Speaker 1: So you're you're an engineer my training, and you you
Speaker 1: worked for the railroad company, right, right? Can you explain that,
Speaker 1: like what you actually did, because that what you did
Speaker 1: that for twelve years? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So I started while I was in college, like working
Speaker 3: for in part time. But what I did was so
Speaker 3: design rail terminals. I mean it's pretty it was pretty
Speaker 3: simple as far as engineering, because you're not building buildings
Speaker 3: and everything. But it was just a lot of work
Speaker 3: that was needed to like when after a derailment, you know,
Speaker 3: realigning the track, making sure that the trains can run
Speaker 3: because they they running a high velocity on these two
Speaker 3: little bitty rails and you got hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 3: tons moving at sixty seventy miles an hour, so you
Speaker 3: had to make sure that everything was designed, the curvature
Speaker 3: was right, and all that kind of.
Speaker 2: Sf And where were you doing this at?
Speaker 4: So I started off working for ce In Railroad.
Speaker 3: So I was covering between Chicago and ben Ruge, Louisiana.
Speaker 5: Wow, because we seen in you know the past few months,
Speaker 5: these railroad systems, the subwatses especial you know where we're from,
Speaker 5: that are completely outdated.
Speaker 2: They're running on systems that are from like.
Speaker 5: Nineteen ten, right, and we're like, how is this even possible?
Speaker 3: Yeah, technology has not changed, and they just they do
Speaker 3: the minimum maintenance to keep it up. So I was
Speaker 3: on like the freight side, so it wasn't any passenger rail.
Speaker 3: So a lot of it's behind the scenes. You know
Speaker 3: that they didn't get a lot of exposure unless that's
Speaker 3: a big derailment somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So merchandise and product is moving through your.
Speaker 3: Life right exactly, And like eighty percent of anything that
Speaker 3: moves somewhere in the United States, if it comes in
Speaker 3: on a cargo ship from China somewhere, it moves by
Speaker 3: rail at some point in time. It only moves by
Speaker 3: truck when it gets closer to its destination.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't think people realize how big of a business
Speaker 1: trains are because the vast majority of the country probably don't.
Speaker 1: They don't ride trains like we're kind of because we're
Speaker 1: from New York, so we're used to riding trains, subways
Speaker 1: and trains. It's pretty normal. But most of America they
Speaker 1: don't really ride trains like that anymore. So people might
Speaker 1: not fully understand that trains is a big business and
Speaker 1: even if you don't ride it, like you said, a
Speaker 1: lot of cargo ros.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And what people don't realize is that the railroad is
Speaker 3: basically what helped build the West. Like when everybody went
Speaker 3: from the East coast to West coast, everything was moving.
Speaker 2: By a rail.
Speaker 3: It was small trains, great expansion, right, yeah, the great expansion. Yeah,
Speaker 3: everything was done by rail And people always wondered why
Speaker 3: the railroads in the hood that wasn't always the hood.
Speaker 3: That's what the first area that was settled in every
Speaker 3: small town because you had to bring everything in by
Speaker 3: a rail to set up, you know, the infrastructure, build
Speaker 3: a city hall, to build small buildings.
Speaker 4: Everything came in by rail.
Speaker 5: So one of your job t not titles, but responsibilities
Speaker 5: is designed Are you designing the actual tracks?
Speaker 2: Like what what does that mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Designing actual tracks?
Speaker 2: You are?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Oh well, I mean that's what I did.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: I did that for.
Speaker 3: The first four years I worked for the railroad. But
Speaker 3: like I said, I wanted to get out of engineering.
Speaker 3: So and once I started getting into reading the real
Speaker 3: estate and entrepreneurship stuff, I realized I needed to learn
Speaker 3: more about business. So I kind of took that opportunity
Speaker 3: while I had.
Speaker 1: The corporate.
Speaker 3: Blanket over me to try to get into other departments.
Speaker 3: So I went to the operation. So I ran freight.
Speaker 4: Terminals for like four years.
Speaker 3: And that was crazy experience because I'm like twenty four
Speaker 3: to twenty five mosion guys that's forty fifty twice as
Speaker 3: much money as me. You know, the union guys make
Speaker 3: over one hundred grand a year. I was making like
Speaker 3: fifty sixty. So I learned a lot about managing people
Speaker 3: that in that role. Then I got out of that
Speaker 3: and I got into the marketing and sales side, and
Speaker 3: I was lucky enough to get into industrial products, which
Speaker 3: is chemicals and oil and gas stuff. So I'm sitting
Speaker 3: in rooms with all these decision makers that Exxon, Chevron,
Speaker 3: pill Up sixty six, these type companies, and yeah, man,
Speaker 3: it's just open mye's to a whole different world. They
Speaker 3: speak a different language. You learn a lot more about
Speaker 3: the economy and infrastructure of everything.
Speaker 1: And what's one of the things you learned when you
Speaker 1: was working on that side of the fence.
Speaker 3: Man, I just learned how money really works and how
Speaker 3: people really make decisions. Because energy runs the country, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Like without without coal, without oil,
Speaker 3: Without gasoline, everything shuts down, and so they know that
Speaker 3: they basically have monopoly on everything, you know, and the
Speaker 3: profit margins are crazy in the what's.
Speaker 1: The profit margins?
Speaker 4: Three hundred percent on a lot of stuff?
Speaker 1: Wow, on like gas and oil and stuff. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let me ask you this. Then, a lot of people
Speaker 1: are saying that we should move away from that, going
Speaker 1: to solar energy, wind energy, electric energy. You're you're an
Speaker 1: engineer and you worked in the space. Hey, is that realistic?
Speaker 1: And what's your thoughts on that? Like, as long term,
Speaker 1: can we continue the way we're going now or do
Speaker 1: we have to make a change.
Speaker 3: I mean, eventually there will have to be a change
Speaker 3: because there's a limited amount of fossil fuels out there,
Speaker 3: so we're gonna have to find other energy sources that
Speaker 3: we can use that are renewable. So it's definitely feasible,
Speaker 3: it's definitely plausible, and like wind, sunlight, water, that stuff's
Speaker 3: not gonna go away, So we're alway gonna have that.
Speaker 3: But you just have these big institutions that are making
Speaker 3: so much money off of the fossil fuel based energy
Speaker 3: sector that they're not going to just give up their.
Speaker 1: Position and they do a lot of lobby in Washington.
Speaker 3: That's I was about to say, that's something that we
Speaker 3: don't really understand, but that lobbying is powerful. That's why
Speaker 3: all the legislation really happens. I don't care who you
Speaker 3: vote for, it's somebody with money in the behind the
Speaker 3: scenes in Washington taking them out to dinner, wining and
Speaker 3: dinam and that's when the real decisions are made.
Speaker 2: You got to make sure they keep their money.
Speaker 1: I remember when Hillary Clinton was running for president versus Trump.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, so they were saying, I think Chase
Speaker 1: Chase put like ten million into Hillary's campaign, but they
Speaker 1: put nine million in Drumps campaign. So no matter who won,
Speaker 1: they won, it doesn't matter. I mean, that's what people
Speaker 1: don't fully understand either. It's like you're playing a political
Speaker 1: game based off of emotion, but these people are playing
Speaker 1: a political game based off a strategy.
Speaker 2: It's two different things. Yeah, they're playing chess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're gonna give money to Republicans, Democrats, and independence
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, they need what
Speaker 1: they need done, and money talks.
Speaker 5: And whoever whoever's the decision maker, either red or blue,
Speaker 5: is gonna help them right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you started a business the erail commerce. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about that?
Speaker 3: So basically something else I like to teach entrepreneurs, especially
Speaker 3: the ones that's coming out of corporate world. Everybody feels
Speaker 3: like I got to create something new, Like I got
Speaker 3: to get into an industry that I see everybody else doing, right.
Speaker 3: But what I realized is like, man, if this company
Speaker 3: is paying me one hundred grand a year to do
Speaker 3: this job, there has to be a smaller business out
Speaker 3: there somewhere that needs these same services, need the same
Speaker 3: skill set, and I can just go out and provide
Speaker 3: the service for them, and instead of being their employee,
Speaker 3: I become their consultant. So that's what Erael commerces. I
Speaker 3: took all that experience I had, all those connections I
Speaker 3: had with the railroad, all these oil and gas companies,
Speaker 3: and I found all these smaller companies that need or
Speaker 3: want to get a contract with an Exxon.
Speaker 4: Because Exon has over ten thousand rail cars.
Speaker 3: Everyone of elose cars has to be maintained, has to
Speaker 3: be repainted, has to be cleaned, that has to be
Speaker 3: maintenance done to them. They have to storm when they're
Speaker 3: not using they got to park them somewhere. So what
Speaker 3: I do is I help all those companies that provide
Speaker 3: those services get in the door with exon, get the contract,
Speaker 3: and then they perform all the work and I just
Speaker 3: get commissions off of the deals.
Speaker 1: So you get like the relationship, man.
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 3: I'm basically brokering, basically broker in and I have everything
Speaker 3: set up with with my clients to where whatever contract
Speaker 3: that helped them get I get paid.
Speaker 2: So eraail is not the only.
Speaker 5: Form of consultation that you're providing, right, Don't you have
Speaker 5: a few other consultation things that you do well.
Speaker 3: I mean, in general, I just try to help entrepreneurs
Speaker 3: get started, you know, because I mean I was so
Speaker 3: lost when I was trying to get out out of
Speaker 3: the work world. I was like, man, nobody was really
Speaker 3: here to guide me and teach me. So I use
Speaker 3: my social media platform, and you know, I use that
Speaker 3: network and that audience as as my way to give back,
Speaker 3: you know. So anybody that has helped wants help with
Speaker 3: it getting started entrepreneurship, I try to teach them the
Speaker 3: basis the kind of stuff we're talking about now, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. I get them as far as
Speaker 3: I can and then I try to network with someone
Speaker 3: that's actually in their field.
Speaker 5: And this episode is brought to you by P and
Speaker 5: C Bank. A lot of people think podcasts about work
Speaker 5: are boring, and sure they definitely can be, but understanding
Speaker 5: of professionals routine shows us how they achieve their success
Speaker 5: little by little, day after day. It's like banking with
Speaker 5: P and C Bank. It might seem boring to save,
Speaker 5: plan and make calculated decisions with your bank, but keeping
Speaker 5: your money boring is what helps you live or more
Speaker 5: happily fulfilled life. P and C Bank Brilliantly Boring since
Speaker 5: eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty five is
Speaker 5: a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc.
Speaker 5: P and C Bank National Association member fdic.
Speaker 3: Erners.
Speaker 2: What's Up?
Speaker 5: You ever walk into a small business and everything just
Speaker 5: works like the checkout is fast, the receipts are digital,
Speaker 5: tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before
Speaker 5: the line even builds. Odds are they're using Square? We
Speaker 5: love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just
Speaker 5: feels seamless, whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor
Speaker 5: at a pop up market, or even one of our
Speaker 5: merch partners. Square makes it easy for them to take payments,
Speaker 5: manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from
Speaker 5: one simple system. If you're a business owner or even
Speaker 5: just thinking about launching something soon, Square is hands down
Speaker 5: one of the best tools out there to help you start,
Speaker 5: run and grow. It's not just about payments, it's about
Speaker 5: giving you time back so you can focus on what
Speaker 5: matters most ready. To see how Square can transform your business,
Speaker 5: visit Square dot com backslash go backslash eyl to learn
Speaker 5: more that Square dot com backslash, go backslash eyl. Don't wait,
Speaker 5: don't hesitate. Let's Square handle the back end so you
Speaker 5: can keep pushing your vision forward.
Speaker 4: Try to get them to get under that person.
Speaker 5: So you're providing the mentorship by consulting, right, Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 1: Consulting is something that we also haven't spoken about yet
Speaker 1: in this podcast, but it's extremely important and it's a
Speaker 1: very profitable business as well. Consultants. You have consultants in
Speaker 1: school industry, you have consultants, and political industry you have
Speaker 1: consultants and all kinds of stuff. Right, can you explain
Speaker 1: the importance a lot of time, especially for small business owners.
Speaker 1: This is the problem with small business owns us compare
Speaker 1: the business big business. They have a small way of thinking.
Speaker 1: They don't understand the power of consulting. They don't understand
Speaker 1: the power of marketing. They don't understand They just want
Speaker 1: to just do the work. It's like running on the tread,
Speaker 1: but you can only get so far. Right. When you
Speaker 1: get enough wind behind you, know, you can start to fly.
Speaker 1: So when you're talking about the power of consulting, like
Speaker 1: what can somebody get value out of a hiring the
Speaker 1: right consultant.
Speaker 4: So there's only two ways you're gonna learn.
Speaker 3: You're either gonna bump your head and you're gonna lose
Speaker 3: time and money, or you're gonna pay for the knowledge.
Speaker 1: Period.
Speaker 3: There's no other way you're gonna learn, right, So you
Speaker 3: hire a consultant. A consultant that's someone that's an expert
Speaker 3: in that field, that has already got experience doing what
Speaker 3: you're trying to do. Or they can help you with
Speaker 3: a particular area of the business that you can't fulfill.
Speaker 3: Like if you have a great product but you don't
Speaker 3: know how to get it in front of enough people,
Speaker 3: you need a marketing consultant to come in and help
Speaker 3: you get it in front of the right people. And
Speaker 3: so it's basically a way for you to you can
Speaker 3: add a whole department to your business without actually having
Speaker 3: a hire enn employee.
Speaker 4: It's a consultant.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: That consultant can neither be somebody that's paid by an hour,
Speaker 3: or it could be somebody that I always recommend you
Speaker 3: get performance based consultants, which means they work off a commission,
Speaker 3: So if they don't produce for you, they don't make
Speaker 3: any money, right, so that that gives them a vested
Speaker 3: reason to get in there and work hard and get
Speaker 3: something done. And on the flip side of that that,
Speaker 3: like you said, that's a very lucrative business too, because
Speaker 3: it's a business where it doesn't require you have to
Speaker 3: invest a lot. You can work from home and be
Speaker 3: a consultant and people actually paying you just for the
Speaker 3: knowledge that you already have.
Speaker 4: You know, so you can take that corporate experience.
Speaker 1: You could.
Speaker 3: Man, you could have been flipping burgers and McDonald's for
Speaker 3: five years, but guess what skill set you got. You
Speaker 3: know what it takes to onboard a new employees. So
Speaker 3: you can go to other small restaurants and say here's
Speaker 3: the McDonald's model. I'm gonna teach you how to run
Speaker 3: a McDonald's model for your restaurant.
Speaker 2: And that's something that anybody can do.
Speaker 5: Like as you're saying it, I'm thinking of like especially
Speaker 5: in the education field, and especially in the restaurant field
Speaker 5: as well. It's like people always try to figure out
Speaker 5: how can they make passive income, right, and they don't
Speaker 5: realize that they have a skill set already. They're just
Speaker 5: overlooking it, right, They're not maximizing their potential.
Speaker 1: Well, this is one of the things you talk about
Speaker 1: multiple streams of income. That is, the average million that
Speaker 1: has seven streams of income. That doesn't mean they has
Speaker 1: seven jobs or even seven businesses. Is that they're maximizing
Speaker 1: their skills maybe one or two businesses. So, as you said,
Speaker 1: you can be a teacher, right, but you're an expert
Speaker 1: in that field. If you're a really good teacher, Now
Speaker 1: you can be a consultant to school districts, right, curriculum
Speaker 1: things of that nature. Right, And that's something that anybody
Speaker 1: can do. As choice said, even if you're still an employee,
Speaker 1: you can be an entrepreneur and create your own consulting business.
Speaker 5: And the amount of time. It doesn't require as much
Speaker 5: right to say these are my hours. You dictate the hours,
Speaker 5: and you dictate the fees.
Speaker 3: And a lot of times you're helping different customers and
Speaker 3: clients with the same problem exactly, so you already know
Speaker 3: it like in and out.
Speaker 1: You know, for your consulting business, how did you market
Speaker 1: yourself to your customers and clients?
Speaker 3: How do you man The most powerful tool I use
Speaker 3: is linked in, Okay, And what I liked about LinkedIn
Speaker 3: is because when when you put yourself on there as
Speaker 3: a business owner, you give yourself whatever title you want,
Speaker 3: you know, so I gave my it's just it's me
Speaker 3: and one partner, but my title is Executive VP. So
Speaker 3: that puts you in a whole different arena. They look
Speaker 3: at you like, it's all perception. It's all perceptions. So
Speaker 3: then when I go to when I see a company
Speaker 3: that I'm trying to get a connection with, and I
Speaker 3: go to the CEO and request to connect with them,
Speaker 3: they were like, oh, it's another executive that wants to
Speaker 3: connect you.
Speaker 2: We got an exec that wants to meet you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's all it is, is positioning, and it's
Speaker 3: it's all about you. Know what you post. I post.
Speaker 3: I repost a lot of Wall Street durnal type articles
Speaker 3: that related to the industry. Any type of insight that
Speaker 3: I get from anybody else that's in the industry, I'll
Speaker 3: make a post about that. So then you kind of
Speaker 3: position yourself as a subject matter expert. So then a
Speaker 3: lot what happens is eventually enough people are watching your
Speaker 3: posts to where when they have a problem, they come
Speaker 3: to you instead of you having to go out and
Speaker 3: ask for business. And another great thing I like about
Speaker 3: LinkedIn is because you can type in any job title
Speaker 3: you want. So I'm in a supply chain, right, I
Speaker 3: type in director a supply chain. LinkedIn is gonna give
Speaker 3: me a list of people with that title.
Speaker 4: So all I do is go connect connect connect, connect,
Speaker 4: connect connect.
Speaker 3: You know, and then that builds you audience because people
Speaker 3: go to check you out to see who is this
Speaker 3: that's asking the link with me? And then like my
Speaker 3: network on LinkedIn is like seventeen thousand, it's all industrial products,
Speaker 3: supply chain people from all these big companies.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of that's a lot linked You got
Speaker 1: to accept every single person, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well yeah, the person that the person has to
Speaker 3: approve the connection. But if your page is set up
Speaker 3: to where it looks like, oh, this is somebody that
Speaker 3: I might want to my network, then you're good. And
Speaker 3: that's the whole purpose of you know, making sure that
Speaker 3: you set yourself up right on there with the right titles.
Speaker 1: You send and you send uh was it in mail?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: They send you in mail? So you could both.
Speaker 4: I guess something of both.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I met with a guy matter of fact, he flew
Speaker 3: in from Arkansas last week because he's working with a
Speaker 3: private development group that does industrial development and they're looking
Speaker 3: for new locations to build new rail terminals. And that's
Speaker 3: part of my job when I working in the railroad,
Speaker 3: so that's part of my consulting too. So he literally
Speaker 3: reached out to me because he had been seeing me
Speaker 3: make these posts on LinkedIn about railroad development and railroad terminals.
Speaker 3: So he this gout literally fluent for the day, just
Speaker 3: for that meeting.
Speaker 5: You are using your resources efficiently, and a lot of
Speaker 5: times people don't realize that, Like they're just on LinkedIn
Speaker 5: or they're just on Facebook just to put pictures up,
Speaker 5: not networking, and not realizing that how powerful a tool
Speaker 5: they have at their fingertips.
Speaker 1: Well, LinkedIn is only for networking, but I got to
Speaker 1: get a better I go, actually got to do a
Speaker 1: better job on LinkedIn because I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: don't feel too comfortable with it. I feel like it's
Speaker 1: some kind of boring.
Speaker 4: It is boring, but it's like Facebook, but it's for
Speaker 4: business only.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's powerful, Yeah, it is, it is.
Speaker 3: I mean you can you would be surprised that people
Speaker 3: that don't have a lot of LinkedIn followers that are
Speaker 3: like powerful people, like I mean like producers, executive producers
Speaker 3: at these big stations. They may have five hundred, one
Speaker 3: thousand connections and you go requested and it's approved the
Speaker 3: next day, you know. But it's like it's like it's
Speaker 3: like a back door to get the connection that usually
Speaker 3: you have to call a corporate headquarters and talk to
Speaker 3: administrative person and ask the schedule time to meet this person.
Speaker 4: You just got to LinkedIn and find them.
Speaker 5: So when you need it's like getting you past all those.
Speaker 4: Steps, like all the gatekeepers. Yeah, pass all the gatekeepers if.
Speaker 2: The person's on LinkedIn, if they're on that, but.
Speaker 1: Every everybody's on LinkedIn and LinkedIn is one is the
Speaker 1: most powerful search thing too, because like so when you
Speaker 1: search somebody's name on Google, the first thing that comes
Speaker 1: up is LinkedIn. That's like the first thing. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's like your online resume pretty much it is. And
Speaker 1: so I don't know how they how they work that
Speaker 1: with the algorithm, but they always are on the top
Speaker 1: of your thing. So you kind of have to have
Speaker 1: a LinkedIn page if you're doing anything in business. It's
Speaker 1: like almost mandatory. Yeah, agree, got up that man, Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: so that was good.
Speaker 4: A