John Corcoran: 17:59
Yeah. And at some point you figure out that this would work for the military. How did you come to that realization?
Kyle Ewing: 18:08
Yeah, there was a guy at the Air Force Academy that stumbled on my product, and he called up and he said, hey, I think we could use this for our maintenance log and flight manuals. And I said, okay, I like that idea. And so he’s like, I’d like to buy a small order of 5000 sheets. And I thought 5000 sheets was huge. So I was thrilled.
Yeah. And it worked well for him. So we got in there and then it sort of spread to the other branches of the military because it works in similar functions, like it’s in the tanks. The M1 Abrams tanks, some of those, it’s in some of the nuclear submarine escape pods. Not a place you ever want to find yourself, by the way.You’re for sure going to die. But it is pretty interesting to read some of those manuals.
John Corcoran: 18:51
Wow. That’s crazy. And around the time or shortly after it looks like you started the TerraSlate, you end up starting another company test line is what it was called, which competed with as if starting and innovating on a new product that has been around for centuries or millennia wasn’t hard enough. You decided, well, let me take the test. Let me go compete with Uber and Lyft, two of the hottest startups of the last ten years. So what was that?
Kyle Ewing: 19:20
Yeah, I thought there was an opportunity to compete with Uber and Lyft using all electric cars. That was the one thing that they didn’t do well. You know, they started like Uber, started with black cars, and then it got into like regular cars.
John Corcoran: 19:33
And then you’re driving around in Priuses mostly.
Kyle Ewing: 19:35
Sure. Right. And like, there’s a premium market here. People will be willing to pay more to be in a luxury car. And oh, by the way, it’s electric.
So that was the idea. We built an app. It was called Tesla, and it worked all throughout the state of Colorado. We got some national coverage. It was on some TV shows and radio.
It was really cool. The problem ultimately was that I was financing this myself. Out of the proceeds of the sale of my previous business and the cars we were driving were Tesla model X’s, so they were all about $100,000 cars.
John Corcoran: 20:06
You got to buy. Yeah.
Kyle Ewing: 20:07
Yeah, they were like 120. Yeah. And then we had to have a charger for every car, and then we had to have a garage for every car. And then we had to have drivers. And you pretty much need four drivers per car in order to maintain the vehicle on the road, plus you have to have downtime to charge them.
So it turned into a 24 hour a day business. And it was an immense amount of work to run this thing and truly not very profitable. I thought I would get to profitability, but competing against Uber and Lyft with the funding they had just wasn’t practical. And at the same time, TerraSlate had really begun to take off. So I ended up closing the test line. I sold the book of business for a nominal amount, sold all the cars and really focused on TerraSlate.
John Corcoran: 20:55
How painful was that?
Kyle Ewing: 20:59
You know, I had flown across the country. And was driving back with my mom, and we were like in the middle of the desert in Nevada or something. And I was just thinking about it and talking it through. And she loved the service. So when I mentioned I’m thinking about closing it, she was like, please don’t do that.
Do not do that. Like, I love this. My friends love it. And I was like, yeah, but the thing is, the business case just isn’t there. You know, we’re either not charging enough or we shouldn’t run it 24 hours a day.
Those are both mistakes that I, in hindsight, clearly made. But I decided, you know, like, I gotta shutter this because I have this opportunity to cost any time I’m not spending on TerraSlate that I am spending on the test line. It’s costing me a lot of money and I got to not do that.
John Corcoran: 21:45
It must have made it easier that you had this other company that was doing well. It’s not like, you know, you were closing it up and you didn’t know what you were going to do next. And what about so you have got these large global behemoths Tesla, Uber, and Lyft, were they at all concerned with you, or were you so small that they weren’t thinking about you? Or did you get cease and desist letters or any fights with those big companies? Because it can be tough for a small startup to compete with those large companies?
Kyle Ewing: 22:14
Yeah. You know, getting customers wasn’t the problem. and Uber and Lyft. I don’t even know if we were on their radar, if we were. It was at a level that I don’t think they were very concerned about us.
Tesla, while they wouldn’t give us a discount on bulk buying cars, they did indirectly tell us that you’re not allowed to use the supercharger network for commercial vehicles because it was all free at the time, so we were charging the cars for free. They indirectly said, if you do that, we’re not going to shut you down for that because we were getting a lot of people in Teslas that had never been in a Tesla, and they would have a really good experience, and then they would go buy a Tesla. So they were getting this kind of referral network set up. And so Tesla was not giving us discounts but not charging us to charge the vehicles. And we were technically breaking their rules so we appreciated that.
John Corcoran: 23:09
Yeah. Something that’s a positive there I guess. By the way, during all this time, are you still harboring this love for Hawaii and, like, yearning to go back one day.
Kyle Ewing: 23:21
Oh, absolutely. You know, like, Hawaii is one of the most magical places in the world. I love everything about it. I love the people. I love the culture.
I love the water. The challenge for me is that there isn’t a huge amount of job opportunities there. And it’s limited to really one island of Oahu and that island, it’s pretty crowded. So like if I want to live in Hawaii, it’s on one of the other islands. But then there really isn’t any industry. It’s like tourism. Yeah, a little bit of agriculture and that’s it.
John Corcoran: 23:52
And you’re moving to Maui, which I believe the population of Maui is like 50,000 people, 60,000 people or something like that. You know, I mean, not counting tourists, obviously. It’s like 100,000 or so. Okay, maybe it’s Hawaii. I’m thinking it is like 50,000.
S3: 24:03
60,000 in Hawaii or.
John Corcoran: 24:04
Something.
Kyle Ewing: 24:05
Yeah, exactly.
John Corcoran: 24:06
Yeah. So not a lot of people.
Kyle Ewing: 24:08
You know, the plan was I would sell TerraSlate in two years and move to Hawaii. And the problem is, I’m 11 years in now and I haven’t sold the business. And I don’t really want to sell the business because I like running it. I love the people that I get to work with, and we get to do things that have positively affected other people’s lives, and we’re good for the environment and powered by the wind. And I just there’s a big part of me that always feels like it’s going to be two years out, which sort of means never.
And so my wife and I were in Maui on our ten year anniversary trip that we took there this past summer, and we had a boozy lunch, and we decided we were going to go look at a couple of houses. So I called a real estate agent, and that’s sort of how that happened. And then we closed on one in September, and now we move officially June 1st.
John Corcoran: 24:57
So that’s about nine months between closing on the house and moving. What have you had to do in that time in order to get the company ready for you to make this major change?
Kyle Ewing: 25:09
Yeah. In order to get myself out of the day to day operations, it’s been critical to make some new hires. So I have a new CEO. Not related to this, but he’s been here about a year. His name is Ryan. Phenomenal guy. I love him. Got a director of sales. Director of marketing. We have a plant manager.
We have a sales manager. A whole bunch of new account managers. Really? Building out the team and installing systems like iOS or the entrepreneurial operating system. So that I can run the business from 3000 miles away.
And just recently, I had the opportunity to visit Richard Branson on his private island in the Caribbean called Necker Island. And I was able to spend a few days with him and really engage with him about how do you manage a company like Virgin or all of the Virgin companies from the middle of an island in the Caribbean, incredibly far away from anything, much less England? And he had some really good insights. You know, it was about the team paying the team. And then some tips and tricks we probably don’t have time to go into. We’ll do that on a follow up. But it was really motivational. I got a lot out of that, and that’s what gave me the confidence to really go ahead and do this.
John Corcoran: 26:20
Yeah, he has something like 400 companies or some insane amount of companies. I don’t know how many he has now, but yeah, it’s an insane number. I don’t even know how he keeps tabs on all those. I’m sure he has other people that keep tabs on all the other companies because he can’t. It’s not like he can meet one on one with even.
Even if he did one a year, it met with the operator of the business. Once a year it’d be every day you’d be meeting with an operator of a business that he owns. Yeah, yeah. He also has a really fascinating licensing arrangement. I don’t know if you talk to him about that, but there’s like a licensing model where they basically are basically kind of licensing the brand, which has a great cachet to companies in exchange for an equity ownership stake in that company, which is quite interesting.
Kyle Ewing: 27:04
Yeah, absolutely. Super cool model that he’s built.
John Corcoran: 27:08
By the way, One, You are also the owner of the Big Island Honey Company. How? How did that come about? And how have you managed that from afar? I’m assuming that that one’s in Hawaii while you’ve been mostly living in Colorado.
Kyle Ewing: 27:22
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That one is on the big island of Hawaii. My wife and I were visiting the Big Island, and I bought some honey and a couple other things at the grocery store, and somehow my tab was like 200 bucks. And I was like, what did we just buy?
I mean, I know Hawaii is expensive, but wow. And then it was this honey. And, you know, I was like, this better be the best honey I’ve ever had in my life because I’d already opened it, you know? Yeah. And so I tried it and I was like, okay, well, I mean, that’s accurate.
And my wife tried. She agreed. And so it kind of got involved. Originally I was just buying cases, and my wife said, Kyle, I don’t care what you do, but you can’t buy the company. Just buy.
John Corcoran: 28:03
What do you mean by you got involved and you’re buying cases. You’re buying cases and like reselling it or something like that.
Kyle Ewing: 28:08
I was buying cases, shipping them to Colorado, and then I was giving it away as gifts like, thank you. Great to meet you. Whatever it is.
John Corcoran: 28:15
Okay.
Kyle Ewing: 28:16
I used to give wine, but not everybody drinks wine. And sometimes it triggers people. But honey is amazing because it never goes bad. It lasts a while. No one’s allergic to honey, and nobody’s ever been triggered, right? It’s like, yeah.
John Corcoran: 28:27
Those are all good reasons. Yeah, yeah.
Kyle Ewing: 28:29
And it’s kind of like the funniest thing where people typically won’t spend $165 on a jar of honey, but if you give it as a gift, they really appreciate it, because the.
John Corcoran: 28:40
165 bucks for a jar of honey. Wow, that is not cheap, honey.
Kyle Ewing: 28:45
Yeah it’s spendy. Honey, I will send you some. You have to let me know what you think.
John Corcoran: 28:48
Oh, damn. I will take it. I mean, it sounds like there’s this coffee bean that’s from Jamaica. I forget the name of it. And there’s some elevation in Jamaica where they can grow coffee beans.
And it’s like some of the most expensive coffee beans in the world because of the location. Sounds kind of like a similar type of thing, You know, where it’s like, so rare, so pristine that they just charge crazy, crazy amounts for it.
Kyle Ewing: 29:13
Yeah, that’s exactly right. Like this apiary, which is what, like a bee farm is called, is located about 2500ft up above sea level on the side of a volcano. So it has this very unique climate. And the flowers that grow around the hives are growing in this ultra mineral rich soil. And so the bees, when they do their thing, they’re pollinating and doing the nectar from these specific flowers that you can plant by the hives.
And then those are growing in ultra mineral soil. So you get this honey that has this really delicate flavor. And people love it. So the price is predicated on demand. It’s pretty much always sold out.
It is very difficult even for me to get a jar at certain times of the year. But man, it’s good. And it is so fun. Like when I send somebody a jar of honey. I love getting that text message back from them opening it, or they got it on the counter, or their kids got a whole spoonful of it. I think it’s just the best. I absolutely love it.
John Corcoran: 30:11
Now, do you tell them that this is a $165 jar of honey so they don’t accidentally give it to the neighbor or something like that?
Kyle Ewing: 30:18
Well, I don’t tell them no.
John Corcoran: 30:19
Oh, you should man.
Kyle Ewing: 30:21
Figure it out because it’s white. It’s not yellow.
John Corcoran: 30:23
Wow.
Kyle Ewing: 30:24
Oh, and it doesn’t pour like honey. It almost has the consistency of butter. Like, it’s thick and more of a spread. So they know as soon as they open it that this is not just regular like yellow bear honey. And so I don’t know if they figured out the price or not, but I.
John Corcoran: 30:42
I have it in my fridge. I’m, I’m, I’m almost as much of a fan of Hawaii as you are. Just love the place, love the culture, love the people, everything about it. It’s peace on earth. It’s the one place in the United States where you feel like you’re not in the United States, but at the same time, you’re in the United States, which is kind of a weird way of describing it.
But I have a jar of lilikoi butter in my fridge that I got from the last time we went to Hawaii and similar types of things. It’s like a different kind of consistency. Jamaica. Blue Mountain Coffee is the name of the one that I couldn’t think of there. So.
So you love this coffee? I mean, sorry you love this, honey. And you’re like, this is so expensive, I might as well buy the whole company. So how did that come about?
Kyle Ewing: 31:18
Yeah, so I ended up doing what’s called an asset sale, where you buy the rights to the business. But I don’t own the land. And it’s advantageous for me because I don’t know anything about bees or raising bees or making honey. And it’s advantageous for the folks because they got what they wanted, but they continue to make honey. Right.
John Corcoran: 31:41
Okay.
Kyle Ewing: 31:41
And I love that because I don’t know, I mean, I, I’ve learned over the last year and a half but honestly I don’t know anything when it comes to how to do this. Yeah. So they’re passionate about that. What I’m good at is distribution, logistics , marketing, and sales.
And so we kind of combined superpowers and it works great. The company got totally rebranded. I love the packaging now it’s black and white and it’s just been so much fun to run it. It won’t do $1 million of sales this year. So it’s not a big company limited by capacity. But man, it’s fun.
John Corcoran: 32:22
Yeah. Yeah actually I mean, now that you mention it, you know, you’ve done distribution of physical products all across the globe so that in a sense you’re bringing in that expertise, which I imagine they had n’t had that kind of expertise before. If they’re, you know, really good at making the product.
Kyle Ewing: 32:42
Yeah. Exactly. Like distribution from Hawaii is incredibly expensive. So the challenge for them was they could sell it on the islands, but it was hard to get it to the mainland because the cost was so high to ship individual jars. And so what we do now is we ship in bulk to the mainland and then we distribute from here.
And then what’s going to get sold in Hawaii stays there. So it’s very logical now. But if you don’t have those shipping rates established with the freight carriers, it takes forever to get to that level where it’s cost efficient. So I was able to leverage the buying power from TerraSlate and just create a separate division within those accounts to leverage those rates and that. And that’s how we do it.
John Corcoran: 33:26
Very cool. And indulge your passion in Hawaii. Own a bit of Hawaii. But of course you will be there very soon. I usually want to ask my last question, but I also want to ask about your book.
So I’ll ask about that after this. But my gratitude is a question. So I’m a big fan of practicing gratitude and also giving our guests a little bit of space at the end here to acknowledge any peers, contemporaries, mentors who’ve helped them in their journey. Anyone you would want to shout out and thank? Bank.
Kyle Ewing: 33:57
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And thank you for the opportunity. I had a ski coach when I was in high school and he was incredibly detailed, incredibly specific, very motivational. And he drove a tough bargain.
Guy’s name is Bobby. I am forever in his debt. He’s the one that taught me how to be on time and and so much more like the discipline I learned from this coach has paid for itself 1001 times over throughout my whole life. Like true hard work is something that very few people get a chance to see. Everybody will tell you that they work hard, but there’s different levels of that.
And it’s and it’s all relative. And Bobby was trying to make anybody that wanted to be an Olympian into an Olympian. He had done it. He’s like, this is how you do it. And it was painful.
I mean, there were a lot of days where I just felt like a broken toy. We had gone so hard in the off season training or 5 a.m. weights when I was 14 years old. I mean, I just took so many things away from that that I still use them in my daily practice in business and life. So, Bobby Gary, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
John Corcoran: 35:09
It’s amazing the impact that a good coach can have on a young person. The final question. You got a book coming out. It’s called Against the Clock Strategic Time hacking for entrepreneurs. Tell us about it.
Kyle Ewing: 35:22
Yeah, I’m super excited about this book. I just finished it. It’s with the editors. The final ones now. And here, here’s where the premise comes from.
Both of my parents are attorneys and so is my wife. The challenge that they have is that they perpetually trade time for money. It’s very hard to scale. Can you hire more attorneys and have a bigger billable rate? Sure.
But it’s ultimately very slow and difficult to scale a business like that. So as an entrepreneur, we have the same issue, that if we do all of the jobs in our business, the business will grow very slowly. So what time hacking is, is how to leverage your time. If you can teach somebody how to do it 80% as well as you can, you need to hand that off today. It’s actually almost a self-help book for myself, because it took me so long to learn these things without a manual, that I was really excited to write the manual and accelerate the process for everybody else.
So how do you buy back your time? How do you know when to hire somebody? What should you do? What tasks should you delegate? And it’s a combination of learnings that I’ve taken from the University of Denver, Wharton School of Business, went to this executive education program at Harvard, and I did a three year program on entrepreneurial and entrepreneurial master’s program at MIT.
So it’s all of those lessons, plus being in the Entrepreneurs Organization for five years and put it into one book, and it’s a quick read. It’s and it’s really nice. You put together a couple tips. They last forever and they scale on, on themselves. So I’m really excited about the book.
John Corcoran: 37:01
Yeah, well I’m a recovering lawyer, so it sounds like this book will really resonate with me, because that’s part of why I’m not practicing law anymore is because of the reasons that you identified Kyle. This has been great. Where can people go to learn more about you and TerraSlate and the book and all that kind of stuff?
Kyle Ewing: 37:16
Yeah. Thank you so much. KyleEwing.com is not yet live, but it will be. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m super active. So look me up on LinkedIn, Kyle Ewing, and then you can find me at bigislandhoney.com and terraslate.com.
John Corcoran: 37:31
Excellent, Kyle. Thanks so much.
Kyle Ewing: 37:34
Thanks for having me, John. It’s a pleasure.
Outro: 37:38
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.