Fueled by Diesel - Tyler Robertson’s Journey to Entrepreneurship

Don't be afraid to take a risk, but don't take one that you can't afford to lose. I'm not telling people here, like, go bet the whole farm and leverage yourself up to the hilt to go do a thing, but be smart about it. And taking risks is okay. That's really what it comes down to is if you really want to move a needle on your life, you got to get outside your comfort zone and take some risks.

Good day, everybody. I am Jeff Duden and we are on the home Front, currently number 42 on Apple for entrepreneurship. Thank you for listening and as always, this podcast is brought to you by Homefront Brands. Simply building the world's most responsible franchise platform, encouraging entrepreneurs to take action, transform their lives, impact communities and enhance the lives of those they care the most about. All the while delivering enterprise level solutions to local business owners out there on the home front. If this sounds like you, check us out@homefrontbrands.com today and start your next chapter of greatness, building your dynasty on the homefront. I will be looking for you. And today we have an excellent guest who has an incredible story. Tyler Robertson, welcome.

Hey, thank you very much. I appreciate the invite on the show. And 42 man. Moving on up. You'll be up there before you know it.

I'll move right to the east side. Moving on up. Tyler Robertson is the founder and CEO of Diesel Laptops, an industry provider of diagnostic products, services, parts and repair information for the commercial truck and automotive markets. Prior to Diesel laptops, founded in 2014, Robertson worked for Carolina International Trucks as a service manager, a parts manager and an IT marketing manager. With an IT background and over 15 years of experience working at commercial truck dealerships, Robertson has created a unique company that provides efficiency solutions to repair facilities across the US and in this short time built a company that this year is forecasted to be $100 million in sales. So nothing small about what you're doing working on big trucks. Tyler, welcome and it is wonderful to have you on today.

Yeah, thanks for inviting me on again. And yeah, I never, I mean most people don't understand how big this commercial diesel repair industry is. Like people are like, oh, what is that? I've never even heard of it. But literally just a commercial trucks. Over $80 billion a year is spent on parts and labor fixing these things. And that's not including the diesel powered equipment which is even bigger world than the on highway stuff. So it's this massive world with a massive problem of labor with all the no one really taking the skilled trade route anymore, everyone going to college. There's just so many problems, so many issues, and it affects every one of our lives. And it's why the cost of things are expensive. And I didn't like empty grocery stores during COVID all these things that happen. So a big market that people don't understand exists and operates behind the scenes of our everyday lives.

Well, it's certainly essential. And you have done some revolutionary things in terms of diagnostics, so making sure that we're working on the right problem and we're being efficient with our time and our energy and our dollars. So kudos to you and look forward to unpacking it and learning all about it. Do you mind starting with your background, where you grew up, how you grew up, and your entrepreneurial journey?

So I can. I can definitely do that. So I grew up in northern Minnesota, and my. My family is definitely a family of entrepreneurs and business owners. My great grandfather started a company. My dad runs it today with his brothers. My brother's involved in it, and they're in the gravel pit and ready mix. So I grew up sitting around a dining room table listening to my dad talk about unique contractors and customers, not paying bills and cash flow and all the things that go on in every business that's out there. And I didn't want to be involved in that business. I wanted to do my own thing. So once high school got done, I went to college. I can definitely say in hindsight, I definitely wasn't mature enough to be going off to college and doing my own thing. And an important lesson for any young people out there listening to this, if you don't go to class, you fail your grades and they kick you out. And that is. That is. It took me two years to get kicked out, but they. They. I got kicked out. Well, you.

You made it twice as long as I did in my first college.

So. Yeah, yeah. So I. I learned a lot about myself in hindsight. And, you know, when you're. When you're 20 years old and you think you have the whole world figured out, and all of a sudden you're kicked out of college and gotta go home to dad and mom with your tail tucked between your legs, it wasn't a good feeling. And that's. That's what I had to do. And unfortunately, my dad was like, well, you know, we started this new business. It was a commercial truck dealership. So just like an automotive dealership or commercial trucks. He's like, we had a couple good years. We didn't want to Pay taxes, that we'd start a new business, invest the money. Him and his brothers, they knew nothing about a truck dealership. But I literally came over there as, like, just manual labor, like, helping physically build the building and pulling cables and putting in floors. Like, I was just there. My dad's like, and you owe me for college because I just wasted 100 grand on you. Like, you're paying me back one way or the other. You to figure this out.

Hey, was that dealership a franchise?

It was, yeah. Yeah. So OEM dealerships are franchise. This was a Western Star truck franchise, which is one of the smallest truck manufacturers. At the time, they knew nothing about a truck dealership. And just for the audience in general, there's one way to make money owning a truck dealership, and there's a hundred ways to lose it. And my family found at least 100, if not 101. Right. They didn't know anything about that. They were in the concrete and gravel operation. And now you're trying to run a. A dealership, buying and selling equipment and repair and parts and deliver. Like, it's just a totally different thing for them. And they tried to bring in the right people. They didn't bring in the right people, and they trusted some of the wrong people. And they're a couple of years into this dealership, and they're. They're losing money hand over fist. And their decision was, well, let's go buy another franchise. So if we have two franchises, well, double the volume, and surely, surely we'll make money. So they put two franchises under one roof, and we actually got the thing back to, like, breaking even, making a little bit of money. And now this is like five or six years into it, and my family is just like, we're done with this. Like, this business sucks. We want nothing to do with it. Let's go figure out what we can do here. And they found another franchise that was in a bigger city down in Minneapolis. We're up in northern Minnesota. And they approached them and they said, yep, we would love to buy it and do a thing up there. So they sold it. I had the option to go work with my family or stay in this business. And, you know, I grew up in that concrete business, and we're selling one product every single day. Didn't tickle my fancy at all. So I was like, I'll stay with this new company. I made it a year before I got fired, so first time I've ever actually worked for someone not my dad and I, you know, you got fired and now, at this point, I'm married. I remember. I remember having to go home and tell the wife, like, yeah, I got fired today. You know, and that's a. That's a. That's a. As a man, that's a. That's a really hard thing to go tell your spouse. Like, I was utter crap at work, apparently, and they decided to. To let me go.

You know, I had Verne Harnish on the podcast, and I asked him, I said, what. What makes a great entrepreneur? Or why do people. Why do people turn into entrepreneurs? And his first answer, kind of tongue in cheek, was, they're unemployable.

Yeah, apparently. Apparently. Yeah, there you go. I was. I was pissed, man. I was really upset. I'd been in that business for a while. I thought he was doing a great job. I was taking care of customers. I feel like they kind of used me to, like, get to know all the customers in the area and my connections, and they're like, okay, you can go. So I was like, I'm. Now I'm mad. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna work for another franchise in town, and I'm gonna go get all my customers back. So I went and did truck sales at a Peterbilt dealer. I learned something really important about myself in that year that I worked there. I am not cut out for sales commission sales. Like, I. It was, you know, you wake up in the morning with the draw and the commission. I'm like, I could get out of my head, like, man, I owe them money on the first day of the month. Like, this is. Looks like a weird situation. I'm just not cut out for it. And in hindsight, I actually made more money doing that than anything else because I was in panic mode all the time about getting a paycheck that month and have to go sell something. So I was doing okay financially, but I hated it. Put my resume on the Internet. Headhunter found me. I didn't realize that these OEM and franchise dealerships across the country are actually really looking for talented people. They can't find enough of them. I had experience at this point working in parts service, truck sales, accounting. Years I was kind of doing it all, learning the business with my family. So I had a little bit of experience at everything. I knew how it all worked, Flown around to Billings, Montana, New York, New York, New York, New Jersey area, and South Carolina. Got a job, offered all three. And I loved it in South Carolina. So I'm coming from northern Minnesota, and I land in South Carolina. It was literally 100 degree temperature difference. And this is like February. Like, okay, I'm like, I love it here already. Like, let's do it. I took a role as a service manager with them in a very big shop. I really went like all in learning how diesel repair works at dealerships. And when you're that involved with something, you start to really learn and listen to your customers and hear and hear what the problems were. So in the service world, just again, some background here. When people bring their commercial trucks in to get repaired, most commercial truck, most of us have fixed trucks are booked up two or three weeks in advance. It's because it takes long repairs. They're more difficult to diagnose. Not enough technicians, not enough shop bays. All the shortages. Well, if you own a truck and trucks for people are not to get from point A to B, they're tools to make money. And you really can't go find another spare mixer truck and go rent it for a week. That doesn't exist. Or a spare dump truck. Like, those aren't options that exist. So now you own a business and you have a truck and you may or may not find an alternative one to use, but you're without your truck for a couple weeks, which means you're not making money. That's the fundamental difference in this world. So what I did, because I was more customer focused, I was like, well, yeah, our shop loves the fact we're booked up two to three weeks because I know I'm going to make money. I'm going to bill out every single hour of labor my guys have in the shop. And we're going to, we're going to, we're going to have some great numbers this month. And every, every shop loves being booked out weeks. Customers hate it. So I was like, I think we can do better. So most times people come in. So like my check engine lights on or my, my truck's doing a weird thing. We'd be like, park it there. We'll get to it in two or three weeks. I'm like, okay, let's do it differently. Let's go just do a quick triage. Let's just walk up there with a laptop. Let's hook it up, see what code, see what it's doing and just tell the customer if he has to leave it, or he can just schedule it two weeks from now and bring it in. It'll solve his problem. He can make a decision. And we started doing that. And then inevitably, if you go out to customers all the time and hook your computer up they start to ask, well, can I just buy that computer so that I can do it? Not even have to come here or buy the software? I'm like, no, you can't. That's why you have to come to me. I'm a dealership. This is the privilege we have as we get this. You don't. That's why it rolled for a little bit. And then they wanted to promote me up in the company. I wanted to run the store. What happened is they said, well, you do really good in service, Tyler. We want you to work in the parts department for a while. So I left the service department, ran this parts department. They do like a million dollars a month in parts, which is big for, for a parts dealership. Customers were coming in there asking all the time to buy the software and nobody knew there how to sell it. So now I'm in the same building, same roof service. I reported to somebody else. Parts, I report to a new person. I'm like, man, people keep asking to buy this. I actually know how we can get it because I came from service. He's like, yeah, sell it to them. I'm like, well, they're going to be really upset in the service department when customers start having their own software to do their own things. And he's like, I don't care. That's their budget, their problem. Like, we have goals, we have revenue, we have margin, we need to make. I don't care what you mark up, go ahead and do it. So I'm like, all right. So I started selling software that we would acquire through our franchises to customers, which is perfectly fine to do. But we quickly ran into a problem. These are 50, 60 year old shop owners and you're handing them a piece of hardware to connect to the vehicle. You're handing them software and you're saying, here you go. And they're like, I know how to fix trucks. I don't know how to install software, update firmware, configure wireless and Bluetooth. Like it doesn't connect. What do I do? Well, I knew all these things because I was in that world and I had the IT background from going to school and all the things I did. So I started helping customers during the day, which became a problem because now I'm trying to run a parts department and I got customers doing tech support all day long, helping with the software stuff. I was like, okay, I gotta find a better solution. So the idea I came up with was I talked to the company I work for. I said, what if I buy the Software from you. And in my spare time, I'm gonna buy a laptop off ebay or a new one or whatever. I'll install it, license it, configure it. It'll be ready to go out of the box. I'll sell you the complete kit back. You can mark it up again. And now the customers won't call me for support. Okay, so.

So it was a package. Package solution, worked with your employer. And now somebody who owns a truck can come in and get a diagnosis. But then you can also sell them this laptop that's all ready to go, and you can show them how to. Where to plug it in.

You want this, you buy the hell package. It's ready to go out of the box. It was just a much simpler solution. And my company was. That I was working for, was making more margin.

And nobody else in the industry was doing this.

No. Like, that was the thing. It was really weird. Like, one company makes hardware, they don't make software, and another company makes a software, they don't support that guy's hardware. Right. So you had to know a little bit of something to actually be able to cobble all this together and buy software from different places to, like, do the thing you needed to do.

Yeah. And the companies are comfortable. Like, they're booked up.

They.

They just. They can't even service the customers they got. So why change anything?

Exactly. Like, a hundred percent. Right. Especially, man, I'll tell you what, if you're a local customer, yeah, you're probably getting in quicker. But if you're a guy passing through, like, you're at the end of the line, like, they have no care in the world how long you have to sit in a hotel for with that guy.

Yeah, it's residents in for you.

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. We had a. We had corporate rates of the local hotels by us for drivers. Like, it was nonstop. I think that was kind of the beginning of, like, me understanding people. People didn't want products, they wanted solutions. Like, the guy didn't want software. He just wanted to know what the heck's going on with my truck so I can make a decision for my business on what I'm going to do and tell my customers that that was really what he was trying to. That person was trying to figure out. But it started to lead into more problems because now I'm selling software to people and it's ready to go. They're connected to the vehicle. And it's, of course, coming up with fault codes and it's saying, here's Your diagnostic trouble code, and it's for your EGR valve or your knock sensor, whatever it was. People will then call me and be like, well, how do I fix this code? Well, I worked in service. I know how to fix all these things. I have access to all the information. Because this diagnostic software doesn't tell you to fix it. It just tells you what's wrong. So now I'm on the phone all day long, not helping people connect to vehicles and do installs. I'm actually helping them troubleshoot their trucks over the Internet. So I'm like, well, let me remote into your computer. Let me see what you see. Let me do a thing. I got so sick of helping people with fault codes, like, all day, all nights, all the time. So I had the idea. I said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna make a piece of software, and it's gonna catalog every single diagnostic fault code that's ever existed for every commercial truck and how to fix it so people can stop calling me. And I can just say, go. Go look in there. And I remember talking to some people. I'm like, man, do you know how many codes there are or how long it's gonna take? I'm like, I have no idea. It was 80,000 codes and took me, like, two years to catalog them all. But I did. Wow. And it solved the problem. And that just led us on this road to the products we were creating was now somebody else's. Stuff. I bundled. I got some of my stuff. I got the support and the whole concept of solving people's problems, building a package, putting a bundle together, and making it easier for people to do what they're trying to do. Price, all of a sudden, wasn't becoming a factor anymore. Like, it was insane. The margins and stuff. I was getting really. With not much of my own product at that point.

Are you a coder yourself? Were you able to actually get the first iteration of the software out, or do you outsource that?

I took coding classes in college. I can do stuff. But for me, it was like, you know what? I'm just gonna go on upwork or odesk at the time. Outsource it. Literally, somebody built it for, like, 500 bucks. It was super simple what I needed. It wasn't complicated. So it was just, I'll just go outsource this so I can keep focusing on things I need to focus at, so I know enough to be dangerous. But I didn't need to get that far in depth into it. Got it.

So you're employed and you've got a great thing going. You're creating, you're iterating on this business model that's helping the people that you're working for and it's also really helping independent operators, people that are running dump trucks, all of that kind of stuff. And you're helping them solve their problems faster and avoid delays. Get more information. Earlier, where was the inflection point that led you from saying I'm going to keep doing it this way to I'm going to start my own company?

Well, financially life was great. I'm making six figures a year working for somebody else. I'm also now making a lot of money on my side business as well. It was almost coming the point. I was making as much on both, but I'm like, cool. I'm really tuning it. I got a stay at home wife, I got a one year old and a three year old. I was like, I can keep doing this. And I'm, I know I'm grinding 40, 50 hours at my regular job plus another 30, 40 hours. This thing, it's like killing me, right? But I'm like, I want to do this. I'm making money. I'm all out of debt. Like things are going good.

How many kids you got at this time?

To two. I got two. One year old, the one year old, the three year old. I'm the only income on the health insurance, the 401k, all the, all the things, right? So one day my boss comes to me and says, hey, good news, we're going to double your bonus this year and give you a raise. I'm like, well that's odd because I just got my bonus and I just got my raise, so what's the catch? She's like, oh, you need to quit your side business. I'm like, oh, why? I'm like, we're both making money. She goes, yeah, but it's starting to impact our service and our service departments and customers are able to make their, you know, do their own service work regardless. She's like, you need to quit your job. I'm like, well what if I don't want to do that? Or quit your side business? I'm like, well, what if I don't want to do that? She's like, she's like, you need to, yeah, you gotta, you gotta resign then like, oh, okay. So I remember calling my dad right away. My dad was like, dude, you got, you're the only income earner. You got a one year old and a three year old. Don't don't screw up your life. Quit that side business and just. Just take the money from the employer. Like, okay.

I find that interesting because you come from an entrepreneurial family. Yeah, I find that interesting that he. That he would. For. For himself, he would choose risk, but for you, he would choose security.

Yeah. It's your kid. Right. So I. I would maybe do the same thing for my kid, but I don't think he understood what I was doing and how big it could be. I didn't at the time either. I didn't think it could be like, what it is today. I remember going home, talking to. Talking to the wife, and I was like, here's the story. What do you think? Talk to my dad. Here's what he said. And she's like, what happens? Give me worst case scenario. Say you do this and it doesn't work out. I'm like, well, we have no debt. We have cash in the bank. I guess if it doesn't work out, I just go work for somebody else again. She's like, that's the worst case. Like, yeah. Yes. She's like, I think you should quit your job. And I'm like, okay, you're right. So that's what I did. And, you know, it was my garage dining room table. Just thought I'd be a little solo entrepreneur and do a thing, and, you know, here we are, you know, eight years later with 200 employees.

Yeah. So I've said this many times on this podcast, so if you're out there listening, you don't want to hear about inflection points again. Just put your head down on your table or whatever you're doing. But inflection points, what I found have three things in it. Number one, there's people. People that you care about, people that you're responsible for. Number two, an adventure or an opportunity that you need to. That you need to really consider. And then the third thing is risk of loss. There's always downside anytime you're grabbing for upside. And I've never gotten anything of value without giving something up.

Yeah, I didn't, you know, I didn't do a lot of math, right? Figuring out, like, what do I need to make each month and how's this going to work? But a big quirk for me was I was debt free. Like, I had everything paid off. I mean, I had, like, just a little smidgen left on the house. So we had no debt, cash in the bank. I had some income coming in, so I was like, okay, this isn't too risky. But I still remember my first day. First day, get up in the morning, do the work. Lunchtime comes around, wife brings lunch. She's like. And actually, I went and sat at the table with my two kids, right? I'm like. She's like, how much you sell today so far? And I'm like, zero dollars. I sold zero hours today so far. But thank you for asking.

Yeah. The wife. The wife wants the PIP pipeline report right off the first day.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it'll be all right. Don't worry about it. Like, it ended up being a good sales day and things progressed and moved on from there. But you're right. Like, for me, it was the realization the risk wasn't as big as I thought it was. Like, it was always a scary thing. Quit your job and do this and go do an unknown thing. And I always tell people, the three best things that ever happened to me were getting kicked out of college, getting fired from a job, being asked to resign. Like, in hindsight, those. Those were the best. The best things that ever happened to me. Cause it forced me to change and it forced me to be somebody different and to grow. And I'm a better person for it. So it's funny how. Funny how life works out like that a lot of times.

Well, incredible story and should be an inspiration to many people out there that are right on the cusp of it. And fear creeps in. And you think about, you know, our brains are 75% negative, so the first thing that we think about is what could go wrong, what could happen? And then we get extrospective. Like, what's it going to look like to other people?

You.

I've always said, like, my. My last book is going to be too stupid to fail because, like, you. Like, I mean, I've learned now as the deals have gotten bigger, to do more diligence and to do more financial modeling and to be more careful and to not. To avoid permanent impairment of capital. But you know, your position. No debt, low debt. If you have the discipline to stay out of debt, then that gives you optionality in the things that you want to do. And you can take chances when you need to take chances. So, you know, being able to, you know, deal with that fear, you know, being able to make those types of decisions is. Is. Is paramount.

I still run my company the same way. Like, we've cat. We bootstrapped this thing. We didn't go take investor money. We didn't go take a bunch of debt out. Yeah, we bootstrapped it up to what we have. And it's exactly like you said. All of a sudden you as a business now I can go take risks because I don't have debt, I don't have shareholders, I don't have people I have to go answer to for anything. So it allows us a lot of flexibility and allows us a lot of risk taking that some people look at and be like, man, that's stupid. You go invest that much money in a thing. But I'm like, well, I don't need that thing to generate revenue today. I need to generate my revenue three years from now so I can keep growing this thing. So we keep trying to look out in the future as much as possible and keep trying to place the right bets. And I'm not, I don't sit here and take out millions of dollars a year of the company. I keep most of it in there and keep, keep growing the company. And things have been working out pretty well so far. So we keep on that path. But eventually there's an exit point here.

Yeah, you'll have your day for sure. The decision horizon in being able to control that I have found to be one of the most important things. When I've gotten in deals with a lot of partners and time horizons and coupon clipping people that need, you know, you've got 24 months until this needs to happen. You have to make decisions that may be more short term and not in the long term interest of the company because you're having to satisfy things that have nothing to do with the outcome. It creates fake work, it creates people doing things that are not aligned with the overall goal of the company. And you know, your ability to be a purpose driven company to impact the people that work for you in the right way. I mean, it's just, you know, having control. Control is really freedom and maintain. So I applaud you for that. And yeah, it might be a little bit harder, but like, what is it? Damon Johns, he talks about the power of broken and he built his companies with just, you're bootstrapping all the time. And I've also heard a lot of those types of people say having too much cash when you start a business is probably the biggest problem because you get sloppy.

Yeah, I mean, I've seen so many companies raise a lot of money and then they go blow it all on big marketing campaigns or parties or whatever they do with it. And all of a sudden they're out there scrambling for a capital raise thinking that the pipeline will never go dry. And it does. You're seeing that today with a lot of EV companies and some other things in the space that. That I watch. But those first couple years, man, every dollar you make, right back in the. I didn't take a salary the first year and a half. Yeah, I didn't need it. And I was like, the company needs it to grow. And it's amazing how much cash you need for taxes and for growth and for receivables and inventory. And I remember sitting there one day saying, I'm never gonna. I'm never gonna have receivables. People can pay cash, and I'm gonna keep my inventory down. And you wake up one day and you got $10 million tied up in the two of them. Right. And that took cash to get that, to be able to afford that. So it's. It's a long slog road. But I. Eight years later, I can tell you I'm really glad I did it that way, because I'm in a really good spot now.

Yeah, cash is like oxygen. You don't know how bad you need it until you don't have any.

Yep, 100%.

Let's move on. You know, I want to get to talking about diesel laptops and, and how you, you know, current state of the business. Before we do that, can we talk a little bit about digital marketing? I watched a YouTube video that, where you were going through your Strategy videos on YouTube, solving people's problems instead of pushing products at them. You've got some really old, original videos that you made, holding up your iPhone, but showing people how to diagnose their truck. And. And those are. Some of you have over 9 million views of these types of things. Because really. And what I've learned, I've learned this from my kids. It's. It's like anytime they go to figure something out, I'm. I'm looking for the instructions, and I'm digging through, looking for paper, and they're already looking at a YouTube video of somebody doing exactly what it is we're trying to do. So talk a little bit about that. You had a LinkedIn strategy. You've got a YouTube strategy. How did you utilize digital marketing, social media, to build this company so quickly?

Yeah, I think there's a couple things. Like, number one, I was like, okay, it's just me in my garage. Nobody knows my brand. Nobody knows we exist. How do I. How do I do that? And for me, it was, well, let's go. Let's go worry about organic search rankings on Google, and let's go figure out what keywords? And let's write blog posts and product pages and rank. In most businesses, it's not super competitive to go rank yourself on the front page of Google. So like the joke we have always that people have heard, right, it's you know, where do you hide dead bodies? It's the second page of Google because nobody, nobody goes there. So let's make sure we're ranking for everything. So that was kind of number one and learning SEO, just basic stuff. It wasn't complicated. It's not complicated. People can go rank pages pretty easy. Number two, where the YouTube came in was we were having a sales problem and that was, we were doing it the same way everybody else was. I'm going to go drive out to a client, I'm going to, I'm going to hook my laptop up, I'm going to show them what it does and I'm going to spend a couple hours there and I'm hopefully going to convince them to buy it from me. You could sell four to six units a month doing that. And these are $10,000 units, right? So there's revenue and margin and commit. It was, the math was okay. It wasn't great. The frustrating part was you talked to one or two customers a day and as a salesperson, you're not filling that top of the funnel up very much at that rate. And I'm like, how are we going to scale this up across North America having people go out in the field, dude, this is horrible. This is never going to work. So my sales manager at the time goes, I got an idea. Let's, let's do this. Let's never do a demo again to a customer and never show them actually how it even works. Like, they don't even need to know. They seem to know what problem it solves. I'm like, well, how are we going to sell them? He goes really easy. He goes, I want you, Tyler, to go out there and he goes, you know this stuff like the back of your hand. Just do a bunch of YouTube videos, hooking it up, showing people how you code a cat injector, how it reads codes, how it does this. And he goes that way when I'm on the phone and the customer's like, well, does it work on a caterpillar? Be like, dude, yes, it does. And here's five videos of us doing things that dealers can do on a video. And by the way, we're gonna give you a 30 day money back guarantee. So if it doesn't do the things I'm promising You, it's gonna do, you're gonna get your money back. You know, it's funny, I got a full marketing team and eight or nine people and my original videos still have way more views and all these fancy new videos and things we do here because it's really, it goes back to people just wanted to know what it does and how it works and will it solve my problem. And we were able to clearly show that to customers through those videos through the promise of 30 day money back guarantee. And when you do those things, all of a sudden our salespeople, which took a little bit but they went from selling four to six units a month to selling 20 and now they're making better commissions and it just worked out to be a much better model for us and allowed us to scale up. So yeah, do we lose some sales because we don't go out and drive and show people? No, yes we do, but we're not going to do it. Like it's just not, it's not worth our time or effort to go do that. As crappy as that may sound to customers. We say it in a much nicer way, but that was what allowed us to scale up through that. And then the other one was LinkedIn. So I, I had no one really to talk to. No one understood my business. I felt like I just wanted a place to kind of like here's what's going on in my life and my, the things we do. So I just started posting random stuff on LinkedIn. Here's me in my garage, here's me doing this thing, here's this to whatever, like it didn't matter what it was. And today, I mean I got a lot of followers, a lot of people that know my journey. You know, I get millions and millions of views on my posts every single year on there. And it's been single handedly the best networking tool I've ever used. We got strategic relationships, we've hired employees, we got vendors, we've got, I, me, I never go on there and talk about like you should buy from me, here's my product, here's the demo. I, I don't do that but I get people every week approaching me on LinkedIn. I'm interested in your products. Can I talk to a salesperson? So I, I do it a little bit different way, but it's built a huge brand, a huge following. Like I go to industry trade shows, people are coming up wanting pictures, autographs, say hi. You know, it just, it's really weird, right? Cause I'm like I'm just trying to run a business and do a thing here. So it's, it's, it's been a really good tool for us. So anyone that's in the professional world at all, LinkedIn. It's an amazing, remarkable tool and it can grow your personal brand and your business brand. And literally I don't spend a dime on it. We don't do paid ads on there. We don't do any of that kind of stuff.

So it's blogs, newsletters, posting videos.

Yeah, we're all in on e commerce. So we, we do, I mean the only thing we do physically is trade shows. We do, we do a bunch of those, but we do a lot of, yeah, emails. I mean we sent an email out this week. When I looked last, it was like one user every six seconds was clicking on the, clicking on the link to come to our website to learn about a new product that we launched.

And that's email, just email marketing to a database.

Yeah, we have a, you know, about 80,000 people, 100,000 people on our email list and they're all engaged customers that have bought something or did something with us. It's not some cold list we bought, it's a list we grew ourselves. So we do a lot organic, we do paid search on most of the major social platforms as well. That's what I love about online marketing. Like, you know what you spend, you know, how many eyeballs you get, how many clicks you get, how many people fill up the form, how many people bought something. Like you can do the math all day long and figure out where to crank things up or down or try new strategies. So that's why I love online marketing. And we spend probably 60 grand a month doing paid search type stuff online marketing now. But we drive thousands and thousands of leads a month. You know, our products again are $10,000 products are upper tier stuff. We got that nailed down. Now we're trying to figure out how to sell other things, which is a whole different learning curve that we're on over here.

I'm interested to know, have you spawned any direct competitors that have mimicked your business model?

Well, yeah, I mean a lot of them cop. I mean nobody used to offer a money back guarantee and now they, now they all offer 30 day. Right, right. So now we're, we're one up and on that. We're saying, well now we're gonna do 60 day. But you have to do some, certain things, some training or actually pay attention to how the tools work and do some things. So a Lot of people have tried that. No one else has been able to scale up like us. Like most people that we're competing against, it's either somebody that's was like me, one or two people like working together, going around doing demos door to door and slinging tools. You got a couple of bigger companies. I mean I compete against snap on. And everyone's heard the word snap on before. Or Bosch, Bosch makes a tool like Autozone sells and O'Reilly sell diagnostic tools. But the problem they all have is they can't get mass distribution because These are complex. B2B tools are not, it's not like you're buying a brake shoe or a brake drum or a can of brake clean. Right. It's, it, it's not a, it's not a product, it's a solution. And they're the more complex people aren't going to go drop $10,000 from the guy across the AutoZone parts counter because he read off his website what the tool does. It just, it doesn't happen.

Yeah.

So like for example, we have a, we have a competitor out there. They have 300 physical stores. They sell a similar product. I think they, last I heard they sold like four a week. I mean we sell 20 a day. Right. And we're nowhere near that size. So it's a hard thing for someone else to scale up unless you're all in on this industry to understand what it is and how it works. And now that we have such a stranglehold kind of on the industry, we're the big 800 pound gorilla. It's really hard to come in and compete against us because we keep adding more and more value and we sell our products for 30% premium compared to everybody else. So we go more on the high side, premium pricing because they're getting a lot more value with what I offer versus everyone else.

You really created the blue ocean. Did you redefine the way this industry operates?

So for diagnostics, yeah. And we're still doing that. Right? Because the problem, we still didn't really solve the problem of the two to three week backlog. So we gave people tools and that allows them to hook up and do a thing. But they're missing two pieces. They're missing the repair information. So the tool tells you what's wrong. So we had to build our own Wikipedia repair information. We call it diesel repair and we integrated them. So. Great. So now I don't have to go to two different websites or two different things. I can just click, click and see my thing and that, that sped things up and helps. But the quantum leap that we made now this year was, well, if we know what the fault code is and we know what component is, why don't we just tell the customer what part number they need to buy and the list of cross references, alternative parts, give them the part number and give them a buy it now button. So that's never been done really in automotive or heavy truck industry and took us years of cataloging truck parts and fault codes and all the things to put all those pieces together. But literally people can now can buy a $350 tool, hook up to their phone and it'll be like, here's your problem, here's the code, here's the part you need to buy to, to do it. And currently just punches right out to Amazon and Google so people can click buttons and things show up. But eventually all people that sell parts aren't liking it one bit because we basically built a new road for them to buy parts versus the old school way of picking up the phone and doing whatever. So we're creating our own marketplace inside of our tools, which hasn't been done either. So it's not an easy thing, it's not a cheap thing, it's going to take some time. But we got, you know, it's like they say, you get, you got traffic, you got eyeballs, you can kind of control the way things work. And that's why we've been so aggressive pushing our tools in the marketplace. It's kind of flipping the model around on what people are doing and what they're expecting out of a tool. And it's like I said, it's really hard for people to compete against us at this point.

You've gone from your kitchen table to $100 million business in a beautiful facility with 200 employees in eight years. That many people, not everybody works. You're cycling through people to find the number, the few people that are going to fit inside of your culture. What kinds of things do you do culturally at diesel laptops to make it a place where people want to work and where they want to stay?

Yeah. So scaling up the people side is probably one of the most difficult things that we've done like the products and sale like that market that, that's been easy compared to, compared to the people side of the equation. One of the biggest issues we ran into right away is we were growing so fast hiring a diesel tech to help in tech support and now we need like 10 more employees. So that guy became a manager. Well now He's a manager, over 10 people, and he was turning wrenches six months ago. Like, those are two totally different skill sets. And we had that problem going around in, like every department. What we quickly realized was they were failing. And it wasn't because they were bad people. They just didn't have the skill sets, experience, tools, or guidance to be a leader and be a manager. So we brought in a consulting company and we went through management training, leadership training, and we said, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna help you guys be better and give you the tools. And in hindsight, there were a couple employees who like, literally were like, I can't do this. I don't want to do this. I want to go back to making the widgets, not managing the people that make the widgets. And that was great. There was a couple people that weren't getting it at all. Like, they said they wanted to do it, but they weren't putting the effort and doing the things that they need to do. And it was really hard to say, like, sorry, you're no longer going to be a manager in this company. I'll try to find out a seat in the bus for you. Otherwise you got to go somewhere else. And that's a really tough conversation to have with people that have been with you since the start. So we had to have. I had to have a couple of those conversations with people. But culture wise, I think one of the things I've been good at to this point is being really, really transparent to people with, here's what we're doing, here's where we're going, and here's how we're going to get there. And if you don't want to get on the bus, I get it. There's plenty of other places to go work. But this is, this is where we're going as a company. So I'm really fortunate. A lot of those early people I hired are still here. They believe in me. I say all the time, like, I got a great group of people, like, if I'm like, hey guys, we're going this direction. They're. They're not even questioning it. They're like, we're with you. Like, what's our role to help do this thing? Being transparent, being open and honest with employees, letting everyone just know where we're going and what the plan is is a huge thing. And giving people opportunity to grow themselves. My director of operations, my right hand person that runs the day to day here, he was making pizzas and subs seven years ago. He didn't even know he could do this. But he had opportunity, he had ambition, he got passionate about it and he's got opportunity. And there's story after story here of people coming in at one level who are now running divisions in my company. You know, if you would've interviewed them for that role years ago, they went to, there's no chance they would've made it past anything. Right. So I think it comes down to a combination of those things.

Yeah. So if you look at my mug here, it says speak a bold future. And that's exactly what you're saying. It's the leader's job to speak a bold and powerful future into existence so that people understand with clarity. Clarity equals velocity. So it's like you're clear where we're going. What the, it's the CEO's job, set the strategy. And to communicate that strategy, it's paramount. You find that in any fast growing organization that everybody really understands what problems we solve and where we're heading. Other than consultants, how have you invested in yourself along this journey? Have you found some mentors? Have you joined any EO or ypo, or do you have a group of other business owners that you've put around your table that are facing similar challenges to you along the way?

Yeah, so I think there's a couple things. One, I'm an, I'm an audible book junkie, so plenty of business books listening to as I'm walking or driving to work. Like that's, that's, that's my jam and podcasts and that type of thing. And you gotta keep in mind, I've been, since I've been like a little kid, I've been around dining room table talking about business stuff. It's always enthralled me, hearing my dad, my grandfather and his brothers talk about it. So I've done that. I am involved in a couple local groups of other business owners and it's good to be there and to network and get to know them. But my problems are way different than their problems that they have. I mean, they're, you know, four or five employee operations. I'm 200. You just, you have, you have different things. I'm an advisor on another local company around the same size of us. So you do, as an owner, you start to get to know other business owners and other people involved. And I'm on some committees involved in talents and leadership committees and that type of thing. So I try to do that. But like, as a, as a person, what I had to do was just get out of the way. Like that was the biggest. I had the epiphany a couple of years ago. Like, the biggest problem here is me. I'm the one holding people back. I'm the one Microman, like, I gotta stop doing this. And really my goal at that point was like, work myself out of a job. Like, I should not be involved at all in the day to day. And three or four or five years ago, like I was involved in the day to day every single day for more than I wanted to be. Today I'm not involved in it at all. Like now I have a great C suite. I don't have to worry. I got a chief revenue officer, chief operator, CEO, cfo. Like I pay them a lot of money and I just lay expectations out on. These are the things I expect you to do. And here's the direction we need to go. Like, it's your job. That's why I'm paying you all this money to go do this for me. So I had to get in that role of, like you said, worry about the future. Like I need to be thinking three, five years from now where I want to get to and helping, helping put those, put that bridge together. Not involved in the day to day stuff. So I make it a point when people come ask me for things like, no, that's not my job. Go talk to somebody. I know the answer. But you got to go talk to the right person or figure it out yourself. And that's really hard as a founder owner to do is to give up control because people do not do it the same way as you. And truthfully, most times they actually do it a better way than I would have done it. So I just, I've had to learn to give up control and that, that's really, really tough for a lot of people to do.

Recruiting specialists, experts, professionals in those key roles. You know, you're a 1 percenter. You can do, you could do every job in the building, from accounting to sales to the, you know, managing the, the website and E commerce and all of that. I'm sure you can do every job in the building, but you can't because if you do, then you're, you're not, you're not going to scale your business. So part of it is finding the right executives that are a cultural fit, that are a personal fit with you, that are going to mesh with your leadership style and they can get really committed and bought into doing it. And then to your point, you got to incentivize those people correctly. I mean, it's, everybody has to be aligned. That, you know, when we get to where we're going, that it's going to be worth it. Because quality people and quality executives, that's what they're looking for. And you know, they've spent a lifetime learning how to do these things. And so really putting together the right team, the people that are directly around you is where a lot of business, a lot of small businesses stay small. And you know, you've obviously been able to manage yourself through that and that's awesome. Do you use any particular strategy, methodology, scaling up traction, any of those types of things? Or, you know, how do you, how do you guys turn strategy and make sure that your ladder is always up against the right building?

Yeah, so we just did a. Being the senior executives, the C suite, we just did a two day retreat up in the mountains. Got away from everything. Like Internet didn't really work there. And it was just two days of talking about, hey, we all know where we're at today. And the problem we're having today is we're spending most of our time talking about things going on today or the next couple months. So this, this whole meeting was like, okay, five years from now, like, this is where I want to be and this is where we got to get to. So let's work about building, building all that pathway and figuring out how the hell we're going to get there and what that looks like and what that means and what our company is going to look like. So keeping everyone focused on the long term of where we're going is really what's going on here. And it's really a little bit of an evolution because we've spent so much, we spent millions building our own products, our own services. Those have come across the finish line here in 2023. And it's been a challenge for us to say, well, I got an existing sales team that sells the crap out of stuff and we're growing good, but now we have a bunch of new shiny stuff and it's important for the future of my company to, to go sell that stuff. How are we going to go do that? How are we going to go execute and make sure we do this? And it's lining up my long term goals with the senior executive's long term goals and just laying the map out and plan, plan, plan, plan, plan. I think, I think I learned a long time ago we should be spending 90% of our time planning, about 10% executing, because if we have a great plan put together, this will, this will work. But if we're constantly putting out fires all day long and dealing with whatever BS issues going on today or whatever, like we're never going to get to where we want to get to. So we got to have a real clear milestone and where it is. And all that rolls into annual plans, budgets, managers have certain goals and requirements. Salespeople do. Everyone does. Right. So putting those KPIs across the industry that line up with the long term plan of the company is what we're working on currently. And it's, it's not an easy thing to do with a lot of moving pieces going around. But the more people, again goes back to, the more people understand where we're getting to and why we're going that way, the more they get on board with it and the more they tend to push me along. And I can say this is the first time in eight years I got a senior staff that I feel like I'm not pulling. I feel like they're pushing me, which is great. Which means they're focused on all the right things and we're going in the right direction. So it's been a little bit of a pivot this year and trying to get the management to that level. But now that we're here, it's, I mean, we're having a, we're having a record revenue and record profit. We'll make, we'll make more profit this year than all the other years combined.

That's amazing. My mentor, one of them was a guy named David Zierfloss, and he was the president of Husqvarna North America, the outdoor power equipment company. And he joined them. They were $29 million in sales domestically here in the U.S. and then 18 years later, there were $530 million in sales. And he shared with me that every hundred million dollars that they grew, they had to take everything and they had to put it all out on the curb and only bring the things back in the building that would get them to the next hundred million dollars in sales. And he said, you know, you can never let a good, never let a crisis go to waste. And if there's not a crisis, but you're getting entropy and you're getting friction and you're not getting the growth you want in certain areas, then sometimes you have to create a crisis. And what really resonated with me, that at $500 million in sales, they had half the employees that they had at $200 million in sales. So think about automation and technology supply chain. You know, how the Products came in, how they went direct managing, they did theirs through a dealership network. So it was converting dealers from other outdoor power equipment people or going and negotiating for an end cap or some shelf space or whatever it was to be in that independent outdoor power equipment dealer, whoever it was. But man, the, the, the ability to go through those stages as technology advances, you know, it takes a lot of skill to lead in that way because employees sometimes and owners, I think you referenced it earlier, you think it's going to go on forever just the way it is. That's never the case. The future is never the same as the past. Everything's changing all the time. So if you're not really getting those think days and spending the time to really sit back and say, look, what is the strategy?

Where.

Where can we go? And then prioritizing which ones of the strategies are going to get you to where you want to go. Other people will catch you.

Yeah, I mean, I was, you know, slinging tools on the back of my trunk of my car at truck stops eight years ago. Right. Or nine years ago. And I think our competitors looked at us and kind of laughed. And all of a sudden now my, you know, I doubled. We blew by the biggest competitor and more than double their revenue now. And I think they're sitting there wondering like, you know, what the hell happened to us or how do we end up here. But it's exactly like you said. I brought in a new chief revenue officer. He's here in that role for about a month and he's like, man, we got to blow up our whole sales org because if we had a white. If we had to start over today, it would not look like this. It needs to be different. And you can't just blow up your whole sales org overnight and throw a new one in there. So we're going through stages, but I mean, that's a ballsy thing to do. To say I'm going to go risk my new job and all this revenue in the company to build something we've never done before is tough pill for a lot of people to swallow. And that's exactly right. That's why a lot of companies don't innovate. They don't change. They just get comfortable with where they're at and they're afraid of the risk. But for me, it's always been like, we can do better and there's always a better you can do. Like you were saying, the biggest companies in the world exist today, probably won't exist 100 years from now. Like Companies rise and fall all the time. It's the way it's been, the way it'll always be.

Yeah. Nothing scales to infinity. And the great. You hit on one of my favorite questions. If we weren't doing this today and we were going to start doing it now, would we do it the same way again? And the answer is almost always no. We have all these sacred cows. We got fake work. We got processes that don't make sense because we started doing them. And the faster percentage you grow, the more things you outgrow. It's really incumbent. You have to be very nimble in your thinking, and you got to have strong fundamental beliefs, but they have to be held loosely because if you get stuck on a way you're doing something to today, if you're not moving, the market's moving, marketing's moving, Facebook changes their algorithm. Something. Something happens. So it's really going to be interesting to see. And I don't know if the next. What's the next. What's next for you in terms of that. Are you.

Do you.

Are you skipping right past 100 million and got your eyes on 200 million? Is it international markets? Is it expanding your product line? You know, how are you thinking about that next phase of growth built upon the fundamental that you have right now?

Yeah, I think the first question I had to answer was like, what do. What do I want to be in five years? Or where do I want to be? Right. So that's really where it started with me was like, okay, I'm 45. My kids, they'll be basically done with high school in five years. At this point, or getting close to it at least, do I really want to be sitting here working every day running this company? Look, eventually I. I die, I retire. Like, those are like my two options. Right, Right. For this company, when you own one, you can't just quit and go find another job somewhere. Not probably employable at this point. For me, it was like, okay, five years from now. Like, I don't. I don't want to own half. I need to own less than half the company, and I need to put the right people in charge and the right processes and the right things in place so this company can go on for the next 20, 30, 40 years and keep growing, because otherwise I'm going to be the one holding it back. So that was number one. But number two, it's been, you know, we've invested millions of dollars over the last three or four years in a bunch of products, and we've been trying to figure out how to be a software company, not other people's stuff. And all these things. And they're there now. Some just came across the finish line last couple months, a bunch more coming across. So now it's not as much investing money in products. It's more, okay, now we got these nice new things that we know are great things the market needs. Let's go sell and market the crap out of this stuff. And so it's a combination of new products. What I didn't realize but now do is that same diesel engine that's used in North Dakota, the same engine that's used in Australia or China or somewhere else. We have worldwide potential to go push our products across other continents. So that's on our eyesight to go accomplish that. But in the meantime, it's still a market grab of we built our company with bread and butter. The small mom and pop shops that make quick buying decisions. That's our core customer base. But now we've reached into the enterprise level. We've landed a couple big enterprise accounts almost by accident. So what did we do this year? We built an enterprise team and it's go after all the big deals and that's going really, really well, which is again, really not. It's really upsetting some of our current competitors. That's for kind of their market. They didn't think we'd ever get there and now we're there. So there's a lot of different revenue paths here for us to go keep growing this thing. And I keep telling people here, we don't have a brand awareness problem. We don't have a marketing problem, we don't have a sales problem. We just got to get out of our own way and figure out how we're going to do this. And I know it's going to work. It's on us as the C suite to figure this out and push the strategy down. And we know it's going to go execute. So that's the mentality that we're going through over here.

I have no doubt. I appreciate you being on today. We're coming to the end of our time. I do have a question for you. If you had one sentence to make an impact in someone's life, what would that be?

Okay, so like I'm an entrepreneur, right? So like I'm. I'm the risk guy. So the one thing I would say is don't be afraid to take a risk, but don't take one that you can't afford to lose. So just think hard about what happens if I lose this? Don't go. I'm not telling people here. Like, go bet the whole farm and leverage yourself up to the hilts to go do a thing. But be smart about it. And taking risks is okay. Like, if you never take a risk, you're never probably going to get to where you actually want to get to in life. And that's really what it comes down to is you got to get outside your comfort zone and take some risks. If you really want to move the needle on your life, awesome.

If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space, brother.

100%.

Tyler, how can people reach out to you if they want to talk to you about your products or anything else?

Yeah, my whole story since day one is on LinkedIn something. I'm going to go back and look through my original post and do a thing maybe or something. But LinkedIn's the best place to search for Tyler Robertson or Tyler Diesel. I'll pop right up on there. I still post consistently every week. What I'm doing, where we're down, where we're going, the fails, the wins, the things I complain about, the things I love, all the, all the stuff. So love to connect with you on there and keep on the journey here.

Well, awesome. Thank you for being on the Homefront with us today. This has been incredible and I know that our listeners really appreciate it. Thank you.

No problem. Thank you very much.

Absolutely. And as always, this podcast has been brought to you by Homefront Brands. Simply building the world's most responsible franchise platform, all the while delivering enterprise level solutions to local business owners out there on the homefront where accounts. So if this does sound like you, check us out@homefrontbrands.com today and start your next chapter of greatness, building your dynasty on the home front. I will be looking for you right here. Thank you for listening.