So you're you're an engineer my training, and you you worked for the railroad company, right, right? Can you explain that, like what you actually did, because that what you did that for twelve years? Right?
Yeah?
So I started while I was in college, like working for in part time. But what I did was so design rail terminals. I mean it's pretty it was pretty simple as far as engineering, because you're not building buildings
and everything. But it was just a lot of work that was needed to like when after a derailment, you know, realigning the track, making sure that the trains can run because they they running a high velocity on these two little bitty rails and you got hundreds of thousands of tons moving at sixty seventy miles an hour, so you had to make sure that everything was designed, the curvature was right, and all that kind of.
Sf And where were you doing this at?
So I started off working for ce In Railroad.
So I was covering between Chicago and ben Ruge, Louisiana.
Wow, because we seen in you know the past few months, these railroad systems, the subwatses especial you know where we're from, that are completely outdated.
They're running on systems that are from like.
Nineteen ten, right, and we're like, how is this even possible?
Yeah, technology has not changed, and they just they do the minimum maintenance to keep it up. So I was on like the freight side, so it wasn't any passenger rail. So a lot of it's behind the scenes. You know that they didn't get a lot of exposure unless that's a big derailment somewhere.
Yeah, So merchandise and product is moving through your.
Life right exactly, And like eighty percent of anything that moves somewhere in the United States, if it comes in on a cargo ship from China somewhere, it moves by rail at some point in time. It only moves by truck when it gets closer to its destination.
Yeah, don't think people realize how big of a business trains are because the vast majority of the country probably don't. They don't ride trains like we're kind of because we're from New York, so we're used to riding trains, subways and trains. It's pretty normal. But most of America they don't really ride trains like that anymore. So people might not fully understand that trains is a big business and even if you don't ride it, like you said, a lot of cargo ros.
Yeah.
And what people don't realize is that the railroad is basically what helped build the West. Like when everybody went from the East coast to West coast, everything was moving.
By a rail.
It was small trains, great expansion, right, yeah, the great expansion. Yeah, everything was done by rail And people always wondered why the railroads in the hood that wasn't always the hood. That's what the first area that was settled in every small town because you had to bring everything in by a rail to set up, you know, the infrastructure, build a city hall, to build small buildings.
Everything came in by rail.
So one of your job t not titles, but responsibilities is designed Are you designing the actual tracks?
Like what what does that mean?
Yeah? Designing actual tracks?
You are?
Yeah, Oh well, I mean that's what I did.
Now.
I did that for.
The first four years I worked for the railroad. But like I said, I wanted to get out of engineering. So and once I started getting into reading the real estate and entrepreneurship stuff, I realized I needed to learn more about business. So I kind of took that opportunity while I had.
The corporate.
Blanket over me to try to get into other departments. So I went to the operation. So I ran freight.
Terminals for like four years.
And that was crazy experience because I'm like twenty four to twenty five mosion guys that's forty fifty twice as much money as me. You know, the union guys make over one hundred grand a year. I was making like fifty sixty. So I learned a lot about managing people that in that role. Then I got out of that and I got into the marketing and sales side, and I was lucky enough to get into industrial products, which
is chemicals and oil and gas stuff. So I'm sitting in rooms with all these decision makers that Exxon, Chevron, pill Up sixty six, these type companies, and yeah, man, it's just open mye's to a whole different world. They speak a different language. You learn a lot more about the economy and infrastructure of everything.
And what's one of the things you learned when you was working on that side of the fence.
Man, I just learned how money really works and how people really make decisions. Because energy runs the country, you know what I mean, Like without without coal, without oil, Without gasoline, everything shuts down, and so they know that they basically have monopoly on everything, you know, and the profit margins are crazy in the what's.
The profit margins?
Three hundred percent on a lot of stuff?
Wow, on like gas and oil and stuff. Yeah, so let me ask you this. Then, a lot of people are saying that we should move away from that, going to solar energy, wind energy, electric energy. You're you're an engineer and you worked in the space. Hey, is that realistic? And what's your thoughts on that? Like, as long term, can we continue the way we're going now or do we have to make a change.
I mean, eventually there will have to be a change because there's a limited amount of fossil fuels out there, so we're gonna have to find other energy sources that we can use that are renewable. So it's definitely feasible, it's definitely plausible, and like wind, sunlight, water, that stuff's not gonna go away, So we're alway gonna have that.
But you just have these big institutions that are making so much money off of the fossil fuel based energy sector that they're not going to just give up their.
Position and they do a lot of lobby in Washington.
That's I was about to say, that's something that we don't really understand, but that lobbying is powerful. That's why all the legislation really happens. I don't care who you vote for, it's somebody with money in the behind the scenes in Washington taking them out to dinner, wining and dinam and that's when the real decisions are made.
You got to make sure they keep their money.
I remember when Hillary Clinton was running for president versus Trump. I think, yeah, so they were saying, I think Chase Chase put like ten million into Hillary's campaign, but they put nine million in Drumps campaign. So no matter who won, they won, it doesn't matter. I mean, that's what people don't fully understand either. It's like you're playing a political game based off of emotion, but these people are playing a political game based off a strategy.
It's two different things. Yeah, they're playing chess.
Yeah, they're gonna give money to Republicans, Democrats, and independence because at the end of the day, they need what they need done, and money talks.
And whoever whoever's the decision maker, either red or blue, is gonna help them right.
Yeah, so you started a business the erail commerce. Can you talk about that?
So basically something else I like to teach entrepreneurs, especially the ones that's coming out of corporate world. Everybody feels like I got to create something new, Like I got to get into an industry that I see everybody else doing, right.
But what I realized is like, man, if this company is paying me one hundred grand a year to do this job, there has to be a smaller business out there somewhere that needs these same services, need the same skill set, and I can just go out and provide the service for them, and instead of being their employee,
I become their consultant. So that's what Erael commerces. I took all that experience I had, all those connections I had with the railroad, all these oil and gas companies, and I found all these smaller companies that need or want to get a contract with an Exxon.
Because Exon has over ten thousand rail cars.
Everyone of elose cars has to be maintained, has to be repainted, has to be cleaned, that has to be maintenance done to them. They have to storm when they're not using they got to park them somewhere. So what I do is I help all those companies that provide those services get in the door with exon, get the contract, and then they perform all the work and I just get commissions off of the deals.
So you get like the relationship, man.
I am.
I'm basically brokering, basically broker in and I have everything set up with with my clients to where whatever contract that helped them get I get paid.
So eraail is not the only.
Form of consultation that you're providing, right, Don't you have a few other consultation things that you do well.
I mean, in general, I just try to help entrepreneurs get started, you know, because I mean I was so lost when I was trying to get out out of the work world. I was like, man, nobody was really here to guide me and teach me. So I use my social media platform, and you know, I use that network and that audience as as my way to give back,
you know. So anybody that has helped wants help with it getting started entrepreneurship, I try to teach them the basis the kind of stuff we're talking about now, you know what I mean. I get them as far as I can and then I try to network with someone that's actually in their field.
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Try to get them to get under that person.
So you're providing the mentorship by consulting, right, Okay, gotcha.
Consulting is something that we also haven't spoken about yet in this podcast, but it's extremely important and it's a very profitable business as well. Consultants. You have consultants in school industry, you have consultants, and political industry you have consultants and all kinds of stuff. Right, can you explain the importance a lot of time, especially for small business owners. This is the problem with small business owns us compare
the business big business. They have a small way of thinking. They don't understand the power of consulting. They don't understand the power of marketing. They don't understand They just want to just do the work. It's like running on the tread, but you can only get so far. Right. When you get enough wind behind you, know, you can start to fly. So when you're talking about the power of consulting, like what can somebody get value out of a hiring the right consultant.
So there's only two ways you're gonna learn.
You're either gonna bump your head and you're gonna lose time and money, or you're gonna pay for the knowledge.
Period.
There's no other way you're gonna learn, right, So you hire a consultant. A consultant that's someone that's an expert in that field, that has already got experience doing what you're trying to do. Or they can help you with a particular area of the business that you can't fulfill. Like if you have a great product but you don't know how to get it in front of enough people, you need a marketing consultant to come in and help
you get it in front of the right people. And so it's basically a way for you to you can add a whole department to your business without actually having a hire enn employee.
It's a consultant.
You know.
That consultant can neither be somebody that's paid by an hour, or it could be somebody that I always recommend you get performance based consultants, which means they work off a commission, So if they don't produce for you, they don't make any money, right, so that that gives them a vested reason to get in there and work hard and get
something done. And on the flip side of that that, like you said, that's a very lucrative business too, because it's a business where it doesn't require you have to invest a lot. You can work from home and be a consultant and people actually paying you just for the knowledge that you already have.
You know, so you can take that corporate experience.
You could.
Man, you could have been flipping burgers and McDonald's for five years, but guess what skill set you got. You know what it takes to onboard a new employees. So you can go to other small restaurants and say here's the McDonald's model. I'm gonna teach you how to run a McDonald's model for your restaurant.
And that's something that anybody can do.
Like as you're saying it, I'm thinking of like especially in the education field, and especially in the restaurant field as well. It's like people always try to figure out how can they make passive income, right, and they don't realize that they have a skill set already. They're just overlooking it, right, They're not maximizing their potential.
Well, this is one of the things you talk about multiple streams of income. That is, the average million that has seven streams of income. That doesn't mean they has seven jobs or even seven businesses. Is that they're maximizing their skills maybe one or two businesses. So, as you said, you can be a teacher, right, but you're an expert in that field. If you're a really good teacher, Now you can be a consultant to school districts, right, curriculum
things of that nature. Right, And that's something that anybody can do. As choice said, even if you're still an employee, you can be an entrepreneur and create your own consulting business.
And the amount of time. It doesn't require as much right to say these are my hours. You dictate the hours, and you dictate the fees.
And a lot of times you're helping different customers and clients with the same problem exactly, so you already know it like in and out.
You know, for your consulting business, how did you market yourself to your customers and clients?
How do you man The most powerful tool I use is linked in, Okay, And what I liked about LinkedIn is because when when you put yourself on there as a business owner, you give yourself whatever title you want, you know, so I gave my it's just it's me and one partner, but my title is Executive VP. So that puts you in a whole different arena. They look
at you like, it's all perception. It's all perceptions. So then when I go to when I see a company that I'm trying to get a connection with, and I go to the CEO and request to connect with them, they were like, oh, it's another executive that wants to connect you.
We got an exec that wants to meet you.
Yeah, And that's all it is, is positioning, and it's it's all about you. Know what you post. I post. I repost a lot of Wall Street durnal type articles that related to the industry. Any type of insight that I get from anybody else that's in the industry, I'll make a post about that. So then you kind of
position yourself as a subject matter expert. So then a lot what happens is eventually enough people are watching your posts to where when they have a problem, they come to you instead of you having to go out and ask for business. And another great thing I like about LinkedIn is because you can type in any job title you want. So I'm in a supply chain, right, I type in director a supply chain. LinkedIn is gonna give me a list of people with that title.
So all I do is go connect connect connect, connect, connect connect.
You know, and then that builds you audience because people go to check you out to see who is this that's asking the link with me? And then like my network on LinkedIn is like seventeen thousand, it's all industrial products, supply chain people from all these big companies.
That's a lot of that's a lot linked You got to accept every single person, right.
Yeah, well yeah, the person that the person has to approve the connection. But if your page is set up to where it looks like, oh, this is somebody that I might want to my network, then you're good. And that's the whole purpose of you know, making sure that you set yourself up right on there with the right titles.
You send and you send uh was it in mail?
Right?
They send you in mail? So you could both.
I guess something of both.
Yeah.
I met with a guy matter of fact, he flew in from Arkansas last week because he's working with a private development group that does industrial development and they're looking for new locations to build new rail terminals. And that's part of my job when I working in the railroad, so that's part of my consulting too. So he literally reached out to me because he had been seeing me make these posts on LinkedIn about railroad development and railroad terminals.
So he this gout literally fluent for the day, just for that meeting.
You are using your resources efficiently, and a lot of times people don't realize that, Like they're just on LinkedIn or they're just on Facebook just to put pictures up, not networking, and not realizing that how powerful a tool they have at their fingertips.
Well, LinkedIn is only for networking, but I got to get a better I go, actually got to do a better job on LinkedIn because I don't know, I just don't feel too comfortable with it. I feel like it's some kind of boring.
It is boring, but it's like Facebook, but it's for business only.
Yeah, it's powerful, Yeah, it is, it is.
I mean you can you would be surprised that people that don't have a lot of LinkedIn followers that are like powerful people, like I mean like producers, executive producers at these big stations. They may have five hundred, one thousand connections and you go requested and it's approved the
next day, you know. But it's like it's like it's like a back door to get the connection that usually you have to call a corporate headquarters and talk to administrative person and ask the schedule time to meet this person.
You just got to LinkedIn and find them.
So when you need it's like getting you past all those.
Steps, like all the gatekeepers. Yeah, pass all the gatekeepers if.
The person's on LinkedIn, if they're on that, but.
Every everybody's on LinkedIn and LinkedIn is one is the most powerful search thing too, because like so when you search somebody's name on Google, the first thing that comes up is LinkedIn. That's like the first thing. It's like, it's like your online resume pretty much it is. And so I don't know how they how they work that with the algorithm, but they always are on the top of your thing. So you kind of have to have a LinkedIn page if you're doing anything in business. It's
like almost mandatory. Yeah, agree, got up that man, Yeah, alright, so that was good.
A