Transcript:

Michael (00:47.086)

I'm Michael Palumbos from Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. And we have a fantastic episode of the Family Biz Show for you today. We're joined by Dylan Rexing from the Rexing Companies. 

 

Michael (01:16.984)

Welcome, Dylan. 

 

Dylan (01:18.38)

Hello, how are you? 

 

Michael (01:19.746)

Good, good, good, good. So we have a tradition where we ask people, how did you enter the family business? There's always a story, regardless of whether you think it's important or not. We just like to share, because there's so many different ways of how people enter the family business. What was your story? 

 

Dylan (01:41.464)

So I'm actually the fifth generation in our family business and we're a little different. So we're mainly, you know, we started as an agricultural family and we farmed and all that fun stuff, but now we're in transportation. And so that I'm actually generation one in that, but generation five starting back to farming and we still farm today. So how did I get started in that? You know, I'd like to say, 

 

Dylan (02:08.782)

It's probably one those things that somebody tapped on my shoulder and told me I had to do it, which actually wasn't the case, but sort of had that feeling in my head. I suppose I went to college and got a degree in accounting. And so I just sort of saw the family business needed me. My dad was very good at, you know, fixing things and working on equipment and growing crops, but book work was not something he was that he excelled in. 

 

Michael (02:26.401)

Okay. 

 

Dylan (02:38.56)

And so in college, I would come back, you know, after, after hours and at breaks and those kinds of things and help with the family business. so, you know, how did I get there? I just, I sort of saw it as something that I needed to do rather than, you know, wanted to, suppose. And I've enjoyed it. It's the backbone of our economy, it's family owned businesses all over the country. And so I'm glad to support our family and sort of our vision for the future. 

 

Michael (03:08.91)

Love it, love it. So walk us through kind of the history, your fifth generation in a family business, but now you've, know, skirted off to do something different. But my gut says that it's not, you know, I think you alluded to the fact that it's not totally removed from the farming. So walk us through, you know, kind of that, the big picture of what did G1, you know, generation one, what did they start with? And then, 

 

Michael (03:37.418)

In recent generations, what was the migration to, you Rex and companies? 

 

Dylan (03:42.062)

So ultimately I think it, and I don't want to discount agriculture and the important part that it plays in our business and in the economy as a whole, but ultimately I think I sort of woke up one morning and noticed that everything we did in some way, shape or form, we didn't have any real control over, right? So like we would go out and we would plant crops and mother nature would determine how much rain we got. that, you know, what our yields were and. 

 

Dylan (04:10.848)

And, you know, overlying markets and other parts of the country in the world would determine what that market price for those products were. And so I just sort of woke up and said, you know, I'd like to have a little bit of control over my destiny. and so I think that's, that's sort of what started my shift towards, you know, doing something outside of farming. But again, it's still, it's still the backbone of our, you know, our business. still, you'll see me in a tractor, you know, every spring for about six weeks. 

 

Dylan (04:40.526)

We have 90 employees today and my folks, I'm not so sure what they think. Maybe I should write them an email or tell them, but you'll see me kind of disappear out of the office for four to six weeks, sometimes a little longer. So it's still, again, it's still really important to our business, but we've just sort of shifted away. Maybe not shifted away is the right way to say it, just had a more of a laser focus on transportation and logistics. And it's kind of interesting. 

 

Dylan (05:10.606)

Um, so we, no longer have chickens, um, but we were as part of our ag business, we were in the egg business. So we had 120,000 laying hens. Okay. And we produced eggs and sold them all over the country. Um, and that led us into, um, our next business, um, which was, uh, uh, cold storage. So we call that business Evansville cold storage today and we store. 

 

Dylan (05:36.494)

almost exclusively, food products, frozen, frozen food products, you know, without naming customer names, I'm not sure if they want, they want that stuff to be known out there, but probably the largest larger, chicken producer in the, in the country. the largest or number one or number two pasta sauce company in the country. And so, and just different kinds of food ingredients that we store, and that business led us into trucking. So. 

 

Dylan (06:06.432)

If you have a warehouse and your customers want to bring your stuff to store, it sort of makes logical sense that you want to take it a step further and say, Hey, you know, I'd love to store your products, but what if I delivered them for you too? And so then we got into two trucking companies, one where we have trucks and drivers and we, you know, deliver products all over the country. And that company is called JR's expedited freight. 

 

Dylan (06:35.022)

Interesting little tidbit for that. just picked up this year, we're pulling Indiana University's football trailer. So we were in Maryland this week, this past weekend, didn't exactly end the way we wanted it to. And then they play Michigan October 14th, I think. So we'll be going to that. But that's just a cool little piece that we do. 

 

Michael (06:42.574)

Okay. 

 

Michael (06:57.486)

That's fun. That's very fun. when we talk about the family, how many family members today are in farming? How many family members are in the transportation logistics business? 

 

Dylan (07:10.67)

So the farming is really only three of us, which happens to be the ownership structure as well, myself, my father, my uncle. So we do all of the farming. Occasionally we'll have someone help us haul grain or something, but for the most part, there's really just three of us that farm and we farm, we own about 3000 acres, little over 3000 acres and we farm ourselves, I don't know, 14, 1500 acres of that. 

 

Dylan (07:38.87)

some of the we lease out. So in the farming portion, there's three of us in the logistics and warehousing business. The same three folks are involved. I sort of run the day to day. My father and uncle are involved as well. Our CFO is happens to be my mother. So there's a fourth and then my aunt helps. Well, I've got two aunts that help actually. 

 

Michael (07:59.95)

Okay. 

 

Dylan (08:06.808)

kind of part-time basis, kind of as needed. So four and a half maybe. 

 

Michael (08:13.676)

No, no, no, I love it. And that's, it's helpful because my gut says, and tell me if I'm on track here, when it came to the farming side of things, the ag side of things, did you guys, was some of the shipping and some of the storage, that that was your own product, yes? 

 

Dylan (08:31.566)

Yeah, that's sort of how it started. So the building we operate in today, I've got my background on, or I typically, I talk to folks, I just turn my camera and show you, because I'm in the corner and you can see it. But, you know, the building we purchased is 134,000 square feet, holds about 12,000 power positions. And we bought it with the purpose of storing our own egg products in this building, which we did and still do. We don't produce eggs anymore, but we still are involved in that business. yeah, to go back to your question, we did. 

 

Dylan (09:01.624)

purchase this building with the intent of our own agriculture products. 

 

Michael (09:06.894)

I think it's when we look at running any business, and I think the reason why I bring this up is because I want people to hear this is when you look at all of the choke points and all of the delivery points and the value points for the customer along the way, if you can take some of the pain out of those different arenas, those different areas, there's value. 

 

Michael (09:36.174)

to the client for you to do that for the customer. to me, it's a natural fit for you to be in the logistics coming from the farming background. It's just like one of those things that it's like, we're just taking that, you know, the customer life cycle there and the delivery cycle and looking at all of the different pieces in there and saying, what can we do better than the competition? And maybe we just insert ourselves into that arena. So good on you for doing that. 

 

Dylan (10:05.836)

I mean, we sort of tell our customers and our employees, our stakeholders that we're really a one-stop shop in a lot of ways. I think you'll find that if you do some research on the ag space, you'll find that a lot of farmers own trucking companies. They have these trucks that sit around and they're, you know, they're sort of used to haul grain in the fall and maybe, you know, the spring or whenever they might sell that product. But so they're using it. I don't know. 

 

Dylan (10:31.626)

eight to 10 weeks a year. And so they're paying for the truck to maintenance it and license it and all of those things. And so I think it's pretty natural for a farming operation to also own a trucking business. 

 

Michael (10:43.564)

Right? What's it like for you, you know, working with the family? what, give us the, give us the highlights. What do you love about it? What are the, what are the, you know, the things that are easy? What are the things that are tough? And, and when we talk about the tough things for you guys, and again, we're not looking for, you know, throwing mud or anything like that, but I'm just kind of like, how do you navigate the differences in decision-making? 

 

Michael (11:12.162)

When there are, you know, when it does get tough, how does that work for you guys? 

 

Dylan (11:16.77)

You know, so I was waiting for that question. probably the most, probably the most interesting and probably what folks want to hear the most about. know, working in a family business is rewarding and challenging, kind of all in the same breath. You know, what's interesting about us is my mother was married to my father. They're no longer together, but she works in our business because she's very valuable. 

 

Dylan (11:42.478)

She's got lots of talents and she came with came with 30 years of banking experience and she's brought a lot of things to the team. So that the creates its own its own challenge, but it's worked out really good. She started in October last year and she's she's what they say. You want to hire a player. She's an A player. So I mean, I would say, you know, it brings some challenge, but it also brings it also brings some rewarding pieces as well. 

 

Dylan (12:09.504)

At the end of the day, I get to talk to my mother and my father. And at some point, my sister every day of the the work week, it brings an interesting dynamic to the family table at Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter. you kind of, you know, I think I'm safe saying that family business owners never take the business hat off. 

 

Dylan (12:38.786)

You know, when I go home, unfortunately, I'm still thinking about business and what we could do to get better and grow and those kinds of things. I think it's awesome having the opportunity to have family members work in our business and work with us side by side and help us grow what we're doing here in our community and do some cool things. 

 

Michael (13:04.782)

How long is the trucking company, the storage company been in business? How long ago did you start? 

 

Dylan (13:15.05)

So the warehouse, Evans and Cold Storage, we bought the building in 2012. And so shortly after there, it probably sat empty for a little bit while we were trying to get things up and going. so it was in 2012. The brokerage, the Frank Brokerage Company, which has the chunk of our dollars in revenue, we started that business from scratch in 2015. 

 

Dylan (13:42.19)

Um, you know, we've been on the fastest growing list of companies, um, several years in a row. Um, thank you. Um, the trucking company where we own trucks and, know, have drivers and we pulled up the football trailer for IU. We purchased that business in December of 2017. Um, it was a small, I mean, we're still fairly small, but it was a eight or nine truck fleet. 

 

Michael (13:49.934)

Congrats. 

 

Dylan (14:09.678)

when we purchased it, maybe 10-ish. And we're right around 30 trucks today, which is kind of a nice sweet spot for management and those kinds of things. And then, yeah, mean, farming, the other entity of ours we've been involved in for five generations. 

 

Michael (14:28.878)

Okay. Walk through the employee setup again. So when we look at 2012, how many employees did you have then? What's the growth trajectory been since 2012? So you're at that 10, 11 year mark now. What does that look like? 

 

Dylan (14:51.01)

So 2012, we probably had... 

 

Dylan (14:55.854)

before the Cold Swords business, probably had five employees plus the three family members. from 2012 to now, five employees to 90 will probably be over 100 by the end of the year, as long as a couple of things go right. So we've had a lot of growth, challenging growth at times, going from five employees to nearly 100 is not necessarily an easy task. 

 

Michael (15:07.106)

Yeah. 

 

Dylan (15:25.838)

I think I probably share a similar personality that I kind of want to do everything myself and, you know, have trouble sort of handing things out. I'm sure I've listened to some of your shows and that's come up several times. It's kind of a normal piece of our sort of personality. But yeah, I mean, having quite a bit of growth over the years. 

 

Michael (15:46.126)

That's great. Our new website is coming out. It was supposed to be out months ago, just long story, but the tagline is, you tired of being the CEO? Are you ready to be the CEO? And it is probably, I think that's one of the most challenging pieces is putting on that head site. I'm so good at getting stuff done. 

 

Dylan (15:59.096)

Yeah. 

 

Michael (16:14.546)

I know that if I do it, it's done right. How do I build that team out? So for you, couldn't, you wouldn't be at 90 employees if you hadn't done some of those things. What were some of the, what, know, how did growing yourself as a CEO, as the, you know, the head of the company, what were some of the things that worked for you along the way? 

 

Dylan (16:37.976)

So I'm gonna beat up on myself to answer this question. So before I beat up on myself, I tell folks in my office that I'm the chief fire extinguisher. Like all I do all day long is sort of walk around and put out fires. So I'll add that to the CEO of all, right? So I'll beat up on myself to kind of answer like how I, you the journey of how we got here. You know, I'm not the oldest CEO in the. 

 

Dylan (17:04.301)

And on the planet or in my city or in the state or, or whatever, right. I'm 31 years old, so I still have a lot to learn. I sort of believe kind of early going that, um, that the employees were kind of here to serve, serve the business. Um, and I quickly learned that it's really the other way around. That if you want a thriving business that can grow in your community and have an impact that, that really my job is, is to serve my employees. 

 

Michael (17:33.814)

Yeah. 

 

Dylan (17:33.934)

Yeah. 

 

Dylan (17:34.314)

Give them the tools that they need to be successful. And so it's, kind of, my answer is kind of cheesy. And I think it's probably the answer you get a lot, which is the reason we grew is because of our employees. but I just, I wanted to share that journey for me to, recognize that I didn't always think it was that way, but truly it's all about hiring good people. and we're still on that journey. we'll always be on that journey. Our, you know, our role is to always. 

 

Dylan (18:03.086)

My role is to always look for folks and make sure they go, you know, we have the folks in the right seats and they're, you know, incentivized correctly and they've, you know, they've got the right, they're going in the right direction. But I will also tell you there was an organization that I highly recommend called Vistage. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. 

 

Michael (18:23.576)

I'm a Vistage member. Okay. 

 

Dylan (18:26.19)

So I'm going on this October will be two years that I've been in Vistage. I think it's helped sort of my leadership journey. You know, the really neat thing about Vistage is, I'm speaking to a Vistage member, it's, I'm not telling you that you don't know, but. 

 

Michael (18:47.374)

For people that are listening, it's A-OK. It's helpful. 

 

Dylan (18:51.854)

I it's important that no matter what business you're in, whether it's a family business or you just started it, so it hasn't had that legacy yet, or maybe you work for a quote unquote, you work for the man. Vistage, what you'll find is every different business and any different history of that, we all deal with the same problems. Whether you're, again, whether you're a trucking company like us or. 

 

Dylan (19:20.846)

I don't know, maybe you produce some widget or you're a CPA firm or law firm or whatever. We all struggle with the same sorts of things. And so what I think is really interesting about that group is we'll have, you know, kind at the end of our meeting after we've had a speaker or what have you and had some of those things, we'll talk about some of our challenges and our challenges are all similar. And so. 

 

Dylan (19:46.094)

One of the folks in our group will be talking about something and I'm sitting down with my piece of paper and I'm jotting down notes about what we can do from our organization to make ourselves better. And I think to tie back to your original question, I think that's important to building a good conducive team that's sort of rowing the right direction. 

 

Michael (20:04.332)

Yeah, I'll share with you, you said it's because we have good people and I will challenge that just a tiny bit. It's because you made the decision to make people matter. That's why you're successful. You made a decision to worry about culture. So when I'm working with CEOs in any company, it doesn't matter that my two things for the CEO are you need to be doing head of company activities. And the two major ones, 

 

Michael (20:33.44)

is you're in charge of culture. Nobody owns culture but you. You're 100 % accountable. What you expect from people and what you allow matters, right? And then the other one is strategy. so it's like, if you just as the CEO, if you own those two things, that does not mean that you're not gonna have to sweep the floor some days. It does not mean that you don't get dirty and dive in with different things, but you're accountable and you own those two things and you did it. 

 

Michael (21:03.662)

You 

 

Dylan (21:03.982)

Dylan (21:04.683)

No, I will say we're not perfect. So we have we have had we've hired quite a few folks over the last several years and every month we have a new hire meeting. I found that we were adding five and six people a month and I didn't know their names. I didn't know what made them tick. And so every one of these we have it in the morning and we'll provide coffee and whatever. And I tell everyone that comes into our organization like we're not perfect. We're going to stub our toe. 

 

Dylan (21:33.484)

We're still fairly new in the world of business. I'm young. I don't know all of the answers. So come see us if we stub our toe. And I think sometimes just recognizing, you know, I like to call leopard spots, recognizing what you're good at and what you're not good at and just giving folks the voice to come talk to you. And again, we're not perfect, but. 

 

Dylan (21:59.598)

I challenge our group, I challenge my leadership team all the time to what can we do to make things better. 

 

Michael (22:06.434)

And so here's a question I've never asked a CEO before, but you seem like you'd be up for the task. Can you talk about without incriminating names or any, putting names in there, but a time when you stubbed your toe and how you, it was brought to your attention that you stubbed your toe and how did you go about dealing with it and rectifying it? 

 

Dylan (22:15.992)

name 

 

Dylan (22:30.418)

I think to get back to the family business aspect, think the beauty of businesses of our size is we can sort of make decisions like this, right? And to get back to where did I stub my toe, I would say we probably at times make decisions too quick. We don't need to down and line item decisions like what, if we do this, how is that going to affect this person? so there are... 

 

Dylan (22:58.154)

several examples that come to my brain where we did something, we acted too rashly. Maybe we only heard one side of the story with one particular employee and we sort of already had it in our brain that that person was right and we didn't take the other person's perspective into account. so without giving any names, I think that's something that we struggle with. And I think the answer to how you solve that is 

 

Dylan (23:28.142)

is you sit down with such individual and say, listen, we missed this. We should have asked for your input or we should have done X, or Z and we didn't. Here we are. How do we get through that? 

 

Michael (23:43.532)

Yeah. Looking at your company, you know, with 90 people, have you developed a leadership team yet that is aside from the ownership team? 

 

Dylan (23:56.396)

Yeah, we're still like so we're still on that journey to get everybody in the right place. We've made a lot of management changes here in the last call at six months. We've had a new warehouse manager, a new CFO. We just changed some of our sales folks to sales leader to make sure we have, you know, everybody focused on what they need to be focused on. So yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the difference between a company like ours and let's say, without naming any names, 

 

Dylan (24:25.518)

behemoth monster company. You we don't have layers and layers and layers of managers, which is a good thing in a lot of ways, right? You know, our overhead's not the same as some of those companies, but at the same time, like if we have somebody that decides to move, right? So like our previous CFO moved south, it wasn't a bad relationship. just, you you move back south. And so we had to... 

 

Dylan (24:54.264)

We had to fill that void. was nice enough to sort of manage the finance and accounting team remotely for some time. It wasn't the most ideal for him or us, but it worked. But I think, you know, ultimately our bench is not as deep as some folks just based on our size. And so we are, we do have a good leadership team. Probably one of the better ones that we've had. feel pretty good about everybody. But at the end of the day, our, 

 

Dylan (25:21.742)

you know, our bench is not as deep and we're always looking for, you know, if we've got a few business ideas in the back of our brain that are, we think are going to be pretty powerful and send a great message. And, and hopefully our customer base will agree with that. and if that happens, you know, we'll have some, another good chunk of growth. And with that comes, you know, more good folks that want to row in the same direction. 

 

Michael (25:48.046)

Great. Are you familiar with the book, either Scaling Up or EOS or Metronomics? You guys probably talk about those things, you know, at Vistage. Do you utilize any of those business operating systems today or? 

 

Dylan (26:03.64)

So I've read EOS, I've read the whole thing and then some time has gone by and I've started to reread it. I'm not, know, one of the, you know, back to my leopard spots, I probably don't read as much as I should. I read a ton, just I don't necessarily read books, but I read, you know, different articles and kind of what's going on in the world. So we have not implemented those yet. I know of both of those, you know, VISTA's community talks pretty highly of EOS and there's several in our. 

 

Dylan (26:32.406)

and our group that use it and there's several that use scaling up as well. So I'm familiar with them, but we don't necessarily use them today. 

 

Michael (26:40.526)

So I'm a metronomics coach, is kind of, so scaling up, all of these organizations all came from scaling up. most people don't know that. So Gina Wickman was a scaling up coach and Shannon Susco was a scaling up coach. And then they said, wait a minute, Gina went one way to take it and simplify things and. 

 

Michael (27:03.342)

And Shannon took it a different way and said, I want to use all the EOS and scaling up pieces, but I really want to dig in and help people with their strategy. Cause that's what, you know, she loves. So we don't give away, you you don't lose any of the other pieces. my point is, just came as you were talking, here's what came up for me. Key, you know, inside of scaling up, they talk about making sure you have a function accountability chart. They call it the face. And so it's, 

 

Michael (27:33.068)

breaking down the org chart instead of by position and title, name and title, it's what are the different functions. Shannon took it a little deeper, which I really got a lot out of, and she creates the key function flow map. And so think about how your business makes money and making sure that there's somebody accountable in each of the areas of how you make money. And every business is mostly the same. There's a couple of little nuances. 

 

Michael (28:03.022)

but there's marketing, how do we attract new customers, right? Then you've got the sales, how do we take them from being a qualified prospect to, you know, we land them and they're in-house. Then we have operations and the inside of operations might be a little different for each company, but at the end of the day, operations is operations. And then you've got finance. So as you're building the leadership team to go through... 

 

Michael (28:27.63)

and say, I have somebody in each of those seats? I know there's other seats. There might be customer success. It might be a seat that's, you know, if you don't have the right customer success, that's part of how you make money. That might need to be in there. might, you know, I know contractors don't, know, and construction industry doesn't like to call it sales. It's the estimating department. You know, so there is little nuances, but by flowing that out to see how you make money, there's so many things. 

 

Michael (28:56.994)

that you can add to your business. And if you have somebody that's accountable and you can't be accountable for all four of them, otherwise you're back to that. I've got that extinguisher and where do I go with this thing? I love that analogy. That's so good. But I'm going to, give you credit for the first three times. That's my rule. Give you credit for three times. Then it becomes mine. 

 

Dylan (29:11.33)

to use it. 

 

Dylan (29:20.558)

Yeah, I think those books provide a lot of value and it's just something that we need to, it's part of our journey and we need to get, we need to get there. 

 

Michael (29:27.33)

Yeah, I would, I'll send you a couple of books. And I think, you know, I feel that Shannon just has taken it to the nth degree. And, and I don't want to, I tell people all the time, whether it's Vistage, EO, YPO, you know, Metronomics, EOS, or Scaling Up, whatever you decide to utilize Gravitas is another organization out there. 

 

Michael (29:56.44)

Whatever you decide to use, you really live it and do it, you're going to get a lot out of it. So I'm a big fan of all of them. I'm just biased because of where I land. 

 

Dylan (30:08.738)

Yeah, I think it sounds like you're pretty knowledgeable. The way I understand it is scaling up is a bit more specific. and EOS is maybe a little more holistic from the higher level. Is that a fair assessment? 

 

Michael (30:20.074)

What I would say is, and I'm just speaking generalities, I'm not an EOS coach, but from what I've seen, EOS does a really great job on execution and getting the team aligned and getting stuff done. And so most businesses, and matter of fact, I'm giving a talk at the University of Buffalo Wednesday, and we're talking about the fact that, you 

 

Michael (30:49.006)

88 % of businesses in the U.S., out of the 33 million plus businesses in the U.S., 88%, is it 80, 93%, sorry, do not make a million dollars or more of revenue. So 93 % of businesses in the U.S. are under a million dollars. You go a million to $10 million, that's 8 % of, 91%, then it goes 8%, and then 1 % of businesses throughout the U.S. 

 

Michael (31:18.518)

are making $10 million or more of revenue. And now I know based on your business model and those things, I know you guys have surpassed that number, but the reason why, where EOS shines is that in my opinion and from what I've seen is that $10 million and under to get me through those levels, it's awesome. Where, you you still don't want to lose that stuff. So metronomics and scaling up. 

 

Michael (31:47.458)

they start to take the strategy piece and take it to the next level so that you can start to be thinking about, you your strategy of saying, okay, let's take the farming industry that we're in and how do I make and have a little bit more control over it? You did exactly the right pieces of putting that together. And what you just said earlier was I have some ideas and I hope my customers like it. I would just say that like the strategy work through Metronomics and know, 

 

Michael (32:17.486)

The different book, Three Hag Way is one of Shannon's books that really digs into the strategy side. I would do that work before I say, let's pull the plug and make this happen. Cause you know, so I can make sure that what I do when I do it, that we've done the research and we, and we know this is going to be a, a game changer and a winner for us. 

 

Dylan (32:38.348)

And don't, Mike, I don't know your audience necessarily, but I'll just sort of say this out loud. When we started our, you know, sort of our, our journey of business outside of agriculture, I felt like we still work really hard. So I don't want to discount that, but I really felt like we were scratching and clawing to get every, you know, kind of every opportunity for those folks that are listening. would tell you that eventually the work pays off. 

 

Dylan (33:06.902)

And there was kind of this moment and I can't exactly pinpoint when that moment happened, but at some point that the pendulum sort of shifts and your business starts working for you, not you working for your business. And, and I think all of those things that those pieces of making sure you have the right leadership team and you're, you're, have some, you know, EOS or scaling up or some of those pieces to talk, to make your business really churn. 

 

Dylan (33:36.086)

I think you have to remember at the end of day that your hard work will pay off and to get to that 1 % over 10 million number, at least what we see or what I see, I don't know that, you know, we're just trying to solve problems that others know are there, but they just maybe don't focus on one of the business ideas that's in the back of my brain. won't go into specifics of it, but it's, it's, it's finance related in the trucking space. 

 

Dylan (34:06.272)

And ultimately all we have to do to serve our customer is listen to them and do what their feedback is, right? Where some of these companies are just so large. You have to have structures in place to do things. But ultimately, sometimes just, know, the reason big businesses are scared of folks like ours is because our boat turns so much faster than theirs. 

 

Dylan (34:35.565)

It's just kind of doing the little things, right? 

 

Michael (34:38.508)

Yeah, no, I agree. You I had three things that went through my head as you were speaking. So I got a slow. I know I got no, that's good. 

 

Michael (34:53.262)

I just lost it. I apologize. It happens. I'm not perfect either. That's what it was. It was COVID hit and I just wanted to serve clients and that's how this podcast started. And you talked about just your client. I was clawing, you know, this podcast, most podcasts don't survive three months, six months. They, you know, people get into it they start doing it and they find out that it's a lot harder to put together a podcast than they thought it was. 

 

Michael (35:22.67)

And I got lucky, I hired the right person. had one of my kids friends had gone to school to be a producer for, you know, the marketing company. And, you know, they wanted to get into that, that industry. And she was having a hard time. was around that 2020 times. So nobody was hiring her position. I came in and said, produce, create the systems to produce my podcast. 

 

Michael (35:51.566)

She created Excel spreadsheets. You're gonna need this. I mean, stuff that I had never would have thought about. And here we are into our 90th episode, 91, 92, coming up on our 100th episode. And for me, it's simple. Christina came in, took over for the person who set everything up for her. And Christina's like, oh, I love my job. And I'm so glad that her name was Sierra, that Sierra came in, Sierra Morabito, who's... 

 

Michael (36:19.776)

now working for some big Hollywood firm and does social media. I mean, she's just a rock star out there. Did a great job and really set us up for success. And the fact that we didn't stop our podcast is one of the top five rated family business podcasts in the world. So that's kind of cool. Just basically exactly what you're saying. It just aligns so perfectly. It's don't stop. 

 

Michael (36:49.898)

you just keep doing it and eventually it will work its way out as long as you keep doing and solving problems creatively for the people that you serve. 

 

Dylan (37:01.664)

Well, you know, I would, you know, I will congratulate you on I haven't had the opportunity to listen to 90 podcasts, but I have listened to several of them and you guys do provide value. And I think, you know, I'm our chamber of commerce in Evansville. We rebranded three organizations and called it EREP. So I'm from Evansville, Indiana. So it stands for Evansville representation. And one of the committees I'm on is the family business alliance. 

 

Dylan (37:28.022)

And so we have quarterly meetings where we sit down and try and do what you're doing in a podcast, but do it in a setting where people are kind of in person. And, it's not the easiest thing to keep running. So congratulations for now. Almost, almost a hundred episodes. I think you guys do a great job and provide content that folks want to listen to. 

 

Michael (37:47.886)

Yeah, and it's these, but it's these stories that are real. It's, know, we've, when we started, it was a lot of consultants and we still, we have a consultant in here and there, but we're much more focused on the families and the businesses because it's real and people, think other people just, it matters to them and it's more, oh yeah, yeah, I'm going through the same thing and they need to hear that. So, cool. 

 

Michael (38:15.022)

Top let's do this. So a couple of things. One, if you ever need some help at Evansville, let me know. I'm happy to, you know, pop on a zoom or, know, I, I, planes are pretty easy. So you can still be in person if you ever needed it. Um, but then the other thing I would throw, what is your top three priorities right now? If you looking out the next 12 months and you're sitting down with your coach and they, know, he or she says, all right, Dylan. 

 

Michael (38:44.972)

Top three priorities next 12 months, what are they? 

 

Dylan (38:48.194)

You know, I, tough question. Thank you for that. I struggle with vision because I have all of these things sort of coming at me and I just see so much opportunity out there, you unlike what you hear on television and the media that we're sort of kind of heading down and the world's collapsing. I think there's so much opportunity out there. And I do think there are some economical challenge that we're going through. So, you know, one of the things that 

 

Dylan (39:17.758)

That is a priority for me over the next 12 months is making sure that we're in a position our balance sheet, our financials are in a position to take advantage of what's coming because it's coming. Yes. I'm not going to take credit for it, you know, but it's it's out there and there is I'm talking about sort of both sides, the world's not falling apart. But there are some some financial challenges that are coming when interest rates went from three percent to eight percent in a couple of months. 

 

Dylan (39:47.458)

there's going to be some things happen. you know, kind of number one for me is just making sure that we're in a good financial position to take it, to take advantage of what opportunities may present themselves. Number two, sort of builds on number one. Again, it's a little cheesy, but making sure that we have the right people in place to take advantage of said opportunities when they come. And number three, maybe just again, doing the little things right. 

 

Dylan (40:16.546)

You know, one of the things that I picked up from, listening to podcasts like yours and Vistage and whatever, it's just, you know, writing a little anniversary card to all of our employees. it takes, it takes not a lot of time. takes some time out of my day, but it's important. And it's just a little things that people, people appreciate. we, we have a, sort of a. 

 

Dylan (40:42.158)

a sales competition inside our organization for hitting, you know, making certain phone calls and emails and those sorts of things. And one of the things that I implemented was writing handwritten cards to customers and potential customers, because no one does that. And going back to what I said earlier, it's the little things that matter. And if you're going to write a card, so you're going to take the time out of your day to sit down and focus on writing a little thank you to someone you just met with, Hey, I really appreciate. 

 

Dylan (41:11.982)

You know your time. I really enjoyed listening to X, Y, and Z. I'd love to learn more. It's that simple. Again, it's just a little thing and there's a million little things that you need to do right, but and maybe that should have been the first thing I said. So the last thing should have been number one instead of number three, but it's just again. It's just doing the little things right. 

 

Michael (41:33.922)

I know I think you're on the right track because, know, it's hard to summarize those again. Number one was finance. 

 

Dylan (41:43.054)

Financials. Make 

 

Dylan (41:44.831)

it clear you're in a good position. 

 

Michael (41:46.85)

Number 

 

Michael (41:47.09)

two is the team and number three is all the little things. Okay. So watch this and I'm going to agree with you. We use a tool with clients and customers called the cash conversion cycle and cashflow story. And just making sure right now I'm an agreement with you. The leading economic indicators started firing way early. We're ahead of it. And so it's like, 

 

Michael (42:15.592)

it's a recession is coming, a slowdown is happening. What that turns into, whether it's soft or hard, we don't know. I think that because it's fired so early that a lot of the big companies have tightened up their balance sheets already. They're ready to go. They're looking for the opportunity. So what you're talking about is exactly right. Tighten up our books, make sure that we've got cash to deploy because there will be opportunities out there for the, especially 

 

Michael (42:45.302)

some of your competitors and some of the people that are in industries that you might want to get into, they might not have tightened up their balance sheet and they might not have the cash to deploy. remember, Warren Buffett says it best, when others are fearful, be greedy. When others are greedy, be fearful, right? And so that's a good balance. 

 

Dylan (43:05.314)

Take advantage when there's blood in the streets. It's one of my favorite things he does. 

 

Michael (43:09.182)

Yeah. And then the people side of things and creating that culture and making sure that you've got that, you can never stop doing that. You'll never, that will pay dividends over and over again. I had one of my favorite stories as a company that I was coaching that went from $10 million of revenue to $40 million of revenue, much faster than they ever should have. And in a good way, it was, it was just like much faster than normal. How's that? 

 

Michael (43:37.486)

Their secret, they did not implement all of the things that we coached. They implemented one thing that we coached, which was build an A player team around you and let them run. And they had an opportunity. They were always hiring people. If they saw an A player, they didn't care whether they had a spot or not. They got them on the team and then figured out where that person would go, he or she. 

 

Michael (44:04.11)

So they could do things and then they would just let them run. And so that was a really cool thing. If you looked at their team, you know, in 2014 versus 2023, it's night and day, the kinds of things that they were able to put together. So that was, that was fun to watch. And then the third thing, all the little things, me, oh my Dylan, is huge. And I'm going to give you a book that I think will be helpful. 

 

Michael (44:31.436)

because if you focus on all the little things, there's so many, there's so many little things that you could be focused on. Now you run around with that fire extinguisher again, kind of a thing. Joey Coleman, who's been on the show and it's an episode you might want to listen to. Maybe it's, you don't even have to listen, grab the book, but I do highly recommend the book is kind of a workbook, but how to never lose a customer again. And what he talks about is creating systems and processes all the way along the value chain. 

 

Michael (45:01.3)

all the way along all the contact points so that you throw in the little things and they're built in for you. And he also does it for never losing employee again. And so those little pieces of saying, okay, we're gonna build a process for making those things happen. It's all good. 

 

Dylan (45:19.116)

I just, again, it's just, I don't mean to beat, you know, beat the same issue, but it's just, know, answering your phone and answering your emails in a professional way and, not just yes and no. And just, just the little things just really make a big difference. 

 

Michael (45:35.596)

Yeah, but you talked about asking people to send thank you notes and to do those things. One of the things I found is like the younger generation, they weren't even told how to hand address an envelope. And so we, I went out and I made sure that if you do not know how to do something, the world has changed. And just because I know how to do this and it's second nature for me on how to write a business envelope, that doesn't mean that it's second nature for you. 

 

Michael (46:05.432)

just because I was taught how to shake it. I'm telling you, I've had to teach people how to shake a hand. I've had to teach people how to look people in the eyes and introduce yourself, how to answer the phone. Those are things that sometimes we take for granted. We need to be okay. I don't think that people are the younger generation. I just think that we weren't taught the same way and technology has taken away a lot of the things that 

 

Michael (46:34.242)

help with those things. 

 

Dylan (46:35.97)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I agree, 100%. 

 

Michael (46:39.15)

All right, so we've talked about your priorities. I think you're spot on with what you're doing. If you look at your pain points, what are your top three pain points right now? And then what are you thinking about addressing them? So when I say pain points, pain points to me are the things that it's like, if I wake up at three o'clock in the morning, I'm like, what are those things for you? 

 

Dylan (47:07.054)

So I will intentionally not try to get political, but I will tell you that probably my number one issue right now, and some of it got solved this weekend because they passed a small funding bill, government scares me probably the most. Number one or number two, just making sure that ultimately, again, not to get political, but government's job is to sort of provide some things that we need to then get out of the way. 

 

Dylan (47:36.59)

just want to make sure that they get out of the way and let us do what we need to do and regulate where needed. Cause there are, there are instances and different things that they needed to get involved in. So I would say, so what keeps me up at night is, is, is kind of regulation in general. Um, you know, there's a lot of, okay, maybe the number two thing is, and I, I know this is, this is maybe keeping me up at night, but 

 

Dylan (48:02.572)

Well, I would think it would be should be keeping most employees up at night is is AI. And where that goes, I don't think anybody really knows if you kind of watch that story. You know, Elon Musk at Tesla and SpaceX and several others sort of started that journey and then he sort of backed away and said, wait a hold on. Wait a minute. This is maybe running a little too fast. And I just I worry that. 

 

Dylan (48:31.138)

You know, one of the guys in my Vistage group had some folks that got replaced by AI. Like they didn't go in and sort of just get rid of them overnight. But as attrition happened, they just didn't replace those folks. And I think that sort of scares me. Like what's going to happen with our population as jobs sort of get eliminated? Do we find new ones? Typically, know, traditionally or historically, 

 

Dylan (48:58.252)

we find new things for them to do and they become more, you know, equipment and technology makes them more efficient and we're able to produce food at a cheaper level or produce, you know, automobiles or, or what have you at a lower level. But I think this one might be so big that I'm not so sure that we could find something for them to do. so those are probably two. And then the third one. 

 

Dylan (49:22.264)

Just sort of the uncertainty of where things are going. I want to make sure that we handle our business in a conservative way, getting back to kind of like my number one issue, which is making sure, not number one issue, my number one priority that we're trying to do is protect our balance sheet. I think my number three issue is, bad issue, is just making sure that we're operating in a conducive way to make sure we're playing for the future. 

 

Dylan (49:50.67)

Fifth, I don't have the statistics off the top of my head, but so I'm going to guess at them. But five generations of family business is like 2 % or something, 3 % somewhere in that route. Very, very, very small. I don't necessarily want my family business to falter on me. I don't want it to falter on anyone ever, frankly, but I don't want it to be me that makes a bad decision. And so just making sure that we're 

 

Michael (50:03.234)

Yep. 

 

Dylan (50:19.384)

cognizant of what's going on in the world and in our local community and we're following, not necessarily jumping at trends, but following them to see how they might affect our business. 

 

Michael (50:33.23)

I think that having the business operating systems, regardless which one you put in, I think that's a real helpful thing to help eliminate the, my goodness, we just made a horrible mistake kind of a thing. That's one of the areas that that can help in. But I think you're on the right track, know, doing the things that you're doing. that's what want you to Family business is fifth generation. It is well under 1 % by the fifth generation. It would be my guess. 

 

Michael (51:02.168)

But here's the thing that I want to make sure that everybody listens to is I think following those statistics is wonderful, but I think we need to be proud of if something happened and there wasn't a generation behind you. one of you, you know, I don't know if you have kids or you're planning, where that's at, but if that doesn't happen, I would rather you be proud of being fifth generation because most 

 

Michael (51:31.086)

S and P 500 companies, they're not, they're not the same in 15 or 20 years. And think about how many years you go. So I think we need to balance that conversation with, I don't want to be the one. And I understand the legacy and I understand the, know, what that feels like pressure wise to make sure that it keeps going. But at the same time, I think you need to celebrate much long, much more how long it has gone on and how proud we are. 

 

Michael (51:58.99)

to be a family that made it to fifth generation, even if it didn't go to six. So just make sure you that piece for yourself. There's some of my contemporaries and colleagues, Dennis Jaffe, Jim Grubman, and my goodness, I just did that thing. I apologize and she's gonna kill me where I just said, there we go. yeah, Kristen Keffler. I just had a brain cramp. Sorry, Kristen, but. 

 

Michael (52:28.142)

They wrote a book called Wealth 3.0 in which they really, they wanna talk about the positive side of all of these things and how those companies got there, how the family enterprises and how the family wealth was able to go there. And I will tell you the biggest thing, just trust and communication. Figuring out how to have open dialogue and build a trusting leadership team, build a trusting family that can, you know. 

 

Michael (52:56.884)

Ask dumb questions and not be ridiculed for them. Ask dumb questions and people be like, okay, let's think about that for a second. So trust in communications, 60 % of the issues. 

 

Dylan (53:07.438)

Obviously, I'm extremely proud of being Generation 5, but it's going to be my mission to make sure. my kids, I do have three kids. I have two daughters and a son on the way in December. And so we will have the people. Now, I'm not going to be one of those fathers that says, hey, this is something you have to do. My dad didn't tell me I had to do it. think when we started the show, I think I explained that was kind of something he didn't say necessarily, but I can understand. 

 

Michael (53:37.25)

Yeah. 

 

Dylan (53:38.094)

that sort of thing. ultimately, I want our business to continue. If it doesn't, know, nature has its course. But I will tell you, know, on on the adding to what you just said to some degree, Jeff Bezos, you know, pretty famously for for Amazon, right? He says that, you know, you have A and B decisions. Sometimes in family business, large business, small business and anything in between. 

 

Michael (54:00.568)

Hmm? 

 

Dylan (54:06.924)

Sometimes you just struggle to make a decision. You know, even if it's the littlest things and he sort of, he, he taught folks at Amazon to sort of throw things into buckets, you know, an A decision or a B decision and a decision is, know, it's, it's a bet the farm kind of situation, you know, to, be cliched to us as farmers, I don't think you meant that way, but you know, bet the farm situation. We better sit around a room and get the stakeholders that matter and get their opinions. And then there's the B decision. Like what? 

 

Dylan (54:36.872)

office to promote Billy into. is he going to want that office or this office or, or what have you just sort of make a decision and roll with it? too many ideas just sort of sit on the shelf because somebody doesn't want to be accountable for whatever that is. And I think that's something that's special about family business that, you know, we have the ability to, whether it's again, I'm not saying every decision I've ever made is a good one, but I'll make some great ones. 

 

Michael (54:45.346)

Right. 

 

Dylan (55:04.49)

And sometimes just making the decision is all that matters. 

 

Michael (55:07.49)

Yeah. it's, Patrick Lanzione talks about, know, the five dysfunctions of a team. And number one is that trust, which I think that happens in a family. happens in a business. That is the biggest thing. If you can foster trust with your children, foster trust with your leadership team and learn how to make that happen so that it works is huge. 

 

Michael (55:30.348)

the ability to handle conflict. So like if your kids disagree with you, how do you allow them the space to be human beings? Cause they are human beings, regardless of whether they're know it all or don't know it all and they're young or they're not young, they're still human beings and they have, you know, their own thoughts and that's, you know, challenging. Same with your leadership team. So how do we handle conflict and how do we be able to talk about those things? And then once you, you know, we trust each other enough, 

 

Michael (55:59.288)

to handle conflict, constructive conflict, healthy conflict, respectful conflict. So we built that. Then he goes into the next one, which is commit. And so it's like, okay, everybody, because we were able to have conflict and everybody was able to air out what they thought about this stuff. know, Dylan says, look, it is the CEO. I know you guys are tied down the middle this way. We're going to go with Betsy's idea and we're just going to go. And then to have a team. 

 

Michael (56:27.83)

or have a family that says, if that's the direction we're going, then we just don't totally ignore what Joe was talking about. And that wasn't even an option. We're just a hundred percent in for Betsy with Betsy's idea. And we're going to commit to doing that. That's a really big skill to, you know, to talk about and to foster within the leadership teams and within the family. 

 

Dylan (56:47.628)

Yeah, and this is the call it care frontation. At least that's what our group calls it as care. And you know, it's it's some of those uncomfortable conversations, you know, in conflict and and folks don't like to have them. I don't like to have them. I think if you talk to our leadership team, you'll you'll learn that I don't love it. But, sometimes you have to have it. We had a little small session this morning where there was some conflict before I got on here and we, you know. 

 

Michael (56:51.086)

Exactly. 

 

Dylan (57:14.254)

We figured it out and then at end of the day we said, know, we're going to all march in the same direction. 

 

Michael (57:20.11)

That's awesome. Cool. All right. Last question or two here. You're sitting in front of a panel of 100 family businesses that are second generation and they're all envious of fifth generation. What are you telling them are the three things that they should be focusing on to make that transition from second to third? 

 

Dylan (57:48.694)

You know, ultimately, I think you have to work hard. I think you have to be intentional to go from two to three. As I mentioned a while ago, I'm trying to go from five to six. I think I have to be intentional to make sure that my kids want to do it and that we have a healthy and thriving business. So think you have to be intentional. have to really think through it. I think one of the things that I 

 

Dylan (58:16.064)

I struggle with to some degree and I'm working to get better at it is I am in the weeds a lot. And I think that folks around me, you know, founders of businesses going into two or two going into three, something that they may be better at than me is disconnecting from the business and going to whatever it is that helps them think through strategy, whether it's a... 

 

Dylan (58:42.094)

you know, an EOS driven or a scaling up driven conversation with your group, a strategy session, or reading a different books or what have you. For me, it's going on vacation and stepping away from the business, trying to turn off phones and distractions and just, you know, really sort of enjoying time with my family. And it clears my head and gives me the ability to sort of jump back in and 

 

Dylan (59:11.682)

You know, be full of energy. Number three. 

 

Dylan (59:18.412)

You know, I think you need to think through, sort of goes back to the intentional. One of our Family Business Alliance meetings that folks come to to listen to things like this. One of the things I thought was the most impactful was they talked about kind of, again, being intentional to the next generation, but also like developing a group of advisors or a board. Some folks might call it a board for legality reasons. They're not a board. They're 

 

Michael (59:47.498)

advisory. 

 

Dylan (59:48.158)

advisory 

 

Dylan (59:49.038)

group or whatever. I think you need to have somebody from the outside that's not connected to the business that can challenge you on strategy and where you're trying to take the business. Because ultimately, think sometimes, I think from being the leader of our business, I sort of have my impressions or I have the things in my head that I think I want to do. 

 

Dylan (01:00:17.558)

And then, you know, I'll, I, I convey that to our leadership team. So some of them will fight me on it. And some of them will row in the same direction, but ultimately, sometimes I think I'm, wrong. and I'm not ashamed to say that. I think having somebody from the outside, for me, it's Vistage is going to Vistage and having these types of conversations when something comes up and somebody from the outside saying, okay, well, wait a minute, Dylan, have you thought about A, B and C? 

 

Dylan (01:00:46.03)

I think is extremely important, but depends on the business, right? If you're a 10 person business and you're on a small retail store or a restaurant or something, you're probably not going to have a board of directors or advisory group at that level. So it all depends on, you know, depends on the business, I suppose. 

 

Michael (01:01:06.894)

Done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. This has been a great conversation. There's lots of golden nuggets in here for everybody to listen to. So I really appreciate your time today and thank you for sharing. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Michael Palumbos. I'm with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. This has been another episode of the Family Biz Show with Dylan Rexing. 

 

Michael (01:01:33.996)

I appreciate you listening and we look forward to hearing, having you listen in on the next episode. Thank you for listening to the Family Biz Show.