On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. I'm pushing as hard as I am because I wanna build something that My dad can never have dreamed of building. I wanna take this to the next level. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe, featuring fellow 7, 8, and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life. But have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be.
We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the reel of the reel. On what it takes to build a successful business today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way they give true and accurate picture of the journey growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and kings like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's podcast today.
I've got Blake Carlisle here on the king stage. My brother, my bearded brother from another mother. How are you today? I'm good, man. How are you? I'm doing wonderful, dude. It's a it's a beautiful Monday, and it's even more beautiful because we just got done talking about elk hunting. I love El Cunning. It was your first El Cut. I'm so glad to graft you into the elk family. Oh, yeah. I'm glad to be part of it, man. Good, man.
Well, obviously, we're here to chat about business, not necessarily elk hunting. Maybe we'll weave in some elk hunting tactics into our business story today, but tell us what kind of business or in this case, business is that you have. Yeah. So my my first name business that's actually a family business It's called custom host tech. Basically, what we do is we build hydraulic hoses for heavy machinery So anything from, like, your low telehandlers, your bobcats, excavators, that sort of deal.
I have 2 store fronts. 1 in the twin cities in Minnesota. Another in Rochester, Minnesota, in our storefronts, basically, and the people will take the hose off, bring it to us, we'll make it like for like, and get them out the door. I also have 4 mobile trucks that operate in the twin cities that will go out onto the job site and actually wrench the hose off the machine build it on their truck and then go and reinstall it for the customer just to alleviate some of the downtime for them.
Yeah. That's incredible. And and and really, you I mean, we'll jump into this. I'm sure a little bit more, but the tech behind this is what's unique. Right? Like, this is something that that you guys have developed This is not just a, hey. We're just gonna order this from someone and replace it for you. This is something that you've developed. Tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah. So when when somebody brings the hose in, basically, there's hundreds of different configurations that can be on the hose. So what we do is we identify what is on the ends of the hoses. And then that tells us the pressure of the hose what really what the fittings are so that we can build the hose. So I don't have I don't have premade hose assemblies just sitting on my shelf like some places do. Right? I make exactly what you need in 5, 10 minutes. And then yeah.
So, basically, we make the host 5, 10 minutes. I'd be out the door. With What's what's the value of having a custom hoe hose like this? So the main values that that we're adding for people is really the downtime on the machine. A lot of times when they have a machine going down, they're losing 1000 of dollars an hour. With that machine down. Yeah. They they can't miss. They can't miss those deadlines that they have with their contracts. Yeah. So my ECA for my trucks is 1 hour.
So we'll be on-site in an hour, and usually a job takes about an hour depending on how tough Chaz one is. I mean, some can take long, but usually Chaz the hour, 2 hours is a is a pretty good time frame to get the job complete. Gonna switch gears on you here. My first question is always the same, and I think it's gonna be unique to hear your question or your answer on this because obviously, like you said, it's a family business.
I know you said your dad originally started the the main business, but you and your brother are doing this together. Right? So At this level, my question to you, and that maybe you answer on behalf of your family, maybe, but it's why. Why are you still pushing? Obviously, you you've grown a big business as a family. Why are you now as a 2nd generation owner pushing as hard as you are?
Then I'm pushing as hard as I am because I wanna I wanna build something that my my dad could never have dreamed of building. I mean, I wanna take this to the next level. I want I want custom host techs to be all over the country. Right now, there's one main competitor that's actually a franchise model that is all over the country. They have a 100 and something locations. I wanna say their name. No need to give me any credit. Yes. But I wanna I wanna take them on.
I wanna I wanna become I wanna become better than them. I wanna build this brand to something that we never even thought we could have when we first started in 1998. Yeah. And, I mean, I have my brother to help me. I mean, my my parents are pretty much retired. But they're there for some of the questions that that we do have since Fleet's me and my brother have only been in charge for, like, 5, 6 years now.
Yeah. So I think there's a good support system there to just kinda take it to to new heights. What do you think? This is just such an interesting, you know, generational pool I'm super motivated legacy wise. I think about my children and grandchildren doing something that I can't even imagine. So even the language that you just use there, It's not so much of a I don't I'm not picking up that it's a spike towards your dad of like, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna show him.
It's more of a He took it this far. Now let me see how far I can take it, which is the same language that I dream about with my kids and and, I mean, I don't have any grandkids. But one day. Right? So my my question to you is, how did that get instilled to you? Why do you think that way? Is it is it Is there anything else tied to that? Is it for your family as well? Is it monetary? Like, what all goes into that for you? How did you come to that conclusion?
So I think First, I do need to give some credit to my dad or when he started the company. Yeah. What he did and what he built is pretty unheard of in today's day and age. There's a lot of big powerhouses in the industry from the people that do exactly what we do. And the manufacturers. He overcame a lot to get to where he got us. So I think that I I definitely need to give him the the credit that's that's due there.
Yeah. But going off of that, I think the main thing growing up, I was a wrestler. So a lot of heart every single day through my entire life. Just training to be the best wrestler that I could be getting the that work ethic. I think that's the most important thing that you can learn from sports growing up is is that that tough work ethic just break through any barrier that might be in your way, that resiliency. And then it's just I'm just not I'm not satisfied with with where we are.
I think if you do if you are satisfied, somebody else in the same industry as you is not satisfied, and they're getting better every single day. So I need to make sure that I'm doing everything that I can do every day to make sure that those people behind me don't catch up with me. Why do you think why do you what burnt? Like, what's what's the fuel? That's that's the that's what we get as the heat. Right? What you just described Chaz the heat.
What are you putting in that burns the fuel like that? Was that your dad speaking into you as a kid? Was that just because you have this innate just desire to go conquer? Like, what is that? Yeah. I think the the fuel for it is a lot of it is is watching my dad and what he went through. Building the company when I was young. I mean, So he started with a old ways potato Chaz, Chuck, that he stocked with all these fittings and hoes, and he would bring me in the van, babysitting me Right.
John's place. And I Wolfe sit in the back of his malaise and making these hoses and wrenching on machines. So I think I think watching him do that and watching him build it. Right. I I mean, I I don't wanna I don't wanna let him down. I don't wanna let my brother down, my mom down. And then I also I want to be able to give some of my don't have children yet, but I wanna be able to give to my children what my parents gave me, which was great childhood. Never really anything to worry about.
Yeah. I just I wanna I wanna leave that be hurried for my kids. My nephew cash is my brother's son. Who just turned a year old. Yeah. I wanna, like, give the people in my family the opportunities that I was a forty with my parents' hardware. 100%. I love that, man. Sorry to press on you so hard. I just love this stuff, and I and I'll dude, the the next generation, like, I'm literally obsessing over building my children.
And and I see you, you know, fast forwarded my own children fast forwarded they're you. You know, they're the 2nd generation, and it's like, okay. What do I need? What are the ingredients to build this? My son, my daughters? You know? And so selfishly, but those questions work for me. It's it's trying to be a good dad over here, but I'm sure plenty of the listeners have got plenty of value from that as well. Let's go into your story. Obviously, we know how the business started.
Your dad, you know, kinda threw all this thing together there, but I wanna know how did you get involved Did you try anything else beforehand? Kind of what was your entry to entrepreneurship? I mean, There were certain times that I thought of maybe going a different direction from the family business. Sure. But, I mean, I've worked here since I was fourteen years old. I It's really what I'm the best at in hydraulic hoses.
Right. So I think with my with my drive and my determination, and starting with such a great foundation that was already built. I I really felt like I could I could take this to the next level. And, I mean, that's just that's kinda and I guess I never really thought or felt that I needed to go any different direction Chaz I could really build something great here. Yeah. Absolutely. I love that. So fourteen years old, you're working on the on the back of it. You can't drive it.
You can't drive the van. It's a good stuff, though. Tell us how, like, how like, was Chaz, like, a, hey, son? Do you wanna start working for me? Did you just say, hey, dad. I wanna make money? Like, how did how did it all start? Wolfe, so our our shop here in Bloomington, we actually have a wrestling room for a wrestling room in the back. So, really, it started with when I was doing the the private trainings, the college wrestlers, they'd come here and they'd train me.
I mean, you can only do that for 2 hours a day. Right? And we're here for 10. Uh-huh. My dad's kinda like, well, you wanna wanna learn how to make a hose and Sure. So it kinda it kinda started with the wrestling aspect. They just grew into making some extra money when I was done practicing. And then really learning the family business. Love it. Love it. Okay. Well, let's get into some tacticals here. I wanna talk good and bad decision.
What is something that in the last 5, 6 years that you said you kinda you and your brother have been have been running the business. What's a good decision that you guys have made that's really catapulted the business. Biggest thing that we have done since I've been here is marketing. Before when my when my dad was here, they did no marketing. Everything or everybody heard about us was just word-of-mouth, which is great.
I mean, it's great having your customers out there telling people that you do a good job. Right? At the end, once we start doing the SEO, we start doing the Facebook ads, we kinda unlock the whole new group of people that had had never even heard of us before. Yeah. So, yeah, implementing the marketing is was definitely a game changer for us. Yeah. I mean, I think that's, obviously, every business listening today, 6 figure level.
In order to get to the 7 figure mark, you have to Mark it yourself in front of more people. Get more leads. Right? Then you gotta sell them, and you gotta service them, and you gotta keep good track of your finances. Those are the Four areas of business that you just have to get really good at and hit the repeat So for you, that was the beginning. Boom. More people in the pipeline. You mentioned a few SEO, Facebook ads like Was it just like, hey. Let's just throw some money at it and it worked.
Was was there like a like a we had to figure out what our message is? Like, give us a little bit of a little bit of the meat behind How did you figure out? How did you even wanna know to do marketing? Well, I actually went to college, North Dakota state, and my degree is in marketing. So I had a pretty good idea of of what I wanted to do. The implementation was kind of the the harder part because, I mean, college teaches you how to work for a a company in my opinion.
Rather than teach you how to run it. So we we've teamed up with some some people that I'm pretty close with. Me and Tanner are close with, and they've they kinda helped us along the way in the beginning. Yeah. And and now it is once we learn how the the key metrics, like, the the click through rate, conversion rate, so converting to directions to our store, phone calls to one of our stores.
Once we learn that, we We really learned what works and just we've just stuck with it since, and it's been been helping us out a lot. Yeah. Did it how long did it take you to figure out what works, as you say? Cause there's a lot of businesses out there that kinda just fumble around. They try a bunch of stuff, or maybe they don't try something long enough. To to really see the value. They're just kinda bouncing around from, you know, shiny object or sign shiny object.
What what would you say your experience is, or what would you say to that person? I think the way that we figured out best practices for our marketing is we we looked at the phone calls a lot, because, yeah, you can get in front of a lot of people, but what you want is you want your ad or your, you know, Facebook ad, SEO ad, you really you wanted to convert to something. Yeah. So we've we've found that especially with, like, the Facebook, We did. We just tried some things.
Changed it up in the beginning. And, yeah, some of the times it didn't work as well. So then we just kinda went back and revisited it and went more towards the direction of where we were getting the phone calls. Right. We said with the SEO, Pretty much Chaz we just did is took a lot of keywords from our website that we know people will be searching a lot. Really hammered those.
Yeah. So now when you're in our area, if you if you search any of those of those keywords that we that we have, we're the first ones that pop up. And that's that's pretty easy. Stuff there. Yeah. Exactly. Good stuff, man. Hey, Kings and Queens. Chaz Wolfe. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort. We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day.
And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too. So we would love If you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things on social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast, mediums of Apple and Spotify. We would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as as possible.
Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this. Let's help each other. Let's help each other grow. And let's flip the coin. Let's talk about a bad decision, something that's, you know, maybe hasn't gone so well that, maybe had to had to change directions on. Yeah. So right when we first started out and took over the company, one thing that we I mean, we were brand new entra entrepreneurs.
So, naturally, we're gonna make mistakes. In one sitting is when we were getting price increases from our vendor, we were eating some of those those costs. And then we get to a certain point down the road, and it's like, Our receivables aren't very good. We don't we don't have a ton of money to to to pay our employees to The old cash flow issue. Yeah. It's the the cash flows. So then we really sat down and looked at what the issue was and be as we're charging enough.
I think that it's a it's a novel idea to incur some of the costs that you're customers don't have to Sure. In the long run. Yeah. You need to do what's best. Your customers are gonna understand. I mean, they don't if you're doing a good job, they're gonna want you there. So you need to do what is best for your company. And, yeah, if we just looking back now, it was it was foolish and but, I mean, it was something that we we really learned. We learned our lesson on.
And from here forward, we You know what we gotta do. I I think that, you know, the underlying story there is, obviously, if you don't take care of the business, there will be no business. Exactly. Which then of then long long term hurts your clients. They gotta find somebody else, and they gotta change the way they do business. And And so, yeah, you gotta, you know, keep up with the times with with pricing.
What when you said you sat down because the 4 things that I mentioned that we talk about a lot with with 6 figure business owners, marketing, sales, fulfillment, and finance. You're obviously talking about the finance piece. And it's like, okay. Where's the money coming from? How are we collecting it? Where's it going? What are we spending money on? What's our bottom line? Are we making money? Right? Okay. What was that conversation? Was it you and your brother? Was it you your brother's CPA?
Was it Other people around you, how did you how did you ding? We're not charging enough. Yeah. So what happened in that is We so my mom handles more of, like, the accounting side of everything, the back office, the front office stuff. And we had just noticed that with things that we wanted to buy, she was telling us that we need to hold off, that we need we need to do this through that. So we we are getting mad.
So, like, well, we need this stuff if we're gonna we're gonna continue to do what we're doing. Right. And so we I mean, this is, like, probably a year into when we took over. Yeah. And we're like, okay. We need to we need to figure this out. So when we went and sat and looked at the the p and l profit and loss statement. And after doing some digging, we saw that or cost of goods was way up. And, the margin that we were making on everything was way down. So that's kinda what like, not kind of.
That was what was causing our issue. And ever since then, we we sit down and go over the p and l monthly with them. Yeah. Just to make sure that everything's in good standing and make sure nothing crazy is happening. Yeah. Let me let me summarize that because you just made just such a profound statement, and I don't know if you even realize it. Most businesses don't do this. Most businesses, number 1, you have to know you have to have the p and l. Like yep.
If you're listening right now and you do not have a CPA or someone in the back office, producing the p and l for you, Stop everything. Stop the podcast right now. Go and hire a CPA a couple hundred bucks a month, and they'll produce a monthly P and L for you. And what that does for you is it allows from a high level because that 1st year, what you described, is that you were disconnected from the money.
You were out there doing the work, out there grinding, making changes in marketing, you know, fulfilling a good experience for your clients, you had no idea what was happening. On the finances. And so what you've just now described is not only you got in tune with the finances, but now how do you stay in tune, which is at least a monthly review of the p and l and making sure those there's always gonna be on the p and l. There's always gonna be 3, 4, 5, 6 things that it's like, boom.
Like, as long as I get the p and l, I can go ding ding ding ding ding. And as long as those numbers are in place, generally speaking, we should be good. Obviously, if we're trying to grow or if we're trying to do other, you know, caveat of things, fine. But generally speaking, there's, like, 3, 4, 5 things that I'm gonna check on there. As long as those are in line, We should be good. Would you agree with that? Would you add anything to that for somebody who maybe hasn't or isn't doing this?
Yeah. I agree. Basically everything you just said, maybe something that I would add with looking at your P and L. Is especially for us every single day. I'm I'm logging in to my quickbooks, and I'm looking at our sales revenue daily. Just to make sure that everything's looking good. If if there's a day that's down, I need to get I need to figure out why. So I think those two things go out together go together really well.
Like you said, there's certain bullet points that are on that P and L that you definitely wanna be in tune your cost of goods sold, some of the the percentage is on there. But yeah. Exactly. I'll I'll even add one additional thought to your keeping track of the sales. First thing I do every single morning is I pop my eyeballs open. Well, I do, like, a 32nd gratitude, little, you know, thanks for, you know, just being alive. But then I pop open all my bank accounts. Just one after the other.
And and I think what you're the principle that we're describing is really just being in tune, knowing Chaz flow in and the flow out. And if you don't know, then you just don't know. You can't manage it. You can't be excellent at it. You have to know. So I think we've think we've efficiently beat this horse completely all the way, dude. So let's move on. I wanna know, is there a process to making decisions? Like, right now, you're 5, 6 years in, You know, you're running a good business.
Decision comes across your desk. What's the process or maybe a steps or mindset that you take when it comes to these types of decisions now? So I think it it kind of depends on the decision. Like, if if one of my mobile techs makes a mistake on a job, like, We just had this the other week where one of our best customers, we're doing a hose on a bobcat, and one of my technicians didn't have a backing wrench on and phoned one of their steel tubes and smashed it.
So they came to me and and told me about what happened. And I've heard in the industry a lot of people that do what we do. Wolfe, just tell them no. I didn't we didn't do it. That's that's not our problem. Sure. When something like that happens, I mean, you gotta stand behind your work. You gotta stand behind your guys. And So I just my my process there is I just gotta do what's right.
It might might hurt for a minute, but what I'm gonna mean from that customer in the long term is a lot more than what I'm losing now. Sure. Then with all their things, like, more business ideas, it's just sitting down, talking with my parents, with my brother, through the positives, through the negatives, and just kinda getting a game plan together with them to make the best decision for all of us. Yeah. Love that. I hear a lot of logic in both of those answers.
We get we get tied up in emotions, you know, the the emotion of your guy saying, this is how it happened. This is how it didn't happen. Or the customer getting frustrated.
Us being emotional about their emotional response and lot of opportunities, especially in the family scenario where you guys could be, you know, at at each other's necks a little bit, but logic, you know, removing the emotion for business decisions must probably one of the greatest assets that you can have just because if you can just look at it black and white on paper, No motion involved, then you can make a a decision one way or the other because that's what business is.
Yeah. Of course, there's a lot of emotion that go into We we feel those every single day, but, you know, as far as the decisions go, that's what I'm hearing you say is logic. I wanna switch over to our speed round. I'm gonna come at you at a little different angle. The first question is this. If you can take your business and dwindle it down to one trackable metric, you can only pick 1. What would it be? Profit margin. K. And why?
Because I need to be making money on the product that I have, or else there's no business. Right? For you specifically, you said margin. Is there is there a reason it wasn't just profit to be at all? Like, just any profit. Is there a specific margin. You don't have to say necessarily the margin number, but if it below if, like, is there a threshold is what I'm asking?
Yeah. So the reason that we look so closely at the profit margin is because with our mobile fleet, there's a lot of different variables that can affect how much money we're making per job. Like, right now, gas prices are through the roof and saying, so I need to be constantly looking at at the margin that I'm getting to make sure that I'm that I'm charging enough for the jobs that I'm going to do it. Sure. 100%. Love it.
K. Next question is what book would you recommend for a six figure business owner? Yeah. I was excited about this one. I got I'm a avid reader. Love it. I got a few of them. The the most recent one is Ed Mylet, the power of 1 more. Yeah. I think that's a really good one. Just sit It kind of instills that idea into you where you Chaz do one more thing every day. That's gonna help you get to that next level. I mean, if you're in a sales role, make that one more call.
That one more call may get get you to that that commission that you really need. Next one is Tim Grover, both of his books, winning and relentless. Yeah. Those are kinda more mindset books, but with business, mindset is the most important thing. Your mind, your body. So those are those are 2 really good books. Brad Lee, who I actually work with with my university, Okay. With light speed? Yep. With light speed. Cool. So here's the hard way.
Basically, just a book about a bunch of lessons that he's learned as he's growing light speed BT. Yeah. And then kinda get into the elk hunting and his cam hands and door. You read that book. You're gonna wanna run through a wall when you're down with it. That's awesome. Yeah. We'll put all those in the show notes. Cam is a beast. Like, I think I think if you look up the definition of beast, there's there's his picture.
But The other ones that you've mentioned are are phenomenal, huge fan of all those those guys. The one more mentality that you were just talking about, I was just as you were talking, I was going back in my memory of being a sales rep years ago. And I can't tell you how many deals I got on that last phone call. Just thinking. Exactly. Let me just let me hit the let me hit the let me hit it one more time. One more time. One more time. You know?
And I'll tell you what, man, a lot of times, it's just how it works. That build your faith, your confidence, those emotions, those positive emotions that we were just negating in business decisions, but it doesn't mean you negate emotion Chaz you're actually looking for the emotion in that one more. You know? Love that. What do you think about intentionally networking or masterminding with other entrepreneurs.
All you have to do, I I mean, If you wanna grow and get better, you need those people in your quarter that you can ask questions to. You can balance ideas off. Because people people wanna help. So you'd you definitely need those people around you to to get better. Like, the same go as your your reflection of the five people close to you, networking and getting close with other business owners or other people that are successful is what is gonna help you get to that next level. Yeah. 100%.
Do you have a moment in time or a story that you can tell about that being impactful for you specifically? I just think that the 6 figure owner, I hit this every single show, but the 6 figure owner knows that they're supposed to meet other people supposed to be building relationships, supposed to be putting key people around them. It's just so difficult because they're busy doing the thing every day.
You know, they haven't really gotten past the working in and started working on the business, which is really the more important side, but it's just tough to get there. What would you say that maybe you've benefited from this that would encourage them to start doing this. Yeah. I think a big reason that Chaz you're struggling to get to that 7 figure is because you're focusing so much, which is important on the business itself. But when you're at that level, you are the business.
So you need to to network and do these things with people that will help you get to that next level. Like, I'm part of the RTA RSA syndicate. Yep. I mean, there's, what, 1 hour Zoom calls, like, three times a month. Right. And I've gotten so much value out of all those things. Chaz you can't make an hour to to get better. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's it it the way you just said it, right, like, you're you're you're gonna choose to not spend the time on getting better, really, is what you're saying. Yeah. Because what else are you doing? I mean, you're going to the gym. I mean, going and, yeah, spending time with your kids is important and everything, but the RSA ideal is 1 hour a week. Thank you. You can't make time for that. Yeah. I mean, they're 24 hours of the day. Yep. Exactly.
Yeah. We it's greater or lesser desire. You either wanna get better or you don't. Yeah. We find ways to stay busy one way or the other. Right? Alright. Last question here for you. Alright. This is gonna be interesting because you're a young guy already. So it's like, you know, you can't you can't go back too far, but if you could whisper, in the younger Blake's ear. What would you tell? Chaz is a good question.
I think so right when I got out of college, I was in a a weird point in my life, and I was drinking heavily, really heavily every single day. Wolfe, I'm not doing the things that I knew I needed to do. Not being the person that I should be made lots of poor decisions. I think that I would go back and tell myself, just stay away from that. I mean, the people that you're Arun, they don't like you for you. They like you for the person you are when you're drinking.
So I think I got a later start on the being great thing Chaz I should have. Yeah. So I think, yeah, I think I would tell myself just go back and stay away from that. Make good decisions. But but everything that you're putting into drinking and partying and Beam with friends, put it into your work life, put it into your personal personal development. So once I once I did do Chaz and I stopped drinking, and stopped farting and he got away from less people. Crazy things started happening.
I met my wife Chaz now we've been married for going on 2 years, better friends. I feel better. I'm healthier. I'm doing the things that I love to do again. Like, elk hoodie, deer, honey, So Yeah. I was just a successful business. Running a success business. Growing the business. I opened in the new business, the custom hosting university, which we didn't touch on a whole lot. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and there I got some more things in the works.
I can't talk about them because there's a confidentiality agreement, but There's exciting things coming, and I'd never would have gotten there. If I wouldn't have made those decisions, it'd be better. I love that. You're so right. Good decisions are are the key, really, and whispering to yourself to to make those sooner. I think we'd all agree with that.
Blake, You you just mentioned briefly that, obviously, the one of the secondary businesses is that you teach people how to do this and how to do the fittings and stuff. And so Give it. I want you to, you know, take 30 seconds a minute on that. I'm gonna I'm gonna then I'm gonna ask you how people can find you. How can they, you know, if they're potentially needing that service, how they can how they can get set up with that?
Yeah. So a custom host university started because I have people come in in my shop all the time that have gone to other host shops. And the host shop has told them that they're looking for something, and they're looking for something that's completely different. And if you're making hoses that is completely irresponsible, to not know what you're selling, not know what your customer needs. So that's where we came up with the custom host university.
Basically, the course teaches you to identify the hose that is between the fittings and the fittings that are on the hose. It's 5 hours of finished content, going through our proprietary method that that we've used since 1998, that we actually have the whole system trademarked and everything. So it's ours. And we're the only ones to do this.
And, yeah, so it it it goes through that and Wolfe help canix people's echo shops, other technicians that work for other companies, that do the same thing as us, it gives them the resources to do their job better. Yeah. Love that. K. Can listener connect with you? Maybe they need to get some training around host fittings, or maybe they just wanna connect with you as an entrepreneur and and get to know you a little bit. Yeah. I'm on I'm on LinkedIn. Just search Blake Carlisle.
You'll see my picture, hot bod, Instagram, Blake, r Carlisle. And then you can find my main company on Facebook, LinkedIn, basically, anything, where you can go to www.customhose.ner And then if you wanna check out the university, it's www.customhoseuniversity.com. Perfect. We'll put all that in the show notes as well so that people can easily connect and find with you or find you and your and your businesses. But, dude, you've been amazing today. Thank you for sharing.
Even just your you know, you're just a humble approach of, I just don't know, 5 year yet. Dude, you've done an amazing job. You've you've grown an existing business. Some of those things just don't happen unless certain decisions and skillsets and desire are in place. And so you've definitely shown us that here today. Thank you for being here. Blessings to your family, your business, your future children, your wife, all that fun stuff.
Hopefully, next year on your elk hunt, you can that you can you can harvest one. Bagwood. Thanks for being here. Appreciate you having me on. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own, carrying the way all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries, and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1000 Kings specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you and you know that you need people around you sharp qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com.
I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.