RVE Podcast #327: Is your business in the midst of a growth phase? Navigating expansion from the nomadic perspective can be demanding.
Is your business in the midst of a growth phase? Navigating expansion, especially from the nomadic perspective of the road, demands not only immense effort but also a focused mindset and a strategic approach.
In this captivating episode, Rose Willard engages in an insightful conversation with Robert & Tosha Lackey, the visionary couple behind Bison, a motorcycle safety gear business, as they run their business full-time from the road.
Join us as we uncover the intricacies of their strategic move to grow Bison geographically, exploring how the Lackey’s seamlessly blend their passion for motorcycles with the freedom of the RV lifestyle.
From the innovation in safety gear to tackling legal complexities, scaling on the move, and finding equilibrium in work, life, and homeschooling, this episode provides invaluable insights for fellow entrepreneurs navigating the challenges and triumphs of life on the road.
Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, an RV enthusiast, or simply hungry for a story of resilience and innovation, this episode promises inspiration and practical wisdom.
Buckle up for a deep dive into the exciting and pivotal phase of Robert and Tosha’s entrepreneurial journey, where the road becomes the backdrop for business growth and personal adventure!
Navigating the Growth Phase on the Entrepreneurial Highway
with Robert & Tosha Lackey of Bison
Your Host: Rose Willard
Connect & Follow the Lackeys:
Website (Bison): https://bisontrack.com/
Website (Lackeys Be Trippin’) : https://www.lackeysbetrippin.com/#/
Instagram:
- (Bison): https://www.instagram.com/bison_track/
- (Lackeys Be Trippin’): https://www.instagram.com/lackeysbetrippin
- (Bison): https://www.facebook.com/BisonTrackGear
- (Lackeys Be Trippin’): https://www.facebook.com/lackeysbetrippin
Youtube
- (Bison): https://www.youtube.com/@BisonTrackGear
- (Lackeys Be Trippin’): https://www.youtube.com/@LackeysBeTrippin
RESOURCES MENTIONED
The Blox on Prime Video: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/The-Blox/0IJBJZ2SMKGB6180ZAXN39CFW1
Rose’s Blog: https://resetyourjourney.com/
Rose’s episode on The RV Life Podcast:
”Should I Start A YouTube Chanel?: Unveiling the Journey of Content Creation”
Listen to The RV Entrepreneur Episode #327
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THE RV ENTREPRENEUR
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The RV Entrepreneur #327 Full Episode Transcript:
Navigating the Growth Phase on the Entrepreneurial Highway
327-Rose Tosha Rob.mp3
ROBERT: A lot of people buy from us. Well, and we have a lot of pro writers even that go with us just because we’re there and they see us, they meet us and they’re like, wow, this is a nice rig you have. You guys must be banking, you know? And it’s like, no, this is actually our house. And we sold everything to do this. And they’re like, oh my gosh, I’m totally buying from you.
RV LIFE: Welcome to the RV Entrepreneur Podcast, the weekly show for nomads where campers are RVers and entrepreneurs looking to earn a living or build a business while enjoying the RV lifestyle. This week’s host is Rose Willard. Let’s settle in and enjoy the RV entrepreneur podcast brought to you by RV life.
ROSE: Welcome to another episode of the RV Entrepreneur Podcast. I’m your host this week, Rose Willard, and I am so excited to dive into my conversation today with Robert and Tasha Lackey, because they are right in the heart of their exhilarating and dynamic phase of their business. The growth phase Robert and Tasha are full time RVers, along with two of their four kids that chose the nomadic lifestyle not for leisure, but as a strategic move to grow their business. Bison, a motorcycle racing gear business which thrives by being present at numerous motorcycle racetracks in countless states. They have a lot going on, but they’re going to provide valuable behind the scenes insights of running a mobile business. In this episode, we’ll discuss the challenges they face, as well as how they manage inventory and shipping of their products from the road. We dive into scaling their business, navigating the legal intricacies of selling products across different states, tax considerations, as well as promoting their brand at racetracks, the Lacheys will also share the importance of building a community and culture around bison, as well as the lessons learned and invaluable advice for fellow entrepreneurs considering RV life. We’ll also discuss what a typical day looks like for them on the road, balancing work life and home schooling. So join us as we explore the unconventional path they’ve chosen and their unique way of growing a business on the road. Right after this short message about how you can make the most of your RV life.
RV LIFE: Your RV adventures are worth sharing. With an RV life profile, you can connect with a community of RV enthusiasts, engage in meaningful conversations, and inspire others on their journey. It’s not just about where you go, it’s about the memories you make and the people you meet along the way. Start sharing your unique RV experiences at RV Life.com.
ROSE: Hey Robert and Tasha, I am so glad you’re here today. Welcome to the podcast.
ROBERT: Thank you. Glad to be here.
TOSHA: Thanks for having us.
ROSE: You are welcome. My pleasure. I’m excited to chat with you both today because we share similar reset stories, and also because you’re kind of different from most full time RV years out there, and that you travel to grow your motorcycle racing gear business, which is a physical product that you sell from your RV. So I have a lot of questions about all of this, but first, can you briefly tell us a little bit about who you guys are, what you’re doing, and what your RV life looks now? And it can be a short version if you like.
ROBERT: Yeah. So basically, uh, Tasha and I, we’ve been married a long time, about almost 20 years, I think. And, uh, we’ll get into all that later. But essentially, right now, we’ve been in our RV for about four years. We’re just running all over the country, like you said, trying to grow our business. And, uh, but also at the same time trying to give our kids, like, an on site education, you know, and just life is like a vacation sometimes. And then other times it’s like a nightmare. But we’re just taking it day by day and, uh, trying to enjoy every minute of it. So right now we’re posted up in Kansas. We’ve been all 48 states, but Kansas is home to both of our families. So that’s where we’re at right now. And we’re usually here through the holidays. That’s kind of our reset and break period. So that’s what we’re doing now.
ROSE: Perfect. Yeah, that’s what we did too. Around this time we were back east and settling down for a bit before heading back out. So that works. So when you first got into this RV life, had you ever RV before?
TOSHA: No. Never. No no.
ROSE: No. Yeah.
ROBERT: No. In both feet.
TOSHA: Yeah. It’s actually crazy. I think I wrote a blog about it on our website, but from the time that we had the idea to RV, to the time that we actually started Rv’ing and we were full time, it was less than six weeks.
ROSE: Oh my goodness, that is. Yeah, very quick.
ROBERT: What were we thinking? Right. Oh my gosh.
TOSHA: Yeah, we definitely didn’t. I mean we planned but in a very short period of time.
ROBERT: So it continues to be the theme.
ROSE: So how did this idea of moving into an RV to grow your business first begin?
ROBERT: So like Tasha said, it happened very quickly. Her and I were both working full time, obviously, you know, in office jobs. Basically I was service manager for car dealerships and I’d been in the auto industry for like 20 years. Tasha was VP of finance for a marketing agency in Oklahoma City, and we were both making great money and we loved our jobs. And then two things happened. One was we started talking about the lack of like us time. You know, we were making good money, but we were working our butts off and we just had a bunch of stuff and we didn’t have a lot of experiences. Right. So our youngest daughter, Edith, you know, she’d never really been on a. We’d never taken her and done anything. And there she was, six years old, you know, and at the time. And we’re like, man, she’s six and we’ve never really taken her anywhere. And then Carter, at the time he was, uh, 12. And it was like, same deal. He we’d taken him a couple places, but we’re like, these kids don’t get experiences, man. It’d be cool if we could do something a little bit different. And we kind of had a, uh, like, a catalyst moment, I call it, where Tasha and I went out of town for Memorial Day weekend, and, um, we tried to cram everything into three days because I had Monday off, and I still got basically, you know, just I, my, my employer beat me up about it. You know, I actually wrote me up because I took Memorial Day off for her birthday, no less. And I was so frustrated.
ROBERT: I said, you know what? We shouldn’t live like this. Like, this is our jobs are are running us, not vice versa. And then right after that conversation, both of our situations with work kind of hit speed bumps. And Tasha, especially was very frustrated with her situation. And one night we were sitting in bed and we were both kind of she was crying and I was trying to console her, but I was upset too. And I said, you know what? Because we’d already been talking about bison, and I’m probably getting ahead of myself here, but bison, at that point, we’d had it for a year and it was a side hustle. And we’ll talk about how that started and everything, I’m sure. But we had talked about, shoot, one of us should just do bison full time or we’re going to have to hire somebody. And, uh, so with that conversation proceeding all this, I said, you know what? We could both just quit, get like an RV or something and just travel and Airbnb the house, sell it. I don’t know, but we could just do bison full time. And she just, like the tap work shut off, and she was like, you know what? Yeah, we should probably we should do that. And I was like, okay, we chatted for a few more minutes, went to bed, and then we woke up in the morning and it was kind of like, so that conversation last night, we actually we didn’t do that. And we’re like, yeah, we should do it. And boom, it just like things started escalating quickly. Yeah.
TOSHA: Yeah. We hurried up and bought, you know, our RV and everything while we both still had full time jobs and income and kind of re reorganized our vehicle situation, sold, uh, sold an expensive car we had and bought a cheap car we had. So we are both like really big picture people, you know, and we both get crazy ideas, but they never happen at the same time. And so, like, you know, I’ll be like, hey, we should buy this house. And we’re I’ll be like, no, not right now, you know, or vice versa. He’ll be like, let’s buy this motorcycle. It’s usually a motorcycle. And, uh, I’ll be like, no, not right now. And with the RV thing, it just aligned like we both were just like, yes, which is good that we normally offset each other because otherwise we’d do a lot of crazy stuff. But yeah, that one just aligned perfectly. And that was our that was our catalyst.
ROSE: That’s awesome. Yeah. You guys needed a reset. You know, something to really shake things up a bit. And you did it fast. Rip that Band-Aid off. Sometimes that works really well. It sounds like it’s working for you guys. And you downsized, right? You got rid of a lot of your stuff, cut some expenses, got the RV. Yeah. What kind of RV did you guys decide on?
ROBERT: So we did a whole bunch of research. Of course, in a short period of time. He did, I didn’t. Yeah. So I’ve always liked RVs. I mean, when I was three years old, I used to go to my grandma’s house to stay. And she had, like, cardboard boxes. She baked cakes and stuff. So I would take the boxes and draw them like an RV, like they’d look like a motorhome. And then I’d cut windows out and stuff, and I was sleeping them. And, uh, so I was like, it’s my, it’s my RV. So like, literally, I’ve always wanted to do this. My dad always wanted to do it too. And anyway, so I was excited about the research of the RVs. And I always kind of knew a little bit about them. But anyway, we started with like a class C based on our budget. We thought we had to buy like a new RV, like a new ish RV. And with that in mind, classes were kind of like what we were looking at and I’m like, I just don’t know if this is going to do it. Like room space wise and capacity towing and all that. And so we almost bought a class C like we did the rookie thing. No offense to anybody. We went to Camping World, looked at a class C and was like yep, this is the one. And looking back we’re like, oh, I’m like, we dodged a bullet on that one. So we came home that night and uh, actually Camping World just they just didn’t want to take our deposit. I was like, yeah, this is the one we want. And I was like, I’ll give you a deposit. And they were just like him hauling around. And we ended up leaving and like, everything happens for a reason, man. That was like, literally I’m like, why did they not want our money? Yeah.
ROSE: You lucked.
ROBERT: Yeah. Out. Yeah. So anyway, got home that night she had passed out and something told me just like, look, more, look more sleep.
TOSHA: Is not more appropriate.
ROBERT: Um, yeah. You fell asleep. Didn’t pass out. It was a difference, I guess. So, uh, I pulled up my phone and I found Thor Outlaws, which is a toy hauler, because we looked at toy hauler, like fifth wheels that we could, you know, buy a dually, put the fifth wheel, and then the toy hauler has the garage in the back. For the office stuff or the inventory for our company, of course, and then the motorcycles for play. Anyway, I didn’t know that they made a class A toy hauler and I found the outlaw. The reason a fifth wheel doesn’t work for us is because we move so much. You know, just the tear down and the setup of a fifth wheel is not feasible. So anyway, found the outlaw. And basically we didn’t look at an outlaw. I watched all the videos, read all the specs, everything. We didn’t look at one, but I found one in Texas. We were in Oklahoma City at the time, so I was like, all right, that’s right down I-35. And it was like 110,000 or whatever. And then I found one in Florida that was substantially cheaper. And I called them the next day, and I woke Tasha up the next morning.
ROBERT: I’m like, look, I found an RV and I sent her all these links and she’s like, wow, that’s great. Okay. But I called the Florida dealership and I said, listen, there’s one in Texas I can look at, or we can negotiate over the phone. They negotiated with me, got it figured out in a couple of hours. And then I called her and were like, we had a plane ticket to go, like, sight unseen. Hadn’t looked at any of these RVs in person. And we were just like, we were so excited. But I’m like, we just got to be prepared to cut bait and fly back home. Like, we can’t get so excited that we’re going to pick this thing up and come back. But ended up we got to Fort Myers, Florida, and it was, um, it was everything that we hoped it would be. It was perfect. And we still love that thing. We still got it. It’s for sale, by the way. Somebody should buy it. 2014 Thor Outlaw. But we’ll talk about that later. So we love that RV. We were in it for four years, so.
ROSE: Oh that’s awesome. And I can’t wait to get into your business here. All sorts of questions. But real quick, as we’re all entrepreneurs here, what does being an entrepreneur mean to you guys?
TOSHA: Yeah, it’s funny, we actually talked a little bit about this and we both have kind of different meanings there. I think for me personally, entrepreneurship is more about building something like building something that has a purpose, you know, whether the purpose is, you know, financial freedom or contributing to a community or whatever the purpose may be. It’s about a purpose for me. I like I’m very purpose driven. I think Rob had a little bit different take on that one.
ROBERT: Yeah, as per usual, we offset each other. So hers is very much like, you know, creating something meaningful with value. And while I do understand that and I get it, for me it’s more like freedom and flexibility. So we’re kind of opposite ends of the spectrum. I love the ability to like, today we woke up and we’re like, do we want to stay in the RV and work? Or do we want to go into the office and work, you know, and like Mr.. Stay here and do I want to sit at this table or do I want to sit over there in that chair or go lay in bed and work like, I think that’s cool. And then the financial freedom to Tasha’s point is like, you know, yeah, you can kind of do what you want every day. That being said, you can’t ever shut it off.
ROSE: So yeah, I agree, but those are all great reasons. Yeah. That’s why I think I mean, they’re all reasons that we, we tend to do this and some weigh heavily for people more than others. But um, I like you said, the flexibility, the freedom, the the purpose, that’s very, very important. So that’s awesome. You guys, were you always entrepreneurial or like did you have that in you? I know you worked corporate jobs before, but like how did you just make that switch?
TOSHA: Yeah. So I have been always that way. It’s funny because that’s actually kind of how my last job ended. I’m a CPA and I was the VP of finance, and I did all the like accounting for this company. But I really enjoyed like the big picture stuff, and I really enjoyed that. It was a marketing company because I got to participate in like brainstorming sessions and stuff like that. And then I also ended up taking over our project management team for a period of time. And but that’s kind of how that one ended, because it was like they needed somebody to just be an accountant. And I was like, well, I’m not just an accountant. I have so much more to offer and there’s so much more I want to do. And for Rob, Rob actually had another business when we first moved to Oklahoma City in 2005. You did that for how long? Like I had a patent.
ROBERT: Yeah You had a patent and body shop for about five years. I worked on cars and it just wasn’t, uh, it wasn’t a successful, you know, as bison is it was a tough one. But that being said, right, as it started to kind of gain traction, that was oh nine is when the, you know, everything tanked and I lost all my dealer accounts that paid the bills. And it was like, okay, we gotta do something different. So I went back to car dealerships at that point. Yeah.
TOSHA: And we make a really good team. Like we’re like the yin and yang, right? So like, as far as business goes, we very much make a really good team. And during that time when he had that business, I wasn’t able to help at all. I was working on my master’s and we had just had a baby. And so there was a lot of stuff going on.
ROBERT: So yeah, I was left unattended with the business. They should never do that.
ROSE: Oops. No. That’s awesome. So it sounds like you guys had it in you and you got your feet wet, Robert, with that first one. And, uh, how great that you could start. Bison. So let’s dive into these details. What inspired you to start bison track this motorcycle safety gear business in the first place?
ROBERT: Well, I’m a motorcycle racer.
ROBERT: Obviously. I have a passion for the gear side of it for whatever reason. So I played hockey for 20 years. I was a goalie and I always was excited about my equipment. Like, I just thought I was always looking at like, what’s my next? You know, one of my next pads gonna look like, what’s my next helmet going to be painted? Like, you know, I was always excited about that. And when I stopped playing hockey, I kept getting hurt playing hockey. So I stopped. And then I needed an outlet. And a year or two later, I started riding motorcycles, uh, much to her chagrin. And so that was my new outlet. And I realized, oh, shoot. Like, yeah, all the gear. Motorcycle gear is cool, too, you know, like all these helmets and all these jackets and gloves and boots. And so I ended up like just buying a bunch of used stuff. I had a basement full of things. If my friends crashed, you know, in their gloves or their helmet and they say, well, this is trash, I’d say, well, let me have it. I’m gonna see if I can fix it or take it apart and see how it’s made. And just like, I don’t know, for whatever reason, I and then, um, and plus, I have a creative side, you know, I have a creative mind. I love right now. I’m working on some artwork for one of our racers for next season. And like, that’s that’s like a game to me, you know, all the numbers and the business stuff is tough, like it’s a grind.
ROBERT: But when I can sit down and, like, design something with somebody, that’s where I get excited. So, um, as a racer, I start to get sponsors and I needed to have, like a uniform look for my motorcycle, paint my suit and everything, and that can get expensive. So I found a kind of a cheap outlet. You know, normally a motorcycle suit’s about 1500 to $2500, and I found a, like a $450 outlet for these, you know, custom motorcycle suits. And I was like, ah, what’s the worst that can happen? If it’s junk, I’ll just hang it on the wall and I’ll buy something else. Well, I got it and it looked really good, but I could feel that it wasn’t great quality, but I was so excited about wearing it. I just I raced in it and I took it to the track and all my friends were like, I can’t believe you’re gonna race in that. I said, yeah, but it’ll be fine. I’m on a little bike this weekend. You know? I’m not going to be going fast. Well, three laps into the race with this new suit, I crashed and, uh, it it, like, dinged me up. I was bruised, and, you know, the suit tore where it shouldn’t have even torn. And, you know, I had I had bruises because the padding wasn’t good. And I said, okay, why isn’t there an option for a custom suit? Like, all of them are very expensive, but I see what this $450 suit is and it’s a starting point.
ROBERT: Why can’t there be something around like a thousand bucks? You know, that’s for racers. That’s still a well-built thing, but it doesn’t break the bank. And there were some options out there. But then on the flip side, the customer service was horrible. You know, the turnaround time was bad. And it was just it’s like, okay, I have really good customer service skills. If I could find somebody to make these things the way that I want them to be made and spec the way that I wanted to, and we can meet the price point, that would be pretty cool. Well, I happened to have a friend that was in the industry, and he was kind of soured by one of our competitors, and he said, hey, if you want to do this, I’ll just give you my black book that has all the suppliers and everything, you know, and you can kind of get your foot in the door. You can make a bunch of phone calls. And I said, okay. So I was doing that kind of talking at the racetrack. And then Tasha came to me one day and she’s like, hey, this racing stuff’s expensive. You know, it’d be nice if we could, like, make a buck and maybe have write some of this stuff off, you know, taxes wise.
ROBERT: And I’m like, yeah, well, I’ve already kind of got an idea, actually. And she said, all right, well, we started chatting and then, um, next thing you knew, we went down to Dallas for like the International Motorcycle show. We met with some suppliers. We had some meetings and making phone calls, and then boom, we just we started making stuff. And I, of course, were the first prototype stuff for a season. Crashed it, made sure it was safe, you know, made some tweaks. And then at the end of the year, I told my friends that the last race of the season, I said, okay, guys, see this bison suit that I’m wearing? This is my company and I want you guys to wear this stuff next year. And they were all in, you know, well known name brand expensive suits. And they’re like, really like, you want us to wear your. And I’m like, no, just trust me. You guys saw it worked right. And they’re like, okay. So I got about five of our closest friends to buy the first run and they looked great. They performed great. And then all of a sudden that was down in Texas is where I raced primarily. And all of a sudden boom, Texas just blew up. It was bison everywhere that first year, just in that paddock of that one race club. All of a sudden we were like overwhelmed her and I. And that’s where we said we might need to do something different.
ROSE: Wow. Yeah. You found this personal need to find something that has good quality kind of custom and at a great price point. And gosh, with your connections and everything, it all worked out. That’s awesome. Yeah, yeah. Good for you guys. So curious why the name Bison track.
TOSHA: Yeah. So. Well, we’re from Kansas, but we were living in Oklahoma City for about 15 years before we went full time. And I believe it’s the state animal, right? The bison I I’m pretty sure it is, I think so, um, and we should know this. We should know this. I always say it. I’m pretty sure it is. We were also big Oklahoma City Thunder basketball fans. We actually had season tickets for about eight years with.
ROBERT: Um.
TOSHA: Kansas. Kansas. We should.
ROBERT: I feel really terrible now. That’s our home state, and we didn’t know it was the home animal rights.
ROBERT: All right.
TOSHA: So between that and the basketball team, the mascot for the basketball team was Rumble the bison. And in Oklahoma City, there are bison. And this is probably why I think it’s Oklahoma, because in Oklahoma City, there are bison all over the city like statues of bison there. Some of them are painted, some of them are not painted, but they’re all over. So that and then just like it just works with like the leather and the like needing to be tough, you know, it just kind of worked. And yeah.
ROBERT: We wanted the name to speak to our roots as well, you know, hence the you know, when you think of bison, you think of like the Midwest, you think of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, you know, quarter at least I do. You think of like a tough, badass American animal, you know, and you think of leather. And so we had gone through a whole bunch of different name options and it’s like naming a baby, you know, you go through all these things, it’s like, I don’t know. And then one day I was driving actually on the highway, and I saw bison in the concrete on the walls, and I was like, bison. Bison is a cool name. So I like, texted her and said, hey, bison. She’s like, that’s it. You know, it was just it’s like when you had that baby name that you. Yeah.
ROBERT: So yep.
TOSHA: And we actually tried to register just bison. But again, being that so popular in the area that was not available. So we added the track because it spoke to our roots at the racetrack. Yeah. So yeah. And we’ve kind of dropped the track.
ROBERT: From our branding track.
TOSHA: Branding standpoint. We it was originally like on all our logos and everything, but we’ve kind of dropped it because we do have future plans for stuff outside of the track, you know, street gear and whatnot. And we do have some now.
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ROSE: Yeah. So talk about this gear a little bit more. You said it’s custom and that price point is great. Are there any other innovative features or design elements that are incorporated that kind of sets it apart more from traditional products?
ROBERT: Yeah.
ROBERT: So as a racer, when it kind of set out to spec this stuff, of course there are certain things that you want to see in a suit for, for like racing purposes, just like car racing, auto racing. You know what happens on the NASCAR track that technology filters down to the brake pads on your, you know, Chevy Equinox in your driveway like that. That stuff all trickles down. And so that’s why we started with racing. First of all, we knew that if the product worked well in racing, it was going to work well on the street. You know, if you’re sliding down the track at 170 miles an hour, it’s going to work at 3050 miles an hour. So anyway, we spec the products with certain materials, you know, certain construction methods and what we have done to kind of set ourselves apart is we’ve tried to stay kind of ahead of the game, ahead of trends. For instance, right now we just announced, well last year, an integrated air vest in our race suits. Now, that’s not new technology in and of itself. But we were working with Helite, which is a French company that is one of the pioneers of motorcycle air vests, and we were working with them to integrate this into our suits, you know, and that had been ongoing for like three years, that discussion, you know, and that back and forth. And so finally, we got the products this year. We’ve been putting them in the suits, and it’s giving people another option that they didn’t have before, you know, and they’re very excited about it.
ROBERT: So you know things like that kind of looking ahead right now, the thing that we’re looking a lot at is alternative materials, you know, aside from leather. So we do have a vegan suit which is constructed from Cordura and super fabric in lieu of cowhide, kangaroo stingray skin, which is what is used on our on all race suits right now. So that’s a great product, but it’s not certified for racing. And so what we’re trying to do is find materials that will, you know, take up that gap between the vegan suit and the leathers so that we can certify a vegan suit for racing. And that’s still down the road. We’re talking to multiple companies. We’ve got some sample materials and working through some things, but it’s definitely on our radar. Coming from the automotive industry, I’ve seen leather seats in cars go from animal leather to synthetic leather and even like recycled materials. You know, I like leather seats made out of plastic bottles. You know, it’s like. And you couldn’t tell the difference. Wow. You know, crazy stuff like that. And the trick with motorcycle gear, obviously, is that it has to be not just durable for you to slide your butt in and out of every day, but to slide across the asphalt at 100 miles an hour. And so those tests and those certifications are are tricky, and we’re working at that. But those are the type of things that we look at.
ROSE: Right, right. No. Good luck with that. Well I hope you will find something that bridges that gap. Thank you. I think you will. So in that first year, your business was doing well and it was starting to pick up. This is while you were still working the corporate jobs. At what point then did you decide you needed to travel instead of staying stationary?
TOSHA: Yeah, so we had we had kind of a sit down strategy session about just who we were, what we wanted to accomplish and how we were going to accomplish it. We knew that, you know, with with what we were already doing in Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas, we could only grow so much, you know, and it was good. But there’s so much more, the country that, you know, we were starting to see people pick up on it just by because they knew somebody. And people were asking us all the time, hey, when are you going to come up here to Wisconsin? Or when are you going to come out to California? And part of the trick, too, about what we do is, like we’ve said, everything’s custom, the design’s custom, which that’s easy to do virtually. The measurements are custom. That’s the trickier one. So we take 32 measurements, and taking those in person is super easy. And Rob and I have got it down to, you know, a science where we can do it in like 10 or 15 minutes. But doing those virtually wasn’t even like a thought. Right? So we were focused on getting to as many people as we could, and we were like, well, we can do that. We can travel and do that, and we can, you know, that can be the next phase of the business is growing geographically because we have considered, okay, we’re at the point where we’ve kind of, I don’t want to say topped out in Texas, but definitely gotten a big market share in Texas. And so we were like, do we start releasing street gear? Like, where do we go from here? What’s the next phase? And it was just we felt like the right move was to grow geographically and get because we had. Didn’t even touched, you know, California, which is turning out to be just as big and will eventually be bigger than Texas, I’m sure. Um, but yeah. So that’s why we went on the road.
ROSE: That’s awesome.
ROBERT: A lot of people buy from us. Well, and we have a lot of pro writers even that go with us just because we’re there and they see us, they meet us and they’re like, wow, this is a nice rig you have. You guys must be banking, you know? And it’s like, no, this is actually our house. And we sold everything to do this. And they’re like, oh my gosh, I’m totally buying from you. Like it’s that whole people don’t buy like what you do. It’s why you do it, you know? Whatever.
ROSE: Yes.
ROBERT: People see that and they feel that they’re like, man, you drove all the way out here from Kansas for this. Like, yeah, we are on the road all the time. This is our passion. And they’re like, yeah, okay. We get put a face with the company like people ask us all the time, like, how long have you guys worked for bison? Like, how does this work? Are you a franchise or whatever? I’m like, no, we started the company and they’re like, wait, what do they think? We’re just popping up? You know, as a representative, and they find out we own it. And then they just like they buy right there. So that’s been a big part of our growth, you know.
ROSE: Yeah. That personal touch being in person they get to see you know your story know you they trust you. Yeah you’re right there. You can listen to their needs. And it’s custom. How perfect. That’s awesome. So my other big question here is how do you handle all these physical products in your RV. Where do you put it all. How much do you carry with you? That’s tricky. I’m sure.
ROBERT: It is.
TOSHA: Yeah. It’s been a process. We actually when we very first went on the road, we had our first couple shipments shipped to an RV park or a racetrack, and we realized quickly that it was not gonna that was not going to be sustainable. And this was when we were getting, you know, maybe five suits at a time. Yeah. So thankfully, my mom, she didn’t have like a full time employment. She’s always just raised us and, you know, helped around the house, took care of my grandparents and my niece. And I was like, hey, would you like to maybe be the point of contact for us? Like if we have everything shipped to your house because you’re always there. They don’t travel, they don’t get out and do a lot. Would you like to be the point of contact? She was like, sure. I, you know, could use the extra money and why not? And that’s really evolved. That was I guess almost five years now. It’ll be five years, I believe, in early February. But now she is our full on shipping and receiving quality control.
ROBERT: Inventory management, inventory.
TOSHA: Management. Yeah. And now that we have a space you know, she has where she can actually organize everything. We actually were doing everything out of my parents house for the first like four years. And it started as, hey, can we rent this room, this extra bedroom that you empty nesters have available to? Whoops. Uh, now we’re going to start putting stuff in this other room, and then it’s a good problem.
ROBERT: Yeah.
TOSHA: Last year at Christmas was actually kind of a turning point as well, because last year at Christmas, we were sitting in their living room trying to have a conversation, and we were like looking over boxes. And we were closer together because they had to move their furniture out from the wall, because the whole wall was lined with boxes. And it had just that’s great. Gotten out of control. They were fine. They were like, no, it’s fine. We’ve got more space in the shed and we have this. And we were both like, no, we need it organized and everything in one space. And so we’ve made that move this year.
ROSE: So now what do you do?
TOSHA: Well, it actually worked out perfectly because my brother owns a couple businesses and he was looking at buying a shop right down the road. Well, he was looking all over the place, but he ended up finding a shop, what, two miles from my parents house and his house. And he’s like, I don’t need all this space. He’s like, so if you guys want to commit to it, I’ll go ahead and get it. And then then you can rent space from us. So now it’s nice because I’m like, I’d rather give you our rent money than some random person, you know, and it’s it’s become this kind of like family, calm family. Yeah. Yeah. Because that’s awesome. Are there? And, um, my niece helps my brother out now and it’s. Yeah, it’s just kind of like a family. The kids are there because they’re homeschooling and.
ROBERT: Yeah, it’s fun. Right?
ROSE: That’s wonderful. So everything gets shipped. This is in Kansas. Yes. Okay. So everything gets shipped there. But then how do you guys get it if you’re on the road? Like, what’s the logistics of all that.
TOSHA: Yeah. So for the most part my mom just fulfills orders direct to the customers from here. She okay. She gets like a. A large shipment of like, ten seeds takes everything out. Shesays it. Repackages it nicely, you know, because who knows what customs did to it or whatever. So repackages everything nicely and branded and and then ships it out directly to the customers. We do have instances like if we’re coming up on a big event or something where, you know, especially the first race of the season, everyone waits till the last minute. Everyone needs their stuff like drop ship to the track. So we’ll have like a huge shipment come in to the race track where we just kind of have to coordinate. We’ve kind of figured out the timing, and as long as nothing crazy happens in customs, then, then we’re good, but we’ll get it there. We’ll take out everything and QC it and ship it out from there.
ROBERT: Daytona in March is always our big one because that’s the first event of the year and it’s the Daytona 200 there at the big race track, all the teams have to look their best and everything. And so ultimately we have the Daytona shipping and receiving. Guys know like they will have a pallet. You know, actually we have a picture from last year where we’re taking a pallet jack just stacked with stuff out of there and loading it into our RV. And then as I’m driving down the road, her and Carter are unboxing stuff and there’s just pit shirts and suits and gloves and everything all over the RV. And then we get there and people are knocking on the door, hey, you got my stuff, you got my stuff, and we’re giving them out. And then we’re jumping on the motorcycle and running around trying to deliver it to people, figure out where everybody’s at. It is.
ROBERT: Chaos.
ROBERT: It’s crazy.
ROBERT: That is chaos.
ROSE: Oh my goodness.
TOSHA: Sometimes it goes really well and sometimes it does not.
ROBERT: Yes.
TOSHA: We’ve had both.
ROSE: I can imagine. Yeah. So you guys mainly you’re going out in your RV doing this and you’re taking your hands on with the measurements and you’re meeting them and you’re making the sale and all that stuff. That’s the majority of your, you know, with the RV. And then they receive them from your point of sale in. Yeah, in Kansas. I got that now for.
TOSHA: The most part. Well, I forgot to mention we do carry inventory with us as well. So we will okay. We will pull out, you know, five of these or ten of these or whatever. And in The outlaw it was really, really good. Like we had the back garage area that was pretty much full of our canopy, our flags, all of our inventory, all those things. So that worked out really well. We’re still trying to figure out what our new situation is going to be in the new RV, because we’re probably going to have to get like a trailer and and go that route.
ROBERT: So pretty much all.
ROBERT: Under the basement storage in this new RV is bison stuff.
ROBERT: Wow. And there’s a.
ROBERT: Lot of space, but we don’t have our garage anymore that we had now lost, so we’re trying to figure that out.
ROSE: What do you have right now then?
ROBERT: So we actually bought a 98 Fleetwood American tradition class A pusher. It’s really, really nice. And ironically, the family that had it before us full time did it for six years. So, uh, the interior is beautiful. It has custom made bunks, you know, bunk beds, which are great for Ed and Carter and Rabbit. And it actually works out really well for us. The exterior looks terrible. It looks like Cousin Eddie’s RV. It has a bunch of delamination. The paint’s falling off of it. Um, so it’d be in a paint and body guy. I will fix that at some point, but we got a great deal.
ROSE: On at some point, so. Yeah.
ROBERT: Yeah, yeah.
TOSHA: And it’s free time. I always like.
ROBERT: To say free time in your free.
TOSHA: Time because that doesn’t exist when you’re an entrepreneur.
ROSE: So in that first year or two, being on the road, you experienced a lot of growth, correct?
ROBERT: Yeah.
ROSE: Yeah. That’s awesome. So how are you running such a seem large business now from the road like typical in person. They usually have all these meetings and like all these things like how do you keep track of everything. How do you do it. Yeah.
TOSHA: So we have a team that we work with now. That’s how much we’ve grown. You know, it’s not just my mom. We actually have somebody in in Georgia. We have somebody in Oklahoma. We have somebody in California. So we meet every Monday. We have a standing Monday meeting where we meet with the team. Um, we do it all virtually we can from anywhere. You know, we.
ROBERT: Use Google Meet.
TOSHA: Yeah. And then, yeah, just then we meet with people on the road at the track. We do a lot of that where we’ll we’ll measure them, we’ll talk to them about the gear, you know.
ROBERT: So yeah WhatsApp.
ROBERT: And Google meets has been our friend for sure. So and then Starlink it was kind of a game changer for us. So yeah.
ROBERT: That’s good.
TOSHA: Yeah. We could pretty much do everything we needed to from like our phone hotspot prior to Starlink. Except Rob’s big on like YouTube videos and, you know, so the big stuff where we needed to download a lot of or upload a lot of data, that’s where the Starlink really was a game changer.
ROBERT: Mhm. Yeah.
ROSE: That’s right. You guys have a YouTube channel as well. Yes.
ROBERT: Yep. Lachie’s be trippin.
ROSE: Nice. Oh yeah. That’s right. That’s your personal brand, Lackey’s beach trip. And I love it. Yeah. How did that name come to be?
TOSHA: Actually, I worked for a marketing company, and I kind of threw it out there one day. I don’t know if it was in a group setting or in a meeting or something, but one of the girls that I worked with, she was our creative director. She was like, lackey’s be trippin. She just threw it out there and I was like, yep, that’s it. And then another one of the people I worked with, a designer, he’s the one that created the logo and each of the little characters, and now he’s helped us with some bison stuff as well, so.
ROSE: Oh that’s great. So can you guys kind of go over what a typical day kind of looks like for you guys on the road and then also walk us through like when you go trackside and how do you promote it and all that stuff.
ROBERT: Yeah.
ROBERT: So it’s kind of funny. A typical day for us could be I, I don’t know. It’s right. It goes back to that freedom and flexibility thing for me. We’re you know, we kind of adapt and we have to because the amount of travel that we do. So let’s look at a week during the heat of the race season, I always tell people we were at a different racetrack for six weeks or seven weeks straight, seven at different racetrack for seven different weeks every single weekend in a different state. Every single one was in a different state. So what that means is we roll in like Wednesday night to Thursday. We get set up, set all our canopy, our inventory and everything up, and then we bust our humps Friday, Saturday, Sunday, tear down Sunday, and maybe leave Sunday night. If the track will let us stay. We’ll stay over till Monday morning and then we jump on the computers, try to knock some stuff out, and then I jump behind the wheel and we take off. Wow. Then, you know, we’ve got two days of travel to get to the next track by Wednesday night, to get in there, to get set up Thursday to work Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So we did that for seven weeks straight. And you want to talk about a burnout that was that’s tough.
ROBERT: That was yeah.
ROBERT: Yeah that was a couple years ago. We scaled that back last year. We learned a lesson there. We said we can’t do that. You can’t go that hard. So um, still it’s very intense travel schedule. And so for us like every day during that week is different. You know, Monday morning we’ll wake up, we’ll try to jump out of the racetrack before they shut the gates on us or, you know, or whatever. We’ll get out of the track, go find a truck stop or something, set the computers up, get on our Monday meeting with our team, do all that, and then I start driving early afternoon. I primarily do most of the driving, Tasha, because she does a lot of the computer, you know, the numbers and the a lot of the logistical stuff internally, she’s on the computer. And then she also we might talk about this too. She has a consulting company that she starts. So she now has some clients with that that keeps her really busy. So I just drive, drive, drive as hard and fast as I can. And then I stop. I get on my computer and we do hit a lot of planet Fitnesses, um, for showers because we’re boondocking a lot. So, you know, planet.
ROBERT: Ideas.
ROBERT: Are typically you get it, they’re usually in good areas so you can stop, not worry about it, go and work out, get a shower, you know, maybe use their Wi-Fi.
TOSHA: Except in Portland. Don’t stop at the Planet Fitness along the highway in Portland.
ROBERT: Yeah.
TOSHA: There’s a few.
ROBERT: Well, the thing we found in the Pacific Northwest is they, uh, they don’t want you to stop very long because there’s so many people just squatting in RVs, so.
ROBERT: Oh, yeah, you know, literally.
ROBERT: And it was in a nice area, but we stopped, went and worked out, came back out and just started making dinner. And there’s a security guard like, hey, you guys need to go. Like, you can’t stop. And I’m like, yikes. So that was tricky up in the PNW. But uh, anyway, yeah, that’s what our week looks like, right? So we’re just go, go, go now when we settle in and we’re able to take some time, we don’t plan ahead landmarks, but we try to like we stumbled upon Mount Saint Helens, right? We’re like, oh, Mount Saint Helens is right over there. Let’s just go over there. And so we spent a day and we just told our team, hey, we’re going to be offline today. And we drove up and we hit all the the exploration spots. And the kids got on site learning that day. We found independence Rock in the middle of nowhere, climbed up there and saw all the engravings you know, from the settlers and stuff like things like that. We just kind of do impromptu. We try to slow down a little bit, and that’s what we’re going to try to do even more next year.
ROBERT: Yeah, we’re.
TOSHA: Bad at planning, but the good news is we kind of can be because of the way we travel. So we’re never looking for, I say never rarely looking for RV parks for the weekend. Yeah, because we’re always at a racetrack. So usually if we’re looking for an RV park, it’s for like Monday through Thursday at the latest. So that’s never really been an issue. We can just pull.
ROBERT: In there usually and they’re like, oh yeah we got a spot.
ROBERT: Yeah.
ROBERT: Unless you’re in Florida.
TOSHA: Yeah. Especially this time of year in Florida this time of year.
ROSE: Yeah.
TOSHA: Yeah. So the way we travel it works out that we’re not planners. And I say that we have to kind of.
ROBERT: We do plan.
TOSHA: Plan our events and stuff. But we’ve also been known to kind of have some options or not have had something on our radar. And then we add it. So yeah. We’re flexible.
ROSE: Yeah. You’re flexible. You have your anchors though, so that helps a lot because you know, you have to be somewhere you’re going to be there and you can boondock. Yeah. You guys are good at that now. You travel a lot and you have this business that you’re doing. So how do you handle all the legal aspects of selling a product from the road in different states? I assume now your business is actually started in Kansas, so maybe that’s how you’re you’re dealing with that. But go ahead.
TOSHA: Yeah. So it actually started in Oklahoma and we’re registered in Oklahoma which is still okay. We have two kids in school in Oklahoma. So that’s also a thing. But it’s interesting. So most of our sales are online or at a track. So most states for sales tax purposes have like a small business exception. So if you only sell X number of dollars in a certain state you don’t have to collect and remit sales tax. But once you get to a certain point you do. And you might remember this change. It’s probably been eight years now when Amazon started charging sales tax on things they used to not.
ROSE: Yes you’re right.
TOSHA: Because it used to be all about your physical location. And then there was a shift that happened where it’s like if you’re doing a certain amount of business in a state, you know, now there’s that part of it. So we have to collect sales tax in Oklahoma because that’s where we’re registered. It’s just kind of our home base. You know, that’s where we collect sales tax. And then there’s Kansas, which happens to be the only state in the country that does not have a small business exception. So if you sell $5, I mean, that’s, you know, a little dramatic. But basically if you sell $5 in Kansas, you have to register to be a business and collect sales tax in Kansas and then every other state right now, you know, we’re just not at that point, you know, it’s six figures plus in each state that you have to sell to make it. I think we’re probably getting close on a couple states, but, you know, that’ll be something we deal with as, as we continue to grow. But yeah, as far as the legalities and stuff, there’s not a lot there. It’s really just more around taxes.
ROSE: Yeah. I was going to ask you, being a CPA, do you handle all of your taxes for the business or do you outsource that.
TOSHA: So I hate taxes. I yeah, have never done taxes. I can’t say I’ve never done them. I’ve always I’ve never done them professionally. I never went the tax route. Um, I did auditing for a while and I’ve done like mainly just been in industry working for companies. We outsource our taxes and we’ve gone through a couple different firms, mainly because I know enough to like be annoying to some CPA firms.
ROBERT: Yep.
TOSHA: Where I catch them on things, but I don’t want to do it. So. So yeah, I understand, but I, I know enough to make sure the books are right. And you know, they have what they need and we can make tax decisions.
ROBERT: Good.
ROSE: Yeah.
TOSHA: Yeah. Taxes is just one of those things. Like unless you do it all day, every day, you’re not going to be really proficient at all. Yeah. Yeah. Because there’s so many tax law changes every year.
ROSE: It changes.
TOSHA: Yeah. You just can’t stay up on it. So.
ROBERT: Mhm.
ROSE: Good call. So what percentage of your traveling are you able to realistically have covered by bison and expense on your business taxes. Do you know.
ROBERT: Yeah.
TOSHA: So I would love to answer this question. No um I have.
ROBERT: No idea I totally or you don’t have.
ROSE: To if it’s too personal, you don’t.
ROBERT: Have to.
TOSHA: That’s fine. Okay, I’m conservative, but. And I get a lot of flack for that from people. But what people don’t understand is, because I’m a CPA, I can’t be like, well, I didn’t know that because literally I have a license and I take CPA credits every year. Like it’s my job to know, you know, so I don’t have the luxury of just being able to say, oh, I didn’t know I couldn’t take that much, you know? So I’m probably more conservative. I know I’m more conservative than most people, but the way we’ve done it up until this point is we do it all based on mileage. So if we leave Kansas, we drive to a track in Atlanta. I figure out how many miles that was, take a miles deduction, and then we do a per diem for the the days of the event. Because we live in our RV. It’s really tricky because we can’t write off 100% of our RV. So, you know, with taxes you either have to do mileage or actual cost and we can’t do 100%. So the easiest thing for me to like show, hey, we went here. We were here for X number of days is just to do mileage and a per diem system. So I would say probably. Minutes depending on how much we travel. So there’s certain times of the year it’s more than others. But I would say overall it’s probably maybe 60%, 50 to 60% of our travel costs we write off.
ROSE: That’s decent. Yeah. Very good.
TOSHA: I’m sure it could be more, but yeah, it can’t be 100%.
ROSE: It can’t. You’re living in it. That’s right.
TOSHA: So it’s personal. Now we.
ROBERT: Did. Do we want to tell her about the potential resale.
ROBERT: Yes.
TOSHA: So so we are kind of making a transition there this year we actually bought our new RV under another business where we’re going to just like a house, fix it up. We bought one that needs some work. We’re going to fix it up and like sell it within the next probably two years. And the idea is to, you know, flip it, make some money and write it off fully in the meantime. So it’s a little it’s viewed differently because we are we did buy it as an investment like we know it needs work. And you know, so it’s a little different with the new RV.
ROBERT: But yeah, well that’s good. We got a.
ROBERT: New one, you know, paid a fraction of the price for this one as our other one was.
ROBERT: Right.
ROBERT: You know we got to put some blood, sweat and tears into it. But I enjoy doing that anyway. And then at the end, we’ll have a nice RV that somebody can enjoy and.
ROBERT: Make more money, hopefully.
TOSHA: Be able to stair step up actually to the RV. Right. Really neat right?
ROBERT: Yeah.
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ROSE: But my goodness you guys have so much going on and you have some other little small businesses going on as well there. Oh my gosh. So how do you balance. Are you just go go go go go. You just never stop. Or how do you balance this work life and then homeschooling. You’ve got kids.
ROBERT: Yeah.
TOSHA: So thankfully we have a really good homeschooling structure. It’s less homeschooling. It’s more just kind of.
ROSE: Schooling, life.
TOSHA: Schooling. Sure. Yeah.
ROBERT: The online charter. Yeah.
TOSHA: They have a teacher and a curriculum and all that. So I’m pretty perfect on that, especially now. Now that they’re older and Rob is doing most of that. I don’t have the patience for school, to be honest. Wow. Um, Rob is doing most of that in the beginning with Edith. In the beginning, it was tough because she couldn’t even fully read yet, you know? So it was like, you have to sit down with her and walk her, read things to her. And. Yeah, but sorry, I just blanked on where we were. Yeah.
ROSE: The balance.
TOSHA: Oh, yeah. Yeah, the balance thing. Yeah, I’m bad at it I but it’s and I’m so bad. So I actually get annoyed because I feel like there’s been this whole big push for like work life balance and that’s fine. And I get it. And I understand that it’s necessary. But at the same time, some people enjoy working and some people enjoy like get there. Like for me personally, I’m fulfilled by the work that I do, you know? So for me, that kind of flows over to personal satisfaction too. Now. Okay. Right now it’s a little crazy, and I would love nothing more than to get to the gym because I was in a really good routine on that, and now I’m not. But yeah, it’s it’s hard and it’s funny because we started this with the idea of like, let’s spend more time together and do more things and travel. And with being an entrepreneur, that’s really hard. Depending on your business, depending on your business, like we’re in hyper growth mode. Yeah. You know, we’re juggling a lot of things. So for us it’s really hard. We’ve actually I wouldn’t say necessarily done as much as we’d like to do, but at the same time, we spend every day with our kids, you know. Yeah. So it’s kind of that trade off of like, yeah, we may not be going to do like all this fun sightseeing stuff that you see all these other full time families do. But but my kid is sitting next to me every day and we have little conversations here. So it’s more about those moments than the big.
ROSE: Yes, yes. It’s that quality time together and and they’re experiencing real life, you know, the life skills that it takes to run a small business, especially on the road. But yeah, you get to you get to travel and see and experience all kinds of people as well. They’re sponges. I’m sure they’re taking in a lot of that. And like you said, down the road, it might, you know, you’re in that super growth phase. So I think you’ll have a shift where you can kind of breathe a little and be like, okay, I can I can do something a little bit here that I wanted to do or, or that. So yep.
ROBERT: Very good.
TOSHA: The whole goal with how we’ve structured bison is we’ve to a point over invested in the people that we have on our team, because we’re trying to get to a point where and we are in a lot of ways, at a point where the business we always say the business will run itself without us, it doesn’t need us for in order to come in and things to go out. We have systems and processes and people set up, but for it to grow and continue to grow, it still needs us. And we’re working on that now.
ROSE: Yeah, yeah. That’s important. Yeah. You need to be there. You need to be that face. But in the future you feel like someone else could be there trackside working for you, taking those measurements.
ROBERT: Yeah, we’ve actually just started a new program this year where we’re trying to clone ourselves because now that we’ve been to all 48 states as of last year, we’ve been all four corners that Southern California, Arizona, that was our last frontier. We got down there and they’re like, cool. So we spent the winter down there last year because they race in the desert and the winter time. And so we stayed down there and it kept work going, and we wanted to do that again this year. But we have the new RV and there’s still things going on. We have a sprinter van as well that we haven’t even talked about. The engine blew on, thank goodness. Yeah. So we blew the sprinter engine at the end of last season. And so we just are getting that fixed. And anyway we couldn’t make it down to California. So everybody’s like where are you guys at. There’s this event last weekend and they’re like you guys are we put. Some stuff into the raffle and everything like, hey, we saw the the bison suit and the raffle, are you guys come in and we’re like, no, we’re we can’t get out there. And so what we have then is we’re trying to get people in different areas that can be us, for lack of a better tum. Um, and so we’ve created this cool structure for track side partners is what we’re calling them. They’ll get a canopy and flags and stuff just as we do, but they buy their inventory and sell it, that they make their margin on it. And then they can also take measurements and everything.
ROBERT: So kind of like.
TOSHA: A hybrid franchise model. It’s not a franchise, but it kind of acts as one. But we’re really, really protective of our brand and our culture because that is what we’re known for. Yeah. And so we don’t want to fully let go with the franchise model. So yeah, it’s kind of a hybrid. Yeah.
ROSE: So with that culture and that community is it’s very important. Like in the RV world, I can imagine it’s very important in the motorcycle world. And so have you guys incorporated anything else like built that kind of community of these safety conscious riders within Bison track?
ROBERT: Yeah, yeah.
ROBERT: So when we started this company, we really wanted it to be a lifestyle brand at some point. You know, we look at brands like Nike or, you know, people, people wear alpine stars as one of our big competitors. They’re one of the like I’d say big three. Right. And people wear alpine stars hats. They’ve never been on a motorcycle before or a race car or anything. You know, they just it’s a brand thing or Fox. Yeah. Fox racing. You see teenage girls with big Fox Racing sticker on their car and never been on a motorcycle. And so we want bison to be that way. And what kind of happened organically and it took us a little bit by surprise was this thing kind of happened, we call it the Herd. And, uh, the herd is just our it can be our customer base, but it could also be just people that are fans of the brand. And so it’s evolving into this lifestyle thing. We go to events all over, well, all over the world. Even people will send us a picture of somebody at a race in Europe that wearing a bison shirt, you know, and they’re like, look, look at this guy’s wearing a bison shirt.
ROBERT: I’m like, ah, that’s awesome. They’re on the other side of the world. Right? And so it’s it’s become this thing where it’s like, you don’t even have to wear our gear to be part of the herd. You just got to be kind of a fan, you know? And, um, we hear this constantly from our return customers and even new customers that they just want to be a part of it. We have a writer in South Korea that applied for sponsorship this year, and he said, I feel like I’m part of a family, even though I’m on the other side of the planet. It’s just really cool being part of the herd, you know? So that’s circles tight to your point. Yes. It’s great that we have that community and we’ve built that just kind of organically, but we can’t take our foot off the accelerator. We can’t change things because the second you mess up and social media has tightened that circle, as you know, the second you mess up, that then becomes your reputation. And so trying to maintain that really good customer service, as Tasha said, being really protective of our brand and our culture.
ROBERT: Right.
ROBERT: We’ve had some, as an example, some really fast riders, you know, racers with very good resumes that we’ve turned away for sponsorships because we have seen or heard things in the paddock that don’t align with our culture and that we don’t want to associate our brand with. And so it can be difficult as a small business to do that, because you see somebody come to you with a big name and you’re like, yeah, okay, we just need to do it, right? No, but it’s long terme, you know, it’s it’s a short sighted vision. So the circle’s tight. One thing we’re trying to do is influence people that are riding on the street and, uh, stunt riders, for instance. Gear is uncool to them. Like, it’s just stunt riders, especially those are the people that crash the most. And they wear t shirts. Maybe a helmet, but t shirts, no gloves, you know, and I just see them crash all the time and I’m like, oh my gosh, they think it’s cool to rash themselves up, but like, let’s make a gear cool where you’ll wear it a little, at least a little bit of it.
ROBERT: And uh.
ROBERT: Anyway, we’re just trying to operate intentionally with everything we do and those intentions being good and pure and not losing sight of our culture. So, yeah.
TOSHA: And I think that’s going to be the hardest thing as we grow and we know that’s going to be the hardest thing is like, how do we create this bigger company that allows us to do more things and support more riders, but still maintain our same level of customer service and our culture. And so that’s really our big focus this year. And honestly, with the track side partner thing, we we had this vision like a year ago where we we knew we needed to do it a year ago. And we talked about it. We’re like, okay, we need to meet people. But part of our thing is we don’t want to force it. We want to make sure that the person that we’re bringing on is a good fit. And so until we have those people, we’re just not going to do it. And, you know, so it’s it’s delayed things a little bit there. But it’s the right call. Mhm.
ROSE: Yeah that’s okay. You guys are doing the right thing. I like your purpose and your mission with all that. Yeah that’s fabulous. Yeah. So after four years, what have you guys, what have you all learned that you wish you knew when you started traveling?
ROBERT: Uh, put a third dump valve on the waste tank outlet so it doesn’t drip all over you.
ROSE: That’s a good one.
ROBERT: Yeah. It’s, uh, don’t.
TOSHA: Leave the cap inside the hose. When you put two hoses together, make sure.
ROBERT: You take the plug.
ROSE: Out. Nothing will come out.
ROBERT: Yeah.
ROBERT: No. In all seriousness, I think that, um, there’s a few takeaways Tasha and I visited about this. We’ve talked about it a lot, actually, but I think the first thing would be maintenance and repair time and cost, you know? Um, yeah. For us, traveling so much, especially when we bought our outlaw, we bought an extended warranty. And that was a great peace of mind. But honestly, I made so many repairs myself just because we didn’t have time to put it in the shop for three months. And, you know, it’s just I remember specifically the carburetor on our generator went out and we were in the middle of, like, Montana and traveling across the United States. And I said, I just got to go to Cummins and buy a $450 carburetor and put on this instead of paying our $100 deductible. I just had to bite the bullet and do it.
ROBERT: Yeah. At the time.
ROBERT: Yeah, yeah. We just we knew it was going to be a lot. We didn’t have any illusion that this thing was just going to go down the road without issue.
ROBERT: We’ve seen people.
TOSHA: That do have that illusion and we we definitely bad.
ROBERT: News.
TOSHA: We’re not those people, but.
ROBERT: All of them. All of them have issues and you know that. So that’s the one thing like an.
ROSE: Earthquake going down the road every time you drive. So everything gets shaken up.
ROBERT: Yeah. Bingo.
ROBERT: And then I think the other point of that kind of in conjunction would be that newer and shinier and more expensive does not equal better when it comes to RVs and motorhomes.
ROBERT: Nope.
ROBERT: Here we are in this 98, and we have friends with 2020 RVs that they paid $200,000 for, and they’re just falling apart going down the road in this 98, don’t get me wrong, has a lot of issues, but it’s no more or no less than a brand new one.
ROSE: Um, we had a 97 outdoors RV travel trailer, and it was built like a tank. Um, my gosh, it was the best.
TOSHA: Yeah, I wish I would have known that for sure when we started, because I would have just gone this route from the beginning.
ROBERT: Um, yeah. I heard a.
ROBERT: Lot of people say it in my research. You know, a lot of people mentioned that on Facebook and on the forums, and, and I can see that just by looking at them. There are two problems that we had when we started. One was we thought we needed to have a toy hauler for sure. And that was why, you know, they don’t make any older classes that are toy haulers.
ROBERT: So short.
ROBERT: Of getting like a, a class eight, you know, semi conversion, that wasn’t going to happen. So yeah. Um, we got the outlaw and the outlaw was great actually for what it was. But the older RVs also harder to get loans on. And I just didn’t know enough about them to go look at one and determine if it was a good or a bad one. And, you know, now that I know them top to bottom, I wouldn’t looked at this one. I’m like, yep, looks like crap. Nobody else wants to drive it. But I know that the bones are good. That’s all I care about.
ROBERT: So that’s important.
ROBERT: Yeah, I didn’t have that education four years, five years ago.
ROBERT: So yeah, I say I.
TOSHA: Wish, but I’m glad we have that experience to like bring us to this point.
ROBERT: Yeah, right.
ROSE: You don’t really know unless you’re in it and doing it. I mean yeah, there’s a big difference. You can research all you want, but yeah, you just have to do it well.
TOSHA: And then just like how much stuff you pack too. Like, I’m sure you experienced this, but yes, I think we probably downsized our personal belongings like five times since we’ve been in here because we were, you know, filled to the brim. We need everything. We need totes for this and that.
ROBERT: And, um.
ROSE: Now you can get a lot on the road, too. I mean, you don’t need everything.
ROBERT: Yeah, well.
TOSHA: Every time we come back to Oklahoma, which is where our storage unit is, we would be like, okay, let’s make a trip to the storage unit.
ROBERT: Yeah.
TOSHA: Like, we know now that we don’t need these three totes, you know, and and honestly, we really just have clothes and our, like, electronics and that’s pretty much it like food and.
ROBERT: Yep.
ROSE: Yeah. That’s all you need. You got your experiences out there.
ROBERT: You.
ROSE: Go. Yeah. So looking back at your journey with Bison Track, is there anything you wish you had known when you started that you’d like to share with other entrepreneurs?
TOSHA: So I feel like no. And this is why. Because I feel like so many entrepreneurs wait until everything is so perfect before they launch, and they go and it’s like, it’s never going to be perfect. So you need to just go. I would say every year we we have a big learning yeah moment you know or not moment. There’s like a takeaway from every season. It’s like. One year it was, you know, we need to work on our fitment guarantee policy because we were our fitment guarantees were kind of out of control and we didn’t have a good return policy. You know, it’s still something that’s a big part of our business because it just is. That’s the nature of our business. But we didn’t have a good return policy that protected us and the customer. That was last year. We we wrote the policy and put it into play this year. And that was really good this year. It was like because of our vehicle issues and stuff, we didn’t travel for the last half of the year and that was a huge impact on our business, like sales wise and financially. So now we know we need to really replicate ourselves. We have to move in that direction if we because then if we’re not traveling, we’re not worried about sales because there’s other people out there representing the brand. So I think there’s like little stuff like that that you learn. There’s a moment or a takeaway every year or every phase of your business life cycle. Now, that being said, being a CPA, I had like the accounting stuff down and I could see how a lot of people jump into a business without thinking through that and without collecting the information they need and saving receipts and doing all the things like, I think that’s probably the thing I would warn people about most is like, make sure you’re you have all your ducks in the row when you start, because if you don’t, it’s going to be a kind of a nightmare on the back end. Right. And people don’t think about that.
ROSE: No, no, that’s a tough part for a lot of people. And they try and take it on and they think they could do it, but either outsource or you better know what you’re doing. Good point. Yeah.
ROBERT: Yeah.
ROSE: So we talked a little like your future plans I guess for Bison track. But anything else and your RV adventures, anything up on the horizon here?
ROBERT: Well, I mean, we’re going to try to as I said earlier, take it a little bit slower in terms of the business stuff and spend a little bit more time on the family. Our oldest son, well, not our oldest son, our oldest son that’s with us. We have two kids that are out of the house and they’re older and they’re in their 20s, married and all that. But Carter is 16, and we pulled in here in Kansas and parked the RV and he like, took off to go live with my brother in law next door. Um, so.
ROSE: Oh, wow. He needed some space. Yeah.
TOSHA: He’s very different than us, too. He’s, like, very type A, and nobody else in the family is that way. So I’m. I know it’s a lot for him. Yeah, yeah.
ROBERT: But he’s doing a great job with it. He’s figured out ways to occupy himself and make money while he’s on the road. He works for MotoAmerica. When we go to those events and stuff like that. But he got a full time job at chick fil A here in Wichita, and he is loving that. And actually.
ROBERT: It’s supposed to be.
TOSHA: Part time.
ROBERT: Well, yeah, it’s part time now. It’s full.
ROBERT: Time.
ROBERT: And today he’s working 12 hour shift for actually 14 hour shift total today. So I mean that gives you an idea of what this kid’s about. But what I’m getting at there, we’re probably only going to have one more year with him. He’s 16 and he’s like, listen.
ROBERT: Yeah.
ROBERT: He’s fighting it. And I’m like, you are coming with us one more year. I think he’s gonna be gone next year. So we really want to do as much as we can while we have him on board still. Yeah.
TOSHA: Because not only is he working over 40 hours a week at 16, he is doubling up on school, and his plan is to graduate before the end of this year. So we unexpectedly are approaching senior year already into.
ROSE: Yes you are.
TOSHA: So yeah, that’s um, that was kind of a stressful moment for me. I’m like, wait, did I just take your last first day of school picture like, oh yeah, it made me really sad. But yeah, I think I wouldn’t say we’ve talked him into I think we’ve forced we’re forcing him one more year. We’re like, look, you owe us one more year. You don’t get to go. Just live your life yet.
ROBERT: So it’ll be fine once we’re on the road. But we do have to do things to keep him occupied, you know? And like, I understand.
ROSE: Yeah, yeah. We have a 13 year old, and and we want to get back out on the road, like part time for a little while. And, uh, trying to do that before he gets, you know, to that age, he’s already like he’s into driving games and that stuff online and just wants to learn all about the rules of the road. Right now. I’m like, wow, this is early, but okay. Yeah, part of our home school is do this. You know, we use life. Yeah. Pretty cool. Yeah. So guys, anything else do you want to comment on? I know we talked a lot. This is a great long episode. This is awesome. But I want to give you one more opportunity.
TOSHA: We do have our first international trip coming up so.
ROSE: Oh that’s exciting. Do tell.
TOSHA: It’s just the two of us. And it’s it is a work related trip. It’s something we kind of won because of what we’re doing with our business. But we are supposed to be going to Thailand at the end of January. So.
ROBERT: Yeah.
TOSHA: Yeah. Wow. A week long, actually. It’s a motorcycle tour of Thailand, so we’ll be on a motorcycle for about a week going through the whole country, so.
ROBERT: Yeah.
ROSE: Amazing.
ROBERT: So that’s cool.
ROSE: Yeah, that is very cool.
ROBERT: A big thing which we didn’t mention before. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the show The Blocks. Uh, it’s an entrepreneur show. It’s on Prime Video. And then you can have to.
ROBERT: Look that up.
ROBERT: App. Yeah. So it’s blocks.
ROBERT: And so blocks. Yeah.
ROBERT: So the blocks is well it’s hard to explain. But basically they have lots of training content on their website on their app. And then they have this show that they do every year. And we got accepted into the next season of the blocks. So we’ll be shooting that at the end of February. There’s a week in February, we’ll be shooting it and then it’ll I don’t know when it’ll be, when it’ll air, but something to keep an eye out for. So go check out the blocks and watch for us on there. Yeah, I don’t know what season it’s going to be even, but this is the first time we’ve talked about it to anybody. We haven’t announced it on social or anything. So you heard it.
ROBERT: Oh wow.
TOSHA: Exclusive.
ROBERT: First exclusive.
ROSE: That’s awesome guys, I am so excited for you all. What is the best way for our listeners to follow or reach out to you guys online?
TOSHA: Yeah, so we’re on all I would say all the social. It’s not really all. It’s Instagram, Facebook, Black Keys be trippin YouTube definitely on YouTube. And you can email us. We also have a website. It’s Lackey’s Tripping.com with links to all those social channels and some blogs and whatnot.
ROBERT: So yeah.
ROSE: And for bikes and track. Yeah, I was.
ROBERT: Gonna say bison. So bison track com or bison leathers. Com and then on all the social channels it’s either bison or bison track. Okay. Instagram, Facebook I think our Instagram is bison underscore track.
ROBERT: Yeah some of them are weird.
TOSHA: Because of.
ROBERT: You can find we’ll find you a name like.
TOSHA: Bison. It’s kind of yeah.
ROBERT: Type in bison motorcycle gear and, uh, boom, everything will pop up.
ROSE: Sure thing. I’ll be sure to put all these links in the show notes for everyone. Thank you guys so much for taking the time to come on the show today. I know you all are super busy, but I really had a lot of fun chatting with you and I wish you continued success in all your businesses and on the road guys.
ROBERT: Thank same.
ROBERT: Rose, thank you so.
ROBERT: Much, so much for.
TOSHA: Having us.
ROSE: How exciting for Robert and Tasha. It is so inspiring to witness the dedication and the hard work that they’re putting into growing their business. Bison. It’s a phase of any venture that requires immense effort and a focused mindset, and it’s evident that they are fully committed to steering their business towards success. And their entrepreneurial journey really resonates with me in the experiences that my husband and I had while growing our first stationary business, and also currently with growing our blog at Reset Your Journey. The excitement, hard work, consistency, and the pursuit of those goals all universal elements in any entrepreneurial journey. I want to give a massive thank you to Robert and Tasha for taking the time to share their journey with us, as they gave some wonderful insights and practical guidance, and are a great source of motivation for those navigating the exciting yet demanding path of business growth. So if you’re a motorcycle fan or interested in what they’re doing with bison and their unique adventures, definitely go check out their websites at Bison Track Comm and Lackey’s Be trippin.com and on all their socials. You can find all their links in the show notes. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I absolutely love to being here with you all. Please let us know what phase you’re working on in your business and how it’s going over on the RV Entrepreneur Facebook Group. We’d love to hear from you! And for more insights to all sorts of RV lifestyle adventures and challenges, be sure to tune in to our sister podcast, the RV Life Podcast. In fact, my husband and I were recent guests on the show back in December discussing if you should start a YouTube channel. Mm. What do you think? You can tune in over there to hear all about that. Have a great week.
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