite 59:03

like

Matt Willis 59:04

oh, well, I was looking for a company that you guys are too structured. In other words, you guys have SOPs, policies, procedures, all of that.

Leroy Hite 59:12

that

Matt Willis 59:13

You guys actually require us to work eight hours instead of offering an hourly smoke break on top of a 15 minute break, break on top of an hour long lunch break. Like,

Leroy Hite 59:24

Like,

Matt Willis 59:25

I'm good.

Leroy Hite 59:25

Like

Matt Willis 59:26

are there specific, whether it's questions or approaches to hiring

Leroy Hite 59:31

hiring

Matt Willis 59:32

have found to help sve out the people that are not going to be a good fit and only let through the people that are going to offer the type of customer experience and therefore be a good cultural fit that you would expect.

Leroy Hite 59:47

Yeah, I hiring people is hard and there are people that are great at interviewing. I think to a degree, some of those will always slip through.

Matt Willis 59:58

Mm-hmm.

Leroy Hite 59:59

I think there's two sides of it. One that I've learned from Horse Schulze, the co-founder of the Rights Carlton is, people only learn in hard times and while they're trying to get a job and they just got a new job, is actually a really good time to teach them things. And usually when people are new, you're like handing'em out, like your policy and your SOPs let's set up your bank account when that is the prime time to be teaching them new things. And you only, I don't know what the window is. I don't know if anybody knows exactly what it is, but it's a short window. Like you should be creating new habits for them at the beginning and changing them. That's part of it. The other thing is, I do think it's very important when you're going through is asking'em more questions around times they've done things like, tell me about a time had a customer yell at you. did you handle it? Why did you handle it that way? If they had done this, would you have done things differently? Why did you handle it that way? And you go deeper into experiential and how people act and their motivations and I think going deeper instead of just do you work hard? Yes, I work hard. Okay. Give me an example of a time where

Matt Willis 1:01:23

Relative.

Leroy Hite 1:01:23

the cards were stacked against you and you persevered and they're telling something and you're like, okay what drove you? What kept, why did you stay two hours after y'all closed and you didn't get paid any extra, or you were only getting paid hourly or whatever what drove you? And you can go and a lot of times you can be like, what happened? Most people are like. Why did you leave that job? And they'll be like it just wasn't a good fit. And you're like, okay, great. next question instead of, why wasn't it a good fit? And they'll be like my

Matt Willis 1:01:59

Boss.

Leroy Hite 1:01:59

like me. Why did your boss not like you? And just'cause your previous boss? Now that's a yellow flag. It's not a red flag. You wanna dig into that? And then,'cause I, I've interviewed people that, that were pretty good at interviewing. And I'm like, you, why'd you leave your last job? My, my boss was a jerk. And then I and like that was what it really was. And then I'm like, okay, your job before that, they're talking about it, it's like positive, it's a good thing. And then I'm like, why? Ultimately did you leave? And I get to down to the bottom of it and they're like, yeah, that guy was a jerk too. when there's two in a row, I'm like, oh, so if I hire you after I fire you, I'm gonna be the third jerk because this isn't gonna work out, so no, I'm not gonna hire you. And so it's really more it digging deeper

Matt Willis 1:02:49

Recognition.

Leroy Hite 1:02:50

out, yeah, finding out motivations. And I've, and the higher are exceptions, and this is a saying and sayings just have a lot of truth. And no, it's not the gospel truth. But higher quickly, sorry. Hire slowly. And fire quickly. I have been in situations where I was desperate and that kid up and down that he would be fine working on Saturdays, I had red flags. But I was desperate'cause I didn't have anybody elses to hire. And so I hired him guess what? First time he worked over 50 hours during the busy season in the firewood business, he quit. Even though he promised me he would not quit during the busy season. And the kid even went to my church. So like I knew his parents wild thing is if he had made it till summer, he would work like a 20 hour week, all summer long. So overall, he would probably be working an average of less than 40 hours a week, but during the busy season it was 50 to 60 hours a week. but he got paid well for it too. but no, he quit right when we needed him and it was rough and it hurt, but I learned my lesson. Yeah, don't hire that person even when you're desperate because, and what's also wild is so many times there was somebody, when it comes to slowly and fire quickly, there were times where I was like, I can't lose this person. We're in the middle of busy season. I can't even though they're a cancer on the culture. And then they would quit and everybody would like. There'd be this big sigh of relief, we would get better and everybody would enjoy their job better. And I was like, why didn't I just fire them? And we would've been so much better off without them. And so that, that whole get the right person in, but when you get the right people, reward them and keep them around and realize how much value they're actually adding because yeah, turnover can be painful even in the day of, an age that we live in.

Matt Willis 1:05:05

Definitely. I'm curious now that you've built and sold a business, and I mean that business grew to over 25 employees, not including contractors, et cetera. I'm guessing you're pretty set, and yet you're already looking into a new venture. You don't have to get into what that new venture is, but I'm curious, what is it that keeps you hungry for more?

Leroy Hite 1:05:31

Yeah, I took some time off. Time with family was great, but after like initial 30 days, I tried to start playing like some video games. And you actually accomplish things, is so much more fulfilling than just scrolling on social media or playing a video game. Feels empty unless you accomplish things. And on the family side, like I'm more proud in what I've accomplished with my family than with the business, but as but we are made to work and accomplish things. And we all know this it used to be like the American dream to retire young. And not that there's necessarily something wrong with retiring, but we've, everybody knows you retire and then you just start withering away and you

Matt Willis 1:06:23

Yep.

Leroy Hite 1:06:24

Whereas if you have something that is motivating that you can work towards, that you can accomplish, like we were made to work. There was work in the Garden of Eden and there will be work in eternity. work is a good thing. It is a fulfilling thing. It is a fun thing. It psyches you up. We all love accomplishing things and so that's my motivation to keep going.

Matt Willis 1:06:53

I feel like it feeds into an earlier comment that you made about, and I loved this line. You said, out of all of the things I got outta sell or of out of growing and selling my business, the finances was the least important. It was the connections, it was the character development. It was anyway. It was the resilience, it was all of that, it sounds like what you're looking for in the next venture is you've had a little bit of a break opportunity to pour into your family and you're hungry to continue growing and be able to contribute more into society.

Leroy Hite 1:07:31

Exactly. Yep. And

Matt Willis 1:07:34

my friend.

Leroy Hite 1:07:34

know, it it goes back to everything worth having is on the other side of hard, and that includes comfort. Like when you are just sitting around comfortable achieving nothing, you feel lazy and it doesn't feel achieved. Whereas when you put in a lot of time and effort and then you go on vacation and it's luxurious and you can enjoy it on another level then if you are just sitting there all the time. and so yeah, it makes it sweeter.

Matt Willis 1:08:04

It does. My friend. Thank you. It has been such a joy connecting with you, your a wealth of wisdom and

Leroy Hite 1:08:10

Thanks.

Matt Willis 1:08:11

just have a lot of admiration for your ability to create an industry, grow a business, and it's just been such a gift getting to connect with you. So thank you, Leroy. Appreciate you.

Leroy Hite 1:08:23

Thank you for having me, Matt.

Matt Willis 1:08:24

Absolutely.