Manufacturers Make Strides
Manufacturers Make Strides is a podcast about people in manufacturing and the paths they’ve taken. Martin speaks with guests from across the manufacturing world about their careers, the challenges along the way, and the strides that keep the industry moving forward. New episodes every other Tuesday
Manufacturers Make Strides
Building a Manufacturing Business That Lasts with Larry Dix II
Manufacturing leadership looks different once responsibility moves beyond the role and into ownership.
In this episode of Manufacturers Make Strides, Martin speaks with Larry Dix II, President at Apex Truss, about what it means to lead a manufacturing business when decisions carry long-term weight. Larry shares perspective shaped by decades of building, running, and owning manufacturing operations through changing conditions.
Larry was invited because he has experienced the shift many manufacturing leaders face, from managing functions to being accountable for people, margins, customers, and time. His career reflects how leadership evolves as responsibility deepens and decisions extend further into the future.
In this episode, they discuss: How manufacturing leadership changes with ownership
- What responsibility looks like when payroll and margins sit with you
- Why autonomy and judgement matter on the factory floor
- How experience reshapes leadership over time
- What consistency means in long-running manufacturing businesses
Hosted by Martin Griffiths, Manufacturers Make Strides is a podcast featuring in-depth conversations with manufacturing professionals about their careers and experiences in the industry.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-dix-ii-62b75312/
https://www.apextruss.com/
And that's where I started Apex, and that's when I really learned manufacturing. I thought I knew manufacturing. You don't know manufacturing until you start writing your own checks.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, I'm Martin. Welcome to another episode of the Manufacturers Make Strides podcast. Well, today I'm having a fascinating chat with Larry Dix. He's CEO and founder of Apex Trust Company over in Virginia in the United States. And Larry had a really fascinating journey that I know everyone's going to get a lot of value from, whether they're in business, whether they're in the manufacturing industry. Larry really told us about his whole journey from starting off by finding a partner investor when he was in his 20s, through to some difficult moments in the business, in some of the industry crashes, particularly in the 2008 recession, through to how he got through that today, and to some of the employees and the team that he's brought with him for over 25 years, how he's built a business based on trust. So really interesting, some great lessons here. Let's jump straight into the conversation now with Larry. So hey Larry, great to see you here today. How's it going? Really well, Martin. How are you doing? Yeah, really good. Yeah, I'm in the UK, so it's kind of afternoon at the moment. Had a good day so far. Where about you joining from today?
SPEAKER_00:I am in a small town called Woodford, Virginia, which is outside of uh Washington, DC, about 50 miles south of the big city. Nice.
SPEAKER_01:And it's Thanksgiving tomorrow, right? Do you have any have any plans?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, we have family coming over tomorrow. You know, we're the uh old people, so we're it's all of our kids and and grandkids and stuff like that, and we'll come over. We're not doing turkey this year, and we're actually doing uh ham, which my wife prefers anyway. And I don't have to I don't have to do anything with it, so it's great. I just get to sit around and eat.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well that's yeah, that's a privilege when you're uh when the elder of the family, you get to uh kick back and you enjoy enjoy it. Yes. Hopefully I'll get a nap in maybe. I don't know if you get much napping. I feel like you uh you get a lot done, Larry. I think we're gonna get into a lot of that today. I want to jump in though. So I want to cover your story today. I'm sure we'll get into lots of that. I'd like to just ask you just a question, maybe jump into the end of your opinions now on where you're at today. Do you think or did you think that someone with no expertise could ever end up running a successful factory in a successful business?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm a forever optimist, so I would say yes, but it would be a very steep learning curve. You know, I've I've learned through manufacturing there's lots of pitfalls because you've obviously got a lot of moving parts, but it does have its advantages because you know you're in a controlled environment. So you've got four walls, you can kind of see a lot of the stuff that goes on. So from that standpoint, it's it does have its advantages, but you there's just so many holes and opportunities to lose money. So I would say no, it'd be very difficult to do it. Not saying it can't be done, but it would be a it would be a challenge, and you'd pay a lot of a lot of dumb taxes, I like to call it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the tough roads. Okay. So I'd yeah, I'd like to kind of cover your story and figure out where you've come from. So where did your work in life begin?
SPEAKER_00:So I started when I was 11 years old. I started working in the fields of South Texas in the heat. And, you know, my dad was a very hard worker. I actually got to watch my father graduate from college when I was 12 years old. So he's very determined, very disciplined man, and you know, was very, you know, prone for, you know, wanted an education from where he came from. And that was just not in my wheelhouse. I was a very poor student for the most part, barely graduated high school, but I was always a really good worker. And um, I went to work for a framing contractor because I told my dad I wasn't going to college. He was very disappointed at the time. And I did that, and the guy was bouncing all my checks, and I didn't know because he was spending most of it on drugs, apparently. So my dad told me I had to get a real job. And I went to work for a very small family-owned lumber yard, which ended up becoming big. And that's where I got my start. I was a yard dog, which was basically a human forklift back, you know, you can imagine 45 years ago. And, you know, I just worked my way up very, very rapidly and they saw something in me. I think because I was, like I said, I was always a really hard worker, very respectful young man. I was, you know, my dad was very, you know, yes, sir, no, sir. You know, if someone told you to do something, you didn't ask why, you just went and did it because you were you're getting paid a wage to do that. And so I became the youngest outside salesman in the history of the company at 21. And then at this point, there's 350 employees, and it's a very big, it was growing into a very large company. And that's kind of where it set off. And I just got into sales, and then there was a thing called the SNL crisis in Texas, which uh happened in 1986 where the banks were basically were insolvent. And they asked me to go out and work in a trust plant manufacturing. And I said, sure, I would do that. And that's where I got into the world of manufacturing. And I just liked it. It was different, you know, it wasn't like just pedaling lumber or doing stuff. You could see things physically being made. You know, a man would put in a day's labor and see a product at the end of that day. And it just, it was always mesmerizing to me. And back then we were doing it very simply, right? So fast forward, I got an opportunity to run a trust plant when I was like 26, 27 years old. A guy took an interest in me, and it just parlayed into that. And then I ended up building a manufacturing facility by the time I was 30. And then I got to come to Virginia, where I am today, 28 years ago, and was going to build a trust plant here for an existing facility. And they sold the darn company three weeks after they hired me. And that's where I was like, well, okay. So I stayed. Obviously, I had a wife and three children, and I didn't like it. We were owned by a big corporate equity, you know, private equity group, hedge funds, and they were telling us what the numbers were gonna be. And I just I was miserable. I I'm not a real big corporate guy, you know, I'm not that kind of guy. And so this guy had a trust plant for sale that he had closed down and in Virginia, and he was willing to owner finance it. So it was like I say, it was a match made in heaven. I had no money, and he wanted to owner finance, so he was the bank, and that's where I started Apex, and that's when I really learned manufacturing. I thought I knew manufacturing. You don't know manufacturing until you start writing your own checks. And that's where I am today. Now, you know, 26 years later, I still have Apex and I build trusses. And now I do a lot of other things as well. But you know, that was where I got started. That's a quick synopsis of, you know, basically 40 years.
SPEAKER_01:You crumbed a lot in the that's that's brilliant. And you know, it seems a lot happens quickly for you. So what I was kind of interested about, well, two things. I just want to say when I got into manufacturing, the real interest for me was you could put your efforts into something and you see something fun being created, something impressive on the back end of that. That is definitely big attraction. On those times in throughout your career, could be early days, could be now. There must have been a lot of times when you took on or you were given or you took on responsibility, maybe more than you felt completely ready for. How can you think back to any moments like that and how you handled that extra responsibility quickly?
SPEAKER_00:The first one that I can remember very quickly was when I started Apex. I borrowed$250,000 from an investor. And because I only needed$125,000, I thought I had enough money. Well, six months in, I was broke. I had no money, no line of credit, and I didn't even know I was gonna make payroll. And that was where you suddenly realized that, as they say, the tire meets the road, you know, the tread meets the road. And I was like, oh my gosh. And I would realize at that moment I was in over my head. But being a fighter and a willing to work, I like, I had to figure something out. So I got my wife at that time of you know, about 25 years, said, Hey, you're coming to work for Apex. And she goes, Why is that? I said, Because I don't, I can't do payroll. I need to save$300 a week for having paychecks do it. And we started doing payroll, and I started going and picking checks up and talking to people and and called my vendors and said I couldn't, and this was something that I can tell everybody from a business standpoint. I didn't know how I was going to pay my suppliers. So what I did was, and and I picked up the phone and I called every one of them and said, Look, here's where I'm at. And it was shocking that every one of them were willing to work with me. And one of them I'm still with today, 26 years later, he said I was the first guy that ever called him and told him he would he that I couldn't pay him. And he just was amazed that I was willing to do that. And just being honest and telling people what you got and what you're trying to do. Because what people do is a lot of times, and I've done this too, is we just don't take the call, right? Well, what does that do to you and me as business guys? Well, if you're not calling me, I'm assuming the worst, right? Like I'm assuming you're not gonna pay me. But when you pick up the phone and say, look, I've got business, I'm in a cash crunch, I've got receivables, I've got inventories, you know, I've got this stuff I'm and you start talking to people like, okay, well, I can work with that. Because a lot of times you're talking with a business owner who has, by the way, already been through what you're going through now. And that's that was one of those moments. I was, I mean, I was in over my head, and I was, I was honestly, you know, very scared, but I didn't have a choice. Like I owed a guy 250 grand. This guy had a lease with, you know, this guy, you know, was was owner financing the equipment, you know, and and I and I'd only been at it six months. That's not very good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a tough spot, but that's yeah, that's amazing that you did that, you know, that you picked up the phone and you know made those kind of commitments. What happened after that then?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, I learned that, you know, again, people would work with me and I just drove at that point. I just kept driving more. And I and I had a man, another great story that owned a manufacturing company and they had recently sold. And I went down there and I was trying to get them to sub-workout so I could do work for them because they were another manufacturer. So I'd be like overflow. And he goes, Larry, well, how many sales guys do you have? And I'm like, Well, I don't have any. I'm doing everything. You know, I'm the president, the buyer, the design manager, sales manager, you know, I'm doing it all. And he goes, You need to hire salespeople, you'll never make it. And I was like, Oh, you know, and I never really had thought that far. I knew I would, but I went out and hired people immediately after that and started hiring salespeople. And then that instead of just being Larry, I had two other salespeople that were out calling on stuff so I could start getting more bids. Well, if you don't bid it, you don't get it, right? And so we started bidding more, and then I just slowly but surely grew the business and went from doing, you know, 800,000 my first, you know, nine months of business to 1.9 million the next year. And, you know, and it was growing, and it was hard. But I got, and then I met with banks and I got a line of credit, and I started really running it as a business, and then it was just head down until, of course, you know, the 2008 crisis hit, and you know, that was the that was a freight train because that's when I was broke. How did you get through that, Ben? Same principle, you know. I I I so I get into so I have a bankruptcy story. I I didn't go bankrupt. So I'm I'm meeting with a bankrupt attorney. It's March of 2010, it's in the middle of the housing crisis. I already had a guy go bankrupt on me, you know, pop me for a bunch of money. And I'm meeting with a bankrupt attorney, and he's like, so I have 80, I remember the number. It was 80, I think it was exactly$88,000 in true assets, and had$2.2 million in debt. So from a liquidity standpoint, you are not only bankrupt, you are very bankrupt. And he said, Larry, you're bankrupt. We go through the numbers. He said, you know, I can make all this go away in 90 days, you'll never stop manufacturing. You'll just, you know, America does have an interesting bankruptcy laws. And he said, All I need you to do, he slides paper cards, he goes, All I need to do is sign this document and write me a check for$10,000 and make it all go away. So I looked at him, I said, So what you're telling me is I can't go bankrupt. And he looks, he slides a paper again to me. We're in a conference room, right? He goes, No, Larry, he starts tapping, he's like, You're bankrupt. You you have no money. I'm like, but you don't understand what you just said. I don't have any money. I can't pay you$10,000. And he just leaned back in his chair and he put his arms across and he goes, Well, I guess that's going to be a problem then. You know, so I'm like, oh my gosh. So I leave there, tucked in, met with another guy. He's like, Yeah, you're done. And I honestly, I spent about three weeks, probably drinking more than I should have back then, and had a what we call, I call a pity party, feeling sorry for myself. And honestly, one day I was laying in bed and I'm getting up and I swear God spoke to me, goes, Larry, you're gonna you're gonna make this. You just gotta, you gotta get through this. And so I went down and told Cheryl, my wife, and I said, Look, we're not gonna, we're gonna double down. I said, if you go bankrupt for 2 million or 10 million, you're still bankrupt. So I said, we're just gonna do what we have to do and we're gonna figure this out. And I said, and if we don't make it, then and I use this announcement, and I said this, and I don't know where, I said, we will look like the space shuttle going across West Texas, meaning flight entry into the atmosphere on fire. But I knew, and you know, I can bore you your listeners with story after story. I mean, and I and I I just I borrowed 50 grand from my dad. I got a vending business and I filled vending machines for three years at night while I, you know, ran a business. And I'm the CEO and founder of a, you know, big company, and I'm filling 65 cent bags of chips and dollar candy bars for three years while I made my house payments and kept my kids in private school. And and I did that for three years. And it was brutal. I mean, it was it was hard because I felt like such a failure because, you know, here I am, a founder of a company, and it was a it was a good little company. And uh, here I am filling vending machines and kids are making fun of you. And, you know, I was in schools and they were trying to take, you know, snacks from me. And, you know, you'd have a guy rip your head off for a expired bag of 65 cent chips, and you'd take that same bag of chips, throw it on the counter, and say it was free, and they'd eat it. But you know, if you're if they but it's just things like that, and I mean it was just but you have to be, you know, and I was just been given this ability to have incredible determination. And I just I I just failure was not an option because if I didn't make it, I would have had to have left the area and would have gone somewhere else and got a job. And nothing against being a job, but I just that wasn't the way I was wired.
SPEAKER_01:That's interesting. Yeah, a couple of things. So, you know, thank you for for sharing that. That sounds like a really tough time. It's amazing the the persistence that you had to keep it going there. Well, you mentioned before that you're an eternal optimist. I would just be interested in like looking through that lens. How do you think that influenced your persistence or influenced you during that time? I guess there's pros and cons to it, isn't there? Do you think uh being an eternal optimist means you maybe don't have as much insight into, or maybe you weren't as on like the potential downsides of doing things? What do you think the pros and cons are to that?
SPEAKER_00:Youthfulness helped me with the part of not seeing the downsides. I look back now and I wrote my book, Born or Made, and I was we were in a recession when I started my business. But I was so determined. Like I just, you know, you're 33, 34 years old, you know, you you the Superman I tell everybody write the S, the Superman S on your chest, that thing's still bright. You get to be my age, it starts fading quite a bit. But the optimism was just like I would it was, and I still have this is that I'll have a very bad day. But I wake up the next morning and I always just think today's a new day. And so that's really more my optimism is like, look, if you don't believe in yourself, nobody else will. I tell people this all the time. There's a very fine line between confidence and arrogance. You need to be confident, but you don't want to be arrogant. It's like you want to be content, but you don't want to be complacent. And so these are all things that I wrestle with. Look, I'm not any different than you. I mean, this thing between our ears is a is a monster. And it can create a lot of self-doubt and a lot of things, but it also can be your greatest asset. It's like you just got to get up and go, I can do this. I can do this. And two hours later, you may think that you can't run a, you know, a lemonade stand. But two hours later you think you may be able to run a Fortune 500 company. That's just the battle we all fight. So I'm not unique. I guess it's just that I just don't have a lot of quit in me. You know, I'm I mean, I just don't quit. And I tell people all the time, like, look, if the things get bad, I always believe in my heart that I'm gonna be okay because I know I'm gonna be willing to outwork every person out there. And I and I will. I get up at four o'clock every single morning and I work out and I'm very disciplined, but I apply that to every bit of my business and and everything I do. And so that's the optimism. But I mean, look, some of us are night people, some of us are morning people, right? I'm not, I'm, I mean, I'm asleep by nine o'clock, nine thirty, you know. But I think we can all be somewhat optimistic because I think you just gotta look for the, you know, the light that's there. There's always some glimmer of hope. Now, look, there's times that you know we do have to throw in the towel, but I mean, it's it's gonna have to, I'm gonna be pretty beat up before I do that. And I think that in and I learned this in COVID. This is an interesting thing, and I I've really never heard anybody say this is that if you can stay in business long enough, an economy is going to benefit you greatly. And COVID was one for me. And this was this has happened several times. But if you're the guy standing, there's gonna be some benefit. And then that's what you're trying, you're trying to think about it like in 2008, 2010, my accountant tells me, he goes, Larry, he goes, I don't know how you're gonna make this. He goes, but if you can survive this and outlast, because there were there were a thousand manufacturing companies in my industry that we think just disappeared. A thousand. So that's a thousand competitors. When I came to, when I started in Freddy's proof, there were one, two, three, there were four trust plants. Today, you know how many there are? One. Because I outlasted people. I stuck it out. I tall people, I said, I can't do this, I can pay you here. I mean, I can remember ordering trust plates and they'd be like, Larry, you just put in a ten thousand dollar order, what can you pay? And like, I'll pay you five grand. Okay, I'll release the order. And I'd send them a check for five grand. But you know, long answer, but yeah, I think optimism is still a I think most entrepreneurs are optimistic because you have to kind of you have to believe in yourself more than you don't, right? I mean, because we all struggle.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, yeah, to get up and kind of have the vision and go for it every day. Yeah. So I'd like to dig into what you said more about manufacturing plants there and get into that side of it. So so you mentioned in that first kind of question that manufacturing is a tough road for creating a business, but you just you mentioned there that if you could be the one, you know, with the business suit still running that many years later, there's there's some benefits for that. So, yeah, so let's talk about that a little bit. What are some of the benefits to taking the tougher road with the manufacturing business?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you learn. I mean, like I when I start, I mean, to me, when I think of tough road, I think of like starting at the bottom. Like the the guys that I went to work for, that I was working for, the company, they made me go out and run the saw. They made me catch, they made me build trusses, they made me learn how to design trusses. Back then was very different. We didn't we didn't even have computers. You had to hand draw everything and stuff like that. That's the tough road. But anybody who wanted to do that, that's the first thing I would tell them like, you need to understand how the truck gets loaded? Like when I was working for other main. Manufacturers, I was loading trucks. You know, I would go out and I would say, can I load this truck? And I would try that. Two things happen. One, you build incredible loyalty by your employees because they say you're the guy in charge, but you're still willing to do their job. And then you understand how it works. Like you suddenly see a job come through and you're like, well, what are we doing here? And they'd be like, What do you mean? I'm like, well, this truss is too big. We can, you know, we can only run 11 foot 11 down the road. You've got a 12 foot two. You know, what are we doing? Oh, I missed that. You know, things like that. Those are the things that you don't learn sitting in an office looking at PLs. You know, you got to get into the bottom of the and and understand like how every, every piece of equipment worked. You know, I when I was running my first truss plant, I would literally, when things would break, I would stay after work with the mechanics and help them fix machines and get dirty and try to, because I had an incredible experience. We had this machine, it built floor trusses, and it's, and it was always, it was very noisy. It was real loud. Never thought anything about it. It had been that way since I got there. Well, you know what it was? About a year in, the thing breaks. No one had ever put oil in the gearbox. So what I was hearing was the gears grinding against it. Well, so when we pull it off, it's basically smooth. Well, let me tell you what, when they fired that thing up, and we spent we were there all night. We had to have machinists do this stuff, and I had to offer them, you know, I was like, I'll give you a case of beer, and you know, I need this done. And it was, you know, it's several thousand dollars. And machinists don't do that, but they did because I was like, I really need this. They fire that machine up, it starts going down the conveyor system, and it's like, and I'm like, what the heck? You know, there it was, you know, things like that. You don't learn that sitting in an office. When I walk into a piece, when I walk into that manufacturing set, I can hear those saw machines, these you know, 10 and 25 horsepower motors. If they have a weird tone, like when they're perfect, they're just they hum. But if you start hearing a wong, wong, wong, wong, wong, or any kind of off-cycle, you're like, hey, we got a problem here. Brushes are going bad. Do we have a bearing going out? Well, you don't want to find out when the bearing goes out, when the machine stops. So those are the things that, you know, it is hard, but I encourage everybody to understand that the best way to be a manufacturer is to understand the business better than anybody else.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because I guess if you can't get into that position where you understand it better and you've outlested your competitors, you end up in a good situation, I guess.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, and you're willing to do, yeah. And and a lot of guys who like all the manufacturers around me now, they're all corporations. They've all been bought out. There's only a couple of independents within a hundred miles of us now. You know, and those guys that are running those trust plants, it's nothing against them, but they don't have the same skin in the game. You know, they just their payroll, you know, shows up in FedEx and everybody gets ACH. I have to understand how much money I have to transfer every Thursday. You just look at things a lot different because you're the one signing off on the checks.
SPEAKER_01:So if you're enjoying this episode, please give us a follow on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That would help us to keep bringing authentic manufacturing conversations with the people who are shaping our industry. Thank you. What to switch gears slightly? We have a section called Myths and Truths. So I'm gonna throw some questions out. You can tell me if you think it's a myth or a truth. You can tell me what your thoughts are about it if you want. Only certain backgrounds are a good fit for manufacturing roles.
SPEAKER_00:I think there's yeah, truth. Yeah, I think that because I think you your brain has to be wired a certain way. You almost have to be like I'm a great sales guy, and I'm not saying that in an arrogant way. I'm just I'm a good sales guy. That's what I do for a that's where I, you know, really blossom very early on. But I also have this analytical brain that can process things and look at things because manufacturing is very redundant over and over again. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You've got to have that process, analytical mind frame. Yeah, sure, sure. Most learning actually happens once you're doing the work.
SPEAKER_00:Truth without a doubt. Like you need to understand how it works. You know, the best lessons you learn is when you repair a gear for two years or a year, and then when you hear it fixed and it's quiet, that's how you learn. I mean, that's the stuff the the on-the-job training that yes. So that beats a textbook every time you think. For me, I mean, I would want to read the textbook, but then I want to go apply it. It's like listening to a good, a good, you know, I'm a love of sales guy, right? Zig Ziggler is a guy in America, America Salesman. He could sell anything, but he, you know, he taught you those type of things. You would read, you would listen to his tapes, but it didn't work until you applied it in real world because it doesn't always work in every situation. So, yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and figure out what works for you and your your situation. Yeah, sure. You need big bursts of motivation to make progress.
SPEAKER_00:No, you don't need big bursts, you just need motivation in general. Sometimes the smallest things can light the biggest fires. I mean, it's sometimes it's the littlest. I mean, there are things that you work, you know, the big things are great. You're like, aha, but it's the little stuff like I can squeeze a penny out of that. You know, that that that two cents or I got a half a step less. That to me is really like that's the cool stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's that consistency of sure of like what you said before, the getting up every day and starting again.
SPEAKER_00:Every day. And and and don't look, you know, just when you think you have it figured out, that's when you're gonna get punched in the face. So don't don't go in and think, oh, I've got this wired, because things are changing, and you know we can, you know, go down these rabbit holes. I mean, AI, technology, like when I started literally 40 years ago, we were sharing, or it was 45 years ago, we were sharing data through a server in some place in Missouri, and we could design one job in a day. We can design multiple jobs in a day with computers, and you know, I thought we'd still, you know, when I got into it, we were hand drawing all the layouts. I build my first manufacturing trust plan and I put drafting tables in, like, well, I don't think we're gonna need those. I'm like, nobody's gonna use CAD, right? Computer automated drafting. Guess what? Nobody knows how to draw anything anymore. Now everything's CAD.
SPEAKER_01:Be prepared for change, I suppose, is all you can do. Yes, you gotta be prepared for change.
SPEAKER_00:Tough seasons shape better leaders. True. You you have to have the tough. You do not appreciate the wins. And I and I talk about this in a lot of my keynote speeches. Like what happens to everybody is they see you at the peak, but 90% of the time you're going into the challenges or coming out of challenges, and that's what makes you appreciate. Look, when I draw when I do this, one thing everybody notices the peak is very narrow. You're only there for a very, very short period of time. So, yes, 100%. I mean, that's what makes or breaks you. And sometimes it's gonna break you, and sometimes it's gonna make you. But the breaks will make you into a better person because you'll see it coming.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, last one. Thank you for being sponsored with me so far. You have to wait until you feel ready before you step up.
SPEAKER_00:No. If I would have done that, I still would not be in business. It's like having kids, right? It's the same scenario. If you wait till you can afford them, you'll never but you'll never have kids. I mean, this stuff is hard. If you wait till you're prepared, you're you're never gonna get anything done. Zero. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, I kind of guessed where that question was gonna be going. It's shocking for me, right?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Great. So yeah, I'd just like to talk about, find out a little bit more about what you're working on now, what the future looks like for you. So your book, Born and Maids, it looks more like on the totter side of growth from that book. What are like the number one things that you hope readers take from that?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I want people to understand that it's not easy, right? Not everybody's on Instagram flying around in private jets and living on caviar and and all this kind of stuff. And it's hard. And there's a reason why 80% of businesses fell in the first five years. And I just want people to understand it, but I also want to give them the hope, like I talk about, is like, hey, if I can do it, I always like to say anybody can do it, right? I mean, I because of if you look at my, you know, I'm not highly educated, you know, but I'm very educated because I never stop learning. And I want, and I talk about in the book, is like, look, you have an incredible advantage now. I mean, think about where you and I are at today. We have these phones that are basically computers now, right? I mean, we can do anything. And so I just want people to understand that. I want to see the real stories of how a guy like me that went out and worked his butt off and made it. But the other thing I talk about is I'm still never comfortable. They can raise interest rates to 10%, and you and I can be in trouble. I mean, there's, you know, we can have a war in in Ukraine, it could cause problems here. Well, it could next year it could be in Canada. Don't get complacent on that kind of stuff. And you, you know, if you don't think it can happen to you, you're you're gonna be sadly mistaken. And I just want people to really understand the, you know, because all you talk ever all we ever, you and I ever hear about is Elon Musk, who's, you know, one of the, I think, you know, our Einstein of the of our era. But I mean, you see all these guys and gates and how successful they are, but 90% of the you know, the global population works for guys like me and you, not the guys on Forbes magazine. I mean, we have real problems. They have real problems too. They just got billions of dollars. I'm assuming it makes it better. I don't know, but you know, maybe it does, but I mean, they got problems too. I mean, they, you know, like I tell people all the time, I mean, their days, they probably don't like their kids either, you know, just like you and I do some days. There's some days and your kids don't like you, you know. I mean, it's just what it is, and and that's the reality of it all. And I think social media has done us a lot of disservice because I tell people all the time, like, when I was, you know, a young man, I just wanted to be a business guy, right? I just want to own a business. Well, now everybody's like, oh, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm like, well, what does that mean? We think it's all cool and everything. It's not. You think it's more about status than it's not. Because when you're the CEO, and you know, I don't, I'm not really a CEO. I like to kind of call it a founder because it's not like it's a big company or anything like that. I mean, you're the face and your company. And what people don't understand is like, look, if you were a yeller and a screamer and dishonest in your company, people are going to be the same as you. You will develop that skill set through your entire organization. My organization's is our mission statement is do what's right. I trademark that. Like I own that trademark because we are setting a standard. I have, you know, I've retired three employees in the last two years that have been with me for 25 years. That's what I'm talking about. Not flying around in private jets, which I don't, you know, that it's just most of us are just out here, you know, helping, like for me, I have, you know, 45 employees. Well, if you multiply that times four, do quick math, you know, you're talking almost 200 people. Well, I take that responsibility personally. If I, if you lose your job working for me, well, that affects your wife, your children, you know, everything right. And I take that very that burden personally. And but my employees also know that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So do you think there's a lot of opportunities out there, you know, in businesses, areas that aren't as maybe as glamorous, you know, maybe aren't as focused on on social media as much. But there's you think there's still a lot of opportunity out there?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think it's changing. You know, I I tell people all the time, like when I started Apex, I borrowed 250 grand from a guy, went into debt for, you know, arguably a million and a half with the leases, but it was probably about a I was probably in debt for about 750 grand. Well, that same business today, you can't start it for less than$10 million. I mean, it's just the barrier of entry has gotten great. So it's there's a fine line. To answer your question, yeah, I think there's opportunities. I mean, I I've looked at this guy that's doing this fuel business down in the Carolinas, and he was telling me about it, and I was just blown away. So you got to find the niches, right? You got to find the things because manufacturing, what I do is trusses. Most people think I'm a banker. They're like, you're you own a trust? I'm like, no, trusses. And I have to kind of, you know, because it's not sexy, but every house in Virginia, for the most part, in Maryland, have trusses on them. Most people don't know what they are. So I look at things that are not sexy, that are kind of off the beaten path that someone maybe just doesn't pay attention to that can be very successful businesses. And think about this. I'm 62. My I'm the last year of the baby boomers. Me and Cheryl, I think, may actually be. I was born in 63. Well, I talk to these guys all the time. There are thousands of businesses in America that are for sale today, right now, because they're guys like me and they have no one to sell them to. So people should look at opportunities like that. I think they're calling it the Silver Age, or there's some, there's some name they're calling it acronym, they're calling it, because there's all these people that own these great little businesses. Now, are you gonna make$5 million a year? No. But you might make a half a million. You might make$250 and control, you know, somewhat of your own destiny or something like that. Those are great opportunities. So to answer the other side is yeah, I think there's opportunities. I think there's gonna be a lot of businesses in them in the U.S. that are gonna be for sale and that are for sale and just can't find buyers. And they'll own or finance it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a good, that's it. That's a good tool. So go back to your book slightly, you've built your own framework over the years. What made you think about that and put your ideas into that kind of framework?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I didn't realize I had the framework until I wrote the book, honestly, because I've just been in the day-to-day fight for 20, 23 years at the time. My new book is, you know, Built Not Born, and just trying to talk about how we were built in this, you know, in God's image is what I talk about. But, you know, the seven steps that got me unstuck. And and the one I really talk about now is, you know, make decisions. Even indecision is still not a decision. Okay. You've got to have discipline. Like I talk about that a lot because I think discipline creates opportunity. You've got to have determination, right? And then you've got to have delivery. And so you've got to have something you're delivering bigger and greater than you, and have something that gives you that ambition to follow through on the other three, because you can't have delivery without the other three. And so I talk a lot about that. And but again, I didn't, I didn't really realize because what happened was my mom died. And I started writing this book, and I'm like, you know, my dad, he's, you know, like most men, he's he's working, he didn't pay attention halftime what I was doing. My mom did. And I started writing this book, and that's when I figured out that the four D's and the seven shifts and stuff like that is that these are things I had, I just never, I just took them for granted. And I think most people are like that, is you're just you're fighting every day. I mean, you're trying to sell the next deal, you're trying to make sure you have enough material, or you know, you lose a key employee and you don't have time to think about it. But most of us, I think, already have most of those skill sets. Just some are some are easier for people than others.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. So you also mentioned that you're kind of constantly growing and constantly learning. So what are you learning at the moment and what's kind of an area of growth for you, would you say, at the moment?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, technology is obviously an easy one to throw out there. I mean, I'm playing a lot with AI now and really letting my mind go through that because you know, I think everybody's listening about listening to it, but I don't think people are really paying attention to it. Is that how much it is going to change things? Robotics is just blows me away. I interviewed a guy the other day about, you know, these humanoid robotics and stuff. And then I was reading some stuff this week in, you know, in China, how they're starting to do these in these factories. Um, I really do that. And then constantly, like I've got this one book. It's interesting. I was reading, I've been reading, it's called the The War on Talent. And this guy, or for talent, and he talks about the way we need to think about things differently, because, you know, the way you grew up is very different than the way I grew up, and and we're probably only 20 years separation. Well, then, you know, we look at our children and and the way they have technology. Well, it's the same thing that you're gonna say about your kids that I said about my kids or the next. Well, they'll never, you know, that we're run, you know, this generation. Well, guess what? Our parents said the same thing about us. The bottom line is we're gonna be, you know, you're gonna be running this place, or your children or my children are gonna be running this place. You better figure out how to operate within their systems because they're the ones taking over. And so I'm constantly looking at stuff like that, the the cost benefit. And that's what this guy talks about. Like he saw, he talks about unlimited PTO. Well, when you hear that, you think, that's crazy. But when you read the book, he's like, well, people don't take advantage of it, actually. People just take the time off, but you because you're you're worried first thing you think, well, heck, they'll take six months off. People don't do that. And if they do, those are the ones you get rid of anyway, because they're going to be a problem, most likely. So I'm constantly learning. And the big thing I try to really spend the most time on, and I've yet to figure it out, is just the world's market. Why does interest rates go up? Why do they go down? Why do we run out of money? What really, you know, most people like, oh, the like in America, everybody wants the Fed to cut rates because it affects housing. I'm in housing, right? So it affects mortgage rates. Mortgage rates aren't based on the Fed rate. They're based on the 10-year treasury. Well, nobody pays attention to the Treasury. 99% of the people, 90%, think that it's controlled by the Fed. And it's the same in, I'm assuming it's the same in the UK. It's based on the 10-year treasury of what a mortgage rate's going to be. And so I'm constantly, I'm, there's nothing I'm not willing to learn about. I raised beef cattle. I didn't even have a cow five years ago. You know, I'm raising cattle because I'm, but, but it creates me, it makes me think. It makes me understand things. It's a, it's a form of manufacturing. It's just involving cows. It's not exactly, you know, and real estate. And I'm just, I'm looking for every opportunity like data centers. Well, guess what? Data centers have to move dirt. Well, they need a place to put dirt. Well, I have 186-acre farm. Do you think they might want to be willing to put the dirt on my farm? So I look at that. I look at opportunity. May never happen. You know, so constantly be looking at the next possible idea and just keep doing it. Because like 3D printers, I've got a 3D printer. Well, you know what? They've been doing 3D printing since 1989. But guess what? Most of us don't even know that. I there's a guy in Stafford County, two counties up for me. I go into this place and he's literally been in business since 1989. But yet you and I just started talking about it within the last, what, 10 years?
SPEAKER_01:So you've got a lot of ideas. You're brimming with ideas. How do you choose what to focus on?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I've gotten a lot better at it now. I used to be focusing on about 50 things. And now what I do is I keep myself only on five. That's it. Five things. And I focus on five. I if there's if something comes in and I like it, well, that means I got to throw one out and put it in the five. Because what I'm trying to do is build five streams of income. I have three very good ones, my book and stuff like that. Kino speaking is my fourth one. And I've got a fifth and sixth one. I haven't decided which one the fifth one's going to be yet. And so, you know, if I tell you, I'd have to kill you. So I don't want to have to drive all the way over there and fly all the way over there and get to you. And so that's what I learned because the problem with, and I didn't even realize this until again, is my wife and there's another squirrel. So I'm the guy, like most entrepreneurs. You know, I'm sitting here talking to you, and next thing you know, like I'm looking over here. And then I'm looking over here. And my wife used to get so mad at me. She'd be like, I'm sitting here trying to tell you something. Next thing you know, you're like, hey, did you see that house over there? Can you believe it? And I'm like, and then one day, it's literally within the last five years. She was very frustrated with me that day. And I said, Cheryl, I said, you need to understand something. I said, I don't like being this way either, necessarily. This is just Just who I am. And it was like an aha moment. Like it frustrates me. Like I have to sit here with you and be very focused. That's why I have a light in front of me. I have a camera. I'm sitting because next thing you know, I'll be like, I wonder what they're doing out. I wonder what that why is that cow making that funny noise? You know? And so I have to, so I've had to learn. I only have five things and that's it. Otherwise, I just get, I'm just freaking crazy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's interesting. I've done something similar. I kind of commit to three projects per quarter and can rotate one or bringing you in once every new quarter because I also need the blocker on being able to just randomly swap in a project here or an opportunity here or there. Yeah, it's good to give it to see it through at least to the end of the next uh you know it's quarter, then see at that point. Does it seem as shiny and fun at that stage?
SPEAKER_00:Do you see that like that? It is funny. You said a funny word, not funny, but that's funny to me because what happens is I get stuck on the shiny object. But sometimes it's amazing how quickly in a week that shiny object can become very dull. But your mind gets like, whoa, that's a great idea. And you're like, oh, that's kind of dumb. You know, yeah, it probably doesn't work. But you do have it's a constant battle for guys like us to keep that stuff out. And that's where the discipline, you know, the determination, you know, making decisions, like you just gotta make a decision to stay within certain guard roles. And my brother and I, you know, we talk every day. And matter of fact, he's over there with you right now. Actually, he's in Paris. But, you know, he and I hold each other accountable. Like, yeah, don't go, let's just don't, nope, don't do that. Don't do that. Because we're all we I bet there's not a week goes by that he and I are talking about some crazy idea. But it keeps your mind moving, you're thinking, you're trying to see things because you never know. You know, you might get the the deal that works.
SPEAKER_01:You may stumble across, yeah. You never know. You never know. That's right. So, what's your focus then for the coming year? You've got your book out there. Yeah, what's your kind of business goals?
SPEAKER_00:So, my manufacturing, I'm really on a growth spurt. Um, I've been kind of complacent and not complacent, but I've just had a very steady business. It's been, you know, it ebbs and flows. I'm now taking control of that. I've hired two additional sales guys. We've added a brand new saw. We're you know doing a little different stuff. I've hired a general manager, which I've never had before, and helping me grow because I figured out that he's just better at certain things than I am, period. And so I'm really that's a big focus, is we're on a very large growth program for the next three years.
SPEAKER_01:I have a quick question there, Ben. So you have you've got a lot of systems, I'm sure, in your heads that you just know how to run. How do you hand that off to a general manager?
SPEAKER_00:It's very hard because what I'm learning is, like you, I mean, I can look like I get production reports every day. I can look at them in within two seconds, like, hey, we got a mistake here. Well, having to teach, so I'm what I'm having to do is is I'm having to teach this, teach him. Like we looked yesterday, I put a budget together for the next three years and I'd, you know, go down every one of those. I have him come in the first Wednesday after of every inventory to do whip adjustments and and do the stuff. So it's I'm literally having to dove through and do everything. It's kind of hand-to-hand combat because he worked in the corporate world and all that stuff just kind of came to him. And for him to really understand manufacturing, like I understand it, I'm having to go over the you know the financials and say, you know, here's where our direct labor is cost of goods. He sees that, but you know, he gets real hyper-focused on this because these corporations do. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not worried about that. I want margins. You got to drive sales, margins, and you got to pay attention to the stuff in between. But there's, you know, margins and sales solve a lot of problems. So to answer your question is I'm literally having to teach him, you know, how to do that. You know, going over, we're readjusting our employee handbooks, which we kind of had, but not really had, because again, small company. You know, if somebody had a question, what do they do? They just called the owner. You know, you got 40 employees, 45 employees. Everybody knows your number if they got a problem. Now I try to follow the proper chain of command, but if there's a question, they just we make a decision. Well, now you got to start having it in writing because you know, you we may be 80 employees in three years. Well, you you know, you got to have a very specific vacation policies. So to answer your question is I'm literally having to just get in hand-to-hand and we are going over every single thing.
SPEAKER_01:So you're putting your general manager in place. Is that gonna free up your time for another opportunity or two on top of those five? Or are you gonna be focusing on something else a bit more?
SPEAKER_00:No, I'm gonna be focused on Apex right now because that's where I've always kind of made all my money. I'm always gonna be focused on, I love real estate, but now my main focus is, you know, like I said, I've got the five. There's a couple of things I'm working on. But what happens is because the economy's kind of not very good here, you end up working harder during the slow times than you do when business is good. It's easy to let things slide when you're making a bunch of money, but boy, when you're not, you gotta pay, you gotta start watching every penny. So right now, my main focus for at least the next three years is 100% the manufacturing. I don't know if you notice, I'm the president of the National Trade Association for the Structural Building Component Association for the next two years, too. So I'm very focused on manufacturing for at least the next 24 months.
SPEAKER_01:I hope that works out really well. I'm sure it will. It's got you've got it, you've got it this far to a great position. Thank you for your time today, Lari. Just kind of final thoughts. What's one small shift who was working in manufacturing that they could make this week to move forward in their business, in their career, maybe if they're working in the manufacturing business?
SPEAKER_00:If I was gonna tell anybody the quickest thing, always immediate, is review your financials every single day, check your receivables, your payables, and your inventories and monitor those and get into a skill set that what happens is if you do this every day for like three months, and I mean Monday through Friday, and if you want to do it Saturday, Sunday, you will start picking up things so quickly that no one else will pick up. Like you'll see, because you start remembering the numbers, you start seeing the things. Why is my direct layer change? Why do we have overtime? Why is my inventory getting low? Why do we have a high inventory? Well, high inventory is cash, and you know how that works. You got inventory, it's like, oh, we got all this inventory. All you see is money. And I would tell people that I learned that very young, and that would be the number one thing I would tell any manufacturer to review your financials, balance sheets, receivables, payables, inventory turns every single day. You do that for six months, you're going to be so far ahead. Your time from spending 20 minutes a day to doing that will literally be 30 seconds. And you get just this crystal clear view of your operation.
SPEAKER_01:Great. What about someone who's working? And, you know, what's the your best people working in your working in your plants? You know, what do they do every day that really helps?
SPEAKER_00:Well, what I've been, I was very fortunate. I worked for a guy in Austin, Texas, named Alec Beck. And one of the things he did is he was very big on autonomy. And so what the reason, some of the reasons why I have people for so long is one, I like to think I'm a nice guy, but is that I give them autonomy. I'm like, make decisions. You know, I talked about decisions, right? I truly push people to make a decision. Don't like I can remember I hadn't been in business probably six months. And one of the people in the office calls me and says, Larry, we got a problem. We've got to overnight hangers, right? This is a part of a product that has to be installed, and we didn't have them, and I need to overnight them to the job site tomorrow. And I listened, I heard this, and I said, and all I said, right? And this is a true story, I said, don't ever call me with a problem like that again. And I hung up the phone. I sent them a clear message. You're gonna spend$80 on a$10,000 project to make a customer happy. Make a darn decision. And I give people that autonomy to make decisions, to do, do what's right. I mean, because look, if you look at our website, we are a customer service business that manufactures roof and floor trusses. The key word is customer service business. And so I really drive that with every single person. Just, you know, make a decision. Can should we run over time to make sure a customer's happy tomorrow morning? Well, absolutely. Should we deliver trusses at 8:30 at night? No. You know, things like that. But they know this stuff, they need to make those decisions because a$10,000 job is not worth somebody's life shipping, rolling off manufactured product onto a job site in the dark. And so my big thing is autonomy. Give people autonomy, give them chances to hang themselves. Because the same thing you and I talked about, what's what do you learn the best from? Making mistakes. Like I have electric fences out here around my property. Let me tell you what, you grab a hold of one of them things, it hurts. So every time I go up to a gate, I tap it. Okay? I'm making a decision. Is that thing? Because it's cycles, right? So if you hit it, you can at least you're pulling off. It's the same thing in business. Give your people autonomy. If you're a constant control freak, you'll never grow. And that's allowed me to keep, and people like that because then they buy in. They they know that wow, the owner trusts me. Well, yeah, I trust you. You know, I I know you're not going to steal from me. And if you do, I'll I'll fire you. That's why literally I have people that have been with me for 25 years. That's my greatest success. Period. Like I tell people all the time no matter how much money I've made, no matter how much money I've lost, the fact I've been in business 26 years is that I have people that have worked for me since the day I started. My first employee just retired a year ago.
SPEAKER_01:That's great. Thank you for those stories, Larry. That was really great to hear your journey, your lessons, everything along the way. What can people find out more about you, Larry?
SPEAKER_00:So you can go to www.larrygdix.com or born or made podcast.com. They can talk to me. We have some you know speaking opportunities. We love to come out and speak to people, talk about our journey and the four D's and then the you know the seven shifts that got me unstuck, and and really try to motivate people and and keep it give people true life stories of one person's journey. And you know, there's lots of them out there. And then get in touch with me anytime through the websites, and I will respond.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Lari. Really appreciate your time. Fascinating interview today. Hope you have a great day. Thanks a lot. You do the same. Thank you. Take care.