Asking A Lot of Really Good Questions Allows You to Move Up Fast with Travis Rosbach

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell.

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Of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm back with Travis Rossbach and we're talking about moving forward in your life, following your inspiration, keeping yourself fired up and letting your natural curiosity drive you forward. Because when you're pursuing things you're super excited about, you don't mind putting in the time and you can make incredible progress. And most of the things you want to do are a whole lot more fun at the top when you really get good at it and you've moved to the top, then at the bottom, you know, being a chess grandmaster, I'm sure is a whole lot more fun than just being a knucklehead who plays chess once a year with grandpa, you know. And so thanks, Travis, for getting back.

Larry, it's great to be here. Thank you.

So much fun. Such an interesting start to your journey. Well, most, you've had basically two lifetimes now before you even started your business in going to become the dive master and the captain of the, you know, rating for the 50 ton ships and all those certifications and then going into pilot, becoming a master pilot and certified for the big jumbo jets, I guess, you know, anything there is up there. And so what's it like flying a jumbo jet, by the way?

It's a lot of fun. Yeah, I really loved flying Learjets. The Lears are super fast. They go really high, they've got a really great climb rate. And I think that flying the Lears were my, they were my most fun jet time the, that I've had flying the larger ones, the Falcons and the Hawkers. That's a lot of fun too. I mean it's, it's a lot of fun to move big objects through the time and space continuum. But I really enjoy the Lears.

And so let's talk about where along the way did you get the idea of starting a company?

Well, I was flying the aforementioned Lears. I was, I was doing jet charter out of Florida and I realized that, yeah, my salary was capped, my time was taken flying from airport to airport and going from hotel to hotel. And you know, I'd always take advantage of the time on the ground and go to the museums and the art institutes and things like that. And I'd always have a lot of fun. But I realized that that wasn't going to last forever. So I stopped flying and told my girlfriend at the time that I was driving to move back to Oregon. I had no idea what I was going to do or what was going to happen next. And she's like, well, can I come with you? I said, okay, yeah. Cool. So we moved back home to Bend. We rented a house, and the second night we were there, some guy shows up in the backyard and get the gun. What's the guy doing? We go out back and he was putting a fence in and I started talking to him and he was using these metal posts and he was putting up this beautiful fence with no knots. It was just gorgeous. And I asked him, I'm like, are you doing all of these, you know, the subdivisions that are going up like crazy? And he said, no, they just do one offs. I said, well, do you mind if I do the subdivisions? This looks like fun. And he said, yeah, go for it, you know. And so I went back inside, I told my girlfriend, I was like, yeah, I think we should start a fence company. You know, sort of famous last words. How hard can it be? And sure enough, we. We bought everything that the guy at the store told us we would need to start a fence company and started doing fencing. And within about a year we had one of the largest, most well known fence companies in all of central Oregon.

And so how did that, how did you do that become. In one year you go from buying what you needed to having so much business and I guess so many crews where you could become best known fence company in. What'd you say?

Central Oregon? Central Oregon. Yeah. Well, we. It started out originally we hired a guy who was supposed to be a really well known fence guy. He'd worked at the largest one called Mike's Fence Center. He had worked for Mike for a number of years and he was a free agent. So we hired him and that was kind of our. A golden ticket, or so we thought. He ended up getting arrested the day before our first job. And so we ended up going down to the homeless shelter, picking up a couple homeless guys and went to the library, rented a VHS tape and then went to the pawn shop and got a VHS player and learned how to build fences just by watching the cassette or the VHS tape. And but yeah, long story short, we basically just hired really good people and that had been in the fence industry for a long time. And my partner was really good at doing the book work and the paperwork and the. You know all of the business side of stuff. And I was quite proficient at going out and getting the contracts, going out, giving the quotes and the estimates and things like that, running the cruise and. And then, yeah, before we knew it, we were up to, I think we had about five crews out and about running all around, putting up fences.

Now, how did you go from being a pilot to where you're this guy that's great at drumming up business in the fence installation industry?

Well, I don't know. That's a good question. I think that, you know, when I was. When I was growing up in the Virgin Islands, did you hear a voice.

As you walked away from the plane that said, you are a fence salesman?

No. Like, when you left the boat, it.

Said you are a pilot. You see, it's a real clear direction on these things.

No, but, you know, when I did ask the guy in the backyard, I, you know, I said, hey, are you doing the subdivisions? Because it just made sense because we had so many subdivisions going in that that's got to be good money. And it, you know, it looked relatively straightforward and, you know, dare I say, easy. And when he said, no, I think that was a real light bulb moment that, like, oh, maybe there's a gap in the market here where somebody needs to be putting in these beautiful fences. And so, yeah, you know, I just asked a lot of questions and. And, you know, once you figure out how much it costs per foot, it's fairly straightforward to take the measuring wheel and go out and measure how many, you know, linear feet that somebody has for their fence needs.

And so how. How did that run after a year of that? How did you now move. Move on from there?

Well, it was February and it was cold, and it is icy and a lot of rocks here in central Oregon. And I was just sore. I was just physically tired and sore. We'd been just flat out like a lizard drinking for the full year. And I called my partner and I said, look, I got to get out of here. I'm going to kill myself or somebody else. I got to go somewhere warm. I got to go back to warmth for at least a minute. And she said, okay, you know, and called me a little later and said, hey, get to the airport. You're going off to Hawaii. And I didn't actually, you know, even though I'm from the West Coast, I spent all my time in the. In the Virgin Islands, and I hadn't actually been to Hawaii, so I didn't actually even know what that really meant, but landed in Oahu as soon as the doors opened, I just, I felt the aloha. I felt it. And I was like, this is awesome. I called her and I told her, I said, you can either keep the company or sell it, but either way, I live here now. Wow. And she.

The girls with the dancing, the hula and grass skirts and giving you the lays.

Yeah. I hadn't even got off worked yet. I hadn't even got off the plane. And my partner, she says, you know, she kind of says, you know, are you drunk? Where are you? At the bar? And I said, no, I haven't even got off the plane yet. Like, okay. So. And I spent. I've been thinking about, like, it was a long vacation. I was there, I think I was downtown Honolulu for like nine days. And I got back and I was. I was still very serious. I. I knew. I knew I was living in Oahu. And so we sold the fence company. It was right before the, you know, the down turn started in and, and yeah, we sold. We got a fairly pretty penny for it at fair price for it, especially after only owning it for less. And then we lived in Oahu. And in Oahu, it again, just kind of hit that, hey, I want to do signs. There were a lot of companies advertising that they were a sign company or doing T shirt screen printing. And it seemed like there was a lot of competition. And for some reason I just thought, well, let's just try that.

Let's back up. You get involved in the fence business because there's a gap now. You go to Hawaii, look at the sign business and say, okay, it's covered up with businesses making signs. That's a fit for me.

Yeah, I don't know what that was. It is a dichotomy. And I think that what I. What. So I did a little bit of research and I found that. That people had just a. A plotter that would cut vinyl, and they take the vinyl and then they'd stick it on a banner and they'd say, there's your sign. And it, it wasn't all that impressive. Well, I figured out that we could get a digital banner printer and it just better. And so we flew out to Florida to the. The sign sgia, the sign show, and said, hey, we want to open.

How did you even find out or know that there was a sign sga? I mean, how do you find these things out? Asking questions again.

Yeah, exactly, Larry. Yeah, with the fence company. We learned that there, you know, and I can't remember the name of it, but there's Basically a national institute of fill in the blank. Whatever position or job or career you want to have, there's going to be typically some sort of government governing body or assistance league type thing. So we joined the Fence, National Fence Bureau or whatever that was called. And by golly, we learned a lot and we got a lot of clients from it. We actually got a lot of business from joining that organization. So I just sort of naturally assumed and then found that the sign industry also had a, you know, an organization that you could get cheap insurance and things like that, better business type of thing. And sure enough, they had, you know, either one or once or twice a year in Orlando, they had a big sign show. And it just so happened that it was coming right up and we got tickets and we flew from Honolulu out to Orlando. And we showed up and I saw, you know, like quickly surveyed the scene and saw who was the best and who was doing what, walked right up to the best and then found the owner. Frank Fellers at Feller Sign Supply. Met Frank and just said, hey, Frank, I'm Travis. I want to open a sign shop. He's like, okay, go ahead. I said, well, I need you to, you know, sell me this stuff. He's like, okay, what do you need? I don't know, Frank, that's why I'm talking to you, man. What do I. And he, you know, it baffled him a little bit, but, you know, he didn't think. He didn't, you know, I could tell he wasn't real sure if I was serious or if I was a little bit off mentally or what was going on. But pretty soon we had a full shopping cart. And about three weeks later, you know, everything started shipping and showing up in Honolulu. And we went and rented like this huge place downtown, started Oahu Signs and screen printing.

And how did you. How did you kick off your business there?

You know, we had a really cool sign because we were able to digitally print and so it our science.

Did you make your sign? Yeah, we did.

Yeah. It was so cool. Yeah, it was a light box. And most people just have these, you know, basic one color light box that, you know, that's backlit and then another one color on top of it. Back to these plotters, they're like so 1980. Well, we printed wood. So it's like kind of this 3D wood looking sign that was backlit and people noticed it. I mean, like they were really noticing. And then we got fairly lucky, you know, like, whatever. We were right next to the Blaisdell center, which is the big auditorium in Honolulu and the mma, the mixed martial arts was just starting to come to town. And we met BJ Penn and who's a fairly famous mixed martial art fighter and his mom. And so we started printing for them. And then we, we met the Dahui crowd, the whole boys, and we're printing for them. And so we just kind of started building up local connections and then started working with some of the real big sort of fortune, you know, whatever companies in Honolulu doing all of their printing business. Cards, brochures, banners, T shirts, embroidery, things like that. Yeah.

And the thing is, so what people can take away from this is there's always people out there who know what you don't know. And most of the time, if it's a significant, you know, it's a business area, there'll be a national association of people. I've heard a funny thing about. They were talking about COVID and what a devastating effect it had on New York city. And like 30 or 40% of 30 or 40 bar, Irish and British bars had gone out of business. What a tragedy. And they said, of course there's still 320 left. And I don't know, you've been to Manhattan. And I always had, you know, we stayed at a hotel April, a couple of years ago, right across the street was an Irish British pub, you know, and I'm thinking, you know, because I thought, well, there's probably a few more of those in town, but 300. But there's a lot of everything out there. And so if you go out to these associations or these trade show things, first of all, only the most motivated people are going to go there. And there you can wander around and you know what you do at trade shows, by the way. And they're going to be pretty much in Vegas, Orlando, maybe New Orleans, something like that. But that's pretty much where the monster ones are going to be. And you walk around and see where the big crowds are and you could see that like the pga, the golf, they have every Orlando in January. In Orlando, that's what I, that's where I got clued in by the pros. They said you just go around and you see where the big crowds are and that's the hottest new product, hottest clothing line, you know, whatever, because people find the hot ones. And so when you go there, it allows you to identify who the role models, because we all need role models. You have people to copy and you find up getting your advice, asking your questions, modeling yourself after a superior. You save a lot of time Rather than modeling and asking questions of somebody who's like, average. You know, it's not that they're bad, but they're like, average. So you're going to get what the average guy would do and the average equipment they would have. And like you said, in the sign business, the average guys have equipment out of the 80s. And so a lot of. I don't know how you knew to do it, but you did a lot of things right. And you got. So how old were you now? So how long did it take you to get really established with that sign business?

And in Hallelujah, it took, you know, it took about a year and a half to get really to the point where we were able to pay the bills. I mean, it's not cheap to live in in Hawaii. It is really expensive and it's really expensive to pay rent there, especially downtown. Yeah, funny story about the PGA Golf Show. We actually won the best new designed, best new product at the PGA Golf Show.

Oh, congratulations.

Yeah, thank you. That was, that was kind of one of our first big awards that was like, wow, this is really cool. But and another thing, at the trade shows, they have a lot of speakers that come in and they'll teach. And I found that if you just sit up front and you listen and you learn and then they have a Q and A at the end, I could ask all of my rookie questions to this, you know, master fence builder. And they were happy to help. And, and then people would come up to me afterwards after asking all my questions and they're like, you know, what are you doing? How long have you been doing fences? Well, we haven't done any fences yet. Or, you know, hey, we haven't done any signs yet, but we're here to, you know, I want to learn. Like, wow, that's kind of strange. But here's my number. If ever you need anything, call me. And like, cool. I just picked up another mentor, you know. And so when we had hit a hiccup or a speed bump, you know, I'd call up and say, hey, I don't know if you remember me, I met you at the trade show. And what do I do? And they're like, wow, this is just nuts. But here's what you do. And sure enough, it worked.

Unbelievable. And so how old are you at this? By the time you got a year and a half, you got your business established and humming along in Hawaii. Now this was. You become dive master. You become captain of a 50 ton, you know, 50 ton vessels and got that rating and that took 700 something hours. Just get that. Then you walk away from that, become a pilot. Two and a half years, you're licensed in multi engine and you know all of the aircraft and then you go and you spend a year and a half or a year, you built the biggest fence company in central Oregon, sold that in two years. Now you're in Honolulu. In a year and a half, you got a whole nother new business up and running. How old are you at this time?

Boy, I'm trying to do the math. I should take my shoes off. Let's see, so this, you're from Hawaii.

Your shoes are not already on. Right.

I was probably right around 29 at that point.

Travis, you cover some ground, man, in your life. Unbelievable.

Yeah, I've been busy.

Yeah, I'm waiting for your presidential campaign to kick off here in a decade or so. Anyway, it's just good for the country to know there are people like you out there. I've never been in politics before, but now, Prize for peace and I was just elected president.

People every once in a while, you know, and I think that they're fairly serious or maybe they're just messing with me. But they ask, you know, like, why don't you run for mayor? It's like, I just, I don't know that I could have.

Let me give you the answer that you'd have to sit in a committee meeting.

Yeah, yeah. I've been in enough courthouses that I don't, I don't like spending time with, I don't appreciate spending time with lawyers and judges and locked inside the courthouses.

That just the limitations of that would be a whole lot worse than being a captain on your boat.

Yeah.

You know, but God bless, everybody wants to do it and, you know, maybe they'll come a time where that's, you know, you're looking to, to do that. And God bless the good people that do that. And so thanks so much for sharing.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works. And in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch, go to whiteellumwinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible, I'm Larry Wydell and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.