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Driven By with Sam Coates
Trailer
Bonus
Episode 13
Season 1
13. Mike Bruns | The Momentum That Builds a $200 Million Dollar Company
Listen to this week's episode with Entrepreneur Mike Bruns. Mike founded trucking company Comtrak with one driver after working for three bankrupt companies prior. Twenty-three years later, Mike sold Comtrak with $200,000,000 in revenue and 1,500 employees. My conversation with Mike is unconventional and engaging. It's not your typical business conversation. Mike talks about getting scrappy, how we as people develop, the driving force behind opening up 21 locations, how much money is enough money, the importance of philanthropy, how he wants to make an impact, the aspects of life that won't change, what makes a bad acquisition and much more.
- 1:03 I'm going to be the smartest 90-year-old you know
- 1:49 Transitioning from trying to make Friday's payroll
- 3:30 Industry experience is less important than raw talent
- 3:57 Daily habit- make my morning rounds
- 5:50 Mistake of hierarchy that organizational chart determines one's value
- 9:13 Empathy whether necktie or uniform on
- 11:30 No smoke-filled room
- 13:00 Working for 3 Bankrupt companies shows you what not to do
- 13:20 Trucking was immaterial for what I did for a living
- 13:36 I knew what buttons to push
- 17:21 Take the person for what their value is. You can't take a chainsaw to someone
- 20:23 Changed from doing everything to letting people do things better than me
- 23:50 We learned the most from mistakes
- 25:00 Examples how to make the best out of mistakes
- 26:05 Let's give the mistake the biggest wow factor they have ever seen
- 26:29 Enough money is enough money
- 27:44 Most conservative trucking company in the business
- 32:00 Where I learned to scrap
- 34:54 How we decided where to expand locations
- 37:02 Didn't care about size
- 37:17 I had to run ahead and see what we were doing next
- 37:47 Create new challenges for people
- 38:17 Working in a dying industry sucks
- 42:28 My greatest joy was taking someone and reinventing them
- 48:16 I didn't plan beyond a year
- 50:33 Technology creates opportunities today, but some things don't change
- 52:42 Even if I wasn't first I could react because I had the best people
- 57:46 What does well run look like?
- 59:33 Revenue hides sins
- 1:00:57 What acquisitions to stay away from
- 1:03:09 How to move on after selling
- 1:07:00 Importance of Philanthropy
- 1:10:19 Helping others created buy-in with employees
- 1:17:40 How to buckle down during a setback
- 1:24:30 Going backward to appreciate going forward
- 1:27:11 Humility is the secret weapon