Disrupting an Industry: Leroy Hite’s Cutting Edge Firewood Story

Leroy Hite: 00:00:00

I got a personal loan and maxed out seven or eight credit cards.

Leroy Hite: 00:00:04

and honestly, that was my finance of the company for the first.

Leroy Hite: 00:00:08

Five years was I would, during the spring and summer, I would get as many credit

Leroy Hite: 00:00:15

cards as I could And then in the winter, when cash was good, I would pay them

Leroy Hite: 00:00:20

off my, My score would shoot through the roof and then I would get more credit

Leroy Hite: 00:00:25

cards, max them out in the spring and summer, pay them off the next winter.

Tim Winders: 00:00:41

What does it take to turn a simple necessity like

Tim Winders: 00:00:43

firewood into a premium product that enhances every fireside experience?

Tim Winders: 00:00:49

Today on SeatGoCreate, we're excited to welcome Leroy Hite, CEO and founder

Tim Winders: 00:00:53

of Cutting Edge Firewood, a company that has redefined the standards for

Tim Winders: 00:00:58

firewood quality and customer service.

Tim Winders: 00:01:01

Growing up in rural Northwest Georgia, not far from where I grew up, Leroy's

Tim Winders: 00:01:05

early life around the woodpile and his later frustrations with subpar

Tim Winders: 00:01:09

firewood led him to create a business that delivers nothing but firewood.

Tim Winders: 00:01:13

The best, whether it's for a cozy winter fire or a backyard pizza party, or just

Tim Winders: 00:01:18

enjoying a quiet moment alone, possibly with a cigar whiskey cutting edge

Tim Winders: 00:01:23

firewood ensures every fire is perfect.

Tim Winders: 00:01:26

Join us as we explore Leroy's journey from a young boy to man, by managing

Tim Winders: 00:01:29

his family's wood pile to becoming the entrepreneur behind the leading firewood

Tim Winders: 00:01:33

supplier in the industry and how his commitment to quality and customer service

Tim Winders: 00:01:38

is lighting up lives one fire at a time.

Tim Winders: 00:01:42

Leroy, welcome to Seat Go Create.

Leroy Hite: 00:01:46

Thank you so much for having me.

Tim Winders: 00:01:48

Glad you're here.

Tim Winders: 00:01:49

And you're coming to us from my old home state, right?

Leroy Hite: 00:01:53

All right, Georgia,

Tim Winders: 00:01:54

What part of Georgia you in?

Leroy Hite: 00:01:57

Metro Atlanta, Peachtree Corners specifically.

Tim Winders: 00:02:00

Peachtree Corners.

Tim Winders: 00:02:01

When I was at Georgia Tech, my first co op job was at a Georgia power

Tim Winders: 00:02:05

office up in Peachtree Corners.

Tim Winders: 00:02:08

And while I was working there, I met my beautiful bride out

Tim Winders: 00:02:11

at Lawrenceville, Georgia.

Tim Winders: 00:02:13

And so that place has, is near and dear to my heart.

Tim Winders: 00:02:19

And,

Leroy Hite: 00:02:19

say so.

Tim Winders: 00:02:20

This is going to age me.

Tim Winders: 00:02:21

that was almost 40 years ago.

Tim Winders: 00:02:24

Peachtree Corners was a pastor then.

Tim Winders: 00:02:26

No, I'm just kidding.

Leroy Hite: 00:02:28

you're no doubt.

Leroy Hite: 00:02:29

I'm sure it

Tim Winders: 00:02:29

and, I'm coming to everybody from the Black Hills.

Tim Winders: 00:02:32

We have relocated, Theo, our RV.

Tim Winders: 00:02:34

I'm up in the Black Hills of South Dakota and enjoying that.

Tim Winders: 00:02:36

But Leroy, let's not pretend we bumped.

Tim Winders: 00:02:39

Let's say we're sitting on a plane and we just start chit chatting

Tim Winders: 00:02:43

and I say, Hey, What do you do?

Tim Winders: 00:02:45

What's your answer when someone asks you what you do?

Leroy Hite: 00:02:49

I really have two answers, but the one I usually give

Leroy Hite: 00:02:52

is I own a firewood company and I love to just see how they react.

Leroy Hite: 00:02:58

And people from different parts of the country, depending on if they've heard

Leroy Hite: 00:03:04

of us or not, usually react differently.

Leroy Hite: 00:03:06

And, people used to act completely differently before we were

Leroy Hite: 00:03:12

well known than they do now.

Leroy Hite: 00:03:14

used to, I would say that and they would change the weather.

Leroy Hite: 00:03:17

now if they've heard of us, they're like, Oh my goodness,

Leroy Hite: 00:03:20

you're not, Those guys, are you?

Leroy Hite: 00:03:22

so it's fun to see the difference.

Leroy Hite: 00:03:25

and it's a lot of fun just to say I own a firewood company.

Leroy Hite: 00:03:29

Cause if they haven't heard about us that, they have no interest,

Leroy Hite: 00:03:33

Wow, you have all your teeth.

Leroy Hite: 00:03:35

That's incredible.

Leroy Hite: 00:03:36

kind of thing.

Tim Winders: 00:03:38

a lot of people would have, if they're from certain parts of the

Tim Winders: 00:03:42

country, there's some people that would have no thought of this, but they have

Tim Winders: 00:03:47

the thought of old beat up pickup trucks sitting on the side of the road, with a

Tim Winders: 00:03:52

load of firewood, pretty gnarly looking, but if you need firewood, you've got it.

Tim Winders: 00:03:58

It's from out of me a place in Virgin, Utah, that they've got a big,

Tim Winders: 00:04:02

pretty janky hand painted sign out front that says organic firewood and

Leroy Hite: 00:04:08

is it spelled F I R E W O D or is it

Leroy Hite: 00:04:12

F I R W U D?

Tim Winders: 00:04:14

I'm pretty sure they're

Leroy Hite: 00:04:15

For sale.

Tim Winders: 00:04:18

and I love a good marketing.

Tim Winders: 00:04:19

I know you've done roadside signs.

Tim Winders: 00:04:21

We may talk about that later, but I love it.

Tim Winders: 00:04:23

It's intriguing to me.

Tim Winders: 00:04:25

And when you're in like RV world, they sell you like four or five sticks

Tim Winders: 00:04:30

of firewood for, 10 or 12 bucks.

Tim Winders: 00:04:33

it's like the margin on it

Tim Winders: 00:04:35

is amazing, but, I let's, before we dive in, let's talk a little bit

Tim Winders: 00:04:40

about big picture macro firewood.

Tim Winders: 00:04:44

I mean, I've heard you talk a little bit about.

Tim Winders: 00:04:49

What firewood leads to, I don't know

Tim Winders: 00:04:52

that people are looking for firewood.

Tim Winders: 00:04:53

I think they're looking for what firewood gives them.

Tim Winders: 00:04:57

What are some of those things that they give us?

Tim Winders: 00:04:59

And I think we're going to have a good conversation about this.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:02

so this is a, it's the other thing I tell people if I'm

Leroy Hite: 00:05:05

really wanting them to understand is a fire is like a beautiful sunset.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:11

There is no one on earth that dislikes it.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:14

It's universal.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:16

It's unifying and it's primal.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:19

after a stressful day, um, oh yeah, and I forgot, you can take a 95 year old

Leroy Hite: 00:05:24

man from Ethiopia and a three year old girl from the States, they will both

Leroy Hite: 00:05:28

sit in front of a fire and stare at it.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:30

I actually have a, one year old, and if there's a fire in the

Leroy Hite: 00:05:33

room, she's always looking at it.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:36

but, after a stressful day, I can take a whiskey, sit in front of the

Leroy Hite: 00:05:39

fire, and my stress level goes down.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:42

I think deep thoughts.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:43

my wife and come out the mood changes.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:45

It's romantic.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:46

My daughters can come out and make s'mores and memories.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:49

They will have for a lifetime.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:52

can, teenagers will put their phones down and talk to their parents and it

Leroy Hite: 00:05:56

can be at the center of a wedding party.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:58

and.

Leroy Hite: 00:05:59

And I make incredible food with our cooking wood, whether

Leroy Hite: 00:06:04

it's steak, pizza, or barbecue.

Leroy Hite: 00:06:07

And, I love on one side that experience, it's all around an experience.

Leroy Hite: 00:06:14

But then on the other side, yes, before we got into the industry standard was wood

Leroy Hite: 00:06:18

set outside for 12 months, rot would rot.

Leroy Hite: 00:06:22

Literally have mushrooms growing out of it.

Leroy Hite: 00:06:24

The business strategy, the, customer service and that overall customer

Leroy Hite: 00:06:28

experience that's so important to me.

Leroy Hite: 00:06:31

Match the product quality of rotting wood.

Leroy Hite: 00:06:34

I like to compare it to water partially because, I get a lot of comments like,

Leroy Hite: 00:06:39

why would I spend that much on wood?

Leroy Hite: 00:06:41

It literally grows on trees, which I say, why do you buy bottled water?

Leroy Hite: 00:06:46

It literally falls from the sky and the industry was.

Leroy Hite: 00:06:51

Um, basically, going into your backyard and getting water out of a puddle, a muddy

Leroy Hite: 00:06:56

puddle and drinking that or using that.

Leroy Hite: 00:06:59

And we took the industry from that level, skip getting water out of a well,

Leroy Hite: 00:07:05

skipped, Tap water, Dasani, Aquafina, and went straight to liquid death or

Leroy Hite: 00:07:11

whatever high end fancy smancy bottled water in a bottle, glass bottle.

Leroy Hite: 00:07:17

Um, and so really it's, we've really come in and completely

Leroy Hite: 00:07:24

transform the industry there.

Leroy Hite: 00:07:27

I can't really think of another industry in the past few decades.

Leroy Hite: 00:07:30

That was as ripe for disruption as firewood.

Tim Winders: 00:07:33

it's, it is fascinating to me.

Tim Winders: 00:07:35

And I want, and we're going to go through your leadership journey

Tim Winders: 00:07:38

because I do agree from looking at things and from studying you guys,

Tim Winders: 00:07:43

there's been a, it's one of these things where it's a disruption in an

Tim Winders: 00:07:48

industry that probably no one knew.

Tim Winders: 00:07:52

no, let me say it this way probably no one knew the industry existed.

Tim Winders: 00:07:55

A lot of people didn't And so if they didn't know it existed, they didn't

Tim Winders: 00:07:58

know It was right for disruption, but I want to stay High level before we

Tim Winders: 00:08:05

go into the journey you've been on because I think there's power in this

Tim Winders: 00:08:10

message When I was reading through your stuff, there's a couple of things that

Tim Winders: 00:08:14

jumped out at me that kind of tie in with our theme that we've been really

Tim Winders: 00:08:19

having quite a good bit at seek, go create here, the leadership journey.

Tim Winders: 00:08:22

we've been seeing this over and over again, and that is

Tim Winders: 00:08:25

in a highly digital world.

Tim Winders: 00:08:28

In a fast world, in a world with so much coming at us, things that are,

Tim Winders: 00:08:35

I'll use the word analog or things that are slower paced seem to be

Tim Winders: 00:08:40

getting quite a bit of traction.

Tim Winders: 00:08:43

And that's what I heard you say when you talked about fire again,

Tim Winders: 00:08:45

let's don't talk about firewood yet.

Tim Winders: 00:08:47

Let's talk about the fire for just a moment, because see that

Tim Winders: 00:08:51

to me is a lifestyle product that people are yearning for.

Tim Winders: 00:08:55

Correct.

Leroy Hite: 00:08:56

Absolutely.

Leroy Hite: 00:08:57

It's, and it's only going to accelerate as everything online basically becomes

Leroy Hite: 00:09:05

fake as AI makes video and stuff.

Leroy Hite: 00:09:08

it, people will yearn, yeah, for the analog, for the natural,

Leroy Hite: 00:09:12

for physical experiences.

Leroy Hite: 00:09:16

Connections with other people that aren't digital that are in person or

Leroy Hite: 00:09:21

like around a fire and you really can't beat The only thing that comes close to

Leroy Hite: 00:09:27

sitting around the fire with connecting people is sitting around food and

Leroy Hite: 00:09:32

food tastes better cooked over wood.

Leroy Hite: 00:09:33

So it's perfect.

Tim Winders: 00:09:35

and you can

Tim Winders: 00:09:35

do both.

Leroy Hite: 00:09:36

it's the caveman TV.

Leroy Hite: 00:09:38

Yeah, you can do both.

Leroy Hite: 00:09:39

Exactly.

Leroy Hite: 00:09:39

And it's the caveman TV.

Tim Winders: 00:09:42

And you don't have any plans to generate or create AI fires, correct?

Tim Winders: 00:09:48

Let's just go ahead and get that out of the way early on here.

Leroy Hite: 00:09:52

it's funny.

Leroy Hite: 00:09:52

So many people, and I get the, allure and, and the reason behind doing it.

Leroy Hite: 00:09:57

People all the time might be an exaggeration, but I've had a lot of people

Leroy Hite: 00:10:01

over the years say, you need to do a video of a fire and put it on YouTube.

Leroy Hite: 00:10:06

That's for the hour that just loops at people.

Leroy Hite: 00:10:09

And I'm like, no, it's nothing to do with us.

Leroy Hite: 00:10:13

Like I'll do a video on how to start a fire, how to use our firewood.

Leroy Hite: 00:10:18

and things like that, but I'm not, that has nothing to do with us.

Leroy Hite: 00:10:21

so

Tim Winders: 00:10:22

So would you consider is your leadership style,

Tim Winders: 00:10:27

would you be like high energy?

Tim Winders: 00:10:30

do you have hustle in your makeup at all?

Leroy Hite: 00:10:38

is absolutely in my, makeup.

Leroy Hite: 00:10:40

I'm not, comparing myself to some leaders that I know that are high energy.

Leroy Hite: 00:10:45

I wouldn't say I'm high energy.

Leroy Hite: 00:10:47

I can't, I definitely can come across more high energy than your average

Leroy Hite: 00:10:52

person, um, and I can come across as.

Leroy Hite: 00:10:56

optimistic, other than reality analyst.

Leroy Hite: 00:11:00

I can, but it's, I think what people, ultimately two things that really

Leroy Hite: 00:11:05

come through, that I think people see is the passion and the perseverance,

Leroy Hite: 00:11:11

which kind of makes up grit really.

Leroy Hite: 00:11:14

it is people when I talk about a beautiful fire and how it's.

Leroy Hite: 00:11:19

Like a sunset, people hear the passion.

Leroy Hite: 00:11:22

They feel the passion.

Leroy Hite: 00:11:24

but then when they see my story or when they work with me, they

Leroy Hite: 00:11:29

see the grit of just, I keep going no matter what, keep going.

Leroy Hite: 00:11:34

no matter, what happens, giving up isn't really an option.

Tim Winders: 00:11:38

The re, the reason I asked that question, one of the things

Tim Winders: 00:11:42

that I do, and we talk about it quite a bit here, are how to balance And

Tim Winders: 00:11:50

balance isn't even the right word.

Tim Winders: 00:11:51

Let's say integrate.

Tim Winders: 00:11:53

How to integrate, our faith, family, all that we really are, that we say sometimes

Tim Winders: 00:11:59

are important to us, but maybe it doesn't

Tim Winders: 00:12:02

line up on our calendars and things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:12:05

And what I found, I briefly told you a little bit about my story before we

Tim Winders: 00:12:08

hit record, but what I found with me is

Tim Winders: 00:12:10

that I was addicted to more.

Tim Winders: 00:12:13

Or being busy and I just kept, it was more if there was one company, we

Tim Winders: 00:12:19

wanted to start another one.

Tim Winders: 00:12:20

If there was, real estate, we needed, we didn't need 10, 50 properties.

Tim Winders: 00:12:25

We needed a hundred, 150, we weren't going to buy one a month.

Tim Winders: 00:12:27

We were going to buy five a month, all of that.

Tim Winders: 00:12:29

It was just more.

Tim Winders: 00:12:31

So here's what I believe a fire is.

Tim Winders: 00:12:33

let me connect some dots here because it,

Tim Winders: 00:12:35

let me tell you what the RV life did for me.

Tim Winders: 00:12:38

It forced me.

Tim Winders: 00:12:40

To be patient.

Tim Winders: 00:12:41

I cannot be in a hurry and drive this 40 foot square box of a vehicle.

Tim Winders: 00:12:48

My thought is, and I'm going to ask you this in a form of a question,

Tim Winders: 00:12:52

is that you can't be in a rush.

Tim Winders: 00:12:56

with fire.

Tim Winders: 00:12:57

Is that a correct statement?

Leroy Hite: 00:13:00

Yeah, absolutely.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:01

A fire.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:03

The whole point of it is, um, to start it and sit back and relax.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:11

And either get lost in conversation or get lost in thought, deep

Leroy Hite: 00:13:15

thought, staring at a fire.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:17

It's all.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:18

And, yeah, me specifically, I am definitely that drive, drive.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:23

And it's funny, I'm a all or nothing kind of guy.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:27

if I'm working out, I have the hardest time not pushing myself to the limit.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:32

if, anything I do, it's all or nothing.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:37

And, but it's funny, I can flip a switch and a perfect example of that

Leroy Hite: 00:13:41

is, and a lot of people have a hard time believing this, every Sunday.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:46

I take off completely.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:47

I check out.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:48

I turn my work brain off.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:51

And so it's a all or nothing.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:54

It's a nothing.

Leroy Hite: 00:13:55

I do leave my phone across the room so I'm not tempted to open it and look at it.

Leroy Hite: 00:14:00

and I spend about two hours.

Leroy Hite: 00:14:05

staring at a fire.

Leroy Hite: 00:14:06

on the Sunday, I spent a lot of time reading books to my girls.

Leroy Hite: 00:14:10

I read a lot of books to my daughters, spend time with my

Leroy Hite: 00:14:14

wife, go to church in the morning.

Leroy Hite: 00:14:16

And, so it's that.

Leroy Hite: 00:14:19

Just flip a switch.

Leroy Hite: 00:14:20

but when I do, flip the switch back on, I have a hard time stopping until I decide.

Leroy Hite: 00:14:26

And in fact, in, 2022, I actually took, the month of March off

Leroy Hite: 00:14:30

and did no work for the month.

Leroy Hite: 00:14:31

Just flip the switch.

Tim Winders: 00:14:33

What is that?

Tim Winders: 00:14:34

What is that like?

Tim Winders: 00:14:35

people in the faith world will call that a Sabbath, people in just the business world

Tim Winders: 00:14:40

will call it a sabbatical, which obviously

Tim Winders: 00:14:43

has a very similar route.

Tim Winders: 00:14:44

do you call it that?

Tim Winders: 00:14:45

Or is it just you?

Tim Winders: 00:14:46

cause I, I do believe that.

Tim Winders: 00:14:48

Clearing our mind is what allows for

Tim Winders: 00:14:50

creativity and, being intentional and things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:14:54

give me a little bit more on that because I could tell you people

Tim Winders: 00:14:57

aren't good at that typically.

Leroy Hite: 00:14:59

Yes.

Leroy Hite: 00:15:00

and it took me a while to really dial it in and I've gotten better over

Leroy Hite: 00:15:05

time, but it, yeah, flipping the switch is, It takes self control, but once

Leroy Hite: 00:15:12

it becomes a habit, um, you love it.

Leroy Hite: 00:15:15

And it, and it's not, it, we're just better for it.

Leroy Hite: 00:15:19

And you get more done with that time.

Leroy Hite: 00:15:21

And I think, a great example, of course, is Chick fil A and what they've been able

Leroy Hite: 00:15:25

to do with being closed one day a week, but, professional athletes, and physical,

Leroy Hite: 00:15:32

scientists have proven even your body, if you take a day off, you do better.

Leroy Hite: 00:15:38

the, the world's leading, Experts on lifting weights advise an absolute

Leroy Hite: 00:15:45

maximum of working out six days a week.

Leroy Hite: 00:15:48

If you work out seven days a week, you will not get as good.

Leroy Hite: 00:15:52

It's not that you'll get the same results.

Leroy Hite: 00:15:54

You'll get worse results.

Leroy Hite: 00:15:56

and it's the same thing in work is, and yeah, sometimes emergencies can come

Leroy Hite: 00:16:01

up and really part of the habit is.

Leroy Hite: 00:16:04

and I almost forget about it now, because I've been doing

Leroy Hite: 00:16:06

it for so long, is on Saturday.

Leroy Hite: 00:16:09

When you're talking about work, tomorrow is Monday.

Leroy Hite: 00:16:15

Um, and it's funny people at our business sometimes we'll do that.

Leroy Hite: 00:16:19

and I catch it cause I want to make sure we're on the same page,

Leroy Hite: 00:16:21

but it'll be Saturday and they'll say, I'm going to do this tomorrow.

Leroy Hite: 00:16:24

I'll reach out to you tomorrow.

Leroy Hite: 00:16:26

And I'm like, by tomorrow, you mean Monday, right?

Leroy Hite: 00:16:28

And it's always yes.

Leroy Hite: 00:16:30

so people have even just bought into it internally in the business.

Leroy Hite: 00:16:34

but, it's amazing just coming back refreshed, and, how much more creativity

Leroy Hite: 00:16:41

I have when you take that time off.

Leroy Hite: 00:16:43

it just allows your, your brain to process the thoughts, and allows you to be more

Leroy Hite: 00:16:48

creative, and on the other hand, even if you're not a creative type, it allows you.

Leroy Hite: 00:16:55

And everybody has creativity, but even if you don't consider yourself as

Leroy Hite: 00:16:59

the creative type, it stops burnout.

Leroy Hite: 00:17:02

Working seven days a week is a guaranteed way to burn yourself out.

Tim Winders: 00:17:07

Yeah, absolutely.

Tim Winders: 00:17:09

And I also believe it helps us make better decisions.

Tim Winders: 00:17:12

It limits mistake.

Tim Winders: 00:17:13

There's all.

Tim Winders: 00:17:14

Types of benefit.

Tim Winders: 00:17:15

And if someone's listening in here, if they've been listening

Tim Winders: 00:17:18

to the 250 plus episodes, they know that message is important.

Tim Winders: 00:17:22

But, I want to say that our first learning point for anyone listening in is sit

Tim Winders: 00:17:27

by a fire more often have more fires.

Tim Winders: 00:17:31

And I heard two hours.

Tim Winders: 00:17:33

That's the,

Tim Winders: 00:17:33

is that a prescription?

Tim Winders: 00:17:34

is that what you're saying?

Tim Winders: 00:17:36

is that our first, the three steps of success from Leroy first sit by a

Tim Winders: 00:17:40

fire for two hours a week.

Leroy Hite: 00:17:43

huh.

Leroy Hite: 00:17:43

Yeah.

Leroy Hite: 00:17:44

So I, yeah, a minimum of two hours.

Leroy Hite: 00:17:46

Earlier last year I started, Sundays I do that and I actually listen to

Leroy Hite: 00:17:51

two sermons on Sundays and then I've started a habit of during the week,

Leroy Hite: 00:17:57

having about a two hour fire and just staring at the fire for two hours.

Leroy Hite: 00:18:03

It's amazing just how much better I feel after that.

Tim Winders: 00:18:07

So one of the things for me, the reason that I'm asking

Tim Winders: 00:18:09

so many questions about the fire, as opposed to the firewood, we're

Tim Winders: 00:18:13

about to get to the firewood, but

Leroy Hite: 00:18:14

I love it.

Tim Winders: 00:18:15

I, and because I think it's what's driving the passion,

Tim Winders: 00:18:20

it's the marketing, it's the message, it's the purpose, all of that.

Tim Winders: 00:18:25

we've got cars out here.

Tim Winders: 00:18:26

I'm interested in how they're built.

Tim Winders: 00:18:29

But I need them for what they do for me.

Tim Winders: 00:18:32

And so a couple of things I thought of when I was thinking about the

Tim Winders: 00:18:35

fire, there's a masterclass for those people that have masterclass.

Tim Winders: 00:18:38

There's one by Aaron Walker, who's the Texas barbecue specialist.

Tim Winders: 00:18:43

And I found myself getting frustrated with this.

Tim Winders: 00:18:45

Leroy, you would probably appreciate it.

Tim Winders: 00:18:47

But on masterclass, he has, it's about a 12 session class.

Tim Winders: 00:18:52

And before he even talks about barbecue, he actually

Tim Winders: 00:18:57

does

Leroy Hite: 00:18:58

Franklin

Tim Winders: 00:18:59

Aaron Franklin.

Tim Winders: 00:19:00

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:19:00

So I just say that I say Walker, Aaron Franklin, sorry about that.

Tim Winders: 00:19:03

Thank you for correcting me, Aaron Franklin.

Tim Winders: 00:19:05

And, I think he does about four episodes on the fire,

Tim Winders: 00:19:11

the fire.

Tim Winders: 00:19:12

so that's pretty cool.

Tim Winders: 00:19:13

mention this as a pitch.

Tim Winders: 00:19:15

And I think it blends in well, I might need to connect you guys.

Tim Winders: 00:19:18

in a couple of weeks, I'm interviewing a guy named Burke Atkerson.

Tim Winders: 00:19:22

He's out of Colorado Springs and he's written a book called

Tim Winders: 00:19:25

fire nights and he's in ministry and the ministry is all about getting a

Tim Winders: 00:19:32

handful of guys around a fire once a week and oddly enough, or interestingly

Tim Winders: 00:19:38

enough, there's sometimes a cigar, there's sometimes a sip of whiskey.

Tim Winders: 00:19:42

And

Tim Winders: 00:19:42

it's really all about men connecting at a deeper level, which men

Tim Winders: 00:19:48

are typically not real good at.

Tim Winders: 00:19:49

So I'm just

Tim Winders: 00:19:51

mentioning that to you and also to the audience to be looking for that.

Tim Winders: 00:19:54

If I could time it well, I might actually put these episodes back to back and

Tim Winders: 00:19:58

see if we could have, the firewood and the fire nights combined there.

Tim Winders: 00:20:02

So anyway, Fire definitely

Tim Winders: 00:20:05

important and I like that it brings patience in a world

Tim Winders: 00:20:10

that's hurry up and go fast.

Tim Winders: 00:20:12

So with that, let's shift a little bit and let's talk about how

Tim Winders: 00:20:20

cutting, cutting edge came to be.

Tim Winders: 00:20:23

And I know there's a lot of story here and there's places people can go

Tim Winders: 00:20:29

to get a lot of it, but I think what I'd love to do is I knew, and I know

Tim Winders: 00:20:33

you grew up in Northwest Georgia.

Tim Winders: 00:20:36

I think I'm going to force you Leroy to give me one or two key

Tim Winders: 00:20:41

things from Leroy the early years, okay, that have impacted you.

Tim Winders: 00:20:48

Could be positive or negative.

Tim Winders: 00:20:50

something that's driven you that's gotten you where you are or something that

Tim Winders: 00:20:53

it's called a Scarlett O'Hara moments.

Tim Winders: 00:20:55

as God is my witness, I am never going to blank.

Tim Winders: 00:20:59

Mine is I'm never going to work corporate again.

Tim Winders: 00:21:01

I'm not going to work corporate.

Tim Winders: 00:21:03

And God is my witness,

Tim Winders: 00:21:05

you the reference.

Tim Winders: 00:21:06

just a couple of things

Tim Winders: 00:21:08

growing up.

Tim Winders: 00:21:09

obviously you're exposed to, trees and fires

Tim Winders: 00:21:13

and all of that, but What else?

Tim Winders: 00:21:17

What's come to mind when I ask, when I force you to come

Tim Winders: 00:21:19

up with one or two items?

Leroy Hite: 00:21:22

Yeah, it's funny, I don't really have the, I will never

Leroy Hite: 00:21:28

whatever, moments, when it comes to that, it's funny.

Leroy Hite: 00:21:31

Cause, I have like, I do have goals, but they're, it's really, they're not goals,

Leroy Hite: 00:21:36

they're visions and I'm just working in a general direction, um, with the

Leroy Hite: 00:21:43

business and growing up, I didn't know I was going to be an entrepreneur, I,

Leroy Hite: 00:21:49

and it's hard to, I might make it three.

Leroy Hite: 00:21:51

I might break the rules.

Leroy Hite: 00:21:52

I'll never was a rule follower.

Leroy Hite: 00:21:54

I grew up Northwest Georgia, pretty poor, one of eight kids,

Leroy Hite: 00:21:58

had a ton of chores growing up.

Leroy Hite: 00:22:02

And, and had, I could give so many examples, but tons and tons of

Leroy Hite: 00:22:09

chores, yard work, and, I remember one of the chores was cutting

Leroy Hite: 00:22:13

the grass and trimming the grass.

Leroy Hite: 00:22:15

And I remember we had these scissors, we didn't have a weed eater.

Leroy Hite: 00:22:20

We had these scissors that I would use to cut around trees and, the phone pole.

Leroy Hite: 00:22:25

And they were so dull that it was literally a breakeven, whether you

Leroy Hite: 00:22:30

should use them or just pull the grass.

Leroy Hite: 00:22:33

and so half the time you would see me out there pulling the grass up

Leroy Hite: 00:22:37

around the trees and the poles.

Leroy Hite: 00:22:39

and that was the kind of manual labor that I grew up in doing.

Leroy Hite: 00:22:42

And so I think that really instilled a level of work ethic

Leroy Hite: 00:22:47

that I'm not scared to work hard.

Leroy Hite: 00:22:50

and.

Leroy Hite: 00:22:51

And which I think, which I'm very thankful for.

Leroy Hite: 00:22:54

I hated it at the time, of course.

Leroy Hite: 00:22:57

Um, but I remember even as a teenager, going and helping other people

Leroy Hite: 00:23:03

that had kids with yard work and they would always comment on, wow,

Leroy Hite: 00:23:08

you have a really good work ethic.

Leroy Hite: 00:23:10

And I didn't really think much of it at the time, but, looking back

Leroy Hite: 00:23:13

on it, I'm like, yeah, apparently I did have a pretty good work ethic.

Leroy Hite: 00:23:17

Um, The next one, is, and I'll talk more about her probably in the story,

Leroy Hite: 00:23:26

but, meeting, dating, my wife met when we were 17 working at Chick fil A.

Leroy Hite: 00:23:32

we got married spring break, junior year of college.

Leroy Hite: 00:23:36

Um, and, And she's been incredible as an entrepreneur's wife.

Leroy Hite: 00:23:42

Um, but in that, Oh yeah.

Leroy Hite: 00:23:46

And then the next one would be during college at Berry college.

Leroy Hite: 00:23:51

they had an entrepreneurial program and, and I would definitely

Leroy Hite: 00:23:56

say that was pretty incredible.

Leroy Hite: 00:23:59

It lodged something in my head that I could not get out of my head.

Leroy Hite: 00:24:04

Just the entrepreneurial bug, the spark, the ember, whatever.

Leroy Hite: 00:24:08

if you want to do a corny, puns, but it, it really did lodge in

Leroy Hite: 00:24:13

my head and while I was there, I started a different firewood company.

Leroy Hite: 00:24:18

And I just realized.

Leroy Hite: 00:24:21

This is completely undisrupted.

Leroy Hite: 00:24:22

It's a backwards thing.

Leroy Hite: 00:24:24

Like me just sitting down for 30 minutes and thinking about it.

Leroy Hite: 00:24:27

I could come up with new ideas to innovate the industry.

Leroy Hite: 00:24:31

and, so it was a comparison.

Leroy Hite: 00:24:37

It was a completely undisrupted forest that nobody had really

Leroy Hite: 00:24:41

gone through, to disrupt it.

Leroy Hite: 00:24:43

There were no paths.

Leroy Hite: 00:24:44

and that was absolutely a turning point that I can look back at and be like,

Leroy Hite: 00:24:51

that was a defining moment of my career.

Tim Winders: 00:24:55

you think, was there any clues to that entrepreneur

Tim Winders: 00:25:00

spirit, entrepreneurism prior?

Tim Winders: 00:25:04

it's a very odd story for someone to say they took, they

Tim Winders: 00:25:07

were in a program or a class.

Tim Winders: 00:25:09

Our daughter actually, she went to High Point University up in North

Tim Winders: 00:25:12

Carolina and they had an entrepreneur program, which I thought it was an

Tim Winders: 00:25:15

oxymoron for someone to be in college.

Tim Winders: 00:25:18

And studying entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, you

Tim Winders: 00:25:21

get it.

Tim Winders: 00:25:21

you understand that.

Tim Winders: 00:25:22

or, but I guess it can help unlock it.

Tim Winders: 00:25:25

We're looking back.

Tim Winders: 00:25:26

Were there any clues growing up that you may have had it other than the

Tim Winders: 00:25:29

work ethic and we'll, I may come back to that later, but other than that,

Tim Winders: 00:25:33

something that you said, you know what, I need to make me some money and I'm

Tim Winders: 00:25:35

going to figure out a way to do it.

Leroy Hite: 00:25:38

I think it's work ethic and looking back.

Leroy Hite: 00:25:42

And I even knew it at the time ish.

Leroy Hite: 00:25:46

I've always looked at things differently than other people.

Leroy Hite: 00:25:50

Even in college, I played a lot of Halo.

Leroy Hite: 00:25:55

and a lot of Halo and I miss it.

Leroy Hite: 00:25:58

It was a lot of fun.

Leroy Hite: 00:25:59

Had it, that was a flipping a switch that when I started this business and had a

Leroy Hite: 00:26:03

daughter, I was like, Oh, that's gone.

Leroy Hite: 00:26:06

That's over.

Leroy Hite: 00:26:09

Gave my X Box to my, nephew, nephews.

Leroy Hite: 00:26:13

And, even in that, like I wasn't particularly skilled.

Leroy Hite: 00:26:18

Like in reflexes and being able to, but I, there were other people way more

Leroy Hite: 00:26:24

skilled than me, but my strategy and it was just really um, my, gut strategy.

Leroy Hite: 00:26:32

Um, I played differently than anybody else that I ever met.

Leroy Hite: 00:26:38

And, and that and like, when I think about rules, I always go to the, people

Leroy Hite: 00:26:45

think I'm, There's people think there's either rule followers or rebels.

Leroy Hite: 00:26:49

There's a third option.

Leroy Hite: 00:26:50

And that is you look at the reason behind the rules.

Leroy Hite: 00:26:54

And I did that as I, I look at the reason behind the rules and I try and follow.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:00

when I agree with them, the spirit of the rule versus the letter of the rule.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:05

and so I think those are some kind of, instances.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:10

it's funny, I, when I worked at a, enterprise, we took

Leroy Hite: 00:27:13

this, personality test.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:15

I think it was.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:16

And, and I, when it happened, I was like, Oh, that is interesting.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:21

one of the question and I don't remember what the question was.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:23

I just, it was, ranking your level of independence.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:28

And I think it was like one to 50.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:31

it was when I was an assistant manager and everybody, all the

Leroy Hite: 00:27:34

assistant managers were single digit.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:37

I want to say they were like seven to nine.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:39

Maybe there was one that had an 11.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:42

All the area managers were, which were our boss's boss.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:46

the highest was like a 23, if I remember correctly, I was like a 47.

Leroy Hite: 00:27:53

So

Tim Winders: 00:27:54

looked and they all looked at you like dude, they

Tim Winders: 00:27:56

said dude, why are you here?

Leroy Hite: 00:28:00

Yeah.

Leroy Hite: 00:28:02

So I think that, that was, and obviously I'd already, I had The entrepreneurial

Leroy Hite: 00:28:07

spirit lodged into me at that point.

Leroy Hite: 00:28:09

But, so those were some looking back.

Leroy Hite: 00:28:11

It is funny though.

Leroy Hite: 00:28:14

now think of me as like extreme, creative type.

Leroy Hite: 00:28:20

Growing up, nobody thought of me as a creative and even some of my college

Leroy Hite: 00:28:25

buddies have over the last few years commented, you came up with that.

Leroy Hite: 00:28:30

I can't believe that kind of thing, but,

Tim Winders: 00:28:34

one thing related to one thing related to creativity i'm

Tim Winders: 00:28:37

going to ask this before we leave

Tim Winders: 00:28:39

the early years I'm gonna

Tim Winders: 00:28:41

ask a little bit about your faith because i've heard your story and I know

Tim Winders: 00:28:44

that later it's significant There's a,

Tim Winders: 00:28:47

I think a significant thing that you did as you started your business.

Tim Winders: 00:28:50

But I don't think that those

Tim Winders: 00:28:52

things are just, you wake up one morning and say, Oh, I'm going to

Tim Winders: 00:28:54

do something that shows my faith.

Tim Winders: 00:28:56

And then I'm a follower of Christ or something that I know.

Tim Winders: 00:28:58

But, and

Tim Winders: 00:28:59

listen, truthfully, there are clues when someone says they

Tim Winders: 00:29:02

work for Chick fil A.

Tim Winders: 00:29:04

It's like immediately, Truett Cathy spoke at my wife's

Tim Winders: 00:29:07

graduation.

Tim Winders: 00:29:09

that, yeah, he was a, yeah, tell me a little bit about, there's two things that

Tim Winders: 00:29:14

I want to frame before we dive into some leadership styles and things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:29:18

And that is, tell me a little bit about.

Tim Winders: 00:29:20

your faith growing up, where you were your family of

Tim Winders: 00:29:23

faith, where you, were you a Christian coming out of the womb or,

Tim Winders: 00:29:27

or was there a decision later on?

Tim Winders: 00:29:30

I've talked to people

Tim Winders: 00:29:31

that

Leroy Hite: 00:29:32

what you call uh, The ultra reformed.

Tim Winders: 00:29:35

that, yeah, I'm not saying that's good theology, but I'm

Tim Winders: 00:29:38

telling you, I've had people that have said something like, I've been

Tim Winders: 00:29:42

Christian as long as I could remember.

Tim Winders: 00:29:44

In

Leroy Hite: 00:29:44

You can call me John the Baptist, Jr.

Leroy Hite: 00:29:47

yeah,

Tim Winders: 00:29:48

Yeah,

Leroy Hite: 00:29:49

cause you

Leroy Hite: 00:29:49

know that story with them and the womb.

Tim Winders: 00:29:52

listen, you mentioned a couple of things that were significant.

Tim Winders: 00:29:54

you big family, eight kids, Northwest Georgia.

Tim Winders: 00:29:57

So you're in the Bible belt.

Tim Winders: 00:29:58

You work for Chick

Tim Winders: 00:29:59

fil A and you said you were poor.

Tim Winders: 00:30:02

so I'm sitting here going, man, this is like a

Tim Winders: 00:30:04

solid.

Leroy Hite: 00:30:04

Christian.

Tim Winders: 00:30:05

Christian kid.

Tim Winders: 00:30:07

Homeschool.

Tim Winders: 00:30:07

Did I get, can I get a homeschool out of

Leroy Hite: 00:30:10

it was public school.

Leroy Hite: 00:30:11

although ironically, my daughters had been in a, private school, but, my wife.

Leroy Hite: 00:30:17

Led this decision, but, we're actually going to homeschool him next year,

Leroy Hite: 00:30:20

which I'm pretty excited about.

Leroy Hite: 00:30:21

But, but I was at no public school.

Leroy Hite: 00:30:24

and I thought I was going to send my kids to public school.

Leroy Hite: 00:30:28

but the world's an interesting place now, and especially with, four daughters,

Leroy Hite: 00:30:33

very quickly that just dissolved.

Leroy Hite: 00:30:35

It wasn't even like a decision.

Leroy Hite: 00:30:36

It was just, with, but, public school.

Leroy Hite: 00:30:40

And I think a lot of, actually that, that could be another, clue

Leroy Hite: 00:30:43

to being an entrepreneur is I was really like self educated.

Leroy Hite: 00:30:48

Um, I, give, credit to where credit's due, I had a fourth grade teacher that

Leroy Hite: 00:30:54

introduced me to the Hardy Boys books.

Leroy Hite: 00:30:56

And in the fifth grade, it might still be the all time record, but I.

Leroy Hite: 00:31:00

Crushed the all time record in number of books I read because I basically read all

Leroy Hite: 00:31:05

the Hardy Boys books in the fifth grade and But that kind of started my love of

Leroy Hite: 00:31:11

learning and being self taught and Like in school, I got to where I would just ignore

Leroy Hite: 00:31:19

the teacher and I would read history books and read through the science book.

Leroy Hite: 00:31:23

And, and so I was really stealth taught, even though I was sitting in class, I

Leroy Hite: 00:31:28

would use that time to teach myself.

Leroy Hite: 00:31:30

Um, and on the, yeah, I grew up in a Christian family, solid Christian parents.

Leroy Hite: 00:31:35

I'm very thankful for that.

Leroy Hite: 00:31:37

and so with that, With my love of reading, at an early age, I started reading through

Leroy Hite: 00:31:42

the Bible, read through it multiple times.

Leroy Hite: 00:31:46

And, I have a, very useful skill set.

Leroy Hite: 00:31:50

I'm not the best at memorizing, but I have a phenomenal skill to

Leroy Hite: 00:31:56

remember the gist, the summary of what I heard, how that played out in

Leroy Hite: 00:32:01

college is I could sit in classes, not take notes, not study for the test.

Leroy Hite: 00:32:07

And I would make an A or a B usually.

Leroy Hite: 00:32:10

and, but so I read through the Bible many times and, and got

Leroy Hite: 00:32:14

a good understanding of it.

Leroy Hite: 00:32:18

and yeah, and, I um, put my, my faith officially it, as I grew up, it became

Leroy Hite: 00:32:27

official, you leave your parents faith and it becomes your faith at some point,

Leroy Hite: 00:32:31

high school and into college, that definitely happened to me officially.

Leroy Hite: 00:32:35

but there's never a time as long as I can remember that I wouldn't

Leroy Hite: 00:32:40

have called myself a Christian.

Leroy Hite: 00:32:41

or, that you wouldn't have looked at my wife and thought,

Leroy Hite: 00:32:45

yeah, he's probably a Christian.

Leroy Hite: 00:32:47

Along those lines with the business, something that is cool that are along

Leroy Hite: 00:32:51

those lines are is we've had a couple, a few customers ask our customer

Leroy Hite: 00:32:55

service department, are y'all are Christian business solely because

Leroy Hite: 00:32:59

of our level of customer service.

Leroy Hite: 00:33:02

Um, which I take as a big compliment.

Tim Winders: 00:33:04

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:33:05

technically a company cannot be saved.

Tim Winders: 00:33:07

There cannot be salvation for a S corp, C corp.

Tim Winders: 00:33:11

I, again, theological stuff here, but the leader, the founder of the company

Tim Winders: 00:33:16

can run with principles and it's, when we share love, I'm doing a deep dive

Tim Winders: 00:33:20

study on the kingdom of God right now.

Tim Winders: 00:33:21

And a lot of it's going to spill over into business.

Tim Winders: 00:33:24

What does that mean for business standpoint?

Tim Winders: 00:33:28

do you think that cutting edge would exist if your faith wasn't what it was?

Leroy Hite: 00:33:38

there were, and we can dive into this however you want, but, but

Leroy Hite: 00:33:45

between the time when I had the previous firewood company and when I

Leroy Hite: 00:33:48

started cutting edge firewood, looking back on it, I wouldn't have called it

Leroy Hite: 00:33:53

this at the time, but looking back on it, it was a loud and clear hauling.

Leroy Hite: 00:34:00

but I was way too afraid, um, to lean into that.

Leroy Hite: 00:34:06

cause had the theological truth, but I didn't have the experience, of that

Leroy Hite: 00:34:14

theological truth of, of really leaning into what you think God's calling

Leroy Hite: 00:34:20

you to do, stepping out in faith.

Leroy Hite: 00:34:22

and that played.

Leroy Hite: 00:34:24

and it's, when I started the business, we'll get into this, but

Leroy Hite: 00:34:28

I started it basically fasting and praying and listening to sermons.

Leroy Hite: 00:34:32

And there's been so many times when I've been in the fetal position and

Leroy Hite: 00:34:36

I've gone back to different biblical truths over and over again, listening

Leroy Hite: 00:34:42

to sermons on faith, listening to people in the Bible, exercising

Leroy Hite: 00:34:46

their faith and, and really seeing.

Leroy Hite: 00:34:51

It's been really comforting looking at Biblical figures and seeing

Leroy Hite: 00:34:57

my story in many ways reflect their story of Just like them.

Leroy Hite: 00:35:04

I'm far from perfect made a lot of mistakes, but God uses Both the

Leroy Hite: 00:35:12

good things I do, the intelligent things I do and the dumb mistakes

Leroy Hite: 00:35:16

I've made, to, to teach me and to make me into who I've become.

Leroy Hite: 00:35:23

and ultimately When you wash everything away or if you burned everything away,

Leroy Hite: 00:35:29

the foundation is ultimately on the, on my faith of that's what I lay the business

Leroy Hite: 00:35:35

and my future on is, is that rock.

Leroy Hite: 00:35:39

and the verse, of course, that if you build the house on the rock, and it

Leroy Hite: 00:35:44

doesn't, it of course doesn't promise, financial, it's not that the Bible

Leroy Hite: 00:35:48

promises that you're going to be rich, or that your life's going to be easy.

Leroy Hite: 00:35:51

And in fact, my life has not been easy.

Leroy Hite: 00:35:54

but, at the core, that's what I base everything

Tim Winders: 00:35:59

So what's interesting, this is what I've heard along the way.

Tim Winders: 00:36:03

with this conversation.

Tim Winders: 00:36:05

and I would agree faith is in all likelihood the foundation because the

Tim Winders: 00:36:11

faith probably fed a lot of the growing up, the work ethic, things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:36:15

I'm guessing that the faith probably led to your, was it Michaela?

Tim Winders: 00:36:20

what's.

Tim Winders: 00:36:21

Yeah, led

Tim Winders: 00:36:22

to your wife, which is an, a lot of people will say who you choose or

Tim Winders: 00:36:28

who God chooses for you or however people look at it to be your spouse

Tim Winders: 00:36:32

is a significant factor in whether or

Tim Winders: 00:36:35

not someone succeeds.

Tim Winders: 00:36:36

And I'm sure you could tell story after story.

Tim Winders: 00:36:38

We may not have time for it here.

Tim Winders: 00:36:40

if I could with my wife, it's my goodness, why did she stick around with me?

Tim Winders: 00:36:44

And the things that I asked

Tim Winders: 00:36:46

her to go through, and I'm sure you've got the same story.

Tim Winders: 00:36:49

And

Tim Winders: 00:36:50

all of those things built up and then we're going to hit through this real

Tim Winders: 00:36:53

quick Yeah, I mean i've heard, chick fil a you were considering being

Tim Winders: 00:36:56

an owner operator you worked at.

Tim Winders: 00:36:58

the car

Leroy Hite: 00:36:59

enterprise.

Tim Winders: 00:36:59

enterprise.

Tim Winders: 00:37:00

Yeah, which probably

Tim Winders: 00:37:01

that was cool.

Tim Winders: 00:37:01

I don't want to go there though and then I think I saw it's

Tim Winders: 00:37:04

a different type firewood.

Tim Winders: 00:37:05

Were you a georgia pacific?

Tim Winders: 00:37:06

Where are you like big corporation?

Tim Winders: 00:37:09

That's a

Tim Winders: 00:37:09

firewood company.

Leroy Hite: 00:37:11

they, they hope the wood doesn't burn there, but, yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:37:14

Okay.

Tim Winders: 00:37:14

Sorry.

Tim Winders: 00:37:16

But I think everything, I do believe the path that God leads us on as a

Tim Winders: 00:37:20

preparation for getting to a place.

Tim Winders: 00:37:23

And it's not as if we arrive, it continues.

Tim Winders: 00:37:25

It's why we call this the leadership journey.

Tim Winders: 00:37:27

That's part of the journey.

Tim Winders: 00:37:29

so that, and then the two things I heard there, these are kind

Tim Winders: 00:37:32

of church words we're using.

Tim Winders: 00:37:33

And so called and that you fasted and prayed.

Tim Winders: 00:37:38

And it led to this business starting and things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:37:43

And some people have trouble understanding that called.

Tim Winders: 00:37:48

Let's don't get into the fasting and praying.

Tim Winders: 00:37:50

It's just a, I think it's just a way of clearing our head.

Tim Winders: 00:37:53

Let's, can we leave it at that and move on for maybe someone

Tim Winders: 00:37:55

listening going, how does that work now?

Tim Winders: 00:37:57

We're not

Tim Winders: 00:37:57

going to do a teaching on fasting and praying here.

Leroy Hite: 00:37:59

Yeah.

Leroy Hite: 00:37:59

And for the record, that was the first time that I'd ever done it.

Leroy Hite: 00:38:04

And it was spur of the moment.

Leroy Hite: 00:38:05

It wasn't even planned.

Leroy Hite: 00:38:07

Um,

Tim Winders: 00:38:09

It was spur of the moment for you.

Tim Winders: 00:38:10

It was probably not spur of the moment for God.

Leroy Hite: 00:38:14

yeah, probably.

Leroy Hite: 00:38:17

I think that's the, uh, that's theologically correct for sure.

Tim Winders: 00:38:20

So what year did cutting edge get started?

Tim Winders: 00:38:23

Let's tell a little bit about that story in the time we've got left here.

Tim Winders: 00:38:26

So cutting it, this was you were, you went through a

Tim Winders: 00:38:29

lot of, a lot of items that were probably preparing you truthfully

Tim Winders: 00:38:32

for starting this company,

Tim Winders: 00:38:34

this business, you had done the thing in college and all of that.

Tim Winders: 00:38:37

So what year are we at with cutting edge and the fasting and the prayer that you

Tim Winders: 00:38:41

did, and then bam, let's start a business.

Leroy Hite: 00:38:44

2013.

Leroy Hite: 00:38:45

Yeah.

Leroy Hite: 00:38:45

2013.

Tim Winders: 00:38:46

So now we're talking about 10 or 11 years and you started

Tim Winders: 00:38:51

the business and it was money in the bank And everything was just

Tim Winders: 00:38:56

super duper right out of the gate.

Tim Winders: 00:38:58

You've been living the dream life ever since right

Leroy Hite: 00:39:02

Yeah.

Leroy Hite: 00:39:02

I was, his name?

Leroy Hite: 00:39:03

My mind's called blank.

Leroy Hite: 00:39:04

the, cut up your credit cards guy.

Tim Winders: 00:39:06

dave

Leroy Hite: 00:39:06

yeah, Dave.

Leroy Hite: 00:39:07

yeah, I was Dave Ramsey's worst, nightmare.

Tim Winders: 00:39:10

are you the

Leroy Hite: 00:39:11

I, uh.

Tim Winders: 00:39:11

against?

Tim Winders: 00:39:11

Yeah, we did that with real estate, too Did you build your company on credit card?

Tim Winders: 00:39:15

So

Leroy Hite: 00:39:17

yeah, absolutely.

Leroy Hite: 00:39:18

That was my, I got a personal loan and maxed out seven or eight credit cards.

Leroy Hite: 00:39:24

and honestly, that was my finance of the company for the first.

Leroy Hite: 00:39:28

Five years was I would, during the spring and summer, I would get as

Leroy Hite: 00:39:34

many credit cards as I could that way.

Leroy Hite: 00:39:37

Sorry.

Leroy Hite: 00:39:38

And during that, so I got as many credit cards as I could.

Leroy Hite: 00:39:41

And then in the winter, when cash was good, I would pay them off my,

Leroy Hite: 00:39:45

My score would shoot through the roof and then I would get more credit

Leroy Hite: 00:39:49

cards, max them out in the spring and summer, pay them off the next winter.

Leroy Hite: 00:39:53

And so my credit score would go from 300 to 800 a couple times a year.

Leroy Hite: 00:39:59

And it was just a rollercoaster, but I would go higher and

Leroy Hite: 00:40:02

higher with my credit score.

Leroy Hite: 00:40:04

And that's how I, financed the business for the first few years.

Leroy Hite: 00:40:07

until I got to the level that I

Leroy Hite: 00:40:08

got my first SBA.

Tim Winders: 00:40:10

Cause originally it was firewood.

Tim Winders: 00:40:14

You were in the South in an area that has about a, has a three or

Tim Winders: 00:40:19

four month winter, and sometimes they don't have a winter, right?

Leroy Hite: 00:40:24

Right.

Tim Winders: 00:40:25

moving?

Tim Winders: 00:40:26

Do you ever consider going somewhere else?

Tim Winders: 00:40:29

Go farther north.

Tim Winders: 00:40:30

Sorry, man.

Tim Winders: 00:40:31

But

Leroy Hite: 00:40:32

You know, not, not, yeah, no, not initially.

Leroy Hite: 00:40:35

I've thought a lot about it, in the last few years.

Leroy Hite: 00:40:39

Um, but then now that we shipped to 48 states, there's less of a reason.

Leroy Hite: 00:40:45

but I still think about it and debate it.

Leroy Hite: 00:40:47

it'd be interesting to have a location in Boston or New

Leroy Hite: 00:40:51

York, any other northeast city.

Leroy Hite: 00:40:55

Um, Dallas, Texas is pretty interesting too,

Tim Winders: 00:40:59

it is

Tim Winders: 00:41:00

so you started and it was still pretty much firewood seasonal, people

Tim Winders: 00:41:05

don't want it March through November ish and, so you're on an

Tim Winders: 00:41:11

up and down.

Tim Winders: 00:41:13

Tell

Tim Winders: 00:41:13

me when was the time that this went from a, just a firewood for people's fireplaces

Tim Winders: 00:41:22

or outdoors to something bigger?

Tim Winders: 00:41:25

Give me if it's a multiple step along the way, or if it's a point in time,

Tim Winders: 00:41:30

because to me, that's where creativity and to me that those are divine type

Tim Winders: 00:41:35

moments in my opinion for company.

Tim Winders: 00:41:37

So tell me

Tim Winders: 00:41:37

more about that.

Leroy Hite: 00:41:40

Yeah, there are really two super critical points.

Leroy Hite: 00:41:45

One was, in 2017 when I went to my wife and said, Hey, we've got

Leroy Hite: 00:41:50

to take this to the next level.

Leroy Hite: 00:41:52

I know we have two little girls at home and you're eight

Leroy Hite: 00:41:56

months pregnant with our third.

Leroy Hite: 00:41:58

I got this wonderful idea of let's sell our house and invest it in the business.

Leroy Hite: 00:42:03

And we did that.

Leroy Hite: 00:42:05

I took that money, redid the branding, hired our first delivery

Leroy Hite: 00:42:10

artisan, hired the first person employee that was taking care of

Leroy Hite: 00:42:14

customer service, got our warehouse.

Leroy Hite: 00:42:17

And, reinvented again, how to do deliveries and what that led to

Leroy Hite: 00:42:23

it was we would just stack all the firewood to we included the

Leroy Hite: 00:42:28

rack and have a patent on that.

Leroy Hite: 00:42:30

And that took the deliveries from approximately 2 hours.

Leroy Hite: 00:42:34

Once I arrived at the house.

Leroy Hite: 00:42:36

To about 15 minutes once our delivery artisan arrives at the house, it made

Leroy Hite: 00:42:42

it way safer and it made it where it was efficient enough that we could make money.

Leroy Hite: 00:42:48

before that it was way too dangerous.

Leroy Hite: 00:42:50

There's no way I could have paid somebody else to do it.

Leroy Hite: 00:42:53

Um, and, so it was like, it would take eight, it would take about 18

Leroy Hite: 00:42:59

hours to do eight deliveries the first four years when I was doing it.

Leroy Hite: 00:43:04

and then it went down to, where now you can do about 16 deliveries and 7.

Leroy Hite: 00:43:12

5, 8 hours kind of thing.

Leroy Hite: 00:43:14

Um, and, so that was hugely important.

Leroy Hite: 00:43:19

And, and then in 2019, we started putting up yard signs around town and they were

Leroy Hite: 00:43:28

just our logo, um, and put them, hundreds and hundreds of them out, and eventually

Leroy Hite: 00:43:37

we started putting them in our customers yards, but, And we started leaning into

Leroy Hite: 00:43:43

cooking wood and pizza wood, and then we made our first dollar outside of Georgia.

Leroy Hite: 00:43:49

And all those things added up to talking about divine timing

Leroy Hite: 00:43:55

that was at the end of 2019.

Leroy Hite: 00:43:57

And in 2020, obviously COVID happened.

Leroy Hite: 00:44:00

And, and we just immediately forexed year over year.

Leroy Hite: 00:44:07

which is hard when you have to have the employees and the raw materials in

Leroy Hite: 00:44:12

advance and the systems and the SOPs.

Leroy Hite: 00:44:16

That was hard scaling like that, but, we, massive growth, but, and so the

Leroy Hite: 00:44:23

cooking wood and firewood, the cooking wood and pizza wood went from essentially

Leroy Hite: 00:44:28

probably half of a percent of our revenue to 20 percent of our revenue

Leroy Hite: 00:44:34

while our overall revenue forexed.

Leroy Hite: 00:44:37

And, our, we made our first dollar.

Leroy Hite: 00:44:41

outside of Georgia, where now it's the majority of our revenue,

Leroy Hite: 00:44:45

um, is outside of Georgia.

Tim Winders: 00:44:47

did some of that level out the seasonal aspect of the business?

Leroy Hite: 00:44:53

It did to a large degree.

Leroy Hite: 00:44:56

do in our best month compared to our worst month, three,

Leroy Hite: 00:45:02

three and a half times as much.

Leroy Hite: 00:45:04

Um, whereas, um, it used to be, it was about 15 times as much.

Leroy Hite: 00:45:14

In our best month versus our worst month, so it's still quite seasonal.

Leroy Hite: 00:45:20

but it's a lot better, than it used to be.

Tim Winders: 00:45:23

Yeah, I love the, the industrial engineer, industrial

Tim Winders: 00:45:27

and systems engineer at Georgia tech is getting excited in me.

Tim Winders: 00:45:30

You talking about that process and delivery improvement

Tim Winders: 00:45:34

was that.

Tim Winders: 00:45:36

The same delivery that you do outside of the Georgia market, or are you

Tim Winders: 00:45:40

just shipping or have you, what have

Tim Winders: 00:45:42

you done to me?

Tim Winders: 00:45:44

Cause it's not as if, wood, firewood, cooking wood is a light.

Tim Winders: 00:45:49

a light

Tim Winders: 00:45:50

product, tell me a little bit more about

Tim Winders: 00:45:52

that, what that looks like.

Leroy Hite: 00:45:55

Yeah.

Leroy Hite: 00:45:56

really, we build it into the business model.

Leroy Hite: 00:45:59

We build it into the price.

Leroy Hite: 00:46:01

and it's, yeah, it's not cheap, shipping it.

Leroy Hite: 00:46:05

but because it's the best, that want the best are willing to pay a premium

Leroy Hite: 00:46:11

price for, for a better experience.

Leroy Hite: 00:46:14

And really.

Leroy Hite: 00:46:16

Um, if you look at it and you're like, why are people paying that much more for wood?

Leroy Hite: 00:46:21

You'll never understand unless you make the leap to, Oh,

Leroy Hite: 00:46:25

they're not paying for wood.

Leroy Hite: 00:46:26

They're paying for an experience and people will pay a premium for experiences.

Tim Winders: 00:46:33

They're paying for that experience we talked

Tim Winders: 00:46:34

about at the beginning,

Leroy Hite: 00:46:37

Yes,

Tim Winders: 00:46:38

that peace, that relaxation and things like that.

Leroy Hite: 00:46:42

and really at the end of the day, like having a fire,

Leroy Hite: 00:46:45

the whole reason you do it is enjoy it to have an experience.

Leroy Hite: 00:46:51

So, why go somewhere else and spend half or even a fourth of the money?

Leroy Hite: 00:46:58

To have a terrible experience where you can't get it started.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:02

Or you have it stored in your home and bugs are crawling out of it.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:05

Or it smokes and everybody smells terrible afterwards.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:09

it's really, ours burns hotter.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:11

You want the heat.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:12

You want it to burn longer.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:14

you want the ambiance.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:15

You want the lively flame.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:17

You want the amazing aroma.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:19

and, you want, yeah, less smoke.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:22

You want it to start easy.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:23

There's, it's miserable to try and start bad firewood.

Leroy Hite: 00:47:28

You're sitting there playing with it for an hour and then you just have to

Leroy Hite: 00:47:31

continually go and attend it when you should be sitting back and enjoying it.

Tim Winders: 00:47:36

right.

Tim Winders: 00:47:37

There are some companies, That, that I've interacted with it.

Tim Winders: 00:47:42

Their goal is to be the lowest cost on the market.

Tim Winders: 00:47:48

some companies, they want to scale and address the masses and everything that

Tim Winders: 00:47:55

I'm hearing from you is I'll throw out some words and then you could just respond

Tim Winders: 00:48:01

in whatever way you want to quality.

Tim Winders: 00:48:03

Not just the experience of the product.

Tim Winders: 00:48:06

Yeah, not just the experience of the product, but as I understand it, it seems

Tim Winders: 00:48:10

like the customer Service experience.

Tim Winders: 00:48:12

I think I see that terry bradshaw is a big fan of you guys and

Tim Winders: 00:48:15

a big customer and all of that Which is cool And so lowest cost Is Not your goal.

Tim Winders: 00:48:22

I'm guessing you're, I'm guessing the product is pricey relative, but, and then

Tim Winders: 00:48:26

I also want to throw in here competition.

Tim Winders: 00:48:29

I

Tim Winders: 00:48:29

think I've heard you saying, correct me if I'm wrong, that you

Tim Winders: 00:48:31

really don't have competition.

Tim Winders: 00:48:34

is that correct?

Tim Winders: 00:48:35

So whatever

Tim Winders: 00:48:35

you want to address with all those words.

Leroy Hite: 00:48:37

Yeah.

Leroy Hite: 00:48:38

On, quality, what I always say is any product we release, I

Leroy Hite: 00:48:42

want it to be the best in class.

Leroy Hite: 00:48:45

In quality and I break up quality into aesthetic and functional and

Leroy Hite: 00:48:53

I want us to be the best in both.

Leroy Hite: 00:48:55

So when it comes to the firewood, our firewood is beautiful.

Leroy Hite: 00:48:59

You can use it to decorate.

Leroy Hite: 00:49:01

And the racks of firewood that are on our website, every single rack that

Leroy Hite: 00:49:06

leaves our facility looks that good.

Leroy Hite: 00:49:09

we have an internal mantra of, pretend that every rack or every

Leroy Hite: 00:49:15

product that's leaving our facility is going to Terry Bradshaw or that

Leroy Hite: 00:49:19

it's going to a photo video shoot.

Leroy Hite: 00:49:22

And when Terry Bradshaw places an order, there's no internal memo that

Leroy Hite: 00:49:28

says this is going to Terry Bradshaw.

Leroy Hite: 00:49:29

It better look perfect because that's that's the internal.

Leroy Hite: 00:49:33

Everybody knows that for everything that leaves.

Leroy Hite: 00:49:36

Um, so that's the quality piece.

Leroy Hite: 00:49:40

competition.

Leroy Hite: 00:49:41

Um, I kinda as a visual, I say when we act like this is the floor,

Leroy Hite: 00:49:49

this is where the competition was.

Leroy Hite: 00:49:51

Or when I entered the market, I entered the market probably about

Leroy Hite: 00:49:56

right here and I've moved up to here and it's are we a lifestyle business?

Leroy Hite: 00:50:01

So even when you say we're a firewood business kind of thing, and.

Leroy Hite: 00:50:05

We've, I've had a lot of, maybe as many as 50 like imitators

Leroy Hite: 00:50:13

enter the market right here.

Leroy Hite: 00:50:16

if you asked me if I was honest and, what I wish that they weren't there,

Leroy Hite: 00:50:22

the answer would be yes, but it's more of just competing for Google search

Leroy Hite: 00:50:27

terms, um, and things like that.

Leroy Hite: 00:50:30

But.

Leroy Hite: 00:50:31

they're not as good as, they're worse than we've ever been.

Leroy Hite: 00:50:35

And really, they're like an off brand, and by that brand,

Leroy Hite: 00:50:40

slightly stale version of us.

Leroy Hite: 00:50:44

You'll see a lot of logos that have an act in it.

Leroy Hite: 00:50:48

They have similar colors.

Leroy Hite: 00:50:50

Their website just so happens to be, exactly laid out like ours.

Leroy Hite: 00:50:55

And when we update our layout, it seems like several other websites update

Leroy Hite: 00:50:59

theirs within about six months after us.

Leroy Hite: 00:51:02

Um, there's a firewood company.

Leroy Hite: 00:51:05

I know of that.

Leroy Hite: 00:51:06

Their tagline is we edge off the competition.

Leroy Hite: 00:51:10

And then there's another we offer racks of firewood and we're the only firewood.

Leroy Hite: 00:51:15

I own the patent.

Leroy Hite: 00:51:16

Um, and that, a, another one that their tagline is Unwrapped Firewood.

Leroy Hite: 00:51:23

And I'm like, have a little bit of originality, like they, it's

Leroy Hite: 00:51:28

like they're looking at us when they come up with their branding

Leroy Hite: 00:51:31

and their taglines and everything.

Leroy Hite: 00:51:34

and really.

Leroy Hite: 00:51:36

It's a, it's hard to look at it this way, but in reality, it,

Leroy Hite: 00:51:39

whether they definitely don't mean it this way, but it is a compliment

Leroy Hite: 00:51:43

because it's the whole, imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

Leroy Hite: 00:51:47

Um, and.

Leroy Hite: 00:51:49

I, if they're going to do it, imitating us is the best way because that means

Leroy Hite: 00:51:54

they're always behind us and they don't have the same passion or grit and they

Leroy Hite: 00:52:03

don't have the same quality standards.

Leroy Hite: 00:52:06

They just want to imitate without putting the effort in.

Leroy Hite: 00:52:10

they're not going to be successful.

Leroy Hite: 00:52:11

And once again, we're up here and there's.

Leroy Hite: 00:52:16

40, 50 down here.

Leroy Hite: 00:52:18

They're still Some of the ones down here, but they're right here.

Leroy Hite: 00:52:23

Um, and the other thing is, it's interesting is none of them

Leroy Hite: 00:52:27

imitate us in our full lineup.

Leroy Hite: 00:52:30

you, mentioned that we would talk about the fire pit later.

Leroy Hite: 00:52:32

Not even like that aside, there's some that'll ship some wood, there's some

Leroy Hite: 00:52:38

that'll do cooking wood, and then there's some that'll do a local firewood delivery.

Leroy Hite: 00:52:43

None of them deliver firewood like we do because we own a patent and,

Leroy Hite: 00:52:46

and we have our own custom software and, and we spend too much money

Leroy Hite: 00:52:50

on the trucks and, and our delivery artisans are salaried employees that

Leroy Hite: 00:52:56

get paid well, and they can't do that.

Leroy Hite: 00:52:58

They can't imitate that.

Leroy Hite: 00:53:01

But yeah, that's the competition.

Tim Winders: 00:53:04

just the fact that you call your people delivery artisans

Tim Winders: 00:53:09

should tell people something yeah, our guy with the truck.

Tim Winders: 00:53:15

He'll be there.

Tim Winders: 00:53:16

When's he going to be there next week?

Leroy Hite: 00:53:19

I, I got a lot of funny stories on that.

Leroy Hite: 00:53:21

Mostly from what customers have told us.

Leroy Hite: 00:53:24

Like I've, I had a guy tell me that, That he, went with the quote unquote

Leroy Hite: 00:53:28

competition and the guy forgot to put the brake, on his truck when he

Leroy Hite: 00:53:34

parked in the driveway and it came out of gear and hit his Mercedes

Leroy Hite: 00:53:40

and the guy didn't have insurance.

Leroy Hite: 00:53:42

Um, there's the bug infestation stories.

Leroy Hite: 00:53:46

There's stories that I almost feel bad talking about like pregnant

Leroy Hite: 00:53:50

women delivering firewood where the people feel so bad that they do the.

Leroy Hite: 00:53:54

The delivery and then, but my favorite is one time a firewood, owner company,

Leroy Hite: 00:54:01

and this was many years ago, invited me to come and meet with them and they were

Leroy Hite: 00:54:06

just nonchalantly talking about how.

Leroy Hite: 00:54:10

Their delivery guy was in jail and they're like, the firewood industry.

Leroy Hite: 00:54:14

And I was like, Oh my gosh, none of our delivery artisans

Leroy Hite: 00:54:17

have ever been in jail before.

Leroy Hite: 00:54:21

they're basically sending like a convict in other people's

Leroy Hite: 00:54:24

homes and deliver firewood.

Leroy Hite: 00:54:26

That's a

Leroy Hite: 00:54:27

interesting.

Tim Winders: 00:54:28

appreciate the, the disruption you've done in raising the bar.

Tim Winders: 00:54:33

I had a client years ago, not far from where you're located there that was in the

Tim Winders: 00:54:37

pool maintenance and cleaning business.

Tim Winders: 00:54:41

and there was some similar thoughts.

Tim Winders: 00:54:44

There we I mean there was so many things we had to do to get that business cleaned

Tim Winders: 00:54:48

up with Delivery people that were smoking dope and just all kinds of stuff So I

Tim Winders: 00:54:55

like what you're doing how many what's the size of the organization with people now?

Tim Winders: 00:54:59

Where are you at?

Tim Winders: 00:55:00

Not that people is a great measurement, but I got just a couple questions here

Tim Winders: 00:55:04

I want to ask related to that and then we'll talk about product and be done

Leroy Hite: 00:55:08

So we're at about 30 people now.

Tim Winders: 00:55:11

Excellent.

Tim Winders: 00:55:12

And tell me about your current leadership style, whatever you can

Tim Winders: 00:55:17

tell me about it, because I'm sure it's grown from, zero to now 30.

Tim Winders: 00:55:23

That's a great sweet spot.

Tim Winders: 00:55:24

A lot of the clients I work

Leroy Hite: 00:55:26

I'm just a guy that started a firewood company.

Tim Winders: 00:55:28

Yeah.

Leroy Hite: 00:55:30

Now, yeah, my leadership style, I'm, I have strong standards that

Leroy Hite: 00:55:38

I hold employees to, but I'm definitely a, I'm a hands off leader that will from

Leroy Hite: 00:55:47

time to time check in if that makes sense to make sure everything's good and strong.

Leroy Hite: 00:55:53

Um, so some of it, yeah, that, employees have gotten used to.

Leroy Hite: 00:56:00

Just me being like, coming in and critiquing a random response to a

Leroy Hite: 00:56:04

customer or being like, Oh my gosh, I love that message from so and so talking

Leroy Hite: 00:56:09

about how much they love the product.

Leroy Hite: 00:56:12

like that customer just sent an email, saying that he tried out all the other.

Leroy Hite: 00:56:16

cooking wood suppliers over a six month period, and he's donating 3, 000 worth of

Leroy Hite: 00:56:24

it to a barbecue competition and a bunch of professionals are going to be there.

Leroy Hite: 00:56:28

Did you see that message?

Leroy Hite: 00:56:31

And I'm like the first one that saw it because I just, yeah, exactly.

Leroy Hite: 00:56:34

and so it's either that or That was a pretty good response

Leroy Hite: 00:56:37

to that upset customer.

Leroy Hite: 00:56:38

This is how I would do it slightly differently.

Leroy Hite: 00:56:41

And, but they're used to it.

Leroy Hite: 00:56:42

whereas, if some business leaders did that, their employees would either

Leroy Hite: 00:56:48

get really defensive because they would think you were attacking them,

Leroy Hite: 00:56:51

or they might have a heart attack that they actually care that much.

Leroy Hite: 00:56:54

so it, but I hate micromanaging.

Leroy Hite: 00:56:58

And I've over the past few years actually struggled a little bit and it's been

Leroy Hite: 00:57:02

a learning time for sure that I've always wanted to just hand off things

Leroy Hite: 00:57:08

as soon as they say, I've got it.

Leroy Hite: 00:57:11

But in reality, most people, when they say I've got it, they don't quite got it.

Leroy Hite: 00:57:16

and you need to stay involved.

Leroy Hite: 00:57:18

and give them additional feedback for a little while longer and

Leroy Hite: 00:57:22

make sure they've really got it.

Leroy Hite: 00:57:23

And then you slowly back away.

Leroy Hite: 00:57:26

whereas I want to be like, here, catch this.

Leroy Hite: 00:57:28

I'm going to do this new idea kind of thing.

Tim Winders: 00:57:31

are you starting to see some leaders in a leadership

Tim Winders: 00:57:33

team develop with 30 people?

Tim Winders: 00:57:35

You're probably starting to identify that.

Leroy Hite: 00:57:39

Yes, yeah, we, yeah, and we, yeah, we have a leadership team and, and

Leroy Hite: 00:57:44

it's grown definitely over the past years.

Leroy Hite: 00:57:46

and, and we have our director of operations, to be a great people's

Leroy Hite: 00:57:51

leader, and with me, can I step in?

Leroy Hite: 00:57:57

Thank you.

Leroy Hite: 00:57:58

and coach and lead people.

Leroy Hite: 00:58:01

Yes, but it's not what drives me.

Leroy Hite: 00:58:04

And, I want to be more of I want to come in and give people high fives and

Leroy Hite: 00:58:09

tell them great job and, get people excited and then come in and then

Leroy Hite: 00:58:14

think about which of my 50 ideas in my head I want to prioritize and do next.

Leroy Hite: 00:58:21

How can I reinvent something that's already been reinvented?

Leroy Hite: 00:58:24

I constantly go through the business and I'm like, I know I reinvented

Leroy Hite: 00:58:28

how to do a local delivery.

Leroy Hite: 00:58:30

Are there any other things that I can, and I have ideas how to reinvent it again.

Leroy Hite: 00:58:34

but, should I focus on that or should I focus on this other idea?

Tim Winders: 00:58:39

That's one of the most difficult things that organizations

Tim Winders: 00:58:41

moving from the entrepreneur, the person that's task, get it done to

Tim Winders: 00:58:45

now moving in a strategic type mode.

Tim Winders: 00:58:49

That's, that's primarily the work that I do now and also, and one of the cool

Tim Winders: 00:58:54

new things you came up with, and this is where we're going to transition.

Tim Winders: 00:58:57

We're right up at the end of our time here.

Tim Winders: 00:58:59

I want you to Tell us a little bit about the wood because we didn't talk a lot

Tim Winders: 00:59:04

about what we've talked about the fire, which to me is the most important thing.

Tim Winders: 00:59:06

However, I want to

Tim Winders: 00:59:08

finish up because I, I know you could probably tell us about the

Tim Winders: 00:59:11

breadth of the type wood that you've got, and then I want you to

Tim Winders: 00:59:14

lead into this new, cool thing that I'm looking at on your website right now,

Tim Winders: 00:59:18

which will include links everywhere to this fire pit that is like.

Tim Winders: 00:59:23

some kind of space age deal that looks cool.

Tim Winders: 00:59:26

So tell us about the wood and then the fire pit.

Tim Winders: 00:59:29

And then I've got one more question before we finish up.

Leroy Hite: 00:59:32

on the firewood side, we have premium oak, we have,

Leroy Hite: 00:59:36

artisanal hickory, wild cherry, orchard apple, and redolent on the,

Leroy Hite: 00:59:42

and we have that in premium, really luxury boxes that ship to 48 states.

Leroy Hite: 00:59:51

We have it locally in several cities in the Southeast and what our firewood

Leroy Hite: 00:59:56

racks, our delivery artisans deliver.

Leroy Hite: 00:59:59

And then we have our ultimate package, which are 5 of those racks.

Leroy Hite: 01:00:03

Um, that come and they come with a hand truck so that you can easily

Leroy Hite: 01:00:07

move it around and some other goodies.

Leroy Hite: 01:00:09

and then that's of course what Terry Bradshaw buys are the ultimate packages.

Leroy Hite: 01:00:13

And, in the cooking wood, we have, post oak, we have, hickory, cherry, Apple,

Leroy Hite: 01:00:21

maple, pecan, and then we have sabanaheat.

Leroy Hite: 01:00:26

Sabanaheat, everybody's what is that?

Leroy Hite: 01:00:27

It's a wood that comes from Africa.

Leroy Hite: 01:00:29

it's an invasive species, so it's actually good for, baby

Leroy Hite: 01:00:32

cheetahs and rhinos if you use it.

Leroy Hite: 01:00:35

So just, you can just buy it and burn it just to help the environment.

Leroy Hite: 01:00:39

Um, and, and then we have wood for different size pizza ovens and everything

Leroy Hite: 01:00:44

when it's fresh is cut down and, put into a big oven where it's dried out

Leroy Hite: 01:00:51

and then it's stored inside and then it is literally hand selected and

Leroy Hite: 01:00:56

by that every single person that is either stacking the racks or the boxes.

Leroy Hite: 01:01:01

it's trained to, know the difference between if something is rotten, if it has.

Leroy Hite: 01:01:07

Um, any imperfections, or if it's not quite dry enough,

Leroy Hite: 01:01:11

they're all trained in that.

Leroy Hite: 01:01:12

And our quality control is without a doubt the highest in the world.

Leroy Hite: 01:01:16

and, yeah, so those are the different firewood and cooking wood and

Leroy Hite: 01:01:21

pizza wood species that we have.

Leroy Hite: 01:01:23

Um, and what that does is it's is it comes back to ultimately is it's the product

Leroy Hite: 01:01:29

quality, which goes to the experience.

Leroy Hite: 01:01:31

for listening.

Leroy Hite: 01:01:33

On the fire pit, so, around a lot of fire pits in my time, um, the number

Leroy Hite: 01:01:41

two most common complaint that I always heard was the firewood smokes.

Leroy Hite: 01:01:48

So we fixed that with higher quality firewood.

Leroy Hite: 01:01:52

Um, and they do, they have the, of course, the smokeless

Leroy Hite: 01:01:55

fire pits that also help some.

Leroy Hite: 01:01:57

and, but the number one complaint I always heard is my feet freeze.

Leroy Hite: 01:02:02

You can hold your hands over the fire for your hands to be warm, but

Leroy Hite: 01:02:06

my lower body or my feet freeze.

Leroy Hite: 01:02:08

Or even, my kids put their feet up on the fire pit and

Leroy Hite: 01:02:12

melt the bottom of their soles.

Leroy Hite: 01:02:14

So we.

Leroy Hite: 01:02:15

have start started taking pre orders and are launching the world's

Leroy Hite: 01:02:20

first thermoelectric fire pit.

Leroy Hite: 01:02:22

What that is smokeless fire pits have two layers.

Leroy Hite: 01:02:26

This has a third layer.

Leroy Hite: 01:02:28

And in the third layer, it circulates the air and, it converts some of the heat into

Leroy Hite: 01:02:34

electricity that powers four fans on the bottom of the fire pit, which blows out,

Leroy Hite: 01:02:40

that air that's circulating warm air.

Leroy Hite: 01:02:43

In a 360 degree area around the fire pit, month and a half, two months

Leroy Hite: 01:02:48

ago, we were outside and it was in the mid fifties on my back deck.

Leroy Hite: 01:02:52

And my wife jokingly, you can't do this.

Leroy Hite: 01:02:54

People, said, I'm trying to figure out how we can bring this fire pit inside

Leroy Hite: 01:02:59

because of the ambience, the warmth around the fire pit, basically the

Leroy Hite: 01:03:03

whole fire, the whole deck, which is a pretty good size one warmed up a bit.

Leroy Hite: 01:03:09

but particularly six to eight feet around it.

Leroy Hite: 01:03:11

It's just this envelope bubble of warmth, cause it goes down

Leroy Hite: 01:03:15

first and then heat rises.

Leroy Hite: 01:03:17

So really like your whole area is warm.

Leroy Hite: 01:03:20

Um, so I'm pretty excited about it.

Tim Winders: 01:03:22

Very cool.

Tim Winders: 01:03:23

probably don't need to bring it in the RV either outside.

Tim Winders: 01:03:25

Yes, not inside.

Tim Winders: 01:03:28

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 01:03:29

we don't recommend that.

Tim Winders: 01:03:30

Folks.

Tim Winders: 01:03:31

man, that's awesome.

Tim Winders: 01:03:32

that's like some cool stuff, but, and I'd love to go into that a

Tim Winders: 01:03:35

little bit more, but let's just tell people to check it out.

Tim Winders: 01:03:37

We'll include links below so people can check all

Tim Winders: 01:03:40

that out.

Tim Winders: 01:03:40

The website phenomenal, the experience and all that you stand for.

Tim Winders: 01:03:47

Leroy, it's so beautiful.

Tim Winders: 01:03:50

I love

Tim Winders: 01:03:51

it.

Tim Winders: 01:03:51

I know there's a lot more to the story, but I think I caught the essence of what

Tim Winders: 01:03:57

you and the company are trying to create.

Tim Winders: 01:04:00

and I do want to mention the website, which is go and tell us the website.

Tim Winders: 01:04:04

And I think LinkedIn is the best place for people to find you, right?

Tim Winders: 01:04:07

What's the website

Leroy Hite: 01:04:08

Yeah.

Leroy Hite: 01:04:08

If you want to connect with me, Leroy Height on LinkedIn, on the

Leroy Hite: 01:04:12

website, it is cuttingedgefirewood.

Leroy Hite: 01:04:16

com.

Tim Winders: 01:04:18

Very good.

Tim Winders: 01:04:18

We'll include that down below.

Tim Winders: 01:04:20

Leroy, we're seek, go create.

Tim Winders: 01:04:23

I'll let you pick one of those words just means more to you or

Tim Winders: 01:04:27

resonates or jumps out at you.

Tim Winders: 01:04:29

Seek, go, or create.

Tim Winders: 01:04:30

Which one and why is my last question.

Leroy Hite: 01:04:34

Create, um, even though growing up, nobody thought I was

Leroy Hite: 01:04:38

a creative, as an entrepreneur.

Leroy Hite: 01:04:41

I love creating new ideas, thinking outside the box.

Leroy Hite: 01:04:47

And, And building upon it.

Leroy Hite: 01:04:50

So just building something.

Leroy Hite: 01:04:51

so that's what I really enjoy doing.

Tim Winders: 01:04:54

Awesome.

Tim Winders: 01:04:55

Says the guy who just invented and could be disrupting the fire pit.

Tim Winders: 01:05:00

Industry now is a creator.

Tim Winders: 01:05:03

And I definitely agree with that.

Tim Winders: 01:05:05

Thanks for joining us, Leroy.

Tim Winders: 01:05:06

We're Seek, Go Create.

Tim Winders: 01:05:07

We have new episodes here every Monday.

Tim Winders: 01:05:10

Continue supporting us.

Tim Winders: 01:05:11

You could go to seek, go create.

Tim Winders: 01:05:12

com forward slash support, and you can buy me a coffee or a whiskey,

Tim Winders: 01:05:17

or you can contribute some funds and I could get me some high end

Tim Winders: 01:05:21

firewood and maybe that fire pit we just talked about when it's released.

Tim Winders: 01:05:25

So anyway, you could leave as little as a buck or all the way up.

Tim Winders: 01:05:28

To, whatever you would like and leave comments there.

Tim Winders: 01:05:32

So listen, I appreciate you being here.

Tim Winders: 01:05:34

Check out everything that Leroy talked about.

Tim Winders: 01:05:36

That is a phenomenal business.

Tim Winders: 01:05:38

We'll include some links also to some other episodes where he's gone in deeper

Tim Winders: 01:05:43

detail on the business and things.

Tim Winders: 01:05:45

I just wanted to catch some of the high level things that he's doing.

Tim Winders: 01:05:48

And I think we did a great job of that.

Tim Winders: 01:05:51

Thanks again, until next time, continue being all that you were created to be.