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Uncharted Entrepreneurship - hosted by Brent Peterson out of the Minnesota chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization – brings you daring stories straight from the trailblazing entrepreneurs who are unmapping business frontiers across every industry. Settle in around our virtual campfire as Brent sits down to pick the brains of startup pioneers, visionary founders, and intrepid CEOs whose origin stories - marked by unexpected twists, lessons, and stumbles along unpaved paths - will inspire your own trek in launching a boundary-pushing venture. Trading war stories, strategies, and even warnings, these audacious guests invite fellow founders and future leaders into their confidential circles in a uniquely transparent, wise, and motivational way. So join us off the beaten business trails to light your entrepreneurial fire!
Brent Peterson (00:03.257)
Welcome to this episode. Today I have John Willenborg. He is the CEO of Owlvans. John, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day to day role and one of your passions in life.
John Willenborg (00:15.818)
Thanks a lot. Yes. My name is John founder and CEO at owl we build off -road accessories and Install various products for adventure vans and actually expanded past that a little bit Yeah, and then sorry, was that? What was the second part of my introduction? Passions passions. have it, you know I'm basically living my passions. I have a huge passion for creation product design engineering
Brent Peterson (00:33.467)
Passions? Any passions?
John Willenborg (00:43.97)
and also being in the outdoors. So all of my passions come together, although they do say don't go into a job, which is one of your passions because the majority of my time now is spent in front of a computer. And as CEO, think Elon Musk said it the other day, he goes, best description of a CEO is constantly having all of the problems of the business escalated to you. And that's really
being a CEO is because if it's going right, you're probably not dealing with it. And so it's a constant barrage of what's going wrong and how do we solve it. And those who solve it the best are successful companies and those that don't solve it don't survive. And so I think...
Although my passions are outdoor and product creation, you have to have a tolerance for, you have to have a pain tolerance when you are CEO because you will be stressed out, you will be frustrated. yeah, so my day to day existence in the business is somewhat stressful, but you have to learn how to manage that stress. And you also have to like to perform under those conditions. So chaos is where I live best. Some people love tons of order and there's no right solution there, but each person's individual.
Brent Peterson (01:59.941)
That's awesome. Have you looked at any frameworks like EOS to help manage some of the different workloads and delegations?
John Willenborg (02:11.295)
I'm a very old school manual person. So I'm not huge on new software and we are gonna put in an ERP system here. The problem you run into is, and I know when we were chatting briefly before this started, you talked about running marathons. And I think there's a good analogy for running marathons when it comes to business. And that is you're running and you're feeling good. And you're coming up
like a water station or a feed station, but you feel good. Do you keep running or do you stop and feel yourself for better performance down the line in the marathon? And I think that's a constant choice that you're making as a business owner, right? So I've got a lot of orders, I've got a lot of products that I'm gonna come out with. There's only so much bandwidth in a day, only so much bandwidth in each individual on the team.
Do we stop what we're doing and implement the ERP system because we know that over the next three or four years it will pay dividends in better inventory management, fewer mistake shipments, et cetera? Or do we focus on new product development to stay out in front of our competitors and keep our manual processes, which are pretty good or it wouldn't be the size we are, and continue to outrun the competition? that's kind
where we fall. And so when it comes to software or processes and so on, I think right now we're still in that manual phase, but we're reaching a point where we're going to have to take one step back to go two steps forward.
Brent Peterson (03:37.305)
Yeah, that's, that's good. And just for the listeners, the EOS is a, it's just a framework. It's not a software. It's a framework. Yeah, it's a framework. No, that's like Google has one. And this was, this one happens to be, I'm in entrepreneurs organization. It's a, and that's, it seems like a lot of people in, in, businesses in, in the businesses that I talk to are, running EOS. It was a book called Traction by Gina Wickman. I would highly recommend people read it. It gets
John Willenborg (03:45.15)
okay. Shows my ignorance.
Brent Peterson (04:06.701)
Addicted to it and there's the one the main thing is that is called an L10 meeting So it's a super structured super on time blah blah blah. Anyways, you won't get into that and that's so it's interesting, you know, I about new new development because one of our clients is is a they manufacture meat sticks jerky beef sticks things like that and They're trying to get the they're trying to really own bison
John Willenborg (04:16.003)
Yep.
Brent Peterson (04:35.959)
especially in there in Montana. So localized that. And I said, well, you know, one thing that would be good is maybe looking at having a seasonal bison jerky and shoot, you know, they were explaining how long it takes to cure the meat and it's so labor intensive and they only have such a big smokehouse, blah, blah. And I, definitely can understand that, that, that push and pull between developing a new product and then having the time to do it. And then taking away the bandwidth to actually do
So.
John Willenborg (05:06.53)
Yes, although I must say I'm jealous of their ability. When someone asked them what they do, they said, I'm in meat sticks. I guess there's no more fun answer. That's definitely a more fun answer and it would cause a lot of people to be like, huh? And that's funny. Yeah, no, it's definitely a more entertaining title than making off road cars.
Brent Peterson (05:28.923)
I don't know. mean, I think vans are pretty fun. I think so your businesses must be growing. And I would imagine that your business grew exponentially during the pandemic.
John Willenborg (05:39.691)
Yes or no, I think people, what I say about the pandemic is it took years out of people's awareness of the vehicles. So we were actually growing at the same rate pre -COVID as during COVID. And we actually had a fall off initially when COVID started and then we came back. Now we would have grown much faster. The problem was we were reliant on vehicles and nobody could build vehicles. So I think what people kind of forget looking back on the pandemic was the fact that
you couldn't get new vehicles because there were no chips. so Mercedes wasn't able to produce vans. It was a year to two year wait to get a van. And so our business, if there's no vans, there's no business. And so yes, we performed well in COVID, but it was very much.
constrained by the availability of spinners. So had those been plentiful, yeah, think we would have absolutely, well, arguably we would have problems keeping up and scaling that quickly. But yeah, no, I wouldn't say COVID was bad. What COVID did is it already furthered this trend of people shying away from air travel and falling in love again with this beautiful, stunning landscape that we have at our fingertips that's called America.
Being able to get out there and be away from technology, be away from the hustle and bustle of the urban cities that so many people live in and spend time with your partner, with your family. Those, I think,
fundamentally enjoyable to humans and vans are a vehicle, pardon the pun, that allow you to get out and adventure. So the point is not being in the van. The point is taking the van to someplace where you get to do what you want to do, be that biking, hiking, kayaking, et cetera, or just staring at beautiful sunsets. And that's what I think COVID did for the van world is it allowed people to get more mobile.
John Willenborg (07:31.808)
And so they tried out this van thing and since then they have fallen in love with it. And we have customers that have built out two or three or four vans with us. so COVID shortened the learning gap, but the reality is vans will take over the vast majority of the RV industry within the next few years. It's already happening and they're just such a better product. And so this was going to and will be a thing regardless of pandemic, regardless of interest rates, regardless of any macro economic or macro.
world trend.
Brent Peterson (08:03.263)
Explain your business model. You're creating accessories for existing vans and are you creating the ability for somebody to take their old, to take the Sprinter van from Amazon that's been now retired and turn it into their own camper? Do you go that
John Willenborg (08:21.351)
Yeah, so it's interesting there's kind of two or three
verticals in our business you have the Kind of more hippie what's called kind of van life and this is typically someone that's you know Maybe just out of school has a remote job the ability to travel maybe doesn't have the Disposable income that someone that's older and more established in their career would have so these are the people that are buying inexpensive vans and building them out themselves with readily available materials, then you've got kind of
The Amazon taking used vehicles and turning those into camper vans is much more of a European thing than it is here. The majority of what's driving the market here is brand new, what I call turnkey vehicles. So the major RV manufacturers as well as some very nice high -end bespoke builders and I guess folks that fall in between that like a storyteller overland.
But the big ones, Winnebago, Tiffin, Airstream, Thor, which is part of Tiffin. So all of those companies are building turnkey vans. They have heaters, and I can go into what these vans are like because they're very different from what people have experienced in a camper and so on before.
in that they have thermostats just like your house. You set it and forget it, you know. You've got no generator rattling, it's all solar powered with lithium batteries now. So you can run AC all night, you can be very comfortable. They've got all power efficient LED lighting, showers, bathrooms.
John Willenborg (09:58.254)
It's amazingly convenient. It's just all packed into a very small package. And so these RV manufacturers are building these vans as turnkey vans. They're anywhere from brand new 100 to $300 ,000, which is not an insignificant amount of money. But when you figure that you can finance these like a house, which a lot of people don't realize.
It's not like a car loan. So you don't have to do like a 60 month car loan. You can get a mortgage essentially on these vehicles because you can live in them. And so people are buying those vehicles turnkey and that's really what's driving the market and driving a house growth.
Brent Peterson (10:35.675)
Yeah, you mentioned, the difference between a van and an RV or the van and I, what do we call it? A large larger class RV. the, think the difference and I've been fascinated by the sprinter size vans for a long time. think the difference is just mobility or getting around in, in when you do get into a big city or you do get into that tight space. tell us the kind of the background on,
John Willenborg (10:57.326)
Mm -hmm.
Brent Peterson (11:02.927)
between the two and why somebody would choose one or the
John Willenborg (11:08.43)
Yeah, so vans are a newer kind of concept as of, mean, I bought my first van 10 years ago, but they've definitely become more mainstream. And it's some of the reasons you just spoke about. There is, I think it's called gas station anxiety. I have been someone who has owned almost every type of recreational vehicle under the sun. And when you get into the bigger vehicles, what happens is you,
have to be very careful. You make a wrong turn with a giant fifth wheel trailer and you get down a one way street, you gotta back that thing up and you're gonna back into the traffic and if you're by yourself, you're in a whole heap of anxiety. You've got situations where gas stations, the overhang's not tall enough. You've also
a massive change in the gender of the people or the gender spread of the folks that are purchasing vehicles and adventure vans. And I think it's for two reasons. We have a much higher female customer ratio for an automotive company than most companies. And it's because they feel comfortable driving it. One of the number one things that,
we're told by women that have purchased vans is it's driveability and safety. They feel comfortable driving it because it drives like basically like a minivan. It does not drive like a giant RV or anything like that. You can fit it in a parking space in a regular parking lot and then safety. A lot of women really, really want to get out and explore this country and they want to do it solo or with a friend. And if you're in a rooftop tent, there's just fabric between you and whatever else is out there. But when you're in a van,
you've got essentially a steel cage and you can drive away. And so the great thing about a van is you can close it, lock it, and if anything goes sideways, you can drive away. And so what's awesome is there's this huge contingent of women who I think have been on the fence about getting an RV and recreating and going and living this lifestyle. And now thanks to the security and driveability of the vans, they feel comfortable venturing into this area.
John Willenborg (13:13.516)
And in fact, it's really cool. On a lot of our trail runs, there will be couples where it's a male and a female and the guy's got this bravado that he knows how to off -road. And so we go on these trail runs and then the wife takes over at some point and then absolutely falls in love with it and won't give the driver's seat back. And to watch them go
Maybe as a kid they've done less off -roading, and so they're maybe a little bit more apprehensive, but they're great at it. And they follow direction, they pay attention without the ego, and so they actually get better faster. A lot of guys are like, I don't know how to do this. And so it's really cool to see that aspect of this community grow so quickly.
Brent Peterson (13:54.067)
You mentioned lithium earlier, lithium batteries, and I know the ID buzz is coming out this year and they have a pop. They're advertising, they're going to have a camper van version of it. Where do you think the electric van market is going to go in the future?
John Willenborg (14:11.97)
I think you've got a problem with electric vans. think that I have an electric vehicle that I drive to and from work and it's perfect. I've got a longer commute, I save on gas, I plug it in, I never need to go to gas stations. I think it's a perfect use case for an electric vehicle. The issue you run into with vans is the whole point is to get really far off the grid. And you can't charge a vehicle with solar. You can charge batteries
running your lights, running your heater, that kind of thing, because they don't draw that much power. But as far as powering a vehicle, you would need just a massive solar array to charge that thing in any reasonable amount of time. So where you run into issues with an electric vehicle is you get really far off the beaten path and then you run your heater all night or you forget to turn something off and you wake up and the batteries are dead, you're hosed. And so I could see...
of really great, and I think this is what the automotive industry is moving to as a whole. think hybrids having some sort of ability to have a motor that recharges lithium and working with those in concert, I think that's where we're going to end up. I think EVs will exist, but I think that we're going to end up at a place where we have a lot more battery
have some sort of small compact engine that can also recharge those. I think that would be a fantastic van solution. I don't think fully electric is going to be ideal for everyone.
Brent Peterson (15:34.425)
Yeah, I can say that I had the I3, the BMW I3 with the range extender and it had a little tiny generator in it that sounded like a lawnmower that would click on when you were trying to go too far on your electric. So, Alvanz, I know that we spoke earlier about your kind of this target of getting to hundred million. What are your plans on getting there for sales -wise?
John Willenborg (16:00.738)
Yeah. And when it comes to entrepreneurship, everyone does it differently. For me personally, the way I build a business is, and I've had other businesses in the past that I've sold, I focus on a niche market. So what is an area where I can...
really communicate and build a brand to a customer that, and thankfully social media has allowed us to do this. So I can go really deep. think one of the mistakes entrepreneurs make initially when they're trying to build a company is that, and you actually see this on Shark Tank, where they'll come in and they'll say, fishing is a hundred billion dollar business or industry.
And if I get just 1 % on success, well, how do you get that 1 %? You've got some, pardon the pun, really big fish in that market who have established brands, established distribution networks, retailers, et cetera. So getting that 1 % is damn near impossible. But if you said, hey, kayak fishing is becoming a thing. So I am going to focus, hyper -focus on accessories for kayak fishing.
And I bring this up because I know a company that was very successful because they did just that. And so they started out there, which like we did, we started out purely with Sprinter vans, Adventure vans when the market was very, very small.
we grew our breadth of products and then now we're at point in the company where we've actually kind of dropped the vans from our name and we're now just OWL and we are making products and servicing other vehicles in addition to adventure vans. And so I guess what I mean by that is the path for
John Willenborg (17:42.958)
me to create a successful business is get your toe in the door with a niche market. Market only to them, concentrate only on them and focus on owning that demo with your brand. Once you do that, then you can start to spread your wings a little bit very modestly if you will, depending on your cash flow of the business. And you're able to go into those adjacent groups and then you look up five years later and you've got that 1 % of the fishing market.
Whereas if you just came in and said, I'm gonna make everything they make in the fishing market and get 1%, it'll never happen.
Brent Peterson (18:16.793)
Yeah, that's good. I know we talked also a little bit about the slumps that happened, the different seasonal slumps. How do you get your team behind getting past those slumps and working through them? then I guess on the flip side too, especially in the e -commerce space, there's this huge rush at the Black Friday time that also will suck up teams.
John Willenborg (18:46.542)
Yeah, this is where I think spreading out your business and I never really got to answer your question of the 100 million which we can but by having multiple revenue sources, it allows you to be much more insulated from things that go up and things that go down. So first and foremost, sales are addictive but I don't think they're very beneficial. So.
They are addicted because they're quick cash, but it's not playing the long game. Owls never run a sale. We never will run a sale as far as I'm concerned. And that's for two reasons. One, once you run a sale, that's your price. People are not gonna buy that product for the full price anymore, especially with a product that has much more permanence. you're a pair of socks, great.
run a sale because nobody's gonna come back after they bought a pair of set of socks online six months later and check with the prices. No one's gonna put a set of socks in their, I shouldn't say nobody, most people won't put a pair of socks in their shopping cart and watch the price change over three or four months before they pull the trigger on the 9 .99 socks.
When you're spending 20 to 30 grand on parts, you're gonna ask for discounts, you're gonna look for sales, you're gonna use your Honey browser install to look for discount codes. And by not running sales, we do two things. One, we don't create barriers for customers to wait on their purchase. And getting that purchase in earlier allows us to grow the business faster.
B, you're not frustrating customers that just purchased something and then it went on sale and then you have to honor that sale. There's a big van brand in the business that I know ran some discounts, not aftermarket accessories, but actual van builder. And they ran some discounts and now they're stuck continuing to run those discounts because buyers were watching the vans for six to eight months because they were considered to purchase. Then they saw this massive
John Willenborg (20:54.479)
Manufacture rebate and so they come in for the rebate but it was for a limited time and so I'm friends with a lot of these RV dealerships some are massive You know hundreds of millions of dollars a year and they're like, yeah We can't sell any XYZ vans because the customers are pissed because there's there was a discount and now they want the discount and now they feel like they're overpaying and so
As far as the Black Friday stuff, we don't really run any sales. do shockingly get, I think people wait to shop until Black Friday, but by not running sales, we don't have people, like our sales before and after Black Friday are still strong. And so, A, I don't run sales and B, as far as the business and slumps and growth, everyone likes to work for a company that's growing. Everyone likes to show up to work when things are getting better every day.
Thankfully Owl has really never had a slump since we started. We started about five years ago and we've grown to be the biggest aftermarket parts manufacturer in the adventure van world and even this year we're up sizably. I think we're up 30%, 25 to 30 % on last year. Everyone else is down. And the way we're able to do that is because of all the different knobs that we have to turn.
people oftentimes will ask, how did you get out to the size it is or what did you do to become successful with your business? And the answer is, and I give the same answer every time, it's a ton of little knobs that get turned every day. So it's not like I ran one Instagram ad and boom, we were successful.
It's tweaking the quality and doing revisions. It's talking to the customer service staff and making sure that they are communicating with the customers in the right way or following up on orders. It's making sure that your products are shipped faster and in better condition. It's tweaking a hundred ads that you have running. So it's turning all these little knobs and the more knobs you have, the more insulated you are from downturns in the market. here's a great example.
John Willenborg (23:03.374)
If we only manufactured aftermarket parts and had no installation facilities, which we do, we have five installation facilities now and we're going to have them nationwide and international within the next 12 months.
For a long time, there were no vans available at RV dealerships. And so every van that showed up sold or it was pre -sold six months in advance. Well, we've come out of the pandemic. We've come out of the Mercedes had a stop ship for a while with an issue. And now we've arrived at a place where there finally are vehicles available at Mercedes Sprinter dealers and vehicles available at RV dealers. And that's due to increased production by Mercedes and finally getting away from like the chip
issues, etc. Well, some of these vehicles are sitting longer on dealer lots and what we found is with our accessories on them they sell in a matter of weeks and so you've got vans that have sat at dealerships for 330 plus days. What we do is we say, hey we'll take the van in, we'll put our parts all over it,
We'll bring it back to you. You make additional margin on the parts that we've installed. You make additional money on the financing because now you're financing a higher amount. The customer's happy because the products are in the financing so they don't have to come out of pocket up front for
And so having those installation centers allows us to change with the industry so that now when the vans are on the dealers lot, we're able to sell the products prior to the customer purchasing the vehicle, in addition to parts after. And so a year ago, that was not an option for us. Now with vans being on a lot longer, we're still able to grow as a company by doing these, you know, pre -purchase builds, et cetera. So having different ways that you can
John Willenborg (24:57.746)
grow your business allows you to kind of mitigate slumps and areas where seasonality, know, if you have seasonality, release your brand, save your brand new product release for the slump in your season, you know, and so that will flatten out your seasonality and it'll mean that you don't have the, you you don't have to lay anyone off seasonally like some businesses do, but Vans don't have a massive seasonality. have a little bit, but it's not massive.
Brent Peterson (25:26.159)
Yeah, I want to pick at one pet peeve that I have with a big brand that sells direct and they do sales constantly and they're also in Costco. And so their sale price is never as low as Costco, but if you want that special flavor, let's say you have to go onto their site. So I signed up for their deal and then I was brought to their site through a, know, a pick four thing. And I went through the whole pick four thing, put
John Willenborg (25:45.378)
Yep.
Brent Peterson (25:56.111)
discount code in and it didn't, it didn't apply to that one. So I think you're right, not just the sale part of it, but also making different reasons why people should buy and then excluding that sale automatically turns people off from buying. I immediately abandoned the cart. But my question is when you see abandoned carts, do you, do you specifically follow up with, with real people or do you depend on your e -commerce platform to kind of reach
and hit people up on abandoned carts.
John Willenborg (26:29.646)
We're huge fans, and maybe this makes us boomers, but we're huge fans of telephone calls. And you would be amazed how far that goes for a customer. So what we will do with abandoned parts is, and this is all dependent on how busy we are, right? And so again, these are knobs that you can turn. When we're slammed,
I couldn't care less about abandoned carts because we're red line. We're shipping, we're building as much as we can build. We're picking up the phone as much as we can pick up the phone. We're shipping as much as we can ship. So the nice thing though is abandoned carts are there when you get to a season that's slow or even a day that's slow. Then what happens is the customer service and the sales team can start reaching out to the customers with abandoned carts. We don't offer them deals. We just offer them.
Assistance with the purchase and so we say hey we noticed you had five things in your cart you know some of these are pretty complicated products full suspension systems etc and Just wanted to ask you if you if we could answer any questions for you on these if you got all the things Answered on the website or we can direct you towards some videos that we made that might explain the products better and just take a very We are not pushy at all. We play the long game with our customers. We will even
People will call with questions, somebody had questions about powder coating and changing the color of stuff, and it wasn't even stuff they bought from us. But we'll take the time, you'll like, hey, here's what I would do. I would take it to this powder coater and I would ask for this process, et cetera, because we know that that builds goodwill down the line.
And I don't care if I ever sell that person something, but how will they feel about my brand? Well, if someone else is saying, Hey, I'm deciding between owl and XYZ product. They'd be like, I talked to all those guys are super responsive and really nice. And it's that goodwill. so we try really hard with customers to spend as much time as they want on the phone. have people live answer calls. It's not email support. We have email support, but we also have live support. And then,
John Willenborg (28:28.46)
What we'll do is we will call those abandoned carts and you'd be amazed how many abandoned carts turn into sales when you ask questions because people can be like, a lot of times they'll be like, thank God you called. I was embarrassed to call and ask these questions because I didn't want, they don't explicitly say it this succinctly, but they're like, I didn't want to seem like I didn't know what I was talking about or I thought maybe my question was dumb. But now that I have you on the phone, I wanted to know like, will this work with blah, blah, blah van? And we'll be like,
Yeah, no, actually, good question. It's actually this other skew that's gonna work for your van, et cetera. But the amount of people that abandon carts because they have a question but they're so busy, they either don't want or have the time to get ahold of you or they think they're gonna be put into some sort of foam tree purgatory where you listen to jazzy hits for two hours. So yeah, that's kind of the approach we take as a business.
Brent Peterson (29:22.819)
Yeah, I mean, that's, it's such good feedback. And I can, I have this thing called an endless pool where you swim against a current and I've gone through the same sort of phone tree purgatory where you're, you just have the smallest question and it, know, it's a thousand dollar item that you're purchasing and you end up, I'm not going to buy this yet. I'm going to get a better call them.
that phone tree purgatory can really be the maker or breaker to some of those deals. as your average order value goes up, I can imagine that that's just more important to have that touch. I think even today, as we're entering more more AI, that people want to talk to people more than they want to talk to a robot, especially a chatbot.
John Willenborg (30:07.406)
And it matters who you have too. Our customer service folks and our customer experience folks are right outside my office door. So I have four people right outside my door. I can hear the conversations. I can hear the questions. I can hear how they're answering them. And that allows me to keep a pulse on the business. didn't farm out my, this is following on your pet peeve, this is a pet peeve of mine. We don't farm out our,
phone support to somewhere either in this country or out of this country or whatever. And everyone's had this experience where they call a phone system and they pick up and the person goes into this 10 minute long intro. You know, thank you so much for calling me with a problem. I hope to offer you the best possible service today, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then they like tell you their name is Bob. And you're like, look.
I know your name isn't Bob and I don't mean that in a bad way, but it's like you're starting off that customer service interaction with a false hook. And so how are you supposed to trust with your customers? It's like, if the person's name isn't Bob, let the person say what their real name is. If you're gonna have someone that's from another country handling your phone support, then let them be honest in who they are and establish that honesty with the customer. But to have someone that, you know,
starts off with a lie with their name, I don't like that kind of support. So I have my support here, they know the industry, I can hear their complaints, and if I ever do reach a point in the business where I have to have phone support somewhere else, well, those phone support people are gonna be honest, and they're not gonna pretend that if they're in Dallas, I'm not gonna have them pretend like they're in Austin, and I'm not gonna have them use fake names. It's like just be honest with your customers, that's day one.
Brent Peterson (31:59.151)
Yeah, that's really good points coming out today. I appreciate that. So how do you see the industry going for this next couple of quarters? What do you see in Q3, Q4 for your business?
John Willenborg (32:17.282)
I mean, I think we're entering kind of uncertain macroeconomic times, right? We've got a couple of wars going on. We've still got some high interest rates. I haven't looked at where inflation is. You've got an election happening. So there's a lot of uncertainty and economies don't like uncertainty. They like certainty. When it comes to our business, the nice thing is, and this is another tidbit for entrepreneurs that I've learned over the years is we cater to the high end.
and we're all about the best product and the best service and then we're gonna charge appropriately for it. And by going for the high end, it has a number of advantages. A lot of people pay cash for their vehicles for these vans. so, interest rates are less of an effect on a high end. If you're selling Ferraris and interest rates go up, it's not gonna affect you like it's gonna affect Honda.
I don't know what percentage of Hondas get financed, but I bet it's a lot higher than the number of Ferraris that get financed. So catering to the high end means you're more insulated from macroeconomic trends, good, bad, or sideways. So I always like to make fewer of something, make it better, and cater to the higher end market. It's not always possible, but that's kind of where I stand. As far as the rest of the year,
I think we've got enough knobs to turn that regardless of what happens in the market as a whole, we're going to continue our growth. Like I said, through the start of the year, we're up 25 -ish percent on year over year, and I don't plan on stopping that. We're continuing to hone our marketing, continuing to build out our brand, and my goal is to make our competitors very, very uncomfortable over the next six months.
Brent Peterson (34:00.475)
Last question, I've been asking people about their hiring. you know, so I have summer in Minnesota, we winter in Hawaii. Minnesota right now is 2 .8, 2 .8 % unemployment here in the Twin Cities. And believe it or not, Hawaii is around 3 % unemployment, which means it's very hard to hire people. And I can say specifically, you know, if we go to a restaurant in Hawaii, oftentimes you're waiting with open tables.
John Willenborg (34:12.14)
that's a nice life right there.
John Willenborg (34:29.848)
Yep.
Brent Peterson (34:30.371)
How do you deal with trying to get people in store to do that, some of the work you need them to do, especially when you want to hire people that you would like to come into the office?
John Willenborg (34:46.252)
Yeah, so there's a fair amount to unpack there. And that was actually the impetus for the move to Arizona was employees. We needed not just one or two. I I took a vacation, which is not very often, like two weeks ago. And when I got back, we had hired four people. And that was a one week vacation. So the fact that we're able to hire four people in one week, if we're different positions.
the labor market matters for your ability to scale a business. And one of the complexities, so we started in the Northern California, the complexities I had in Northern California, in addition to all the California stuff, which is not exactly, well, I wouldn't say not exactly, it's not business friendly at all. But I loved California. The real reason we moved was labor pool. I couldn't get workers. that's not because they aren't there, it's because,
You can't be in any sort of an area of California that you have to have everything in an area where you have those workers, otherwise they're driving two hours. So when we were
Northern California to get someone to pack and ship. They can't afford to live in that area. And so they have to drive in. And if you're driving two hours with the price of gas, you're exhausted. You're leaving early. All your money, you know, after taxes, a large majority of your money is going towards your car, your maintenance and your gas. And so after a while, that person doesn't really care if they work for you anymore. And it's not, I'm not knocking them. get it. If it doesn't pencil, it doesn't pencil. So first and foremost is you have to
When you're small, doesn't matter, but as you grow, you have to put yourself in an area where you have access to employees because we love our employees, but we also have a short rope is the right term. But when we realize it's not a fit, you rip the bandaid off. If someone is not jiving with your culture after the first couple of weeks, dear God, it is not going to get better. And even if you have a meeting with them and they get better for a week,
John Willenborg (36:51.424)
it's not going to be better long term. So if it's not a fit...
Even if they're a nice person or a hard worker, if it doesn't jive with the rest of your company or you're having issues with them, rip the bandaid off and find someone that jives with your team because it's not just the work that person does, it affects the entirety of that vertical of your business or that team. So if you have someone that's on their phone all the time and shipping, constantly checking their texts, what does that say to the other people that make the same money that that person's making who are working harder? That's disrespectful. And so you have to make sure that disrespectful person is no longer part of your team because the
the other people on your team will be sitting there and being like, why am I showing up and working my butt off if Joe Schmo is on his phone for half a shift or half her shift or whoever? And so I think hiring good people affects not just the work output of that person, but the culture. And then I think you also have to realize that people are not a commodity and each one of these people
has things that motivates them in the morning, that makes them happy, that makes them upset. They have lives outside of the business. And so I try really, really hard to make sure that OWL is a business that I would want to work at and that we do everything we can to make sure that these people enjoy their time here. And a lot of that comes from hiring people that are self -motivated so that you don't have to be the manager that's constantly on, why didn't you get this work done? Why did you box 10 things instead of 35 like everyone else?
That's the kind of thing where...
John Willenborg (38:24.312)
Hollywood has this idea of the entrepreneur of going into a boardroom and standing up and be like, you all suck, you need to work harder, I want double the output by noon and coffees for closers. And that's just not, that's not the way successful businesses actually work.
The way successful businesses actually work is someone comes in and you ask how their weekend was, how their family is, and when they say they need to leave early to pick their kid up from school because their kid's sick, you let them. And if that means I have to go out and box stuff, I will.
It also means a culture of when the toilet needs scrubbing, guess who scrubs them? I do. I own the company. And if the customer bathrooms are not up to shape, I go clean them. And I don't tell someone else to do it because if I'm unwilling to roll my sleeves up and, you know, get dirty in the business, then how can I expect them to roll up their sleeves and do what I ask them? So I think it starts with the ability to have a labor pool where you don't have to put up with people that don't write your business. And it ends with,
creating a culture where people, even if they don't like their job, they don't hate their job. And they come in every day and you motivate them and you don't just find their faults, but you recognize them when they do a good job. And that's huge. know, recognition for good jobs will do so much more for someone's, kind of state of mind of work than a raise well.
We still give raises obviously, but if you recognize someone's accomplishments to them and in front of the team, it pays dividends.
Brent Peterson (39:57.881)
Yeah, I'm going to key in on that. Your employees are not commodities because it's so expensive to rehire somebody and train them, especially my previous business with the developer business and trying to get people on board and trying to get people trained and learning how to do things was so difficult. John, we have a few minutes left. Yeah, it's a huge investment and I think there's so many.
John Willenborg (40:16.714)
It is a massive investment to people do not realize the cost of training. And so if you get someone, you do not want to train someone that's not good because you're investing a lot of money in them. So if you're going to train them, you want this person to be with you for a long period of time.
Brent Peterson (40:31.023)
Yeah, absolutely. So John, we have a few minutes left. As I close out, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything. What would you like to plug today?
John Willenborg (40:42.715)
I would like to plug this gorgeous country that we have. people have heard this podcast, if they're listening obviously, and they can Google OWL and they can see our website and check out what we do. I hope you become a customer and I hope that you experience the joy that this community has brought to me and everyone that's in it.
Beyond that, what I love is being part of a business that allows people to go out and connect with the outdoors. Some of my best experiences over my children's childhood has been going on trips with them in a van where now my preteen daughter doesn't love the fact that you're kind of sequestered, but you're not on your iPads, you're hanging out with your family, you're hiking, you're looking at this gorgeous country that we have, you're not.
stuck going through TSA where they're, you know, probing every part of you, et cetera. And so just the ability to go on trips and spend time with my family has been amazing. So however you can do that, that's my plug. Go do that. Whether it's in the back of your Subaru, in your Jeep, in your van, in a tent, go get out, experience the lands that we have and enjoy them with your family because other countries don't have the expanses of nature that we have.
Brent Peterson (41:55.213)
Yeah, and I was just trying to think what is my favorite national park, but there's so many great ones, you know, every state has some great national parks and.
John Willenborg (42:03.916)
And they're so different. Like you go to other countries and they have a topography. have, know, California, you can drive from, you know, wetlands to redwood forest to snow capped mountains to desert in three hours. I mean, that's insane. There's no other country in the world that you have that kind of breadth of natural beauty within a few hours of itself. We are so spoiled and to not use that as a travesty.
Brent Peterson (42:30.169)
Yeah, very good. Thank you so much for that. We'll have to do a follow -up posting for our favorite national parks and where can you drive in on those with your Sprinter van? Mine is, so yeah, in Minnesota we have the Bondi Waters Canary area, which is no motors. So that's another unique adventure.
John Willenborg (42:43.884)
Yeah, absolutely.
John Willenborg (42:51.5)
Yeah, and there's something to that which I understand no motors for noise, but I think one of the things that people have a little bit backwards is they view vehicles as being less environmentally friendly than like tent camping. But in reality,
Vans are one of the most ecological ways of camping because you are often times charging with solar and so the power you're using is from the sun. You've got enclosed camping toilets that bring all of your unseemly stuff out with you. You've got trash inside your vehicle. You've got water and grey water inside your vehicle. You've only got four tires that, you know, two of them are going in line and so when you spread a tent out on the ground and run generators and so on, it's a
completely different impact and you see this now in national parks. a huge problem with people leaving behind toilet paper and garbage. Bands are very enclosed and so it actually is a really ecological way to experience these lands without leaving trash and damaging them etc.
Brent Peterson (43:51.109)
You have good shameless plugs all around. And John, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. John Willenberger, the CEO of OWL. I'll make sure to put all your contact deals into the show notes. Thank you so
John Willenborg (44:06.402)
I appreciate it, Brent. Thanks for having us.