Latest / Exit Algorithms / 7 Exits, $100M Revenue, 29 Employees: How Eliot Vancil Built FuelLogic | (#55)

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7 Exits, $100M Revenue, 29 Employees: How Eliot Vancil Built FuelLogic | (#55) · Exit Algorithms

• speaker-0: Welcome to exit algorithms, the podcast where we decode what it really takes to unlock growth, streamline operations and prepare your business for a high value exit. I'm your host, Pete Vera. And today I'm excited to bring on Elliot Vansil. He's a serial entrepreneur who started, run and sold over seven businesses across IT, hospitality and fuel management over ⁓ 25 plus years. He's now managing partner of FuelLogic, one of the only national providers offering diesel, gasoline, and DEF delivery solutions for fleet operators across the country. so excited to have you. Welcome to the show. speaker-1: Hey, thanks, Peter. I appreciate it. I'm happy to be here. speaker-0: Absolutely. Yeah. Man, we're getting into it a little bit on the pre-show, but I'm really excited that I think it's going to be a great conversation for our listeners today. speaker-1: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I've definitely made a lot of mistakes and I've done a few things right. And so an open book that I'm happy to share all of my experiences. speaker-0: Awesome. Yeah. How about we start off? Can you share a bit about your background and maybe some of your business journey and some lessons learned? speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. So I don't, I don't have any real special background. I'm a, my dad was a house painter. was a stay at home mom that, that had jobs from time to time, but I really didn't have anybody to, that I really ⁓ I would say, you know, about businesses. So I like to tell everybody, you know, I'm not the, not the smartest guy in the room. I usually will just outwork everyone else. And, ⁓ that I know is typically because I've got a scar to show you that, that where I've done it wrong. you know, to be multiple times sometimes, you know, trying to, trying to find the way. But, but, ⁓ that was a graduate of Texas tech university. I've got my finance degree and, and I'll be honest with you. I've just always kind of known that I was going to be an entrepreneur. Like I just, I worked, it's funny. My first job, ⁓ I had a finance degree. first job, Sherman Williams paint company hired me and they moved me to Denver, Colorado. And I had a West Texas fiance at the time and she wouldn't move to Colorado. And so I wound up in Dallas, Texas, and I'll never forget, it was a contractor for US Sprint. he hired me, ⁓ buddy of mine told me, hey man, we can work on these computers. And for this contractor, can make like, it was like 12 bucks an hour. It blew my mind. I thought it was going to be so awesome, you know? ⁓ I got the job and I'll never forget. I told my buddy, I thought, don't know anything about computers. And I wound up getting the job. The guy called me in a week later and he said, hey man, I love you, you work hard, all the things, but you don't know anything, man. I'm gonna break you down to seven bucks an hour. And so that's how I got into my first industry, was technology. And I worked for someone for a couple of years while I cut my teeth. And it was networking back in the day and everything was about being a Microsoft certified engineer and all this stuff. But I wound up building my first company, which funny enough, I... I just exited a couple of years ago. That was Network Logic was the name of that company. And we were a ⁓ a managed services provider before, before revenue was a thing. It was, it was ⁓ a, did work for small and medium businesses, what we did. And ⁓ even when we started, you know, I kind of figured out that, you know, that if I could figure out how to make things proactive, I could make things recurring. And as we evolved in that industry and in that business, that ultimately turned into managed services. that's where I cut my teeth, ⁓ in IT Back when the internet was becoming a thing, I'm showing my age, but back when ⁓ internet was a thing, probably in the early ⁓ 2000s, late ⁓ probably actually, early 2000s, somewhere in there. started selling telecom and internet services to our customers. And we really didn't think too much about, you know, like the money aspect of reselling these services. We just wanted to help our clients get great internet. And then that led to my second big business, which was ⁓ Nexus Consulting. were a master agency that spun out of NetworkLogic and we sold Pretty much in the beginning, we sold a company was called C Beyond Communications and they were owned by Cisco and they did, they were one of the first voiceover IP companies. And so we became big with those guys. And if you're around back in those days, back in the deregulation of telecom, cause everything used to be the ma bells prior to that Southwestern Bell, Atlantic Bell, that kind of stuff. But if you were around whenever they deregulated, all these little companies popped up and they wanted market share. And so we were able to secure a lucrative contract that they would, there's no way that those companies will do those kinds of contracts today. But if you're around back then and you got one of these contracts that said evergreen commissions, and there was just all kinds of clauses in these agreements that you can't get today, you know, little boutique industry popped up out of that and it's, it's a master agency is what they call it. And so, but basically what we did, there's probably I don't know, man, 15 ish real companies that had real contracts and did real business. And it was very, it was kind of funny. We all worked with each other, but we were also competitors. And so I would go to you and I'd say, hey, you've got AT &T, I've got Verizon. Let me sell your AT &T and I'll let you sell my Verizon. We'll help write each other's numbers. And so that was my first real kind of introduction to reoccurring revenue. we would sell telecom services and get paid forever. And it was kind of like annuity. And we had these agreements that said that we would get paid forever. And so ⁓ that industry matured, as that industry matured, they started taking those clauses and tighten them up. Like you'd have minimum commitments. You'd have, you know, they'd give you commission for a year, these kinds of things. And they'd make it harder, right? Like if you weren't selling, they'd cut your commissions off, things of that nature. And so, That's where the master agency space came from. And I did that business for probably about eight years before I exited that business. But in the end, we had, I think, 350, 400 companies that we were reselling for. And so we had a portfolio of technology products. So everything from Azure Cloud products to Office 365 to telecommunication services to... cell phones, even energy and power and stuff like that. that was an interesting company and that's really probably what founded learning how to sell those products and then learning how build companies that didn't require employees necessarily to grow your revenue. that probably ⁓ most my beliefs and most of my beliefs about and the kind of businesses that I want to be associated with, that's where they came from is that company. And then fast forward, started getting bored of that business. I had a really great leadership team. I'm kind of known for that. build companies, I get them to a point. And then ⁓ I to build leadership teams. And then once they're kind of running things, I get bored and start doing something else. And so a buddy of mine that had been in the early days with me ⁓ in the industry, we're really good friends. And he was my first salesman. And I lost track of him for a few years, because he had gotten divorced and he was just kind of getting through all of that. When I found him again, he'd always been in technology. When I found him again, he was in fuel. And, ⁓ and everything I've ever done previous to that point in time had always been in technology. And, ⁓ so I found him, I was like, what do mean you're in fuel? We sell technology. And, ⁓ he was like, no, man, he's like, fuel is great. We don't have to go to the front door. ⁓ We don't have to deal with a receptionist. going around to the back dock. We're talking to the guy that manages the fleet. And he was doing what they call direct to equipment or wet hose fueling. And that's basically where I would come to you and say, Hey, you got 10 trucks back there. Instead of sending them the truck stop every day and wasting your labor and wasting, you know, all the things are stealing from you. Why don't you let us come out here and fuel them at night? And so we, we jumped, that's where FuelLogic started. And he had worked with me in the telecommunications business. And so he knew about selling products for other companies, right? And doing it that way. And he kind of had a vision that we could do the same thing we did in the telecommunication space, in the fuel space. And that's the craziest, really one of the dumbest ideas we've ever had that worked. It worked better than any other company that I'm still operating it today. And I'm just blown away that such a simple, you know, thought, you know, could work. um, and I'm convinced that there's probably other industries that it could work in, but the reason it worked in fuel is cause it's such an old archaic industry that these are a hundred year old companies were great granddad left it to the grands, know, left it to his son, left it to the grandson. and they're still writing paper tickets and doing all these things. And so we brought technology into that space and I'm having a lot of fun running that business today. ⁓ do real estate, a lot of real estate as well. But a little bit about me and my background, kind of I came from. speaker-0: Yeah, thank you for sharing. That's awesome. Really ⁓ inspiring story. I'm sure we're going to talk more about FuelLogic too. curious, were there any mistakes made in your earlier career or lessons learned that have helped you build out FuelLogic? speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, I can, I can't even count all the mistakes I've made, but I think that the biggest thing that I learned early on, probably wasn't even early enough. You know, this is probably, started, I think my first real business in like 98 or something. And, and, and I'd been running network logic was the name of that business. And I had been running it for, you know, for a handful of years. And I'd created probably the most miserable place that you can imagine to work. It was a. You know, we were up to like 70 employees at that time. And, and I was in the middle of everything. I was in the middle of our accounting. I was in the middle of our, was, I was the escalation point for our engineers. I was in the middle of our sales organization. I was in the middle of absolutely everything. And thankfully, by no fault of, know, by no really nothing that I did that was right. I wound up with a pretty loyal group of leaders that, came to me and said, Hey, we heard about a peer group ⁓ we think that you need to join. Because was horrible, man. Everybody hated working there. Nobody more than me. It was, it was just a miserable culture, ⁓ no a rudderless ship and, and, and, and a big micromanager at the top of it. Right. And, and I joined a technology group called that was a Heartland technology group. And it was this farmer that I think he was in Kansas or somewhere that has started this group of IT companies the idea of a peer community. I think by the end of it, when I finally ⁓ was out that industry, there's like 3000 companies or something like that worldwide, like Australia, ⁓ England, New everywhere of IT companies where... where they created these peer groups and they broke us up into individual groups where we would have 13 to 15 companies that were not geographically competitive, but we all did the same thing, right? And to get into this group, had to, and the commitment level was high. You had to meet these guys in person two days a week, every quarter. typically had to meet via conference call a couple of times throughout the quarter. Each quarter, I don't remember, each quarter had a theme. And one of the themes was business plan. One of the themes was legacy. One of the themes was a life plan. And with the idea that entrepreneurs, good at, we're good at, you know, typically we're workaholics. Typically we're good at, you know, the business aspects, but thinking about what's your legacy, right? If you fell over dead on the sidewalk, you know what mean? What happens? What happens to your family, right? ⁓ These little businesses typically are built around the entrepreneur there is no legacy. They just wither up and die, right? And so I'll never forget the first time that these guys came in. I was doing a lot of stuff, right? And I'm a little bit of an over accomplisher and I do a lot on a bootstrap and just shoestring budget. And I was pretty proud of my numbers. I'll never forget, we came in and it was really cool what this group did is they normalized our numbers. And so what I called an orange, the other guy called an orange, what I called an apple, he called an apple. And so we had to take our financials and put them into a book. And then they compared us and benchmarked us against the companies worldwide that were in ⁓ Heartland Technology Group. And so that was a really cool experience because that was the first time that I got to see. ⁓ what good looks like. As entrepreneurs, a lot of times we build these, I can't do this because I'm in Dallas and there's all these limitations and this, that, and the other. Well, when you joined a peer group like that, I came in and there was a guy in Cairo, Georgia that was kicking my butt. And here I am in Dallas, you know I mean? And millions population, I don't know what the exact population number is, but it's a big place. Cairo, Georgia is not big. And he was murdering my numbers. And so all of a sudden it started exposing me, right? To, ⁓ to what was possible. And I'll never forget, you know, your question was the thing that I did wrong. never forget the first thing that they said to me. And man, I'd only known these guys for like a week. And, the first thing they told me was Elliot, it's really impressive what you've been able to build, but you're not going any further. You're at a ceiling because you do not develop people. You don't develop leaders. You don't develop people and you're in the middle of everything and you're a micromanager. And until you learn to do that, you're not going anywhere. And I'm not known for listening to people, but that stuck with me and it hurt me. And it hurt my pride for a little bit. I went home and licked my wounds and I looked at what I had built and I built this tower, 70 employees. mean, that's a pretty good size IT company. And I built this tower that had no foundation, right? And I would say that that was probably 2005, 2006, somewhere in there. And I can tell you that the rest of my career to today, I'm still focused on figuring out how to develop people, how to develop teams, how to develop culture, how to do those things. And so that's what I got wrong early on is I just was trying to be in the middle of everything. ⁓ I was tearing people down rather than building people up. And that's my biggest mistake. And today I look at my success, it's literally the ⁓ of the people around me. And ⁓ learned early on that money really doesn't change anything. It actually makes life harder in my opinion. I think that it's a lot more fun to want things than it is to actually get things. And so pretty early in my career, I figured out it's not money gonna drive this. It's gonna be playing the game, playing the game well. And then I get more out of looking at the people that have worked with me and where they're at today and knowing that I played a part in that, you know, ⁓ pretty cool. I've got a pretty amazing team around us here today. So, but that would be my... what I did wrong early on. speaker-0: Yeah, that's awesome. Man, ⁓ a lot of direction we could take this. But like that. I love that idea of a peer group. Do you have any ⁓ recommendations for business owners How do you find the right peer ⁓ group? ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah, I think that there are, I was trying to think of there's some that are just general, you don't, that aren't in the same industry. think Y.O. is one and there's a, there's some other like groups like that, that are some, my buddies have been telling me about because today we just exited that business a few years ago and I really hadn't found a good home. Like I still need that community and me and the guys, those guys that were, that were my peers, they were my peers for 15 years and they still, serve as my peers, right? Like even though I'm not in the group with them anymore, I still talk to them weekly, you know, but today I need to find a home. And today I'm in the fuel industry and there's really not such a thing ⁓ the fuel industry that I've found yet. And so, but there are some general, there's Y.O., there's another one, you know, there's a of them out there and I've talked to buddies of mine. They say they have similar experiences, even though one's in plumbing and one's in and one's in the logistics business. so probably where I'm gonna be probably stopping next because I ⁓ that Your employees tell you what you wanna hear, right? And going into a peer group like that, dude, they don't really owe you anything. just kinda, they beat up on you pretty hard. And it was an experience that I tell you, wouldn't be where I'm at today. that iron ⁓ iron. ⁓ literally wouldn't be where I'm at today had it not been for those guys. I would have just gone back to work for someone because it was just miserable prior to speaker-0: powerful. And you had to open your eyes to realizing you need to make, you know, build people up to, ⁓ basically over some, a lot of your responsibilities at the end the speaker-1: and that's the thing people don't really, and I know you will get into this, but I think that one of the biggest things that young business owners don't understand is that it's not when people come in and look at you and ⁓ your company, the more in the middle you are of everything, the less valuable your company is. And hard understand that, right? Because ⁓ most business ⁓ I'm a big proponent of disc profiling, which is there's a lot of personalities. I don't know if you've ever heard of that one, but they're all kind of the same, but we're all different personalities, right? And to have a successful business, you really need all the personality types, because they all have strengths and they all have weaknesses. And so most business operators are D personalities. It takes a D personality, a dominant personality. to step out, take the risk, you know what mean? They're usually riverboat gambler types. Well, that typically comes with egos too, right? And when you've got an ego, when somebody comes to look at your business, you know what I mean? It's like, hey, I did this, I did that. you think that you're making your business look good, but you're really devaluing your company. When comes in, ⁓ it's to place a value on your company. What they want to see is that you could literally exit stage left, and ⁓ in the business wouldn't hiccup at all. so that's what I work on today. Right. Is and I'm proud to say I'm a big overland camper and me and my me and my wife love to just go out on journeys and ⁓ we're taking multiple 30 day journeys. You know what mean today. And I get back and sometimes I think my business is a little better than it was when I was when I was there. ⁓ know. So that's how you know that you're doing it right. You know. And so, but that's what I enjoyed. speaker-0: That's one of the probably the number one thing that's going to increase the value of your business ⁓ getting it to be able to run without you. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, your leadership team is everything. that's ⁓ best way to build value for sure. speaker-0: Yeah. Do you have a process that you use to try to identify things that you start to give some of your employees those responsibilities? speaker-1: Yeah, I think that the best thing, I was introduced to this business system from peer group, my time with the peer group, but big, big, big proponents of the entrepreneurial operating system, which is EOS. I don't know if you've ever heard of EOS, but I run EOS in every one of my businesses and we've it since probably 2005. And I'm a big kind of give it back guy and I love to. got a handful of young guys that I mentor today that I go to breakfast with typically a couple of times a week. I've got a different guy that I'll go to breakfast with. One of them owns a landscaping company. And I've mentoring this guy probably for 10 years or something. I introduced to EOS ⁓ early on. ⁓ were having I was telling him about some of the problems we were having to fuel logic. And he said, man, are you sure you run EOS? I thought, shut up, dude. I introduced you to EOS. And he goes, man, I don't think you'd be having these problems if you ran EOS. And it's funny, man. He introduced us. I'd always implemented EOS myself or one of our peer guys would come in and kind of help me. And we never really had a real coach or a real facilitator. And he challenged me. said, you're not running EOS. And he challenged me to go meet with his coach, the guy that I'm mentoring. Right now I'm with his coach and I went and sat down with him and probably two years ago we started, we sat down with this guy and he said he was intimidated by me. The coach was because like I'd been running EOS longer than him. And once he got to do me, to know me, he said, Elliot, you're running EOS. All right. But it's not the entrepreneurial operating system. You're running Elliot's operating system. I had taken EOS and I'd kind of morphed it into my own thing. And so we recommitted EOS about two years ago and like literally do EOS literally to the T today. But I find that that business, and there's a lot of them out there. I would say pick one, stick with one, stay with it. But EOS for us, little things I had changed along the way, like if you're familiar with EOS, they're all about level 10 meetings, right? And it's how to run a meeting, how to get traction. right in your meetings, how to IDS, which is identify, discuss, and solve problems, make them go away permanently instead of having Groundhog Day meetings, right? Where you're dealing with the same things over and over and over. And little things that I had done is instead of having a 90 minute meeting, we just had meetings until the problems were gone. And then we adjourned our meeting. so, ⁓ know, and what I've done is I trained my employees not to bring real issues to the meeting and you can get out faster. And so just a little thing, like have a 90 minute meeting. It's always gonna be 90 minutes and we're just gonna sit here if you don't bring your issues. And now we can't get through half of the issues that are on the board today just because I went back to a 90 minute meeting. But EOS is all about, and I think that this is what I'm all about today, is you've got a vision, I've got a vision, and our visions may be similar. But if you're going to be in business together, they have to be identical, right? And so you got to be bought into the exact same vision and mission ⁓ bought into, right? And then once you and I are, if we're business partners, once you and I are bought into that same vision, we've got to get it pushed down to the very, I mean, ⁓ the person that started last week. And you've to do it repetitively, right? And you've got to just... You know, so probably the most powerful things that we do, yeah, we have just a system and it's just a rhythm, you know, and I'm convinced like, ⁓ you know, some say bill Belichick's gone crazy now, but, I still believe he's probably one of the greatest coaches of our time. He had a system, right? And he just had a system and that's the reason they've been so successful. And so we start every morning off in our, every one of our businesses, eight o'clock phone rings, and we have a huddle, right? And, ⁓ and our huddle is meant to not last more than 15 minutes. We're not solving problems on that huddle. We're not doing anything other than we have a lot of remote people. So I want to hear everyone's voice at eight o'clock. I want to hear what they did yesterday, what they've got today. And if they've got any stoplights, if they say I've got a stoplight, all that is is a queue for their manager to give them a call after the call. Hey, what do you have going on? But there's that, that rhythm of doing that new people come in and they're like, no, that's stupid. We don't really accomplish anything. And then after we've after they've been here a year or two, they're just like, man, I don't know how we do it without that, you know? your remote people start to, they start to feel like they're on an island, just disconnected from the mothership. And that little rhythm of a huddle really Everybody in my company ⁓ is in a level 10 meeting. In that level 10 meeting, so the leadership one lasts 90 minutes, the departmental ones are 60 minutes. And it's the agenda, right? time, and that's once a week, right? And then we run that, and then every quarter, we have a whole ⁓ quarterly meeting that's EOS style as well. And we just revisit what's our mission, what's our vision, and what are our core values. And I think ⁓ core values is probably one of the biggest things that ⁓ learned to really understand your core values. We all have core values. ⁓ got a hundred core values, but what are the five most important? ones to you. If you don't hire by those core values, by your five core values, if you don't hire people that are identical to your five core values, it's not going to work. And I would suggest that even in your personal life, if you're not hanging around with people that share the same core values as you, it's probably not going to work. And so we're fanatical about our core values. And that's how we get the right people on the bus. And our core values are pretty simple. ⁓ You would think integrity would have to go without saying, but I still have it there because I believe in it. That's your one strike and you're out. ⁓ our next one is, is accountability. a culture of accountability. ⁓ you accept responsibility, I want you to show up and I want you to deliver right on that, on that responsibility. And we expect that at all levels. And it's really cool because when you hire people that are accountable people, they hold everyone else accountable. They'll chase out the bad seeds, right? And then our next ones are team. You know, I talked a lot about, I don't like all stars. I'd rather have a team of just good, solid. I call them the West Welker. If you're a football, you know, if you follow football, West Welker, you can just always count on him across the middle, you know what I mean? And he wasn't flashy. wasn't your, you know, your Antonio Brown. wasn't your, you know, like Terrell Owens or something like that. He was just low key, always where you expected him to be. Those are the kinds of players that I want in our company. And ⁓ I want them to care about each other and I want them to care more about they build the people around them, rather their knowledge, what makes them special, right? And so that's team, then we have growth and then we have consistency. And those are our core values and that's how you get on ⁓ our bus. getting our people and just running that rhythm, right, in our company. Our level 10 meetings, they... always, always, always happen. They always start on time. They always end on time and they're always in the same place. And so if I'm out, if I'm on vacation, whatever, there's somebody right behind me that picks that ball up, runs the meeting the exact same way that I ran the meeting. And I just find that that rhythm, you it just creates so much harmony. You know what I mean? And there's, it just, know, the culture is just really amazing. that just comes from that. And I'm a big proponent. I'll have people, ⁓ work our people hard. Our people, our teams, they really deliver. We, FuelLogic do over $100 million this year and we've got 29 employees. That's pretty impressive. You know what I mean? That's pretty cool. And so ⁓ that prouder of that than anything, right? Like in my step book, you know, I'm like, How do you do that with that few people? It's because we just have all, we have that culture, we have those core values. it's just that EOS is the foundation for us. We use it everything. speaker-0: Yeah, thank you for giving all that level of detail. appreciate it. I'm familiar with EOS, but it's great to hear someone is really, really living it out. ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah. Revisit it, is. It's, know, and there's nothing that it's all common sense stuff, right? Like, like when I explain it to your buddies, like when I'm mentoring guys or whatever, they're like, man, that's all like pretty common sense stuff. like, yeah, but are you doing it? You just, you know, not, you know what I mean? And, um, and I think that that's probably the best thing, but we, the bad culture that I had in the early days. ⁓ when you're living, you know, an EOS lifestyle, it, know, in your core values forces you to deal with the people that don't, doesn't make them bad people. we, had a particular person that was literally ⁓ the probably the number one reason for our, our bad culture, my fault, cause I let that person exist in our ecosystem. because I was scared to ever try to do it without her. Right? Like she, you know, she was an all star and, but she was, ⁓ she just tore down other people and it just, you know, she was one of the types that I let her exist in our ecosystem for probably 10 years. and just literally when we dealt with that problem, everything changed, culture changed. And so if you're living a true EOS lifestyle, it's, you to deal, you know, with people that don't match your core values. and help them move on to somewhere where they can be happy. so, so yeah, I'm a huge proponent of EOS. speaker-0: Yeah, that's awesome. And it dictates who you let on your team too as you grow. speaker-1: What's crazy is I no longer am the person that's dealing with the, like when we don't have a core value fit, our team members run that person off. Like they will not, you know, Hey, I heard somewhere, I don't know where it was. I've read some article or something like that, that if, that if you take an A player and you put them on a team of C players, A player doesn't bring the C players up to A's. The C players bring the A player down to a C. And I'm convinced that that's reality. so our people ⁓ if it's not a core value fit, and proud to say this, you can walk up to any one of my employees and not only can they tell you what our core values are, but they give you a core value speech, which means that they understand what they mean and they understand how to apply it to our business. so, you know, that's probably the foundational piece to having great culture is getting that have the same and share the same core values. ⁓ when it comes to our core values, so it's a big deal. speaker-0: Yeah, that's great. I mean, it's, it's obviously having great results as well. imagine only with only 29 employees, you had to be very, very selective you know, just when you choose to hire, ⁓ I think that's lot ⁓ problem a lot of business owners have is deciding when, when is a good time to hire to, or like to have that expense, expense and time you have to invest in training that person. How have you navigated that? speaker-1: Yeah, so I would say that that is very important. being a part of that peer group, I there were different extremes, Like your most guys would have backups for their backups, for their backups. And they're over, they would say they're under-customer is what they would say. I was like, you're running a bloated business and they would be putting four and 5 % to the bottom line, you know what I mean, as a result of it. I'm on the opposite side of the spectrum, right? Like the first thing when I get into business that I like to understand is what does good look like, right? And for me, know what I mean? That means that revenue minus cogs, I need about 50 % left after that because I'm trying to put 20 plus points to the bottom line. And so for me, I'm always looking at, I always tell people they come in, I feel like we need new people, another person. show me the science, show me the math that says that we need another person because it's not proved out in the numbers or something wrong, right? With your processes or with something. But what I challenge my people with, I'll tell you one thing that we do at FuelLogic is that every seat on the bus, every employee is all paid. ⁓ the business wins, our employees win. So they all have a component. of shared compensation, like a pro act. So I tell you what, we won a big deal with Walmart a few years ago and we were all going around the office high five and ⁓ we filled their turkey trailers, which is the holiday where they put the turkeys and the pies and it's their freezer space during the holidays. it's a very it's a weird thing that we do, but. but it's very profitable for us. And so we were all going around high-fiving it. And I got to the little girl that does our invoicing it doubled her job. Like it literally, took our invoices and doubled them during the holiday season. I looked at her, she high-fived me and I said, you're not really happy about this, you? And because, know, ⁓ so right then and there, I was like, all right, ⁓ got to put a system in place that when the companies went in, our employees are winning, right? And so. That's the number one thing I think that our employees think about gross profit. And we spend a lot of time explaining to them which dials in their world that they're in control of that impact our gross profit. A lot of companies do bonuses, but they don't do the second part. They don't explain to their employees what role you play in our gross profit. And so the little girl that's doing our invoice and well, the role that she plays is she sees frontline if our vendors are charging us right, right? If we're paying the right price for fuel or if something's moved errors, mistakes, that's how she impacts our gross profit. Right? So we spend a lot of time making sure that there's a component of their pay and we always try to pay the market, right? Really above market for, what they're doing as their job. Like I want them to be paid better than they, than they could make anywhere else. And then we try to make that that that performance component on top of that. Right. And so, so they all understand the gross profit and more head count means less gross profit. Right. And so less to the bottom line. And they all understand that. And so I think that's number one, but the questions that we ask before we ever hire anybody, cause what's the easiest way to mess up your culture is to hire somebody that doesn't fit your culture. That doesn't fit your core values. And you introduce the pilgrims to the Indians, right? You make all your Indians sick, right? Like that, that you're at risk every time you have to hire someone, right? And so we take hiring people very, very seriously. So the first question we ask ourselves ⁓ pain that we're feeling, is it temporary or is it permanent? If it's temporary, we're not going to hire anybody. We're just going to muscle through it. We might bring a temp in or something like that if it's, if it's really bad, but we're just going to muscle through it. The next question we ask ourselves is can it be solved with process or technology? Right? Do we have a process that could be improved to where we could still get it done with the same head count? Or there technology that we can bring in like our invoicing? Like we're an invoicing machine. We produce an insane amount of invoices every month. And so... ⁓ We still do that. Like we just now last December hired a second employees girl. So our same little, the little girl she's been with us for a long time. She did all of the employees because we kept improving our technology to be able to do more. And so we kept bringing, we bring AI in, we would bring in all these things that, that made her job easier. There's a point in time that you hit where it's not temporary, can't be solved with process and it can't be solved with technology. And that's when we believe that it's time to hire. And then we spend a good amount of time sure that we have a complete alignment with our core values. Slow hire, quick to fire, right? Like we've made some mistakes. We've gotten people on. You don't really know until you get them in. ⁓ But spend a lot of time trying to make sure that they're a good core value fit. And then once we get them in, we make sure we get them out quick if they're not. But that's our biggest thing. And then once you got them on the bus, we're big on making sure that we get them in the right seat on the bus. And getting them in the right seat means that that seat is well-defined, right? Like so many companies, don't have really defined, know, EOS is big on what are the five most important things that Elliott's responsible for? in this seat, right? And then we try to, when we hire people, we try to make, that's where we use disc profiling because like a D and an I, they're not known for being great organized people and detail oriented people. And so if we're hiring for an accounting seat where it's critical that they're detail oriented, probably don't want to hire an I. You know what I mean? Like you probably want to get an S or a C probably in that seat, somebody who's more detail oriented. And so that's how we approach hiring. is fanatical about that whole process. speaker-0: Got it. Yeah. ⁓ Awesome. too. love your systematic ⁓ of, know, hiring at the right, the right time. Super, super valuable. speaker-1: I think something else that's important to mention as part of that thread we hit, I think in the past five years, we've hit our quarterly goal, which is our revenue. I mean, all the way down to our net income within 1%. So we, ⁓ we're not by accident. Like we're, we're, it's intentional. And when it's intentional like that, and you know, ⁓ and you predict because your sales team's hitting and all the kinds of things. you know what you're going to need operationally to support that in advance, right? Rather than like my early businesses were brotherless ships, man. If we got good Lord, I can't imagine getting one of those businesses to a hundred million, you know, like it would, it would, but today there's nothing that's accidental. Like we call our shot at the, have literally, know, EOS is big on, we have a 10 year plan. And that's our, we call that our BHAG, our big hairy audacious goal. Like, man, we're dreaming baby. You know what I mean? Like it's a, a, it's a big deal. And then you just work backwards. You reduce that down to a three year plan. You reduce your three year plan down to a one year picture. And then you reduce your one year picture down to quarterly. you know, in EOS we call them rocks and we live in 90 days in EOS. And, ⁓ but you call your shot and nothing's an accident. Right. And you, you're adjusting along the way, like things are happening in the industry that, you know, but every 90 days you're readjusting and it's amazing to me that we've been within 1%. And so, so having that kind of a map, makes it a little easier to know when to hire, when to, when to do things to be ahead of it. Cause it's always hard to hire someone after you needed them. Right. Like it's, know, cause you really need somebody. I would say. that employees, they're not real valuable until they've been here about six months, maybe a year, you know, before like, all right, they get it, right? Like they get all the nuance to our little business and they're valuable at that point. And so ⁓ you to be ahead of the curve a little bit. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ it makes sense. Yeah. I'd love to talk a little more about growth strategy also. And we talked a bit about on the pre-show about growing through acquisition. When you decide to first do organic or geographic expansion or service line and expanding service lines or what have you versus acquiring another business? speaker-1: Yeah. So I've done it. I've done it all the ways, right? Like I've done, the early, early in my career, we did it all through just good old fashioned door knocking and, and, and, and the hard way hiring sales guys and trying to, you know, in the reality of that world is, that it's, it's hard to predict. You know I mean? If you're totally reliant upon that. And, ⁓ I've done ⁓ and A work. where we've gone out and we found companies that I love finding a company that the operator like in the IT industry, I'll use that as an example, where you had an engineer that wound up being a business owner and he hates being a business owner, but he loves being an engineer. he up, you you can, in that model, you can pretty, these guys can get to about a million, million five in revenue. And then it's, it's big enough to have start having like bigger company problems, but not big enough to do anything about it. And they're just in this miserable space. ⁓ love finding companies like that and rolling them up into our family. Right. And we've done that a lot of different ways, but, but, ⁓ is a very, that's a very predictable way to grow. Right. Is there ⁓ and a, know, ⁓ and a can be really dangerous, right? Because if you there again, if you If bring the pilgrims to the Indians and there's not a good culture fit, there's not a good core value fit. There's not a, you don't know enough ⁓ do your due diligence. You ⁓ bring cancer into your organization and you can kill ⁓ company that way. So there's a lot of danger to that as well. But I've them that way. think that the biggest one that I'm, you know, the companies that I've built today, I'm fanatical about being able to grow revenue. without having to necessarily increase headcount. So when I was in the IT industry, if you were running, ⁓ I had this data because I was part of that peer group, ⁓ did all this benchmarking, but your engineer, ⁓ poorly run company would get about a one and a half times W2 multiple to two times W2 multiple on their engineers. Meaning if you're paying your engineer a hundred thousand, you're a poorly run company if they were running If they were supporting 150 in service revenue 200,000 in service revenue. And so a well-run best in class company was getting three to three and a half. If you're running four or more, you're probably burning at both ends and overworking your staff and doing all that kind of stuff. So the sweet spot was three to three and a half, right? But what that meant, there guys out there that are way better than me at running large organizations. I don't love it. don't love having, you know, I love small companies, small teams that are highly effective. Right. And so in that model, every $300,000 I had to hire a new engineer. And, and engineers are quirky people. know, they're not necessarily grew up in the closet playing video games and they can be quirky people, for every million dollars in revenue that I was adding, I was having to add three headcount or more. Right. And so that got old real fast. I kind of, so what I learned how to do is to build companies that, that you could stack revenue without necessarily having to do a ⁓ formulaic, you know, addition of an employee like that. And I think that that's, that's a big thing. And in the IT space, the way we did that is we sold service, ⁓ managed service agreements where I would come to you and say, Hey, Instead of working for $150 an hour, can we agree on $2,000 a month? And so now the onus was on me to keep your network up so that I never ever had to work on it. I made pure profit, right? But that's good for you also, right? Because now your network's up, your computers are up, and so you're doing the things that make you money, right? So was good for both of us. And we were able to do it to an extent in that industry, in the telecommunications, we were being paid a commission. So I was, was selling things once and getting paid on them forever. And that's probably the purest form company that I've ever owned where we, we, we ran that company with 10 employees. And so, but key was stacking deals and never missing. We call it our 20 mile march. It's from a Jim Collins, ⁓ a by choice, I think is the name of the book. They talk the guy, the two guys that race to the South pole. One of them makes it halfway there and dies. The other one makes it there and back. And the guy that made it there and back, he was going 20 miles no matter what was going on. so in our business, we have a 20 mile march and that's typically a sales related number and we don't miss it ever. And that us to kind of stack and grow that way. But if you look at a business where you're able to do that, just the compounding ⁓ of stacking. You know, 10, like in FuelLogic, we stack 20 deals, right? We have our own definition of what a deal looks like. It's got to have certain gross profit. doesn't have an end date. You know what mean? It's on a schedule. That's the kind of business we're looking for. We're 20 of those every month. The compounding effect of that growth is pretty amazing. But it's pretty cool if you find a company that does share your core values and that you can... layer in. That's a quick way to grow and I've done them all. speaker-0: it really comes down, sounds like to being extremely in what companies you want to go down the acquisition route with. speaker-1: Yeah, you have to. I watch the way some of these private equity companies work roll, they just go and roll. don't take that into consideration a lot of times. Like you're pure bankers in the background, right? I've been a of my IT company is a great example. That company got rolled up into the company that ultimately wound up with that company. They're like at the top five. largest IT companies in the world, not the United States in the world. And I was talking to one of my guys that's still, he's the only one left. They've run off all of our employees and they've run off, they've run off more than, more than half of our, of our customers. And so I don't understand that I've never, you know, they're, they're up to some banking thing that makes sense in their world somehow. But, for me, it's always been about finding. Finding that operator that's miserable, that wound up with a business that doesn't like not knowing where his next check's coming from, that can't manage salespeople, that can't produce, you know, gap accounting, you know, books and, and rolling that guy up and making him, because usually they're really good people. You know what I mean? And taking that guy and giving them a place where he can thrive and succeed. And a lot of time, I love to keep them as part of the, uh, as part of the equity group. And I mean to where they still are participating in the business. And when we do exit, know, like the couple of companies that we rolled in prior to the exit of our network logic, our IT company, I was able to buy those guys. So they kind of got their own little exit, you know what I mean, from that. And then I was able to exit them again a few years later. And they made, I think like three or four X more than they made the first time. And so kind of that second bite of the apple, if you will. so pretty cool. speaker-0: Yeah, it's a great value proposition for them well. They have a small piece of a much bigger enterprise business and they get paid multiple times. speaker-1: Yeah. And to be happy doing it. You know what I mean? And, uh, and we were, you know, I always, you know, we were focused on us being a good place for their customers to come and land as well. And, um, and so that was, you know, that was, that was a part of it. So I think that, that, today, if you ask me, like, you know, I've always got a business where we're stacking deals, right. And, and we were doing our 20 mile march and we're really good. don't. Like hadn't missed our 20 deals in years, I think. Like I can remember one time that we missed it and we're all sitting in the conference room at 10 o'clock at night on the ⁓ 31st the month talking about, you know, what we're going to do. And we only missed it by one, but that's how seriously we take stacking those deals. And that's part of that revenue predictability, right? That we talked about a little bit earlier. And so my foundation is always around that. And then a lot, I'm never probably actively looking to find that guy that we can acquire, but I'm always every week I've forced myself. And I believe this is a great, great exercise for any entrepreneur. Every week I've forced myself to go sit down with somebody that I don't know that doesn't even necessarily have to be in my industry, but just is going to be able to give me information, going to be able to. introduced me to something that I hadn't been exposed to before. And I find that that exercise of me just doing that over and over and over, that's typically where I find these acquisition targets. And not afraid to pick up the phone. We're in a big pond. I'm not afraid to pick up the phone and call my competitor and ⁓ lunch with my competitor and have a friendly lunch with the competitor. Like ⁓ do that. regularly. and I'll be honest with you, it's kind of produced like, you know, like I had one competitor that because we did that, he liked me and I liked him and we kind of formed a relationship. He could have taken one of my clients one time and he didn't do it because of that. So that's a pretty cool deal, but that's typically how I find those opportunities is doing that. When you're looking for them, doesn't feel like you ever find them. ⁓ but if you've always got kind of a hook out there and you're just constantly, yeah, I try to pay everything forward. Right? Like I've, you can probably tell from this, this conversation, I'm an open book. like, like early in my career, I thought that I had all this proprietary knowledge that I needed to keep a secret and all these things. No, man, this is a big pond that we live in. if there's that much synergy between, you know, two companies. Why not push them together and figure out how to do it together? And so that's how I live. speaker-0: I appreciate it. Yeah, sharing that mindset and some of those tactics as well. Yeah, super valuable. Thank you. You know, we can talk all day. I'm trying to keep it somewhat in check here, but I would be absolutely speaker-1: Good luck keeping me in the vein, I can't get over the place, man. speaker-0: I think I'd be missing out. I'd be doing our listeners a disservice. I didn't bring up the topic of AI with you. It's because of your expansive career in technology, seeing all the ups and downs and changes throughout the years. And then also your focus on minimizing head count while maximizing the gross profit like you mentioned earlier. I'd love to hear your mindset around AI. How are you implementing it, leveraging it in a fuel logic? speaker-1: Yeah, it blows my mind, the world that we live in today. And we didn't have any of this when I was in the IT space, you know, and it was, it's just crazy. But I think that we've developed all of our own technology, which I'm typically not a big proponent of, right? Like I've supported businesses in IT and, know, since 1998, right? ⁓ I've you know, I've seen a lot of people go wrong trying to... develop their own platforms and things of that nature. So if there's something canned out there that you can possibly use, use it. But in FuelLogic, we couldn't find anything that could support the way that we do our business in FuelLogic. And so all the systems that we have today are developed. And we use AI. There's a lot of areas that we use AI in. And besides ⁓ it's crazy what you can just sit there and just feed into EI and the conversation that you can have. I did a booklet for our board of directors and it was just kind of year to date, kind of outlook of where we're at. And that would have taken me weeks to produce that document. And so I use it a lot for that kind of stuff. But in the business, We use a lot of AI in our systems. We a lot of ⁓ 3PL. ⁓ got one of the larger networks of ⁓ fuel providers in nation. The fuel industry is very segmented because it's so heavy. These fuel trucks are $600,000. And so the biggest fuel companies that actually roll assets, maybe 13 states or something like that. We all kinds of fuel and we have all kinds of fuel providers. And so one of our bigger problems that we have is of them are literally writing paper tickets and some of them are pretty advanced and can send you a CSV file or something that can be imported into your system. And ⁓ so used AI ⁓ in system to where it can literally take these invoices from any number formats. almost even handwritten, like it's not quiet, but almost even handwritten, all these formats, and it can take it and standardize it into our invoice, right? And so the person that's responsible for our invoicing here in our place, all she's gotta do is just kinda go through a check and make sure it all came in properly. And I think that's one of the bigger probably advancements that... you know, that we've had, you know, probably with AI here, because in the early days, we couldn't process 50 invoices, you know, to end a day in like, in like today's thousands of invoices that were, that were, you know, intaking and getting back out, you know I mean? With very small head count. Our sales and marketing, our marketing organization uses extensively as And they're, they're with all kinds of new technologies. in even from our dispatch and like recommendations on our systems are kind of taken in fuel. You would think fuel was just putting the nozzle in a hole and pulling the trigger. Pretty simple, right? We all do it our cars up, it's you're in logistics. Logistics is hard. And so, ⁓ know, that that's where it gets complicated. And so just like a doctor, you've got certain fuel providers that will You'll want to go out and do that 20 gallon fill into a refrigerator trailer for Walmart. Another one won't do anything if it's smaller than 10,000 gallons, right? And so you have, and there's everything in between there. And so it's really hard for us to intake an order. And so today we even have our own network trucks in certain markets ⁓ where we really, really heavy density and it. We use the technology to intake the kind of order that it is and then to output, you know, who's the best, where's the best place to put this, right? This order. even then it's challenging because if ⁓ a same day delivery, your best output might have any capacity to do it today. You know what I mean? And ⁓ so really, really challenging for us to kind of figure that stuff out. So we use AI there. And then in our marketing team, they're just using it to, mean, they're scraping information all over the internet and kind of just pulling in, you know, leads and our salespeople, it's crazy. I watched one of them do it the other day. He was going, he was traveling to Atlanta and he had one meeting and he was like, dude, I'm not going there and just having one meeting. And he just, he asked AI and like, know, chat knows enough about him that it literally laid a whole day out with him. with people that he should go talk to that would be good customers for us. And he laid the whole thing out for him and he put his flight in there and it told him what time to be at the airport. And so, you know, the world that we live in is crazy and we have a good amount of programmers. We do a lot of outsourcing to the Philippines and we've got a lot of tech people over there. And ⁓ then we have our people here in the States. ⁓ And it just seems like every week I'm getting in and learning a little bit more of what they've got planned and all that kind of good stuff. But, but, ⁓ we're definitely embracing it. ⁓ know, one of the things that fuel logic that we've done well because of my technology background, the fuel industry was, man, they, don't even think they knew how to spell Google, you know what I mean? And so ⁓ came into the industry, we literally took over Google. And so ⁓ you're looking for fuel, you're finding one of my entities. Right. And so we're getting first crack at it. And at first the industry was resistant, you know, because we were almost taking the orders away that they used to get and feed them right back to them. first they were resistant, but then they came to love us because we're so much more than a, I hate the word broker, but we're so much more than a broker. ⁓ involved in the logistics. handle all the customer issues with ⁓ the do a lot of a. the middle work that they would typically have to do. And then the other thing that we do is we ensure every gallon that we pump so they know they're gonna get paid. And so we get rid of a lot of their accounts receivable risk as well. And so that's how we're using it. speaker-0: Yeah, thank you. bunch of use cases there. think listeners will find really valuable, not for ⁓ your but also yourself kind of as an executive assistant, ⁓ a partner in a way. speaker-1: That blows my mind. It kind of scary to be honest, yeah, it's crazy what it remembers about. Sometimes when you're bored, just go ask, know, chat what it knows about you and look the document that ⁓ it produces. it's a very, very powerful tool. speaker-0: Yeah, wow. Yeah, where do you see it going in the next few years? It's hard to predict, I know, but you've seen some major disruptions throughout your business journey. speaker-1: Yeah. I'll tell you where I've been using it the most here lately. Well, if you would have asked me about being in the fuel industry two or three years ago, I would have told you, I'm going to probably exit this thing in a few years because you know, EV cars and EV trucks and you know, these self-driving and I tell you what, man, this AI construction thing that we're in now, I don't No, I'm certain you are probably seeing it around your place. They're a hundred and I think it's 45 data center, you know, like AI data centers in Texas, like right now. And some of our biggest projects are, we're providing all the fuel during the construction phases of these data projects. like we're doing one in Amarillo right now that's... It's like a 15 year project. It's 5,000 acres going to be 500 buildings the end of it. It's in the middle of nowhere. And so all of a sudden I've got kind of a renewed, ⁓ want to stay in this for a while because so many of our, and it's not just AI. We did the Samsung facility where they brought the chip manufacturing back into Austin. We did ⁓ in Austin. All of a sudden, I think that we outsource so much of this construction, of what we do, we're bringing it back into the States and it's created this crazy amount activity around building things. ⁓ And I don't know. I know that everybody using AI, we're providing a role in building these things. And one of these It's in the middle of Texas, the middle of the desert. ⁓ they don't know where they're getting their water. They don't know where they're getting ⁓ energy, their power, but they're already building these things. And they've already completed one building and they hadn't figured out where they're getting their power yet. And they filled this thing full of servers and we're literally fueling, know, megawatt generators to run these data centers. so, you know, I don't know where it's going to take us, it's, me, the stuff that's going on in our RAM right now has doubled the price of our fuel. And so in the fuel industry, you really, weird the way the fuel industry works. In computers, if I sold you a computer, I'd mark it up 30%. And if the computer's twice as expensive next month, I still mark it up 30%. Fuel doesn't work that way. Fuel is like cents over wholesale. if your price doubles, all of a sudden you've got all this risk and this AR risk and all this stuff. And so I've been using AI and I've been using different platforms to see what kind of feedback I get, but just in order to manage our risk and manage our, I can process data really, really quick. and I can analyze huge tables really, really quick. And I just don't know if I'd have been able to maneuver this fast years ago to deal with this type of a situation. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, it's ultimately expanding what you're able to do, expanding your output ⁓ opening, able open your mind to things that you haven't, wouldn't necessarily think about too. speaker-1: And it's, it's man, it's crazy how valuable it is to always like, you know, the sniff test, the gut, you know, does that feel real? And it is, it's crazy how, how real it is. And so very powerful. speaker-0: Yeah. Well, yeah, I know we're way over the 45 minutes I brought in the beginning, that is totally okay. Thank you so much for pouring into our listeners today. Really got a lot of value, ⁓ tons wisdom you shared, Elliot. So yeah, where's, people who got a lot of value as well from this, where's the best place they can find you and learn ⁓ more about you FuelLogic? speaker-1: Yeah, you can find Elliott Vansel LinkedIn is ⁓ the place. then obviously, FuelLogic.net as ⁓ You can me that way. yeah, I'm an open book. I love talking to entrepreneurs. And so if there's anything struck a chord, ⁓ I'm an open happy to help. speaker-0: Yeah, thank you, Elliot. It's great having you on the show today. speaker-1: Yeah, man, very nice to meet you. I'm excited to be here.