This episode of 'Celebrating Small Family Businesses' features an interview with Kuder Consulting Group co-founder John Kuder, focusing on his family's business origin story, particularly his grandfather's journey.

Starting from a farming background in central Ohio, John's grandfather attended Michigan State and worked his way through college. He built a real estate career in Long Beach, California, starting from an inherited property.

This entrepreneurial spirit later led him to observe the potential of turning the waste product of orange peels from the citrus industry into a valuable byproduct, ultimately pioneering in the citrus industry in Florida by building a plant to process and sell dried peel as cow food.

The narrative covers the transition from manufacturing to sales and the eventual contraction of the business, showcasing the innovation and adaptation across generations.

Visit our website at https://kuderconsultinggroup.com/

00:00 Introduction to the Family Business

00:53 The Birth of Kuder Consulting Group

02:04 The Family's Early Days in Ohio

03:50 The Journey to California and the Real Estate Venture

06:31 The Citrus Industry and the Birth of a New Business

08:37 The Evolution and Challenges of the Family Business

Hi, and this episode of

celebrating small family businesses.

We're.

Going to talk to each other about

our own small family business.

So that you get a little

sense of our history and.

And potentially some of the

challenges that we've faced

we'll, we'll see where it goes.

Well, and this is

John's um, about John's family,

because we've already done mine.

So if you haven't seen mine.

Yes refer to another episode,

Right.

Where we talk about Connie's

family business history, right?

A little bit of it.

We'll, we'll probably catch.

This may be an ongoing thing

because you know, we've had.

A lot of time.

A lot of years together,

a lot of years together, and

a lot of, a lot of years being alive.

and in business.

And a lot of family drama.

Yeah.

A lot of family drama.

Okay,

so, John?

Yes, ma'am.

Tell me about your family.

How did you get involved with this whole

thing to begin with and, and what, and

maybe more the impetus, what was the

impetus for Cooter Consulting Group?

Because you're actually

the key behind this.

Okay.

Let's go with that one first.

That's an unexpected question.

Thank you.

Uh, Cooter consulting group is a reboot.

So, um, I almost feel like I'm putting

the cart before the horse, when we're

going to talk about family business

history, but the more recent history is

had to close down the family business.

I was the third generation

and it wasn't sustainable.

And the conditions that

we had to work in and are.

Assets and so forth.

So it was re-invent and reboot.

And so Kuder Consulting Group is intended.

To the, the, the impetus behind it is

to be able to help other people, other

family businesses not do what we did.

Not have the pain, the struggles and

the, and the ultimate result of closing

down the family business that we did.

Well, so how

did your family get in.

Involved with this family business.

I mean,

Yeah.

I mean,

okay, now we're

talking about my grandfather.

Right.

He was the one of three brothers that,

um, that lived on a family farm in central

Ohio outside Akron anyway, Akron, Ohio.

It's pretty interesting that.

That our families are only like

three hours, two and a half

hours apart from each other.

Geographically.

Yeah.

And I don't really know

much about the farm.

I just know it was a farm in Ohio.

I feel like when I talk about my

family business, especially about

my father, my grandfather, and often

about, you know, before I got there.

It's sort of like looking through

a photo album of snapshots

because what I have are snapshots.

Little stories that I was told that

give me a, just a glimpse of that

moment, but I don't have any continuity

between the snapshots sometimes.

So, he was one of three

brothers and his father.

Uh, it must have done well

because he has two other brothers.

He was the youngest.

His two older brothers.

Their college was paid for.

Wow.

And they both blew it.

They both flunked out.

So when my grandfather came

along, his father said, "I'm

not paying for your college."

Wow.

Yeah.

He'd been burned twice and he

wasn't going to do it again.

So the outcome of that was that he

worked his way through college and.

He waited tables.

And he, yeah, he might've done

some things that were less.

Uh, savory.

Savory.

But, uh, but he, you know,

he, yeah, he, he had to scrap.

Uh, he had to get scrappy to pay his way.

But I I'm guessing he valued

it more because of that.

And, , he went to Michigan State.

So it was a, it was an

agricultural university.

You came from agriculture

and then, you know, somehow.

Later he was selling

shovel handles, I believe.

And he was dating my grandmother.

His father asked him to go to

California and investigate this piece

of property that he'd somehow inherited.

Again, the snapshot, I don't have

the, I don't know where the property

came from or anything else.

Right.

But he invited my grandmother

to, to go with him on this trip.

And she said, well, I couldn't do that

unless we're married, you know, we're

talking, you know, I don't know the 1910s

or something, so totally appropriate.

Right.

And, uh, so they got married,

but again, I only know that

he, she said they did right.

Boom, nothing about the wedding.

Never heard a word.

So they're married.

They go to California.

And he,

and that's a big

trip too, at that age.

Oh, big.

Big trip.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I'm guessing it was, I don't

know if it was train or car.

I just don't know.

Right.

But, we know he had experience in sales.

Okay.

And, you know, some sort of, I'm guessing

that it was traveling sales of some sort.

And he went to Long Beach and it

turned out this piece of property

was an entire city block in the

city of Long Beach, California.

Whoa.

Okay.

And at that time it was vacant.

It was a vacant lot.

And I'd say it was, it

was an undeveloped lot.

It was not vacant.

There was a tent city there.

And again, you'd have to do some

research that I haven't done

about what the, what tent cities.

You know what time exactly that was.

But.

It was.

Um, not so different from

a refugee camp, I suppose.

Uh, and th the people

were just camping out.

I don't know, an empty lot.

And, um, you know, making do with

what they could, I think there

was, it was probably during some

sort of a recession or hard times.

But a guy, an entrepreneur, had set

himself up as the landlord there.

And so he was keeping order and

providing some sort of service.

And charging rent to these people a small

amount, but I assume, but it was rent.

I mean, how much would you

charge for a tent space, right?

True..

But my grandfather being the

entrepreneurial minded person than

he was , took this guy aside and

said, okay, now we're partners.

Because I own the land.

Right.

And I can.

Go through some kind of

process and kick everybody out.

But, but what's the point?

Let's.

We're in the real estate business here.

Right.

And.

So now you and I are partners and you

stay, keep doing what you're doing.

But I'm going to, you know, now as

the owner, I get a percentage, I don't

know what it was and that's how he.

This is from my grandma.

And that's how we got in

the real estate business.

Cool.

Some sometime later he was, they were

in the real estate business and then

there was a bust, there was some kind

of a recession or a real estate bust.

And then he was out of the business.

I don't know the details.

Right.

Timing wise.

I don't know.

But at some point while he was in

California, he saw that someone had

taken the orange peels that were the

waste product from the or citrus industry.

No.

The squeeze, the orange

juice, and they've got this.

messy peel that's left behind.

Well, because of the

volatile oils in the peel.

They could catch fire, believe it or not.

If you put a big, big, big mound of

them out somewhere, it would compost

and the heat of the composting that

was the heat was generated inside

that it could eventually catch fire.

And apparently it was pretty hot fire.

So they needed to get rid of that.

And the way they got rid of it was

taking it out into the cow pastures.

And spread it out and

letting the cows eat it.

Except that it, it was, that was

ineffective to a degree because it

only lasted so long and it rotted.

All right.

So somebody got the idea that,

uh, dry to dry it, and they had

this, these big rotary dryers.

Uh, they, uh, I guess they

had some excess capacity.

They.

We weren't using it for something else.

And they, so they ran this through

and, oh my gosh, it worked.

So he, he observed this somehow.

And, and made it turn

that into a business.

And so he came through Texas and built

a plant there and then came to central

Florida and built a plant drying

the peel, chopping it up and bagging

it and selling it for cow food.

Oh, wow.

And so that's how, and in

the process, did research.

Continuing to try to develop , the

by-product industry or the, by the number

of byproducts that were available from

the citrus industry, peel oil, et cetera.

And today, the one of the biggest

byproducts is called d-limonene

and it has many, many uses.

And, you know, the story of

d-limonene is another somebody,

another family's story, right?

But, he was a pioneer in the

citrus industry in that regard.

Although he's not credited publicly.

, in terms of being, , you know, helping.

Serve that industry in dealing with a,

what was it initially, a waste product

and turning it into a valuable byproduct.

So over time, , the.

Processors.

They have a lot of equipment, you

know, processing orange juice.

Right?

Squeezing.

And, and so they've got

boilers and they're generating

steam and heat and all this.

And so they figured out, well, we

can just put that dryer right here

next to all this other equipment

we've already got all this stuff.

You know, we'll just make the

peel and you sell it for us.

And so, you know, over a period of

years, we were gradually pushed out

of the manufacturing part of it.

Right.

And so we closed down, you know, it

was a, it was a shrinkage and that's

kinda my father's arc in the business.

Is he, unfortunately, he was not, he was,

he ran one of the plants for a while and

his early career, but the majority of

his career was seeing that contraction

and that shift from the manufacturing and

shipping rail cars, full of bags and stuff

to just selling it for as, as being a

sales agent, using the, all the contacts

and the network that they had built up.

And wasn't it

shipped overseas too?

Eventually.

Corn.

Corn is cheap here in the United States.

And, we grow a lot of it and

not so much in Europe, they don't

have as much farm land in Europe.

And so it's much more expensive.

And apparently it was cheaper to

ship the peel of the citrus pulp to

Europe than to ship corn to Europe,

or I don't know, but that's where

most of it goes is what I was told.